They didn't ask the genre to change. The players are not chasing the games. The devs are chasing the players. The devs came to us and said we made changes so people in your situation can play our game. We then said we'd try it.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Again, this is like drawing a conclusion about the average number of children Catholic Priests have by using the average number of children the US Populace as a whole has.
Chilton is drawing conclusions only for his own MMO and he doesn't even expound on his basis for concluding that. It could be data driven or it could simply be his own gut, like you were using.
/snip
I feel like arguing with a college freshman that did their 'research 101' but lets break it down!
You bring up 'Priests' as an example on why we can not use the US Census. This is fairly bizarre as the condition of being a priest is that you are not married (I'm told there is a legal definition to this but /shrug) so the sample condition will make the 'how many children' portion of the US Census skewed to one direction.
However, that doesn't mean we can't use the US Census to gauge the average age of 'priests' as anyone of any age can be priests. Same with 'gamers', there are no condition on being a 'gamer'.
For the Chilton example, I would like to know what logic you used in order to deduce that Blizzard would spend thousands of man-hours, millions of dollars and countless resources on changing their game from a 'hardcore 3-4 hour weekly raids' to 'semi-casual solo friendly' on 'own gut' rather than hard numbers. That is some logic that I would love to know.
I feel like I am arguing with a brick wall. You can't draw conclusions about a specific subset of a study group based on the overall study group unless you know that the overall group is representative of the smaller subset. This IS statistics 101, you should know it if you are actualy involved in any sort of research. It's basic.
This is why I used Priests, because it was very easy to demonstrate but we could easly use surfers or mountain climbers or gamers or just about any other specific subgroup. People self-select to be Priests just like they self-select to be surfers or mountain climbers or gamers. One of the conditions of being a Priest is that you are (supposed to be) celebate, meaning no more kids.... that self-selection influences other life choices in ways different from the general populace, meaning the demographics will be different from that of the general populace. Further, there will be certain factors that influence people to self-select to become Priests that are likely to make them different then the populace as a whole.
This demonstrates exactly why your contention that we could use the average age of the US Population as whole (as determined by the US Census) to judge the average age of Priests is flawed. We know that children can't be Priests (you have to graduate from Seminary College to become one) but children are part of the US Population as a whole which would cause differences in the average age of each study group. Further we know for a fact (you can find ample documentation of this) that many people who become Priests do so at a later stage in thier lives (e.g. There are life experiences that influence people to self-select to become Priests) and that the percentage of people who choose to become Priests in modern generations is less then those in past generations (this is also well documented) as common attitudes towards religion has shifted from generation to generation.
Further, if we want to draw conclusions about Priests as a whole but are looking only at the U.S. population (using the U.S. Census as a data source) then we are discarding any factors that might make the populace of nations in Africa or Asia or Europe or Latin America... all of which have Priests... different from the U.S. populace.
This should demonstrate why it is fataly flawed to try to draw conclusions about MMO Gamers as a whole by looking at the Demographics of the US population as a whole as presented in the US Census. In order to even attempt to do so, we'd have to first understand if there were any factors that would cause people to self-select to be MMO gamers that were different from the populace as a whole. Next we would need to understand how playing MMO's might influence other life choices or opportunities that might be different from that of the general populace. Finaly, since we want to look at MMO gamers as a whole, as opposed to just US MMO gamers then we need to know if there are any demographic differences between the US population and the populations of Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America... all of whom contribute to the pool of MMO gamers. We just can't assume all these are null factors without studying them and making some attempt to determine that they are.
In terms of Chilton, while it is likely that he is basing his decision making off of data research about his game, we can't just assume that he has, because he hasn't stated as much. Further, his data research would be subject to the same sort of limitations that Yee's was...self-selection bias. That is one of the reasons why market research... which alot of companies in many verticals do isn't an exact science like chemistry or physics that always yields perdictable results. That's why we get things like "New Coke".... and why we get products that end up with very different results then the companies who released them (many of whom did market research) expected. Even if Chilton is absolutely on the ball about his own MMO, we can't assume that the demographics of WoW (a 10 year old game) are identical the demographics of the MMO audience as a whole.
Again, I'm not trying to argue that your conclusions are right or wrong. Frankly I don't know... there isn't any reliable data outside anecdotal evidence. I'm saying that your methods for arriving at those conclusions are entirely unsound if you are really trying to be data driven.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Chiltons information does address the subset though.
More likely, assuming he's basing his decision making off of actual research on his own game..... which I expect he is but is still an assumption on our part..... his information would address a subset of a subset...namely WoW players.
We are left with the same problem in reverse. How representative are WoW players (a 10 year old MMO) of the MMO gaming populace as a whole. It's posiible they are quite representative but I don't think we could simply assume so with a high degree of confidence.
Finaly, even if we assume all the above, we are still left with the same weakness that Yee (or pretty much all market research by such services) has.... self-selection bias. It's not like Blizzard is sending people to knock on doors to verify whether it's players are 30 yr old men or 12 yr old girls. Chilton can probably tell with a high degree of accuracy WHAT people are opting to do in his MMO, that is very easy to measure.... and I expect they are noticing people opt for shorter or easier content.... but the WHY people are doing it is ALOT harder to answer.... that they can't measure directly but have to get from survey responses, etc.
P.S. I'm not actualy arguing for or against my own preferences. Whatever is is, regardless of my own preferences... they aren't going to change that. But if we really want to be data driven we have to understand the limitations of what we are studying and how we are studying. In terms of my own preferences, I'm not really too worried at this point.... the MMO market is broad enough and saturated with competition enough that SOMEONE is going to make a game that matches closely enough to my preferences to enjoy....even if those preferences are "niche"....if only because they don't want to fight every other MMO developer out there for the same market segment. This is actualy the case... I'm playing 2 MMO's in Alpha right now, and I see more potentials on the horizon. Good situation for me....not so great for the MMO companies who have to fight each other for an audience against all that competition.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Chiltons information does address the subset though.
More likely, assuming he's basing his decision making off of actual research on his own game..... which I expect he is but is still an assumption on our part..... his information would address a subset of a subset...namely WoW players.
We are left with the same problem in reverse. How representative are WoW players (a 10 year old MMO) of the MMO gaming populace as a whole. It's posiible they are quite representative but I don't think we could simply assume so with a high degree of confidence.
Finaly, even if we assume all the above, we are still left with the same weakness that Yee (or pretty much all market research by such services) has.... self-selection bias. It's not like Blizzard is sending people to knock on doors to verify whether it's players are 30 yr old men or 12 yr old girls. Chilton can probably tell with a high degree of accuracy WHAT people are opting to do in his MMO, that is very easy to measure.... and I expect they are noticing people opt for shorter or easier content.... but the WHY people are doing it is ALOT harder to answer.... that they can't measure directly but have to get from survey responses, etc.
largest mmo study i've seen was the EQ2 study - but it only pertains to EQ2
In addition to introducing the EQ2 logs as a resource, Dmitri Williams described some of the efforts involved in exploring how much of the real world spilled over into the virtual.
The average age of players turned out to be 31. "These aren't just pasty white teenage boys in a basement—to be sure, they're there, but they're not typical," he said. The older players tended to play more than the kids and, although the total hours played seem large, he said that the time mostly displaced either TV watching or movie going. And the surveys showed that those who viewed TV news in the first place continued to do so, suggesting that gamers really slotted EQ2 into their entertainment time.
and the demographic surveys relied on players telling the truth ..
It is good when Tom Chilton (Game Director of WoW) validates your facts.
Now that is an interesting little bit of information. Tom Chilton is going to know more about his player base than anyone else here.
It's towards the end of the article. He literally says the player base for WoW is getting older, and as the player base gets older, it gets more casual. He attributes this to having children.
I can see his point of player base getting more casual when they get married and have children. They don't have as much time for games as they had before.
What i don't get is does he think they somehow become dumber and forget everything they have learnt of gaming. Every single one of my friends and acquaintances who played WoW from the very beginning have quit because 'the game became too easy and boring' and 'it's not the same game anymore'. Their kids, however, love it. He also says "the players we’re getting now are far less familiar with the standard MMO-slash-RPG mechanics than the players we got years ago were".
So it looks to me they are attracting people who are new to gaming; kids, older folks not familiar to games, etc. and there seems to be quite a lot of them, and it's great they've found gaming as a hobby.
At the same time, there are millions of gamers who still can remember how these games used to work, and many of those new folks are prolly getting hang of it by now. Still, every single new MMO follows this same formula.
It's like all we have is tutorials and basic editions for MMO gaming, but not an advanced and expert ones.
UO's peak population plus EQ's peak population plus SWG's peak population is just a hair over a million people. Throw in Anarchy Online and maybe Dark Age of Camelot and you still don't get to two million players. There are not "millions" of players who both remember, enjoyed and want to again play games that are just like those older MMORPGs. WildStar is learning this lesson right now.
The people that started entering the genre since WoW are more numerous and more casual than those original players, and at the same time, some portion of those original players are becoming more casual. I don't think it matters that much why they are becoming more casual on average, it's only important that they are, and where I as a player fit in on that spectrum between hard core and casual.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Wildstar is just like old MMOs? In regards to raiding... Sure. But where else? It sure didn't feel anything like my old mainstay when I played the beta.
If you mean, specifically, raiding, then yea. But there was a lot more to older MMOs than hardcore raiding.
It is good when Tom Chilton (Game Director of WoW) validates your facts.
Now that is an interesting little bit of information. Tom Chilton is going to know more about his player base than anyone else here.
It's towards the end of the article. He literally says the player base for WoW is getting older, and as the player base gets older, it gets more casual. He attributes this to having children.
I can see his point of player base getting more casual when they get married and have children. They don't have as much time for games as they had before.
What i don't get is does he think they somehow become dumber and forget everything they have learnt of gaming. Every single one of my friends and acquaintances who played WoW from the very beginning have quit because 'the game became too easy and boring' and 'it's not the same game anymore'. Their kids, however, love it. He also says "the players we’re getting now are far less familiar with the standard MMO-slash-RPG mechanics than the players we got years ago were".
So it looks to me they are attracting people who are new to gaming; kids, older folks not familiar to games, etc. and there seems to be quite a lot of them, and it's great they've found gaming as a hobby.
At the same time, there are millions of gamers who still can remember how these games used to work, and many of those new folks are prolly getting hang of it by now. Still, every single new MMO follows this same formula.
It's like all we have is tutorials and basic editions for MMO gaming, but not an advanced and expert ones.
UO's peak population plus EQ's peak population plus SWG's peak population is just a hair over a million people. Throw in Anarchy Online and maybe Dark Age of Camelot and you still don't get to two million players. There are not "millions" of players who both remember, enjoyed and want to again play games that are just like those older MMORPGs. WildStar is learning this lesson right now.
The people that started entering the genre since WoW are more numerous and more casual than those original players, and at the same time, some portion of those original players are becoming more casual. I don't think it matters that much why they are becoming more casual on average, it's only important that they are, and where I as a player fit in on that spectrum between hard core and casual.
When i talked about millions of players, i was refering to early WoW, and 12 mil. players it once had. The game had very little tutorials or hand holding compared to the current retail game. People have already learnt how to move camera, how to take quests and manage inventory. Chilton now says their new players are not familiar of these things, and the older player base have become more casual.
I have to make a conclusion the player base is vastly different than what played WoW early on. Blizzard has also stated publicly there's more former WoW players than those who keep playing today. This means there's more than 6 mil. players who knows how these games work, and for them the new MMOs are, in fact, too easy and very underwhelming in terms of interest and excitement.
Originally posted by TorvaldrBoth Lineage and Asheron's Call were solo friendly. There was content and you tackled it however you felt like and solo or duo was a very viable option.
Neither Lineage (1) or Asheron's Call (1) could reasonably be called solo friendly. There were large portions of content that were not readily available, unless you grouped. Other non solo friendly games included Everquest and Ultima Online, as well as most games of that era.
The trap people always fall into here is to assume that MMO players are a uniform and homogenous group. That they all want the same exact experience as each other and want that experience in every single MMO they play. People also often try to project thier own personal experiences upon the audience as a whole.
This simply isn't true, of course. It is no more true of MMO gamers then it is of movie goers. If it were the case, then every single movie released would be a romantic comedy. It's not. While it usefull, though not particularly easy, for industry pundits to try to study the MMO audience trends as a whole. It really doesn't matter that much for individual gamers....nor does it really matter that much for individual developers..... what matters is what sort of audience can THEY get for the specific game they are producing and what sort of resources does it take to capture that audience. There is room for a heck of alot of variety on alot of different factors.... group content included.... within the market as a whole. The market is also going to have to get even more varied if it wants to grow.... because the developers who want to be succesfull are going to have to reach out to whole new audiences that aren't catering to people currently playing MMO's if they want to compete well in an already saturated market.
That's a lesson that, I think, has really started to hit home with Developers. For a few years there it seemed like they all were trying to make the same MMO (WoW) because of the undeniable success it had with it's audience. The problem with that approach is that in order to beat the competition at it's own game and steal audience away from it, you generaly have to throw an ever increasing amount of resources at your product to make it "better" at what the competition does and give people a reason to spend money on it instead. Why do you think the budgets of AAA MMO's started to soar? At a certain point that justs gets unsustainable....that kind of capital get's very difficult to raise and it gets more problematic to meet your revenue goals. That's why you see more and more Developers who are putting new products on the market trying out different things to attract different audiences that aren't interested in playing the same game as thier competition. Some will succede, others will fail.... and alot of times that won't even be because there was no audience demand for the type of game they were making but based on how well they executed on thier product.
I've heard the opposite. That a good portion/most of uo ac could be done solo. I know coh could andswg as well. Eq wad the outlier. The majority of games pre wow were solo friendly.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
That is not true at all. Some before WoW were not solo friendly. I'm curious what your list of non-solo friendly pre-WoW mmos would look like. I think they are heavily responsible for this horrible contrived group vs solo design paradigm.
you could solo in these mmos but it was much more effective to group
- Anarchy Online
- Asherons Call
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Final Fantasy XI
- Lineage
none of these games were solo quest driven except at the newbie levels
Raiding as adults is possible, the mmo just needs to support it.
For example, I see no reason why a group of players cant temporarily 'switch' themselves to auto-group mode, following along healing/tanking/dps-ing/cc-ing, as need be, while afk or even logged out.
This is the next logical step to support mid-core adult players and I suspect we will see at least one mmo that supports this coming out this year.
Originally posted by MadFrenchie Wildstar is just like old MMOs? In regards to raiding... Sure. But where else? It sure didn't feel anything like my old mainstay when I played the beta.
If you mean, specifically, raiding, then yea. But there was a lot more to older MMOs than hardcore raiding.
I was thinking in general terms of not trying to appeal to a casual crowd of gamers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
you could solo in these mmos but it was much more effective to group
- Anarchy Online
- Asherons Call
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Final Fantasy XI
- Lineage
none of these games were solo quest driven except at the newbie levels
Funny, I largely soloed Anarchy Online all the way to 220. There might have been times that I'd jump into a PUG, just for the heck of it but I could have soloed all the way up if I wanted to.
Originally posted by MadFrenchie Wildstar is just like old MMOs? In regards to raiding... Sure. But where else? It sure didn't feel anything like my old mainstay when I played the beta.
If you mean, specifically, raiding, then yea. But there was a lot more to older MMOs than hardcore raiding.
I was thinking in general terms of not trying to appeal to a casual crowd of gamers.
Ahh, then I misunderstood. I get what you are saying with your originally quoted post, then.
4. Many players coming from single player RPGs (like Skyrim) that still want to play the whole MMO game as a single player. And for those players... "If you don't like to socialize, then get the &@## out and go back to your single player console game. MMO's are not single player games."
They are now.
You are confused between cause and effect. It is the MMO devs who want to tap into the single player RPG market, and lure players into their games by offering solo-friendly gameplay.
In fact, you think those players will care if they have to group in MMOs? They will simply go somewhere else. There are plenty of choices.
The solo-friendly content wasn't to tap into single player RPG players... It was to provide easy to consume content for casual gamers. Just as class homogenization provided more options for players in soloing said content. They also aren't single player games, even if you like to play them as such. I like to play Skyrim as an FPS with a bow and arrow.. It does not make it an FPS.
Originally posted by MadFrenchie The solo-friendly content wasn't to tap into single player RPG players... It was to provide easy to consume content for casual gamers. Just as class homogenization provided more options for players in soloing said content. They also aren't single player games, even if you like to play them as such. I like to play Skyrim as an FPS with a bow and arrow.. It does not make it an FPS.
No they are, by arbitrary classification of the industry (just as WoT is classified as a MMO).
However, if i can play them as single player games, and i do so as such, the distinction is immaterial to me.
Recently 2 of my friends got married and found out afterwards that their wives were ex-WoW players.
This started a series of events that ended up with 9 players in Karazhan cause most of us left during the BC/Wrath era and no one knew what the heck was going on.
Where are my talents? Why is there a pokemon game in WoW? I was told there is farmville in WoW now. Where is it? F it! Lets pile into Kara for old times sake!
While it was a fun run of 9 people for '2-3 hours' something struck me. Not one of us actually managed to play for the full 2-3 hours.
Baby feeding / baby bath / wife aggro / Non-scheduled downtime at work etc all meant people had to take breaks while others went ahead. Now Kara is solo content so we didn't have any issues as we made our way through but what if it wasn't?
What if we were in 'current Raid content' in WoW? Would any one of us actually be able to play?
Now, back in the BC/Wrath days, most of us were single so we could. Now? Married + kids? I don't think so. And I don't think i'm alone in this. The large portion of people who played WoW on release were in their 20s. They grew up and are doing things that most people do when they grow up; have a child / start a family.
This limitation for us means 'bite sized content' which starts the whole 'lack of grouping' in modern MMOs. If you only have 20mins consecutively, you are not going to be able to group with other people.
Here's the thing, I'm pretty sure we represent the largest portion of the MMO playerbase; middle class or higher, aged around 30-50. As someone from that playerbase, sorry but this 'group content' isn't more important than my baby's meal / baby's bath / Wife aggro / whatever.
MMO players grew up, deal with it.
So, that's a great explanation of why group content doesn't work for you, your friends/family and, perhaps anyone else whose life situation resembles yours.
That does not, in any way, explain why most... or even many people prefer soloing to group content. You're taking what is a very limited scope of reasons, and applying them to "a majority". It just doesn't work that way.
You also make the oh-so-common and, to me, bafflingly short-sighted, assumption that "most people" have "grown up" and "don't have the free time they once had". Again, that certainly can apply to a portion of the MMO base, but you can not generalize it to "most". Yet, so many attempt to do just that; projecting their own situation on to some population of people they presume to speak for.
Well, let's start with one simple fact.. There are people playing MMOs now who are the very age as us "grown ups" once were. They have all the free time that we once had. They have all the lack of responsibility that we once could claim. They're playing these games as well. It brings to light an interesting contradiction in MMO gamer logic, actually.
People - self-described "adults" - will often describe how the MMO community has "grown up", and use that as the basis for why "the genre should as well". Every time, they completely omit or dismiss the younger people who also share these worlds with us.
Yet, skim through the many threads about WoW, or any other MMO that's even remotely modeled after it.. And what do you find? A plethora of people making the claim that "WoW and games like it are designed for children". Yet, here you are, OP, using WoW as your specific example.
So which is it? Has WoW "grown up" with its players? Or are they still designing the game specifically for "kids"? It can't be both. My guess? It's neither. Or, perhaps, it's partially both.
There's a population of people who've grown up, who have families, careers and such... who still prefer group content to solo content, even in their limited time. In fact, they schedule their group activities around their own personal schedule. A real-life friend of mine is married with a child, a dog, a full-time job and all that goes with it... He managed to achieve more and get farther in FFXI than I even did... and I had all the time in the world at that point. Why? He planned his game time around his personal schedule, put together a collection of people to get through that group content with... and completed it. And he's only one example of someone I know personally. I've met and/or spoken to plenty others who fall into that "grown up" category, who've done very much the same.
So, merely "growing up and getting more responsibility" does not automatically preclude you from participating in, nor enjoying group content. It comes down to how people choose to spend that time. If they enjoy the group content, they'll find a way, even with limited schedules, to do so. Because scheduling time and prioritizing is something grown-ups are - or at least should be - accustom to doing.
And even beyond that... What are reasons given, rather often, against group-centric content?
- I don't want to depend on others
- I hate waiting for groups
- I don't want to deal with sharing drops
- I want to hop in and do what I want, when I want, without having to wait on others.
- I don't want my fun to be ruined if others in my group suck.
- Most other people are idiots and I'd rather not deal with them
Also see Azzamasin's post directly after mine. They post reasons they aren't a fan of group content, some which echo what I listed here.
That's just a handful of examples I can think off of the top of my head, which I read/hear quite often. None of those have anything to with "being grown up and limited on time".
I fully accept your explanation as being relevant to you and those in your example, OP. But that's where your credibility ends. The moment you start attempting to speak for some larger group of people, you deem "the majority of the player base", credibility goes out the window.
My advice: Speak for yourself. Let others do the same. That's always the safest bet.
Edit: typo correction and a few changes/additions to phrasing, etc.
Recently 2 of my friends got married and found out afterwards that their wives were ex-WoW players.
This started a series of events that ended up with 9 players in Karazhan cause most of us left during the BC/Wrath era and no one knew what the heck was going on.
Where are my talents? Why is there a pokemon game in WoW? I was told there is farmville in WoW now. Where is it? F it! Lets pile into Kara for old times sake!
While it was a fun run of 9 people for '2-3 hours' something struck me. Not one of us actually managed to play for the full 2-3 hours.
Baby feeding / baby bath / wife aggro / Non-scheduled downtime at work etc all meant people had to take breaks while others went ahead. Now Kara is solo content so we didn't have any issues as we made our way through but what if it wasn't?
What if we were in 'current Raid content' in WoW? Would any one of us actually be able to play?
Now, back in the BC/Wrath days, most of us were single so we could. Now? Married + kids? I don't think so. And I don't think i'm alone in this. The large portion of people who played WoW on release were in their 20s. They grew up and are doing things that most people do when they grow up; have a child / start a family.
This limitation for us means 'bite sized content' which starts the whole 'lack of grouping' in modern MMOs. If you only have 20mins consecutively, you are not going to be able to group with other people.
Here's the thing, I'm pretty sure we represent the largest portion of the MMO playerbase; middle class or higher, aged around 30-50. As someone from that playerbase, sorry but this 'group content' isn't more important than my baby's meal / baby's bath / Wife aggro / whatever.
MMO players grew up, deal with it.
I'll tell you why group content doesn't work for me. Pick and choose any of the following reasons:
Limited time
Asshat Douchebags
Stupid players
lack of group finders (spamming chat for groups is stupid)
I am introverted by nature (as I suspect a great many gamers are too)
planning and coordination needed to do detailed content like raids.
Just downright dislike it, I've always preferred solo play more. (for those who say "well duh play a single player RPG" then my answer is STFU, I enjoy the economy and immersion that a breathing living world brings.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Recently 2 of my friends got married and found out afterwards that their wives were ex-WoW players.
This started a series of events that ended up with 9 players in Karazhan cause most of us left during the BC/Wrath era and no one knew what the heck was going on.
Where are my talents? Why is there a pokemon game in WoW? I was told there is farmville in WoW now. Where is it? F it! Lets pile into Kara for old times sake!
While it was a fun run of 9 people for '2-3 hours' something struck me. Not one of us actually managed to play for the full 2-3 hours.
Baby feeding / baby bath / wife aggro / Non-scheduled downtime at work etc all meant people had to take breaks while others went ahead. Now Kara is solo content so we didn't have any issues as we made our way through but what if it wasn't?
What if we were in 'current Raid content' in WoW? Would any one of us actually be able to play?
Now, back in the BC/Wrath days, most of us were single so we could. Now? Married + kids? I don't think so. And I don't think i'm alone in this. The large portion of people who played WoW on release were in their 20s. They grew up and are doing things that most people do when they grow up; have a child / start a family.
This limitation for us means 'bite sized content' which starts the whole 'lack of grouping' in modern MMOs. If you only have 20mins consecutively, you are not going to be able to group with other people.
Here's the thing, I'm pretty sure we represent the largest portion of the MMO playerbase; middle class or higher, aged around 30-50. As someone from that playerbase, sorry but this 'group content' isn't more important than my baby's meal / baby's bath / Wife aggro / whatever.
MMO players grew up, deal with it.
I'll tell you why group content doesn't work for me. Pick and choose any of the following reasons:
Limited time
Asshat Douchebags
Stupid players
lack of group finders (spamming chat for groups is stupid)
I am introverted by nature (as I suspect a great many gamers are too)
planning and coordination needed to do detailed content like raids.
Just downright dislike it, I've always preferred solo play more. (for those who say "well duh play a single player RPG" then my answer is STFU, I enjoy the economy and immersion that a breathing living world brings.
I agree with a lot of that, although my biggest reasons are #2 and #3. Right now, I have no time whatsoever to play games of any kind but even if I did, I wouldn't want to group because I find the majority of players to be uneducated, ignorant asshats. I'm not particularly introverted, I'd like to group if people weren't shitheads and they actually wanted to play the same way I want to play, but everyone is rushing to endgame and I am not.
Comments
I'm almost 40. I make time for MMO's. MMO's require time.
If i don't have time for MMO's, i do something else. I don't ask that a genre change for me or the situation i'm in.
That's the problem and why we can't have nice things.
I feel like I am arguing with a brick wall. You can't draw conclusions about a specific subset of a study group based on the overall study group unless you know that the overall group is representative of the smaller subset. This IS statistics 101, you should know it if you are actualy involved in any sort of research. It's basic.
This is why I used Priests, because it was very easy to demonstrate but we could easly use surfers or mountain climbers or gamers or just about any other specific subgroup. People self-select to be Priests just like they self-select to be surfers or mountain climbers or gamers. One of the conditions of being a Priest is that you are (supposed to be) celebate, meaning no more kids.... that self-selection influences other life choices in ways different from the general populace, meaning the demographics will be different from that of the general populace. Further, there will be certain factors that influence people to self-select to become Priests that are likely to make them different then the populace as a whole.
This demonstrates exactly why your contention that we could use the average age of the US Population as whole (as determined by the US Census) to judge the average age of Priests is flawed. We know that children can't be Priests (you have to graduate from Seminary College to become one) but children are part of the US Population as a whole which would cause differences in the average age of each study group. Further we know for a fact (you can find ample documentation of this) that many people who become Priests do so at a later stage in thier lives (e.g. There are life experiences that influence people to self-select to become Priests) and that the percentage of people who choose to become Priests in modern generations is less then those in past generations (this is also well documented) as common attitudes towards religion has shifted from generation to generation.
Further, if we want to draw conclusions about Priests as a whole but are looking only at the U.S. population (using the U.S. Census as a data source) then we are discarding any factors that might make the populace of nations in Africa or Asia or Europe or Latin America... all of which have Priests... different from the U.S. populace.
This should demonstrate why it is fataly flawed to try to draw conclusions about MMO Gamers as a whole by looking at the Demographics of the US population as a whole as presented in the US Census. In order to even attempt to do so, we'd have to first understand if there were any factors that would cause people to self-select to be MMO gamers that were different from the populace as a whole. Next we would need to understand how playing MMO's might influence other life choices or opportunities that might be different from that of the general populace. Finaly, since we want to look at MMO gamers as a whole, as opposed to just US MMO gamers then we need to know if there are any demographic differences between the US population and the populations of Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America... all of whom contribute to the pool of MMO gamers. We just can't assume all these are null factors without studying them and making some attempt to determine that they are.
In terms of Chilton, while it is likely that he is basing his decision making off of data research about his game, we can't just assume that he has, because he hasn't stated as much. Further, his data research would be subject to the same sort of limitations that Yee's was...self-selection bias. That is one of the reasons why market research... which alot of companies in many verticals do isn't an exact science like chemistry or physics that always yields perdictable results. That's why we get things like "New Coke".... and why we get products that end up with very different results then the companies who released them (many of whom did market research) expected. Even if Chilton is absolutely on the ball about his own MMO, we can't assume that the demographics of WoW (a 10 year old game) are identical the demographics of the MMO audience as a whole.
Again, I'm not trying to argue that your conclusions are right or wrong. Frankly I don't know... there isn't any reliable data outside anecdotal evidence. I'm saying that your methods for arriving at those conclusions are entirely unsound if you are really trying to be data driven.
More likely, assuming he's basing his decision making off of actual research on his own game..... which I expect he is but is still an assumption on our part..... his information would address a subset of a subset...namely WoW players.
We are left with the same problem in reverse. How representative are WoW players (a 10 year old MMO) of the MMO gaming populace as a whole. It's posiible they are quite representative but I don't think we could simply assume so with a high degree of confidence.
Finaly, even if we assume all the above, we are still left with the same weakness that Yee (or pretty much all market research by such services) has.... self-selection bias. It's not like Blizzard is sending people to knock on doors to verify whether it's players are 30 yr old men or 12 yr old girls. Chilton can probably tell with a high degree of accuracy WHAT people are opting to do in his MMO, that is very easy to measure.... and I expect they are noticing people opt for shorter or easier content.... but the WHY people are doing it is ALOT harder to answer.... that they can't measure directly but have to get from survey responses, etc.
P.S. I'm not actualy arguing for or against my own preferences. Whatever is is, regardless of my own preferences... they aren't going to change that. But if we really want to be data driven we have to understand the limitations of what we are studying and how we are studying. In terms of my own preferences, I'm not really too worried at this point.... the MMO market is broad enough and saturated with competition enough that SOMEONE is going to make a game that matches closely enough to my preferences to enjoy....even if those preferences are "niche"....if only because they don't want to fight every other MMO developer out there for the same market segment. This is actualy the case... I'm playing 2 MMO's in Alpha right now, and I see more potentials on the horizon. Good situation for me....not so great for the MMO companies who have to fight each other for an audience against all that competition.
largest mmo study i've seen was the EQ2 study - but it only pertains to EQ2
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/02/aaas-60tb-of-behavioral-data-the-everquest-2-server-logs/
In addition to introducing the EQ2 logs as a resource, Dmitri Williams described some of the efforts involved in exploring how much of the real world spilled over into the virtual.
The average age of players turned out to be 31. "These aren't just pasty white teenage boys in a basement—to be sure, they're there, but they're not typical," he said. The older players tended to play more than the kids and, although the total hours played seem large, he said that the time mostly displaced either TV watching or movie going. And the surveys showed that those who viewed TV news in the first place continued to do so, suggesting that gamers really slotted EQ2 into their entertainment time.
and the demographic surveys relied on players telling the truth ..
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26947992/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/video-gamers-are-surprisingly-fit-says-study/
http://kotaku.com/5056938/mmo-players-surprisingly-adept-at-lying-on-surveys
EQ2 fan sites
UO's peak population plus EQ's peak population plus SWG's peak population is just a hair over a million people. Throw in Anarchy Online and maybe Dark Age of Camelot and you still don't get to two million players. There are not "millions" of players who both remember, enjoyed and want to again play games that are just like those older MMORPGs. WildStar is learning this lesson right now.
The people that started entering the genre since WoW are more numerous and more casual than those original players, and at the same time, some portion of those original players are becoming more casual. I don't think it matters that much why they are becoming more casual on average, it's only important that they are, and where I as a player fit in on that spectrum between hard core and casual.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
If you mean, specifically, raiding, then yea. But there was a lot more to older MMOs than hardcore raiding.
When i talked about millions of players, i was refering to early WoW, and 12 mil. players it once had. The game had very little tutorials or hand holding compared to the current retail game. People have already learnt how to move camera, how to take quests and manage inventory. Chilton now says their new players are not familiar of these things, and the older player base have become more casual.
I have to make a conclusion the player base is vastly different than what played WoW early on. Blizzard has also stated publicly there's more former WoW players than those who keep playing today. This means there's more than 6 mil. players who knows how these games work, and for them the new MMOs are, in fact, too easy and very underwhelming in terms of interest and excitement.
Neither Lineage (1) or Asheron's Call (1) could reasonably be called solo friendly. There were large portions of content that were not readily available, unless you grouped. Other non solo friendly games included Everquest and Ultima Online, as well as most games of that era.
The trap people always fall into here is to assume that MMO players are a uniform and homogenous group. That they all want the same exact experience as each other and want that experience in every single MMO they play. People also often try to project thier own personal experiences upon the audience as a whole.
This simply isn't true, of course. It is no more true of MMO gamers then it is of movie goers. If it were the case, then every single movie released would be a romantic comedy. It's not. While it usefull, though not particularly easy, for industry pundits to try to study the MMO audience trends as a whole. It really doesn't matter that much for individual gamers....nor does it really matter that much for individual developers..... what matters is what sort of audience can THEY get for the specific game they are producing and what sort of resources does it take to capture that audience. There is room for a heck of alot of variety on alot of different factors.... group content included.... within the market as a whole. The market is also going to have to get even more varied if it wants to grow.... because the developers who want to be succesfull are going to have to reach out to whole new audiences that aren't catering to people currently playing MMO's if they want to compete well in an already saturated market.
That's a lesson that, I think, has really started to hit home with Developers. For a few years there it seemed like they all were trying to make the same MMO (WoW) because of the undeniable success it had with it's audience. The problem with that approach is that in order to beat the competition at it's own game and steal audience away from it, you generaly have to throw an ever increasing amount of resources at your product to make it "better" at what the competition does and give people a reason to spend money on it instead. Why do you think the budgets of AAA MMO's started to soar? At a certain point that justs gets unsustainable....that kind of capital get's very difficult to raise and it gets more problematic to meet your revenue goals. That's why you see more and more Developers who are putting new products on the market trying out different things to attract different audiences that aren't interested in playing the same game as thier competition. Some will succede, others will fail.... and alot of times that won't even be because there was no audience demand for the type of game they were making but based on how well they executed on thier product.
you could solo in these mmos but it was much more effective to group
- Anarchy Online
- Asherons Call
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Final Fantasy XI
- Lineage
none of these games were solo quest driven except at the newbie levels
EQ2 fan sites
In Modern games grouping if much more effective to get xp and loot as well
Raiding as adults is possible, the mmo just needs to support it.
For example, I see no reason why a group of players cant temporarily 'switch' themselves to auto-group mode, following along healing/tanking/dps-ing/cc-ing, as need be, while afk or even logged out.
This is the next logical step to support mid-core adult players and I suspect we will see at least one mmo that supports this coming out this year.
-WL
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
I was thinking in general terms of not trying to appeal to a casual crowd of gamers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Funny, I largely soloed Anarchy Online all the way to 220. There might have been times that I'd jump into a PUG, just for the heck of it but I could have soloed all the way up if I wanted to.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Ahh, then I misunderstood. I get what you are saying with your originally quoted post, then.
They are now.
You are confused between cause and effect. It is the MMO devs who want to tap into the single player RPG market, and lure players into their games by offering solo-friendly gameplay.
In fact, you think those players will care if they have to group in MMOs? They will simply go somewhere else. There are plenty of choices.
No they are, by arbitrary classification of the industry (just as WoT is classified as a MMO).
However, if i can play them as single player games, and i do so as such, the distinction is immaterial to me.
So, that's a great explanation of why group content doesn't work for you, your friends/family and, perhaps anyone else whose life situation resembles yours.
That does not, in any way, explain why most... or even many people prefer soloing to group content. You're taking what is a very limited scope of reasons, and applying them to "a majority". It just doesn't work that way.
You also make the oh-so-common and, to me, bafflingly short-sighted, assumption that "most people" have "grown up" and "don't have the free time they once had". Again, that certainly can apply to a portion of the MMO base, but you can not generalize it to "most". Yet, so many attempt to do just that; projecting their own situation on to some population of people they presume to speak for.
Well, let's start with one simple fact.. There are people playing MMOs now who are the very age as us "grown ups" once were. They have all the free time that we once had. They have all the lack of responsibility that we once could claim. They're playing these games as well. It brings to light an interesting contradiction in MMO gamer logic, actually.
People - self-described "adults" - will often describe how the MMO community has "grown up", and use that as the basis for why "the genre should as well". Every time, they completely omit or dismiss the younger people who also share these worlds with us.
Yet, skim through the many threads about WoW, or any other MMO that's even remotely modeled after it.. And what do you find? A plethora of people making the claim that "WoW and games like it are designed for children". Yet, here you are, OP, using WoW as your specific example.
So which is it? Has WoW "grown up" with its players? Or are they still designing the game specifically for "kids"? It can't be both. My guess? It's neither. Or, perhaps, it's partially both.
There's a population of people who've grown up, who have families, careers and such... who still prefer group content to solo content, even in their limited time. In fact, they schedule their group activities around their own personal schedule. A real-life friend of mine is married with a child, a dog, a full-time job and all that goes with it... He managed to achieve more and get farther in FFXI than I even did... and I had all the time in the world at that point. Why? He planned his game time around his personal schedule, put together a collection of people to get through that group content with... and completed it. And he's only one example of someone I know personally. I've met and/or spoken to plenty others who fall into that "grown up" category, who've done very much the same.
So, merely "growing up and getting more responsibility" does not automatically preclude you from participating in, nor enjoying group content. It comes down to how people choose to spend that time. If they enjoy the group content, they'll find a way, even with limited schedules, to do so. Because scheduling time and prioritizing is something grown-ups are - or at least should be - accustom to doing.
And even beyond that... What are reasons given, rather often, against group-centric content?
- I don't want to depend on others
- I hate waiting for groups
- I don't want to deal with sharing drops
- I want to hop in and do what I want, when I want, without having to wait on others.
- I don't want my fun to be ruined if others in my group suck.
- Most other people are idiots and I'd rather not deal with them
Also see Azzamasin's post directly after mine. They post reasons they aren't a fan of group content, some which echo what I listed here.
That's just a handful of examples I can think off of the top of my head, which I read/hear quite often. None of those have anything to with "being grown up and limited on time".
I fully accept your explanation as being relevant to you and those in your example, OP. But that's where your credibility ends. The moment you start attempting to speak for some larger group of people, you deem "the majority of the player base", credibility goes out the window.
My advice: Speak for yourself. Let others do the same. That's always the safest bet.
Edit: typo correction and a few changes/additions to phrasing, etc.
I'll tell you why group content doesn't work for me. Pick and choose any of the following reasons:
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I agree with a lot of that, although my biggest reasons are #2 and #3. Right now, I have no time whatsoever to play games of any kind but even if I did, I wouldn't want to group because I find the majority of players to be uneducated, ignorant asshats. I'm not particularly introverted, I'd like to group if people weren't shitheads and they actually wanted to play the same way I want to play, but everyone is rushing to endgame and I am not.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Is the fact that solo is popular, and many don't want to group in dispute? Or just the reasons of why it is so?