Back about 8 months ago, I sat down with Matt and chatted with him. One of the questions that I asked him was a bit about “strategic planning” and if that was something Mythic did. Not planning for the next expansion or the next patch, but rather an overarching plan. Now, his answer was a “No”, but maybe I just phrased my question poorly. However, I am seeing some things happening to the game I love and care deeply about, so I figured I’d take this opportunity to wax philosophical.

What is Mythic’s overarching goal with DAoC?

I would hope that they want to see the game actually grow and provide the players with an enjoyable game that also generates a positive revenue flow for the company. As such, what is it that Mythic can do to make the game more attractive to players, old and new alike?

I think that the recent experience with the classic servers has highlighted a couple of things: People did not like ToA. Bots may be part of that equation too, but I’ll save that for later.

Okay, with that bit of information, lets look at some other things. What made DAoC so wildly successful upon release? Two factors are what I feel made it happen. It was a familiar fantasy genre setting, and the RvR aspect is the finest in the industry.

ToA took away from the familiar fantasy by introducing a legend/storyline that really had nothing to do with the Arthurian era. Not only that, it created problems in the arena of RvR that are still being dealt with today.

Okay, before going into some over-arching goals and directions, I wanted to look at some other information. Fantasy RPGs make up 85% of the MMO market. Sci Fi (and Superhero) games only make up 9.5%. DAoC is sitting at about 1.9% of the market share. Now, what really makes this number deceptive is that a significant percentage of all DAoC accounts are held by the same billing information. Now, that doesn’t mean that all of those DAoC accounts are bots, there are families that play together, but I doubt it’s on the order of that percentage. Also, I would bet real money that in the past 8 months, that percentage has increased! (NOTE: I am unsure if I am allowed to share the actual number, hence my vaugeness at this point.)

Okay, gathering up these bits of information, what can we say about DAoC and Mythic? Well, I won’t try to say anything about Mythic, because I don’t have any real information there. However, DAoC is suffering a little bit, and I would like to see that reversed. I would love to see the game go back to what made it great. Not only that, I would love to see new players brought to the game.

What can be done to do these things. Well, first let’s look at the strategic level:

No new classes. The game already presents a confusing array of classes, and balancing them is quite a strain already.

New races? Well, that’s a possibility, but keep them strictly in the Arthurian/Norse/Celt genre!

New zones? Already the world is getting relatively large. I recall that in EQ, after the Scars of Velious expansion, the world just seemed TOO huge, and became daunting and unmanageable. I don’t think DAoC is to that point, but for a new player, it may be approaching that “critical mass” so to speak.

Expansions? I won’t even pretend to know what contractual obligations Mythic has, so I am going to just go on the assumption of a “Yes” here. This is where the biggest opportunity for change exists though.

General Direction: As I said, the RvR system in DAoC is the finest in the industry. Mythic needs to protect it, and build on it. This is the Strategic Level that needs the main focus of Mythic’s energies.

Okay, now that we’ve looked at a strategic level, let’s drill down a little into an Operational Level (sorry for using these military type terms, but it’s what I am familiar with).

Again, ToA was a departure form the strategic vision of DAoC. Now, Mythic has done a lot to mitigate the workload involved with ToA; however, the impact of ToA is still creating a lot of problems to the game. The next step is to seriously mitigate the impact of ToA to the mechanics of the game while keeping it as something that is fun, and still worthwhile to do for a player. Oh, and walking on a razor’s edge is easy too. However, with this operational goal in mind, tactical objectives can be added that should accomplish this with enough whiteboards and input from the players and Team Leads. “Ownership” needs to be placed by the wayside. Just because it was a project you worked on, and you have pride in it, sometimes you need to just let go and do what is best for the overall strategic objective.

Along the lines of ToA affecting the game, it was a significant departure from the mythos of the game. Refocusing on the Arthurian/Norse/Celtic Mythos is vital for the continued familiarity to consumers. Introducing elements like The Crusades, The Inquisition, Ragnarock, etc will do a lot more to turn heads in the direction of DAoC as opposed to going out all over the place. With Darkness Falls (i.e. Hell), maybe a sort of Elysium/Valhalla/Heaven type thing is a better addition than a Greek island legend?

And when thinking about expansions, go back to what makes the game such a standout: RvR. Tie in more goals and objectives to RvR not only for the individual character, but for the realm as a whole. When expanding the realm ranks above 10 first came out, there was a suggestion of post RR10 rewards not doing anything for the individual character, but rather for those around them. As an MMO, DAoC also needs to continue to encourage the interaction of their players. The game needs to be more than a 3D chat-room where you are playing a side game.

The population of the game has been in a relatively steady decline. The Classic Servers did cause a bit of an upswing, but how permanent is that. And where did most of the population come from? Are there really any truly NEW subscribers to the game? Again, this is info that only Mythic has, so I won’t venture too much of a guess about it. However, I feel that it is probably an issue of concern for Mythic, as it is for the players.

The Classic Servers have shown that ToA and (to an extent) bots were unpopular (as already mentioned). Let’s capitalize on this! Now drilling even further down into a tactical level, here are a couple thoughts on this.

First of all, when Darkness Rising is released, allow a totally new player to get into the game! If they buy Darkness Rising as a first time subscriber, they should not need to go out and also buy Catacombs and the Platinum edition. One box, one game, ready to go! This should be a major advertising point for selling the game as a whole. Current subscribers of course can get all the DR goodness for their current accounts. I will again mention the “Long Time Customer Reward” thing. This is probably a good time to start thinking about it, especially if the DR box can be made into a stand alone box to start a totally new account with all expansions available to the new player.

ToA. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those three letters keep coming up. Make an announcement that the effects and chores of ToA need to be mitigated for the good of the game. Use whatever excuse (learned from the Classic Servers, the generally decling populations, extensive internal testing, whatever…). I bet you’d be surprised at the reaction!

Bots: (Oh, for christsakes, here he goes again…). Yes, the actual number is hard to nail down, but again, the classic servers have shown it’s an issue to players. It is ALSO a MAJOR financial issue to Mythic. A wholesale “nerf” to bots would financially debilitate them. This is where there needs to be some very tricky handling. Here is my idea:

After whatever nerf happens, if an account has shared billing information, offer them some transfers and upgrades. Allow them to select characters to merge onto their primary account. Allow them to select a character race and class that may be totally different from their bot, but it will be the same level, ML, and Realm Rank as the bot. For instance, I have a level 50 druid that is ML 1 and RR2. I would like to have a level 50 Blademaster on my primary account instead. Heck, allow me to put it on a different server as well. With this done though, I now am transferring ownership of that account to Mythic to sell as a “Deluxe Edition”. Now a new player can buy a “DAoC Deluxe Edition”. When they first log in, they get instructions on allowing them to create a character of Level XX, ML YY, and RR ZZ (XX should probably be 50, but YY and ZZ can be set by Mythic to be uniform throughout all these “Deluxe Accounts”, like ML 4 and RR3 or something). I know it’s not much different from eBaying an account, but in this case, Mythic is the one benefiting, and hopefully allowing people who have not picked up DAoC to experience the phenomenal RvR system.

Some other things that I would like to see on a more tactical level, and perhaps these can serve as the “non-diluting” type expansions:

Continued revamps of the classic areas of DAoC. Maybe I am too attached to these areas, but it may help with the homogeneity of the game mechanics. Things like swimming and even flying should be something you can do in ALL the zones, not just specific zones.

Continue to work on things that keeps DAoC from looking like a too old fashioned game. I realize the game is 4+ years old, but in my opinion, graphically it is still excellent, but there are areas that it does show its age. For instance, the list of emotes is incredibly small compared to games that are out there. The housing zones are a bit contrived in the way they are set up. NPC are still incredibly static. And a host of other general complaints the player-base has expressed.

Forgive me for rambling. Trying to cobble together a document like this at work isn’t that easy, but since I sincerely love the game, and I would much rather see things that sustain growth and expansion as opposed to this clustering and shrinking, I only wish to offer whatever help and ideas I can.