How To FUBAR an MMO Launch
So I bought into Tubine / Atari's marketing, and pre-ordered Dungeons & Dragons Online. I was already planning on playing, as our group of friends were all thinking it'd be fun to play together once a week or so in the game. And I had friends in the beta that really enjoyed it.

The launch has been rough. Unsurprising, considering launches of any Massively Multiplayer Online game is usually pretty rough. But it has been a little rougher than one would expect of a company that's been doing this for six years and has had two major MMORPG launches under their belts. Oh,there's been the usual server downtime, rollbacks, bugs, problems logging in, and so forth.

One particularly amusing problem is that people have already been able to "max out" their characters to tenth level (the highest level in the game) in under a week of play. They used their fifteen minutes of fame (which was literally only about fifteen minutes) to voice their complaints about the lack of "high level content." They pretty much skipped all of the low-level content anyway, so what are they really complaining about? But that's another rant. Still, I doubt Turbine really expected people to level up quite so fast, and they'd probably planned for more high-level content in, say, three months or so. Oops.

Turbine responded by yanking the most exploited quest, increasing the death penalty, and possibly a few other stealth changes. Those swift changes MAY have introduced a new bug that causes quests to suddenly dissapear - which pretty much screws up the quest royally and requires you to fail them and start them over again (if allowed, and with attendant penalties). Yeah, that one bit me.

But here's the most amusing thing. Turbine was very smart in allowing pre-orders to participate in a weekend "head start" before the game officially opened. They gave pre-order players some free in-game goodies, and guilds that reached a certain minimum size some in-game recognition (forthcoming). This was a great move - the people willing to fork out money IN ADVANCE for the game are going to be your hardcore "opinion leaders" who will be your primary source of "word-of-mouth" advertising. Getting as many people pre-ordered as possible helps the companies involved get a much more solid expectation as to the success of the game (and how many copies to manufacture), and also builds a community for the less-hardcore players who will be joining later. The whole idea of rewarding guild formation was an excellent part of this scheme - you get your community leaders in-place and already serving the community.

Great idea if it WORKS. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with the retail channels about the importance of this "Head Start Key." So while they were pushing pre-orders (primarily through EBGames Online) on their website, and the retailers were enjoying a flood of last-minute pre-orders, they .... um... ran out of headstart keys. The retailers just kept taking in the orders, and failed to communicate (until the complaints started mounting) the fact that they'd run out of the promised head-start keys to Turbine. Not quite realizing that THIS WAS THE REASON PEOPLE WERE BUYING THE GAMES FROM THEM.

Oops.

This was apparently swiftly remedied (I received my key by the time I got home from work, so it was no problem with me). Some people lost out on about a half-day of "head start" play. Not a huge deal - if this was the extent of the "glitch". By late Friday night, the SNAFU with the retailers was largely cleared up, and people were in playing the game.

The problem is that the effort to get a "critical mass" (and early $$$ ) into the game, they had to give everyone temporary keys. At some point, they needed people to switch over from the temporary "Head Start" keys to their actual retail keys, which are printed on the jewel case for the DVD-ROM inside the box. Now, mind you - THOUSANDS (Tens of Thousands?) were playing the game just fine without a box, or a DVD, or anything else that came in the box. All they needed was that little number that could have been sent in an email.

Turbine decided to cut off the accounts that didn't have the retail key Sunday night (which was easy, as all the servers were pretty much offline all of Sunday and well into Monday). This would have been okay, except MANY, MANY of their customers hadn't received their pre-ordered boxes yet. If you didn't pay extra for expedited delivery, there was about a good shot you didn't have your game by then. Which meant those same "opinion leaders" and community leaders who Turbine had wooed and earned so much good will with found themselves locked out of the game.

Some Best Buy pre-orderers found themselves treated even more poorly. While every Best Buy store managed to get an ample stock of DDO boxes on their shelves on time, many people who pre-ordered from Best Buy have found that their orders have been delayed two weeks due to "insufficient supplies". Many of the other companies (EBGames, Gamestop online) had so many pre-orders that they spread shipments out through the entire week. So people who had their shipments mailed out Thursday or Friday via standard shipping will be lucky to be able to play the game again by the end of this week.

So this bunch of early adopters found themselves cooling their heels last night - and may be doing so for a few days yet, since Turbine won't let them play the game they already paid for. Some desperate folks have gone out and purchased new copies of the game, intending to "return" the shipped copy back to the local retailer when it arrives. Others, found locked out of their account for no fault of their own, had nothing better to do than to...

... uh, post on the Internet and forums about how pissed off they are. Or they broke their forming addiction early to go back to World of Warcraft.

How bad this turns out to be remains to be seen. As for me - I like the game, but I only intend to play once or twice a week. I'm a little dissapointed that aside from persistence and matchmaking, Neverwinter Nights is actually a better online game of D&D. But D&D Online has tons of content, tons of adventures, and I have friends that I can link up with regularly and "hit a dungeon." So I think I'll stick with it for a while. I think the game has a lot of potential, but Turbine really has to get their act together if they are going to make it succeed.

BUT MORE INTERESTINGLY:

I think people (MMO publishers, particularly) are going to take note of the minor disasters that have taken place that were entirely related to shipping the retail "box" version THAT NOBODY REALLY WANTED OR NEEDED. That's where the breakdown in getting the headstart keys came from, and it's where the breakdown in getting player's their full account took place. Yeah, Turbine really didn't make good by their customers on this latter bit (it doesn't help to just blame the online stores for not shipping on time when you are the one locking your customers out of the game they paid for).

But it comes down to the fact that the retailers handling the shipping of pre-orders were the weak link in this chain, and that the boxed sets were entirely superfluous.

I don't think this will go unnoticed, and may prove to be another nail in the coffin of "Brick and Mortar" sales channels - at least as a PRIMARY channel for online-only games.

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:55 AM (Permalink)