Reevaluating MMOs

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Let me begin by saying that MMOs are absolutely subject to review upon launch. I do not personally give MMOs a score per se, but I will loosely review them based on whether or not they are fun, and provide a running commentary so that people can get a feel for how long it takes for the game to no longer be fun.

I’m seeing a lot of people drinking the kool-aid out there when it comes to MMOs “relaunching” or “rebranding” or whatever they’re being incentivized to call it.

What is “launch?” 

Launch is the minute you start taking people’s money and allow them access to your game. I don’t care what your marketing team chooses to call it; If you take people’s money and you let them play then your game is live, launched, and subject to review.

In speaking about the first iteration of Marvel Heroes being a flop, here’s what David Brevik gives as advice for how to minimize your failure.

If you don’t feel like you’re quite there, my second tip is that you should almost always, almost under every circumstance, launch as a beta. I think our biggest mistake was the fact that we didn’t launch with the beta tag. If we had done that, people would have been much more forgiving. – David Brevik, Gazillion CEO

I’m rolling my eyes over here.

Getting people to give you a second chance.

MMOs are, or at least should be, an evolving experience. I am absolutely in favor of continually evaluating and reevaluating MMOs. How you get people to do that can come in many forms, but here are a few obvious ones.

Annualizing

Annualizing your product is one way to do it, but it will absolutely cheapen your MMO in the eyes of the consumer. Marvel Heroes (the aforementioned flop) “relaunched” or “rebranded” as Marvel Heroes 2015. They spent a truckload marketing the game as having changed, timed it with a few movie releases, etc., etc., and raised their metacritic score. Cool. Now they’ll release Marvel Heroes 2016 and so on. The gimmick of slapping on a new year to the end and running banner ads won’t change the game itself, but it will probably get starving news sites to spam your message on point and smother their sites in your ad wraps.

Expansions

The age-old tradition of launching lots of new content at all once, most likely bundled into some theme, has worked for decades. Whether it’s every 6 months or every few years, expansions always get people to pay some kind of attention to the game. Expansions are often used to try and justify people staying on and continuing to play the game. However you monetize, the goal is to keep people playing and providing more content will do that. Expansions work best when people already liked you, and you have to get them to come back and continue caring about you. World of Warcraft is the perfect example.

Massive Patches and Overhauls

Occasionally we see a game undergo a massive overhaul or patch to change something that wasn’t quite working. I look at EQ2 as an example of how a game can launch, not resinate, then radically undergo change and definitely improve. When EQ2 launched it was seriously hardcore and quite honestly too cumbersome to really stick with it. The user experience was improved, the game became more fun, and I played it for 2 years. Then they radically overhauled AGAIN to be Free to Play, and I’m pretty sure that brought even more people back.

Burn it Down and TRULY Start Over

FFXIV is the epitome of launching absolute garbage, putting a stop to it entirely, and starting over. The result was (comparably) amazing. Relative to their original release, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is a phenomenal game.

Whatever the reason, even if none of the above, we can continue to look at MMOs and ask ourselves, “Has this game improved?” No amount of marketing or fixing a bug will change the fact that you still have the same product — maybe now it just works a little bit better or lasts a little bit longer or looks a little nicer.

MMOs deserve the scores and/or reviews they get at launch, and no amount of renaming a product or trying to start over is going to change the fact that you get only one first impression. (Special note for Mr. Brevik: People don’t care if it’s called a “beta.”) Realize that second chances ARE possible, but they will always be relative in success to your first impression. The secret to success isn’t in how to spin the next five years. Simply make your game fun, entertaining, and polished. Avoid having to battle for a second chance at all.

  • By and large this fails to garner any real bonus for the game in question.

    Of course there are exceptions, and that is great.

    Do you have any thoughts for a Skyforge piece, Keen? I got an email about it’s open beta and was tangentially interested. But I didn’t take the plunge and install or anything.

  • I feel differently. If it’s a new game, who cares what the past was. I’m not playing the past game, I’m playing the game as it is now. By similar logic, a company that releases a flawless, 10/10 game and later patches it into oblivion should be revered for their first impression, and the game played on the merits it used to have.

    Of course, this would be silly logic. Perhaps then the logic is that Negatives, past or present, automatically outweigh any positives. It’s a pessimistic way to live, but perhaps the game industry is nurturing this culture by accident.

    I think of D3. It was Awesome when it came out, because it was a new experience. That quickly turned into disappointment. With new direction and “Loot 2.0” along with Reaper of Souls, the game is back to being awesome (from my perspective). I LOVE it when a company makes something old into something new.

  • @Rawblin: I might write something more on Skyforge, but I’m mostly uninterested at this point. Nothing is drawing me in. I’m also very, very hesitant to get on board with the Allods team, my.com, and somehow Obsidian. I plan to give it more attention and thought so that I might more adequately write up my thoughts in a post.

    @Lokked: Ah but see that’s the real key there. They want you to think it’s a new game. What if it’s not, and it’s just a “rebrand” aka a “we slapped 2016 on the label and ran some more ads so people will try it?? Unless the game has truly changed, is it fair to simply just market your game in a new way to get people to play? I’m not so sure it is.

    Games fixing their issues deserve to be looked at again. For example, I agree with you that D3 has become better with age because the team has changed the game drastically.

  • Yes. I see what you’re talking about now. If it’s in the grey area between False Advertising and unwarranted hype, then I’m against that style of marketing. However, I personally feel like I’ve developed a defense against it through educating myself. Another part is learning the company and the team responsible for these changes.

    I think I took your article as “All of the following reasons are immoral methods of getting you to try their game again”, where the first (Annualizing) is where I’m hearing the most disdain from you, and the others are more viable and less sneaky.

  • You mentioned Allods so I feel the need to comment. As a guy that really doesn’t find pvp too fun Allods actually managed to be the first game to get my attention for far longer than 3 months since eq. Mostly I think because it was hard again, and so were the raids. It’s been years since I played so can’t comment on the current game.

  • Allods was a ton of fun. I actually enjoyed myself immensely during alpha and beta when the cash shop wasn’t there. Heck, check out my Youtube videos where I showcase tons of PvP. I LOVED it. Then they ruined it with the cash shop. Utterly DESTROYED it. I’m not effing bitter at all.

  • Ill agree with you about slapping a year on your name and calling it new. HOWEVER, Marvel Heroes significantly improved compared to how it was when it first released.

    I dare say it was almost a whole new game. My only beef with it was the crazy prices for costumes, but that was the only way they really made there money.