The Daily Grind: Do you believe MMOs have one month to make a positive impression?

Well, as a player I'd normally expect to get a free month with the box and see whether I liked the game before deciding on a subscription.

So yes, as a player they absolutely have one month to get me to make up my mind.

Yes and No. If a game is compelling with unique features, interesting gameplay and fun mechanics then I will gladly give it time to flesh out. If the mechanics and interface are clunky with unoriginal ideas slapped on top of some over hyped IP then it will be lucky if I make it to the end of the free month.

I don't write off a game for a rocky launch when it comes to servers, lag and log in queues though. These are all WoW's fault....seriously though the WoW tourist element makes launching these days really rough. People unrelaistically expect a company that knows it's going to be sitting on 200k subscribers to put together a lag-free, queue free server architecture that can handle 4 million A.D.D. gamers for 30 days because they are bored of Ulduar. Then seamlessly scale down to 150k subscribers and eat the cost of all those extra servers. All the while these same people are screaming DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM on their blogs because they new title is merging or closing servers. It's a vicous cycle.

I treat MMO games as I do all other games. I don't discriminate between a single player experience, a multiplayer experience, a casual/hardcore, or a short or long one. When it comes to playing a game, and having fun, why should I?

From the moment I start playing a game the only question I continuously ask myself as I am playing is: Am I having fun? If at any point I am not I then ask myself another question: Is this the game's fault or my own/something else's?

MMOs have the same amount of time to impress me as any other game would. I do not "go easy" on MMOs because they are more complex, or have longer development cycles, or require more time to complete or "to get to the fun parts." No, the fun part should be gotten to as soon as the game begins and should continue until I stop playing. That is how I judge my games, and I can tell you that not many games pass this test. I don't force myself to stick with anything that doesn't feel good right from the start. Years of experience have taught me that this is simply a long path towards disappointment.

If a game can get the basics right straight from the beginning- control, interface, good game play and mechanics, good presentation and aesthetics, good sound, good visual style, good storytelling/pacing, and clean programming/coding along with ease of use- then it's a winner. Anything else that gets added or patched in will simply make it stronger and more worthy of playing as long as it is done right and stands up to the test of my first two questions.

So show me you are/can be a good game worth playing and spending my time with. You have exactly the amount of time it takes for you to load to do so.

Yes.

No matter what, the whole point of an MMO is to play with other people. If you gaming friends leave the game after one month, even if you personally like the game, not only do you have to re-sub and try,but so do your friends.

Otherwise, there's no point. My guild's CO supergroup is all but dead now, while the Aion division is going strong. I don't have any personal desire to join them in Aion, grindfests are not me. But our Aion division will be going strong well into 2010, while the CO division is already functionally disbanded.

More of our CO guys are playing Borderlands than CO now. That should tell you something.

Yes, designers, you have that month, two at the most. After that, people move on to better.

if your mmo has truly unique gameplay mechanics it can grow slowly and steadily. eve is a sandbox where most mmos aren't and it has had steady growth. if your mmo is more of the same though, you're competing for the eye candy crowd and you have to impress up front or you'll lose customers.

One month? I give the game one hour to feel different and be fun at the same time.

I tried FE and CO last week and both games disappoint and feel like they were rushed or not done very well.

At the time I got my first month of WAR and enjoyed the game but was on Order and getting handed to every single time in scenarios is not fun.

LOTRO was a great game to get into and I enjoyed it for several months, sure it was like most MMOs but the story is what sold me.

So if I can not get sucked into the game in the first hour I am not going to enjoy it in 59 more levels.

When I think of the first month window, I think that it's the norm for some titles, particularly so-called AAA 'class' titles, but for titles that aren't meant to compete in that so-called AAA status the first month can be endured if the mistakes aren't that significant in the long view of the game. One example comes to mind is EVE Online, where originally a person could grind skill points through use, but this spawned a host of AFK bots, where folks merely played when they wanted and let the computer do the grinding. Now, bots are fairly rare in EVE in comparison to other games since the training of skill points happens in real time. But it too had other failings such as a lack of territory control at release, a lack of ship role variety and lack of variety in ship classes, and many other problems (chronic lag being one of them).

Today, many people tout EVE Online as the best thing since sliced bread, and strangely very few even mention these flaws that nearly ended CCP's career and first MMO title. None the less, it's a good historical example of not everything will kill you if you don't get it right the first time. Sometimes you can move past the mistakes and make a decent going at your venture (MMO title).

Nope. It's much less than a month. I knew within the first few minutes of playing WoW that I would be playing it for years to come. It certainly didn't take a month or a week or even a day, it was obvious from the very beginning that this was a quaility product even with the bugs and frustrating connection issues at launch. As time progressed, almost every twist and turn of the game only reinforced the initial impressions of WoW.

Since then, of the few dozen MMOs I've played, I don't think any have really captured that "early grip" that Blizzard achieved, except maybe possibly Free Realms (if only it were aimed at an older audience I'd still be playing it). The bottom line is that MMOs need to have a much better early game experience than most do - especially the Asian F2P's - that are less of a painful tutorial and more of a storybook in videogame form.

If a newly installed MMO makes you feel like you have to force yourself to play it for any length of time at all -even a minute, much less a month!- then it has already failed. It's as simple as that as far as I'm concerned.

When I first started playing MMO's back in 1993 there weren't a lot of choices. Ultima Online starting in 97 set a trend until about 2005 where games had about a 1 year "fix it" level of patience from the customers.

But since AOC we have seen games do massive amounts of sales ( War 800k, AOC 1 million, AION 900k) but they ultimately fail to retain the customer. AOC and Warhammer both lost 70% or more of their initial customers within the first 4 months, and although AION has sold well its grind and problematic end game are causing it to follow a similar path.

So I would say that games have about 90 days to make it right or lose a huge portion of their initial customer base. If things don't improve between 90 and 180 days, they stand to lose half of those who remained 90+ days.

AOC/War/AION show that there is a customer base of around 1 million people who are looking for a game with good PVE, PVP, and sense of community. The problem is that none of them have gotten even one of those things right, and until someone does I doubt any North American release is going to stay over the 500k mark.

First, show me any MMO that didn't have a bad first month. I don't think you can. No, not even WoW.

Second, show me any MMO that has continuously improved, that didn't slash its development budget, that hasn't gone on to not merely survive but thrive. I don't think you can. Granted, there aren't many such examples, but no matter how rocky the start, no matter how dumbed-down (EVE, Runequest) or incomplete and buggy (WoW) the start, early subscribers stick with you and new subscribers keep joining for as long as you continue steadily and rapidly improving your MMO.

It's not the first month that kills MMOs. It's the third or the fourth, when people notice that the development timeline is suddenly a lot less ambitious, and the bug fixes slow way, way down. THAT'S when they stop forgiving the MMO for its bad first month; when they realize that it's never going to get any better than it already is.

For me, well... I'll give it about 3 weeks. If that doesn't hold me, I may wait 6 months and go back to it later, or I may just write it off as a lost cause. The thing that kills an MMO for me the most though, is the player's inability to affect the game environment. EvE does a good job with conquerable space and a 99% player driven market, but until something grants as much or more control over the game world as EvE does, I doubt any MMO will hold me more than 3 weeks.

Yes, one month is plenty for an "impression".

Next, never ever buy an MMO at launch. Wait six months and never, ever pay 50 bucks for an MMO, they just are not worth it. Especially now that PC games prices are going up to 60 bucks.
They usually price drop within the first six months or you can usually pick them up dirt cheap on ebay by then.
Most times six months isn't enough time for most games, especially western made ones which very rarely run very well at launch. Most need about a year to sort themselves out.

I think they have until billing starts, to make a good impression. And that is typically one month, but can be shorter (10 days or even shorter) depending on the specific MMO. That's just the reality of expectations in the current market environment; many people want a certain threshold of satisfaction before agreeing to an ongoing fee.

I think future releases might need to address this, to help them survive the initial tough period. Maybe extend the free period, or offer discount billing, etc. Assuming they want to do more than just survive and exist and be barely profitable.

What do about MMO tourism is tougher. Building in infrastructure to handle millions of people checking out your game when you release, which is realistically an order of magnitude more than your long term subscribing customer base, and what to do afterwards, is tricky. Maybe going forward companies will have to scale up/down through virtualized servers hosted from somebody else, until the number settle down.

It depends on your financials at the end of the day. If your company has to make back the cost it took to develop the game within the launch window, you have one month. If your balance book has a longer view, you can handle slow growth over time.

With the customers, you don't even get a month. You get a first impression. There are a good number of games that didn't launch so great but are rock solid now. They have stable audiences who tell everyone they know that they should come and try. Thing is, for the folks who tried your launch and found it less than great, that's a high hurdle to get over; they tried the game once and found it lacking, getting them to try again is a challenge.

I'll be completely frank: an MMORPG has less than an hour to grab me. I say this as someone who plays them and designs them.

It's not about the quality of the content, or the elder's game, or the community. It's about how the game plays moment to moment. Clunky movement? Uninspiring combat? You spend 80%+ of your time doing these actions in every MMG. If they don't show me fun (or at least strig promise) in an hour, I'll be thinking, "I could be playing something else now."

I could tell that NeoSteam was boring after an hour. I did nothing interesting in that time - just struggled with the laggy WSAD movement controls and did the same repetitive, hands-off combat over and over. LotRO gave me several cool combat abilities, and showed me a Nazgul taking down a Dunedain. Fallen Earth showed me FPS aiming and a quad-runner vehicle.

Not even that. I can tell if an MMO will be what i like in a very short time. Its like eating at a fave eatery, until you get food poisoning everything is great, then you will never go back again.

I am use to zero defect product release, there is such a thing when you have huge monetary penalties and the threat of jail held over your head when its in a contract (thats right kids, the big contracts) If the devs were held to higher standards we would have heated competition right now with everyone and their buddy singing the praises of every MMO game released this year. Instead we have layoffs, finger pointing and lazy consumers not sending the right message to ignorant devs.

If it takes you more than a couple days or even hours to figure out a title is hosed and it is a fixer upper, then you have a problem and deserve to lose your money.

There are plenty of other things to keep you entertained. Do the hard right thing and send a message, no quality, money.

Of the 8 MMO's i tried this year, none passed muster,none lasted more than three days, some less. Currently playing borderlands.

Absolutely, if an MMO doesn't make a good enough impression on me in the first month, I won't stay subscribed. Why would I pay more money for something that isn't quality entertainment?

But it's not over forever if I leave. There are games that I bought, played for a month, and left, but later gave a second chance to. e.g. Eve Online and LOTRO.

It all depends on the fun factor.

If the things I like about the game are stronger than its flaws, I'll give it second month (or more).

I've rarely stopped played a game because I hated it -- I usually never get to the point of hate. If a game stops being fun, I lose interest quickly, and drift away to other things.

With certain MMORPGs, I knew after, say, three days that I was done with it.

I knew after three _hours_ of playing EverQuest 1 that I wanted nothing more to do with it. I wasn't angry; I just wasn't having fun.

Ironic then, that I did end up Enjoying EQ 2 ...

Again, it's all about the fun!

I always judge a game in the first month and definitely do not subscribe to the idea that a game needs time as it should be ready at launch - if its not ready, dont launch! I will however keep an eye on most games that I have tried and am happy to give them another try after 6 months if it looks like they are trying to make it better.

However it is unfortunate that most developers are not given sufficient feedback from beta players as most beta players are only there to get a preview of the game and play it before anyone else, rather than do what they are supposed to do and help the developers by giving feedback.