ASK BRAD! Okay ... what HAVE you been smoking?

Brad said:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I do think, however, that Velious’ attention to raids and other epic battles was and is important. While it is true that not everyone will reach 60 or have the time to involve themselves in large guilds, the playerbase as a whole still enjoys that content vicariously. MMORPGs need rumors and legends of awesome, virtually unbeatable foes against which mortals send armies. Just looking around at various message boards you can find all sorts of players debating the high-end of the game. In fact, when we sometimes change aspects of the high level game we get all sorts of feedback, both negative and positive, from players who aren’t even close to experiencing the content we changed. Why? Because it’s a goal for them – they plan on encountering that content one day, no matter how far in the future.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I think that this is probably what Uber-Guilders and professional players want to think, that the average player runs around in awe of their accomplishments and dreaming of being like their in-game "heroes". I think Brad's opinion is skewed by the fact that most of the people involved with developing the game and in positions such as yours are professional gamers, and most of the sites are run by and visited by professional gamers. They are part of an obsessive subcultural fan base that has been breeding into industry positions since the early days of MUD, when the "obsessive subculture" WAS the entire market. That mentality no longer represents the majority of the customer base.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>That was an important day for me. It was at that moment I knew the MUD was for me – a game that had legends and rumors and where experiencing the ‘end-game’ was something to really strive for.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I think the mistake here is assuming that the proclivities of a professional gamer (and by that I mean someone who has made gaming, particulary with a history of MUDs and is now involved in the business and/or spends a lot of time camping out sites and message boards when not in the game) represents the gaming proclivities of the average gamer.

Brad, you don't represent the majority of the player base, because you are a professional gamer. The only people that strive for the "end game" are those that can invest the professional levels of time necessary to accomplish it. 90% of your player base doesn't play in a way that allows for that kind of participation, even eventually, and they know it, yet they still keep playing, month after month, even though they know they're not going to ever access those parts of the game.

Do you know what logic is, Brad? Obviously, the vast majority of your player base has no intention of, or dreams of, accessing the "end game", yet they continue to play the game and pay the subscription. Nor do they care about the fan sites. If they did, overall, LTM and other such sites would have hundreds of thousands of views of their articles, not a few thousand. Yet your "world-view" doesn't even include them. If they're not striving or dreaming about the end-game, or obsessively visiting and posting to websites, they don't even have a place in your MUD-influenced view of MMOG reality.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>So while I know we’ve been criticized for paying too much attention to ‘uber guilds’ and their needs and wants, I do think there needs to be a balance. There should be content at the high end for single groups, massive raids, and everything in between. And to that end, Shadows of Luclin should complement the Scars of Velious quite well. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I sincerely hope this is accurate of Luclin, because the fellow in his original question wanted to know about gear, drops, quests, etc. I would throw trade skills in there as well. You've made accomplishing virtually ANYTHING of worth in the game, material-wise, only really accessable via the professional-gaming playstyle.

I don't care that there are encounters or zones that are basically only available to the uber-guilds, professional players, or those that they deem to invite and include. That's fine; the problem is that when you make THAT KIND of content/gear/drops/quests virtually exclusive to that playstyle you are alienating a huge section of your playerbase that is paying just as much and perhaps, over the long haul, is being a much more profitable and loyal customer.

Painting this disparity as something good, that players who "can't" can look up with big wide eyes and feel the joy of seeing someone who "can" in inspirational glory reminds me of another, similiar claim made by Verant... that people also enjoy playing the "victim" when the GMs would come through a zone and trash all the regular players in a sporting contest with their Uber and Professional buddies.

I assure you that this is simply not true. We don't dream with wonder about the "end game", and we don't look up with wide eyes at those that sport gear only attainable by making EQ your second job. The idea that we would is juvenile.

How about putting your developers to work figuring out how to reward effort that isn't necessarily linked to uber or professional playstyles? Like real-time based quests that may take several real months to complete, with enough diverse, non-concurrently attainable rewards that you regulate their entrance via statistics rather than bottlenecked spawns? Or how about random drop quests that begin with a looted note off a random MOB? Or how about going to a NPC in your class guild after you hit 50 and signing up for "special tasks", and a few random people, when they log on, get a special quest hand-delivered to them?

I understand that you want to make the "end game" something of mythical proportions to keep the game exciting; however, the end game is just not something a lot of us CAN look forward to because, frankly, we just can't invest the "at a sitting" accumulative investments necessary (playing 6-8 hours at a sitting for many, many sessions). But we are still loyal customers, and love the game .... don't we deserve to have some mythical, exciting, rare things that we can hope for?

Or is the game designed so that ONLY the professional, uber players get to hope for that kind of experience? When are you going people who are NOT part of the obsessive subculture you were born in into your narrow view of MMOG reality?