Let us speak today of MMO websites. I visit loads of official MMO websites, both for work and my personal interest, and it is absolutely appalling how many of them appear to be slapped together by Geocities monkeys from 1998 with no greater understanding of what such a website should do or offer. I often find myself very frustrated when I’m trying to find some basic information, the latest news, or God forbid, an RSS feed. You’d be surprised how many official websites do not have an RSS feed. It’s like they’re in denial about modern technology even while running a highly sophisticated game.

So here are ten things that I declare mandatory for all MMO websites:

1. An RSS feed

I’m sorry, but I cannot stress this enough. Your. Website. Must. Have. An. RSS. Feed. Let’s back up for a second: The two audiences of people visiting an MMO website are either complete newcomers to the game or current players. You have to provide information for both. One of your website’s primary goals is to keep players up to date on what is — by definition — a constantly evolving, growing game. And because we don’t always have time to get over to your website, you have to make an RSS feed available so that you can get the news over to the many of us who use blog readers.

I just hate having to scrounge about for an RSS feed on these sites only to find out that they never decided to implement one in the first place.

2. Subscription/payment info

Here’s another pet peeve: a complete lack of up-front information as to what your game will cost the player. I recently wrote a top ten list for Massively about subscription holdouts, and a bulk of the time that article took to write was spent combing through websites trying to find the exact subscription rates. You’d think it would be somewhere near the front page, but nope, it usually was buried. In two cases, I had to extract the information from the forums because the only other way you could find out was to have an active account. That’s just stupid.

3. Latest news on the front page

THIS IS MANDATORY. You think the previous two items got me steamed? This one takes the cake. It is simply unbelievable how many MMO websites lack any updated news feed on the front page. I’m going to pick on LOTRO a bit here, so go check out its front page. It looks like there’s “latest news,” except that it isn’t. No, the actual news is very much buried within the website; the front page “news” is just self-promotion crap. The latest news link on the front page takes you here, which also isn’t the latest news. You’ve got to use a whole series of drop-down menu items to find the patch notes, dev diaries, and other important facts, and still you’re missing out on breaking news that goes out over the LOTRO RSS feed or twitter account. It’s beyond ridiculous.

4. Easy-to-find trial

Let’s make this simple: If your game has a trial, the link to it should be on the front page and it should be highly visible.

5. Link to the latest patch notes

Please. Seriously. I hate it when a game tells me that a patch is released but the link to the notes is missing. Players of your game will want access to these patch notes at all times, so make them available.

6. Catch-you-up post

I’ve seen this just on a couple websites and I love it. Basically, it’s a page where a recap of the game’s major changes over time are laid out in a quick Cliff’s Notes format. This way, if you’re coming back to a game after several months or even years, you can get caught up to speed without having to do tons of research.

7. Frequent updates

If the front page hasn’t been updated in the past two weeks, that’s a bad sign for any MMO. If it hasn’t been updated in months, you’re essentially broadcasting that you’re a dead game.

8. Dev tracker

Dev posts are often crucial sources of important information for players, but unfortunately they’re not made as accessible as they should be. Listen, if you’re going to be dishing out important info to the playerbase via this method, then you better be making it well-known where people can go to read up on it. Better yet, major dev posts should be copied to the news feed.

9. Links to social media

We want to know where your Twitter, Facebook, etc. links are. Don’t make us hunt for them.

10. A female character with enormous cleavage

Fortunately, most MMO websites have this covered and then some. At least they have priorities.