Redefining MMOs: Player developers! page 2

EVE Online – Player owned structures:
In the beginning of EVE, the only stations to be found were those built by NPCs. Apart from space owned by NPC pirate factions, the valuable 0.0 security rating systems had no permanent stations for players to use. Due to the rewards to be had there such as high quality ore, players sometimes treated this space as somewhere to launch expeditions into and accepted that they would be far from a base of operations.

Before long, the game's developers CCP Games released several conquerable stations in the midst of the chaos. Players would lay siege to these stations in order to capture them for their corporation. Using them as a base of operations, living in nullsec was a lot easier and became incredibly profitable. Owning them became a matter of both profit and pride, with corporations fighting over them fiercely. As EVE's population grew, a need for more conquerable stations appeared. But rather than simply magic some new ones into existence, CCP took a rather unusual stance – they gave players the reigns.

The first player owned structures to be released were starbases, expensive control towers that could be anchored at moons. They extended a large shield bubble around themselves, making everything inside untargettable and safe. Although they didn't provide the same services as a conquerable station and players couldn't physically dock at them, they performed the role of a base of operations amicably. A corporate hanger module allowed the storage of loot, equipment, ammunition and ore while a ship hanger allowed corporations to store all of their ships. Additional modules such as ore refineries and weapons were available and the towers could be used as part of the tech 2 advanced material production chain.

Not long after, CCP topped their previous effort by releasing outposts – fully fledged stations that players could construct. Rather than creating conquerable stations wherever they thought was best, CCP let players decide where to build them and what space they wanted to claim. There are now hundreds of player-made outposts, each with a rich history behind its construction and the battles fought over it.

World of Warcraft – User Interface:
Blizzard don't do anything by half measures and World of Warcraft is no exception. When it was being developed, a lot of care and attention was put into designing a good user interface. Understanding that they may not have made the most effective user interface possible, they released a UI add-on system that let players tweak their interface or even develop an entirely new one. Communities rapidly erupted around the creation of UI add-ons and several key products emerged. Ideas that Blizzard had never considered came pouring forth from add-on developers keen to make a name for themselves and the game as a whole was enriched as a result.

Popular add-ons like Auctioneer, Enchantrix and Carbonite gave players integrated tools that weren't available in the game, pushing the limits of UI add-ons almost into the field of game design. Since then more complex add-ons have been developed, with game studio Popcap even developing one to play Bejewelled or Peggle in-game. With all this development, Blizzard has used the most popular player-made UI modifications to learn how to design a better user interface. It's been a win-win situation for Blizzard and WoW's players but more recently it hasn't been plain sailing for WoW's add-on community.

A recent policy change banned the sale of add-ons for cash and the use of donate links or advertisements in them. Many of the game's most popular UI developers have to spend a considerable amount of time updating their modifications with each game patch and relied on the income from sales, donations or advertisements to compensate them for that time. To some, UI development simply isn't worth their time unless there's money involved. With the high quality of some of the add-ons the community has come up with, that stance may well be justified.

Read on to page 3, where I explain why handing players the reigns in an MMO's development is often a smart move and suggest what game developers can learn from it.