A Dirge For SOE

I made a new year's resolution this year to write fewer posts about the EQ2 business model.  Part of my reasoning was what I wrote at the time - I felt that I had added what insight I had to the topic.  The other was a lingering fear in the back of my mind that something like what happened today was in the game's not too distant future.  The damage could have been worse, as the team lost "only" two members, but this does not bode well for the game.

A no win situation?
The game's current producer, David "Smokejumper" Georgson, takes a lot of flack for the state of the game and the seemingly constant push for more revenue over the last year.  It now appears that there was an "or else" behind these efforts - earn more revenue or else your staff will be cut to balance the books.

I still strongly disagree with the decision to implement free to play as a separate service rather than biting the bullet and converting the existing servers to the new model.  I can also see how the way the game is today might leave longtime players feeling left behind as Smokejumper dictated a focus on streamlining the game and adding more low level content.  To those of us on the outside, this shift calls to mind the notorious Star Wars Galaxies NGE, which also alienated the existing players while failing to bring in the new blood that SOE was hoping for.

But what choice do you have in a six year old game when you're told that you are no longer paying the bills?  Stay the course and lose staff, leaving you less able to produce content so that you lose more customers, and then lose more staff? 

Other Casualties
The two layoffs at EQ2 were actually a very small part of the bloodbath today.

SOE's entire online TCG studio reportedly got the axe.  I never actually played Legends of Norrath, other than to open the cards that come with my EQ2 subscription in hopes of getting in-game loot, but I did play the old Lord of the Rings Online CCG that was made by Worlds Apart before SOE bought the studio.  I hate the TCG business model, but that was no fault of the team in Denver - the client and everything else about the game was solid work, and I'm sorry to see them go.

The other casualty is the entire idea of having MMO's on consoles in general.  It's always risky to base a business model around a platform that someone else owns, because they will almost always someday be in a position to choose their own interest over yours.  SOE seemed poised to overcome this obstacle, because the relevant console was owned by their own parent company.

Instead, DCUO has to delay all its patches (if any more are forthcoming) on the PC while the PSN folks do their own testing, and the game's servers need to be segregated by platform (PS3/PC) for reasons that have been confirmed to be non-technical.  (Most likely that the two divisions of the same company couldn't come up with any other agreement on how to split the revenue.)  Free Realms finally launched on the PS3 more than a year late and with the same server split.  The Agency will never launch at all. 

If this is the deal you get your own partners, is it any wonder that third party devs aren't making much headway on the console?

What's at stake
Ironically, I'm one of very few who let a Rift subscription lapse yesterday so I could spend more time with a recently renewed EQ2 sub.  Most of the game's biggest champions - people like Ferrel and Karen Bryan and Feldon - are now spending their time in Telara, rather than Norrath.  Most likely I will be back to join them in a week or a month or two, but for right now EQ2 was the game that I wanted to be playing.

I never played the original EQ, so I don't have the advantage of knowing the world's lore (or the disadvantage of being offended if the latest expansion is inconsistent with it).  Instead, my experience with the game is straight up on its own merits.  On the merits, EQ2 has the best crafting content - actual separate non-combat questlines - in any game I've played.  The game's player and guild housing blow everything else on the market out of the water.  But most of all, even with the non-sparkly vampires and the complaints that all the classes now play the same, the game is the one and only MMO where I actually have stories for my characters.

I tried a Rift bard once, and I now understand why Ferrel gripes when you dress a Cleric in something other than plate armor.  I have a bard.  She has eyes and wings and hair of brilliant green and a pair of flashing blades, and when she fights, she swoops and darts behind foes to cut them down before they even realize where she went.  She believes that things happen for a reason, to the point where she's developed way more of a chaotic neutral streak than I ever intended.  She joined a guild that hailed from Halas back when that was merely a name in the history books - things happen for a reason, remember - and now that guild hall is such a part of her identify that I don't know that I could transfer her to the free to play server, even if it would save me money.

Her name is Lyriana, and she is a bard.  The weird girl in Rift who kills stuff by throwing musical notes at it is what us LOTRO players call a minstrel.  Of all the other characters in all the other games and all the time and money I've spent on MMO's, there isn't a single one anywhere else that has as much backstory as my level 20 crafting alts in EQ2.  That, for me, is what SOE has accomplished with EQ2 - I'm actually paying them money because I missed a character.  That is what is at stake if they can't find a way to make their situation work.

I'm pretty sad that the job just got that much harder.

A Fae's View Of Chronoportal Lore

The following is Lyriana's take on the EQ1 anniversary event in EQ2, which has added a few mini-instances containing some famous mobs from the original game. The devs have stated that this event has no ties to the lore, so Lyriana decided to help out with a little retcon work. Any glaring lore errors are due to my extremely limited knowledge of Norrath. If you think you catch me making not-so-subtle references to a certain other game, you've been reading too long. :)

 "Did I get that about right?" Lyriana asked, as she finished attempting to repeat the gibberish that the Erudite Chronographer had been spewing at her for the last ten minutes.

"Other than completely mangling terminology that has been carefully crafted through hundreds of years of Arcano-temporal scholarship?" the mage retorted in an inpatient voice.  "Yes, I suppose that will do.  So you'll help then?"

"Not even if you tore my wings off!" Lyriana exclaimed angrily.  "We have Chrono-Porto-things sending people back hundreds of years into Norrath's past, and you'd like to send an invasion force of adventurers through to try and best the toughest champions history has to offer, back from the grave, all so you can analyze what the planar energy does to the old platinum coins?  No thanks, I have a strict policy that if someone comes to me with the stupidest idea I've ever heard, I say no, and you just made the bottom of the list!"

Lyriana stormed off muttering about crazy Erudite plans under her breath.  "Like it's MY fault that I asked one of them a simple question about how to absorb the power of a Mythical weapon, and they turned around to develop a technique that would allow some crazed dragon god thing to absorb world-threatening powers off of the signature blades of Qeynos and Freeport?  And now... oh dear gods a talking otter."

"Hail to you, adventurer," the Othmir said, raising a paw.  "I have come to take the chosen ones of Norrath to Velious."

Lyriana cupped her hands over her nose and mouth and took two deep breaths.  "Let me guess," she began, exasperated, "You came through some sort of Chrono-Rift from hundreds of years ago when people actually went to Velious, and now you're going to establish some sort of time foothold thing."

The othmir looked at her, puzzled.  "What is a Rift?  I assure you, Velious is real and still in the world today."

"If that's the case," Lyriana asked, skeptical, "Why hasn't anyone seen the place in centuries?  How are you proposing to get us 'chosen' folks there, anyway?"

"Easy," the emissary exclaimed, pleased to finally have a question he could answer.  "We shall ride on the back of the mighty Lodizal."

"The legendary giant turtle that adventurers used to fight centuries ago?" Lyriana asked, incredulously.  "That's the stupidest...."

She thought about it for a minute and sighed.  "You see, I have this policy about world threatening stuff and apparently this whole rift thing has gotten to the point where it's not at the bottom of the list anymore.  So I'll tell you what - I'm going to go try to deal with that, and if this doesn't send all of you crazies back to whatever age you came from, we can talk."

Not a death rift.

A Pink Pig-tail Finale

Today is the end of an era in WoW blogs, as Larisa announced the finale of the Pink Pigtail Inn. Larisa has played a non-trivial role in the life of this site, so I feel it only fitting to pay her tribute. 

I started my blog a bit after Larisa started hers, but mine was an intentionally soft launch.  Though my first post was in April 2008, I viewed those early months as a warm-up for July, when I would actually have time to write on a regular basis.  I made a few posts, had the occasional comment, but things here were pretty quiet. 

I eventually ended up on Rohan's blogroll at Blessing of Kings, and then one day out of the blue I got a comment on a random post expressing appreciation but pointing out that I did not have a contact email on my page. This wasn't really something that had occurred to me previously, as the idea that a reader might want to get in touch simply hadn't come up.  Regardless, I dutifully sent this Larisa character an email, and added a gmail address to the site in case anyone else was similarly inclined. 

I hope that she will forgive a bit of skepticism in hindsight - usually, when someone emailing you is supposedly female and from Sweden, the odds aren't that great.  The truth is that Larisa turned out to be friendly, supportive, insightful, and thought-provoking.  To this day, the PPI is still one of the top traffic sources to this site, and I'm pretty much certain that I have Larisa to thank for the fact that Sweden is the number six country on my "traffic by country" chart. 

I don't know where the road is going to take this particular pink pig-tailed gnome mage, and I'll be keeping her spot in my blogroll in case she changes her mind.  In the mean time, until we meet again, I wish her all the best and good luck on her journey. 

EQ2 Epic Complete

Always fun to get a personal grats from a dev, thanks Domino! 

Lyriana has been working on her epic weapon for over a year now.  I completed the fabled version in late January 2010 and started working on the quest to upgrade it after hitting the new level 90 cap in June.  Unfortunately, I ran into a wall that took a lengthy hiatus from the game and a server merger to overcome.   

Mythical History
The upgraded "Mythical" epic weapons, with sometimes class-altering abilities, have been in the game for over two expansions now, and they were causing a bit of a design problem.  Classes had been balanced assuming that they had the epic abilities, but the only way to earn the weapons was to complete Kunark-era raids from 2007-2008.  Once you had your weapon, you were never willing to use anything else, because it would mean losing your epic abilities.  Neither of these conditions was tenable.

In 2010's Sentinel's Fate expansion, SOE added a new quest that allowed players to drain the energy from their epic weapon, gaining the powers that the weapon previously held as a permanent buff to your character.  The good news is that this only required single group dungeon content from the new expansion.  The bad news is that this quest was now nigh mandatory, as you would always be behind the curve no matter what weapons you obtained in the future if you did not have your epic buff.  

Looking For Server
I'm in a small guild called The Halasian Empire from the Lucan D'Lere server, so it wasn't possible to just strong-arm guildies into taking me through the content.  Meanwhile, LDL was desperately in need of a server merge due to low populations, but it did not receive one until this past February because it was an RP server, and there was no RP server with room for additional players.  This made it nigh impossible to find a group for the epic questline.  The big dungeon I needed was a zone called Cella, and I once spent an entire evening asking for it in the LFG channel on a day when it was the daily dungeon quest, without success.  This had gotten too frustrating, so I finally gave up.

LDL finally got its server merge into a regular PVE server called Crushbone earlier this year.  The improvement is dramatic.  It still took about three days to find a group to run Cella (which is now previous-expansion content, and was even less attractive this weekend with the EQ1 anniversary event running), but I was finally able to get a PUG to complete the dungeon last night.  Two of the players in the group even accompanied me into a non-instanced dungeon area known as The Hole to kill the last few relatively weak (but not quite soloable) mobs I needed, and I was able to claim my epic prize. 

 

Epic Group Finder
As Rohan said in his Rift-wrapup, it's hard to overstate the impact of not having a dungeon group finder.  I actually enjoy single group content when I can actually get a group.  The thing that I don't enjoy is having an entire night feel like a waste because I spent the whole time plaintively looking for a group and failing to find one.

There were a lot of problems with WoW's Wrath era heroics (most significantly that Blizzard intentionally packed them with overgeared raiders), but a 15 minute queue time plus a 30 minute dungeon run meant that I could actually do group content whenever I wanted to.  Last night's session ended up taking over four hours and running to about 1 AM - fortunately, I was able to find a group on a Saturday, because I'm not young enough to pull those kinds of hours off on a work night anymore.

Overall, I enjoyed the actual content, and I look forward to taking Lyriana's new toy for a spin over the next few weeks.  That said, it's somewhat problematic that the logistics kept me from finishing for so long.  In an era where group players are increasingly feeling that they're being pushed to the side in favor of solo play, studios need to do a better job of helping people who actually WANT to make the jump from solo to group content do so.

Blades, blades everywhere!

Rift Elf Panties For Psychochild

Previously, in the comments at Psychochild's place:

Green Armadillo wrote: I'd like to believe that my Cleric's current armor is bugged and missing its texture, because it sure looks like she's just wearing panties.

Psychochild wrote:
Oh, my. I assume you're in plate? Got a screenshot to shame the artists with?

My original theory appears to be incorrect - if I remove my character's pants altogether, her underwear is a different color.  I suppose it's possible that they wanted the crotch colored black metallic and were going to add legs later but forgot.  At the moment, though, it looks like the leggings have indeed vanished into some extraplanar space.

Of course, maybe this is all Ferrel's fault.  Going back to old school DND and EQ1 rules, where Clerics get to wear plate armor, he argues that "Clerics do not wear chain mail unless it is under plate."  Maybe Trion decided to listen to him, cause it sure looks like you could get those "leggings" under some plate.  If you don't mind the chafing anyway. 

Rift Fails Public Group Accountability?

Five evenings ago, I was riding my collector's edition turtle across Scarwood Reach when I came across two players, a lumbering non-hostile robot, and the Rift public content UI.  I'd never seen this UI appear without something to kill right next to it, so I stopped to read the text.  I had just figured out that it was an NPC escort quest when the window closed up and the loot icon flashed on top of my screen.  The robot had reached his destination, and my presence for the final seconds had flagged me as a participant.

I had just accidentally completed a quest for a four-digit chunk of exp and a blue sourceshard.  I don't think I've logged into my main character since.

Victory Through Attendence
In hindsight, reflecting on this one incident brings into focus something that I've been trying to put into words for over a week now.  The problem with Rift's cooperative public content system is not merely that you get tired of seeing the same events destroy your quest hub yet again (though that does start to happen).  The problem is that in many cases I'm left feeling like victory or defeat would have happened regardless of my participation, and I just happened to be along for the ride and the loot. 

Now that I'm running with a dedicated healing spec, I can state objectively that this impression shouldn't be true - there have been several encounters where, judging from the amount of damage the tank was taking and the amount I personally was healing them for, the group would probably have wiped without my actions.  Then again, in that case they would have respawned and eventually more people would have shown up to heal the team to victory.  Moreover, even when it is actually true that my presence decided the encounter, it does not feel that way when I'm one of two dozen players spamming away at a mass of players and mobs.  When I'm solo or in a smaller group, I can tell how well (or poorly) I did, but in a massive public raid my contribution disappears into a sea of numbers. 

Outlook
The bigger issue is that the public content is my reason to play the game (or possibly not as of next week).  Yes, there is solo content, it is reasonably polished, and the soul system lets me all-but re-roll on every trip to my class trainer without having to start over at level 1.  Yes, there is group content, though I haven't been able to do much of it because of time constraints.  Yes, there's PVP, which I should probably try at some point.  But the thing that Rift does that none of the numerous other games I could be playing instead does not is public content.  

Rift is still easily the best MMO launch in the last four years, and it will almost certainly be the fourth MMO that I cap a character in.   As of right now, though, my outlook on Rift is that I should probably give Trion a few more months to iterate. 

F2P LOTRO Version 2

LOTRO had its update 2 patch this evening, adding in some long awaited group content, major revamps to the UI and some existing content, and significant changes to the game's store. 

Back in September, when the F2P model was newly introduced, I was underwhelmed with the game's non-subscription model.  Today, the premium free to play option is far more attractive, especially for infrequent players and tourists, but the higher end of the store does far more to push the limits on how much of what used to be gameplay is now for sale in the cash shop.  Update 2, feels like it has moved the F2P business model to version two, with all the blessings and curses that go along with the more traditional free to play label. 

More open for less money...
At the time of the free to play relaunch, the game's two pre-F2P expansions were mandatory purchases for the increased level caps.  This restriction was removed in a previous patch, allowing players to advance all the way to the cap if they were so inclined by grinding the freely available skirmishes and scaling dungeons. The Lone Lands zone was added to the completely free content, pushing players' decision points back to the neighborhood of level 30.  In another change, former subscribers are now allowed to use swift travel routes, which were previously restricted to subscribers only (one of the big things that I really disliked about the model back in September). 

The update two patch also adds a major update of the Evendim zone, which I happened to have picked up for cheap in a sale using points from retroactive reputation deeds after the relaunch.  With some sale discounts, I was able to get the riding trait for an old hunter alt for 57 TP, which is the only thing that you absolutely have to buy as a non-subscriber if you didn't have it from past VIP days.  I'll probably make that back while leveling the new character to the revised content, and I don't know that I'm going to need to spend very much money from here to the cap on that character if I really wanted to. 

...And more ways to spend
That said, Update 2 also adds many more ways to spend money.  At an approximate exchange rate of 1 cent per Turbine Point, you can now buy:

• Up to three additional cosmetic outfit slots for $5 each (account-wide).  No complaints here since we still get to keep the two slots we had.
  
• Up to five additional millstone destinations (LOTRO's version of hearthstones) for $3.50 each PER CHARACTER. All of your destinations share the 1 hour cooldown, you just get to pick multiple destinations for that one cooldown.  You can also halve the cooldown to 30 minutes with another paid unlock, that costs $5 PER CHARACTER. 
  
  (Note that this is separate from the reusable travel skills and consumable maps that were available at the F2P relaunch.  The travel skills share a cooldown with each other and any racial/rep teleports you might have, for $3 per destination per character - unlike the additional millstones, each skill has a single fixed destination.  I haven't ever used the consumable maps, so I don't know if they have a cooldown, but it would seem strange if they did.) 
  
• Up to two additional Legendary Item slots for $3 each PER CHARACTER.  This one starts to get concerning because having additional legendary items at your disposal can actually affect gameplay by giving you more options. 
  
• And finally, the big and controversial one: the Legendary Item system has been overhauled to be less random, but now there are even more consumables that you can use to upgrade your items... and they're all available in the store with no ceiling on your potential expenses.  The reaction in my kinship chat has been punctuated with the occasional "wait, you can buy what?!" as each player notices the new tab in the store. 

Throw in other stuff that's been here from the start, like outfits, consumables that raise you from the dead, consumables that let you track mobs, crafting materials, etc, and this store is starting to look much more like the traditional F2P cash shop, which is unfortunately not a compliment.   

Bargain for tourists, iffy for long-time residents?
The good news is that this game is far friendlier to low-spending tourists.  You probably won't enjoy the game you get if you try to play it without spending a dime, but you can see the world of Middle Earth for far less than $15/month - and, as with DDO, all the content you unlock is yours at no additional cost for future alts. 

The okay news is that this model is increasingly designed to get you in the door in the hopes that you'll buy stuff once you're there.  Only fair, I suppose, Turbine has to pay the bills somehow, and letting players choose what they want to pony up for is a relatively fair way to offer options. 

The bad news is what I feared when the game relaunched.  Things about the game that are not good - like the travel system or the random legendary item grind - are being preserved in order to sell cash store fixes rather than improved.  Maybe the game is still worth playing, and maybe it's even worth paying for the fixes, but it sets a dangerous precedent.  If you consider travel and legendary items "fixed", the biggest problem left in the game is the insane proliferation of bound-to-character tokens, none of which are allowed to go in the in-game currency wallet.  A dev commented that they have a proposal for this issue, and the fix may well involve another cash store purchase. 

The big reason why I like Turbine's other F2P success, DDO, is because they give you some of the game, which is good, and then you can pay them for more of the game.  The big thing that I have enjoyed less about other F2P models is that they give you the whole game, but the game is not good until you pay them to make the things they broke better.  I hope that LOTRO isn't going down the latter road.