Metaplace shuts down
Metaplace is shutting down and I know this isn’t supposed to be the appropriate time to disassemble why, but I think that’s part of the point. Everyone has been too polite and reserved toward Raph Koster and his big project. The collective web has been a group of yes men. There’s no grand conspiracy, just a lot of respect. Respect != Honesty. Of course, I’m just as culpable as the next fanboi. It’s too damn easy to critique after the fact, but better late than never.
Content is king. If you’re going to develop a game / platform / whatever that focuses on Community Content Creation, then you better jumpstart it with some seriously good content yourself to begin with. This has been true since Lode Runner and all through Doom, Quake, Half-Life, etc..
When I logged into Metaplace, it seemed cute, but no more compelling than any other Flash-driven avatar system. I know there was more than the usual under the hood, but the exterior never grabbed me. I don’t know if that was everyone’s experience, but that’s my take.
I also feel that trying to trying to compete with Facebook and Myspace is silly. That’s not a market of many successes, it’s a domination of few. The gold rush on mainstream social networking is already over. Although I’m convinced that game communities could wedge into the social networks market, it would require leveraging from a strong game.
I’m curious to hear Raph’s postmortem on Metaplace, which I’m sure is coming. I hope next time he makes a fun game design first, content creation tools second.
The Alt Issues: Content and Progression
Many players identify themselves as altaholics, or alt-addicted in some way. I’m not one of those players. In most games, I choose my main character near the beginning and then stick with him. So I’m probably not the most authoritative word regarding alts. Disclaimer out the way:
Champions Online could be alt paradise, but right now it’s more of an alt trap. From what I’ve seen, a lot of players are creating and re-creating, rolling and re-rolling. Alt after alt they climb up close to level 20 and then restart the game.
So what’s the problem?
- There’s only one quest path. On each alt, you’re repeating the exact same quests. As you level, you encounter bugged quests and things get really sparse at times. Champions is in sore need of more quests and more content overall. Doing the same exact things on each alt must get tedious after the third or fourth alt, let alone the eighth.
- The better content is at higher levels. That’s been my experience so far, that Champions ramps upwards. The gameplay expands into better mob abilities and on Monster Island in particular (Lumeria not-so-much) the world feels more integrated, or at least it does when a flaming lava meteor hits me from the island’s resident volcano. Nemesis quests also get better as they go. 5man quests start out in the late 20’s. Quests get more varied and creative, unfortunately they bug out more often too. If you re-roll at 20, you’re missing the good stuff.
- Character progression comes together around level 30. It’s not until getting over the mid-range hump that the Powerset Frameworks really come into their own. A lot of powers overlap and compliment each other and it was around level 30 that I really got into the groove and rhythm with my character in combat. I watch other players around me and although some still seem to be having problems with their builds, a lot of others appear to move along gracefully: It’s noticeable when someone pulls the pieces of their powers together into a coherent and capable whole. It almost sounds like magic describing it, I know, but it is what it is.
- Crafting lacks. There aren’t a lot of side activities outside of combat and what’s there (crafting) isn’t spectacular. That’s fine, I don’t think Champions is a do-everything kind of MMORPG. The combat is the big attraction for sure, but more things to do would make alts more compelling.
Point #1 is the pivotal one, the rest would fall into place if it were solved. I think players would push themselves to higher levels, the rewards for doing so are good, but they need to have fun getting there.
The quests themselves have decent variety. The repetition is in redoing the same ones again and again. If you burn out on alts, it could burn you out overall.
Even alt-resistant as I am, I’ve become enamoured with Champions’ character creator and the Powersets are the clincher, I’d love to try more builds (outside of the Powerhouse). I’ll probably end up playing more alts in this game than any other. I just hope I don’t end up stabbing my eyes out with my mouse (it could be possible, but I’m trying not to think of the resulting image) while I go through the same questing I’ve already thoroughly immersed myself in with my main.
Cryptic is promising more content, across the board. I hope they keep up on that.
This game could become alt paradise. It’s not there yet.
Note: I’m thrilled with my main (currently level 36). Overall this game has surprised me, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would and I’ve been playing it less casual than I’d planned. See disclaimer at the top.
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.
Content, Content, Content!
We keep getting told that content is expensive. Sure it is, making content is more expensive than not making it. Is it too expensive? Bullshit.
MMO developers spend gobs of money. An AAA title MMORPG costs somewhere between $20-80 million USD. That should pay for a decent amount of content. Unless you’ve been dicking around, which seems to be common when people have that much money to coast on.
If it’s successful, an MMO can make millions. Hundreds of millions. If it’s hugely successful, we’re talking billions. Tell me content is too expensive again? Bullshit.
What they mean is good content takes an active and interested developer base to keep churning it out. It’s cheaper to stretch it, to give us smaller amounts of content that are more repetitive, to make us climb ladders or distract us with player competition or meta-gaming on changing stats. I say fine, give us those things too, but don’t cheap on the good solid content.
What they also mean is that in today’s corporate culture, profit margins trump customer satisfaction. Their object is to do as little as necessary to keep the customers strung along. This works especially well in an industry where there’s a large barrier to entry for competitors to catch up: Let them spend the money while you carve out your margins.
Developers are jumping up and down pointing at the small ‘casual’ games that are resource-lite / asset-lite. A little bit of coding, a small bite of art and *ding* you could be selling a game. Hey those games can be fun, but if you’re trying to convince me to pay more than the initial (small) price for them, screw you.
I’ve heard the bemoaning that some players will run through the content like it’s a race to the end. Fine, you cannot perpetually please that group, but you can for a while and the rest of us are still here too. Don’t throw your hands up in the air and toss in the towel over it.
The first M in MMO is for Massive. Make a Massive game!
