One of the first things I learned as a game designer is that the first 15 minutes of your video game is critical. It is during this brief window of opportunity that most players decide whether to invest their time in your game. The sobering reality is that after 15 minutes most players have made up their minds whether your game is a piece of crap or something they will keep playing. A video game that fails to capture the interest of a player during that time is essentially dead in the water.
Smart video game companies realize this and plan accordingly with regards to budgeting and production scheduling. Initial content for video games should never be completed first because at that point the team is not experienced enough — you don’t want players to have to suffer through not quite perfected content and untested design ideas while the team is figuring out how to create and script the MMO. Introductory content should be attempted only after the team is experienced and has a clear vision of the game.
For example, Blizzard spent many months refining and polishing the WoW newbie experience of the human lands of Elwynn Forest. Eventually they ended up with a newbie experience that was so completely perfect that they used it as a template for all of their newbie starting lands. And the rest is history.
In view of this cardinal rule and with a fresh set of eyes, let’s take a look at the first 15 minutes of a MMO that had showed great promise but somehow missed the mark: EverQuest2.
Introduction
Back after playing EQ for many years I had pretty much given up on SOE due to the poorly quality of their expansions most notably the disaster that was Gates of Discord. Back then I was so upset for SOE for letting EQ deteriorate that I swore I’d never buy another Sony product — I’m not kidding.
Despite my feelings about SOE I felt compelled to give EQ2 a try. Previously to this article I have played EQ2 on three brief occasions: once when it was released, again during the release of the Faydwer expansion, then after the release of the continent of Kunark and again just recently to try out the game in it’s Shadow Odyssey incarnation.
For some reason I EQ2 never quite clicked with me, therefore I have no real knowledge of the MMO as a whole except my own brief experiences and what I’ve heard from others. This lack of familiarity is useful when approaching an analysis of the first 15 minutes of gameplay as I will try to do all of the typical things a newbie player might do as they stumble into a re-imagined Norrath for the first time. Where I differ from a newbie is that I will present my analysis of what I encounter both by providing constructive critiques and offering solutions to problems.
By many accounts EQ2 has improved over the years. Let’s see if any of those improvements made it into the first 15 minutes of gameplay.
My Character’s Setup
I’ve decided to play a male barbarian mystic with a good alignment starting in the Qeynos newbie area called the Queen’s Colony. When EQ2 launched 5 years ago it was called the Isle of Refuge and was meant to teach players about the MMO and give them some details as to the back story. Once they reached a certain level they had to make a choice between choosing the cities of Qeynos (good) and Freeport (evil).
Since then SOE has created additional newbie starting zones in Faydwer, Neriak and Timorous Deep which is a reversal in the original design philosophy of herding players into one of two alignments/starting cities. The new starting zones are a wise and sensible return to they way characters started back in the original EverQuest and in WoW. (These new starting zones also are significantly more polished and refined then their older counterparts and I hope to discuss this in part 2).
I chose Qeynos newbie zone for a reason: given the stirring EQ2 opening cinematic that sets the stage, many new players would gravitate toward selecting that and Freeport as starting cities.
Minutes 1-2: The Loading Screens — A Missed Opportunity
Let’s start at the beginning. On the first loading screen the ESRB notice is too big and distracting — it’s dead smack in the middle of the screen — like a bulls eye. Instead it should not be on its own page. Compare that to the tiny ESRB notice that is tiny and tucked away in the bottom left hand corner of the WoW login page. It’s a mistake to emphasize what the game has that could offend people; instead it should trivialized by making the warning smaller.
Then you have the practice of concept art being used as disconnected filler to entertain the player while the game loads. I’m not a big fan of the decision to have random concept art being displayed while the player waits for the game to load and for zones to load. I’ve noticed that SOE makes this mistake in Free Realms as well. Loading screens that reflect the zone the player is about to enter are a great way to get the player in the right frame of mind and help to strengthen the notion of immersion.
It seems to me that SOE is missing a major opportunity to be promoting the current storyline in EQ2: the Shadow Odyssey. I’ve been playing EQ2 now for about a few weeks and I still haven’t a clue what or where the Shadow Odyssey is. Contrast that with WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King opening screen that previews an expansion where the viewer instantly knows that it takes place in a northern, snowy and hostile environment.
Also where is the Shadow Odyssey opening cinematic? Does one even exist? If not, then why not?
SOE should play to the strengths of the Sony Corporation and enlist the expertise of its film division Sony Pictures to help the produce cinematics that would help promote their expansions. Blizzard has no such motion picture division in its parent company but somehow it manages to produce world class cinematics for their games.
Suggestions:
- Show scenes from the current expansion to whet the player’s appetite for what’s to come. Look at how and why trailers are made in the motion picture industry and emulate that philosophy.
- Players should be salivating to experience that new content. Remember, you want long-term subscribers. They need to be able to see themselves experiencing that future content. The opening screens and cinematics are a great way to do that. Give potential players goals, aspirations and dreams!
Minute 2-3: Character Creation — Inappropriate Background Screen
No matter which race you create you have the same bucolic background screen that reminds me of Rivendell from Lord of the Rings. While the current artwork may be fine for some of the good races it is inappropriate and far too cheery for the evil races. This is really a missed opportunity to give players a sense of the history, lore and culture of the race they will choose for their avatar.
A picture is worth a thousand words and Blizzard pulled this off brilliantly with their character backgrounds giving each race an appropriate setting that gives a well- defined sense of content for each possible race at the character creation screen.
The one-size-fits-all background screams “cheap” at me every time I am forced to look at it. It’s amazing that this glaring omission has not been addressed yet after 5 years.
Suggestion: Have SOE artists create a unique background for every race which would at the very least inject some polish at the front end of your MMO.
Minutes 3-4: Character Creation — Too Many Choices
Once the player chooses a server they are faced with the daunting process of creating a character from scratch. Every race that I clicked on had a randomly generated appearance; quite a few of them were downright ugly and made no sense. Having to see a motley crew of ugly characters that look like they just escaped a carnival side-show is going to be quite disconcerting to new players. Let’s not forget you as a MMO company are expecting players to identify and bond with these avatars. Players don’t generally like UGLY avatars.
The problem is obvious: there are too many choices and options for appearance. It’s all very overwhelming and the player can get lost in the minutiae of it all. Players — at least the males — don’t want to spend half an hour customizing the tilt of their nose and the shape of their ears. Instead they want to experience the fun of your MMO right now.
It’s easy to forget that many of your new players may be entirely new to MMOs — they are not experts on human anatomy nor are they artists that understand the human form. Having to create an avatar from scratch can be hard.
Giving the player too many choices this early is somewhat misguided. I got the feeling when I created my characters that I could stay at the character creation stage forever as my avatar was never quite right. What if I chose the wrong beard or didn’t like it later on? Players should be able to change their appearance later on once they know how to play and are hooked. (I believe this feature is in game now).
Another problem is that for some reason all of the variations seem to have little effect on the race of a character. Dwarves, elves, humans, barbarians all seem to look exactly alike despite the myriad of character feature options. The end result is that no matter how much time your players spend creating their EQ2 characters they will all look strangely similar.
Suggestions:
- No ugly random character appearances from the outset.
- SOE should make about 20 stock archetype pre-set character appearances for each race and gender (after writing this I noticed that NCSoft has done this with their Aion MMO).
- Lock up the EQ2 art team in a log cabin and have them create these characters using the character creation screen and have them make the avatars as attractive and handsome as possible.
- This way the player could scroll through a multitude of ready to go awesome looking characters, choose a class, then name and immediately enter Norrath and start having fun.
Minute 5-6: Alternate Appearances
It would be remiss of me to not to mention the inclusion of “alternate appearances”. Just as the original EQ has the confusion of having 2 distinct art styles for their player avatars to choose from so too did SOE make the mistake of allowing this to happen in EQ2. Having these alternate appearances is another frustrating distraction to the new player. It basically sends a message that “we don’t have a unified art style in our MMO”. Most new players will wonder what this is about and may be tempted to click on this feature.
To me the alternate appearances seem to reflect a more cohesive art style that has become popular in MMOs like WoW. They are simply more attractive then the stock character graphics despite hints of an anime style which I’m usually not a big fan of. I feel it would be wise to offer these as the standard appearances and shelve the original appearances or at least make them optional in order to appeal to new subscribers.
Suggestion: Scrap both of them and hire a team of brilliant character artists to create new player avatars. Yes I understand this costs money.
Minute 6-7: Class Selection
Overall I thought the class selection screen is done very well. Lots of class choices is one of the strengths of EQ2. The good, neutral and evil restrictions make it interesting but not too onerous.
Suggestion: My only concern is that SOE should indicate in the class description how useful each class in different situations such as soloing, grouping and raiding.
Minutes 8-10 – The Player Arrives in Norrath
Upon entering the world of Norrath the new player is presented with a user interface (UI) that looks like a tornado swept through someone’s backyard. There are hotbars and buttons all over the place with very few of them if any in logical and customary places one would expect in a MMO.
Admittedly the first thing I tried to do was to replicate the stock user interface that exists in WoW. Replicating the layout that I was used to took me a few minutes and I find it disconcerting that SOE does not offer a “use WoW” user interface to their players. I do like the import UI settings from your other characters feature which can help the existing player get up to speed.
The quality of the UI itself just does not stack up competitively to what is found in most MMOs today. I realize there are some alternate UI mods you can use in EQ2 but it’s very disconcerting to see what comes standard with this MMO.
Here are a few issues:
- Player’s buff and NPC debuff icons are too small and can’t be re-sized as is the case with many parts of the UI including the chat font input bar.
- this is even more pronounced at higher resolutions such as 1900 by 720 which seem to makes the icons tiny.
- remember that this is an accessibility issue for older players who’s eye sight is not what it once was.
- Lack of a player and NPC portrait in the target box(include comparison graphic).
- Out of place icons include:
- compass icon
- experience bar
- threat icon
- time icon
Suggestions:
- The UI needs a complete and total revamp to bring it in line with what players expect from a UI in a state-of-the-art MMO.
- Give players the ability to re-size spell/debuff effect icons — they are just too small!
- Create player and NPC portrait icons for targeting that reflect the current standards in the MMO industry.
Minutes 10-12 Newbie Tutorials and Quests
The tutorials which address most faces of how to play an MMO are generally fine but a bit too wordy. The nice thing is that they are purely optional.
Regarding quests, I like the fact that a player has a choice when proceeding down the pathway of quest dialog — players actually have a reasonable way to terminate their conversation with an NPC which makes sense. This approach is very refreshing from the typical non-interactive quest dialog typical in WoW.
Quests are not too numerous at this point which is a good thing. The player should be focused on as few tasks as possible during this critical time.
Suggestions: Cut down on some of the quest text — less is more.
Minutes 12-14: Combat and Abilities
Finally the player can get their hands dirty in combat and it feels fun. Mobs seem to be well tuned — they have a healthy amount of hit points and are relatively challenging but not impossible. This too is very refreshing from the cardboard NPCs that seem to go down after a few hits/spells in a shooting fish in a barrel MMO like WoW.
I noticed that most of the abilities have rather long cast times compared to WoW. I’ve noticed that this is a trend in EQ2 — everything takes a lot of time! Rarely if ever do you have any insta-cast abilities which I find strange.
The player hotbar is set up quite adequately with all of the abilities at their disposal. When you level, I found that some classes sometimes gain two additional abilities which show up magically on the hotbar. At this point one new ability should be sufficient per level as the player is still learning how to play their class — don’t overwhelm them with too many new abilities so early in their career.
One thing that bothered me was that it was hard for me at times to tell whether I was in combat or not. The only way to tell if you are is your name starts flashing red. For me this is not enough of a visual cue. Blizzard handles this very well with their flashing attack icon which also has the added benefit of displaying the current equipped weapon.
Suggestions:
- Limit new abilities to one per level
- Reduce casting times by about 30% across the board for all spells/abilities
- Add some insta-cast spells/abilities wouldn’t hurt either
- Communicate a clearer way to tell the player they are in auto-attack mode
Minutes 14-15 – Exposing the Player to Crafting Too Early
Since I created a barbarian mystic that chose Qeynos as his home city, I ended up on the newbie island of Queen’s Colony. Evil aligned characters that choose Freeport start on the Outpost of the Overlord. What I found upon entering Queen’s Colony is that crafting is immediately available to the new player and it’s a mistake. This is the time that players should be getting right into the main part of the gameplay which of course is combat — killing monsters and taking their stuff.
Instead the player is presented with all kinds of raw materials such as ore, lumber, plants and even collectible items. To make matters worse the newbie grounds are swamped with these resource nodes.
Despite the fact that gathering and crafting *are* optional activities for the player, having all of these gatherable and collectible things available from the outset is sending the wrong message to the player at this early stage of the game. As a player, I immediately started gathering — after all those resources where there and because they existed I felt it was incumbent on me to take them. The problem is that gathering at this early stage in the MMO is a distraction that prevents the player from experiencing the main thrust of what your MMO is all about: the thrill of adventure via killing mobs and completing quests.
Additionally, gathering takes a long time compared to other MMOs and is tedious and laborious. This too sends the wrong message to the new player — things are a “chore” in this MMO.
Suggestions:
- Reduce the number of resource nodes in the “old” newbie areas such as Queen’s Colony and make them more plentiful once the player reaches level 8 and higher. There is no need to confuse players with crafting at this stage in the game. Thankfully SOE already realizes this and has learned this lesson as crafting trainers are not initially available in the new newbie areas of Faydwer, Neriak and Timorous Deep.
- Increase the speed of resource gathering.
Conclusion
Today’s jaded gamer has certain expectations of what they want from a MMO. We can rightfully thank Blizzard for raising the bar on so many levels for this state of affairs. Previous to WoW consistency of art style, a culture of polish, fluid animations, balanced combat and an elegant user interface — just to name a few were almost non-existent in the MMO world.
Given these new realities, the first 15 minutes of EQ2 are not quite up to the current standards of what one would expect in a MMO today. It is in that crucial time period that one can easily see the fundamental problems that might continue to plague the MMO. From the lack of a polished presentation of the opening screens to the lack of a cohesive and functional user interface which could confuse a new player, EQ2 has suffered from neglect and a lack of refinement that veteran players seem to take for granted and have grudgingly learned to live with.
Probably the biggest offender of them all is the original character artwork which is downright embarrassing. Nothing is more critical in having the new player bond with their avatar then the artwork itself. This is a serious impediment that may be preventing new players from sampling and staying with this MMO. I strongly urge SOE to expend the funds to bring the player avatar artwork up to a respectable level of professionalism and artistry that is consistent with their competition.
With the exception of character artwork which is cost intensive I believe that most of my recommendations could be done with a minimum cost. Nothing is more apt then the old maxim that it takes money to make money. If SOE is serious about attracting new players to their MMO then they are going to have to make an investment to address these problems. It seems to me that spending some extra money to improve the newbie experience and sub-standard areas like poor character graphics and an unrefined user interface would improve EQ2 for everyone both newbie and veteran alike and ultimately increase profits for SOE.
If I were face to face with John Smedley I would tell him this: at the very least, halt all new development on EQ2 for one month and put everyone to work on polishing the newbie experience and revamping the user interface.
I want SOE to succeed with EQ2 because the more viable MMO alternatives we have in a market dominated by Blizzard, the better. I also want want EQ2 to become more popular because there is a certain sublime magic and charm about Norrath that more people need to know about and regrettably is betrayed by a lack of polish in a few key areas.
I hope some people at SOE will evaluate this article and take an honest look at their MMO with a fresh set of eyes. For most people that play EQ2 it may actually be an amazingly brilliant and immersive MMO but if a new player quits in frustration in the first 15 minutes then all of those millions of dollars of development spent creating all that expansion content is meaningless. Don’t just take my word for it; take it from the company that has this down to a science: Blizzard.
In part 2 of this series I’m going to go beyond the first 15 minutes of gameplay and address the next phase of the new EQ2 player’s experience in Norrath. This will include a look at the new starting areas to see how they stack up to the competition.
-Wolfshead
Excellent article!
I just compared it to the first 15 minutes in Aion, the only weakness I could find is that both gathering and combat feel a bit like 1 button pressing and generic, which really made me afraid if this is going to become a simplistic grinder.
Regarding SOE hate: I even hate their mother company SONY, too. The word “Sony” has the same phonetics as “so nie” in German, which means “this is never going to work” (I am not kidding), and this is what I am thinking about Sony hardware (I had horrible experiences with customer service, a cd-writer and a TV) and Sony Online Entertainment.
In fact I blame them for wasting very good MMO ideas, designers and teams. Just like Electronic Arts usually buys up promising studios and then dumbs them down to nothingness.
I am looking forward to your next article. I said I would write something about Aion, but my aim was to write about the PvPvE part that I did not experience yet. 🙁
I’m finding this very interesting because I’m just coming to the end of my first paid month in EQ2 so currently taking stock of my experiences and trying to decide what to do next.
I picked a different starting zone and they seem to have gone totally the other way with tutorials and crafting there. We had to spend 15-30 minutes searching the city to even find anyone who would teach us to craft. Tutorials were stuck on characters named things like ‘teacher about collections’ — you clicked them and they told you about collections. Not a very interactive tutorial really.
I do agree about the character models. Was also struck by how many human-type models there were. Maybe someone out there cares deeply about the difference between humans, barbarians, half elves, halflings etc but I saw big humans, small humans, fat humans, bald humans, humans with pointy ears etc.
I do get that some people love the game so much they don’t care about these things, but even after a month, I’m not 100% sure I totally understand why. Maybe it comes at higher levels.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (Gamecube version) fails in this aspect because when you start a new game the opening credits roll, and sure the characters look good and the music is nice & all, but there’s no frigging way to skip or fast forward. You have to sit there (or go make a sandwich) and let the credits play out before you get into the game itself. It’s like the Devs thought “Nobody’s going to finish our game and see the credits…I know! We’ll put them at the start!”
IIRC there are a couple of other games that do this, too. Not that I can think of their names. The opening credits probably pissed me off so much that I never really played them.
Extensive opening credits with no way to skip them = Fail
This is quite an exceptional article on EQ2. I’ve been retired from the game for over two years now and it really interests me to see how you perceive it. Even then I felt the game was a lot less new player friendly and that quickly showed. Recruitment became harder and harder on our server and we had to go game wide.
@Spinks
I frequently complain about the proliferation of humans and elves. We need more exotic races in MMOs. I just don’t consider humans and barbarians separate and I rarely feel that there is enough distinction between wood, high, dark and half elves to justify calling them four races.
Earth Eternal seems to lack all of the traditional races and has a relatively massive amount of choices. I’m not sure how the game will do but I am pleased with the fact that someone recognized the need for a change.
In the several times I have tried to get into EQ2, I rarely last more than 15 minutes it seems. That’s probably an exaggeration but only because I did manage to get a total of two characters into Freeport before leaving the game.
I don’t mind that EQ2 doesn’t have the AC2 UI layout (what people mistakenly think WoW came up with) which is widely regarded today as the “standard” fantasy MMORPG UI layout. It seems most players jump in at the beginning and move the UI elements to a place of their liking anyway, although I could guess a brand new player to the genre might not do this until later.
Other elements of the overall UI did bother me, however, ranging from icon art to the quest dialogue and selection boxes to the fonts used in both chat and over objects in the world. Pretty much all of the art (and art design) in the newbie world (and Freeport) was beyond atrocious. I’ve seen screenshots of better-looking zones in the game later on but I’ve never seen a single good-looking shot of a character. Animations of my character were fine, but the monsters in the new zone had limited frames and very jumpy animation. I’ve seen better in very low-budget Asian F2P games, and that’s just sad.
While I don’t mind having directed content and the occasional “go talk to this NPC to continue” type quest, I prefer to either have some detailed and quickly read text describing where this person is, or perhaps a mini-map “dot” highlighting his location like Guild Wars and Age of Conan do. EQ2’s shimmering thread of energy connecting my character to the destination NPC evokes a “how dare you!” reaction from me every time I’ve made a new character, however.
I read somewhere, and I totally agree, that EQ2 tries so hard to be everything to everyone that it succeeds only in pushing us away.
I can agree with the start up screen items you mentioned. And I agree on some of the newbie starting area fixes. But on the issue of the character creation, I think you are totally incorrect. I like the idea of detailed character creation. So person who has never played EQ1 or has played other MMORPG, might like less, but most people like their avatar to be unique, not some cookie cutter avatar. The SOGA models I thought were a bad idea. But you do not have to use them or you can, giving the player more choice. More choice is ideal when it comes to a MMO especially when creating a character. Because the game just isn’t about quest or combat, it is fixing your character to your taste and taste varies from person to person, so more is better. City of Heroes/Villains is a perfect example of this, since they have the biggest character creation in any MMORPG.
And don’t confuse WOWs popularity with having the best ideas. The reasons they are on top are because of low computing power of the client, easy to new people and advertising.
SOE actually is taking the time to generate a new intro experience, supposedly including a way to download just the art assets for the trial area so that the download doesn’t take all night. We’ll see how this pans out.
I entered EQ2 knowing that I was interested in playing for a few months, and having an idea of what characters I wanted to take for a spin. Though I think the original system of branching out from archetypes was not a great idea either, I will say that it takes a fair amount of time and outside reading to actually learn the differences between the 24 classes.
First of all, thanks for this blog post.
I bought EQ2 collector’s edition a long time ago, but never installed it because I was too busy playing the WoW beta and then WoW when it came out.
I’m not sure if anyone over on the Everquest 2 team will actually read your blog post, but if they do I sure hope they investigate what you suggest.
It should be as simple as looking at their own data.
They should be able to see in their data how far new characters get before quitting.
Measuring how long it took to perform certain actions, etc.
Data is essential to understanding if your product has a problem. If they don’t have someone over there who is dedicated to mining their data to find out about their own product, well, they really should 🙂
This is a great point Robert and I thank you for bringing this up. You are absolutely right, the data should be there for SOE to be able to diagnose many of the current problems with EQ2.
I wonder if anyone at SOE is even looking at the data and doing something with it to effect some positive change?
Speaking about races and their appearance in MMOs… let’s talk about the mainstream.
The more human-like, this includes elves, the more players get attracted.
Think about the Horde factions. Tauren are the only race that gets played a lot besides the ubiquitous Blood Elves. Undead took the spot of the “human horde race” before them.
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
Here, take a look – Humans, Night Elves and Blood Elves make up 51% of the playerbase, three of a total ten races. (07/21/2009).
Still, I think it is just poor art direction in EQ2 that most races look so equal. They also have some pretty fail shields and weapons. Regarding stunning looks and art direction, nothing beats Guild Wars. Though they usually fail to produce nice looking weapons for some reasons, especially swords. Aion is better in this regard, but does not mix and match western and asian themes with so much elegance as Guild Wars.
I’m a little confused by all of the EQ2 art bashing that seems to be taking place. I am curious as to what “performance setting” (from in Game, click EQ->Options ->video ->performance) everyone has their computers set to. I’m sorry but WoW can not touch EQ2, from an art and environment perspective, if you are set to Extreme or Very High quality. Given, you must have a pretty hefty system in order to run EQ2 at this setting but it is worth it. I can post screen shots for anyone who would like to see the difference. The difference between the “balance settings (and below)” and “Very High” to “extreme” could span the grand canyon as far as look and feel is concerned.
I do , kinda, agree with you on the Char creation selection. Personally I don’t care to much, I click random a few times, do a little tweaking and then get moving. Having 20 specificly designed skins would be a nice touch, but please don’t make it the 4 options that you have in WoW to customize your char.
Also, WoW (although successful) didn’t raise the bar are MMO. Quite the opposite, the lowered it. (not flaming just true, and I guess the argument could be made that they raised it by lowering it). Everything in WoW is about convince and instant gratification, no need to work really hard to kill this bad guy or get this piece of armor. Its the “I’m a causally gamer but that should stop me from getting everything I want in this game environment.”
Conversely; EQ2, although no where near to the degree as EQ1, is much harder. You can not be a causally player and expect to level to max cap and get you epic, etc, etc really really quickly. That just will not happen, but that’s OK. There is more to MMO then just killing mobs, and grinding XP / Quests. The social / group interaction is a huge part of this game. You can have fun and not get the best equipment in the game. The sheer volume of content in EQ2 is insane, for instance; A buddy of mine who has been playing since release of Still gets taken to places (Raids, instances, dungeons, etc) he’s never been. It takes a long…long..long.. time to see everything this game has to offer.
I do wish you had played with a friend or a little bit longer, cause then you would have found out the one that EQ2 does do right over allot of MMOs, groups of chars with uneven levels. In most MMOs if a high level person is friends with a lower level person, there is no convient way for them to grp with each other. In EQ2 this is solved by mentoring. I’m 80 and you happen to be lvl 10, I mentor (shrink) to your lvl making me a lvl 10 (a very awsome lvl 10) and I can do all the quest with you gain XP with you and give you an XP bonus cause I’m mentored to you.
Long,
When you said EQ2 has some pretty “fail” shields and weapons what are you referring to. The high level Fabled, epic, mythical (drops , quest , quest) are insane with the stats and abilities. Sure it doesn’t have a nice color coded system like wow
I was referring to pure looks! I did not talk about the stats, the game does not have a look where world, chars and weapons belong together and often they look outright wrong to me.
The avatars are quite often just ugly. I saw shields that looked like a blank slate with some ugly textured put on it. The weapons were usually better.
I don’t have the pic of the shield that looks a bit like “Buck Rogers meets EverQuest” anymore, but here are some EQ2 screenshots from Olnigg, a MMO critic and dedicated EQ player who really did not like EQ2.
Note, he does his reviews usually in a snide and sarcastic way, so the images he posts are usually the worst of the worst, but well, here they are:
http://www.olnigg.de/jahr2004/olg112.htm
http://www.olnigg.de/jahr2004/olg113.htm
http://www.olnigg.de/jahr2005/olg119.htm
Not snide and sarcastic, more a foul mouthed elitist rant, sometimes I like ones like this – warning its got lots of swearing, but comes over comical at times, but this German ones fascination with faeces and diapers deeply disturbs me.
The few actual points he makes are feeble too, I mean, we’d all love for items to never push through other objects such as weapons. But short of quadrupling computing power we’ll have to wait there or put up with wooden looking avatars. It doesn’t matter how you cut it, even as beautiful as Age of Conan can get we at some point need to use our imagination with these games, we’re a long way to reach photorealism. Ok, I get it that you hate SOE (but play one of their games – go figure), you say you don’t like the graphics, doesn’t like the mechanics, but fails to say why, perhaps because he doesn’t want to.
Ok I have thought a few more points that I wanted to add, and I am not trying to flame, just give additional insight, which I will agree EQ2 may not always be good at giving to newbie players.
First, I apologize for the typos in my previous post.
2) You talked about the instance cast, lots of spells etc that you get as a newbie char. It really depends on class how many spells you get at what level, not only that, but (it seems) that depending on your class you will progress on either an adv / complex route or a more simple one. You happened to create a mystic (Healer / warder) which is a more complex class to play and not generally associated with something a new player might want to do. Had you created a melee class (E.G. Shadow Knight / pally / monk / bruiser), you would have had both of the things you asked for above. Melee special attacks are nearly instant and those chars usually only get one spell for the first couple of levels. So, it might be interesting for you to give that a try.
3) You mentioned that “newbie mobs” have a fair amount of hit points. But, they really don’t. This is a second level of complexity, that yes is not explained well enough in the beginning. The overall class category.
Class Categories (high level)
Damage
Support
Healing
Tank
You picked a healing class, your exp would also be the same with a tank or support class. However, if you were to pick a damage class (E.G. Monk, bruiser, scout, Wizard, Warlock, Conj, Nec) you would have found these mobs to be a cake walk. My level one bruiser, on the newbie island, could walk out and one-shot the bees / elks that you kill in the beginning. But you as a healer will never be able to do that. This is another point about EQ2, is the unbalance perfection of the class (I know I know it sounds like an oxymoron). Basically, as a healer, support, tank class you will NEVER do the damage that a pure damage class can do (with few exceptions). Case in point, I signed a buddy of mine up via refer-a-friend and he has created a wizard. Currently he is about 10 levels lower than me (I play a support class) and already out damages me, matter of fact he started having bigger “nukes” than me when he was about 20-25 lvls lower than I. But, that is ok. Because the whole idea behind my class is to support him and others like him. I make him do more damage, faster and better. Like wise, you played a healer, which is to keep everyone healed. Sure you have damage spells, you have to, but they will NEVER be as good as a damage class.
That’s another difference, between WoW and EQ2. WoW strives for this “balance” but I think that takes away from the game play. There are and should always be something a class is good at or designed for, and no other class should be able to do that one thing better than that person. I think it helps and plays into the grp dynamic in EQ2 and why you need so many difference classes, cause they all do something different and all of their uses.
Yes, it has very old fashioned class design ideas going on. I think it sucks horribly that tanks and healers have to be such poor soloers (especially if you are starting the game now where there won’t be groups at lower levels very much so you will pretty much have to level solo).
It was never a fun design to do that. And EQ2 really goes with it.
I play a Froglok guardian tank, and soloing is totally fine, really don’t get what people are having difficulty at.
One thing I really don’t like about a lot of the games, and how WoW has gone is with weak mobs and just rounding them up to AoE them down (stopped playing now since I found I was limited to just a handful of raid bosses to play against, the rest of the game was too easy).
I’ve seen videos of people doing the same in AoC too and its really not immersive fun.
Overall I think this is a very good article though, I would disagree with the art thing (I really don’t want to play another MMO where everyone looks beautiful, and WoW’s success shows that that isn’t a bonus either), the massive amount of customisation is one of the beauty’s of EQ2, in EQ2 you can be a unique character, in WoW your just one of a crowd of identical characters.
You make a great point Gareth. Perhaps I didn’t explain my intentions well enough regarding the quality of the avatars that I find acceptable.
Having a beautiful or handsome avatar should be a starting point. We should be able to go beyond that and have detailed avatars that have character and personality.
I play a dwarf paladin in EQ2 right now and he’s got an ugly dwarf face (uses the original graphics). Yet I love playing the little guy with his chiseled dwarven face.
Despite the poor quality of the art, good avatars are possible in EQ2 but it does take a lot of work to get everything right. I’m not so sure most new players would invest that amount of time to get those results.
Since I tend to play Frogloks only I don’t have a problem with the customisation, but that makes me a extreme example. Whatever though I’d agree that the human style avatars need to be cleaned up, but not 100% sure on your idea of beautiful. Rather then making them more beautiful in the male model (thinking Aion/Guildwars look) I’d like to see more rugged character options.
Here I’m thinking of Legolas vs Aragorn, Legolas was clearly the more perfect looking male in Lord of the Rings from a beauty perspective, yet Aragorn was very popular with the women.
So looking at those avatars the faults I could find with them are
1) Too perfect skin, give some options to look weather beaten, maybe even scars.
2) Some of the hair just looks wrong and like a lump of plastic.
Maybe both of these problems could be solved by a move to the shader 3.0? I dunno, but I’m sure something could be done.
I think a lot though does come down to personal preferences, I definitely agree with your assessment of the backdrops, looking at EQ1 they split them for good and evil, just no idea why they didn’t here. They could do this on a tiny budget too, one screen shot of each races home, maybe something mixed with an artists impression, and pick say the Freeport guild hall music for the evil races.
And the other thing missing was any attempt to get a basic storyline for your race, a short voice over as you start in the new starter area giving a 40s racial history could go a long way to giving people a purpose. Anyway, thanks for the post, you’ve got a lot of people thinking, I hope that SOE picks up at least the good ideas generated for their planned “best ever MMO starting experience”…
I like concept art, m’self. Of course, it needs to be good, and it would be fantastic if it were relevant. What I’d love to see is concept art fading into game implementation, indeed, with an eye to enticing players to engage with the world.
Awesome article.
I couldn’t agree more. As much as I love EQ2 and actually think it’s a great game once you get into it, it really does like that ‘cohesive’ experience and I’m not just talking about art.
If SOE could take the game and just, well, polish it up, tighten the interface and sort out the artwork, they could have a stunning game on their hands. Right now it’s a Prince but it could’ve easily been a King.
Exactly my point!
I wish that EQ2 fans would realize that I’m not bashing EQ2 or SOE here. My intention is to make the MMO better.
Originally I had a disclaimer (a fanboy bug zapper) in the article stating that this was going to be “inside baseball” analysis that would only appeal to people involved in MMO production. Perhaps I should have put it in after all.
I never played EQ2, but lately I’ve been thinking about giving it a shot, so this is really informative. Thanks for writing it!
Although I agree that the first 15 minutes of gameplay is important, the community is really what tends to make or break a game for me. A big part of my first impression is based on chat channels and forum posts. If I feel like the community is active and solid enough that I’ll be able to find a place to fit in, then I’m more likely to stay, despite minor annoyances.
Sharon, I highly recommend that you avoid at all costs starting a new character in Qeynos and Freeport. Instead choose Kelethin, Neriak or Timourous Deep. You’ll thank me for this later. 🙂
I hope to talk about these starting areas in my next article.
I would agree. The newbie experience for the newer zones totally blow away the Qeynos/FP.
I really enjoyed your article. I agree that SOE could do with some serious polishing of the newbie experience, but to be fair, they have – in all the new starter areas. One of the problems EQ2 has is that it still has a lot of legacy content from launch, and these areas just aren’t up to snuff with the rest of the game, in terms of looks, quests, items, etc. They have done great things with the new starter areas, particularly Neriak and Timorous Deep – but I wonder if they realize that the original Qeynos and Freeport areas are still out there, and are really just a negative advertisement for the game at this point. They are gradually going back and sprucing up some of the older zones, but in my opinion they should have started at the lower level zones and worked their way up.
I also have to agree with the UI – I personally have become used to it through a lot of play, but it’s not great, and it is certainly not what a lot of players may be used to in other games. But then, EQ2 is not in other games. It has a lot of systems that are rather old fashioned, and to be honest I like a lot of them that way.
I agree that the legacy content is the most problematic for newbies right now. That’s something that I hope to discuss in the 2nd article when I’ve experienced enough of EQ2 to be able to write about it. However, from what I have experienced of Qeynos and Freeport you are right — they are a negative advertisement for their MMO. I found it too easy to get lost in both cities.
Reading through your post I think you have a mix of valid opinions which could be applicable for MMOs in general, but also opinions which seems just to be that the game does not fit into a very specific view of how you think you want an MMO (WoW?) to be.
And some comments/complaints are also things that you might not have tried out enough to reach a conclusion to, which of course would not be possible in just first 15 minutes. That would include things like background screen for character and the insta/short-cast spells.
I have not played WoW for over 3 years now and last time with EQ2 was 1.5-2 years ago, so I might certainly not be up to date with how things are in each game today.
But I do recall that there were multiple character background screens, just not chosen in the same way as WoW. And spells/skills would much depend on different classes chosen.
As for loading screens, that I think more a matter of taste. I do not see a compelling reason why screens related to the area for example would be a better choice to get people in the right state of mind.
Concept art does not click with you, but may click with others. For the objective of immersion I think that sound/music is quite important also, at least as important as what you may show as picture.
I do not quite see how including a character/NPC portrait is a game-improving element. If you would need a portrait to help with targetting, then the whole design for targetting is something to to look at rather than a specific element only. But maybe there was some other reason for that comment.
As for the character choice comments, you should probably have used a headline “too many ugly and meaningless choices”, since it does not necessarily seem that the issue you have is the amount of choices, but rather than you do not like the art direction and there are options that do not make a big differenence.
While I do agree with your opinion on the art direction (including the alternative character models) for the characters as I remember it in EQ2, I think that few MMOs have done a good job here. As I remember from WoW it had fewer choices, but they were also mostly crappy/ugly, in my opinion.
Are the opinions on character appeareance universal enough to warrant some major restructuring? I do not know. I do recall that I was a bit annoyed when I discovered that that my characters had two apperances to others, one with the alternate models and one with the standard models. If that is still the case I do think they should at least make the apperance the same for everyone.
Another example fo a point which I do not necessarily agree is a valid for a “standard” that MMOs should follow is when and how crafting is introduced. I think this is something that something that would rather be individually looked at for each MMO. Different games have different focus here – as I recall from playing EQ2 I found that it fit well in with the later experience to introduce it at an early stage.
I think something that you could perhaps have looked at also is the different starter areas available. Since the newbie experience was revamped and added to in updates and expansions you do not have a unified experience depending on the area you choose to start in. As I recall some other starter areas are probably more geared towards existing players starting new characters rather than for players entirely new to EQ2.
Enjoyed your article, and am looking forward to your next one(s) about the experiences further on.
For myself, my 1st MMO was SWG, and then EQ2 followed that up. With SWG I had the UI set up a specific way I liked it and it worked really well for me. When I began playing EQ2, I *loved* that the UI had enough flexibility to make it so I could set it up to look almost exactly as I had it in SWG. I used the main UI for over a year before I download the “Profit Reborn” UI mod and began using that instead. Even within the Profit UI, though… most of my stuff is still like I originally had it in SWG, just the additional on-screen info that Profit provides is useful and helpful to me.
I have tried out WoW a couple of times, and I *despise* their UI. Maybe I just haven’t played with it enough, but as far as I could tell the functionality and customization options were just not there.
FWIW, there used to be several different background screens at character creation, but they used a lot of system resources, so with the EoF expansion they took them out and replaced them with the current static background. My beef with that screen isn’t the background it’s that the toons do their idle animations while I’m making changes to them, and suddenly I can’t see what I’m doing. . . . If they would freeze them while on the “customize your character” part, that would be a huge thing for me right there.
Anyway… I can see your points as coming from the perspective of someone who feels WoW did all the newbie experiences right and thus the differences from EQ2 as being somehow “wrong” 0r “could be better.” But with that said — I had absolutely no problem with EQ2’s 1st 15 minutes, and frankly I don’t like WoW’s 1st 15 becuz it’s different from EQ2’s. . .so take that with your fistful of salt. And yes, I have tried the newbie experience with every race in WoW (except gnomes, now that I reflect on it), including the Dranei and Blood Elves. TBH, I liked the Blood Elf starting are best of them, but even then I didn’t think it was “all that.”
Perhaps a big part of the perspective come from what you’re more familiar with initially?
And yes, I’ll still summarize with “Newbie Island sucks, TD and DLW are WAY better.” I’ve never gone past level 6 in the Kelethin area, so while the “Nursery” line is decent, I don’t know about the rest of its “lowbie experience.”
I think there’s a mistaken premise here, that EQ2 needs (or even wants) to attract people who aren’t already engaged with the game. Let’s be brutally honest here, EQ2 (as well as WoW) is an older game. They’re not looking to expand at this time, they’re mostly looking to retain existing players and maximize revenue. SOE has a newer game out that they think is the future, so pouring extra resources into EQ2 to expand the audience to attract the mythical MMO gamer who likes MMOs but who hasn’t heard of EQ2 yet is an exercise in futility.
I know from first-hand experience. I poured a lot of effort into revamping Meridian 59 to attract this mythical audience. True, I don’t have the resources of Sony, but putting all that effort into trying to fix perceived faults (for us, it was something basic like not using a software renderer for graphics) just didn’t attract new players. Worse, it frustrated our existing player base because they didn’t value us updating the graphic engine.
Likewise, to pick one example, I’m sure that people who are willing to play EQ2 in the long run aren’t fussed with having more backgrounds for their characters on the selection screen they stare at maybe a few seconds every time they log on. Sure, it’s a bit of artist time to do so, but where does that artist time come form? Do you pull someone off of creating the next unique set of raid armor? An artist adding content to Free Realms? Unfortunately, artist time doesn’t magically get created out of thin air, otherwise I’d have much prettier game art to go with the 3D hardware accelerated engine in M59.
One last quibble I have is with your treatment of the ESRB notice. Seriously, stop and consider what the ESRB notice is for: it’s the game equivalent of the movie rating system. Complaining about the “large” ESRB notice in EQ2 is like complaining about the green screen rating notices that come on before movie trailers.
The purpose of the ESRB is to show politicians who try to score easy points about us “corrupting children” that we take steps to keep inappropriate content out of the hands of children. We demonstrate, as an industry, that we can self-regulate instead of letting the politicians come up with rules and regulations for us. This means that showing the ESRB rating prominently like EQ2 does is what a game company should do! It should be easy for parents to see what the content of the game is. It shouldn’t be hidden away as a tiny footnote on a screen. SOE also shows the actual ESRB rating (T) instead of just including the “online play” caveat like WoW does.
This isn’t just some aesthetic bit of frill, it’s something vitally important to do right. As a game designer, it’s in your professional self-interest to make sure companies do stand by the ESRB. If anything, you should convince Blizzard to do a more obvious and accurate.
Some great points about established MMO communities. I think this is exactly what is going on here. How foolish of me to even have thought I could make a difference.
Wrong. My job as a game designer is to design the game. It should not be my concern that certain politicians may be trying to use video games as a means of scoring cheap political points. As soon as game designers have to start looking over their shoulder and worry about politicians trying to censor them then we’ve come to a dangerous point in this country.
Designers are supposed to be artists. Artists don’t cave in to censorship. Ever.
Like the Motion Picture Association, the ESRB is a purely voluntary organization. Blizzard has it absolutely right here. They’ve relegated that ESRB rating where it belongs in a corner and barely visible.
How big would you make the ESRB rating then? How about make it fill the entire screen and let it run for 5 minutes. Let’s make everyone paranoid and feel guilty about the content of the MMO.
Thankfully some of us still live in America where unlike other so-called democratic countries (Australia and Germany) there is still freedom…at least for now.
I don’t think that is at all true, either of WoW or EQ2 on the established communities.
And on EQ2 that’s not true since the EQ2 devs announced at Fanfaire that they are releasing a new player area with the ambition for the “best new player experience ever”. They’re looking for new customers
Whether they plan to appeal to jaded WoW players, or the next year’s intake of high school kids is the real question here (the human population didn’t stop growing!).
For WoW and WotLK, there is no way that the WotLK expansion was put out to cater to the player base of the burning crusade since they dialled back the difficulty level on raiding, dungeons and questing. It knocked a 3+ year experienced player like me off the game since the available content left to me was one raid instance, not enough to interest me and I wasn’t even bothered by that storyline 😛
But maybe its a hit with new players? I’m guessing this is where they are aiming.
Whereas EQ2 seems to be pitching to experienced players by adding difficult content and revamping easier content at a 50/50 ratio, whether its own player base or people like me, jaded WoW players, its sucked me in anyway. How they will promote the new player experience in February will be interesting.
WoW is offering everything to be achievable by most people, even our mediocre casual guild was 1/2 way through the toughest raid instance. They have stated many times that they were not happy for example that only 5% of the player base saw one particular instance.
Whereas EQ2 is offering a fantasy world that has a broad range of tough and easy content, but are happy for some raids or dungeons will just be too tough for all but a few to reach.
Which approach wins? I’ve cast my vote for EQ2, but we’ll see I guess.
In reality both approaches win if they both increase the subscriber base.
Actually, Wolfshead, promoting the ESRB is the way to keep legislators off of our backs and maintain some level of autonomy and freedom. We can say “look, we’re taking care of it” and make the case that we don’t need Jack Thompson looking over our shoulder.
Mind, I have my own complaints about the ESRB, mostly about what they consider “mature”, but on the whole, I’ll take it over a government-imposed system any day. And really, that’s what we’d have without the ESRB or a similar voluntary system.
Maybe it’s not ideal, but it’s a fair sight better than the alternative.
I do appreciate where you guys are coming from regarding the notion of having the ESRB as a substitute for government regulation. I just personally hate warnings.
Nothing bothers me more when my wife and I sit down to watch a DVD after a hard days work to have to sit through a 5 second FBI anti-piracy warning. Our society is full of ridiculous warnings. Ever looked at a pack of cigarettes lately?
All that matters is that the ESRB logo appears somewhere on your loading screens.
Here’s an interesting comparison of the size of ESRB logos on 2 SOE products — one aimed for adults and the other aimed at children/teens:
(Both images taken from a widescreen monitor with the same resolution.)
Why does the game intended for adults have the ESRB logo so big yet the game intended for a younger audience has a tiny ESRB logo? If this is truly about protecting the children from being exposed to bad things then doesn’t this seem completely out of whack?
This is why I believe that my original point about the primacy of the logo is still valid.
Wolfshead wrote:
Designers are supposed to be artists. Artists don’t cave in to censorship. Ever.
Who said anything about censorship? Censorship is about removing content, and I certainly do not advocate limiting content. There’s a world of difference between putting a label on your work saying, “it has violent content” and being required to remove that violent content from your work. Do not confuse these two things.
Now, you can certainly argue that ESRB ratings can be used by people interested in restricting games, such as Walmart famously not carrying M rated games. But, that’s a problem with Walmart, not the ESRB. The role of the ESRB is to inform people about the content so that they can make decisions about if the content is appropriate (for themselves or for children).
I just personally hate warnings.
That’s fine. These warnings aren’t for you. Hell, I ignore them, too, but don’t have an ever-burning hate for them.
The ESRB logos are for parents trying to do the responsible thing and limit their child’s exposure to material they think is harmful. It’s a tool to give parents information instead of expecting them to play through an entire game themselves, or worse, just throw a game at little Sally and hope it doesn’t reward her for killing hookers.
The issue if seeing a pixel death is truly harmful or desensitizing to children can be argued; I saw barnyard animals slaughtered when I was young but still managed to turn out somewhat okay. But, again, the job here isn’t to tell people what they can or can’t put in games or what they can or cannot let their children play, it’s to give information.
But, if you’re against even providing information to parents to let them make informed decisions because you “don’t like warnings”, then you’re playing right into the tactics of people like Jack Thompson.
Here’s an interesting comparison of the size of ESRB logos on 2 SOE products — one aimed for adults and the other aimed at children/teens:
Let’s consider movies a moment. Which does a parent care about more: the “G” rating on Finding Nemo, or the “R” rating on Watchmen? The second is just a cute superhero movie like the old Superman serials, right?
For the most part, games are considered for kids, so the “T” rating is more important than the “E” rating in a game. If you saw little Becky playing Free Realms, a typical parent might assume there are not going to be “(sexually) suggestive themes” in the game. A quick glance at an average EQ2 screen (well, at least one not in Freeport) and a parent might make the same assumption.
Again, it’s about giving information to parents to let them make informed decisions. It’s more important that a parent understand what’s in EQ2 than FR, so the ESRB information is bigger. Complaining just because a logo shows up front and center while the game is loading, especially coming from a game designer who this is in some ways trying to protect, is misguided.
Wow, I’m very impressed with this article, good job! I tried out EQ2 as well a week ago and I have to say, my first 15 minutes is scarily similar to your experience. In the end, I was thankful to experience a new MMO from WoW.
Very good attempt at specific constructive criticism.
Like most others I don’t agree with all the specific points but I think it’s very contructive to do this.
The one thing that concerns me though is your mention of WoW’s “perfect” start experience and several implications that they would do better by being more WoW-like in certain areas.
Would you care to balance this review with a similar look at WoW’s first fifteen minutes? I think the value of this piece will be enhanced if you take WoW off its pedestal.