Turbine and Blizzard are promoting their new Twitter feeds with a variety of raffles. Ironically, raffles actually discourage players from making an effort to promote the feeds - more followers mean more competition for the same small number of prizes.
By contrast, SOE's new Facebook/Twitter campaign will hand out the prizes - up to $7.50 in Station Cash item store credit - to EVERY SINGLE PLAYER of EQ1, EQ2, and Free Realms (not just the ones who participated) if the respective Facebook and Twitter pages reach very attainable goals by February. Now players have a strong incentive to talk up the pages to their in-game friends, advertise the game to their out-of-game friends, and even sample item shop goodies that they'd previously been ignoring (at no real money cost to SOE).
(Incidentally, your Station Cash balance applies to your entire Station account, not individual games. If you don't already have one, it might be worth taking five minutes to start a Free Realms character on your existing account so you can double up on the prizes.)
The catch is that Facebook's new privacy policy makes your name and your fan pages un-hideable public information. By clicking that "become a fan" button, you may be irrevocably declaring your association with MMORPG's to potential employers. Unfortunately, many non-players still associate MMORPG's with addiction and all-night marathons that leave players too exhausted to work. There is an unfair but real possibility that someone who participates in this promotion will be denied a job because of it.
In the long run, perhaps we're all better off if more players (who DON'T reinforce the stereotype) "come out" about their status as MMORPG players. For any one specific individual at the moment, though, there is a very real possibility that they might someday regret having pushed that button - consenting to, but not necessarily understanding the consequences.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Pranking the Lich King, and other 3.3 Impressions
Thanks to a well-timed Anniversary retrial, I've been able to take WoW's 3.3 patch for a test drive.
Probably the biggest feature is a new five-man dungeon. Non-raiders get to knock on the back door of Icecrown Citadel, kill the doorman and some of Arthas' other servants, raid his fridge, and bravely run for our lives when the Lich King comes home to find us trashing his bedroom. This is supposed to make us feel like all the best lore isn't being reserved for raiders, as it was in TBC and will be in a few months when Blizzard lets raiders actually kill the expansion's title character instead of playing some practical jokes on him. The dungeons also drop ilvl 232 loot on heroic, marking the second complete gear reset in the year since I hit 80.
Lore and loot quibbles aside, the dungeon(s) are actually very well executed. The encounters are basically an 8-boss raid, broken up into three wings to insert convenient stopping points. The bosses do interesting things (the very first is probably my favorite, for sheer uniqueness), and the dungeon tuning seems about right for a group that's geared to the levels of previous 5-mans. That was the group I had for the first wing on patch night, and we actually had to work - wiping a few times and even using crowd control - to clear the dungeon.
On the downside, many players are geared well beyond the levels of the previous 5-mans. I joined a group last night for wing two and wound up burning through that and the third wing (the dungeons are connected to allow groups to chain them in succession, which would probably take experienced players under two hours) without really being challenged.
Finally, on the incentive side of things, I won [Seethe] outright off of the last boss of the first wing. There was no reputation to earn, no tokens to collect, and, now, no particular reason to ever go back to that wing of the dungeon. This weapon was a huge upgrade over the [Spire of Sunset] healer staff I'd been using and I would have been willing to do substantially more work to obtain it.
Such, I suppose, is the peril of the RNG; sometimes you don't get what you wanted (e.g. the caster weapon off of the Black Knight in last patch's 5-man) and sometimes it's almost insultingly easy. Even so, it feels like the purpose of these dungeons is to gear up raider alts quickly, rather than actually occupy 5-man players in the way that the 5-mans at Wrath's launch did.
Misc 3.3 impressions
- The new quest display on the map is great, even more polished than Warhammer's version.
- The Blizzard outfit manager now labels items in your bags with what sets they're in, so you can tell what goes in your bank.
- As promised, it's now possible to mail heirloom items to cross-faction alts on the same server. (If you're planning to test this, be warned that your level 1 alt will have to kill some stuff for the 30 copper needed to mail the heirloom back!) I've always preferred to have my Horde alts on another battlegroup, partially so they won't have to share character slots and partially because that way I have another server to play on if one is down. I'll have to ponder whether it's worth setting up Horde camp on my Alliance server for the heirlooms. Also note that this now includes head and shoulder rep enchant items.
Overall, it's looking like a major polishing patch as Blizzard gets its house in order in preparation for the expansion. It's well executed, but it will be very interesting to see whether the content that's here will keep players entertained through to whenever Cataclysm happens (personally, I doubt that it will be anytime before summer).
The weapon that Greenwiz will probably take into Cataclysm, barring the rare and coveted Quel'Delar drop.
Probably the biggest feature is a new five-man dungeon. Non-raiders get to knock on the back door of Icecrown Citadel, kill the doorman and some of Arthas' other servants, raid his fridge, and bravely run for our lives when the Lich King comes home to find us trashing his bedroom. This is supposed to make us feel like all the best lore isn't being reserved for raiders, as it was in TBC and will be in a few months when Blizzard lets raiders actually kill the expansion's title character instead of playing some practical jokes on him. The dungeons also drop ilvl 232 loot on heroic, marking the second complete gear reset in the year since I hit 80.
Lore and loot quibbles aside, the dungeon(s) are actually very well executed. The encounters are basically an 8-boss raid, broken up into three wings to insert convenient stopping points. The bosses do interesting things (the very first is probably my favorite, for sheer uniqueness), and the dungeon tuning seems about right for a group that's geared to the levels of previous 5-mans. That was the group I had for the first wing on patch night, and we actually had to work - wiping a few times and even using crowd control - to clear the dungeon.
On the downside, many players are geared well beyond the levels of the previous 5-mans. I joined a group last night for wing two and wound up burning through that and the third wing (the dungeons are connected to allow groups to chain them in succession, which would probably take experienced players under two hours) without really being challenged.
Finally, on the incentive side of things, I won [Seethe] outright off of the last boss of the first wing. There was no reputation to earn, no tokens to collect, and, now, no particular reason to ever go back to that wing of the dungeon. This weapon was a huge upgrade over the [Spire of Sunset] healer staff I'd been using and I would have been willing to do substantially more work to obtain it.
Such, I suppose, is the peril of the RNG; sometimes you don't get what you wanted (e.g. the caster weapon off of the Black Knight in last patch's 5-man) and sometimes it's almost insultingly easy. Even so, it feels like the purpose of these dungeons is to gear up raider alts quickly, rather than actually occupy 5-man players in the way that the 5-mans at Wrath's launch did.
Misc 3.3 impressions
- The new quest display on the map is great, even more polished than Warhammer's version.
- The Blizzard outfit manager now labels items in your bags with what sets they're in, so you can tell what goes in your bank.
- As promised, it's now possible to mail heirloom items to cross-faction alts on the same server. (If you're planning to test this, be warned that your level 1 alt will have to kill some stuff for the 30 copper needed to mail the heirloom back!) I've always preferred to have my Horde alts on another battlegroup, partially so they won't have to share character slots and partially because that way I have another server to play on if one is down. I'll have to ponder whether it's worth setting up Horde camp on my Alliance server for the heirlooms. Also note that this now includes head and shoulder rep enchant items.
Overall, it's looking like a major polishing patch as Blizzard gets its house in order in preparation for the expansion. It's well executed, but it will be very interesting to see whether the content that's here will keep players entertained through to whenever Cataclysm happens (personally, I doubt that it will be anytime before summer).
The weapon that Greenwiz will probably take into Cataclysm, barring the rare and coveted Quel'Delar drop.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Stargate: Torchlight, the latest solo prototype for an MMORPG
Various sources are reporting that Stargate Worlds will be a single player game before it's an MMORPG. We've already seen one single player Stargate game fail to advance to market after having a prototype that was good enough to use on an episode of the show, but it seems that Cheyenne Mountain has a better chance of pulling off a single player game than an MMORPG given their funding situation.
At this point, I guess we can say that pulling a Torchlight is a legitimate business model - build the game engine first and use the cash from that to finance the network code, testing, and larger amounts of content that players expect in an MMO. The production values on the modern MMORPG are becoming large enough that this may be the only way for a start-up to get into the genre.
That said, it will be interesting to see whether the Torchlight MMO, and Stargate Worlds if it ever happens, will be influenced by having begun their lives as solo games. Will the engine work with large numbers of players, or will there need to be Guild Wars style single party instances? Fans of the single player version are going to be amongst the most likely customers for the MMO, so developers are almost certainly going to be pressured to keep the games solo-friendly at precisely the time when there's real room in the genre for games to hit the non-solo niche. In the end, this development model may have more impact on the end products that anyone realizes at the moment.
(Ironically, Massively has an interview with Runic Games on their work with Torchlight and its MMO offspring just as another studio emulates their business model, albeit as a last resort.)
At this point, I guess we can say that pulling a Torchlight is a legitimate business model - build the game engine first and use the cash from that to finance the network code, testing, and larger amounts of content that players expect in an MMO. The production values on the modern MMORPG are becoming large enough that this may be the only way for a start-up to get into the genre.
That said, it will be interesting to see whether the Torchlight MMO, and Stargate Worlds if it ever happens, will be influenced by having begun their lives as solo games. Will the engine work with large numbers of players, or will there need to be Guild Wars style single party instances? Fans of the single player version are going to be amongst the most likely customers for the MMO, so developers are almost certainly going to be pressured to keep the games solo-friendly at precisely the time when there's real room in the genre for games to hit the non-solo niche. In the end, this development model may have more impact on the end products that anyone realizes at the moment.
(Ironically, Massively has an interview with Runic Games on their work with Torchlight and its MMO offspring just as another studio emulates their business model, albeit as a last resort.)
Monday, December 7, 2009
Optimal Use of Leveling Content
Allarond is back in Moria, trying to mop up some quests he missed, including the entire zone of Foundations of Stone. The catch is that, between these quests and the ones in Lothlorien, he is already level 62. The Mirkwood expansion raised the cap to 65, and I'm likely to hit level 63 before I set foot in it.
The irony is that LOTRO originally launched with far too little solo leveling content, especially in the 40+ level range. Now there's comfortably more than a player needs for a single playthrough from 40-60, but not quite enough to take a second character through without repeating a lot of content. Also, the deed system still discourages alts, and there's no way to lower your level if you actually want to do all the solo content at non-trivial levels.
Content usage in WoW
WoW has a similar problem - amongst other things, you can skip approximately half of the Burning Crusade expansion these days - but there's plenty of content to take a second character (possibly as many as 3-4 if you do both factions, with the exception of the 40-58 range) through all-new content.
Also, if you really know what you're doing, you can use the new level locking feature to freeze your exp gain to do more content at a constant level, though you do this at the risk of having a lot of grinding ahead if you miscalculate.
It will be very interesting to see how the Cataclysm expansion is received, since players may need to make multiple alts of both factions to see all of the new stuff. If you only stick to your one main character, Blizzard's decision to re-allocate resources from the level cap to the early leveling game may leave you feeling like it was a very thin expansion.
Content Usage in EQ2
One of my earliest observations in EQ2 was the same problem - leveling past most of the content in the 1-30 region. (Things settle down from 30-60, kind of suck from 60-70, and then you're looking at basically one path through Kunark from 70-80 and the current cap.)
Today, EQ2's probably got the best solution out there - a new feature in September's Game Update allows players to temporarily lower their levels for the purpose of completing low level content. You will even continue to gain experience at some reduced rate, which might do a fair amount to patch the hole in solo content in the game's 60-70 tier.
Solutions for Everyone?
Don't get me wrong, there are problems with expecting players to complete all the solo quests in the game just to level. Having to chase down every single quest can start to feel like a chore, especially if you're stuck in one area for too much time (See Kunark). You also run the risk of having to return to the same area repeatedly, which is when even the best travel systems start to drag. Finally, players who are trying to make their way to higher levels so they can escape the solo quest grind need to have a way to make that happen.
I'm just saying that it would be nice to have a good mechanism for using all the content before you out-level it, if that's actually your goal as a player.
The irony is that LOTRO originally launched with far too little solo leveling content, especially in the 40+ level range. Now there's comfortably more than a player needs for a single playthrough from 40-60, but not quite enough to take a second character through without repeating a lot of content. Also, the deed system still discourages alts, and there's no way to lower your level if you actually want to do all the solo content at non-trivial levels.
Content usage in WoW
WoW has a similar problem - amongst other things, you can skip approximately half of the Burning Crusade expansion these days - but there's plenty of content to take a second character (possibly as many as 3-4 if you do both factions, with the exception of the 40-58 range) through all-new content.
Also, if you really know what you're doing, you can use the new level locking feature to freeze your exp gain to do more content at a constant level, though you do this at the risk of having a lot of grinding ahead if you miscalculate.
It will be very interesting to see how the Cataclysm expansion is received, since players may need to make multiple alts of both factions to see all of the new stuff. If you only stick to your one main character, Blizzard's decision to re-allocate resources from the level cap to the early leveling game may leave you feeling like it was a very thin expansion.
Content Usage in EQ2
One of my earliest observations in EQ2 was the same problem - leveling past most of the content in the 1-30 region. (Things settle down from 30-60, kind of suck from 60-70, and then you're looking at basically one path through Kunark from 70-80 and the current cap.)
Today, EQ2's probably got the best solution out there - a new feature in September's Game Update allows players to temporarily lower their levels for the purpose of completing low level content. You will even continue to gain experience at some reduced rate, which might do a fair amount to patch the hole in solo content in the game's 60-70 tier.
Solutions for Everyone?
Don't get me wrong, there are problems with expecting players to complete all the solo quests in the game just to level. Having to chase down every single quest can start to feel like a chore, especially if you're stuck in one area for too much time (See Kunark). You also run the risk of having to return to the same area repeatedly, which is when even the best travel systems start to drag. Finally, players who are trying to make their way to higher levels so they can escape the solo quest grind need to have a way to make that happen.
I'm just saying that it would be nice to have a good mechanism for using all the content before you out-level it, if that's actually your goal as a player.
Onyxia Plus Four Years
Green's most recent Onyxia raid, December 5th, 2009
I've apparently been away from WoW for long enough to be offered seven days of free retrial time in honor of the anniversary. I cashed in this trial on Saturday so that I would beat the deadline for the minipet and still have an active retrial going for the rest of this week in case patch 3.3 goes live.
WoW's endgame is basically how I left it - lots of daily quests, most of which I have finished, and players looking for more companions (almost always including a healer) to try and burn through some dungeon I've completed half a dozen times. As it happened, my guild decided to organize an impromptu Onyxia-10 raid at the exact time I poked my head into Azeroth with an hour or two to kill. After warning them that I hadn't killed her since 2006, Greenwiz came along for the ride.
The more things change
Green's first Onyxia raid, November 21st, 2005
From crawling through my screenshots folder, I determined that Greenwiz went on his first Onyxia raid over four years ago. In my limited experience with the new version, the fight seems to be much polished and improved.
Then and now, DPS players have an odd balance of importance in raiding. If the tanks and healers don't have their respective activities down, the presence and/or competence of the DPS is often irrelevant. Meanwhile, in a 40-man raid with two dozen DPS, the odds are that success or failure will be determined by a greater margin than any one player's contribution.
By scaling the Onyxia fight down to the 10-man format, Blizzard has actually managed to make DPS matter. If I fire off AOE too early and get eaten by whelps (as is traditional), that represents a huge amount of the raid's DPS lost. There are also decisions to be made - what portion of my time is to be spent on whelps versus the new Warders who spawn in the middle of the fight versus actually killing Onyxia in a timely fashion.
Even with the added polish, though, raiding is still largely like I remember it. It's still a question of farming up upkeep costs (I'd guesstimate that I spent 50G on a flask plus repair bills on the brief raid) for largely repetitive content. The eventual victory, if it happens, is supposed to make the tedious learning process worthwhile.
Tobold critiques solo players for diminished willingness to run the same content over and over again, but I'd read the same critique as an admission that the content isn't worth repeating that many times on its own merits. In an era where players have many other options for their gaming time, that's a problem. If the increasing use of NPC henchmen calls attention to the problem, and forces developers to address it with their revenue stream on the line, that sounds like a good thing to me.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Can an NPC teach you to group with players?
Keen, Syp, and Tobold have got a little debate running on whether NPC companion characters in the upcoming KOTOR MMO push the envelope too far away from grouping and towards solo play in supposedly massively "multiplayer" games.
No one knows how this will play out in KOTORO yet, I will offer a random observation from my early experiences with LOTRO's new skirmish system. Skirmishes are instantly-generated PVE instances that scale for various group sizes. Players are given an NPC soldier - who is significantly less intelligent than a player or normal player controlled pet - to fight alongside them (only in Skirmishes). The pet can (in principle) tank, heal, buff, or do ranged DPS. The skirmish system scales to a certain extent with the number of players in the group, and is supposedly used to allow players to solo otherwise group-based content in the game's epic book storyline.
My character is a Champion - a melee DPS with off-tanking capabilities and minor self healing - so I promptly picked the "healer" traits for my soldier. I ran through two actual skirmish battles using the healer, and I noticed something interesting. My Champion has a defensive stance and a taunt that I have never used, because I play 99% of my time solo and don't need to worry about keeping aggro when there's no one else for the mobs to fight.
I also promptly noticed that, when we get attacked by several enemies including at least one with ranged attacks, I needed to take an effort to drag the melee foes to the ranged attacker so that I can hit all of them with AOE attacks. If I failed to do so, the ranged foe would promptly start attacking my somewhat-defenseless healer, as I would not be doing any damage to it or generating any threat. When I'm soloing, I'm generally more inclined to use line of sight to force the ranged attacker to come to me, and it's not necessarily a bad thing if it gets stuck in anti-exploit mode instead of finding me. In the skirmish, that foe would promptly switch targets and kill my healer.
In short, I probably learned more about how to off-tank in LOTRO in a single hour of playing skirmishes than I did from soloing 61 levels to date. I find it puzzling that Keen and Tobold think this feature is detrimental to grouping; it seems like the first serious attempt I've seen to address the problem of players getting to the level cap and not knowing how to play their class in groups.
No one knows how this will play out in KOTORO yet, I will offer a random observation from my early experiences with LOTRO's new skirmish system. Skirmishes are instantly-generated PVE instances that scale for various group sizes. Players are given an NPC soldier - who is significantly less intelligent than a player or normal player controlled pet - to fight alongside them (only in Skirmishes). The pet can (in principle) tank, heal, buff, or do ranged DPS. The skirmish system scales to a certain extent with the number of players in the group, and is supposedly used to allow players to solo otherwise group-based content in the game's epic book storyline.
My character is a Champion - a melee DPS with off-tanking capabilities and minor self healing - so I promptly picked the "healer" traits for my soldier. I ran through two actual skirmish battles using the healer, and I noticed something interesting. My Champion has a defensive stance and a taunt that I have never used, because I play 99% of my time solo and don't need to worry about keeping aggro when there's no one else for the mobs to fight.
I also promptly noticed that, when we get attacked by several enemies including at least one with ranged attacks, I needed to take an effort to drag the melee foes to the ranged attacker so that I can hit all of them with AOE attacks. If I failed to do so, the ranged foe would promptly start attacking my somewhat-defenseless healer, as I would not be doing any damage to it or generating any threat. When I'm soloing, I'm generally more inclined to use line of sight to force the ranged attacker to come to me, and it's not necessarily a bad thing if it gets stuck in anti-exploit mode instead of finding me. In the skirmish, that foe would promptly switch targets and kill my healer.
In short, I probably learned more about how to off-tank in LOTRO in a single hour of playing skirmishes than I did from soloing 61 levels to date. I find it puzzling that Keen and Tobold think this feature is detrimental to grouping; it seems like the first serious attempt I've seen to address the problem of players getting to the level cap and not knowing how to play their class in groups.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Tweets of Mirkwood
I've been a bit busy with actually playing Mirkwood to blog about it, but I suppose that makes this as good a time as any to unveil my new Twitter feed.
http://twitter.com/pvdblog
Twitter seems like as good a way as any to keep track of what I'm actually doing on a daily basis, while saving the more serious analysis for the blog. It's basically an open notebook of sorts, and may or may not be of interest to anyone, but hey, what's a social media tool if not occasionally of questionable use?
http://twitter.com/pvdblog
Twitter seems like as good a way as any to keep track of what I'm actually doing on a daily basis, while saving the more serious analysis for the blog. It's basically an open notebook of sorts, and may or may not be of interest to anyone, but hey, what's a social media tool if not occasionally of questionable use?
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