This ones more of an editorial
cartoon, so it deserves an explanation.
I play a lot of City of Heroes. A lot. And,
following the release of I13 players were
given the tools to create their own content
(in the form of Mission Architect).
And, well, if you've ever played an MMORPG
you can guess what happened.
The Farmers, who previously had been fringe
dwellers whose way of life, farming, yielded
only a marginally better reward than any of
the games other content (and even that could
be argued) suddenly had a way to truly earn
XP & ingame- cash at a phenomenal rate.
Phenomenal.
So they exploited it.
A Lot.
And, pretty soon everyone was doing it.
And let's be fair here, the vast majority
of online gamers have all, at some point,
participated in farming. Farming will always
be a part of MMORPGs, but generally ‘Farming’
is boring, repetitive stuff, that as mentioned,
yields only a marginally larger reward than
other content, so even though they may have
participated in farming, it's generally not
what they're thinking about doing when they
log on, it happens, but farmers are definitely
a minority grouping.
But this was Phenomenal Loot.
A way to get instant epic characters.
And so, soon, everyone was doing it.
(Also, there is just one more thing worth
mentioning - suddenly, server numbers were
up. Up in a big way, clearly a lot of people
liked this. A lot.)
So what was the developers response?
They could have just gone with a Patch/Nerf
that everyone expected, and noone would have
argued was need, but they got REAL Heavy-Handed
in response. It started with a vague open
letter that threatened to ban 'farmers' who
'exploited' the game (in what has got to be
one of the single longest forum threads I
have ever seen, and it spilled out from there
in a BIG way). Remember, it’s pretty
fair to say every single character had probably
now used this feature, and the Dev response
was going to be to potentially wipe ALL those
characters. Thankfully, this has since been
clarified, but their definitions of ‘exploitation’
and ‘Farming’ are still very muddy,
and the line between ‘good at the game’
and ‘exploiting the game’ is very
hazy indeed.
Because, and lets be clear here, these weren't
people who hacked the game in any way shape
or form, through the (very large) new feature
of Mission Architect, that by playing the
game as normal, that their rewards became
greatly increased, so that’s how they
played.
And yeah, it's pretty tough to argue that
this entirely wasn't 'exploitation' but the
counter argument, but the 'we were just playing
the game with the tools provided' is still
equally valid. And frankly this was a 'feature'
that NEEDED to be patched and nerfed immediately.
But likewise, the decision to get heavy-handed?
Make overt threats, while leaving the definitions
of 'farming' & 'exploitation' vague? All
on an issue that the majority of the player
base had used to some level?
Well, that was equally stupid and unbalanced,
to call it bad P.R. is probably an understatement,
players quit as a direct result of this threat.
But likewise it's not to understand how these
players felt. This was a major new tool/feature
that had been introduced to the game, it was
clearly within the rules of the game, even
if those rules needed to be fixed and threw
the previously established risk/reward balance
WAY off kilter.
Many players saw this as the developers chucking
a tantrum because it was 'broken', 'not working
the way the dev's wanted', and didn't fit
with how 'the whiny developers were demanding
their players played'. And yes, it’s
very easy to blame shift this to the dev’s,
and quite clear to see how a delicate situation
has been mismanaged.
So what was the result?
All those extra players, and increased server
numbers were gone overnight. And with it much
of the goodwill the developers had built over
the years.
And, well i'm not going to make
judgements about right and wrong in this situation,
at least not any more than I said in the above
cartoon.
9th May 2009 
