Moorgard makes some interesting observations in the linked post, which started as a response to this post on LotRO at Adele Caelia’s blog (reminder: which needs to be added to my blogroll).
It is true, MMOs are evaluated a bit differently than single player RPGs in terms of the purchasing decision: I do it myself. I started to try to evaluate “why”, and figured I’d post some of my ideas, and request some feedback. (I’d definitely suggest reading Moorgard’s post first, btw, otherwise a lot of the following might not make much sense…)
Pricing?
I started out with the simplistic issue of mere pricing. A triple-A single player game that has just hit the shelves will run $50 or so, and it’s about the same for a triple-A MMO. The MMO also comes with an additional monthly price tag, $10-15 per month, but includes significantly greater content than any single player game. The MMO is, by definition, multiplayer: most single player games also come with multiplayer options these days, but there are usually some pretty strict limits on the functionality available, either in terms of number of concurrent players, styles/modes of play available, and so on.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I lean against the concept that price is the issue here, at least in terms of the core “value assessment”. If an MMO provides you with even just 3-4 months of solid play time, it runs you about $100, approximately the same cost as the two single player games that would have presumably filled the same amount of time.
The “used” perspective
One concept that seems a little more possible to me is a perspective that seems best described by the word “used”. Unless you get into most MMOs very early on, nearly everything has been explored, mapped, timed, and plotted: the entire thing feels “used”.
Now, I’ve always found this to be an interesting nuance of thought, because it really isn’t all that different a situation in a single player game. Two months after Oblivion’s release, I’d imagine nearly every possible position and encounter in the game world had been explored and mapped by some player or another, walkthroughs of the entire storyline posted for all to see, etc. And yet, I had no compunction whatsoever recommending it to someone who was looking for a new game to play. An MMO title, on the other hand… under similar circumstances, I would have thought twice, and then wondered why.
The perspective of a “shared” setting is a potential drawback here, I think. It doesn’t matter that every single copy of Oblivion is identical, because my specific copy is mine, only impacted by me. In the realm of the MMO, a different set of expectations applies. I can tell myself that it doesn’t, it shouldn’t matter… but it does.
For example, I know for a fact that nothing I do is really going to change anyone else’s experience for more than a moment in most of these games. My slaying of the “Orc Chieftain terrorizing the village” is not going to prevent someone from having the same exact experience and achieving the same goal 5 minutes later: that is the way most of these games are designed. However, knowing it just doesn’t make that “used” feeling go away.
Being late
There is also the issue of effectively “coming late to the party”. Another reason that there is significant pressure to get into a game early or not at all is simply the fact that many of these games feel pretty deserted in the “low level zones” within 2-3 months of release. This recent post over at Virgin Worlds blog delves a bit (tangentially, at least) into just one aspect of that phenomenon.
Why spend extra for an MMO if there’s going to be almost no one to play it with? Even for the dedicated soloist, part of the draw of the MMO is the _prospect_, the promise of being able to group with others on occasion, to show off, to socialize, to conquer a specific challenge. If everyone else playing is half a virtual world away, fighting creatures that wouldn’t even notice trampling you to dust as they passed, why bother?
The opposing argument is, of course, that it really doesn’t take very long to get to those elevated levels in many games… to catch up, as it were… and then you can start grouping and all that. The question then becomes, but if I rush through all that to get to the point where I can group, haven’t I missed out on something like 75% of the content then?
Abandoning the children
Another possible factor for some, particularly those with prior experience, might be the attachment to their characters that some people feel.
“I’ve gotten my Xanthrax, my half-elf/half-kobold archmage, to the level cap, visited and conquered the fetid bowels of every major dungeon and stronghold in the game, hundreds of hours invested, his name renowned across the lands… and now I’m going to drop him like yesterday’s newspaper, and try this new game over here.”
Easy for some… not so easy for others.
Moving away from family and friends
Another factor mitigating against a more casual switching back and forth between MMOs as the original post proposed is the fact that just because you are ready to move on, it doesn’t mean your in-game friends and comrades will be. It’s a little like moving to a new town… sure, you’ll stay in touch and all that, but it’s not going to be the same.
As Moorgard points out, it’s easier than ever to stay connected to guildies and online friends, new tools come out weekly it seems. Still…
Continued…
So, what do you think? Other ideas? Am I way off-base, here?
6 comments
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July 12, 2007 at 9:12 am
adelecaelia
As I said when I replied in Moorgard’s post, the expectation for an MMO comes from us expecting to have a long attachment to it. We expect a huge portion of an MMO to be social and it is supposed to be since it is an MMO, and social attachments generally last a long time.
Also it does have a lot to do with the fact that like you said, when you aren’t playing everyone else still is.
July 12, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Aaron
I judge MMOs on pretty much the same scale as single-player games.
Even with single-player games, regardless of quality, I won’t buy a game unless I expect it to last me more than a few weeks. Mostly, I buy games that will last months (Oblivion, Battle for Middle Earth 2, Star Wars: Battlefront, etc). I have that expectation because (1) I’ve found games that last that long, and (2) games cost the same regardless of time. If I have a choice between something that will last 15 hours and something that will last 60+ hours, each costing $50, then of course I’ll perceive the shorter games with disgust!
I’ll buy an MMO if I’m sure it will last me that month, just like any other game. But after that first month, when the subscription fee kicks in, it has to match the worth of a $10-15 game (like a year-old game or something off of Xbox Live).
I’m sure it would be different with alternative pricing models, but I haven’t experienced a quality game like that yet (I haven’t tried many yet).
Quality matters, but I generally won’t buy even the highest quality games if they’re short. That’s why I skipped on Prey, after loving the demo, and that’s why I regretted buying Half-Life 2. Replayability or endless discovery (ala Diablo 2) is an essential characteristic for my purchases.
That’s interesting about MMOs feeling used. I had never thought about it that way before, but the analogy makes sense.
July 13, 2007 at 1:56 am
damianov
@Adele: Quite right. I was going to mention your point on initial expectations in my original post, but overlooked it in the press of other concerns: definitely another potential element in the decision-making process. Thank you for stopping by!
@Aaron: I find I’m more tolerant of single player games, in part because of potential replayability down the road. Just in the last 6 months or so, I’ve reloaded at one time or another: Knights and Merchants, Populous II, No One Lives Forever (blame Casino Royale for that one), and even spent an afternoon trying to get Ultima: Martian Dreams to run for old times sake… no luck.
Strangely, I rarely bother even considering an MMO in that context. Perhaps it’s just me, but there is something about the MMO that puts me off after the first 3-6 months. I still haven’t spent more than half-a-dozen hours in Burning Crusade: loaded it up, looked around, said “nice work”, and then went back to trying Vanguard, then LotRO, then Tales of Pirates, then…
Or maybe I just have some form of MMO ADD. Quite possible…
July 13, 2007 at 7:36 am
JuJutsu
Just a comment about being ‘late to the party’. One big decision point for me is whether or not my wife is interested in playing. If she is, then I’ve got a locked in duo and I don’t care if I start after everyone but the altoholics have long ago moved elsewhere.
July 13, 2007 at 8:21 am
Moorgard
Certainly the longer you play an MMO, the more economical its purchase becomes. Paying $50 up front and $15 for subsequent months is cheaper than $50 a month for new games.
A lot depends on the type of games you buy, of course. Straight single-player games have finite content, period. Unless you replay it in some slightly different way, once you’re done, you’re done. Games that offer some form of cooperative or match play (shooters, sports titles, etc.) have much more replayability because interacting with other players makes each experience slightly different.
This is one of the great things about MMOs. Even if you’re doing the same dungeon for the tenth time, the potential exists for something cool/fun/unique to happen because of the social element.
While WoW’s emphasis on soloing makes the game very accessible, it does diminish this social element which was so big in EQ. Then again, it’s not like WoW seems to have a lot of issues getting most people to replay it, so what the hell do I know.
July 16, 2007 at 5:48 am
damianov
LOL, given that you are currently designing for a living, I’m willing to give you a few points for greater insight than us “armchair designers” out in Greater Blogistan… (but only a few
)
On the social element: while I agree in general, there are relatively few games these days that _don’t_ have some form of network play. You’ve almost got to go to the realm of puzzle games, solitaire, and the like to find truly single player games at this point. Doesn’t that diminish, to some extent, the relative effect of the social element on the “value equation”, in relation to MMOs?