Taugrim's MMO Blog

Let’s review what we’ve seen in recent years.

In 2008, we witnessed the failure of 2 hugely-hyped titles: Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. Mythic cut 4 of the 6 capital cities and 4 of the 24 classes just before WAR’s launch, the class balance was poor, and the game client and server were unstable and couldn’t handle RVR. From what I heard about AoC, the Tortage experience from 1-20 was awesome, then the quality of content dropped off. Simply put, neither game was ready to launch.

In 2009, there was excitement for 2 polished games, Aion and Allods Online, coming from Asian and Eastern Europe. NCSoft didn’t localize Aion sufficiently for the western audience – the leveling experience was tediously grindy. AO was supposed to be F2P but just before launch a stacking death penalty mechanic was added to the game that essentially required players to buy a Cash Shop item to remove the debuff.

By the start of 2010, I became increasingly concerned that social gaming might kill investment in MMORPGs. If you’re an investor, why would you risk tens of millions of dollars to build an MMORPG when it’s possible to build a profitable social game for a fraction of the cost and in a matter of months instead of years? Moreover, many believed that WoW had set the bar too high for new entrants.

However, Trion demonstrated with RIFT in early 2011 that it’s possible to launch a AAA-quality game. As Exec Producer Scott Hartsman told me, Trion was willing to wait until the game “wouldn’t fall down” and “had enough for players to do” at launch. I was a huge fan of RIFT, as it brought some innovations to class customization (you could spec with any 3 of 9 talent trees for each of the 4 classes), elegant warfront (battleground) design, and a stunning world. What we learned from RIFT is that a strong launch with a good product is not sufficient to maintain a subscriber base. There were multiple issues with the game, including buggy raid content, gear that scaled too much across tiers (leading to power creep and making it difficult for guilds to replace members who quit), and starting with Patch 1.5, increasingly poor decisions in terms of class balance for PVP. According to Xfire, RIFT isn’t even in the top 50 for online games, just 15 months after launch.

However, there was still hope for 2011, as SWTOR was going live before end of year.

SWTOR launched with neither the polish nor feature-parity of RIFT. E.g. the UI in SWTOR was clunky and could not be customized meaningfully, the auction house was difficult to use, and the game client had performance issues. Justin Lowe from darthhater.com was and is still getting ~15 FPS with a high-end PC. Despite these issues, I enjoyed SWTOR immensely. The game provided a fun combat experience – the animations and sounds made combat feel epic. I loved several aspects of its PVP, including the brilliant design of Huttball (a PVP battleground where you can pass the flag) and the fact that meaningful effects in PVP required the use of an ability with a cooldown, whereas in RIFT many of the most important effects simply proc from button spamming. That said, I believe SWTOR launched before it was sufficiently ready.

From a financial perspective, the launch of SWTOR was the most successful ever. Millions of copies were sold. However, there has been a significant drop in subscribers over the first 6 months. While BioWare has been working hard to deliver new content and game improvements, it’s not happening sufficiently fast to stem to flow of players unsubbing.

Based on what we’ve seen over the past 4 years, here is what I now believe:

1. It is possible to launch a AAA-quality MMORPG. RIFT proved that
2. It is possible to acquire a significant number (1MM+) at launch for a new game that requires an upfront purchase and monthly subscription. SWTOR proved that
3. However, if a game requires both an upfront purchase price and a monthly subscription, the players are going to be incredibly demanding and unforgiving

Regarding that last point, there’s a factor that significantly impacts a developer’s ability to keep players happy: most of them have been implementing games with a vertical scaling model, which involves delivering:

1. A huge world, with a lot of leveling content. E.g. zones with quests, instances, etc
2. Increasing tiers of content (heroics, raids) and gear at endgame

This model requires a huge investment for the developer, which in turn creates tremendous financial pressure to launch prematurely to recoup the sunk costs. Moreover at launch, some players will speed-level, tear through the endgame content, then complain there’s nothing to do. Even in a game such as SWTOR where BioWare invested heavily in rich story arcs and voiceovers. And the playerbase in general will expect more new content from the developer to justify the subscription. My gut feeling is that it’s nearly impossible for a developer to continue providing fresh content for a game built on vertical scaling while retaining a sufficient number of subscribers to make it financially worthwhile. The only company to have been able to do this so far has been Blizzard with WoW. Yes, some games such as EVE have gradually grown their playerbase, but they’re still south of 1MM players.

As I discussed elsewhere, horizontal scaling systems enable content to remain relevant over time and therefore provide much better ROI for the developer, which still providing entertainment value for the gamer. I would argue that horizontal scaling systems will actually provide a better experience for the customer, even though many players have been indoctrinated into believing that vertical scaling and tiers of gear create a positive experience.

So here is what I propose as the business model of MMORPGs:

1. Build games that scale horizontally instead of vertically. GW2 and TSW are doing that
2. Create a business model that doesn’t discourage customer acquisition and/or retention. Charging both an upfront purchase fee and a monthly subscription doesn’t make sense long-term, because it creates too many opportunities for customers to opt out. Any of the following are much better models for the long-term:
   • Having no upfront purchase fee and no monthly subscription, but provide microtransactions for virtual goods. This is the proven F2P model (a la League of Legends)
   • Having no upfront purchase fee but a monthly subscription. Many F2P games support this by providing a subscription that provides a bundle of virtual goods at a discount
   • Having an upfront purchase fee but no monthly subscription (a la GW2)

The main point about #1 is creating a compelling experience. Make the combat engaging. Make it social. Make if fun. If you do these things, you’ll grow your customer base. The #1 online game League of Legends has been growing swiftly despite lacking massive content. Riot Games releases new content such as hero classes, but doing so is far less costly and complicated than trying to release new PVE zones, group, and raid content.

Some people might rebutt point #2 by saying that a developer needs to recoup their costs. They do, but part of the reason they are under pressure to launch prematurely and charge upfront is because they are simply building too much content, and the reality is that content will soon be outdated.

My prediction is that Guild Wars 2 going to fundamentally change the way gamers experience and relate to content ArenaNet implemented GW2 with a horizontal scaling system and doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. ArenaNet has smartly invested in content that you build once and the players re-play forever: Structured PVP and WvW. AN has removed the leveling divide between players via their PVE sidekicking system, full Bolster to max level / gear in Structured PVP, and from what I understand scaling PVE such that a player never truly outlevels it.

If I’m right, GW2 will model a viable approach for other companies, and we’ll continue to have the benefit of choice as gamers.

Today’s video contains my solution for re-designing Rogue classes in MMORPGs so that they are viable in sustained PVP combat.

Rogues across games tend to do well in 1v1 and small-scale combat, but where Rogues fall down from a mechanics perspective is in sustained or large-scale combat.

Why?

Rogues typically have many of their key damage and CC mechanics coupled with being in stealth, but their ability to sustainably re-enter stealth in combat is limited.

Watch the video for my simple solution for addressing these issues and creating a dynamic playstyle that scales from 1v1 combat up to raid-vs-raid.

It is amusing that I concepted the same solution that ArenaNet came up with for their Rogue “Thief” implementation in GW2. They grasp the issues common to the Rogue archetype in PVP and are addressing them with elegant game design.

To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary – and to the extent possible interaction with the Chat Room.

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

Back in January 2010, I predicted that Social Gaming may kill the traditional MMORPG industry. This was after the spectacular failures of two huge IPs that launched in late 2008:

• Warhammer Online (WAR)
• Age of Conan (AoC)

The developers for those games make the mistake of over-promising and under-delivering, a cardinal sin for any business.

EA Mythic set the expectation that WAR would launch with 24 classes and 6 capital cities, but shortly before launch they cut 4 classes and 4 cities. The game client was unstable (multiple CTDs a night for me even a year after launch) and the servers simply couldn’t handle mass RVR without crashing or lagging severely. The “lakes” RVR while leveling was one of the most enjoyable PVP experience I’ve ever had, but the game fell down at endgame in T4. A game that hyped RVR couldn’t handle it.

I didn’t play AoC, but I kept tabs on the community. Funcom set the expectation that AoC would ship with DirectX 10 support – it was written on the box – but DX 10 wasn’t there until 6 months post launch. The game in Beta had serious performance issues and bugs, and Funcom unwisely drew attention to a “miracle” patch right before launch. It’s like saying “we’ve done a crappy job but finally got our act together, really!” Gamers loved the leveling experience from 1-20, but unfortunately the content team did not maintain that standard of quality from 21 to endgame. Rumor was that the writers across leveling zones had little or no interaction.

After WAR, in 2009 and 2010 I played several other “new” games to the Western market: Aion and Allods Online (AO). Aion’s grindfest killed my interest before I even reached level cap. AO had a terrific Beta experience go into the toilet when the game developer implemented a Death Penalty mechanic that basically made the F2P game a P2P game. I stuck with AO as paying to play wasn’t an issue for me, but I eventually quit due to the lack of appealing endgame content.

The failures of these MMORPGs unfortunately coincided with the incredible surge in growth and popularity of Facebook and Social Gaming. Money was being funneled into Social Games for obvious reasons, as I wrote in that Jan 2010 article. I grew increasingly concerned that developers would lose the financial backing to publish new MMORPGs, which typically cost tens of millions of dollars to launch. All any executive or VC had to do was point at the high cost and high failure rate to say it wasn’t be worth the risk. The MMORPG market was facing a vicious cycle, whereas Social Gaming was in a virtuous cycle of wildfire growth.

I went back to the safe haven of WoW in May 2010 after hearing that much of the tedious grinding in WoW had been removed. I enjoyed the latter parts of WotLK and then Cataclysm, which finally brought back meaningful challenge in PVE. Although as Josh “Lore” Allen recently pointed out to me, I am in the 1% who wanted things to not be faceroll, and the other 99% of the population had gotten used to the faceroll joke that was WotLK Heroic content.

While Cataclysm was my favorite WoW expansion, by mid February I was restless / bored with it. A fellow gamer, Castorcato, sent me a link to the talent calculator for a game I hadn’t heard of. RIFT. Looking at the talent calculator for an hour sold me on trying the game. Castorcato said that RIFT in Beta felt like the good things from WAR again, and I got very excited.

RIFT’s launch was the smoothest that I’d ever seen for an MMORPG. It blew me away. The game had bugs of course, but the level of polish was phenomenal, so it was able to meet the “is this as polished as WoW” standard question from the gamer community.

At WonderCon 2011, I asked a panel with Scott Hartsman (Exec Producer, RIFT), Dirk Metzger (VP Publishing, Zentia), and Nick Huggett (Customer Experience Manager, Runes of Magic) about the viability of the MMORPG market given the past couple years and their responses were highly encouraging. I also spoke with Scott after the panel about how Trion was able to launch a AAA-quality MMORPG.

As you may know, I’ve been critical of RIFT’s 1.5 and 1.6 patches – IMO they’ve derailed the great progress being made for PVP from 1.0 -> 1.4. But there is no denying that Trion has shown that AAA-quality launches of new games are doable, with the right mindset and execution. Trion has also brought a healthy amount of innovation to the MMORPG market – in particular with RIFT’s superb spec system and the game’s integration with social media.

So we started 2011 with a bang with RIFT, but that isn’t the end of the story.

EA BioWare is launching SWTOR later this month. I started researching SWTOR once I saw what was coming in RIFT 1.5 to determine whether it was a viable option for me. Long story short, SWTOR has greatly exceeded my expectations in Beta and I am pumped to play it at launch.

My guess is that RIFT has been a significant financial success for Trion Worlds, and I expect that SWTOR will be the same for EA BioWare.

This is great news for fans of the MMORPG, regardless what game(s) you play. The more success stories in the industry, the greater the degree of financial investment into game developers, which means more new games for us.

Thank you Trion Worlds and BioWare for delivering!

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtaugrim
Facebook: http://facebook.com/taugrim
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Sanctum” RIFT show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-sanctum/
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

While skimming through SWTOR PVP links on Google, I noticed that:

• One writer described SWTOR’s approach for making tanks relevant in PVP as novel
• Another writer recognized that SWTOR’s PVP design for tanks is a copy of what Warhammer Online implemented

The second guy got it right base on what I read.

I am glad that SWTOR is borrowing the tanking mechanics from WAR – these mechanics made tanks in WAR valuable in PVP and mad fun to play.

I often read complaints from players, bloggers, and media folks that games don’t innovate enough, but in my opinion, what game developers don’t do enough is copy the great features from other games while delivering true innovation.

RIFT is a good example of blending innovation with parity. In my opinion, RIFT clearly innovated in several areas…

1. Flexible class spec customization: each of RIFT’s 4 classes has 9 talent trees, and for a given spec you can mix-and-match 3 trees however you like. By comparison, WoW’s 10-class system with 3 fixed trees per class feels incredibly rigid and limiting. In RIFT, you can spec your Mage, Cleric, or Rogue to be a MDPS, RDPS, or healer. And Clerics, Rogues, and Warriors can all tank in PVE
2. Rich, elegant warfront map design: RIFT’s maps have similar mechanics to maps from other games. E.g. Codex = WoW’s Arathi Basin, Whitefall Steppes = WoW’s Warsong Gulch, etc. However, the maps in RIFT have terrain features that encourage and create opportunities for tactical play, as exhibited in my most recent RIFT Cleric PVP video
3. Integration with social media: you can record game footage in RIFT with the press of a button and then upload to YouTube, and RIFT integrates with Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr

…while copying other practical, sensible features from other games, such as:

1. Distinct PVE gear vs PVP gear systems (e.g. Valor is WoW’s Resilience, etc)
2. Achievements, which originated in WAR and were copied by WoW

It will be interesting to see how/where SWTOR and GW2 innovate and where they choose to copy from other games.

I have been a huge advocate and supporter for RIFT – it was the first AAA-quality launch of an MMORPG in the past several years, which in itself was a big deal. I am concerned with some of the proposed changes in Patch 1.5, such as how key talents work (for Clerics) and how the stats work. I also believe that now is not the right time to be introducing disruptive changes to the playerbase, given the impending launch of SWTOR and GW2. By changing stat mechanics, RIFT players may have to re-gear, which usually means re-grinding, and some players may simply write a game off and jump ship for perceived greener pastures.

RIFT can’t create meaningful differentiation in terms of lore-based IP – the buzz around known properties such as Warhammer Online (3 years ago) and Star Wars (now) has already proven that – but RIFT can differentiate itself from much of the MMORPG market by iterating thoughtfully and carefully with each Patch.

If any of you have tried SWTOR, let us know what you think of the game. I have heard that it feels more like a single-player game than most MMORPGs and that the PVP was not so good. But I have not tried it myself.

Trion shared their proposed class/spec balance update today, and they are planning to:

• Re-work (balance) Pyro Mage’s Ground of Strength. It its current incarnation GoS provides total CC immunity indefinitely for the Mage plus the ability for their spells to stun, and this is rather imbalanced in PVP
• Increase Rogue melee and Marksman damage

The timing of the balance update makes sense – there has been sufficient time since 1.1 went live for the community to get its arms around the changes and to identify problem areas.

To date, players have often framed their feedback quite negatively. E.g. some players have been equating Trion to “Failcom” (aka Funcom, the maker of Age of Conan) and to Electronic Arts / Mythic Entertainment (the maker of Warhammer Online).

Both are unfair comparisons, but players have been badly burned since 2008 by games that were over-hyped but under-delivered, and Trion is experiencing the backlash from players who are now understandably wary of game developers.

While I am not going to predict what degree of commercial success Trion will have or whether Rift is the fabled “WoW Killer” (and as I wrote elsewhere that’s the wrong question to ask), Trion’s actions with and after launch show me that they get it. I have high confidence based on what I’ve seen and heard that Rift will continue to improve and that Trion is listening to the community.

Hopefully over time the majority of Rift’s players will perceive that as well.

As I have stated previously, Rift has been by far and away the best MMORPG launch I’ve seen in over 2.5 years, including Warhammer Online, Aion, and Allods Online. What has made Trion’s launch of Rift successful? Multiple, synergistic actions:

1. Trion didn’t launch until the game was ready. As Exec Producer Scott Hartsman said to me at WonderCon 2011, they were not going to launch until the game was sufficiently stable and had sufficient content
2. Trion has been unusually communicative about upcoming changes with the community. Examples: the Dev Tracker forum functionality to track all posts by Trion employees, Trion’s participation in 3rd-party fan podcasts, and their honesty in answering my questions in person
3. Trion is willing to make the tough calls to bring classes and specs into balance, even if the decisions are unpopular in the short term. I’m not going to tell you the balance in 1.11 is perfect. It’s not. Balance is an iterative process, and considering that we are ~7 weeks from launch, balance is reasonably good, even better than what I experienced as a 2k Arena Protection Paladin in World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion Patch 4.0.6

Class / spec changes for the sake of balance can be hard on the community, but they are absolutely essential for the long-term health of a game.

UPDATE (2011/04/22): OK, maybe I spoke too soon. On the Alpha 1.2, the CC immunity and 30% stun proc for Ground of Strength have not been touched. /sigh

UPDATE (2011/04/29): before I forget, the stun proc was removed from GoS in the first update to 1.2 notes published on 4/26. I think the indefinite full CC immunity is still an issue.