New Year's Resolutions for 2012

Having detailed what I did (and what it cost) for last year, it's once again time to look ahead to the new year.  The year ahead has a blessing and a curse; there are many games I would like to play, and I can already tell that there won't be time for all of them. 

WoW (Pre-Pandaria)

• Complete quests of Cataclysm: I'm still not finished with Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, or Firelands on my main - I tend to work on dailies first, and there are enough dailies that I haven't gotten around to these.
• Finish out armor set from 4.3 heroics
• Use the raid finder to kill Deathwing
• Cap out TBC-era dungeon reputations: Most of these rep's stalled out at Revered when the content was new.  Two expansions later, these heroics are quick and easy rep farming.

The picture with Pandaria will depend a bit on how it shapes up and when it arrives.  I will very likely level my main to the new cap and complete the new dungeons the requisite once each.  I will also likely level the requisite Pandaren Monk through the newbie zone, but I haven't felt any pressing unmet need for more WoW alts and I don't know that the newest additions will change that.  If Pandaria arrives before my annual pass runs out in October, I may do more work on the new expansion's endgame.

LOTRO

• Reach the new level cap on my main (currently 67 of 75)
• Don't feel obliged to "save" content for future level cap increases

I had a bad experience with LOTRO's original launch - though it took me several months to get into the 40's, it took Turbine about a year to produce enough content to make leveling to the original cap a pleasant experience for solo players.  Since then, I've been very nervous about completing content at the level cap, for fear that the next expansion would be similarly lacking in sources of exp.

Fortunately, Turbine's actions since have proved my fears unfounded - even if some future expansion does launch without enough solo quests, there are now enough forms of repeatable content, such as daily quests and skirmishes, to make up the missing exp if needed.

Rift

• Finally reach the level cap
• Investigate the endgame

Rift spent most of 2011 as the best MMO that just never reached the top of my to-do list month after month.  While I respect the reasoning behind Trion's pro-subscription stance, the need to set aside a month at a time to focus on this game like it was still 2010 is definitely hurting this game's appeal in the crowded marketplace.  I would gladly pay by the day or the week, but this game is not sufficiently better than its competition for me to be excited about setting aside an entire month to play it.

In any case, Trion is supposedly going to give me 3 days of game time as compensation for their servers being hacked, which will get me to the game's level cap.  From there, it will be a question of how much I like what I see.

EQ2

• Enjoy world events on my main without having to subscribe
• Try to complete current dungeon content
• Betray to the evil side to see content, collect houses, perhaps try the Troubadour

The good news is that I no longer need to use a throw-away EQ2X alt to see holiday and world event content in this game, now that I can have year around access to my main. The bad news is that my progress kind of screeched to a halt due to Velious' highly regimented dungeon progression, and attempting to deal with the plat cap for non-subscribers is not going to make this easier.   

Will new dungeons continue to ramp up in difficulty, even though the current ones are already unpopular for PUG's?  Will there be new solo content?  Or will they tune all future content to require the use of NPC mercenaries, and thus the purchase of the AOD expansion, much as all solo quest rewards are now "legendary" quality to require the purchase of gear unlock tokens? 

One project that I am seriously considering is taking my main and having her betray over to the evil faction to see the revised Freeport content, collect some houses in the evil cities (you don't lose houses when you switch sides, though you will be kill-on-sight with the local guards as appropriate), etc.  This might also be an opportunity to take the Troubadour class for a spin, though doing so may or may not require a paid class unlock.  I've never been interested in sticking with alts in EQ2 to date, so I might as well take my main over to see what the rest of the content looks like. 

DCUO

• Gear my main up for DLC content
• Work on one or more alts to see the other storylines

Ironically, my challenges with DCUO are similar to what I'm facing in EQ2.  The currency cap is not friendly to non-subscribers, and will likely keep me out of the game's more challenging content.  This, in turn, affects my ability to gear up to qualify for the content that I actually am willing/able to run (and pay for).

SWTOR

• Play one or more storylines

So, I hear there's some game that's like an MMO about Star Wars or something?  :)

Seriously, my current computer situation (more on this in a minute) has me holding off on SWTOR, but I fully expect to pick up this game and spend some time working on the various storylines in 2012. I had originally figured that I would play a Sith Inquisitor based on the theory that I can play a guy with a gun in any number of other gameworlds.  However, I ended up really liking both the personalities and the gameplay for both the Smuggler and the Imperial Agent.

Other MMO's
So now I'm on my seventh subheading without having covered DDO or Runes of Magic (both of which I have spent money on in the past).  Lineage 2 just went free to play in North America, and Aion became the first major MMO I'm aware of in which the European market beat the North American to a non-subscription switch (which I assume will force the US servers to follow suit, if that was not already planned).  By the time the dust settles, there will probably be at least a dozen major MMO's I haven't played that originally launched as subscription games - I could literally try a different one every month for 2012.

I don't think I'm going to go to that extreme, but it raises a point about how tough the current marketplace is for new entrants. Not only must version 1 of your new game be competitive with version 7 of the competition's, but your game has a $50 buy in and a subscription while their's has no buy-in.  In my case, even the time to download the client (and the hard drive space to store yet another one!) and try a new game for a night or two is starting to approach prohibitive. 

PS3
Games on my Christmas loot haul include Uncharted 3, Arkham City, and the Metal Gear Solid trilogy.  I have yet to finish Assassin's Creed 2, and it has two sequels out that will be somewhere on my playlist.  Other games on my wish list include Infamous 2, Tomb Raider Trilogy (and the new one if/when it arrives), and possibly FFXIII-2.  The discerning reader will note that only two of those are not currently released - my time crunch on the console is as bad as on the PC (though at least on the console showing up a year or three late means paying dramatically less for the games).

Computer Building
I am thoroughly dissatisfied with my Alienware M11x (original revision), which has had a number of problems.

• First, the hinge broke when the machine was less than three months old - Dell replaced this because it was a well-documented issue, but it was an inconvenient situation for a week or two until this could be resolved.  
• Then the power cord plug started slipping out of the back of the system, which left the machine unexpectedly shutting down for lack of power when I thought it was plugged in.  
• Then the battery, which has a 12-month warranty - went completely dead at the 14 month mark.  (This is also a commonly reported issue with the machine.)  Now I own a "portable" 11 inch laptop that has to be tethered to an outlet, unless I want to throw good money after bad by spending $200-300 on a new battery for a $700 machine.   
• On top of all of that, I apparently did not comprehend exactly how slow the processor was in all the hype about how the machine would run this that and the other thing - even overclocked (which Dell will not guarantee will work) the specs are below the minimums for Rift and SWTOR. 

Anyway, it's time for a new machine, and I'm finally steeling myself up to build a computer.  I find the first step or so - the one where you can physically ruin a $300 processor - intimidating, but the difference in cost and quality makes this a skill I really should have in the long run.  I will most likely build something in the $800-1000 range with an i5 and a single graphics card (possibly a cheaper placeholder so I can spend more on components that are harder to replace later).  I'd love to have an SSD, and it seems like there is something to be said for avoiding current hard drive shortages, but I do need a fair amount of storage due to the number of games I play.

In any case, I'm sure I'll be writing more about this topic once I actually go through the process.

The Blog
This will be post number 185 for the year, which is the lowest postcount I've had since I started the blog partway through 2008.  There are several drivers for this - I'm doing less work on the blog over the weekends, I'm writing longer posts, and I'm not feeling obliged to post something just to bump the update time on the RSS feed.  Overall, though, the current schedule - where I do 2-3 posts during the week and maybe a post on the weekend - seems to be working.
In any case, there's going to be plenty to do - and write about - in the coming year.  Happy New Year, and I look forward to hearing from all of you in 2012!

2011 MMO Expenditures and Accomplishments

I'm never quite sure how to handle my New Year's/Canada Day resolution wrap-up for the year - realistically most of them are blown by July in any case, and the discussion invariably bleeds into what I'm planning for next year.  This year I'm going to try something different and focus solely on the past; what I spent on each title I played, and what I got for my money.  

For the sake of my sanity, I have chosen to bill content/currency purchases (expansions or free to play content packs) in the year that I actually paid for them (even though I may continue to consume it in future years), and to track subscription time in the year it was actually used (rather than paid for).  Games are listed in the order in which the accomplishments appeared in my twitter feed.  


WoW: $54.40

• Completed a tour of the newbie zones post-Cataclysm
• Advanced my mage the last level to 85, completed all Heroic dungeons (both Cataclysm launch and patch additions) at least once, still working on rep and gear but qualified for the looking for raid finder.
• Advanced warrior from level 82 to level 85, completed all of the holidays through mid-summer to obtain my second violet protodrake
• Actually healed some PUG 5-mans on a mid-level priest alt.

With Cataclysm launching in December 2010, I had just paid for the expansion and was on the tail end of a 90 day subscription at the beginning of January (approx $8.40 for 18 days).  I paid $30 for two months of time (around world events in late April and late June).

I signed up for the annual pass in late October - I'm choosing to account this as $16 for two months this year, with $60 for DIII and $80 for 10 months both applied to next year's budget.  This will either be a bargain or a budget buster depending on how much use I get out of it.  So far, I'm not spending nearly as much time per month under the discounted annual plan as I was when it was costing me $15, but I'm enjoying that time more because I don't feel that I have to force myself to grind day in and day out to maximize the value of the $15 one-month subscription. 

Rift: $48

• Playtested a bunch of alts during the paid beta phases
• Settled on Cleric, leveled from 1 to 48 (and 3/4).  
• Leveled alts to the 10-19 range on the other three callings.
• Actually healed some PUG's using the dungeon finder

I paid $48 for a digital collector's edition back in January, and have not paid since.  Note that this included access to the paid portions of the "closed" beta, as well as three extended retrial weekends.  

LOTRO: $20 in cash and $10 in gift card (which I value less than cash)

• Comleted solo-ified Volume II
• Currently working on Enedwaith and associated book of Volume III

I paid $20 for the Black Friday sale Isengard bundle, which came with 1000 TP's.   I wouldn't have paid $10 for 1000 TP's and a cosmetic outfit, but the half off sale made this a $5 upgrade.  I also turned a $10 gift card at a brick and mortar store into a 750 TP card (which is a terrible exchange rate, but the store had nothing else I wanted for $10).  I've used some of the TP for the Enedwaith quest pack, a second milestone destination, and the 30 minute milestone cooldown reduction for my main, which are collectively definitely worth the price of the points I paid for them.    

My remaining LOTRO playtime was in content that I paid to unlock via expansion purchases in 2009.

EQ2: $85

• Completed Lyriana's enervated mythical
• Advanced from 191 AA's to 267
• Beat first seven dungeons in the Velious progression, obtained about half of my T2 armor   

I paid $45 for three months of game time, and $40 for the DOV expansion.  I also received 45 days of compensation time for the hacking debacle (cost: my identify, dun dun dun).  Up until December, I occasionally used a silver EQ2X account (purchased last year with promotional Station Cash balances that I didn't pay for) that I occasionally used for world events or limited-time quests.

I was expecting to spend about $20+ to unlock my character after the free to play switchover, but SOE's decision to grandfather in existing characters meant that I only had to pay to unlock my current gear, which I was able to do out of my remaining promotional SC balance.  That said, I did decline to purchase the year's second expansion box, along with the $20 paid add-on race that arrived with Velious.  This game would have been exceptionally expensive for someone who actually stayed with it the full time and paid full price for stuff as it was released, were it not for all the freebies for being hacked and for changing the business model.. 
 
Runes of Magic: $15

• Advanced from 30 Druid/30 Rogue to 57 Druid/53 Warden/50 Rogue
• Test drove a bunch of alts into the 20/20/20 range

I spent $15 on diamond currency.  I purchased a mount and some daily quest tickets, and I have just over $5 left. 

Vanguard: $5

• Escaped the generic Isle of Dawn
• Leveled character to 11 Disciple/10 crafter/12 Diplomat

Spent $5 to upgrade my EQ2 subscription to Station Access for one month so I could extend my Vanguard free trial by a bit. 

DCUO: $10

• Reached level 30 on a hero, completed solo campaign
• Experimented with some alts on both factions, platforms 

I spent $10 in the December's triple Station Cash sale for 3000 SC and immediately spent 999 SC on the Lightning Strikes DLC pack, which unlocked the new powerset and upgraded my account to Premium.  I'd been considering paying the full $10 for the pack anyway, so it became an absolute no-brainer with an extra 2000 SC.

Note that some of this balance may eventually get spent on EQ2 instead of DCUO, such is the perk of SOE's unified account system.  I will also tip my hat to SOE for allowing players to purchase currency in any increment of $5, without getting hit with funky/punitive exchange rates. 

DDO: $0
No additional expenditures this year.  I spent $100 in 2010, and spent about $70 of that on unlocking the content and character options I continue to use sporadically.
 
Kingdom of Loathing: $0
No additional money spent, I did sink something like $20-30 in this game back in 2007-2008 or so.

PS3/PSP

• Beat Portal 2 ($35)
• Beat Infamous 1 (PSN hacking debacle freebie)
• Beat Uncharted 1 (Christmas present in 2010)
• Currently working on Assassin's Creed 2 ($10)
• Currently working on Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (PSP, Christmas 2011 present)

These obviously really MMO purchases, and aren't included in the totals below, I just record them for the sake of perspective. 

Grand Total

All told, I spent basically $240, not counting the $10 gift card, the PS3 games or the $140 committed to Blizzard products next year.  (Nor, I suppose, do I count the amount of patience and attention it takes to await and grab some of the more substantial deals I got this year.)  When you consider that a single subscription MMO with a $40 expansion box and $15 in monthly fees will run you $220 annually, that's really not bad for what I'm getting for my money.

Speaking more generally, 2011 was the year when I actually learned to take advantage of non-subscription gaming models.  I spent a fair amount of time in non-subscription games in 2010, but I continued to play them the way I would approach a subscription game - focusing on one game at a time, playing it until I had completed everything I was aiming for and moving on.  As increasing numbers of games that I wanted to play anyway are offering more flexible options, I'm routinely logging into 3-5 games per week, and on rare occasions even per day.

Ironically, this hasn't blown my costs through the roof the way I wondered that it might when I started tracking what I was spending this year.  The "all-inclusive" subscription model has never included either the initial account nor the paid expansion boxes.  I'm definitely spending more on content than I was - and sometimes I'm putting up with irritating restrictions because I don't feel like paying to remove them - but I'm not then turning around and paying again to continue accessing the content I have paid to unlock.  I may or may not be paying more, but I'm certainly getting a lot more.

Looking ahead to next year, my totals will almost certainly be higher - if you budget the payments to Blizzard and likely boxes for both SWTOR and Pandaria, I already have about as much in total MMO expenses for next year as I did for this year.  Several of the non-subscription games I paid into this year may not require additional funds next year (in particular, EQ2 should be way down), but the fact that I'm already down for $60 on DIII - more than I spent on all but one MMO I played this year - is already looming as the potential difference between the budgets.  Guess we'll find out how this goes next year.

Incentive Design from the Mouths of Babes

We're visiting this week with a niece who just turned two, and my wife downloaded the top-rated toddler app for her iPad.  In the game, a cartoon monkey does a somersault and makes a happy monkey noise when the player succeeds at various tasks, like touching the green fruit, re-assembling a small puzzle, etc.    Most of the minigames can be solved by tapping the screen repeatedly and yelling "yay, monkey".  It was only when this approach did not work that the niece actually attempts to think about the puzzle, and I found the results surprising.  

• She can't read the instructions to "touch the purple fruit", and she may not yet know what the word purple means, but when I pointed to the word purple (which was colored purple), she immediately hit the purple plum.  
• She doesn't appear to have the fine motor skills to drag and drop the pieces of fruit for the reassembly puzzle, but her hand motions make it clear that she knows what she needs to do.  
• On paper, the concentration game (eight face-down cards consisting of four pairs that you can flip over two at a time) is the hardest of the games, but she's definitely got the concept of this game (if, perhaps, not the attention span needed to deal with all eight cards - or perhaps getting an adult to take 2-4 of the cards off the board for her is also part of her strategy).  

Overall, this game raises incentive design questions.  Is the little girl an MMO player in the making, already able to skip past the educational content much as we don't read quest text?  Is it part of the game designer's strategy to have most of the puzzles be easy as a way to lure players into the game where they may eventually learn from the content they're being exposed to as they go?  Do the designers actually care whether anyone learns anything, as long as the product is fun for the kids, looks educational for the parents, and therefore can go on to be a best-seller?  And, perhaps most importantly, where are the videos of two-year-olds on voice chat planning their approach to the latest monkey puzzle? 

The Niche For Single Player Games

One of my Christmas presents was a copy of the old PSP game Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (when will they start making titles that make sense in English?).  I immediately set the game to "proud mode", the third out of four difficulty settings, because I have played some of these games before and because the title screen informs the player that the "secret" ending is much easier to unlock at higher difficulties. 

The result has been an experience that we don't often get in MMO's - the content starts out tuned significantly above the player's head.  However, the power curve is intentionally set in a way where going off to farm up even one or two additional levels will allow the player to overcome a previously tough challenge.  My experience with MMO's of late has been that the content starts out at "too easy", but the power curve tends to be flatter - if you actually are stuck on something, one or two levels aren't going to help, and you're probably going to have to come back when it's grey (or with a better dungeon PUG, if that's the problem). 

Overall, it's an odd challenge that MMO's face as developers aim a larger portion of leveling content as solo players, but that content continues to be the prerequisite for endgame grouping.  It's hard to balance one set of content for two very different demographics, and much easier to accidentally end up with a situation where the solo player feels like Werit "drinking from the XP fire hose" as the devs struggle to find the balance with not forcing the poor aspiring group player to endure every last solo quest in the game.  I suppose this is the remaining niche for the single player game, until someone comes up with a better solution.

Beating DCUO

Yesterday, I beat what could be considered the single player portion of DCUO - the Green Armadillo has now completed every story mission from the launch game up to the end of Batman's story arc, all six original "challenge mode" versions of leveling dungeons, and the Catwoman Challenge Mode dungeon that was added in one of the game's few pre-F2P patch updates. 

The World's Greatest Detective checks his notes to make sure that yes, I really did just qualify for membership in the Justice League, while Superman appears to be pondering my death behind my back, perhaps because I made fun of his half of the story content.

I hit "cooperative" reputation with two of the game's three factions, allowing me to purchase entry level gear (blue quality item level 34) that was more than enough to get me through the finale of the Batman missions.  There's one more solo challenge mode zone, where I would face off against The Penguin (though this zone is notoriously difficult, to the point where I gave up after a few attempts), and then it's on to (or to attempt to get to) the DLC.  To borrow the analogy that Tobold dug out of his archives today, I have finished the content and am largely left with the gameplay.  As I wrote last week, that's not necessarily all bad, to the extent that DCUO's combat is fun (and different from your average MMO).  At the same time, as Tobold suggests, new story content is a part of the deal, and that particular part is largely over. 

So, about that DLC that you thought you purchased...

Speaking of the DLC, I did decide to pull the trigger on the new "Lightning Strikes" content when the triple exp sale rolled around last weekend.  This does immediately grant access to the new powerset, which I'm test-driving on a new Villain character.  It also, in principle, contains content.  The catch is that players aren't even allowed in the new zone until they hit a Combat Rating - DCUO's version of the gearscore - of 53. 

Again, my gear right now is sitting at a 34.  To put this number in perspective based on info from the guide forum, the best items that drop outright in hard mode T2 alert content (the best non-raid drops in the game) are item level 52.  The T2 vendor armor is item level 56, but a full set of this requires around 400 T2 "marks of distinction".  These marks aren't available in solo content - I can get one daily from the daily "duo", two more from the daily T1 hard mode alert, and around four per hard mode T2 alert (which themselves require a combat rating of 43 to access).  While it's theoretically possible to meet this bar inside of two weeks, it's likely to take far longer due to the extremely low liklihood that I am going to complete seven T2 alerts and a T2 duo each and every day. 

Prices on the T1 vendor also call for about 400 marks, but these are much easier to obtain - even solo players can obtain a dozen or so per day, and these also drop in greater numbers in small group content.

Two additional quirks:

• The entry level reputation gear I currently own is geared for DPS.  I have a few drops for healing, but I would need a separate set of Healer-role gear if I wanted to pursue that route, and the need for an additional 400 marks to obtain this set makes that outcome extremely unlikely. 
• The business model as currently designed makes it extremely challenging for non-subscribers to run content that actually incurs significant costs (either repair bills for wipes or - especially for healers - "soda" potions to restore health and power).  I spent nearly $1000 on a less than full repair after failing to clear the Penguin challenge mode.  I cannot have more than $2000 on my character ($1500 before I spent enough money to flag for premium). 
  
  I generally keep my bags at least partially full of sell-able items to restore my cash supply after taking this kind of hit to the wallet, but raiding is out of the question and even the hard mode 4-player content may be limited.  In principle, I can pay 200 SC ($2 if there's no sale going) to withdraw $10,000 from my escrow balance (if I actually had the $10K, currently I spend the excess money on cosmetic armor skins to try and avoid ever sending money to escrow), but this is both costly and not a fun thing to spend money on.  Realistically, it's easier to just pass on content that my account level does not support. 

The escrow withdrawal purchase

Overall, my experience is still generally more positive than negative, but it appears that accessing the new content I paid for is going to be a long term goal indeed.  I don't entirely regret the one DLC purchase because I am using the new powerset on an alt, and the purchase did upgrade my account to premium status, but at this rate I'm unlikely to qualify for future content updates if I did want to pay for them. 

In the mean time, I do have the option of replaying the game as a Villain.  There are three story missions that are unique to each of the six hero/villain mentors.  That said, the challenge of leaning heavily on storytelling is that you have to enjoy the story that's being told.  DCUO's take on the Villains of the DC Universe feels a bit less nuanced than I'm used to from the Batman comics - there's a lot of sucking the souls out of the innocent to summon demons into the world and testing mutagens on innocent college kids by the Villains who populate Metropolis.  Then again, at no additional charge I suppose I have nothing to complain about. 

Soonspeeder, my new Electricity/Superspeed Villain, arrives sooner than any MMO patch.  Also, she probably needs to set more ambitious goals for herself.

Population Distribution Impact of SWTOR Staggered Access

I was debating whether or not to post about the SWTOR staggered launch plan, since I personally chose to sit this one out due to computer performance issues (more my fault than Bioware's).  MMO-Gamer Chick's questions convinced me to go ahead and post anyway, mostly because the comment I was writing on her blog was starting to look more like a blog post. 

To lead off with my main point, I wonder if Bioware has taken a long-term risk to alleviate a short term problem. 

The Background
For any readers who have not heard about this controversy, Bioware elected to admit players into the "head start" based on when they pre-ordered the game.  Historically, MMO's have gotten absolutely hammered on launch day when everyone shows up at once, and I suppose that dedication to the game - as demonstrated by pre-ordering early - is as good a criteria as any if you are going to limit access in the hopes of improving the experience. 

(It's entirely possible that they intentionally did not go out of their way to let "late" pre-orders know that they might be sitting out the better part of the week, but I don't know that this diminishes the fairness of the system.) 

One consistent complaint players have expressed was the uncertainty about when in the week of head-start time their personal invite would arrive.  To ensure maximum flexibility to adjust the rate of invites based on server performance, players had very little indication on when they could plan to start playing.  Personally, my guess is that people were more displeased that they personally weren't in the earliest invite cohorts than about the uncertainty - how many folks really would have been happy if Bioware had said on day 1 "fine, you're not getting in til day 5 of 7, but here's the precise time your invite will arrive"? 

Population balance going forward
All of that said, I don't think that any of the above will matter in a week, and I'm already seeing people who were very displeased with the roll-out while they were awaiting their invite happily posting about the game.  (Indeed, reaction amongst people who were on the fence about the game, myself included, who actually tried it has been almost universally pleasantly surprised.)  The real issue which addresses MMOGC's question about whether other companies will attempt the same approach is the effect on populations going forward.

Figuring out how many servers to offer at launch is probably the biggest challenge a MMO studio has at launch.  Launch with too many servers and you will end up with low populations, potentially forcing server merges (which are nigh universally regarded as a devastating vote of non-confidence for a new game).  The opposite issue is less obvious but harder to fix.  Because MMO's are social games, many players don't want any random server (and the ones who do are less likely to have social ties that will keep them around longterm to form a community).  Players want to be on the server their friends are already playing on, and no amount of additional servers added after launch can fix that population issue if the game launched with too few servers. 

In some ways, Bioware seems well prepared to know what to expect - the aggressive push for pre-orders, combined with a social networking guild setup system, gave Bioware some numbers. However, I wonder if the staggered access cut them off from the real-time data about how many people who for whatever reason did not pre-register with a guild were eventually going to join up with that guild once they got in.  Under a free-for-all system, Bioware might have seen on day 1 that certain servers would have been a problem.  Because of the staggering, it might not have been apparent until day 4-5 that specific servers were overcrowded.

As of this writing, the official server list has 72 US (EST/PST) servers that are not labeled "new" and 51 servers that are labeled "new" as of either 12/16 or 12/20.  And, sure enough, we have dire warnings that just a handful of servers are so overcrowded that players can expect queues for the indefinite future.  Unlike the pre-order access, which is already old news, this balance issue may remain with the game for months or even years to come (much as it did on my WoW server, which was one of the original 40 pre-announced for WoW's launch day and which ended up needing almost three years to recover).  Other studios will be watching, and their conclusion may be that it's better to have some short term pain. 

Crafting a Role for Crafting

Through the wonders of Archeology, I can actually make my gnome smaller (as well as trapped in the block of Amber for 5 minutes, or until I click off the buff).

The Winter Veil holiday got me to take another look at Cataclysm's new archeology profession.  Effectively, it's a means of turning time into cash, a snippet of lore,  and the occasional unique cosmetic item as you travel the world. 

Archeology is an odd gathering profession where very little of what you gather can actually be sold to anyone - you will sometimes harvest tradeable "keystones" that allow you to spend fewer of your soulbound fragments on soulbound (or sometimes account bound) items.  For the most part, though, it's a crafting profession without either the crafting (there are no choices, your fragments can only turn into the next item the RNG offers you) or the profession (due to the lack of stuff to sell). 

Today, I get to use my fragments on a "rare" item.  Note the option to use up to three keystones to remove the need for 12 fragments (1-2 harvests, with three harvests per node) each.

In some ways, that doesn't make it especially unusual in the modern World of Warcraft.  The two actual tradeskills on my character at the moment are tailoring - whereby I turn valuable cloth into junk that I immediately disenchant in exchange for a cloak enchant and discounted leg enchant - and enchanting (which gives me ring enchants, the ability to disenchant my old soulbound gear rather than vendor it, and the right to spend a lot of money on enchant recipes that I will likely only use once or twice more this expansion depending on how much loot I get.

Overall, my LOTRO character is looking much smarter.  Allarond has been an avid crafter, mining various metals, placing them on the auction house, and turning the resulting gold into a wider variety of items than he could possibly craft for himself.  There are some games where at least we see quest storylines that can be solved via crafting - EQ2 and maybe Vanguard probably take the top honors in this genre.  SWTOR has tried to spice it up a bit by outsourcing your crafitng labor to your NPC companions, which I suppose at least puts some story behind the endeavor. 

As is, I suppose the modern crafting system is something of a form of alternate advancement, whether actually tied to stats (as in WoW), content (as in EQ2), ways to counter the random number generator (as in DDO), or acquiring achievements/deeds/etc (all of the above).  Sometimes (again, as in EQ2) a game will physically force players to seek out crafter intervention in the course of obtaining an item, but this just gives the crafter a cut of the economy, which has little to nothing to do with the actual crafting of stuff. 

Overall, it feels like MMO crafting systems could stand to craft themselves a better role in their games.