WWOL, TCS, CI, MS/ES

[Frodo_I]

I've been seeing alot of posts condemning WWOL for their shotty performance and i thought i'd like to sum up what i think the "real" problem is:

TCS - total customer satisfaction, CI - continuous improvement, MS-meets standards, ES-exceeds standards.  These terms may seem like buzz words but software companies live and die by these terms every week in todays internet.

I believe WWOL put an infrastructure in place for online gaming that involved different game interfaces for each game back in 97, i may have the date wrong though.  The problem is that wwol keeps adding on to that infrastructure (or updating it to accommodate new software) and never revamps it.  For instance, Gob himself stated in another thread that he doesn't understand why WWOL doesn't make the same chat interface for ALL wwol games instead of seperate ones.  Having seperate interfaces alienates users for different games from each other, as well as making interest in the game decline faster since people that leave the game are less people to chat with or see online.  So when people start moving to other games friends get bored and move on faster than if those same users could log on and say hello even though they were logging on through another wwol game.  Blizzard is an example of people logging on and chatting to each other even though they are playing different games.

Advertising, wwol doesn't suppliment their online gaming with ad banners, and never has.  As a result who gets stuck with the bill to pay for the online serving and support?? Either wwol, or ultimately US, the gamers that buy the games.

New and better ideas - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a game that people like.  Any idiot can lock 50 kids in a hall and ask them what they are looking for in a game and then "MODify" an existing game to "cowtow" to the wants of gamers.  The true genious of a company comes when you think of new and exciting ideas of how to give gamers what they want.  WW came up with a way of making "3D" gaming in both first person and real time strategy that put their names in the papers, then they just stopped.  They didn't rethink about how to support the game, how the game is played online, or how to "exploit" the online experience

Again i'll use blizzard as an example.  Blizzard doesn't have "monster graphics" in their games.  They don't have extrodinary AI's in their games.  In fact, blizzard games have a unit cap incorporated that most people hate, yet more people are playing 3 or 5 year old blizzard games then WW gamers, why is that???

It is because blizzard knows how to SUPPORT their games.  They suscribe to TCS, and ES, and CI.  Especially CI in the number of patches they have put out for their servers instead of abandoning them.

I believe WWOL also would support their servers better IF and only IF they had centralized servers that support all games.  IF they continue making different interfaces for different games then they'll stop support for ANY game as soon as sales trail off

In summary i don't believe wwol is intentionally abandoning users of their games.  if a particular game isn't being sold/played much compared to the current hot seller it's only common sense to move the largest part of your companies rescources to the newer game.  I think wwol needs to rethink their way of gaming online so they CAN and WILL provide constant support for ALL games online.  By making a centralized user interface, using ad banners to suppliment their online income, and by continuously improving their online interface to make it more friendly, more inviting, and more efficient wwol could reinvent ww gaming and give back ww's good name

As said in other posts this may never come about due to the management of ww by EA.  So maybe i should replace all the ww's in this topic with EA.  Regardless, i think blizzard is gonna leave ww in the dust unless ww gets their arses together and starts making changes

It's interesting to note by the way, ww is alot older, and at one time alot larger than blizzard is (at least i think so, maybe i am wrong on this but 5 years ago i didn't even know blizzard existed whereas i was playing ww games back then all the time)

[Gobalopper]

I would agree with you. For me the recent incarnation of WOL has always been a lower point in WW's games. WW used to have a great program called Westwood Chat that was a common launching interface for all their games and included options where you could make your own chat channels.

Personally I would rather go back to the old method of using WW Chat to launch games and chat with people instead of being stuck with a clumsly interface like they made in Emperor. It would get rid of those annoying bugs that cause the game to crash too.

[Frodo_I]

lets not forget that havin a common chat from where you could launch games also increases the amount of competition dramatically.  You get a clan that invents their own room (and usually wind up making a web page as well, another thing i haven't seen in emperor) and other clans visit and start spouting about how they can beat whoever, next thing you know you got people who put down a game weeks ago REinterested in the game just for competition and bragging rights.  I think WOL really should think about "picking up the ball in hopes of running with it" on this subject (since they already dropped the ball)