Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
 
Barriers to entry

Barriers to entry is originally an economic concept, describing how competition can be kept out of a market if for example it takes a huge investment to enter that market. But for a MMORPG player the term barriers to entry describes the difficulty of starting a new game. The recent announcement of Age of Conan being delayed for half a year specifically cited those entry barriers as something they still need to work on. Age of Conan has developed a brand new way of doing MMORPG combat, but apparently it isn't very intuitive, and there wasn't a good enough tutorial to get people into the swing of things.

My personal barrier of entry experience of the last week is Everquest 2. After not playing it for nearly 3 years I have forgotten a lot about how that game is played, and could have used a good tutorial and introduction into how things work. Unfortunately I started in the Nursery, the newbie zone introduced in the Echoes of Faydwer. While EQ2 has excellent tutorials in the original island newbie zone, the devs took some shortcuts and left out many of these introductory parts in the Nursery. This weekend I started crafting. There is a series of crafting quests to get you into things in Kelethin, but these quests contain zero information about how crafting works. First quest is "bring me a fried frog leg", telling you that you fry a frog leg on a stove. So I go to the stove, find the recipe, find the guy who is selling the wood needed to make a cooking fire in the stove. But I can't find a frog leg to fry on any of the vendors. And I didn't see any frogs out in the forest from which I could have gotten one. Finally I ask in chat and it turns out that I need to find a "school of fish" in the ocean bordering the Nursery, and click on it to fish, which after some tries gets me some frog legs. Sorry, but fishing frog legs from the ocean with the fishing skill isn't really intuitive. Some explanation would have been great. I should maybe make a new character just to do the island newbie zone once and learn how everything works. Well, I got my crafting up to level 10 by trial and error. After being hit with accident events for several levels, I finally found the hidden crafting tab in the knowledge book where the icons are that you need to counter those accidents. But some explanation of all that would really have lowered my barrier to entry into EQ2 crafting.

In my opinion the two MMORPGs with the lowest barriers to entry are World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. Both have excellent newbie zones explaining you just about everything you need to know to play the game. Thus if somebody would ask me for advice on what he should buy as his first MMORPG, I would recommend either of these (depending on how much of a Tolkien fan that person is).

Many other games get away with not having such a good introduction, but doing most things very similar than previous games. Every MMORPG which has a map uses the "M" key to open it. The keys for other activities, like opening your bags or quest log, have not been the same in all games until 2004. But since then, World of Warcraft has become the gold standard, and many games just copied the keyboard layout of WoW. Of course this strategy only works if your new players actually played WoW or a similar game previously. A big part of the success of World of Warcraft is that it has such low barriers to entry, and therefore succeeded in bringing many first-time players into the genre.

Being accessible to newbies is very important. You can't just assume that every single one of your players has played WoW or a similar game before. World of Warcraft has 9 million subscribers, but that is far from the total number of people playing video games. The Playstation 2, for example, sold 120 million units worldwide. A new player has to thoroughly enjoy his first hours in the game to get him hooked. If he spends that time wandering around in a bewildered state, you'll have problems keeping him as a customer. You really don't want barriers to entry keeping players out of your game.
Comments:
I recently experienced a major barrier to entry into the original Everquest. I had played EQ as my first real MMO back in 1999. I played for over a year before moving on. Nostalgia brought me back this weekend, along with the release of Everquest: Escape to Norrath, a free trial that allows you to play in an unlimited way up to level 10 with any race/class. Everything has changed. Not just my perspective, but many of the fundamental features of the game itself. The tutorial, the skills, crafting, everything. It was a type of culture shock. I was lost and felt like a newbie again. I now know how much I have been spoiled. WoW and LoTRO truly do have low barriers to entry and in contrast I have now found I lack the patience as a player to "figure it all out" on my own. I expect a bit of hand-holding and direction. I expect some challenge and a learning curve but I also want to PLAY. I don't want to spend my first few hours begging for help in chat, or surfing the interweb, just to figure out how your game mechanics work.
 
Todd,

The Isle of Refuge is a much better starting point.

I started characters for both good and evil on the island. I later created a Night Elf and selected Neriak as my home city.

I started off in a whole different place. I think it's called Camp Hate or something.

The differences that I noticed were:
1.) There was no golden trail leading to your first quest giver.

2.) Your first quest was not to go to the combat trainer for instructions on how to use your combat interface. However they are there, if you want to talk to them.

3.) It did not hand you off to a new quest giver when you had completed all of the original quest givers missions. You had to look for someone with a feather over their head. The Island has a storyline which involved several quest givers which I found much more enjoyable.

I would definitely recommend a first time player to choose either Qeynos or Freeport as their home city, so they start on The Island.

Mr. Anonymous
 
Anon===> Tobold already stated: "No Todd working here..., although I prefer people who can write my name correctly". Pft.
 
Thanks Otfun.
I have no idea where I got the name Todd from.

I'm sure there is a reason I translated Tobold into Todd in my mind.

I am going to request a research grant from the government to track this mystery down!

-Mr. Anonymous
 
I'll cite City of Heroes/Villains for ease of entry. The tutorial is pretty smooth, and most things are intuitive unless you made a Mastermind. You get bright colors and big explosions early on. The game hides most of the numbers because they are irrelvant to you as a player. You cannot do serious damage to your character until level 22 or so, and you can earn a respec at 24 if you messed up the first chance you got.

Besides, in what other MMO can you accidentally aggro six things at once and survive, possibly win, at level 2?
 
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