The Quest To Build a Better Warcraft 196
Red Herring tackles the rush into virtual space, talking about the MMOG goldrush and the business consequences World of Warcraft has had on the games industry as a whole. Though sometimes it doesn't seem to fully understand the difference between a single player game and a Massive one, the article still touches on a number of important points. Lots of folks are looking to cash in on WoW's success, and they're importing or licensing every Massive game they can find to get on the bandwagon. "The problem is that no one knows what the next WoW killer will look like. Creating a hit video game, which combines strong characters, a compelling story, and top-notch production values, is part art and part inexact science. Making a hit game can be much more difficult than producing an Oscar-winning movie. After all, the hit video game must be compelling enough to keep players coming back for more." Even if a lot of their conclusions are odd, and they call Puzzle Pirates silly, it's worth a look. What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?
Make Smarter People Sign Up (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we really talking about MMO ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Compelling story ? Strong characters ? We re not talking about MMO games here...MMO aims to the "lowest common denominator" between players to attract as much people as they can. WOW did it so well that they managed to attract people who hardly ever played video games before...and that's also why hardcore gamers tend not to play WOW.
What about the rest of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW dominates the "traditional" MMO market right now. It's foolish to directly compete with WoW unless you have a strong IP, huge marketing budget, and gameplay that makes players to give up their WoW timesink for your timesink. Most startup MMO companies lack at least two of those things...
But you have a chance if you create an online game that appeals to other gamers. What do Half-Life 2, Halo, and Gears of War have in common? They're shooter games and they're best-sellers, yet no one has created a successful FPS MMO. That market is a potential goldmine...as long as devs steer clear of the traditional MMO crap.
Imagine a MMOFPS similar to Guild Wars. No monthly fee, but frequently-released expansions. There would be a co-op campaign where you and your party fight the baddies and advance through the game's storyline, all while gaining access to new weapons/skills. Add in some arenas for on-the-fly PvP combat, territorial conquest zones, and a some sort of guild structure. Now you've got yourself a game. Simplified, I know, but a competent studio could easily pull that off.
"Warcraft" is not a MMORPG. Warcraft is an RTS. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the issue:
Building a World of Warcraft successor is easy. Look at what they do, copy it and do it better. Improve the things that aren't good and add the things that are missing. Generally the japanese do this sort of things when it comes to electronics. It's the very same way people could build an iPod killer. It's just that somebody still hasn't built a single device that can compete with it on the most simple specs (large memory, video capability, ease of use, decent looks).
Same goes for WoW. Look at the game. Play it. Aside from Monopoly sucktion it's advantages are very real and obvious.
1) Runs easily on older hardware without looking like crap.
2) Runs on Macs and plays nice with mac users. (potential universal opinion leaders when it comes to nice gaming and fun stuff)
3) Takes 90 seconds for the most ultimate n00b get into.
4) Slowly reveals it's complexity bit by bit without overwelming anybody at any point.
5) Has a powerleveling 'grind option', but not an omnipresent one.
6) Has an optional powerquesting stance.
7) Is beautyful and content laden enough for all who just like to run around and are not to interested in 5 or 6.
8) Has a super addictive end-game that even amplifies the underlying 'diabolo collectors habit' subnote of the entire career in conjunction with strong multiplay / competetive play.
9) Has subtle Humor made by the actuall builders, doesn't take itself so serious - important if your offering a full-time imersive VR.
10) Builds on a world that is not and doesn't have to be realistic or even plausible when considering distances between regions (this is why LotR online will fail. The Shire is 25 minutes away from Mordor - how weird is that?)
11) Dedicated company and team with sufficient cash and corporate strategy backing. Blizzard made a decision and came through with it all the way. No half-assed stuff. And, look, a miracle! They've got a game that works and people like! Unbelieveable!
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Game engine (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Second Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Second life is essentially a chatclient to spend real money on virtual goods (or for the few who actually build stuff make real money on virtual goods).
The problem with second life is that for many people there is no reason to "play" it. There is no real objective to the game, eg. you don't get to slay dragons and rescue the princess, you don't get the rarest of rarest of items that increases your stats so you can brag in your guild about your latest armor or sword, you don't have that rare drop to fit on your brand new spaceship you use to pirate.
Many people play MMOs in a really competetive fashion, or for the challenge, or because they're addictive. I don't really see any of these qualities in second life. It's basicly a market of virtual goods, and they're making a lot of noise because they're selling baked air, everyone knows it, and appareantly everyone
The broader market? I dunno, I've met a lot of different people in WoW. Ranging from the immature adolescent ("lolol i'm so l33t") to the student with time to waste ("I raid every evening, have calculated the best uber stats for my character, troll forums, and somehow have to get a passing grade this year") to the adult with spare time ("My kids play this game, and this is a great way of keeping an eye on their online activities, and it's fun too" "I'm single and bored on weekday evenings" "My wife has another headache"). I think that WoW and Second Life have all of these groups as well, but that the WoW player is in it for the gameplay and the Second Life player is in it for the chat.
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be so great about an MMO Half-Life or whatever? As far as I know, the HL dedicated server already allows you to create a server with hundreds of players, but either the server can't handle the load, or people's connections aren't good enough to make everything appear smooth. In RPGs it doesn't matter if you're lagging a bit, but in an FPS, even a slight bit of lag can make the game unplayable. Internet technology isn't quite mature enough for a "real" twitch-skill MMOFPS.
Also, imho, in FPS games can have too many players. If you've got too many people shooting rockets and sh*t all over the place in a very small area, the quality of gameplay just deteriorates as you don't really have much control over winning. And if you'd have huge outdoor maps like in PlanetScape, you end up with loads of bland, uninspired terrain and no real exciting maps like in traditional FPS games.
Re:Are we really talking about MMO ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Warcraft" is not a MMORPG. Warcraft is an RTS. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and then all you have to do is convince WoW's 5 million+ players to give a rat's ass.
-Eric
Re:Game engine (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there are the "You don't have permission to loot that corpse" bug, the numerous quests that are so buggy that nobody can complete them (Like the one in the dungeon in Terrokkar that if someone fails on the attempt it requires a server reset before it will ever work again) and so forth. These are probably scripting rather than engine bugs, but still.
WoW is remarkably polished for a game its size, but it's by no means bug free.
Re:Game engine (Score:3, Insightful)
Visually what has been compelling to me about WoW was not the special effects, but rather the artistry. They have beautiful, vibrant, imaginative, and colorful landscapes, buildings, characters, monsters, and spells. These things are not very well aided by the graphic engine (which generally keeps it to the basics), but are amazing nonetheless. As a result, the hardware needed to play it is less than other games which are less visually interesting, where they get hung up on bump maps and dynamic shadows, and other things which are nice only in a peripheral way, and don't really contribute that much to the enjoyability of the game itself. Kinda like a typical focused-primarily-on-cgi movie, which is beautiful but boring.
Re:Game engine (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW is just the same thing - take an established genre, and make the perfect game within it.