Today’s Bombthrowing Comes From A Veteran Grenadier

17Jul/07Off

Today’s Bombthrowing Comes From A Veteran Grenadier

If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?

I'd take over World of Warcraft and I'd close it. I just want better virtual worlds. Sacrificing one of the best so its players have to seek out alternatives would be a sure-fire way to ensure that unknown gems got the chance they deserved, and that new games were developed to push back the boundaries.

Er, I would get to do this anonymously, wouldn't I?

Note to the gaming industry: is there some reason this man hasn't been given a design lead position yet? I mean, you know, there are some MMO shops in the UK. Just sayin', is all.

Filed under: _ Comments Off

Comments (77) Trackbacks (8) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Scott
July 17th, 2007 - 17:38

This is like saying that MMO players arn’t always seeking out better alternatives. That hasn’t been true since the very first mouse trap called Everquest more or less defined the offerings we’re seeing now. Sure it’s allot harder to divest yourself from a character that represents a significant time investment, but players who have shorter end-game curves are less attached to both their characters and their groups.

Guilds frequently jump ship as a whole when they feel they’re bumping on the top of the ladder. Burning Crusade, while a great money grab, was too short a curve for not enough pay off. Whole groups are bumping heads on whatever ceilings they can find. Not everyone has the intestinal fortitude to go up against Black Citadel, as such, my glass ceiling may be allot lower than yours. When I hit it, I start to lose interest in the game. Then, as a game developer / publisher, you better hope I’ve got friends to keep me around, or I’m going to start looking for the next mousetrap.

Build something better, and they will come. What’s better? Depends on who you’re looking for.
Firecrak
July 17th, 2007 - 17:59

This man needs a medal, its something I’ve been musing over for a very long. If WoW were to hit the shitter right now however, a whole influx of people would disseminate across the multiverse…however this may have dire consequences for any future games healthy and stable populations. I am noticing it creeping up more and more now. In EvE, MMO newbs are comparing everything and anything to WoW….EvE resists are compared to WoW resists, next thing you know people will be petitioning for orcs in space. Yay…NOT!
Merlyn
July 17th, 2007 - 18:10

One problem. If you look at the majority of WoW players, most of them don’t seem themselves playing an MMO, and a lot of the folks who leave WoW don’t go to another MMOG. They like Blizzard games, and like the soloing and casual-friendliness of WoW….A lot of folks would go back to their old games, and others would just leave the genre entirely.

I know I would, and I spent 6 years in UO.
Freakazoid
July 17th, 2007 - 18:38

I wanted WoW to completely shut off because of how they mistreated the paladin class. Where the fuck is my medal?

“…next thing you know people will be petitioning for orcs in space.”

Warhammer 40k MMO. It’s just waiting to happen. Plus their orcs are better than blizzard orcs!
Hellfire
July 17th, 2007 - 18:55

Merlyn makes a solid point.

Saying that there’s not one production MMO I’d pay to play right now is easy. There’s nothing in the sword-n-board world that’s got the same polish even with years of history on the big dog.

“Alternative” games like Eve or CoH have their own issues that prevent folks like myself from ever going back. They’re not bad per se, they’re just not something I’d ever pay to play again without radical changes. Although in CoH’s case I’d pick it up again if I had 6 or 7 friends that I could trust would still be playing in 3 months time. The XP curve is still an unfun BITCH. And I maxed out the first 2 level caps of Everquest!

Freak: Reroll {warlock|druid|hunter|shadowpriest|shaman}, nub.
J.
July 17th, 2007 - 19:38

I’d be surprised if most people working on commercial MMOs have even heard of Richard Bartle. And if they did, they’d probably want him to stay way the hell away from their projects, just by gut reaction.

That probably says more about my opinion of most people who work in commercial games than my opinion of Professor Bartle.
Ross Smith
July 17th, 2007 - 19:40

Note to the gaming industry: is there some reason this man hasn’t been given a design lead position yet?

Yes there is, and I think the statement you quoted makes that reason abundantly clear.
kalain
July 17th, 2007 - 20:34

WoW going away wouldn’t make people want to play the other MMOs. Other people building with the polish blizzard put on their game will make people get lured away.

I can honestly say that in their current states, no other MMO can hold my interest long. And I’m BORED of WoW. I WANT to leave. But nobody else is even in the same ballpark. EvE can’t get their servers to handle the load, plus it’s something I can’t really powergame (online or offline, I make the same progress, really). CoH becomes the most unfun thing in the world post 35ish. DDO? LOTRO?

I mean, what’s this hidden gem of a game I should be playing instead of WoW? Or is the claim simply that I’ve played something really solidly done, and need it taken away so I’ll accept halfassed productions again?
Syntheticist
July 17th, 2007 - 20:39

Yes there is, and I think the statement you quoted makes that reason abundantly clear.

Well, no, it’s not, because Bartle is right on the money.

WoW has scared the shit out of every single developer and publisher. If you enter the online space, you have to compete with that behemoth. If your new game isn’t like WoW, then you “have ignored the lessons that WoW has handed down”, and if your new game is like WoW, then you “have created a game completely derivative of WoW”.

Escaping the shadow is absolutely impossible. It’s defined the entire genre of MMORPG. There is nowhere to go from here, until at least half of those 8 million active subscribers get very tired of the game.
J.
July 17th, 2007 - 20:55

Well, no, it’s not, because Bartle is right on the money.

Doesn’t matter if he is, because not only is that a very selfish and borderline vindictive statement to make, it assumes 7 million people would necessarily want to play other MMOs if by some freak of nature WoW were to suddenly shut down. As pointed out above, most WoW players probably never played any other MMO or MUD beforehand, and probably won’t thereafter, unless someone else wants to create a very well branded and marketed juggernaut with comparable design and polish.

What game maker hasn’t wished millions would suddenly get interested in games the way they did? Does that mean that’s going to happen by anyone’s best efforts? If some well-heeled game company makes a better compilation of someone else’s ideas and is a far greater success than anyone else previous, is that necessarily wrong? Are they stealing bread from anyone’s mouths? Are other games necessarily better just because they’re different and/or smaller than WoW?

I have to give Bartle credit, though. It was a lame throwaway question.
Syntheticist
July 17th, 2007 - 21:12

Doesn’t matter if he is, because not only is that a very selfish and borderline vindictive statement to make…

Wow, do you usually take everything people say so literally? The whole notion is that he wishes good games got their time in the sun, not to destroy the playing habits of gamers.

Goodness.
Aufero
July 17th, 2007 - 21:41

There are several reasons I disagree with Bartle’s assessment of what would happen if WoW suddenly died, but this is all probably over-analysis of a comment he tossed off in reaction to a casual interview question.
Victor Pellen
July 17th, 2007 - 21:52

Nobody goes to their first MMO thinking “Gee, I want to play an MMO.” It doesn’t matter what got them into MMOs, it only matters that they are. You know those people who started playing WoW as their first MMO because it was a Blizzard game? They’re not playing it because it’s a Blizzard game anymore. They’re playing it because it’s an MMO.

And yes, I did just make quite a few baseless generalizations there.
Ross Smith
July 17th, 2007 - 22:22

WoW has scared the shit out of every single developer and publisher. … If your new game isn’t like WoW, then you “have ignored the lessons that WoW has handed down”

You say that like it was a bad thing.

Originality is not an end in itself. The point of making games is to entertain the players; originality is one of the means to that end. By all means experiment with new game design ideas. But remember that experiments are something you do on a small scale in the laboratory — not straight onto the industrial-scale production line before they’re thoroughly tested. Don’t complain when small experimental niche games tend to stay that way.

There’s a phrase I’ve seen a few (too few, I think) times in MMO-related forums: “Ant Farm Syndrome”. It refers to game designers who treat their games as “God Game”-style toys for their own personal enjoyment, and the players as merely components of that toy, that sometimes frustratingly fail to do the right thing.

I’m pretty tired of the attitude from so many designers and wannabe designers that players can’t be trusted to know what they really want, and have to be force-fed something “original” instead of the <sneer>WOW clones</sneer> they inexplicably keep voting for with their wallets.

I realise this is a crazy heretical idea, but perhaps there might actually be a good reason why WOW and a few others have millions of players, while so many of those “more original” games are struggling to keep one hundredth as many.
J.
July 17th, 2007 - 22:48

Wow, do you usually take everything people say so literally? The whole notion is that he wishes good games got their time in the sun, not to destroy the playing habits of gamers.

Is that the entire notion? Because even if he didn’t mean the latter part, there’s still a lot to question about the former. I listed most of the questions above.
Jarnis
July 18th, 2007 - 00:27

I’m also one of those who is constantly seeking for a “WoW replacement”. With my gamer hat on, I don’t *CARE* why companies turned into gutless mice in the shadow of Blizzard – if you build a good game, the masses will come.

That means, building a game that is polished, stays up, has working and balanced economy, sane exp curve, is polished, has plenty of good risk-vs-reward content, IS POLISHED and… well, I could babble on for an hour, but you get the idea. I’ve tried just about every MMO on the market, and every single one of them has multiple fatal flaws that kill them dead. WoW is just the one with least number of flaws.

EVE Online? Pretty close… but I’m sorry, beta quality server code plus “leveling” system that ensures your pal who wants to join in has to wait for 9-15 months before his character is ‘effective’ in 0.0 for anything other than flying a tackler frig…

LOTRO? Fire the animators, hire new ones, rework every animation in the game, then call me again. I just can’t stand the crappy animation… also notable lack of content.

DAOC? It’s dead. Was good for a long while, and did plenty of things right, but the fact that you needed 50 people zergs (no skill and coordination required) to take on the ‘endgame’ PvE plus the lack of single group content, rubberband-happy netcode and constantly borked PvP balancing kinda killed the game for me.

CoH/CoV? Broken advancement curve. Leveling curve is VERY steep *and* the number of levels required between new rewards (new abilities) goes up the higher you get. Fail at MMO Design 101. Also lack of content and poor reaction to a levelling exploit a while back (summary: There was a way to exploit the sidekick system some time before CoV launch – some people were levelling 10x the rate by blowing up large piles of mobs with carefully balanced ‘mean level’ of a group…). Fix took weeks to materialize, and nobody was penalized (permabanned/rolledback) for it. I don’t play games where you are rewarded for cheating)

Vanguard? Sorry, you fail at game programming. Crappy performance, bugs everywhere, silly design mistakes…

EQ2? Game that can’t get their graphics engine fixed does not get money from me (those beautiful character and building shadows *still* disappear within 5-30min of being turned on, depending on amount of spell effects going off around you. Bug known since few weeks after launch, no fix to date). Also I have fundamental disagreement with SOE on the subject of SOEbay. You are supposed to take the RMT guys behind the shed and shoot them, instead of legimatizing the cheating – even if it’s on separate servers.

SWG? Early on had tons of bugs married by some interesting design ideas. Actually played actively for the first couple of months dedicating my time to craft. Once they figured out that they were not supposed to give crafting exp for factory produced items, turning it to a huge click-grind fest, I snapped out of that and looked at the more classical “PvE” side, and found it to completely borked. /cancel…

Auto Assault? Hahahaha, even the publisher pulled the plug on this one… someone forgot to design in the fun.

So, where is the game I should ‘try out’? I see only buggy, mismanaged piles of steaming crap around. And I’ve tried very hard to look for them… If that means publishers are now scared of piling up tens of millions to fund another steaming pile of crap, that is a good thing. Blizzard showed the noobie devs that you can make a MMO without ton of excuses, and unsurprisingly gamers now expect others to follow the pattern and publish complete, polished games. It doesn’t matter how revolutionary your design is if the game fails the polish check or the “is it any fun?” check.

Bring on more *good* MMOs. Blizzard is getting a bit too comfortable with their utter domination…
Mist
July 18th, 2007 - 01:13

When Granado Espada is the second best MMO I’ve played all year, there’s something wrong with the MMO genre.

As for Richard Bartle, I’m not convinced he actually knows all that much about the intricacies of designing game systems, so I don’t know about making him Lead Designer of anything, but he certainly knows a lot about the people who play these types of games, which means someone should be cutting him ‘le phat cheque’ for his wisdom, and the fact that nobody is really shocks me.
M Grey
July 18th, 2007 - 01:32

I see good things in store for the future of that quote. No way will the magic of the internet take it out of context and blow it out of proportion before distributing it to the 8 million WoW players and the equal and opposite 8 million WoW haters. No way.

I hope the man doesn’t take too much flak over it. It’s kind of messed up that his parting thoughts at the end of an interview can somehow become the title line.
Brian 'Psychochild' Green
July 18th, 2007 - 03:07

I think Jarnis’ post above shows exactly why Richard Bartle is right on the money. Jarnis looks for any reason to hate a game that isn’t WoW.

LotRO has bad animations? What? How exactly does this impact gameplay? And no content? If there’s one thing I’d say about Turbine is that they can produce content like nobody’s business. If this were a problem, I’m sure it is only an temporary problem.

EQ2’s shadows disappear? Seriously? This is the best you an find against the game? And, you can’t stand “SOEBay” even though a majority of the servers don’t support this? If anything, it made the game better because SOE seemed a lot quicker to shut down gold farmers. I very rarely got gold farmer spam, and the in-game mail system had a “report spam” button built right in.

The problem is, as Dr. Bartle implies, is that people are content enough with WoW, no matter what anyone else offers. There will always be a reason to hate another game, no matter how mundane or trivial. And some people are happy to go out of their way to point out the problems.

The larger issue here is that WoW created unrealistic expectations. If I can’t have any flaw in my graphics engine to please people like Jarnis, then it’s hopeless. (I’ll note that even WoW had it’s share of graphics engine problems, although people seem quick to forgive them.) Developers were already worried about development costs after EQ. Blizzard came along and used their incredibly deep pockets to create a game with a budget that is still impossible for most mortals. They also set up the ultimate Catch-22: either you have a lower budget and you have some flaw that people can claim makes your entire game suck, or you get the $50M in investment and walk on pins and needles about pissing someone else’s money away and threatening your career.

And, don’t take that bit about ruining a career lightly. Just look at what happened to Sigil; not making value judgments here, but they did spend a lot of money and heads did, unfortunately, roll. And what would I , the great indie supporter, do if someone forced me to make a game with a $50M budget? I’d clone Wow, for two reasons: first, this is what the person giving me $50M almost certainly wants, and second, because when my game has some minor flaw (such as not using the same username/password for every player as their WoW account does by default), nobody will blame me for my stupid ideas fucking up the game. I might be labeled an unoriginal hack, but at least my career will still be intact.

Some more fuel for the fire.
gheist
July 18th, 2007 - 04:09

Jarnis hit the nail on the head, I’ve tried almost all the major MMO’s out there and there is nothing that comes close to the quality (I’m not talking playability/quests/exp/dungeons ect ect) and polish, reliability and just re playability of WoW. Until a company has the balls to innovate and produce a finished product without hyping it up for years on end then failing to deliver badly then you wont see the numbers come in. I dislike allot of the direction WoW is/was headed in, too much in the footsteps of EQ for my liking, which is why it seems to be turning off allot of people.

Now people are looking for the next big thing, but unfortunately I don’t think there will be one from looking at newest crop of contenders coming out in the next 6-9 months
Caya
July 18th, 2007 - 04:22

Sorry, Brian, but saying he’d shut down WOW if he could, *if* it was serious, is still a spiteful thing to say. That sounds suspiciously like the nerd whose dreamgirl went for the hunky sports team captain.

Disclaimer: I don’t play WOW, never have (just not my cuppa). But I’m glad it’s around regardless. Something that brings fun to 8 million people is a good thing in my book. Taking those people’s beloved pastime away just because maybe some of them will wander on to something that you consider better, for whatever reason, smacks of sour grapes and elitism.

Dis-Disclaimer: I adore M59, I really do. I lost the better part of a year of my lifetime to that game in its original incarnation and now prefer to regard it from a safe distance, just in case. I know it’s a great little game, okay?
Brian 'Psychochild' Green
July 18th, 2007 - 06:25

It’s not sour grapes. If it were, then Richard would have said something to the effect, “close it down just like I would do with any game I did not create.” Go read that interview, Richard’s not one to mince words.

Instead, he’s taking it as an interesting intellectual exercise. Take the juggernaut that’s affecting the industry (for both good and ill) and shut it down? What would be the effects? Richard is playing a game here, because he’s a world-class game designer and understands what the game is to be played.

And, really, it’s nothing more sinister or spiteful than an intellectual exercise. Because, if he were 110% serious the answer would be, “take over WoW and laugh all the way to the bank while funding my ideal game.” Well, at least mine would be.
Michael Chui
July 18th, 2007 - 07:16

I normally don’t read this blog (and regularly ask myself why), but Richard actually talked about this on his blog and it deserved linkage: Famous Last Words.

Also, I find Jarnis’ comments about EVE Online odd. I just started playing the trial last Saturday. So far, both of my friends who started with me are ahead of me. I can’t quite express how glum I feel over this, but I also know they won’t read this, so!

But the scenario he describes is like a level 40 player inviting a newbie friend over to play and, geez, you can’t do raids together, can you? What are you going to do? Babysit your friend? And I absolutely love how he called it a leveling system. What do you think it is? WoW? Yeah, because your paladin can really switch bodies and become a shaman by teleporting back to the city. I’m finding it difficult not to just repeat what Brian said; the entire argument is summed up by, “insufficiently WoW, next?” Vanguard’s idea, for instance, was superb; they merely had shitty execution.

Then again, I went into EVE knowing that I wouldn’t be able to stick with it. Because I play an MMORPG that most people have never heard of. It’s in TEXT. Excuse me while I indulge in elitism for a bit.

Oh, and Mist? Read his book.
Gojira Shippi-Taro
July 18th, 2007 - 09:19

Jarnis’ comments do seem to be fairly nit-picky. I didn’t really see any specific gameplay problems, just “this graphical element is broke” or “they didn’t punish a small set of players nearly 2 years ago”.

The only thing that was dead on was the Auto Assault comment. I didn’t even bother with more than a couple days of Beta testing on that one. Some interesting mechanics choices, and zero fun.

That said, the only game on that list that I’m playing right now is LOTRO. The only two I have any intention of going “back to” are EQ2 and Vanguard (and SWG, since it comes with the hole Station Access thing).

I don’t think killing a game (that I personally no longer care to play) to try to get people to look at more potential “virtual worlds” is really all that workable (because, you know, they want a GAME, not a virtual world). Having read Richard Bartle’s update, however it appears that wasn’t really what he was trying to say (much).
yunk
July 18th, 2007 - 09:22

I don’t see how it’s different than any other industry. This same scenario has played out time and again in many industries. The dominant player has a stranglehold and few can even imagine its downfall, let alone how to go about getting customers. But eventually someone does. It’s the whole “disruptive technology” phenomenon.

WoW will fall eventually. Something else will rise, or maybe several smaller products will. Don’t worry it will happen. WHEN it happens and WHO will do it can’t be predicted. To say innovation and competition is being stifled is wrong, anyone can still innovate. The bar has just been raised, that’s all.

Sure people criticize LOTRO , but they obviously learned lessons from WoW, and they are making money. And for game companies to make money is the bottom line – it allows them to do the things they want.

To get rid of WoW is like saying “let’s get rid of that which is forcing us to strive to be better” or like saying “I can’t possibly compete so let’s just get rid of the competition” .. not a good idea, and not a way to get better games. We’ll just go back to the games we had before.
Amber
July 18th, 2007 - 09:44

Sorry, Brian, but saying he’d shut down WOW if he could, *if* it was serious, is still a spiteful thing to say. That sounds suspiciously like the nerd whose dreamgirl went for the hunky sports team captain.

It’s fortunate that you caveated your opinion with “*if* it was serious.” I don’t know Richard Bartle personally, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he was not literally advocating the wholesale destruction of WoW. As the article made abundantly clear, it was a thought exercise not a call for Blizzard’s head.

As for me, I hope World of Warcraft never goes away. WoW is a clearinghouse for the absolute worst, immature, and downright clueless players in the MMO-o-sphere. (And before someone gets too uptight about that statement, let’s do a little set theory. Not all WoW players are the worst, most immature, and downright clueless players. However, a very large majority of bad, immature, and clueless players play WoW.) I’ve actually noticed an increase in the level of quality players in the non-WoW games I play and that makes me happy. Please WoW, never go away.
PD
July 18th, 2007 - 11:05

I lost a tremendous amount of respect for one of the founders of MUDding with this sentence:

I’d take over World of Warcraft and I’d close it. I just want better virtual worlds.

This sounds like an illogical statement if you come from the “theme park” vs “virtual world” debate, which is something that any MUD staffer should recognize, even if they can’t codify it as such.

WoW is a theme park. It largely sells to people who want a ‘theme park’ experience. It may seem dull, but most people who play WoW don’t want things like player housing and government: they want loots, quests, instances, etc. They are looking for the traditional CRPG game that they can occasionally play with friends.

What would I do? Take WoW, open-source everything, and provide consulting services to all these people with big ideas. The problem with the industry isn’t artistic or creativity: its producing games that aren’t bug-ridden piles of crap that should still be in beta.
Steve
July 18th, 2007 - 11:33

Here’s some more set theory. WoW has more bad, immature, and downright clueless players than any other game for the same reason that they have more bright, witty, creative, and highly-motivated players than any other game.

Regarding the interview, I actually agreed with most of it. Right up until the “bomb-toss” at the end. As has been pointed out here and elsewhere, if you shut down WoW, the vast majority of those millions of players would stop playing MMOs altogether.

I, too, am having difficulty believing that any of them would start trying out the “unknown gems”. If they’re gems, why are they still unknown?

Why hasn’t anyone given him a lead design spot? Who says they haven’t tried? I think Bartle hasn’t got a position in the game industry because they can’t compete with the ivory tower. As a professional lecturer, no one can hold him accountable for anything, and he must be getting paid pretty well, if the MMO companies can’t compete. He laid out in the interview what it would take to get him into the industry: a $50 million budget.
Rick
July 18th, 2007 - 11:33

Hmm. While there are plenty of things to gripe about in WoW, there are also plenty of things that they did right, probably more things than any three other mmorpg’s put together.

What WoW didn’t do was take risks, and I think risk is where innovation and emergent games arise. Blizzard made a great game, but it’s not so hot as a virtual world. Lightweight crafting, no housing, no controllable territory, no meaningful PvP, limited race/class combos, lack of avatar variety…there’s not much to latch onto and extend as a player. It’s the difference between leasing a pretty car you’ll return in 3 years (WoW) and buying an older car to restore, invest some sweat equity, make it unique, and make it your own.

Anyway, I read Bartle’s post and see him saying WoW is a barrier to other developers (or more likely, investors/publishers) willing to take risks. And maybe for players as well?
DaveT
July 18th, 2007 - 11:48

“…At another level, though, I’m content, because I do get pleasure from virtual worlds – only I get it from the beauty of the design, not from the experience of playing.
It doesn’t take a lot of playing to get a handle on the design, either, so when I do play I don’t generally do so for long. Indeed, most of my understanding of a design comes from watching other people play and from reading about it on the web.”

Then in the comments: “Hopefully they’ll notice I have 3 level 70s in WoW myself before they start burning my effigy…”

There’s something important about this apparent contradiction but it eludes me, please share your thoughts Professor.
Vermain
July 18th, 2007 - 12:02

Anyway, I read Bartle’s post and see him saying WoW is a barrier to other developers (or more likely, investors/publishers) willing to take risks. And maybe for players as well?

The biggest barrier that WoW is putting up right now is money. No gaming company wants to be running a game at a loss, and they all want to be making as much money as possible off of the thing. WoW has put the expectation barrier so high that attempting to start up a new MMO is a risky maneuver. You can attempt to copy WoW with a few different decals, and this will probably guarantee at least a decent amount of subscribers, but it creates stagnation and stifles creativity. You can also attempt to be creative and improve upon the classic MMO format by including innovations X and Y, but this is a risky move, because the profit isn’t truly guaranteed, and the company might end up investing millions of dollars in a flop.
Frag
July 18th, 2007 - 12:08

Brian,

I’ve played most mmorpgs, and stopped playing most mmorpgs. Currently I still play wow, because it simply offers gameplay I enjoy. If wow went away tomorrow there is not another mmorpg I would pick up. When I stopped playing EQ, I stopped playing mmorpgs for a number of years, not because I didn’t have other options, but because they simply weren’t offering a game I was interested in playing.

The reality is, love it or hate it WoW really does do a ton of things right. The art style brilliantly allows them to target relatively low end hardware while still looking pretty (and don’t discount appearance, it does matter, even to serious players – heck I remember when AC went gold, a bunch of hardcore EQers I worked with including myself basically dismissed it initially because it was a similar game on the surface with worse graphics, and why move to what appeared to be a worse looking clone of a game we were still enjoying.)

Sure WoW has it’s faults, but the world feels good, the instances really do have a magical feel to them that games often miss (though I will say that TBC lost some of this.) If you’ve played EQ to 60, I’m sure you’ve seen BRD, and I’d argue that place really does feel “alive” when you’re in it, and not merely like a scripted roller-coaster ride.

In fact I’d argue on of the biggest failings of the burning crusade is that the instances offer too many uniform experiences, where at 60 they had a bit more variety when it came to the following points:
1) Instance size
2) Instance difficulty
3) Linearity of the instance

Personally I think it’s the lack of variety (which is fixed in the later raiding content) that has hurt TBC most relative to vanilla WoW. I think a key lesson I’ve extracted from playing many mmos is that people inherently want to hang out with their friends (virtual or otherwise) in them, but once they’ve reached the end of the provided content, if they are to keep playing they need enough different-feeling activities to have fun with to avoid the repetition becoming monotonous. That said, while TBC has less variety at max level compared to what vanilla WoW offered, it doesn’t have any real competition that offers more variety of activities that most players would enjoy from what I’ve seen on the variety front, and post TBC launch I’d argue they’ve done an amazing job polishing the content they do have.

I believe that most games fail not due to a core concept problem, it’s not due to a single key issue, rather they die to a thousand pin-pricks of issues. Jarnis may not have articulated all of the specifics, but what he’s fundamentally saying is “given the combined impact of the issues I encountered the game was not compelling to me” I seriously most WoW players would be playing one of them “if only WoW wasn’t there” quite simply because no one has built a game that is competitive with WoW.

WoW has taught many people about mmorpgs, and thus there is a larger audience that will try out an mmorpg than there once was, just like iD isn’t the only maker of 1st person shooters but basically created an audience that was aware of the genre and willing to try out games in it. However, just because I enjoy some 1st person shooters, that doesn’t mean I can’t/won’t take a break from playing any of them for years (for example, after Doom2 I didn’t pick up another first person shooter until Quake.) For a mmorpg to take the market the way WoW did, it needs not only to be a good game that can grow a fanbase, but it needs to be something that can be sold to new players in less than 5 minutes. WoW does that, I’ve seen many new (to Blizzard, and to mmorpgs) gamers see WoW and quickly sold on it, that’s a key point, then it needs to back that up with enough hooks to convert a large percentage of the people who pick it up into strong fans who won’t stop playing. To sell someone on a game in 5 minutes, look and feel matters alot, and WoW gets this right. To keep these people playing the mechanics need to be accessible, and Blizzard really nails these elements.

You can see just how well Blizzard did when you look at the real dredges of the player-base, the guys who clearly don’t understand or know what they’re doing. For example, there is a guy who was rather embarassed to learn *when he was in Un’Goro crater around level 50* that there was a trainer in the big city that would teach more advanced abilities – he had only ever used the trainer in the starting area and basically solo’d to 50 on his rogue. Now of course this guy was terrible at 50, but he was having fun and making progress, and the game effectively offers enough dynamic difficulty for that player to have fun and enjoy themselves, while maintaining the depth necessary to appeal to people deeply interested in underlying theory and game mechanics (such as those at the elitistjerks forums.) I would argue that the dynamic difficulty that WoW is able to offer at all levels is a key part of it’s success, and something I haven’t seen any other mmorpg come close to matching.
kalain
July 18th, 2007 - 13:03

I honestly feel that most of the WoW angst I see in the playerbase isn’t “I want something other than WoW”, it seems to be a lot of “we want to punish bad players and enjoy gameplay related to pounding nails into our genitals”. Go look at the Warhammer fansite boards. It’s amazing how many completely unfun gameplay ideas get pitched in MMO development phases.

WoW’s basically got no punishment factor. The death penalty is Minor at best, the crafting system is relatively easy to run through, losing at a BG still gets you some level of reward.

It’s Accessable to Everyone. Sure not everyone may raid, but the vast majority of the game’s content from 1-70 is accessable to everyone and doesn’t really smack you around for screwing up. While this may mean you have a lot of retarded 70s running around, it means people have less chance of logging out in frustration at the RNG for the night when they die to a lucky mob crit or spawn and lose progress for the 8th time that night.

It’s got a lot of random long term things to do at the high end, be it pvp, crafting, endless instance runs, faction grinds, whatnot. When I picked up LOTRO, my major question for anyone who would listen is “that’s great, but when I hit the level cap, what do I DO? What makes me want to keep playing. And don’t say roll an alt.”

While they may have walked into this with a giant wallet, that’s not a bad thing for the industry as a whole. It’s just like any other programming field: someone finally wandered over and took it seriously, and put a large amount of effort into something they knew would work. Sure, everyone else may be scared to put in a large amount of money, but if you know a project is going to be a success, you have to front the money and take the bet. It’s how ever other industry works. You can either be a bit player who throws in safe products for little R&D/Dev time, or try and do something massive to own the arena.

You don’t need to take WoW away from the players to get people to play other MMOs any more than you needed to take EQ away when it was the 500lb gorilla. You need to give the players something they’ll consider more fun. And to do this, you’re probably going to alienate the hardcore gamers just as much as WoW seems to have. The era of being an Elite and honored few at the top of your server’s social foodchain is over. It’s a mainstream enough industry now that you’re simply going to be Some Dude On A Server, and have a group of friends. Instanced content is here to stay, because waiting on a spawn for 12 hours IS NOT FUN. I dare you to find a single person who thinks staring at an empty spot for 12 hours is fun who isn’t secretly confusing “having said rare item as an ego boost” with “staring at empty space” as the fun. Losing XP or levels because the healer went linkdead on a pull Is Not Fun. Heck, doing safe pulls over and over to level because you’re scared of wiping or the risk/reward balance is way off isn’t fun either. No more redcaps, please. I don’t need 80 classes and 10 races. But I do need more than 4 classes. I’d also prefer to never do tiered classes again, but that’s less important. I’d really just like to log into an MMO, be viable Solo, viable in a Group, and have an easy time getting either started. I want to be able to log in for an hour and feel I did something more than spam a chat channel, or log in for 6 hours and still not be bored.

Basically, I want FUN, given to everyone regardless of skill level, class, number of friends online, whatever. I don’t want to be punished heavily for my mistakes or the mistakes of my comrades. It’s an entertainment venue, if I wanted pain I’d go to an S&M club in my off time. We mentally beat ourselves up for messing up enough, I don’t need someone else adding to this. I don’t mind failing to get into an encounter due to sucking, I do mind moving backwards for Trying. I do not find walking across a huge world to be fun. I don’t care how much work you put into placing those trees, if it takes me more than 10 minutes to get to my friends, after I log in, you’re wasting my freaking time.

Christ, I could ramble about this for hours. But you get the idea. I’ll try any MMO, though I’ve never bothered to find a trial for vanguard, but if you can’t make it fun from when I log in until I log out, chances are you’ll never see me again. And if you make the mid or end game painful, I’ll find something else to do with my time. Heck, WoW’s 40-50 grindfest is as painful as I’ll go, and I’ve done it seven times now. Just understand that I’m playing a damned game, and if your game isn’t fun for me, I’ll play someone else’s damned game.
NateE
July 18th, 2007 - 13:18

I think there is certainly a point to consider in Brian’s post: quality of life. This is an aspect that WoW has done decently well on, although all MMOs these days tend to fail on it in some aspect these days. Many game devs tend to bypass a lot of the QoL polish because of time and budget constraints which, while probably necessary to actually ship the game, can have long term detrimental effects.

Look at the animations mentioned for LOTRO; sure they are minor, but it is a constant, glaring issue for some people. Sure, it doesn’t bother everyone, nor does it impact the dynamics of gameplay, but it is still annoying. And over time those annoyances can build up until a player decides they don’t want to be annoyed anymore.

This goes for all the little frustrations in games; they add up.

Everything discussed above points to the same core issue though: MMO customers are different than even the majority of people who play videogames. WoW recognized this fact and created a game that could appeal to both the ‘typical’ MMO player (yes, broad assumption there) as well as the more casual player. This is something I’ve often heard referred to as “The Girlfriend Effect,” meaning the game appeals the the gamer (assumed male) and is fun and casual enough to also lure in his (assumed non-gamer) girlfriend. While certainly the game play is what brings the people in, the QoL considerations and polish keep them there.
Machinator
July 18th, 2007 - 13:41

“WOW clones they inexplicably keep voting for with their wallets.”

I’m curious as to what WoW clones you feel were a commercial success? In my recollection, none.

WoW esentially is what EverQuest 2 should have been. The vast majority of old EQ players who wanted to switch to EQ2 were confounded by overhigh system requirements and a generally weak buggy game. They went to World of Warcraft, along with a sizable portion of the old Battle.net crowd.
From there it snowballed further – remember, people called it EverCrack before World of Warcrack, though of course there is no question that WoW has reached a level of popular success EQ never came close to.

Thing is, many people these days only play WoW to pvp, and there are many players looking for Something Better(tm). Question is where will they find it. I suspect a sizable portion of the pvp crowd will move to Warhammer provided it doesn’t turn out to be a steaming pile.
Machinator
July 18th, 2007 - 13:49

“Basically, I want FUN, given to everyone regardless of skill level, class, number of friends online, whatever. ”

This is going to be difficult – the nature of competitive play is that there is a winner and a loser. Not everyone can be winners, and there must be losers in order for there to be winners. You understand right? It’s more or less etched in stone, if you will. Many people don’t consider ‘losing’ to be fun.
DaveT
July 18th, 2007 - 14:02

@ Amber
“However, a very large majority of bad, immature, and clueless players play WoW”
While I agree in general, I feel it important to mention that not all WoW players are adults. It seems obvious, I know, but we adults have a tendency to judge others based on our own, adult standards, when we really shouldn’t.
I was reminded of this fact when I teamed with a guildie whom I previously avoided because of some odd comments she made (yes ’she’) in guild chat. Turns out she’s 12, and I am amazed at how tolerant and protective of her (and her ilk) in-game knowing this.
I’m just sayin…
yunk
July 18th, 2007 - 14:45

This is going to be difficult – the nature of competitive play is that there is a winner and a loser. Not everyone can be winners, and there must be losers in order for there to be winners. You understand right? It’s more or less etched in stone, if you will. Many people don’t consider ‘losing’ to be fun.

In a pve game there needn’t be any losers, that’s the whole point. Why must there be losers unless you’re competing with another player in a sport or fps or pvp game? There’s no need at all, as long as both good and poor players get challenged and rewarded accordingly.

Sure people like to feel special and lord it over others that they were able to beat an encounter that others weren’t, but people will do that no matter what as long as there is any sort of challenge. And I’m not sure those people make up a sizable percent of potential players. You can make players feel like winners without making others feel like losers.

However, if what you were trying to say is “difficult for some is easy for others – how do we code for this?”, well some games use instances and difficulty settings for this. Adding different rewards for different difficulty levels would complete the model.

Of course, I get bored with CoX and DDO since they are basically all instanced, and there is no world to discover and goof off in that satisfies the explorer and socializer in me, so instancing and difficulty settings present their own problems. (yeah i know CoX has a world but it just doesn’t feel the same as WoW, lotro, eq, etc).

There might be even better solutions that someone somewhere will think of and implement.
Adam Martin
July 18th, 2007 - 14:56

I’d be surprised if most people working on commercial MMOs have even heard of Richard Bartle. And if they did, they’d probably want him to stay way the hell away from their projects, just by gut reaction.

Well, all the good ones know exactly who he is .

/me ducks and runs for cover
blachawk
July 18th, 2007 - 15:17

People are surprised by the fact that no one wants to hire Bartle?

Well, if you had a company that desired to make money, would you hire a guy who claims he would shut down the most commercially successful MMOG ever realized?
Kayn
July 18th, 2007 - 15:38

I remember seeing Bartle when he did a lecture at Teesside Uni.
Back then he only had a level 40 Paladin.

Whilst I don’t agree with shutting down of any game, it would be nice if people actually explored outside thier own little cosy corner of v-space. At least then we wouldn’t say “Virtual Worlds” when we really mean “WoW and SL”.
Brian 'Psychochild' Green
July 18th, 2007 - 16:26

Reading through the comments here, it’s easier to see the rift between player and designer. I think most people just don’t understand what Richard was saying when he lobbed the bomb at the end. He clarifies his position, which is pretty much what I said about it being an intellectual exercise above.

A few comments I thought I’d respond to:

Steve wrote:
If they’re gems, why are they still unknown?

Games don’t remain unknown merely because they suck. I could list a few dozen games you probably haven’t played that are superb games. An easy example is Beyond Good & Evil. The game did terribly in sales, but most people who have played it agree it’s a truly wonderful, fun game, worthy of being in “Top N Lists”. Just because people aren’t playing a game doesn’t mean it’s not fun.

One big issue is marketing. It’s hard and it’s expensive. So, if there were a small gem of a game out there that can’t afford big advertising, it’ll probably get lost in the tidal wave of people that can afford marketing. Numbers I’ve heard for WoW’s marketing budget are larger than many MMORPG budgets before WoW launched.

I experienced this myself when we revamped Meridian 59’s client with a new rendering engine. (It doesn’t make the game compete graphically with other games out there, but it was supposed to be the first step toward many upgrades to the game.) Unfortunately, we finished just before WoW launched and my marketing budget was about three orders of magnitude too small to get any significant notice. That’s why I’m working on other projects these days.

Frag wrote:
I’ve played most mmorpgs, and stopped playing most mmorpgs

Newbie designer mistake #1: Assuming everyone will react the same way you do.

Not to pick on you, Frag, because other people did the same thing. The problem is that not everyone will react like you did. Sure, not everyone who loves WoW would go seek another game immediately if it went away, but some people would.

In retrospect, I suspect that completely closing down WoW would have an effect that Dr. Bartle didn’t intend: since the majority of WoW’s players are in China, all those Chinese players would support different Chinese games. This would give those games a boost, perhaps enough to jump to other markets easier. In the end, this would probably be a big boon to Chinese games.

Yunk wrote:
To get rid of WoW is like saying “let’s get rid of that which is forcing us to strive to be better” or like saying “I can’t possibly compete so let’s just get rid of the competition” .. not a good idea, and not a way to get better games. We’ll just go back to the games we had before.

But, here’s the fallacy: it’s not making people make better games. It’s making people give up because they literally cannot compete. You don’t get $50M in funding in the game industry without a lot of issues. Blizzard was in a unique position: they had resources from a large company to rely on, an established and eager fanbase, and a degree of creative control rarely seen in any game company. You can’t just click your heels together and wish to have the same situation. This is one reason why it’s nearly impossible to compete with WoW directly.

Let’s take a look at history, shall we? EQ launched in March 1999, and the first “big” competition to the game, DAoC, launched in October 2001. (Sorry, AC fans; isn’t it fun to be marginalized?) That’s 30 months later. (You might also note that DAoC’s budget was about $4M if I remember my figures right.) Now, here we are 32 months after the November 2004 launch of WoW. Where’s our DAoC? You could argue that LotRO fills that role, but that’s not good news. The rate of development should be increasing after all these years, not remaining so static. This is not a reason to be excited, because WoW is not encouraging people to get better; it’s the opposite: it’s encouraging people to not even try.

Rich wrote:
Anyway, I read Bartle’s post and see him saying WoW is a barrier to other developers (or more likely, investors/publishers) willing to take risks. And maybe for players as well?

You got it in one.

To spell it out, on the developer side the problem is that you have two funding options with two results:

* Have a “small” budget (maybe “only” $20M like the original SWG spent), and fail because your game isn’t WoW enough.

* Have a “small” budget and hope to find your niche. Of course, the more money you spend on development the less you have for marketing, so your game will likely remain unknown. (See my response to Steve above.)

* Have a large budget ($50M , please, as Dr. Bartle mentioned in the interview) and have Vanguard-style problems. Problems that can ruin a career.

* Have a large budget and succeed wildly. How many people have done this since WoW launched over 2 years ago? Maybe LotRO, as I said above.

Unfortunately, games are an art, not a science. You can talk all you want about people believing a game to be a success, but until it launches you just don’t know for sure. I think Auto Assault shows this well, because the reviews during demos for the game were nothing but enthusiastically positive; yet, the game launched and people shunned it like an unfun plague.

Some insight.
NateE
July 18th, 2007 - 19:47

Brian responded:
Games don’t remain unknown merely because they suck.

I could not agree more. Too many people make the immediate assumption that success = quality. Extend this idea to modern music; so much of what is ‘pop’ and sells many millions of CDs is not necessarily quality.

Granted, the opposite can also not be claimed absoliutely that obscurity of a title implies quality. There are certainly games that have never been heard of for very good reason. Ad Brian mentions much of this comes down to marketing and PR. If that weren’t true we would never have situations like this one for Age of Conan: 30 million USD extra for marketing. Funcom is trying very hard to make sure their game won’t be unknown. Is it good? Not sure yet, but it certainly wont be unknown.
Steve
July 18th, 2007 - 22:07

Brian: “I could list a few dozen games you probably haven’t played that are superb games. An easy example is Beyond Good & Evil.”

OK, fair enough, I’ve never heard of Beyond Good & Evil, much less played it.

But, that’s a single-player game, and I was talking about MMOs. From the context of his “bomb-toss”, I thought that’s what Bartle meant, and with the exception of your response to my comment, that’s what everyone else in this thread seems to be talking about. I could be wrong though.

So. Are there any MMOG’s and/or virtual worlds included in your “several dozen” superb games that no one has ever heard of?
Toby
July 19th, 2007 - 01:48

Mr. Bartle, if you feel you can do better than WoW, feel free to do so at any time.

Eventually something will come along to be the new WoW, as every fad eventually dies out. The problem I see with other MMOs is not WoW, but the designs of the games themselves. WoW is a polished product and Blizzard is dedicated to quality. Most MMOs I’ve tried felt like rush-jobs of companies trying to get a piece of Blizzard’s pie. Sure there’s plenty of innovation and quality games out there, but they don’t have larger numbers because they don’t provide a better overall experience than WoW. Also what needs to happen is companies doing like Nintendo with the Wii and bringing in new gamers from outside the normal gaming community.
Richard Bartle
July 19th, 2007 - 04:37

I wasn’t planning on posting here for fear of disrupting what’s turning out to be the best discussion of the “Bartle wants to close down WoW and dance on its grave and curse its children for seven generations” statement that people elsewhere seem to think I made. However, there are a couple of side points that have cropped up that I feel I ought to respond to because otherwise people might go away with a (different) false impression.

Steve>I think Bartle hasn’t got a position in the game industry because they can’t compete with the ivory tower. As a professional lecturer, no one can hold him accountable for anything, and he must be getting paid pretty well, if the MMO companies can’t compete. He laid out in the interview what it would take to get him into the industry: a $50 million budget.

My life in the ivory tower borders on purgatory. Read this blog post I wrote while at the Indie MMO GDC earlier this year. As a professional lecturer, my pay is less than half that of my wife (who programs for a bank), or at least it would be if I worked full time (I’m actually only “50% full-time equivalent”, so in practice she gets over 4 times what I do). I’m not accountable for my research, but I am accountable for the administration that’s dumped on me: this summer, for example, I’ve been given the joyful task of analysing the potential of Indonesia as a source of computer science and electronic systems postgraduates, and what particular degree schemes the Indonesians will find attractive. Rivetting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree, and just the kind of thing I yearn to write reports on…

I’m in the industry in the sense that I do regular industry consultancy work, but that’s hardly the same as designing my own virtual worlds. As to why I don’t work in the industry permanently, given how miserable I am in UK academia, well there are probably many reasons, all of which I would doubtless discover in the event that I were actually offered a job there. I get offered hatfulls of academic jobs, but none in the industry.

Oh, the $50m figure wasn’t budgeted or anything. I hike it up every time I’m asked, taking the point of view that eventually it’ll be so big that someone will give me it.

DaveT>There’s something important about this apparent contradiction but it eludes me, please share your thoughts Professor.

OK, so the question is how come I can claim that I don’t need to play virtual worlds for more than a few hours, and yet I have 3 level 70s in WoW? (I also have a 60 rogue, by the way, so it’s even worse than it looks).

The answer is in my blog here, here and here. It was always going to be three characters, I just wish they’d waited a few months for Burning Crusade to come out so I could have escaped earlier.

Yes, I do realise this doesn’t help with my “please don’t burn my effigy” argument.

Richard
yunk
July 19th, 2007 - 07:45

But, here’s the fallacy: it’s not making people make better games. It’s making people give up because they literally cannot compete.

I still fail to see the difference between games and other industries. Especially Hollywood. I’ve worked in theater as both actor and writer in the past, and know plenty of writers and others who stay in eastern cities and those who have moved to LA. They all say similar things: “hollywood forces us to make mediocre products that pander to the masses” due to budget, unimaginative management, you can’t find out about the good small movies, etc, the same things you are saying.

The fact is, there are still plenty of independent and small films being made that are great and allow people to make a living. No they’ll never make a blockbuster, but they go on and make good products that people like. In the end, all of those are just excuses if the person saying it doesn’t get out and even try. If WoW were gone, independent and small publishers would still be small and independent and largely ignored.

Games aren’t special or different than any other industry. These same arguments are posited time and again, and they’ve been proven false time and again. There is a market, there is room for good products that aren’t “dumbed down for the masses” (which is itself an elitist argument that should stop). Mass marketed products are always different, and it’s always harder to find the niche or different products that may be “better” in some ways.
Steve
July 19th, 2007 - 11:46

OK, so you’ve skewered my theory pretty soundly. The reason remains undiscovered. Or undocumented. Or inexpressible. Or something.

Maybe you can answer the “unknown gems” question then? Did you have a specific MMOG(s) in mind when you said that, or was it just theorycrafting
Richard Bartle
July 19th, 2007 - 12:39

Steve>Maybe you can answer the “unknown gems” question then? Did you have a specific MMOG(s) in mind when you said that, or was it just theorycrafting.

Hmm, well the smart answer would be “if I knew what they were, they wouldn’t be unknown”.

However, I did talk to some very smart developers at the inaugural Indie MMO Developers Conference this year, and some of those worlds they were building sounded excellent. They’ll be lucky to get more than 20,000 subscribers each, of course.

I also get to see designs for virtual worlds in development, and some of those are very impressive (they don’t all get to the point where they can launch, though). I can’t comment on them as I generally have to sign a non-disclosure agreement (which, sadly, means you don’t have to believe a word I say on the subject as I could be making it up).

Toby>Mr. Bartle, if you feel you can do better than WoW, feel free to do so at any time.

That’s Dr Bartle.

Or Richard, that works too…

OK, so I do feel I can do better than WoW, and the time I feel free to do it is 2008-2011. When will you give me the $100m I’m going to need?

Richard
DoubleD
July 19th, 2007 - 13:32

The problem with these ‘next gen’ Muds (oh MMORPGS) is it takes too long to develop. I’m from the old school Mud and Mush days. A very descriptive paragraph of text of a ‘room’ description would take a Graphic Artist 6 months to make today.

This large time frame just to make Art assets slows down the evolution of the graphical MMO’s. A text game could evolve in 3 to for 4 times faster and learn it’s lessons from bad designs and fix them way faster than a graphical game can. A text game could be working on 2nd generation system design before the Art team and finish their assets with a MMORPG.

It’s also very apparent (From my point of view) that these MMORPG developers do not learn from the past histories of the text Mud/Mush world. Do you think player abuse is something new? Or perhaps God like ‘ant farm’ and conspiracies of favortiism of ‘Staff’ and players (ala eve?) is something new?

If you read Bartle’s book. There is a lot of wisdom in there that was learned from the text days. Too many people now try to re-invent the wheel.

Just a side jab:

Why is just about every MMORPG game puts customer service last when they develop their toolsets in creating their game. How many times you hear ‘Sorry we can do that, we don’t have the ability to refund X?’ Or Oh We got great Direct x10 support, but sorry we never thought about a LFG tool?

I babble.