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Content-driven MMORPGs


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I partially agree that an MMORPG based soley on Content is 'unsustainable' when you make comparisons to the bigger games like EVE-Online, World of WarCraft and others. Yet, I don't believe that Content is the end-all, be-all of an online game. There are other things to do that have been put into the hands of the players that begin to approach the 'sandbox' style game.

Here in Earth & Beyond Emulator, the task of re-specializing one's skill dots is put into the hands of the Progen Sentinel, not some mindless NPC somewhere that will re-purpose your toon for you in some cold menu that cannot lend itself to enjoyment. I came back to the Emulator to enjoy that social interaction that I began to suffer a deficiency in those big-name games. Because we are still small in player-base, we of need tend to be more polite to each other and work as a community to improve the play, story, interactions, immersion and our role-play skills. Let's face the baseline name: Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Game. It seems, to me at the very least, that 'grizzled' (and I am quoting somebody here, you know who you are) gamers have forgotten the 'R' in MMORPG. Now, I don't expect players of pilots to be award-winning actors or artiste thespians, but I still enjoy immensely our small community's occasional flood into the [Roleplay] channel. Additionally, I enjoy bringing pilots the Net-7 News, leaked through me by the Developers and GMs. This level of play adds social interaction that grants a new level of immersion. I can only imagine if Uulidyian's [sic] project of class specializations will spark a round of social interaction between players and even between their toons in [Roleplay]. I hope so.

Though I don't favor the Jenquai, I can call up a ton of topics of social interaction from that race. Back in EA Live, I started with a Defender and got a bad taste in my mouth. I did not like the guerilla warfare of the Defenders. Then I found the Terran Tradesman and fell in love with it. Mercantilism, capitalism, struggling to make that extra credit was both a game challenge but a source of personal, pilot pride. Lastly in EA Live, I came into my own as the Progen Sentinel. With it's myriad of storyline, rich class leaders and characters, and a skill-set, including Call Forward, I found it to be my home away from home. It presented the story conflicts of Man vs. Man, Man vs. Himself, Man vs. the Monster (Frankenstein Effect), Man vs. Alien, Man vs. another Human variation (racism), and Man vs. a godlike entity or being. This would be the many settings to provide much interaction with my fellow players. I pray to the Progen Progenitors (Jericho and Vita Theodora) daily that each newcomer player-pilot is also given to role-play interaction.

In an attempt to bolster the 'R' in MMORPGs, I began writing. Being given a position in Net- 7 News was a godsend to this goal. Short stories, novels and the news brought new light to this decade-old game. With Content trickling after we went Live, could it have been the die-hard gamer, the uber-drop raider, the helpful builder, the Content guide, the Agrippa therapist, or the voice of the game, Net-7 News that kept us alive? It was all of those to their own extent and scope. I hope not to lose any of the above. I even went so far as to ask you, the pilots to submit dossier on your favorite toons so that I could tap those colorful characters and use them in my books. Have a look at the number of Views in the Roleplaying sub-Forum and see that story, player involvement, character development and character value (how much you like your 'main'), add weight to the 'sustainability' of the Earth & Beyond Emulator.

Sure, 'grizzled' players (note I do not say pilot) will have their gripes about the play, the Content, and the negative interactions (KSing, spawn-camping, powerlevelling, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad astra) and we all still log back online after 8 hours of sleep. I am proud to be playing the Earth & Beyond Emulator. We all see the long, volunteer hours of development, umpire-work, guild management, server troubleshooting and we are thankful to be so die-hard fans of the game. I feel that this game would not be the detailed challenge that we enjoy and appreciate without all the negatives to balance the positives. There is no EASY-button, no INSTA-Win technique. We work hard in this game to share in the thrill of victory and the agony of XP Debt, the uber-drops and the vendor-feed. I maintain that we are 'sustaining' the game we all love quite well. I have very little fear that we are doomed to quit the Earth & Beyond Emulator. Why? We don't compare our game to the big-name titles. There's no need to. We aren't in this for the profit of money. There's little reason to stand on the Gold Medal podium and say our game is the best. We're more than ten years old with a hiatus in forging the Emulator. I'd go as far as to say we are humble and grateful for this game. It's simplicity and lower-tech level means we don't have to go out and purchase the next generation of hardware just to be able to play it, (I'm looking at you, Chris Roberts' Star Citizen).

To summarize, I believe that we Developers, GMs, Web crew, Portal crew, Net-7 Newsteam, Guilds, and general playerbase have sustained the Earth & Beyond Emulator without all the trappings the above article tries to provide as a quick fix to the market of MMORPGs.

Live from Saturn's NET-7 SOL, this is the Pakkrat.

(...*rattles cage door* Now where's my cheese, Master?)
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I don't agree with the statment in the article , and here is why.

 

End result test - World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO out there , 8 years , 12 million subscriber , for comparison the sandbox equivalent eve has like 50k subscribers ?

World of warcraft is content driven MMO that was done correct . not everything there is peachy , but enough  was done right to keep you logging for years .

the single most important thing they did correctly compare to other games is the fact that the added content is ALWAYS endgame . new expansion , higher level cap higher equipment and bosses .

they didn't add lvl 2 missions , they will add missions dungeons and raids for endgame players , because they know this is what the majority of their players DO when they log.

 

If i take swotor , most content is leveling content , you are maxxed level and you have nothing to do , 

it took them about 2 years , what they added ? 40-50 planet .... most people are 50 ! they have no reason to do it , what would you keep playing ?

monetary system which sucked , 

P2Win , slowing the pace of the game enough for you to not enjoy the progression , they soled bars for action items ffs! (you cannot use cloak or foldspace unless you pay 5$ a month)

 

no raids for more then a year and a half , dungeons which were horrible beside the first 2 . 

not to mention horrible battle mechanic , and horrible responsivity on the skill system . 

and pretty bad endgame gear mechanic.

 

and then they blame the content system on their failure .... brilliant .

btw the leveling experiance in this game was superb , start a sith / inquisitor level to 30 and delete the game , you will enjoy it 

 

so anyhow i just responded to this because of  pakkart ;) .

 

i don't agree with you good sir , 

I like the game feeling of EnB , and the recreation is superb , i feel like playing in live .  

 

but calling it success in almost any judgment beside personal nostalgia is incorrect . 

we have a tiny player base (but great souls) and have a missed chance to be much more , if the develop decisions  will be correct.

You will get into a game for stuff to do , everyone here are 150 on multiple chars , the thing to do is end game pve challanges . 

 

we don't need another 20 quest , if we will do it it will provide us with 2 hours of entertainment at best , and 0 if we just skip it . 

How many hours we spend on fishbowl ? 100's  per persion by now ?

 

we need more end game content , we need it badly , the diversity and stuff to do will make a differences if the population will go back to what we had in ST4 or stay like 50 die hard fans in two years . 

 

if i want to talk to people i will join team speak .if i have stuff to do to keep developing my characters and challenge myself i will log into the game client. 

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What made WoW such a success was how they "dumbed" down MMO gameplay mechanics in order for those with virtually no MMO experience to hit the ground running the moment they got ingame. Financially speaking, this was brilliant on the part of Blizzard; however, I don't really care for all the "hand-holding" that came along with it. For all it's success, I personally feel that WoW has had a negative impact on the MMO genre. Just my two cents.

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i kinda agree and don't agree with you there . 

 

agree since by the end wow was dumbed down and there was a lot of hand holding in the end , and a trained monkey could do end game content .which i despise .

 

don't agree because i believe the golden age for WoW was burning crusade , when things were kinda harsh . i don't believe many players managed to finish the end game raid even by the end of the expansion i think number was 0.5% of the player base, it was quite an achievement to do so . and heroic dungeons were harsh as well. 

 

i also don't blame them since before WoW we had EA which abandon an MMO because "they can never succeed financially" and moved to greater things like Sims online. 

so while now we attacked with bad wow clones , i still believe someone will indeed dare to do things a bit differently and make a fun game to play :)

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i kinda agree and don't agree with you there . 

 

agree since by the end wow was dumbed down and there was a lot of hand holding in the end , and a trained monkey could do end game content .which i despise .

 

don't agree because i believe the golden age for WoW was burning crusade , when things were kinda harsh . i don't believe many players managed to finish the end game raid even by the end of the expansion i think number was 0.5% of the player base, it was quite an achievement to do so . and heroic dungeons were harsh as well. 

 

i also don't blame them since before WoW we had EA which abandon an MMO because "they can never succeed financially" and moved to greater things like Sims online. 

so while now we attacked with bad wow clones , i still believe someone will indeed dare to do things a bit differently and make a fun game to play :)

The day EA announced they were cancelling E&B was the day I was through with them as a customer.

 

As for me saying that WoW has had a negative impact on the MMO genre, I am referring to how WoW is now the standard "litmus test" when it comes to comparing other MMOs. It seems a lot of people have forgotten all WoW's predecessors such as AC (Asheron's Call), UO (Ultima Online), DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot), EQ (Everquest/Evercrack), and MMOs like SWG and of course E&B - all of the above listed were arguably great during their respective time periods in the history of MMOs. Each of these games had their own loyal, rabid fanbase. The kicker is a lot of these games were up and running during the same time frame and yet, while there was some competition amongst one another, you didn't see a whole lot of "if this game isn't like [insert name], then it will fail" or "OMG this game is a [insert name] clone; therefore, it is /fail". Now it seems that today's MMOs don't stand a chance when compared and contrasted against the almighty WoW - and I'll reiterate, it's only WoW that they are being compared to.

 

Sure, WoW has some good things going for it, but the MMO genre didn't start with WoW and it sure as hell shouldn't end with it. This is mostly what I am getting at. Personally, I think upcoming game developers should feel free to take a page/cues from some of the older games I listed instead of relying on a WoW template for a model of success which is as you alluded to - doomed to failure. Well, that's my issue with WoW and the MMO genre.

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  • 2 months later...
In my opinion, EA did sunset of ENB at the time because its revenue didn't match their cash cow UO. Yes UO only had 300k subs at the time. But before Wow that was huge.

I also believe that EA was picking up game studios primarily to let them fail and write them
Off.

But those are my opinions. From what I've heard, SWTOR being FTP with a cash shop makes them
More money then all their pervious MMOs combined.
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Smedley...Oh, the Planetside 2 guy. Well then.

 

So...no one has mentioned EVE in this. It is touted as a sandbox, but the funny thing is, the content defines the sandbox. The same (to a much lesser degree) is true in Planetside. "Sovreignty mechanics now work this way." and so the regions of space worth living in (in EVE) change, and wars are fought, industry is fueled, etc. The sandbox occurs because the mechanics, that is...the content, of the game changes to bring about entropy. They leave it to the players to figure out what to do with that entropy. PS2 changes in that weapons are added or rebalanced, but let's be fair, PS2 is just something you play to shoot people. It's apples an space ships comparion.

 

As for WoW, as far as content driven MMOs go it is king in the western world. Lineage II, with the Korean factor added in, was the nearest neighbor. But content driven MMOs *are* unsustainable. I've spent more time NOT playing WoW than I did playing it. I got MoP for $7 and 'beat' it in 2 months. I wanted to know the storyline of the pandas, and it took me about 6 weeks to do that. I ran every question in the expansion, leveled up a few different characters to max, got a bit of raid gear so I could see all the raids in the game...and then I was done.

 

WoW had 12 million subs *very* briefly during WOTLK, arguably their best expansion pack. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png <--right now they have about 8 million subs, which is very near the number of subs during Vanilla. Having played so intermittently over the years of WoW I have watched the playerbase change. I used to find common ground with my fellow players, people motivated to see new stuff and try new things. Now...99% of the people who play do it to be social. "Well it *is* an MMO!" Right, but not everyone gets along with everyone else.

 

I only kept my sub going for 2 months because while they have dummed down the mechanics of the game a lot, they did what they have done with Starcraft and most other blizzard games: "Easy to learn, difficult to master." Say what you want, but run your WoW character through simulationcraft, then compare your own log parses and if you aren't within 3% of the DPS simulation craft says your gear can output...congratulations! You are exactly average at WoW! The top 10 guilds? All of their players are within a few % of what their gear is theoretically capable of. Most WoW players only utilize about 50-70% of the capability of their gear. This is the very definition of difficult to master.

 

To that end, I was average, but above the common average. I didn't find it fun to go on drunken raids, wipe all night because people couldn't focus, etc. I am objective based, so the concept of standing in Orgrimmar and doing nothing is an anathema to me.

 

All these words to say...yes. MMOs that are content driven are untenable. The most successful models are the sandboxes where the content drives the activities of the sandbox by giving the sandbox a reason to change. Want that in E&B terms?

 

  • What if trade runs weren't static, and the level 1 items everyone ignores in Earth Station were worth 4000 credits in Trader's Fort, because no one ever ran the item there?
  • What if raiding the red dragon base in Aragoth Prime removed some number of rare spawns (tatsu, chang, etc) and also cut in half the number of Red Dragon seen in the game?
  • What if activating the Cooper Gate doubled the number of Tengu, and their wander ranges, every time, on a one week cooldown?
  • What if asteroid fields weren't static (fields frequently mined out became lower level, low level fields rarely mined out became high level fields, or the rarely mined fields got larger, or respawned faster {might be easier to just keep a counter and insta-spawn new roids when old ones are mined via a counter}, or closer together (gravity effect))?

With the raid content, you'd need EVE style PvP to allow factions to fight over the right to hurt other's playstyles, which E&B wasn't about. But the economic sandboxes (ore, trade) would be doable. Either way, those examples stand to show you that "this is the fundamental change in thinking about what defines content if you want to have a sandbox game instead of a content-driven game."

 

Sandboxes still need sand, and they also need goals for non-creative players, like me, to imagine as attainable with the sand in the box. These are the roles of a game dev in a sandbox game.

 

Actually...wait. No. You wouldn't need PvP, use the economic systems to allow players to counteract the actions of the raiders. IE: Red Dragon base was destroyed, but if 1,000,000 units of construction materials from any trade vendor that sells them are brought to Chernavog Station then the RD effects will cease to impact the playerbase at large. {bad specific example, but do you see the theory?}

 

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I don't know what to say about this. I believe most gamers like game play easy or "dumbed down" if you will to go along with content. But at what point does content not get repetative, or the easier gameplay interfere with the role playing part?

 

I'll use Asheron's Call as an example. When it was released, it had a spell system for players that required actual research on the player's part. There was an algorithm for each spell, and one had to literally experiment with spell components to learn spells. It was quite a challenge. I clearly remember players watching other players cast spells so they could see the movemments and mannerisms of the caster. If you found a scroll with a popular spell, it was worth some serious cash, as many players would pay big $$$ to not sit around and try to learn spells all night.

 

Well, a small group of intrepid players, after much sweat and experimentation, finally cracked the algorithm that was behind the spell system. Thus, a program called Split Pea (IIRC) was born. This took, IMO, a big part of the role playing out of AC for players (all could cast spells to some degree if they wanted to).

 

As more content was added, and players didn't want to focus on mundane tasks such as making arrows, potions, food, etc., as leveling became a goal unto itself, and hard to find needed items for game play became expensive, people began to experiment with macros. Out of this came one program above all others, called AC Tool. The first macros were simple combat macros designed to sit ina spawn area, kill the mobs, and loot the goodies from the corpse. From these humble beginnings came bots that roamed mob infested areas for combat and loot (and XP), bots that could buff a player for in game cash or free, Bots that could imbube weapons, bots that could cook...eventually someone wrote a market bot script, and thus, a market place was born, where live players could access bots and buy items from player bots. it was a great way to make cash and dump excess loot.

 

But the money became easy to get, and money became virtually useless (hmm......). The only thing left for the game was to add more higher level content, although some lower game added content was so good many players made new low level toons to run the dungeons. The max level went from 126 to 175, to 275. For all I know, it might be 350 now. When all was said and done, even with in game housing added, and all the scripts making leveling easier, the only thing left was more and more content to drive the game.

 

The one exception to this was on the dedicated PvP server, which to this day has the most active community in AC. PvP'ers made their own fun (I did for 9 years on that server) and content became an afterthough for a sizable number of those players, other than to see who can gank the next quest party at said quest. For all the servers, you have the very detailed and rich stoy line, tons of things to do in game, loads of weapons/armor/items/other goodies to acquire. The PvP server had the added feel of making sure you were armed/buffed to the max before stepping out of the mansion area of your monarchy, else face near certain death, as well as the prospect of having to fight nasty mobs and enemy players at the same time on occasion (very fun BTW). But from a one-time base of about 125,000, perhaps 5,000 are left playing. Not bad I suppose from a game that started in 1999.

 

I suppose content can take you only so far. How high can a level cap be raised? How many variations of a theme can one run before utter boredom sets in? Maybe a purely content driven MMO can't survive in the end, because, as Pakk stated, the "R" is missing, or because without new faces in the game the social aspect simply isn't enough anymore. I don't know the answer, but no game lasts forever. I had a blast playing AC, AO, CoH/CoV, and of course EnB. But I wonder myself about the state of this game and all MMO's in the future.

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