I find myself, as I write this, in a state of rather extraordinary surprise. As a complete MMO fanboy, it goes without saying that online multiplayer games are something I enjoy. A lot. And it should also come as no surprise that I want as many of these games as possible to succeed.

Why? Well, it’s pretty simple. I want the innovation that new games bring to the industry. I want the playerbase to expand; new games bring in new players. I also enjoy MMOs of different genres. On top of all this, I want variety. I don’t want to be locked in to a single game; I want to be able to play a couple of good MMOs at any given time.

That’s why I get so infuriated when otherwise promising MMOs get sabotaged by the very companies that make them. It’s stupid decisions that kill otherwise good games, chase off potential customers, and shorten the life spans of interesting MMOs.

Turbine’s “Customer Service” Announcement

The preceding rant comes to you courtesy of Turbine Incorporated. In case you didn’t know, Turbine has a long history of developing online MMO games, and includes prestigious titles like Asheron’s Call, Asheron’s Call 2, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and the soon-to-be-released Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine is generally considered to be a successful MMO company.

But this week, I really began to question whether or not Turbine knows what it?s doing. It was something of a minor revelation, really. This all struck me because Turbine this week made a small, but remarkably game-damaging decision. Examining this decision reveals that it simply defies logic and common sense. There is no doubt in my mind that this seemingly small thing will actually have a substantial and negative impact on potential customers. The announcement, printed below in its entirety, comes courtesy of an administrator named “Marketroid” on the official LOTR forums:

 

On behalf of both Turbine and Codemasters Online Gaming, we wanted to answer some of the questions we?ve been seeing from the LOTRO community about Pre-orders and access to The Lord of the Rings Online game servers.

As you may know, the LOTRO Pre-order is now available in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. European customers in countries* served by Codemasters will be able to Pre-order LOTRO both in-store and online in the coming weeks. As the game begins to enter global distribution we wanted to take a moment to explain how the game is operated internationally.

For each region where the game is available, Turbine partners with a publisher who handles production and distribution of the packaged product as well as marketing support. In some regions we also partner with a service operator who will host and manage the service, including billing, customer service, and community.

In North America and Oceania, Turbine is the service operator. We work with two publishers to support our service – Midway in the US and Codemasters in Oceania. In Europe, Codemasters is both the publisher and the service operator.

What this means is that the version of the game you can play is determined by the service operator that supports your region. Since the service operators maintain completely separate billing, hosting, and support systems it is not possible to allow players to access both services – they?re just not compatible with each other.

There are a variety of differences between the EU and NA versions of the game and service. In order to provide the best possible experience to our EU players (including local language game content and customer service) both Codemasters and Turbine have implemented blocking rules to prevent players from activating keys from outside their home region. Specifically, players must register on the service for their region and only client software and keys purchased in that region will work. This applies to both Pre-order programs as well as the final retail game.

If you are a European player and purchase the game from a retailer based in North America you will not be able to activate your Product Key on the Turbine billing system. The reverse is also true: Copies of LOTRO intended for the European market cannot be registered with Codemasters from a country outside of the territories they serve.

Any questions about this policy should be directed to the customer support representatives for your region.

*Countries served by Codemasters include: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Andorra, Serbia & Montenegro, Israel, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah, and Fujairah) and South Africa

Allow me to clarify and simplify what Marketroid is saying: you, the customer, will not be allowed to play LOTR Online with your friends, family members, or guild mates worldwide. You can only play with those that exist in your own region. Even if you try to work around the regional differences that we?ve implemented, we?ve taken the further step of purposefully implementing blocking methods to prevent you from doing this. And we’re doing this just a few weeks before the game officially launches.

Customers: Not As Important As Business Partners

Implied clearly in Marketroid?s statement was why Turbine was going to all this trouble: it?s because of the deals that Turbine makes with publishing companies and regional service providers. Of course, this hasn’t escaped the notice some prominent gaming newsies, including Two Hammers at Gamebunny and Razor at Warcry.

Allow me to further clarify this issue. The trend in game publishing is to allow players worldwide to interact with one another. It’s one of the things that gamers have come to expect as a feature in the games they buy. However, some MMO companies have had to place limits on this international or regional cross-pollination. This is usually done solely because of deals they’ve made with regional service providers.

Consider that Blizzard works with a number of other companies who distribute or otherwise service World of Warcraft worldwide (i.e., TheNine provides these services to players in China). This means that WoW is regionalized, and not everyone can automatically interact. In fact, largely because of the business deals Blizzard has made with regional providers, there are some limitations to who can play with whom. Companies limit this so that regional providers, like TheNine, are guaranteed a certain number of paying customers.

However, Blizzard doesn?t go far out of it?s way to preclude players from utilizing work-arounds to hang out in-game. By allowing work-arounds, regional providers are guaranteed customers, while the small percentage of players who really need to play outside their region have a method for doing so. I’ve long believed this was done deliberately by all parties involved, with a small wink and a nod. My wife and I (in America) have a couple of friends from England with whom we play MMOs, including WoW. We?ve known them for years. In order to hang with us, they play U.S. versions of the game so we can all be together. It?s an important element of our social interaction since they live 6,000 miles away, and we just don?t get to see them all that often.

An even better example of this trend is Guild Wars, the second most popular MMO (approximately 3 million customers) in the world. They?ve taken this tendency for global interaction several steps further. GW allows everyone, everywhere to interact freely. You can play with your buddies from China, Germany, and England. If you have a brother serving in the war, you can hook up with him online. If you have a family member living in the Czech Republic on business, you can still hang out with her in the game. Guild Wars allows this kind of interaction purposefully, and this feature is one of the big selling points of the game. If you?ve ever tried it, it works extremely well, and it does make the game a better experience. It has been argued, quite effectively, that this feature is one of the reasons that Guild Wars is as successful as it is.

And let?s not forget that the overwhelming majority of non-MMO multiplayer games allow complete international cross-pollination. No work-arounds are required. Anyone, anywhere, can play with their friends, even if they live halfway around the world. Virtually every shooter you?ve ever heard of is an example of this trend.

Bucking a Growing, Positive, Customer-Friendly Trend

Well, Turbine has taken steps to make sure this kind of international interaction doesn?t happen, at all, ever, under any circumstances. They?ve also taken the unprecedented step of specifically preventing any work-arounds. In short, my wife and I won?t ever be able to play LOTR with our friends in the U.K. Based on Marketroid?s statement, we also have doubts as to whether or not we?ll be able to play with our guild mate in Australia.

I got the impression, from Marketroid?s statement, that this doesn?t strike Turbine as a very big deal. It?s not very important. It won?t, in their view, impact sales of the game, or its overall success.

I think that Turbine is dead wrong. Placing these kinds of irritating, arbitrary restrictions on gamers have a tendency to tick those same gamers off. Much more seriously, the game knowingly and purposefully splits guilds, separates online game clans, and prevents one of the most interactive forms of social contact available to friends, relatives, and loved ones separated by international boundaries. This is a big part of why people play MMOs.

Why has Turbine decided to piss off, and drive away, their own potential customers so willingly? I believe that this is so that regional providers, in this case Codemasters, can squeeze every single dime out of customers that live in their region.

“Solving” a Zero Sum Problem

Both Turbine and Codemasters have to fully realize that some people in Europe will want to play on US servers. I agree that this will occur. My guess is that, somehow, they don?t realize that the opposite is equally true. It appears equally likely that some people in the US will want to play on European servers.

Most importantly of all are the numbers involved. The relative number of people wanting to play outside their native region will probably be a very, very small percentage of the whole.

So what is the big deal if Codemasters services loses 1% of it?s customer base to Turbine or Midway? And what is the big deal if Turbine, or Midway, or some other service provider, loses 1% of its business to Codemasters? Doesn?t it all even out in the end? Doesn?t everything all balance out in the wash?

I suspect, very strongly, that Turbine just doesn’t get it. They don’t see the importance of this. They don’t understand that negative decisions like this, while seemingly small, will have a substantial impact on the success of their game. There is some information out there indicating that making some ugly business decisions, ones that hurt their games or reflect poorly on the company, is an ongoing problem at Turbine.

Three Insights

At this point, I’d like to share three insights with you, my fellow MMO-geeks. These came up while researching this article. Because I’m brilliant, and to make this article as readable as possible, I’ve labelled these Insight One, Insight Two, and Insight Three.

Insight One: When it comes to public relations, Turbine?s track record is pretty sketchy. They’d had some successes in this area, to be sure. They also had some remarkable, and extremely preventable, faux pas. These little things hurt their own games. The effect this has on their own games seems lost on Turbine. For example, at E3 this past year Rush, Elvyra, and myself were covering E3 for WorldOfWar.Net and the IncGamers sites in general. (WanderingGoblin.com wasn’t born until January of 2007). We did a series of video interviews with game developers regarding their upcoming games. I know from personal experience that these interviews generated a lot of press for the respective games we covered.

Our methodology for getting these interviews was extremely simple. We approached a company?s PR people, asked for an on-camera interview, and let them know that they could say anything they wanted about their upcoming product. Obviously, these interviews are a very positive way for developers to promote their soon-to-be released game.

As you can imagine, most companies positively jumped at the chance. We interviewed senior developers for The Burning Crusade, Hellgate: London, Eve Online, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Conan, and many others. The lead producer of Warhammer, despite his obvious exhaustion, dropped everything the moment we showed up and gave us an excellent, lengthy interview.

Turbine reacted a bit differently. The PR people asked us if we?d made an appointment. (Huh? What? An appointment for an interview at E3? That?s kind of like being asked if you made an appointment to eat at McDonalds.) The whole point of E3 is these walk up interviews, and the publicity they generate. Further, it?s not like anyone else was there taking up the developers? time. We didn?t see that Turbine was very busy with interviews. It was kind of like they didn?t really care all that much. The PR woman we talked to walked away from us, saying she?d try to set something up. We waited. She didn?t return.

Prior to being completely blown off by Turbine, we did get to talk to a reluctant junior developer, on the floor of the show, as he played with LOTR. We tried to ask him questions, but he didn?t really feel like talking. When we asked him what made his game stand out from other MMOs, he just shrugged and somewhat sarcastically said, “Well, it?s Tolkien.” And then he didn?t say a whole lot else.

Can you see where I?m going with this? E3 is the big show. It?s a publicity gold mine. It?s the best single place to get free promotion for a company?s game. It?s a great nexus to generate positive buzz. And Turbine didn?t seem all that interested in talking to the press or generating positive publicity. Hell, they didn?t seem all that interested in even treating us very politely. It was like we were bothering them.

I?d argue, based upon this most recent decision by Turbine, that they still don?t regard the need for positive publicity to be very important. They don?t see the building of customer loyalty, good sentiment, or trust in a MMO company to be an important factor. They seemed very content to side with a business partner, even though doing so will cost them some customers and generate a bit of bad publicity.

Insight Two: I was given reason to recall some of the problems that plagued the now-defunct game, Acheron?s Call 2. The game actually had multiple problems, many of them small but moderately irritating, leading to its demise. Turbine didn’t seem to take these very seriously, but these little things added up. In this case, the small problems added up to some serious player frustration. Among the most prominent were the problems the game had because of Turbine?s business partner. Microsoft had contracted to publish AC2, and also provided some in-game services. Most notable among these was the completely broken chat system. When Microsoft failed to resolve technical issues that plagued the game in a timely manner, players left. In almost every analysis of the death of AC2, this issue figures prominently.

The issues between Microsoft and Turbine dragged on for nearly a year. Customers quit the game because of them. And yet, despite this, Turbine did little to resolve the issues with Microsoft. Turbine allowed that one deal, with a company serving as a service provider for the game, to seriously damage their base of paying customers.

Is it possible that Turbine hasn?t learned from these lessons? Is it possible that Turbine will allow yet another of its business partners to irritate and drive away customers? This most recent decision, one which may be motivated by a desire to squeeze ever last dime out of European players and puts them in Codemaster’s pocket, would seem to indicate that Turbine is still devoted to making exactly the same kinds of deals – ones that damage its own customer base – with service providing companies. This kind of thing may impact their anticipated plan to attract a million customers.

Insight Three: Early in the article, I referred to Turbine as a successful MMO company. In fact, it seems everyone constantly refers to Turbine as a “successful” MMO company. When LOTR ships later this year, they?ll have produced four MMOs throughout their history. Only one, the original Asheron?s Call, was a unique, new world. The other three titles – Dungeons and Dragons Online, Asheron?s Call 2, and LOTR – were based upon well established, well-known, franchises. Each had, presumably, a solid preexisting fanbase. Each would draw upon both established MMO players as well as fans of Dungeons and Dragons, LOTR, or the original Asheron’s Call, for customers.

Because of this, you’d expect these games to be successful. Yet, in doing research for this article, I came across some very interesting figures, I obtained this information from a number of sources, but primarily from MMOGCHART.com

• The most customers AC2 ever had? Approximately 50,000. Current customers? Zero (the game is now defunct).

• The most customers Dungeons and Dragons ever had? Approximately 90,000. There is no specific information about current customers, but they are obviously down. There was a recent merging of 6 European servers to 2, and a similar merger for all the North American servers has been both rumored and requested on various forums due to the inability to find groups, etc. They have also just run a promotion they called the “Welcome Back Weekend“, in which players that have left the game are invited back for a weekend of free play. If you’re a veteran observer of the MMO industry, you know this generally isn’t considered a sign that things are going well.

• The most customers the highly successful, first generation MMO Asheron’s Call ever had? Approximately 120,000. Current subscriptions? Approximately 10,000.

My response, in learning of these numbers, is to change my prior view of Turbine in general. It’s hard to argue, based on their subscriptions, that Turbine is a major player in the MMO marketplace. In fact, quite the opposite appears to be true. They appear to be a very minor player. It appears that Turbine was simply an early player in the MMO marketplace with Asheron’s Call, but that they’ve let even that title slide into near bankruptcy. They don’t appear to have ever had another successful title, and it appears at least possible that their lofty status as a prominent MMO game developer is solely because of that one, early game.

The numbers don’t lie. When your games’ combined subscription numbers are dwarfed by freakin’ Toontown Online, you have a problem. In fact, Turbine’s games don’t capture 1% of the entire MMO market share. There are a good number of games that are really outpacing anything Turbine is putting out.

The Customer-Unfriendly Conclusion

In summary, this most recent decision by Turbine isn’t, in and of itself, a monumental one. It’ll keep some people, who were looking forward to the game, from playing it. My wife and I, along with our friends in the UK, are but four examples. It will keep my guild from playing the game en masse, though some individuals may give it a try. This isn’t a game killer by itself.

However, these kinds of negative decisions — small, incremental, unfriendly, and remarkably dumb, quite frankly — add up pretty quickly. Asheron’s Call 2, Shadowbane, and World War II Online are all testimonials to this fact. These games frustrated players with a series of what were, in most cases, small but bothersome, negative problems. Those players went away, and didn’t come back.

I think that this kind of thinking, which Turbine demonstrated in their announcement, reflects a long-term, customer-unfriendly attitude. That attitude is not one that primarily serves players; it reflects an environment disconnected, and seemingly uncaring, about them. It’s one that has, in the past, tolerated irritating bugs, made some poor decisions, and didn’t seek to resolve problems quickly. It’s an attitude that makes the customers a secondary consideration. It’s one that, should it continue, will keep LOTR Online from being a successful game, but will instead make it an also-ran. DDO is fading. AC is fading. AC2 is gone.

Given their track record, and their willingness to sacrifice customers by making decisions like this one, Turbine appears to be taking small, incremental steps to make sure that LOTR Online follows the same path.