I’m forty nine years old and I play MMO’s. Happily, I’m not alone. You can find my kind of player in just about all games from World of Warcraft, to Eve Online, to Star Trek Online. We tend to help out players in game and be a moderating influence on the forum boards.
Well sometimes we’re a moderating influence. Other times we’re the worst bunch of flame warriors you’ve ever seen. We also are generally ignored by game developers which is a terrible mistake since we also are the ones who give the money to our children to play online or buy that great new box from Sony or Microsoft.
I figure it’s about time we had our say on the state of the online gaming industry.
I got rather annoyed when I read this interview with Bill Roper and Craig Zinkievich and the rather condescending manner that they talked about gamers. All the hype about their games aside, Cryptic has made a few mistakes about who plays their games now.
Listen up you two idiots! The kids are gone. They beat your content lite game in 2 to three weeks and are playing and replaying Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age.
I paid for my subscriptions to your game and helped beta test both of them. I made what I thought were well reasoned and helpful suggestions on how to improve your product and was ignored. I and hundreds of others begged you not to release STO in the condition that it was in and you did it anyway.
For months we told you about problems with Champions and you ignored us and put buggy patches out that did exactly what we said they would do while they were on your test server. For our work which I might add was done for free, we received a game that got much worse.
To have one of your company members come on the forum for CO and suggest that we go test an upcoming patch was the final straw for me. The Vibora Bay fiasco was just icing on the cake. That caused my subscriptions to be cancelled and I can honestly say that however great those two games turn out to be in the future, you still won’t get another dime from me.
You could give your player base actual superpowers in real life, with the ability to shoot lasers from my navel whilst flying at supersonic speeds. Not a dime. Nope Bill and Jack, you can just sit in your offices and take your pool winnings on which consumer on your forums came with the first “slap on the face or thrown under the bus comment.”
I’ll be spending my money on MMO’s that appreciate the fact that I’m willing to help out their customer base. Games like Eve-Online or even browser based games like Astro Empires. They appreciate their subscriber base. I’ll also be spending time looking for the best value gaming experience for us older folks.
In my next stop, I’ll be contrasting two different gamer groups that play multiple games online. What do they do to attract adults to their gaming communities?
Cryptic hasn’t had a very good image lately, considering Bill Roper has hardly helped create anything ground-breaking, I wouldn’t be surprised if they let him go. Those type of comments are really unacceptable.
With the MMO-boom we’ve had after WoW’s release, a lot of developers seem to underestimate the role your community plays.
Just look at Blizzard: It’s not hard to assume things like paid server transfers were inspired by the community’s consensus.
I know Blizzard gets a lot of crap from the “hardcore” MMO players, but this is one thing that company gets. It *listens*, but more importantly it knows *when* to listen.
You gotta play LOTRO man… most mature player base, fun content based on the best IP in this century… Well worth all of the money I put into it. Turbine isn’t the best at listening, but they are better than most!
Boo Hoo. Maybe check out the horribly average reviews of their games before you dish out the dough and for a subscription. Go play WoW, at least you get lots of content and its constantly patched.
@BobsYurUncle, If you read the article more carefully, you’ll see he was in the beta for both, before any reviews. :p
I guess you think they are EVIL then?
Actually, I think they’re incompetent. That’s worse than evil.
I didn’t know much about this conflict, but just by reading this article, and looking at the Massively comments, it seems clear that Cryptic is neglecting their community, which is a damn shame.
When making a “regular” game, your community is extremely important. When making an MMO, doubly so. Like some have mentioned before me, Blizzard gets this. They continue to rebalance and add content and features to the game, even after 5 years, all based on requests from the players.
Cryptic needs to realize that without the community, there’s no player base, and without players, they won’t get any money.
Lol I was thinking of getting STO
@Mark,
Why? Star Trek Online looks like crap.
cuz its Star Trek, lol
@Mark, Star Trek Online is a decent game, but like most MMOs it is completely lacking in things to do once you reach level cap.
They seem to be working on fixing that issue a lot more with Star Trek Pnline though, as there has been a lot of content updates for the game since it launched.
I’m actually looking at Black Prophecy as a potential winner for a space MMO. Looks like I may have gotten into the closed beta as a tester. I’ll be posting on how it plays