Tutorials! They’re important. I even wrote an entire column about them recently, talking about how important they are in getting people into a new game. But that does not mean that every game does tutorials very well. In fact, most of tutorials MMOs have are… well, mediocre to bad. It’s fine, not a fatal flaw. Acceptable tutorials are good enough.
But that doesn’t mean that all MMOs have sub-par tutorials. In fact, there are games whose tutorials are really freaking good. And since I was just thinking about how tutorials are important, today I want to highlight some of the games that really get the tutorial experience right from front to back. So let’s give props to the games where the tutorial doesn’t feel like a blatant afterthought and introduce the game in a way that really sticks with the player. (Sometimes to the rest of the game’s detriment, to be fair.)
1. Warframe
The tutorial to Warframe is such a banger that it would be fair if you wanted to keep replaying that section over and over. That’s not to say the rest of the game is bad in any way; I quite like the game as a whole. But the first few hours are like a roundhouse kick to the gut in the best possible way. They pull you forward in such a driving fashion, with a constant escalation of danger and stakes. You don’t get many choices at the start, but you get enough to make informed decisions early on, and it’s just… yeah. It’s so good, front to back, that it feels like a bit of a letdown once the game lowers the temperature post-tutorial.
2. The Secret World
It’s so weird that Funcom decided to remake a bunch of the tutorial – or more accurately staple another tutorial on top of the existing one – from the original The Secret World. The original tutorial was not one of the flaws of the original game! I know, very few of the things that Funcom fixed were actually problems in the first place, but this was a case where the original game had a really good tutorial, loads of flavor, and gave you a very good sense of how the game was going to run and how you would experience it.
3. Star Trek Online
On the other side of the scale, the launch tutorial for Star Trek Online was definitely in the category of being not terrible but just acceptable. But when they remade the tutorial from start to finish, at least on the Federation side, it became intensely compelling, gave you a good idea of how the game works, and really helps you understand the idea of the game’s ground and space combat. It’s a shame it stops before getting into some of the game’s other more esoteric concepts like skills.
4. Project Gorgon
If you’ve never played Project Gorgon before you might not understand how delightfully weird the game is. I love that about it, but it also means that it needs a unique tutorial experience… and it turns out that it does in fact have just that. It’s one of the best parts of the game, and it really helps get you invested in the weirdness of the game. I love the tutorial and the weird things it asks you to do on the regular.
5. Age of Conan
So most of these are tutorial experiences that I have actually been through, but I must admit that I have not actually played Age of Conan. However, I’ve heard so much about Tortage as an experience and seen so many people play it that I can’t argue it’s not a memorable and charming tutorial experience, and heck, how can you not love a tutorial experience that involves beating people with boat wreckage? More tutorials should include that.
6. Lord of the Rings Online
You have to love the sheer commitment to atmosphere replete in every single part of Lord of the Rings Online, but also in the tutorial experience. Not only do new characters get to choose from multiple nicely bespoke tutorials that act as an extended part of the story of the larger game world, but it’s all presented in such a loving fashion. It makes it compelling to make new characters and experience the additional stories, even though it’s just a tutorial! You don’t feel as if you’ve gone through a tutorial; you feel as if you’ve gotten an introduction to the game.
7. World of Warcraft
I’ve long been of the mind that World of Warcraft launched with a pretty good tutorial experience, but standards were a little bit different when the game launched two decades ago. Blizzard made little adjustments over the years, but the little adjustments alone weren’t enough. But when the whole thing was overhauled in Shadowlands… yeah, that actually worked again. The current tutorial is pretty good, covers all the big things that players need to know, includes stuff for each specific class along the way, and really engages as well. It might lack some nostalgic flavor here and there (like going through Gilneas) but the net result is a much better introduction for new players.
“How many new players is the game even getting any more?” Well, that’s a separate problem. At least they get a good opener.
8. Marvel Heroes
One of the things that is really important with any tutorial is that it gives you an expectation about the game that you are about to play. Marvel Heroes had kind of a lift right out of the gate, being a Diablo-style game that maps superheroic antics on top of that. Ironically, there are a lot of superhero games that really blow the tutorial, but this game nailed it, and it let you understand very quickly how you were going to play the game as well as how it was taking on the superhero milieu. It made it a lot easier to get into the game even if the component parts were less appealing to you.
9. Dungeons & Dragons Online
Playing Dungeons & Dragons Online is in no small part like trying to recapture playing the tabletop game with a group of friends where you don’t have to deal with nobody wanting to actually run the game. Sometimes that’s a good thing, both because it means nobody has to come up with a game experience everyone wants to play and because it means that you can experience something otherwise foreign to you. The tutorial experience, start to finish, not only gets you invested in the world (which is no small task for what is not one of the “classic” D&D settings) but also helps you get a feel for how the game will behave moving forward. It’s really neat.
And yes, I’ve heard the jokes about how many of these games seem to involve starting with a shipwreck. It seemed to me the polite thing to do was not to mention it.
10. EVE Online
You might argue that the tutorial for EVE Online is unfriendly, opaque, and generally makes you feel unwelcome. In fact, I remember some random other player opening fire on me during it.
Which makes it a perfect introduction for the game itself. I did not say that was necessarily a compliment.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
