Drow for the Money: Putting Marketing Before Fun

By Darkgolem

The implementation of drow in Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) has highlighted a difficult issue common to massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs): companies have a tendency to put profit before the interests of player fun. This is an understandable situation, since companies ultimately have profit as their goal, and it is in the interest of players for this to be the case. But I believe that by far it is better for a company to create a product that does not sacrifice quality, gaining and keeping players by making a fun gaming experience. In my opinion, that is good marketing.

Old Content for New Results

Drow can be gained by in DDO by gaining enough faction, or favor as Turbine calls it, through the patron system. You gain favor by doing quests. In essence, you have to repeatedly do quests--preferably on hard or elite difficulty--to unlock drow. Once you gain enough favor, you can make drow (either just one, but more likely as many as you can fit on the server).

Drow are distinctly superior to most races for most classes. That is, with a bonus to Charisma, Intelligence and Dexterity, plus a basic form of spell resistance, a drow character is an excellent choice for any class that has use for these Ability scores. The only downsides are possibly missing out in some racial Enhancements and that you have to earn favor to unlock drow.

The way that drow are attainable in DDO rewards people for playing a lot, but after the amount of favor needed is attained, the DDO implementation of drow discourages use of other races for character classes. The benefit to the makers of DDO of course is that people spend a lot of time playing to first unlock the drow and then to level their new characters. But this detracts from the game in several ways.

So Many Drow

First and foremost, the game will eventually have a disproportionate amount of drow. Drow will be considered better overall as party companions. A side effect  could be that players who do not feel they have the time (or who do not have the interest in playing the hours necessary to acquire favor) will be excluded to some extent.

Don't even get me started on the Drizzt Do'Urden issue. Just don't.

Paying for the Next Guy's Drow

To avoid overpopulation of drow, the developers of DDO could set the amount of favor necessary to be a drow very high. But this would make drow a benefit that only limited numbers of players can enjoy. This causes people pay for another person's enjoyment (since only certain people benefit from the coding) with their monthly subscription fees.

All these issues were clear to the designers of DDO when they decided to use favor to unlock drow. The designers could have created an experience penalty for drow that would be balanced. Instead, the way of unlocking drow encourages larger play time, yet has the flaws I mention above.

Now there is not problem with a company using marketing to encourage purchase and use of product. In fact, a consumer of DDO should want the producers of DDO to aim toward making a large profit. This allows further development time to be placed in a product, and makes the product better. But by making a product where marketing is placed as more important than quality (even in the form of a compromise, which seems to be Turbine's aim with drow in all fairness), you have changed the product's point itself. No longer is the product meant to be fun, leading to profit. Now the product is profitable with quality and fun being secondary.

Parting Thoughts

This is my problem with the implementation of drow. It gives me the feeling that I am being taken advantage of by the developers of the game. It makes me feel like I am encouraging the developers in taking advantage of me. After all, I am paying for the game. Shouldn't I be able to participate in all the fun of the game (playing a drow) without being “forced” to spend more money (in this case due to spending time making the necessary favor) to play a drow? And if my predictions of Stormreach being overrun with drow, or of almost no drow being used because Turbine sets the favor goal too high, then I will feel betrayed by the same people who I am paying to create DDO.

So sure, it's nice that drow are allowed in the game, and I hope I am wrong in my predictions about how they will work out. Regardless, the developers of DDO appear to have placed their profits ahead of my fun despite the fact that people who enjoy their game are the ones who support it.

Now I've given you my opinion. I hope that you'll take the time to check out our poll and make your voice heard, too.

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