Daedalus Project MMO Survey Updated

Nick Yee writes "The Daedalus Project, an ongoing online survey study of MMORPG players that started 4 years ago and has surveyed over 30,000 players, has published presentations of new findings, including whether players get more frustrated in MMOs or everyday life, quotes from players discussing why they play online games, and a statistical ranking of the motivations for MMORPG players. There's also a new multiple-choice survey MMO gamers can fill out."

New Game, New Content

[Herkum01]

The drive for me has always been to find something new or interesting to do or try. It is amazing how often that games try to hide old material with a smatter of different pixels. That is why I am always looking for a new game to play, I want something that will provide something new and different. I don't want to got from kill 200 zombies, level up, now kill 200 ghouls!

Re:New Game, New Content

[Ieshan]

You know, this is a very frequent MMO complaint, and let me break the bad news: This is what players ask for, this is what players get.

It's like any genre. There's still innovation in minor areas, but the basic themes are all the same. I don't know why this should upset you so.

There are lots of different Genres of games. MMO Creators aren't trying to hide old systems behind new graphics, they're trying to make those systems playable in ways you haven't seen before. I mean, look, when you read a Murder Mystery novel, you know a few things coming in: There's a murder, and someone's trying to solve it. You don't accuse the author of trying to hide a murder mystery behind a new plot of descriptive phrase. You don't think, "Oh, damn that clever author! He made the murder really tricky this time! But the hero STILL figured it out! I wanted something new!"

You play MMO because you want to buy into the current MMO system: Lots of people level their character for mindless reasons and make friends doing it.

Re:New Game, New Content

[AuMatar]

I don't read murder mysterys, but I do read fantasy. And I've eben waiting for one where the bad guy wins in the end for a long while. So I guess I do say that.

Shameless plug? prehaps, but still my thoughs.

[Brutus (moo)]

Well, I played Diablo II(I know it's not an MMORPG, read on) since about 2 months before the Lord of Destruction expansion came out for around 2 years, I had some strong characters on the USWest realm and I finally got tired of it after 2 years because of having 2 of every characters at level 99, and the economy went to heck back then.

Now I started playing a MMORPG that was originally korean or chinese or something, but a few months ago went global and is free (for now), it is called MUOnline [muonline.com] and at first glance I thought something like this "hm...Diablo II, worse grahpics, FREE!, more than 8 players per server" and now I play it, what do I do there? well, at first I killed spiders, then budge dragons, then bull fighters, then elite bull fighters, then beetle monsters...you get the picture, but it's still fun, both games consist of about the same thing and look similar and are all about clicking on monsters over and over and over again until they die, level up, move on to stronger monster, but people find that fun especially when you have hours of time to waste, and I find it fun too.

Now, that's what people basically want now-adays from MMORPGs, (well, free ones, if compared to a p2p MMORPG MUOnline would be considered 1/50th as good), now comparing MU to D2 I can say this, most of the interface is similar, most of the basic game functions are too, but there are ofcourse some new stuff, such as obviously the more than 8 players per server thing, as well as things like the specific classes (which may be similar in concept, but have a new look and name), the specific weapons...but overall the game is about the same, it was popular back then, it's popular now (did I mention it's free?).

Re:Shameless plug? prehaps, but still my thoughs.

[Nivoset]

looks kind of interesting, but i think you should put in mroe than hack and slash, heck. bars would be nice. and other things you could do for fun

Re:Shameless plug? prehaps, but still my thoughs.

[Deraj DeZine]

Free meaning something like $30? Sorry, but I don't wanna pay $30 to click on 2D sprites and watch them go through a finite number of death animations.

Could you work slower?

[MMaestro]

The Daedalus Project, an ongoing online survey study of MMORPG players that started 4 years ago and has surveyed over 30,000 players

Four years? 30,000 players? Thats an average of 7,500 people surveyed each year on average. I know this doesn't exactly have the mass hordes of telephone callers like political parties, but that few responses? You'd think they woulda established some kinda method over that time, maybe streamlined the survey, or at least gotten more people. Or just hire some people in Korea and have them conduct surveys there, the number of responses would probably skyrocket.

Re:Could you work slower?

[ospen]

It's several things: - This is an academic project with no commercial funding. - MMORPG players are becoming very cynical of surveys targeted at them. For example, see: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum= 1 &mid=1081006378898262613 - Recent MMORPGs have their own portals which draw most of the traffic and is much harder to publicize to those players. The other problem is that if it were publicized on the official site, then that would create suspicion of commercial motivation (which low