Over the last five years, I’d argue that our perceptions have changed. Guild Wars 1 and 2 introduced the “buy the box” model, delivering a high quality game while still using the subscription free microtransaction model. We’ve also seen several MMOs transition from being subscription based to free-to-play and becoming successful as a result. Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online and EverQuest 2 are all positive examples of this change in model.

This year, a new trend emerged. After reading a number of blogs I’ve seen the same phrase repeated again and again. “It’s a great MMO, but I’ll wait until it goes free to play before I play it.” We now expect subscription based games to fail and eventually switch to a free-to-play-model.

Have our previous experiences conditioned us as consumers to expect games to switch to free to play? Are we becoming congested with too many games we want to try and not enough time to play them, so we’re cutting back on the ones we subscribe to? Or is it just a polite way of saying that we have no intention of playing a game, either at launch or for the foreseeable future?

My own suspicion is that there’s elements of all three. With pre-launch betas becoming larger in size and scope, many of us get the chance to try an MMO before we put our hand in our pocket. Instead of buying the box, subscribing for a few months then ditching the game for something else, we elect to bide our time, drifting from beta to beta while we wait for a bargain. A game might grab our interest, but we have a ready-made, plausible excuse for why we shouldn’t buy into it.

But is this healthy for the industry? With subscription-based MMOs still being developed, are we discarding them out of hand? It’s possible we’ll see a reduction in subscription games, forced by changes in customer behaviour. What’s much less certain is if we’ll see future games take the same route as Guild Wars 2 and avoid subscriptions, or launch as completely free to play. It’s also possible that we’ll see MMOs switch to a single player RPG (such as Warhammer 40K: Dark Millenium), or cancelled completely.

There’s also the economic impact – is it a sign of these austere times that we’re more reluctant to pay a monthly subscription for a game? I think this is partially true – I’m cutting down the number of games I subscribe to and playing the remainder more. I’ve also dropped secondary accounts I had for some games. But I’m still happy to drop a three month sub on a new game to see how it fares post-launch.

Are we likely to return to MMOs if they switch to free-to-play? I’m still undecided on this. Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online have failed to pull me back in. Everquest 2 hasn’t managed to grip me for an extended period. But that’s largely a lack of time. What I play changes from month to month, and while I have a few core games I still play, I rarely get the chance to return to older titles.

What next for MMOs? Stick with subscriptions or forge ahead with freemium? Ultimately, I think that it’ll be the player rather than the developer that decides.

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• The Declining MMO Market
• How Warcraft Will Never End
• Free to Play: MMO Retirement?

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

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Post tags: free to play, subscriptions

It doesn’t matter what MMO I talk about, I’ve only ever played two thirds of the game. It doesn’t matter if it’s World of Warcraft, RIFT, Star Wars: The Old Republic or any of the countless other worlds I’ve kicked around in. Whatever the game, I’ve avoided PvP completely.

I’ve not always been like this: back in the vanilla days of WoW I’d play my hideously overpowered mage and have huge amounts of fun. Looking back, I think that my interest in PvP plummeted when all these special rules and exceptions came in. Resistance gear. Diminishing returns. Trinket rules. Yadda yadda. It went from being one game to three, all forced together like three unruly brothers.

Which is why the last few months have been incredibly strange. On the one hand there’s Guild Wars 2, where I’ve spent huge chunks of my beta time in World versus World (versus World versus World… etc). And then there’s Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, a game that I’d describe as MMO PvP without all the MMO crap that goes along with it.

If you’ve been watching the MMO blogsphere, reading my articles on ZAM or generally following Kill Ten Rats, you’ll have noticed that a large chunk of Guild Wars 2 is made up of what I’d describe as “inclusive” PVP. There’s no vital talent spec or special gear to succeed in WvW. Just dive in and away you go. Competitive PVP is still there in smaller battleground matches, but for big mosh fights you can go with what you have.

I first played Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes three weeks ago, but since then I’ve been playing the game almost every day. By putting a 15 minute time limit on matches and stripping down the concept of arena PvP, there’s a streamlined route to getting into the game. No prep-work beyond a five minute tutorial, no gearing up, no talents to choose. Just in and fight.

The strange thing is, my niche in PvP is completely different from my DPS spellcaster roots. In Guild Wars 2 WvW I’m more comfortable playing a Guardian, with the ability to take a bit more damage but still have some spellcasting. In Wrath of Heroes I tend to stick to a tiny healer named Glowgob and a tiny Skaven rogue called Ikkrik. They’re all loaded with survivability, can deal a bit of damage and hold their own against most others.

Interestingly, both games are also microtransaction funded. While I’ve dabbled in the paid pool for both games, it’s not something that’s completely necessary. What I would say is that it helps you get where you want to go quickly. With Wrath of Heroes, you can either unlock a hero by playing hours of matches to earn gold, or you can pay cash and unlock it instantly. After facing the prospect of having to grind for PvP gear in full-fat MMOs, you can guess which route I took.

That said, there’s one way in which all forms of PvP are still absolutely identical, and that’s that people are generally mindless idiots that don’t listen. They don’t fight near the flag/artifact/objective/thing. They don’t focus their damage on a single target. They don’t stick together in a group and they certainly don’t listen to tactics or strategy. As a result, the easiest way to decimate your opposition is to get organised, communicate well and generally kick ass. It’s the kind of stuff that Gnomeageddon and Cynwise have been preaching for years, and it still works.

What I find slightly harder to understand is why there’s this desperate desire to push the eSports agenda into large scale MMOs, as if it’s somehow going to translate to the average joe having an occasional arena match. Why not just build a dedicated PvP game that’s intended to pull in the heavyweight eSports players but is also accessible to newcomers, and leave MMOs as the slightly unbalanced but largely fun thing that they traditionally were?

While I love the PvP action I’m now getting from my games, I don’t think that they’ll encourage me to play PvP arenas in MMOs. The PvP game is too divorced from the PvE experience to be meaningful for me any more. With other games able to provide a more accessible and rewarding PvP experience without any overly cumbersome barrier to entry, I’m already sold on where to spend my time.

(Note: Inspired by Gordon’s rant about why he doesn’t like raiding)

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• The Trans-Temporal MMO Sausage
• Guild Wars 2, Keybindings & Razer Naga
• The Movement-Based MMO of the Future

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: guild wars 2, pvp, wrath of heroes

I’m incredibly excited by the future of MMO gaming. This year alone, the launch of TERA, Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World shows that developers aren’t afraid to experiment with new concepts in order to keep the genre alive and fresh. The free-to-play market is also bubbling away, with Firefall, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Ancients, and Tribes Ascended offering us new and unique experiences.

If anything, the free-to-play model has shown Western studios that it is possible to make a good quality MMO without the overhanging subscription free. Although we’ve seen many top-flight examples switch from subscription to free-to-play and do well, it’s likely that some of the next wave of MMOs will directly choose similar model, even if there’s a box fee attached to get started.

The trouble is, MMOs have a long lifespan. World of Warcraft has been running since 2004, but there some that started even earlier that are still in operation today. By coming up with alternative ways to generate income from MMOs, developers can keep their games running with much smaller player numbers. For new entrants looking to make a splash, the MMO marketplace is getting pretty congested.

Slicing the Sausage

There are two ways in which MMOs can differentiate themselves – thematically and mechanically. We don’t want to be paying for games that have similar settings and similar mechanics, as they don’t offer us new experiences. Cut away the story and you’re left with an identikit experience.

If you collect all of the different MMOs and arrange them by the time period they’re set, then  compare their complexity on  art style, story, strategy and so on, you end up with a rough sausage shape. This Trans-Temporal MMO Sausage bulges where there are several MMOs with similar settings and offering a range of styles, and thins out where there are only maybe one or two fairly superficial games.

This means that there’s some very familiar sausage-meat in the regions of medieval high fantasy and far-flung spaceship-faring future. Creating a an MMO with a theme in one of these periods relies on huge amounts of effort to be unique in terms of mechanics, story delivery and so on.

But this also means that there are opportunities. Although 1800s era Steampunk is often cited as a possible choice (indeed, the whole range from 17th to 21st Century is ripe for exploration), there’s also the classical and prehistoric eras available. In the future, cyberpunk (as characterized by Deus Ex) and other near-future non-apocalyptic options are possible. It’s more challenging to try and produce games that fit these periods without being a history lesson, but alternate history/alternate reality games such as The Secret World are examples of how this could give writers space to create fantastic stories.

Cutting the sausage another way, there’s also the way of looking at how our games are made, from the simplistic to the complex. As an example, this is why Guild Wars 2 is gaining momentum even though it’s high fantasy – many of the mechanics and concepts it uses are either completely new or radically different to others in the same space. It also means that offering something different, such as a medieval MMORTS, has the potential to stand out.

That complexity doesn’t just have to come from mechanics. It can be choices like art style (realistic versus simplistic), story delivery (text quests versus fully voice acted), action style and so on. Whatever criteria are important to you can be added to give the sausage some cross-section.

Stating the Obvious

For MMO veterans, this is nothing new. We tend to stick to our current game because of the relationships we build while playing it, and only tend to switch long-term if something significantly different gains enough critical mass to hold us. We might dabble in several different games, but we tend to only stick to one or two.

It’s for this reason that I’m dubious about announcements like The Elder Scrolls Online. From what I’ve read and heard about the game, it’s largely following a Warcraft-style experience in a fantasy setting, with possibly some Guild Wars 2 questing elements thrown in. While the lure of the franchise might pull some players in, I don’t think there’s enough there at present to make it sufficiently unique to those who aren’t familiar with the game world. Times may change as more news comes out, but currently it feels like the wrong game at the wrong time.

Examine the Sausage

If I were looking at developing a new MMO today, I’d look at plotting out my own sausage. Look at the games currently on the market or likely to come out over the next couple of years that I’m likely to be competing with, and see if they create any bulges. If there’s places where the sausage is particularly thin, they’re ripe for me to exploit. That leads on to new types of gameplay, and so on.

While pulling on an existing franchise is great for growing the overall MMO playerbase, it’s completely new settings combined with radically different settings that have the biggest potential to succeed in a genre where players mostly stick to what they’re playing unless there’s something sufficiently different to pull them away. It’s why I’m enthusiastic about this year’s MMO releases, and why I’m hoping that it’s something that continues in the future.

Vive la différence!

(sausage image from David Monniaux on Wikimedia Commons)

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• Just Listen You Idiots!
• Guild Wars 2, Keybindings & Razer Naga
• To The Future!

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: difference, guild wars 2, sausage

Boxes of chocolates are like boxes of frogs. They’re both boxes. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarity ends, as anyone who’s received a box of frogs on Valentine’s Day will surely agree. So, boxes of frogs are actually nothing like boxes of chocolates, and should under no circumstances be used as a gift for loved ones. In fact, putting frogs in boxes is a ludicrous idea, unless you happen to be a biologist specialising in amphibians.

Another thing completely unlike a box of frogs is a blog about massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as this one. The construction, creation and maintenance of a collection of articles about your favourite MMOs is a happy, frog-free zone in which you can share your thoughts, opinions and ideas on the games you play. It can be anything you like, from the straight-talking dispenser of sage advice to the surreal idealist struggling against an inner pessimist.

In short, MMO blogs are for everyone, including you. They say everyone has a book in them, and while I’ve yet to see one show up on an x-ray that means a stonking amount if you turn them into articles on a blog. Even if it’s mostly pictures, although I’m not sure how they’d come out unless the book inside you was hermetically sealed. Besides, instead of waiting for said book to explode out of your chest like an alien looking for a face to hug, why not let it out gently? Far safer, in my humble opinion.

This is where the jolly good chap Sypster over at Bio break comes in. He’s devised a cunning, frog absent and above all pain-free way to safely nurture your budding blogging needs, helping you develop into a stout oak of the blogging community. It doesn’t matter which particular game tickles your moustache, as long as you have the desire to write.

During the month of May, a veritable frog chocolate box of bloggers will be on-hand to lend a hand as part of the Newbie Blogger Initiative. We’ll be there to help all would-be, could-be and should-definitely-be bloggers with getting a helping hand as you start scribing. All in one easy to swallow capsule.

If you’ve ever felt the urge to start your own blog in safety, now’s your chance. If you’ve ever written a monolithic forum post, now’s the time to give them a new home. And if you’ve ever written the Mother Of All Comments on someone else’s blog, only to have the blasted thing eat your carefully constructed prose and replace it with nothingness, now is your chance to exact revenge.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• Getting Started with MMO Blogging
• That 6AM Moment
• How Beer Prevents the Zombie Apocalypse

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, newbie blogger initiative, silly

I promise this article is going to be the last thing I write about the World of Warcraft Annual Pass. Once this is finished, I’m done with the whole sorry saga. To me, the whole process has been a great concept gone disastrously wrong, exposing how far a company will push their terms and conditions at the expense of customer satisfaction.

It’s also – and I’m being honest here – the symptom of a bet gone bad. Of calculating the probability of when key events would happen, and getting it wrong. While these events are still somewhat inside Blizzard’s control, it’s something I’m aware I’ve got to take on the chin.

But it’s not an emotionless decision. One doesn’t just turn their back on a games studio in the blink of an eye. It takes time for opinions to change, for the fan to metamorph into the cynic. It took this latest saga to realise just how far my opinions had changed about the studio and their commercial decisions.

Winding the clock back, I was completely in favour of the Annual Pass when it was announced back in October 2011. Blizzard were offering guaranteed access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, a free copy of Diablo 3 and a free mount just for signing up to a 12 month commitment. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer to me. I’d still be playing Blizzard games, so I’d essentially be getting a whole handful of free stuff. You can imagine my glee.

The first clanger was the announcement that Dragon Soul would be the final content patch before the expansion. This meant that at best I’d be working through a six month content drought while the guild progressed through the Dragon Soul raid. Little did I realise how brutally effective the LFR tool would be. Within two weeks I’d been through the raid, killed Deathwing and finished the story. As the guild leader dished out loot, the future of seeing this same scenario play out week after week appeared in my mind. I rejected it. I’d seen what I wanted. I was done.

The second clanger – Diablo 3. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game. This was the icing on the top rather than the cake itself. But after playing through the beta I gave up even considering it. While it’s not a bad game per se, it’s an incredibly direct continuation of the mechanics, art style and even game engine used in the previous games. For me the beta didn’t add anything substantial to the experience beyond the use of true 3D graphics. I went from considering a Collectors Edition preorder to outright dismissing the game in one playthrough.

The third clanger – The handling of the MoP beta invites themselves. Not only did we see the climbdown from “everyone in at once” to “invites in waves”, but we also saw some barefaced untruths. After being told in forum posts and news articles that priority would be given to the longest subscribers who signed up quickest, it’s clear from various news sources that it simply isn’t the case. But it’s the mismanagement of how this has been handled that really strikes me. Instead of firing up new beta servers, Blizzard sticks to their guns.

The fourth clanger – experiencing the beta. After playing through the new starting zones and some of the high-end content, I’ve come to realise that the game is offering me more of the same. Like a TV series that has outstayed its welcome or a line of books that have run out of ideas, I’m reminded that I’m still playing the same game that I was seven years ago. The core of the game hasn’t moved, even while the MMO landscape has been changing around it.

As a result of all of this, I made the unusual step of contacting my card provider and blocking any further payments to Blizzard. Tired of continuing to pay for something I was no longer using, tired of the repeated changes by Blizzard and tired of evasive responses by customer support teams, I took matters into my own hands. It’s at this point that I realised just how far things had changed, from a plucky developer eager to please to a businesslike service provider mired in policies and procedures. I was a fan of the Blizzard they used to be, not the ActiBlizz they’ve become.

In truth I haven’t been playing World of Warcraft for four months. Instead, I’ve been returning to games like Rift and trying out new ones like Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve also been involved in a handful of betas, some of which I hope to talk about someday. All of this has reminded me that it’s variety that makes the games fun, and although World of Warcraft was a fun experience for the many years it lasted, it’s a game whose time has come and gone.

That’s not to say that I begrudge those who are still enjoying their time in WoW. If you are, good luck to you. If you still have faith in Blizzard then I’m happy for you. If you’re happy with raiding the same instance for months on end while paying a subscription for it, then that’s entirely your decision.

The whole situation has reminded me of a greater truth: it should be easy to judge the value of entertainment. Choosing to spend money on a particular game, book or film should be about how much enjoyment we’ll get out of it. Trying to balance cost against options and terms and conditions – these things are better left to mobile phone contracts or car insurance. Gaming should be a simple choice, not a complex negotiation.

That’s my final word on it. World of Warcraft and I? Done.

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• My Annual Pass Regret
• To The Future!
• The Supermassive Beta

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: annual pass, fugpusc, mists of pandaria

I’ll start off with the issues around pre-purchasing. In the UK at least, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Within the space of three years we’ve gone from a free preorder system, to paying a nominal deposit, to paying full price for a pre-purchase. Sure, I can choose to wait until the game launches and the previews are our so that I feel more confident in my purchase, but then I might miss out on getting a spot on the same server as my friends or not getting the character name I wanted. Add to that special pre-purchase bonuses like early access and in-game items, and delaying that purchase can seem like a bad idea.

As Spinks  and Ravious points out, this could be the start of a worrying trend.  As more bonuses get added to pre-purchase sales, the the pressure increases on us to take the plunge and sign up.

So what can we do about it as gamers? Making a pre-purchase is a risky activity, much like placing a bet. We’re taking a gamble that in six month’s time, there’ll be a game that we want to play. If we win, we get the game we want, plus some extra bonuses. If we lose, we get a game we don’t want or (rarely) no game at all.

I think that if pre-purchases are going to become more prevalent, we need to accept that they’re a risky proposition. They might not be as risky as backing a game on Kickstarter, but there’s still a gamble there. We can mitigate some of that risk by reading previews and attending conventions to get some hands-on time with the game, but that’s not always possible. At the end of the day, we’re being asked to have faith in the development team and publisher to deliver the game we want to play.

Moving from the whole pre-purchase topic for a bit, I also wanted to talk about the big carrot being offered to gamers who sign up to all sorts of MMO deals at the moment: beta access. What used to be a lottery process to encourage willing gamers to sign up to email lists is slowly changing into a substantial marketing token. That said, it’s a token that can be misused in a way that can cause more harm than good.

It’s hard to dispute that Blizzard’s Annual Pass fiasco has damaged the World of Warcraft franchise. By guaranteeing gamers with beta access in the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, the firm were inundated with over a million signups. As the start of beta approached, Blizzard then began a massive climbdown, stating that invites would go out in waves. And although there were assurances that priority would be given to long-standing subscribers who took up the offer earliest, I have direct experience that this is simply not the case.

That’s not to say that getting beta access is the only hurdle. The beta servers themselves are swamped with players, particularly in areas of new content. Compressing hundreds of thousands of invites into four servers creates a dismal playing experience. Questing, experiencing content isn’t made difficult because of the game, but by the sheer volume of other people.

Sure, beta is beta. But it’s not. Beta is a pre-release playable demo, a marketing tool employed by developers in order to build up interest in their product. Although there are a number of people in betas who work to give good quality feedback in order to improve the game, there’s also a large number of gamers who just want to take a peek, look around and decide for themselves if it’s something they want to buy.

Going back to where I started, where do these two concepts marry up? Basically, if you’re asking gamers to part with a substantial amount of cash in return for beta access, developers need to make sure that what they’re offering can meet player expectations. This may mean ensuring that media access has been granted beforehand so that they can help to describe the game experience. It might also mean delivering a more polished beta that’s accessible by a greater number of players, in case the promotion that you offer becomes unexpectedly popular.

Pre-purchase and commitment schemes are a gamble, either against the initial game or against a continual flow of content. But they’re also a more substantial bet against the goodwill of the developer. A good pre-purchase followed by a good beta and good final release can earn a developer extra fan approval. By contrast, a badly handled pre-purchase or commitment, followed by bad or mishandled delivery of the beta or finished product can damage fan opinion of a developer and their publisher, as well as harm future sales and subscription revenue.

Caveat emptor, but caveat venditor too.

Update: Since this article was published, Arenanet made a post on their Guild Wars 2 Facebook fanpage. In it, they stated that “if we max out our beta server capacity, we may *temporarily* make pre-purchase unavailable until we can bring more capacity online”. In my opinion this is a responsible, good thing.

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• Likes, Dislikes and Opinions
• SWTOR: The Broken Mess of Crew Skills
• If Not You, Who Else?

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: latin is awesome, preorder, prepurchase, rant

Confession time: I’m pretty excited about Guild Wars 2. After being able to get in to both press beta weekends, I’ve been impressed by the amount of detail already in the game. All the major game systems are present and correct, letting me get a real feel for what’s involved. You can find some of my more general thoughts on the game over at ZAM.

As part of the process of adapting from more stationary MMOs like World of Warcraft and SWTOR to ones that are more movement focused like TERA and Guild Wars 2, I’ve been reassessing how to make the most of my MMO-designed Logitech G15 and Razer Naga Molten. It’s not as straightforward as you’d think. Guild Wars 2 only has a single action bar with 10 abilities, which in theory would make the Razer Naga pretty much redundant. Add modifiers like weapon switching and profession abilities into the mix, and combine them with trying to limit moving your left hand so you can stay mobile, and you can see why a different approach is needed.

It’s why I spent the last four weeks playing movement based games like Team Fortress 2 in order to get used to moving again. I used to play a lot of Counter Strike and Quake 3 Arena back in the day, but raiding as a Mage in World of Warcraft has made my reflexes and spacial awareness soft and flabby. There’s only so many ways you can stand at the back pressing One, One, One, Two and occasionally moving out of bad stuff.

This is where the transition to Guild Wars 2 gets interesting. Instead of a whole bunch of abilities, I have 5 weapon skills, one healing skill, 3 slot skills and one elite skill. I can swap around my healing, slot and elite skills out of combat, but they generally tend to stay fixed. The five weapon skills, on the other hand, can be swapped in combat. This is done either through switching between two sets of weapons, or through a profession ability like the Elementalist attunements, or through a Slot or Elite skill, like the Engineer’s various toys.

It’s at this point that I started to seriously look at keybindings. When you’re in a crowd movement is less of an issue. But if you’re facing mobs alone or trying to survive in PvP movement is as important as dealing damage. I haven’t done a single arena in World of Warcraft, and it really shows in how much training Guild Wars 2 has put me through.

So where to start? The initial issue is left hand movement. Skills are bound to keys 1 to 0 along the top. WASD is home to your standard movement, with Q and E providing strafe movement. Q, E, W and S will also provide a double-tap to dodge if needed. Beyond that keys F1 to F4 provide access to special profession abilities, while the WTF key (`) will provide weapon switching for those professions that support it. Tab still does target switching.

By default your first skill is set to auto-repeat after the first cast, but you can do this with any other weapon skill if you prefer by holding down CTRL and right-clicking it. Useful, but its ultimate value depends on what weapons and profession you’re playing with.

The first option is to look at mapping the F1-F4 keys to the buttonpad on the Razer Naga. This only frees up four keys, meaning that either my heal (bad) or elite skill (not so bad) also gets thrown to the Naga. It also doesn’t prevent me from occasionally bashing the Esc key by mistake when trying to move from a weapon switch to F1. While it might have some potential, I eventually had to drop this one.

The next option is to bind my heal, slot skills and elite skill to the Razer Naga. This works to a point, although I had to put an adhesive pad on the heal button to make sure I could find it reliably and quickly. I think this could have potential as most abilities on the right of the actionbar are on a longer cooldown, but I can see it causing conflicts with having my voice chat push-to-talk bound there as well. During the more recent press weekend this was the setup I eventually ran with.

There is a third option, and that’s largescale rebinding. I can either look to drop everything down a row, so that WASD becomes SZXC and re-form everything around that. This way I can still map the profession abilities on F1 to F4 to the Razer Naga and still avoid kludging Esc. The other way is to potentially unbind the turn keys A and D and backpedal S, drop the bindings for strafe and move forward down a row to replace them, and instead rebind my heal and slot abilities to QWER and F. Both of these have potential, and I’m hoping to find one that feels natural over future beta sessions.

Is the Razer Naga worth using with Guild Wars 2? Well, yes and no. If you’ve already got the classic version or even a Razer Naga Molten then I’d suggest giving it a fair go, using the training stickers or adhesive pads to help your thumb retrain as needed. If you’ve not got one but you’re considering it, I’d suggest a closer look at the Razer Naga Hex. The button layout is designed for MOBA use, but I reckon it’ll be ideal for Guild Wars 2’s reduced dependency on hotkeys. Plus it’s green and, as we all know, green is good.

Meanwhile if you’ve got any keymapping suggestions of your own then feel free to share them. April 10th is only a few short weeks away and the promised land of beta awaits. Any planning done now will probably pay dividends later. Just remember, if you played last weekend then respect the NDA!

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• Just Listen You Idiots!
• The Trans-Temporal MMO Sausage
• The Movement-Based MMO of the Future

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: combat, guild wars 2, keybindings, razer naga

The problem is, we’re crap at providing feedback. Sure, we’ve mastered the art of shouting “This is crap” or “This is good” as loud as possible by as many people as possible. But let’s be honest, humans mastered the art of shouting loudly thousands of years ago. We’ve kind of moved beyond the idea of yelling “Fire!” or “Look, Mammoth!”. We’re dealing with PCs and consoles now, not rocks and spears. Last I heard, your iRock didn’t hook you up with Reddit.

So what gives? In this age of free and frank exchange of ideas, how can we improve the chances of getting the kind of games we want to play? And just as importantly, how can we ensure that when developers and publishers get it wrong that we don’t bludgeon them into silence with noisesome complaints? We want to be heard, but we also want them to take risks and come up with fresh ideas, right?

Right?

Before I started blogging about videogames in general and MMOs in particular, I used to document them on Wikipedia. While it’s great training to help develop research skills, it’s ultimately a soul-destroying experience for two main reasons. Firstly, the publications that covered the early days of videogaming are largely lost to history, meaning articles on many gaming legends have been purged due to a lack of “reliable sources”.

By far the bigger reason though was that it runs counter to the notion of creative writing as a platform for sharing both information and opinion. I was reading all these great articles where authors celebrate the great and good by extolling a game’s virtues. They don’t just stipulate that something’s good or bad, explain their opinions and weigh up pros and cons. And they could do it in such an entertaining way that it was a joy to read.

It’s probably no surprise to you that after a while I grew tired of Wikipedia and its critique by committee and abandoned the project for pastures new. I still had an itch to write, which is how this blog came about. The difference is that now I get more freedom to decide what I write about and, more importantly, how I do it.

But it isn’t as broad as liking or disliking something in general terms. As an example, I like all ice-cream, but I prefer Ben and Jerry’s to Haagen Dazs because of the creamier taste and more interesting textures. Further in, I prefer coffee, banana and toffee flavoured ice-cream because I feel they work better with the cream base, and besides I prefer fruit to be in a frozen yogurt or sorbet. But put a bowl of ice-cream in front of me and I’ll still eat it happily.

It’s this bit about the granularity of likes and dislikes that I wish people would get more, particularly when offering their opinion on videogames and MMOs. I completely get that there are games which have elements we don’t like, or that are made by publishers who’ve done some questionable things. But the important thing is to make sure that our feedback is specific, proportional and targeted. Otherwise there’s a big risk of us being seen of as perpetual whiners, fanboys or worse. Our thoughts and opinions are pretty meaningless if we just operate as a toggle between pure love and outright hatred.

There’s also an important reason behind providing more specific feedback – it helps developers make better games. Sure they might be unable to fix your particular issue for your particular game, but it means that next time around they’ll be able to iterate on it and improve it. You can see this easily through the patch notes for World of Warcraft. If we’d come out raging against the game, bombing review sites and whipping up frenzied campaigns, would the game have lasted through seven years and three expansions?

In the face of a wall of criticism, developers are likely to do something we’ve accused Hollywood for years – play it safe. That means no more risky storylines or plot themes. No more exploratory game styles or new concepts, at least not by the mainstream studios. Instead it’ll be wall-to-wall Michael Bay: grand explosions, impressive budgets and finely polished product, but ultimately nothing new. We want developers to feel they can take risks, safe in the knowledge that fans will be reasonable but fair in their response. Currently we’re not there, favouring the loud and uncompromising approach promoted by many of the online communities in existence today.

And that’s really the nub of it. We live in a world that’s more connected than ever, where the only thing faster than the speed of light is the speed of bad news. It takes mere moments to write a forum post, start a campaign and amass a legion of followers with a common grievance. Sometimes that’s a great thing, but when it becomes our default response it loses its meaning, instead being seen as a knee-jerk reaction rather than a considered response. It’s the same with review-bombing – if we grossly penalise games for proportionally minor yet significant issues, we’re destroying the value of those outlets as a reflection of opinion. Knowing what goes on with Metacritic user reviews or Amazon product reviews, would you pay them any more than a cursory glance?

It’s why, in the absence of a reliable and reasonable way of aggregating public opinion, we still need people to write about videogames and share their views. And let’s be honest – reviews aren’t there to help validate your own opinions or justify which games you buy. They’re there to help you make an informed choice if you’re unsure what to buy. If someone rates a game differently to you then that’s fine – it probably means that they have different opinions of the game. But that’s the thing about opinions – there’s no right answer. Scores are all subjective, and wailing against someone for giving a game a different is like wailing against a friend for liking a different band or film.

That doesn’t mean that as individual consumers our opinions aren’t valid – far from it! But we need to get better at articulating and expressing our opinions as sharp tools operated with precision, rather than crudely wielded blunt objects. A carefully written blogpost, an expressive YouTube video; there are several tools that allow us to put our stake in the ground and say “This is my opinion and why I have it”. Several videogame critics have started their career in that exact fashion, through developing a voice for their opinion.

As a culture, we have one of the most effective ways of providing feedback to those who provide us with our entertainment. Developers and publishers are keen to talk with us, discuss our concerns and use that to make better games. Community managers are there to help us share our opinions with those developers and publishers. But the system is only as valuable as the information we as players and consumers put into it, and collectively we’re doing a pretty poor job.

So the next time you’re asked to jump on a campaign or help promote a cause, ask yourself some questions. Does the response we’re giving fit with the size of the problem? Can I help with making the message clearer or more specific? Does this encourage developers to make the kind of games I want to see? And most importantly: does this help move gaming culture forward?

The future of gaming and games development is in our hands. Our opinion governs what games get made and how they’re created. Let’s make it count for something.

Like this? Try these other related posts:

• Pre-Purchase for Beta
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• If Not You, Who Else?

NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: opinion, rant, whine

Earlier this week, ArenaNet announced that Pre-purchases of Guild Wars 2 will start on April 10th. As an added bonus everyone taking part also gets access to beta weekends. If you’re thinking of going for this MMO then I’d seriously suggest going for this deal, if only to get used to just how different this game is for spellcaster types.

As a result, I’ve gone through my notes from the closed beta back in February and pulled together this quick guide on spellcasters in Guild Wars 2, focusing on how they work, what the common features are and what sets them apart. I’ve also tried to explain how each profession feels in order to give you an idea of the playstyle. I’ve been a bit brief in some of my explanations, so if you have questions please let me know in the comments!

If you’ve been brought up on a diet of Warcraft, Rift or SWTOR then you’re probably used to the traditional style of spellcaster combat. There’s a meatshield at the front who’s job is to stand there and get hit. There’s healers mashing their keyboards desperately trying to prevent people from dying. And there’s caster DPS, playing their rotation like a orchestral symphony of destruction and occasionally interrupted by Bad Stuff on the floor.

As I found out during the Press Beta last month, that approach won’t work in Guild Wars 2. Instead of being able to conduct affairs from the back, we’re expected to get into the thick of things. And occasionally tank. And heal ourselves. And dodge incoming attacks. But although it was a painful experience, it’s the good type of pain that leaves you mentally exhausted and grinning like a madman. Since then, I’ve been putting myself in a training regime to help meet the challenge.

Switching from playing a spellcaster in other MMOs to playing one in Guild Wars 2 is a little like changing out a greying Gandalf for something from a martial arts movie. Deciding what to cast is just as important as where you’re standing and what weapon you’re carrying. At any point you could be dealing damage, tanking an enemy or healing yourself up – or all three at once. It’s a much more intense experience, which is something a lot of veteran spellcasters have been crying out for.

Oh yes, there’s also no mana bar. Instead of managing a resource and trying to maximise your damage output around it, Guild Wars 2 is all about using the right abilities for the situation at that time, with the flow of the game changing rapidly so that you’re forced to flex those abilities.

Although Guild Wars 2 includes three different types of spellcaster (Elementalist, Necromancer and Mesmer), there’s a couple of features common to all three of them. Your first priority is to find your self-heal ability and commit it to memory, as you’ll need to keep yourself alive rather than rely on others. The other thing you’ll notice is that you don’t get a huge amount of time to move out of the way of incoming attacks and AoE, which is where dodging comes in. It’s worth getting used to this technique before getting into the meat of the game, as you’ll need it to handle some of the tougher content.

The third feature that all spellcasters share in Guild Wars 2 is having their spells linked to the currently equipped weapons. Changing weapons gives you access to a new set of five skills, meaning that you don’t need a mass of hotkeys just to have every ability mapped. Both the Mesmer and Necromancer also allow you to have two sets of weapons that you can quickly swap between in combat. You can read more about weapon skills and other character abilities in my summary on ZAM.

With that out of the way, the final task is to choose what kind of spellcaster to play. Classes are known as Professions in Guild Wars 2, with spellcasters represented by Elementalists, Mesmers and Necromancers. There’s no dedicated healing profession, although you can tweak them (particularly Elementalist) to provide some groupwide healing. The great thing is that although each class will feel slightly familiar, ArenaNet’s approach really freshens things up.

Probably the easiest to grasp is the Necromancer. If you’ve played a Warlock, Shadow Priest or other class with a lifestealing mechanic then this will feel right at home. A fair few of your abilities will drain life from your enemies, with others inflicting poison, bleeding or crippling effects. The Necromancer basic heal is also pretty unique, as you summon a Blood Fiend that heals you every time it attacks. You can also pick up skills that allow you to summon other blood creatures if that’s your thing.

The Death Shroud ability is the Necronamcer’s signature move, putting them in an altered state that provides them with another set of skills and allowing them to turn their accumulated life force (absorbed from killed creatures) into health. If you’re going to be temporarily tanking a mob, switching into Death Shroud should keep you up for longer.

Mesmers are probably the next easiest to get to grips with, but also provide buckets of chaotic fun. One way is to create illusions of yourself, either as autonomous clones or attacking phantasms. Another way is to load enemies up with random conditions or debuffs. You don’t know quite what you’re going to get but that’s half the fun! If your mission is to create a character with a distinct Loki feel, this is for you.

As with Necromancers, the Mesmer also has a signature move. In this case it’s the ability to shatter illusions to disrupt surrounding enemies or reflect incoming attacks. While it doesn’t help as much with tanking damage as the Necromancer’s Death Shroud, there’s more flexibility when you’re getting paggered by a crowd. It allows you to be more nimble and flexible, almost being a spellcaster equivalent of a rogue or thief.

The Elementalist profession is possibly the most difficult one to master, but comes with the added benefit of a high degree of flexibility. If you’ve played mages or shaman in other MMOs, you’ll be used to the elemental spell types on offer here. As well as throwing fireballs or ice shards at your opponents, the Elementalist can also summon weapons for themselves and their party to deal additional damage. You can also summon temporary creatures to fight by your side depending on which elemental attunement you’re currently using.

That attunement is the Elementalist’s signature move. Instead of switching weapons like the Mesmer or Necromancer in order to change abilities, the Elementalist changes which of the four elements they’re attuned to. Earth will help with soaking damage, water can help with healing and fire and air provide alternate styles of dealing damage. This allows a skilled elementalist to quickly switch roles in response to a changing situation, but it does require a greater level of skill and/or practice to master.

There is one spellcaster gap with Guild Wars 2, and that’s the pure healer. Although you can try to force a Water elementalist into that role, the output just isn’t enough to be the sole supplier of healing to an entire group. Instead, everyone in the party is expected to deal damage, heal and occasionally tank. It means that responsibilities are shared more evenly between players, as well as making it much easier to assemble a party for group content.

Change is definitely coming to MMOs, with Guild Wars 2 offering some real challenges for those players looking for a fresh approach to spellcasters. While this change might not be for everyone, I can see arena spellcasters and raidiers suffering from malaise or boredom really going for something like this. If you’re contemplating getting into Guild Wars 2 then the best advice is to get in early, try out the spellcaster professions and see which ones work for you.

Like this? Try these other related posts:

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NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: design, elementalist, mage, mesmer, necromancer, noob

In case you’ve missed it, last week saw the release of Mass Effect 3. The launch saw most of the internet fall quiet as fans rapidly devoured a game almost universally praised by critics. But as players across the globe slowly emerged from an intense period of gaming, the first notes of discord started to emerge.

What started as a few quiet murmurs rapidly snowballed into an online campaign: fans were not satisfied with the game ending and started to demand that BioWare change it. Seasoned video games journalists called the movement “idiotic” and “angry”. Harsh words indeed.

But is this response from the video gaming press justified, or do the fans have a point? Have BioWare produced an ending suitable for the game, or should they go back to the drawing board? More fundamentally, can a studio enduring a difficult relationship with its fans still have a meaningful dialogue?

I’ll try to answer all these questions and more, but be warned: Here Be Spoilers.

Firstly, I want to address what I mean by a Good or Bad ending.

A Good ending is in keeping with the rest of the game, both in terms of concluding the story arc and providing a suitable end-point for the player’s emotions. It’s also the payoff or reward for finishing the game, the recognition of some 30 hours of gameplay. It doesn’t have to be a happy or even bittersweet ending, but it needs to fit in terms of context, emotion and reward.

By contrast, a Bad ending seems disjointed with the rest of the game. It uses tropes such as Deus Ex Machina in order to conclude the story, or has characters behaving unusually or displaying unknown abilities in order to make the conclusion possible. It also ignores the player’s (and character’s) emotional state, creating an ending that “feels” wrong. There’s also the disproportionate payoff – a 60 hour game ending with a 60 second cutscene would leave players feeling somewhat cheated.

From all of these measures above, Mass Effect 3 exhibits Bad endings. There’s extensive use of tropes in order to conclude the stories, Commander Shepard demonstrates previously unknown abilities, the emotional rebalancing just isn’t there and the payoff is both inadequate and contradictory.

So how did BioWare drop the ball, and why are video game journalists struggling to understand the dissatisfaction?

To answer the first question, there’s a rumour (unproven) that the endings for Mass Effect 3 were changed following a November 2011 script leak. Given that it takes 2 to 3 months to QA and publish a game before release, this would have left BioWare with 2 short months over the holiday season to reuse what they could in order to build something new. That’s a huge task, which (if true) would explain why the payoff is small and the storyline incongruous.

There’s also the challenge of trying to manage a project as large as Mass Effect 3, ensuring all the various aspects line up and the story and characters are emotionally consistent. This is further compounded by the number of side-missions available that the player is encouraged to complete in order to get the “perfect” ending. Trying to develop an ending that fits for a 15 hour action playthrough, a 40 hour RPG playthrough and a 70+ hour trilogy playthrough is going to cause problems.

This is probably what has thrown traditional video game journalists a curve ball. When reviewing Mass Effect 3 in isolation, the downbeat ending works as it emphasises finality. A short mission-focused game coupled with multiplayer sessions will result in a conclusion that newcomers to the series would probably be happy with. But take longer gameplay sessions into account and add to it the knowledge that fans have been waiting 4 and a half years for this moment, and you can see why expectations were much higher.

To put it another way, imagine the final film The Return of the King from Peter Jackson’s epic version of The Lord of the Rings. In one of the final scenes, Frodo and Samwise are on a rocky outcrop surrounded by lava as Mount Doom collapses around them. In isolation the story (although bleak) could have ended there. But in the context of a trilogy of tales, the payoff and conclusion needed to be larger.

Another example is the zombie romantic-comedy Shaun of the Dead. The original ending was incredibly bleak, with the hero and his love interest ending up in the cellar of a burning pub, surrounded by zombies. After testing, the ending was rebalanced to show the Army moving in, the hero being rescued and how life recovered. The change was successful, with the film gaining significant critical acclaim.

So what can be done about it?

The current campaigns for BioWare to “fix” the ending will, in all likelihood, end up with no positive outcome for either the company or the gamers. With no satisfying conclusion to the game and BioWare emphatically stating that they won’t release any new content that occurs after the game, players are left with little motivation to purchase any downloadable mission packs.

The job of the video game journalist has also just become that much harder for titles like Mass Effect, where the experience of the returning gamer is as important to consider as that of the newcomer to the series. A game can’t be considered in isolation any more, but rather how it builds upon the artistic endeavour and legacy of the franchise.

But do gamers have a right to demand such things from our developers? Absolutely. Although video games are a form of artistic expression created by the labours of a development team, as paying customers we are the ultimate critics. It is our job to assess if a package of entertainment is worth buying, guided by reviews and developer history. If a game does something we don’t like, we should be free to explain our displeasure clearly, accurately and reasonably.

While the saga of Commander Shepard draws to a close and with it a trilogy that has defined an era of gaming, it’s also shown that there’s a huge amount the gaming industry still has to learn. From developers understanding how the expectations of fans can grow over a series, through to journalists understanding how their approach on epic gaming sagas needs to change. Fans also need to work with developers on how concerns and grievances are aired, discussed and responded to – an area where the MMO industry is leading the way. Not everything needs to be a boycott or campaign, but more open dialogue is needed.

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NEW: A Guide to Mana Obscura. All 200+ posts in topic-led guides on a wide range of MMO subjects.

© Gazimoff for ManaObscura.com, 2012. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: back to MMOs soon I promise, bioware, mass effect 3, storytelling