How to Create a Successful MMO by Jeff Strain (ArenaNet)

This article was very revealing of the real IQ of the Anet staff.

I found in it a reflection of my own arguments that I have been having with a guild member of mine.

Basically the game players are split several diffent way, but the majority(80% perhaps) never dig deep into the game. They play it 1-2hours every couple of days maybe only once a week even. They wont unlock every skill or aquire every rare weapon/armor/skin. They dont care about R7 weapons or max lvl titles.

I know people will argue about my numbers, and I did just pull that number out of my guild roster over the last 2 years so its not a perfect estimate.

But keep in mind that 20% of the 4million copies sold of GW is a very large number of people. Now take that 20% and split it equally between pvp and pve and you still have 100,000+ playing almost every day for more than 2hours.

Note* I played GW for a year before I ever visited or posted on Guru or any GW forum. I started in that 80% but have drifted to the 20% and I would bet most people on this forum are in that 20%.

A nice read. I have played two MMO's over the last few years, GW and DDO. GW is free, has a huge game content and huge new campaigns and uptade. There is always something to do in the game, and plenty of different enjoyable ways to play.

DDO requires a subsription. For a game that takes less then a few days to beat. That takes one or two weeks to complete all the quests, and has very small updates which happed in spaces of several months. E.g. the game has now been out for maybe a couple of years, initially you could reach level 10, currently you can only reach level 14, which for a D+D based game is clearly showing a lack of expansion or improvement (Cant cast level 9 spells after 2 years of the game games release WTF?)

DDO was a fun game, but it was not in any way worth the subscription. I played my 14 day free trail, then the 30 days free that came with the game and that was it. I only bought it as a hardcord D+D fan, and was disapointed (Even more disapointing that theres only a few hundred players playing at any one time).

I were going to try WoW, but it was a case of WoW or GW when I bought my first MMO. GW was free to play, which is what made me pick it over WoW.

OFC I'm still angry at the inability to use 7 heroes in GW, but I have my hopes that Anet will change their mind on that at some point.

Article changes none of my views on ANET what so ever. There model is get you to buy the game, then current content is meaningless, only what the new stuff will be.

There is a reason Burning Crusade sold more copies in a month than GW did since it started. He fails to see that, and over estimates the influence and sales strength of Guild Wars itself.

Also Guild Wars has very few of the concepts he feels a great MMO should have, and downright failed in other areas.

But he also mentions that too... Remember, one thing that WoW and especially Burning Crusade had going for it that Guild Wars didn't and thats an aggressive Marketting campaign in new territories and thats why WoW has been so successful in previously bad for MMO sales areas like Western EU and North America

My 10 thousand shares in Pong Online didnt pan out... go figure

Also, the Warcraft franchise has been around for ~15 years. Blizzard was able to draw on the large fanbase of its RTS games.

This article was a very interesting read. Although some of Strain's claims do not correspond entirely to reality, I am impressed by his arguments. The heads at ArenaNet are much wiser than many people on these forums seem to think.

Great article. Too bad they don't implement much of their own advice.

Very interesting concept Strain puts in his article about "two player" groups. Sounds like that may be the true reason for the 3 hero limit - to encourage dualing PvE areas.

I personally haven't seen much dualing before, but then again, that may be the true path for those players whose guilds are dwindling with the gradual deterioration of the GW population.

Well, yeah, they've founded a company grossing an odd 150 million dollars in 2 years based on a new and untried business model with a new franchise from scratch.

Doesnt mean that Strain is 100% right nor does the fact that WoW is more succesful invalidate anything he's said but it does mean that the GW model can work and work well.
Whether it has stamina and longevity, well, GW2 will have to prove that, I certainly hope so.

Strain wins at MMO.

Strain fails at RPG.


GW needs more plot + environment / less dungeon-crawl!

It's not fair to compare Blizzard's success with Arena.net's success. Not even close. Blizzard has been at the point where they could put a turd in a box, slap their logo on it, and sell millions of copies.

They are established, they have insane financial backing and a huge fanbase built over many years. A.net is still very young and finding their place.

However, unlike ArenaNet, Blizzard are actually on their own...

NCSoft throws a lot of money at Arenanet for the work they do, especially as NCSoft considers Guild Wars their number 1 franchise in the EU and North American territories

Maybe, maybe not

considering the massive numbers of writers, designers and script writers for the game, the RPG element really comes down to them, especially as RPG is all about the story and the players interaction with that story... And too be fair, most MMO's I've played, including WoW, have little to no noticeable storyline to follow that i could find, and I'm finding this especially noticeable in WoW at the moment (having just started a few weeks ago) after deciding to play for my guild and actually being a Warcraft Lore fan, I'm not seeing any storyline to follow, just quests...

Well, blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal.

Rant:

B.C. is fail, major fail. Instantly dismissing a year + of work for many of players and adding a ton of new fedex quests (around 9 quests involve killing 30 animals for each quest in just one area for an example).
Rep grinds simply to get into the dungeons in order to get better gear so you can get into other dungeons that require more rep grind. If you don't want to raid the only other endgame thing to do is battlegrounds, which, if you don't have the gear you get instantly bowled over by those people that have the gear. Also alot of the endgame gear is reskins of past endgame gear, and its not so much reskins as it is simple recoloring .
The part of Blizzard that works on WoW is going downhill fast. WoW could be so much better but its not, its an updated RS and thats about it.

/end rant

Back on track, that article was a really interesting read and quite informative, didn't realize so many people worked on one game or that it required that much money/time to start up.

I'm curious as to what he thinks that the "Big Two" Franchises are.

Obviously Star Wars Galaxies is one. But what's the other? I think Lord of the Rings is doing fine, so was he referring to The Matrix Onine, or Dungeons and Dragons Online? Or is he just taking a potshot at Lord of the Rings Online here.

I constantly find myself wishing that people were better at games, so devs didn't have to make a decision between working for the hardcore player or the casual player. It's pretty obvious to all involved at this point in the game that casual is where the money is (see: Nintendo Wii). Unfortunately, down that path lies easy, shallow games.

"...The heads at ArenaNet are much wiser than many people on these forums seem to think...." someone said 100% ok with you & thats why I like GW....and I will like GW² + GW3 + GW4. And your children will inherite the characters you created. Maybe those children will then transmit YOUR 2005 character....& so on....

And read Jeff strain, they do play GW at Anet and for sure they are not bad players

"..I'll end by paraphrasing the famous Japanese game designer, Masaya Matsuura: Go forth, and do weird and difficult things!..."

I'm sorry? Blizzard is 100% owned by Vivendi Games and a full subsidary, just like Anet is of NCSoft, its profits are on the books with Vivendi Gaming, Vivendi also bankrolled the development of WoW.
Vivendi, like NCSoft, gives full creative freedom to Blizzard but Blizzard is not an independent company.

I hope your wrong. lol. You seem very right. I been playing video games for ever and i play games that require skill.

Also Jeff Strain needed to added some more info about not rushing your product out. I think GWEN needed to be sent back for another couple of months. I also think that the next successful MMO will probaly have in game advertising somewhere. You go to the character select screen and see Pepsi. MMO's are getting to be now a standard type of game on the market. Its only time before in game advertising starts.