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MMOG Expansions and Trading Card Games
By Cameron Sorden | July 30, 2008
I was just reading sid67’s thoughtful post on what he calls “horizontal expansions,” and I think he makes some excellent points about the nature of MMOG expansions. I wanted to see if I could elaborate a little more on the same concept using an example from trading card games. Many of you are probably familiar with the popular trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. Like many trading card games, M:TG has a core set of cards that players use to build their decks and periodically has new expansions which supplement the core set and introduce new mechanics.
I played M:TG for many years, and at the time I stopped playing the game was on its 31st expansion set. What’s interesting is that none of these expansion sets made the cards from the core set any less useful or desirable. The expansions weren’t designed to replace the core game, but were instead designed to expand upon it and offer players more options for play. Each expansion introduced a new mechanic of some sort that was independent and different from any previous expansion, and which offered new ways to interact with the rules of the game. In essence, every expansion made the gameplay deeper and richer, instead of simply bigger.
While it’s not a perfect parallel for many reasons, imagine if the now-standard MMOG model of expansions (boosted level cap, better weapons, better armor) were applied to M:TG. Instead of deeper gameplay, you’d get the same gameplay with bigger numbers: new cards would cost the same amount of resources to play but be vastly superior to old cards. Monster cards in the new set would be superior in every way to cards from the old set. Everyone would have to get cards from the new set to be able to compete, and then the game would pretty much settle at the old equilibrium (with bigger numbers). If that was how Magic expansions actually worked, it wouldn’t be a very interesting game.
Instead, the strength of Magic: The Gathering is in its depth and versatility of play. So many options means there’s a lot more strategy. What would happen if an MMOG company focused on expanding the breadth of play in their game rather than on the length of play? Focusing on length exactly what Blizzard does, and they’re not alone. They do have small breadth improvements (new classes, new races), but the big excitement from each new expansion is additional levels, new gear, and new skills which are bigger and more exciting than the old ones.
Imagine if a new expansion didn’t offer any of those things, but it did offer a new enemy type that could only be damaged by a new type of weapon and required new armor to defend against? That wouldn’t invalidate the gear you had gone through so much trouble to acquire in the first place. Another idea is to have a new expansion offer no new levels, but let you work towards special abilities that would diversify your class. How about letting you start your character over as a different class at level 1, and be allowed to switch between your classes fairly effortlessly? Or expanding the tradeskill and exploration options?
The point I’m making, and that sid67 is making, is that you don’t need to invalidate old content in order to present new content. It’s possible to build new content that works alongside and invigorates existing content instead of tossing it out with yesterday’s trash. That attitude towards existing content is something that has bugged me about World of Warcraft for a long time now, and I really wish they would stop. It’s immensely frustrating to spend so much time and effort acquiring cool items only to have them invalidated by the next expansion. There’s no reason why they can’t remain useful alongside new content: It’s just a design choice that they don’t.
MMOGs are one case where bigger isn’t always better. At some point, bigger just gets boring. If I’m still using the same three types of skills to whack level 80 foozles who behave the same as level 10 foozles (only with bigger weapons), the game hasn’t really gotten any more interesting. A deeper game will almost always be better at keeping players interested than a game that’s essentially the same as before, but kicked up a notch.
Topics: Game Design, Massively Multiplayer, Tabletop Gaming |
July 30th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
That’s a great comparison. Magic has been expanding horizontally, whereas MMOs in general tend to expand vertically.
It should be noted (as you do) that MMOs do a fair amount of horizontal expansion.
I would love to see an MMO that expands primarily horizontally. Guild Wars looks like it does this more than others, although I played very little GW. I just remember examining the sheer number of skills and classes (which are added in each expansion) and being memorized. I also like how their expansions are all based off of the main game, such that you don’t need all of the previous expansions to use the latest one. (If any of this doesn’t apply, attribute that to my lack of experience with this game.)
July 30th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Nope, you’re correct. Guild Wars does an excellent job of horizontal expansion
July 30th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Horizontal expansions assume potential for replayability. MMOs tend to be linear and shallow, so adding onto the end makes sense. Horizontal expansions for MMOs have been well received in the past (Kunark for EQ, WoW battlegrounds), but their potential for that sort of content is limited by their extreme emphasis on forward progression and optimization.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
IMO, you’re trying to compare apples to oranges here. The difference is that M:TG has no persistence from game to game. If you walked into the next game with the same amount of lands as your last game but still having your full deck, you’d be looking for something more powerful, wouldn’t you? Summoning that Shivan Dragon is suddenly a breeze, 5 mountains is nothing, give me something that uses 10! And thus, you’d have an expansion in M:TG that is for more power, like an MMO.
Fortunately, the game isn’t structured that way - every time you play, it’s a different experience and you start from scratch. This is the reason MMOs generally can’t expand horizontally, as it doesn’t add anything to the character to face the same level of challenges as before.
That being said, I think that done properly, a MMO with a reincarnation system (where you perform a certain set of quests and get to come back at L1 more powerful than before) is an area that hasn’t been touched. I’ve seen it in MUDs, but no MMO has tried it yet. I’d sure like to see it, though - I can see expansions adding in a couple more reincarnations with more powerful races or classes, but you start over from level 1 to get there. It would keep the old content relevant, for sure.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I could see a Final Fantasy style job system that, instead of an additive power expansion, follows a parallel advancement path. That way you’d have players going back to the low level areas to improve their new jobs, keeping those areas active. The developer would then have an incentive to create new content across all levels instead of just at the top end.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:09 pm
MTG is a great analogy for horizontal expansion. I haven’t played an MTG in a decade, but I could still pick up my Black First Strike or Red/Blue decks and remain competitive because they didn’t invalidate the old cards, simply provided new ones. However, the MTG comparison does underscore a potential problem we already see in skill-based games like Eve. New players to MTG have less options than someone who had been collecting cards for a longer period of time. In my day, Wizards of the Coast addressed this problem in later editions by re-releasing some of the older cards in the starter packs. While this did devalue the original cards, I would argue that it’s a reasonable compromise since it doesn’t actually invalidate them.
As a whole, I think horizontal changes are far more appealing to older players and new players may even find them burdensome or difficult to understand. This raises an interesting question of how carefully a company should cater to new players versus older players. Conventional marketing wisdom states that it’s far easier to KEEP an existing customer than it is to GAIN a new customer.