Have you ever had a stool with three legs? What happens if one leg is shorter than the other two?

That’s right…it’s a wobbly experience, and the first stable chair that comes open you’re going to swap. Sometimes, it’s so wobbly that you’ll go back to sitting on the floor, and the only reason you got up to begin with was that it was making your ass hurt because you had been there so long.

And what happens if one of the legs is completely broken? That’s right…you take a one-way ride to “Busted Butt Town”, because it won’t hold up. And then you throw it away, cursing the guy that built such a lousy stool to begin with. “I’ll never buy a stool from that store again!”

Replace “stool” with “MMO” in the above passage, and it still holds true.

What are the three legs of a good MMO? In my opinion:

1. Fun
2. Stability
3. Community

That’s it…if you allow for all three of those to be equally strong, then you’ve got a good solid MMO…one that can potentially stand on its own and support people for years.

However, remember this…none of those three legs are any less important than the other two. If you take any one of them away…your MMO falls down, breaks a hip and never rises to the heights it could have. And if you skimp on one, it’ll be a wobbly experience at best. Let’s look at each leg:

Fun – This is the trickiest leg of the three to get right. Why? Because every single person on the planet has a different idea of “fun”. And what constitutes “fun”? Quest design, play mechanics, PvP options…the things everyone considers “the most important part of a good MMO”.

I call bullshit.

If a new MMO has more bugs than Paris Hilton’s underwear, a severe lag problem and a client that won’t even run on your computer…how much fun is it? Likewise, if it’s a stable playable game, but there’s no one there to play with or against…is it any more fun than a single-player game that you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription fee (or blow money in microtransactions) for? You can’t have “fun” without the other two.

Stability – Again, if an MMO won’t run, or is bug-laden to the point of bringing screams of frustration from those that attempt to play, no one’s going to want to have anything to do with it, no matter how many free trials you offer. However, if your game runs like a freshly-oiled sewing machine with no server crashes and zero bugs (the unattainable goal), guess what? If it’s not “fun,” it won’t matter, because no one’s going to stick around. Likewise, if it’s “fun” and stable, but the community is bad or non-existent, then no one’s giong to stick around for long. And they certainly won’t be back after they leave for greener pastures.

Community – Obviously, this is important. As we’ve seen, the other two factors aren’t enough to hold a game up by themselves. But guess what? Neither is community. If there’s a tight-knit group of people playing your game, but the sheer number of bugs stop them from doing most of the things they want to do…they’ll leave. And usually, they’ll leave in clumps. Also, if the game is stable and the game has the best community ever seen…if it’s not fun, most of the community groups will again leave, this time in search of that fun. (And probably gripe about how much more stable their last game was on the forums of their next game.)

If one of the three legs is missing, all you’re left with is two nice accomplishments that you’ll see on developer resumés after the game folds…usually after limping along for a few years after letting McQuaid go and putting in a free trial island after a while.

However, even if your stool has three sturdy legs, some will still get up and try out another chair from time to time…the upholstery is always greener on the other side of the den. But it doesn’t matter if the new chair is as comfortable as your stool…it had better be more comfortable (or have stronger legs) than your stool, or sooner or later…people will return to yours again.

Unless you’ve panicked and changed the entire thing while they were gone in order to get them back of course (oh hell, I’m too lazy to search up a new one…insert your own “Star Wars Galaxies NGE” link here), in which case they’ll mutter something about “This isn’t the game I loved!” on the forums and wander off…permanently.

(I have fairly high hopes for this game thanks to Bioware’s involvement, but there’s already enough coverage/talk/bitching about cartoony graphics out there to choke a bantha, so you’ll find none of that here…today, at least. But feel free to add me as a friend at the new TOR site…just click here to go to my profile page.)

Today’s announcement did bring something else to mind, however…specifically iTunes and Adobe.

Stay with me for a moment; I’m getting there.

Almost a year ago, there was quite a bit of eFuror© due to a post entitled “Lies, Lies and Adobe Spies” at UNEASYsilence about the fact that, when you launch an Adobe CS3 program, it connects to what appears to be an IP on your local network.

What it’s actually doing is connecting to the 2o7.net (that’s the letter “o,” not a zero) server of a company called Omniture, which makes its money providing website traffic analytics and “aggregate behavioral tracking”. The upshot of this is that it installs a cookie on your computer to track what you do on the site…fairly standard internet stuff that happens all the time…trust me.

The same type of problem made headlines in 2006 when it was discovered that iTunes was tracking what you listened to. Take a guess what company was providing that service for Apple?

No, not PopCap. Pay attention.

(The SW:TOR stuff is coming…just stay with me.)

What’s not quite so standard is the reason why Omniture feels it necessary to do so through a spoofed local network IP, using the letter “o” instead of a zero. The entire process gives a fairly common practice the air of suspicious behavior, as was stated by Adobe’s John Nack when the issue came up. And the official answer to the question of “Why use such a suspicious-looking method to do this?”

Would you believe “We don’t know.”?

Now, let’s take a little field trip over to the LucasArts website…specifically the LucasArts privacy policy page: Appendix A, where we find listed under “Aggregate Behavioral Tracking”….

Omniture.

This, of course, explains why you will see the IP “eaeacom.112.2o7.net” pop up when you download one of the spiffy wallpapers at the new SW:TOR site.

Which means that LucasArts is using a sometimes-controversial web service to install a cookie on your computer to track what you do at the new site. A big deal? Probably not. However, different people have varying degrees of feeling about this type of thing, so I thought you’d like to know.

I’ll go into my theory that it’s being used to determine what to keep in the game and what to take out based on what gets the most attention from visitors at the new site another time; instead, I’ll leave you with two quotes…the first from the Omniture “What is 2o7.net?” page:

Omniture will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any session data of visitors to the customer websites except as requested by the customer or as may be required by law.

It is very important that you review the respective privacy policy of each website that you visit, because such privacy policies govern the use of information on those websites, including our customer’s use of Omniture products and services where applicable.

And now, to the aforementioned privacy policy page at LucasArts that mentions Omniture:

As part of the advertising process, these agencies or our partners who assist us in ad-serving or in assessing behavioral patterns may place cookies or web beacons on your computer. These agencies and partners are not governed by the Privacy Policy of this site.

So Omniture tells us to read the privacy policy of LucasArts, since that governs the use of information collected by Omniture. The LucasArts privacy policy, meanwhile, tells us that Omniture isn’t bound by their privacy policy.

Who watches the watchmen?

Apparently, no one.

I’m familiar with EvE Online, to put it mildly.

CCP has a unique corner of the MMORPG landscape; there’s truly nothing else like it. However, CCP seems determined shoot themselves in their foot (public relations-wise) on a regular basis; the latest shot was fired on the official forums earlier today by CCP Fallout:

A long overdue and much needed change will be put in place with the Wednesday, 15 October 2008 patch. Ghost Training, the continuous skill gain on accounts in an inactive or expired state – will no longer function after Wednesday, 15 October 2008. This practice upsets the balance of the game, and capsuleers who actively put their time and energy into working on their characters will no longer be unfairly affected by those few who have not.

This immediately prompted a Threadnaught to spawn, running to 49 pages in the six hours following CCP Fallout’s post, sprinkled with…well, with what you would expect, ranging from the attempts at logic:

Please try to explain this a bit better. How are people actually putting their energy and time into clicking on a skill? Since skills train automatically without any actual practice.

I believe if this will be implemented, EVE will not just lose a lot of players but a unique feature which made it attractive among other MMO’s.

To the accusatory:

This idea is full of fail.
Ghost skill training has NO effect on active players, so why do you tell us this bullsh*t about ‘unfairly affected’ and game balance? Why not just admit that this change is implemented to try and get more income from players?
Lying to your playerbase does NOT make the situation better, only worse.

To the always classic:

Perhaps instead of having everyone complain about the change, why doesn’t everyone just post the number accounts they’ll be letting lapse without renewing thanks to this change.

I’ve already got one I’ve written off.

However, that was just the response to a forum announcement, with the promise of an official dev blog addressing this rather sudden change. Surely that will smooth the waters somewhat. Right?

As many of you know by now, on Wednesday, Oct 15th, CCP will put out a server update disabling “ghost training”. Ghost Training was an unintended feature where unpaid accounts of EVE Online were able to continue training skills. While this allowed players to run multiple characters on a shoestring budget, in all effect, this was a bug.

It should be noted that we’re not changing offline skill training for active subscribers in any way. This change only affects those who do not have an active subscription.

Does that mean that CCP is a greedy money chewing monster that just loves nerfing things? Of course not. We’re a company like everyone else, we make a game, that we happen to love making and for most of us is the passion of our lives. But it’s also a company. We make a product, sell it, get salaries and then continue maintaining the product and making it better.

Now I’m not saying that if me personally would be at the other end of this Dev Blog I wouldn’t be annoyed by CCP’s actions. We are gamers. We game the system. We figure out how to maximize our returns. There’s no surprise that people have done this for the simple fact that it wasn’t banned per se and also for the fact that it was possible. But recently we have seen a surge in this behavior in a way that we were essentially supporting and maintaining a large number of customers that weren’t paying us regular subscriptions. That’s not fair towards CCP as a service provider and it’s not fair towards other players that pay a subscription but don’t make use of this bug.

Oh yeah; that’ll calm’em right down.

So basically, CCP is saying it’s taken them five years after launch to fix a bug? A “bug” that was mentioned in their own knowledge base on their official website? (No, really…it says “Skills continue training even if you are logged off or if your account is inactive.” Allow me to illustrate:)

Did this “fix” need to happen? Who can say, although in my opinion if it hadn’t been a problem for five years I don’t see the issue now. However, what I can say with one hundred percent certainty is this…you don’t spring what you know will be a controversial game change on your playerbase 48 hours before you implement it, especially so soon after completing a promotion to encourage folks to start alt accounts (The “Power of Two”)?

C’mon, guys…you just made me add “public relations stupidity” as a category here. You make great internet spaceships, and are the unparalleled masters of pewpew…for crying out loud, could you at least occasionally put ten seconds’ worth of thought into your announcements?

(Credit where credit is due: DigitalCommunist made the “ninja” graphic above for the aforementioned Threadnaught, and did a darn fine job of it, too.)

Why? Because of WoW’s success…with ten million subscriptions, it’s the pinnacle of success in the MMORPG world. This fact leads to endless proclamations of “the next WoW-Killer” every time a new MMO is announced.

I’m as tired of the “Who’s the next top dog?!?!11?!” crap as the next guy, so I want to propose a different search that should be more fun…what’s the least successful MMORPG? It would be easy to just say “Dark & Light”, but I have a few rules for this search:

1. The game must still be active.
2. The game must be open for new account signups.
3. The game must not have announced its impending closure.

Those three facts all apply to World of Warcraft, so they will all apply to this search as well. Why impose those restrictions? Because we’re not looking for the least-successful MMO of all time (looking at you again, D&L)…we’re looking for the one that’s currently the least-successful.

Look at it this way…one day, WoW will close. If no other game has eclipsed what it has at it’s peak, then it will still stand as the most successful of all time…just not the most successful at that time.

Now, taking all of that into account, riddle me this…what’s the least successful MMORPG, and why?

I have my own answer to this one, which I’ll give you later this week.

However, don’t be fooled by the word “internet” in quotes up there…Jeff was my friend, and God, I’m going to miss him.

Safe travels, bud. You won’t “be” missed…you already are.

Cue the clouds of Forum Doom.

But wait! They’ve got a ton of things that are going to be in Issue 13 (the CoX name for a free content update), and quite a few of them weren’t originally supposed to be there. This, of course, is good news, with things like secret identities, a feature that players have asked for ever since beta, and “day jobs” (and that means yes, World of Workcraft is coming soon to a CoX install near you!) . However, the most interesting addition to me is the concept of Leveling Pacts. Let’s quote Massively on what that means:

The Leveling Pact: A new innovation to MMOs, this groundbreaking system allows you and a buddy to create new characters and have your XP be permanently in sync, whether both characters are online or not. You will always be the same level, even if your buddy plays ten times more often than you do! It’s sort of like “Extreme Sidekicking.”

That’s got a certain appeal, I’ll admit; I get out-leveled by my wife, for crying out loud (currently five levels ahead of me in EQII, for example), so I would love for her to grind for me.

…

Okay, that sentence not only came out wrong, but it’ll probably trip content filters all over the place. Back to the topic at hand.

On the surface, this is a pretty good idea; allowing two friends with varying amounts of play time to stay together, so that they can always play together. However, I do have a couple of questions:

• Won’t that make it take twice as long to level?
• Will this introduce an all-new level of griefing to MMOs…”Friendly Sweatshopping”?
• Will this enable PL services?

From what I’ve seen, NCSoft is addressing the first two items already, but that third one is something I haven’t seen much mention of.

Now admittedly, using the Leveling Pact feature to power-level someone for cash would take something that most PL services don’t have…at least an average amount of intelligence. If the GM staff sees a character named “asdfx” playing twenty-four hours a day, it’ll still set off an alarm bell somewhere. However, unless there’s a part of this on the back-end that I’m not seeing, then the account that is in a leveling pact with that person wouldn’t have action taken against it.

Which, of course, would mean risk-free power-leveling service for the customer; just create your character, meet up with the person you’re paying to form the leveling pact, and then log back out until it’s done.

Heck, you could still log in and play occasionally while they’re at work.

Of course, if NCSoft starts taking action against characters that are in pacts with accounts that are banned for power-leveling/gold selling, that takes care of the problem, but then you open an entirely different kettle of Hamidons, and not all of them will be nice (especially since they’ve buffed Hami).

As always, there is a better-than-even chance that I’m missing something here, but if not…I see problems coming from what looks like a really good idea. And, of course, there are even some positives in allowing farming:

Okay, I’ll admit this topic has been talked to death already. Scott talked about it. Mark Jacobs used the power of drama to discuss it. Jeff Freeman nailed it (as usual).

I’m talking, of course, about Tobold being a faithless Commie who kills kittens with salad forks for fun ever since he received a free subscription from Mythic.

Now, the last time I checked, what Tobold did was not illegal, nor was it immoral. However, I find it interesting that somce of the people that are informed, entertained and amused by our mouthings and ramblings in the world of blogging are the ones that want to make damn sure we don’t get a thing out of it, because if we do, then we’re obviously corrupt.

That may be the most naive thing I’ve ever written about, and I’ll tell you why.

There’s no difference in that attitude and stating that “some gamers pirate games, so therefore all gamers are pirates”.

That method of reasoning used in the hallowed halls of game development has led to the current fun with DRM that everyone’s getting to enjoy on games like Spore. Every time you paint people with a broad brush you screw up the picture, and that’s all the furor over “Toboldgate” is…people assuming that, since they’re heard stories of other online writers being influenced by gifts from gaming companies, then anyone that accepts anything from a gaming company is automatically biased and not to be trusted.

Assuming that someone is biased toward a game because they received something from the company (because others have been in the past) goes hand-in-hand with a company assuming that just because some gamers have pirated games in the past, then all gamers are potential pirates and should be treated as such.

I write LagORama for the same reason that Tobold writes his blog; the same reason that Ethic writes on Kill Ten Rats; the same reason that Mark started up his new blog (well, maybe not that one; Jacobs’ blog is just his former career as a stand-up comic screaming to get out, and a desperate cry for attention)…because I love MMORPGs, and I love writing about them.

Today is a fairly neat day for the ol’ Lag…one year ago today, I published the first post on this blog (about, of all things, Huxley entering beta…I still can’t understand their website), and my one-year anniversary just happens to coincide with the day I get into Warhammer Online on the SE pre-order head start and finally join my friends in the Casualties of War; nice day all around. However, I’d like to share something with you…since I launched this blog, the ads you see around this post have brought in a grand total of $24 dollars.

In a year.

Very few bloggers in the MMORPG world do it for the money; we do it because we truly love this medium. Period. No matter which side of this debate we fall on. I’ve never had the opportunity to be offered a comp anything because of this blog (apparently, you have to have more than two regular readers for that, but I still appreciate you both), but I have had comps in the past, both in my day job and (more relevant to the MMO world) during my tenure at MMORadio, and I would do it again.

Yes, I am evil, aren’t I?

But understand this…if I get offered a free anything, the purpose it serves is to introduce me to another part of the MMORPG world that I might not otherwise be exposed to. I’m starting WAR today with a pre-order, and currently playing EQII with my wife as well.

I don’t have time for anything else I can get for free because of the time I spend on what I’m paying for, and yet I still check out free trials and the like on a much-too-regular basis, and would gladly check out a game I had a free account on. Why?

Because I love MMORPGs, and I love this blog. Checking out new things broadens my perspective, brings new things to my attention, and gives me an easy post enriches the content here…for better or worse.

I’ve been planning for a while to run a “One Year Anniversary” contest here on LagORama, just to have a big hoo-hah (technical blogging term) to celebrate, using a few things I’ve collected over the years and a couple more I plan to purchase just to be able to give them away, and I’ll be doing that in the next week or two so stick around for it.

I’ve met some great people through this blog…readers, gamers, developers and all sorts of nice humans (plus Jack Thompson), and I hope that continues for the foreseeable future.

But in the interest of full disclosure, some of the prizes will comped merchandise, some of them will be items I received at E3, and some of it I found in the dumpster behind a Chuck’E'Cheez in Austin.

If you think that makes me biased, I would ask you to please stop pirating games.

Thanks for a fantastic year!

- Dave “Inhibitor” Hughes (inhibitor at lagorama dot com)

However, it’s nice to see that some are finally starting to notice some of the positive influences that come from MMOs. Constance Steinkuehler, described by the article at Wired magazine as “a game academic at the University of Wisconsin” (which is code for “Hib hates you for having the perfect job and hopes you develop the heartbreak of psoriasis”) has written a research paper on the fact that the best players in MMOs become so by using….ready for this?…the scientific method.

She and her co-author, Sean Duncan, downloaded the content of 1,984 posts in 85 threads in a discussion board for players of World of Warcraft.

What did they find? Only a minority of the postings were “banter” or idle chat. In contrast, a majority — 86 percent — were aimed specifically at analyzing the hidden ruleset of games.

More than half the gamers used “systems-based reasoning” — analyzing the game as a complex, dynamic system. And one-tenth actually constructed specific models to explain the behavior of a monster or situation; they would often use their model to generate predictions. Meanwhile, one-quarter of the commentors would build on someone else’s previous argument, and another quarter would issue rebuttals of previous arguments and models.

Of course, I doubt if a majority of raiders are even aware of utilizing the founding principle of almost all human scientific development…but then again, sometimes you learn the best when you’re not aware you’re being taught. For example, see if you learn anything from two of the comments on that Wired post:

I also find the authors remarks interesting, but I think the academic is deceiving herself. If she truly believes an addicting and socially damaging activity such as this is in the least bit beneficial she is at best misguided at worst stupid.

What video games can accomplish and what schools can accomplish are two very different things and no responsible academic would ever seriously try to make this comparison. This is tabloid journalism poorly masquerading as scholarship.

Now, what did we learn from these comments, made under an article wherein* an academic game player conducted research, analyzed her findings and concluded that MMORPGs teach scientific processes, and as a result are doing a better job at that in her opinion than science classes?

That’s right! We learned quite a few of the people that vocally think video gaming makes you stupid…should probably play a few more games.

Steinkuehler (which is German for “you’ll have to cut and paste this one unless you’re better than Hib”) met with one young person that had compiled a spreadsheet with a particular boss’ data (collected over several raids) that enabled him to determine the best way to take him down, and Wired reports she had this exchange:

“Do you realize that what you’re doing is the essence of science?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “Dude, I’m not doing science,” he replied. “I’m just cheating the game!”

And that’s what science is…cheating “the game”, which in this case is “what we consider to be the physical principles of the universe”.

This also means that we should ban the inventor of television from the universe for hacking, but I suppose that’s a given.

* The use of the word “wherein” indicates that this is, despite all appearances, an educated post, filled with scholarly observations. This, of course, makes it stand waaaaay the heck out from the rest of this site. I apologize, and promise to try to work more posts about night elf porn into things in the near future, since that’s my top keyword at Google, and it may distract me from the flashbacks I’m now having about my once-thriving Master Weaponsmith’s business in SWG, and the spreadsheets and data tables I still have from those days. Sigh.

A gold-seller is giving away open beta keys for Warhammer Online.

Now, normally this would provoke a few cries of “What th’?!?,” a few comments along the lines of “They just bought 50 copies of the game to use for their ‘business’, and are giving away the beta key part,” or “Cool! Where do I sign up?”.

I’ve seen all three.

However, even that isn’t what I’m in complete amazement about here. No, the fact that’s caused my brain to melt is the fact that this gold seller is also selling open beta keys for $23.99.

Yes, that was enough to make me link to their site.

Now, the page linked to is somewhat unclear; I can’t tell if you’re actually buying a pre-order, or just a beta key. However, either one would be odd in the extreme:

• If you’re buying a pre-order, you’re getting a $50USD game for $23.99USD
• If you’re buying a beta key only, then EA Mythic is going to have their guts for garters.

My theory is that they’re basically buying a full pre-order for everyone that places a $23.99USD order, but only giving them the beta key. Then, they can use the “live” account to grind their gold for resale, having basically gotten it for half-price. Of course, it could just simply be a pre-order payment for a legitimate purchase of the game, like the $1 you can pay for a preorder at Target, or the $5 at Gamestop, etc.

Yeah, ri-i-i-i-i-g-h-h-h-t.

I sent an email to their customer support asking just that question…does the $23.99 get you the entire game, or just the beta key? If you need me, I’ll be over in the corner holding my breath until I turn greenskin.

• The Montauk Monster
• A Texas deputy filming what some think is a chupacabra
• A press conference this Friday to annouce that a bigfoot carcass was discovered in Georgia (the state, not the country at war with Russia)

Of course, it’s not that cut-and-dried:

• A film director claimed credit for the Montauk Monster (and of course, there’s no proof that’s true) as a viral marketing scheme for his new movie, Splinterheads, which makes sense only if you believe a movie about carnies would feature a bloated, naked animal carcass as a star. (Although, Rosie O’Donnell has been in a few movies, so anything’s possible.)
• A previous chupacabra sighting was theorized by animal experts to be a mix-breed wolf with mange.
• The Bigfoot carcass shows a striking similarity to this.

However, I had an odd thought…what if all three of these stories are in fact part of a viral marketing campaign…for Funcom’s The Secret World?

As I have said before, Age of Conan hasn’t been the only child of Funcom for the few years or so, it’s just been the only child that Poppa has talked about. The “black ops sheep” of the family has been The Secret World, but it hasn’t been shame that’s kept Funcom from discussing it.

Far from it.

The company (and rightly so) decided to devote their resources to AoC as the game drew closer to launch, with a promise from Lead Developer Ragnar Tornquist that the game would take center stage at some point after AoC had it’s feet under it.

This game has been shrouded in mystery since it first appeared in the Funcom financial statements (in the third quarter of 2005), from the cryptologically-based websites that initially announced the project on May 6, 2007, to a lack any specific details of the game itself, other than a few things:

• The game has been in development for three years.
• The game world has some connection to various myths and beliefs, such as the Illuminati, the Knights Templar and the “day the world ends on the Mayan calendar“.
• The Secret World team was diverted to the final crunch for AoC, so there’s been little news for months.

Beyond that…nothing. However, the fact that we don’t know a darn thing about this game leaves open the possibility (however small) that crypto-creatures play some part in the game, including things like Bigfoot and the chupacabra.

No, it’s not likely, but it is fun to think about. And let’s face it…this sounds right up Tornquist’s alley, since TSW started with a cryptological viral marketing campaign to begin with.

(By the way, the Montauk Monster is a dead raccoon carcass, the chupacabra is a deformed wolf-coyote hybrid with a skin disorder and an enormous freakin’ head, and the Bigfoot carcass is a stuffed costume in a Kenmore chest freezer. Or possibly not. Paris Hilton still has a career, so nothing is too weird for reality on this planet as far as I’m concerned.)