The article is from MMOsite Writer Club member oliase

Key Factors for Success

Creativity is one of the features that has been lacking in the online-gaming industry for quite a duration now, some would even stretch so far as to say that before Age of Conan, the World of Warcraft was the last innovative MMOG. I probably wouldn't go so far as to say that, but I do feel that game developers are focusing more on the marketing aspects, which in turn leads to lack of an audience to market to. We've seen games come, and games go of all different styles. Some games are a huge success, while others, sometimes extremely similar, go down a path to failure. But why do some games remain hits long after release, while others dissipate shortly afterwards? In this article I will look at several factors that can lead a MMOG to success or failure depending upon how the developer and publisher approach them, and backup my reasoning with examples.

The Features.

I chose this first because in my eyes it's not only one of most important parts of a game, it's one of the most common parts to change.

When I find out about a new game from another source, one of the first things I look at on the website is the features page. Normally companies try and fill this page with anything that applies to the title, and rarely do I see some real innovation in this section. But this section is always different. Some games have the most basic features ranging from player vs. player combat in battle arenas, to the ability to use skills, oh my! But then there's games that take these to a new level, with the ability to fight other players in large-scale territory battles in order to gain control of areas and earn profit from it.

Pass: Perfect World is a good example of a game that did this well. Although PW didn't get immensely popular, this is one aspect it would get a good score in a review from me on. The unique flying system, the territory wars, all the types of player vs. player combat, the guild aspects, etc. Basically, this game had endgame content from the likes of the World of Warcraft available as early as level thirty when it came out (Probably around level 50-60 now, if not higher).

Fail: Scions of Fate is an example off of the top of my head that dropped the ball in this area. The highlights of the features offered by Scrions of Fate are the enchanting and enhancement systems, both of which are very basic and reduced to the likes of talking to a NPC and dragging items into slots after purchasing them from a seperate NPC. Then you'll see houses, now that sounds fun. I love having my own house to invited my friends such as Guild Halls in Guild Wars. Well, it's not what you think at first. The house system is basically another name for the always-evident guild/clan system. Then there's battle arenas, oooh, innovative!

The company interaction.

A big part of every website in this industry is the forums that go along with it. It is here that most of the companies interaction with the community happens, and believe it or not, this is usually a huge indicator of whether or not a company is going to succeed with their game or not. This is mainly because a lot of gamers hate it when a company cares more about making money then about the gamers and the product they are playing. This is always the case, but it's more along the lines of when the company makes it so obvious that things don't go so well. Company interaction can be as little as the community manager participating in the forums thanking players for their suggestions or giving a weekly update, or as much as numerous contests and events as well as things like IRC meetings.

Pass: Rohan Online has had a great company interaction with the community throughout the duration of the CBT, and it is extremely evident now that the OBT is coming near. They've released information on several features that they have added due to overwhelming demand by the community such as key-mapping so you can use WASD controls instead of the standard point-and-click controls. YNK has gone above my expectations in this field and gets a great score here if I was reviewing them for their work and dedication to make the game as good as we all hope it can be.

Fail: Seal Online completely failed this category, which is ironic since the same company was behind the Seal disaster as is behind the Rohan success, YNK Interactive. Perhaps they learned from their original mistakes on Seal and improved on Rohan, or maybe the team dedicated to Rohan is just more interested in the community and keeping their jobs. Seal Online did terrible in this field mainly because not only did they have a terrible forum setup to keep us informed and involved during the testing periods, but they hardly ever even made news announcements. They delayed the game's CBT a couple times, once without any explanation or excuse at all. They just took off the news article saying the 20th of August or whenever it was, and replaced it with another news article as if the previous article never existed. Sorry Seal, but you didn't even come close to the benchmark in this category!