What do people want from an MMO?

If you’ve been following my work here at DevilsMMO, you’ve probably realized that I like to ask questions about the games I play. It’s my job to see gaming as more than a form of entertainment and analysing why certain games are successful and why others are less so is a big part of that....

I don’t think many people understand why so many quality games are overlooked while other games that have seemingly ripped off another game’s format entirely are hugely successful without adding anything to mix – I certainly wouldn’t even pretend to know.

In the past we’ve taken a look at why some MMO games fail, but what people seem to want from an MMO and what people actually play seem to be two different things. Take an example from that article, for instance, when we talked about APB. That was a game that received a lot of hype, people were extremely excited for it but, at launch, those people didn’t show. They liked the idea of something new but, at the same time, didn’t want to take a chance in case it sucked. In APB’s case, depending who you ask, that worry may have been justified.

This isn’t a problem that is directly linked to MMO games but gaming as a whole. As Modern Warfare 3 was becoming the biggest launch for a piece of entertainment ever, people took it upon themselves to go onto Metacritic and post endless complaints and 0 star reviews. There are now nearly 5000 negative reviews on Metacritic for Modern Warfare 3 despite the fact it is still receiving awards and garnering praise.

What do people usually complain about when it comes to Call of Duty? Without reading through all 5000 comments, I’m not going to try to act as an authority but it seems the major complaints seem to stem from a few issues: the game not being “original” enough and the graphics not having been changed. There are also people who complain about the maps either being too little or too big and people who claim it is difficult to find a game.

This isn’t just me ranting about the negative press that Call of Duty gets just because it is Call of Duty, although I do that sometimes. It’s an extreme indicator of something that some people seem to forget: the developers can never win. No matter what they do, no matter how they create their game, each decision they make will alienate further players. Everything from the plot to the design of characters in a game will be debated on for hours, made and remade, discussed and restarted.

From the blank slate (at which point there is the potential to hook every single person alive who has ever or will ever play an MMO) each decision lowers that user base potential. The developer decides to use an anime style to design their characters? Say goodbye to anybody that hates anime MMOs. You go for an orchestral score? Expect people who want to listen to nothing but rap uninterrupted to feel less warmly towards your game.

And so those great ideas that you read on the internet must be taken with a pinch of salt. Sure, it’d be awesome to find an MMO that has 6000 square miles of amazingness to explore, no repeated quest, no need to grind – those sorts of things cost time and money and, chances are, the small number of people who subscribe would never cover that cost. Everybody else would wait for it to go free to play.

So is that what people want from an MMO experience? An infinite handcrafted landscape in which they can do whatever they please while at the same time completing exciting new quests, all of this for free?
Some of you reading will see that and think it sounds awful. Infinite landscapes - no thank you.

Whatever I please – I only get a couple of hours to play a week. Original quests – if they’re all that great, they would have been done before. FREE TO PLAY?! Everybody knows you get what you pay for.

And in that paragraph we have the internet in a nutshell. To some of you the most obvious game ideas are the ones that appeal to you and haven’t been done yet but that applies to almost everybody. Everybody thinks they have a blockbuster game in their minds, like so many people think they have a great novel tucked away, but they don’t have the effort and, more importantly, the money to go ahead and actually do it.

So what do people actually want from an MMO? Star Wars: The Old Republic, apparently, if you’ve seen the figures for the beta. Over the Thanksgiving weekend nearly 750,000 unique players got onto the servers and spent an average of twelve hours per person over a three day holiday. Nine million hours were logged during that time and that’s for a limited beta. There were still people who wanted to play but couldn’t. This is going to be repeated in a few weeks’ time when only limited copies of the game are being shipped to retailers – EA want to be certain that the servers don’t crash and their way of handling that is to only let so many people buy and play the game.

But what does The Old Republic offer that other MMOs don’t? The Star Wars IP for a start. Let’s face it, it could be the Star Wars Dance Dance Revolution game and it would still get a lot of interest, especially if it came with awesome costumes. Add into that an experienced development team and EAs marketing team and you’re onto a winner before we even look at gameplay.

Before we even touch on what the game is in itself, The Old Republic is hooking Star Wars fans, Bioware fans (including the millions who found out about their games by playing Mass Effect), fans of some of EA’s titles and people who have had enough of World of Warcraft but don’t feel like spending hours looking for a decent alternative. That’s a lot of people with a potential stake in the game. And unlike Star Wars Galaxies, The Old Republic is going to fiercely market to these sorts of people.

So from that you’d think that what people want from their MMO is a world that they already have an interest in, an advertising campaign that they feel is either consciously or unconsciously targeted at them and a game from a development studio that they respect and recognise. In short: they don’t want to take a risk. If this one display of a game’s popularity is anything to go by, and it isn’t a definite indicator of anything, people like to play something that they already know they’re likely to enjoy. This would account for the millions of copies sold of Call of Duty – it’s a game they recognise by a competent developer (they kept the Infinity Ward name despite most of the studio leaving Activision).

Is this a good thing? Those people who raided Metacritic to post negative scores felt that it wasn’t a good thing. What they want is “innovation,” which I’m writing an article about that’ll be ready for the end of the week. What the mass public want and what the vocal minority want, however, is a completely different thing.

© 2011 - DevilsMMO.com