High Expectations in MMORPGs

A new article on GameZone Online discusses a few of the recently released and upcoming MMORPGs and how players’ high expectations can lead to big disappointments. Mentioned in the article are games such as World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and EverQuest II. A snippet:

Be surprised .

This is the backend of expecting less. If you don’t set your expectations too high for what a game will show you in beta, chances are you will be surprised by what you can do.

Case in point: When Cryptic Studios talked about character customization for avatars in City of Heroes, most of it was relegated to the (ya, ya, heard it before; probably means I can have green pants instead of brown.) Expectations were not all that high. The reality was so impressive that the first couple of attempts at creating a look for the avatar took 40 minutes or more of tweaking, exploring and enjoying the experience. And the look created carried over to the game.

EverQuest II will have more in-depth character customization than EverQuest. Will it have as much as CoH? Who knows? Who really cares? The latter is not a fair question, because players will care. I do know that not every character will look 20 years old. The game is supposed to have an age slider that will let players age their avatars from 20 to almost 50 at least that was the line at E3. Sounds cool. The screens of the avatars have looked impressive, but not expecting that much until I really see it. And no, not from Missouri, but I do adhere to the (show me) mentality.

That leads to pleasant surprises.