Bringing Purpose To Procrastination

ID:91311
 
Feb 11 2010, 8:32 pm (Edited on Feb 11 2010, 10:49 pm)
Keywords: design
In another lifetime, some 5 years ago, I wrote up an article for Grimwell.com that gave me my 5 minutes of fame. For a short window of time, everybody in the gaming world seemed to be talking about me.

Granted, I'm not too proud on the grounds that I was predicting the early demise of World of Warcraft...
Contrary to my predictions...
... and I turned out to be dead wrong about that.

The whole premise of my argument was that MMORPGs need to be more than fun, they need to have a deeper purpose within the context of the virtual world, otherwise they're vulnerable to being undermined by ordinary games. When World of Warcraft continued going strong, I spotted one problem right away: I did not account for how the later game switches back to EverQuest fundamentals.

Yesterday, an article on Escapist Magazine brought an interesting new fact to light. Apparently, according to a Blizzard CEO, only 30% of World of Warcraft trial players actually get above level 10. Maybe I was wrong to second-guess myself: it would seem that WoW really did have poor retention, after all, but it powered through regardless through sheer churn. [This is assuming that the trial accounts are the primary means of new players to enter the game now, and also that they took care to remove gold farmers from the count.]

Now, I find myself wondering about just how close I was to the truth 5 years ago when I created that World of Warcraft doom article. Could it be that MMORPGs really do need a compelling sense of "purpose" to set them apart from normal games? [In World of Warcraft's case, lack of this in the casual introduction would be turning players off before they reached the more traditional endgame.]
Popular Learning Curve Joke

Difficulty curves are oft the first thing developers blame. However, does the dumbing down of a game carry the cost of lost significance?

If this sense of purpose beyond the fun is needed for a MMORPG to be worth the subscription, what specific features bring it about?

Considering my recent experiences in Champions Online and Star Trek Online, and less recent experiences in Dungeons and Dragons Online or Guild Wars, it would seem that heavily instanced games are lacking in this aspect of "purpose." However, there's probably more to it than instancing alone.

I expect to be looking actively for an answer soon. Thus far, I've spent my excess of free time from dropping Calculus on Mass Effect 2 and BioShock 2. Now that I've finished them, it's unlikely I'll find as interesting of a game to play for a long time, and that means it's up to me to come up with my own.
Feb 11 2010, 8:49 pm
I'd have to say the title means only 30% of NEW World of Warcraft players actually get above level 10.

I've made it past level 10 alot, i know others who have. I think Blizzard is fucking with us
Feb 11 2010, 10:16 pm
"Currently, only about 30 percent of our trial players make it past this threshold. So anything we can do to improve the new player experience is a huge opportunity for us."

Ah! So as we can see, this is only for trial accounts that are making it past level 10.
Feb 11 2010, 10:38 pm
this is only for trial accounts

I saw that. I could see that going either way.

On one hand, trial players are most likely making up the vast majority of new players they get these days.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if they're counting gold farmers who have started trial accounts just to spam their services. If so, 30% would actually be really, really good.

Either way, it seems growth has (finally) stopped for the game. Been stalled for over a year, apparently:

"There are currently 11.5 million World of Warcraft subscribers, Morhaime said, the same number of users the game had in December 2008."
Feb 12 2010, 1:43 am
Feb 12 2010, 5:26 am
The thing that has kept WoW going, I think, is that Blizzard has an excellent track record of putting up new content to keep players interested. The world they've created is more immersive and real than in other games.

I think in WoW's case a big part of the purpose it creates is that many quests are basically impossible to do on your own--you need to find others to rely on, whose names are not Leroy Jenkins. Players form "guilds" and get to know one another. So people come for the game, and stay for the sense of community. It's really quite brilliant, in that WoW as a social network is more meaningful in some ways than Facebook. The need to work together as a team is a powerful force on the human psyche.

This is one of the things I always loved about the epic games of Lode Wars we used to play. When you had about 15 people on a server on any given Saturday night, you could really coordinate with your team members so one or two could focus on exploring and hauling, calling others to grab exposed ores when they were found, and others could coordinate on defense or raids. Working constructively with a team is a great experience.
Feb 12 2010, 6:40 am (Edited on Feb 12 2010, 6:51 am)
in that old post you linked, i found it hilarious to look at all the other people similarly predicting WoW's doom. in one example, "Sir Pimp" complained about the horrible service and said he would not play the game for more than a year [in '05]. ...his sig contains two of those forum sig character info images- of a level 80 paladin and a level 80 mage.

i find that priceless


oh, and those "Learning Curves of [some games]" charts are always brimming with extreme amounts of bias; people just edit the legend to make whatever game they're playing be the black one. even at the lower levels, WoW has a pretty high skill cap, and it only gets enormously higher in max level arenas when one's entire skillset is available and class synergy becomes a key component. WoW simply succeeds by also allowing "casuals" to play the game to its full extent, not forcing them to raise their skill dramatically to adapt to the rest of the game
Feb 12 2010, 10:31 am
I like the people hanging and nailed to crosses in the second graph.
Feb 12 2010, 4:55 pm
Side note... There have been few games that I went back and tried again to find that the experience actually got better. I've played WOW a couple times off and on over the years. This last time out has been an all new experience. Everything is so much easier. I don't feel like I'm grinding at all. I'm making swift progress and getting around in the world. I'm nearly 60 after a few weeks of casual play. I've done this mostly solo and I'm not part of any guilds yet. In fact, I haven't been invited to a guild once on the Lothar server.

I still can't get over the fact that fighting a level 4 monsters is essentially the same experience as a lvl 55 monster and people eat it up.
It's silly and amazing at the same time.

Although, things are getting a little more interesting with almost every monster having a spell now.

Being a warrior, I need a bumper sticker that says "I hate magic users". :)

ts