By
Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor
In the computer gaming industry, success is often measured by the
number of boxes a company sells, the total concurrent users online at
the same time, or the amount of money a person decides to spend on
virtual goods. Just like any business, it all comes down to money. So
if a game sells approximately 800,000 copies and manages to retain over
50% of that population, that’d make the game a
success…right?
Over the last few months, hundreds of thousands of individuals have
played Age of Conan:
Hyborian Adventures. According to their official marketing
report, the developers at Funcom sold over 800,000 copies of AoC and
have retained approximately 400,000 subscribers. Yet clouds of doubt
and uncertainty remain over the product, as if only a few hundred
thousand boxes hit store shelves and a handful of the subscribers
stayed with the product. Why is this happening? What is driving people
to such rampant negativity?
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What
drives the negativity behind the MMOG community? Isn't AoC a success?
After a bit of contemplation on the topic, I’ve come up with
three factors that really drive how gamers perceive a released product.
As always, these are only my personal thoughts on the subject, so
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=33329"
target="_blank">feel
free to argue (or agree!) with me in the forums.
1. We have really long
memories. (Or once bitten, twice shy)
More than any other culture, online gamers are incredibly adept at
remembering the developers that have failed the in the past. Through
the widespread use of message boards and instant messaging services,
gamers can easily bring up topics that have been discussed to the point
of near exhaustion.
Take for example the infamous NGE from
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Galaxies"
target="_blank">Star Wars Galaxies or the chaotic
release of
target="_blank">Anarchy Online. Even as I write
this,
I’m again bringing back awful memories for many users who
considered these products to be their next great game only to find that
their game is flawed or has become flawed in some way shape or form.
Unfortunately for Sony Online Entertainment and Funcom, those memories
have haunted their more recent offerings as well. While SOE has yet to
release a AAA game that has been fully developed under their roof since
the release of the NGE, Funcom’s Age of Conan has certainly
seen the negative affects of their previous offering. While the game
shot out of the starting blocks by selling 800,000 units, there are
still a vast number of nay-sayers online.
Even with the problems seen in the post-launch version of
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aoc" target="_blank">Age
of Conan, it’s nothing compared to
what they faced with Anarchy Online, and they still ended up with a
solid product with AO. Solid enough, in fact, to earn a massively
multiplayer game of the year from
href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Feb_11/ai_82747195"
target="_blank">PC Gamer back in 2002.
If it weren’t for the unfortunate memories of the past trials
and tribulations of online games, would we consider Age of Conan
anything but a success? Probably not. However, that doesn’t
dismiss the fact that these events did happen and users were forced to
go through the turmoil of their aftermath. It’s reasonable to
be a bit cautious with companies that have faced problems in the past,
but that shouldn’t be the single reason to dismiss a game as
a “failure” after only a few months of live
operation.
I know that in the past I’ve pointed a finger at particular
moments in the MMORPG era as proof to stay only slightly optimistic
about a game. However, I’ve been proven more than a few times
that that sort of thinking only lends itself to not giving a game the
amount of credence it deserves. In fact, after the initial hiccups that
World
of Warcraft experienced, I tossed
in the towel and decided that the game was a flop. Waiting in queues
was not my favorite pastime, yet several years later I now find myself
with some level 70 characters and eagerly awaiting the release of the
next expansion. Go figure.
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I
once thought World of Warcraft was going to fail.
2. We are waiting for a
winner.
We – as gamers – almost always have an opinion
about the future of an upcoming game. Many of us will state how
it’s the next “X” killer, stating that
the game that’s on top of the mountain is going to start
showing weakness and decline. We did it with
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/38"
target="_blank">EverQuest, and now we’re
doing it again with World of Warcraft. Ever since World of Warcraft
came to dominate the market, many gamers have been eager to jump into
the next great game.
However, with each generation of MMOGs that hits the market, that
standard of excellence for the next “great” game
rises ever higher. We want everything in our games. Solid player versus
player. Engaging player versus environment. Instancing. Open world
zones. Impeccable community tools. Our own web pages. Housing. Guilds.
Auction houses.
It all needs to be in the game, and it all needs to be fantastic, or we
simply turn around and walk the other way. Take Tabula Rasa for
instance; it was a fairly decent game and a new way of playing MMOGs,
yet it was lambasted by many critics because of limited community
options and the lack of an auction house. Since it’s release,
Tabula Rasa has gathered in a fair number of subscribers, but many
individuals still raise the banners of “Doom!” at
the earliest opportunity.
But even if a game does have all of those elements included in the game
at release, it still may fall prey to the wiles of negativity.
href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/" target="_blank">Lord
of
the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar had a nearly flawless
launch, yet
the boo-birds still found areas to complain about, namely that it was
too much like World of Warcraft. Similarities did exist between the two
games, but nothing that should have caused players any sort of
discomfort.
Frankly, I feel that this particular portion of our gamer mentality is
the worst. We’re so quick to jump to conclusions about a
product – almost always within that 15-30 minute initial play
window – that I’m continually amazed. I truly am
aghast when I see a review for an MMORPG two or three days after a game
hits the market. Our games are so big, so huge, and so time consuming
that most reviewers should take at least 20 days to review a product,
if not longer. That way a true experience can be gathered, and any
nagging bugs that exist can have time to get squashed.
3. We are viral.
As my final reason for our constant negativity is the fact that gamers
are viral. Our entire hobbies are based around living in an online
space, surrounded by others who do other things online. We are
constantly being barraged by opinions and ideas, and the movement of
our opinions is an almost organic entity.
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Will
WAR live up to its RvR/PvP calling?
It’s truly an amazing thing to see. As I strive to be
unbiased in my reporting, I often am forced to stand back and take a
look at the true opinions of the gamers around me. While there are some
that banter back and forth, it’s often about simple, trivial
matters. The true choices have already been made, and a preconceived
opinion has already been formed.
World of Warcraft is the king of MMOGs.
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/" target="_blank">EVE
Online is a stellar economy based game.
This same notion exists for games that haven’t even been
released.
target="_blank">Warhammer Online and Age
of Conan were both slated to be the next great PvP games. While WAR has
yet to see if it does or does not live up to its reputation, many Age
of Conan aficionados opted to make characters on non-PvP servers,
simply because they weren’t confident of the status of PvP in
the game at its launch. They were so concerned about it not living up
to expectations that they chose to simply ignore the preconceived
notion and do the exact opposite.
While much of the hype surrounding a game is generated by the marketing
forces behind the title’s development, the online gaming
community certainly has a hand in making a game fit into a certain
niche. Without it’s avid PvP community, Warhammer Online
certainly wouldn’t be considered a true contender for the PvP
crown.
But what do you think? Do you agree with my three reasons behind the
constant negativity we see on the Internet? Are there other factors we
should include?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=33329"
target="_blank">Let me know on the forums!
