Can Word of Mouth Really Help?

On last week's episode of The Multiverse (where they also gave me a rather generous shout-out, thanks guys), Riknas' rant focuses on unknown free to play developers. As he says, some of the smaller - and most successful - free to play games are being made by studios that no one has heard of. Chris adds that, for players, supporting studios that we haven't heard of is the only way to drive real change. I don't disagree with either sentiment, but allow me to play devil's advocate.

Over the weekend, I got an out-of-the-blue apology email from a longtime commenter who felt in hindsight that he'd given me too much of a hard time for my take on his favorite MMO. The email said that he felt that defending the game against blog comments was necessary - i.e. that, if untrue claims were not countered, they could drive off new players and ultimately hurt the success of the game and its ability to continue. Personally, I don't think that any such apology is really needed - comes with the territory of expressing an opinion, especially if you're brave/foolish enough to play as many games as I do. It does drive home the point that the perceived stakes in the word of mouth business can be high. But is that really true?

Beyond the reach of Grassroots?
For those of us who aren't Curt Schilling, the fact is that our individual contributions don't make all that much of a difference in the fate of a game. (Schilling, incidentally, sounds like he's having a bit of buyer's remorse about having tied most of his net worth to his new studio.) A few players here or there, or even all of their friends, aren't going to make or break the success of a game with a multi-million dollar budget (that is to say, almost any game that could credibly deliver "massively multiplayer") in the short to medium term. The product either does or does not deliver, and the majority are going to base their payment decisions on that truth, rather than any matter of principle word of mouth crusades.

The paradox with supporting the studio that no one has heard of is that there is a factor that is correlated to whether the game can deliver - its development budget. No one is that worried about the mystery fourth Blizzard project, the supposed EQ3 at SOE, or the mystery possibly-Harry-Potter project at Turbine because these companies have the money to finish the development job. When you look at some studio that has yet to deliver a working product, like, say, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment or Flagship Studios, it turns out that neither had the resources to actually produce the promised games.

CME's situation was so dire that they went under without ever launching their MMO (though they did try a non-MMO prototype that I'm gathering did not fare so well from the lack of fanfare). Hellgate's legendary launch failure brought down the studio, complete with the more promising Mythos project. Any additional funds that a player sent in the direction of those studios (e.g. purchasing additional copies just to support what the devs were doing) would have ended up in the pockets of creditors when the shops went under.

Is success pre-determined?
So here's a question - when we see a game that launches big and flames out - like, say, Warhammer or the two Cryptic games - versus a game that launches small and builds on positive buzz - perhaps Eve, Wizard 101, Runes of Magic, etc - can we really credit the word of mouth with that success? Or is the positive word of mouth just another effect caused by the games' success? Clearly, you can create a PR disaster bad enough to affect your reputation, but I'm less convinced that the effect in the opposite direction works enough to change outcomes.

Games live and die on their quality, and most of the work on that front isn't really something that can be patched in later because subscription numbers were 10% higher than expected.

Close Encounters of the Massively DDO Kind

Last night, I kind of "attended" the first edition of "Syp's" Massively DDO night. The air quotes are because I accidentally blundered off to do something else and because the event did not include the advertised quantity of Syp due to arrival of new baby. (Grats Sypster!)

What does "static group" mean again?
In the absence of everyone's favorite Bio Breaker, one poor Massively editor was left to wrangle a 32 member guild on his own. Rubi did as well as he could under the circumstances, but it seemed like an occasion to take a little initiative. I said oh hai to Ethic from Kill Ten Rats, and then I saw one of the Massively guild ("OnedAwesome") say they were looking for more, so I joined in.

It turned out that the group in question was a group of normal players who happen to have picked up a couple of us just by virtue of being in the right/wrong place at the time. This was fine, even great, because it was a good team that was fun to play with.

Unfortunately, being a noob to the DDO chat interface, I clicked the chat panel over to "party" because I couldn't figure out how to make my chat go to party by default on the general tab. What I didn't realize until an hour later was that this would effectively mute my guild chat. As a result, I never saw the chat messages indicating that the plan was to deal with the first few quests in town, pose for a picture, and call it a night.

In the absence of instructions to the contrary, I figured it was "move at your group's pace" night. Thus, Massively called their night at level 2 and just outside of town, while my group powered through the entirety of Korthos Island on both hard and elite, ending up at level 3 and reaching Stormreach harbor. Ooops?

WTB New Starting Area
I've actually played through the early town quests about 8 times by now. This is relatively typical of my early days in a new MMO, since I like to try a variety of character types to see what I like before committing to a main. As long as I was auditioning characters, I figured I might as well switch servers to claim more server first Turbine Point awards - I've claimed the 5 favor award on all seven servers, and, with the Massively festivities, have reached 50 favor on two servers for a grand total of 450 "earned" Turbine Points to date.

On a personal level, I could really stand to see an extra starting area at this point. DDO literally only offers the one set of questlines (with the upshot being that I've now got enough practice to re-roll and catch up to the Massively group in under an hour if I wanted to). For an event like this one, I can see the merits of this approach, as it theoretically ensures that everyone will be in the same location for grouping. (There was some way to screw up and wind up in "snowy" Korthos instead of "Sunny" Korthos, but that didn't seem to bug me any.)

On the other hand, if Turbine added a new level 1-2 zone to the Turbine Point store - specifically so that free to play players could stay in the current experience to find groups, while veterans seeking variety would have an alternate path, I'd pay the Turbine points without question.

Trial of the Wizard
As long as I was going through the starting areas yet again, I figured that I might as well try a Wizard, a class that was very low on my priority list due to poor solo capacity. This seemed like less of a handicap for a character I was making specifically for grouping.

Unfortunately, the low level DDO wizard is probably the most useless I've ever felt in a MMORPG group. At level 2, my main damage spell hit for 4-10 damage, and I could use it about 20 times before running out of mana. Level 1 mobs seem to have about 20 HP, and it seems like the game provides a rest shrine for recovering your spell points approximately once every 15 mobs. I was literally doing better DPS by swinging a rapier with barely any strength, and the rapier never runs out of spell points. (I picked the Drow race, cause we all know how much Syp loves Elves, and all Drow are proficient in rapiers.)

In fairness, this aspect of playing a caster comes out of the 3.5e DND ruleset (which is actually even more restrictive on casters). If things are implemented correctly, the class will eventually be able to absolutely cripple foes with debuffs and unleash devastating alpha strike nuke spells on bosses to make up for having to hang back on trash mobs. I might even give the Wizard another chance whenever I pay to unlock the Warforged (a race of bio-golems unique to the Eberron campaign setting - they get 50% healing from normal heals because of their golem side, but can also be healed by arcane magic, which means that a Warforged wizard can heal themselves between nukes). For now, though, this character is almost certainly going on the shelf.

DDO Grouping Experience
All miscommunication aside, my first time in a DDO group was actually a lot of fun. I was moderately familiar with the content, having seen all of it at least once, but it was still at least somewhat challenging to a full group with some newbies in tow when set to elite difficulty. (We did have three relatively more serious veterans, who probably could have carried the whole group if need be, but that may also be in part because these were newbie quests.)

I had not pictured myself actively working to spend more time in groups, since that's generally not my playstyle in other games, but I could see myself potentially spending the extra effort in DDO, if I find myself in the right type of community. Coming from a solo player like me, that means that DDO must be doing something right with its group game.

Requiem for a Blood Spec

Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that they would be gutting and overhauling the Death Knight tanking talents. The class was originally designed with three talent trees (same as the other classes), but each tree contained both melee DPS AND tanking talents. This predicament was not entirely unique - Feral druids also use one tree for both tanking and DPS - but I can see how it is a balance challenge that will only increase as Cataclysm allows more cross-tree points.

As a result, the Death Knight blood tree will become a dedicated tanking tree in the expansion. I'm a bit puzzled about why DPS blood, as opposed to frost, was chosen to get the boot, when the DK frost stance is used for tanking. (WoW.com claims that DPS blood had drifted closer to DPS unholy, which is as good an idea as any.) I'll also admit to a bit of nostalgia.

The blood spec I knew and abused in the Wrath beta is long since gone - at varying points it the beta, it was possible to spawn half a dozen blood worms and solo just about anything that couldn't one-shot you. I ultimately opted to reincarnate Cheerydeth as a rogue rather than suffer the disappointment of playing the Death Knight in a state that actually resembles balanced. Even so, I'm a bit sad to see the option of revisiting the minion horde go away.

In related news, Klep quips that shaman tanking will be the next spec overhaul. The new spec that has me really excited, only a week late for April Fools Day, is the new Frost Mage kiting/tanking setup. The Frost mage taunt will be a skill called "got your nose" that only works on frostbitten foes, and forces them to chase the mage until they can get in melee range. The ability also applies a debuff called "to spite your face" that reflects any non-melee damage the afflicted mob might otherwise be tempted to send the mage's direction.

Seeking The MM-Slo Lane

Official forums aren't always a good indicator of what to expect from a game community at large, but they can at least help with learning the local lingo. Case in point, this rant-turned-discussion of looking for more requirements in DDO.

• "Know quest" and "not learning friendly" are relatively obvious.
  
• "TR XP Zerg" means that the characters in question have undergone a True Resurrection, which grants certain bonuses if the player is willing to reset back to level one and level again with a harsher exp curve. Because DDO quests are worth diminishing exp each time they are repeated, these players can least afford losing the "no one died" exp bonus for a flawless dungeon run.
  
• "Be self sufficient" and/or "BYOH/Bring your own heals" is another common qualifier - many classes can self heal and fix their own debuffs, while others can use cheap many-use wands for these tasks, and an unlucky few must actually resort to chugging potions. Apparently, the worst case in that department involves an entire inventory tab full of potions for things like resisting specific types of damage, curing half a dozen different classes of debuffs, etc.

(It is worth noting that some players pay real money for experience boosting potions from the DDO store, and therefore have extra motivation for demanding speed and efficiency above and beyond the time pressures seen in the other games I've played.)

The Challenge of Finding Your Pace
Personally, I'm just as happy NOT to jump into a group that's going to trivialize the content - almost as happy as they would be not to have me. This problem is in no way exclusive to DDO, as I've seen overly efficiency-obsessed groups in both WoW and EQ2. So why is it so hard for players to find other players who are on the same page?

My impression is that we see this type of screening - WoW's version is the gearscore check - more readily as the number of times that players are expected to repeat the same content increases. This only makes sense - if you run each dungeon a single time, you're going to be as unprepared as everyone else and only in so much of a position to complain, while your patience may understandably begin to wear on your tenth trip through.

The unfortunate conflict is that group systems depend on enough players being available to fill out the groups. The most active players, who are best able to fill the need for groupmates, are the most likely to have already exhausted their patience. As a result, we see incentives structured to make it worth their while, whether it's a positive incentive (overpowered loot tokens) or a negative one (go re-run these old dungeons even more times than it took the first time you leveled through them). The problem is that this creates an environment that's even more hostile to the actual newbies who need the training and experience.

In the end, I won't be sad if I can't complete all the dungeons/quests/etc out there, as long as I'm having a good time playing with players willing to move at a rate I'd actually find enjoyable. It's just frustrating when the primary roadblock to that playstyle is figuring out where to look for those players.

A Tradequesting Revolution

Lyriana finally hit EQ2's new tradeskill cap this evening. Not so-coincidentally, I'd just completed the last of the expansion's new tradeskill quests, including the signature quest for the class specific crafting tool/weapon. In my view, the current expansion crafting content is the best in any MMORPG I've seen. The biggest complaint I have to offer about the experience is that it points out how sparse the earlier crafting content is by comparison.


My new crafting tongs have a better DPS rating than my offhand weapon. They've also got a tradeskill exp bonus that I'm not going to need until the next time the level cap increases, which will probably be at least a year from now.

The Evolution of the EQ2 Crafting Quest
The thing that's really unique about EQ2's approach to crafting content is the use of tradeskill-only quests. These quests are a great change of pace in a world where most problems are resolved by stabbing something. Sometimes, the player has to craft some gizmo. Sometimes, the player has to craft some gizmo and turn it in to a questgiver, who will then turn around and hand it out to the next adventurer who comes along needing a tool to complete some mission or another. Add in some amusing writing and you've got a recipe for a pleasant change of pace.

The catch is that the content does not kick in at low levels. The crafting tutorial will deposit players at level 10, but, after that, they're on their own with a single original quest every ten levels through to level 50+. Instead, the bread and butter trade leveling are handled through grinding out recipes. You can grind items to sell, or grind items to turn into a writ agent for guild experience, but grind grind grind it is for hours at a time.

ROK
The continent of Kunark starts to try and shake things up, offering repeatable tradeskill quests for some of the area's major factions. It's a nice attempt, but falls short because the rate of reputation gain is often laughably low - two of the three reps are easily maxxed by adventuring, so players who intend to quest eventually anyway would be wasting their time if they bother with crafting.

TSO
The next expansion, the Shadow Odyssey, still shared three of its four trade factions with adventuring. It also has a badly designed introductory quest - because EQ2 crafting is intended to be independent of adventuring, the quest offers teleportation shortcuts across a massive zone, but the shortcuts go away if you actually complete the quest. There are also AFK-flight paths, but we're talking about flights that take 3+ minutes, which I would have needed literally dozens of times during my stay in the Moors - well worth delaying access to the TSO crafting quests in my book, so I did not complete any of these quests until after I was done adventuring in the Moors.

TSO did also introduce a crafter-only rep grind, including the only group-based crafting quests that I'm aware of anywhere in MMORPG's. These quests offer amusing storylines - the story for the one I actually did is that a raid group is getting slaughtered, and the player needs to fix the portal out of the zone before the fleeing raiders arrive, presumably with some angry boss in hot pursuit. (The quests also do not warn you in any way that the quest will require a total of 108 combines to complete. I would not have attempted the thing solo had I known that it would take nearly two hours, though I suppose I did get most of a crafting level, two rare harvests, and a random piece of salable jewelry out of the effort.)



The problem here is that the rewards for participating are, frankly, a bit underwhelming. There are entire sets of gear that offer crafting bonuses, but any character with the required reputation and tokens to purchase these items has already completed the hardest crafting content in the game. There are mounts that offer increased harvesting skill, but it would take a very long time for that investment to pay off when you consider the time it takes to earn the mounts in the first place (time which you might otherwise have spent on harvesting).

The really hardcore crafter had the chance to make raid-quality gear for fewer dungeon tokens than the NPC vendors charged, but there's a really limited amount of value in the whole exercise for players who aren't in it so professionally.

TSF Gets It Perfect
So, after all of this, players hit level 80 crafter in time to hit the new expansion. Sure enough, there are, once again, quests. Only this time, we're not talking about a few lines that duplicate reputation that can be obtained more easily by some other method. Crafting quests lead to crafting-only reputations that offer unique recipes. Players who set out to craft so they could make their own gear/spells/etc can actually expect to reap the benefits of finally reaching the cap.

Meanwhile, the quality is accompanied by a large quantity. There are four separate trade factions to interact with, each of which offers generous reputation through their introductory quests before offering up daily repeatable quests to finish off the relevant reputations. (Each of the three crafting vocations has a specific faction that offers them more quests and sells their recipes.) Overall, the end result was that my trip from level 80 to 90 was as smooth as the typical leveling path for PVE questing, with very little time spent grinding miscellaneous rush order writs in front of the same crafting station.

The Paradox of Improvement
The problem with EQ2 crafting at the moment is that it is entirely backwards. Crafting an item requires an equal amount of progress at level 1 and level 90, but the level 90 character has improved crafting abilities and gear that make the recipe far easier to complete. In other words, the very first items players attempt to complete are the hardest that they will ever suffer through. When you pile that on top of the extremely limited amount of content available to lower level tradeskillers, I'm a bit surprised that more players don't give up on the mechanic entirely.

Perhaps even more than adventuring, EQ2 crafting could really use a Cataclysm-style revamp to gut and overhaul the pre-70 trade content. I don't know how likely this is, but it would be a huge improvement to the game in general, and my willingness to repeat the experience on future characters in particular.

Supporting Optional Niche Roles

One of the quirks to Dungeons and Dragons is that the game system has always had a class (currently called the rogue) who specializes in opening locks and disarming the traps found in dungeons. From a design perspective, this raises a bit of a chicken and egg problem - if your dungeons does not have traps, there's no need for a rogue, but is it really fun to tell a group they're flat out screwed if they don't have a rogue but the dungeon is packed full of traps?

The workaround for this in the traditional tabletop game is that players know who they're playing with and what classes they're intending to play - effectively, someone can step forward to play the party rogue. In an online game where you're playing with strangers, that plan runs into a bit of a snag - it's hard enough dictating that there has to be a tank and a healer (however your game of choice handles those roles) without adding in an additional role that is sometimes essential and sometimes useless.

So how does Turbine attempt to address this problem? Incentives.

Exp modifiers

As with the pen and paper game, DDO does not hand out experience immediately when players kill mobs, advance quests, etc. Rather, an exp number is doled out when players complete the final objective of the dungeon - killing all the mobs, or sneaking past them are both valid ways of approaching the problem. However, in this model, sneaking past mobs would always win - less risk of being injured in combat, less resources/consumables spent, and less total time per quest leading to higher exp.

So, DDO modifies the base experience number in a variety of ways. Killing most of the enemies in the dungeon gets a bonus. Completing the dungeon without dying gets a bonus (part death penalty and part insurance policy so that players don't use suicide tactics to pick off foes in pursuit of the killing bonus). And, as you see in the screenshot above, there are bonuses for uncovering hidden doors and disarming traps.

I have no idea how well this system works out in social practice, but it's a fascinating principle. It means that the traps in the dungeon can be optional, but players will still want to bring a rogue to obtain an across the board experience boost. Almost all DDO quests can be repeated (and sometimes must for sufficient exp gain), but the exp award drops with each repeat, so every bit of exp potentially matters, especially for players trying to get by at higher levels with the relatively more limited selection of free to play quests.

Of course, a minor side effect of this plan is that many players choose to add a single level or two of rogue to their existing builds so that they can serve as a "trapmonkey" while still filling whatever their normal class role would have been almost as well. Sometimes there's no keeping us pesky players in line. :)

Worlds Collide

I thought I was playing EQ2, not DDO? ;)