I’ve ranted here before about microtransactions, and the negative effects of RMT on today’s games.  I’m not a big fan.  But what I don’t like is the type of MT that gates or changes game play.  So when Blizzard announced this week that they were adding the Pet Store to their Blizzard store for use in WoW, you might expect that I would have a problem with that as well.

Instead, as you can see here, I now own one.  It’s actually fun, as people can come up and bow to him, and he will bow back.  He’ll also do some animations that are kinda fun.

I’m still not a fan of changing game play with MT.  Even the moves that SOE made this week rubbed me the wrong way, converting Free Realms from a Free To Play to a Fee to Pay.  But to me, cosmetic things like this are harmless.  If you think they are stupid, you don’t have to buy one to remain competitive or able to play.  So you are free to take a pass.  To those who say that they are too much money, I say the same thing.  If it’s too much money, don’t buy it.  You don’t need it to raid/crawl/craft or whatever you like most in the game.  It’s really something you can ignore if you think it’s overpriced.

Me, I’ve already got my $10 worth out of the little guy.  Had some fun parading him around Dalaran tonight and watching others interact or try to interact with him.

I’m interested to see what else may come along for this kind of thing.  Armor dyes, color swatches to match up all your armor, other pets?  All of this kind of thing are the least objectionable form of MT to me.  The first time they ask me for cash for a key to a dungeon or the like I’m gone though.  How about you guys?

I’m excited to join a multi-author blog.  Some of my favorite blogs (I’m looking at you, KTR) are multi-author and I’m hoping that some day we can get the quality and consistency they get.  We’ve got a couple of newer bloggers to the circle I usually run in, along with old friends Oakstout and JoBildo contributing.

I’m going to keep this blog open, because I know that there are going to be things I want to say here.  Please set your readers and feeds to http://imtalkingames.com as well.  I’d love to see you all over there too.  We’ve got some exciting things planned there.  I’ll let you head over there and see for yourself.

Thanks!

In accordance with the server closure date, the Free Character Transfer service has been extended through October 15. 2009. Between September 15, 2009 and October 15, 2009 at 4:59 PM PT all characters on the affected servers are eligible for a one way, one time Free Character Transfer* to any of the remaining thirteen (13) Star Wars Galaxies servers.

Cool!  Free character transfers!  That’s always good, especially when the server you are on may be one of the soon-to-be-obsolete variety.  Duh.  But there is more;

After October 15, 2009 at 5:00 PM PT, any characters and their associated items and structures remaining on the identified servers being closed will no longer be accessible on your Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access account.

Ouch.  OK, no longer accessible? You mean deleted, right?

But wait!  There’s more!  And this is the really good part!

To access the Free Character Transfer Service, you must login to Star Wars Galaxies with the character you would like to transfer. You will be notified that your character qualifies for the free character transfer service opportunity when you login. Eligible characters may also enter “/freects” to begin the transfer process. Only one character may be transferred at a time. Please read and respond carefully to each question and answer entry you type. All Character Transfers are considered final and cannot be reversed.

This means that there is no way to transfer your characters if you are currently unsubscribed.  I say currently because the nature of MMO subscriptions is that people come and go, then come back again.  Tarkheena and I have resubbed to SWG three separate times.

So let’s do some fact inventory, shall we?

1. Many of us have enjoyed repeated returns to the SWG for visits from time to time.  During AGDC we even talked about this game in particular having that kind of draw.
2. The servers, the way they were, were completely untenable.  You could scarcely find another player, even in most of the cities.
3. They are offering free transfers.  Whoopty-freaking-do.  Of course they are.  Who in their right mind would PAY for a transfer.  This brings us to the fourth point.
4. This program was designed to MAKE YOU RESUBSCRIBE if you want to change and preserve your character.  This is horrible customer service, and by extension, business.
5. SWG is an abject failure.  I don’t think anyone involved with it pictured it working out this way.
6. SOE is not a customer-friendly company.

Here’s what chaps my hide: This was another opportunity for SOE to engender goodwill.  Instead they have taken a short-term attempt to grab a few extra dollars in callous disregard for their past and future customers.  The players and fans of this game have been jerked around more than the subscribers to just about any other game I can think of. CU, NGE, all of that stuff has been well documented.  There have been discussions here and elsewhere in the past about making it as easy as possible for customers to return to your game (and thus your income line) in every case.  I’ve abandoned games because of resubscription policies before, and this is another case where the publisher has tried to exploit people’s feelings toward their customers to callously take a month of subscription money in exchange for an opportunity to preserve those characters just in case you might want to come back at some future date.  Yet here once again, SOE didn’t think things all the way through.

All they had to do was one of two things;

1. Make character transfers available through the web site, whether or not you were currently subscribed.
2. If the above wasn’t technically viable, offer a week-long “return to archive your stuff” free access period where people could come back, pack up their houses, and move to their new server homes.  Who knows?  Maybe a few of us would get nostalgic and take out the credit card one last time.

That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now.  So I guess it’s goodbye SWG for me and Tark.  It makes me sad, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Now it’s a month or two later and you are starting to notice your Hot New Game has a few warts.  It’s still the Shiny though, and you try to ignore them.

Then it starts.

First, it’s a couple of blog posts or a tweet.  Um, it’s not as cool as we though.  A couple of people defect and go back to their All Time Favorite.  ATF takes them back because it always does, and in a month or three their account goes inactive and they try not to think about it any more.

Then there is a small swelling of people saying that the emperor has no clothes. They are pointing out legitimate concerns with the game.  Some of these people are the ones who should love the game, it’s purported target audience.  Yet they begin to second-guess the game and where it’s going.  This is where Aion is right now.  Some of the people whose opinion I respect that should be the target audience are starting to slough off the game’s subscription roles.

I’m going to go ahead and call it now.  Aion is going to hemorrhage users within the next 6 months, until the point where is is WAR-sized or smaller.

Here are the issues as I see it;

1. PVP is never going to be a viable core game mechanic in MMO’s.  There isn’t a sufficient number of PVP-oriented players to sustain a subscription model.  PVP is a niche.  People say they want PVP but honestly it’s only proven viable as a distraction.
2. Korean MMO’s which are developed for the Asian market will never maintain critical mass in the US and EU.  Why?  Because the playstyles of the two markets are too starkly different to reconcile and maintain.
3. Most PVP fans like Wolf-vs.-sheep PVP, where they are the wolves.  This is a self-defeating mechanism, because sooner or later, the sheep will get tired of being killed and ridiculed by the wolves.  Wolves will push-back against any mechanism that tries to balance the situation decrying the “removal of skill” from the equation.  No matter which way the developers go, their user base will dwindle.
4. PVP is not an end game mechanism.  If your end-game is PVP, you don’t have any end game.  Why?  Because your end game is then at the whim of the player base.  One of your bigger guilds defects for another game?  Your server is now imbalanced.   One of your sides full of gimp players?  Imbalanced.  Imbalance -> people quitting -> more imbalance -> no endgame.  As long as designers try to substitute PVP for content, this will be an issue.

I’m not a PVP hater.  It’s not my first choice for game play, but I have over 10,000 PVP kills in WoW, so it’s not like I am calling PVP out because it’s not to my personal taste.  I’m just saying that the road is littered with games that try to substitute PVP for actual content.

Is it impossible?  No, I don’t think it is.  I do believe that Aion is another one of the pretenders to the throne that will also fall by the wayside.

Please visit PVP online at http://www.pvponline.com/. (credit for graphic)

Champions is a fun game and I think that there will be a time in the future that I resub. For now though, there are a few things about the game that make me want to put it down.  First, there is the lack of polish and finish to the game.  Depending on the encounter, a mob near your level might be an appropriate challenge or it may not.  This is especially true in boss encounters.  Some of them are major undercons.  This betrays a lack of balance that permeates the game.  Second, there is the quest driven nature of the game.  Now before you think I’m going to bash quest-driven games, know that I like that style of game just fine.  You (game designers) just can’t let me run out.  As my main character reached his mid-twenties he started falling farther and farther behind the quest curve.  For example, when he was 21 he only had quests that were 2 levels higher than him available.  He was still able to do them, if not able to use the rewards immediately.  As he leveled through his twenties this problem became worse.  I could probably grind though it but mob experience is weak, and I’m not inclined to do so.

The other major issue with the game doesn’t have anything to do with game mechanics.  My guild (Casualties of War) seems to have moved on to Aion and Fallen Earth.  What was a vibrant SuperGroup at launch is now a small handful of us.  For me, the social aspect of the game is at least as important as the game itself.  So lacking that ability to hold the attention of my (admittedly ADD) friends I am left feeling more alone in a multi-player game than I am comfortable being.

The game does have a lot to recommend it though.  It’s fun when it works.  I like being able to attack and kill multiple mobs at once with my chosen power set.  The character creator has been discussed ad nauseum, but being able to make just about any kind of character is very appealing.  I do miss seeing my character morph over time as I gain power and gear.  I guess that is my DIKU-mud influenced MMO background.

Keep at it Cryptic.  You have something good there.  Please get it finished, and I’ll be back.  At least for some visits.

During AGDC this week during 2 separate events Blizzard Entertainment shared what they think makes them unique in this regard.

The first, a Gamasutra interview with Blizzard lead content designer Kevin Martens is relatively simple: Iteration.  Taking something and playing and testing it over and over.  Tweaking it and playing and testing it over and over again.  I suspect that many of us would expect that this is the essence of “polish”.  How can something be polished without lots of testing and lots of adjustments from what you found while testing?  Of course all of this iteration costs money, so that excludes some studios who may be operating on a shoestring or are under time-pressure to release a game.  It’s also clear that this is why Blizzard takes so bloodly long to get anything out.

In the second example, also on Gamasutra, you can see that great MMO development can’t be done on a highly limited budget.  It’s also harder to do if you don’t have years of back-story and multiple generations of games leading up to your project.  In WoW’s case, they already had so many of the elements of the MMO by the time they had finished Warcraft III.

World of Warcraft was launched on a foundation of 10 years of Warcraft RTS games. Brack noted the first appearance of the yellow exclamation point in the Warcraft III title, and the RPG-focused elements of the Orc Campaign in the Frozen Throne expansion.

You don’t just hit the ground running with an MMO of this scope either.  Those of us who were there for beta and launch remember the crowded servers, loot lag (I remember kneeling over a mob for 10 minutes, unable to stand), and the constant striving to catch up as the server populations exploded beyond their wildest expectations. Even then, the size of the overall team working on WoW was large.  Now, it’s huge.  From the Gamasutra article;

As an organization, World of Warcraft utilizes 20,000 computer systems, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and more than 4600 people. “Operating an online game is about more than just game development.” Pearce hopes that the importance of these non-development groups is obvious, especially given the explosive growth of the company over the last five years. “World of Warcrafthas completely changed the organization”, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the departments that they’d singled out.

Obviously, this is a huge undertaking.  You don’t just staff up to 4600 and launch an MMO.  It’s taken a total of almost 10 years to get to this point.

Blizzard’s iterative approach and “We’ll ship when it’s done” approach has served them well.  It’s pretty evident from their results in both the MMO arena and in their other games that taking time, going slow, and making sure it’s right (and more importantly, fun) is a big part of the success that Blizzard enjoys.  Now let’s see how the industry views this, and if other companies are able to adjust and work on a more Blizzard-like schedule.  It seems like the outcome makes the extra investment up front worth it.

He’s returned in a big new way with his new site GameBreakr.  The new site is a combination of news, ultra-brief reviews, and something a little more experimental, Gary’s live video podcasts.  At AGDC, he’s launching the site with the help from the folks over at Vivox.   He’s also peppering in a lot of social networking components with his presence on Facebook and Twitter as well.  It’s a little more of a 360 degree approach to an online presence than is being done elsewhere.

The tag line on the blog is “Video Game Talk You Can Trust – with Gary Gannon”  The scope of the podcasts will be everything gaming from Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and PC gaming.   I’d encourage you guys to go over to the site and check it out and click the “Game Breakr Live” tab at the top to see the live podcasts during AGDC with people from the industry, and check back each day to see what he’s got going.  I’ll be following this new experiment and see how it develops.  It’s cool to see someone take a little more complete approach to the community.

Accomplishing things when you are an idiot requires some effort and determination.  Many of the things I have accomplished in my life are heroic in nature because at the very core of my being, I’m an idiot.  I pointed this out to some of my fellow bloggers and guild members in our Champions Ventrilo channel the other night.  To my dismay, they tacitly agreed.  As a matter of fact, they tactfully tacitly agreed.

Here’s the latest example of my bumblehood;

Now, in reality, I’m a relatively smart guy.  I get it, more often than not.  But lately when it comes to gaming, I’ve noticed a trend.  For example, I’ve been playing Champions online since late beta.  Admittedly, not a terribly long time.  During this time, I have experimented with many of the pre-made power sets if not nearly all of them.  During that time, I managed to completely avoid slotting a single defensive ability.  I think it’s fair to say that I died.  A lot.  I knew something was wrong, but I was having fun and the death penalty is so small in CO.  So I kept dieing.  And dieing.  Sometimes it was so often that I felt a need to apologize to my teammates.  I’ve often used the saying that “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”  Or the southern version; “If all you do is all you’ve done, then all you’ll get is what you got.”

Clearly, I’d lost my effing mind.

I needed help.

Syp over at Bio Break and Brent from A Wall of Text walked me through a basic understanding of the defensive abilities and how they work vis-a-vis your chosen stat base.  Syp memorialized that conversation on his blog for the benefit of others who are similarly daft to me.  For those of you who aren’t daft, this is still an excellent guide and a roadmap to undestanding defensive abilities in 400 w0rds or less.  I chose a defensive ability that went well with Blambot’s (my little Munitions expert) stats.  Being that I hadn’t used my free Retcon yet on this character, I did so (which I thought was terribly clever.)  Since that time, Blambot has been absolutely wrecking stuff.  And Syp got a free post out of it.

This is my way of returning that favor for myself.  I got a post out of it too.  And I’m having a lot more fun with Champions.  Thanks guys.

I managed to play most of the evening without dieing more than once or twice.

Now how do I find the bank again?

F. Morrone

I never met Ferdinand Morrone.  This is his story…

Before he ever became the Superintendent of the New York Port Authority Police, Ferdinand Morrone had a law enforcement career that most cops would envy.  Born in Brooklyn, he started his career with the New Jersey State Police in 1963, and continued his education and got his PoliSci degree from Stockton State College in 1974.  He followed that up with a masters in Public Administration from Rider University in 1977.

In 1981, Justin Dintino was running the Intelligence Unit of the State Police.  He recalls;

I was running the Intelligence Unit… and he was assigned to me as an investigator.  He was a tremendous investigator.  He was like a bulldog.  I would give him the toughest cases – organized crime, solid waste, and he would always deliver the goods.  …  If he got on your tail, you might as well cry uncle, because he was going to get you.

One of the last cases he worked as a State Policeman was the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.  He was one of a few dozen cops the NJSP lent to the feds to work the investigation.  Morrone finished up his 30 years with the NJ State Police in 1993 and took his retirement as a Lieutenant Colonel.  Cops like Fred didn’t just lay about the house though.  By 1996, he had taken the job as the Superintendent of the Port Authority Police, a force that is in charge of all the transportation and shipping jurisdictions in NY and NJ.  Still living in New Jersey, Fred would sometimes work at his office on the first floor of the World Trade Center, or sometimes from his office in Jersey City, depending on the day.

Superintendent Morrone wasn’t just a cop though.  Even though he was always spoken of as a “Cop’s cop” he was also a devoted family man.  His family, Fred, his wife Linda, and his three children, Fred, Alyssa, and Gregory always knew that he would be there for them if he could on holidays.  Especially on Christmas, the family stuck to it’s traditions. He was also known for doting on his wife.  For their 25th anniversary, Fred took Linda to Hawaii for a second honeymoon.

After he had started working for the Port Authority, he had even tried to learn to relax.  He was used to being good at what he tried, so golf was a special challenge for him.  ”He was very athletic” his wife
said. He wasn’t very good at it.  At first, it frustrated him.  But he learned to be content doing something that he wasn’t adept at.  ”I thought it was great that he reached a point in his life that he was comfortable being bad at something he loved.  It showed a real growth in him.

In his 5 years with the Port Authority, he was credited with establishing a residential training program at the Port Authority Police Academy, toughening the training standards for the recruits, creating the International School for Airport and Seaport Security, starting a program to train officers in the use of portable heart defibrulators, establishing bike patrols in the airports, starting a scuba team, a Commercial Vehicle Inspection Unit, an Airborne Services Unit (Helicopters) and a Motorcycle Unit.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Fred was working in Jersey City when the news came in.  A plane had struck tower 1 of the World Trade Center, where Fred’s office was.  As soon as the people who knew him heard about it, they didn’t need to ask.  They knew he was on his way to help.  He phoned his wife to let her know that he was going to the city to help.  ”To this day, people don’t understand why he went there” she said.  But he was a “Cop’s cop.  He would never send men to do a dangerous job if he wasn’t willing to go in there and do it himself.”  She said it was the “Cop in him” that put him in the car that day and took him to Ground Zero.

The last time anyone saw Ferdinand Morrone, he was on the 45th floor of the World Trade Center.  He was trying to evacuate as many people as he could, including many of his own men from offices on the 66th and 67th floors above.  He was calmly going about his business and urging people to safety below.  Within hours of the attack, the tower had collapsed, and Fred and nearly 3000 other souls were lost that day.

His wife and Children attended mass together on Christmas Day that year.  ”We tried to honor him” she said. “We wanted to keep the holidays as close to the way he would want us to celebrate them.  We tried to honor my husband with the same family love and affection that we always showed each other during the holidays.”

On this, the 8th anniversary of that horrible day, I’d like to encourage people to remember Fred and the others like him who paid the ultimate price that day for nothing more than being Americans.  Remember the huge price the New York and New Jersey law enforcement and fire departments paid for doing what they lived to do; to help people to safety under the most oppressive and dangerous conditions.  Every day of their lives.

I was encouraged to do this memorial when  I heard about Project 2996.  The project is an attempt to memorialize the 2,996 people who perished that day on the ground and in the air as part of the terrorist attack on the American way of life.  The idea behind the project is that a different blogger would write about each of the people that died that day in 1991.

I was saddened that just 8 years later, there weren’t going to be enough bloggers volunteering to be able to do a proper memorium for all 2,996 who perished.  If you are a blogger, I challenge you to take this up next year and volunteer.  There are 2,996 stories to be told, and we as American are too soon to forget.  Too soon back to our routines, too soon forgetting the horror of that day, and how it outraged and galvanized us as a nation.

Please remember Ferdinand Morrone and his family today.  And please remember the other 2,995 people who also lost their lives.  Just for being Americans.  Just for not having the same beliefs and values as the terrorists.

Thank you Ferdinand for not hesitating to help others that day. Rest in Peace.  You sir, were a Great American.

And thank you Linda, Fred, Alyssa, and Gregory.  God bless and God speed.  We miss him too, even those of us who just got to know him.  We can’t imagine your loss.