I’ve recently gotten into game blogging in a big way. And I’m not talking about game design blogs like this one; no, most of my time has been spent in the WoW blogosphere, reveling in the hundreds of personal blogs that spring up every month to celebrate and share someone’s play experience, specialized knowledge, or weird little project. I tend to think of these as character blogs: instead of being about “games” or even “WoW”, they are primarily about “my character” or “my experience” in the game.

I prefer MMO games to single player games in large part because of the shared experience. My game experience is more exciting — more important! — because I am adventuring in a shared world where I can see and interact with other players. Character blogging extends that shared experience; it allows me to share not just the virtual world and the big events that happen there, but also the smaller personal events: buying my mount, the battleground I did this weekend, a trick I learned for raising my weapon skill. To turn that around, reading other players’ blogs allows me to connect with them whether or not they play on my server. It gives me more personal (and often more trustworthy) views of other classes, factions, and perspectives.

I also find that character blogs tend to highlight the diversity in our games. Sure, there are lots of twenty-something guys with night elf hunters who post about their twice-weekly raids and PvP pwnage. But there are also a disproportionate number of women blogging about their game experiences, as well as older folks and even families who both play and blog together. We know these people are out there, of course, but these blogs — while perhaps not exactly representative — do help make the diversity of our audience more personal and immediate.

If I were running an MMO team right now, I’d be seriously thinking about how to leverage this character blogging to the benefit of my game’s community. Some basic ideas:

• Spotlight useful blog posts on the game’s official community page. I would focus on particular posts rather than an entire blog: it’s much easier to vet a single post, and since it is also much easier to write the occasional brilliant post, you can hit a wider variety of blogs this way. You can also spotlight interesting stories or opinion pieces, but your bread-and-butter should be informational posts: how-tos, tutorials, game info, and so on.
• Provide and promote some simple tools for blogging players. Some games already provide fansite press kits as well as desktop backgrounds, so you could easily extend this with some simple blog theme elements. Imagine, for instance, a game-themed RSS icon or some sample header graphics. And don’t make the rookie mistake of taking down your theme elements after your expansion-pack promos end, like some games I could name. Blogging keeps your players engaged even when nothing big is happening in the game world, so support that by giving your bloggers tools even during the slow times.
• Aim an occasional contest at your character bloggers. Even if you don’t have a prize, you can suggest a topic (a la “My Favorite Zone”) and assemble a list of blogs who respond with a post on that topic before the deadline.

Really, these ideas come down to encouraging your players to blog about their experiences and then helping your blogging players connect with each other. By fostering this kind of extra-game community you help keep players positively engaged with your world.

Most MMO developers are worried about seeming “money-grubbing.” Whenever they introduce a new pay feature, they are stung by people who say the company is nickel-and-diming them. But in general, this is just another case of MMO developers paying too much attention to a tiny percentage of their audience. The general audience of WoW or EQ2, for instance, would pay good money for certain luxury services. But you need to know how to present these services in order to make them happiest, and in many cases this can be surprising: more expensive is better.

Let’s take in-game weddings, for example. One company I was close to planned to add in-game weddings for a small fee, say $20. Doing a simple $20 version isn’t where the real payoff is, though. Perhaps that makes it nice and accessible to roleplayers who want to have a half-dozen “marriages” in their character’s career, but it isn’t particularly appealing to people who are actually getting married. Diamonds aren’t the traditional wedding ring because they’re prettier than other rings. It’s because they’re also really expensive, and they make good tokens of tribute. At times of celebration or gathering, many people want to spend top dollar in order to have top-dollar accommodations. The $20 marriage package comes off as cheap.

Not that you shouldn’t have a $20 wedding package if you feel strongly about it. But have better versions, too. If the $20 version gets you a room, cake, and costumes, then the $50 version should get all that plus an NPC band, catering NPCs, a fountain that buffs everyone in the room for a week, etc. But that’s small potatoes. Go further. Let people have really special events. The $500 version has a customer service rep on-hand for two hours, providing services such as crowd control (keeping rowdy players off the stage), creating custom effects as desired (perhaps the bride and groom want to ceremonially kill a monster together?), and to perform any other wedding roles desired, such as the emcee, DJ, whatever else you can make work in your game. Make it special. Put some time into it.

Then go further. The $2500 version has all of that, plus it’s attended by two game developers who will make short remarks at the in-game reception. This version also includes a real-life framed photo from the wedding, signed by the entire game team. Maybe a unique in-game trinket, too. Add whatever else you can think of to make it feel worthwhile and special.

It’s not really about making money. Even at $2500, the development investment combined with the disruption to your dev team means that your ROI (return on investment) is probably pretty low compared to other things you could do. But man, will it make people feel special! In a game with 100,000 players, I’d expect you’d get 10 or so $2500 weddings a year. Those will be events that participants talk about for many years to come. Plus, you have a good chance of turning those people into lifers — dedicated fans that will stick with the game through thick and thin, and who keep other people playing, too. You should always work hard to create lifers. And the best way to create lifers is to give people personal attention.

Anyway, I got a bit distracted. But the point is this: make your luxury services luxurious! Services in this vein can include weddings, bar mitzvahs, company meetings, funeral services, memorials, sweet 16 parties, and so on. Don’t skimp, and don’t worry about people saying you’re nickel-and-diming them to death. Those people weren’t going to buy your luxury services anyway.

 PS - a tip: start by designing and implementing the most elaborate version first, then create the stripped-down versions second. Don’t try it the other way, it’ll be much harder and a lot more frustrating for everyone involved.

Random Battle is a blog about MMOs and game development written by an editor from Ten Ton Hammer, a network of MMO community sites. So it’s a good source for keeping an eye on the MMO community meta-community, if you will.

Recently, Random Battle posted a thought-provoking article about how to make community sites more relevant to bloggers. What really caught my eye about this post, however, was this partial line:

Given that bloggers are a relatively small, hardcore, vocal subset of gamers …

Now, I’ll give you that bloggers are a small subset of gamers at this point, and by definition they are vocal. But the term ‘hardcore’ really jumped out at me here.

On the one hand, anyone who is invested enough in their game to blog about it on a regular basis is .. well, pretty darned invested. But on the other hand, I spend a decent amount of time reading World of Warcraft hunter blogs (it’s one of my weaknesses), and I’d have to say that at least half of the blogs I follow are not in any way traditionally hardcore. They don’t raid. They don’t PvP. They don’t power game. They don’t even have level-capped characters, some of them. But man, do they blog.

There’s the guy who spends his time writing complex mods to record game data … the Ruby programmer who plays once a week or so but faithfully reports on his progress in between coding tips … the husband-and-wife team that likes to make real-world food out of in-game recipes … the retired Air Force major who delights in mentoring younger players … the housewife with the arm-length list of alts. And a whole mess of roleplayers, most of whom (thankfully) don’t write strictly in character.

The term ‘hardcore’ fails us when we try to use it as both a measure of investment and as a description of playing habits. There are hordes of players out there who are invested, dedicated, even obsessed … and who play these games in search of an experience that defies our simplistic expectations. So let’s just drop the ‘hardcore’, okay? As a definition, it’s not doing us any favors.