GDC08: Pardo and others on the future of MMOs
by Elizabeth Harper 
Feb 21st 2008 at 7:15PM
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Social Conventions, Blizzard
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Shumina Feb 21st 2008 7:46PM
It's comforting to hear them say that they care so deeply about what the customers/players want. I'd love to actually feel that concern come through in their products more. Lately, I'm feeling like "y dollars."
But overall, they're talking specifically in business terms which *destroys* the fourth wall for me. I'm glad I wasn't there.
wowtard Feb 22nd 2008 9:26AM
The real appeal and uniqueness of MMOs is the fact that they are persistent worlds with thousands of players in them. The weakness of this system is that a content development team can never make enough top-down content to satisfy players, so user created content (or at least Guild Wars style competitive PvP ladders) would seem an ideal solution. But instead we are shovelled RPGs shoehorned into endless subscription grinds or ridiculous microtransaction systems designed to milk the most amount of cash from a player for the least amount of development time, while players suffer in an endless state of 'open beta' content and the whims of bad developers.
These systems are greedy, which is why so many in the industry saw $$ in their eyeballs when WoWs relatively small development team struck gold. Blizzard is making so much more money for development time invested that it's casued a literal explosion of cash-ins and me-toos. The problem? They all suffer the same fundamental design flaws, usually to a worse degree, causing players to mostly avoid them.