rant found on gamemethod.com that makes tons of sense, and an interview from wtfman.com:
The game development business model:
1) Come up with an innovative design, if that fails use the tested and true models.
2) Make sure to try to be different, new races, new graphics, new concepts.
3) Attract as many players as possible, even players from a non-MMOG background.
4) Make entering the world easy and acceptable, a good interface and tutorial.
5) Retain those newbies, and turn them into a constant revenue stream.
6) Bend over backwards and ruin the game to keep your customers.
Here’s an all too common scenario:
Community: “Hey, we just wanted to compliment you guys on the archery system, it’s great! On a side note that healing bug is terrible, its ruining gameplay, could you please fix it?”
One week goes by….
Two weeks go by…
Dev’s : “We are running a community poll, Do you think we need more colored robes?”
Another week goes by…
Dev’s: “The patch has the following fixes: We noticed players were having too much fun with archery, this caused an imbalance for players who did not have the archery skill, so we had to fuck up archery completely, we’re sorry. We also attempted to fix the healing bug...
Community: “Omfg, wtf”
Here’s a generalization of the instant thrill player who jumps into an MMO: He doesn't have much time, so he hates to have his fun disrupted. He works during the day and has to take care of other matters at night so he can only play an hour a day, but he wants to become up the ultimate rat slaughter, all hailed throughout the kingdom for his abilities to slaughter rats. He plays a bit, but realizes that he’s not doing so well, another player “Pow3rGamer” has all day to play and he’s just destroying the rats, he’s a virtual genocide. The player says, “Damn, this isn’t fair. I really want to be a rat destroyer, but I don’t have time! And his pockets jingle with lose change amounting to $9.99” The developers ears, which are normally plugged with wax and other crap hear his $9.99 in change (a month) jingling in the players pocket and the developer gets down on his knee's and fixes the game for the player. They add “Power rat poison” It only works for the first hour a day that you play, but it allows you to kill 10x the rats that you normally could. The player is happy, he is now a masta rat slaughter, killing 10x the rats he used to. But after a few months he realizes he didn’t work for any of it. He realizes the game has evolved into a great Rat killing machine, nothing more. As time rolls on the players will sit back and say to themselves, "at level 1 I use a wooden sword to kill a rat, at level 10 I will use a broadsword to kill a rat warrior, and at level 20 I will use a golden sword to kill a rat queen" and he will think to himself, "How is this progress? How is this accomplishment? I'm doing the same thing over and over, my progress is a function of the amount of time I put in... where is that cancel button again?"
Developers and businessmen are trying to mold the MMOrpg genre that was built on the backs of hardcore DND (dungeons and dragons) and MUD (multi user dungeons, text based mmorpgs) gamers into a genre that can be played by everybody, only an hour a day, and you get the same rewards for your time and feeling of accomplishment. Bullshit. The sense of accomplishment in DND doesn’t come from the fact that you got that “+5 sword of Rat slaying”, instead it comes from trials and tribulations you and your character took along the way. The rewards are gained on the path, not at the end. People play MMOrpg’s now with the mentality of “when I get there…” and it’s sickening. This entire mentality is built from the design of EQ where you needed to “get there” to get the next shiny sword, EQ was about the end game, or more precisely a multitude of small steps to “get there” instead of a living breathing world in which your character resided. The end-game mentality further ruined Mmorpgs for some time, they were no longer worlds, but rather overcomplicated chat rooms where you could perform actions over and over until you “got there.” As a newbie in Shadowbane you are tossed into a ass-backwards “world” with a “kill everything” mentality. Lo’ and behold, your first targets to be bashed are some ants that are only a few steps from your spawn point. After you bash a total of five ants you “advance” to you next level, where you proceed to bash more ants. The fun of Shadowbane isn’t about bashing the ants, but it’s in the end game where you can have town vs. town combat. The leveling (*aka* tread-milling) process in Shadowbane is completely unnecessary to the game design as a whole, a fundamental waist of time because of the “end game” mentality. Shadowbane also failed on its attempt to deliver good town vs. town combat because of some of the crappiest game design ever, which totally disregards everything we know about the way people play; they are lazy. Why would a guild spend the time and effort to raid a town while the defending towns’ guild members are online? Well, they don’t. They raid the town at 4am. The next day you log into 7 protected buildings, and a shitload of rubble. Terrible game design lead to many guilds waking up realizing, “wtf, I just wasted a four hours a day for the last month putting this town together, and it got blown up overnight… where’s that cancel button?”