Sadly, my account had just auto-renewed for six months a couple weeks into April, so I’m stuck with a semi-inactive account until October. So there are good odds that I’ll be back in the game, off-and-on, until then. I might even go and try out the new Land of the Dead zone once it’s released to the general public.

I’m not sure what’s worse; the fact that I still enjoy WAR and can’t find the time to play it, or the fact that I’m just plain afraid of the enormous time commitment that any good MMORPG entails. I’m sure a little bit of it is that the current crop of MMOs really aren’t cutting it for me, either, but I used to be able to play for hours on end many times a week. Now, I’m lucky if I can scrounge together an hour or two on a weekend to sit down and play without feeling guilty for not doing something productive instead. Responsibility is the bane of my existence… and hell, I’m not even all that responsible. :)

In any case, what I’m getting at here is that I’m not going to be blogging here quite so regularly anymore (quite obviously, if you look at my last month and a half’s worth of posts.) I’m probably going to put the main reroller site on hold (again) as I put the finishing touches on a bunch of major new additions to Protagonize. I also have another site in development that I want to have up and running sometime this summer, or more likely early in the fall. Once the dust has settled on all of that, I’ll probably start gaming (and blogging about gaming) again in earnest.

Until then, I really have to buckle down and focus on one or two projects at a time to get anything done. In order to do that, I know that at least one of my projects needs to take a back seat, and the unfortunate victim is this blog (and the main site to come later.) I’ll still write off-and-on, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up.

Cheers, and thanks for putting up with my sporadic posts for the last couple of months. Sometimes life dictates where you need to spend your time, so I’m trying to get everything organized and follow life’s (hopefully sage) advice.

Ack. Been a while since I posted anything, hasn’t it? Yeah. Life has a funny way of monopolizing any free time you think you have, and then you realize two weeks have gone by since your last post… ugh. Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? That’s what counts. *cough*

I used to be an avid single-player RPGer as a kid and later as a teenager. I played most of the big PC releases in the late ’80s and ’90s, from Betrayal at Krondor to Daggerfall, Baldur’s Gate to Planescape: Torment, with a particular focus on high fantasy, which I’ve always enjoyed reading. That interest fell away once I started playing MMORPGs, starting with Ultima Online and then through Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and now WAR. I’ve picked up the odd single-player RPG in the last few years, but most often I’d buy the game, install it, play it for a few hours, and then leave it on a shelf while I returned to my MMO “hobby”, forgetting about it entirely. The last games I did this with were Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (both on X360), which I still regret not playing through. Thankfully, I still have both games, so I may give ’em a go again down the road.

Interestingly, I picked up Bethesda’s newest release a couple of weeks back, Fallout 3, and sat on it for a few days before having time to actually sit down and play for a straight stretch. I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic settings for my sci-fi, but I hadn’t played either of the previous Fallout games and I really wasn’t familiar with the game’s history at all. I sat down last weekend and went through the character creation process, played through the tutorial, and worked my way out of the starting area and into the blasted, mutant-filled landscape of Earth, circa 2277. And damn, I was impressed.

Is this what I’ve been missing over the course of this last decade? Is this what I’ve traded off when switching completely to the MMORPG genre as my bread-and-butter?

The trade-offs

Now, obviously, single player RPGs have their drawbacks when directly compared to MMOs; the primary differences being games’ lifespans and their aspects of social interaction. While I can muck around in my favourite MMO for years, interacting over that timeframe with thousands of other players on a single server (or more, if you include cross-server battlegrounds and the like), most single player RPGs will provide you with 30-60 hours of content. If you’re lucky, a more sandbox-style game like The Elder Scrolls series or Fallout 3 will give you enough freedom and side quests to get a couple of hundred hours of play in. That’s already pretty good, pushing 8-9 days /played, if you really get your money’s worth and play every possible angle through. Maybe you’ll even eke out a few more hours by returning to old save games and pursuing different dialog/action paths to discover multiple endings. At that point, however, you’re replaying old content and just fending off the inevitable conclusion of the game.

From a social perspective, they are called single-player RPGs for a reason — sometimes you’ll find a game that allows for some co-op local network play, or a multi-player variant that can be played on an online service like Xbox LIVE or Steam, but you’re still dealing with a game designed for the single player, with some extensions to it. Interestingly, this differs from old-school pen-and-paper and table-top RPGs, which were usually played with a group of friends.

What gets me is the amount of polish in a game like Fallout 3 have (and I bought the Xbox 360 version, which I was pleasantly surprised with) when compared to your standard MMO fare. 

Immersion? That’s un-possible!

Every WoW fanboy you run across will tell you that its success is due to its polish and simplicity, the way it brings in non-gamers and gamers alike, easy of gameplay and the usability of the interface. Yeah, that’s all baloney. While the introductory play of WoW (and even WAR, to a point) is certainly nice and polished, and the interface is pretty straightforward, it’s nothing revolutionary. It’s definitely an upgrade over previous games in the genre, but MMOs started on the low rung of the ladder while your typical single-player RPG has had years to get its game up to snuff. The current set of triple-A MMORPGs are put to shame by the level of immersion you’ll find in the latest couple of games from Bethesda, or any number of other single player RPGs released over the last several years.

Most will then argue that it’s nigh impossible to compare the two, due to the nature of persistent online worlds and the lack of true interaction the invidual gamer can have in a world populated by several thousand other people. That you can’t tailor an MMO to the single-player experience because then you have to either neglect the social aspects of the game, or figure out some way to get around the pandemic MMO issue of “if Jimmy does task X, then Jane can’t do her version of task X because it’s already been completed.” This lack of concurrency support is what leads to the current stopgap measure of instancing — creating individual bubbles within the universe where everyone can basically step into single-player mode (or co-op, in raid groups or dungeon instances) and pretend there’s no one else around.

WAR’s take on this is even more unrealistic. If you join an end-game city raid, you’re limited to separate instances within the city. There’s no open gates to run through, there’s no sense of belonging to a real defense because you’re split up amongst queues and separate instances of the exact same content. How frustrating is that? This totally destroys any sense of immersion the gamer has, and I’m really hoping that as technology advances in MMOs over the next few years, they’ll find a way to improve that type of bottleneck. MMOs are currently suffering from their own popularity, with inherent flaws in architecture in the current generation limiting what’s possible for them to accomplish.

Been there, done that.

Age of Conan. Guild Wars. Both are much maligned for other facets of their gameplay, but I think many of you will agree (if you’d played them, tsk, tsk) that one of the strongest areas in both games were the way they approached development of the individual character. In fact, it’s probably the area I enjoyed the most in both games. While the social aspect of MMOs was still there (moreso in AoC), both had a very enjoyable take on character development that harkened back to the way you built your characters in single-player RPGs. Both even compare favourably to my previous example, Fallout 3, which has a spectacular combination of scripted events, tutorials, and your own exploration of your starting area, Vault 101. Even at that early stage in the game, decisions you make affect how your character develops and is treated in the future.

In AoC, the single-player “night” mode in the starting City of Tortage alternated with the multiplayer “day” mode until level 20. There was voice acting and great quest scripting throughout. Of course, the minute you passed level 20, the game started to fall apart, quality-wise. I still think AoC would have been an amazing game if they’d kept up that early quality level throughout the game, right up to level 80 and beyond. The game’s artwork was admittedly amazing, and the character classes were all pretty neat and unique. The combat mechanics were a little gimmicky, but I didn’t mind the combo sequences all that much. Instead, I stopped playing at level 35, mainly because I’d lost that sense of immersion that I’d truly enjoyed for the first few levels. I’m sure I’m not the only one in that boat, either, and it’s really unfortunate for the genre. Rushing games out the door to meet or beat your competition’s release dates has become a common reason for the failure of new MMOs. Hopefully the next batch of releases will learn from these mistakes, but I’m not holding my breath — you can only screw up a multi-million dollar production so many times before you start running out of chances.

In Guild Wars, I treated it almost solely as a single-player game. While you could group up if you so desired, I only started playing GW when the Nightfall expansion was released, which allowed me to select a bunch of heroes to act as my henchmen, which was a lot easier than if you played with the dumb-as-a-stick henchmen in the first two releases. The heroes were much more customizable (both skills and gear) and less cannon-foddery for it. I played through the single-player missions quite extensively in Nightfall, then I went back with my new heroed-up character to the Factions area and played through the missions there, as well. While Guild Wars had some non-mission related stuff that really bugged me (why couldn’t I jump? seriously!), and the combat and movement response times were a little sluggish after coming from a couple of years of World of Warcraft, it was very tactically satisfying, and the campaign missions were fun, well-thought out, and immersive. I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment I had after completing each mission and unlocking new abilities and items, something you really don’t feel when questing in your typical MMO. At least, I don’t.

So, my question to developers is: why isn’t it possible to take what AoC and GW did a step further, and tie the single-player experience more tightly into MMOs? Why can’t my own character development path be more interesting and immersive, instead of the way everyone now just automatically clicks on quest givers, runs to the flag on the map, completes the “kill 10 foozles” quest and runs back on autopilot? Obviously, the scale of MMOs requires a lot more work on the technology and infrastructure to handle load and concurrency, but there are enough frameworks out there now that it must be possible to license a solid, proven MMO framework technology and then build a game that really focuses more on the gameplay.

Maybe the next batch of games will take this sentiment to heart. Now that’s something I’d gladly pay to play. :)

Apparently the folks over at Jolt Online have a keen sense of humour, as they managed to launch the latest iteration of the Zork franchise on the one day of the year that most wouldn’t contemplate launching a new product — aside from a statuatory holiday, of course.

If you happen to be a fan of stick-man mainstay Kingdom of Loathing, Jolt’s Legends of Zork is right up your alley. Except it has a much nicer interface and a solid IP behind it. Not to discourage you from trying out a Pastamancer, but Zork is a pretty familiar franchise to anyone who grew up gaming in the ’80s and early ’90s like myself. The latest entry in the series is unlike the previous point-and-click adventures produced by Activision in the mid-’90s in that it’s a completely web-based “casual massively multiplayer” environment, much like the popular MUDs (multi-user dungeons) of old.

Here’s the catch: nothing good in life is free. The latest of the Great Underground Empire’s offspring operates using a variation of the freemium business model now prevalent on the web — you can get a taste of the game for free, but if you want the advanced features, you’ll need to shell out some real-world dough. The game provides you with 30 Action Points a day that you can utilize to your heart’s content, but after that, you’ll need to either pay or earn those extra Zorkmids via a nifty system of surveys and other devious means (i.e. they actually make money with this thing somehow!)

If you’re smart about it, you won’t let it become too much of a habit; play casually, as the game was intended, and your Action Points will pool up on the days you don’t happen to show up, so you can play longer when you actually have more than a few minutes to sit down. In the meantime, you can always keep tabs on what’s going on via the official game blog, or Jolt’s twitter feed.

I’ll write more about the game when I have a little more time (and APs banked) to sit down and explore it fully. In the meantime, don’t let that grue eat you on the way out.

FOTM ftw.

Of course, the same could be said for the reams of Slayers you’re seeing on Order right now. I don’t think I’ve seen so many dwarves in one place before… ever. Reams and reams of those crested, frothing, red-haired, tattooed midgets running around, whirlwind axes beating the tar out of you the minute they wade into the front lines.

Now, as most of you who read this blog regularly probably know, I’ve been playing Order pretty steadily since the game launched. I have a 40 Warrior Priest, a 32 Swordmaster, and a variety of 20s over on Skull Throne. I’ve played a few Destruction alts over that span, getting a couple to the Tier 1 cap on Monolith. I had some cash banked from my multitude of lowbies on Monolith, but I decided to try something new, this time around.

Since the server merges earlier in the month have consolidated the action pretty nicely onto a few distinct US servers, I figured I’d start fresh with my newly-minted mean green choppin’ machine. After a quick glance at the current server population situation, I did what any self-respecting, self-centered player would do and rolled my Choppa on the most populated Destruction server I could find, Iron Rock.

Sorry, Mythic. You won’t bait me onto a low-population server again. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice… yeah, uhh… that.

A few hours of mucking around in Tier 1 for the first time in a while provided a good refresher on how the low tiers were rollin’. I gleaned a few interesting facts from this ongoing experiment:

1. People in Tier 1 are still dumb. For whatever reason, in Tier 1, most players don’t seem to know their role, or just don’t want to play it. I can understand people rolling alts just to muck around and have fun, but losing repeteadly due to plain old stupidity isn’t fun. I don’t know how MDPS can decide it’s awesome to just engage the tanks and other MDPS repeatedly while Order beats down our back lines, and no one on Destruction aside from me wants to rush the Order back lines. Warrior Priests, Rune Priests, Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors are just standing there completely untouched, while Destruction attacks the reams of Slayers, heavy tanks, and the odd White Lion in droves. And that’s in scenarios with at least double the number of MDPS I’m used to seeing in Tier 1 on Skull Throne (Order). It’s like their brain fell out somewhere by their spawn point and they forgot to pick it up and shove it back in their ear. Sigh. Maybe it’s all the new players from Mythic’s 10-day free trial offer. That’s gotta be it.
2. On Iron Rock, no one speaks in (or reads, apparently) scenario chat. At least, in Tier 1. I’m not sure why. And yes, I have my chat filters setup properly. :)
3. Camping spawn points in the RvR lakes still seems to be the only thing to do. Why no one breaks up into smaller 6-man groups is beyond me. It’s a lot more fun than 30-on-30 at the Order guard line.
4. Mythic’s new (old? I dunno…) “Welcome back” quest line is actually pretty handy for getting through those first few levels. The quest rewards are pretty good — +5/+6 talismans (with several stat choices), good XP, centrally located (same areas as other quests in the RvR lakes), and trophies. That said, out of the three trophies you can get from the first set of quests (sub-rank 11), only one (the beer stein) is worth wearing. I don’t know what Mythic’s fixation is with making lameass trophies. I still recall that YouTube video of Justin Webb giving an internal trophy presentation that blows what’s actually been implemented in-game out of the water. Where are the really cool trophies? Where’s that extensive character customization players were promised before release? I’m still waiting…

Anyhow, just a few random observations from getting back into lowbie RvR after a little bit of a break. Oh, and I’m looking for a guild on Iron Rock, too. Happen to know of an active, casual guild that’s recruiting? Drop me a line or post a comment and I’ll check it out.

So, how are you all liking the Choppa? I’ll be posting my thoughts on the class itself once I’ve gotten mine to a bit higher of a rank — it doesn’t feel right posting a review of a class based solely on the first eleven levels. ’Course, this is my blog — I can brag a little, right? ;)

There’s a commonly-shared belief in the gaming marketplace that games with no monthly fee that are microtransaction-supported are unpalatable to the “serious” MMO gamer. Microtransactions, which offer an alternate (or additional) form of payment to the traditional subscription model, have been looked down upon for a long time, the general sentiment being that they encourage spammers, gold farming and sales, real-money trading (RMT), and pretty much every negative activity in the MMO book.

Now, I’ve written about microtransactions and real-money trading in MMOs before, but from a different vantage point. This time around, I’d like to explore a couple of options that I see as viable ways to monetize an MMO with microtransactions (and in turn, dropping costly subscription fees) in a way that doesn’t anger the majority of the player base and get a rise out of half the gaming bloggers out there. Obviously, this has been expounded upon by any number of gaming industry professionals and many people much smarter than myself, but I figured I’d take a stab at the concept coming from a the perspective of someone who develops web-based communities, as opposed to coming from a game developer’s mindset.

Challenging the misconceptions

The way I see it, MMOs are at their core simply online communities like any other format, be they social networks, message forums, etc. They engage and involve the user to an extraordinary extent, and provide a much richer user experience and interface, but they function based on the same principles that power most communities. And there are a few things you can do to encourage good (and bad) behaviour in most online communities.

The problem with the way microtransactions have been implemented in online games to date is two-pronged:

1. They remove the barrier to entry to the game, introducing undesirable users into the game. These users would then spoil the community via abuse of the system like gold sales, spamming, etc., encouraging negative behaviour in the process.
2. They alienate the actual gamers themselves by preventing them from growing their characters without spending money.

I’d argue that most or all of the worries people have about microtransactions are either unfounded or based on discrete examples of how they’ve been integrated into games in the past. MMOs have evolved, so why can’t the way payment is handled evolve along with them?

Microtransactions remove a necessary barrier to entry

The first misconception to challenge here is that moving from a subscription-based model to a microtransaction-based one will remove the primary barrier to entry to most MMOs. In most communities, strategically-placed barriers to entry are a good way to encourage good behaviour, and keep out the chaff. They’re used everywhere, in varying degrees and different flavours.

To take a page out of Derek Powazek’s classic book of the early social web, Design for Community, barriers to entry come in three distinct strengths: informal, formal, and extreme. Being interested in playing an online game would be an example of an informal barrier: if you have no interest in MMOs, why would you play Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft? That step already weeds out a good chunk of disinterested folk. Registering for a web site in order to be able to participate is definitely a formal barrier, although a weak one. Requiring a driver’s license is a slightly more formal barrier to driving a car. Being ultra-rich and having to be invited by someone else ultra-rich is a rather extra

However, take a look at YouTube. How many of you actually register for YouTube? What percentage of people actually rate videos, add favourites, or subscribe to other users’ video streams? How many people actually contribute content to YouTube versus the lurkers who just come to watch? That percentage is undoubtedly quite low compared to, say, active players of an online game. The moral of the YouTube example is that barriers to entry vary in their level of requirement. Some situations dictate harsher or more serious barriers, and some don’t, such as in YouTube’s case. They get what they need from the site without requiring users to register or participate, for the most part.

In the case of MMOs, the majority of triple-A North American titles charge a monthly subscription fee. In fact, the definition of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game often coincides directly with the term “subscription-based”. There are a lot of influential folks out there who decry microtransaction-based games as everything from unethical to evil, a cash-cow, and generally as an epic fail on the part of game developers.

That’s not always the case. As an oft-stated example of non-subscription games, Guild Wars was a game without a subscription model that succeeded both critically and financially, and had a pretty solid community to back it up. Of course, it didn’t use microtransactions, either. It had an alternate business model that depended on regularly-released expansion packs, which weren’t required to play, but were a viable way of producing additional content at cost to the players.

However, moving to microtransactions does not necessarily mean you’re completely removing that fiscal barrier to entry. While most examples of games monetized using micropayments, such as the majority of Nexon’s games, are free-to-download and free-to-play until you want to shell out real cash for armour, items, virtual pet, or ability upgrades, there’s nothing preventing game publishers and developers from still requiring that up-front investment from gamers. Buying the game box on the store shelf is an experience in itself, and Guild Wars did an excellent job of getting users to repeat that experience every six months. There’s no reason a micropayment-funded game couldn’t still require you to purchase a retail box, and not require a subscription. In fact, that’s what most of the subscription-haters out there gripe about; finding an alternate way to monetize that doesn’t require them to drop coin every month. Instead, make the games buy the box — and then charge them to promote good behaviour in the game, not bad.

Microtransactions alienate gamers and promote bad behaviour

This one is the easiest to quash. The main argument here is that most games that run entirely on micropayments are riddled with gold sellers, spammers, RMT, and are generally unsavoury places that “real” MMO players don’t want to be. Microtransactions themselves don’t promote bad behaviour. Bad design and implementation of microtransactions does that quite handily, though. If you build a system that encourages this kind of behaviour, it’s bound to happen. It’s all a matter of looking at alternate ways of monetizing gamers’ activities.

I look at games that run on micropayments as an extension of the freemium business model commonly found on the web these days. You get your basic package for free (or in the case of some games, with a one-time cost when you buy the game off the shelf), with a good set of features and tasks you can accomplish with the tools provided. If you want more, you pay for it in different increments. While most web sites that use the freemium model are subscription-based, there are plenty that require one-off costs to perform specific actions, which are undoubtedly forms of micropayment.

A good example of this methodology of how micropayments can be applied in the web world is Freshbooks. Freshbooks is a site for individual freelancers or small businesses that lets you track time and invoice your clients. The basic service is free of charge, or if you require additional services, or have a larger staff, you can upgrade for a monthly charge to a more performant account. Now, I’ve used Freshbooks myself and I’ve been quite impressed with it. One nifty trick they have up their sleeve is their invoicing system; if you want to send out an invoice via email, it’s free. However, they also offer the ability to send that invoice via traditional letter mail. In that case, they charge you a small fee, usually the cost of the stamp with a very slight markup. That definitely falls into the micropayment category and it works quite well.

In the console gaming world, take a look at the incredibly successful Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises (or hell, even an online service like Xbox Live.) Both games offer downloadable content (DLC) available via micropayments that allows users to continue enjoying the game after they’ve completed the basic content. Even popular console titles like Rockstar Games‘ Grand Theft Auto are expanding into the DLC arena with available-online-only expansions like GTA4: The Lost and the Damned. None of these micropayment-based systems are harming gameplay or hindering gamers’ enjoyment of the game, so why can’t the same be said for applying similar principles to MMOs?

Microtransactions aren’t evil; they’re just misunderstood

Seriously, folks. It should be obvious that there are other ways to implement micropayments properly, without pissing off the entire gaming community at large. It doesn’t all need to be about character customization and advancement. It should be possible to run a game on micropayments without resorting to cheap tactics like item purchases, character upgrades, or explicitly paying for XP. There are other features of MMOs that could be monetized, or at least work off of a freemium-style model, and wouldn’t disrupt the games’ ecosystems quite so much.

Here are a couple of examples, off the top of it head.

• Charge users to operate (or participate in) micro-communities.
  What does this mean? It means that you buy the game off the store shelf, sign up without paying a monthly fee, and then if you want to start a guild, you pay a small chunk of change to do so, potentially on a monthly basis. It’s even possible that you could create a sub-economy within the game where guildmasters could charge their own players to be part of a guild, recuperating some of the money they’ve invested in forming the guild, and developing a bit of a reseller mentality. All of the financial dealings could be handled via the game’s interface and be one-clickable; the best micropayment systems are the ones that are totally transparent and easy to use —Apple has recently become the master of this: think iPhone App Store, or iTunes, or even the new features being built into iPhone OS 3.0. Not only would this approach create a formal barrier to entry for guild creators (and/or members) and limit the amount of bogus guilds and dead micro-communities in MMOs, it would increase the responsibility (and potentially, respect) granted to the role of guildmaster, and really make gamers think twice before joining a guild, or guild-hopping at a later date. Financial investment tends to create a sense of attachment that you don’t really get otherwise. This would be beneficial to both people operating guilds and to the guilds as a whole.
• Charge users for premium services within the game.
  Instead of charging gamers for shiny new armour or to buy yet another virtual pet, why not charge for premium services within the game? Here’s an example of a common MMO feature that could be revamped using this notion: auction houses. Now, I’ve complained in the past about the simplicity of WAR’s auction house, and how it could use additional features to bring it up to par, or surpass, existing auction house systems in other games. How about if instead, some of those features were only available if you were to shell out a little cash to subsidize their operation? You’d still get all of the basic features of the auction house, but if you want to be a real pro auctioneer, or just streamline your user experience by adding a bunch of additional ways to utilize the system, you’d have to pay a small amount. Let’s say you want to re-sell your own services as crafter on the auction house. You could pay a small fee to list yourself via a paid advertisement, and in turn, you might be compensated by other users who want to request your services, who could be charged a small sum to find out your in-game contact info or place an order. This would allow the game publishers to makes some money off both parties, and would allow you to re-coup a little (or all) of your investment/costs, and eventually maybe even make a profit. This would only apply to the subset of gamers who really want to use the auction house to its full potential, and wouldn’t interfere with others who just want to play the game and not bother with getting that involved in these more specialty-oriented features.

I realize that the examples I’ve presented are small and probably wouldn’t come near compensating for the loss of subscription revenues, but they’re only two options to consider. There are any number of other ways you could monetize MMOs and forego subscription fees in addition to what I’ve suggested above — and to do it in such a way as to not alienate gamers or make them think they’re being ripped off. These are alternatives to the present implementation of microtransactions that provide additional services to those who require them, but don’t hinder gameplay or allow only people who can afford financial investment to succeed in the game. They don’t interfere with game mechanics and even could go so far as to improve or extend MMOs’ economies in ways that aren’t really being attempted yet.

Apologies for the wall of text, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I couldn’t decide whether to post it here or on my personal blog. I think I’ll probably end up cross-posting it. :)

Are microtransactions really the end of the MMO world? Or are they just poorly implemented right now? What other in-game services could be monetized without breaking gameplay and hindering users who don’t want to pay, or don’t have the resources to do so? I’d love to hear what you guys think.

Photo courtesy of waɪ.tiː on Flickr.

Apparently I’ve been seriously out of the loop since I got here, as I completely missed mention that WAR is closing 63 existing “source” servers across North America/Oceania (43 servers) and Europe (20 servers via GOA) and merging existing characters onto more densely populated servers. If you happen to already have characters on the opposing realm of a target server,

To be honest, this isn’t much of a surprise, although Mark Jacobs and Mythic have been quite vocal (arguably too much so) in the past about how server closures are a sign of weakness and were a path that they’d never take with WAR. Obviously, the tables have turned and Mythic is now backing up and making changes that they’ve previously denied having any intention of doing, including server merges and the addition of official forums.

Mythic’s mistake was obviously in loading up with too much hardware off the bat and providing people with too many options on launch day — maybe their expectations for WAR’s launch were overly optimistic, but I don’t think they could have really thought they’d need to support ~2 million subscribers right out of the gates. Clearly, scaling back 60% of their servers six months after launch falls right into line with the initial 750,000 subscriber count being revised to 300,000 subscribers. The ratios match up nicely, although some are suggesting that this could all be a pre-emptive strike to help support a future Asian launch. I’m skeptical.

On the other hand, Tobold has a post up about the closures suggesting that this is a sign of the apocalypse for PvP, and that PvE games will vastly outnumber PvP-based games in the future. While I disagree with his naysaying, everyone’s allowed to their opinions… and I think most of his regular readers are aware of his predilection towards the PvE genre. So the negative attitude towards anything with a PvP-oriented end-game is understandable, even if you disagree.

Tobold’s suggestion that WAR’s PvE is zero-sum is pretty definitively not the case, though. Even the losing side in WAR is still rewarded with influence, renown, and is still able to progress towards reward goals, if a little slower than if they had won. The mistake in the assumption here is that wins and losses are clear-cut in black and white. There’s often just as much fun to be had in a losing cause as in a winning one. Is losing a scenario 500-496 be all that terrible? Is defending a keep successfully for an hour before losing it, raking in a ton of renown and enjoying a good battle — even in an eventual losing cause — be all that bad? It’s not as simple as a “no one gains, no one loses” situation.

Interestingly, while the original post was a good initiator of conversation, I found more insight in some of the comments. A couple struck a chord with how I feel about WAR — although I haven’t been playing as much lately, I could never see myself going back to WoW’s end-game raiding structure, while WAR is a much more casual-friendly game. This one pretty much sums up my feelings:

The WAR will kill WoW meme is conclusively dead and buried, but WAR is a game that is very very fun to level in and the endgame is fun as well (if you’re in to that sort of thing).

What its not is a game that lends itself to being an alternate lifestyle. But if you play it in moderation, its the only MMO I’ve found that is genuinely fun (by my “would you do it for free” definition of fun).

Mythic has my money for now. It’s the only MMO I could picture myself playing anymore.

posted by Toxic @ 12/3/09 15:55

Interestingly, there’s a whole lot of gaming and community-related presentations happening between the Interactive festival and Screenburn, so I’ll probably be posting from there with some insight from the sessions I attend, too. Lots of gaming royalty seems to show up at SXSW every year (Will Wright, recently of Spore fame, gave the keynote a couple of years ago.) I’m sure I’ll be meeting some interesting folks. :)

If you happen to be down in Austin too, drop me a line — I’d be more than happy to meet up.

Infocom’s Great Underground Empire captivated the hearts and minds of old-school PC gamers back in the very early 1980s, moving from their glut of notoriously well-written text adventures, to full-on graphical masterpieces in the 1990s. The group of MIT students who formed the original developer, Infocom, were eventually swallowed up by Activision in 1986, who in turn ended up doing quite well by the Zork name over the next decade and change. Activision developed three highly-rated (for the most part) graphical additions to the series in the late 1990s, Return to Zork in 1993, Zork Nemesis in 1996, and Zork Grand Inquisitor in 1997.

I still have fond memories of spending hours upon hours playing Return to Zork when I was in high school. “Want some rye? ‘Course ya do!”

I had heard some rumours of Zork making a comeback as a web-based MMO a few months back, and had signed up at LegendsofZork.com to see whatever the new developers (still working under the Activision label) had in store for the franchise. I thought it would be quite interesting to see how what was originally a text-based game, then a graphical point-and-click adventure, would translate into the not-so-new frontier of persistent, browser-based games.

There’s a press release about the game from this January over on the official site; although it’s purposefully quite vague, the impression I get is that this will be a pretty light-weight game for casual players. The press release describes it as an MMO, but from what I’ve read, it looks like the major parallel to MMOs will be the persistent game world. There’s only so much you can do on an interface that supports a wide variety of browsers, including the iPhone. Aside from that, and maybe some kind of public chat channels, I’d curious to see what they come up with in the limited capabilities of a completely web-based client. Of course, there are some other gaming sites out there that work pretty well entirely on the web, although they’re of varying degrees of complexity.

What prompted my post today was the email I got this morning from the developers, Jolt Online Gaming, which provided a little additional information about the game:

Now, a word about LoZ (as we affectionately call it). I’ve been reading a lot of speculation about what kind of a game this will be and I really want to set expectations correctly. LoZ is a casual adventure game. We’ve designed it to be the kind of game that sneaks into your soul and steals about 20mins of your time each day. It’s not an MMO (collective sigh of relief, I’d imagine). We genuinely think it’s a worthy addition to the Zork universe but at the same time we know that some of you won’t agree. You’ll have the opportunity to try it out very soon though.

Finally, I’ll start posting some game details on the blog about game mechanics and other *actual* detail in the next few days (we’ve been annoyingly vague on it).

According to the email, they’re in the process of balancing the game (which hints at a little more in common with MMOs than I had expected), and they’re looking for additional beta testers, so if you’re interested, drop an email to lozbeta@joltonline.com and get yourself signed up.

They’re also on Twitter (as are we), so you can follow them there and harass them with questions, if you’re as interested in the game as I am. And if you’re lucky, you won’t get eaten by a grue in the process. :)

Dictionary: fence sitter
n. Informal.
One who takes a position of neutrality or indecision, as in a controversial matter.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a fence-sitter. Every time I see a negative post about Darkfall Online (err, the easiest to find are probably over here), I see something positive written about it a day later. I was convinced not to try the game… and then I was convinced to give a shot. Hell, even half the commenters over here aren’t overly generous when it comes to discussing the game. And then again, the other half seem to swing the other way.

Either way, Darkfall appears to be making people think, and generating a pretty good chunk of discussion and controversy, which I generally consider a good thing™, no matter what side of the fence you fall off on. To be sure, Darkfall is a relatively small release with a reasonably compact (yet vocal) community. I don’t know how quickly that’ll change, either, considering sales of the game are currently “on hold” (from what I’ve heard.) It’s not all that encouraging that the game’s official news page doesn’t have  a single mention of the status of new orders. Hmph.

At this point, my head is swiveling back and forth like a spinning top and I’m willing to give Darkfall the benefit of the doubt. And damn Keen for posting objective, entertaining reviews of the game in bite-sized, easy to digest morsels. He’s obviously much too skilled at this whole MMO blogging deal. His last batch of screenshots even makes it look relatively decent! Seriously, he’s doing a better job of marketing the game than Aventurine’s own PR department. Time to consider a career change?…

(Although it does remind me a little of Dark Age of Camelot, circa 2001. Not only in the visuals, but in the general MMO new-car-smell vibe.)

For shame. And we all thought Darkfall looked like crap, right? Apparently not. Well, I guess I’ll just sit here on my fence, until I get a chance to give this enigmatic game a shot. And after I read a few more (objective) reviews.

Back when I was a kid, I remember playing hockey in the gym at my elementary school. We had a pretty small class, 12 or 13 kids in my grade, so we were actually in a split-class most of the time, with two grades merged into one classroom. The teacher would divvy up the teams as fairly as possible, with all of the little Gretzkys and Lemieuxs spread out evenly, and some poor schlub stuck playing goal on either side. We used plastic sticks and plastic pucks (which hurt like a m***erf***er every time you got hit by a slapshot on the shin or thigh without pads on), wore running shoes on a non-skid gymnasium floor, and everyone wanted to score goals. No one wanted to play defense.

Of course, it wasn’t the NHL. Stay-at-home defensemen in the big leagues get paid two-, three-, and even four-plus million dollars a year to ply their trade, nowadays. Scoring forwards are always going to make the big bucks, but it pays well to be a Willie Mitchell, a Robyn Regehr, or an Adam Foote, playing consistently in the background and acting as that last line of defense in front of your goalie.

As kids, everyone wanted to be that big scorer. Everyone wanted the glory. No one wanted to be the defenseman and do the grunt work of keeping your crease clear, defending your goaltender from interloping forwards, anchoring the penalty-kill, and back-checking.

Okay, enough of my hockey analogy

Healing in MMOs is a bit like that. While it can be argued that tanks defending the back-line in specific situations (like in many of WAR’s scenarios) can be considered defenders, they fall down dead pretty quickly without good healing. Your healer(s) are always going to be your key defensemen. The problem is, healing in MMOs just isn’t as entertaining as going up and smacking someone with a big two-handed sword, or a pair of poisoned daggers. There’s little glory involved, and little respect for players who take on the thankless role of healer. Just the satisfaction of a teammate saved, a flag defended, and a job well-done.

In his post, Tobold suggests that “even Blizzard doesn’t know how to make healing feel epic.” I concur with this sentiment. WAR has done a pretty good job of changing up healing by mixing in alternating damage bonuses for healing (Shamans and Archmages), and giving healers a few different melee spec options (Warrior Priests and Disciples of Khaine), but there’s still a long way to go before playing a healing class will actually be as much fun as their melee and ranged DPS counterparts. It’s still a step up from older games, where healers either became completely overpowered (Paladins, Druids, and old-school Shadow Priests at different points in time in WoW), boring to the point of being botted (Shamans and Clerics in DAOC, unless they went with a damage spec and gave up their healing abilities), had enormous crowd control options that changed the face of the game (Pacification Healers in DAOC), or were generally unplayable due to not having enough damage to solo.

The long and the short of it? Healing is boring and thankless, and sucks unless the game gives you something else more entertaining to do to compensate for it.

WAR is the first game where I’ve played a primary healing class from start to finish. (Note: I had a 50 Shaman in DAOC, but he was a buffbot.) I played my Warrior Priest as a hybrid melee class (mainly as Wrath/Grace, and then Grace/Salvation specs for the last few levels) until hitting rank 40. Upon my entry into the end-game, however, I quickly realized that (a) you’re not going to be very effective in PvE instances with a melee-specced Warrior Priest, and (b) you’re not going to be very useful or effective on the front-lines of RvR battle with a melee-specced Warrior Priest.

Why, you ask? Because on the front lines, I get CC’d and killed pretty much instantaneously. If I stay back with the casters and other healers, I’m left to be the poor sucker trying to peel a heavily armoured tank (or the odd Witch Elf) off of my caster mates, since I can’t both stay in the back lines and still generate any Righteous Fury in order to heal properly. At least, not without using a book and halving my damage output. Wrath and Grace Warrior Priests were meant to be in the thick of combat, yet we don’t have the survivability or CC to be able to do it properly without being geared out the wazoo and completely neglecting healing. It’s too much of a sacrifice and you really feel that Salvation ends up being the only reasonably viable option left… unless you’re a complete masochist who enjoys earning a quarter the renown for double the effort (and yes, there are some out there.)

All of this led me to respec over to full Salvation, with the rest in Grace. Which is fine, but it’s not what I wanted when I rolled the class. I wanted to play a hybrid healer/melee class, and I ended up being railroaded by game mechanics and the game’s community (expectations, you see) into being a full-on group healer. Bleh.

Inherent problems with balancing healers

There are a couple of primary concerns that game designers have that prevent healers from being both fun and balanced all rolled into one tidy package:

• It’s tough to give a healing class decent damage potential without overpowering them.
  Healers in MMOs are historically either one of: low damage, medium armor, high healing, or medium damage, medium armor, low-medium healing. Having a high-damage healer is pretty uncommon (though Shadow Priests came close back when I played WoW) and the usual tradeoff is in survivability. The minute you have a healer that has moderate healing and survivability, and reasonably good damage, they become nigh impossible to kill in a 1v1. Now, I’m sure many will argue that this shouldn’t matter in a team-based or RvR game, but it still does. One-on-ones happen quite often even in a scenario-type situation and even cloth healers in WAR are hard to kill without a full-on DPS class beating them down fast.
• Healers are meant to heal, not do damage.
  Many will also argue that the healing archetype was never intended to be a damage-dealer. That’s fine. I’m not saying that it should be — what I’m asking for is to be able to both stay alive long enough to do my job, and to actually have fun doing it. This is a game, after all. Why isn’t healing as much fun as the rest of the game mechanics? WAR has tried to balance this by adding damage specs across all of the healing classes, and by creating both the melee healer mechanic and the trading damage for healing power (and vice-versa) in the Shaman’s Mork/Gork system (which the Archmage also shares, although I can’t remember the name.) Unfortunately it still falls flat on its face — healing classes are still relatively weak and their damage output isn’t anything to write home about. Not to mention everyone expects you to heal, and criticizes you for doing damage.

Making healing fun is hard

Many MMOs have tried to make healing fun, or at least a little more balanced with damage, and so far I don’t think any of them have really succeeded without falling into one trap or another. The primary issue here is that the act of healing alone isn’t enough to keep the average player entertained. Sure, WoW had some nifty effects for heals like the Shaman’s Chain Lightning spell, they had Druids who could shape-shift and do a variety of jobs in a group without respeccing, and WAR’s tried to diversify the healer’s job by giving them damage options, but none of them really address the root of the problem. They’ve tried to make the classes more appealing by layering on alternatives to distract you from the tedium of tossing out heals left, right, and center.

Now let’s all stop and think for a moment: if the act of healing itself were entertaining enough to keep our interest and attention, there’s a good chance more people would play the healing archetype. In turn, thanks and DPSers would complain less about not getting timely heals, and healing would be less of a thankless job.

Now all we need to do is solve that last little niggly issue. How do we make healing fun? I haven’t figured it out yet. And neither have the guys building the games, although they are making baby steps in the right direction, by at least attempting to address the problem. But it’s something that should be at the top of any future MMO developer’s list. There’s only so many distractions you can toss into the mix before players realize that when it gets down to it, they’d rather be doing something entertaining. These are games we’re playing, after all.

What do you all think? What would make healing fun for you? Let’s get a discussion going.