Let's change the topic now. What is the most difficult thing when it comes to running a MMORPG for all of you?Hmm, I guess it'd be the fact that you can't argue with your customers. In a MMO, you very often have customers who go back and forth discussing various topics. And a lot of times, you'd have people tell you stuff like "you should've done this" or something.You mean the whole "I know, I totally understand what you're saying! BUT..." thing.Exactly. "I know, I understand what you're saying, but there really is a reason why we can't do that......" And you really want to tell them the reason but you just can't.Yeah, and if you try to give a poorly crafted response, you'd just end up with people saying stuff like "don't make excuses!" or "go do your job!".Of course, we really appreciate our customer's feebacks, and I believe it is our job to listen to our customers too. But since our solution to their feedbacks can only come in the form of (updates to) the game itself, we'd need to ensure that we address as much of our customers' grievances and demands as possible before we can release it. I'm sure this sounds obvious to you.Well, yes.But then, if you look at it another way, this also means that you will never be able respond to at least some customer's demands. That's why there are situations where even though we fully understand the true meaning and intention of some players' feedbacks, as well as the core issue they're trying to address, we simply could not say to them "you're right, we'll do that right away". And this really kills you. There are times when I got drunk and really just wanted to spill everything to everyone out there.Be careful about that (laugh).It's the same with me too. Many people recognize me as a "hardcore player" to begin with, so it's really upsetting when people say "Of all people, I thought at leastwould understand this, Yoshida!"Do you have an example of this that you can share?For example, I get a lot of people telling me "why do you set limits on items you can get each week?"Ah.And I understand how they feel. They're thinking "this part of the game is actually fun, so why would you make it so we can't get the item we want?" However, let's say if we try to control the distribution of rare items not by a lockout, but via drop rates instead. If you do this, then the game will simply become one-sided favoring those who can play longer.So it's a choice between having the drop rate being 1% but unlimited, versus getting a 100% drop only once each week. And having to decide which one serves the players better. It must be a hard question to answer.And having a drop rate of 1% does not necessarily mean you'll get 1 guaranteed drop out of 100 tries. It's simply an expected rate. So for example if you have a player who does nothing but play 24 hours a day, it can actually be a pretty high drop rate for that person. But then if you end up with a ton of these rare items in the game, it would cause problems with the game balance too, so then you'd end up having to make adjustments, so you reduce the drop rate to something like 0.1% because there are too many of these items, and now you just made it impossible for people who don't have a lot of time to play to get that item.This was exactly the kind of problem Diablo III had when it first started, wasn't it?Yes. Of course, we don't want to turn our backs on players who play a lot. We have players who play a lot, and players who can only play a bit, and many other customers each with their own play style. What we tried to do is to launch with something that we feel was "the best choice that appeals to everyone". Beginning with patch 2.2, we will try to include more contents for those customers who tell us "I want to spend more time playing" and "we want to see more useless/trivial things". We do want to have something to address both of those needs. But these kind of intentions can sometimes be difficult to get across to our players.But if you just tried to explain your reasonings to your players like you did just now, wouldn't they understand?Yeah, but that's still really tricky. Even if we explained all of this to them, from the perspective of a serious hardcore player, all that person would hear is how we're still going to put a damper on their desire to play more. At the end of the day, you'd still need to look at the whole picture from the service provider's perspective in order to know whether or not you made the right choice. The wishes of each individual player does not always translate to merits for the game.And there's the fact that resources in the game such as items and experience points really only begin to hold value when the game is properly balanced.And even that balance too is subject to each person's perceptions. You have people who think it should be normal for someone to become stronger the longer they play, just as you'll have people who think it's discouraging to have a system where those who started earlier has an unfair advantage. Both are right in their own ways, and its ultimately a matter of how they perceive things.That's true.And this kind of stuff is one of the unique issues with MMOs where many different kind of people share a single world. If person A has a problem with something but person B thinks it's fine, then who is right? Well, both of them are right, so as the developer, you'd either have to choose between one of them, or find a different solution altogether.Exactly. It's really difficult.I see. Well, let's shift topic here and talk about what you think is the most fun part of running a MMO.This is kind of against conventional wisdom, but for me it'd have to be when you get to meet your customers directly. I really enjoy events where I can meet our customers.It really is fun. Everyone is so nice.With FFXI, since the game has been running for more than 10 years now, we really get a lot of mature, grown up customers who come to our events.Other than that, it'd be when you log into the game using a private character and observe other people play. Sometimes I'd just want to keep watching instead of going to work.I feel the same way too. When I play with my own private character, I feel like I could just keep playing Titan Extreme with other people forever.I know that feeling.As for that feeling of joy, I guess it'd be right before and after we release a new patch for me.It's that feeling of excitement.Yes. I get really psyched when I read people's tweets about waiting for the server to go back up. There's that undescribable feeling when the server's back up and you see everyone log back on all at once and sets off in-game all together. It might sound weird, but it feels as if we're launching a new service or releasing a new game every time we do it. This is something I would have never been able to experience when I was still making offline games.It is fun. But not when you have to do emergency maintenances.Yeah. If only we could leave out those 2AM phone calls that start with "Yoshida-san, we have a problem"...