Comments on: MMOs are bigger than you think

By: Adele

Adele — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:22:19 +0000

It is no surprise that Gods and Heroes tanked. The game was extremely buggy, and not just a little that could be fixed easily. It was the kind of buggy that would take years to fix. It also looked horrible. It may have looked good 5 or 6 years ago. There are so many new games coming out that look and play great, and if you are going to put out a new MMO it had better be something that can compete.

By: Moorgard.com » Blog Archive » The Undiscovered Country

Moorgard.com » Blog Archive » The Undiscovered Country — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:00:37 +0000

[…] former boss Scott Hartsman wrote a really good piece last week about the complexity of building MMOs. He’s right on the money about why it’s so hard to bring these games to the market, […]

By: Joe Ludwig

Joe Ludwig — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:43:42 +0000

I don’t know of a single high-budget MMO that’s been staffed with that kind of experience throughout, simply because those people just plain don’t exist yet in sufficient numbers.

I bet LotRO had a ton of experienced people on the team. If they didn’t it was because of turnover, not because there aren’t enough MMO developers total.

Of course in our case we have three people who have shipped MMOs working on pirates. That’s on a team that’s now over 70. But we’ll be adding 70 new people to the list in just a few months.

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:35:45 +0000

It’s interesting, because at the smaller scale of things, the infrastructure isn’t nearly as complex. Sometimes people want to make things more complicated than they truly are. M59’s billing system was one of those “thrown together at the last minute” things that should have been ruinous for us. But, through a combination of good people and finding a good service, we were able to pull through just fine. Is it the absolute best billing system ever? No, but it works well enough.

However, you are right in that many times inexperienced people don’t really think about these things. Optimistic veterans assume things will go smoothly and don’t anticipate snags. But, this is the same as many other areas of the project. Most projects are just one disaster away from doom, and I think we’ve seen more people recognize that they’re on the wrong path and choose to shelve the project instead of doing a terrible launch; I think this is mostly because people are starting to realize that reputation gained from one game (and it’s launch) carry over into other games.

My observations.

By: Brian Motisko

Brian Motisko — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:53:55 +0000

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one Scott. Just look at SOE as a big example. Back when EQ launched and the first few expansions, launch day was always a mess. Now with the experience on those teams and in the company, launch days go off really smooth.

Plus like you said, as more people are brought into the industry now that its growing and get experience it will be easier. The tech will be out there, teams will be more efficient and I think you will see production times go from 4 years down to 2-2.5 years.

Personally what I think will eventually happen will be a standard first rate MMO engine that will be built. I know the Unreal engine is starting to be used but it’s also being heavily gutted for an MMO. Once a solid MMO package is made available smaller/newer companies will be able to have less growing pains on the tech side and be able put these games out and have some success.

By: Nick McLaren

Nick McLaren — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:20:10 +0000

“Core files aren’t sexy”

This is definitely my mantra for the next week. I need to post this one saying all over the office, or buy t-shirts for the QA department with this on it. So very right on… not only this awesome quote, but the post in general. It all makes logical sense when you think about it, but people do tend to focus on what they see and not what happens behind the scenes to enable them to see anything besides a login screen. Kudos! =)