My Internet connection woes seem to be behind me. I'd knock on something, but it's a wireless connection. Knock on air I suppose?

Here in the Great White North, in order to coach 7-year-old hockey players you are forced to take 16 hours of "classes" over the course of two days. You must then take a "preventative services" course for an additional four hours. I coach not because I'm a good guy trying to give back to the community, but because I don't want a knucklehead coaching my kids. The vast majority of the 20 hours spent on the ice and in the classroom is not consumed discussing how best to teach our young players. It is spent discussing how to best deal with the parents that will inevitably cause problems. I see a great parallel between this travesty and MMOGs.

The vast majority of developer time, post-release of a MMOG is spent creating content for end-game players, yet end-game players make up a small portion of the game population. Many developers spend countless hours trying to appease end-game players in an attempt to retain them. Would it make more sense to spend some of that time improving the early and mid-game experience? I think so, and here's why...

The majority of players will never see the end-game content. This is a generalization, but it holds true for most games. Even WoW, a game that makes getting to the level cap relatively easy, doesn't have most of its level 60 players raiding the end-game content that has been lovingly created.

If more time were spent giving the starting players entertaining things to do the rush to the end-game might not be as fierce and some of the new players might stick around, using up less time per day on the servers than the hard-core players I might add, and keeping the subscription numbers up.

Of course, the high-end players are the ones who make the press swoon. It's a rock and a hard place.

What do you think? Do developers spend too much of their time on high-level content or are they staying the best course?

Post a comment at the bottom of this blog. If you are shy (or female and sending in naughty pictures) you can E-Mail me.
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As always, thanks for visiting TenTonHammer.com,
-- John "Boomjack" Hoskin
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