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 Editorial: A Player's Rant
Koranis is a long standing member of the Massive Multi-Player Gaming Community, who has just about played every major release to date. However, in the ever increasing market and hype, games are not living up to the player's expecations. Our expectaions as paying players. Growing quite unhappy with the way the market is spinning into a downward spiral and fearings that in five years, we will not be purchasing products that any of us will be satisfied with unless we as players do not take a stand, we eventually will only get an "Empty box and a blank CD. Let's take a look at history and where it's leading us. Note:The following is a reader submission. The views expressed may not necessarily be the same expressed by the GameRifts Team.
A few months later, I am on track to my first title, a good share of the way towards master swordsman, and enjoying the game immensely. I've joined a guild, have a prominent position as 'Head Tailor' (or something to that effect), and we all adventure together regularly. Then comes the first 'enhancement' in MMOG history. "We've made all the creatures one order of magnitude harder to ensure long-term playability for our customer base." You know that Liche that I killed just the day before, well, he's killing me now, and on top of that, he's camping my corpse. I think I went through five deaths attempting to get my things back. It seems that the developers hadn't thought to add any real content, go figure. Apparently, since I didn't use macro programs to advance my character, I was now one of the lower level players which Origin and the developers hadn't figured into their equations when they beefed up all the NPC's in the lands of Britania. Oh well, live and learn, right? Gotta keep up with the Jones' when playing online. Add to this the complete lack of foresight, we ended up with the tankmage syndrome. Where everyone was essentially the same. Perhaps a different suit of armor, or a different enchantment on their Viking Sword. There were a few people that endeavored to be original, and for that I salute them.
Shortly before my exit from Ultima Online, I'd heard of a new game coming out, that would supposedly knock UO off the top of it's little hill. One day, while milling around the internet, I decide to look up this "EverQuest." Lo and behold, my Salvation. No Player Vs. Player combat for macroing antisocial kiddies to rule, an incredible 3D world, and a first or third person perspective. I'm in love. I immerse myself into every aspect of EverQuest. I join an online guild a full year before EQ's release, and I've volunteered my limited writing skills to one of the myriad of EQ Fan News sites popping up. Well, after a few months, the guild has already disbanded, and I'm working full swing for the fan site. No pay mind you, but it's fun, and I truly enjoy writing about my new love, EverQuest. Being a member of the press, I manage to swing a press account for Beta. I do some adventuring, make some friends, and write stories about all of it for the website. I'm in 7th Heaven. Eventually, the website shuts down, and I'm back to being a civilian. But release is just weeks away, and I've managed a personal beta account for the final phase of testing..
But I struggle through, and come out of it feeling pretty good about Sony and Verant Interactive. A month later, I'm in a new guild of great people, all of whom I consider friends. I'm level 20-something, and all the world is perfect. Yet, not being a 'power gamer' I do not have the items or time necessary to advance much further. A flaw in the game design? Nope, it's Brad McQuaid's 'Vision'. I just can't seem to change my play style to fit into EverQuest's mid and high level game strategy. Oh well, take another break. I come back a while later, refreshed and ready for more. I quickly shoot up to level 40-something. On top of that I manage to make it to Gen-Con the year that Brad and the EQ bunch are there showing off 'The Ruins of Kunark'. Incredible new graphics, lots of new areas to explore, and a whole new adventure for me. Meeting Brad McQuaid in person was a real eye opener though. I swear the man wore blinders. Right in front of him he had people talking about how they had used exploits and bugs to advance their characters and skills. Yet it was these very same people he listened to the most as to what was wrong with the game. After a few more months, I've explored 90% of these new lands. Over all, there's nothing groundbreaking or exciting beyond the graphics. So I take another break, this time I don't return until 'The Scars of Velious' has been released. Once again, I join back up with my old guild, which by now has a new leader. Hey, times change. Unfortunately, so had the guild. EQ wasn't much fun for me anymore, so I quit for good finally, vowing to never return. And I haven't.
Just a few weeks later, I had found true redemption for the MMOG genre. "Dark Age of Camelot" was everything an MMOG should be, it had PvP and Non PvP. It had no lag, no real game breaking flaws from day 1. I was in heaven once more. Then I manage to find one of those unpopulated dungeons. Well, they had monsters, just no loot of any kind. I think to myself, "Well, at least the game runs. And it's only a few dungeons after all." My first and favorite character is an Elven Assassin. I'm good at what I do, and I look damn hot doing it too. Then comes the first 'Nerf' of DAOC. All stealth classes get hit. My effectiveness in the Realm Wars (pvp) is now gone. Moving on, I decide I like the Hunter class of Midgard. After playing him for a few months, soloing 99% of the time mind you, I realize that there just isn't much new content to the game. Sure, the dev team is working on stuff, but it's months away. I'm now 20 levels behind everyone else, and nearly useless thanks to even more nerfs. What is there to do after 100+ quests, and a few hundred thousand NPC's lay at your feet? I all but abandon the MMOG scene completely for what now seems years. I return to UO and DAOC, only to quit within a month. Too much has changed in both games for me to get back into the swing of things as a casual gamer. Now with 2 kids, a business, and a mortgage, there isn't time for the true dedication these types of games require. But I always keep an eye out for the next great game, since I'm a true gamer at heart.
A few months later, I find a game called "Shadowbane." Built from the ground up by an all new team of developers, it sounds like my last great hope for the genre. They're going to let us own not only buildings, but whole towns! A skill based system, where the guy with a rusty dagger and the right skills, both in game and real life brainpower, can take down the fellow with the nice equipment. Where do I sign? Oh, you want my firstborn? Ok, sure, no prob. I follow the game for 18 months, off and on. Past not 1, but 3 postponements of the promised release date. I manage to drag my cousin along with me to GenCon '02 to get a look at this new game, and to get him away from UO finally. I speak to people like Sam 'Meridian' Johnson, Chris 'Vosx' Mancil and a few others. I come out of Gen-Con thoroughly convinced that Shadowbane is the new messiah of online gaming. Then come the fateful release. The game is so buggy and imbalanced that it is all but impossible to play at times. Ranging from 'SB.Exe' errors making play seem more like work, to having only 5 or 10 race/class/discipline combinations being useful to a guild. Not to mention a complete lack of content, customer service, and care for their customers. The developers even had the gall to begin nerfing abilities and classes before fixing any of these game breaking bugs and imbalances!
Shadowbane has yet to recover from the ineptitude of it's original development and publishing teams. I hear that they've now got a whole new team of programmers in there, and many of these problems have indeed been fixed. But I'm not going to throw away good money after bad. I've learned my lesson. But wait, "Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided" is due out! Surely with George Lucas and Lucas Arts behind Sony, the game just has to be good, right? Riiight… Again, game stopping bugs, severe class and race imbalances, broken quests, and another inept team of developers run amuck. With a list of bugs a mile long, they go about changing the very nature of some classes. Something that should have been done during beta testing, if not even during it's alpha test. Some people will disagree with me here, which is natural. In all fairness, I will admit that the game is great eye candy. And the game world is by far the largest to date in any game, online or otherwise. With nine planets and moons to explore, each one taking at least an hour to traverse end to end, anyone that achieved an 'Explorer 100%' on the "Bartle's Test" would be very pleased.
This is only 1 example, of course. Other elite classes are essentially useless. The bio-engineer, meant to create new and better pets for creature handlers, has never had a use. Droid Engineers, thanks to the knee-jerk nerfing syndrome prevalent at SWG, are closing their shops at a faster rate than ever before. The list of problems in SWG could go on for pages, but that would be a waste of your time and mine. At the rate that SWG is alienating its customer base, I foresee the day when half of it's staff is laid off or transferred to other projects due to a lack of funding coming in. Right now, SWG's only hope is that Lucas Arts steps up and takes a much more active roll in the continued development of an otherwise failing game. So, we come to today. With no less than 5 MMOG's on the near horizon, do I have the faith to try yet again? Is there a development team out there with the brass balls to stick to their guns and release a finished product? Or are we doomed to always accept that purchasing the box automatically enters us into the final phase of beta testing? By definition, could we sue Sony Online Entertainment, Origin, and Funcom for back wages? In the 8+ years of MMO gaming experience I have acquired, the quality of workmanship going into these games has steadily decreased. It's a syndrome I see more and more of on game forums. People actually expect this kind of treatment by MMOG developers! They don't seem to expect to get a finished product for their money. Would you go to McDonalds and be happy with a Big Mac that didn't have any meat? What about buying a car without an engine, or passenger seats, or tires? All you're getting with MMOGs today is an empty shell. In some cases, these games never get fixed. In other cases, it can take six months to a year for the game to reach a 'finished' state. In no other business can you sell a half finished product and expect full payment. Or any payment for that matter.
At the current rate of decay, the purchase of an MMO game in 5 years will net you nothing more than a generic box with a two page manual and a blank CD inside. In fine print somewhere, you'll read a disclaimer that the game is still in development, some features will change, others will be removed, and you've just blown $75.00 on some really lousy toilet paper and a shiny Frisbee. Discuss: Only you can get game companies to fix this!
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