Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late 328
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting:
"While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
Try a Guild Wars 2 approach (Score:5, Interesting)
I think after six years it's safe to say that trying to beat WoW at its own game is futile. If you want to surpass WoW as the world's leading MMO, you can't just copy their model.
The approach that ArenaNet appears to be taking with Guild Wars 2 is more sensible. They've thrown out many things which could be considered as fundamental in an MMO, but are actually limiting or frustrating. This includes things like grinding, quests that have no impact, text based plot and more subtle concepts such as the DPS/tank/heal arrangement.
If any game is capable of surpassing WoW, my money would be on GW2.
Or are they too soon...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tabula Rasa was not really that different (Score:4, Interesting)
It was just as grindy as all other games.
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
Throw in the one thing they all miss, WOW has two major focus points. It has the leveling system which interests many people with thousands of quests and a lot of lore and it has the end game. The prior does not inhibit you from getting to the later by any appreciable degree. You can blow right through the quest systems, even ignore the majority, and strictly hit top level and do the end game content. Which is where WOW shines. Their end game content is always good. Far too many up and comers have NPC BOSS mechanics that feel nothing more than just that Rat I killed twenty of but with ten times the health. It might have one new effect but for the most part its as dumb as the rats outside.
What is happening at BIOWARE/EA is that I see "we have this great IP, hence any expense is justified" mentality which usually goes hand in hand with feature creep and never finishing a system to completely but having far too many incomplete ones.
Network effects and economies of scale... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the perspective of game designers, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Already having had years to iterate and refine their game and engine. 2. A large paying audience, which means that the costs of implementing content X or upgrade Y are, per subscriber, tiny. Any game designer who thinks that those can be overcome by any means except doing something quite different(EVE: online, which went for a totally different player base, or any of the random browser-based grind games which go for being radically less expensive to produce and to play) is suffering from some serious hubris.
From the perspective of the management types, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Network effects: because so many people play WoW, if your friends play any MMORPG, that is probably the one. Barring specific hatred of some aspect of WoW, you will default to playing the one that your friends are playing. 2. Substantial costs already amortized: They have a (more or less) fully functional engine, stuffed full of art assets and flavortext and whatnot, all paid off. Any new player that they can attract is, other than some slight server and bandwidth load, basically free until they have ground through a fairly large chunk of gameworld. Any competitor is starting from a far weaker position, attempting to get their engine and flavor to playable levels on borrowed or advanced money. 3. Large player base over which to divide fixed costs: Games, like movies, are heavy on fixed costs. The engine costs the same even if noone ever uses it. That dialog tree costs the same even if noone ever reads it. The more subscribers you have, the lower your fixed costs per subscriber(or, alternately, the higher your quality for the same fixed cost per subscriber as your inferior competitors).
That's what I don't understand: All but the most delusionally hubristic game-design guys should easily realize that any 'me-too' attempt is going to go badly. They are probably inclined to be a bit optimistic about how original their work really is; but they should know that 'me-too' is suicide. At the same time, even the management types who know absolutely nothing about games should, purely with basic EC101 type considerations, be able to see that this is not a market where there is much room for imitative product. Blizzard hardly has a monopoly on "games"; but the idea that the market will support multiple "clearly WoW-like games" is hard to support.
Given that even outrageously hubristic game designers tend to depend on suits for money(at least until the game is ready to sell) and that even the dullest suits need a bunch of game designers willing to take the risk of having a real fuckup on their CV, I don't understand how these projects get off the ground. In almost any case, I would expect one party or the other to (sensibly) get cold feet quite early, if they even get the idea at all.
Re:Tabula Rasa (Score:4, Interesting)
TR suffered from a number of problems. Actually, it should go into textbooks as an example what you can possibly do WRONG in an MMO.
Lessons to learn from TR:
1. When you have a famous developer, do something he is known for.
Lord British is known for Ultima. For NOTHING else. When someone hears Garriot/British, he expects fantasy. Likewise, taking Sid Meyer and having him make a shooter will not attract an audience. People have some expectations when they hear a name.
2. Choose your guns and stick with 'em.
TR went from a fantasy game to a sci-fi game, then halfway back. Every time you're wasting code, artwork and time, and every time you're losing followers. Take a few looks at TR previews at the 2004 E3 (youtube will aid you) and you'll see a game that had NOTHING to do with the final product.
3. Release a game when it's done.
As a result of 2, the beancounters will shove it out the door long, long before it's done. TR was finished and ready for release JUST when they shut it down. Anything before was a beta. Half finished quests, broken balance and zero content are not what keeps people playing.
4. Make sure the classes deliver what their package promises.
It should go without say, but TR proved it doesn't. The medic was originally the ultimate killer while his healing abilities were at best useless. The sniper was a great close range fighter while his sniping gun sucked. For pretty much every class you could be sure that their "signature ability" or weapon stunk, but using one of the weapons or abilities that allegedly only lend themselves to leveling 'til you get that "signature" stuff was partly SO overpowered that it was simply not funny anymore, due to the combination with various skills. And due to the class specialization trees, it often meant that 2 classes played identically, because what set them apart was equally useless.
But it can all be rolled up into one single problem that killed TR: DO NOT release a game before it is done. You might try to cut your loss, but in the end, you're throwing away the game. TR had the potential to be good. Not great, certainly no WoW killer, but it was fun enough to attack and defend those bases to keep people playing and paying, even without any sensible content around it.
What broke its back and drove people away was that it was in a state of a very early beta at release (hell, they redesigned half the skills of the classes 4-6 months after release, and I don't mean "tweak", I mean "whole new skills") and that Garriot and NC fell apart, not to mention that NC wanted to promote their new love child Aion and drive the remaining TR players there.
Why, though, I should trade a base defense/sci-fi game against a WoW clone is beyond me.
It's not the engine and bling. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the story, stupid. When WoW came out, the majority of MMOs were horrible at telling stories. For example:
Star Wars: Galaxies - there were what, 2, 3 possible "raids"? There were theme parks where you ran a bunch of random quests that kind of told a story, but at the end of it, nothing changed, nothing was unlocked, nothing was different for your character to do, and your rewards were pitiful for doing it. The "missions" in the game were literally, run up to a machine, it says "Hey, (some random SW type person) wants you to go and kill a bunch of animals! Do that!" and you ran out to kill a bunch of animals. The only interesting thing about that game was the rather amazing player based economy, but SOE completely wrecked that when they changed the underlying mechanics of the game.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
And then there is WoW. When it launched, the normal quests you were given lots of were the equivalent of most other MMOs *major* storylines as far as complexity. It was rough around the edges as far as player friendliness went (I remember running around for a couple of hours trying to find someone to turn a quest into - the text said "north of here" but it really meant "way on the whole other side of the world and all the way north as far as you can go") but there was a story, and you were a part of it. There were dungeons to go to - and some of them were jaw-dropping ("Holy shit, a PIRATE SHIP, in a MINE?!") even if they were annoying at times. For every little mechanical nit or bugged event or other complaint, there was stuff to do. And, even with all of the flaws at the time, it was *still* the most polished game around.
In the meantime it's only gotten more polished, and the already way more intricate quests and storyline has been added to massively. There are dozens of dungeons to go to at various points in your playing life and quite a few raids (though some of the older stuff is ignored). They've added tons of features to improve gameplay. And, with the latest expansion, even at very low levels, your character feels, despite being one of millions, *important*. And you can change the world through your actions - as you complete quests, the world around you changes to reflect that in many ways. On top of that, they've really done a good job of making the player feel like their character is important, but at the same time that they are part of something larger.
WoW doesn't have the shiniest engine - it's actually really dated, and I'm often surprised when I play newer games at just how dated it is - but that's not really important. The biggest asset WoW has (aside from a huge playerbase drawing people in) is that there's TONS of stuff to do, tons of stories to follow.
And now we have Bioware's new game and... Oh, look, quests that would have been amazing 6 years ago but WoW's from 4 years ago were better. A shiny new engine but not, seemingly, a lot to do with it. So kind of like a lot of the other games out there. I played Champions Online - and it actually had some interesting stuff going on (and seems like it's gotten more to do so I might try it again). I got Star Trek - which really was pretty interesting to play, but I quickly got bored of repeating pretty much the same 5 missions over and over when I ran out of story arcs to do.
If people want t
All based on one vague 'review'? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an EA employee. I used to work at BioWare. There's my disclosure.
I'm not allowed to talk very much about the game, for obvious reasons. I AM allowed to disclose that I was part of an internal beta late last year. (At least, at the time I was in it, I was allowed to disclose that. Hopefully that hasn't changed.)
Everyone that I know that was playing it was playing it addictively. We all loved it. The storyline that WE got to play was impressively well put together; I felt more at the center of that universe than I ever have in WoW (and I'm playing Cataclysm again, just so you know. I also think it's great).
This 'review' is pretty vague, and betas are betas. I can't promise the game will be great, and there's obviously a massive bias for me to say that it will be, but I was really sad when the beta completed. The first 6 hours of WoW are just you running around killing small, nearly defenceless animals; the first 6 hours of MY ToR experience was so much more. I really wish I could reveal everything that went on; it was really rich, engaging storytelling, with interesting conversations and dialogue. I don't remember skipping over any of the dialogue – spoken dialogue, of course –even once. Most of the time in WoW, I just click through as quickly as possible and read the quest text only if I really obviously become stuck. (Cataclysm's introduction of forced cutscenes in the beginner areas actually makes things a lot better.)
Seriously, give the game a chance. Beating up on it before you play it and based entirely off of the experiences of one person that played a few levels is hardly the way to judge an entire MMO.