Spoiled Rotten...tomatoes??

Man...I've got to get off the sauce with these titles.

Anywho, there was an interesting post over at MMO Gaming by Brandon that I think I'd like to discuss. The premise of the article is that MMO gamers are spoiled when it comes to their genre. Spoiled, because of our high expectations for change within the MMO space. We think that the genre has stagnated, that it is offering nothing new, and that if we were just patient and wait, the changes we want will come...eventually.

Hmmmm...it's an interesting theory and it may be true, but I don't think the correct word to use is "spoiled". Being spoiled implies someone asking for and getting everything that they want...and clearly this is not the case as far as the players are concerned. MMO players are clearly not getting all they want, nor will they ever get all that they want, therefore, they cannot be "spoiled". What they are is frustrated at the perceived rut we are in, and there very well may not be any rut at all...we just may be seeing a disconnect between what is expected and what can be delivered. MMO gamers can bark at the moon until they are blue in the face, but there are financial implications to every feature they want...and every MMO cannot be everything to everybody. So we get into this mismatch when a player gets into a game and then says, "Why can't they have X, Y and Z in here?! We need it or I'm looking elsewhere".

We've also go to understand that players put a lot more time and money in MMOs than any other genre out there. Over the course of a two year subscription, a typical MMO player would have spent $410 on a game ($50 box + $360 for subscription at $15/month). The amount of hours varies for each player...but multiply your typical length of time by your local minimum wage to put a value on it if you want. It adds up to quite a bit over the course of two years. Now, a typical FPS game runs for the same box price with no subscription and the typical length is about 10 hours. So, there is an obvious investment factor to MMOs that FPSs do not have and I think that MMO devs should listen to those investors.

I do admit though...sometimes these "investors" act like unitards (the term"asshat" has been put away for a while to be reused at a later date). There are better and more constructive ways to address developers than how we already are. Right now, it seems like we approach these professionals in a very unprofessional way. Calm, rational discourse is not really the typical characteristic of the MMO "mob personality". Gotta change that.

D out.