Many MMORPG's have released, only to flop. You may think to yourself, other, more popular games are to blame. [sarcasm] (Not talking about WoW) [/sarcasm] Forgive me, but I'll be referencing WoW several times in this article. Truth be told, games like WoW aren't hurting other MMO's but more than likely helping them. How many newer gamers without any MMO experience, would pick up a subscription based game without any previous experience? WoW provides a way for newer online players to experience an MMO that's done properly. It touches on a lot of areas players enjoy, such as dungeons, socializing, uniqueness, custom events, and polish.
Grinding
MMO's should take successful elements from other games and incorporate them into their own. For example, this isn't Korea, no one likes to spend all day grinding for levels. You don't always even need to go the full length of a quest, a dungeon with an end will do just fine. A goal for the person to spend working on instead of just killing the next monster they see. A chest at the end of a long tunnel will give a purpose to what the player is doing, even if the only thing in the chest is a peice of paper saying, "lulz, u fel 4 it". It might seem like a overwhelming task trying to get content like that for every level so that the player always has something to do, but that's where focus on groups and playing with other people comes along, after all, this is an MMO.
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| Dungeons even lower levels can participate in |
The biggest appeal to an MMO is spending time with other people online. You'll find that many people continue to play MMO's because of their online friends. Allowing players to easily communicate, spend time together, and participate in events together. The more you encourage guild actions, the closer the community will become; the closer they are, the less likely they'll leave. Guilds have a lot of potential, both for customization, world events, interactions, or PVP (GVG). In a lot of games, players request for something like a guild hall, this wish is almost never fulfilled, but it's always requested nevertheless. Guild Wars gave players a guild and allowed them to upgrade it with it's own vendors. You could take this one step further and allow the Guild Master and Officer ranks to customize the furniture placings, expand the area, several times, and bring in more customizations. Players would love to be in an amazingly unique and customly crafted guild hall where they can meet with friends. More importantly, however, guilds will help you keep your gaming going because of their unique ability to have groups of people run through areas like instances together much easier. If someone wants to go run a dungeon, it's much easier to get your guild to go with you than random people.
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| A group posing in their Guild Hall. |
A game made for hardcore players will focus more on putting time into the game = levels, a system that's being less emphasized in newer MMO's. FFXIV has a new guildleve system that is specialized for people who don't put more than an hour into the game a day. Guildleves aren't allowed to be accepted more than once a every other day, meaning if you play more than that, you won't have as much questing to do. And even then, the more you grind, the less experience/skill points you get for it. Eventually, removing all benefits to playing the game for any extended amount of time. While this may be good for casual players, and Square-Enix, the developers, as it makes it longer for most players to reach endgame, it makes it a longer and harder task to get to the end of the game, meaning you need to find more to do. Hopefully this will be met with more content for the downtime you experience instead of questing and grinding. Leading into my next point.
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| Bahamut: Not for casual players |
Eventually, your players will run out of things to do. Once that happens, don't expect them to stick around much longer. Frequent updates and world events will keep your players interested. I firmly believe that coliseum tournaments should be done in a bracket like fashion, where participants fight Team versus Team, one at a time, in an actual arena, with players watching them. Where for every say 100 spectators, a new row would appear in the stands and start filling up as people started watching. If you were a spectator, when you start watching, your player is actually placed in the stands, and your camera zooms in on the fight. Large Scale tournaments with unique prizes would be worth watching, maybe even wagering on. This would give more of a sense of, "Wow, this is an arena, when I go out there to fight for my next match, all those people will be watching. Having commentary would be a plus too. Again, this would be a world event, something that would only be hosted once in a while by staff. This is an idea of original content. The point is, having things to keep the community active, and not playing through the same events all the time. WoW has holiday events that go off on their respective holidays, so if you miss it this year, you'll have to wait until next year. They also release expansions every now and then to keep the game new.
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| The Headless Horsemen - A special guest for Halloween |
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| The Blade of Infamy |
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| A preview of the extensive customization options. |
If you rush anything, the quality will deteriorate. As I mentioned in a previous article, releasing a game too early can ruin it forever. Many games have gotten bad reputations right on release due to faulty systems or broken mechanics that halt players progress. Giving this impressions may ruin any current, or future sales, even if you manage to fix the problem. Blizzard has the right mindset in that they don't release anything until it's done, even if that means pushing back the release date several times. While no one wants to wait for a game, it's better to wait for it and play it properly than have it released half-assed. You're better off holding out on the release until it's ready for the full satisfaction from the customers.
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