DGN: Emergent Behaviors spawned from - Re: [MUD-Dev]SOC:Willcompany sanctioned cheating hurt theMMOcommunity?

[Michael Hartman]

Vincent Archer wrote:
> According to Michael Hartman:

>> They make raids to cater to their most hardcore players who are:

>>  1) Less than 1% of their customers.

> A bit more than that. On Everquest, a couple years ago, I did a
> quick estimation, and raiding guilds represented about 15% of the
> players.

Two things:

  1) 15% still isn't a very high number when the issue is 100% of
  high end content, and 100% of access to high end items requiring
  this type of gameplay.

  2) Your study was done near the end of Everquest's life cycle. By
  that time, more and more of the raid-haters had moved on to other
  games. The longer a game that is so incredibly raid-centric
  survives, the population will start to self-select for being
  pro-raids. Why? Because they are the only people who will stay
  around.

> World of Warcraft seem to have about the same amount of raiding
> people, but diluted in a much larger pool of players, though.

Which is basically why I estimate the 1% (a very non-scientific
estimate, I must admit). That is the problem. There is definitely a
group of people who love raids. This is a significant group by pure
numbers, but an insignificant group by percentage. It is GOOD to
design raid content for people who like this stuff. Even people who
aren't huge fans of raids still enjoy them on occasion. But to make
raids the *ONLY* way to obtain access to high end/top
end/post-level-cap gear is just horrificly bad game design.

--
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.thresholdrpg.com)
President & CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
University of Georgia School of Law, 1995-1998
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 1990-1994
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