Older Players in MMORPG’s Clashing with Younger?

This morning, I was doing my usual thing. Drinking Coffee, and reading some of my favorite gaming blogs. Rob, over at MMOCRUNCH, wrote an interesting article about the Generation Gap in MMORPG players.

It’s funny to be 33 years of age and starting to feel really old in the MMORPG community. Sitting below me are at least one, and probably two, new generations of gamers, all with their own ideas on what makes for a good MMORPG - and all of these ideas are wildly different to my own.

This is causing a serious disconnect in the industry as games developers, to my mind, try and chase the future and what they think “the kids” want to do in the year(s) ahead. And, in doing so, they are neglecting the game mechanics that my generation still believes would be the best underpinning for MMORPGs in the future.

** side note to Rob- You think you are old, I was OLDER than you when I started playing MMO’s. I feel your pain.

I agree that there tends to be a difference in what the players seem to want. Is there more to the cause than JUST the difference in age and experiences? I think there is a Generation Gap in the Developers. They have grown, and changed. (Here me out.)

When the older games were being written, they really did not know what would happen. I will use Everquest as an example. When the team was developing that game, they had no idea it would be so popular. They developed with 6 months to a year in mind. Never did they imagine dozens of servers and millions of players.

They also had no idea how players would exploit and/or use some of the game mechanics. (For example they never considered the fact that feign death would be used as a way to pull mobs)

They certainly NEVER thought about the sheer amount of in-game support would be spent, dealing with players and the environment. For example, how many times people would accidentally attack their own guard? How many times did someone steal gear from a corpse they were dragging? How many times would people train someone else on purpose?

As time went on, the developers, tried to cut down on frustration by the players, and the CS people. They began to limit some of our actions. For example, players complained about powerleveling, so some games have made it impossible to buff people that are not in your group. Some players complained about kill-stealing, so they made locked encounters. CS complained that they had to answer too many petitions about ‘trains’, so they put Mobs on a leash and they do not have chain agro to players in most games now.

We have seen the worlds become more linear. You are born here. You do X number of newbie quests, then are ‘encouraged by NPC’s’ to go to the next area that is level appropriate for you. In this way, the designers are herding us like cattle through the gaming environment.

(In the original EQ back in 1999, you created a character and might spend a full night trying to get out to the world to hunt - especially if you were a dark elf born in Third Gate, or a gnome)

None of the NPC’s directed you. I think it took me several weeks to find out you could hail them for quests.

So I guess, I agree there is a generation gap, but it’s not JUST the younger generations attitude.

I think the attitude has been carefully crafted by the developers and marketing departments.

I think it is caused, just as much, by designers wanting to control gameplay.

The more you can control a players actions, the less customer service.

I think it’s more economics than preferences.

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