Wildefire Walcott

I'm not sure I've ever heard of an MMOG where someone didn't say, "Man, that was a great game during beta, but once it went live it SUCKED." Since I've never participated in a beta for anything (although if I'd known better I'd have beta tested both Marriage and Parenthood), I don't really understand this phenomenon about which so many discontented gaming veterans speak.

Is it because a game's beta population tends to be a more homogeneous group of passionate early-adopter types who are eager to show off how much they know help each other? Is it because developers tend to interact more regularly with the community during Beta, and are responsive to user recommendations and bugs? Or do developers just turn on the Suck Switch the day they go live?

What gives?

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Briar Bing

I sometimes don't make it for very long after a game goes live, this applies to EQ, AC, WWII Online, and TSO, in my case. So, for myself at least, probably a combination of all of the above reasons you've mentioned.

I do sometimes wonder why developers make major (and sometimes outright stupid) changes after beta, sometimes even years after, which really tend to alienate the existing player base, and not just beta testers - anyone who has played up to the point of the major changes (UO, SWG, etc).

Malachi

This sounds remarkably like "Yeah Band Foo rocked my socks when no one knew who they were but since they sold out to The Man they are teh suxx0rz." I think it has to do with one's perceptions of oneself as a frontrunner, cooler than the pack.

As a counter-example, If Gmail should ever come out of beta, I doubt there'd be a lot of people saying "it was so much cooler back then".

Aaron Edelweiss

People. People ruin everything.

Cattrina Careless

Although the only MMO I ever really felt that way about was Lineage II. In beta it was a lot less crowded and, on release, they raised the xp requirements for each level. So what was an acceptable grind in beta, once it went live, became an overcamped grind from hell.

Edav Nomad

WoW seems to be the only MMO that I've played more than a few months after the beta. I liked SWG till they made way too many changes.

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Wildefire Walcott

I am only guessing here, but I wonder if a lot of those controversial changes are aimed at making the game easier for new players and/or attracting a more casual audience. I'm betting that the type of person who participates in betas is a more hardcore type, who appreciates and enjoys more complex systems and difficult challenges- which are likely the very things that keep many games from having mass appeal.

Briar Bing

Yes, it's sort of a balancing act I suppose.

Cindy Claveau

Part of it, at least for me, is burning out on a game by playing during beta. As a good friend of mine said, "It can only be new once". Once you've killed Lord Xxybsokjf 42 times, it just doesn't have the same zing to it.

And people - yes, people. Take the small beta community and add thousands of juveniles, powergamers and assholes and there goes the community.

But there's more. This is an old link, written for MUDs, but it still holds true today for MMOs when the devs listen too much to the players:

MUD Wimping Guidebook

The life cycle of a MUD or MMO:

1. The Honeymoon
2. Midlife Crisis
3. The Danger Point
4. The Death Spiral

Sony: Take note.

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Cristiano

People suddenly have to pay for it.

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Wildefire Walcott

Oh the OUTRAGE when people learned that Blizzard was going to charge $15 a month for WoW. "You mean I have to pay for the disks AND pay monthly on top of that? NEVER!!!!"

10,000,000 players later...

But I think you do have a point. Many people do appear to apply a value judgement to their entertainment. "This game is good but it's not $15-a-month good."

'Course if I applied that logic to SL, I'd have quit loooong ago.

Edav Nomad

Yeah, thats happened to me a few times. Even though I enjoyed some MMO's they just weren't worth the money to play after beta.

With SL there was and still is a lot of potential for growth. Even though sometimes it feels like its still in beta.

Verkin Raven

It's exactly that "frontrunner" elitist snot attitude that keeps me out of betas.

Aodhan McDunnough

1. In Beta there is a sense of wonder since no one has been there before. There are no walk-throughs ... no cheatsheets ... no spoilers. Everything is discovered.

2. In Beta there are less people, you are the heroes of that world. This gets vastly diluted when the game goes live.

One MAJOR problem with MMOs is that the fantasy worlds (e.g. LOTR) were written around a small group of heroes who stood out from the crowd. In an MMO you instead have a crowd of heroes. Thus when everyone is heroic, heroic becomes ordinary.

Wildefire Walcott

Hmm. I think I've heard something about a big uproar in Star Wars Galaxies- like it used to be really hard to become a Jedi, so it meant something to be one, but now anyone can roll a Jedi as a starting class- is that right?

Joshua Nightshade

That sounds right, I remember something similar.

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Aodhan McDunnough

What I heard is that it used to be a random thing. But I think some people gamed that by remaking characters ad infinitum until they had a Jedi, then they changed things (the jedi thing and I hear they wrecked the entertainer class) and it was downcliff (not downhill) from there.