Same Same But Different

Wilhelm has a provacatively-titled post up about expansions. He's bouncing off another very interesting post on the same subject by Kaylriene. Now here am I, bouncing off both of them. Isn't blogging wonderful?

Both posts have long comment threads that are well worth reading. It's a topic that could sustain many discussions and it would be all too easy to wander off into the thickets of detail about this expansion or that, something I'm extremely tempted to do, a temptation to which I may very well give in, some other time.

For now, though, I'm going to try and opine on the generalities a little. Why do I like expansions so much? Why do I feel uncomfortable with any MMO that shies away from them? What makes for the perfect cadence?

As is so often the case, a little research finds my memory playing me false. In a comment on Wilhelm's thread I repeated a claim I've made many times; that I'd found EverQuest's six-monthly expansion release schedule, something they kept up for five years between 2002 and 2007, perfectly suited to my needs.

This is not entirely accurate. Checking the list of expansions that appeared during those years I find that, while I did indeed buy and play, on release, the first four bi-annual expansions (Planes of Power, Legacy of Ykesha, Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Gates of Discord), after that I skipped an entire year, missing both Omens of War and Dragons of Norrath, before returning for Depths of Darkhollow in September 2005.

There was a very good reason for that: Gates of Discord. GoD, with SOE's unerring timing, arrived in February 2004. That gave EverQuest players most of the year to struggle with the worst expansion they'd ever seen. GoD was not just brutal and unforgiving, it was buggy and often unplayable. It was later revealed that it had been released unfinished for reasons having mostly to do with arcane internal politics within the company.

Gates of Discord broke guilds. It broke the one I'd been with for years. Before Omens of War appeared in September to stem the hemorrhage, EQ had bled players in all directions. I went to the EQ2 beta along with half my guild. Others I knew went to the beta for a new Blizzard MMO called World of Warcraft. It was more than a year before I returned. Most never did.

This is a lesson; a bad expansion can break your game. Many, myself included, would say Storm Legion broke Rift. I've heard it argued that Mines of Moria broke Lord of the Rings Online or that Trials of Atlantis broke Dark Age of Camelot. Every expansion upsets someone but when you upset almost everyone you give yourself a lot of work just to get back to where you were. You never quite do.

As many people have observed, though, as a developer you can't just sit back and do nothing. Assuming your goal is to make money and keep everyone in work, you have to have something to sell and your players have to have something to do. These days a canny combination of premium membership, cosmetics and cash shops can make for a surprisingly substantial and consistent income stream but even now, the big cash injection comes when you have a "box" to sell.

Expansions also get you coverage. Over time, as your MMO ages, people write and stream and talk about it less and less. Everyone wants novelty, except your slowly shrinking installed base, who want anything but. You have the inevitable dilemma to face: new players or old?

When you're talking about a video game that's ten or fifteen or even twenty years old, the chances of attracting fresh blood are vanishingly small. Everyone who cares already knows about your game. Anyone who's interested has already tried it. It's huge and tangled and complicated and the barriers to entry are so high there's snow on top.

EverQuest last made a concerted effort to draw in a new audience all the way back in 2006, with The Serpent's Spine. TSS added an entire wing of the game that allowed new players to progress from tutorial to level cap in brand new zones, just as though the game was new.

That was seven years after the game began. It's now been running for twice as long, mostly as a nostalgia train for devotees, than it ever managed as walk-in entertainment for newcomers.

This, again as many have pointed out, is another lesson: you need to decide who your customers are. After a certain point, almost all your income is coming from people who play your game because yours is the game they play. They may not have much interest in what's new or hip in the genre any more. They may actively dislike most of what they know about "that sort of thing", assuming they know anything at all. They may be staying with you because your game is old-fashioned, not in spite of it, however uncomfortable that feels.

Every change you make risks shearing off a chunk of your playerbase with no realistic chance of attracting a significant number of new players to replace them. On the other hand, you have to have something to offer that doesn't feel like last year's leftovers warmed over. Your regular players will probably be happy enough with more of the same but the goal is to pull back some of those who've drifted away, while not driving off too many of the ones you've managed to keep.

Fortunately, the MMORPG genre has been around long-enough to have established a number of recognized nodal points. A clever developer can plan ahead. There are certain levers to pull that should have predictable results: mounts; flying; housing; NPC Mercenaries; PvP Battlegrounds; cloaks. (Yes, cloaks...)

Farm the changes and you can keep the installed base as happy as installed bases get (tar and feathers but no torches and pitchforks). Meanwhile, you get to enjoy a few months of revived interest from the much greater number of people who used to play and still have relatively rose-tinted memories of how it felt.

Just how often can you pull that trick off, though? EverQuest has almost certainly had more success in developing and marketing pure nostalgia via the Progression Server production line than it could ever have hoped for from the last decade of high-end-focused expansions. Who, reading this, has actually played through any of the new content in an EQ expansion since 2010's House of Thule? There have been  eight more since then.

EverQuest II is five years younger but that's still plenty of time for expansions to pile up. There have been fifteen, which averages out at one a year although the schedule has had some bumps. World of Warcraft, exactly the same age, has managed fewer than half that with seven.

Evidently, commercial success and frequency of expansions are not inextricably linked. Then again, who can say whether there would be more people subscribed to WoW right now had they kept to the same cadence as the erstwhile rival they left in the dust so long ago?

WoW's astonishing success could have - perhaps should have - killed both EverQuest and EQII, but it didn't. How far has the willingness of first SOE and latterly Daybreak to keep pumping out expansions, year in, year out, contributed to the impression that these are games people still play? If (when) the expansions stop, as some of us, myself included, thought they might this year, will the conclusion be that the games are over? Or will that installed base just carry on, regardless, grumbling and complaining but still paying and playing?

My own feeling is that an MMORPG that no longer releases expansions has become a curiosity, a period piece. That doesn't mean its days are over: Final Fantasy XI proves that much, but it does mean an almost inevitable drift, slipping out of public awareness into the muzzy comfort of history.

While your game can still raise a news item or two on its upcoming release schedule, no-one can reasonably claim it's dead. People may shake their heads in wonder that anyone's left to care but the corollary is that someone must.

What, then, to make of busy, active, successful MMORPGs that eschew expansions altogether? Guild Wars 2 is one. Alright, GW2 has had two expansions in seven years but only in the way your cat might have had two baths. ArenaNet had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the expansion cycle and all the evidence right now is that, having wriggled free, they hope never to go back.

The Living World/Story concept was devised to replace both the desire and need for expansions with a continual stream of expansion-like live content. It took ANet many years to get that cadence right; so many years that they were forced to drop two expansions just to fill the gaping holes. Now it looks as though they finally have the pattern down pat. Will GW2 fans ever see another expansion? Maybe. Money is still nice. Just don't expect one any time soon.

The effect this has on me, as a regular, long-time GW2 player, is enervating. It's arguable that four quarterly updates comes to something not so different in size and scale to a full expansion but that's not at all how it feels. Also, there's nothing to buy. That's important.

I don't look forward to LS releases any more. If anything, I dread them. GW2 feels to me like an MMORPG already in maintenance mode, except every few months there's a very brief upset that annoys me for a few days before everything settles back to normal. I spend nothing on the game even though I play every day. Without an expansion to look forward to, there's not much to hold my attention, which is wandering.

Then again, I strongly disliked Path of Fire. I rate it the second-worst expansion for any game for which I've ever paid money (Storm Legion being the worst). And since it was hugely more popular than Heart of Thorns, which I loved, I should probably be glad there's no sign of a third. I'll most likely loathe it, if and when it arrives.

In a way, that sums up the problem: every expansion is a roll of the dice. If it changes the game too much people who liked things the way they were will leave. If it changes it too little people who were getting itchy feet will take it as a cue to quit. There's a Goldilocks zone there somewhere but good luck finding it.

It's a truly fascinating subject, or I find it so. Because I came to the MMO genre via the undisputed emperor of expansions, SOE, my expectations have been sculpted into a certain shape. I love expansions and I want them for any MMORPG I play. I like to anticipate them, I like to pay for them, I like to play them. And when I've done all that I want to do it again. And again.

On balance, for a game I'm playing regularly, I think once a year is about right. First there's the three or four months playing through the new expansion that just appeared. Then there's the announcement of the next one to look forward to.

Half a year of mild anticipation follows, with plenty of time to get up to speed in any areas that may be lacking. Then there's a couple of months of gentle pre-expansion activity both in and out of game before the next one drops and the whole cycle rolls over. Perfect.

Which is not to say I'd turn my nose up at an expansion every six months. If the content was decent that would certainly reduce my desire to play multiple MMOs. I can't see that ever happening again, though.

To conclude, my feeling is that expansions are essential for the ongoing health of any MMORPG that hasn't yet slumped into maintenance mode. In the early years, expansions can and do bring in new customers in numbers but after a time the best that can be expected is for the expansions to keep the players who are already committed from having other ideas. Crucially, if your expansion isn't going to do more harm than good, it better not be a stinker.

As to what constitutes a "good" expansion, that's a question for another day and another post. I feel this is a topic I might come back to, again and again.

Appropriately.