[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

From: "Marc Fielding" <fielding at computer.org>

> With budgets for commercial MMORPGs climbing into the tens of
> millions, developers don't have the luxury of limiting their
> target market.

Absolutely wrong!

This is a very basic marketing concept: if you're putting a lot of
muscle into moving the train, make sure you're pushing it in the
right direction.  The higher the stakes, the more you have at risk,
the bigger the budget, the more CRITICAL it is to know EXACTLY who
your customers are and EXACTLY how to get their money in your pocket
as soon as possible. Define your exit strategy and recoup fast, so
you can start pulling in profits and making sensible decisions about
how and where to broaden the market.

It's simple inertia. Grabbing a big idea and swinging it wildly will
hit a lot of people, but you'll get tired a lot faster than if you
used that big idea with surgical precision to hit *exactly* the
people you need.

> customers have no real incentive to stay put, as there is always
> something new arriving on the scene in "two weeks."

The problem is that there isn't something *different*
arriving. Nobody is splitting up the market. They all want the whole
thing. We have half a dozen major MMORPGs which are all trying to
own ALL the marbles, which simply never works.

Brand leadership 101: If your market share is more than 60%, you
have a problem.  Brand leadership 102: If you WANT more than 60%
market share, you have a problem.

Anyone marketing to "everyone" is trying to hit the broad side of a
barn and knock it over. It's not going to happen. You have to throw
a lot of really big stuff to knock over the broad side of a
barn. What you need is a little pyramid of milk bottles, where each
target supports another target and you can knock down several with a
well-placed manageable throw.

The single smartest MMORPG on the planet right now is Furcadia,
which is not *competing* with any of the other games. It's doing its
own thing and doing it well, and nobody takes it at all seriously
except in its own little niche market. Furcadia doesn't want the
world, they want a small part of the world. they know who they want,
and they know what those people want, and that's what they do.

Ten years from now, Furcadia will probably still be there. Most of
the others will have long since become embarrassments and
liabilities to their owners, if they're up at all. Because Furcadia
knows better than to grab for all the marbles, and apparently nobody
else does.

> Today's "vanilla" product (as you put it) serves a purpose. It
> provides a taste of MMO gaming to the public. From this seemingly
> homogeneous mass of humanity will come new generations of
> roleplayers, socializers, explorers, and, yes, powergamers.

That's entirely backwards. Today's vanilla product ought to serve as
the basis for tomorrow's chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, white
chocolate macadamia, and banana split. No ice cream shop sells
nothing but vanilla.  They sell the proverbial 31 flavors, to
satisfy more and more people. If all they had was vanilla, nobody
would go there.

Vanilla ice cream doesn't teach you how to eat chocolate ice cream,
it teaches you whether you like vanilla ice cream. We *need* more
flavors.  Right now, I'm sitting around wondering whether SWG is the
flavor I want; when I get a chance to play it, I will *probably* say
"nope, it isn't" and keep looking. But I'm going to try it, anyway,
because it looks promising.  Nothing else has, to date.

> Those newly minted roleplayers will seek refined experiences,

No, they won't. They will seek experiences that are more of what
they like, and less of what they don't. It takes a certain kind of
person to appreciate refined experiences, and that kind of person
tends to turn up his nose at vanilla.

Hence Mike's later comment that people keep coming back. Vanilla is
nice. I like vanilla. But it's boring, and I always seem to return
to more complex and refined desserts... although admittedly, as a
former pastry chef, I tend to have more options than most
people. Likewise, by virtue of our participation on this list, we
all have more game options than the average player -- we hear about
the real shining stars of the field, and flawed games are recognised
and condemned rapidly. It would be a mistake to think that we
automatically know what players want, because we're not really
players anymore.

However, being the hardcore gamers we are, we could always go
roleplay one for a while to gain insight. ;)

> Muling still requires WORK on behalf of the player to train a mule
> in the desired skill set. I believe that most people focus the
> bulk of their efforts on a single character. They simply don't
> have time to mule. Hence, muling is relatively rare, with minimal
> effect on the rest of the game.

Only if training a character is more difficult than finding a
character to do what you need. Which, in most cases, it isn't. Most
people get to a point where they can "powerlevel" someone reasonably
rapidly, and they use that to give this person a huge supply of
skill or experience points that can be used to create the mule.

There are some people, like me, who think this is too big a pain in
the ass.  I think you're one of those people, too. We don't care how
you can get someone from level 1 to level 45 in a single combat. It
smacks of cheating, anyway, and that's just not right. We determine
that this is both immoral and unethical, and we don't do it.

But a lot of other people just want "easy". And those people will
find it much more simple to train a new character than to go out and
look for someone with the right skills. How many people have a level
42 cobbler with a specialty in basilisk hide? Not many. And if you
can rip a new character up to level 45 in a day, it will be harder
to *find* one than to *make* one.

Muling happens largely because a series of problems support one
another.

  1. It is hard to find out who has the skills you want.

  2. It is hard to contact that person when you find them.

  3. If the skills you want are not fun, nobody will have them.

It's easy to get rid of problem 1 with a few good search tools. You
can't get rid of problem 2, though, and problem 3 is much more
pervasive than it seems.

The big assumption about crafting is that if crafting is profitable,
more people will do it. I don't think this is true. I think people
want money so they can go out and get things they want and then go
do interesting things.  But the assumption I see most often is that
the "interesting things" they want to do are obviously -- more
crafting, on a larger scale!

Joe makes guns. Why does Joe make guns? So he can make money. Why
does he want the money? To make more guns! And Joe DREAMS of owning
his own complex of major manufacturing concerns throughout the
galaxy where guns are manufactured by the millions! And then, THEN,
when they least expect it -- a chain of multi-level pancake houses,
in every major city of the Netherlands!

Somehow, that doesn't strike me as a sensible thing to expect of
your players. That's a small dream, a dream that someone would have
for atmosphere. Joe will probably have a more *interesting*
dream. Every time he goes after the gun-manufacturing thing, he's
taking time away from his interesting dream. He's using up skill
slots that could support his interesting dream. And he's giving
other people the chance to get in his way and stop him from
achieving it. Do you really think you can just *buy* those things
from someone?

I just don't think the money is enough incentive. I don't know what
would be a good incentive, but I'm skeptical of money's ability to
motivate people when it doesn't represent anything of real
value. Muling is attractive because your mule produces things *you*
want and need. Why is crafting for others attractive?


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