Ngruk said:
To some degree you are 100% correct. People aren"t just going to fall in love and start reading quest text dialogue boxes because RA wrote them. One of the way we have to innovate is in HOW and WHEN we tell the story. Those are as important, if not more so, than the story itself.
Yep. There is no deep science in this point, the game, experience HAS to be fun. For an MMO fun is a very different animal since that fun has to spread out over months and years of game play in one world. That"s huge, that"s the scary part.
In regards to lore, the first time it"s beaten the lore is likely going to be posted either through screenshots or videos on the internet. Even if you limit when the story is told, it"s eventually going to come out. What keeps people doing instances 10+ times is not the lore, it"s the rewards that people want from beating the instance.
The system in which HOW people are rewarded is the most important. If people think that rewards are not worth the time in regards to the difficulty and time required to beat the content, they will lose interest. If the rewards are developed properly, people will repeat the same content a ridiculous number of times to get the rewards they want.
In regards to playtime, there isn"t much to learn from the data. It"s already well known that a large portion of the playerbase can only devote small periods of time per online session. In order to cater to those players, a game needs to have content that can be completed in that time period. Let"s assume a portion of your playerbase can only login for 1-2 hours per session. If you develop an instance that can be completed within that time period, the content can be used by everyone including the players who can login for long periods of time. For that reason alone, if you want to cater to the largest number of players possible it"s beneficial for a lot of content to be developed assuming players have short periods of time to play. The data is irrelevant.
World of Warcraft took it one step further, and actually took the random factor out of the rewards as well. If you kill a boss, you loot a form of currency which can be used to purchase the item you want. If you complete a battleground, you get a form of currency that can be used to purchase items regardless of whether you win or lose. That means that a player who wants the item, and can only login for short periods of time can still achieve the item he wants. Everybody is always working towards a form of achievement and when they login, regardless of how much time they have, there is something for them to do even if it takes as little as 15 minutes. It could be something as simple as a daily quest for faction for a mount they want etc. The wider variety of content appealing to different playtimes, and different forms of achievement, the longer you can keep a wider variety of people playing. The odds are greater you will have something that appeals to each type of gamer and because they want the reward they will keep playing to try and achieve it. My primary point here is that it would be very hard for the lore itself, due to how stuff gets spoiled on the internet, to ever become that proverbial carrot maintaining the playerbase. It"s a bonus, a competitive edge.
Basically, the success or failure of Copernicus is likely going to depend on how you appeal to a players sense of achievement, and their competitive and social nature regardless of the lore.
