MMO Design: How not to Sunset a Game

[Part of my MMO Design folder.]

Massively recently drew my attention to Psychochild's blog post of "How to Sunset a Game", wherein he talks about the Business vs Player issues about such an undertaking. My only real experience with a game closing down on me is Wizardry Online, which has led to my utter hate of all things SOE / Daybreak. Sure I've had Ultima Online shards shut down on me too, but all the free ones we played on were with the express knowledge of "this is just some guy/gal running the server, quite likely in their basement, and it can (and will) end at any moment."

But Wizardry Online was run by a "big" company so I was a bit surprised when news of its demise was announced. Obviously the market for it is dying since even the Japan released is being shuttered. How SOE went about this though is really turd level scum. They pulled all support / event runners from the game, while continuing to have a cash shop selling in game items. In fact I think all focus (of the last guy on the project) went to the store, trying to milk players for whatever money they could, knowing full well said items would be useless soon.

How I would have gone about it? Make all those cash shop items free. The zones that are level locked? Open them up to all players! If that's too hard to do coding wise per area, then put an NPC who just hands out XP. Players would have been encouraged to have one last hurrah. As a bonus, since they actually run -other- MMOs, maybe give each player who registered from "x" date a bonus "thank you" package they can redeem in one of their other titles. You know, to encourage your customers to stick around?

Instead they treated the player base like dying lepers, basically ignoring their last, simple, requests while simultaneously trying to milk the remaining whales like desperate leeches. If that sounded wrong, that's because it is. I'm never playing another SOE / Daybreak run MMO again because of that experience, and strongly advise everyone else to keep away from this terrible company too.

Flatlining Heartbeat: Wizardry Online

[My second Blaugust post!]

I didn't quite make it on at the appointed hour but I did manage to login early. There were no large "goodbye" parties (on the Bareaux Bareaux Server anyway) that I saw. No special events, no GM spawning stuff for one final hurrah. Just a rather quiet global chat where one or two people were giving their final goodbyes to their peers who I think, with lack of anything else to do, were still camping the Loitering Armor to up whatever final score or level they were keeping track of.

Myself, I decided to see how far I could run into the Azarm Trial grounds, a level 50 zone that people avoided for good reason. I do mean run in the literal sense too as everything there could one shot me, and dying meant evading the many reapers wandering the halls. Not that it really mattered though. After coming back from the shops I was greeted with this.

And that was the end of Wizardry Online.

Blaugust Bonus: Much like MMO developers keep an eye on player numbers, I've been keeping a rough count of how my blogroll on the right there is going. As I said near the beginning of the Newbie Bloggers Initiative, I would be constantly culling any blogs that failed to at least put up one post every four weeks. Now before I add the other Blaugust participants I don't yet have, I just wanted to ask if this is too aggressive? Why do I ask? During the NBI I had around 145 links over there as I added everyone and then some. I also had to shrink the list to only show the latest 25 (by default) since it was quite ludicrous to scroll down. As of this post only 77 remain. Is there a lot of silence out there or am I just not waiting long enough to listen?

NBI: Talkback Mixed Bag 2014

While Doone seeds the proper topics I thought I'd try my hand at answering some the suggestions that weren't picked up, rolling most of them into this post! He did invite people to just go ahead and post about them anyway so I invite you all to do the same! :)

What pen-&-paper RPG (D&D and the like) deserves to be adapted into an MMORPG, why, and by which development house?

Vampire the Masquerade and the rest of its cousins, all rolled into one (or if that's too hard, just the Masquerade). I think it has the best chance to succeed over my other choices here (the others being Gamma World and Lovecraft based stuff) as there are enough fans and enough lore to work with in terms of plot, factions, abilities and the like there already. CCP Games had the same idea and tried this with World of Darkness but had to cancel development. I think I'd like to see Cryptic take a shot at it because I like their model (f2p), and that they'd probably have a foundry (mission creator), and because while they don't really have standout games the ones I've tried are rather enjoyable.

Will any MMORPG ever overtake WoW as the leader of the genre? If so, what game will it be, and why?

That's a pretty open ended question. "Ever" as in - till the end of time? Then yes. Something will definitely overtake WoW. The "Why" is easy: new technologies and new IPs will emerge. Will your great, great grandkids be playing WoW? Maybe. But more likely they'll be playing something else... WoW 2, or maybe Starcraft Online? I'm sticking to Blizzard themed IPs since they have  the best resources at the moment (funding and players) to make a game to rival WoW. It would be much harder for a small unknown company to oust them but hey... maybe an Attack on Titan MMO would bleed the WoW base enough to take over. Who knows?

What 'failed' video game deserves to be remade or brought back under new management?

Wizardry Online. SOE failed big time there, leading me and many other disgruntled Wizardry players to avoid any further SOE games. It should also be remade to be more violent, with a higher risk of character permadeath balanced off by slightly easier content. As it is you literally had to suicide your spirit against reapers if you wanted to lose your character or be extremely unlucky/unprepared in dice rolls. Even then, the "Soul" system that your characters shared meant that losing one guy didn't remove all your work anyway, just giving you a minor-moderate set back.

Click the image too see the consistency of SOE!

What game series would you like to see remade (updated graphics, but stays to the original story/gameplay) or rebooted (completely re-imagined with familiar bits)?

I'd like to see id-software's Doom series remade into an MMO. Maybe a survival MMO.

If the NBI formed a guild, would you join it? Where would you want the guild to play?

Unlikely, and if I did it would probably not as a regular member. A number of the NBI folk are people who are always sitting on the cutting edge games, new releases, betas and the like. Another bunch enjoy games that have a pay wall. I prefer sticking to free games that I can enjoy whenever I feel like. I'm also not sure how many of you are in my time zone to play with anyway! ;P

Is the 'holy trinity' really holy? (Coming from the removal of a healer in GW2)

I've spoken about this before but I don't mind repeating the important part: To me, the MMO Holy Trinity is a piece of shit. If you can't do everything yourself, you aren't much of a hero to begin with. I don't mind playing with other people or grouping to do content out of choice. It's when grouping becomes a necessity that I take issue, because it means the game is not letting my character evolve the way I want him to. Especially in games which tout "be whatever you want to be", or "the world depends on you" I generally lose interest when I realize it actually means "be what we catered for" and "the world depends on you... and all those other guys because individually you all just suck. Now check out this cool, unfair, boss whom you cannot solo!".

When you're deciding if you like a game or not, which aspect weighs the heaviest and why? 

Fun! That's a no brainer. There is no point in spending time doing things you don't like. If a game is fun right off the bat or I can see will be fun when I get better at it I'll stick with it. If it's just tedious or of a genre I dislike I'll leave it alone.

Question Time: How would you end an MMO?

Most of the time we read about how MMO's are going and what stuff they can do better. Well, what about shutting down? Alas that is a function that happens sooner or later to many of our online games. If you were in charge of one such game, an MMORPG in this instance, what would you do? Would you add more events or celebrations leading up to the final hour? Spawn enemies in safe zones as the time draws to an end? Unlock all the zones for people to visit (if your game has that sort of thing)?

Perhaps let loose a big blue demon to eat everyone?

Or would you simply switch off the box at the alloted time and think nothing more of it? I thought that this was the path SOE was going to take with its four sunset games, but, in Wizardry Online at least, thanks to player and GM cooperation they still manage to pull off some pretty cool events: another example of good user generated "content". I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, and how you would go about as a player and/or an owner of an MMO during its end days.