Are MMO Devs Selling Us Short On Live Events?

For many players, in-game holidays and live events are an integral part of the MMO experience. Are we really getting what we paid for?

I have a confession to make. Actually, it's more of a guilty pleasure. I love MMO holidays. Those damn events get me every time. Most MMO players are familiar with them; especially World of Warcraft players. In-game holidays and live events existed in MMOs long before WoW, but Blizzard pushed the notion of celebrating real-life holidays more than most developers. In fact, one of the largest and most-popular holidays in WoW is just around the corner; "Hallow's End" is Blizzard's equivalent to Halloween, many gamers' favorite real-world time of year.

Since Wrath of the Lich King's release, Blizzard has taken what I believe to be a step in the right direction by adding a little content to its existing World of Warcraft holidays, and even adding a few new ones to its roster however small they might be, like the upcoming "Pilgrim's Bounty". But could the developers, or rather, should they be doing more? Sure, we've seen a few of our favorite WoW holidays get facelifts throughout the years, most of which came as welcome changes. For the price we're paying as subscribers—not only for WoW, but for other MMOs as well—are we entitled to more holidays and live events?

It's important to discern the difference between MMO "holidays" and "live events." Typically, in-game holidays are celebrations or festivals based on a real-world activity or event, or sometimes, the game's own lore. In WoW, Hallow's End is based on Halloween, while the "Harvest Festival" draws inspiration from Warcraft lore. Usually though, even the holidays based on real-world equivalents borrow elements of both, to help the player "stay in character."

Live events are a different mechanic entirely; rather than an annual celebrations or festivals, these events supplement the MMO's ongoing story, giving players a chance to take part in the game's unfolding history. They are usually isolated, one-off events reserved for pivotal story arcs or to introduce new content in a game world, but they can also be as regular as a semi-weekly dragon battle. In WoW, one of the most memorable live events ever created was the "Corrupted Blood incident" back in 2005— more on that later.

While live events attract almost every kind of MMO player out there, in-game holidays can be a bit different. Most role-players love them to death, eliciting frequent /facepalms and /rolleyes from hardcore raiders. That's not to say role-players are the only people who enjoy MMO holidays, but they definitely aren't for everyone.

When my buddy and I came back to WoW for the second time in 2007, it was early February and "Love is in the Air" (a Valentine's Day-themed holiday) was just beginning. This was the first time I'd ever been a subscriber in WoW during an in-game holiday, so I ran around like crazy, collecting quests and buying worthless trinkets from vendors. Like many others, I'm not a role-player, but I get a kick out of anything special or outside the norm in MMOs. On the other hand, my buddy couldn't have cared less, and laughed his ass off as I stood near the mailbox in Orgrimmar asking nearby players for a "Friendship Bracelet to fix my broken heart." Different strokes, I suppose.

Judging by the number of players I see participating in MMO holiday events, though—not to mention the walls of text about them on the forums—I'd venture to suggest that the majority of players enjoy these events to some degree. I believe that's a fair supposition to make, and it's one that I'll return to shortly.

Trying to judge the popularity of live events, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. Depending on the player, they can come as either a blessing or a curse, especially in WoW. Consider the "Corrupted Blood incident," meant to introduce WoW's first 20-man dungeon, Zul'Gurub. Faithful to the lore, Blizzard unleashed the highly-communicable Corrupted Blood disease on the player base, via the Zul'Gurub boss Hakkar. The disease gradually reduced players' hit points, and it had the nasty side-effect of spreading to lower-level players outside the dungeon, killing them en masse. As you can imagine, many players weren't thrilled with the event after they kept contracting the disease unwillingly.

Ironically, Blizzard created a similar live event called the "Zombie Invasion" in 2008, in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King's launch. This time, players unwittingly transformed into Scourge Zombies after a single bite or claw from anyone infected. Millions of players—including me—loved the event, but a substantial number loathed it as well. I suppose that's the problem with live events that force the player into participating, and there's no way to fix it; there will always be some people who just don't want to be a part of it.

Non-compulsory live events are much more common than these examples though, and those are the events most MMO players look forward to. Early examples would be Ultima Online's "Lord British Assassination," Asheron's Call's "Shard of the Herald" and EverQuest's "Death of a Sleeper."

Of course, some of the most popular MMO live events weren't scripted or intended by developers. The infamous "Funeral Raid" by WoW guild Serenity Now went on to become a viral classic, and the whole "Leroy Jenkins" fiasco turned into an Internet meme virtually overnight. EVE Online has seen its share of epic heists organized by clandestine players over the years, and some people are writing their way into history by making millions in RMT-based games like Second Life.

Generally speaking, though, it's the developer-created live events that many players yearn for. They help move the story along and usually introduce new content or game mechanics. More importantly, they just break the monotony. In today's overflowing MMO market you'd think more developers would rely on live events for customer retention, instead of uninspired referral programs and the like. To some extent, the same is true of in-game holidays; they might not progress the story, or your character, but at least they mix things up a bit and give players something new to play with.

Avid role-playing guilds often create their own live events, similar to the pen-and-paper RPG adventures created by Dungeon Masters back in the day. They might not have control over the environment or the game, but that doesn't get in the way of these guilds trying something new.

As odd as it might be, though, role-players are a minority in MMOs these days, especially in behemoths like WoW. In a perfect world, your average MMO developer should be releasing new live events on a monthly basis. Many games have recurring"mini-events," like weekly PvP tournaments or monthly player gatherings, but these pale in comparison to the caliber of live events we know the developers are capable of.

I'll concede that many developers, especially the smaller ones, just don't have the time or resources to create and maintain a new live event every month. But what about developers like Blizzard, NCSoft, SoE and others? Expansions and new content patches are great, but don't we deserve a little more for our money? A little icing on the cake, so to speak? I realize Aion has only been out in North America for a couple weeks now, but the only piece of holiday event-related info I could come up with for the new MMO is the"Solorius Festival," with a handful of Christmas-looking gear.

Coming full-circle back to WoW; I mentioned earlier that I am impressed with Blizzard's increased development speed, and that it's finally started sprucing up those aging holidays (Noblegarden, Winter Veil). But come on…stuff like Pirate's Day? That's the best Blizzard can come up with, in all its trendsetting glory? The company has proven it has no problem coming up with its own original, lore-based holiday events; why aren't we seeing one or two per month by now? Not only would they add an additional layer of perpetual depth to the game, holiday events give more incentive to players to stick around between major content patches.

Live events are even more important. They're part of the lifeblood of any quality MMO.  Live events should be even more commonplace than holidays, yet they're few and far between in many MMOs, including WoW. Live events offer all the benefits of in-game holidays, plus more. They pull the player community together for a collective purpose, advancing the story and offering a dynamic gameplay experience. This"dynamic gameplay" also happens to be what so many MMOs fall short on; whether it's grinding, questing or raiding, it eventually become a tired mechanic until new content is released.

Some of the most fun I've ever had in MMOs was during live events, especially when they were well-scripted and engaging experiences that made me feel like something was finally happening in this "massively multiplayer world." Admittedly, some developers are much better at offering a relatively steady stream of live content than others, and it might seem as if I'm unjustly picking on Blizzard. On the other hand, WoW is the biggest MMO in the world, and in many ways, it's a benchmark that lots of other MMOs are compared to. I think it's a question worth asking; why can't the most-successful MMO developer of all time offer its customers a more-engaging—and more frequent—array of live and recurring in-game events?

Comments

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In-game holidays, meh...Live events = very yes.
# Oct 08 2009 at 1:11 PM Rating: Decent
Y'know... I've been a wow player for some time now, and I've gotta say. The only holiday I really enjoyed was the Mid-Summer Fire Festival, and I look forward to participating in that every year. THAT is a fun in-game holiday. All the others to me were just meh.

LIVE events are awesome. Even though the ZG bug was not intended, I thought the entire thing was funny as hell. I was a lowbie when all that started, and I'd be dead every few minutes yeah, but it was just...hystical to me watching everyone QQ and go nuts. The opening of Ahn'Quiraj life event was cool, the Wrath of the Lich King release live event was fun (I joined the army of the scourge and wrought mayhem everywhere I could), and I can't wait to see what's going to happen for Cataclysm.

But, I don't want live events all the time. I'm a busy raider. We're trying to clear content. I don't have time for that crap. And y'know, Deathy-by-choclate cake is great, but do you want to have it everyday? Once or twice a week? Once or twice a month? If you start spamming the servers with live events it's going to take all the novelty out of them. That's why they're so much fun, because they happen so rarely. But you can always count on it happening on the new expansion release!!! :D
adsf
# Oct 05 2009 at 7:23 AM Rating: Good
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111 posts
Personally, I find most holiday events in game to be an annoying detractor from the game itself. I guess it is considered a norm in MMOs nowadays but I honestly don't look at this content as anything more than filler and another checkbox that a developer can check off saying that they have this super cool feature. Just my two cents.
Live Events
# Oct 03 2009 at 9:09 AM Rating: Excellent
44 posts
As previously stated, the ZG incident was not really a live event as most would define it. As for the zombie invasion, the enormous backlash was due to the vast number of griefers who took advantage of the situation to ply their trade, not the actual event itself. When players took it upon themselves to grief their own faction by repeatedly killing their own AH, bank, quest givers and city flight masters, the game became mostly unplayable. While some argue that the intent was to completely disrupt normal play, I can most assuredly tell you that Blizzard is not that stupid to not realize such a thing would **** off vast numbers of their customers. The event, which started out as interesting and fun, simply got out of hand due to the unforseen diligence of the griefers. And why is that? Because a good number of players are jerks who get their jollies by harassing others, and then laughing at the "QQ" that results. Blizzard handed them the means to be even more of an assclown than they normally are, and they took full advantage of it, which is why we will never again see any similar event in WoW that is player-controlled.
Live Events
# Oct 03 2009 at 1:00 PM Rating: Decent
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2,047 posts
Hey now, the zombie event with whole towns blowing up, was the best event ever. :) Never loved the game so much.
Live Events
# Oct 03 2009 at 7:10 PM Rating: Good
44 posts
It was fun when it was players vs player zombies, but the moment the griefer zombies began camping the npcs just to harass and disrupt others' play, it ceased to be fun at all, especially for newer players. A huge number of players complained to Blizzard, and an even larger number just quit logging in until it was over. This was the last thing Blizzard wanted to see while it tried to build up hype and interest in the imminent release of WotLK. Some, like yourself, will try to downplay the significance because they themselves had fun, but I guarantee that Blizzard realizes the mistakes that were made. When Cataclysm is about to be released, we won't be seeing any event where players will have the power to widespread affect others' play negatively.
live events? really?
# Oct 03 2009 at 8:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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6,678 posts
Wax, I think you have a remarkably different interpretation of what makes something a "live event" than I do.

The Zul'gurub plague was *NOT* planned. It was courtesy of a bug. Blizzard did not mean for the plague to leave the dungeon, but it did, largely thanks to pet classes. The unintended consequences of having entire cities brought to their knees led many sociologists to study these effects as a virtual sandbox, and Blizzard didn't immediately hotfix it because they saw it as an interesting scenario that resulted, but they did not mean for it to happen that way. Obviously the zombie event afterwards was intended.

And while discussing developer involvement, is it really fair to bring up events started by players, such as the funeral or Leeroy Jenkins?


In essence, World of Warcraft has nearly no live events. Everquest? By contrast, when I first started playing that, there were a bunch. The whispers of "GM event" went swirling through the playerbase very rapidly from time to time, and although I only ever witnessed one or two of these hallowed events, they were a lot more special to me. When I saw the guy who had his last name renamed to "the Fire Caller," I remembered the event where that happened. It was significant to me to have been there.

Unfortunately, not many live events happen any more for a variety of reasons. They were popular in the early days of EQ, but mostly fell by the wayside (at least while I continued to play it, up to GoD's release.) The ability to simultaneously release events on different servers, or simply to keep up with the quality of the event, became much more difficult as players became more demanding. I shudder to think what it would be like to have 400+ master storytellers simultaneously control characters on the different WoW servers, particularly when the two factions can't communicate and often end up fighting when in close proximity, which I'm sure is the main reason Blizzard doesn't do anything of the sort.

The other reason why Blizzard doesn't is because the vast majority of their players are completionists, at least on some level. Many people play the game just to play the game, but most want to say "I've done everything" at least within their own small spheres they focus on. This, I think, is the real reason players participate in the holiday events. I know I, personally, have *NEVER* done most of the holiday events in years past until they added achievements for them. I've still never done some of them in spite of that, and I've been frustrated by trying "to do everything" at several others.


I will not argue with you that live events are awesome, but I don't feel they are the lifeblood of an MMO -- players themselves are, and their own nuances and self-made rules and silly stuff among them. WoW is an awesome game, but people play it because other people play it, not because they have events that happen during holidays. The reasonableness of making live events has come and gone, and only small MMO's can even attempt them any more without the rest of their playerbase being upset at being excluded (for lack of it happening on their server or for it simply only happening for the one half hour in the day they were logged off) or mismanagement of resources. ("How come I can't get any GM service right now? Oh right, cause of the dumb events trying all of them up right now!")

If an MMO I played did live events, I would perhaps attend them, but honestly even when "special stuff" is happening in WoW, I tend to overlook it anyway. Maybe I've just lost my sense of wonder, but they don't mean to me what they once did.

I still wish I had been Restandre the Fire Caller on occasion.
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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
#REDACTED, Posted: Oct 05 2009 at 2:26 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) LMAO you believe Blizz's response that the zombie event was not planned ?!?!?! A program went rogue and did somthing it wasn't programmed to do ?!?! C'mon that was a truly abominable event but it WAS planned no matter what publicity spin Blizz sought to put on it after it went bad, and it did go BAD. The slightest bit of testing and a dash of common sense could have prevented that catastrophe. I find the RL holiday events in game to be a huge cop-out. Make GAME relevant holidays that fit the genre and the mythology, but the low budget low creativty staff blizz pays for seem to really strain and hurt them selves when it comes to anything new. They can with ease reporduce somthing done elsewhere, but I've actually given up on seeing anything new in WoW.
I Would Like To See More Live Events Too
# Oct 03 2009 at 5:47 AM Rating: Decent
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76 posts
I used to play a MUD called Gemstone where live events were more common than any other MMO that I've played. And those events were always fun and well done by the developers. Sometimes it would just be a random troll invasion on one of the towns that lasted for a couple of hours. Most of the time though, it was a long drawn out event that that was part of the main storyline. It would last a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or longer and have a resolution that had a lasting impact on the game world. That's what I really liked about that game and what I really wish would occur in other MMO's. Events that have lasting consequences on the world. That's what makes an MMO fun to me, when there is meaning to it.

But the reason that we don't see those type of events more often in MMO's is because of the fact that there are very few role players in these games. Developers don't want to put the time and effort into creating and running a big live event if the majority of the players aren't going to care about it at all. I don't know why people just want to do nothing but raid the same dungeon over and over in the exact same way every time, or do meaningless PvP all the time but that's what the majority of MMORPG players like to do so that's what the developers focus on. Developing content that appeals to those players. Unless the player base changes, and I don't think that it will, then I think we'll continue to see live events be few and far between.
my thoughts
# Oct 02 2009 at 10:50 PM Rating: Good
26 posts
WoW's holiday events were very, very underwhelming for me. There were some aspects to it, but I never really cared too much about them. Here were my problems: 1) some of the quests and stuff that they offered were really, really hard, especially compared to the rewards. 2) some of them I found difficult to even understand. There's nothing worse than trying to do a quest that doesn't make any sense (and I'm a fairly intelligent player). A caveat: I only participated in a few of the holidays while I played and then just decided to ignore them, so I could have just had a bad experience or two.

I will have to say that the first time EQ made a big effort for one of their big holidays (I think Halloween, but it could have been their anniversary events), I had a blast. There were some fantastically fun quests they offered (not all easy, but with decent rewards -- even if they were more for fun than fighting, etc.) -- but the best part was the random stuff you could buy from a merchant in your hometown. It looked like goofy junk. Once the celebration was all over and the game was patched to go back to normal, all that "goofy junk" suddenly had fun stats... a lot of it actually pretty good for low to mid level characters. The anniversary quests and "Fabled" mobs were freaking awesome.

In terms of whether or not these games should be creating new content -- I absolutely think they should, to a certain extent. There should be quests added to the game and other stuff along those lines, but I'm not sure I want the devs spending their time creating entire Halloween (or other seasonal) zones every year, unless they were permanent or rotating and came back every year. One important thing to consider, though, is these games a extremely expensive to make. While a WoW may make money when they sell copies of the games, most of the pay-per-months probably don't... they make money through the subscriber base. If in game events and new, monthly content kept more people paying $15 to play the games than $30 expansions every year or so, then that's probably what they'd do. WoW really did manage to strike a decent balance, though, adding in new content every few months - and only adding a new expansion every other year or so. Other games, EQ especially, just had too damn many expansions for a long time.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2009 3:21am by Ryepower
MxO
# Oct 02 2009 at 10:32 PM Rating: Decent
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3,114 posts
One of the truely awesome things I miss about the now dead Matrix Online was they went so far as to have a whole team for Live events, from characters such as the Frenchman hosting parties for players allied with him, chasing an Assassin who killed Morpheus and a wide range of other events with actual people behind the main characters, with players actually being able to interact with the leaders more than just by receiving/handing in a quest. You got to have actual conversations and do such amazing things. It was sadly toned down when Sony bought it, but MxO was amazing with Live Events. Just wish there were more of them. Hopefully in Cata with the forces more geared for war, perhaps we could see Varian leading a charge against a Horde camp and Garrosh raiding an Alliance town?
Subject
# Oct 02 2009 at 9:43 PM Rating: Decent
I apologize if I somehow missed subtle mocking concerning the Zul'Garub incident, but that was in no way an 'event'.

Players hearthed while still affected by the debuff, and it was spread to invulnerable NPCs which players could then use to reinfect themselves. I think it's important to distinguish between planned events and programming oversights- which was what the Hakar buff was (a similar thing happened with the Baron Gedon's bomb back even further).

Despite it being a bug, the Hakar incident was also incredibly fun. I take your point that a lot of people hated it, but I have absolutely zero sympathy for people that seem to want to play a single player game in an online world.

One of the grating things about WoW for me was how little effort they put back in. Despite making ridiculous amounts of money they invested practically nothing back in to it. Sure you have expansions and bugs were eventually fixed, but there was never anything past the bare minimum. No other product works like this, research and development can make up to 40% of a budget, while WoW barely got 5%.

What I always wanted was player generated content. Bounties, killing blow strings that make your character grow and that gives rewards for finally taking you down, PvE kill rankings, ingame votable news articles: basically anything that you setup and just leave for the players to play around with. Instead of personally crafting an experience that will take about 50 times as long to program as it will be play through, resources should instead be put in to simple systems that can create an unlimited amount of content. The problem seemed to be either short sightedness or an underestimation of the playerbase.

I think the fact that the Hakar incident is still one of the most memorable events in WoW history is a testimate to how much better player generated content is, all devs need to do is give them the tools to make it happen.
Subject
# Oct 03 2009 at 10:51 AM Rating: Decent
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363 posts
Your point about the reinvestment rate is to me, the most annoying thing about WoW. I remember in Asheron's Call, there was an invasion event with the same sort of buildup we saw before WoTLK. The difference was that at the culmination of the event, there were GMs taking control of powerful NPCs (GM-PCs?) and fighting players in high level areas. There hasn't been anything in WoW which has been that much fun, or that interesting.

AC was a tiny, tiny game compared to WoW, yet they managed to pull off some great live events that years later WoW still can't match, because they don't even try.
love them
# Oct 02 2009 at 7:25 PM Rating: Good
In game events, or Real World events added to the game.
I enjoy them all.

I've played FFXI and WoW, and have done all the holiday events each game has had to offer (well, not all of WoWs. I lucked out of last year's Halloween, and then the "new" ones that we have now).
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Pirate's Day
# Oct 02 2009 at 5:33 PM Rating: Good
My friends and I have been celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Day on Sept. 19 for a number of years. http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ It's very popular around the country. It seems to be a great fit for a celebration in Booty Bay. It wasn't "the best Blizzard can come up with". They just adopted it from the real world.
Pirate's Day
# Oct 02 2009 at 8:08 PM Rating: Default
I'm sure the OP knows that Talk Like a Pirate Day is a RL holiday. I believe he meant that Blizzard could have made the in-game celebration a bit more exiting than going up to Demelza and clicking the "Have a drink with Demelza" button.

It could have been epic, with enemy pirates attacking Ratchet, Booty Bay anf that town on the coast of Tanaris, or hell, any coastal town. The fact that there are already pirates in the game world makes this "holiday" one that the devs at Blizzard could have really showed their creativity.

Alas, maybe next year.
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