What's in a pre-order (pt. 1)?

So, yesterday saw the announcement of Funcom’s pre-order package for the Secret World.  Reactions around the net varied from excitement and interest to disinterest and anger.  The positive reactions are, obviously, related to interest in the upcoming product.  The negative reactions vary between concerns about Funcom’s past launch history with Anarchy Online and Age of Conan alongside concerns about the pre-order packaging itself. 

Over the next few posts, I am going to address the TSW pre-order and compare it to what’s been done in the past.  Due to length, I will probably keep my posts to 1-2 pre-order components each.

So, what’s in the pre-order and how does it stack up to previous pre-orders:

1.       Multiple tiers of pre-ordering

This is one of the more controversial features in TSW’s pre-order.  It’s not that previous games haven’t offered varying degrees of packaging (virtual or physical), it’s that Funcom has more tiers of virtual packaging than prior MMO launches.  TSW will ship with (a) a basic software purchase, (b) an initiates pack with a few in-game items, (c) a master pack with more in-game items, an extra character slot, an extra name reservation and pre-paid months of content, (d) a grand master pack which includes the master pack, a lifetime subscription and an additional in-game item.

None of this is really new.  MMO’s have been offering a basic, enhanced and deluxe virtual pack for the past couple of years.  Further, these upgraded packs typically contain more virtual goods (starter gear, cosmetics, mounts, vanity pets, etc.).  Additionally, MMO’s have offered different payment methods ranging including monthly, quarterly, biennial, and annual payments for some time.  At least two MMO’s (Lord of the Rings online and DC Universe online) offered lifetime subscriptions in pre-order.  Note, that a lifetime subscription is usually a bit longer than an annual subscription – with an unlimited free period following the pre-paid time.

What’s different in TSW is that the billing model and pre-order vanity packages were intertwined.  The regular and initiate packs assume (at least at present) the monthly payment model.  The master pack is for those who would have paid for three months up front.  The grand master pack is about right for those willing to take the one-year plunge.

2.       Staggered head-start period

Some level of a head start period has been a staple of MMO launches for about a decade.  Regardless of your player population level, your player base has unusual clustering and use dynamics in the launch window.  First, everyone uses the account creation system at the same time.  Second, everyone uses the character creation system at the same time.  Third, everyone uses the login system at the same time.  Fourth, everyone plays in the starter areas at the same time.  After launch, people trickle in and these systems do not face the same demand bubble.  You can’t really scale hardware to this problem since the window is such a narrow one.

The third and fourth problems are actually the easiest to deal with.  The latter problem, newbie zone congestion, fixes with instancing starter areas.  The former, login server congestion, is fixed with login queues (no one likes them, but they help).  After a few weeks, players spread out across your game world and they play over fewer days/hours than they do at launch.  If the typical player plays three days a week, four hours a session – they play seven days a week six hours a session during the launch window. 

MMO’s used the pre-order period to help deal with the first two problems (account and character creation bubbles).  Over the past decade, it wasn’t unusual to see a week of game time given to those who ponied up money early.  Players gradually adjusted behavior to this and many who intended to buy the game would pre-order.  So, rather than pre-ordering fixing the bubble, pre-ordering simply shifted the bubble a week forwards.

TOR changed this by phasing in pre-orders.  Rather than everyone getting a week of pre-order, every pre-order received a nebulous “at least one day” promise (which was eventually extended to three days).  They rolled out pre-orders over a four day window, with people getting started in three or four batches a day.  In this manner, congestion to the account creation and character creation services were kept minimal.

The TOR model, along with TOR’s pre-registration of guilds, was one of the better attempts at managing the herd dynamic and chaos problems of launch.  It’s actually a good thing to see Funcom mirroring this. 

For those wondering, it’s not an issue of how many people play an MMO.  TOR probably outsold what TSW will – that’s not what causes the problem.  Population size is simply a hardware multiplication problem.  Launch problems occur because players use the software during the launch week in a way that they never will (at that volume) again over the life of the game.

It's time to re-launch Anarchy Online

So, the other day, I read that Anarchy Online (AO) is getting ready to replace their dated graphic engine.  The new engine, if I understand things correctly uses the same engine as Age of Conan and Funcom’s upcoming massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, the Secret World.  On top of that, the new game director, Fia “Lindelu” Tjernberg has stated that the character models in AO are getting an overhaul, bringing them up quite a ways in polygon count.

AO is currently a very dated looking game.  When it launched in 2001, it was a fairly pretty game (although character models were always pretty bland - my three year old daughter refers to it as "the ugly man game").  AO was, however, a very innovative game that really changed some of the staple features in MMO’s that followed.  Hyper-linking of items, that’s an AO first.  Player housing in a 3D MMO?  AO gets that first, although the isometric Ultima Online achieved it first for the modern MMO market.  Instanced, on-demand content?  AO.

AO was also a product of its time.  Back then, MMO’s were relatively sandbox in design.  The game creators generated a world, gave you tools to develop a character and more or less let you go wherever you could manage.  Character development was fairly complex and the array of interdependent decisions you made rendered a game where arguing what was best was part of the fun of game play.

Those games are gone now.  The modern MMO is a theme park.  The world created by game developers is linear.  Bread crumb paths pull players along a predetermined route.  Exploration, for the most part, is simply a process of checking off achievement boxes.  Character development is simple and linear leading to easily analyzed optimized builds.  Without question, the theme parks pull in larger subscriptions than the sandbox model ever did, justifying high levels of venture capital.

In recent news, a number of older MMO’s have experienced some success inter-twining free to play (F2P) with their premium subscription model.  In particular, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has embraced F2P, adding it (or in process of adding it) to their DC Universe Online, Everquest 2, Everquest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes games.  Turbine entertainment has found some success revitalizing their Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons online games using a hybrid F2P/Subscription model.  NC Soft has added a hybrid model to City of Heroes.  Cryptic Entertainment similarly either has, or is working on, hybrid models for Champions Online and Star Trek Online.  Funcom itself has even experienced some success using a hybrid model with Age of Conan.

In some ways, Funcom piloted the current generation of hybrid F2P/Subscription gaming with their “froob” model for AO.  In that system, players can play the entire original game without ever spending a penny.  However, to experience any of the content from the various game expansions, players have to upgrade to a subscription model.  Thus, while AO was the first modern MMO to embrace F2P, it’s simply not monetized very well.

Now is the time to change all of that.  Not specifically because every MMO in the last 10 years is experimenting with hybrid models.  Instead, Funcom should consider this because AO is about to do a massive engine upgrade, because none of the more modern looking MMO’s feature sandbox game play and because AO plays in the relatively uncontested sci-fi genre.

The FROOB system needs to be addressed in this.  Either it needs to be removed (not likely to be popular), or the current FROOB model needs to be a destination halfway between hybrid F2P and full subscription.  You could simply monetize content selection up from the current FROOB model, but you lose out on several easily monetized options.  There are a number of features in the FROOB model that could easily be monetized (inventory, insurance, classes and races).  Following the lead of their MMO competitors, the new hybrid model should open with:

- Restrictive race options (perhaps only Solitus)
- Restrictive class options (Enforcer, Doctor, Fixer and Nano-mage)
- Restrictive inventory (50%)
- Restrictions on free insuring (once per week)
- Restrictions to original AO content
- Limited number of character slots

Each of the above could be fully unlocked via premium subscription, or purchased up via cash purchase unlocks.  To get to the current FROOB account, people would have paid a small amount for more races, more classes, more inventory, unlimited insurance and more character slots (if desired).

To ease the transition, current FROOB’s should be grandfathered in.  However, just before the new engine goes live, the ability to create new FROOB’s should be frozen and replaced with something along the lines I proposed above.  Once the new graphic engine is in place and running smoothly, Funcom marketing should promote their repackaged sci-fi, sandbox MMO.  The game very much deserves a second life.

What I am currently playing

For the most part, I play massively multiplayer online games (MMO’s) on a PC. While I dabble with console games (PS3 and Xbox 360) and an occasional PC game, I don’t put a lot of time or money into any of those areas. I do, however, pay attention to what’s being done from a business context across the video game industry, so this blog will periodically venture outside of MMO’s.

I am sort of in-between MMO’s at the moment. For the most part, I’m finished with Star Wars the Old Republic. We’re partway through the hard mode raids, meaning it’s just another lap through the content at a higher difficulty setting (but nothing new in front of us). There are a few games on the horizon that interest different people in our guild, but at the moment there isn’t anything else out there. 

My guild is still active in Star Wars the Old Republic and probably will be through May. At that point, Diablo 3 comes out and I expect more than a few people will jump for that one. In June, the Secret World comes out and I’m looking at that as something promising. Sometime this year is Guild Wars 2, and while I’m not looking forwards to that one, I know a number of people are.