This well known saying is true for many situations, but it is especially true (in most cases) for people who make or run MMOs. Sadly, this doesn’t stop developers from frequently tinkering with aspects of their game that people already like the way it is. This kind of nervous, pointless, busy-body meddling is rarely a good thing. Some developers should be forced to take a dose of ritalin before they sit down to work in hopes of preventing this sort of misbehavior.

So why exactly is this kind of tinkering a bad thing? Before I list some reasons, let me define “tinkering” for the sake of this post. Tinkering is when a developer makes minor or major changes to a system, zone, ability, class or other content that is already well liked, popular, balanced, and functioning properly. So, why is tinkering bad?

1) It is not an efficient use of developer resources. Whatever feature you are working on is already in the game and (presumably) functional. If you want to do something, make something new!

2) It risks upsetting the delicate game balance. If the feature is already balanced as is, any change you make adds the possibility of it becoming unbalanced. The cosmetic or “fun” change you think you are making could very well combine with 4 other pieces of content to make something worthless or overpowered. Balance is an extremely fragile thing in an online game. Don’t poke it with a stick just for the heck of it.

3) It risks the introduction of bugs. Whenever you mess with code there is the possibility of introducing bugs. If you have content that works well, is already enjoyed, and is bug free, leave it alone! The odds of introducing a bug are not insignificant.

4) Players already enjoy the content. LEAVE IT ALONE. This is the most important of all the reasons to avoid tinkering. The ultimate goal of all game design is to make things that are fun. If you have already achieved this goal, you’re done. You won! Pat yourself on the back and move on to the next challenge. If players are having fun, don’t risk that by messing around with it.

A corollary to this is the redesign of a feature because a certain group of people argue they would like it better if it was different. Or even worse, the belief that if you make a change to a system you will be able to attract a lot of new users. Don’t listen to this! It is extremely unfair to your existing customers to take something they like and change it in hopes of attracting different customers. Your existing customers are the ones that have supported your game. They have paid your salary. They have recouped your investment.

CAVEAT: Occasionally a developer successfully tinkers with some content and makes it universally better. This is marvellous when it happens. But it is rare compared to the many ways it can go wrong.

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Most MMO fans have seen developers ignore this and ruin (or nearly ruin) their game. Two of those most clear examples are Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies. I will explain what happened very briefly.

Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) - The second expansion for DAoC was called Trials of Atlantis It was an ambitious project that added an enormous variety of features to the game. It made oceans and other bodies of water a major playing area. It added artifact items that leveled up and gained powers. It added a new path to advancement (master levels). Sounds great right? Well, the problem was to fully utilize and benefit from these features you had to join “raid groups” of 10-30 people to accomplish many (most) of the goals, and you often had to camp for rare spawns, wait in line for spawns, and a whole host of other things that were not compatible with the rest of DAoC’s design. Some of these things were features enjoyed in other games (like Everquest) but they had never been the types of things DAoC players enjoyed. They tinkered with their gameplay in the hopes of attracting a different type of player, and instead alienated their own playerbase… massively. Within a few months of the Shrouded Isles’ release, DAoC had lost approximately half their subscribers. They went from 300,000+ to around 150,000. Expansion packs are a major financial investment for MMO companies, and it is expected that they will grow the subscriber base by adding new players or at least luring back former players. Shrouded Isles did the complete opposite.

DAoC later rallied by doing something you don’t often see in the MMO world: they admitted their mistake. They opened “classic servers” that included all content except for Trials of Atlantis. From that point forward, their expansions were a “more of the same + some extra fun stuff” instead of trying to dramatically change the game play.

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Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) - I have never played SWG, so this explanation is from an outsiders point of view. At some point in the life cycle of the game, the developers decided they needed to reach out to the more casual player that either lost interest in SWG or never played it. They came up with something called the New Game Expeirence (NGE). What this represented, for the most part, was a massive dumbing down of the game. It became easy to make a jedi (something I think would have been wise to do from the start, but I digress). They removed most of the aiming from ranged weapons. They made changes to the crafting system that made it far more simplistic. As in the DAoC example, the goal of this was to attract new players. What was the result? They didn’t attract many new players and instead lost tons of their devoted players. Login to just about any MMO nowadays and say on a public channel “I love the NGE for SWG” and brace yourself for a torrent of hate.

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What is the lesson from both of these examples? Don’t tinker. More specifically, don’t focus so much on attracting new players or new interest that you forget what your players already like. As the saying goes, “dance with the one that brung ya.”

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