What makes an MMORPG work?

There's an article over at Gamasutra which briefly describes the upcoming game Aion as being a potential "second" to WoW in the world of MMORPG's. Reading it got me thinking about my own experiences with this form of game, and the many dissapointments that there have been in this genre.

I stayed away from MMORPG's for a long time, afraid of being sucked and losing the initiative to do any work - something which there has been a lot of press about. But it's hard to stay stoic when you love to play computer games, and are friends with a group of people who love to play them too. It's even harder when your housemate plays WoW (among others) right in front of you, and you get to see all the pretty graphics and fun things that are possible. Since opening myself up to this format of game, I've tried a huge range of MMORPG's. From WoW to Lineage (1 and 2), Tabula Rasa to Hellgate: London. And in most circumstances I have been disappointed, as have most of the rest of the world, causing servers to shut down and games to become, basically, extinct. These lost games are like dinosaurs, relics on my bookshelf which I keep for sentimental purposes but are not really playable - what's the point in playing a multiplayer game if I'm the only one playing it?

An example of this is Hellgate: London, which was released in Australia in November of 2007.


Demons have invaded Earth, and hiding out in the London Underground are the last of the human resistance. As a player, you fight your way between safe stations through recognizable locations such as Piccadilly Square and St. Paul's Cathedral, leveling up your abilities as you work out how to stop the demon occupation once and for all. Underground Stations are safe havens, were a player can heal, purchase and upgrade gear, get given and hand in quests, and interact with other players. Combat zones are individually generated instances, with mobs and layouts randomly generated, so that reentering a zone is rarely repetitive, and you never find yourself waiting for a mob to respawn after somebody else ganked your kill. The graphics of this game are beautiful, the gear fantastic, and the various classes that one can play are quite unique. My friends and I were really excited about this game, and all bought a copy so we could play together.

Fighting demons on the streets of London - Public phone booths could be used as part of a defense!
Promotional still from hellgate.iahgames.com

Less than two years after its release, in January 2009, game servers were shut down, effectively killing the game. Of course, the game had been dead for quite a while before this. So what happened? Why did Hellgate: London die a lonely death? Especially when there is obviously an audience out there for MMORPG's, as evidenced by the ongoing popularity of WoW?

Sure, I know that these two games don't run strictly on the same model - Hellgate: London operated along the same lines of Guild Wars, with an initial purchase fee and no recurring fee. Except Hellgate: London threw in a subscription possibility after the games release, which allowed paying players to access different content, a different area to the game, and better gear. It least with World of Warcraft you know exactly what payment scheme you're getting into at the start, and that everybody is basically on even footing.

While I initially despised the ongoing payment plan that WoW requires, thinking "if I've already bought the game, then why do I need to pay to play it?", I've come to see now that it is in fact one of the reasons why the game works so well, and remains so popular. That steady stream of money coming into Blizzard means that the servers are well maintained, that there are plenty of them, and that there is enough funding to support new content being constantly released. Every Tuesday the servers are shut down around the world, so that they may recieve some much needed maintenance.
The constant update of new material also helps make WoW a success. There are large expansions that are released infrequently, with smaller patches being released inbetween to keep content fresh.
An example of the smaller content releases: In the most recent patch, new skins were released for the druid shapeshifted forms.

The bear at the bottom center shows what the druid bear form used to look like.

These small tweaks, along with small changes in game play (in this circumstance, new PVP rules), keep players coming back to give these new things a try.
In the larger patches more world shattering things can happen. Literally. Blizzard has just announced that in the next expansion, Cataclysm, that:

Deathwing the Destroyer will return to Azeroth, and his eruption from Deepholm will sunder the world, leaving a festering wound across the continents. As the Horde and the Alliance race to the epicenter of the cataclysm, the kingdoms of Azeroth will witness seismic shifts in power, the kindling of a war of the elements, and the emergence of unlikely heroes who will rise up to protect their scarred and broken world from utter devastation.

Released notes inform us that there will be two new playable races - the Worgen for the Alliance and the Goblins for the Horde. The level cap will be increased from 80 to 85. New zones and raids will be opened up for exploration, and most interesting of all the classic zones, which have not changed since their releases in either the original game or their birth in the expansions, are going to be completely remapped. Thousand Needles - a dessert environment, will be flooded thanks to the effects of the cataclysm. Oggrimar, a capital city for the Orc race, will be decimated. These map changes are extremely exciting, especially for players who have been around for the five years that WoW has been released.

The upcoming expansion is a brilliant bit of marketing. It attracts new players with interesting content and a great advertising campaign. It also attracts back players who might have played WoW in the past and left because they got bored.

Aside from great ongoing content updates, what does WoW have going for it? Well, Blizzard has a lot of money. This means that they can do things like get Mr T or William Shatner in their ads.



There are even international campaigns with famous actors - such as Jean Claude Van Damme for the French audience. Every ad ends with the same slogan - "What's your game?" By pulling in famous faces to support the game, the game becomes less associated with geeks, and more a game that everyone can access.

Something else that should be noted is that WoW gets a lot of free press from all the negative press about gaming addiction. It's easy for people to look at those stories and say "That would never happen to me!"

Another thing WoW has going for it is the fact that at its inception, the Warcraft games already had a pretty large fan base - it is literally the "World" of "Warcraft".

To make a very long story short - Apart from an engaging game narrative and beautiful graphics, it's going to take a lot of finance, a lot of good ads, and a large fanbase, at minimum, to make Aion a success.