Bad launch? So what.
I’m sure that many will disagree with my title for this post, but I stick by it 98%. A poor launch has to be beyond abysmal to truly screw up an MMORPG. As long as the problems are fixed, the game will stand on the merits of its gameplay.
The 2% exception: Anarchy Online still holds the title for worst MMO launch because not only was it messy, it involved registration issues (and related credit card fears) that left some players allergic to MMOs altogether. Yet even though AO’s launch scared off customers in large volumes, it still survived and is running to this day.
Every major MMO has launched with problems, either technically on the launch itself or lacking significant content / features.
The real test is how the developers respond in the months that follow.
The WoW example
Blizzard’s launch for World of Warcraft was an epic mess. Game awards were retroactively revoked and servers commonly had downtimes measured in days. Blizzard’s immense and stubborn fanbase probably helped, but more importantly Blizzard stepped up and did what they had to do to recover from the failures. WoW still has the odd bad patch but they always rebound with the game stronger than before.
WoW launched with less pre-orders than Aion, Warhammer Online or Age of Conan. Astonishing when you think of how much (and how quickly) it grew once it stabilized.
WoW did have over 600,000 subscribers after the first month, but here’s something that’s rarely mentioned: Their subscriber base dipped before climbing again. Blizzard literally stopped selling the game until they could sort out the significant problems. Many players left during long queues, disconnects and all sorts of bugs and downtime, but when Blizzard consistently added fixes and content: New players flocked into the game in droves. It was later, months after launch that WoW hit critical mass into millions of subscribers. An even larger bulk of WoW players arrived in its second year.
Past Examples and the Present
Perseverance after launch pays off. EVE Online didn’t get over the hump until after CCP bought it back from their publishers. Dark Age of Camelot spiked its largest numbers after 2 years with its Trials of Atlantis expansion. City of Heroes has restored most of its population after 5 years. Notably, most of the rebound examples predate WoW.
Recent MMOs have tried to copy WoW’s success in a myriad of other ways, but they’ve unfortunately been slow to get their wheels moving after launch. New content and zones often get mentioned early but then pushed back, sometimes longer than a year, or in worse cases earmarked for an expansion. Big necessary changes don’t get made for fear of upsetting the playerbase. Server infrastructure is often skimped on, planning for population decreases instead of increases. Some notable games have been flat out shut down.
The MMO playerbase is incredibly resilient to changes as long as they’re necessary and well designed. More content is always welcomed. Many players wait until after launch just to see how the game pans out.
On the other hand players only tolerate broken for so long and once the smell of stagnation sets in, they’ll leave in bulk.
The months after release = more important than the launch week.
That’s difficult to master for most game studios. After a few years of development, I’m sure they just want to get the thing out the door and take a deep breath or even a (well deserved) vacation. Burnout at this point is probably the biggest risk at such a critical time.
Not every studio can afford to keep up development either, costs are soaring in the age of HD visuals. Betting on a big launch to restore dried up funds doesn’t usually work out. Running under big publishers has its risks too, they’re accustomed to games making or breaking on initial box sales and they’re not known for being patient if a game doesn’t score big right away. These are company health and business issues regardless of launch issues though.
Bad launches suck, but on their own they don’t break a game into failure.
IMHO, it’s all about ramping up the game after launch.
EVE touches on pseudo RMT to reduce gold farming
I haven’t played EVE Online for awhile, so this is news to me and certainly an intriguing concept. Massively is covering it, but you can also read about it on the EVE dev blog.
Basically, they’re letting players sell gold (ISK for EVE), but not for real money, for game time instead.
It’s a compromise for sure. If you disagree with RMT on the basis that it lets players leapfrog the grind (at least the gold part of it) then this could rub you the wrong way too.
I’m a pragmatist. I don’t like RMT, but it isn’t going away anytime soon. This is one of the least evil approaches to acceptance that we’ve seen yet. CCP started up the program months back but it’s settling into the news again since they’ve presented some of the data in convenient graphs and whatnot.
The big upsides: Less gold spammers and less hijacking of accounts. One downside is they’ve basically got two currencies in the game now: the original ISK and the new PLEX (30 day Pilot License EXtension). Sooner or later one will devalue the other, at which point CCP may have to step in and adjust currencies.
The other upside, or downside depending on how you see it: The system acts like a one-way gate. Real money gets put in via CCP’s website and comes out to players to purchase ISK from other players who can cash in the PLEX for time on their accounts. So is this just an elaborate way for CCP to double-dip? A bit, yeah, but the overall result for the players is probably positive. And of course I’m sure the folks at CCP would argue that their financial health helps the game.
I’m trying to imagine a system like this dropped into other MMOs and honestly, it sounds better than a lot of the alternatives.
EVE could have ruined my life
In 2003 after some rocky points IRL, I was looking for a new MMORPG. Space sims caught my eye, they seemed a natural multiplayer extension of the old Elite series I loved so much. I passed on EVE Online because I was leery of an MMO just recently launched. Earth & Beyond had been around longer and had avatars, it seemed the better choice.
Here’s my timeline since then:
- August 2003 – Joined Earth & Beyond. Had a lot of fun, brought a score of friends along too, mostly our old group of Quake LAN buddies.
- February 2004 – Met Michelle. We um, dated. Well, not really, we met and had a lot of kinky sex.
- May 2004 – EA announced plans to shut down Earth & Beyond. Most players quit shortly afterwards, including myself.
- May 2004 – Convinced Michelle to join me playing City of Heroes. My pitch: With us living an hour apart, we could spend quality time chatting and killing baddies– rather than just chatting on MSN. My ploy worked. She was cautious about the Superhero / Sci-Fi cheesy theme, but the character creation system won her over. We continued to have a lot of great sex whenever physically together.
- May 2004 – Michelle visited me while I was stuck in the Hospital with gall stones during an HEU worker’s strike, it brought us closer.
- July 2004 – Narrowly escaped a harrowing house fire, which left my home inhabitable for months, during which I couch surfed at the generosity of friends. I played a lot of City of Heroes at this time, joining Michelle, Nelg, Lurch and Nezgar often online.
- December 2004 – Our group of avid gamers migrated again, this time to World of Warcraft. Michelle was very busy in school so the majority of our free time was spent together in-game while we were physically in different places.
- December 2007 – After a long run in WoW, our gaming group decided to take a break from MMORPGs until Age of Conan comes out, temporarily returning to our FPS roots.
- April 2008 – Michelle moved in with me, now we’re a happy couple that shares a gaming obsession.
- May 2008 – Age of Conan arrived, our guild migrated again.
- July 2008 – Age of Conan has me frustrated, I broke my rule about playing launch games and it’s lacking significant features and content. I’m trying EVE Online on the side, which is ironic since I passed on it 5 years ago to give it time to grow after its launch.
The key point here was in the collapse of Earth & Beyond. If I’d chosen EVE Online instead, I suspect its deep economic and unique PvP experiences could have grabbed me by the balls and never let go. It’s likely I would have skipped past City of Heroes, possibly World of Warcraft and Age of Conan as well.
Michelle wouldn’t have joined a space sim in 2004, we didn’t know each other well and she’s not a Sci-Fi fan (you should have seen the faces she made at Auto Assault). Flying around in a bunch of ships probably wouldn’t have appealed (or floating in ships, she hated Pirates of the Burning Sea). With MMORPGs in general she was cautious, but City of Heroes’ character creation was the hook. Now she enjoys these games as much as I do.
Michelle and I were initially lovers, but we’ve come together as a couple through these games. That may sound nerdy or cheesy, but I’m a geek through and through.
If I’d become a hardcore EVE player, Michelle and I would have spent a lot less time together sharing gameplay online. I probably wouldn’t be living together with her now and who knows if we’d have even stayed together. Damn EVE Online.
4.5 years as a gaming geek couple. Woot! =D
