The Decline of MMOs case study Plarium Part 1
What are the main causes of the malady of plarium games? More and more players each day go out and shout their disappointment on the part of plarium, curse the glory and honour that is manifest in their name and cast away their shield and armour disappearing forever, to the shame of their subject and to those in their objective, to the mist of one player based RPG games, never to be seen again. I found myself one of these players. For I too have shamed the Gods, I too have spit on the graves of the battle lost warrior, and went into a tirade bellowing in disgust how they, in their stupidity and foolishness, have left to us the barren two edged dream. Sans hope I found myself back, back again, back to such a course, one that I have foreseen leading to my demise. One that will in no doubt lead to plarium destruction. Such was our inheritance, such is the inheritance left to us by battle lost warriors.
Causes
1. Development
A} Overspending on colour
Plarium spent more money on surface quality including intellectual property, Voice overs, Characters than on depth quality including, and not limited to gameplay, events, and bugs fixes. All Plarium games are made to look super colourful, but less is spent on maintaining and making the game fun. These is prevalent on the issue of bugs and battlegrounds complains.
The side effect of such and act affect not only Plarium, but other companies also. Games that have bad surface quality, but superb gameplay are side-lined as players have been natured to expect more colour from a game. These in turn drive the cost of making a new game even more expensive than the last.
B} Overspending on marketing
Plarium have recently bought the beautiful image of Fox to use on marketing the game. These cost money. A great deal of money is spent on gaining more players to try and justify A}. These result in Plarium calculating the success of their game by using numbers of signups. ‘’3.5 Million players have signed up’’ is of far value, compared to ‘’15000 players have rated our game on average of 4.5 stars’’, or ‘’we get 5 good job compliment everyday on our forum.
These is dangerous. Hard core players aren’t given any value.
2. Cloning
High development cost result in clones. You can find clones in every genre, every world in all MMORPG games. A complete game engine will be reused to create a new game. The only thing that differ will be the world Brown (stormfall), Blue ( Nords). Quest which are the fundamental principle of gameplay, the drivers of fun are cloned again and again, Nothing new same principles, same same same. PvP and Battleground tournament are reinvented again and again, by mincing words, and changing one or two rewarding system those two quests are expanded and regenerated. PvP in beacon, PvP in fort, Harmlets ect. SAME SAME SAME.
These leads to boredom and repeat winners on the part of players. On Plarium and other associate part the consequences are dire. If players leave one MMO and find that the next play exactly the same, they will leave the game and not return to another MMO.
Player type imbalance
All player types are needed if an MMO is to be healthy. For example, an MMO with achievers but no socialisers will shed achievers, because low-level achievers will find that there are no players that they are “better” than and so leave. Likewise, an MMO with socialisers but no achievers will mean players have little to do and will leave. Plarium have two main sources of player imbalance.
A} In game purchases
In games purchases result in a very cheezy community. To achievers any payment for any gameplay-affecting item or service is pay-to-win. These model gaining revenue in games results in class generation. Based solely on the size of players wallet. The bigger a players pockets is, the better he/she will be no matter what. Coining results in 4 classes of players.
1. Elites.
They have the biggest wallet. They don’t understand or care about the game mechanics, cheats or How to. Communication keep them more glued to the game, than game content ( Soft-core socialisers) They have little or no time to grind and so rely on the black market clicks to progress. They are the winners when they choose to be.
2. Monarchs
They have a limited wallet. They will use whatever game mechanism available to progress faster. They tend to ally together, produce out of games software’s, calculators. They are the best grinders, but only do so to empress chatters. Hard-core socialisers.
3. Chatters
They are the common socialisers, and the core of the game. They are highly active, and have the greatest expertise in one or more game mechanics, so they seldom coin. Hard core achievers.
4. Common folks
They are poor, have periods of high low activity, thus include bots, level 1-40 and alts. They never coin have some level of expertise in games. Potential hard-core achievers.
Pay-to-win attracts socialisers but puts off achievers (except cheating achievers). Achievers are the core audience for MMOs; they’ve long been abandoning them for single-player games. When an MMO is designed around a revenue model rather than around fun, it doesn’t have a long-term future.
A} Content.
These include the depth of the game, in game events, quests and levelling. A game more focused on PvP will shed socialisers, while a game more focused on PvE will shed achievers. Game events and quests that start in 8H00 in USA and 00H00 in China will be disadvantageous towards one group of players. A game that divide players into class based on level will.
Players Expectations
These has more to do with the politics of the real world than in game issue. Simply put players have been groomed and natured to be given, to forever take and be given. Fun is never something one must work hard to get. It must be given on. So every time a new content is introduced, players see it as a price tag on top of fun. To them fun on plarium game is sold, and at a very expensive price. So players will complain of how p2w destroy game balance, and in the same time shun plarium for selling ingame purchases at such a high cost. Most players can’t or won’t see beyond the short-term. If a feature has a short-term disadvantage and a long-term advantage, they will not go through the pain to reach the gain. Likewise, if a feature has a shortterm advantage and a long-term disadvantage, they will take the gain then leave when the pain comes (then in all likelihood decry competing MMOs that don’t have the very feature that caused them to leave)
M'lord, I've put some cheese in the place of a word that's rather ungracious!
Let's not swear with those words!
