MMO Weekly: The Humans-Only Mistake

15 Dec 2009 at 00:00:00 by Jeff Hollis

Let's forsake introductions, for a moment, and jump right into the fray.  Be forewarned, this is going to be a pretty odd MMO Weekly.

The year is 1999.  If you want to play an MMO, you have three choices:  Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, and Everquest.  Everquest comes to dominate the other two.  Why?  Of course, there are a number of reasons.  However, one of the noticeable things that makes EQ stand out among it's peers is that it offers a lot of fairly exotic race / class combinations.  The other games force players to role play as humans.

The year is 2001.  The number of people playing MMOs has reached all new levels.  Hoping to capitalize on this growing fan base, three new MMOs are released the public.  They are World War II Online, Anarchy Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.  DAoC comes to dominate the other two.  Why?  Of course, there are a number of reasons.  However, one of the things that makes DAoC stand out among its peers is that it offers a lot of fairly exotic race / class combinations.  The other games only allow players to play as humans.

It is now 2007 and 2008.  Times have changed, and the MMO market is dominated by one game: World of Warcraft.  

Largely due to the success of WoW, the player base of people playing MMOs has reached all new levels.  Hoping to capitalise on this growing fan base, five new MMOs are released to the public.  They are Fury, Hellgate: London, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online.  Of the five, Warhammer has the worst possible release date.  Despite the fact that it's released in direct competition to a WoW expansion, Warhammer Online is more successful than the other four.  In fact, Fury, Hellgate: London and Tabula Rasa go out of business entirely, and Age of Conan totters on the edge.  One of the things that makes Warhammer Online stand out among its peers is that it offers a lot of fairly exotic race / class combinations.  The other games only allow players to play as humans.

Ok, enough pedantry.  I'm sure you're seeing the trend here and, if you've read my prior articles, you know what I'm talking about: the “humans only” error.  Basically, if you're publishing an MMO in which players can only play as humans, you are alienating a significant portion of your potential customers.  There is simply a large number of players that want to play gnomes, trolls, or other equally exotic characters.  If you, as a developer, don't extend that option to them, they simply won't play your game. 

There are three interesting side notes to all this.  First:  I have been present when two developers – those behind Fury, and behind Tabula Rasa – were asked about including non-humans into their games.  They openly acknowledged that this is desirable.  They also indicated that they didn't want to include them for budgetary reasons.  You see, if you include aliens, mutants, halflings, elven pansies, or orcs as a playable race, you have to change up your back story a bit.  You also have to include some additional art assets, new starting areas, etc.  That takes time and money.  The developers behind both Fury and Tabula Rasa openly indicated they didn't want to spend the additional cash on this, but instead wanted to invest that money elsewhere.  In both cases, the developers defended this decision in a quite genuine manner.  They seemed to have thought about this, and felt they were doing the right thing.

That decision, as it turned out, was unwise. 

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