I noticed a piece of news about Ryzom and planned changes to the newbie experience and it triggered some thoughts:

The current “newbie land” system made of 4 separate islands, is completely changed and replaced by a unique island; and, the new players should also be able to find more help through new missions that will guide their first steps on Atys regarding the gameplay and the lore basics.

I don’t want specifically to discuss this game but just some general points. It is interesting because there’s a trend about consolidating the newbie zones and simplify a lot the offer in quests and content. For example it happened consistently in DAoC, with a progressive approach, and in the classic EQ with brand new “alienated” tutorial content that gets revised and redone from time to time. I say “alienated” in the sense that it’s like a different part of the game, like a “ship” that brings you later in the real game. A transition. The same approach was used in EQ2’s newbie island that is “somewhere else”. Almost a stand-alone game (“The trials of the Isle”).

The whole newbie experience is another crucial point in this genre because it brings up many problems, that get systematically ignored only to demand overhauls and redesigns later on. In fact I think Mythic hasn’t learnt from DAoC when planning Warhammer as I already commented about the introductory PvP model they have hinted.

Anyway, I can observe this general trend to restructure, consolidate and simplify the newbie content. This is probably the consequence of a “redistribution of the players” over time. Exactly what Raph explanied in this often-quoted chart (and that I commented specifically). The players behave like waves, moving uniformily toward the perimeter of the game, till they reach the dam and start to stagnate there (while the center exsiccates till it needs to be refreshed).

There are a few interesting concepts in there to consider, though. One is that I don’t think WoW will require a redesign anytime soon. What is different then? The fact that the game was planned and designed completely around the accessibility, something that noone else was able to reproduce well enough. WoW starts as a single-player game. The zone can be fairly crowded or deserted but the key element is that you are “emancipated” from the presence of other players. The game teaches itself, you follow along. There aren’t barriers to pass, you play it exactly as a single-player game, so if there aren’t other players the game doesn’t suffer. This isn’t only valid later on, but even during the off-peaks (that get always ignored in the design). So it’s a self-supporting part of the game and that is expected to work under much different conditions.

What have we learnt? I’ve written recently: the multiplayer part is a “natural drift”. The key point is that it is “spontaneous” instead of imposed. The idea of an connexion, a join. Or, as I defined it to go at the core design idea: a gateway. The single-player experience can be used as an efficient “gate” to bring the two parts together. To add the value of one, to the other. “Gated content” to make the impermeable barriers, permeable. To make the genre accessible.

Now there are a few other points to consider. One is how you can add new content to the early game. This is a common topic that gets frequently brought up. Recently I’ve seen Aggro Me writing about it. The content is always exclusively added at the endgame, following the linear progression model, opposed to a “systemic” approach. It’s a way to let the players surf the wave on the border and you have to regularly extend their space, adding “segments” through expansions and rising the level cap as a rarer measure. What about adding new content even for new players? It is not a simple consideration about the convenience (since there are more players at the endgame) but a risk. If you add new low-level content you risk to spread the players thin and fragment the playerbase too much. As we’ve seen in Raph’s chart, the noob to mid level content is almost always underutilized and frequently mudflated out of irrelevancy. It will be increasingly hard for the players to meet and enjoy the game together.

So are there ways to add new content for the low level players without damaging the game or change completely model? Of course there are. To begin with I consider stupid to erase and rebuild. You can work to reiterate the development, which would bring to very good results if it was actually done. Polish old content, refine the quests, update the monsters with new attacks and behaviours, loot, graphic, animations. Bring more life to what was too limited in scope. Then add more tie-ins, more connected plots, quests that link together and deepen certain paths. There is no need to stretch the content and fragment the players. There is no need to add ten more zones when the population clearly doesn’t support that choice. But you can bring new life to the old zones, not just reskinning a couple of mobs (Mythic has often this kind of superficial attitude), but with a more comprensive approach that delves in the content and makes it more interesting and complete. Something that could be positive not only for the new players who are presented with a better game, but also for the veteran players who may enjoy to reenact past experiences that were made more rich and would present interesting variations in the gameplay.

So it’s interesting work that could be done on both fronts: update and refresh the content already there and add new one that blends naturally with the rest. That completes it without dispersing. That is enriching instead of diluting. Instead of creating more and more and more space, you optimize, polish and reiterate.

The classic EQ has in the work another expansion that will be released later this year and that will have content supporting the whole level range, from level 1 to 75. I think it is a good idea but at the same time I cannot avoid to think what will be the role of the old content? Is this going to be the biggest mudflation event ever? If they plan for an autonomous expansion, particularly focused on the solo experience, they’ll finish to obliterate the old content, which is the exact opposite of what I proposed above: reiterate on what is already there instead of dispersing, fragmenting and diluting.

When you think to these problems you always finish to imagine some sort of adaptable server structure that can support dynamically the redistribution of the players along the lifecycle of the game. Guild Wars is the only game that specifically put these problems at the center of the design and the idea would work smoothly even to support the off-peaks. The players would be clustered depending on the need and the single servers would become multi-purpose instead of zone-specific, so that they would be actively used depending on the necessity. If the first day of release you have 99% of the players in the newbie zones, all the server would run newbie zones logic, when most of the players will be at the high levels, all the servers would run endgame zones logic, adapting dynamically and grouping the players to avoid both the desertification and the overcrowding.

Is that the best scenario? Not really, because abstracting the space means that the only persistence that is left is that of the players and not that of the environment. It would mean that there’s little to no active interaction, that the players only move on a static background and that the PvP is extremely limited. No consequences, no roles, no ownership, no management. No self-consistence.

Ultimately, from wherever I start to think about these problems and and possible solutions, I always land at the same conclusions. My tripartite model takes into consideration all these variables: the ease of accessibility through soloable content progression, a spontaneous drift toward the multiplayer without enforcing it, “gated content” to blend and interconnect PvP with PvE and a server structure that keeps the servers all balanced uniformly while solving the problem of the lack of persistence (just examined). The removal of the “levels” also helps a lot to close the circle while still retaining the role of the “cozy worlds”.

In particular my model follows what WoW does and then builds on it. For example at the end of WoW’s newbie zones there’s usually a quest that is more group-friendly. In the Dwarf/Gnome zone you have to go kill a named troll in a cave. It is common to find other players in there, sharing the same objective and group with them for a short moment (weak-ties) to complete that quest. It’s the first “multiplayer” step you do in the game, your preliminary grouping experience. But at the same time the quest is still soloable, if there aren’t other players around you can still carefully move through the cave and manage to kill the named troll. The group is a possibility that is naturally given (and spontaneously taken), but in absence of that possibility you can still move on.

This is the same approach that I follow (the second layer of the tripartite model) and that I extend to the whole game. All the content that is *mandatory* for your character progression is soloable, but at the same time adaptable up to four players. This makes it flexible, if you have more than four players you can split in two or more groups, noone is left out or put in front of a barrier. Noone is excluded. Parallel to this the content is then expanded to become truly group-oriented and requiring more than five players sticking together and collaborating (up to raids), but in this case the functional purpose of THIS content isn’t anymore tied to your own character progression but instead to a “world progression” and then “gated” toward the player vs player. So the design idea clusters the players from the single player up to large raids, it contemplates content for all these cases. With the key design goal to make the character progression always soloable and instead motivate the communal, group-oriented content through exclusively communal objectives (or “horizontal” personal character progression and personalization, like armor and weapons that aren’t stronger but with an unique look that defines a “status” without unbalancing the game).

The accessibility is there, the adaptable servers are there, the persistence is there.

Think to a twisted WoW’s model: the basic landmass where we have now the horde and alliance zones would become the open PvP field where the players and guilds conquer territories and raid cities and castles, a truly persistent environment. Ironforge and the other capitals would be detached from their location and become the “planes” in my model. Suspended and intermediating between that open PvP territory and the new PvE. “Hubs” where the players would gather and then begin their journey into the different PvE adventures (the dungeon instances). With the raids inheriting a different role. Instead of becoming the only way for your personal character progression, they would acquire only communal objectives that would finally affect the PvP world. Bringing to concrete consequences in the persistent world (evocating heroes and artifacts and triggering events).

Every time I reconsider those basic points I arrive at the conclusion that those solutions I’ve thought long ago are still enough satifying and innovative. I don’t know yours.

In the past I wrote that you can guess the quality of the design in a mmorpg from its LFG system and I still believe there is some truth in that claim. I always considered these tools as the real core of these games and I think they should be the starting point from where you design a new game. Not a feature that you consider later on, but the very first one around which the rest of the game is built.

One of the worst examples I remember is SWG and maybe it’s not a case. SWG had a very powerful searching tool so it wasn’t a feature missing, but it was absolutely useless. There was a complicated “match making” service with different parameters that you could set, you could even search for a specific blood type. But nothing that was functional to the game. Nothing that had a concrete use beside being a bloated feature designed out of context that became completely irrelevant and superfluous, leaving the game with a vacancy in the design. That system did everything *but* what was needed.

It was worst than WoW’s meeting stones, that at least had a nice implementation.

LFG systems have always been extremely important because they aren’t just UI features, but they are strictly connected with the fabric of the game, how you encourage grouping and community-building, how you plan the zones and the meeting places, how you segment the playerbase while not fragmenting it too much, how you draw in the new players and so on. Basically the LFG is a small, apparently secondary system that consequently leads everywhere and reaches the whole game. It’s like the tail of a ball of yarn. Pulling it you can easily undo the whole game. And, as it usually happens, the most important element is also systematically underestimated.

I mentioned the meeting stones in WoW, but it is wrong to consider the game as a bad example of a LFG system. The truth is that WoW has already a rather good implementation and overall design. The zones are planned to segment the playerbase into smaller “cozy worlds” (see my cue) and each of these zones has a public chat channel where all the players can easily socialize and organize something. The quest givers are always gathered in a friendly outpost that works as a mini-hub in the zone and from there you move out to different camp spots and POIs distributed around the zone. You can meet other players in the town/village, along the road or in one of those “camps” where other players and groups are already progressing in their quests. WoW, to this day, is the most social mmorpg out there.

Back when WoW was in beta I started to claim how WoW was the game where I grouped the most, with no effort and as the most natural thing. Other supposed “social-oriented” mmorpgs like UO or SWG were instead strongly problematic for me and I always had a very hard time to get involved. In SWG i NEVER grouped with anyone who wasn’t my friend out of the game, same in UO. And not because of a personal choice. To me this means just one thing, and it’s something I’ve repeated endlessly on this website: accessibility barriers.

WoW is considered as a game where you can easily solo. It is the most solo-friendly mmorpg I know. Before its release it was widely common to consider a solo-friendly mmorpg as one that wouldn’t last long. A proof of bad design. “Solo-friendly” meant that it would lack the community-building and without downtimes and mandatory grouping a game would have an awful subscription retention, so it was doomed to fail miserably. Today the “solo-friendly” is becoming one of the most important feature in a game. As you can see, things change. Paradigms shift.

Today we don’t say anymore that “socialization requires downtime”. Today we believe that the socialization is natural and you just need to design the game so that it can happen naturally. So that the game doesn’t get in the way, putting impassable barriers between the players. We learnt that the socialization isn’t something you enforce. The socialization is something you support.

Beside the zone-wide channels, WoW has also the capital cities and the linked LFG chat channels. In this case the functional role of these channels isn’t anymore about the “casual questing”, but it is more connected to the end-game, where you begin building a good group and, in a second moment, move out to a specific zone to enter a dungeon.

Generally speaking an LFG system and its efficiency depend on two qualities: reach and detail (personalization).

Taking again the case of WoW the linked LFG channels offer both. The “reach” is rather good since the capital cities are popular hubs where you can go when you want to join a group or when you are looking for people to get something done. Who isn’t in the capital cities is probably already busy with something. Sooner or later everyone passes there, if two players share the same objective, the capital city is the place where they can easily meet. The “detail/personalization” is also good. You aren’t limited to a codified UI (but the players have built their own code through keywords such as LFG or LF2M) and you can personalize your message as you like. You can add more detail as needed and manipulate the system the way you like.

This just to explain that the common claim “WoW doesn’t even have a real lfg system” holds no value: it doesn’t need one because the feature is satisfied through other, better means. The design has gone past the superficial level.

Where WoW lack is in a more active system. The LFG channels allow you to communicate only with who is already searching and reading on the fly, but you cannot hunt directly the players and ask them in an “active” way. The search system could be improved, it is already powerful enough, but it could use a better UI that could allow you to interact without going through a command line. The players have also complained about the lack of a searchable “LFG” flag (that was removed in beta for no apparent reason).

One of the most important features of a LFG system that is frequently overlooked is the possibility to search for groups already existing that still aren’t full and could use more players. This is what made DAoC one of the games with the best (and most used, till they broke the game with the instances) LFG system. In fact the very first game where I started to play with english players instead of other italian friends. It’s not rare that the players don’t really want to start new groups from scratch, but would still gladly join a group already working. It is essential for a LFG system to let the players not only flag themselves for a group, but also search for groups already active that still have spots available. This is the best way to encourage grouping. In other games when someone leaves the party usually crumbles to pieces, in DAoC, instead, it was common for a group to survive a constant churn and even build its own “queue” with other players waiting for a spot to open up in a successful group.

In this case EQ2 shares the same stupidity of SWG in the LFG system. It lets you flag yourself and search for other LFG players, but it doesn’t give you the possibility to search for other groups in the zone and let you ask if they have a spot for you. This is a *crucial* feature missing. Again back in beta WoW not only let you flag LFG, but the search system also included a flag, letting you know if the player was currently grouped or not.

It is fundamental for a LFG system to let you search specifically for groups already formed and active (both full or LFM).

That said, one of the games with the best search features that is never taken into consideration is FFXI. At the beginning its search system seems quite complicated, but after you understand how it works it becomes one of the most powerful and detailed I’ve seen. The western players don’t seem to use its functions, while the system appears much more popular among the japanese players.

This image shows the search menus and the window with the results. It needs some time to get used to since it follows the same mindset of the rest of the UI of the game and that many players tend to criticize. Instead of presenting an unified UI panel where you can specify the details and then launch your search, this is all nestled into multiple menus. Basically you launch the first general search and then can start to apply different “filters” one by one, narrowing down the results till you are satisfied. The customization available is what you can see from the menu. You can search for:
Area – Name – Job – Country (your character affiliated nation) – Race – Level – Rank (related to your nation and linked to a mission system) – Friend (players on your friend list) – Linkshell (players in your “guild chat”) – Ballista (players involved or waiting in FFXI PvP battleground) and Comment (more on this later)

The window with the results is extremely well designed and offers a lot of informations. From left to the right:
An icon indicating various “states”, in this image there’s just one that indicates that the players is “anon”. As you can see this flag doesn’t remove the players from the search functions but it just hides the relevant details, an implementation of the feature that other games should take as an example. This icon can also show if the players is flagged LFG and other things that I don’t know exactly. Then you have the class and subclass with the corresponding level, the race, another icon representing the affiliated nation with the number representing the rank the players has achieved in that nation, the name of the character with a colored dot on the left (I’ll explain the dot later, instead I don’t know what the color of the name stands for), “J” – “E” or “JE” (not shown in the image and indicating the language, english, japanese or both) and finally the zone where the character currently is.

The “Area” option in the search menu opens a submenu that I added in the image. You can search for the current zone, region or the whole server, then, at the bottom, you have the nearby regions listed (the number indicates the zones in that region) and by selecting them you can go to choose a specific zone within. The rest of the fields are rather self-explanatory, while the most interesting one is the “comment”. Even this one leads you to another sub-menu, which is the one I’ve added in the image. As you can see to each option corresponds a “colored dot” that is the same that you find next to the players names, if a name has a dot it means that the players has a custom comment associated with that “topic” and by selecting that name you’ll be able to read the full comment in your chat window.

These comments add the “customization” to the “reach” but also complete the feature by organizing the informations appropriately:

When you select/flag for a comment like “mission” or “quest” you don’t get just the standard list plus the comments, but this list also gets organized in different tabs (seek party/find members) so that you can see if the “LFG” player is alone or already grouped, fulfilling that important requirement that I pointed out above.

As you can see this is one of the most powerful and well designed search systems, unfortunately FFXI has other accessibility issues in other parts of the game that I’m not going to comment here.

My conclusion is that it is important to design carefully both parts. One is the overall structure of the game, where you try to segment the players and let them naturally come to play together, without imposing them the “socialization” as a requirement (and possibly loosening up the barriers like levels, classes, group composition, zone/server travel and so on). The other is offering powerful search functions with a wide reach and customization (and usability) that can help the players to search specifically for what they need and actively “disturbing” other players to propose them to do something together

Now I’ve already wrote a lot but there are other important topics I’ve still left out. One is the importance of “sharing objectives” so that the players can naturally help each other, socialize and feel part of something without suffering impositions that ultimately work as a “selection” of the players (those who have the support of their friends “can”, while the casual players are excluded with little hope of being helped. Aka: the barrier is impermeable or too hard to pass). The other is an idea that has been my pet peeve from a long time and that Loral somewhat evocated recently on Mobhunter (with which I sympathize, but that won’t possibly happen):

A cross-server grouping feature would help Everquest capitalize on the vast number of players across all servers. Players could go to a set location in Norrath, such as a new tavern in the rebuilt Plane of Knowledge, and find players seeking groups on other servers. Groups would be transported to a mission, monster mission, or even a small 18 to 24 person raid instance. By disabling player to player trading, economies would remain unaffected. Players would go from a few dozen LFG players to a few hundred.

Server travel so that the “pool” of players could be dynamically adapted between peak times and off peaks and the expansions and contractions of the overall playerbase. Without suffering a chain reaction (this is more significant than how it appears).

We are getting there. Albeit slowly.

Just a quick precisation since I bumped into this article at F13 about the missing rates in combat.

It’s not “missing” to be unfun. If it’s the critical strike to be frequent, the combat will have a similar degree of frustration. A “miss” is an “odd”. These odds are extremely unfun when they become a significant part of the gameplay. In every game.

At the origin of this mechanic there’s the lack of control. In a combat we try to determine the best pattern, try to fight at best. A miss is an odd, something that may happen or not. Something that isn’t under your direct control. If you die in a combat you want to know what you did wrong, and you want to have a possibility to try something different and improve. So that the loss can be turned into a victory. If this cannot happen, the game is dead.

If every combat situation has 50% of possibility to finish in a loss or a victory, the game is frustrating. Because you can just stare and see the dice rolls, hoping they go well. You have no control, you have no responsibility and you have no way to improve. It’s like gambling but even gambling becomes more fun when you have a choice that can influence the outcome.

And this has nothing to do with “players want to be heroes”.

RPGs have always relied by a certain amount on random rolls. The point is to not let the fortuitousness take the lead and make it stay in its role: adding a variance without overflowing player’s choices. The best games are those that you can master with the practice and intuition, those that bring you near to lose all hopes, till when you find the “trick” that makes what you thought impossible, trivial. Those that offer you multiple patterns to experiment so that you can continue to try something instead of giving up.

Permeable barriers.

There’s always the desire to have more “skill” in these games. But “skill” is just a way to obtain a choice. A way to have more control over what happens. A way to manipulate the game’s patterns more “viscerally”. Immersion and free will.

Continuing the “random dialogue”, this time the topic is too much important to be condensed into one simple principle. Here we deal with the basic structure of a mmorpg and the discussion could continue in every direction and include every other topic.

My comments still in italics.

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Key idea: Players should be able to play with any other players they like, unless those players don’t want to play with them

Putting artificial barriers between players is bad. Players should have the opportunity to play with their friends without having to satisfy any special conditions. They should also be able to join any group they are interested in, as long as that group wants them. A single-shard model is ideal, but in the event that it’s impractical, characters should be transferable enough that players never feel like they can’t be with the people they want to be with. This applies to levels, shards, regions, whatever. If two people want to play together, they should never be prevented from doing so. There shouldn’t even be disincentives.

This is a huge problem and not that simple. A single shard isn’t a simple solution and, while possible, it still needs a form of “stratification” to be viable. My strategy and keyword is about “permeable barriers”. Which means that the barriers are still there (like servers and classes) but they are permeable, so with the possibility for the players to cross them with relative ease. The goal is to transform a limit (a barrier that makes you bounce back), into an advantage.

Sidenote: WoW managed to screw this up and STILL have the queue problem thanks to the retarded regionalization system they went with at launch.

Sidenote: World Passes? What the fuck? Are you telling me that if I buy this game with my friend, and we both go online that evening, we can’t make new characters and start playing together? Why the fuck not? Do you want me to play your game alone? Maybe it should be single-player, then. I don’t buy multiplayer games with the expectation of playing them with jackasses selected at random from the general public. I want to play with people I know.

Another large problem, the social structure of a mmorpg is the most important part and I have many ideas about this. The idea of “permeable barriers” allows the players to meet and play together if they want, without impassable barriers in the form of servers, classes or levels. But at the same time it’s crucial that the community opens up, welcomes and integrates new players. If you give the possibility to the players to just mind their own business, you’ll have an arid and drying community as a result. I always repeat that these games should be based on processes of integration more than exclusion and it’s where I think a game should go. That’s the strategy I would follow.

The result is an healthy community in the long term, a better player retention, a true sense of positive achievement and collaboration and an overall better satisfaction while playing the game. Since what you do is better “motivated”.

Unicorn McGriddle is the guy who paraphrased one of my ideas to make it more understandable, while I was just struggling to explain it better.

Yesterday I find a couple of PMs on Q23 where he says he read this whole site and decided to continue with some sort of manifesto distilled from what he read here. Now I really have no clue about why he did this, but I’ll use it as a way to rinse and repeat some core concepts. His manifesto isn’t exactly mirroring my ideas but it’s an occasion to make precisations.

Since it was getting too long I’m going to break this thing in multiple parts. Btw, I haven’t asked his permission to post this, so I’m just answering to him directly here ;p

My comments are in italics.

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I was originally intending to write a fictionalized account of play (probably with some chatlogs) in one or more hypothetical “dream MMORPGs” developed and administered using concepts you discuss (and a few ideas I’ve had). I may still do that, but for now, since “the reader writes the book,” please allow me to write your manifesto, as I’ve read it from your site. Corrections, of course, are welcome. I’m sure I’ve left some things out, but for now, here are my Eight Key Ideas and Sixteen Sidenotes Derived from an Excursion into the Cesspit:

Key idea: Developers should be more tied to their MMOs

An MMO is an evolving kind of game — it never entirely leaves the design phase. How it grows post-launch is a development issue and the lead developer (and ideally, everybody who makes design decisions) should stick around to deal with that. Lead developers and other people who make design decisions should be held accountable for their performance on their past games. This doesn’t mean that bad developers should never be removed, but depending on the level of influence they’ve had with the game, it may already be too late. (The whole “when is a game irrevocably fucked” issue is a difficult one, and I won’t really address it here.)

I believe in authorship and I’d like the developers to feel more part of the process. The idea of “accountability” is there so that when something wrong happens the developers don’t start dodging their responsibilities and unload them on someone else. Or feel “estranged” from what happened. I’d like them to have more control over what they do, more responsibility, more involvement. They should care about the game, they should feel part of it. When it’s time to discuss the long term plans and current status, everyone should be involved, free of strict work roles. Teamwork should be promoted and there should be an open, unrestrained communication everywhere, without distinctions of merit or prejudices.

About firing people: Naguib Sawiris is an overly ambitious, emergent Egyptian tycoon who says something I agree with about this topic. “I fire only who is dishonest. If you have someone stupid, you don’t fire him. You just give him a stupid work.”

Sidenote: Raph Koster is better at theory than he is at practice. His games ought to be more consistent with his goals, and he should stay with them as long as he can.

I agree that Raph shouldn’t have left SWG, but this is an universal rule, not something about this precise case. When it comes to Raph, and not his games, I believe that the bigger problem is the lack of “cross examination”. I don’t really believe that he is “better at theory than he is at practice”, I believe that he needs someone at his side that is able to counterbalance and regulate his ideas. A “measure”. Someone who can nail his feet to the ground. Keep the ideas tightly tied to a functional goal with solid premises.

The idea I got is that there are too many “yessir” around Raph. Too many taking him in high consideration, with the fear to truly criticize or create an actual debate. I think Raph would do his best when his ideas are truly considered and criticized. I believe he needs “antagonism” and I always had the idea of placing at his side someone with a completely different attitude and mindset, a nemesis. Then force them to work *together* and watch them brawl :) I think the result could be good. More than an abstract mmorpg guru I’d like to see him as someone serviceable for a concrete project.

Sidenote: Brad McQuaid sucks. In the long term, only catasses will enjoy his games. Even they could probably be seduced away by something better. Fuck his “Vision” bullshit. Putting Diku into 3D and requiring massive time investment doesn’t make him Joan of motherfucking Arc. The main “innovation” there is a monthly fee — which previous games already had (for example, the original Neverwinter Nights).

Well, I don’t agree here. I already wrote my overall point of view on the supposed “vision”. I’m skeptical about Vanguard and Brad himself but far from blaming both openly. My biggest worry about the game isn’t even about the design. It’s about the current state of the systems, the technical side. The design only comes later and we always forget the crucial importance of the technology. We’ll see, but my suspect is that we won’t complain about game design at launch, but about the technical issues, the client, controls and so on. Blizzard was extremely successful also because they had a long experience with single-player games and “battle.net”. They had already rock solid technology and experience to build upon. A mmorpg for them wasn’t a beginning, it was a finishing line. Brad “is supposed” to have an experienced team with him but they still had to start from scratch and they’ll have to demonstrate again that they have the competence.

I respect Brad and I’m even ready to bite the leaf when it comes to some of his foolish ideas. But he still has to demonstrate me that he has the resources to pull all that concretely and make a “mainstream” game. I fear that their technology is still rather rough and immature, far from being able to compete with the firsts. Which is again why I’m much less worried about the design.

Key idea: Communities should have meaningful relationships with developers

“Your players will know your game better than you do,” as the saying goes. Players are a design resource. They will test and critique the games they play. Their playing styles will adapt based on the strengths and limitations of the game (and its competitors). Attention must be paid to such phenomena. Furthermore, players want to be treated with respect, and most players behave in a manner deserving of such treatment. Developers should relate to players in as transparent a way as possible, disclosing all the raw data, design documents, and various internal efforts that they can. When something goes wrong, they should tell the players what it is — not “there will be no service for at least a week,” but “a lightning bolt struck our server cluster, so we’re replacing everything, which our site people say will take five days; characters are all backed up, so they’ll be fine, but we may not be able to recover world data, so guildhalls and houses may be lost (and we’ll post our communications with the site people in the forum as things happen, so you’ll know as soon as we do what the deal is; if it turns out data has been lost we will try to compensate everyone as best we can, and while we wait for the replacement to go through, we’re looking into lightning-proofing our building and sending a delegation to Zeus to ask him to hit churches instead.” Developers should frequent the boards and be visible and known there, even if they don’t have time to read everything that gets posted. They should be aware of memes and behaviors within the playerbase. They should be in adequate contact with real players to know how the game is actually played, and if problems are discovered this way, steps should be taken to fix them. No important development figures should be seen as inaccessible, nor should they be seen as bullshitting spinmasters who can’t be trusted to tell the truth. Players want information, not propaganda. We’re in your forum to think and to learn, so don’t read us the back of the box.

No, people aren’t a design resource. I believe that a community should be always interpreted, not just directly seconded. It’s always wrong to make a community set your development schedule and direct the game through polls. Authorship isn’t a democracy and a community should never become a substitute for game designers. What I’d like to see, instead, is about them interacting. An open communication and involvement is something positive, a resource. The community is an occasion to test and elaborate ideas, discuss positives and negatives. But it should never replace the creation process. The line should never be crossed (making people design and lead the game) but it would be a good thing if that line is felt less as a barrier of misunderstading, contraposition and conflict.

The more the communication opens up and is felt as normal, the more these communities will *lose* the overdramatization we see now everywhere. I believe that a more direct and continuous communication would normalize the relationship instead of rising the conflict.

Sidenote: “Players will tend to automate the parts of your game that are fucking stupid.” Ultima Online could have done away with macroing if the developers had felt like bothering.

Yes, I always considered the use of macros as a design problem. And it is where this problem should be solved: in the mechanics, not on the surveillance of players and enforcement of “rules”.

Sidenote: Memory Holing your forums is a piece-of-shit tactic. All this message control bullshit is a substitute for actually fixing problems and providing a place for players to discuss the game. Both of these things pay serious dividends if pursued, leading to a better game, so developers are only hurting themselves with this Orwellian board-pruning.

There are a number of ways to move the discussion in better ways. I think the developers should come to a forum and create discussion instead of answer passively. The moderation is needed but it should focus on the actual content rather than the “tone” and “politeness” of a message. I would erase in a heartbeat all those “first!” posts and everything that is off topic or doesn’t contribute in any way to a discussion, but I would never moderate negative feedback or critics. Not even harsh attacks if they hold a trace of legitimacy. The point is to understand and interpret the feedback coming from a community and let them understand clearly the situation. The goal isn’t to agree and convince everyone. The goal is to avoid misunderstanding and help both sides to understand the reciprocal positions.

The conflict isn’t a bad thing when it is motivated.