Ask just about anyone in the
industry for one word to describe why World of Warcraft is so
successful, and if they don't say "Blizzard," they'll likely say
"accessibility." What does accessibility mean? Is it as simple as
lowering the barriers to entry or offering casual players a shot at
succeeding in the endgame? We'll attempt to define accessibility, then
examine three case studies in an accessible MMO, an inaccessible MMO
that by many accounts failed, and an inaccessible MMO that became a
success story.
Defining Accessibility
by
Benjamin J. de la Durantaye
Since the dictionary definition
of accessible is pretty broad ("easy to approach or use"), and because
players approach and use these games many different ways throughout
their playing "career", we're going to try and isolate accessibility
for the newbie game, intermediate game, and
endgame. For our purposes,
accessibility can be defined in three ways:
- Can I even play this
MMORPG? - How easy and enjoyable is
the game to play through to the end game or "elder game"? - What’s waiting for
me at the end level or "elder game," and is it worth the trouble?
With these criteria, we have a
starting point for evaluating how likely it is that a game will
initially attract a crowd, pull them in with interest, and keep them
playing.
Can I play?
The first step to reach
players, obviously, is to ensure the game will be able to be played on
as many home computers (or consoles) as possible. If no one can play
the game, no one will. Equally, if only a few can play it, only a few
will play. The danger of going this route is that if a segment of the
audience is excluded right off the bat, there will be fewer players in
phase two, and even fewer to see phase three.
Any restrictions imposed will
have an adverse effect on the active player population. The more
conditions that have to be met, the fewer who will be able (and
willing) to pay a monthly subscription. Age of Conan, for example,
limited its audience to adults only with a big “M”
rating on the product’s box. Technical Requirements prevented
many from playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Billing issues and alleged
hidden fees of the Play Online system stunted Final Fantasy
XI’s numbers. Darkfall never even made it into a large
segment of the North American audience due to myopic marketing.
That’s not to say a
studio should not ever limit its potential audience for a particular
game, either by rating or minspec. Though niche games will never attain
WoW numbers, going for a particular audience can be the best way to get
noticed in a category rife with copycats and wannabes. Gaining
widespread appeal will be an uphill battle for such games, however.
Is the game fun?
Assuming a game makes it into
the home of thousands or even millions of customers, how fun is the
game? This stage of accessibility can be viewed as the real meat of the
product design, and may have a larger contribution to customer
retention than the other two phases. The whole purpose of a game is
entertainment, and that is, to have fun. What makes a game fun is
largely subjective, but most will agree there are some key components
here too. The User Interface, for example, will take away from a lot of
the fun if players cannot do what they want to do with relative ease.
It’s simply not fun to fight with hard coded, poorly designed
interfaces in order to play the game.
Art direction, animation, and
other mechanics like questing, combat, crafting and communication need
a great deal of focus as well, since what makes a game not
fun is as elusive a thing as what makes a game fun. The whole base of
this phase of accessibility is to ensure that players can enjoy the
core gameplay with as little friction as possible. Age of Conan
suffered a difficult UI. Classic EverQuest had a steep leveling curve.
EVE Online is a difficult and complicated game to get to know. Every
complication or obstacle a player faces in a game potentially offers
one more reason for the player to quit the game.
That being said, part of the
fun is also overcoming the game’s obstacles, such as raid
bosses. This should not be confused with core gameplay mechanics.
Solving a puzzle can be fun. Going to university to learn reverse
engineering in order to recode a game to add the ability to move an
awkwardly placed window is not.
Is it worth it?
The players left in game after
phases one and two will be asking this very question. After
they’ve bought the game, played diligently through it, and
reached “max level,” what’s waiting for
them? If the answer is “nothing,” don’t
expect them to continue subscribing. There is no “ending
sequence” in MMO games, so there needs to be an unending
treadmill of significant rewards, and that invariably will lead to more
things for players to do.
Aside from PvP and bragging
rights in games like Ultima Online, perhaps the first major endgame
hook dates from EverQuest. Even after a player has reached the level
cap, has raided all the bosses, maxed their crafting skill, they can
still develop their character through Alternate Advancement (AA). This
system continues to reward players with combat and quest experience,
and after so much experience is earned, they are rewarded an AA point.
They can spend these points on improving their character, whether by
increasing their stats, or just making them able to hold their breath a
little longer under water. Even if the carrot is a small one, players
will stay loyal if they are kept entertained and feel that they can
still progress their character’s career.
If the game can reach millions
of players, get them involved and interested in the game, and keep them
entertained long past level cap, one can expect to keep millions of
players paying a subscription fee. But disregard given to any of the
three phases above will yield lesser results. The only obstacles in a
game should be the ones designed purposefully to challenge players, and
not handicap them. If all the components are weighed carefully and
designed thoughtfully, there’s no reason the game cannot
succeed and attract large numbers of players for a long time to come.
With these criteria in mind,
let's examine three case studies in accessibility, inaccessibility, and
because there's an exception to every rule: an MMO with a reputation
for inaccessibility that's found itself quite an audience.
A Case Study in
Inaccessibility: Where Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Went Wrong
by
Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
traveled a bumpy road to its launch in late January, 2007. A year prior
to launch, many fans
viewed Vanguard as their sandbox-style MMO
savior--the predecessor to EverQuest, if not in name, then at least in
spirit. But by the middle of February that year, and perhaps even
sooner, Vanguard’s status had been downgraded from savior to
bitter disappointment as the game bled subscribers. What happened to
Vanguard, and why?
Could I play Vanguard?
For a large number of gamers
eagerly awaiting Vanguard’s launch, the answer to this
question ended up a disappointing no. Vanguard’s system
specs, for their time, were quite high. [
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=1343">source]
Although Brad McQuaid, co-founder and former CEO of Sigil Games Online,
Vanguard’s original developers, often claimed that by the
time Vanguard was launched technology would “catch
up” and the hardware needed to run the game effectively would
be less expensive, this theory didn’t necessarily prove true.
McQuaid himself says it best in his
href="http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/14_Vanguard__Saga_of_Heroes.html">blog,
utilized mainly as a Vanguard post-mortem:
“Although almost
200,000 people signed up right away, the vast majority of players quit
the game by level 2 or 3. This leads me to believe that most
peoples’ issue was performance. Yes there were bugs,
and yes there were too many servers at launch, making it difficult to
find other people and to successfully group. But the biggest
issue was that the game simply ran horribly slow.”
Even players with solid PC
specs found running Vanguard a challenge. Rushed to release for,
according to Sigil and SOE, “financial reasons,”
the game was not well optimized and ran poorly even on a well turned
out machine. Players fiddled with the game’s graphics options
and sites, including Ten Ton Hammer, created fine-tuning guides to help
players do some client side optimization of their own, but to little
avail.
Could gamers play Vanguard?
Many of them, even those who upgraded their PCs in order to run the
game, couldn’t; they experienced game-breaking lag and
hitching. Vanguards stands today as a case study on how games must be
fully optimized, with accessible min specs, at launch…or
suffer lost subscribers as a consequence. Although the game is well
tuned and playable now, its launch ship has sailed and few players
remain to enjoy what its vast seamless worlds have to offer.
Was Vanguard fun?
Was Vanguard easy and enjoyable
to play? It depends who you ask. Vanguard offered, and still does
offer, a lot to love: its world was beautiful, diverse, and immense;
its combat was fun and engaging; and quest lines and lore were
compelling enough. There was no shortage of things to do or places to
see. Quests were so plentiful that players would often delete some from
their logs because there simply wasn’t enough time to get
through them all before out-leveling the areas or mobs involved.
But at launch
Vanguard’s large seamless world was challenging to explore.
Its developers had long supported the idea of “meaningful
travel.” Players were supposed to experience lengthy, yet
adventure-filled, journeys on horseback or by boat across the vast
lands of Telon to get from one locale to the other. But travel turned
out to be less-than-meaningful to most players, who found spending
precious play time running from point A to point B in order to complete
a quest or meet up with a group tedious. Some time later, a
“riftway” system was implemented, making travel
much easier. But, again, the efforts proved to be too little, too late.
Although aimed at a more
hardcore (Sigil liked to use the word “core”)
audience, Vanguard wasn’t
particularly difficult to play.
What it lacked in polish--guild, grouping and even item broker tools
seemed rather archaic, even compared to older games like EverQuest
2--it made up for in sheer content. But few players were willing to
stumble through the polish and travel roadblocks to reach the end game.
Was Vanguard worth it?
What lay waiting for gamers who
did reach Vanguard’s end game? Was high level raiding
experience worth the journey to the level cap? While most MMOGs lack a
significant amount of end-game content at launch, Vanguard was lacking
more so than most. It was more than 6 months after launch that the game
saw the implementation of its first raid zone, a 12-man instance called
the Ancient Port Warehouse.
Based on forum chatter, players
who did see Vanguard through to the end game seemed impressed with the
Ancient Port Warehouse (APW), and reviews of the content were largely
positive, despite the long wait for its arrival. But once again, the
end game focus proved too late to impress most players. By the time the
APW arrived, many raiding guilds had given up on Vanguard and either
moved back to existing games, or were looking forward to new ones.
Today, Vanguard’s
development crew is small, and its updates rather sparse as SOE has
pointed most of its development efforts elsewhere. Given the size of
the world of Telon, player population on Vanguard’s remaining
servers (merged later in 2007 to account for the sharp decline in
subscriptions) remains thin, but not non-existent. Players still
download the game’s free trial, a zone called the
href="http://vanguard.station.sony.com/isleofdawn/">Isle
of Dawn, reminiscent of
EverQuest II’s Trial of the Isle, which leads them through
10+ levels of quest-driven content.
One might consider
Vanguard’s downfall a series of unfortunate circumstances.
High minimum spec requirements proved a barrier to entry for many
gamers, and those who upgraded their boxes in preparation for Vanguard
met with bitter disappointment when they still encountered lag and
hitching at release. Although the game had the potential for fun,
travel hassles, clunky interfaces and systems, and a general lack of
polish put many players off. And end game content was nowhere to be
found for power gamers until many months after the Vanguard’s
release. Add these things up, and the game that could have been the
king of sandbox MMOs ended up a lowly pauper that most gamers now
overlook, despite its inherent charm and many improvements.
A
Case Study in Accessibility: DDO and The Enemy at the Gates
by
Reuben "Sardu" Waters
Getting into a new MMOG can
often lead to a brand of frustration that simply isn’t shared
across other forms of digital entertainment. As consumers
we’re conditioned to expect that once you purchase digital
media it should be ready to enjoy straight out of the box. Whether
it’s a new CD from your favorite band, the DVD release of
last summer’s sleeper at the theaters that’s
destined to become a cult classic or even the newest console title to
hit store shelves, those shiny new discs are synonymous with instant
gratification.
Yet when it comes to MMOGs,
obtaining the discs is most often just the first of many hurdles that
we as gamers have to overcome on the long and winding road that we hope
will lead us to our next great online gaming experience. More and more,
titles are released containing at best a list of startup instructions
and a product key in the box, so that we even have to wait for the game
to install before we can view the PDF manual. Assuming all systems are
go after the installation process, we’re then treated to a
launch window that informs us that before we can ever push the shiny
Play button and enjoy our new purchase, the mega patch of doom needs to
begin which can sometimes take hours to download to get the client up
to date.
The Virtual Toll Booth of
Digital Distribution
Digital distribution should
have been the silver bullet that kills the need to own a physical copy
of a new MMOG, but in terms of accessibility it has only managed to
create an even larger set of hoops to jump through. In the time it
takes to download, install and patch a new title, you could have
listened to a new CD a dozen times, watched a DVD half a dozen times or
hit the half way mark on a new console game. This lengthy process only
serves to compound the already rampant stereotyping of MMOGs as being a
form of entertainment that requires too long of a time investment
before ever paying off in the fun department.
In an era when open betas have
become the de facto soft launch for many new releases, digital
distribution has wiggled its way into our MMO gaming lives, regardless
of our intentions to own a physical copy of the latest and potentially
greatest new title to grace store shelves. Red flags go up and angry
forum rants ensue the moment its announced that the open beta client
release is being handled by a third party, especially when a monetary
exchange is thrown into the mix which negates the concept of a beta
being truly “open” in the first place.
The Turbine Effect
Many of the top shelf MMOG
publishers have begun using a catchall download manager for their
stable of titles that in many cases circumvents both the necessity of
owning a physical copy of a new release as well as the frustrations
inherent in dealing with a third party for digital distribution. The
recent release of Aion is a perfect example of how this method can be
used to great effect, as anyone owning another of NCsoft’s
titles can log in and play another game such as Guild Wars while the
Aion client downloads in the background, all easily accessible from the
same simple interface. While this is certainly a step in the right
direction, Turbine’s approach with the rerelease of Dungeons
and Dragons Online has shown us that there is indeed a light at the end
of the accessibility tunnel.
The time it took between
clicking on the download button and getting into the now free to play
lands of Eberron was all of 15 minutes, which for all intents and
purposes is a landmark record for the industry based on my own previous
experiences. The way this was accomplished is by Turbine’s
correct assessment that a brand new player just starting out at level
one simply isn’t going to need access to high end content
straight out of the gates. By reducing the core client install down to
less than 300 megabytes, it allows players to dive directly into
character creation in less time than it typically takes to install a
full game directly from a DVD, meanwhile the full client streams in the
background as you play with no noticeable hits to performance.
Bridging the Gap
Not content to simply bash the
gates of accessibility wide open with a +2 Hammer of Striking, Turbine
smartly included a brief walkthrough of the character creation process
within the launch window, giving new players a useful guide to read
during the short wait. By the time you’ve gone through the
information it contains you’ll be ready to dive into the game
itself and also have a better insight as to how the DnD rule set
differs from standard fantasy MMOGs. Even the accessibility of
character creation has been taken into account, as players are
presented with the option to select from a number of preset frameworks
that can guide their character’s advancement (though can be
abandoned at any time should you opt to steer your character in a
different direction).
When taken as a whole, these
key elements stand in sharp contrast to the launch version of DDO from
2006, which had a notoriously steep learning curve for anyone not
fluent in the intricacies of the tabletop rule set. As a result, the
newest online incarnation of the Eberron setting is seeing a rising
tide of renewed interest, and has effectively raised the bar for MMOG
accessibility to new heights. Developers and publishers alike should
certainly stand up and take notice of what Turbine has accomplished
here. As things currently stand for the industry, getting people into a
new title is often times the accessibility equivalent of expecting them
to crawl in through an eighth story window rather than a casual stroll
through the unlocked front doors.
A Case Study in the
Successfully Inaccessible: EVE Online's Hardcore Mythos
by
Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle
Just about every MMO fan has an
opinion about EVE Online. An impromptu survey of the Ten Ton Hammer
team yielded comments like:
- "EVE's fleet warfare is
like Vegas, it'll take you from the most amazing fun you've ever had in
an MMO to the worst in-game horror you've experienced, back to the most
fun again, all in the space of one night" - "Is that the new fitting
screen? it's my longest running subscription... I've been paying for
the game for four years but haven't logged in but to change skills" - "It's the most beautifully
crafted spreadsheet I'll never play again."
EVE Online's unique approach to
massive scale combat is nothing if not polarizing, and as such it's
full of fresh insight into any discussion on what accessibility means
to MMOs.
Can I play EVE Online?
The answer to this question is
easy: EVE Online is among the most playable games in the wacky wide
world of MMOs. While the Linux Cider client was discontinued for lack
of interest earlier this year, the Mac OSX client continues to grow in
use at a clip comparable to Mac vs. PC adoption. The EVE client also
blazed a trail, being
href="http://www.transgaming.com/">Transgaming's
first MMO adaptation for Mac (now City of Heroes and Warhammer Online
have joined the lineup as well, and WoW, though not a Transgaming port,
has always had a Mac presence).
Not only is EVE Online among
the most OS-agnostic of MMOs this side of a browser-based game, you can
easily run multiple instances of the game from one computer. My
personal best is three (one for each of my triple-heads, and a perfect
setup for casual mining), but CCP devs say they've gotten up to 10
instances running on one computer. EVE's multi-boxing capacity has been
the object of fun and legend, too. Darius Johnson, ex-CEO of Goonswarm,
the game's largest alliance, claims to be run by just 20 directors
running massive 12-screen rigs, but Ten Ton Hammer thought it was more
entertaining not to try and confirm their claim.
Is EVE Online fun?
EVE Online is a game of
paradoxes, and what seems like a nightmarishly inaccessible game can,
in fact, put you deep in the "endgame" faster than any level-based
online RPG you've ever played. In a word, it's all about connections,
but first, let's address why EVE has garnered such a gnarly reputation.
Producer and EVE Online
forefather Torfi Olafssen had the final word on EVE for beginners when
he began a 2008 FanFest 2008 keynote segment with reference to EVE's
"steep learning cliff" - an idea forever visualized by an XQCD comic.
Even with the best insurance you can buy, you're liable to lose most of
your investment whenever you lose a ship (which happens fairly often),
and should you get "podded", you can lose horrendous amounts of
training time should you commit the cardinal sin of not upgrading your
clone regularly. In short, EVE Online's death penalty remains the most
punishing among popular MMORPGs, by far, and new players learn very
quickly not to put all their proverbial eggs in one battleship-sized
basket. The paradox here is that you really feel it when you lose a
ship or destroy someone else's ship. For some players, that's visceral
and compelling. For others, particularly the PvE attuned, it's just as
compelling... as a reason to emo ragequit.
EVE's aura of complication and
inaccessibility is in many ways justified, but here’s another
interesting reality about EVE: you can be part of the
“endgame PvP” in your first week, maybe even your
first day. It's as simple as 1) clear your schedule for the evening, 2)
join a militia if you haven't already and watch chat to find a roaming
fleet headed for trouble, and 3) tag along. You’ve got
nothing to lose even if you die in the worst possible way,
you’ll learn plenty, and if you can manage not to make a pest
of yourself on voicechat, you might even make some friends (which
usually equates to getting loot and making money).
The factional warfare
introduced in Empyrean Age means that these fleets can be found much
closer to high security systems - it’s just a matter of
signing up in your local militia office and keeping an eye on chat to
see where the next fleet is forming up. Additionally, the upcoming
fleet finder system (think LFG for alliance fleets) and sovereignty
changes in November's Dominion expansion (notably the new ease with
which sovereignty claims can be made and disrupted, upkeep costs for
claims, and the massive Titan nerf) are, according to in Lead Designer
Noah Ward's words, intended to make sovereignty attainable for smaller
and smaller alliances. In the wake of EVE's Great War, a conflict model
that's more sporadic and balkanized is welcome news for many players.
And you're never completely
without help. EVE still boasts the most newbie accessible mechanic ever
to grace an MMO: the new player corporations. It's impossible to be
"unguided" in EVE, and you'll always find a few veterans (or
pseudo-veterans) hanging out in chat to answer your newbish EVE
questions. Failing that, EVE's second largest corp,
href="http://www.eve-ivy.com/oog/ivy/">EVE University,
has assisted thousands of players in finding their way into fleet
warfare.
What's waiting for EVE players
at the end of the yellow brick road?
This isn't an easy question to
answer, since EVE is the clearest mainstream example of a sandbox game.
From one viewpoint, EVE might be the most soloable game you've ever
played. The "endgame" is whatever you want it to be - whether you're
tooling around mining or pirating with some friends (always take
friends!), roaming around with militia fleets, claiming and maintaining
sovereignty with your alliance, spymastering your corp or spying on an
enemy's corp, or even market arbitrage.
Not all of the continuing fun
of the game is in the endgame, either. Just like in the age of sail,
commanding small, speedy ships makes for a more interesting and varied
experience than commanding massive ships of the line. What small ships
lack in durability and firepower, they make up for in speed,
versatility, and affordability. Designed for small craft, the new epic
mission arcs have been a success, with new epic mission arcs centered
on the pirate factions in the works. Noah also hinted at "subsystem
targetting" during our time with him at PAX 2009, by which hordes of
smaller ships could target specific parts of capital ships Luke
Skywalker-style. No game has put as much continuing effort into
revamping its accessibility either, with three major revisions of the
new player experience, factional warfare, sovereignty changes,
wormholes and tech 3, and so on.
In short, the fun of EVE is all
about the effort you put into EVE - it's the most risk / reward
oriented MMO that you're going to find. And, despite the jokes, EVE is
becoming more and more accessible as time goes on. EVE remains entirely
in the realm of the niche MMO, one of the few true holdouts in a
category slowly caving to the influence of its most popular title.
Despite the "threat" of greater accessibility and a console tie-in,
EVE's hardcore mythos has served the game well in the past and should
continue to do so in the future.
We've had our say on
accessibility, now let's hear yours. Does an MMO's accessibility guide
its destiny? Should every game designed nowadays have an easy onramp,
or should a game weed out the feint of heart at the very beginning? Was
EVE an outlier, or can more MMOs follow EVE's niche model into hardcore
celebrity? Your thoughts welcome in the Ten Ton Hammer forums!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Game Page.
