At the end of this month – January 29th – Sigil will release its highly anticipated MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Of all the potential titles to be released in 2007, this one garnered the most hype by far. This is in large part due to MMO journalists reveling in Brad McQuaid’s (co-founder, Sigil) skills as an evolving game developer. While his vision is sound, I have a genuine fear that the title will fail. It may falter due to the completeness of the current beta: many players have been complaining about how buggy it is.

This raises a very important consideration in the development of any MMO (Lord of the Rings Online included) and that is polish. In essence, we mean the completeness of any given title. Take Star Wars Galaxies and Asheron’s Call 2 for example: they released very buggy and unstable. If you’ve been around long enough, you would know that the former is considered one of the worst MMO’s on the market, and the latter has been cancelled for a couple years. Contrast that to World of Warcraft – the number one MMO in the world – which released complete and relatively bug free. It is no surprise why Blizzard has garnered the success it had: first impressions go a long way in this business.

Though why does previous titles success or failures have anything to do with the Lord of the Rings Online? Certainly the three titles listed are so different philosophically, that the answer might lie there, one may say. While that remains true – and how first impressions cannot count for everything – it is also quite true that a relatively bug free game is critical to success and history has proven this. So what I wish to discuss today – and implore Turbine to adhere – is the issue of polish, why it is so important and, most of all, how it is done.

What I wish to mention first, however, is this whole idea of polish and why the implications of such are so important. I think, too, the earlier definition I provided is a good starting point: polish means completeness. This means most, if not all, the bugs are dealt away with and content (things to do) are filled to the brim. Interestingly enough, Star Wars Galaxies lacked in both of these departments and failed miserably, yet World of Warcraft did not and it dominated. Anyway, there are other factors as well, including stability. When I say stability, as well, I don’t mean server uptime – though that is important – but how the game performs on all kinds of gaming machines. After all, if your game can only be played well on a top end machine, then difficulties will surely follow.

That is polished defined then, but what about the degree of polish? That is to say, what is enough? In terms of stability and bug free gameplay, anything less then near 100% is ultimately unacceptable. That is what the alpha and beta process is for: any potential issues need to be eliminated. That said, what about content? Does the margin for error shift in any direction? Inevitably, there is some room for movement, simply because you can only supply so much content. Then, when you add more content over time, dynamics change and many of the supporting systems (specifically classes) need to be altered. The basic guideline, however, is this: supply players with enough things to do for half a year and it will suffice.

All of this seems rudimentary enough (sadly it is never so in practice) but how do we obtain it? The process is not as simple as the theory, but the basic principle is this: beta test, beta test and beta test again. While good beta testers can be hit or miss at times, one will usually have a solid, core group of participants to which you can rely upon. Through their hard work and diligence, the errors of the game will be pointed out, and then the developers can fix the mistakes and have a polished game.

If only it were this simple.

Often two things take place that complicates the situation immensely: either the publisher demands the game to be released too early, cutting into beta time, or the testing period simply isn’t long enough. If you look at any game released in the past five years that has been deemed failures – Star Wars Galaxies, Asheron’s Call 2 – they suffered from one of the two above difficulties. Yet other titles which did have extensive testing periods – not just World of Warcraft either – had success within their own expectations: Lineage II, for example, while not the most successful game in North America, has world-wide renown in Korea. Final Fantasy XI is another example of this as well, but in Japan instead. In addition, prior to the release of the Trials of Atlantis expansion, Dark Ages of Camelot exemplified this in North America.

In all of this discussion, where does the Lord of the Rings Online fall? Given Turbine’s record – which has been up or down, depending on the time period – it is very difficult to speculate. After all, they are the developer of Asheron’s Call 2 – a cancelled title – and Dungeons and Dragons Online: a very successful niche game. The question that could be pondered, I suppose, is thus: will we see an Asheron’s Call 2 polish or Dungeons and Dragons Online? Given these parameters, I hope it is the latter; anyone who played Asheron’s Call 2 at release knows it was a mess. Further, Asheron’s Call 2 improved significantly into a very playable and enjoyable game close to its cancellation, but the first impression was so poor that it mattered little: the importance of initial polish exemplified.

My message to Turbine and all fans of the Lord of the Rings Online is this: extensive betas results in successful titles. As I mentioned earlier in this editorial, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will release later this month in a likely buggy state. Whilst I have no insight into the development of the title, mass bugs often mean insufficient time in beta (or really bad coding, but I wish not to be so pessimistic). Yet, if this remains true, it will garner a poor first impression and travel down the road of Star Wars Galaxies and perhaps Asheron’s Call 2. In regards to our game, the Lord of the Rings Online, I hope they take great pride in ensuring polish is plentiful: I would much rather have this title walk the path of World of Warcraft.