HANDS ON GUIDE

9 - Survive The First Three Months

It's a bumpy ride

Charles Dickens didn’t write ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ specifically about the first three months after an MMORPG launches, but despite this there is no more accurate description. The heady mix of the sublime and the ridiculous that only occurs when tens of thousands of eager gamers all hit login for the first time is unique in gaming.

The pioneering days of an MMORPG are a special time. Servers are crash-happy and crowded with newbies, the forums are aflame as fanboys and the disenchanted argue the toss about the inevitable imbalances. The game is always, no matter how rigorously beta tested, buggy, laggy, unfinished and broken in many ways compared to what it will be a couple of patches down the line. Guilds will rise, guilds will implode, or explode, or just mysteriously vanish like planes cruising in the Bermuda Triangle. The economy will appear to have been designed by people who make kleptomaniac rulers beloved of spending all their country’s money on fighter jets and roads to nowhere look like models of fiscal finesse.

Red Bull fuelled powergamers will reach the level cap in approximately a week and then bemoan the lack of decent endgame content, there will be tantrums, storm outs, back biting and exploitation. Yet at the same time this is the era that so many players will remember as the Golden Age. When the mobs are new, the tactics untested and the character builds still unformed. From the crucible of newbies and jaded beta veterans, legends will be born and at the start, everyone can be a contender.

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