Actually the other major reason is that I’m a social junkie; I’m not going to pry myself out of my existing comfy social online gaming networks unless I have to. I know so few people on LOTRO that it might as well be a CRPG for me. I don’t have the energy and time to spend time with all of the people I like on WoW so forming a new network on LOTRO makes very little sense.

Experienced MMO players, in their first few hours of play, are not playing the content. They’re playing the system.

I think that’s true for a number of inexperienced MMO players, too. A larger number than you’d think.

At the same time though there’s players for whom the mechanics are the game, and you could slap nearly any skin on there and as long as you gave them an interesting system to play and experiment with, they’d do it.

Extremes of either type can be bad but a good game is going to provide both interesting systems and compelling content, because the truth is that most players, while being motivated more by one side are the other, are often interested in both.

Compare this type of experience to an MMO where you basically get dumped in a newbie area. Sure, there are quests to do, but you have to rely on your own initiative to do them.

In the end I think you need to rely on both hooks. Content is going to get one group of people to play your game, but systems are going to get another group of people. The hard part is merging those two so that the people who are playing the system start paying attention to the content, and vice versa. Combat mechanics don’t do a great job of this because everything boils down to numbers, but noncombat systems and collaborative metagames can fulfill the “play the system” side of things just as easily. The catch is you need to introduce players to those things quickly so they get interested, and not hold them all off until they’ve both lost the plot and gone through 30 levels of mind-numbingly boring, simple combat grinding.

The opening sequence with the fight on rails helped the beginning of the game tremendously, I think, because immediately after that you’re stuck in an interminable dialogue sequence with the Al’Bhed, in a language you don’t understand, in a very constrained environment. Then you ‘graduate’ through a vaguely interesting boss fight into another interminable dialogue sequence with Wakka and the other islanders. Then you have dialogue sequences with the other Guardians. Etcetera, etcetera. I remember all of that with a kind of distant horror, because I’m surprised I made it through to the meat of the story — Yuna’s quest — and I think I only did so because there was a lot of unresolved exciting promise in the opening bit.

I’m not sure if that was system or content, but it may well have been content, and I was just willing to trust Square based on past experiences.

As a discussion point, what do you think of the start of FFX? I consider it one of the better CRPG beginnings because it starts so fast — I’ve consider the fight-on-rails and the immediate commencement of mysterious events and action an exceptional start to a _story_. However, in considering your post, perhaps my positive memory of it is also due to it immediately putting the combat system in front of me.