Wailing on message boards is all very well, but it’s not often you get MMO game devs actually asking you what you want from their game:

MMOSite: Anarchy Online Design Survey

Now’s your chance to be heard. The 15 free accounts competition bit needs a MMOSite login, but you can still do the survey without bothering with that bit. For want of anything better to write about, I’m going take you through some of my answers!

  • Recommendations: Well, that’s part of what this blog is all about, so I’m on firm territory here.

    I gave the basic game 6 – it’s a bit dated by now, but has matured fairly well, and is a fully functional, self-contained and interesting world. The gameplay mirrors the original Everquest in many ways, aside from the obvious Sci-Fi setting, but has far less downtime. Disgruntled Star Wars: Galaxies players could do worse than giving it a go, and the basic game is free to play until Jan 15th 2007, if you can ignore in-game adverts happily. (Get that here.)

    I gave Shadowlands 5, mostly because although it adds a surprisingly deep and intelligent metaphysical and otherworldy angle to the game and story, along with some truly inspired locations and monsters, it also adds an absolutely HUGE grind to the game, making max level about 220, which I thought it could have done without, and also had the effect of making the original world practically deserted. You can quite comfortably do without this if you’ve never played the basic game, and indeed, should savour the original game before delving into the Shadowlands anyway.

    I gave Alien Invasion a 'benefit of the doubt' 4, simply because I’ve never played it.

  • Hours Played A Week: I haven’t played in some time, but I still gave it 2 (Less than an hour), as 1 suggests that I hate it, which isn’t true. Sometimes it is possible to leave an MMO contented.

  • Game Choices: An interesting section, largely unrelated to AO specifically. My opinions on this lot can be found all over this blog. Reputation of dev and publisher is far more important to me than it ought to be, as is quality of graphics. Features are important, but the real winner for me was recommendation of a friend. If anything, being based on an existing franchise is most likely to put me off, rather than appeal – those never seem to go right for some reason, SWG being a good example, and no doubt Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online and the Stargate: SG1 game will all also be nothing like their tie-ins, and therefore, not as good

  • Social Aspects: These choices are a kind of mini Bartle test, and as expected, I went for all the ‘Explorer’ type answers. I’m generally quite ambivalent to social gameplay features, being of the ‘Alone Together’ school of MMO solo play, although I put a 7 on ‘Ability for players of different levels to play together’ – this has long been a grudge of mine, and I’ve seen any number of online friendships suffer because of some arbitrary number assigned by differing time commitments. I also strongly agreed with ‘I can run my character’. I’m not entirely sure what they thought they meant, but running is important!

  • Current Anarchy Online: This was a bit hazy, since it’s been a while since I’ve played – I last quit just before Alien Invasion was released, but I gave it a shot.

    • Character Customisation: Piss poor, by today’s standards. I’m not sure if it’s changed lately though.
    • Quests and Missions: So-so, last I played. They were only just bringing in actual quests as WoW people understand them, as part of Shadowlands. The randomly generated instanced mission system was genius in it’s day though.
    • Monsters: The solo ones were pretty easy, but the group bosses (something they pioneered) were suitably tough. Enough tricky situations existed to require the player to think about the fights a bit though, which is good.
    • Friends: I did make friends in AO, some of whom I’m still in touch with today.
    • Wonder and Awe: Having only seen Everquest before it, yes, at the time it was pretty mind-blowing. Today, however…I’m not so sure if it would have the same effect.
    • Story: These were actually very good, striking a good balance between accessible fun, and hard SF. A real breath of fresh air compared to the usual Tolkien-fest of the time.
    • Downtime: Compared to EQ1, very short, although I now wonder if this was the first step on a downward slope that’s left us with MMOs that can be completed in one month, today…
    • Problem Player Control: No direct experience – 4
    • Weapon Variety: I’ll say…if anything too many bewildering choices, many of which were red herrings.
    • Value for money: Subjective, but yes…I got my money’s worth in my time, and anyway... its mostly free now, so you can’t argue with that.
    • Easy to Learn: So-so…many elements of gameplay were quite complex off the bat. I’ve no idea if there’s revamped tutorials now, but it was a bit of a leap when I started.
    • Interesting Experience for Newbies: Indeed…just the virtual tourism of it all, if nothing else.
    • CS Quality: No direct experience – 4
    • Death Penalty – It can’t have been that harsh – I don’t even remember what it was now. There may have been xp loss, but mostly it was travel time ala WoW.

  • Why quit?: Well, in my case it was a combination of wanting to see new games (Asheron’s Call 2, I think…oh the irony…), and having had enough of AO. Nothing particularly drove me out; just the same weariness we all get sooner or later, with any game. I’ve since been back once for a month or two to check out Shadowlands, finding it acceptable, but left again due to the length of the grind compared to today’s MMOs. I guess I’ve grown soft since then, or willing to put up with less treadmill – whichever.

  • Me: Male, 30-35, and probably ought to get out more.

I hope it helps a bit. If you’ve nothing better to do for ten minutes and have ever played AO, why not head on over and shove your oar in too – it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes out of it all. The most interesting thing for me, is that usually this kind of focus group and survey work is something done by the sorts of interested academic bystanders normally found writing theses over at Terranova, rather than by the actual game devs in question themselves, which I’ve always found odd, all things considered.

Anyway, Anarchy Online – worth a free-play if you’ve never tried it.