Post by Morreion on Apr 15, 2016 18:01:32 GMT -5
The Game Archaeologist: The Wish that wasn’t (MOP)
Wish seemed to arrive as rapidly as it would later disappear. Mutable Realms, a studio that formed in 2001, began work on Wish in 2003 and announced it as well as the start of the first beta test to the world in January 2004. It was small fry compared to the budgets over at SOE and Blizzard, but the Mutable Realms team seemed determined to make a name for itself with Wish. The devs even coined an awkward new acronym for the game: UMMORPG, or “Ultra Massive Multiplayer Online RPG.”
In what sounds like an eerie precedent to claims made by more recent MMOs, Wish was to be a game that would toss out levels and produce truly dynamic content that would forever alter the game world. And oh yeah, everyone in the game would play on a single server.
The game debuted to the public at E3 in May of 2004, receiving generally positive if not comprehensive press coverage. Massively OP was not there because someone had yet to invent Massively OP, so that’s our excuse.
By several accounts, Wish grew in beta testing size and popularity, becoming one of the more anticipated MMOs of the time. As the closed beta test wrapped up, the larger community looked forward to the start of the open beta on December 1st, 2004. However, Mutable Realms announced a one-month delay while the team worked on bugs, pushing beta 2.0 to January 1st, 2005 instead.
And then it happened. Ten days and 60,000-plus beta testers later, Mutable Realms posted a letter stating that the game was to be shut down, and the studio made good on its promise mere hours later.
So what happened?
In what sounds like an eerie precedent to claims made by more recent MMOs, Wish was to be a game that would toss out levels and produce truly dynamic content that would forever alter the game world. And oh yeah, everyone in the game would play on a single server.
The game debuted to the public at E3 in May of 2004, receiving generally positive if not comprehensive press coverage. Massively OP was not there because someone had yet to invent Massively OP, so that’s our excuse.
By several accounts, Wish grew in beta testing size and popularity, becoming one of the more anticipated MMOs of the time. As the closed beta test wrapped up, the larger community looked forward to the start of the open beta on December 1st, 2004. However, Mutable Realms announced a one-month delay while the team worked on bugs, pushing beta 2.0 to January 1st, 2005 instead.
And then it happened. Ten days and 60,000-plus beta testers later, Mutable Realms posted a letter stating that the game was to be shut down, and the studio made good on its promise mere hours later.
So what happened?
The Great Digital Hype (The Escapist, 2006)
...Developers have to balance their enthusiasm with what they're actually capable of accomplishing. On one hand, it is imperative to get people talking before the game ships, especially if you have little to no marketing budget. On the other, the more fans talk, the more they dream, and the more they dream, the more they expect. If it gets out of hand, expect a violent backlash when reality rears its ugly head.
I am writing from personal experience.
Wish was an MMOG cancelled in January of 2005, despite very good beta sign-up numbers and a slew of online media coverage. We bore all the trademarks of a small independent developer. One of these was my serving simultaneously as the Co-Lead Game Designer, Assistant Producer, World Designer and Community Manager, and I was hardly the only one wearing multiple hats.
Two of those hats got us into trouble, though. I had little development experience, and when someone serves as both a senior designer and a community talking head, things can get out of hand.
My experience was in the realm of online journalism, and I knew how that worked. I took that knowledge and tried to spread the word as best I could. We relied nearly exclusively on word of mouth. I spent a lot of time answering questions on message boards and working with game sites to place features.
As a company, we knew our defining and differentiating features and made it our goal to drive them home. Our concept was called Live Content, which called for a small team of game masters to set in motion macro-scale world events so the playerbase could respond to them. Unfortunately, this was a grand concept and not easy for a small development studio to pull off.
By December of 2004, we had a decent-sized community. We had been working hard and - to us at least - it seemed like we'd come a long way from where we'd left off in the last round of testing. Combat was more fun, the magic system improved, the graphics overhauled and some small part of our defining feature existed.
On January 1, 2005, we opened the doors to the 80,000-plus players who had signed up to participate in our open beta. It was during this time that the Half-Life 2 demo had released, and I remember being quite pleased when our beta dropped it down to second on the most active list over at FilePlanet. It looked like things were going well. Famous last words ...
The beta lasted only nine days. On January 9, 2005, after careful consideration of the way the beta had played out, examination of our internal metrics and an honest appraisal of the MMOG landscape (WoW launched the previous November), we made the decision to shut things down.
Wish had no single cause of death, but overhype played a huge role. Our statistics didn't lie. At every step of the way, from signing up for beta, to downloading and installing the client, to playing the game for more than an hour, we lost huge percentages of players. In case we didn't trust the stats, tons of players told us about their departure on our forums, as well.
On message boards, people had spent months retelling the tales of the first beta with Live Content, and by the time our next beta hit, those of us who actually created those events didn't even recognize the tales being told. The community had gotten carried away with itself, and we'd encouraged it.
This same phenomenon applies across all fields. The Da Vinci Code movie simply couldn't recreate the magic people had experienced when they read the novel, despite a massive marketing campaign. A politician who rises to power with big promises and high expectations can be voted out just as quickly if he's nothing short of amazing. This is the same reason that people routinely list massive hit movies, books, games or shows on their "worst ever" lists.
For the community and marketing people, it is important to define and recognize where awareness of a product ends and inflation begins. The worst part is, they're battling human nature. Imagination is always more fun than reality. In imagination, features do not get cut or reigned in to meet deadlines, and things like poly-counts and draw distances need not be considered.
There are people who will spend years of their life following a game's development. During that time, they write fan-fiction, draw pictures, run websites and chat on message boards. These people are not the problem; after investing so much of themselves into the game's progression, they'd never let themselves be disappointed. The danger comes when casual fans expect more than a developer has to offer. When that happens, usually the developers or community and marketing folks are to blame.
The key for developers is not to lie, exaggerate or promise things they're only moderately sure they can do. Hype is not bad. Half-Life 2 may be one of the most-hyped games of all time, but fans were generally happy with the product, and it sold extremely well. The same could be said for The Sims 2. The key is that in those cases, the developers did what they said they would do.
For small and mid-sized developers, this battle can never be fully won. Usually, simple economics means they're going to produce mid-quality titles. What they need to recognize is what niche their game fills and try to attract a community that respects that. A decent game can be sunk if the community expects more than what's delivered and simply doesn't buy it on principal.
The dangers of overhype can't be ignored. It is the difference between a legendary train-wreck in the style of Daikatana and another no-name game lost to history. Whether it's inexperience or hubris, hype can kill. But so long as it is tempered by reality, and continually kept in check, it can propel a game to unbelievable heights. Unfortunately, it's a lesson many learn in retrospect.
Dana "Lepidus" Massey is the Lead Content Editor for MMORPG.com and former Co-Lead Game Designer for Wish.
I am writing from personal experience.
Wish was an MMOG cancelled in January of 2005, despite very good beta sign-up numbers and a slew of online media coverage. We bore all the trademarks of a small independent developer. One of these was my serving simultaneously as the Co-Lead Game Designer, Assistant Producer, World Designer and Community Manager, and I was hardly the only one wearing multiple hats.
Two of those hats got us into trouble, though. I had little development experience, and when someone serves as both a senior designer and a community talking head, things can get out of hand.
My experience was in the realm of online journalism, and I knew how that worked. I took that knowledge and tried to spread the word as best I could. We relied nearly exclusively on word of mouth. I spent a lot of time answering questions on message boards and working with game sites to place features.
As a company, we knew our defining and differentiating features and made it our goal to drive them home. Our concept was called Live Content, which called for a small team of game masters to set in motion macro-scale world events so the playerbase could respond to them. Unfortunately, this was a grand concept and not easy for a small development studio to pull off.
By December of 2004, we had a decent-sized community. We had been working hard and - to us at least - it seemed like we'd come a long way from where we'd left off in the last round of testing. Combat was more fun, the magic system improved, the graphics overhauled and some small part of our defining feature existed.
On January 1, 2005, we opened the doors to the 80,000-plus players who had signed up to participate in our open beta. It was during this time that the Half-Life 2 demo had released, and I remember being quite pleased when our beta dropped it down to second on the most active list over at FilePlanet. It looked like things were going well. Famous last words ...
The beta lasted only nine days. On January 9, 2005, after careful consideration of the way the beta had played out, examination of our internal metrics and an honest appraisal of the MMOG landscape (WoW launched the previous November), we made the decision to shut things down.
Wish had no single cause of death, but overhype played a huge role. Our statistics didn't lie. At every step of the way, from signing up for beta, to downloading and installing the client, to playing the game for more than an hour, we lost huge percentages of players. In case we didn't trust the stats, tons of players told us about their departure on our forums, as well.
On message boards, people had spent months retelling the tales of the first beta with Live Content, and by the time our next beta hit, those of us who actually created those events didn't even recognize the tales being told. The community had gotten carried away with itself, and we'd encouraged it.
This same phenomenon applies across all fields. The Da Vinci Code movie simply couldn't recreate the magic people had experienced when they read the novel, despite a massive marketing campaign. A politician who rises to power with big promises and high expectations can be voted out just as quickly if he's nothing short of amazing. This is the same reason that people routinely list massive hit movies, books, games or shows on their "worst ever" lists.
For the community and marketing people, it is important to define and recognize where awareness of a product ends and inflation begins. The worst part is, they're battling human nature. Imagination is always more fun than reality. In imagination, features do not get cut or reigned in to meet deadlines, and things like poly-counts and draw distances need not be considered.
There are people who will spend years of their life following a game's development. During that time, they write fan-fiction, draw pictures, run websites and chat on message boards. These people are not the problem; after investing so much of themselves into the game's progression, they'd never let themselves be disappointed. The danger comes when casual fans expect more than a developer has to offer. When that happens, usually the developers or community and marketing folks are to blame.
The key for developers is not to lie, exaggerate or promise things they're only moderately sure they can do. Hype is not bad. Half-Life 2 may be one of the most-hyped games of all time, but fans were generally happy with the product, and it sold extremely well. The same could be said for The Sims 2. The key is that in those cases, the developers did what they said they would do.
For small and mid-sized developers, this battle can never be fully won. Usually, simple economics means they're going to produce mid-quality titles. What they need to recognize is what niche their game fills and try to attract a community that respects that. A decent game can be sunk if the community expects more than what's delivered and simply doesn't buy it on principal.
The dangers of overhype can't be ignored. It is the difference between a legendary train-wreck in the style of Daikatana and another no-name game lost to history. Whether it's inexperience or hubris, hype can kill. But so long as it is tempered by reality, and continually kept in check, it can propel a game to unbelievable heights. Unfortunately, it's a lesson many learn in retrospect.
Dana "Lepidus" Massey is the Lead Content Editor for MMORPG.com and former Co-Lead Game Designer for Wish.
