Login Incentives in MMORPGS
A major challenge for any MMO is to keep players logging in to the game. Obviously, regularly adding content and ensuring that there are sufficient quests, activities and tasks for players to undertake is essential. However, experience has shown that no matter how much content developers add to an MMORPG, players will always veraciously consume it and want more. Hence you need an additional “carrot on a stick”. Something that get’s player sufficiently interested to log into a game, even when they don’t have anything especially compelling to do. Login incentives are designed to do exactly that. They offer of some bauble or trinket that motivates you to log into a game once a day. Hopefully once you login, you may then find something to occupy yourself, either on your own or with fellow guild members. And of course the player who is actively playing may well even purchase something from the in-game store. At the very least, a successful login incentive contributes towards active player statistics. If those figures are presented in the right fashion on paper, they can bolster a declining population.
Hobbit Presents were added to The Lords of the Rings Online as part of Update 11: Treachery of the White Hand in May of 2013. Like any other login incentives, they do guarantee that players actively play the game but they provide another reason for LOTRO players to at least login and collect their “reward”. Broadly speaking these rewards are adequate. Silver presents are available daily and gold rewards once every seven days. Upon clicking on the Hobbit Presents interface, players receive a random in-game item. This can range from food, potions, XP, reputation and slayer deed buffs all the way to high-end armour and jewellery. All rewards are account bound so boxes containing level appropriate items can be transferred among players various alts. More often than not, most of the regards are trivial especially for level cap characters. However, they can be sold to vendors, so at the very least they can provide a small stream of revenue on a daily basis. Sometimes items such as the Universal Toolkit can be very beneficial.
Similarly, Daily Rewards were added to The Elder Scrolls Online with Update 18 in May 2018. At the start of each month, a calendar displaying rewards for each day becomes available and items can be claimed in chronological order. Again most of the items tend to be food and other consumables that provide a buff. There are also XP scrolls and modest stipends of the games various currencies. However, non-combat cosmetic pets are also included and there are usually free samples of the latest Crown Crates. These contain a broad spectrum of rewards and on several occasions, I have obtained a new mount just by using these free samples. The gold stipends are also a welcome top up to one’s overall in-game currency reserves. Like other MMOS these free rewards are not character bound so can be swapped between alts or they go into an account shared currency wallet. The Daily Rewards, like Hobbit Presents, can only be claimed by one alt a day.
The question remains, are these login incentives genuinely sufficient to get an indifferent player to log into a game? If you have become burnt out on a particular MMORPG, then I’d say no. I think you have to have some sort of ongoing commitment to a game to begin with. Then such incentives can be enough to give you a little nudge and sign into a game. Of the two systems I have mentioned, I personally prefer that found in ESO. I prefer to know in advance what rewards are available for the entire month. At present the December schedule shows that there are some free Crown Crates available on December 21st. I must therefore not skip too many days of logging in, or else I’ll find that the reward is inaccessible. If you fail to login each day, a reward is deducted from the end of the monthly schedule. The random nature of Hobbit Presents in LOTRO is less compelling system. The allocation of rewards is a lottery. However, there is potential to win something of note, so there is still a degree of motivation to login. Yet regardless of the quality of login incentives, they are still no substitute for having tangible activities to do in a game and should never bee seen as anything more than what they are.
