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| 09.20.2007Casual friendliness in MMO's
Dear Editors,
My apologies in advance for not writing this letter in response to a specific article that I've read in Gamasutra lately. Nevertheless, considering how much interest there seems to be in this space for both casual gaming and successful MMO's, I thought the following "soapbox" letter would be appropriate:
I've always been a huge fan of all games that tell good stories, and create good lore. Lately, my games of choice have been MMO's (Everquest and WoW in particular). However, I have a serious bone to pick with the way MMO's tend to save some of their best and most "lore-rich" content for the "hardcore" or, shall we say, "time privileged" gamer. As the Juggernaut du jour, I'll use Blizzard as my example.
Now admittedly, in comparison to other MMO's out there, Blizzard does a fairly good job of making WoW "casual friendly." However, they also have spent a huge amount of resources creating content that the vast majority of their player base will never see. Creating "endgame" content that is only available to people who have the time/desire to group up with 25-40 other people for 3-4 hours (sometimes more) at a stretch means that most of the people who play your game aren't going to see what is probably the greatest content IN your game. I've personally been following the escapades of Kel-Thuzad, Illidan, and Arthas (all characters from the Warcraft Universe) for years... it pains me that I will never have a chance to face them in WoW simply because, well, they are bosses at the end of 25 or 40 man raids, and I have a job, a social life, and a family.
There are plenty of potential solutions to solving this problem; Guild Wars does a great job of demonstrating one: allow for player-controlled NPC henchmen that enable you to face every challenge that the game has to offer. It might not be as "socially fulfilling" as the developers may think it should be - (but then, should developers really be deciding how social I want to be while playing their game?), but it would let me appreciate the content that they've worked so hard on creating that I otherwise might never be able to appreciate. Developers could also give players an option to "dummy down" end game content, allowing us to perhaps select "easy mode" for a dungeon, making it less challenging, and therefore accessible to solo/small group play and/or help from npc's, and make the rewards less substantial than they otherwise would be (WoW offers "heroic mode" for 5 player dungeons, after all, that offer more challenge and greater reward... why not do the reverse and make "wimpy mode" for the 25 man raids that would allow less challenge and less reward?). This could keep both the casual and the hardcore satisfied, as it would allow the casual player to experience the content/lore/environments, while reserving the greatest rewards for the hardcore. A third, and less-satisfying option, would be to at least allow players to tag along with an endgame guild in a kind of spectator mode so that a casual player could at least watch and listen to see the action and story unfold.
Surely developers want the greatest number of those who play to actually experience all the wonderful content that so much love and hard work has gone into creating. Let's find more ways to allow them to do so!
-Colby Poulson
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