First things first, I want to take a few moments of your time to thank you the reader for reading this series of articles I like to call mmohnoes (pronounce m-m-oh-noes). Also, I would like to give huge thanks to Deeogee, Tono, and Mmolecule.com and for giving me a voice and allowing a dream of mine to come true.
So what is mmohnoes? Mmohnoes is an oversimplified, sensationalized, vent of frustration, and QQing. Essentially reality as I see it. You and I will be getting emo in mmohnoes calling out all the aspects of the MMO genre that make us want to cut ourselves and ask, "How could this happen ti me?" We might get personal, we might get physical, but one thing is for sure, this is serious business...
How many MMO's have you purchased that actually kept you compelled long enough to play past the initial free month? How many failed attempts have you gone through trying to find that great game you wanted? I’m sitting on 7 and it makes me want to corpse camp these developers as if they were a clever forum troll that keeps Rick Rolling my dumb arse. Yea that’s right, I’m angry at them because I’m stupid enough to believe their bull-shite. I wonder if these devs believe it too?
Last week I ended mmohnoes with a brief note to MMO developers:
Dear [Insert MMO developer here], I want to play your game, I really do. I love your ideas and I believe they have a ton of potential, but they fail to be realized and you totally missed the point of what made those ideas fun. To top it off, you didn't even bother to salt my fries, which totally pisses me off! Therefore I won’t be playing your MMO, because I’ve already played it, it’s called WoW. If you're going to copy anything from WoW, copy what they do right, not their systems and mechanics. Make a game I want to play, not the game I’m already playing and please for the love of Palpatine, don’t let me down!
Why is it that these MMO's look great on paper, but fail to come close to any sense of the word Fun? I mean, that is the goal of making a game? To be FUN, amirite? Are these MMO developers just trying to make systems built around time consumption and customer retention to maximize profit? Call me dense, but wouldn't making a game enjoyable draw a bigger crowd and therefore greater profit opposed to making a bad game that tries to tricks players into thinking they are having fun? I don't know... I do know however what it takes to get my hard earned coppers after that initial free month.
I don’t mind giving you my money, but you have to give me something in return – An enjoyable experience. When I say enjoyable I mean something that I want to do. Not to be confused with a month long, bug ridden, mindless grind, with a lack of compelling content. All of that for what, so I can get to the maximum level where I’m supposed to start enjoying the game? Here’s a tip, if you make the ride to max level enjoyable, less people will rush through it like Lindsey Lohan in rehab. You get less boters, less angry/bored griefers, happier CSR’s and guess what, you just earned more money!
Do what Blizzard did correctly. Make your game accessible in terms of system requirements and usability. For instance, Id and Epic ‘s lack of recent success on the PC have caused them to claim the PC is dead as a gaming platform, while companies like Blizzard and Valve have proven that focusing on gameplay is far more important than graphics. Keep in mind; your visuals still need to be good. Visuals are the first thing to turn a player off from a game. If your art direction and animations can be considered cool and are able to complement each other, then you’re on the right track.
If you think you have to put a tutorial in your game, you are wrong. How many people want to load up a game for the first time just to sit through a confusing tutor session? It’s a game, let me play dammit! Blizzard doesn’t need a tutorial, and guess what? Even players who have been playing WoW for 4 years are still second guessing their tactics and knowledge of those systems. Take Blizzard’s talent scheme for example, it’s very simple and easy to understand. Yet players spend endless hours trying to perfect their spec. The reason being is that it doesn’t let you have your wootcakes and eat them too. This causes players to make difficult and meaning full decisions that require them to make a sacrifice for what they really want. Easy as it is to understand, many players fear it and to look to copy proven specs from other players. Easy to learn. Difficult to master.
I know I’m over simplifying things here, but seriously? Is this stuff really that hard? Discuss.
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