Article on Slashdot re MMO

[iwojimmy]

People aren't as hardcore as they think they are, and no one is hardcore on their first log in. With that said, why are hardcore players all that important? Hardcore player are the rockstars. People know who are in the top three guilds on their WoW server. These players provide aspirational models for more casual players. Seeing fully decked out players is not daunting, it's uplifting. It motivates you for future successes. Hardcore players are also evangelizers. They pass the word on to the more casual folks, and get them interested. Ala 'the tipping point', key influencers can make or break a game.

Your game is too hardcore if your hardcore players are ashamed to be playing it. That's not healthy. Also: don't build up your hardcore players in those terms. That terminology ends up being exclusionary. It's dangerous to make a martini bar. You probably want more to be the corner pub.

Damion paused before going on to a topic he obviously felt very strongly about: As a game designer of a massively multiplayer game, you MUST control your game's culture. It's important to try to keep the culture of your game as clean as possible. As much of a losing battle as it can be, it's extremely important that you try to keep the misogynists out. Damion quipped, "Never underestimate the damage a charismatic idiot can do." Keep the gamespace civil, for the sake of everyone from casual to hardcore. People take social cues from behavior around them. Compare the behavior exhibited in the Stanford prison experiments vs. the socially conscious culture at Burning Man.

full article
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 07/1519216

Some interesting stuff there, even if it is WoWcentric

[katriell]

Fascinating article. Thanks for the link.

Though there were many good points, I noticed this one most particularly:

you MUST control your game's culture

I think that applies to everyone involved in an MMORPG, though. The developers who choose what features to add, the specifics of their implementation, and how they are woven into the rest of the mechanical fabric; the support staff, who enforce the rules and set the game's customer service standard; the community, who respond to everything and interact with each other.