Analysis: MMO game-changers

Between now and the end of the 2010 fiscal year in early 2011, several massively multiplayer online games we've known and played for years will receive expansions. Now's as good a time as any to find out if things really do change the more they stay the same.

Right now, the eyes of many MMO players are fixed on World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm. In addition to the usual content MMO players expect from expansions (such as new dungeons, new quests, and maybe even new races), the expansion also adjusts gameplay elements like the talent system and takes a stab at integrating DirectX 11. While the world waits for a release date, however, EverQuest and EverQuest II publisher Sony Online Entertainment chose September to announce its own set of expansions for both games. EQ is on its 17th expansion, which adds in-game housing, and EQII introduces flying mounts in expansion No. 7.

It seems like the changes to EQ and EQII are mostly cosmetic when compared to Cataclysm. Housing gives EQ players a place to stick their collectibles, and flying mounts -- while sometimes practical -- are mostly just a style thing (plus, WOW has them, too). But even though neither expansion dramatically changes the landscape of their respective games, they are still part of a set of MMO "game-changers" developers invest in over time.

"Game-changers" are aspects of development that significantly improve not just the game but the entire genre. They're especially important for MMOs. Consider this MMO game-changer: fast travel. Before MMOs evolved a system of warp points or in-game transportation, it could take up to half an hour for players to get to the action in an MMO like EverQuest. As if that wasn't bad enough, you'd spend 10 minutes fighting and then another half-hour running back to turn in a quest. And trying to meet up with buddies to fight the same thing? Forget it.

Eventually, MMOs introduced in-game transportation in the form of mounts or waypoints that would warp groups of players to different points in the virtual world. This evolved from various fast-travel systems and buddy-to-buddy warp points into flying mounts like the ones coming to EQII -- and even into player flight like in Aion: Tower of Eternity.

Other MMO game-changers include player versus player combat (PVP), instances where everyone gets their own Xeroxed copy of a dungeon or battlegrounds to play in, and even microtransaction payments.

Longstanding MMOs like EQ, EQII, and WOW were bound to evolve systems like travel over time just to stay competitive with each other and on top of new technology. But no successful game-changer happens overnight (if it does, it can be a disaster). Smaller game-changers or added content introduced an MMO over time serve the dual purpose of freshening a stale game and paving the way for bigger changes, like fast travel that evolves the genre as a whole.

EverQuest Producer Thom Terrazas tells GamePro that his expansion, House of Thule, doesn't count as a game-changer in his opinion. Rather, he thinks of it as a "value added" element that keeps EQ current.

"We've seen in other games how successful [houses] have been," he says. "You can obviously reinvent the wheel [with expansions], but if you start to see that everybody has got a better solution or something much better, then you're going in the wrong direction. Obviously, you want to make sure that you can do something bigger and better the next time around."

Without revealing too much, Terrazas says that while houses aren't a game-changer, they do lay the groundwork for "bigger and better" changes down the line. While players can opt out of even having a house, a lot of technical work went into building them, and Terrazas wants his team to build on that for their 18th expansion -- something that he would consider a game-changer.

"This is a business," he explains. "There are going to be business decisions, and there are going to be gameplay decisions, and they have to live together. And it'll be difficult, but I think that players need to see the benefits before they make the decision to opt-out."

Rolling out a change or a new feature of any kind is always a risk for MMO developers, even when players can opt out of it or play the game for months without even seeing it. MMOs are dependent on fan loyalty, and fans don't like surprise overhauls of their beloved games for what they think of as no good reason.

Take for example the New Game Enhancement (NGE), a second update made to Star Wars Galaxies. The changes were major, like the overhaul of the profession system that allowed players to choose "Jedi" instead of working for it, and the backlash from fans was intense. Though LucasArts doesn't call Galaxies a failure or mention the impact NGE had on the MMO's lifecycle, three years later the company announced a new Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, and other MMO developers speak openly of NGE as a "fan rebellion" disaster.

"There's two things that you have [if you want to change your MMO] -- one, you have to have guts that you're willing to tamper with your game. And two, you have to have a lot of time, because the big features require a lot of effort," says David Georgeson, senior producer for EQII. While his next expansion, Destiny of Velious, "barely" counts as a game-changer in his own words, he's a fan of looking ahead to the changes he could make in the future -- if fan support and resources allow.

"There are some things we'd love to do to EQII, but we're going to have to suss them out with our existing players to make sure that they're cool with it. And of course we have a lot of work to do before that, and we're certainly not getting to it before we launch Velious," he says. "Let's just say that it would be great if there were different ways to play EverQuest II than the current combat model -- we have combat and we have trade skills -- and when you get right down to it, we have lots and lots of flavors of those. But it'd be great if there were other things to do, also."

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