Fanboys, your game needs you.

Mythic cuts four classes and four cities from Warhammer Online. Hellgate: London debuts to poor response. Pirates of the Burning Sea needed a better integration of its elements and some changes to pacing. Vanguard was released too early. Age of Conan has a bunch of bugs and its end game is not as stable as was hoped.

ALL these games had incredible fan euphoria leading up to their release. And those that have been released have all been hit with fan backlash because they didn’t live up to their dreams, and because these really incredibly complex pieces of software had bugs.

There has never been a piece of software shipped without bugs. Everyone always says about any software product – never buy the 1.0 version and never expect it to be bug free. Games are no different.

If we, the MMO players, want game companies to innovate, then we have to follow a couple of really easy rules.

Don’t believe the hype. It’s the marketing department’s JOB to hype a game to you, promise everything, say whatever they can think of to get you to buy the box. That’s their job. YOUR job is to ignore it. Unless the new MMO is your first, you likely have plenty of experience with the difference between hype and reality. Don’t get suckered in.

Never buy v1.0. Wait three months or so before buying a new MMO. Your play experience will be a lot better after they get the inevitable launch bugs out. Between launch and when you buy it, ignore the shrill screams of betrayal from the mega-fans who somehow thought that THIS particular million-line-of-code piece of software would be the first one in the world ever to be without serious bugs. Yeah, the PR hype machine will want you to wait in line and buy it at midnight, but you don’t get drawn in by that sort of manipulation, right?

Believe the developers. People in the game industry are probably making less money than you, but working longer hours, and unless they are executives or PR folk, likely getting almost no recognition. Even if a game is successful, they could still find themselves out on the street after their game is released because game development takes more people than game maintenance. Their reward for low pay and low job security is the chance that they may be part of creating a game that they would themselves love to play.

Believe in the game. If you really want Age of Conan to work, give Funcom the chance to put things right. Same for all the other games. If you were excited about the premise but disappointed in the execution, then stand by them and you will eventually get all you wanted. If you were shocked and dismayed that Mythic is cutting the scope for Warhammer Online, then simply wait until they patch the other four cities in before you play.

Innovation is painful and hardly ever rewarding for the developer. Usually, someone swoops in, takes all their best ideas and runs with them. But without innovators, all we ever get is the same old game. If you loved the game before release when it was all dreams, smoke and mirrors, than is it so hard to love it after, once you see it for real?

It’s no secret I am really looking forward to The Chronicles of Spellborn. I want that to be my “1 year” game – the game I play to the exclusion of any other MMO for a full year, good or bad. It will almost certainly not live up to its hype, and it hasn’t even HAD very much hype. Still, it won’t live up to it. It will be buggy. Major stuff won’t work. My class will be unbalanced and nerfed several times. Many quests won’t be completable. But I will pay for it and play it (assuming it even comes out in North America) because I believe in their vision.

Because players like you and me are part of the game’s team. We have to be the fanboys and fangirls for our games, even when, or especially when, they have bugs. It’s EASY to tear something down. You get no credit for me for trashing something. If you loved the game before launch, then love it after, warts and all, just like any relationship. Support the game and you will get the game you want, eventually. People who take glee in the misfortunes of Perpetual Entertainment or Sigil Games or Flagship Studios are really the lowest form of scum. All those people wanted to do was make the best game ever.