Death and Frustration in MMOs

So I've been thinking about MMOs lately.

Not just because I've been playing WoW for a few months now but because we're now starting to see the effects of WoW in future MMO development. Companies have seen that WoW can attract 7 million paying customers, and they want some of the pie. So now we're starting to see the 4th generation MMOs nearing beta: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Gods and Heroes, Huxley and (most importantly) Vanguard.

Vanguard has been in development for ~4 years so far, and it's being led by two ex-EQ staffers. They're going the fantasy route (which is probably the best route to take, but that's a subject for another column), and pretty much openly admitting that they're trying to take people from WoW. On the surface their spiel seems pretty interesting, the game seems somewhat pretty, and I'll probably try them out if they have a trial or open beta. But I was listening to an interview with Jeff Butler (one of the lead developers) and he said something that really lead me to question how much market share they're actually going to get.

During the interview, the subject of punishment for player death came up, specifically referring to EQ's policy of losing experience when dying - and with no lower limit, which meant you could actually go down a level if you died too much. Jeff said that Vanguard would have a similar system, except with no possibility of losing a level (he DID mention, however, that you might accrue an xp "debt" - i.e. if it normally takes 1000 xp to level, it'll now take 1143).

This is a huge mistake.

Look: part of the reason that WoW succeeded so well is that it's an MMO that is extremely casual friendly. Most people playing it aren't the 40-hour a week hardcore raider. They pop in for 5-10 hours a week, noodle around doing quests or talking with friends, and generally have a fun time. I'm not saying that a hardcore-only MMO can't succeed (EVE Online is a great example of one that found its niche) but you're not going to pull anywhere near WoW's numbers if casuals don't have fun in your game. And I can tell you the 2nd biggest turnoff to a casual gamer (other than open PVP) is a severe penalty for dying.

In MMOs, people die. All the time. Sometimes it's due to lag, sometimes it's due to recklessness, and sometimes it's just plain bad luck. You go wandering off into an area you've never seen before, when suddenly a mob 10 levels above you suddenly unstealths, stuns you, then proceeds to chop you into adventurer-nuggets. Or you're fighting a mob, another one suddenly notices you and starts attacking, and you can't find the hotkey for a healing potion quick enough. I would assume it actually happens more for casuals than power gamers, since they aren't quite as good at playing the game and escaping these situations. If you penalize them for that, they're going to get frustrated REALLY quickly. They're going to look at the screen, say "I just lost half an hour of progress! Goddammit!" and log off.

WoW gets it right. If you die, you have 2 options: a) run back to your corpse and take a small durability hit to your items, or b) resurrect in a graveyard with a severe durability hit and a 10 minute "time-out". You still keep all your xp, all your items, and all your gold (yes, you might have to spend some gold to repair, but that's beside the point). Death is an inconvenience - enough of one that you don't want to be dying all the time, but not bad enough to make someone quite in frustration.

I'll predict it right now: severe penalties for death are going to dissappear within the next 5 years other than small niche titles. It presents much too high a barrier for casual players - and if you want to really succeed in the MMO world, you need the casuals. I don't think Vanguard will succeed or fail based on this one facet, but I do believe it will hamper them in appealing to this wider audience.