The Daily Grind: What's more important: content or polish?

by Chris Chester May 14th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Age of Conan, Bugs, Opinion, The Daily Grind

In a recent post, blogger Cuppycake asked a very prescient question that we thought we would relate to you. What's more important to the long-term success of an MMO title: the quantity of content at launch or a high-level of polish? The way development works these days, developers are often hard-pressed to finish a game on a deadline, and at some point they have to make the decision whether to keep implementing new features, zones, and graphical assets, or go back and refine the content they have to make sure it's perfect. Games like Everquest 2 exemplify that first path - pushing out huge quantities of content from the beginning, but turning off many with their initially slow refinement process. LotRO on the other hand is highly polished, but has to undergo frequent content updates to keep players interested.

With Age of Conan right around the corner, would you choose that it be refined but small or huge and a little buggy?

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, content, cuppycake, polish, tdg, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Bryan S. said on 8:44AM 5-14-2008

huge and buggy? Sounds like Vanguard. And we all know while that could mean a lot worse, it's not exactly a good thing. I'll take a moderate amount of game features executed in a polished fashion over just something to zone out and grind on for a couple of hours.

Slogo said on 9:19AM 5-14-2008

It's all about a balance between the two but I'd say polish is more important. This is especially true if your game has PvP which will keep people entertained for quite a while on its own. So long as the majority of players have something to do for a few months you should have no trouble getting out some additional content in time. If the game isn't polished though people will leave within the first few weeks or months of the game and never give you the opportunity to patch it.

Just look at WoW, they went for the polish first content second and it's worked out great for them.

ScytheNoire said on 9:30AM 5-14-2008

Quality > Quantity for launch.
This should always be the case. A poor game could have 10,000 hours of content, but it doesn't mean anything if the game is buggy or just plain sucks. A quality game, and developer who goes for quality, can always release more content, and should do so, as part of the subscription.

Theadrick said on 9:56AM 5-14-2008

I think a balance between the two is extremely important. I've played my share of MMORPGS, and 3 have stood out so far as seeming polished and at the same time having adequate content at release. They are:

1. World of Warcraft
2. Dark Age of Camelot
3. Lord of the Rings Online