What’s the big deal about open betas, anyway?
Posted by Tipa in Age of Conan, MMOs, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, World of WarcraftToday, the Age of Conan open beta opens. And people are fibrillating over it, slavering, EAGER to download a game most of them will have forgotten about in six months. But not today. Today, it brings meaning to their lives. Today the sun is shining right on them and the birds are singing because, today, they can play a new video game.
People are not only accepting of marketing, they willingly dive right in. Even though each and every one of them knows that if they really wanted a quality game experience, they’d pick up the game a month or two after it launches, when the rush is off, the game is stable, and it’s clear if the game is really awesome or just meh. Something you can’t really tell when ten thousand people are lagging the beta servers.
We computer fans have a long history of falling prey to hype. Remember the “Midnight Madness” spectacle Microsoft orchestrated around the release of Windows 95? Nothing was going to stop those people from buying an OPERATING SYSTEM at midnight. So they could be first to… what, exactly? Nobody really knew. They got over it pretty fast, waking up, wondering what all the fuss was about.
There was no fuss. Just hype. Software marketers have become masters at building hype. Age of Conan, Warhammer Online… If you can somehow get a player to make an emotional connection that can entirely bypass the rational part of their brains… well, you’ve made a SALE.
Because, you know what you’re going to do in AoC, and Warhammer Online? That’s right. You’re going to make a character, kill stuff, level, loot corpse, repeat. The same grind you see in every other MMO you ever played. It’s the *same game*.
If you were buying a car, you wouldn’t trade in your perfecly serviceable car for another just because it looked shiny and new.
Oh wait. Yeah, people do that all the time. Because Marketing WORKS. Marketing’s entire purpose is to make you WANT something. Build that emotional connection. You see that SUV rampaging through the mountains and fields and say — yeah, I’d like to be able to just drive around in mountains and fields and stuff instead of driving to work every day. And then drive their shiny new SUV into work every day. Dream realized. No change.
You won’t become an axe-swinging barbarian by playing Conan. We’re all just geeks behind keyboards, performing repetitive actions for no rewards, wasting time likely better spent doing something that would make a positive difference in our lives.
But hey, I guess if marketing can bring meaning to our lives and convince us that sitting for hours behind keyboards performing repetitive actions for no reward is actually something pretty fantastic, then who am I to say different?
Rock on, Conan dudes. You have six months to do it all over again for Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King.
Marketers everywhere rejoice.
(Full disclosure: I waited two months after EQ launched in 1999 to buy it, a year after WoW launched to buy it, and I bought EQ2 the first day it was out. And I didn’t wait in line for Win95. That would have been silly.)
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Special Editions are the Super Extended Warranties of video games. An opportunity for the buyer to give the store even more money. “$60? But… I want to pay MORE! Can you throw me a bone here? I can pay $80? Awesome!”
Pre-orders are for suckers too. If you pre-order for in store pickup, many places won’t honor their reservations, or the store will only get 10 copies when they have 18 pre-orders. If you pre-order from a website and have it shipped to you, you end up paying an extra $6 shipping just to have it show up at your house on Friday (if you’re lucky) of the release week, and more likely, Monday of the next week.
Luckily my job is flexible enough that I usually just slip away on those special Tuesday mornings around 9:30 to go to bestbuy and get what I want. (usually two copies for myself and wifey). The only thing I waited over night for was the 360 on launch day, but that was a spur of the moment thing on the night-of, when my brother was already in line and I just joined him around 11pm. I’ve waited in short lines (2 Hours or less) for TBC, (that was fun, because you know everybody there is a wow geek, even the two uniformed cops that showed up and got in line) and for the Rock Band bundle, (which was worth every penny and every minute of waiting) but I don’t usually make a habit of getting worked up over launch dates. Sadly, a lot of stores don’t even honor the launch dates anymore.
I pre-ordered Rock Band. But I knew absolutely all there was to know about that game in advance and knew I wanted it THAT day. I have never regretted that purchase, not ever. I’ll go to the wall for good games.
On the other hand, I have wanted a PS3 since they came out but still do not have one. Why? Because I have no certainty I will have enough free time to play it, plus I don’t have a widescreen TV, and my son monopolizes the old-style Sony Trinitron we have with the Xbox. All Sony’s desperate attempts to hype me, a true Sony fan, into buying a PS3 have not worked.
I did buy and truly enjoy their Reader, though :)
I understand your feelings on this matter, Tipa but at the same time, you can’t fault a company for marketing. Um, that’s what they’re supposed to do to sell their product. If fans wanna jump back on the hamster wheel every year when the “next big thing” comes along, so be it. For such a young gaming genre, the MMORPG industry strikes me as incredibly conservative creatively and I don’t think we’ll be seeing the next big thing for quite some time. Even the most forward thinking MMORPGs are still working from a blueprint created in a basement in Lake Geneva, WI over 30 years ago.
But am I excited about AoC? Yes. Do I think it’ll change my life–or even my gaming life? No. But I want to play in Robert E. Howard’s world the same way LoTRO allows hobbit heads to play in Tolkien’s. I’m excited about a fantasy game that’s not high fantasy with elves and brownies and unicorns.
The last game I was amped up about pre-release was Vanguard. Now THERE was a case of marketing that intentionally mislead people and promised a product very different than was sold the gaming public upon release. I think both Mythic and Funcom have been quite careful with not promising fans the world–I think the overenthusiasm and blind speculation of fans is what I find most annoying–not marketing departments doing what they’re paid to do.
Of course I can fault them for marketing! Sure, they are just doing their jobs, and its our fault for buying into it, but I can definitely fault them for being part of a system of promising the world to someone in order to get them to make that initial purchase, only to find out all the really cool stuff is coming up in a later patch. See: Vanguard, LotRO, et all. Hell, even WoW promised Hero classes were coming and a sort of free-form Player vs Monster arena while in beta and Wrath of the Lich King will finally add ONE hero class how many years later? And I still can’t walk into the Gorobashi Arena and spawn encounters for my group. And WoW is the Big Kahuna with the big pockets.
It’s very true that with EA Mythic, anyway, that careful reading of their press yields a very different sort of game than that imagined by a lot of people. Maybe that’s the real problem. People think of their perfect game, think of what they would like in their perfect game, then see all the hype and just assume for no real reason that that much-hyped game has just GOT to be their perfect dream game, and from then on hear only what supports that and nothing that doesn’t.
Does our enthusiasm for the whole MMORPG genre make us fool ourselves?
I was certainly fooled by Vanguard, though I didn’t end up buying it because I was happy with EQ2 and the beta resembled it too much. But nothing could have lived up to THAT hype and they WERE actively trying to mislead people, so that’s a very different case.
I think consumers like to fool themselves regardless of the product. We could be talking about MMOs or automobiles or cosmetics or soft drinks–marketing is always trying to SELL us something more than the product itself–whether it’s some convoluted idea of autonomy or youth or sex appeal. I love my MacBook, but can’t stand their asinine marketing campaign that equates Apple with hip, young, and in-the-know and PC users as Bill Gates-without-the-billions-of-dollars nerd computer geeks. I don’t buy Apple products because of their marketing–I like their products, but some must, right? The bands of our youth didn’t write songs to sell Camrys or VW Bugs, but marketing departments use these songs nowadays to plant the seed in our heads that they’re more than a stuffy corporation–”Hey! Here are a bunch of people like ME who like my kind of music so I’m gonna buy a Honda instead of a Ford” or whatever.
It is frustrating that people are sheep–but unfortunately this applies to every arena–whether talking about consumerism, politics, religion, etc. That’s why I enjoy MMORPGs–its one of the many escapist venues in my life that provides some illusion of transcendence in a reality where nine times out of ten people are to numb upstairs to do anything other than follow the herd. Sheesh, I’m depressing myself now.
:)
You know what the difference is here? The reason every one is clamoring for this is simple..
WoW burnout…and burnout of all the copycats as well (looks at LOTRO with an eyebrow raised)
There is a huge discussion of this title offering something new, something different, something bold, something blue…(uh…forget the blue part…maybe blue screens?)…
People WANT it to succeed..
The reason for the raving rantings of fanbois, and with that you get naysayers as well.
You know…this may be the same game underneath (quests, xp, skills)…but, some approaches look to be unique here, and if Funcom can do it, then cool…it will be a good game…barring lag, crashes, etc..
Since Vanguards failure, Tabula Rasa just being bland and just not getitng it…and LOTRO’s “look at me …pretty landcsapes…same vapid WoW gameplay tho’”
AoC is hopefully at least the beginning of Developers looking at new ways to do this genre…
So…hype all they want…they just better match that hype..
Later
I think collectors editions are great if they come with something nice that is extra. The WAR one looks really sweet because it comes with an art book and things like that. I guess what it really comes down to is they are going to sell stuff for whatever they can get people to pay. I don’t see any reason to complain about.
I like to play MMOs on release day (or near it) because there is very little spoiler info out there. Also, there aren’t twinks and power levelers. This gives the game a much different feel than 6 months later when so many people are just racing through content the 3rd time. I am also a crafter, and usually the market is much more active for the first few months. Not just to make lots of gold(which is usually put back into more crafting), but I love knowing that people are actually using my items.
PS: You can buy a FM tuner add-on for the Ipod (not from Apple).
I’m a closed beta tester for AoC, and I have been for months. Closed beta is still not out from under the NDA, but we are apparently allowed to say we’re in Closed Beta now (seriously). I’ve also beta tested basically every North American MMO since The Realm, and I can safely say that AoC is Just Another MMO ™. However, it IS different on many levels, for example the combat system takes the atypical Mash Buttons on your Hotbar ™ approach and gives you 5 different directions to do it in. Also, the MBoyH requires you to pay attention to what you’re doing, as each ‘combo’ (Hotbar Button) has a series of directional strikes to follow to get the fullest from your attacks.
Also, being that this is a Brand New MMO, you can expect that it is much prettier than the rest. Any new WoW expansion, while adding newer graphics, is still built on the same game engine, and so it is still going to look very similar. AoC goes very far to improve on the looks of every MMO. I have quite a high end system, and so I’m able to run AoC in quite high settings and it is far and away the most attractive MMO I’ve seen so far; they seem to know that the graphics engine needs to survive for a few years at least, and so it was designed with future hardware in mind… unfortunately for them that means that there will be many MANY dissenting voices who complain that the game is nigh unplayable for them, and surely they will blame that on Funcom and not their own 2 year old hardware.
My system is cutting edge too, I don’t think Conan looks as good as LOTRO does, personally. I have only seen the tutorial and first town, but I only thought the visuals were “adequate.”
There’s no way I’d say its the most attractive so far, going on visuals at least. Everything is brown and muddy and most areas are just too dark. I understand it fits the atmosphere, but even LOTRO has its dreary areas that don’t look you’re looking thru dirty sunglasses…
look ^like^ you’re
enable editing already will ya
@Captain
Where AoC does look better than LOTRO…is the models.
There was a discussion on another forum about how some people find the EQ2 models great and it makes the game more fun…people seem to personalize with how they look in the game…
Some people feel more for the visual of the character, and not so much for what is around them..reason so many concentrate on making really nice clothing in these games to walk around in…
EQ2 landscapes do not look so good at times (it varies so much from area to area)…but, boy the SOGA based models look great (while others like the clay versions…it can differ)
Vanguard looks just as good if not better than LOTRO in certain zones…landscape wise,.,,but again…the models are ugly..
Guild Wars has some gorgeous models…
And this is where AoC shines, and LOTRO fails…the models just do not look that good..The animations are pretty bad as well…while AoC’s motion capture is top notch.
So unless you are playing first person, I think I want to know I look good in the game…but, this is based on perception…example: I would never play a Troll or an Orc in any MMO…as I do not relate to their visuals..
Maybe this is the real reason LOTRO fails for me…well, besides other problems..