Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Frax said:

how do you judge an MMO as a success in the retrospect of 2008"s large releases and relative failures of AoC and WAR? Conan and Warhammer both sold a million plus boxes. Conan faltered greatly and by some accounts is being improved; Warhammer is obviously fighting to get better, but I have no doubt their retention rate started a hard downward spiral on Nov 13th.

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I see huge potential. It means people are willing to try a new game and are clamoring for something besides WoW. The problem with both these games is they failed to deliver the polish. Both games are really good at the core, but horribly unfinished. I had a great time in each, till I got to the end game.

AoC great game but failed to polish their main theme PVP. It was still being pieced together while players where working on their 2nd lvl 80. Warhammer suffered the same fate, while their end game is slightly more finished. The state of their main draw, PvP was a huge mess. Neither game delivered on the main draw of their games.

AoC just had too much shit that was flat out broke. I mean, once you get past level 20...and sometimes even before that...shit just didn"t work.

Warhammer...warhammer man. Said it before. They should have done a public alpha from October 20th or so to November 5th or so. Then take all the data they gathered, fixed all the broken shit they could, then if they had released right now instead?

God, the crushing Blizzard would take with a more stable, more interesting, more developed Warhammer would have been epic. It wouldn"t have toppled them, not by any means but goddamn.

I almost get hard at the thought of Blizzard scrambling to balance/fix their game rather then phoning it in like they have lately.

Sadly, Warhammer is so full of bugs and imbalances, in both PvE and PvP, that it"s more like playing a Beta 10+ months from completion. It"s my MMO of choice right now, in part because I got tired of the PvE grind, and also I have a large, prominent guild of friends from WoW that play it.

The concept is great, and when you get a 4 hour long RvR fest going, with warbands hopping through zones, or zones flipping in favor of each realm back and forth it"s exhilarating. Sadly, some classes (e.g. Warrior Priests) are pathetically weak (guess which class I play!), and other classes (Disciples of Khaine, Witch Elves) are so overpowered it"s mind boggling.

Add in to the mix keep bugs, mobs behaving erratically, end-game being unattainable for either side, recurring loot issues, memory leaks galore and the PvE dungeon loot system being even worse than vanilla Molten Core"s, and you have a game that, while fun, is covered in fecal matter.

Mythic bit off WAY more than they could chew with this project. It"s awesome when you find the creamy center, but doing so can be a painful process that leaves a very bitter taste in your mouth. Innovation and advancement in the MMO genre is both fantastic and necessary, but if you can"t scrub the game to a blinding shine as well, then it doesn"t mean a damn thing. Hell, even Blizzard, with what seems like an endless bank account and expected release dates of "sometime before 2XXX", can"t fit all the stuff they want into their titlesandrelease amostly-polished title; developers should keep their sights away from the moon and aligned with a nearby tree-line.

All bugs and incompleteness aside, I agree War has actually been a shitload of fun lately when RvR gets cooking. I was bored and thinking of canceling it a few weeks ago, but it seems like there"s been some resurgence of interest lately which has given a decent enough population for fun to be had. I wonder how many people left to check out WotLK and quickly saw that its just the same old with nothing new. War still has the potential to be a decent success if they can start cranking out some good patches again. Seems like they haven"t done much to improve it in over a month.

It"s a combination of polish and end game. If people hit max level and find themselves repeating the same thing after a couple months they"re gone.

You have to realize releasing a game is just not going to be good enough you practically have to release a game +. You"re competing with established games fair or unfair that"s what you"re going to be compared too. If you don"t measure up people will move on.

Sure you"ll get your niche gamers. I play VG believe it or not. It"s my niche game until something better comes. But VG will never be great, or huge or the new in thing (unless someone buys the IP, finishes the game and rereleases it under a new name. Would probably be a hell of a lot cheaper in the long run)

Games need to be designed from max level down to level one with the polish going into end game. AoC was great until level 20. then it fell apart. Don"t worry about the mid level grind. Let the players steam roll right on by it and give them a ton to do at max level until your ready with the expansion.

I don"t really care how much effort you put into that level 30 dungeon. I just want to get to level 40 anyhow. I want good gear and a variety of ways to get it. Questing, crafting, dungeon crawling, random bosses, and raiding.

Give players enough of that at level 50 (or whatever max level is) and make sure it at least mostly works and you"ll be fine.

ToeMissile said:

I think part of the problem these days is that so many people are so eager to make it to max level they skip huge chunks of content. Sure the argument can be made that they"ll go back with another toon and check more out but I just think it"s practically defeating the whole purpose of the game. I am a bit biased, but I contribute a lot of it to the number crunching that WoW has become.

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by these days I assume you mean the last 8 years. Developers need to learn this and design accordingly.

Yep, leveling content should not be used to tell epic stories, but hint at them while you help teach your players how to play and where everything is. Let them develop an understanding of the world before the crazy storylines that are almost entirely wasted. So long as your game involves leveling as character progression, people are going to be capable of missing out on significant storyline events while advancing. Why let them?

I love how all throughout LK leveling we keep running into the lich king, and seeing the impact he has on the world. They could have blown their load early and had us bored of it, but they only used the leveling process to amp us up for Icecrown. We"re not even done yet, but now we"ve really begun to grasp the immense influence he wields.

I don"t mind in the least that WoW"s newbie game isn"t very dynamic. In most games you begin as a scrub, so why should you be expected to do great things? You come into power over time.

The only issue I continue to have with WoW"s early levels is that content is too spread out and transportation is too slow. At high levels they rectified this immensely. We have fast mounts and most quest hubs orient you to similar locations so you can handle several tasks at a time. I wouldn"t say handling this aspect masterfully is a necessity for a new game, but the intuitiveness of it certainly makes logging in more enjoyable. It is effectivelydowntimewhen you have to move from one end of the zone to the other (and then back) to collect four bird beaks.

WoW (and EverQuest) makes the best improvements when they actually feel pressure from their competition.

WoW at the moment has no competition whatsoever so they are taking their sweet time with fixing broken shit and fucked up game balance. Witness the abortion that is the current arena balance, the lag issues, the lack of pve content, etc..

The one saving grace of WOTLK is the absolutely incredible levelling from 70-80 and the art direction/lore.

Gnome Eater said:

... the lag issues,...

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I could live with lag. At least some, not too much.

What kills me is two months of "Additional instances cannot be launched. Please try later"

Gnome Eater said:

WoW (and EverQuest) makes the best improvements when they actually feel pressure from their competition.

WoW at the moment has no competition whatsoever so they are taking their sweet time with fixing broken shit and fucked up game balance. Witness the abortion that is the current arena balance, the lag issues, the lack of pve content, etc..

The one saving grace of WOTLK is the absolutely incredible levelling from 70-80 and the art direction/lore.

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What this man said.

Look no further than how many improvements EQ/DAoC/etc. made "after" WoW stole all their players.

Competition is very good for the genre, no matter which game you"re playing, sadly game designers are either lazy or incompetant and it"s more or less a one game genre at this point.

ToeMissile said:

I think part of the problem these days is that so many people are so eager to make it to max level they skip huge chunks of content.

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I believe this is a product of it being to easy to level. I think original EQ was near perfect. You had to group and the leveling wasn"t fast paced. It encouraged players to really learn the zones and their classes.

I just recently quit wow and I did play it for a few years but wow is everything that"s wrong in an MMO IMO. EQ was about the players skill not the FOTM class. I really miss it.

I don"t remember that game ever being "fun" while leveling. It was cool the first time you saw new places but it was never truly fun. I think no fear of death has a lot to do with it too.

I"m not saying EQ was perfect but it was a lot closer than it"s successors.

Praxas said:

...wow is everything that"s wrong in an MMO IMO.

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No. Let"s not do that.

Praxas said:

I think original EQ was perfect.

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Praxas said:

I"m not saying EQ was perfect...

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Let"s not do that either.

Agraza said:

No. Let"s not do that.

Let"s not do that either.

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LOL! What happens when you don"t proof read. Meant to say it was near perfect but whatever.

Praxas said:

LOL! What happens when you don"t proof read. Meant to say it was near perfect but whatever.

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Well, the Hour-a-day Johnies, and the Wear-a-Helmet-to-bed Billy"s won"t agree with you. And at this point they have more numbers, more funds.

As long as Capitalist dogs, err CEOs/shareholders <G> control games, as long as everyone shoots for WoW style numbers, these 2 groups will outvote you and me.

Agraza said:

I don"t mind in the least that WoW"s newbie game isn"t very dynamic. In most games you begin as a scrub, so why should you be expected to do great things? You come into power over time.

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That"s just not true. Their "not dynamic" far exceeded anything we"d seen before. It was enough to KEEP 11.5 million people logging back in and rerolling. For most of us, heck 98%, it"s old news and a forgotten piece of content, but that was the TOTAL WIN for them. It was fun, it was so far beyond what we"d come to expect in a "polished" game and the kicker to end all kickers was not only did you NOT have to buy a new video card and more RAM, you could play alongside a friend on a state of the art machine, with your 4 year old clunker. The technical barrier to entry was so low it was laughable, at a time when everyone thought you had to push that barrier higher and higher...

Well you"re expanding on my point quite a bit. I just meant that some newer releases tend to toss you into an epic battle when you exit character creation, and I feel that the effort, while appreciated, isn"t necessary. I want to resolve a conflict or challenge a villain, but there is only so much I CAN take in as a new player. The Defias storyline from Elwynn->Westfall->Deadmines was pretty low-key and yet still had a quality payoff that people appreciated.

As to the other genius moves Blizzard made to create WoW"s accessible and polished environment, they"re great. Obviously.

Ngruk said:

That"s just not true. Their "not dynamic" far exceeded anything we"d seen before. It was enough to KEEP 11.5 million people logging back in and rerolling. For most of us, heck 98%, it"s old news and a forgotten piece of content, but that was the TOTAL WIN for them. It was fun, it was so far beyond what we"d come to expect in a "polished" game and the kicker to end all kickers was not only did you NOT have to buy a new video card and more RAM, you could play alongside a friend on a state of the art machine, with your 4 year old clunker. The technical barrier to entry was so low it was laughable, at a time when everyone thought you had to push that barrier higher and higher...

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Do you think part of what keeps people rerolling is the low leveling curve?

I think what Agraza is referring to is; in AoC they had a VERY dynamic newbie experience. It was really the only part of that game you could say was actually polished. But once you were past level 20 most everything else was broken and in the end there was no payoff to max level.

Concentrating on the area people really pay the least amount of attention to is a waste of resources if the rest of the game is unfinished. If you want to hook players and keep them they need a reason to stay in the game.

That reason will very rarely be a well done newbie area.

If I were designing a game I would absolutely be doing from the angle. "OK what will our players do once they are at max level and do we have enough to challange them and keep them busy until we can introduce new content"?

I would not hang my hat on "well maybe once they ding 50 they"ll just want to do all the old content over and over again".

Ngruk said:

That"s just not true. Their "not dynamic" far exceeded anything we"d seen before. It was enough to KEEP 11.5 million people logging back in and rerolling. For most of us, heck 98%, it"s old news and a forgotten piece of content, but that was the TOTAL WIN for them. It was fun, it was so far beyond what we"d come to expect in a "polished" game and the kicker to end all kickers was not only did you NOT have to buy a new video card and more RAM, you could play alongside a friend on a state of the art machine, with your 4 year old clunker. The technical barrier to entry was so low it was laughable, at a time when everyone thought you had to push that barrier higher and higher...

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I think this is BS. I missed the early days of WoW but can"t imagine people keep logging in and rerolling to experience all this fantastic content they missed the first time around. I"m much more convinced they intended to rush through it and get to the end game content that really mattered, and probably went through whichever path was most efficient to leveling.

WoW"s key was that they made the end game readily accessible to everyone and not just the top 5% who made up the uberguilds.

Any company that doesn"t fully know where their customers will be spending their play time and allocate resources accordingly is doomed to failure.

WoW"s key was that they made the end game readily accessible to everyone and not just the top 5% who made up the uberguilds.

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I don"t think they did that at all, at least not in the early days. It"s only recently that endgame raiding has become "come one come all."

People I know clearing Naxx etc. were barely able to complete MC preBC, and kara in BC.


I think one of the thing people who are saying "focus on the endgame" are missing is that the early content is what draws people to the game. The endgame might be gods gift to MMO"s, but if the first 10 levels are complete shit then nobody will ever find out because they"ll write the game off.