14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Kern, the leader of the development team at Red 5 Studios, believes that the MMO genre needs to solve the problems associated with starting zones, especially the cost of creating and maintaining them even when they are little used.
The developer believes that most players spend just a few days in the starting areas of a traditional MMO.
He tells MMORPG that, “Mature MMOs (those out for six months or so) only use 10%-20% of the content to serve the plurality of players at any given time. The other 80-90% is wasted once played through by voracious players.”
Traditionally, players tend to gain levels and explore the world faster than developers can add more content, which means that most of them will be clustered in high-level end game areas.
Kern estimates that creating zones takes up about 70 percent of the budget of the MMO, which in typical conditions means that a starting area costs about 3.5 million dollars (2.3 million Euro).
He adds, “Coming back to spending two four-hour nights in a zone, that’s about $437,500 per hour of gameplay. No wonder MMOs are struggling. You simply can’t keep up with that number and deliver enough content to players expecting hundreds of hours of gameplay.”
Modern MMOs should try to make older zones interesting by changing them after launch or by introducing new quests that take place in them.
Kern believes that Blizzard, the creator of World of Warcraft, can afford the costs associated with zone creation but most new developers will be unable to cope with the conditions and will be forced to close down their games.
Red 5 Studios is currently working on Firefall, a shooter MMO that will go into beta stage tomorrow and will be offered for free to all those players who are interested in trying it out.