They Changed It, Now It Sucks

I endeavor to point out that games I used to play were fun, even if I don't think they are any more. But I have ranted about changes or disappointments in games, even here on this blog. I try to temper that with the acknowledgment that things I don't like about MMOs comprise my own opinion of the genre and not fact, as some people are wont to do.

I'd say you lose the right to call a game bad after it's entertained you for 100 hours. Or 1000. ~ Chris, Game by Night

Chris over at Game by Night wrote a post questioning the attitudes of many gamers toward games they used to play. Specifically, those gamers who are now full of negativity toward games they once enjoyed. Tobold answered, giving his opinion that these negative-nellies are making excuses, rationalizing why they left, blaming the game instead of themselves.

We are unable to admit that falling out of love with the game might be our fault. ~ Tobold Stoutfoot, Tobold's Blog

While I agree that there is often an excess of rage rants by former players, Chris' perplexity and Tobold's glib response oversimplify the situation, when there is indeed plenty of blame to go around.

MMOs, especially long-running ones like World of Warcraft or EverQuest II, are not like single player games like Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto. I might like Mass Effect, but I might think ME3 sucks. (In reality, I have no opinion on the matter.) Maybe the gameplay is too different, or the developers introduced characters or storylines I don't like. No one really questions the validity of an opinion that a franchise has decayed—though they may disagree.

There is a thin line between love and hate.

MMOs don't generally have sequels, they have expansions. But in many ways, expansions create a different game than the original "Vanilla" version, and as time goes on, incremental changes may become drastic. Changes to character progression, talent/ability systems, etc., may eventually prove too much to tolerate, and the player stops playing the game. Simple boredom with a game doesn't engender the impassioned "The game sucks now!" that Tobold claims it does. I should think that only someone still passionate about a certain version of their favorite MMOs would rage so completely about changes to them. If they claim that the game always sucked after playing for those hundreds of hours Chris mentions, that's a different story, and he certainly has a point in that case.

Ducklings and Design Debates

In human-computer interaction, there is a phenomenon called the Baby Duck Syndrome, that condition under which people resist changes to interfaces even if the new interfaces are measurably more efficient. For instance, I am currently typing using a demonstrably inefficient 135-year-old keyboard design, even though there is a debatably more efficient design available to me right now. Why? Because it's what I am used to. Another is the "ribbon" introduced into MS Office with the 2007 edition, a design element I deal with on a regular basis in the software I train, despite it taking up a substantial bit of real estate on the laptop monitors we are required to use.

It seems that with every MMO design change, there are winners and losers. Those who feel the change is an improvement, and those who feel it interferes with or destroys their enjoyment of the game. Unfortunately, unlike those people who were still able to play Dungeons and Dragons using earlier editions of source-books when newer, revised, rule sets came out, MMO players have few legitimate venues for playing earlier versions of their favorite game.

So while they may reach histrionic levels in their rage against games they once loved, be sympathetic to such forlorn players. You never know when the game company will make a change that will break the game for you, sometimes literally. There, but for the grace of the devs, go you.