09-17-2009, 03:44 PM
Incidentally, I was also thinking that WOW-style gameplay is particularly impacted by non-gamers. I think it has to do with a combination of group size and individual dependency.
For example, in an FPS that's, say, 20 on 20, it really doesn't matter if a couple people on your team are flaming idiots. You come to expect that. But because they are 2 out of 20 and your ability to contribute is not strongly based on THEIR ability to contribute, they aren't going to ruin your game.
When it's a 5 man WOW group, though, 1 idiot ruins it. Your ability to contribute as a tank depends on the healer. The healer depends on the tank. The group depends on the DPS and crowd control. 1 idiot ruins it.
Or when it's a 40 man raid designed so that all 40 people have to be paying attention, again, 1 idiot ruins it. In an FPS based around individual contribution, a few good gamers can pick up the slack of the chimp with a keyboard. In a PvE RPG setting, there tends to be little room to pick up someone else's slack.
WOW was our "perfect storm". We got lucky. Nothing in particular about WOW made it work. It has a lot of elements that could have made it fail. It worked for us because we had a perfect storm of gamers ready for a new game and we brought them all together and exceeded critical mass. WOW could have flopped for us pretty easily, I think. If it came out tomorrow, I think it would flop for us. Future Purge games are either going to have to duplicate that "perfect storm" where we can hit the ground with 30 people or else they're going to have to be more supportive to games with different schedules who don't like it when morons can ruin their game.
For example, in an FPS that's, say, 20 on 20, it really doesn't matter if a couple people on your team are flaming idiots. You come to expect that. But because they are 2 out of 20 and your ability to contribute is not strongly based on THEIR ability to contribute, they aren't going to ruin your game.
When it's a 5 man WOW group, though, 1 idiot ruins it. Your ability to contribute as a tank depends on the healer. The healer depends on the tank. The group depends on the DPS and crowd control. 1 idiot ruins it.
Or when it's a 40 man raid designed so that all 40 people have to be paying attention, again, 1 idiot ruins it. In an FPS based around individual contribution, a few good gamers can pick up the slack of the chimp with a keyboard. In a PvE RPG setting, there tends to be little room to pick up someone else's slack.
WOW was our "perfect storm". We got lucky. Nothing in particular about WOW made it work. It has a lot of elements that could have made it fail. It worked for us because we had a perfect storm of gamers ready for a new game and we brought them all together and exceeded critical mass. WOW could have flopped for us pretty easily, I think. If it came out tomorrow, I think it would flop for us. Future Purge games are either going to have to duplicate that "perfect storm" where we can hit the ground with 30 people or else they're going to have to be more supportive to games with different schedules who don't like it when morons can ruin their game.