Hallow's End Haul

WoW's Hallow's End event technically doesn't wrap up for another couple days, but I appear to be done with the event by virtue of having looted it for literally all it's worth.  My mage snagged the Horseman's mount for himself a few days after the Tauren got his hands on one.  Between the two of them, I've also obtained a total of seven of the once-rare Sinister Squashlings and three Hallowed Helms (one of each was not wasted, as the Tauren did not previously have either). 

I had no intention of ever repeating the holiday achievement grind again after the pain of going through it the first year, but the Tauren ended up with all of the hard achievements by the time he was done beating the horseman into submission.  At that point, it was just a question of doing the world tour for candy (I'd never even set foot in the zone of Shadowmoon Valley before) and looking for people to wand-zap me in Dalaran for the second leg of the dreaded meta achievement. 

Pre-Cataclysm Bucket List
As long as I'm rambling about my characters, it seems like a good time to update the pre-cataclysm bucket list.  Time permitting, the things I'm working on are:

• Finishing exalted with the Frostborn Dwarves on the mage (probably 3-4 random 5-man runs to add another +1 to my rep counter, will be harder to complete once I'm no longer 80)
• Dungeon runs on the warrior for access to heirloom rep-based head and shoulder enchants.  Cataclysm will probably add updated ones, but it could be a while before I get them.  The old ones will be better than nothing in the mean time.  Also, this will provide the occasion to try and beat each Wrath-era heroic once.
• Soloing old level 70 heroics on the mage.  I've beaten half of them so far, and I think the Black Morass is beyond my current level of dedication.  We'll see how many I get to.  

Cheerydeth the third, my level 41 gnome rogue, remains parked until the content revisions of Cataclysm hit.  I was considering taking Greenhammer, my old level 70 Pally, out for a spin since Northrend is not due for any sort of update, but leveling felt trivially easy with my shiny new heirlooms (plate shoulders and chest, and the 2H sword).  Maybe it won't be such a bad thing if I do end up running out of character slots on Hyjal and spending more time on other servers. 

Finally, there is the Thanksgiving event that I pointedly skipped last year due to holiday burnout.  I guess there's no harm in taking a look next month to see how that goes.  The next stage of the Cataclysm launch event will also kick off sometime around then.  That said, none of this is completely irreplaceable, and I won't cry if I ultimately fail to complete most or all of it.  There's something to be said for the nostalgia tour, but there are plenty of other things to do while I wait for the End of the World (of Warcraft).

Champions' Take On "Free To Play"

Champions announced their take on "free to play", complete with a benefit matrix similar to what we've seen for other games that made this jump. 

Much of the table is pretty standard.  Non-subscribers face limits on character slots, bags, auctions, and costume slots, and will have to pay extra for access to "adventure packs".  The latter are the patches that Cryptic previously threatened to charge subscribers for.  Presumably that threat is now off the table now that it's an explicit benefit of the subscription, which is theoretically a win for subscribers (especially life-timers, as freedom from the sub is worth a lot less if they start charging by the month for content). 

The big and somewhat unique change is that non-subscribers will be forced to use a pre-generated "archetype" build instead of being allowed to customize their powersets as they see fit. 

Archetype Impact
For a very new player, having the option to go with a pre-made build is probably a welcome option.  In the long run, though, being able to pick your own powerset is one of the game's major features.  More concerning, these pre-generated archetypes will have to be optimized for something.  Presumably, that something will be leveling (possibly solo leveling) to ensure that new players stick around long enough to pay, which could leave players regretting their decision when they reach endgame.

Also, lapsed subscribers will need to somehow revert their existing customized characters (from before or after F2P) into archetype templates to continue playing them, which sort of defeats the purpose of not charging for server access - you can't sell microtransactions to people who aren't playing because they would have to permanently gimp their character in order to do so.  Perhaps Cryptic will implement a system where characters will be allowed to swap between two builds as their subscription status permits, but that does not sound like the current plan.

In the end, as readers of my EQ2X commentary are well aware, I'm not fond of so-called "free to play" models which come with major restrictions that can only be lifted by subscribing.  Time will tell, but this sounds suspiciously like the same situation.  I suppose that the shift to free to play makes it slightly more likely that I will someday try the game.  Unfortunately for Cryptic, the archetype restrictions probably mean that I will do so as a mostly non-paying tourist.

P.S. Star Trek Online, by comparison, will almost certainly make its way onto my playlist when it eventually follows in CO's F2P footsteps.  If Cryptic has a sense of humor, they set it so that STO's free player archetypes are red-shirted ensigns.  :)

Blizzard's MMO Roadmap

Another Blizzcon is in the books, and the majority of my self-described "incorrect Blizzcon predictions" for the year were proven wrong before the convention even opened.  I suppose you can split hairs on whether the event is "widely viewed as a disappointment" for lack of an announcement concerning the Mystery Fourth Project, but what Blizzard did NOT announce was almost as interesting as what they did. 

Diablo III's beta was mentioned (some attendees will win keys), but the SCII expansion/sequel's beta was not, and the game apparently is not expected in 2011.  Also not expected in 2011 is even the ANNOUNCEMENT of the Mystery Fourth Project, which Blizz says won't be revealed until 2012.  (This is remarkable since game itself will probably still be 1-3 years out AFTER the announcement; relatively few games have the luxury of a dev cycle this long.)  These announcements mean that Blizzard apparently intends for WoW to continue to be the company's flagship MMO quite possibly up to the game's tenth birthday in 2014. 

In that context, it's interesting to see how little we got out of Blizzcon about the content patches of the Cataclysm era.  At Blizzcon 2008, just prior to the release of Wrath, Blizzard held a community summit that outlined the planned content patches of 2009.  The actual convention itself included tidbits about patch 3.1 (described at the con as almost complete), such as dual specs and swimming ground mounts.  At this year's event, we got some pictures of new dungeons for patch 4.1 and a comment from Tom Chilton that Deathwing will arrive in either patch 4.2 or 4.3.

Why Blizzard is considering only two content patches for the Cataclysm era? 

Are they thinking that Cataclysm sets a precedent of five levels per expansion that would allow them to complete a less ambitious fifth expansion sooner than late 2012?  Blizzard has been saying that they wanted annual expansions for years now, but previously have never delivered.  Perhaps the added pressure of having the followup so far out is pushing them to pick up the pace?  Perhaps Bobby Kotick is demanding more box sales?  Or perhaps this is Blizz-ness as usual, and we'll see 4.1 in April 2011, 4.2 (sans Deathwing) in October 2011 along with a Blizzcon announcement of the fifth expansion, 4.3 in March 2012 and the new expansion in November/December 2012. 

Given my track record, I'd hesitate to guess.  Given Blizzard's track record, though, the latter may be the most likely.

LOTRO Halloween Holiday Quality/Quantity

Stargrace, Zubon, and Syp (and his twitter friend), are all fans of LOTRO's new Halloween haunted cellar.  The atmosphere is really great.  Further, this content is located firmly in the free portions of the game's new business model (you will need to level to 5 to get out of the starter instance), so this event is available to just about everyone who wants to see it. 

Unfortunately, as with many things LOTRO, the quality isn't necessarily backed with quantity.  If you want the title for doing each of the quests in the cellar once, you will end up exploring most or all of the area a total of eight times.  It's really cool the first time, suitably challenging when you try to solve the two quests that have relatively short timers, and will probably have gotten old by visit number eight.  Even this may not be your last trip through the area if you're after your daily shot at the Halloween decorated horse. 

(Irritatingly, your shot at the horse is treated as a 24-hour debuff rather than a daily repeatable quest, so players who come back at the same time tomorrow will find that they must make their attempt slightly later on each evening of the event.  Still better than once an hour I suppose.)

The Wait For Content
Doc Holiday was the first I saw to notice the schedule for LOTRO's latest patch, which is due out in November.  Endgame players will have spent basically an entire year with only a single full group (6-player) dungeon and a single (12-player) raid at the level cap, supplemented only with scaling skirmishes, and, in the last few months, newly scaling versions of old leveling dungeons. 

The patch will add some variety to the dungeon game (I have not seen details of pricing or intended level range), but Turbine is also taking care to announce in advance that this is the first major patch in the game's history that will not include an update to the game's epic story.  New outdoor leveling/questing landmass is also officially off the table for the new patch, leaving a period of at least a year in which September's Enedwaith zone was the only new area added to the game. 

Perhaps the game's touted free to play success will someday lead to an increase in new content, but that clearly won't be starting with this patch.  I suppose that most players who have made it through the lean times of the last two years are probably used to the pace by now.  Quality over quantity has been the game's calling card pretty much from the beginning.  That said, the quantity is going to have to catch up eventually if Turbine is hoping to convince former subscribers to spend money on a regular basis, especially as the best of the limited content is often available for free. 

Triumph of the Headless Horse-Mount

Whatever else I say about 2010, it's been a good year for random number generator-based mounts.  Mere weeks after my Tauren snagged the Brew Kodo, he also landed the flying horse mount from the Headless Horseman.  This mount is one of only a handful flying mounts that have a ground only mode, allowing them to be used in no-fly zones (such as Dalaran, and outdoor flagged dungeons).  In principle, I guess I would rather have landed either or both on my mage, who is my actual main.  Then again, Greenwiz has his share of shiny rides, while the warrior has only a few, so they might as well be unique. 

I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do for the rest of the holiday.  There's no guarantee that I'll land the mount on my mage, even if I do the event every day from here on out, and he doesn't need anything else that I can get from the Horseman.  By contrast, the warrior might in principle want some of the loot and achievements, but he's already got the event's biggest prize.  I guess the bottom line is that I won't cry if I miss a few days. 

Otherwise, the event has not changed or improved all that significantly since the 2008 edition.  There's a vaguely amusing achievement line to visit all the Innkeepers in the world for some gold and candy, which is probably worthwhile only if you're dying to see the un-shattered landscape one last time.  There's a PVP achievement that can probably be earned most efficiently by joining a Wintergrasp battle and hiding somewhere near the combat.  There's a fire-fighting event in the newbie towns that will almost certainly be won or lost without that much intervention from you individually.  Finally, the once per real world hour trick or treat mechanic is back in full effect, with at least one achievement that can only be obtained via a lucky drop and a few others that similarly hinge on the random treat bag. 

Personally, I don't think this type of system has any place in a short seasonal event.  If Blizzard wants people to fail to complete the event due to the vagaries of the RNG, the achievement in question should be tied to a daily quest so that it does not penalize players for failing to stay up just one more hour to see if next hour's treat bag will have what you need.  Talking to an NPC is not fun, it is not challenging, and it only fosters an image of addiction that the industry is generally working pretty hard to avoid when they're not stumped to think up just one more timesink. 

Somehow, Blizzard found the time to revise a similar debacle out of the Valentine's event between 2009 and 2010.  (The 2009 version was so much fun, I literally signed up for an EQ2 trial and rolled up the character who became my main, checking back with WoW to once an hour on the old laptop to see if I'd win the candy heart lottery.)  I can only hope that the Halloween version manages to make similar progress by 2011. 

Night Of The Dead EQ2 Live Servers

EQ2's Night of the Dead event was a favorite of mine last year, so I suppose that I can't complain too much to see the event back with minimal changes this year - there's a new crafting book, and a new title to be earned from a quest that players will complete by clearing each haunted event once. 

I'm not sure that I would have been willing to pay for a month's subscription to the live service just to get the one additional title.  Fortunately, thanks to EQ2X, I don't have to make that choice; the scaling holiday content is free to play and not too difficult to complete while working with silver F2P restrictions.  Unfortunately for SOE, this shift means that I'm unlikely to resubscribe solely for a holiday event ever again, but such, I suppose is the peril of going F2P. 

Server Merges, and Servers Left For Dead
Speaking of peril and F2P, SOE finally announced plans to merge eight of the game's twenty seven servers.  Each closed server will be folded into an existing server, so, all told, sixteen servers' worth of players will have larger populations to play with when the dust settles. 

There are some complaints about how naming conflicts will be handled (current subscribers will receive priority over inactive accounts), but I haven't seen anyone from the affected servers say that they do not want a merge to happen.  Populations were low across the board, and SOE's decision not to open up the existing servers to free EQ2X players sealed the fates of these servers.  The only question remaining to be answered is whether combining these sixteen servers into eight still leaves too many. 

Of the eleven servers that will not merge, three (AB, Nagafen, and Crushbone) are not merging because they actually have sufficient populations.  The remaining eight are not being merged because there is nowhere for them to merge to because of language, ruleset, or other contractual obligation.  As a resident of Lucan D'Lere, I'm feeling somewhat uniquely hosed by this call. 

It's relatively obvious why you can't merge servers speaking Russian, French, and Japanese, and why the RMT servers need to remain separate.  LDL, on the other hand, is being kept separate because it is technically a Role Playing server.  The only other RP server is the game's most popular (AB), with no room for an additional merge.  The thing is, I don't think I ever encountered any form of actual role playing on LDL.  I know that there are some high quality events to be experienced, but these are almost always scheduled in advance via the out-of-game forums, and therefore could continue basically unaffected if LDL were to be merged with a non-RP server.  This option, though, is apparently not on the table.

End of the line for Lyriana?
Frankly, the last time I let my EQ2 Live subscription lapse, it was largely because I had trouble finding groups for the group content that was the main thing left on Lyriana's to-do list.  A merge during the current expansion cycle would almost certainly have brought me back to the game to try and complete her epic weapon questline before players move on to Velious. 

Now I have limited reason to pay for the live service for the remainder of this expansion.  I'd be happy to pay for new level 90 content in the next expansion, but the new continent will instead offer new level 86-90 leveling content that won't offer any significant challenge if I start it four levels too late. 

At this point, it's looking more and more like the smart play is to wait until next summer, when retailers will be dumping unsold Velious boxes for half price to clear shelf space.  There will presumably be a station cash sale sometime between now and then (it's been double SC for the 4th of July two years running), which I can use to save some money on copying Lyriana over to EQ2X so that I can play her in the future without paying for a subscription.  Though this would technically be a copy that would leave the original on the live service, I doubt that I would ever return once I invest time and money on the shift to EQ2X.  

If that's the way this plays out, it's a sad ending.  Unfortunately, the way that SOE has this set up is leaving me feeling like rolling on a RP server was a mistake.  If this is the only alternative they're currently prepared to offer, I guess we're both going to pay the price.

Rifts To Use WoW-Style Questing

There seems to be a debate amongst the old-school blogosphere about whether Rifts or EQ:Next will be the new EQ1.  Personally, I'm not convinced that either title is likely because both projects are high profile, but I've generally refrained from commenting for lack of more thorough information. 

Over the weekend, I listened to episode 14 of the Rift Podcast, which featured an interview about the game's quest system, featuring the studio's Senior Design Director.  According to the guy in charge, the majority of quests will be solo or small group quests, with quest hubs that conveniently distribute overlapping quests to kill 10 rat-equivalents and loot 10 potato-equivalents from the same field.  The game will also offer daily quests, rep grinds, and the option for max level players to replay the dungeons they soloed past while leveling.  Overall, it sounds a lot more like an attempt at the next WoW than the next EQ1. 

Don't get me wrong, Trion has some talented people on board, and I would love for them to succeed.  Telling players what they want to hear requires that the developers first determine what it is that the players want, which is at least one step in the right direction.  Unfortunately, I feel like the hype mirrors Warhammer more closely than any other game in my albeit limited experience.  Yes, the game engine is working and polished enough to hold an encouraging demo for the press.  Beyond that, pretty pictures are everywhere, hype is high, and the game itself is whatever the reader would like it to be for lack of evidence to the contrary. 

Learning from the past?
Beyond the possibility of raising unrealistic expectations, the things that I'm hearing about this game do not reassure me that Trion has learned from the issues that others have faced.  For example, the "soul" system for building your own class sounds really neat, but nothing I've seen has addressed how they will actually balance a game in which the majority of character setups are useless, a few are overpowered, and a few are worthless except for the one encounter that becomes trivial because the designer didn't plan for a pet that can kite and is immune to stuns or whatever. 

More to the point, this idea of having players solo their way to the level cap and then switch over to some other form of play (generally group PVE, or PVP/RVR in Warhammer's case) really isn't panning out that well across the entire industry.  Yes, solo players will buy boxes and pay fees to level - assuming that you can beat solo-focused games like WoW, LOTRO, and others at their own genre.  However, time and time again we've seen that the majority of these players either can or will not shift to the more structured group format.  Meanwhile, if the real strength of this game is supposed to be its group PVE instances, it does not make sense to encourage players to do something else instead of dungeons/rifts for 49 levels (any more than it made sense for Warhammer to encourage players to solo and run instanced scenarios instead of doing open RVR).


The especially sad part is that I'm not even convinced that this will be an especially good solo game.  In between promising little tidbits - squirreling away some quests in obscure places for explorers or whatnot - it sounds like the game's two factions will have separate starting zones and then can expect to largely share the same content (either via neutral questgivers or through slightly varied versions of the same quest for the two factions).  This is not original territory, and the studio will have to execute it extremely well if they really mean to compete in the crowded fantasy solo-friendly MMO niche.