Raph Koster has a pointer to a rant on Gamasutra about how World of Warcraft sucks.
Nothing new there… (checks watch) Yep, it’s been a little over a year, time for the backlash to hit the mainstream. Still, this article is pretty interesting, especially from the point of view of its author. He happens to be a competitive Street Fighter player, so you can probably guess where he comes down on the player skill vs time investment discussion. And again:
…playing a fair game is what it’s all about. It would never occur to us to play a game where one player gets to do 50% more damage because he has a level 60 Chun Li.
The problem, of course, is that not everyone is going to be a wizard at playing Chun Li. The barrier of entry to knowing exactly how to blow away people with arcane 8-step combo moves is far higher than a “level 60 Chun Li”… and learning how to do them – how to be a competitive, truly skilled player, I would argue, would take more time than grinding your Chun Li to 60. It would feel fairer to some to be able to leverage their hand-eye coordination or whatever to “pwn” people more effectively – but would people resent being “pwned” any less because someone was able to game the system instead of grinding out levels? This is, of course, an old discussion, and Raph’s hit on it more than once.
There’s some other surprising takes in the article as well, that challenge a bit our preconcieved notions of “WoW as the casual MMO”. To wit:
Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance, because you won’t get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild. By design, playing alone (even if you are the best player in the world) will get you worse loot than if you always play in 5-man dungeons. If you always play in 5-man dungeons, you’ll always get worse loot than if you play in 40-man raids. The player base has been hit over the head for so long with this notion of 40-man raids, that players are taking that as given. I see so many people who have been fooled into thinking this is justified, that it actually scares me. They think that you shouldn’t be allowed to get good loot unless you do something with 39 other people, because that’s harder. Coordinating 40 people is hard, but so is winning a Street Fighte tournament, which you have to do by yourself.
This is interesting to me on a couple of different levels.
World of Warcraft actually discourages grouping, at least during the 1-60 character building stage, for the majority of gameplay. To be precise, the experience doled out in groups makes for a far less efficient character growth rate than if the players were solving quests solo. Not only that, with the exception of elite quests and instances, the entire game can actually be played solo; in that it’s one of the most forgiving MMOs in that regard.
That this player took away “World of Warcraft enforces grouping” from this tells me that the groups he felt he had to be in were SO jarring, and SO resented, that they shaded the rest of the experience. (The references to “40 man groups”, which only occur in the vastly different post-60 elder game, tend to bear this out.) To quote again:
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot. (Note to picky readers: there is some, but it’s soooo far out of whack with raid rewards that we can safely ignore it, the same way Blizzard does.) The designers must be so extraverted, that they can’t fathom the introvert point of view.
Again, within the same paragraph: “There’s no content for my playstyle. Well, there is, but the other stuff is better. You know it, I know it, Blizzard knows it, so it just doesn’t exist for me.” This is a far more important lesson to learn than what he is actually saying. As long as there is content percieved as “better”, players won’t settle for what they can easily achieve through their own devices. They will resent not being able to get The Best.
And again:
Warcraft\’e2\’80\rdblquote maybe accidentally\’e2\’80\rdblquote hit upon this concept, and now seems spit on it and all those who appreciate it. If a Blizzard developer read this, his PR department would say they are not spitting on this play-style, but unfortunately the game design speaks louder than words. “Spit on” is exactly how I feel. But far worse is the idea that millions of children are learning that doing things on your own is bad. Albert Einstein accomplished far more in the field of physics by himself during off-time as a patent clerk than a 40-man raid of so-so physicists ever would. I want little Johnny in Idaho to learn that lesson, but he sure won’t find it in World of Warcraft. 40 mundane people with a lot of time would put Albert Einstein to shame any day of the week in this game.
Little Johnny in Idaho may be learning bad lessons, but the lesson Little Scott in Virginia is learning is that as long as 40 man raids exist, there will be people who wish they didn’t have to do them – but still want the rewards that were crafted to reward the combined efforts of 40 people. This is important: rewards for the effort of 1 person isn’t good enough. As long as better exists, that will be the baseline. “Why can’t I get the same stuff as the 40 people working together. I’m smart! I should be able to get the same stuff! Or stuff just as good. It had better be just as good, too, or else it may as well not exist.”
The author also dislikes one of the primary pillars of community in an MMO:
You’re either with a guild, or you’re nobody to them. I can’t imagine being in only one IRC (chat) channel at a time, or choosing only one gaming community, yet I can only join one guild at a time. It’s a very weird social environment with the same dangers as nationalism and flag-waving.
I wonder if the author has settled on one family yet.
Seriously, this part kind of strikes at the core of community building. Like attracts like. We join guilds that have people that we get along with. If we don’t, we don’t last particularly long. If we do, we form bonds of friendship that persist beyond the game itself. This is a pretty key part of what makes the community behind MMOs tick, and the author’s rejection of these out of hand makes me wonder what sort of enforced guild grouping he felt he had to endure to get Those Shiny Things Only 40 Man Raids Give You. If you’re detecting a theme, congratulations!
And finally, the author decides that rules are bad.
The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I’ve learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It’s never, ever the player’s fault: it’s the game developer’s fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn’t behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.
Cheating is fine, because the players learned how to cheat. The game developers should wave a magic wand and fix it! Failing that, they should just let players evolve new forms of gameplay. I believe the terminology used for this in Ultima Online was “creative uses of magic”. Needless to say, most people that found this term used during an interaction with customer service found it an insulting, patronizing copout.
Players expect an even field of play. Developers absolutely have to fix bugs as they are discovered, but that does not give players carte blanche to discover and exploit interesting ways to break the game. The author seems to resent the fact that terms of service exist, but I suspect if he played a game where they were honored only in the breach his opinion would change dramatically.
These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn’t do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don’t just alter their design and code so you can’t do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it’s ok. They start believing that it’s not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment. Well\’e2\’80\rdblquote that’s a dangerous thing. That’s the point at which the game stops being “fun” by Raph Koster’s definition, and it’s also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of “rules of conduct” that prevent you from creative thinking.
Which is all well and good. I want to explore new frontiers in cyberspace and new ways that men pretend to be women to get other men to give them shinies too. But in most worlds, including the one we happen to live in, running afoul of the community standards (our world calls them “laws”) isn’t excused by the complaint that the offender was “exploring the boundaries of society”. Amazingly, there are folks who aren’t joyous explorers of the human psyche, but just want to be irritating weasels. Thus why rules exist. Thus why “babysitters” exist (in our world, we call them police officers). I totally can rob money from stores and punch random passers by in the face. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do this? Those damn terms of service, getting in the way of my fun!
Back to seriousland, what this tells me is that there isn’t enough education about why rules enforcement exist. Grizzled veterans of gameplay ‘experiences’ past know that people online are, nine times out of ten, raving assholes. I’ll grant the author a blissful ignorance on this one, and give Blizzard bonus points for making a world with such a well-enforced rule set that the author can’t understand why it exists in the first place.
Sometimes, you learn things you didn’t expect in places that didn’t expect you to learn them.
#1 by D-0ne on February 24th, 2006
J,
You must know by now that I believe the implimentation of PvP in UO was a mess. To much focus on killing each other and the resulting punishemnt for being killed effecting the victim.
No. What I’m trying to communicate is that communities in current MMORPGs lack an effective political structure within the game mechanics that actually effect the gaming environment. DAoC comes close but is still miles away.
The successful assasination of the top guilds leader should effect the guild and the guilds surrounding community far more than the guild leader. If you’re a pawn in the guild the effect of killing you is meaningless to everyone. If you’re the second in command the effect of assasinating you should be real to everone on your side.
#2 by Tony H. on February 24th, 2006
Quote -
I\’e2\’80\’99m stalking you, too.
But FWIW, I didn\’e2\’80\’99t write the article.
—
Well Raph, You’ll have to excuse us then if you got pinned for this but, It sure as hell reads like something you might have wrote to me. I’ll stand by my view that anytime I’ve seen you talk or read any articles of yours. That in the past few years, especialy, you’ve gone further and further away from what I think the base is, and moved into space that I call madness. Maybe we’re miss-reading into your statements. Perhaps we’re missing something. Something inside of you that helps make sence of all this but, lately what I’ve been hearing is to me, a lot of nonsence.
Hey, I call em how I see em.
#3 by Angry Bob on February 24th, 2006
“Or rather, I question your memory since you are probably forgetting pickup groups and random raids you were invited to. its possible to get through the game without a guild (though extremely difficult, and becoming more so as time passes) but it is not possible to get through the game solo. It simply cannot be done.”
Not only can it be done, it can be done easily and very quickly. I personally have leveled two toons to 60 (hunter and rogue) and never grouped with them at all, ever. On top of that, the only time I ever grouped with my main (paladin) prior to hitting 60 was to run through Zul Farak to finish a bunch of quests. And honestly, it wasn’t worth it. I’d have been better off grinding solo. And right now I’m soloing up my 4th, 5th, and 6th toons (priest, druid, warrior) by alternating so they’re always getting rest XP. I doubt I’ll group with any of them either. Grouping prior to 60 in WoW is a complete and utter waste of time aside from the socializing.
#4 by Balasarius on February 24th, 2006
Raph Koster makes some of the worst games on the planet. His opinion on the time of day, let alone gaming, has no value.
#5 by John Arras on February 24th, 2006
D-one wrote:
How about a system of get enough black marks and you *can\’e2\’80\’99t* do the 40 person raids because too many members of the community think you\’e2\’80\’99re a jerk? Complicated? Not really. Unfair? Not really.
Yeah I hate getting ganked. How about…every time you gank a newbie with any character, none of the characters on your account can enter an instance until they get at least one more day on /played. Then double it for each subsequent infraction. I don’t know if it’s possible to make rules in here that would work since you have situations of newbies attacking and groups of newbies attacking. Maybe if you attack someone who considers you gray, you can be ganked for 10 mins? But it would make people think, and I’ll bet highlevel players could avoid ganking if they tried. It would also stop the stupid “highlevels protecting their friends lowlevel alts” routine that screws up otherwise legit pvp. If it could stop that last situation, it would be worth it.
#6 by Sanya on February 24th, 2006
Joe – ah, I see what you’re saying. I did misunderstand.
(Side note – sex is the most hardwired thing, true, but I chose it as the basis for my analogy because the same parts of the brain are stimulated during any intense pleasurable activity. Some of us in our wilder, unfettered days may have accused the uberguilds of whacking the monkey during raids, but the scientific truth is that they didn’t NEED to – because it would have been redundant from a brain chemistry point of view.)
I still think you’re crazy, but in a Don Quixote sort of way as opposed to a dangerous egotistical fascist kind of way
And Joe? FWIW, there are plenty of devs right now growing disenchanted with the dominant idea that if you don’t have 40 million bucks and a whole lot of rats pounding the pellet bar, you’re screwed. I truly believe that the “next big thing” is going to be smaller, niche world games. I don’t think what you want is ever going to attract forty million investment dollars, but someone’s eventually going to pony up two. Are you willing to accept less than stellar graphics and web-based CS, though?
#7 by Grinless on February 24th, 2006
Quoting Angry Bob:
\’e2\’80\’9cGrouping prior to 60 in WoW is a complete and utter waste of time aside from the socializing. \’e2\’80\’9c
And maybe, just maybe, that is an integral part to WoW tremendous success.
#8 by Aufero on February 24th, 2006
“This is important: rewards for the effort of 1 person isn\’e2\’80\’99t good enough. As long as better exists, that will be the baseline. \’e2\’80\’9cWhy can\’e2\’80\’99t I get the same stuff as the 40 people working together. I\’e2\’80\’99m smart! I should be able to get the same stuff! Or stuff just as good. It had better be just as good, too, or else it may as well not exist.\’e2\’80\’9d”
I’m hoping developers DON’T learn this lesson. I agree it’s probably true for the general gaming population, but I like solo content, and I don’t give a damn if the rewards don’t match the rewards for raid content. If the rewards match, the raiders will be out farming the solo content instead of off somwhere where they’re not in my way.
#9 by Amber on February 24th, 2006
Sanya said: “And Joe? FWIW, there are plenty of devs right now growing disenchanted with the dominant idea that if you don\’e2\’80\’99t have 40 million bucks and a whole lot of rats pounding the pellet bar, you\’e2\’80\’99re screwed. I truly believe that the \’e2\’80\’9cnext big thing\’e2\’80\’9d is going to be smaller, niche world games.”
/nods
Garage Games’ Marble Blast Ultra is a great example of what Indie developers can do on a small budget in the console space, a traditionally difficult space for indies to break into at all. There’s no reason it can’t work for MMOs.
WRT the main topic, I think it’s interesting that people (including myself) keep coming up with ways that WoW sucks, and yet whatever-million-they’re-up-to-now people don’t seem to agree. Blizzard must be doing something right, even if it doesn’t jive with our own concepts of good game design.
Amber
#10 by mouselock on February 24th, 2006
This strikes to the heart of why he\’e2\’80\’99s right on this one point at least, and all the major MMOs are wrong.
I haven\’e2\’80\’99t settled on one family, and I\’e2\’80\’99ll bet you haven\’e2\’80\’99t either. I\’e2\’80\’99ve got the family I was born into, the friends I made in my backwoods Connecticut hometown as a child, the friends I made in college, the friends I made in college, the friends I made in my new home in Silicon Valley, the people I work with, and numerous other \’e2\’80\’9cfamilies\’e2\’80\’9d. These groups overlap. I spend more time hanging out with my coworkers and SV friends than I do with my birth family\’e2\’80\’a6and yet, I go home to be with that family most every Christmas. I feel no less close to them despite that fact.
…
I started playing WoW with various real life friends. We founded a guild so we could hang out and chat together. Over time, however, half of those people have left the guild for others. Some wanted to raid, some wanted more roleplaying, and so on. It wasn\’e2\’80\’99t that they wanted to stop associating with the rest of us\’e2\’80\ldblquote just that the game mechanics forced them to make a choice.
Wait.. so you can’t play with those friends ever again because they’re in another guild? You can’t type, say, /join DamienClub in game and keep in touch with them? You can’t shoot them whispers in game to see how they’re doing or if they want to join up with you?
What you’re saying, from my perspective, seems to be akin to the following:
Me and my buddies used to enjoy playing soccer together, but it was an informal thing. Then some of my buddies really got into sports, and they signed up for soccer teams. Now I can’t talk to them ever, or do anything with them, because they don’t like to play in the county soccer league any longer.
Huh?
My family in my game is my guild. But I have friends aside from that. I even have friends (and some “family”) from my last game’s guild who I still keep in touch with despite the fact that they don’t play WoW, period. The implied thought that the only way you can maintain the bonds you have in game is if you’re always doing the same thing at the same time is absurd. If you translated that dynamic into real life, the behavior would be egregiously unhealthy. I’m sure there’s a psychiatric term for it. In a cross-gender relationship it sounds like codependence.
A guild is a way to organize people who have the most things in common. If your friends leave to go to a raiding guild and you stay behind because you’re not into that, then within the context of the game, you don’t have as much in common with your friends as the raiding guild does. This says nothinga bout your friendship and whether or not you can still regard these guys as your “family” though.
#11 by Heartles_ on February 24th, 2006
Aufero as it has been alluded to in other posts solo content doesn’t mean easy content. Raid content does not mean hard content.
Thats the false belief that developers push on the players and as Joe has gone in depth to talk about it is something that is relatively easy to make people believe en masse.
The raid content of WoW could be debated all day whether it’s rewards are worth the challenge. Same could be said about 5 man dungeons. Same could be said about solo content.
It’s driven into MMOGers heads that raid = harder = better loot. When in fact the difficulty of the content is exactly in the developers hands. Developers just cop out knowing that increasing group size artificially increases the difficulty for the average player. Organizing people is hard unless you all know each other and have played togehter for years.
Its a sad and common occurence in the Diku based MMOG.
And on a final note. Hellfire you may play 10 hours a week now, but your catass logged thousands of hours to get to that point… unless you have a very forgiving guild that lets you afk through raids and still roll on loot. If that is the case you are in the 0.01% of WoW raiders that plays 10 hours a week and still gets the same chance on rolls as everyone else.
If I was in that 0.01% I would say the same exact thing you do… oh come on it isn’t that hard… look at me I play 10 hours a week and I am purple from head to toe.
#12 by mouselock on February 24th, 2006
I will say it once more: \’e2\’80\’9cHow many wildly succesful MMORPGs will it takes before developper consider soloing a valid playstyle ?\’e2\’80\’9d. The solo-friendliness is no stranger to it\’e2\’80\’99s mass appeal success.
Do you at least see a little bit of the irony in making semi-petulant demands that Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games really ought to do a better job of entertaining players who want to play by themselves and minimize multiplayer interactions?
#13 by Hank on February 24th, 2006
“Do you at least see a little bit of the irony in making semi-petulant demands that Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games really ought to do a better job of entertaining players who want to play by themselves and minimize multiplayer interactions?”
No. Massively multiplayer means there’s lots of other people, that you CAN interact with, AS YOU SEE FIT. It does not have to mean that you are forced to interact with those people in ways you don’t like, all the time. The real world is massively multiplayer too, but I don’t have to spend a half hour trying to find a group before I can go to the mall.
#14 by Damien Neil on February 24th, 2006
mouselock says:
>Wait.. so you can\’e2\’80\’99t play with those friends ever again because
>they\’e2\’80\’99re in another guild? You can\’e2\’80\’99t type, say, /join DamienClub
>in game and keep in touch with them? You can\’e2\’80\’99t shoot them
>whispers in game to see how they\’e2\’80\’99re doing or if they want to
>join up with you?
Of course I can, and do. You miss the point.
WoW, like other games of its ilk, has a concept of a “guild”. This is a concept that’s supported by the game mechanics–guilds get a private chat channel, you can easily see who is online in a guild, guild affiliations are visible, and so forth. You can only be in one guild.
You can mimic many of these concepts without using the game-supported guild interface: You can create a chat channel, add all the people in it to your friends list, and so forth.
However, consider this scenario: You’re a member of a guild–an actual guild, supported by the game UI. This guild is casual, though, and you want to get into raiding. A raid guild approaches you and offers you a position. The game UI now forces you to choose which guild you want to be in.
Yes, you can create a MyFriends channel and invite all your old guildmates to it. (Oops, you can only be in ten channels at once–tough luck if too many of your friends do this.) What you can’t replace, however, is the association with the guild as a whole: The new members that join after you leave, the people you never got to know all that well, and so on.
And so when people quit a guild, they drift apart from it. They retain ties to specific friends, but they don’t retain a tie to the community of the guild.
And, as I said, this is entirely unlike the way people form communities in real life. For example…
Gwaendar says:
> He\’e2\’80\’99s married. Chances are high that he meant the
> family you might found some day instead of the one
> you\’e2\’80\’99re born into. And yes, that\’e2\’80\’99s actually, at least to
> me, more tight-knit than my much wider circle of friends.
He’s married, and he has a job. If life worked the way most MMOGs do, he’d have had to /gquit his marriage to get a job–after all, his wife and kids just aren’t enough people to field a decent raid group. You need to hook up with an uber guild like if you want to raid the retail market.
This is the complaint that David Sirlin had: Restricting membership to one guild prioritizes one community that you belong to over the others. It makes certain communities mutually exclusive. And it generally prioritizes the WRONG community–your “business associations” rather than your “family”.
#15 by Grinless on February 24th, 2006
Quoting mouselock:
“Do you at least see a little bit of the irony in making semi-petulant demands that Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games really ought to do a better job of entertaining players who want to play by themselves and minimize multiplayer interactions?”
I find it ironic that after so many years of people soloing in MMORPGs, even when it’s usually the least rewarded path, you and so many others still have the guts to tell us: You should not enjoy this game, go play a single player game…
Do any of your non-MMORPGs hobby require you to group with 40 semi-unknown peoples ?
#16 by Raph on February 24th, 2006
Well Raph, You\’e2\’80\’99ll have to excuse us then if you got pinned for this but, It sure as hell reads like something you might have wrote to me. I\’e2\’80\’99ll stand by my view that anytime I\’e2\’80\’99ve seen you talk or read any articles of yours. That in the past few years, especialy, you\’e2\’80\’99ve gone further and further away from what I think the base is, and moved into space that I call madness. Maybe we\’e2\’80\’99re miss-reading into your statements. Perhaps we\’e2\’80\’99re missing something. Something inside of you that helps make sence of all this but, lately what I\’e2\’80\’99ve been hearing is to me, a lot of nonsence.
Hey, I call em how I see em.
That’s fine, you’re entitled to your opinion. Blaming me because it sounds like something you think I could have written, that’s just careless reading though.
I’d love to discuss the aspects of my madness with whoever. Self-knowledge like that can only bring me closer to union with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s probably not apropos for this comment thread, however.
#17 by Joe on February 24th, 2006
“And Joe? FWIW, there are plenty of devs right now growing disenchanted with the dominant idea that if you don\’e2\’80\’99t have 40 million bucks and a whole lot of rats pounding the pellet bar, you\’e2\’80\’99re screwed. I truly believe that the \’e2\’80\’9cnext big thing\’e2\’80\’9d is going to be smaller, niche world games. I don\’e2\’80\’99t think what you want is ever going to attract forty million investment dollars, but someone\’e2\’80\’99s eventually going to pony up two. Are you willing to accept less than stellar graphics and web-based CS, though? “
Heh, I’d gladly take those tradeoffs. Hell, AC1 and UO were both huge duds in the graphics department (Though AC1 did have interesting art direction to compensate for the outdated technical specs).
I just have a hard time seeing those niche worlds coming to pass – particularly in terms of unrestricted PvP.
Good, unrestricted PvP requires a lot of things to go right:
-A large world, enough that you can spread out and hide out in the boonies from the bigger fish in the sea if you want to.
-Some sort of physics/twitch involvement so that player skill is a major determinant. For instance, in AC1, if an arrow or spell is shot at you, and you physically step out of the way, it misses. No dice roll or anything like that. This became a major issue to me when I was trying out DAoC’s all-PvP server; there just wasn’t enough twitch involved.
-A lack of grind to be PVP-competitive. AC1 had, back in the day, a complex system of unintended “features” and exploits that, while not intended by the devs, essentially meant that you gained XP rapidly based on your membership in a guild and the territory your guild controlled.
-A way to hurt other players. This works better if it involves taking their stuff as opposed to taking their XP.
-A world that’s big, but not *too* big relative to the size of players. This becomes a problem as game subscription numbers change; AC1 has nearly doubled in size since its release (dungeons and world locations included), yet its population is between 1/5th and 1/10th of what it once was. The balance of world size to population is no longer there.
So, yeah – I’d love it if smaller indie games could pull off a good ‘world-y’ MMO, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards, at least for another few years.
Frankly, the only semi-decent hope I see right now is a WoW unlimited-PvP server (no factions) with a heavily modified ruleset.
Why WoW hasn’t tried one of those already is beyond me.
But again, that’s settling for a lot lower than what once existed – so it’s bound to be a bitter pill. When I hear some of the awful noise that passes for ‘rap’ music today on the radio, I can pop in a Tribe Called Quest CD and return to the good old days. Not so when you depend on people for the fun.
#18 by Aufero on February 24th, 2006
“Aufero as it has been alluded to in other posts solo content doesn\’e2\’80\’99t mean easy content. Raid content does not mean hard content.”
Not the point. If there’s solo content with similar rewards to raid content, it will be perceived as easier, and there will be ten times as many people getting in my way trying to do it. (And if it’s actually difficult, all of them will whine until it’s made easier. After all, solo content is supposed to be easy!) The “raiding is more difficult than soloing or grouping” meme is firmly implanted in the average MMOG gamer’s brain by this time, you couldn’t remove it with Drano.
#19 by The Alien on February 24th, 2006
Grinless said:
“Do any of your non-MMORPGs hobby require you to group with 40 semi-unknown peoples ?”
Well, it’s not MY hobby, but I hear that sitting in a park and saying “LFG for football!” doesn’t work all that well, but it can work. Plenty of people play in pickup sports that can involve large numbers of people. But many form semi-permanent groups (we’ll call them teams) and set up alliances (let’s call them leagues)…and then you have drama over folks not showing up for a scheduled raid/match and all the rest.
Many sporting events are like this.
Then you have community development of software, for example. It can be much the same way.
That being said, my hobby horse here is more love for duoing people. In WoW, it’s almost always a bad idea to duo. But, you know, girlfriend. So I do it. Ah, to be back in Camelot, where my Enchanter’s pet would tank with focus shield up while her Healer kept it alive until it was time for me to step up and PBAE it a couple of times to kill it.
Wow. That topic drifted. But anyway, plenty of people engage in hobbies that require other people who you don’t know at first. The main limitation on them is that you’ll only have so many people into X in a given area, so eventually you get to know some percentage of your local community.
#20 by Prognosticator on February 24th, 2006
As much as I tried to resist, I had to break into this topic.
http://www.virginworlds.com/index.php?/archives/80-Mr.-Sirlin-Sheeps-You.html
#21 by Wanderer on February 24th, 2006
Wow, that’s one hell of a thread.
Something nobody really seems to have focused on: it’s all about effort vs. reward — what rewards are “deserved” for which types of effort: hours played, twitch skill, encyclopedic knowledge of the game, whatever. Something to consider, though: what rewards do the players of AC2 have now? Where are their Swords of Uberness?
If your primary goal in a game is to get some virtual widget as a reward, some shiny pixels and different numbers on the screen from the ones you had before, you’re doomed to eternal disappointment. No matter what the game is, no matter how it’s structured, if you’re working (doing non-fun things) for rewards, instead of playing (doing fun things) to enjoy the experience, you’re going to have a problem with that game. There will always be someone with more uber lewtz, or someone who got them without as much work as you did, or something that makes you feel like you didn’t “win” after all. And even if you have the uberest lewtz out there, some day they’ll turn the servers off and you’ll have nothing, nothing at all.
The game designers are missing out on this, too. They’re missing out on putting a fun experience into the game, as opposed to work that you do to earn your lewtz as pay, and they’re not steering the players towards enjoying that experience instead of working their asses off for something that is, in terms of long-term value (next week, next month, after you quit the game) essentially meaningless. When you come right down to it, what are your favorite memories of games you don’t play anymore? If you’re like most people, they aren’t of your spec, or your gear, or how many quests you completed. They’re memories of things like the first time you saw somewhere really cool (the waterfall in that cave in DAoC/SI comes to mind), or crazy things that happened along the way (that’s why Leeroy Jenkins resonates with so many of us). I remember a time in DAoC when my guild got mad lucky, ninja’d a Relic from a successful raiding group, and ran like all Hell was after us to get that thing home — and in guild chat, of course, it was all “omg, this can’t be happening!” It was, it did, we were the heroes of the day. That rocked. The Relic got taken back a few days later, of course … none of it meant anything in the long term, we didn’t get so much as a notch in our swords, let alone any uber rewards. The real reward was the fun of doing it. That reward, I still have. I’ll always have it — that memory — unless it gets replaced with better ones as the years go on.
Another crystal moment, when I was in the bridge room in Spindelhalla and saw some poor bastard who had somehow managed to pull every single mob from the gunstling spawn downstairs, running (futilely) for his life, with this whole circus parade of mobs chasing him, and one very determined mad kobold bringing up the rear. I quit DAoC long ago, but I can still see that scene in my mind’s eye. Another: a line from one of my guildies, an aracoix (avian race) in Shadowbane, when we planted the seed for our Tree of Life: “Now I can build a nest!” I couldn’t name you one item I had in SB, and I was rich. The server I played on doesn’t exist anymore. But that moment of humor (I suspect it’s not as funny to anyone who wasn’t there), that one throwaway line, has stayed with me. The fun of doing things with friends has always outweighed whatever reward the game handed me after I was finished doing it.
People, both designers and players, have gotten so focused on the rewards that they’ve forgotten that this isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s supposed to be something fun to do, not something unpleasant to do in the hopes that the fun will come later. Would you play, say, GTA3 if it was boring as hell, but you got to see a pretty decent cut scene every few days? Nobody would, or at least not enough people to make a profit off of. So why play a MMOG that way? Why build one that channels people into that mindset, when it’s a pretty much guaranteed disappointment for them?
This crops up everywhere — in PvE, in PvP, in raid/casual conflicts, in class balance issues, in everything, in every game that I’ve played. Very few people, on any side, seem to recognize the real problem for what it is. War has been described as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. All too often, MMOGs are hours of boredom punctuated by moments of enjoyment. And that, right there, is the unrecognized force that drives players on their endless migration from game to game: the yearning for something they can’t put a name on, but they know they want. Maybe the next game will have it, or the game after that. But as long as games are focused on the labor/pay mindset in stead of the play/fun mindset, it’s not gonna happen.
Why is our first MMOG, whatever it was, always remembered most fondly? Because when we started, we were doing near things, exploring a whole new type of play, and it was play. We were having fun all the time. Everything we did was fun, just like a kid’s first day at a McJob is fun, because it was new and different and exciting. But, most of the time, it was fun only because it was new — not because it was an inherently fun activity itself. We did it for fun, not in anticipation of later fun. But once we learned the system, once the novelty wore off, the non-fun of the grind became readily and painfully apparent. We switched from having fun to anticipating fun. And we’re still looking for that fun, still drifting from game to game, still trying to find what we can’t put a name on, but we’ll know when we see it: a game that is fun to play, not a game that is fun to have played.
I can thank WoW, oddly enough, for giving me a little of that back. Due to RL schedule issues, I can’t join a raiding guild. I’m married and I run a small business; there’s no room in my life for a second job. Therefore, a large part of the game’s content (and specifically the content that the devs lavish the most time, effort, and care on) is off-limits to me. So, I’ve been finding ways to have fun doing things, rather than anticipating fun that I might someday have when I get the phat lewtz of my dreams. My level 27 mage now has every Alliance flight path. (I died a lot getting the Felwood one) My 60 Horde warrior is rich. My AH mule is a well-known /1 personality, a wiseass with no tolerance for idiots but a heart of gold. That’s why I’m still playing the game when most of my guild quit, and the few remaining joined raiding guilds and chafe under the load of meeting both RL and guild obligations: I’ve found things that are fun to do, not things that are fun to have done.
It isn’t about solo content vs. raid content. It isn’t about low-level content vs. endgame content. It isn’t about casual content vs. hardcore content. It’s about processes, about mechanisms, about having fun while you’re playing, not earning rewards while you’re working.
That’s why I’m still playing Civilization after, what is it, 12 years, and chess after [mumble] decades — and why I’m not playing any MMOG that I was playing two years ago.
#22 by Gil Avalon on February 25th, 2006
Wanderer said:
“It isn\’e2\’80\’99t about solo content vs. raid content. It isn\’e2\’80\’99t about low-level content vs. endgame content. It isn\’e2\’80\’99t about casual content vs. hardcore content. It\’e2\’80\’99s about processes, about mechanisms, about having fun while you\’e2\’80\’99re playing, not earning rewards while you\’e2\’80\’99re working.”
Amen brother! When I started playing UO ten years ago (yep beta) it was for fun and it was great fun. The more recent games where leveling is important and lewt is VERY important do cause most of us to de-focus on the fun. However, it’s up to the players. We CAN have fun in WoW, or we can grind.
#23 by sinij on February 25th, 2006
I actually agree with Ralph and not you for a change. Whil soloing is feasable to level 40, after that, if you are at all competetive gamer you have no choice but to group. After level 40 alternative to grouping is to grind, after level 60 there are no alternatives to grouping.
#24 by Joe on February 25th, 2006
“\’e2\’80\’9cAufero as it has been alluded to in other posts solo content doesn\’e2\’80\’99t mean easy content. Raid content does not mean hard content.\’e2\’80\’9d
Not the point. If there\’e2\’80\’99s solo content with similar rewards to raid content, it will be perceived as easier, and there will be ten times as many people getting in my way trying to do it.”
Why should a MMO have raids at all, then?
I’ve never seriously played a MMO that had raids (the only bosses in AC1 that required more than a single fellowship were legendary, earth-shaking-event bosses that were non-permanent) and I don’t see what the big deal about them is, or why they were invented in the first place.
Why doesn’t WoW just make everything focused around 1 or 2 groups at the most?
#25 by Stara on February 25th, 2006
Because the raid game does sustain a LARGE percentage of the bored level 60s. Theres at least 20 major raid guilds per side on a large server. Thats… a lot of players.
Most of the people complaining about lack of content are non-casual non-raiders. These are people that are impossible to please anyway, at least impossible to please indefinitely. True casual players are not level 60 yet, and if they are, they haven’t finished farming out the non raid level 60 content.
Again, the people complaining are people who are already level 60 and who’ve already completed 5 dungeons worth of 5 man content (usually by zerging it with 10, and wondering why theres no challenging 5 man content.) They want more of the same, but its just not possible for Blizzard to put out more of the same at the pace these players play because they are not casual players, they’re just non raiders. Raiders will accept a new dungeon every 4 months because it takes 2-3 months to learn each dungeon. Its not possible to make 5 man content that takes 2-3 months to learn, well it is but if you did it, those players would complain it was too hard.
#26 by Andrew Crystall on February 25th, 2006
Joe, you’re describing Eve’s PvP. Whatever else they get wrong (and it’s a lot), PvP is right. That and there are things to do to suit pretty much any playstyle except absolute carebear.
#27 by Raph on February 25th, 2006
I ended up writing my own rant about what these games teach.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/24/what-are-the-lessons-of-mmorpgs-today/
#28 by Stara on February 25th, 2006
Funny and sad. But it pretty much sums up not just MMOs, but popular culture in general.
MMOs meet fast food culture.
This is what happens when you build worlds where everyone gets to be the hero. And if everyone DOESN’T get to be a hero, its seen as a failure.
#29 by phal on February 26th, 2006
Interesting.
I can see why people put words in Raph’s mouth so often. His own words can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
#30 by Cecil on February 26th, 2006
Honestly? I think that Raph, like myself and many others, would be happier playing a game more like EVE. 80 man pvp gangs and massive political/resource wars are far more interesting than MC for me, but meh, to each his own.
#31 by Dashhammer on February 26th, 2006
Contrary to popular opinion-
There are many different types of people in the world and all of them have a different definition of ‘play’ and ‘fun’.
If he doesn’t find WOW to be fun, then yeah I think he should try eve or city of heroes. Bitching about how WOW has not completely satisfied his every desire will get him no where. And if he wants to talk about what it teaches us…
It’s just a game.
It is something I do to releave stress after work. It is either this or Dr Phil.
#32 by Sisca on February 26th, 2006
“I\’e2\’80\’99ve never seriously played a MMO that had raids (the only bosses in AC1 that required more than a single fellowship were legendary, earth-shaking-event bosses that were non-permanent) and I don\’e2\’80\’99t see what the big deal about them is, or why they were invented in the first place.”
Raids weren’t technically created by the devs but were an emergient gameplay style.
In EQ the gods and dragons were impossible to kill by a single group of players with the best – non-dragon/planes – gear available to them but the players could damage the mobs so they knew they should be killable. They tried a variety of tactics early on but the simpilest is to just throw people at it, the Zerg rush from StarCraft.
You then get a cycle of ever larger guilds demanding more content that they can experience as a guild so more raid level content being added, and these games being gear centric, the rewards for these larger and larger encounters have to keep getting better and better.
The games in development get an ear full from these huge guilds demanding that there be content that their entire guild can experience or they won’t play your game and so they start out with raids and the cycle continues.
#33 by Joe on February 26th, 2006
Andrew, I agree with you – Eve is great.
Only thing is, I’m not much for ship-flying. Eve is great if you like flying ships.
I’ve never been much of a space gamer, at least not as my ‘primary’ form of ‘game’. I’m much more about land. Puzzle Pirates has a unique PvP system, but I had trouble getting into it for the same reasons.
Fun note: You could re-skin Puzzle Pirates with a Star Trek theme and have it set in space, and it’d actually be the first-ever Star Trek MMO. It’d work well.
“Most of the people complaining about lack of content are non-casual non-raiders. These are people that are impossible to please anyway, at least impossible to please indefinitely.”
We’re not impossible to please. We just want an actual GAME, not a Skinner Box.
Like AC1 Darktide was. Like pre-Trammel UO was.
Like EVE is, or Puzzle Pirates for that matter.
More games please, less flashy.
#34 by Damien Neil on February 26th, 2006
The other thing about raids is that they do foster social bonds: You can only progress if you raid. You can only raid if you join a big guild. If you join a big guild, you’ve got more people to talk to, more chances to make friends, more occasions when a guildmate says something funny and memorable.
It sucks for the people who can’t or won’t join a raid guild, but I think that the evidence to date shows that a raid game leads to player retention.
#35 by Legume on February 26th, 2006
“Raph Koster is a nutcase. Plain and simple.”
I might not have agreed. But then I listened to some of his music…
#36 by Stara on February 26th, 2006
AC1 Darktide and UO were a bunch of dicks running around circle jerking each other. There was no game there, just people throwing dirt in each other’s face.
Puzzle Pirates is a game.
EVE is just more prison politics. Definately not mass marketable. Most people do not want to be in prison.
#37 by Wanderer on February 27th, 2006
…I think that the evidence to date shows that a raid game leads to player retention.
I know it’s believed to, but are there any actual statistics on that? My empirical evidence to the contrary is that I have two separate sets of experiences in MMOGs: One, playing a small game which lacks guilds as such, and which has players who have been around for, in some cases, 8+ years. Second, the guild I am a member of outside that game, which migrates from game to game looking for something better. (sadly, it fell apart when we got to WoW)
The guild thing is a two-edged sword: Yes, guild members will stay in your game when they really don’t like it anymore because their guild is there … but they will also leave your game even if they still want to play because their guild is moving on to the Next Big Thing. I don’t think it increases the player retention, just the granularity of player movement: they all stay, or all leave at the same time.
And then there’s the opposite problem: the marginalization of people who are not members of the big raiding guilds. I’m sitting on a rock in Orgrimmar as I type this, hoping futilely that some pickup group will be recruiting for an instance run. The odds are, if I do find one, that the run’s gonna suck. Pickup groups consist mostly of rejects from the major guilds with a few offshore farmers sprinkled in to make matters more interesting in a twisted sort of way. My RL schedule precludes joining a raiding guild — I can’t commit to being on at raid times. (one of the drawbacks of being married to a non-gamer) Since WoW has become increasingly focused on raids, that means that I am not only missing out on the raid content, but also on the social aspect of the game that focuses on those raids. I think in the long run it’s a bad trade-off: retaining the people who are most likely to pick up and leave en masse, and losing everyone else.
Diversification of your playerbase is like diversification of your stock portfolio: it protects you against one single event wiping out a large part of the value.
(note: I am no longer LFG, as parts of my server are slowly disappearing. First the eastern continent went, then the NPCs and the mailbox, and now players are slowly fading out. There’s a rant in there somewhere ….)
#38 by Andrew Crystall on February 27th, 2006
Stara, what do you mean?
That you need to be one of the great elite, the alliances to deal in the “really fun” bits of the game? Bah, humbug. About 1/3 of the players are in an Alliance, and corperations like my Jerico Fraction show that yuo can be a single group of friends, disrespect every “border” players put out there and have great fun in Eve.
Joe, yes, there is that. I am a space fanatic, so I love Eve. It’s certainly not for everyone. I’d love a broader space opera MMO. (I’m not really a fan of most current fantasy-based MMO’s, although I did play UO many moons ago)
#39 by Neep on February 27th, 2006
“AC1 Darktide and UO were a bunch of dicks running around circle jerking each other. “
But the dicks still want, and are willing to pay for, a game.
#40 by Addy on February 27th, 2006
In response to hellfire
My problem with the pve raid loot is not the means by which it is rewarded (pve) that its used in pvp which on a pvp server doesnt make alot of sense.
Each content patch introduces more and more ways to one shot in pvp – mages busting trinkets and ap to 1 or 2 shot anything they encounter, people with such high resists your lucky if you can ever get a full effect spell on them to stick. PvP rewards have been falling more and more behind each publish. The differences between the rank 8 AH itemized char and the purple itemized char is growing appart to the point now where they are almost twice as powerful.
On a pvp server I would like to either see high end pvp reward not useable in the battlegrounds or a serious boost in the power of pvp rewards. Purpled itemization from zerging pve content should not make for pvp domination – right now it does and thats where the problem is.
- A
#41 by Joe on February 27th, 2006
“AC1 Darktide and UO were a bunch of dicks running around circle jerking each other. There was no game there, just people throwing dirt in each other\’e2\’80\’99s face.”
WTF? I’m sorry, but myself and many people I knew in RL had SO MUCH FUN in these games that it was unimaginable. When we were done playing, we’d have big grins on our faces. We weren’t dicks – I’m actually a really nice person, I was in the running for best smile in yearbook awards way, way back in the day!
AC1 retained each of us for four or five years. That’s a *long time*. We required almost no content additions at all – in fact, it was usually PvE content additions that broke our server and led us to dread patch updates. We wanted things to stay the same for as long as possible.
From a developer’s perspective, we were a dream come true – like Counterstrike customers who would pay a monthly fee without ever demanding new guns or maps. We made our own stories.
We can have fun without Dev Daddy holding our hand and building us new content every step of the way – can you say the same for your playstyle?
The “throwing dirt in one another’s faces” that we did was in a GAME. You can’t be really be hurtful to someone in any meaningful way in a game environment – you turn off the computer screen, and it goes away.
Maybe that’s why we didn’t have IG marriages or any of that silly stuff? Because we were better at drawing the line between game and reality than other people?
Talk about being “jerks” – you know who the real jerks tend to unfailingly be? Catass PvE-ers. I’ve met people from Darktide who ABSOLUTELY LOATHED ME INGAME in real life, and you know what? It was completely cool! We’d laugh, we’d joke, we’d become friends – because PvP bullshit is simply that, PvP bullshit. It doesn’t intrude on real life, it’s just for giggles.
Remind me which player gathering had a REAL LIFE FIGHT BREAK OUT BETWEEN UBER-GUILDS?
Oh wait, that’s right – EverQuest, land of the PvE-ers!
I’m sorry if I’m sounding a bit standoffish, but when you just randomly assume PvPers are jerks, when, if anything, I’d bet we’re *better* socialized in real life, when all the evidence suggests the opposite, and when I’ve been doing you the courtesy of not making such broad assumptions about your folk – that’s just plain unnecessary.
To sum up:
-Our retention rates are high.
-Our only major demand is “have PvP reasonably balanced”. Recent games like WoW and EQ2 are well set up for doing this independently of PvE balance.
-Our demand for more content is “please don’t break the content that we make for ourselves”.
There’s quite a few of us. EVE, Shadowbane, AC1 Darktide, DAoC Mordred, old UO-ers, and probably plenty of others who would pop over and give our playstyle a shot if *their game* opened up a server that allowed it. Of the servers listed above, only EVE is vibrant. The rest have declined due to external issues with the games themselves, not due to the viability of the worldwide full-PvP model.
Why are more dev teams not willing to take a chance on this, and give it a shot as an alternate-rules server?
Why isn’t EQ2 doing just one, *one* factionless server? I’ve never bought a SOE product in my life, and I would start EQ2 in a heartbeat if they did that!
SWG? Galactic Civil War, anyone?
Sigh.
Sometimes I feel like I’m just yelling into the void, and MMO dev houses will never listen. But I can’t imagine that I’m the only one that would play these sort of things.
#42 by scottj on February 27th, 2006
> Sometimes I feel like I\’e2\’80\’99m just yelling into the void, and MMO dev houses
> will never listen.
Or maybe we just disagree that full unrestricted PVP is the Nirvana of MMOs. It’s a VERY acquired taste, specifically because most people tend to be assholes. Your fondly remembered AC1 Darktide memories, for example, don’t mention the common welcoming of new users – constant and repeated slaughtering, where they had no chance to fight back. The only way to start an AC1 Darktide character was, upon character creation, to run very fast and hope no one finds you.
For some reason, many folks don’t find logging into an episode of The Running Man attractive. Thus why developers try to find ways to leverage the political PvP endgame without allowing players to be such raving lunatics that they kill anyone stupid enough to try to play.
#43 by Kathy on February 28th, 2006
ahh yes I remember early darktide, I tried playing twice only to be chased and killed by some dickhead level 20. I decided to leave when I was seriously going to break the CoC by cursing him out.
If someone wanted to give it a shot and make a free-for all unrestricted pvp server or game they could, but not everyone is going to drop everything and jump on it. Some people I know would love it but there are just as many who would never find that kind of game enjoyable.
I actually enjoy raiding and hanging out with my guildmates. The times we do raids are for me, fun. Some poeple may not enjoy that but I enjoy the social aspect of being able to do raids and have a lively guild chat. Sure there are a lot of assholes, but Im not going to insist that I solo the entire world to avoid them. Trust me, they will find you no matter what.
#44 by Cael on February 28th, 2006
PvPer comment – AC1 Darktide was terrible, because ganking newbs was and always will be lame.
#45 by Grax on February 28th, 2006
Dear Joe PvPer from AC1:
While I agree with what you have to say, I don’t think Lumthemad’s blog is really the place where you can expect many positive responses. Of course, this is another way of saying that lumthemad’s blog has attracted many posters with poor taste in MMOGs.
#46 by Nyght on February 28th, 2006
I do not understand why this is such a difficult concept.
There is an ultimate MMO for you.
There is an ultimate MMO for the other guy.
They are probably not the same game.
There maybe be more or less of you then the other guys.
$15 is still $15.
Any leetness infered from an online game has a very limited scope of usefulness.
#47 by Gwaendar on February 28th, 2006
Damien Neil said
> You can only be in one guild.
Per character.
> However, consider this scenario: You\’e2\’80\’99re a member of a guild\’e2\’80\ldblquote an actual guild, supported by the game UI. This guild is casual, though, and you want to get into raiding. A raid guild approaches you and offers you a position. The game UI now forces you to choose which guild you want to be in.
Correct, but there are still ways to make stuff work. I’m currently part of a raid guild, which was formed after the first players reaching level 60 in two separate guilds had to find a way to get access to even 10 and 15-man raids. These members from both guilds found that they got along well enough, and indeed, a single guild is the most practical method to get stuff done as a group. So the officers of both guilds pulled together and decide to create a new, third one for players of the other two guilds reaching level 50+ to have their organizational tool, and restricted access to mains and one alt.
The two initial guilds still exist, hold our other alts, serve as a growing ground to organize content for players level 1-49, and provide us with a steady influx of endgame players who still share similar affinities, because both initial guilds have kept up with recruiting. And if one player needs a hand with something, there are always players out of not one but three different guild available to help.
> This is the complaint that David Sirlin had: Restricting membership to one guild prioritizes one community that you belong to over the others. It makes certain communities mutually exclusive. And it generally prioritizes the WRONG community\’e2\’80\ldblquote your \’e2\’80\’9cbusiness associations\’e2\’80\’9d rather than your \’e2\’80\’9cfamily\’e2\’80\’9d.
See above on how we did it, it only required a bit of creativity and goodwill between family members.
And David Sirlin’s complaint may sound valid on paper, but in practice it is mooted by habits. FFXI gives access to an unrestricted amount of guilds, at the expense of one bag slot and the additional technical limitation that you only have access to one single guild channel at any given time. The latter certainly participates to it, but whatever the reasons you have to get that linkpearl to a different guild, you’ll eventually settle for one and visit the others less and less.
#48 by Joe on February 28th, 2006
Question:
What’s wrong with killing newbies?
Why is a fight more fun when both players have a semi-equal shot, and either one can fight back hard?
That’s essentially CounterStrike. If that was what I wanted, why not play CounterStrike? Hell, they have a Warcraft Mod for CS that allows you to level up over time (and save your levels on the server when you log out) and get powers in a variety of classes. It’s relatively balanced (If you pick a server running one of the more polished versions) and adds a serious element of persistence.
What makes PvP fun isn’t Counter-Strikey pitched battles. It’s the idea that you, by dint of whatever, can set upon the other guy when he has no chance to fight back; and someday, he might be able to do the same to you, or to other newbies.
Kathy… you felt like swearing at the guy who killed you. Over what happened in a *computer game*? When he wasn’t cheating, or hacking, or anything like that?
I’m sorry, but if you feel that much negative emotion upon getting killed in a MMO, no matter the circumstances, there’s just something *wrong* with you. Maybe not majorly wrong, but by the time it’s gone that far, the MMO should be the *least* of your worries. Would you swear at your kids if they beat you at Risk or Monopoly? Or does the anonymity of the internet provide you a cloak for such antisocial behavior?
And no, there’s nothing antisocial or ‘weird’ about killing newbies for no reason. It’s the PvP equivalent of a friendly welcome – like fraternity hazing, in a way! The bullets don’t run away from you in CounterStrike just because you’re new to the game. You jump in and go with the flow, not with the baggage of preconceived expectations about how you should and shouldn’t die.
Ironically, now that I think about it, the PvPers I know tend to be disproportionately involved with fraternities and things of that nature. Also, a lot of business school kids. We’re a naturally sociable bunch.
Whereas, I hate to say it, but on some of the LtM diaspora sites, I’ve been shocked at how many PvE-ers have worked tech support / customer service at some point in their life… From my experience in RL with such people, they are probably one of the more antisocial professional sets around.
Furthermore, on Scott’s point – how is what you’re saying an argument against opening an alternate-rules server to that effect? Mythic opened one and it worked fine, until factors external to the server (Changes in the game overall) have caused its decline.
#49 by Bell_ on February 28th, 2006
I don’t consider myself an expert in such things, but the issue with killing newbies is that often enough when the first thing they experience is death once they’ve finished whatever character creation or tutorial, followed by the serveral next things they encounter being death by level 30’s or so camping the character creation land, it tends to dissuade them continuing to pay for the server, or even pay for the game.
Ultima Online. Shadowbane. EVE. All of these games from release (and before Rennaisance in UO’s case) had areas intended for the just-made character to be safe from pking, outside of tricks (tab/dbl-click for free gold) or outright bugs. The two games we think of today when it comes to PvP even have areas where it’s safe to PvE for truly newbie characters.
Although I think that killing newbs is lame and killing people zoning in before their screen even loads is lame, I like worlds in which I can encounter all sorts of players-the player-killers, the craftsfolk, monster-killers, treasurehunters, fishermen and pirates. The more barriers to entry you place, a lot less of all these different folks I run into until most of what’s left is a KoC/Blood Gear-fest. Color me uninterested in playing in THERE.
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As for Sirlin, keep in mind the background this guy is coming from. Console/Arcade, maybe competitive games for the PC like Counterstrike. Someone with that playstyle is going to be far more critical of Time prioritized over Skill. I know Koster has pointed out before that not EVERYBODY is good at Counterstrike, but more people have played that game than ever have played Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies. I’d throw down money that more have played that mod of Half Life than the sum of everybody who played the major games he had a hand in designing. And then there’s the folks that play Madden, and other sport games serious or casual farther back than Tecmo Bowl. Then there’s the beat-em-ups that consumed quarters in the arcades and L-notes at the likes of Gamestop and Toys R Us. Oh, and I won’t forget Magic: the Gathering.
There’s a lot of folks out there that like to play competitively even though they might suck at a game. As for folks that do decently, it’s not hard for me to imagine that they want more to a game than one which demands less skill from the individual the larger the group they’re in. WoW is definately not the game for this guy-there’s times I question it’s the game for me, because he voices some of the complaints retold on PvP servers for the past year.
#50 by Joe on February 28th, 2006
“I don\’e2\’80\’99t consider myself an expert in such things, but the issue with killing newbies is that often enough when the first thing they experience is death once they\’e2\’80\’99ve finished whatever character creation or tutorial, followed by the serveral next things they encounter being death by level 30\’e2\’80\’99s or so camping the character creation land, it tends to dissuade them continuing to pay for the server, or even pay for the game.”
Well, death is a constant no matter what level you are; thanks to the handy /death counter ingame, I can tell you that during my first year of playing, my character died 1,500 times. That number was not remarkable or exceptional. On occasion, when DT’ers gather to compare /death counts like crusty pirates comparing peg-legs and eye patches, there are multiple folks who have passed the 5,000 mark.
Death, if done properly, isn’t a strong impediment to playing the game; for instance, in AC1, when you die you go non-PK for five minutes. I think this alleviates the issue you’re talking about – one death per five minutes (give or take) is still plenty of time to do whatever you want to. Not to mention that it encourages you to run multiple characters at once (in case one gets camped or in case you want to sneak up on the camper by an alternate route), a positive trait worth ‘teaching’ early.
As far as protection for the ‘true newbies’, by providing an area only they can enter, I don’t see the gigantic problem in that. AC1 does that from level 1-5 (Though the newbies often PK one another in there).
So long as there are still quite a few close-to-fully-new newbies that can’t hold their own in a fight yet, but are still vulnerable.