That headline is a grabber, isn’t it? I did not purchase Wrath of the Lich King so I have no practical knowledge regarding the current state of WoW raiding. I suspect it is not significantly different and still has the same problems that always annoyed me. I created this topic so those of you playing WotLK can educate me. I will start the discussion off by recapping a few things I hate(d) about WoW raiding, and the readers can tell me if WotLK is more of the same, or a major improvement.

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Who Reads Muckbeast?

By “you all”, I mean the few folks reading here regularly. I know I lost a lot of readers during October and November when I wrote maybe 1 or 2 articles tops. Sorry about that. Muckbeast gets about 150 unique hits per day, and I have no idea if that is utterly horrible or decent considering how new it is and how specialized it is. Regardless, I really appreciate those of you who read and especially those of you who comment. I find your feedback (mostly as players) very, very valuable in my own game design.

Tell Me Some of Your Preferences

I will fire off a few questions in rapid fire format:

1) What do you think of the new site theme? I think it is a lot more readable, even though it now lacks a fancy graphic at the top. It is wider, and the content is in the middle rather than left justified.

2) CAPTCHA: I hate that I had to enable this for the comments, but we were getting tons of spam. I’m considering turning it off again soon to see what happens. How much of a pain is it when entering comments to have to use the captcha field thing.

3) The “READ MORE” prompt. This is a tough one. I have heard that RSS readers do not get the whole article if you have a “click here to keep reading” link. I use it on longer articles so the front page of the blog is a little more readable (so you can see more topics on the front). I also wonder if it is a good idea to encourage people to actually come to the site and click on internal pages in order to keep my host happy (maybe he gets more ad hits that way, I don’t know). I don’t get paid anything for the ads here, but I do get paid by Today.com to write posts so I try to be sensitive to their needs.

4) Rate of Topics: Is averaging 1 per day enough to make you enjoy reading the blog? Is more topics too much? So far, we don’t have much discussion, so it is hard to tell if more topics would generate more discussion or if it might make it harder to discuss a topic.

5) Suggestions for improvement?

Are You Out There?

If you read this blog, please take a moment to at least reply to this post with a quick “I’m here!” I would like to know who is reading so I have some idea who my audience is. If you want to include any additional information about yourself in the response, feel free.

Thanks for reading!

Achivements are the new hot feature in MMOs. I’m not sure who had them first, or who does them best, but there is no doubt they are popular as heck. In every game that has them, people seem to really get into collecting them. Even when there is no in-game benefit, just piling them on seems to be really popular.

For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, here is basically how Achivements systems work. There is some system in game that tracks the achivements - either a list of badges (like City of Heroes), a journal (like Warhammer Online), or just an achivement interface (WoW). There are generally categories (quest related, kill related, exploration related, etc.). Whenever you kill X number of a certain mob, or find a specific location, or meet a specific NPC, or perform a task a certain number of times, you get an Achivement unlock. Unlocking achivements can even trigger additional achivements (”You’ve unlocked 100 Achivements!”). These build up over time, and generally provide you with things like fluff titles or perhaps access to specific gear vendors or powers. The tangible benefits are nice, but do not appear to be completely necessary. People will hunt them down even if there are no specific rewards.

MMO Achivement Systems: What I Think.

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MMOs are all about community and playing with (or around) other players. This means population management is vitally important. If the game is too crowded, because get sick of not being able to do things. If the game is too empty, the game is no fun because they cannot find people to play with, group with, team with, or compete against. This is an extremely delicate balancing act. This was hard enough in the old days of MUDs when everyone played on the same server. Then, the only thing you had to worry about was spreading people too thin around the world. But now, with the exception of a small handful of games, all MMOs have tons of servers. Companies that run multi-server (or multi-shard) MMOs have that issue to deal with on top of the matter of figuring out ways to keep players geographically close to each other inside the game.

Geographical Population

This is the type of population problem MUDs and one-shared MMOs deal with. They need to make sure the do not design their game universe in a manner that spreads people out too much. On Threshold, I accomplished this by only having ONE major city with shopkeepers, training halls, and a tavern. As a result, everyone naturally concentrated in a single place between adventures. It was not until the game had grown significantly that I added another major city with shops and taverns.

Server Population

This is a new problem that modern, large MMOs have to deal with. This is a particularly serious problem because most graphical MMOs these days waste so much of their content. The overwhelming majority of their world is total throw away. People blaze through entire zones in an hour or two and will never visit it again. With content being consumed so fast, it needs to be readily available to a lot of people. Thus, a server cannot support more than a few hundred players (or a few thousand tops) all playing at the same time.

This is a particularly serious issue for PvP related games. If you do not have other players to fight against, this entire type of content is rendered moot. This is one of the issues Warhammer Online is currently struggling with. They released with too many servers, they are drastically in need of consolidation, but they don’t do it because they are too afraid of the PR hit from server merger. In the meantime, their players (and subscriptions) suffer.

Your Experiences with Popluation Issues

So as I so like to do, I leave you players (and devs) reading this with a question. What type of population issues have you experienced in games? What have the developers done to solve the problems, and were they successful?

It has become standard fare for MMOs to have some kind of special event around holiday time. Most have something at Christmas and all other major holidays, but some will run special events even for minor stuff (including Hallmark Day… oops, I mean Valentine’s Day.) The current trend is to create some kind of faux-In Character name for the event (All Hallows Eve, Feast of Winter Veil, Keg End, etc.) that dimly creates a lore reason for the event. This is often a very weak excuse, since in-game time rarely relates to real life time.

Before you assume I am down on the idea, I think these events are good and interesting things. I think they are an example of developers giving something fun to their community, and they create a bit of an emotional connection from the game world to the real world. When you are celebrating something special in real life you are also celebrating something special in the game. If anything, the only negative thing I have to say about the idea is the fact that all too often this is the ONLY type of special event developers run. That’s a shame. Events directly related to the game world itself are far more interesting and should be a bigger priority.

What Do Players Think About Holiday MMO Events?

As players (or visiting developers), what do you think about these holiday events? I will get you started with a few specific questions:

1) Are these kinds of events fun?

2) Are they worth the time developers put into them?

3) Do you have a problem with developers trotting out the same event each year, or mostly the same with a few things added?

4) Do events like this break immersion, add to it, or neither?

Feel free to also share examples of good or bad holiday MMO events you have experienced.

Merry Christmas!

If you follow MMOs, you will frequently read complaints that the majority of MMOs are fantasy based. There are many reasons for this, the largest being the simple fact that gamers just like the setting. The historical connection to Dungeons and Dragons also cannot be ignored.

The MMO industry is definitely very healthy right now - even beyond the huge success of World of Warcraft. Both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online surpassed 800,000 subscribers within the first month of their release. This is pretty amazing when you consider it was just a few years ago that 100,000 subscribers was the number that defined an MMO as a “hit.”

But those games were both fantasy. On the flip side, Tabula Rasa recently announced that it will close its servers in February of 2009. The epic fail of Star Wars: Galaxies is widely known. After all, SWG was supposed to be the game of WoW-like proportions that dominated the MMO market. City of Heroes is hanging on to a thread at about 120,000 subscribers - down from a peak of near 200,000 when the City of Villains expansion came out.

And what do we have over the horizon? Darkfall is scheduled for release in early 2009, but it is a smaller budget game and fantasy. Primordiax is scheduled for release in 2009, but it is also fantasy and is made by a small developer (full disclosure: that small developer would be my company, Frogdice). There are two possible super hero games for 2009 - Champions Online and Marvel Universe Online. Bioware announced their Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO, but I would be shocked if that game comes out before 2010. And even if it does, the Star Wars genre is only borderline sci-fi. With the force, jedi, light sabers, rancors, and fantasy elements, Star Wars is at best a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid.

So a few questions for you all:

1. Are we going to see a non-fantasy MMO that can break the new “big market success” barrier of 500,000 subscribers?
2. If so, which one do you think it will be?
3. If not, why not?
4. What will be required for a non-fantasy MMO to attain fantasy-MMO type success?

Follow Your Nerf Assiduously After the Fact

After nerfing something, a developer has a duty and a responsibility to its customers to keep a close eye on the effects of that nerf. Simply releasing the nerf into the wild and just leaving players do deal with the aftershock is irresponsible and downright cruel. Your players are going to be somewhere between mildly annoyed and absolutely miserable as a result of the nerf. You owe it to them to watch it closely and find out if the nerf went father than you expected or intended.

All too often, developers just assume they can count on players to raise a huge stink if the nerf went to far. A sloppy, lazy attitude all too common in developers is that they only need to use their tracking metrics to find things that are too good and too powerful, since players will be far more honest about reporting things that are weak. While it is true that players are more likely to report things that are weak, relying on this depends on your staff having a really good ability to sort through the din of forum posts and other feedback methods. Good luck with that.

If You Need to Nerf Again, Consider Undoing the First Nerf

Everyone has seen this happen countless times. Some class or ability in a game is too powerful, it gets nerfed, it continues to be too powerful, and it gets nerfed again (or perhaps again, and again, and again). Eventually, one of (or some of) these nerfs actually does the trick and results in the ability no longer being overpowered. At this point, all previous nerfs should be reviewed as potentially being unnecessary. Sometimes it is hard to properly diagnose why something is too powerful. Perhaps the ability is getting used in surprising ways, or perhaps when seems like the problem at first is not the real problem. That is fine. There is no shame in admitting that. But do not compound the problem by lazily or stubbornly refusing to re-examine and possibly undoing previous nerfs.

Example: 

A certain power seems too strong. In round 1, the damage gets nerfed. In round 2, the cooldown is increased. In round 3, the “real problem” is discovered, that the damage from this power is being delivered untyped, or unresistable, or resistances simply are not working against it. Round 3 successfully makes the power reasonable. The developer should now go back and consider undoing nerf #1 and nerf #2 now that the real problem has been found.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 1)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 2)

Soften the Blow

It surprises me how few MMO developers make any effort to soften the blow of a nerf. Didn’t any of these people watch Mary Poppins? “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine, go down.”   No matter how reasonable or needed a nerf is, the players negative affected by it are going to be unhappy. Even if they agree with the developers about the nerf, there is simply no way to be pleased when your character, realm, race, or class is weaker one day than it was the day before.

How NOT to Soften the Blow

Fixing a couple negative bugs for someone is not a way to soften the blow. Sure, it is nice, but players EXPECT developers to fix bugs. You are rarely going to get much gratitude from players as a result of bug fixing, and it certainly won’t make up for nerfs.

Give Them Something Useful

The most direct way to soften the blow is to give them something else that is useful. Perhaps this is an ability or feature you had been planning to give this group of people for a while, and now is a great time to release it. This gets back to my previous point about not rushing nerfs - if you hold off the nerf until you have some new content to give at the same time, you might be able to completely eliminate unhappy feelings from the nerf portion.

Give Them Something Fun

Game balance or your development cycle might make it impossible to give them something useful. In that case, figure out a way to give them something fun. Either come up with your own ideas, or comb your player feedback systems (forums, email, whatever) for some fun or pure fluff suggestions. Sometimes purely fun things mean more to players than actually “useful” things.

 No Matter What You Decide, at Least Try Something

Whatever you decide to go with, make sure you at least do something. Show some effort. Show the players you TRIED to soften the blow. Show them you care about their feelings and reactions to a nerf. Do not make them believe you could care less what they think, and that you heartlessly nerfed them out of some kind of sick joy. When players believe the developers are actually looking out for their interests, and trying to maintain a fun environment, they will forgive a lot of necessary nerfs or balance tweaks.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 1)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 3)

I finally had to change the theme. The old one handled white space (empty blank lines, to help set off paragraphs) poorly, and it did not give enough room to the middle content column. I have less options for actual look now (and no custom header), but that is life. I think the site is more readable now in general which is better.

Also, you will see a lot more posts from me this month. So please check back often and post your thoughts!

Finally, I had to enable captcha for a bit because the spammers were totally out of control. I hope that is a temporary measure. Thank you for your patience. I know it makes posting a little more annoying.

What is a nerf? In most of the world, it is a soft, spongy toy like the eponymous Nerf Football. In the world of gaming, a nerf is a reduction in power, utility, or usefulness of a character class, race, realm, zone, item, etc. Nerfs are very controversial because people do not enjoy being nerfed. Unsurprisingly, people often enjoy seeing OTHER PEOPLE get nerfed… especially in PvP or conflict oriented games.

Generally, players think anything of theirs is fine, and many things of their opponent’s is too powerful. Anything of their opponent’s that is weak, is “fine”, and if such people ask to be improved they are told to “learn to play.” This is expressed succinctly and cleverly by the following axiom:

“Hi. This is rock. Nerf paper. Scissors is fine.”

The sad, unfortunate reality is that nerfs occasionally must happen. The problem is, most developers handle this situation very poorly. They do not think things through, they rush the job, and they take no steps to soften the blow. In this article, I will discuss how developers nerf without thinking things through.

Think Before You Nerf… Then Think Some More

Developers need to understand that whenever you nerf something, the ripple effect is going to be huge. Actually, I should call it a tsunami effect. Everyone affected is going to be angry, and some of the people unaffected will also be angry because they might feel you didn’t nerf enough.

Anytime you are considering a nerf, you need to make sure you analyze the ever-lovin’ heck out of the situation. You need to constantly ask yourself “What EXACTLY is the problem with this class/item/etc. What EXACTLY is making it too powerful?” The answer is very often not the most obvious thing. An overpowered DPS class may not be overpowered because it does too much damage. It might be overpowered because the damage is of a type that is not resisted or defended against (solution: give players a way/choice to defend against it). It might be overpowered because that class has too many escape or utility powers, which make the class unstoppable combined with its damage. It might be overpowered because whatever negatives you have given the class are too easily overcome or remedied.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to PROPERLY DIAGNOSE THE PROBLEM. If you rush into the nerf, you are very likely to misdiagnose.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 2)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 3)