Creating Content for the Majority

Keen and Graev's recent blog, while stirring up some fond memories of DAOC, also reminded me of my annoyances with my current game EQ2, as well as previous MMO's.

As I mentioned before, EQ2 recently released epic quests for each class. Whenever someone obtains their epic, a message is broadcast to everyone with their name, guild, and a link to the weapon they've acquired. On our server, only one raid guild has been able to acquire these. It's getting to where I'm starting to get annoyed each time I have to see the message. I'm certain it's no exaggeration that 95% of the players will likely never acquire these. All this effort and time creating content for such a small player base. And for what purpose? To annoy the majority and appease the few? I'm starting to get that discouraged feeling I had in EQ1 all over again.

Which is why I had mentioned in Keen's post that DAOC was the most enjoyable PVE experience for me. We obtained epics with a group of three. And why is this such a bad thing in other MMO's? I had a blast doing these. No camping of mobs hoping the right one spawns after eight hours. Just a fun series of challenging dungeon crawls. None of this carrot on a stick nonsense. The carrot was finally obtainable.

Conquering keeps and such is a different matter. I understand the need for volumes of people when you're taking over territories. And even DAOC gathered large forces for taking down a dragon. But it was for the experience of doing it and not to benefit one single individual with some wonderful armor piece few will ever see. We all pay the same fee and all want nice stuff without having to sacrifice our families to acquire things.

DAOC had added raid content in the form of the ToA expansion, which gave a select few an advantage over everyone else. But when players left in droves, they did eventually implement classic servers which included everything but ToA, and these servers did really well. I think had EQ1 added pre-PoP servers a couple years back, they would have also been successful, but think it's a bit too late for that now.

Mythic created one of the few MMO's with the majority of its players in mind, and that is why I will be trying Warhammer.

When Monthly Fees Aren't Enough

Money, money, money..... Seems Turbine has been sending surveys to its customers asking how willing they would be to pay extra for the following:

Increased inventory storage
Increased bank storage
Increased housing storage
More character slots
Access to special items and loot
Character customization
Special events
Faster support
Dedicated server
Dedicated forums
Dedicated chat channels
Be advised sooner of downtimes

While I realize they are just putting feelers out to see what sort of reception they get, the fact that they are thinking this is really disappointing. It also has me wondering if LOTRO is not as successful as they had hoped. Likely, they're just seeing how far they can push it.

So let's see here:

Increased storage - LOTRO is already one of the stingiest games when it comes to storage. I had never played another MMO with such limited storage. Players had been complaining about this on the forums. So their solution is to charge more rather than add a feature?

More character slots - This one is not too bad I guess. Currently, if you have used up all your slots on your server, you can create additional characters on other servers. And considering there are only a few classes to pick from anyway, not sure many would utilize this service.

Access to special items and loot - This would cause me to leave immediately. Horrible idea. Someone needs a spanking.

Character customization - Character appearances are a bit lacking. Pay more to finally look better? More spankings.

Special Events - Everyone would like a chance to participate in community events. Depends on the type of events I suppose.

Faster support - All customers should receive the best service regardless.

Dedicated server, forums and chat - EQ1 tried it. Didn't work well. But sure. Let all the wealthys hang out together on a server.

Be advised sooner of downtimes - Not sure what purpose this serves and why you would pay for this. So you don't schedule your day off from work that day? So currently they really do know sooner of upcoming downtimes and just aren't telling?

This is all so disheartening to see. I hope this isn't indicative of the future of MMO's. At least for now I don't believe Mythic will be going this sort of route. As Mark Jacobs stated "What I'm not okay with are games that are designed to be nothing but quarter suckers in the online space." And I'm not okay with it either.