MMO Gaming

Over the past couple of days I’ve noticed several posts in my feed reader covering betas, leaks of information (beta or otherwise privileged information) and even a bit about NDAs and breaking them. I’ll probably reiterate here some of what I said in an earlier post, but that’s okay, the things I said then are just as true now.

First I’d like to address an issue with several posts/comments I’ve read about the topic. I’ll group all these people together and let’s just say that these people believe in the “magic patch theory” of game betas. The “magic patch theory” is something I just made up, feel free to use it as you will. Basically the Magic Patch Theory boils down to the fact that certain people believe that at some point during the beta testing period there will be a patch which completely changes and fixes all the problems of the game.

I saw this run rampant on the TR beta forums. These people are fanboys and they have bought into the hype machine. Unfortunately there is not, has never been, and never will be a magic patch to any game. Turning a game around from utter failure to playable but lacking is hard enough (you know who you are, unnamed game) and takes months of work spread over multiple patches. To turn a game around from crap to amazing is next thing to impossible.

Discussing a similar thing with my brother last night he said that, looking back specifically at TR, where can these fanboys possibly sit now? Especially given Garriott’s admission that the game was not where it needed to be. The fact that on the TR beta forums these people were hopelessly disparaging any unkind remark about the game when it was those remarks that were often spot on just shows how ridiculous a stance it is.

I did not post very often on the TR beta forums. When I did I’d like to think my posts were well thought out and presented a balanced view of the issues. If something sucked, I said it sucked (in nicer terms perhaps.) If something was good, I said it was good. It was a realistic and logical look at the game while still remaining hopeful. To this day I am still a proponent of the game, because frankly the game doesn’t suck. It is not where it could have, or perhaps should have, been, but on the whole it is still a good game.

On the other hand, I look back at my time in LotRO. I participated briefly in the open beta and I hated the game. I didn’t purchase it on release and went ahead and gave my opinions about the game here, openly. A while after release I went and picked up the game because so many people from the blogs I read were saying how enjoyable it was. I’d just gotten a new computer and I figured that perhaps my experience was negatively impacted by playing on a sub-par machine.

That wasn’t the case. With my new computer, graphics cranked up to max, I found the game enjoyable for a short time longer due to the beautiful surroundings but still an absolutely boring and shallow game. For that reason I tend to not mention the game at all. Given the time that has passed if I went back to the game I may enjoy it as things have changed. I don’t plan on ever finding out though as the game simply does not appeal to me.

Getting back to the topic at hand, to sum it all up, once a game is in beta, there will be no magic fixes to the game. There will be no mind-blowing changes to make a game massively better than it was. Chances are if the game is simply not good in beta it will continue to be not good on release.

On the subject of NDAs and leaks of information, some people are strongly opposed to breaking an NDA. Theoretically speaking I agree with that. In spirit, I agree with it. Those who are breaking the NDA are usually those who hate the game and the leaked information is tainted by embellishment because of that hatred.

Their is a flip side though. What about a person who presented a logical, reasonable list of problems with the game in an attempt to stop people from wasting money? Isn’t that a good thing? If a person isn’t foaming at the mouth there is a pretty good chance they are presenting at least a portion of the truth even if it is not 100% accurate.

Of course, if we want 100% accuracy who are we to turn to? The developers certainly aren’t honest, they lie to sell games, regardless of what they know about how good or bad a game is. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that. They are a business, it makes sense for them to bend the truth or not fully disclose all the problems they may see. Still though, the fact that we know they are dishonest (or if you prefer to be less hostile in wording, that they exaggerate) is not in itself an excuse for them to continue the practice.

Isn’t there something to be said for being a pro-active consumer? I don’t support the breaking of NDAs in the slightest but the issue is not as black and white as some would try to prove. The person who leaks information or breaks agreements, for the right reasons, is not the only person to blame for a system that simply doesn’t work in the first place.

beta test, nda, mmo, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming