[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] MMO's are for Newbies

[Sean Howard]

"Richard A. Bartle" <richard at mud.co.uk> wrote:
>         My soapbox post is about how virtual world designs get locked in
> place by what newbies want. It's not about whether instances or PD are
> good ideas, or whether anything else I happen to like or dislike is a
> good idea or not. It's saying that whatever any of us like, we're at the
> mercy of newbies as to whether we get it or not.

You will have to excuse me, as I haven't read this soapbox post so if I'm
treading familiar ground, I apologize in advance.

But it seems like what you are saying - that virtual worlds are designed
by newbie desires - seems extremely counter to my experiences with them. I
mean, if you sat a new player down with Everquest 2, where many of the
features are undocumented, have undocumented side effects, and even work
in an unpredictable and counter-intuitive manner. It seems to me that in
order to even play Everquest 2, you've got to have experience with other
MMORPGs and know certain terms and concepts up front. Even World of
Warcraft is difficult for the uninitiated - instead, WoW just catered to a
different online community (namely the Diablo/Counter Strike folks) when
creating its rewards and goals. It was more of a rosetta stone for a
different breed of online gamer than it was actually newbie friendly.

Even MUDs typically require a few months to get a handle on, unless you
already have a handle on that particular genre of MUD. Going from a MUCK
to a MUSH isn't hard, but going from a MUCK to a Diku can be extremely
frustrating in practice.

When you say that online worlds are being designed around newbies, do you
mean casual players? Because if you set any newbie down into a new type of
game where they don't know the vocabulary, it's going to be difficult -
but to do it in a competitive social structure built around cliquish 15
year olds with self esteem problems and virtual anonymity? The only newbie
friendly thing you could do is limit forced social interaction, and most
MMORPGs go quite the opposite direction.

The way I see it, online worlds could only be improved by listening to the
newbies instead of the usual obsessive genre fans...

-- 
Sean Howard