Where's the Polish?

Polish. The arch-nemesis of the MMORPG industry. In my personal opinion, polish is the most important part of video games in general. I just think it shows, or doesn't show, a lot more in an MMORPG. But what exactly is polish? And how does it affect the games we play? Let's take a look.

Polish is the difference between a successful game, and a failure. It's that overall feeling you get while your playing, the difference between a game that was rushed, and one that was loved. How developers don't see this is one of the greatest mysteries in the multi-verse. One of the most obvious polish failures I seem to notice more and more, is the Interface.

Every new MMORPG that I play lately, especially the F2P and Betas, have terrible Interfaces. Opening your quest log to look at your quest objectives is like stepping on a rusty nail, it hurts, and it's just not fun. Many of them can be messy, cluttered, and in lack of a better word, an eyesore.

               

So many times I would sit down in my chair, light a cigarette, hold my breath as I log into a brand new world (I really, really like starting a new game) and then let our a rugged, angry sigh as I get bombarded with pop-up tutorial windows with broken text, bad translation and horrible window frames. In many cases, all of that will fade away once I get into the game, and it won't bother me so much, but first impressions last and a poorly designed interface can very easily leave a bad taste in your mouth.

That's where polish comes in. Polish is taking the extra time to make sure these things don't exist. To make sure that the text font isn't some generic Times New Roman, and something a little more fitting to the style of the game. To make sure that the window frames fit in nicely with with the rest of the screen. To make sure that all of the text fits on one line, instead of half of a work appearing on the next line. I could go on forever, but you know what I'm talking about, you've seen it too.

I'm sure that these little nit picks don't bother everyone, they probably don't bother many people at all. But they do bother some of us, and even a minority player base can add alot of players to your new game.

           

[DAOC - Even with everything possible on the screen at once, DAOC still manages to pull of the Polish, it just all fits.]                      

Combine all these tiny little things together, and the result is marvelous. You log in for the first time to a fantastic looking Character Select Screen, you enter your little world, and everything else just fades away. It's like watching a good movie instead of a bad one. You sit there enjoying every little detail, instead of pointing out every little flaw. "I don't like the way the look when they swim" quickly becomes "I love how the grass blows when I cast Wind Blast".

Once you get that 'appreciation ball' rolling, it's really hard to stop, and if it's a bad ball more and more imperfections rear their ugly heads, and before you know it you've logged out, uninstalled and have already forgotten the game exists. It's hard to think that such a small thing can make such a big difference, and hey, maybe it doesn't. But it does for me, and thats at least one person that won't be playing that game.

What about you? Have you noticed a 'Polished' gamed before? Have you noticed one that wasn't? Does it even bother you that much? Post below, let's find out!