Our Generation

I've been gaming for years. From Zaxxon, on my fathers TRS-80, to Phantasy Star on my Sega Genesis. Then Ultima Online for a year, Everquest for 5 years, EQ2 for 6 months and now World of Warcraft for the past 6 months.

During my stint in MMO's, I've been a Guild Leader for the majority of that time and responsible for keeping a group of 75 or so other gamers productive and having fun. Generally, that's been easier than you might expect because games, like Everquest, actually had some very interesting content and mechanics that could keep us busy for a good portion of the time we spent playing. Recently, however, games like EQ2 and even WoW, to an extent, have been less successful in keeping gamers attention for even a fraction of the time. Why is that? What changed? Was it us or the games? In truth, it's probably a little of both.

The saying "The journey is more important than the destination" bears some truth in the MMO genre. Think about it: In each MMO you have seriously played, what happened as soon as you hit the level cap (destination)? Thats right; you started getting bored with the game even though, just a few weeks ago while you were leveling, (the Journey) you couldn't be seperated from the keyboard, short of a natural disaster. Once that destination was reached, however, your time in game gradually started to decline since you couldn't find anything to do that you hadn't done 30 times already. Lets face it, people can only handle doing the same thing over and over for so long before losing interest.

Its simple human nature. If people aren't learning and experiencing new things, they'll go somewhere they can, even if that "somewhere else" is another game. Developers of tomorrows MMO's would do well to keep that in mind because, unfortunately, todays games seem to have missed this simple fact, and its showing! To be successful in todays MMO market, a MMO must keep their players busy in multiple ways, especially when they are max level.

One such way is character development. Above all else, a successful game must never let a player's character stop developing. The absolute number one largest draw in MMO's is character development. I don't care what people say about socialization, competitiveness or any other criteria used to explain what keeps them playing a MMO. In the end, all of those myriad of reasons rest on the foundation that is character development. For example, in Everquest, the Magelo and EQrankings services were a huge success. Why? Because they provided people with a place to brag about how well they had developed their character and show off why their character development skills were better than their peers. Sure, that plays into the competitiveness I mentioned earlier, but without uncapped character development, those services would never have existed because everyone eventually would have turned out the same. Where's the fun in that?

Many games have approached destination character development in different ways. Everquest's model of Alternate Advancement Experience (AAXP) was one of the more successful systems. It kept people grouping and adventuring, a core strength that most MMO's implement well. This, in turn, kept people engaged once they reached their destination. It allowed them to continue to measure the improvment and progress of their characters in the traditional way, although they could no longer level.

Other games, like World of Warcraft have relied on PVP and faction farming to a much less successful extent. Unfortunately, unbalanced server population removed the PVP destination option of character development before it could even be experienced for many. Even if PVP was available as an option, there usually was only two different venues to practice it on, and I've already touched on the fact that people can only handle repetition for so long before losing interest. This resulted in just a handful of single group dungeons and faction farming to keep people busy.

Everquest 2 seemed to have even less destination options than its predecessor or competitor. Upon reaching their destination in pre-expansion EQ2, players had Heritage Quests to work on, rare crafting materials to harvest and just 3 or 4 zones to adventure in. This lack of options resulted in some serious wide spread and game altering changes being patched into the game to the point that todays version of EQ2 isnt even recognizable to those who played it originally. Unfortunately the game is locked into what could be considered a flat spin as the developers add more and more features that remove the difficult parts of the game and replace them with what are essentially freebies. This, in turn, makes more players bored as they reach their destination faster and find limited choices available to entertain themselves. For example, I recently read that 25% xp bonus potions were being given to long time subscribers to help players level even faster to the games destination. Can you even imagine seeing something like that being implemented in Everquest during its first two years?

Lets look at the situation a little closer.

Why would a business want to expedite someone's journey to their destination when the destination is already known to be lacking content? What will keep people busy when they aren't raiding, assuming that raiding is even an option to begin with. Unfortunately, some people dislike raiding, just as some people dislike PVP with a passion. Because of that, in my opinion, companies would do well to focus on destination options that directly contribute to the continued development of a player's character with systems like AAXP. At the end of the day, the MMO who keeps its players actively building their characters in MEASUREABLE ways the longest is the MMO who will be the most successful.



Another problem, which is even more insidious than what we just discussed, is their adoption of the Staples "Easy" button. In short, games have been getting easier and more user friendly at an alarming rate for the last 3 or 4 years. From mechanics like the Plane of Knowledge in EQ to the silvery cord pointing out your corpse in EQ2 to the various interface mods in World of Warcraft that almost play the game for you, there are very few mechanics in games these days to keep players on their toes. Sure, there's a very solid business reason for this: Companies need to appeal to the widest audience possible to sell the most accounts and keep them active. Unfortunately, this same business practice is responsible for driving away the core gaming populace who enjoys being challenged. What's worse, that same group of gamers often ends up accounting for the majority of a companies long term revenue. Hopefully gaming companies start to realize that fact and adjust accordingly.

The scariest part about the "Easy" button effect is that it's contributing the most to the erosion of our gaming experience. Gamers are getting dumber and lazier as you read this. Read that again if you need to, because its true! Games, of late, have been doing everything possible to make the character development process, that core reason why we play MMO's in the first place, less tedious. Doesn't that sound counter productive and like a bad business decision to you? Ultimately, a company wants to keep people playing for as long as possible, but lately they seem to actively be shooting themselves in the foot.

Take Blizzard, for example: The leveling curve they implemented in World of Warcraft was extremely shallow, resulting in people reaching their destination in as little as two weeks. Blizzard claims this was by design because they wanted people to experience all the cool stuff they had planned at the level cap. The result? A bunch of bored players farming Molten Core and playing Warsong Gulch CTF for months until Blizzard could rush out Black Wing Lair for people to grind on. If you dont believe me, ask Blizzard. They've reported that they see major spikes in subscription reactivations each time they patch new content. Wouldn't it be better if people have enough reason to play that they never let their subscription lapse in the first place?

Which brings us to todays veteran MMO gamer. We've changed just as much as the games we played have changed. Gone are the days of being noobies running around East Commons and getting eatten by the griffons. Today we've seen it all and if we havent we've heard about someone else seeing it all. These days we want a game that can challenge us, gives us multiple real options when we reach our destination and doesn't try to be all things to all gamers. I'm sure everyone has heard the term "Jack of all trades, master of none" and it pretty much applies to the MMOs of today. Trying to do something for everyone just means you won't get any one thing just right. That results is a flat, uninspiring game that won't keep any significant number of games held captive for very long.

So is there hope? Some. A few people, including myself, think so. What gives us this hope? The game Vanguard: Saga of Heros which is being developed by Sigil Games Online and published by Microsoft. Vanguard is shaping up to actually be a refreshing step back, even as it takes steps forward into the third generation of MMOs. The game promises to bring some of the difficulty we grew up on back to the genre instead of handing things to us on a silver platter. Its developers are looking to challenge us, as gamers, to improve our skills instead of allowing them to atrophy with automatic mechanics or unimaginative features. Gone will be the days of hitting "autoattack" and going /afk to get a coke. Encounters will require you to perceive what a monster is doing and react accordingly to prevent almost certain destruction.

Recently, Oloh, one of Vanguards Beta 0 testers, was allowed to explain some of the mechanics that will make Vanguard different and more difficult than its predecessors. Openings, bridges, finishing moves, perception, counters, just to name a few, will contribute to keep us alert and participating in Vanguard at all times. Even more exciting is, as our groups grow, so, too, will our options for reacting to our peers and foes almost exponentially. Do you counter your foe's incoming lightning bolt, or do you pull your partner out of its path? Do you shove your opponent, sending him to the ground so your partner can stab them in the chest, or do you send a brief jolt of magic towards your partner and just let them use the magic's momentum to spring a deadly attack? All of those questions and more will be asked by Vanguard's players everytime they engage in battle. The exciting part is these mechanics will seperate the skilled players from the ones who have just been riding other players coat tails in other games and really force both groups to step up their game.

I, for one, am looking forward to Vanguard for that reason alone. I sincerely miss pulling in Sebilis until my cleric was crying for mana and locking down 6 or 7 mobs at once and living. That the game has so much more to offer me is just icing on the cake. Be it diplomacy, crafting, city building, raiding, PVP or just exploring the vast world of Telon, Vanguard should bring us back to the days before the easy button and thats just fine with me.

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