Players From The Developers And Community Managers example essay topic

Introduction According to the World of Warcraft Community Site, World of Warcraft is "a massively multiplayer online game... enabling thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure" ("World of Warcraft Guide"). Although the origins of MMORPGs can be traced to the 1970's, the release of Ultima Online and Everquest, commonly called UO and EQ respectively, in the late 1990's brought MMORPGs to a broader PC gaming audience. Since the release of UO and EQ, MMORPGs have become a multi-billion dollar market. World of Warcraft went live in November of 2004, and its community has since grown to over 1.5 million players. Effective community management was made a staple in the industry by its two most notable pioneers.

Community management is vital to the success of a MMORPG, and WoW is no exception. Need for Player Representation in Mmorpgs system of communication between the players and developers has the potential to directly influence customer satisfaction. Jeremy Kelly points out "it is assumed that developers seek to maximize profits" (Kelly). From a developer's standpoint, knowing the thoughts and feelings of the player base is one of the most important parts of the ongoing development MMORPGs are known for. Joshua Hong states that the key difference between a MMORPG and other online or offline video games is the existence of a persistent world (6). Creating a MMORPG costs upwards of 15 million dollars, and this figure does not even include the cost of continued support after the game launches (Hong 8).

"These games demand virtual worlds, significant hardware requirements from the developer (e. g., servers and bandwidth), and dedicated support staff" ("MMORPG"). Due to the unusually large investment needed to develop a MMORPG compared to normal games, MMORPGs only thrive financially through longevity. It is therefore imperative that good communication exists so customer satisfaction can be kept high. As seen in Figure 1, 63.5% of MMORPG players consider the most important aspect of the game to be influenced or directly controlled by mechanics coded by the developers ("Making friends" and "Pretending to be someone else" are considered to be primarily social rather than mechanical in nature). Figure 1 - Most Important Aspect of the Game (Yee) These mechanical issues influence the social players' enjoyment of the game as well. Though these players do not consider mechanical issues to be the most important aspects of the game, their enjoyment of the game depends on the presence of other players.

Obviously if the developers can not retain the "mechanical" players, the "social" players may also leave. Nicholas Yee analyzed the reasons players commonly give for quitting a MMORPG and compiled them in The Daedalus Project. Yee reports that the most common reasons players left were "boredom and repetition... persistent bugs and game-balancing issues... and frustrations that arose from their game relationships". Yee cites examples of player responses he received when creating The Daedalus Project: The first reason I stopped playing was terrible customer support.

Should something happen regarding your account, in-game, or other reasons there was virtually no assistance. The atmosphere of the game became such that it was as if they were doing you an enormous favor just by allowing you to pay and play, a privilege they would rescind at their slightest whim without any justification or chance of defense. Game balance was pathetic. Developer had no idea what the issues were and was making changes that had little or no impact. I guess I stopped playing it because a lot of my close friends had left the game. The first three responses demonstrate the feelings of "mechanical" players who left for reasons under the developers' control, while the fourth response demonstrates the feelings of "social" players.

Developers must maintain good communication and relationships with the player base as these areas directly influence player retention. The Problem As of May 2005 the World of Warcraft development team has not yet properly implemented a player representation system, and the need for one is becoming ever more noticeable in the community. Word of Warcraft currently has five community managers - the same number of community managers working on WoW over a year ago when the game was still undergoing beta testing. At that time the game had only a few thousand players. WoW has since grown to approximately 1.5 million players with 800,000 of them in the United States, but no new community managers have been hired ("World of Warcraft Sets"). The community managers call themselves liaisons between the players and the developers.

Each community manager is placed in charge of one class in the game. On the surface this seems like a system that would ensure all players have a representative to communicate their concerns to the developers, but WoW has nine classes. The community managers claim that they can each handle multiple classes if necessary. However, currently only two classes even have a dedicated community manager at all, and only one community manager plays the class he represents. Furthermore the community managers spend most of their time moderating the official WoW forums rather than acting as liaisons between the players and developers. The discrepancy between the number of classes and number of community managers, the lack of representation for most players, and the misrepresentation of the rest has created a situation in which players feel no one is looking out for their interests or listening to their problems.

Many players have quit trying to offer constructive feedback at all, and instead "flame" the community managers at every opportunity. This results in an atmosphere in which it is impossible for the community managers to collect important game data from the community. Without constructive feedback, the community managers do not know what changes the players feel should be made. However, changes are still made in every new patch. To the players, it usually looks as if the community managers have been taking shots in the dark. Necessary improvements are left out of patches, unneeded changes cause new bugs, and new imbalances are created.

This only further alienates the players from the developers and community managers themselves while the problem is compounded and the cycle continues. To break the trend that WoW is following, a new community representation system is needed. Methods In order to evaluate the problem with WoW's current community representation system, data has been collected on the state of WoW's system and that of other leading games on the market. This report contains an accurate representation of the WoW community's feelings towards the current system. The data in this report, collected through online research, shows a need for more effective communication in World of Warcraft.

Some potential solutions to this problem were research and are evaluated by their success in other games. Criteria Each solution proposed is evaluated based on its implementation cost, sustainability, and effectiveness. Implementation Cost - The cost of each solution will be evaluated. Cost will be measured in the number of Blizzard employees necessary for each solution to be successful. Fewer employees will obviously mean a lower cost to the company. Sustainability - The sustainability for each solution will be evaluated in relation to the implementation cost.

A higher implementation cost will be more difficult to sustain over times the game community shrinks. Adaptability is important to a solution's sustainability, since a system that cannot be sustained as the player base shrinks must be altered more significantly than a system that can adapt to fluctuations in the player base. Effectiveness - The ability of each solution to communicate problems and concerns between the players and developers will be evaluated. A system with more direct communication between the two will be more effective. Solutions Below are three possible solutions to Blizzard Entertainment's player representation problems. Direct Developer Representation Blizzard has the option of hiring developers to communicate directly with the player base.

Blizzard would need to hire enough new developers to adequately represent all nine classes while still performing their other duties. Since the current development team is already spread thin in other developmental areas, at least nine new developers would need to be hired in order to adequately represent all classes. However, simply hiring more staff brings with it a number of cost effectiveness problems. With 1.5 million subscribers, each paying approximately $14.99 a month, increasing staff size may be financially viable ("Blizzard"). However, MMORPGs inevitably lose subscribers, and, depending on WoW's retention rates, the need for a larger staff may decrease over time. If Blizzard implements a system of one developer per class, a minimum of nine developers would always be necessary just to maintain this representation system.

Currently each of them would represent over 166,000 players if the players were spread evenly across all classes, but that is not the case. Some classes, such as the rogue and hunter, make up much larger percentages of the player base, while others such as the warlock and druid have a much smaller player base (WoWCensus). This can cause a discrepancy in work loads among the developers which wastes resources that could be applied elsewhere. This problem would only compound as subscription numbers decrease, forcing Blizzard to either maintain a full staff at the cost of profits or terminate some positions. The implementation cost of this system would therefore be very high while the sustainability would be very low. However, the effectiveness of this system would be the best of all the ones proposed since communication with players would be handled directly by the developers.

Larger Community Management Team Blizzard can hire more community managers so that each class has its own representative. This solution would be a way of improving the system that is already in place rather than removing it altogether. A larger community management team would suffer from a similarly high implementation cost and low sustainability as direct developer representation, and would lack its high level of effectiveness. Community managers do not have the familiarly with the code that the developers have, nor the collective experience that such a large player base has. They are simply middlemen, and are the least effective solution. Volunteer Representation Blizzard can implement a volunteer representation program that utilizes the vast knowledge of the players and relays it directly to the development team in a concise, orderly manner.

Volunteer representation programs are common to successful MMORPGs such as Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies. Dark Age of Camelot uses the Team Lead Program, which Mythic Entertainment, the creators of Dark Age of Camelot, have described on their website: The goal of the Team Lead program is to harness the knowledge and experience of the customer base to assist the developers in ensuring that Camelot remains stable, balanced, and fun to play. Team Leads (TLs) are players who volunteer their free time to assist the Dark Age of Camelot development team by providing testing, collation of player feedback, general feedback on proposed changes, and new ideas on ways to improve Camelot. Each Team Lead has an area of specific focus - each class has its own TL, and there are TLs for RvR in general and each Realm in general, plus others. TLs also have a secondary mission of helping to give the player base feedback regarding Mythic's positions on issues related to their specific area of focus.

("Team") A similar system is used in Sony Online Entertainment's Correspondent Program: Correspondents are Players just like anyone else who have applied to be community representatives for Star Wars Galaxies. The Community Relations Team selects Correspondents from applications put in by members of the community and selects them based on professionalism and knowledge of the area of responsibility. The Correspondents work with the Development Team to focus on Player Issues and Concerns and to highlight problems that might otherwise have been overlooked. ("Who") Volunteer representation offers the developers an endless source of player-tested information. The developers only have a handful of internal testers who test new code on isolated servers, but players are more than willing to give feedback on how changes affect the "real world". Volunteer representatives can devote much larger amounts of time to compiling player feedback than the community managers, and the player base's collective testing time - over twenty-three hours a week for the average player - is far greater than the limited internal testing that is conducted (Yee).

Unlike community managers, volunteer representatives also give players a more tangible contact point to the developers since the representatives themselves are players who are affected by changes just like everyone else. This system has a virtually nonexistent implementation cost, and is sustainable for as long as the game has players. Though not quite as effective as direct developer representation, the difference in effectiveness is practically insignificant. Conclusion Community managers are unable to adequately represent players in MMORPGs. They lack the familiarity with the code that developers have, and lack the time and resources necessary to compile accurate data on player-tested concerns. An ideal representation system would place all players in direct contact with a representative on the development team, but this is costly and impractical over time.

Volunteer representatives are both practical and cost effective. They achieve a similar level of effectiveness as direct developer representation at virtually no cost to the company. Blizzard Entertainment should implement a volunteer representation system for World of Warcraft similar to the systems used in other leading MMORPGs.

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