GGL Wire

Continued from Part 1.

Vanguard sticks out as one of the biggest failures in MMORPG history. The game was praised as the hardcore player’s wet dream; promising as it was, the publisher made a crucial mistake by releasing the game before it was finished. The coding was largely incomplete, and the game required extensive polishing.

Without proper coding or optimization, the players who played Vanguard felt they had been sold an unfinished product. This lead many players to cancel their subscriptions and move on to another game. Furthermore,the developers were forced to spend their time fixing coding issues after the game was released.

Players left the game in droves, and Vanguard would become just another failed MMO.

Hellgate: London had many of the same problems. Many players had the feeling that the game was unfinished when released and the developers should have been given more time. Even now, Hellgate: London players feel that the developers are still working to finish their game.

Auran’s Fury suffered from the same issues. Fury billed itself as the ultimate alternative to other MMO’s. Featuring no player versus environment content, Fury stood apart from every other MMO on the market–or so it seemed. After hiring an excellent community relations team to interact with the players and report back the communities desires, Fury’s developers released an astounding build that made drastic improvements to the title, fixing many of the problems that turned players away from the game.

Then, suddenly, the developers released a patch that moved away from everything they had been building toward. The game immediately changed from a grind-free MMO to a game dominated by the items a player possessed.Soon after, Auran filed bankruptcy and players fled from Fury as though it was a plague.

The lesson is invaluable: When determining what the community wants, a good community relations team can be the difference between “making it” and being forced to lay off hundreds of staffers.

Relaying the thoughts and feelings of the players to developers, who may not have enough time to interact with the players themselves, is an important job that not everyone can do. When a breakdown in communication forms between players and developers, game changes will not represent the interest of the community. And MMORPG games are nothing without their communities.

Poor game changes and skill balances can cause the player base to lose interest in an MMO or leave the game altogether. This will usually result in an exodus of the player base. Guild Wars was celebrated for having fun and engaging player versus player content. Over time, however, poor balancing lead many players to wonder if the developers were even listening to them.

A player versus player community relations manager was added two years into the game’s existence, but he failed to bring the level of interaction necessary to get the job done. When plans for a third world championship were announced, the top tier teams left the game and the competition in Guild Wars would never be on the same level again. Had the developers listened to their player base, Guild Wars could have retained many of its players.

When a WoW killer costs an estimated one billion dollars in development, will we ever see another massive MMORPG? Can a game sustain its player base forever?

The history of MMOs says no, but the developers behind World of Warcraft have studied the deaths of other MMOs and taken steps to avoid many of the problems that brought down other MMOs. How can WoW die? Will the game alienate its player base, or will another game steal its players?

I’ll leave you with a quote from my favorite community relations manager, Dan Gray, who worked on Fury:

The management’s lack of experience with MMOs of this type was the main contributing factor of Fury’s downfall, along with poor engine choice and general incompetence. Fury had potential but lacked the development team to execute it, that’s about as straight up as it gets. The team had a few very strong members, but they were pulled down by the rest. Sadly, the biggest issues were in management, where it is most damaging. As far as I am concerned, it was fantastic experience, and has benefited me greatly. Probably more so than working on a game that was successful and had a minimal number of issues. I’ll definitely be staying away from smaller companies in future, particularly ones who hire a chemical engineer to direct the creative vision of the project…