14 DAY TRIAL // At the GDC, Rob Pardo, Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Game Design, hosted a conference, called "Blizzard's Approach to Multiplayer Game Design". Hell, he's certainly over-qualified to give such a lecture seeing how World of Warcraft keeps breaking records both financially and in terms of players' interest while Starcraft II is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated games of the year.
With a plethora of examples and quite a few visual aids, Pardo has proceeded to present his theory that there are a few basic elements that determine the success or failure of any multiplayer endeavor, be it MMO or classic RTS multiplayer. He used Blizzard games as examples, but the principles still hold regardless of game and platform.
The first important thing is to present a fair field of battle for the players. And that, in Pardo's view, means it's better to have predefined maps, rather than random generated ones, and a fog of war system, rather than an unexplored map. Both of these convince the players that the odds were not stacked against them by unfair random placement or by map features. Fairness also dictates that superweapons should be balanced and not simply "I win" buttons. The developer also needs to take time and balance the game before and after it is released to address whatever issues might appear.
The second idea that Pardo stressed is the importance of incentives and of feedback. If players are not rewarded, even for losing, then there's a chance they might stop playing or they might stop feeling good about the game. Reward needs to exist and clear paths must be present to lead to it. Also player feedback should be considered more important that any consideration about the game that the developer makes. Only by listening to the players can a game improve and gain lasting appeal. Pardo has pointed to the way support and patching for the original Starcraft was handled, with players always being consulted and with rapid reaction ready to deal with any anomaly.
Apart from the conference itself, the Q&A session revealed some interesting bits of information. Pardo said that WoW would never introduce micro-payments and WoW aims to present players with a level playing field. Gold or object buying could ruin the balance of any game and overpower some gamers to the expense of the rest. Pardo also suggested that in the future PvP might become something of an E-Sport, with an observer feature and the possibility to record fights.