Loading... You Don't Know What You Want

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Posted Wed, Nov 18, 2009 by Shayalyn

Welcome to the 1,211th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

Most of us have been playing MMOGs for several years now, and when it comes to our games we know exactly what we want. Or do we? Developers have been delivering plenty of what gamers seem to be demanding, and yet there's a growing restlessness in the MMOG community as games launch to great fanfare only to have their popularity quickly fade. If developers are delivering what we say we want, then why aren't we satisfied? The answer lies in today's Loading... You Don't Know What You Want.

The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?).

Here are today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest movers today:

Alganon (UP 28 to #15)
Global Agenda (UP 8 to #13)
Dragon Age Origins (UP 6 to #4)

Recent Releases

9/9 - Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date)
9/15 - Runes of Magic "The Elven Prophecy" (expansion)
9/22 - Fallen Earth (release date)
9/22 - Aion (release date)
10/8 - Cities XL (release date)
11/3 - Dragon Age: Origins (release date)
11/10 - Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection (release date)

Upcoming Releases

12/1 - LotRO: Siege of Mirkwood (expansion)
12/1 - EVE Online: Dominion (expansion)
12/2 - DOFUS 2.0 (release date)
12/15 - EverQuest: Underfoot (expansion)
2/2 - Star Trek Online (release date)
Early 2010 - APB
Feb. 2010 - EverQuest 2: Sentinel's Fate (expansion)

Loading... Daily

You don’t know what you want in a massively multiplayer online game. No, seriously, you’re clueless. It’s okay, though…so am I.

You see, when it comes to MMOGs you and I have the attention spans of fruit flies. Oh, we’ll get starry-eyed while watching the development of a new game, but once it launches we’ll be losing interest exponentially for every month we pay a subscription fee. And that’s if we haven’t already cancelled our subscriptions by the time our free 30 day trials run out. We may have even hit a wall during open beta when we learned that the game we thought was The Second Coming of EverQuest (or Ultima Online, or Dark Age of Camelot, or whatever our first MMOG love was), the one we imagined would be the Next Great Game that we’d lose hours of our lives playing, has failed to impress us. We’ve burned out. And if we’re like many of today’s gamers, we’ve burned out quickly.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. It’s not our fault, really. There are few surprises in the MMOG industry these days, and most launches play out fairly predictably.

There’s a certain chain of events that happens when any new MMOG emerges into the public eye, and that chain of events is, in part, what leads to burnout, the almost inevitable conclusion. It starts with a game announcement. Depending on the popularity of the developer, this announcement may come quietly or with a tremendous flurry of excitement. Then the slow trickle of information starts to feed out; bit by bit, via interviews and press announcements, we learn more about this game to pique our interest. Now that we’re sufficiently intrigued, we’re starting to develop expectations. Our expectations may be entirely fact-based--we may have done our homework and hung on every word the developers have ever uttered--but already they’re becoming unrealistic. Why? Because we can’t possibly know what the reality of the live game will bring. We can make our best guess based on all the information we have at hand--interviews, screenshots, videos and the like--but our perception of the game is still nothing more than a guess.

And then, after anticipation has ratcheted up our expectation levels, the game we’ve been looking forward to goes into open beta or launches. And the minute we log in we’re measuring the game against our hopes and dreams for it, and for every little thing that fails to satisfy, for every disappointment, however minor, we begin slowly losing interest. Unless we’re one of the fiercely loyal fans who cling to their chosen game in small but steady numbers (and kudos to you if you are, because you’re one of the devoted ones sustaining our beloved MMOG industry), we’re already on our way to unsubscribing.

I’ll admit, all this sounds depressing. Will we ever find a game we love again…that game that makes us want to keep playing until we’re bleary-eyed? The game that, when we haven’t played it in a while, we actually miss? I believe the answer is yes. And I believe the answer isn’t going to come in the form of what we want, but rather in the form of what we don’t expect.

This notion occurred to me when I was watching episode one of Jace Hall’s documentary EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest. (See today’s Epic Thread.) While I was listening to John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, talk about the genesis of EQ back in 1995, I was reminded that its origins were by no means based on a tried and true formula. There was no precedent for a game like EverQuest--it was a gamble that Sony decided to take, hoping the public would buy into the idea of something as yet unexplored. (Before some of you jump on me and say Meridian 59 and Ultima Online came first, remember that neither existed yet when EQ was conceived.) The idea took root, and EQ grew until its subscriber base numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Five years later, World of Warcraft took what EverQuest and its compatriots did one step further by making the MMOG more accessible, and soon millions were playing, not just thousands.

And now we’re all a bunch of MMOG experts. We know the mechanics of these games, and we know the features we like and don’t like. We know whether we want a game that’s level-based or one that’s skill-based. We know how we like our PvP, or whether we like PvP at all. We have a pretty clear idea of what constitutes the Perfect Game for us…an elusive beast if ever there was.

But I contend the next truly great MMOG, while not necessarily reinventing the wheel or reinventing the genre, isn’t going to be one carefully designed to meet the majority of our so-called requirements. It’s not necessarily going to be about what’s currently popular and trendy because, as we’re learning through this process of MMOG evolution I’ve described, popularity and trendiness are usually short-lived. No, the next great game is going to take us by surprise. It’s going to change things up in a way we weren’t expecting. It won’t be a game that seeks to bring a new setting and story to life on the exact same time-honored platform that is the modern MMOG; it’ll be the game that takes a risk, that kicks it up a notch and innovates in ways that might look like a gamble.

So, I’ll say it again: I’m a gamer, and I don’t know what I want. In fact, I probably won’t know what I want until I see it. Here is my challenge to all you MMOG developers out there--take a risk. Try to anticipate what I want and then deliver it to me in a brand new way. Surprise me.

Do you know what you want, or do you like surprises? Will the next great MMOG be an innovator, or have we merely not yet seen a developer deliver what gamers want in a polished and satisfying way? Many have tried; few have succeeded. Share your perspective in the Loading... forum.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Tavern of the Ten Ton Hammer forum

EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest

You may have heard of EverCracked, a documentary about EverQuest, around the time of SOE Fan Faire this year. According to the propaganda, "The film, hosted by veteran video game industry developer and personality Jace Hall, includes never-before-seen footage and interviews with industry moguls and longtime players." Khalus provided a link to the first episode in today's epic thread.

I don't know about you, but just hearing the EQ theme music gets me a little misty. Ah, the good ol' days. Come reminisce with us.

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"I get that grandeur feeling of classic epic times that will more than likely never be again when I hear [the EQ theme music]. Memories of those past adventures wash over me for a moment...."

- Khalus
==============================

Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

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