With the atom bomb that Mythic Entertainment dropped yesterday about the massive cuts for Warhammer Online it’s leaving many WAR fans in an emotional fog and just as many WAR haters saying, “I told you so”. It is a lot to take in for sure, I still can’t quite wrap my mind around whether or not this is going to be a good or bad thing. With only two cities instead of six, will the RVR aspects of the game, the stuff that the game was totally designed around work at all the same? Will players that aren’t a member of Chaos or the Empire feel the same connection to the game without a home of their own to defend? Will there be unbalance to the game with the loss of four key classes? So many questions left unanswered.
With the feeling of disappointment setting in so hard, I’m left to wonder if hyping a game as much as WAR or AoC was hyped and then let all the fans down close to game day is a good idea for MMO developers. It’s the same story as has happened so many times before. Then you look at other companies, the way they seem to be tight lipped about what they have on the burner, leaving fans to ponder what game they are even making. Is that the way to go? Will fans be disappointed more by loss of content like AoC or WAR or will they be more disappointed with finding out that Blizzard’s new next-gen MMO isn’t what they were hoping for?
Or how about Bioware? There is a ton of speculation and so many directions they could go in with their Austin, Texas based MMO development. The most popular, long standing theory is a Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG. That theory had some fuel added to it recently when Lucasarts acquired some newly registered trademark names like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars Legends, The Old Republic and Star Wars Sagas. While those alone are not concrete proof, the names combined with the secrecy at BioWare and the description of the trademarks are adding some serious fuel to the fire.
The patents reads: “Entertainment services provided on-line by means of global and local area networks, namely, providing interactive computer game software, interactive video game software and interactive computer games and interactive video games, all on-line by means of global and local area networks … “. That could mean a bunch of different things, but it definitely lends to the MMO theory in a big way.
Which way is better? Who’s to say? Either way you go you’re going to leave someone bitter that it didn’t go their way, but I’m leaning toward the latter of the two options. I think it’s better not to say what you are working on until it’s nearing completion for several reasons.
First, you don’t have to worry about telling fans what you are planning on including in the game until you are damn sure it’s going to make it in. That’s not even an issue if you keep it secret. Second, letting fans guess and fuel their own theories you get a good guage on possible future projects. When people start screaming for a KOTOR MMORPG, you can be pretty sure you’re going to have a good subscriber base if you ever decide to make one, if that’s not what you are already working on.
Next, if you listen to all said theories, you can get ideas for features that your fans want to see and test to see if they would work before giving fans a clue whether or not that the feature was even considered. In short, you basically get a lot more creative freedom without facing pressures and risking as much disappointment to your hardcore fan base. There probably is no perfect formula and there certainly isn’t a perfect MMO out there yet or in development that will launch problem free. But I think it makes a lot more business sense to not make promises you aren’t sure you can keep. Then you won’t be in the position Mark Jacobs was yesterday, doing damage control for a big announcement when you could instead be announcing open beta for a game no one knew was coming. For games like Warhammer or Star Wars, you don’t need to spend years building up a fan base community, those game titles inherently come with a huge fan base – better to keep it under wraps until your are ready for beta – my 2 cents.
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