It’s with a heavy heart that I announce the imminent demise of a beloved game company: one that brought us Fallout 1 & 2, Earthworm Jim and Descent. While their recent accomplishments are nothing more than questionable business deals and becoming a gaming company meme for financial troubles, we have to put in perspective the greatness and enjoyment the ghosts of Interplay past have brought us. It’s been living on life-support the last 10 years - and while it’s sad to see our old friend go, part of us is happy it’s finally being put out of it’s misery.

Exciting stuff, this doom and gloom. They’ve effectively produced nothing but disappointment and false hope for the past 10 years - but really, who are these people? It’s not like the guys that actually made the games stuck around in an empty office doing nothing since 2001. They’ve been long gone. As Interplay was “acquired” by Titus in 1999, and the original CEO of Interplay left in 2001 citing “creative differences” with Titus - we can assume those differences were actually producing games - Interplay, as we know it from 2001-2009, has been a different entity. An impostor, of sorts, and a bad one at that. We have a company that swooped in to a successful game studio and effectively capsized it with “creative differences” - whatever that means. Apparently Interplay has really only persisted through one guy, one Herve Caen, who’s name sounds entirely too French and mustache looks entirely too 70’s.

Glorious Fallout for Make Wonderful Profits in Industry of MMO’s?

Seriously, the mustache is starting to freak me out.

So - Interplay died in 2001 when the original founder and developers left. This shell of a company - Interplay: Reloaded - has been little more than the faint hope of the mustachioed madman who killed it in the first place - AH AH AH. That said, let’s not let this be more than it actually is - the death rattle of a once glorious nation- er, company that brought us some damn memorable titles.

In the past few months, between ranting about botting and not having the heart to talk about Darkfall, the Fallout MMO has been my main interest. For a recap on the past few months of excitement, we have:

The Fine Print of the Fallout MMO - Read this if you want to know about the technicalities of the Besthesda/Interplay IP deal.

Fallout and Interplay: You have Three Months to Live - Hey, I was actually right! In January 2009, Interplay had secured a small fraction of the needed $30M to not void the agreement signed with Bethesda.

So, what’s been happening since then?

Jason Anderson Leaves Interplay - Remember hearing about those original Fallout guys that went back and started working on the V13 Project with Interplay? It’s not a good sign when they start leaving. This was effectively half of the Interplay working force.

Interplay Signs Deal with Masthead - When in trouble, go to Bulgaria. Who needs 30 Million when you can just sign something with a MMO studio? This news was surprising, and led to the inevitable…

Bethesda to Sue Interplay Over Fallout MMO - It’s not official yet, but we can assume the legal offices of Bethesda/ZeniMax did a collective “WTF? They can’t do that!” at the news of Interplay substituting finance and development progress with a deal written on a cocktail napkin in Bulgaria.

And last but not least, Interplay is about to go bankrupt - again.

That means it’s up to ZeniMax/Bethesda to bring us quests to Kill 10 Rad Scorpions. Oh, the humanity. Let’s just hope they don’t use the same writers from Fallout 3 (I liked the game, don’t get me wrong… but, well, let’s not go there.)

As for the deal with Masthead - well, I assume production on Earthrise will continue and Herve will probably be never heard from again if he goes back to Bulgaria.

Very nice!

Technorati Tags: Bethesda, Fallout, Interplay

Darkfall Online is a game that is not for everyone. The nature of the game is such that you will either love it or absolutely hate it depending on your playstyle. If you are a casual gamer, someone who does not like harsh PvP in an MMORPG, or you place a heavy emphasis on graphics, there will probably be little here that will appeal to you. On the other hand, if your MMO history involves playing games like Ultima Online or Asheron’s Call, like PvP with consequences, and value gameplay over graphics, there is a good chance that this game will provide you with something you have haven’t seen in a long time.

Darkfall is a lot different than most MMO’s. The game is entirely skill-based, meaning there are no levels, no experience points, and all advancement happens through the raising of various skills through use. The core of the game revolves around open free-for-all PvP with full looting. This means that when you die through PvP or PvE, the entire contents of what you are wearing and carrying can be snatched up by anyone. Now while the game allows you to attack anyone, the games races are divided up into loose teams, but whether you respect those teams is completely up to you.

There are consequences for your actions in Darkfall. Should you choose to attack members of your own team and go “red”, your experience in the game will be different than those who work with their racial team. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall only allows you one character per server, which means that if you chose to go red, you will not be able to log onto a non-red alt character to get supplies and switch back. It is also worth mentioning that unlike some other RvR based MMOs, there are no language barriers stopping you from saying whatever you want to anyone else.

Character Creation seems fairly simple. I would say its has a bit more options than WoW and WAR, but not even close to AoC. You get to pick your face, hair color, facial hair, and various natural jewelry stuff like rings through your nose. There is no setting for height, and no sliders to sculpt your character’s face and body like Oblivion / AoC. Once you decide on your look, you’ll have to chose a first and last name (yes, the last name is mandatory). Once you are all squared away, you get to chose from 1 of 3 starting cities near your racial capital and you are off to start your journey with nothing except an undroppable starter weapon. I was very surprised by the size of the starter town when I first logged in, I vision of some huts on a dirt road was thrown out the window pretty quickly. I do think they could definitely use some more NPC’s, it looks like there are no non-essential NPC’s at all and it makes the town seems a bit deserted given how big they are.

User Interface

The UI has a learning curve. If you have played other recent MMOs, you can pretty much just forget everything you have seen. The cookie-cutter interface from WoW, EQ2, WAR, AOC is completely gone. I think people are going to struggle with it the first time they sit down and it could turn some people off. Luckily, there is a small tutorial to help you get your bearings. Right clicking the mouse turns the game into UI/Menu mode, much of what you would expect if you pressed the “ESC” key in any other MMO.

When in this mode, you will see that this is the only time you have a mouse cursor on your screen. This means when you are in play mode, there is no clicking on your hotbar to active abilities, you just press the numerically assigned button on your keyboard. The UI is completely customizable as you can move and resize any window to fit your personal preference. The in-game help pretty much tells you that controls will feel better to FPS players over MMO players. The “F” key is the default use button and works just like it would in Call of Duty, as does spacebar with jumping, and “C” for crouching. The “R” key draws your weapon, and will put you into 3rd person if you have a melee weapon equipped.

You can’t loot a target with your weapon drawn. When monster or players die, they leave a tombstone which can be looted by pressing the use key. When the loot box open, this will put you into UI mode, so you will not be able to move or do anything. You also need to open your backpack (Default “B” button) and manually drag and drop the items from their corpse to your bag one at a time. This will definitely be perceived by many as clunky, but at the same time there is a case to be made by others that looting should not be fast to prevent people from cleaning out bodies quickly in the middle of a heated battle. After playing for a while, I think it has grown on me a lot because the time associated with cleaning someone out adds a risk when you are in a heated situation.

My main beef with UI is the chat box. The chat box has multiple tabs that correspond to the different channels, such as group, clan, local, tells, and alliance. The problem with this is that it is becomes easy to miss messages. Let’s say you are in your group chat tab running around looking for trouble, and you run across another player and kill them. Unfortunately, that player asked if he could join you and wanted to provide you with some valuable information, but you missed it because his text was under the local tab that you were not looking at because you were talking in group. Unless you are paying careful attention to the various tabs, you are bound to miss a tell or message in another channel. You can however click and drag those tabs out to create new chat windows for that channel. This also means that having a different chat box for each channel can start to clutter up your screen. I think the chat would be better served with multiple channels in the same tab, and leaving it up to the user to decide which channels they want to see in each tab. Aventurine has stated that further revamping of chat is already in the works and will arrive shortly, so there is a good chance that this will be less of an issue very soon.

The World

The environment looks very nice. The sky looks great, and you can see every branch on every tree swaying in the wind. The game runs very smooth to me with everything cranked, but I have a relatively powerful machine. The graphics are by no means cutting-edge, but considering you are getting a zoneless and seamless world with no loading screens, it looks quite well. The world size does seem massive, and I was shocked to see how little I moved on the world map after walking for a few minutes. Traveling from my starter town to my neighboring enemy’s starter area can take me anywhere from 25-45 minutes on foot depending on my route and how much stamina I burn sprinting. I think it is probably bigger than Asheron’s Call.

There are lots of interesting and hidden places scattered around the world that will appeal to explorer types. I have seen underground cities, giant tree top villages, mountain top fortresses, hidden treasure boxes, and ancient ruins just to name a few. My beef as far as the overworld goes is the scarcity of monsters. Since there are no experience points in Darkfall, monster serve the critical role as a source of items, gold, and materials. This shortage not only makes it difficult to getting these resources, but it makes the world seem a bit devoid of life at times.

Characters and Animations

Chances are that if you are a fan of this game, it isn’t because it is a graphical behemoth. This is one of the areas that people who are sticklers for visuals may be disappointed. The character models are a mixed bag. There are times when I like them, and times were I think they could be a bit better. Graphically, they will come in a distance behind some of the newer MMO’s on the market. I do however think some of the armor models make them look a lot better. When you wear heavier armor, you can see the glare of the light reflecting on some of the metallic pieces, which is a nice touch. It does vary from race to race, I hear a lot of opinions from various people who either like or dislike a certain race’s model design.

The character animations are another issue that detract a little from the game’s visuals. Some of the various animations when characters run around seem a bit off. I think it is something that most people will notice fairly quickly after watching some of the video and in their first hours in the game. Since you are in a first-person view for most of the game, you won’t be looking at your character nearly as much as other games that have you locked in the 3rd person. While they can take some getting used to, they are by no means a game breaker to me and most of the target audience of the game. If they decided to review and rework the animations down the road, I don’t think many would complain, but I think most agree that their time is better spent on other things right now.

Combat
There are 3 major different combat types in Darkfall; Melee, Archery, and Magic. This will most likely be one of the more hotly-contested aspects of the game, where most people will either love it or hate it. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall’s combat plays out more like a first-person shooter than a traditional MMO. This means there is no tab targeting, your attacks need to be manually aimed, and your attacks can also be dodged. It is also worth mentioning that the different races all vary in size, which means that certain larger races (Ork / Mahirim) may have a larger hitbox than some of the shorter races (Alfar / Dwarf). I have heard some people freak out about this issue making different races having advantages, but as someone who plays a Mahirim, it was not much of an issue for me personally. I am sure others will disagree on this point, but I would just suggest people play what they like and you will adapt.

Stamina also plays a very critical role in combat because when your stamina is depleted, you will not be able to attack or put up much of a defense. Stamina management will be vital to most of your fights, and in most cases, running out of stamina can be as equally devastating as running out of life. Darkfall also seems to recognize back attacks, and rewards them with doing an increased amount of damage. This can make turning your back and fleeing from someone have some risk if the other person is able to hit your back, especially with arrows. To combine these points, some people will find that melee combat will often have some people sprinting the entire time trying to get behind behind their targets or to make themselves harder to hit. While it can be annoying sometimes to fight someone doing this, these people tend to burn themselves out faster, but the use of this tactic will no doubt frustrate some players.

Each of the 3 combat types have skills associated with using them. When that skill reaches 25, new attacks will open up to be purchased. These new attacks initially after purchase do not seem to show a noticeable increase in damage, but after skilling them up a bit, they start to show more of a return. Some players might be disappointed to find that there are not many “special” attacks compared other MMOs for the melee and archery types where you may be used to having a hotbar full of different abilities. As a fan of Asheron’s Call which had literally no abilities, it doesn’t bother me as much because the combat has more freedom than other MMOs by combat having no autolocking hits, but it definitely will be an issue to some players. Hopefully as the game progresses, they will introduce a some more skills down the road to beef up the amount of tools non-magic players have at their disposal.

Melee

This is the most basic forum of combat in the game and most likely the path most will follow, especially at the very start of the game because it is inexpensive. While melee is a bit easier on your purse, it has the obvious drawback of limited range. Different weapons types do however offer varying range, such as polearms reaching farther than daggers.

When your melee weapon is drawn, you will be pulled out into a 3rd-person viewpoint. Even if this view, your visibility behind your character is minimal. This means sneaking up behind people is a legitimate tactic as opposed to other MMOs where you can spin the camera to see behind you. I can testify first hand that this works quite well, which is good because this game has no “stealth” skills like other MMOs that can make you go invisible. The only time in Darkfall where you can spin the camera at your whim is while resting.

Pressing “T” will toggle your attacks between a horizontal slash and a vertical chop. While both of these do exactly the same damage, certain situations may find one over the other as more practical. The horizontal slash makes it easier to connect with your targets due to the wide cone of damage, but in crowded combat, this could also have you striking your allies for damage because the game has friendly fire. A vertical chop while having a narrow cone of damage, works better in crowded situations because it minimizes the chance of striking nearby allies in a frantic battle.

Archery

Firing a bow in Darkfall requires some degree of skill when it comes to aiming your shot. When you fire an arrow, it will arc through the air as opposed to traveling in a straight line like a bullet. This means that the archer will have to compensate for this by aiming the crosshair above his target depending on how far away it is. Pressing and holding your left mouse button will make your character load an arrow, which can be held as long as you continue to hold down the button. This allows you to wait for the moment of your choosing to take your shot.

The upside to archery, besides the range advantage, is that arrows can be very hard to dodge if the shooter has good aim because of the speed they travel towards through the air. The downside to archery is that you can only hit one target at a time, and that arrows are not free. This can make it hard for new and financially struggling players to keep up with the price of obtaining arrows on a regular basis, although many of the starting mobs are known to drop small quantities. Archery only skills up when you shoot an arrow, and since they are not recoverable once fired, raising this skill can end up costing you.

Magic

Magic is broken up into many schools, each with their own spells. In addition to skilling up each school of magic, each spell acts as its own skill. The more you cast a spell, the better you will become with it. Higher skilled spells will evolve and start to travel faster through the air, do more damage, or even shoot multiple projectiles.

Like archery, firing spells at your enemy will require some degree of coordination because they need to be manually aimed. The good news is that magic is a lot easier to aim than your bow because your spells will travel in a straight line exactly to where your crosshair is pointed without arcing. In addition to the ease of aiming and obvious range advantages, many of Darkfall spells have splash damage that can hit a target if your shot is close enough, or even hit multiple targets.

Magic does come with its disadvantages as well. Most of the spells in the game require a reagent or component to cast with the exception of the starter spells. This means the life of a mage can be costly, and skilling up spells and school with components can be a hard road. As such, starting the game as a pure mage right out of the gate will come off as extremely difficult. Spells are also easier to dodge than arrows at range because they are easier to spot and generally travel slower through the air. Magic also has a tendency to fizzle more when you are wearing heavier armor, but there is an armored magic casting skill that helps offset it a little if you are able to skill it up.

Those who delve deep into magic will also be forced later on to make decisions about which schools to pursue. New spells and schools of magic are unlocked as you progress through prerequisite school, but some restrictions start to show up down the road. Darkfall does not let you specialize in schools of magic that are polar opposites, such as Fire and Water, Earth and Air. You can have 2 out of the 4 elements, as long as they don’t clash with each other, but your end game plans will need to be thought out to avoid training in the wrong areas.

Finish Him!

Probably one of my favorite aspects of PvP combat that makes Darkfall unique is the incapacitation of a player when they reach zero life (excluding the rare and freakish decapitation). This starts a 60 second or so window where you get to decide the fate of the fallen player, or have some choice words with them. There are no revive spells in Darkfall, but when someone is in this state, anyone can help them back up without need of any spell or item. If the person lays there for too long, they will bleed to death and expire. The option is also your to deliver the final blow to send the fallen player back to their bind point naked, and ironically this is called the “Gank” skill by the game. Incapacitated players will yell out “HELP ME!” when reaching zero life, which can be heard from quite a distance away.

Quests

Questing in Darkfall at this point doesn’t seem to play as much a role than it does in some of the other more recent MMOs. Considering that there are no experience points, quests seem to be a way to get your hands on some items or cash. Finding the quest givers is not as easy also from recent games. There are no floating icons over NPCs like in WoW, WAR, and AoC. Some vendor NPCs simply will have a quest tab on their menu, but you won’t know until you talk to them.

The quests themselves are really nothing special in all honesty. Most of them consist of the same basic stuff we have seen the last few years where you are sent to either kill a certain amount of a monster, or collect some items from monsters, or kill the monsters in a certain time frame. It isn’t to say they aren’t rewarding to do, but they are just as uninspiring as any other MMO, unless I just haven’t found the good ones yet.

PvE

PvE in Darkfall is a bit different than other MMOs in a few ways. For starters, since there are no levels or a con system, you never really know just how powerful a monster (or player) is until you fight it. Luckily, if you find yourself getting in a bit over your head, it is not too hard to escape the aggro range by sprinting away. Since there are also no experience points, your motivation for engaging in this part of the game will be for monetary gain and equipment. Monsters for the most part seem to drop the items you see them wearing or using in combat, so if a goblin is shooting you with a bow, you can assume that it will be on his body after you beat him. That being said, the monster AI is a step up from other games. Monsters with bows will try to kite you sometimes, others call for help, and some strafe around you to avoid being hit.

There is no kill stealing or tagging system for monsters either. This means anyone can loot anything regardless of who hit it first, last, or did the most damage. While this can sometimes be problematic depending on who is near you, most of the time people seemed to have some degree of respect for who did the dirty work. Another interesting thing though about looting in general, is that multiple people can loot the same target at the same time. I have had situations where me and a friend were both grabbing items out of the loot bag at the same time, which can lead to some humorous situations with people frantically trying to identify and grab the stuff they want before the other guy. Remember that if you are defeated in PvE with people nearby, there is nothing from stopping another player from walking up to you while incapacitated and opting to finish you off and cleaning you out. I can say from personal experience that I have never seen this happen, but I will admit to seeing someone bleed out and getting there too late to save them, then sneakily rummaging through their bag to capitalize on their misfortune.

You also need to be careful not to accidentally damage strangers, or you run the risk of going “rouge” status for a short time, which allows other players to attack you without any alignment penalty for a short time. If 2 players are meleeing the same monster, it can be easier than you think for someone to get accidentally hit by a wild swing, but most of the time other people were good sports about it. There are those who will try to capitalize on it though; I remember a circumstance where I saw one of my guildmates being chased by someone he accidentally hit. Magic users need to be extra careful as well because since most spells have splash damage, it can be very easy to hit both the monster and another player trying to melee the same target.

Alignment System

The alignment system is the main mechanic that determines if you are in good standing or bad standing (red) with members of your own racial pairing. The basic theory is that killing someone who in your racial pairing (who isn’t red) will result in a loss of alignment and bring you closer to being red, while killing the natural enemies of your race and red players will increase your standing. The value of a negative hit is much higher than that of a positive one, so it will take several enemy kills to negate the effects of a single friendly kill. If you only hit another player, will be rogue flagged for a short period of time, in which case you can be killed by friendly targets as a means of self-defense. Your alignment is displayed as the bottom meter in the window where your life, stamina, and mana are located.

Having a bad alignment and going red does have some consequences. Besides the obvious of being a target to everyone in the game, your own racial towns will not welcome you and you will be attacked by the guard towers. You will also not be allowed to bind at the same bindstone as normal players, which makes sense because since the bindstones are in town, you would be attacked immediately. Upon going red, you will be automatically bound to remote bindstones in the wilderness where there is little in the ways of merchants and banks in many cases.

The alignment system has its flaws. For starters, it can be easy to flag other players as rogue status by deliberately trying to place yourself in front of their attacks. This can lead to you getting attacked by what would be otherwise friendly players, who then try to capitalize on your rogue status. This means that when you are in a crowded PvE area with strangers, you need to be very careful about your surroundings. Another personal beef I have is that players of an enemy race have their names colored blue, even though they are technically your enemy. The game displays them as blue because their alignment is good in the context of their race. This can lead to confusion if you see another player at a distance and can’t quite make out what race they may be. I think it would make more sense to display their names in red naturally since you will be rewarded for killing them.

Full Loot

This is one aspect of the game that I think tends to scare away or concern players who have never played in this type of environment, but may be considering it. I’m sure most people following the game know and understand that Darkfall has full loot upon death, which means that everything on your body is lootable with the exception of your starter weapons, but does not include what you may have banked. Every player starts with a single starter weapon which can always be traded for a different one for a small fee of 20 gold. For the price of 100 gold, you can secure a 2nd weapon, and for 1000 gold you can secure a 3rd. Most players will eventually have 3, which will probably consist of a melee weapon, a wand (needed to cast magic), and a bow (no starter arrows). So you will never be without a weapon no matter what happens.

Now I am not going to sugar-coat it, catching a beatdown and waking up at the bindstone in your underwear sucks, and everyone is going to have days where it happens. On the flip side, there is definitely something to be said about bending down over a fallen opponent and seeing a pile of treasure. The first time you do this, it will definitely bring a smile to your face. If full loot scares you, consider the nature of the game. This is not an item-based game, and while items do help a good bit, they are expendable and replaceable. Remember that the core of your strength in Darkfall is your skills, and nobody can ever take that from you. I think people who are used to raiding weeks for epic purple gear might have a hard time understanding this, but hopefully this should give you some perspective.

Summary

Darkfall is still pretty rough around the edges and could use some polish in many areas. Given all of the hype and hysteria surrounding the game, it would be easy to be disappointed if you go into it with unrealistic expectations. The game is being developed by Aventurine, an Indy developer that has made an MMO with a fraction of the manpower, and at a fraction of the price compared to the industry leaders. I personally think the game would have benefited a bit by prolonging the release for at least another month or so, and some players who demand polish may be better off waiting for a little bit before jumping in especially with access being limited initially.

That being said, Aventurine has created the solid framework of an MMO that offers a unique experience that the genre has not seen in quite some time, and I am sure many players will be more than happy to jump into Darkfall at the ground level despite its issues. Anyone who has seen their patches can attest to the fact that they are frequent and robust. I have no doubt that as time goes on, Darkfall will further develop into an interesting and needed alternative to the theme-park model that has been beaten to death in the last few years.

If you are a fan of harsh free-for-all PvP, full looting, clan warfare, and non-linear gameplay, Darkfall might be just the sort of thing you have been looking for. If you are a casual gamer, someone who enjoys a linear style gameplay, or looking for a graphically intense experience, this game might not be for you. I also think to fully appreciate the game, playing with a group of friends or being in a clan will expose you to more of what the game has to offer. I don’t think it was ever intended to have mass appeal, but more to cater to a niche of PvP players who are looking for something more than what is out there now, and I think in that respect it will succeed.

If you have any questions about anything I have said or not said, leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Technorati Tags: Beta, Darkfall, Review

Ni hao, bitches. Now now, don’t get all hasty - it’s not quite as bad as it seems. I’m not here to bring you tales of epic gold farming or “Adventures in Azshara: 200 days of Genocide”. Everyone has their own opinion of those kind folk who’s trade involves them creating a level 1 character named “Xkabwqleoiyx” and running to a capital city - and most of these opinions fall into the region of “Wish you could stab someone through the Internet”. Rest easy, I’m not one of those people. In fact, I’m a pretty normal guy - a casual gamer of such. This is my story - the story of a casual botter in World of Warcraft.

I suppose it’s pantomime to account suicide writing something as open and honest as this. Honestly, that’s one of the biggest motivators for me, actually - no, not the danger of it, but the apathetical sense of someone else taking care of one of my own, personal problems. My own personal problem is that when I’m so inclined, I tend to play WoW a bit too much, botting or not. *If* I did get banned for my “tales of a botter” then I’d be disinclined to ever play again - for the betterment of myself and probably everyone else around me. In any case, this is a problem of the past as I’ve already canceled and purified my hard drive of anything WoW related until at least the next expansion pack or in the unlikely case Blizzard ever implements a logical and *gasp* fun PVP system. I digress.

So there it is. I bot in WoW. Some will say “Who the hell cares?”; others with be confused, not really knowing what “botting” means. Yes, there are many people (made evident from the recent MMO Glider legal cases) that don’t really understand what’s going on. So, it’ll help to clarify exactly what botting is in the grand world of Azeroth:

Botting is: A character in WoW that is controlled by a third party program. From a third party perspective, the character behaves somewhat normally (runs around, kills things, loots things, etc).

Botting is not: Paying someone else (like a company) to level, farm gold/honor or play a character for whatever reason. The company might (and probably will) *bot* your character, but purchasing levels / gold is different than botting and should not be confused.

So, how do people bot?

There are a few ways to do it, but the main way people bot is using a program called “MMO Glider” (formerly WoW Glider).  This program was created a long time ago to help alleviate some of the more tedious tasks in WoW at the time; from there, it evolved into a fully functional bot program that was capable of controlling a character in nearly every way, shape or form. Paying customers, using a monthly fee, can subscribe to the “Elite” service which allows highly modified custom classes and a lot of advanced features for the program.

Is botting detectable?

Until a few months ago, it was pretty easy to spot a bot. A trained eye could easily tell if a character is behaving normally or controlled by a program. Tell tale signs are fixed paths, jerky movements, identical attack orders, running into objects, huge stocks of “grindable” items on the AH — all of these things are easy ways to identify a bot.

Things have changed, though. The botting community has created “smart pathing” code which basically analyzes the texture files in WoW to see where obstacles are and best pathing information. Using these advanced features along with highly modified custom classes, I’ve done test runs where my character actually plays *better* than me. He jumps over fences, pulls 2-3 MOBS at once, kills them, and then moves on. He does quests. He stacks his Eternal’s like a good boy and heals and buffs other players when they are near by. He talks back to his friends and guildmates, politely ignores people he doesn’t know, and when his bags fill up with stuff to sell, he mounts up to the nearest vendor, sells the vendor trash, mails the better stuff to a bank alt, and heads back for more tedious killing.

On a technical level, Blizzard has a little anti-third party feature of their client called “Warden”. These botting programs are specifically designed to circumvent any detection like this. For the most part, if you stay up to date and follow the instructions, there is virtually no chance of being detected. Really, the only way to get caught is being reported by other players or selling gold.

Example of non-AFK Botting

Two Types of Botting

Mainly, there are two different types of botting: AFK Botting and Non-AFK Botting. AFK Botting is usually ran for long periods of time in secluded areas, mainly by unguilded or “private” characters. An example of a good AFK Bot task would be to grind the Captured Firely in Zangarmarsh or one of the whelp pets in Azshara. These little pets have a .01%-.1% drop rate, meaning it can be 1-2 thousand kills before one drops. An example of a non-AFK Bot task would be killing Fire Elementals in Storm Peaks at 6 PM server time. Chances are you’ll get attacked if you’re on a PVP server or lots of /whispers on a PVE server. Lots of people will be around to observe your “bot like” habits, increasing the chance you’ll be reported and having your account banned.

Non-AFK botting involves you usually doing something else on or near your computer, to be able to respond to /whispers or take manual control over your character in the likely event something will happen. So, you can non-AFK bot at work, or watching a movie, looking at your favorite midget porn - whatever. It allows you to do normal, non-WoW things and still do something in WoW, albeit less efficiently. AFK botting is the sort of thing you put on before you go to bed, or going to Iraq for 3 months - fire and forget. If you set up cautious anti-detection settings, the worst thing that can happen is that your character logs out.

So, why bot?

I want to say a short disclaimer to say that I’m not here as an apologist. In the WoW community, talking about botting is kind of like discussion religion or politics in the real world - you’re apt to piss people off no matter where you stand. A lot of people don’t care if you bot. A good portion also think it’s unfair or would think negatively towards you if they did find out, perhaps even reporting you in game. That’s why it’s safe to stay secret squirrel about the subject to avoid any unnecessary risks as a botter. I’m not ashamed of it, and most of my good in-game friends knew I was capable of doing it, but it still wasn’t a well known fact.

There are many reasons to bot in WoW; monetary reasons (selling Gold on various sites) - advancing other characters, making money for a mount / expensive item, whatever. I only did it for one reason, though: time. WoW is a time consuming game. It’s really the only real currency in the game: he with the most time, wins. 98% of the items, titles or achievements in game basically come down to a time investment, where throwing sheer amounts of time at them is really the only requirement. I never sold gold to a website or leveled a character to sell it.

It’s because of this I’ve always been defensive of MMO Glider and the botting community. I know everyone has their own reasons, but I see this little bot program as something that saved me hundreds of hours of time and allowed me to enjoy the game to its full potential. I admit that with the recent Wrath expansion, the need for money and grinding has been dramatically reduced, but the sheer amount of time I saved in TBC was well worth the $20 I spent a few years ago.

For example, some of the things I’ve used botting for:

• Obtaining Aldor/Scryer reputation
• Getting the hard, grind only vanity pets (Firefly, Whelplings, etc)
• General kill farming: Killings tons of skinnable creatures to sell the leather on the AH - to be able to buy gems, enchants and flasks/potions for raiding. Killing humanoid creatures to get cloth to level up tailoring or sell the cloth.
• Leveling alts.
• Obtaining enough money for epic flying / mounts.
• Fishing (No, it’s not fun)

Of course, some of this stuff wasn’t necessary. My character can perform fine in a raid without a Captured Firefly. However, things like enchants, gems and gear can make or break a raid, especially when you’re in a critical role. As a healer in TBC (when raiding was actually challenging), not having the right stuff could cost the group an encounter, especially when learning the encounters and still gearing up as a raid. Black Temple and Sunwell might have been “ezmode” for hardcore raiding guilds, but as a casual player in a casual raiding guild, they were challenging and extremely time consuming. Not having the proper gear and gems/enchants just made it that much harder.

That might be a fine excuse on the cover - and honestly, it’s enought to justify my reason for botting. I didn’t have a lot of time to play WoW - 4-5 nights a week and 3-4 hours on average per night. Maybe sneak in during the afternoon on a weekend or something when the kids are asleep. So, with raiding 2-3 nights as week left 1-2 nights maximum where I could play without raiding, and these always went to PVP / Arena. I was left with a choice of either giving up PVE Raiding or PVP if I wanted to get everything the “legit” way. Hell, and that’s only playing one character.

All that aside, though, there is another big reason to bot in WoW:

Botting is fun!

Yes, it is. Some might even argue that it’s funner than actually playing the game. It’s like having personal minions that can go out and do tedious tasks for you. You can see how many level 70/80’s you can get (one of each class, why not?). You can see how much gold you can farm or how many vanity pets you can get. It becomes a game in itself - seeing your profiles and tasks at work, constantly improving and tweaking your classes - it’s like a mini-game. If you’re brave you can even tweak it enough to perform well in PVP (BG’s only, of course - don’t think anyone could do an Arena Bot). All in all, it’s fun to advance or do things when you’re asleep or at the office.

The Legal Issues with Botting

Recently there has been a lot of talk around the MMO-sphere about MMO Glider and the lawsuit with Blizzard. All in all, it’s not looking good for the future of MMO Glider. I’m confident, though, that even if it does go “tits up” - another person or team will step in to fill the hole. In fact, if the MMO Glider code was distributed to the right persons (living in a galaxy far, far away) they could basically continue the legacy where the MMO Glider guys left off. There is a huge community behind them and the idea will live on. How, exactly, is what we’ll find out in the next couple weeks.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Deviant Fish

In conclusion, I want to say I’m not ashamed to have botted in WoW. It allowed me to enjoy the game more without sacrificing my personal and family life. For that, I want to say thanks to the Glider guys and the community as a whole. To all the non-botters out there: next time, before you pass judgment on someone, keep in mind they might be someone like me: just a lonely gnome with not enough time on his hands.

References:

MMO Glider - Official Site

PPather (A Newb’s Guide to PPather)

MMO Glider + PPather Setup Guide

PS: WALL-E is great.

Technorati Tags: Botting, WALL-E, WoW

I don’t like writing about Warcraft. I consider the game unchallenging, frightfully unimaginative and terribly addicting - but in the same time, I’m drawn to it for its familiarity. It’s the familiar and user friendly cornerstone of draining our lives away, escaping into the bosom of our treasured alternate reality. We find comfort in the gear treadmill and bitch about the inevitable dysfunction of PVP. Other games come and go, hopes are dashed - and WoW is still there, persisting like the Family Circus of MMO’s, something we secretly hate but read anyway . The centralized servers eagerly await our inevitable return into their carefully categorized and never changing world before they merge and become WoWNET and kill us all.

Enough waxing intellectual - I’m here to bash Deathknights. Like everyone else in the free world, I tried one of these babies out from the get-go and thought to myself “Nice! It’s almost like they took all the abilities they wanted to give other classes over the last 3 years and gave them to DK’s! Sweetness!” Early days as a DK were tough, as you were just another face in the crowd of ever-growing Deathtards. You laughed at DK’s that were stacking +spellpower gear and chuckled when General Chat had people arguing if you could use maces.

Aww... that's not me. Thank God.

To differ from the herd, I chose the route of tanking  - and also because I’d never played a tank before. It also helped that 98% of all DK’s didn’t even know they could tank and preferred to *nnaaahhh* “hit stuff”. Level 80 and a couple thousand gold later and I was decked out in full tank gear and was tanking every Heroic in the game, patiently trying to convince people that Frost wasn’t the only (or even best) spec for tanking and that Unholy Aura is an Aura and I’m also able to use Frost Presence at the same time to tank. (WTF DK! USE FROST AURA TO TANK NOT UNHOLY AURA!) It was fun to play a new class in a new role. It was also fun to completely dominate everyone in PVP.

PVP, of course, has never been a strong point of Blizzard’s. Some of their decisions have been downright delusional, from Warlocks and Druids pre-3.0 to Paladin / DK’s and general burst damage in Season 5. Not that PVP has ever mattered too much in a PVE oriented game - and, with the  unofficial “Death of the Arena” (some would argue that Arena was never really alive anyway) in the latest 3.0.8 patch - or “Winning is the New Losing” system that was put in place - we can almost start discussing PVP in WoW as something purely past tense. Maybe they should have stuck with the Forrest Gump of PVP systems instead of going full retard.

Deathknights aren’t the sole cause of this, of course. In fact, DK’s had a short reign of just over a month, from the start of Season 5 until 3.0.8 where they truly dominated in the 2vs2 and 3vs3 bracket. They still do dominate, of course, but the stupid new Arena “Spooky Ghost Rating” system has thrown all logic out of determining who is actually winning or doing well in the Arena. It’s also not so much that DK’s are stupidly overpowered - but, partnered with a Paladin - they have really no weaknesses. It’s a bit ironic that the two classes would compliment each other so well as by lore they should be at polar opposites. In any case, I stopped playing my DK for the same reason I stopped playing Quake with godmode on - it just wasn’t fun. After facerolling properly specced and geared PVP players as I wore full PVE gear, it just lost its appeal for me. In short, the current state of PVP can be summarized by one simple image:

After, in a move of epic sadomasochism, I decided I’d play my Druid in PVP. As a healer. Keeping the Quake analogy, that’s like going from Difficulty: Easy with Godmode on to Difficulty: INSANE and playing with no monitor. This did allow to me to gain a proper perspective on the current state (or past state, as I should say) of PVP and Arenas in WoW as a punching bag. Running around with 800 Resilience and 21K HP, I’ve even modified an addon to record the shortest amount of time I’ve gone from full Hit Points to 0. Current 2vs2 record is 3.5 seconds by a Rogue / Mage combo, and my fastest 1vs1 death was by a DK in 4.1 seconds in Orgrimmar. (In his defense, he did precast Army of the Dead. I was fishing.)

To finish the long-winded prelude - I’m back to being a non-DK. Like most other non-DK’s, I’m hoping that they will dissapear or be “retuned” to make less people want to play them. It seems the new “scourge” of Azeroth isn’t the Scourge but the retard Deathknight’s they’ve spawned upon us. AHAH! Maybe Arthas is a smart guy. Learn from Illidians mistakes and send upon us a plague of overpowered glowy-eye freaks. I just hope that in the final fight with Arthas himself, he exerts his power over the Deathknights and turns them against the raid. That would be cool.

Anyway, until then, that means I have to live with Deathknights being part of the world. So I bring you:

Daedren’s Guide to Living with Deathknights!

Deathknight Races / Gender Choice

Race and gender choice says a lot about a Deathknight! Here is a quick summary:

Human Male / Female - I have no imagination.

Night Elf Male - I’m the only one who thinks my character looks cool.

Night Elf Female - Officially I’m a NE for the 2% dodge and Shadowmeld, but I also enjoy watching my character fight with no clothes on.

Dwarf Male - I hate rogues.

Dwarf Female - I am a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Gnome Male / Female - I am evil incarnate and disregard any sense of logic when it comes to choosing a character.

Draenei Male / Female - I hate the world because my DK looked great at the creation screen with a skirt on. Now I have to look at stupid hooves! Need more plate kilts!

Undead Male / Female - Am I alive or dead? I’m all sorts of confused. Added WotF bonus incase I have to kill 17 Warlocks at the same time.

Orc Male / Female - Our racials are awesome, we look good in plate, and my +5% damage to my ghoul(s) and gargoyle will justify me speccing Unholy for the rest of my life.

Troll Male / Female - Our lack of boots makes up for how clearly awesome we are.

Tauren Male / Female - I need Warstomp to suceed and I enjoy flattening horses in my spare time.

Blood Elf Female/Female - I am the embodiment of everything wrong in this world. I also love penis.

Deathknight Names

What about names? Names say a lot about a person, especially if they are a Deathknight! If their name contains:

*death*, *dk* or *deathknight*

– They are just testing out the class. Another possibility is that they are incredibly stupid.

Example:

[1]General: Orcdk: Cool quests!

[1]General: Deathstabber: STFU NOOB

[1]General: Bobdk: [Dirge]

If their name is a variation or similar to:

Arthas, Sepiroth, Sauron, Lucifer or any other evil character, god, demi-god or celestial being:

– They have delusions of grandeur, lack imagination, and should be punched in the cock.

Example:

[1]General: Arrthas: bowz to me minion dkz lolz
[1]General: Deathstabber: STFU NOOB
[1]General: Saurondk: Wrong, they are MINE!
[1]General: Lucyfer: lol at your names
[1]General: Separoth: i know

If their name contains any special characters like:

Æ È Œ Ð Ö å é è

Hopefully they have a macro for telling you what ASCII alt code to use to invite them to a group. They should also be beaten with a keyboard and preferably have it stuffed down their throat.

Example:

From Ðèåthknight: invite me
To Ðèåthknight: get a new name
From Særon: hi DPS here
To Særon: Frodo fucked you up, get over it
From Hán: hi use alt 0225 to invite me
To Hán: hi use alt 0182 to go fuck yourself

In the end, a name is just a name. Sometimes… actions speak louder than words!

Deathstabber has earned the achievement [Merrymaker]!

Translation: I’m doing the seasonal achievements! TAKE ME SERIOUSLY. THIS IS MY NEW MAIN.

Ðèåthknight has earned the achievement [Grand Master Fisherman]!

Translation: I have far too much time on my hands. My dedication to the art of fishing, while borning, implies that THIS IS MY NEW MAIN.

Bloodknight has earned the achievement [Swift Zulian Tiger]!

Translation: I have now obtained a mount that most other people don’t have because I can solo the boss with my overpowered class. THIS IS MY NEW MAIN.

Bloodknight has earned the achievement [Traveler's Tundra Mammoth]!

Translation: I have spent 16,000 gold on a mount to show everyone how serious I am about playing a Deathknight. SRS!

Dklol has earned the achievement [Amani War Bear]!

Translation: HAHA DK’s you can’t have this mount! Nothing you will ever do can amount to the pure awesomesauce of an Amani War Bear. Oh, and your eyes look stupid.

Darknight has earned the achievement [40 Exalted Reputations]!

Translation: Ok, you win. This IS YOUR NEW MAIN.

I feel all dirty now. So, anyone else up for some Darkfall?

– Daedren

Technorati Tags: Deathknight, Stupid Glowing Eyes, WoW

On one fateful day last year, after a late night binge of boxed wine, I decided to write something mildly coherent, uncharacteristically calm and hopefully accurate in regards to the future of a Fallout MMO - specifically, one done by everyone’s favorite old school penniless game studio called Interplay. For those that didn’t read it, here is a quick summary: Interplay needs 30 Million USD in venture capital by April 2009 to retain the rights of making the Fallout MMO; if they don’t have it, they’ll forfeit the rights to the game to Bethesda and probably have their knees broken. The 30M is to start production on the game, and an added 45M or more will be needed for the projected development budget.

One would think major investment announcements would be made by Interplay, if indeed they were, in fact, getting investors to invest in them. One would think that - but hey, who knows, perhaps they are just biding time, waiting to the last minute to tell Bethesda “We got it, bitches!” and then go swim in their vault full of money. One could also think that a financially insecure, unstable game studio of past glories long told could also be completely up shit creek and have no financial backing whatsoever, save for the paltry 1M USD they kind of got last summer - and, with the current economic situation - well, you get the point.

The Interplay website was redone last autumn, a highly needed update that vaulted the Interplay 1994-esque Geocities style homepage to something at least done in the last decade. Oh, and they now offer the Fallout Trilogy - which, according to them, doesn’t include Fallout 3 and instead gives you Fallout Tactics. Ok, we get it, you’re hurting for money guys. I know, let’s head over to the Interplay Forums and talk about a Fallout MMO. Where the hell is the Fallout forum section? Well, it doesn’t exist. Apparently those at Interplay felt the majority of Interplay fans would be there to discuss Earthworm Jim. Sprinkled around the General Discussion and “Other Classic Interplay Games” we can find the hopeful forum users eagerly talking about the possible future of the game.

Forum talk aside, Interplay is pretty hush-hush about this project. Their latest “News” is the announcement of the site redesign. The Interplay dev(s) rarely post on the forums, and when they do, it’s usually in support of another Interplay title. Basically, from a public point of view, not a lot is happening on the Interplay front in regards to “Project V13″. April 2009 is coming up quickly and to our knowledge Interplay has procured not even 5% of the total monetary budget to even start production on the game.

Things are not looking good for Interplay. These could be the final months of the game studio’s existence. The future of a Fallout Online game might rest solely in the hands of one ZeniMax Online which I’ve mentioned before. Let’s just hope Bethesda and company stay the hell away from the “Games for Windows” Live service thing they ran for Fallout 3. Bethesda has made some good games with the Elder Scroll series and Fallout 3, but making a MMO is (as we know) an entirely different animal. Can they do it?

What’s everyone else think? Would you rather have the broke, oldschool Interplay making the game or the rich and greedy Bethesda at the helm? Neither have MMO experience, but money *can* buy anything. Well, unless you’re Mythic or Funcom…

Technorati Tags: Fallout, Interplay

At last! Fallout 3 has swept into our gaming lives, and most people are happy. The game, in my opinion, is pretty damn good. Of course, with a good game like that, coupled with a heap of old-school game fans, it’s easy to get all moist on the mere thought of turning the Fallout universe into a MMO. I’m as excited as the next guy at the thought of having anything as cool as the Fallout series take a leap into the genre. In fact, I like the IP enough where I’ve actually based my theoretical game designs on Fallout (it was either that or Neuromancer, of course) and I even hang out at the craziest, most dedicated fan site that has ever existed for any game: No Mutants Allowed. In my limited dealings with real, actual people in the games industry, I’ve even been lucky enough to chat with a few of the former Black Isle and Interplay guys. So, it pains me more than anything to say: the Fallout MMO probably won’t happen for a long, long time. Sad Panda is sad.

Of course I can’t just go spouting stuff like that without some sort of logical argument. So, let’s take a look at the Fallout wiki site, that fills us in on some of the boring (although quite relevant) legal status of the Fallout MMO. Basically, it revolves around Interplay being Bethesda’s little bitch in every way, shape, and form. Remember a couple years ago when Bethesda bought the Fallout IP but Interplay retained the “rights” to a MMO? There are stipulations. Those are:

• Interplay has to raise $30 Million by April, 2009.
• Interplay has to start development by April, 2009.
• Interplay must launch the Fallout MMO no later than 4 years from starting development (April, 2013).
• Interplay must pay 12% of subscription fees in royalties to Bethesda if they somehow actually launch the game.

If any of these are not met, Interplay forfeits the rights to the Fallout MMO. (Source)

I want to point something specifically out in this little arrangement (which sounds more like a Mafia deal than a real business arrangement). The initial proposal for the Fallout MMO projected the cost of development between $75M - $100M. That means if Interplay does indeed secure the magic “30 Million” that they’re still over 60% under budget for actually making the game. Normally this wouldn’t be too big of a deal, as game studios normally don’t have a strict production schedule. Unfortunately, this situation is far from normal, and even if Interplay could start production on a Fallout MMO in 2009, they have a strict 4 years to get it out the door - no matter what state it’s in.

To compare, games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer had $70M+ budgets and took 4+ years to develop. Oh, and Warcraft had a team of vets from games like UO, Asheron’s Call and Everquest helming it up, not to mention Mythic having the Dark Age team at its disposal. Interplay has a couple of the original Fallout guys (Chris Taylor and Jason Andersen) - and, while talented, have no MMO experience whatsoever.

For arguments sake, we can assume that a Fallout MMO could be made in 4 years with the projected budget of $75M. That leaves us to question Interplays ability to secure investments. While the recent success and hype of Fallout 3 might reassure investors that the IP is workable as a MMO, putting money into Interplay is going to be a tough sell to anyone with money. We’re talking about a company that, 2 years ago, was over $5M in debt and had to sell it’s top IP just to not get their knees broken.

So, in a nutshell:

• Interplay, a company in financial disarray, needs 30M large to just start production on the game.
• Interplay currently staffs no experienced MMO developer of any sort
• Interplay has a strict 4 years to release the game, no matter what the state is
• Interplay then has to pay 12% royalty to Bethesda and can also not profit from any Fallout IP related merchandise.

In short, it’s not looking good for an Interplay based Fallout MMO. I have a gut feeling that of the $30M that Interplay needs to raise, they have about $29M to go. Only one public announcement has been made of investment (and it was for 2M shares of Interplay, not even $1M USD). Sadly I don’t think Interplay has the mettle or the personnel to be trying to keep everything all secret squirrel. Unless Santa comes with a fat check this Christmas, it looks like it’s going to be permanent lights out for good ol’ Interplay.

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This light is: ZeniMax Studios.

It’s not the coolest name for a game studio, but whatever. This studio is Bethesda’s little secret. At the moment, they’re officially working on something that seems to be interestingly uninteresting. They bought a MMO game engine license that makes it look like they’re doing, well, something. What I think they are doing is just biding their time. They are probably just laying the groundwork for their potential Fallout MMO, which they’ll have rights to in either May 2009 or May 2013, whenever Interplay decides to concede victory and try to escape the country without being killed by their investors.

ZeniMax and Bethesda will have exclusive rights to the Fallout IP and MMO as soon as Interplay officially voids the contract. From the above keypoints, it’s probable that this will happen. The MMO industry is a fickle and dangerous business to be in. Bethesda has both the talent (and more importantly) the cash to back a huge MMO project. In fact, when you think of it, Bethesda was pretty sly about this whole thing: they bought the Fallout IP rights from Interplay, probably discounted for the Fallout MMO rights. They then put these stipulations into the contract - knowing that they’d be done with Fallout 3 in Q4 2008 or Q1 2009 - enough time to revive the Fallout IP interest and then dive into the Fallout MMO in April 2009 - since they seem to know that Interplay can’t possibly raise $30M on this speculative venture.

So, maybe it won’t be a long, long time. Actually, ZeniMax seems to have their shit together (no surprise) more than Interplay for the Fallout MMO - as they’ve already got an engine picked out and possibly have a team (not just a couple guys) actually working on the game. They could have it out and humming by, say, 2011 or 2012 if things go well. To be frank, after Fallout 3, I think that Bethesda has a much better chance of making Fallout an “MMO that doesn’t suck” - which really hurts to say as a long time Interplay fan. So, I guess all that’s left for us to do is sit back and enjoy some Nuka Cola, since it looks like the boys at Bethesda have us covered.

Fallout Online - ZeniMax Entertainment

Coming 2012

That’s my prediction anyway!

Technorati Tags: Bethesda, Fallout, Fallout MMO, Sad Panda Interplay, ZeniMax Studios

I’m partial to throwing out the famous words of Mark Twain even before we start: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” My limited premonition has allowed me to see the future comments on this: “Oh, look at this guy now - what the hell is he, a MMO market analyst? Who the hell is this guy? DIE YOU FRENCH BASTARD!” All valid points. I don’t claim that this is official or by any means accurate. It’s just my take, in my limited research, on how Warhammer is doing so far. The hype for the game has died down, and the bigger/better/newer upcomings of things like Wrath of the Undead Treadmill and Bioware’s Better-not-suck Star Wars MMO have been busy stealing the show.

First, I’ll start with my usual disclaimer: the following information expressed is my opinion. It is based upon non-standard and quite frankly rather piecemeal, shoddy and otherwise unreliable statistics that are only a very small fraction of the applicable targeted audience. The statistics for my conclusions are based on forum polls at Warhammer Alliance and the VN Boards, reader responses to my articles on r1ft.com, Massively and MMORPG.com - or, to put it more eloquently - the worse place on the internets to find objective information.

I’ve been a bit torn (yes, torn) over how to feel about Warhammer Online. One part of me wants it to fail miserably and be cast down with the other scrubs like Vanguard, Tabula Rasa and Age of Conan. Why? Because of it’s lack of creativity and ingenuity. (and yes, I know that this is just plain unhealthy thinking) Another part of me, though - the more mature and rational part - wants Warhammer to succeed. It’s a PVP oriented game, after all, and failure could spell doom for future companies/investors looking to pour their time and money into PVP focused games. I consider myself a nice guy, anyway, and it’s just hard to wish doom and gloom on anyone, even the uncreative jackasses that spew crap into the MMO industry.

One thing that surprised me in my “Inevitable “Meh” of Warhammer Online” piece was the agreement I got. I had expected the vehement fanboys to arrive in mass and collectively lynch me for not having the same opinion as them. Some did, but a good portion of other readers felt the similar to how I did, or at least could sympathize with my views. So, I took a few minutes and did an amateur research on what people from around the Warhammer community thought of their game after one month of playing. What I determined was that:

About 65% of people are happy enough with the game to pay for another month.

Roughly 25% of the people are not going to pay for another month.

And the remaining 10% are on the fence, undecided what they will do.

With these statistics, it’s good to keep in mind a few things:

• They are taken from Warhammer fansites, forums, or MMO news sites
• People that have stopped playing the game would be less likely to respond
• The game could also be so awesome that the players don’t have the time nor inclination to look at forums.

(Source articles/forum polls are here: Warhammer Alliance Poll 1, Poll 2, VN Boards Poll 1, Poll 2, r1ft 1, Massively 1)

(FINE PRINT: In regards to references, it’s been said, possibly inaccurately, that the VN Boards are generally thought to be more “pro Warhammer” and fanboyish who intend to address most of their posts to someone at Mythic, while Warhammer Alliance has gained a slightly unsavory reputation for harboring a good amount of negativity towards the game. Mark Jacobs posts frequently on the VN boards. His posts are usually followed by about 85% of the people trying to fellatiate him digitally, with a sane 15% actually trying to say something objective and without balls in their mouth. This, along with a guestimation that a good portion of ex-Warhammer players would not visit these sites again, led me to my conclusion of a 65% rating. That guess is about as stable Funcom’s financial situation.)

I’m not sure what the margin of error should be, but any way you cut it, roughly 1/3 or 1/4 of Warhammer Online’s customer base could be not resubbing or thinking about not resubbing. The last official word from Mythic had 750,000 people buying the game. So, if this research is accurate, almost 200,000 of initial buyers of Warhammer Online could be hanging up their boots after the first month. Or, in strict money terms, over 2 BAZILLION dollars a month. Er, 2.5 million $USD per month, sorry.

More importantly - what does this mean in today’s market? Would a 25% player first impression cut rate be higher or lower than other MMO’s like Age of Conan, WoW or LOTRO? Your guess is as good as mine. Initial player retention might be far less important than long term player growth, like in World of Warcraft - which started with under 1 million subscribers (according to THIS) and has now grown to over 10 Million, or about 2 million if you exclude bot and farming accounts from ninja countries. The question then would be: Does Warhammer have what it takes to make a substantial player growth in the coming years?

In my amateur opinion, I would say no. The difference between now and 2004 is that the MMO genre has a lot more to choose from. The competition in the field has increased by about 300%, or even more when talking about strictly fantasy MMO’s. Warcraft undeniably took a lot of players in from other genres and overall, the MMO industry has expanded significantly because of it. On the other hand, Mythic has catered to the already existing customers of other MMO games (mainly) and hasn’t drawn many into the scene. They’re focused on trying to draw away players instead of generate new ones. This was a fundamental marketing flaw that you really can’t do much about, I’m afraid. So, while Paul Barnett put his money on 3 million subscribers in the future, I’d put mine on hovering around 1 million at most. In the end, though, I could just be plain wrong.

It’ll be curious to see how this affects PVP/RVR based games in the future. I think most will agree that the genre did need - hell, it still needs - more PVP focused games to play. (Hello Darkfall, yes, I know you’re there. Look, about last night…) Let’s hope that just because Warhammer hasn’t generated an enormous player base, other investors and game studios will shy away from creating PVP oriented games.

So, what’s everyone else think? Is this “approval rating” healthy, unhealthy, or just a bunch of crap? How do you think it will do in the long run?

Technorati Tags: Market Analysis, MMO, Warhammer Online, Zombie Mark Jacobs

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Folks,

Many moons ago we embarked on this adventure called ‘creating Warhammer Online’, and we’ve walked on, like a depressed super-intelligent robot, to this end goal of ours. The launch was overly spectacular, with a good deal over 400,000 people coming in the first day and experiencing the game. So grab your Lurikeens and take heed!

We’ve fixed so many things I don’t even know where to start. Improved guild and alliance interfaces, scenario and server queues, quest improvements along with many graphical and client performance issues that have been resolved. It’s been a busy month! I think we’ve really hit most of the key issues that players have given us - and by *hit* I mean homerun! After all, where would Lloyd be without Harry?

With that said, we’ve got a huge list of things we’re working on: plenty of quest voice overs added, additional Tier 1 and Tier 2 content, along with revamping lower Tier RvR areas and Scenarios - we’re looking into plenty of things to make the entire game experience as great as possible. We’re destroying these issues as hard as a Black Ork on an unfortunate War Lion - quick and merciless.

In the upcoming months, we’ll be looking at bringing you the missing classes back and delving deep into class balance. After that we’ll be working on bringing a lot of added content for both sides and improving the end-game experience. We’re even looking to add a RvR oriented dungeon for higher level players to experience. I can give a confident WAAAGH! and say that WAR is here, and it is not going anywhere. As always, our players will be our primary concern, and we’re always looking for feedback.

And with that, we’re off to WAR!

Mark Jacobs

VP / GM EA Mythic

Technorati Tags: Random Nonsense, State of the Game, Warhammer, Zombie Mark Jacobs

While it might be no secret on my personal disdain for Warhammer Online, I’ve been curiously intrigued by the amount of negativity towards the game. Over at Massively, they recently asked the question “Has Warhammer earned your money for another month?” - and surprisingly, almost half of the commentors expressed their intent to either not resub at all, or definately leave once WotLK is on the shelves in November.

Most can agree Warhammer isn’t exactly shattering boundaries with its ideas, but the fact remains that it’s the biggest PVP/RVR focused game to ever be produced. For a PVP oriented gamer like myself, this gives me a vested interest into the future and prosperity of Warhammer, as failure could pose problems for producing similar games in the future. So, while I might not have been wooed and wowed by the ideas or implementation of the game, I’d still like it to have a healthy subscriber base to at least encourage other companies to go forth and forge an epic PVP focused game.

This medium (blogging) isn’t the best for objective market analysis, but its a start. So far, between my blog and Massively, with over 200 readers responding, it seems that almost half of those will either not resub to Warhammer or leave back to WoW in November. Perhaps it’s mainly the negative people commenting, perhaps not. Anyway, I’d like to find out.

So, I ask my readers here: will you subscribe or resub to Warhammer Online?

Technorati Tags: Market Analysis, MMO, Subscribe, Warhammer, Warhammer Online

Warhammer: Top 5 Issues

Well here we are about a month after the release of Warhammer Online, and I wanted to take some time to talk about some of the top issues in the game at the present time. I have previously written about two of the early issues already which no longer seem to be glaring problems to me, Server Queues and Goldspammers. I want to preface this article by saying that I do enjoy the game so far, but for the purposes of this I will be zeroing in on what I see as the top issues that I feel have the potential to derail the success of the game. If you read my early review of the game, which has been published on a variety of sites, then you should know that my goal is to be as objective as possible. Let’s start the constructive criticism.

1) Overworld Rewards

This is issue one for me and a lot of the community at the moment. The entire premise of Warhammer Online is the war in the overworld. I don’t think anyone bought this game to do instanced battlegrounds, but at the present time they seem to be the most rewarding option in regards of using RvR to advance your character.

Scenarios are by far way too beneficial and the overworld is far less rewarding at the present time. Scenarios require no effort to get into, you simply sign up and wait for it to let you know when to zone you in. The longest any given scenario can run is 15 minutes, and can yield large amounts of experience and renown. Overworld RvR requires you to physically travel to the front in hopes of serious combat going on. Overworld doesn’t lay a finger on scenarios in terms of experience points, and unless you are in a major bloodbath you won’t be coming close to the same amount of renown, especially when compared to what can be earned in a 15 minute scenario.

The good news is that Mythic seems to have been reading the feedback. They recently announced a 50% increase in leveling experience in the overworld RvR areas, and they are promising to announce some changes in the next week about renown. This issue is critical because most people will opt to take the fastest route to advancement, and if the overworld becomes empty this game will fail.

2) Class Balance

Since release we have seen a variety of bug fixes go in, but we have seen little in regards to class balance. Now I understand where they are coming from in this regard, but there are some balancing problems that need to be addressed or people will get turned off from RvR. If people are finding themselves saddled into a class that is extremely weak, it may lead them to cancel out of frustration with their class if they don’t have the strength to tough it out or reroll. These are my observations as someone who plays Order in Tier 4, so take it with a grain of salt as I will try to be fair.

Shadow Warriors and Squid Herders are in desperate need of a boost. Both of these classes are one of the rarest played from my experiences, and for good reason. These ranged DPS classes as they are marketed need a bit more DPS or a bit more range. I play a Shadow Warrior in Tier 4, and it is a hard life compared to some of the other classes that are capable of far more damage and have much better survivability. A Shadow Warrior wears the same level of armor as a Bright Wizard and does far less damage. If I am at my maximum range and shoot at someone running towards me, they will be in melee range by the time the move is finished executing. Kiting is not even close to being a viable option in RvR. My root barely works and is a melee attack, so by the time someone is close enough that I need it, I’m dead anyways.

Magus and Engineers need to be looked at as well. These are also uncommon classes because they suffer from similar problems. Both of these classes have an ability that is going to ruin this game if it is not fixed. Electromagnet on the Engineer and the Magus version is an ability that sucks in all plays from 65 feet away, has no casting time, only has a 20 second cooldown, has no line of sight check (can pull people through keep doors in sieges), and snares!  I wasn’t surprised when I found out that the addition of this spell was something that happened right near the end of beta, so probably has not undergone the proper testing. The sad thing is that this is one of the few good tools these classes have at end game, so they need to be brought up a little while this ability gets fixed.

Witch Elves strike me as a bit out of control. I often find myself unable to fight back almost every single time they attack me, even with all of my counter-measures up. They can kill me in about 4 seconds flat while incapacitating me. Now as someone who wears light armor I guess that might be feasible, but Ironbreaker guildmates of mine have been destroyed almost as fast.  The ability that damages you for moving has no limit to how much it can do, and when factored with how easy they can kill when you aren’t moving there is little anyone can do in most cases.  There is nothing fun about not being able to fight back, something DAOC was notorious for.

3) Performance

This is another major issue that needs to be worked on as soon as possible. The end game envisioned by Mythic and its customers is large scale overworld fights. If your computer crashes you to desktop, or reduces you to watching a slide show, then people will eventually quit. My computer is an absolute beast, and even I have found it being brought to its knees in some of the battles we are seeing in Tier 4 at this point. These battles will only get worse as more people level up, so they need to continue to tweak the code. Nothing sucks worse then crashing to desktop during a city raid, then logging back in 1 zone back and unable to rejoin because all of the guards have respawned blocking your way.

I have heard rumors that the game is sending too much data as a reason for some of the performance issues. Some have said that buff refresh data is being updated too frequently, or that chat being logged too often could be possible causes. There are some mods out there trying to experiment with these issues, but I have yet to try any to see if they work. The good news is that the game is running noticeably better after the last patch when I am in large scale battles, so I look forward to seeing if there are more changes coming that will help streamline with before everyone else gets to Tier 4.

4) Itemization

This is a minor annoyance at the present time, but could be a big problem as we move on into the coming months. If you go to the merchants in your capital city who sell the high end RvR gear, you can take a look at some of the rewards and stats on the gear we get to look forward to earning.

The problem is a lot of those high end armors have stats that don’t make a lot of sense. Many of my guildmates report to me that they are seeing the epic RvR gear with very odd stats such as willpower and intelligence on melee class armors and weapon skill for casters. Some of the items are not only lacking in the primary areas for their respective classes, but they have stats on them that are of little value to their class. If these items are deemed as junk by the player base, it will diminish the reward from RvR, and make people less motivated to try to earn them. Now I understand that a lot of these items are sets and have set bonuses, but a lot of these just flat out suck without the rest of them. Maybe they rushed them because the game was close to release and they knew nobody would get them for a long time, but they definitely need to be gone over again.

5) Bugs

These most likely won’t make people quit, but they will test the nerves of the players. The guild interface is absolutely amazing, but it has bugs that need fixing. Some players in my guild have to be manually promoted by typing out the command because the interface hates them. The alliance tab has some glitches making it hard to read at times. The guild heraldry shows to other players, but on my screen I don’t see it unless I toggle it off and on every time I zone. Altdorf still causes me crash almost every time I go there for no real reason.  I still can’t join a scenario from some zones randomly. I could go on but you get the drift.

By far one of the most annoying things is the current state of the mail system. It literally took me 5 minutes to open 3 mails and remove the items attached to them. As someone who is in a guild where people are always sending each other stuff, this can make going to the mailbox a dreadful experience. Every time you buy an item at the auction house you have to go get it from the mailbox, so if you buy some material for crafting or a set of new armor, you might as well go to the bathroom and drop a duece while you wait for your mail to get sorted out.

Conclusion

Overall the game remains solid for what it is. The overworld RvR is enjoyable when it happens, and the gameplay is overall good. When you compare this game in its present state after 1 month to games like WoW and Age of Conan, it definitely has a lot going for it. These issues however summarize what I believe are the top concerns of the community, as you can find on most forums and in game whining.

The good news is Mythic is definitely listening to the player feedback. Recently they made a change in a patch that has reduced the number of gold spammers noticeably. People were upset about the leveling curve in certain tiers of the game and Mythic reacted by increasing the quest experience in these areas of the game. They are keeping a sharp eye on the community and reacting to their needs. If they continue to maintain this level of communication and honesty with the players, this game will be around for a long time.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Technorati Tags: balance, Mythic, Paragus, Performance, Rant, Warhammer