Natural selection applied to MMOs

by James Egan Nov 22nd 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Game mechanics, Guilds, MMO industry, PvP, Endgame, Opinion

There tend to be some fundamental differences between players of World of Warcraft and EVE Online, due in part to the contrast in rules and game mechanics, and the types of personalities each title attracts. This was mentioned in a recent Shut Up. We're Talking. podcast and provided some fuel for further discussion by Syncaine, from the Hardcore Casual blog.

He observes that "EVE players embrace scams, trickery, underhandedness, and generally resent any changes that would 'dumb down' EVE. In WoW that gets you quickly banned, and before that rivers swell from all the tears shed while players scream mommy." There's also a huge divide between the titles in terms of how 'hardcore' or PvP-centric the games are. "EVE is harsh on day one, and stays that way," Syncaine writes. "WoW holds your hand from 1-80, and makes sure you get a cookie regardless if you win or lose. EVE not only takes your cookie, but laughs at you for bringing one in the first place."

In these respects, Syncaine views the rules of an MMO as a type of natural selection. "EVE quickly breeds out the 'weak' MMO players, and only those who can survive in the 'sandbox with mines' stay around and thrive. On the other hand, with its super low barrier of entry, WoW is accessible to anyone with enough brain cells to double click an icon," he writes.

Of course, these are generalizations. Not every EVE player is a podkilling mass murderer who pulls off heists and scams when not raining hell down on his or her fellow pilots. Likewise, there are most assuredly WoW players whose dedication to endgame and other high-level pursuits would certainly label them as being hardcore. However, stereotypes do exist for a reason and there's certainly truth in what Syncaine has written.

What he points out are the social dynamics associated with the sandbox vs. theme park rule disparities between EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Those design choices do tend to attract certain types of players to each respective game. You may want to have a look at Syncaine's "MMO natural selection, and what it means to your game" if his expressed views either strike a chord or strike a nerve.

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Tags: blizzard, ccp-games, eve, eve-online, fantasy, game-mechanics, hardcore, hardcore-casual, mmo-industry, opinion, sandbox, sci-fi, shut-up-were-talking, syncaine, theme-park, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Mr. Pickles said on 4:38PM 11-22-2008

Ya, I love EVE for it's PvP and sandbox style, but I hate it for it being an open space Sci-Fi game. Don't get me wrong, I love Sci-Fi games, just not ones in open empy space as far as the eye cannot see.

But, I wish Warhammer Online took it's mechanics a step further and actually made them as hardcore as EVE in that once a city is captured, it stays captured until the original Realm took it back by force. Instead, the whole system is as Syncaine has said "hold your hand" with the city returning after 24hrs and in the mean time all the normal stuff is in the outsider's camp.

Weiser_Cain said on 5:35PM 11-22-2008

WoW is the most popular MMO ever, Eve is mostly unknown even within gaming.
This is not a fair comparison.

Mr. Pickles said on 6:03PM 11-22-2008

Most popular or most easy (easiest)? Try to comprehend the comparison the author is making. WoW is very easy, gives rewards for winning or losing, and guides you through the game like a boy scout walking an old lady across a street. EVE, on the other hand, takes everything from you: You die, you lose your ship (unless you have insurance, which is expensive and doesn't fully cover everything 100%), you lose your ships cargo, you lose everything.

And, in 0.0 space, everyone is an enemy and it's a hostile madhouse. Even in secure space, there's still people in small ships that are practically worthless to them that like to grief by attacking docking ships just to get them to retaliate enough to get security ships to blow their high price cargo carriers to rubble. The game is the most hardcore MMO released to date, but also the most fun if you play it just right.

Weiser_Cain said on 6:18PM 11-22-2008

A better comparison would be 'wow is a fun game until you meet the other side and even then you never get lost'.
Vs
'Eve is like a legal document that makes you wait a week between page turns. Oh and you can play the game wrong and be punished for it'.

both just 14.95 a month

Kesh said on 11:18PM 11-22-2008

So, basically you linked to a troll. GG.

W. Graves said on 6:32PM 11-22-2008

eve is like poker where your all-in most of the time.

wow is like poker where someone wins but no-one actually loses

Anon said on 6:59PM 11-22-2008

Oh and eve is also a terrible game. Yep, I was "that" guy.

zombiejesus said on 7:18PM 11-22-2008

Eve is great if you love pvp
WoW is great if you love pve

Graill said on 8:42PM 11-22-2008

Now there is a play on words for two "popular" MMo's.

"Dumb down" cannot be used for either WOW or EVE, they are as dumbed down as you can get, it takes no skill in either game other than lots of time, but thats the business model they both use, in EVE's case you dont even need to play, login set skills, log off, live life, after your skills are maxed in 3 to 4 years of real time simply find like minded folks and enjoy (sarcasm).

Any comments that come about EVE being complicated are false, simply release an MMO with an ate up ui like eve and no documentation to support or explain items ingame or fail to institute any type of consequence and you have what you have, a niche space game with a rabid fanbase that whines as things are fixed ingame after nearly 5 years.

EVE is best described as a lord of the flies game, watch the movie, you will see what i mean, the EVE concept is stagnant thats why CCP is changing things slowly.

In WOW's case its no life to get what you need, but then life is what you make it eh?

WOW has many thousands of examples online on youtube and any other video site about it's "community". This slice of the WOW demographic is quite accurate, showing the debilitating results of online binging, spazzing, yelling, screaming, griefing, and anything else the WOW community does while safely behind a monitor and keyboard.

EVE will remain a niche game until it fixes alot of things and brings in more consumers, this of course will irritate the old guard to no end.

WOW, well.........easy is as easy does, with this game your going to need a really big hammer to stop it, that or get the blizzard researchers to stop testing demographic population slices seeing what colors and sounds people like and "what makes them feel good", or did the majority of "you" folks not know this research even happens? TSK.

W. Graves said on 10:02PM 11-22-2008

thats a whole lotta hate....

be happy, go play a game or something :P

halfcaptain said on 11:23PM 11-22-2008

What part about 'here's-a-novel-every-time-you-click-an-item-specific-information-button' says "no documentation" to you? And why does literally taking away your time away and burning up millions upon millions of ISK when you die mean 'no consequences' to you? As far as i'm concerned, Graill, you don't understand EVE. Maybe because you won't, but probably because you can't. The best part about EVE, as far as I'm concerned, is that your character development isn't just killing shit in forests with purple trees - it's you learning about the game. And some people just aren't patient enough for that. Maybe they're not clever enough for that.

Some people call EVE 'spreadsheets in space,' and
while I think that's actually pretty funny, I don't really think it's true. EVE is pretty compelling in my opinion, because it is one of the only mmos that i know of that actually rewards the cunning and the truly opportunistic. the game means to you what you want it to mean to you, and your character can occupy, really, any role you want. I'm the type of dude who can't get excited about collecting a set of obscenely rare armor that just ends up making my avatar look even dumber. For some people, WoW is tedium at $14.95. It's the lowest common denominator. And that's the best way I can explain the droves of subscribers for WoW.

halfcaptain said on 11:03PM 11-22-2008

Weiser, in regards to your "mostly unknown even within gaming" comment: that's bull. Just
because Mr. T plays WoW, that doesn't make EVE irrelevant. Everyone and their dog plays WoW, but that's because everyone and their dog can play WoW. EVE can be pretty hard to stomach, and honestly for the average gamer, hard to understand. that said, EVE still has a considerable player base.

Keeping in mind that WoW, for any number of reasons, is an mmo juggernaut, EVE's player base
looks pretty good in comparison to other popular mmos that aren't Blizzard Babies. EVE has,
by now, somewhere in the neighborhood of 350,000 active accounts (I'd estimate 50,000 or so trial
accounts included here). City of heroes total player base is at the most, half that. As far as i can figure, if you were to rank like-minded mmo's with one another (for the sake of argument, I'm discounting poop like runescape, club penguin, habbo hotel, etc.) EVE isn't embarrassing itself. It's aged far more gracefully and is faring better than many mmos that are around the same age - e.g. star wars galaxies, matrix online, etc. in fact, EVE's not all that far behind LOTR, a game that's four years younger. All in all, total active subscriptions and a share of the market can't hold a candle to a real sense of community and compelling gameplay in an mmo. Besides, considering the 'one universe, single shard' approach that EVE took, it's very common to see 32,000 some-odd active players online every day.

halfcaptain said on 1:03AM 11-25-2008

evidently, i was pretty far off with my active subscriber count in my first post above. according to T=Machine, Eve has roughly 250,000 subscribers. wikipedia's eve online page, though, has a 9 month old figure of 281,000 (including 45,000 trial accounts) and backs it up with citations.

DrunkenPandaren said on 11:14AM 12-03-2008

Psh, all the real hardcore players are all playing UO and AC. :V

Mark said on 12:38AM 11-23-2008

Having played both games and attempting to quit them...one thing I can say for sure; I was able to quit WoW (after 2yr+) much easier than my on/off affair with Eve. (still going strong after 2yr+)

Among other things, I have to give credit to this "off-line training" that makes me go back to EvE. (Ofcourse with recent ghost-training nerf, we actually have to keep the account active) But the option of quiting for a while, whether to go try another game or not, and coming back into bigger and better ship attracts alot of EVE players.

But obviously such isn't true for many other MMOs where you quit for awhile and return, everyone else running around with better gears that makes you feel demoralisingly gimp and make you wonder why you have returned.

One significant reason I am unable to quit Eve easily was also due to its never ending possibilities to learn new stuff. Just as you became expert at something, something else new come along. After 2yrs+, I haven't run out of stuffs to try let alone be good at them. (Eve players knows what I am talking about)

Furthermore, EVE doesn't requires you to stick to a specific "Talent tree" so if you think you made a mistake or you don't like your character, you can always train what you like.

I am just sick of MMOs that defines the way a player should play. I would love to see a MMO with class free environment where "off-line" training similar to EVE will keep casual gamers as well as provide hardcore environment for them go all out and lose everything.

Wjowski said on 3:29AM 11-23-2008

Ignorant, insulting generalizations.

halfcaptain said on 6:11AM 11-23-2008

what an ignorant, insulting generalization of our generalizations.

Anon said on 6:33PM 11-23-2008

I can honestly say I agree with the fundamental idea of the article. However, I also think simply assuming that players of these games neatly fall into such categories is a fallacy. For example, I'm a college student (my major is medicine) and I don't have a great deal of time to devote to MMORPGs; for this reason, WOW appeals to me as it's a more casual game that allows me to make the best of my very short time to play. Mostly by allowing me to have some fun without harsh consequences each time I log in and make a mistake. This isn't to imply that I wouldn't like to participate in end-game raiding or get into huge PVP battles, as a matter of fact, endgame content was all I was ever interested in through the MMOs I've played. It's just not a realistic goal considering time constraints now. Either way I thought it was a good article, even based off of stereotypes, I just think some consideration needs to be given to the fact that the audience MMOs attract can not be so linearly divided.

W. Graves said on 8:52AM 11-24-2008

http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/0711/raven_smartbombs_azeroth.jpg

nuff said.

I dont understand why these comparos keep being made, these games are for two different groups of people, just leave it at that.

Syme said on 11:12AM 11-24-2008

There is no real truth to Syncaine's assertions, only assumptions. He only considers choice based on in-game risks.

In my own situation, I have a limited amount of time to play. I do not wish to place my leisure time at the mercy of others, which is also why I don't play on a PvP server in WoW. I prefer that how I spend my leisure time be my choice.

The use of words like "weak" when discussing games is as ridiculous as it is juvenile. Syncaine is welcome to stay in EVE Online hugging his copy of "Atlas Shrugged" for comfort if he wishes. In fact, I would recommend it, since outside of the safe confines of EVE, that kind of behaviour will get him ostrasized and possibly imprisoned.