The Shrine

Recently EQ put up a poll for a new server that is opened only for subscribers (1 account = 1 vote), and the server options are something like:

Easy mode server
Totally hardcore server
Totally stupid idea server type 1
Totally stupid idea server type 2

Currently the easy mode server has a run away lead on the other choices, particularly against the totally hardcore option. Of course, if you go to the official EQ boards, the posts are overwhelmingly in favor of the 'totally hardcore' server.

Obviously everyone should know that internet forums don't necessarily represent reality, but it's pretty amazing how far off from reality things are. I mean this poll really shows the casuals are fed up with the 'uber owns all' direction the game has been going that you've people voting 20 times with 20 accounts on 'easy mode' just to make sure hardcore can't win. By the way, having 20 accounts in just about any MMORPG doesn't mean you're hardcore. It just means you've a lot of money, since any modern raid is difficult to do with a boxed crew. Every person I run into that boxes a large number of character (6+) tend to be casual players who just happen to have a lot of money. And then you got the hardcore guys trying to convince people that 1 million people will subscribe to EQ to replay on this totally hardcore server, but obviously since they're not currently subscribed they cannot vote.

I think this ties into the beta testing article. Forums are an obvious place to get feedback for beta (or anything else), but how do you get useful feedback when your forum is dominated by guys who do not represent reality in any remote way? Let's say you implemented something that's pretty cool, how do you even know it was cool? If you look to the Internet, chances are anything you make will be treated as the feature that destroyed the game. The Internet isn't wrong every time, but it sure isn't right very often.

The beta article says when you beta, you basically have to believe your game is right because you're not going to get any useful feedback from your beta guys these days. That is certainly true, but what if your game is actually wrong? How would you even be able to tell?

EQ has always been in favor of making an MMO as grindy as possible without forcing people to leave. This is generally part of the old skool ideas of MMOs (pre-WoW). Now that WoW has come along, new MMO developers realize that you can make a lot of money on MMOs tailored to casual players. EQ hasn't adapted to this, and it looks like the players are fed up with it.

Well sure, but the question is how would you actually know this? EQ for a long time has people saying like oh we only got super hardcore left and making it casual will ruin the game. The poll shows quite conclusively that even those who remain are overwhelmingly in favor of an easy mode server, so you can say with high confidence that easy mode server is the right choice.

But suppose if you didn't run a poll, how would you ever know which is the right choice? You certainly cannot figure this out from your forums, where the hardcore guys frequent far more than the casual. But you can't say that feedback is useless, either, since forums are the primary way any feedback is obtained unless you personally know a dev.

I guess you can say 'just always run a poll' but it's not always possible to just take a poll on anything you want to change. Let's say they made me the guy in charge of WoW. I got this radical idea that will either make WoW totally awesome or destroy the game. So how do I even know this is a good idea or that they should get rid of me before I ruin the game? If I make a post on what my idea is, chances are pretty good the forum will have posts that are either 'this will ruin WoW forever' or this idea is totally awesome', and almost certainly the former type post will dominate. I can choose to ignore them and figure I'm just never wrong, but obviously sometimes the player has to be correct. I can say well my friend XYZ is a pretty good player so I'll check with him first, but then that guy can be wrong too.

My best guess is that I'd have to take a poll first too, and assuming I did a good job preventing people from manipulating the poll, I'll use the result to decide. But again that's not something you can always do. Let's say I put a poll like 'what do you guys think about nerfing Paladin DPS' chances are people will always vote 'no way' because people don't like nerfs even if it's needed. So I'll see a poll that overwhelmingly says it's a bad idea, but I can't say well players are whiners and I'm never wrong, so I'll go ahead with my change anyway, because there is a chance that the player is right.

For a long time the way you get feedback, especially for MMORPGs, is 'ask the uber'. The assumption is that the guy that plays the most probably understands the game the most, and that's true. Except the guy who plays the most also wants to retain his advantage, and if your source of information is Crimson Tempest, the #1 guild in EQ whose guild leader delights in the destruction of 'gimp guilds', you obviously end up with a very bad game. EQ went with this for a long time and I think it contributed to its decline. WoW started with this initially and wisely ditched the approach.

But then, who do you ask? If you ask the casuals, they too have their own set of interests, and a casual isn't going to understand your game very well compared to an uber. So you'll see a lot of response like 'make everything easier and drop 10 epics too'. That's also no good. Right now it looks to me WoW developers pretty much stopped listening to anybody. Certainly the input in the WoW forum is way too noisy to be of any use. They just figure that they know the game well enough, and they only use statistical feedbacks like DPS meters to finetune stuff. So for example if you tell them ability X is doing Y damage and that's too high by Z, they'll probably take note of that, check on ability X to verify it indeed should not be doing Y damage, and modify it. But other than that, they don't care what you have to say.

And that's not a bad model since the guys designing the game has a smaller chance of screwing up this game than just listening to the wrong guys. But then you can't assume your devs will never make a mistake, so at some point you got to get input from your players, but from who?