AGDC 2009 Wrap Up - Guildmaster Panel

[Hades]

So Chris Mancil from Trion Studios flew several Guildmasters out to this year's Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC) for a panel where we could interact with game developers and community managers. It was an interesting trip to say the least, and I'll give my version of how things went. I'm sure Sinister and Combine will write up their version as well, so be sure to check up on their sites too.

Here's the link to the panel audio:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showVideo.cfm/videoId/1541

The Session:

Title:
Making the Grade: What Gaming's Premier Guilds Really Think About You

Presentation Format: Lecture
Secondary Presentation Format : n/a

Audience Level : Intermediate

Presentation Description: Massively Multiplayer Online Games revolutionized our industry and redefined entertainment for an entire generation. While multiplayer clans and online teams were a common fixture in competitive gaming before, MMO Player Guilds transformed the way our online worlds evolved, how our communities developed, and occasionally – how our games died. Spanning Meridian 59 to Age of Conan, this panel will assemble five Guild Masters from gaming´s premier player organizations to discuss the state of MMO gaming from top to bottom. Why they choose some games and quit others, how they approach beta testing, what they love (and hate) about our games, and what they still hope to see. Meet Sinister's Bone Dancer, Combine's Deyth, Conquest's Zav, Shadowclan's K'Dahbruh, and Lord of the Dead's Lord Hades.

The audience will get an in-depth perspective of how are games are viewed by a core constituency of our consumers. What motivates these Guilds to play games, how best to communicate with them, and what factors in game design, community management, and customer service affect their product decisions. In effect, this panel will let incredibly dedicated consumers instruct and inform open minded game developers, community managers, and marketing professionals.

Ok here's some things I learned from the AGDC.

1.
Most gaming Executives don't care about guilds. We're considered small fries to them. However I realized that these executives don't truly understand how many players that guilds can bring into their games. We were not aware of anyExecutives that attended our panel. We did get some marketing directors and community directors though.

LotD as a guild contributes up to $45,000 per year of subscriber revenue to a game. The revenue generated by guilds who follow us to a game to game to play with or against us is approximately $540,000. That means LotD alone could have a $585,000 dollar impact on a game, and that is NOT assuming box sale revenue and secondary accounts for LotD or any of the guilds that follow us.

Sinister and Combine both have similar footprints to LotD. If you use the LotD numbers times 3, then having just those three guilds in the game could have a minimum revenue (subscription only) impact of $1, 755,000 dollars a year. That isn't chump change, and there are plenty of other guilds out there who can draw numbers of players like we can.

2.
Most Community Managers do understand and do care about guilds, but don't understand the full potential of how many people guilds truly bring into their games. I heard a few times that guilds were "small" portions of the playerbase.

3.
The disconnect between developers, gaming vision, and how players actually play games was pretty obvious. In the modern age it seems that many devs work with QA teams, but those QA teams don't provide the same level of feedback on gameplay that a real experienced guild can provide. So many developers don't see the big picture until their game launches, and things go horribly wrong.

By the time the game launches and they find out how players are really playing their game, these studios find themselves in a constant reactive mode while trying to put out 1,000 fires. Many gamers no longer have the patience to wait 1 year for a game to get things fixed, and I think that has contributed to the massive subscriber attrition rates we've seen with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online.

In my opinion, games were better developed when they had feedback from real guilds. An experienced guild is going to be more comprehensive from a PVE and PVP standpoint than a handful of QA dudes who probably don't delve too deep into the guts of a game.

The Questions(With My Answers)

1. Panel Introduction of the Guilds and the panel (Chris)

Chris went through and talked about how all of our guilds had been around over 10 years, how that was unique, and really talked us up.


2. Guild Introduction: A brief history of your guild’s founding, games your guild’s have played, and what your guild is currently playing now.

All the guilds had been around a while, and we basically gave a short version of what had been in our guild history.


3. Question: What has been the best MMO game(s) for you in the past ten years and why?

We were limited to 1 game within the last decade. Out of all of those games, our WoW chapter was the longest running. While WoW has its issues, I did have to list this game due to its stability, amount of content, measurable PVE progression, and decently designed PVP systems.

If we had been able to list additional games I would have said:

DAOC: For the RVR
COV: For the PVP and Sidekick systems
AOC: For the Guild City Building component
WAR: For the Guild Leveling Concept



4. Question: What was the worst MMO game you have played in the past 10 years and why?

I answered Age of Conan due to its launch with an unstable game engine, lack of content between levels 21-60, and a horribly broken sieging system.

If I had been able to list additional games, I would have said:

Shadowbane: Poor gaming performance
WoW: Loot drama + rigorous raiding schedule
WAR: Poor PVE/Leveling and broken T4 RVR



5. Question: How does your guild decide to play a new MMO game – what factors do you consider?

Here I described our beta evaluation process which consists of a technical review, a gameplay review, a guild mechanic review, and lastly a vote to move to retail.


6. Question: How important is a beta test to your guilds – does it impact your decision to play post launch?

All of the GM's told the audience that a beta was basically a demo, and that from the beta we could all tell whether or not a game was right for our guilds. None of us expected a beta to be stable, but we let them know that their betas told us enough about their games to make a purchase decision.


7. Question: Why Has World of Warcraft Dominated the MMO Space?

I'll summarize my response here, but it boiled down to WoW being:

Solo Friendly
Quest Designs - generally good
End Game Raiding - gave players things to do
PVP Systems - Multiple server BG's and Arena

All the other games that have come out since WoW have generally messed up in 1 or more of those core things. People do not have the patience that they used to have, and that is why recent games have spiked initially. The large spikes show that there is a desire for a WoW alternative, but the quick die off in subscription numbers also points out that those games had some major concept or implementation failures.

All these companies are trying to be the next WoW and they want WoW subs immediately. Instead of marketing to their niche market and growing, they try to Out-WoW Blizzard. Because they try that they end up launching with watered down versions of their game, the game feels too much like WoW, and people would rather go back to their nice WoW characters rather than start all over in a game that feels too much like WoW.



8. Question: What went right and wrong with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan?



Age of Conan - Wrong

A lack of a middle game (21-60)
Poor gaming/gameplay performance
Bad siege design
Bad siege performance

Age of Conan - Right

Good newbie zone (1-20)
Interesting Guild City building concept

Warhammer - Wrong

Poor character progression strategy
Boring PVE/Leveling from T3 to level 40
Public Quests were not concentrated around flight hubs
Broken T4 RVR endgame concepts
Bad R4 RVR gaming performance
Scenarios without multi-server queuing
Class imbalances

Warhammer - Right

Good starting zones (1-10)
Public Quests (the concept)
Scenario PVP
PVP Experience
PVP Progression

AOC sold 1.2 million boxes, and 6 months later it was down to 9 servers. WAR sold 800k boxes, and a year later its down to about 10 servers between the US/EU zones. Both of those games had over 60% player churn, and did not fix the core issues with their games fast enough.


9. Question: How do you guys handle cheating & exploits in beta and in live?

LotD answered that it didn't condone hacking or exploiting, and that we would boot members if they continued such behavior after being warned.


10. Question: In the game, do you think lore and in-game events are important?

In short, we don't care.



11. Question: What is your dream MMO game?

DAOC 2.0 with the following:

No Trials of Atlantis grinding
With DAOC New Frontiers RVR systemm
WoW's solo friendly leveling
War's Public Quests done right
War's Guild Leveling system with better rewards
AOC's Guild City Building concept
COV's sidekick system
PVP Arena's with multi-server queuing
Detailed PVP stats
---by player
---by guild
---achievement recognition
PVP progression systems for items
PVE systems with 5-10 main raid content
Titles and trophies that provided passive bonuses
Gear that has durability and wears out


Conclusion

We had a decent sized audience and several questions were asked. That told me that at least some of the people in the room cared about what guilds think, and how we make our purchasing decisions. I do think that more interaction between guilds, devs, community managers, and gaming executives needs to take place. Guilds can help steer games and help studios avoid common pitfalls. Until guilds are utilized more, then I guess the gaming executives will keep wondering why tons of players bought their products but didn't stay very long.

This wasn't your typical conference where people were advertising games. Instead it was mostly vendors selling their stuff to the gaming studios. So I didn't get a lot of good pictures, but I did manage to get about 4 that were worth posting.

All in all it was a good trip, and I would like to thank Trion and Chris Mancil for making it happen.

[GC]

Interesting ideas there.

Honestly, after my Darkfall experience, I may have made some different comments. If someone can do the polish of WoW with the PvP and political components that Darkfall has, I think it would be very successful.

In my opinion, the arena, battleground, instanced, point grind for reward pvp seems stale to me after Darkfall.

[Hades]

Yeah I was limited to the last decade or honestly I would have said UO was the best gaming experience.

The only reason I said WoW was because out of everything that has launched this decade, its become the most complete game from a content, gameplay, and progression standpoint. After the next expansion where they put in ranked PVP, its going to get even better.

A good PVP game requires population, and that's where most of the other titles really fell flat after their first 90 days.

[Hades]

At the session I was asked what type of impact guilds like LotD had on games in terms of players we attract. So Bone and I just came up with some rough numbers in terms of our potential impact from a revenue standpoint. These numbers I came up with are actually on the low side, and could be higher. They are based on the sizes of guilds that have followed us to games over recent years, and fought with us or against us.

The bottom line is that guilds like ours go to new games, we bring along our fanbois, and we make new fanbois in each new game we play. So over time its like an ever increasing domino effect, and the longer we survive as guilds then the bigger economic impact we can potentially have.

[Welly]

Good write up, Hades, and it's great to see that some of those in the industry are starting to recognize the impact guilds have on the games. Maybe they will go back and talk to those that didn't attend and if there is a next time, there will be more people there showing an interest in what guilds have to offer to them. Like GC, I might have answered some of the questions differently, but it sounds like it was a good open forum. Let's hope there's more events like this in the future!

[Joe Hostile]

Originally Posted by Hades

11. Question: What is your dream MMO game?
DAOC 2.0 with the following:

No Trials of Atlantis grinding
With DAOC New Frontiers RVR systemm
WoW's solo friendly leveling
War's Public Quests done right
War's Guild Leveling system with better rewards
AOC's Guild City Building concept
COV's sidekick system
PVP Arena's with multi-server queuing
Detailed PVP stats
---by player
---by guild
---achievement recognition
PVP progression systems for items
PVE systems with 5-10 main raid content
Titles and trophies that provided passive bonuses
Gear that has durability and wears out

Damn near Guild Wars 2 in a nutshell.

[Hades]

Here's the link to the panel audio:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showVideo.cfm/videoId/1541