[EQ2] Wolfshead Online’s Analysis of the First 15 Minutes of EQ2 (good discussions ensuing)

July 23, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Age of Conan 

For those that might not have caught it on the newstracker Wolfsheadonline has a great breakdown of the first 15 mins of a newbie to EQ2. I don’t agree with some of his more subjective stuff, but if you love EQ2, this is certainly certainly worth your time to read.

One thing that I think that he REALLY REALLY hit the nail on the head was his first sentence:

“One of the first things I learned as a game designer is that the first 15 minutes of your video game is critical. It is during this brief window of opportunity that most players decide whether to invest their time in your game. The sobering reality is that after 15 minutes most players have made up their minds whether your game is a piece of crap or something they will keep playing.”

OHHH SO TRUE. I think most of us here on the boards have been playing for such a long time that we generally will give a game what I would call the “lvl 20″ rule. Lets get past the main introduction and kill 10 rat quests and get to the meat of a game before we decide if we like it or not. Unfortunately that usually means that we “play till we start to grind”, but most games we generally give a shot. If not because we know that MMO’s take awhile to get into, and also that there has to be that generalized “learning period” for people who have never played an MMO.

WOW had this right from the beginning and their streaming client helped so much with this. For a non MMO person to come to an MMO and see load times and lag, immediately destroyed their faith in an MMO. I want to say around Podcast #40ish we (Rot, Val and I) had this very same discussion as SOE was revamping the intro isle in EQ2. The fact that you could kick in a small client on WOW and then start to play the game within 5-10 min and then have the rest of the intro part streaming in on the background while you played was worth its weight in gold.

SOE missed that with EQ2 and its 1 gig+ download, Blizzard won on that one, and won big.

We who are reading this are seasoned MMO players, we accept the grind somewhat, but what really strikes me when reading Wolfheadonline’s post is that he is completely looking through the eyes of a noob, although we can tell he has been playing MMOs for awhile.

That is what makes this a great read if you have not read it:

EverQuest2 Revisted Part 1: Analysis of the First 15 Minutes

Also be sure to check out Tipa’s rebuttle (which is a great read in and of itself):

West Karana : EQ2: The sixteenth minute — a rebuttal

Also some comments from We Fly Spit Fires & Stropp are worth your time to read:

We Fly Spitfires: Blizzard vs MMORPGs

Stropp’s World: Praising With Faint Damning

[EQ2] Wolfshead Onlines Analysis of the First 15 Minutes of EQ2 (good discussions ensuing)

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