Bioware is certainly defensive about their game. Clearly, something is not going right for them.
To those who aren’t paying attention to the MMORPG scene, here is what is happening.
World of Warcraft, which has dominated the market since its release, is seven years old (!) and showing signs of age. It’s latest expansion, Cataclysm, tried a ‘hardcore’ approach to Endgame with the theme of fire and brimstone and subscriptions have decreased by the millions. While other MMORPGs have come out with great attention, they all have flamed out pretty fast. However, lately, Rift certainly did impressively in its first couple of months when it was released around six (?) months ago. Of course, it began the descent that all non-WoW MMORPGs take.
WoW and MMORPGs are not so much of a game to people as they are a lifestyle. This is why you see so many people play WoW and be frustrated. “Why don’t they do this? Why do they do that?” Video games were originally designed to be played for only a few minutes at a time and only a few times a week. With WoW, people are logged on 24/7 and have been playing the same game for years. I don’t think there has been any video game made that can say that.
So to these frustrated MMORPGers, Stars Wars: The Old Republic was to become the salvation, the ‘new WoW’. It was made by Bioware which many gamers liked from previous games like Dragon Age. It had an IP they liked (Star Wars). It has the biggest budget ever put into a MMORPG.
What people may not have realized is that SWTOR was published by EA. EA is the rival to Activision. EA also specializes in pre-sale marketing. As the days ticked to SWTOR’s release, you would have thought it would be the Second Coming. And this interview is clear, as well as the lack of published sales figures in PR statements, that the hamster fell off the wheel.
Where the Developers Went Wrong
Every single MMORPG developer seems to say they understand WoW’s success. But do they? If they keep flaming out, clearly they do not understand WoW’s success.
Blizzard was not a RPG company. Blizzard was primarily a RTS company (Diablo series was made by Blizzard North). So how did a RTS company take over the MMORPG market?
The turning point for Blizzard’s ascension wasn’t with the release of WoW but with the release of Kali on the CD version of Warcraft 2. Blizzard recognized the value of Internet play far before any other game company did. Using Jay Cotton’s program of tricking computer Local Area Networks to work over the Internet, this was the foundation of what was to become Battle Net. So when it came with the release of Diablo, Blizzard realized the importance of Internet play from Kali and created their own free online platform. Starcraft continued this path as did Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3.
Something interesting happened during this time: the RTS boom. Countless RTS games came out. Yet, for some reason, Blizzard’s RTS games stayed on the store shelves and kept being played while the other RTS games flamed out. Does this sound familiar?
While Warcraft 2’s gameplay might have been too archaic (it wasn’t even designed for Internet gameplay, we owe playing Warcraft 2 on the Internet to Jay Cotton’s Kali [he does not get enough credit in the gaming universe unfortunately]) it and Command and Conquer started the RTS boom. However, it was Starcraft and Warcraft 3’s gameplay and balance maintenance (as well as expansions that fixed flaws) allowed these games to be played… to this day still.
My point is that Blizzard developed unique skills in managing Internet gameplay and game balance for the long term.
All these MMORPG games that flame out are companies without this experience. Companies like Bioware think they know how to make a MMORPG because they know how to make a RPG. But it doesn’t work like that. The Internet gameplay and game balance is of far more of a concern than anything else.
Another thing is that WoW keeps re-inventing itself. I know former WoW players will passionately disagree with it, but stick with me. Look at the changes that occurred to WoW during these seven years. Mounts at 20 instead of 40. More flight paths. Weekly cap on dungeons instead of a ‘daily dungeon’. PvP and PvE separated and using different gear. Looking for Dungeon tool. Looking for Raid tool. 40 man raids turned into 25 and 10 man raids. My point is that WoW keeps becoming more and more accessible. This infuriates the ‘hardcore’ WoW players who keep saying the game is becoming ‘casual’. But if you look at RPGs in their entire history, the evolution has always been accessibility. Prior to Ultima 6, RPGs had battles and the overworld on two different planes. Prior to Ultima 7, RPGs required the player to use the keyboard and type everything into the conversation. The first time I saw automatic map tracking in a CRPG was in Ultima Underworld. Before, we had to draw our own maps.
What I would suggest to these MMORPG rivals is to hire RTS game developers, not RPG game developers. Unfortunately, this will be difficult because Blizzard has hired all of them already. The designer behind WoW Cataclysm is the designer behind Age of Empires. Blizzard has already cleared the field of RTS talent for their competitors to take… if the competitors were smart enough to realize what they should do.
Where the Players Went Wrong
You would think MMORPG players would catch on to the pattern that every new MMORPG, full of sound and fury, end up signifying nothing. Yet, they swallow the siren song each time. And each time, they end up burned.
What is causing this pattern with these players?
It is actually very simple. In MMORPGs as well as most games, content is metered out in different doses not unlike a drug. At the beginning, content is flowing fast and full to get the player hooked. But then it becomes metered out in smaller doses at a regular interval. When it comes to the End Game, content becomes rationed and is metered out in harder and harder ways to get.
So what happens is that the happy-go-lucky player becomes frustrated when arriving at the End Game (e.g. raiding). There is considerably more work and skill involved in order to get through this content (i.e. progression). Since gamers are like water and follow the path of least resistance, many opt to do alts (making another character) and level up again.
Players are attracted to low hanging content fruit and become frustrated by high hanging content fruit. It is also why gamers tend to buy games, sell them back a few days later, and buy more (and sell back days later). The arrival of a new MMORPG is the arrival of much low hanging content fruit which attracts these types of players.
What happens is that the new MMORPG does not offer Infinite Content. This low hanging content fruit quickly gets consumed and the players are stuck back in the same place they were with WoW: stuck being frustrated by high hanging content fruit. They either make an alt or return to WoW grudgingly.
WoW doesn’t have to offer a superior ‘story telling experience’ or ‘immersion experience’. What WoW offers is a superior high hanging content experience with Blizzard’s expertise in game balance and Internet play. So if you are going to do high hanging content, you do it on WoW where it is far superior and far more fun. I have yet to hear of a MMORPG where players say the high hanging content is ‘superior’. Only the low hanging content is compared… which doesn’t matter because it is devoured quickly.
And here’s a handy dandy image to illustrate why people consider STWOR a WoW clone.
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