The MMO Gamer: The Lord of the Rings Online actually had that exact problem. They have what are called Deeds, where if you explore certain locations, or kill X number of mobs, you got a title, and then after the title you got a reward which was like +5 to Spirit, or whatever.
Craig Morrison: Yeah.
The MMO Gamer: And when the game launched, they wanted to make sure people just didn’t willy-nilly go out and collect every reward the first day. So they had ridiculous numbers like kill 750 orcs for +5 to Spirit.
Obviously, that wasn’t fun.
Only the hardest of the hardcore ever got those, and finally they realized that fact and brought it down to a more “acceptable” only 120 orcs.
Craig Morrison: Yeah, and that’s the kind of approach that-I don’t think it’s untoward to ask designers to think of why. And then, because we recently, just before I took over for Age of Conan we actually tried it.
In Anarchy Online we put in an instance that was a boss instance that would drop some of the best loot in the game, that all the players would want.
But they had to repeat it, I think ten times, I can’t remember. Six, eight, or ten times. But there was no lockout. They could go in as many times as they wanted. And there was no limit to how many times they could do it or init the boss drop.
It wasn’t a low percentage drop, the boss dropped stuff all the time. Lots of items, in fact. I think he dropped 12 items.
And, the fear that we got internally was that they players are going to burn through this on the first day. They’re going to be done. And your hardcore are going to have the items because they’re just going to do it, it only takes twenty minutes.
They’re going to do their ten times in the first five hours and where’s your content?
But what we actually found was that the designer put a lot of work into making the encounter fun and interesting. It’s a very dynamic encounter which involves the players moving around, and it’s actually really fun to play.
And what we found over time was the players reacted well to that. Not only did they do it for themselves, because it was fun and quick and they could do it in four hours, they didn’t just do it for themselves.
They did it for their alts, they did it for all their guild mates. And they didn’t mind going along when their friends wanted to do it, because it wasn’t a chore.
The MMO Gamer: Whereas, they might not do it in say, Molten Core…
Craig Morrison: Exactly!
The MMO Gamer: Which took five hours.
Craig Morrison: Exactly! They actually didn’t mind going along and helping their friends. It was probably the 400th time a hardcore player might have done that instance, but they never griped. They didn’t complain about it. They’re like, “It’s twenty minutes out my day.”
There was even a portal that took them right to the door, that once they’d done it once they could go back there whenever they wanted. So, they could teleport there, they were right there, they could do it, they could help for twenty minutes, their friends got their loot.
They came in and went out and they were done. And we have people that have done that instance, you know, four, five, six hundred times. And not once has there ever really been a complaint on that forum about, “It’s boring,” because the designer managed to make it fun.
I don’t think that’s as hard as sometimes people fear it is. And you’ve always, you’ve got to ask people to step over that boundary. And it’s not easy. Even internally you have people going “Oh, I’m not sure this is a good idea. You know, they’re gonna burn through this.”
The MMO Gamer: So where does that mindset come from?
Craig Morrison: You just get cynical after a while about how players see things. But I think players genuinely do want to be entertained. It’s just that they don’t necessarily see all the encounters in MMOs and the mechanics as entertaining.
But they want the reward, so they’re willing to do it.
The MMO Gamer: Right. The desire for loot outweighs the boredom factor.
Craig Morrison: But my point, usually, to the designers is if you can make them enjoy it, if you can make them be entertained, they WILL repeat it. You know, they WILL go back and do it again. Because it’s fun.
You know, Tetris is fun every time you pick it up. A good, well-designed game is fun every time you do it. And it might be that you can only stomach playing Tetris for twenty minutes and then you’re like, “I don’t need to play Tetris for another week.”
But the next time you go back and play it, it’ll be fun. It’s still got the same challenge and the same fun factor. And I think that’s what MMO design has lacked a little in places. And people haven’t really thought enough about and are scared, because, you know you’ve got the management telling you it must take a long time.
You must keep the players occupied.
The MMO Gamer: Right. You have to keep the players subscribing month to month. You can’t let them have everything the first week.
Craig Morrison: But I think you don’t always have to. I think you CAN find the right way to compromise and itemize in the right ways to keep the players coming back.
They do already have the reward, but, tell you what, if it’s fun then they might help their friends get the reward. And their friends will help their friends get the reward. So that constant is constantly done if it’s fun, and easy, and engaging.
I think we also, some times in the past we’ve also added buffs to bosses, that when the boss is defeated they get a buff. So if that encounter is quick and easy to do and fun, they don’t mind going to get the buff before they do a big siege or they might, “Oh, ok, let’s go do that first.”
Whereas if it’s more like, you said, Molten Core, it’s that there’s no way we’re going there just to pick up a buff. Or just to get a single item.
The MMO Gamer: We actually used to do Onyxia just to get the buff before we did Molten Core.
Craig Morrison: [Laughs] Yeah, but that’s a perfect example. Onyxia, ignoring the key quest, Onyxia was, for a good guild, what, a twenty minute encounter?
The MMO Gamer: If that.
Craig Morrison: If that? So, I mean that’s a perfect example. Onyxia was genius because that’s exactly the kind of content I’m talking about. It was fun and interesting every time… Ok, by and large.
You could get it down to rote, there were probably too few random elements in that encounter.
The MMO Gamer: I think by the end we were five manning it, yeah.
Craig Morrison: [Laughs] But you know I mean it’s got that kind of… it can be quick, and easy, and fun, AND have long-term appeal.
With the right design, like, you said, the buff from Onyxia, you guys went and did it because it gave you value for the time spent. So, you found it was okay to go and do.
I really like to think of MMO design as getting more and more fun. Because I think it’s been limited by technology, obviously it’s not as easy to make dynamic content in an MMO, because it’s not scripted like a single-player game is. But you can do it, though.
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