There are essentially five driving forces for MMORPG players. These games, by their very nature have numerous (or at least multiple) activities and each player is motivated by the following:

1. Progression - Experience to level, or obtaining gear at Endgame.
2. Rewards - Gear, currency, notoriety or any other status-symbol or in-game possession.
3. Fun Factors - Is the activity just plain fun to do, or awe-inspiring in some way?
4. Competition - Many players are keen to compete and compare their performance with other players / groups / guilds / factions.
5. Social Interaction - At the core of any multiplayer RPG is the basic social satisfaction from hanging out with your friends & guildmates, teaming up in a cooperative way and meeting / interacting with new people. Human desire to be accepted as part of a group should not be overlooked.

Each of these can motivate players in different directions. For instance, an activity could be fun, but the players may feel discouraged if it doesn't provide experience. It's great to be social, but if solo'ing is the fastest way to level, players will shun teaming up.

The first two motivations can be considered incentives in their purest form, in a way they are both rewards although it's important to separate them because one will motivate a certain type of player whereas the other may not.

In an interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Mark Jacobs repeated an established adage in MMORPGs:

I'd call this more truthiness than truism, because it's missing an important element--

Add Convenience

Convenience is the sixth motivator and it's the trump card. You can take any combination of the above and mix in convenience and whatever the activity is, it will go over in a big way. One example is if quests are trackable on a map, most players will naturally complete the quests that are closest rather than any sort of story-progression.

Players will always find the shortcuts.

For Warhammer, Scenarios match multiple categories, they're certainly competitive and fun and if the queues are short the experience is good. But above all, they're super-convenient.

Mythic may try to nerf Scenarios, or more likely boost the incentives for other activities, but the fact of the matter is that they need to boost all of the motivators, not just exp and rewards if they hope to make their game more well rounded and get players deeper into RvR and Public Quests.

Sometimes something is so good that the flaws stand out like thorns on a rose stem. I'm sure that my next batch of posts about Warhammer are going to seem very critical, but I wouldn't bother pointing out what is wrong with the game if I wasn't enjoying it so much.

I hadn't expected to love WAR. I wasn't even sure if I'd play the game, it seemed in many ways to be contrary to what I prefer in an MMORPG. But what's there, the core of gameplay, is fun.

There are, however, a LOT of bugs and issues. But these are easy to forget when you're having a good time.

I was the same way with World of Warcraft when it was released. It was such a wonder at first that most players glossed over some significant issues that they would otherwise roast a game for. WAR is much the same, some of the issues are big, even close to show-stopping (the poor ways WAR handles lag come to mind), but it's worth playing.

That won't stop me however, from being very critical of Mythic. Some things need fixing now, while others should be addressed sooner or later.

My first day in WAR was great. I'd expected population-related problems, but that just didn't happen on our server. It was well populated for both sides, I never encountered any login queues (Michelle did, but it was less than a minute long). Public Quests were well attended and anytime we wanted to play a Scenario it would start almost right away.

Some of the problems that nagged the Open Beta had evaporated too, it was far less laggy for us, although there were still some disconcerting moments of high latency and WAR still doesn't handle that well. Framerate was all over the place, but that was largely due to the high numbers of players running around.

Game? Great

Michelle had the day off, so it was perfect for an epic gaming session. Our /played time is already scary. Her Witch Elf is Rank 12 and my Squig Herder is Rank 9. Both of us ended our day still in Tier 1 so we can start fresh in the next tier.

Michelle likens the Witch Elf to her WoW Druid's Cat form, which makes a good deal of sense with the Witch Elf being a sort of rogue archetype. I found the Squig Herder has a few unique abilities but pet AI in both pathing and controls response is still poor, my Squig could use some love.

Public Quests were a hoot, although some are definitely better than others. A few players whined about loot, and some were overly competitive (healers happy to let others die, DPS grabbing mobs that they shouldn't, etc.), but for the most part I was thrilled with the cooperative nature of the game.

Questing is fun but standard faire, I'd seen it during Open Beta and already decided that I liked the Greenskin storyline the best.

Open Groups work really well, I was a sceptic and now a complete fan of the system WAR has developed. It could use some tweaking, there's no listing for the group's intent and some players have a tendency to join then wander off while still grouped, but overall the Open Groups combined with Public Quests are a new level of convenience that coaxes even the most insular players (that's me) into participating.

Players? Lots, but some suck

The only serious disappointments so far have come from what we've seen of the playerbase.

Michelle & I witnessed numerous botting and boxing attempts, especially in the Scenarios and RvR where some players clearly intend to farm for exp + renown with multiple characters at a time. The worst situation was when we were faced by a well-coordinated premade, but on our own side almost our entire team barely wandered from the starting mound to attack: The score ended at 500 to 1 as five of us futilely tried to fend off the enemy on our own.

I'm starting to really loathe boxers. They're really obvious right now while they try to get their setups working well with WAR, and it seems they're commonplace. I'm hoping these are just spillovers from WoW and they'll get bored with WAR's lack of raiding, but the mechanics of WAR are particularly open to being exploited this way. I don't automatically consider boxing an exploit, but I'm concerned we're going to end up playing alongside a bunch of players with scripted healers behind them and that's definitely an upset to the balance of the game.

The bots and semi-bots didn't spoil much of our fun however, despite being noticeable they were a minority and the sheer joy of the rest of the game offset their annoyance anyway.

Co-op, Co-op, Co-op!

As I stressed earlier, the cooperative nature of the game won out. With the many Public Quests, ample Scenarios and Open Grouping, it's more co-op than I've seen in any MMORPG before. City of Heroes for instance has great teamwork, but a lack of things for those teams to do. WoW is far too PvE-competitive these days for my taste and I hate what it's done to the WoW playerbase.

I'm a huge Co-op nut, so this is big for me.

RvR works well, the large zergs are the norm, but we found that a small strike team can do wonders. RvR so far is oddly the least coordinated part of the game, but I suspect that's entirely because Tier 1 RvR lacks keeps and siege engines, it's essentially a slower version of the Scenarios.

This game is working for me, even though it's missing a lot of features I'd usually prefer. It just goes to show what good solid gameplay can do.

Hardcore and Casual don't exist, at least not in the ways the words have been applied lately.

There are the informed and the uninformed.

Be careful when you woo the uninformed masses that you don't just sell them shiny new things. Uninformed doesn't mean stupid, you can only hawk baubles for so long. The Mii-toos of the music game genre are one example of paste sold as precious jewels.

Don't repeat 1983.

The craze for anything with pixels left a jaded mass-market in its wake and for decades afterwards the videogame industry struggled for relevance. The buzz is that we've arrived? We've been here before.

Am I trying to be an alarmist? Maybe just a bit, although some ringing in executive ears won't stop this sort of thing. I can only hope they keep up the greater creative effort rather than standing at the base of the money-tree and collecting the dollars that fall. E3's opening pitches this year are not a good sign.

There have been some great examples in recent years of delivering solid gameplay to the masses, but the next wave seems tired.

I've heard complaints that this or that game is too hard. These are games I've found relatively easy and I'm not exactly Mr. Über Superman Gamer.

WTF is wrong with hard?

Geez, most games are all too easy. People complain constantly that they're bored, but then bitch that something is hard? What is wrong with you?

I want more challenges. Sure, I don't want it so hard I'm giving up on it all, but I want it hard enough that I've hit a wall and had to learn how to climb it. Some of it, I can even accept that I can't do it, that's it's too hard for me. Stuff that gives me real and tangible goals.

It's a GAME.

Games need challenges. If you can click through to beat it all mindlessly, what fun is in that exactly? Just go watch a movie instead, or browse websites if you just want a basic level of interactivity.

Now I know everyone has a different skill level, but that's why games should have a variety of difficulties: Different tasks that are harder than others, while some that are easy. Maybe a curve as you go along. As I mentioned, I'm not super skilled myself, but I actually appreciate something that's too challenging for me, that requires me to improve or even if it just plain makes me think "Wow, I wish I could attain that, someone must be good at it".

If it's made to be easy for those more casual than me, well ugh that's gonna suck for my gameplay, of course I'd get bored. Some of it should be too hard for them, some of it should be too hard for me.

I like a challenge. I want games to be harder. I think this whole catering to 'casual' gaming is a falacy, it's making people rip through content at a blinding rate and they're getting bored.

What we've been getting lately as a substitute for hard, is a grind. Ugh, tedious isn't difficult, it's just a barrier.

No wonder PvP is becoming more popular, it's becoming the only serious challenge.

You hear this term a lot, I use it myself plenty, but what is Endgame exactly?

It comes from standard RPG gameplay, where the player "levels up" to progress. But an online world needs persistence, you can't trap players into leveling up forever. It has to plateau, it needs an End. At which point players begin a sort of new game, where some of the rules change and new activities are repeated or take a much longer length of time to complete.

Anyone who doesn't play these games could look at that description and shake their heads. We don't repeat the leveling grind into infinity, because the repetition without end would frustrate players-- So we give them an End, but then redirect them into other activities that repeat anyway. Or make them progress very slowly.

That about sum it up?

I think it's perfectly possible to have activities that aren't a grind, the plain and simple of it is: gameplay and content.

It's easier to repeat gameplay and stretch content than to provide more of it.

Clearly it's impossible to create infinite quality content, but I also think there's this situation in MMORPG development when they stop making a game for the players and start cashing in. Further development slows, they accept the monthly fees but the content trickles out, reducing cost and turning the whole thing into one big cash cow.

I'm generally not this sort of cynic when it comes to game developers, the ones I know are passionate about their games, but I can't explain the trend for MMORPGs any other way.

I think this market is wide open for the first game that keeps up a better pace with quality content and a greater variety of gameplay.

Edit: I've edited much of this post, not because it was incendiary, but because it's been better addressed by Richard Bartle's own response. Even edited, this is still a bit meandering, I think my followup is better.

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The debate of the day seems to be revolving around a recent Massively interview with Richard Bartle, where he lumps Age of Conan and Warhammer into the same pile as World of Warcraft. This offended some folks who are particularly passionate about this specific genre. Keen went as far as to call out Dr. Bartle to educate himself better on the differences between games in the genre.

Keen has a point, if you're going to speak out on something, it helps to know the details.

The thing is, Massively's Michael Zenke was obviously looking for another perverse quote like last years "I'd shut down WoW". Richard Bartle isn't interested in any game based on the EQ / WoW model and whether you're hyped for WAR or not, you have to admit that's the genre it's in. He keeps getting asked, so he's forced himself to play the games and of course playing that way he's had a horrible time.

Are we stuck with the Everquest model?

You probably know the basics of most MMORPG gameplay from WoW, but it's essentially the same model that was Everquest.

The real question: Is the EQ-derived model a Wheel-like invention that's essential for these games? There's this big assumption that's what an MMORPG should start with, then patch in all of the features to differentiate. I don't think it's the Wheel, not even close. We need more games built on new models, that's what Richard Bartle is getting at.

I enjoyed WoW and even moreso AoC. I have huge respect for the evolutionary changes that will be in WAR, but I cannot help but think I'd enjoy these games even more if their core wasn't so much the damn same thing over and over. So while Keen insists that WAR != WoW, I have to say, WAR is more like WoW than it isn't.

So much time and energy is spent at Mythic and elsewhere to fix the deficiencies in the genre's basic model but the concept of changing the model is lost on people. Partly because it's not going to happen, the grind and trap of leveling up equates to pure cash and it's easier to take tried-and-true and just slap some extra fun on top.

Why not change what's broken instead of applying bandaids?

Burdens inherent to the EQ model drag down the fun factors. The MMORPG market has a lot of room to grow, but it could just as easily shrink as players feel disenfranchised because sooner or later they realize that some elements in this genre are nothing more than a dip into their wallets.

Tycho @ Penny Arcade put a similar perspective into better words, of how the entire MMORPG market is leaving him feeling dry:

It hits home the same way Richard Bartle's observations have for me, which is a paradox because Tycho's more interested in gameplay and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't find Dr. Bartle's virtual world simulation perspectives as much fun.