Intermittent FFXIV Players Better Off Starting Over On Expanded Free Trial

FFXIV apparently has so little need of intermittent revenue from low level, infrequent players, that it is willing to allow permanent free access to its first sixty levels including its entire launch game and first expansion.  Changing the trial so that someone who has the time to binge the game is able to play for a month straight could convince that player to stick around.  A telling side effect of the change is that I am apparently such a small fish that they don't care if I ever pay them again. 

In 2013, I played 2 months of FFXIV on both PC and PS3 (using the game's crossplay).  I tried a number of the game's jobs, ultimately leveling a character named Johari Jeutremie to 27 as an arcanist, and I always meant to go back someday. The game is about to launch a patch that overhauls the level 1-50 "main story quest" I never completed, and will allow new players as much game time as they would like without paying. There may never be a better time to revisit the game.

Unfortunately, Johari is not invited.  "Upgrading" a trial account to a paid account is a permanent, one-way process that forever cuts off access to the free trial, even if you are nowhere near the trial's level cap. I can afford the subscription fee, but I would inevitably play once and cancel 65 days later, having been billed twice more without having logged in again. I would be paying to get less access to the game than I would as a free player able to come back for a day every few months if I want, when I am unlikely to finish the story and first expansion's level cap in the foreseeable future.  Even if I did someday hit the trial's level cap, it could rise again in the future; I would be locked out all over again if I paid. 

The only sensible choice is for me to start over and never pay again. I don't love free-loading, but it isn't personal. A single player who becomes a year-round subscriber is worth more than a dozen tourists like myself, and my hypothetical $13 isn't worth risking making it easier for current subscribers not to pay year round.

Three Weeks In Draenor

As Blizzard wraps up the first content patch of the Warlords of Draenor era, I'm marking something like 3 weeks in the expansion.  I'd say that overall it's a good expansion, but I'm not yet convinced of the staying power given that we are almost certainly at least a year from the next edition.

My tale thus far:

- Advanced my main from level 90 to level 100 in 9 days, including full clears of Shadowmoon Valley, Gorgrond, Talador, and portions of the Spires of Arak. 
- My garrison is currently as upgraded as possible given my late start, with all buildings at level 2 (if gated by an achievement I have yet to complete) or 3.  I've collected 30 followers, all of whom are level 100, and am rapidly working on upgrading them to purple quality and ilvl 630 gear.  I'm actually about to start tearing down some buildings where I have already obtained the best rewards. 
- Polished off Spires of Arak and cleared out Nagrand. 
- Captured all pets that can be battled in the wild in Draenor. 
- I'm advancing professions as quickly as the time-gates allowed.  One detour here - I'm continuing to farm the Pandaria farm for cloth, so I can make nearly free 28-slot bags every two weeks or so. 

At this point, I have some amount of stuff that I can loot for zero effort in about 20 minutes each day at my Garrison.  There's a daily quest that I've done once to go to a level 100 area and farm a relatively modest amount of an endgame currency - I can see this getting old pretty quickly.  Otherwise, I can level an alt (including the "free" instant 90 that came with the expansion box) for fun and additional garrisons.... or go do dungeons.  I don't know that I'm going to be sold on doing dungeons.

There is a lot to like in Draenor.  The world is pretty and does much more to encourage exploration than recent expansions have done.  There are constant little blips in the world for looting treasure, killing rare spawns, and even triggering events by just taking the time to kill mobs attacking a town without a quest to do so are in some ways a bigger innovation than anything Blizzard did in Pandaria.  The story is alright, though a bit focused on having major villains escape to go be raid bosses (perhaps appropriate for revisiting Draenor). 

But overall, I'm a month in with a month left on a 60 day time card and I'm not entirely sure what to do with that time.  Perhaps tomorrow's patch will shake things up, but this does not bode entirely well. 

2014 Wrap-up: Resolutions, Expenditures, and Questions

2014 was a year when I moved to a new country, largely (though informally) dropped off from MMO blogging, and spent the majority of my time in a single game for the first time in years. (Perhaps 2008?)  I spent very little of that time in traditional MMO's and sat out the major MMO launch events of the year (which don't seem to have gone that well).  What did I plan to do, what did I actually do, and what did it cost? 

Marvel Heroes: $220

I started the year committed to a $130 pre-purchase of the thirteen hero Advance Pack and then added on $50 in cash store currency and a $40 team-up Advance Pack purchase.  I started the year still working on my first level 60 and something like 8 characters unlocked.  I ended it with 2175/2580 total levels, access to pretty much the entire current roster (all but one unlocked, solely because I haven't had time to play the latest two releases) and 32 out of 43 playable characters at level 60.  I might have been able to push through to cap everyone, but I saw no need to rush, especially with a few characters still waiting for their 52 reworks in the coming months. 

Having spent about as much time on this game as a traditional MMO, the amount I spent is mostly reasonable and the game treated me reasonably well.  The resources I did NOT spend unlocking all those heroes and team-ups sufficed to unlock the entire backlog of playable heroes from launch, and at least the next four new releases besides.  That said, with the current pricing strategy I did not have to think long before declining to "renew" the Advance Pack for 2015.  The discount sounds great on paper but it isn't large enough compared to all the frequent sales that don't require a year up-front commitment to bundles that include stuff you don't want. 

So, it'll be interesting to see where next year goes.  I think I will spend more than $0 and less than $220.  Probably some cash store currency, perhaps a bundle for the Avengers movie, it will depend on what's on offer and how the year is going.

Heroes of the Storm (technically alpha): $43
I was around for the alpha reset and bought up bundles containing a total of 14 heroes, 2 mounts, and a skin at a far greater discount than what Blizzard has offered since.  After trying the remaining characters during free weeks, I unlocked an additional 5 characters with gold.  Collectively, that's over half the roster (with gold remaining to unlock 2-4 more heroes depending on price point), and I have access to characters covering every combination of franchise/role currently implemented in game.  The goal was to get started with a budget around a retail game, and it looks like I'm good to go. 

World of Warcraft: $7.50 (discounted time card)
I used a pre-paid time card to tie up loose ends in Pandaria, including the pre-expansion event and somehow barely grabbing a LFR Garrosh kill before the pre-expansion talent revamp.  I liked Pandaria better when cherry-picking the fun parts at the end instead of trying to grind them them all on a deadline to try and jump the next hurdle.   

I've got some time penciled in for Draenor in a month or two.

Neverwinter: No Cash Spent
I own a level 60 character never paid Cryptic a cent.  Of course, the way this title works, actually gearing out that character would likely churn through a non-trivial amount of money.  Meanwhile, I spent significantly more time leveling and farming currency in the out-of-game portal than in-game, which in principle means that my Astral Diamonds helped encouraged someone to spend real money on Zen to sell me. 

SWTOR: No Cash Spent
I used a double exp weekend to finish up my Sith Warrior's class story.  The expansion presale campaign was a bit wasted on me, as I wasn't willing to clear out that particular month on my calendar to take advantage of it.  At this point I'm likely to leave SWTOR on the back burner for a few more months anyway, and perhaps they'll reduce or eliminate the expansion fee (as they did last round).

Dishonorable Mention: Hex ($20 Kickstarter contribution last year)
I'm not going to list out every game I've previously played and/or spent money on that didn't get my time and money in 2014.  Hex, however, earns special recognition in this category because the defining feature that convinced me to pledge to their Kickstarter in June 2013 remains unimplemented. The game's plans for PVE content were a huge focus of both the Kickstarter campaign and the accompanying website, but have seen repeated delays, most recently a somewhat-obvious late-year statement that PVE would not be added in 2014.

In the interim, they may or may not get wiped out by a lawsuit from Wizards of the Coast (that they may or may not deserve - I've seen completely convinced people on both sides, and doubt that the real legal meat is available to the public at the moment) that certainly wasn't listed as a budget contingency in their Kickstarter. 

I can't say who the dishonor actually falls on (perhaps myself for having decided to offer up $20 and considered paying more), but it's a typical tale for crowd-funded video game projects, and I wish all of you who backed various MMO-hopefuls better luck. 

PS3:
My relatively modest mop-up project on this front was mixed.  I did complete Uncharted 3, and I also tried Infamous 2 before concluding that I didn't like it and writing the thing off.  I also procured a copy of Batman: Arkham Origins that I'd like to finish someday, but decided not to let that stop me from getting a PS4 for Christmas.

2014 Releases:
I've actually spent a few hours, and zero dollars in the open beta/soft-launch for Infinite Crisis.

That aside, TESO and Wildstar both reached the end of 2014 with subscription business models intact.  Based on the incorrect assumption that the game would launch on consoles in 2014, I had assumed that TESO in particular was unlikely to make it.  Whether either makes it to their respective first anniversaries without replacing their business model is a separate question.  In a possibly related story, Massively reports you can no longer purchase a 6-month subscription to TESO; it would make a ton of sense for the game to rip the band-aid off BEFORE the unspecified console launch. 

I'd also asked if we would see any F2P-relaunched titles get the axe in 2014, and SOE of all people came through by killing several titles, including Vanguard.  I guess that means so long to my former low level Goblin creature, gone off to wherever the inhabitants of Telon have ended up. 

And that's 2014, on to another year. 

A Waste of Draenor?

I'm on the fence about the schedule for WoW's upcoming expansion and 10th Anniversary celebrations.  I've long since ceased to make purchasing decisions a matter of principle, but I am concerned and a bit puzzled by the rushed pace that the calendar seems to be dictating.  

WoW's fifth expansion has taken so long to produce that it has bumped into the game's 10th anniversary.  An announcement this week clarified how the schedule will work - the expansion launches on November 13th, the anniversary window begins on November 21st, and the last opportunity to get the goodies will be on January 6th.

The centerpiece of the festivities is a revamped level 100 version of the classic Molten Core raid from WoW's launch.  Getting there will require that players purchase the expansion box - at an increased price of $50 compared to past $40 boxes - and gain the ten new levels in just under eight weeks.  (The preceding 90 levels are a moot point, as the new box includes one instant level 90 character upgrade credit.)  On a shallow level, this is a way to sell boxes and game time, but I wonder if this was a missed opportunity.

I sat out Pandaria's launch due to newborn, and thus incidentally got the expansion box for half off on Black Friday and got to experience the game with the 5.0 jitters polished out.  While I'm not opposed on principle to paying full price and showing up at launch, I probably won't enjoy the journey nearly as much with the deadline.  I also don't understand why it's in Blizzard's best interest to rush players to the new max level before month two of the new expansion cycle when they have yet to release an expansion in under 22 months.

Finally, there's the nostalgia factor.  The 10th anniversary should have been an opportunity to bring back millions of former players to see what Blizzard has done with the game in their absence.  Perhaps the cynical math says that $65 for the box and a month of game time is the best outcome Blizzard can expect from these customers.  Otherwise it would seem like slapping a large upfront purchase and a deadline is not the best on-ramp for people who may be one or more expansions behind the times.  Does it really make sense to take players who last saw their characters three talent overhauls ago, catapult them past all the current expansions, and rush them through the new one, landing them right back at the endgame that may have driven them from the game in the first place?

If anything, I'm thinking I might enjoy resubscribing for a month or two now with no particular pressure to do anything but play around in Azeroth since everything meaningful will be reset in two short months anyway.  There are pets to battle, stories to finish, mounts and achievements to collect, and any number of other things that I'll be rushing past if I do take part in the expansion rush. 

Looking Back on Marvel Heroes

I spent $20 and maybe a dozen hours on the launch of Marvel Heroes.  I returned in November and have spent $270 since (including pre-purchase of post upcoming content slightly into next year), playing Marvel Heroes as my primary title for most of the time since December.  The good and bad of the game as it stands today:

Atmosphere, Gameplay
This game is a licensed property - I can't speak to whether you'll like it if you don't like the source material.  If you do like the material, it's in good hands - including a week-long review process at Marvel for stuff being added to the game.  Characters look like they should, almost always sound as they should (some voice acting is better than others, par for the course), and usually play as they should. 

In one example, they could have half-assed a magic user like Dr. Strange by re-coloring existing projectiles, and they instead spent time and effort on elaborate animations - portals with demons, swarms of magical homing daggers, a giant floating eye - to make him look more like the Sorcerer Supreme.  (One catch - heroes are priced largely based on level of development effort, so characters like Dr. Strange, and Ghost Rider who had a ton of work for his flaming motorcycle, end up costing more.)  The team has also taken the time to go re-review the launch-era heroes - one at a time - to bring them up to current standards at zero additional cost to players who already own that character. 

The gameplay is relatively standard action-RPG combat, with lots of dodging out of damage zones and occasional screen-filling explosions of particle effects.  The Marvel feel is here again, including a storyline that romps through a relatively timeless version of Marvel's major villains.  Personally, I enjoy repeating the story on all of the different characters to see how they handle the same content (which I now know very well) differently.  The action setting also includes shorter levels with more frequent opportunities to sign off and resume your progress later compared to Diablo III.  I feel that I can make progress in a 10-minute session or sit down on a rare occasion and power a character through the entire story in a few hours.

The Business
The game's business model has also seen an overhaul.  At launch, the cash store was all over the place, playable heroes were the priciest items, and just about anything could drop in game with no real way to farm what you wanted.  Today, heroes are cheaper across the board, and a new currency based entirely on time /played can be used to unlock any hero in the game.  The flip side, which the developers have been much more reticent to confirm, has been that everything else, from respec potions to costumes, have been drastically slashed on the loot tables. 

The new model makes sense - personally, my playtime drops off when I start running out of characters I want to play, and that costs the developers the chance to sell me other stuff.   I can also see how someone who focused on a single character and didn't care as much about cosmetic stuff is now looking at increased costs because things no longer drop at any reasonable rate.

This is also, as you might gather from my top line numbers, a potentially pricey game.  If you wanted to purchase just the playable heroes and team-ups released from December through May when there isn't a sale on, you're looking at over $90 without paying for any storage or costumes, i.e. $15/month.  Longer term promotions don't really save you much money but you can expect significantly more stuff - including storage and an alternate costume for each new hero as they are released.  I'm actually in a bit of a dead spot in the business model where I get squeezed harder than most.  Very infrequent players get a lot of playtime without paying at all, and players who get in 40+ hours a week walk away with enough splinters to unlock every character in-game for free.  I play just enough to want new characters faster than I can earn them. 

Also, the marketing team has always focused heavily on aggressive promotions, and recent months have seen a major rise in small but desired bonuses (exclusive costumes and team-ups, permanent experience boosts, etc) for very large purchases of $100 or more.  Thus far the extras have been optional, but the quality and frequency of these promotions is increasing.  A game's business model can't be a democracy, but that doesn't make it fun when it's pointed out that there's a lot of stuff they just won't sell to players who spend $300 per year, in order to make a market for players who spend over $1000 per year. 

Production
The game's developers will readily admit that the initial launch had problems - customer service had to manually flagging accounts for access during launch, the game's first client patcher was routinely redownloading 10GB of data until tech support began telling people to go download the game from Steam instead, and there were huge issues with basic functionality like tracking quests across multiple characters and landing only halfway to the cap after a first trek through story mode. 

The good news is that the game has come a long way and seen a lot added.  Patches with various amounts of stuff arrive monthly, and events of one sort or another run on most weekends.  At least one new playable hero, ready or not, will arrive every month.  And there's the other side of the coin - the team is reasonably good at following up on new releases, but the production cycle is very aggressive, with under a week of public testing for most releases, and new paid characters seldom miss their mark.  Anything that isn't a new paid character is likely to take at least twice as long as the developers say it will to release. 

It's hard to say how harsh to be on this topic.  Blizzard fails to follow through on both its preliminary designs and its time-tables; with frequent releases in Marvel Heroes that aren't held to fill an expansion box, it's more noticeable when features were promised for their actual target date and end up slipping by weeks or months.  Sometimes, small but significant issues even get held up because the team decided to tackle something larger - for example, Life Leech cores were deemed to be overpowered so the developers disabled them from dropping in game and said they would be nerfed in a subsequent review.  The review took something like four months, during which the best costume cores in the game no longer dropped in the game. 

The studio is in the midst of re-branding the title "Marvel Heroes 2015" to match the naming convention of annual sports franchises and attempt to earn re-reviews from game reviewing outlets.  Given the hiccups that they experience on almost every patch, they might want to be careful what they wish for - Simcity still owns a 64 Metacritic score and a 2.1 user rating due largely to server issues (and the company's poor handling thereof) from the launch weekend over a year ago. 

Overall
Overall, I'm playing the game and spending money on the game.  The mechanic of collecting new heroes (some with cash, some earned in-game) and benchmarking them against familiar content is fun for me.  Familiarity with the IP means that I start each new character with some impression of who they are and what they do, and the drop-in style of gameplay works with my lifestyle.  I feel okay about what I've spent thus far, but I do have some concerns. 

Looking into 2015, the team will be releasing increasingly lower-profile characters, and I could see character designs beginning to blur together as roster sizes increase.  I have concerns about how the number of vertical progression systems they are adding to the game will scale over time.  At some point I won't find what they're offering to be worth what they're asking, and because of how I play the game that will likely mean giving up on the game entirely rather than cutting back (i.e. playing with a very limited flow of new characters will no longer be fun). 

As I said up top, this is the first time in several years that I've spent six straight months almost entirely in a single game.  So far, that counts for something. 

Balancing Power And Fun

I had a difference of opinion with a member of my supergroup concerning the Invisible Woman.  He argued that she plays like a weaker version of Cyclops with more support skills, and is further disappointing because she spends less time in stealth than other stealthy characters.  These points may be true, in particular at high level content, but I'm having a lot of fun playing her anyway.

Part of the comparison to Cyclops is that Invisible Woman has a basic attack power that ricochets.  This means you can spam the attack infinitely and it will bounce automatically between a large hostile and inanimate targets.  The damage isn't super high - similar powers that cost spirit to use, such as Captain America's shield toss or Nightcrawler's self-teleporting-projectile Blink Strike, do more damage, but the convenience can't be beat.  Invisible Woman also has some of my other favorite abilities that are commonly found on other characters, including a ground targeted damage over time effect (mob AI is not any better than MMO players at getting out of the fire) and a swarm of auto-targeting force spheres.  Collectively, she can clear out a room of trash very quickly. 

Which gets us back to the other point about stealth/invisibility or lack thereof.  The bad news is that my colleague is technically accurate that Invisible Woman starts combat from stealth (she is automatically and permanently invisible any time she is out of combat) but once she is fighting she typically does ranged combat like other non-stealthy characters.  She can escape into stealth by kiting for a few seconds, but other characters can get out at the click of a spammable button that's also part of their DPS rotation.  But ironically the good news is that you never need to fight any trash if you don't feel like doing so.  Mobs will emote because the AI doesn't know to turn that off just because because the mob can't see you, but you can easily, effortlessly and painlessly skip everything you don't feel like fighting.  This is also true for characters who can teleport, and to a lesser extent to any hero willing to repeatedly dodge-roll for their life across the entire map, but this is a ton more work.

Maybe the appeal for me is that she's the ideal character if you're too lazy to work at avoiding and/or targeting the enemy? 

Getting back to the bigger picture, every game now has way more character variety than you can feasibly balance.  Whether it's dozens of specializations for a smaller number of classes as in WoW or maybe only one or two builds for a really large number of playable characters in Marvel Heroes, it's inevitable that some will be better than others.  It's probably okay for some of the less optimal choices to be fun despite this, though I guess that can be a problem in a game where a significant amount of progress is tracked separately for each character (i.e. you can't really use Invisible Woman to farm gear for Wolverine), or if you felt really strongly about a particular character due to the IP.  Then again, sometimes having the game be relatively easy on the baseline leaves room for a less optimal character build to still get by with enough synergies and bonuses. (Another example is Emma Frost's diamond combat build, which is widely panned and sounded bad on paper, but I liked it better than her popular mental DPS build)

At the end of the day, it is not in the developer's interest for any of the characters to be bad, as they're making money selling all of them.  Novelty characters are possible, but probably limited (and I don't know that anyone would have picked Sue Storm for this).  Maybe this particular character is under-tuned (in fairness, her DPS does seem slightly low), but should the fun factor count for something? 

1000 Total Levels In Marvel Heroes

I hit a milestone in Marvel Heroes over the long weekend, gaining my 1000th combined level. 

The levels are split between 26 different heroes, some of whom are relatively low level, in particular characters who are awaiting their post-launch reworks.  Overall it's 10 characters at level 60, 5 more inactive characters parked at level 50 or 52, and then a small handful of characters I actually consider active.  There are a total of 2040 levels in game amongst the 34 released heroes, with a new 60-level hero added every month, so I'm not even half way to the total cap (especially since the higher levels go slower than the low levels do). 

One odd bit of irony here is that I almost prefer to play when there is NOT an weekly event experience boost in effect.  I have so many different ways to increase my exp gain that I don't have trouble getting my levels and I do sometimes have trouble not outleveling content.  My "baseline" is over 150%, as I'm running at 123% synergy bonus plus 10% for Cyclops and 25% for an experience boon (which will run out in just over five days of /played time outside of hubs due to boon parties).  On top of that, I have the following consumables:

• 16 of the common 50% exp boosts (32 hours total, I would "store" these by consuming all of them - which I've done with the 50% rare item find boosts - except that sometimes I want it to expire).  The overwhelming majority of these come from quest rewards - three per character. 
• Triple iridium 50% boosts (6 of these for a total of 12 hours, and these are comparatively more valuable because they stack with the regular boosts.  Mine came from the most recent fortune cards)
• 100% rush bars (available in exp only - reasonably common and I have 9 of these - or triple iridium, where I have a whopping 14 due to the recent cards and promo codes, i.e. 23 hours of 100% bonus)

All told, I can get above 350% bonus exp with a couple of mouse clicks and stay at that level for at least twelve hours /played before stuff starts falling off, and all of that is multiplicative with any server bonuses.   Thus the reduced enthusiasm for server exp events.  Then again, it does seem like the events are so frequent and so impactful that it's almost anticlimactic to play when there is NOT an event available. 

So that's where I am going into the game's touted 1st birthday.  I'd say expectations - speculation runs anywhere from free G's for the cash shop to a surprise hero - are unrealistically high, but they have done a pretty impressive job with past events.  Guess we'll know in a bit over a week. 

Neverwinter: When are Stats Cosmetic?

My Neverwinter character has advanced steadily through level 31, halfway to the game's level cap.  If you're looking for a decent single player experience with little (though probably not zero) money down, the game seems to fit the bill.  If you play MMO's because you are seeking to fill every gear slot on your character with a reasonable quality item, you're in for an expensive and frustrating haul.  The question I can't quite answer yet is to what extent your stats matter.

The Gameplay

According to the game's map, I've seen fewer than half of the zones, though some of these areas may be dungeons and/or level 60 endgame areas.  The game plays roughly like other recent MMO's, with click-to-attack, a requirement to play in mouse-look mode (which is clunky when it comes to actually using anything on the UI), and lots of dodge-rolling in response to red danger zones on the ground. 

One innovation on this point is that you are not actually required to get OUT of the red area - as long as you perform a dodge roll, the game will treat you as having dodged that attack, so you can get back to killing and don't need to worry about failing to travel far enough for whatever reason.  (I guess this is technically consistent with Dungeons and Dragons rules, where making a saving throw against something does not necessarily physically move the character out of the way?)  I don't generally play rogue type characters, but with all the rolling around that you have to do regardless and less penalty than normal for being caught in melee range, an agile character just feels right in this particular game.

Mechanics aside, it's a reasonably high production value game with about the requisite quests, some voice acting and cut-scenes, and basic MMO features.  I haven't had trouble soloing on the rogue with a healing NPC companion - more on this in a minute - and thus far I haven't hit major roadblocks.  Things could go downhill but overall it seems like the game is not out to stop me from getting to the level cap.

Filling the gearslots
I happened to have some Astral Diamonds I didn't have to pay for courtesy of some promotional codes, but if I had not I probably would not have spent money on the game to this point.  I don't know where the cutoff is, but I expect that trying to get all the way to level cap without paying would be less pleasant.  Even at this early level, pretty much everything can be upgraded to somehow boost your stats. The cost (generally in real money) of gear, item quality, etc, could be a major issue for someone approaching the game with an MMO min-max mindset.  A few examples:

• Almost all equipment has slots for enhancements.  Refining enhancements (done by feeding them other unwanted enhancements and then using a consumable item that is not readily available without diamonds) is costly, and it's not clear that it's worthwhile; I'm finding rank 3-4 enhancements in loot now, so spending diamonds to upgrade my rank 1's would not have been a good plan.
• Players can equip one artifact for stats and a special effect (like trinkets in other games), and two additional artifacts at max level for stats only.  Costly upgrades are required to increase these in quality from green to blue and blue to purple.  (There is also a purely cosmetic and even more costly upgrade to level 100 that does not appear to grant any additional stats, only change the tooltip to legendary orange status.)  
• Each character can have one active NPC companion and 2-4 additional companions (the slots unlock with levels 30 and 60) for passive stat bonuses.  In addition to costs to obtain the companions, these guys also have quality tiers that affect both the companion's rank cap and their passive bonuses. 

My top priority with my Diamonds was to obtain a healer NPC.  Neverwinter characters don't have significant passive healing or food to heal up between combat, so either your character or your active companion just about has to be some kind of Cleric if you intend to solo.   You receive a white quality Cleric for free at level 16, but this character is capped at rank 15 out of 30 due to its low quality; by most accounts, soloing at high levels will be unpleasant. 

I don't know if you absolutely need to go all the way to Purple quality and rank 30 (though each companion has a third special ability that requires this rank), but paradoxically the cost of upgrading that companion was actually significantly higher (300K for white to green, 500K for green to blue, and 750K for blue to purple) than just buying a purple healer from a past promotion (about 600K) and not having to worry about the problem.  This solution costs around $12 depending on the current exchange rate, and I'd consider it a near must have. 

If I was paying out of pocket, I'm not sure what, if anything, I would buy.  Since I didn't pay for my diamonds, I did spend a chunk on an upgraded mount, which moves twice as fast and can take significant more hits, in exchange for looking like a steampunk scorpion-mech.  I spent my remaining diamonds on additional companions who offer passive bonuses I wanted to slot on my character for adventuring, while also providing a party of four companions to play the Sword Coast Adventures minigame on the web portal. 

There are fees for storage, though I haven't had issues here.  There are fees for respecing, but I either didn't screw up my build that badly or else haven't done anything hard enough for it to matter.  The real place where the cost will be problematic would be if the game gets to the point where it's hard to scrape together enough DPS with non-upgraded gear.  Of course, I don't care about PVP or even dungeons, so it's easier for me to shrug this side of the game off.  If you play MMO's to acquire gear, this system - bearing in mind that acquiring the currency naturally is not especially convenient to create demand for currency resales, could be a deal-breaker.

A side effect to grabbing the cheapest purple quality healer and mount I could find is having a giant scorpion mech for a mount and a Lamia with a sword-harp for a companion.  This tasteful stuff doesn't exactly fit the lore as far as I was aware, but at least it's not costing me anything out of pocket.

A Brief Return to Diablo III

A 100% bonus exp weekend was enough to get me back into Diablo III - a title I tried for a few days post launch and ultimately wrote off as a total failure of a purchase.  The good news about buy-to-play is that if you want more of the thing you didn't like, it doesn't cost you a renewed subscription fee.  In my case, I wanted to see the rest of the story I paid for, and I figured there would not be a better occasion to do so. 

I have no idea why this was the lone screenshot I took all weekend, but the bugged "marker location" text is vaguely amusing.

My old character was literally unplayable when I logged in, dying repeatedly to every trash mob I encountered.  I spend most of my time in an ARPG these days, so I was pretty sure the problem couldn't just be that I was suddenly a terrible player.  The issue is that I was level 22 and mid-way through Act II, but wearing gear an average of ten levels below my level and most of it at the lowest non-trash quality the game awarded.  Apparently the game was very stingy with loot back in the day in the misguided attempt to create scarcity for the real money auction house. 

It took surprisingly long to figure out how to backtrack far enough to a point where I would be able to survive.  (For the record, you have to log out and click on the "game properties" on the character select screen if you want to backtrack to a previous act.)  I died a few times to trash early in Act I as well, but then I replaced every single item on my character with higher quality gear within the space of a few fights that I actually survived.  Between that, speccing my Whirlwind Barbarian out like I have Colossus set up in Marvel Heroes, the rest of the game on normal mode difficulty went by pretty quickly.  I completed the story at level 44 with gear that appears from the tooltips to be vaguely level appropriate. 

Over than the overall rate of loot acquisition, it's hard for me to tell how much has changed versus how much I simply never got around to seeing the first time.  (There is an endgame alternate advancement system that was added post-launch, but I'm still not high enough to access this.) 

I will say that I was struck by how freaking depressing the game's setting is.  Maybe I just wasn't old enough to think about the horrors of war fifteen years ago as a student, maybe it's a matter of having a kid myself, or perhaps it's the game's use of voice-over to read lore updates to you as you continue the action.  It just seems like a staggering number of NPC's die - you periodically find and loot a letter from a dead soldier's wife about how their kid is growing up - in an eternal conflict that doesn't seem to have a point or any resolution.  Maybe this lore just worked better when the plot consisted of finding the village of Tristram dead and spending the rest of the time killing everything that moved because they were all demons. 

All that aside, I guess the weekend was a win for Blizzard.  This expansion moves on my watch list from "why would I pay for more of that game I never finished" to "maybe it'll be worth picking up on super sale next Black Friday".  Doesn't mitigate having paid full price for the game, but having written the purchase off as a total loss I guess that makes this a pleasant surprise windfall. 

Burned Alive

The action genre in general, and super heroes in particular, tend to gloss over the fate of minions.  When you're shooting ray guns it's easy to handwave that this is non-lethal because Star Trek thought of setting phasers to stun decades ago.  If your character is a martial artist then you can imagine that they aren't hitting people hard enough to kill them.  If you are using guns and high explosives then people are probably dying, but that's sort of a genre thing.  And then there's the Human Torch.

Burning bodies everywhere - and strangely that doesn't stop the remaining muggers from continuing the attack

Fire as an attack type is pretty common in MMO's.  It's a staple of mages of all types, but then I suppose you're free to handwave and say that it's magical fire or whatnot.  Or perhaps there is a convenient stream of aliens, robots, and other foes who are at least able to fight back. 

Whatever the other excuses, something about having a game in a modern setting and facing thugs, mafia, and ninjas and setting them all on fire feels a bit off.  These mobs would be dying, horribly, and Johnny Storm is cracking jokes about it, presumably because his dialog is the same when roasting Doombots, demons, and dinosaurs.  He's a well implemented character, someone I did not expect to like and have enjoyed playing.  I don't think of myself as overly sensitive to violence etc.  Still, the images on the screen just seem a bit unfortunate.

Optimal Exp and the Cash Shop

If my records are right, the last time I added to the list of MMO's where I have capped a character was back in mid 2012(!).  I spent a decent chunk of late 2012 and all of 2013 re-capping characters who were not longer max level due to expansions, but failed to reach the cap in any new titles.  I finally broke the streak when I got Cyclops to level 60 in Marvel Heroes around a week ago.  The journey there is an odd commentary on exp boosts in the non-subscription era. 

Like most non-subscription titles, Marvel Heroes offers exp boosts in its cash shop.  You can get a limited number of these in-game; one exp boost and one drop rarity boost per character per difficulty from non-repeatable quests, and up to two random fortune cards (roughly 85% chance of containing a random boost) daily if you farm all the terminal missions and spend all of the cube shards accordingly.  They are also frequently thrown in with character bundles in the game's cash store, so I had a fair number of them in storage. 

Busting out the bonus potions for the last ten levels was a relatively obvious and easy choice - I spent the last 10 hours or so running anywhere from +50% to +200% in exp bonuses, and thus on paper shaved probably 10 hours off of my leveling time.  I had 30 minutes of bonuses adding up to +240% left on the clock when I finished, so I ran some legendary quests on Deadpool and advanced from level 25-29 as the last bonus expired (dropping me down to my new permanent baseline of 40%). 

In total, I definitely saved some time, I "wasted" some content (I didn't finish all of the story missions because they are tougher and less exp/minute, and I will need to do some of these later for quest rewards), and technically I didn't pay anything extra out of pocket since I got there entirely through thrifty use of stuff that came with hero bundles I was paying for anyway.  I wouldn't say the bonuses were required, but in a game where I will be continuing to repeat the content it's nice to be able to move on to the next objective early. 

Nothing here is broken - indeed, they're willing to "undermine" their own exp boost sales market by granting permanent bonuses for your alts relatively freely. (I'm currently at 41%, 42% soon, it's relatively easy to get to the mid 70's with four capped characters, and a player who caps all the heroes can actually have 210% permanently for all new characters that are added.)  It's just something to watch for, and something that games that don't use the exp curve as a revenue stream don't have to deal with.

(By contrast, Marvel Heroes has been very willing to add inventory clutter with currencies that don't go in its currency tab, massive variety of relics and boosts that are just slightly different so they can't be stacked, and a new runeword system that will add forty different runestones to the inventory.  They are very willing to make it easy to get more characters on which to acquire loot that needs to be stored but very inflexible when it comes to any discounts on storage.) 

Cosmetic Audience - For Yourself Or Others?

" Once a game is clearly massive, like Hearthstone or LOL it's worth paying to differentiate yourself from every random player because a lot of people will be audience for your flashy cosmetic outfit."
- Stabs, commenting on my post

Stabs' comment assumes that displaying cosmetics to other players is a primary motivator for purchasing cosmetic items in a cash store.  I'm sure some people care about this sort of thing, but I guess for me it is a matter of how you define audience. 

I own Cyclops' 90's costume, after deciding to pre-order his founder's pack at the very last minute pre-launch.  If there had been even a small discount available for displaying the mediocre default costume to the audience of complete strangers who see me passing by in Stark Tower, I would have taken it.  The audience that I cared about in making a purchase to snag this costume is precisely one person large - myself.  Playing existing characters from the Marvel universe is a key selling point of this game, and I strongly associate this particular character with the costume he wore during the era when I was actually reading the comics and watching the cartoons.  I see my character on the screen far often than any stranger I run into in-game will, and it is worth having my character look the way I want him to look for my personal benefit. 

Marvel Heroes is not an open world MMORPG, and thinking back I can remember just one time when I ever had anything in an MMO that actually drew significant attention/comment from other players.  I had a horse for my gnome in World of Warcraft back in 2006, before riding skill or easy spill-over rep gain, and I did occasionally get compliments for having pulled it off.  That said, I'd argue there are two key differences - first, earning the horse was an in-game achievement (which took a lot of time back in the day) rather than just a small cash fee, and second, WoW servers in that era had much more of a community feel of days gone past when someone might actually remember the gnome on the horse.  For better or worse, those days aren't around anymore. 

Today, if I do but a cosmetic item, it's going to be primarily for my own enjoyment.  How do you all feel?  Would you pay extra for the sole purpose of showing off to other players? 

A rare sight back in the day (because it was hard to get a horse), and even rarer today (poor Marcus).

A Nomadic MMO Autumn

I've spent most of 2013 subscribed to one primary MMO and dabbling in maybe a single other non-subscription title at any given time.  For whatever reason, I ended up resolving to tackle some of the backlog and logging into seven different online games in the last week.  I dunno how folks routinely cover as many games as Syp or Chris from MMO Reporter manage this, because it's exhausting.  Anyway, what I've been up to:

• FFXIV: This game has quietly been my go-to since mid-September.  It's a good mix of keeping enough of the new school - public quests, group finder, and solo-ability - but with some old school elements that are a welcome change of pace.  I don't mind that I was playing for over a month before I qualified for a mount or that I'm less than half-way to level cap after six weeks.  In some ways, this game caused my current "crisis" by pushing everything else off the plate. 
  
• Guild Wars 2: This went on a one-day sale for $30, which is the price point at which I'm willing to snag a AAA buy-to-play game as an impulse buy.  I had a ton of trouble actually playing the game because their email authenticator would not work and it took seven CS tickets to get someone to read the ticket and agree to remove this feature.  (Aside: the only other MMO where I have ever needed an extended exchange of tickets due to new login restrictions that the provider added - Guild Wars 1.)  I spent an evening, gained a few levels, and it didn't leave much of an impression.  I definitely could have been looking in the wrong places, or this might just not be a title that I'm going to like (which was why I didn't buy it earlier).   Not going to rush this one, pinging some folks I trust for suggestions on where I should be looking before I spend more time heading in the wrong direction. 
  
• LOTRO: Turbine has turned on double exp for an entire month in advance of their upcoming expansion.  I've been behind on solo content in LOTRO since a few months after the game's launch, but 2013 has been the year when I haven't even managed the token effort to finish the epic story and hit the level cap.  At this point, my favorite part of the leveling game are the non-combat quests where I wander around the towns of Rohan doing things that feel like the belong in Middle Earth, but that interactive story isn't quite enough to convince me to come back.  Also, possibly odd decision by Turbine to try and bring back inactive players just before a major class revamp that is drawing much concern from current players - it might actually have been easier to get the new system if I didn't just take a refresher on how things used to be. 
  
• Hearthstone: I'm not playing this thing daily - maybe once or twice a week - and I'm still losing the overwhelming majority of my games, but I am at least starting to get a hang of which characters not to play or at least how to revamp their decks so that I might have a chance against the non-overpowered heroes.  Game imbalance may play a larger role in my mixed experience in this game than I initially realized.
  
• Rift: Not sure this one counts, but I did log into four characters long enough to tell Trion not to recycle all my names.  I sympathize with the intent, but I feel these drives are misguided - you're still not going to get the name DeathKnight because A) your current characters are already named and B) someone else is going to beat you to it if it does get freed up, which means you're going to have to go back to either spelling it wrong or adding non-English characters that will make it harder for normal players to type your name in a day or two at most. 
  
• Marvel Heroes: I forget why I popped back into this game - probably for the sole reason of continuing the "different game each day" trend that I had going.  Well, there was a bonus exp/loot weekend that kept me involved long enough to finish the story and explore all the improvements.  This game had a rocky launch week and I'm really impressed with how far they've come - both quality of service and quality of life are dramatically better for such a short time post-launch, and bode well for the team's ability to set and meet a schedule.  My biggest complaint now is that there are so many heroes in the queue that it's going to be months before the ones I really want get added to the game, and secondarily that you need to download a second 12 GB client to access the test server if you want to try before you buy.  That's not bad in the broader scheme of things.
  
• SWTOR: I've been mostly out of game for a few months now, and thus have missed two content patches.  The new stuff is great as always, but it doesn't seem like it's going to last that long.  I've also got an unfinished Sith Warrior about to tackle Hoth followed by his final story chapter, after which I may move a character over to play with the Ootinicast folks. 

Have you found yourself wandering the halls of multiple MMO's, or is it just me?  

The Paid Bypass For Levels

With one click of a button, my old Warden crafting alt in EQ2 gained 48 levels and presumably a variety of gear, perks, and AA's.  I don't even know what I won because I have yet to log on to check.  I made my decision to throw this free upgrade at a crafting alt based on why I do - and do not - play MMO's. 

Indirectly passing on the free 85
Before pushing the win button, I used the "try before you buy" feature to test drive a level 85 Beast Lord.  This expansion class would have been the most likely choice if I were rolling a new character to actually play the game with.  Even on the partially locked down trial status - you start with limited AA's but a full set of high quality gear - I concluded that it was pointless for me to spend the free level 85 token on that character. 

I was killing things so quickly that I could not get a good feel for the class.  More importantly, I actually enjoy playing solo content in EQ2.  If I ever do play a Beast Lord, playing it from level 1 would be the entire point.  Since the free upgrade is a limited time offer (for the next week), there was no reason NOT to use it to grab some random perks for my highest level crafting alt to facilitate future crafting. 

Now my 62 Tailor is suddenly a lot harder to kill for any mobs I encounter during crafting quests, and supposedly he has a free flying mount for his troubles.  I wouldn't have paid the $35 SOE is asking for this service, as there is a non-zero chance that I will never actually benefit directly from having this character at level 85.  Still, I don't have a problem taking the upgrade as a freebie.

The myth of the perfectly-balanced player
There are two real drivers for this feature. 

First, the modern MMO model of vertical progression is completely failing people who play MMO's because they want to play with their friends.  There is no way for games to maintain critical mass for group leveling in a game that's multiple years old using traditional MMO mechanics.  Even in games where there is some sort of down-leveling or "level-free" system it is almost always somehow less rewarding for players to come help their newer brethren.  Thus we have a situation where soloing to the level cap - 80 or more levels in MMO's that have been around for a while - is the frequently only option.  

This would be fine if everyone who played MMO's actually liked all aspects of MMO's, but many people do not - for valid reasons - enjoy soloing.  However, you can't just punt on allowing solo content unless you are willing to write off a significant chunk of the market (not a bad decision in principle, and I tip my cap to the games with the guts to go this way).  And thus the developer's dilemma.  No matter how many times you nerf the content, the player who does not want to be there soloing is still going to see it as a speed bump between them and the group content they want to be doing with their friends.  Meanwhile, you will ruin the content for players like myself who actually want to play it long before you make the grind palatable. 

While it was EQ2's producer who floated the idea of jumping players to max level back in early 2011, it was actually World of Warcraft who implemented it first, with a revised win-back program a year and a half ago.  I supported the plan then and I still support it now.  Developers are not going to change player preferences on whether or not leveling solo is a good thing.  Killing levels outright for everyone (which Keen proposed a year ago) does fix the on-ramp problem but it does not provide an alternative solution to the design problems that levels exist to fix.  Offering instant levels is the most expedient - and, with fees, mutually beneficial - solution that I've seen to date. 

Wasted Content in WoW 5.4

World of Warcraft's patch 5.4 finally dropped this week, adding another gear reset to the game's progression.  As a result, the unfortunate but efficient way to win Pandaria's endgame is to skip the overwhelming majority of the endgame content.  It just seems like such a waste, and I continue to question whether having stats on gear is even worthwhile if it's going to waste this much content. 

Raids gone by
By design, players can jump straight from heroic 5-man content into the new looking for raid content (with a very brief visit to Throne of Thunder - more on how this works in the next section). This is a good thing if your goal is to join your friends in the new content, either because you are returning to the game or rolling up a new alt.  It's probably a good thing if all you want is to beat the Garrosh raid once on LFR mode to say that you've been there and looted that.  If you were actually enjoying playing through multiple tiers of content and steadily acquiring new gear as you did so, however, this sort of spoils a fair chunk of content.

I have now run the Throne of Thunder LFR's once each (with an additional run through a partially completed final wing this week).  That's four raid wings I could be doing weekly and getting real gear upgrades each time.  At least I finished the five LFR wings from patch 5.0 before this new content arrived, because changes to gear vendors render that content pretty much entirely obsolete. 

I can still go back and do the old content as it was designed - in fact, the expansion's Legendary questline sort of favors that approach (you can go straight to the Ogrimmar raid and do almost all of the steps there, but you will be grinding the same content for a very long time) - but knowing that I'm getting worse rewards for the same time investment feels like doing it wrong. 

Appendix: Comparing 5.3 to 5.4
For context, an explanation of what changed and how it got us here:

Endgame PVE in WoW uses two currencies, which were not changed in the new patch.  Justice points are obtained in relatively large amounts and there is no cap on how many you can earn as long as you're spending them before you get to the 4000 point cap in your currency wallet.  Valor points are typically obtained in smaller amounts per reward, and there is a weekly cap in how many you can earn.


In patch 5.3, these currencies were of somewhat limited value.  Your goals were to get to ilvl 460 to get into LFR and then slowly increase your ilvl up to 470 and then 480 for the higher tier content.  The problem was that the justice point gear was low enough that it wasn't going to boost your average by very much, and you couldn't actually purchase any of the valor gear without first grinding reputation (primarily through solo daily quests).  As a result, I basically skipped random 5-mans, and got to 460 primarily by doing the daily random scenario once per day and spending the rest of time working on miscellany (the farm, archeology, etc).  Then I did the LFR's as intended. 

Patch 5.4 removed the reputation requirements and downgraded almost all of the gear from the valor vendor to the justice vendor.  As a result, ilvl 496 gear that previously required lengthy reputation and valor grinding to obtain is now quickly earned through unlimited random dungeons for easily obtained justice points.  This obsoletes the five LFR wings from 5.0, as it takes longer to earn fewer, lower quality rewards that will still actively hurt your average for the newest content in patch 5.4. 

Additionally, ilvl 522 rep rewards from the 5.2 raid now require only friendly reputation with that raid's faction.  You'll get this in maybe 2 hours by running 3-4 wings of 5.2 LFR's.  Once you have this rep, the return on your time in 5.2 content is questionable - you can earn valor points faster in other formats (including heroics) and those points get you ilvl 522 vendor rewards rather than scraping for a chance at ilvl 502 stuff in the 5.2 LFR's. 

The True Story of Theramore and Pandaria

Nearly a year ago, Blizzard rolled out a pre-Pandaria special release of the in-game World of Warcraft scenario that destroyed the long-standing Alliance town of Theramore.  My reaction at the time was that the events shown in game made no sense without context provided from the novel, Tides of War, that was released around this time.  I picked up a copy of the novel as part of my pile of offline trip reading, and it turned out that I had only part of the partial story... it's the entire expansion that is only now making sense to me after having read the book. 

In addition to explaining how and why Theramore was wiped off the map, the book describes how numerous Alliance and Kirin Tor NPC's were killed in the bombing.  Their deaths were not immediately apparent in-game, and are a key part of the political context for the entire expansion - why it is such a big deal for both sides when conflict breaks out over the newly discovered continent of Pandaria.  The player finally encounters the survivors of Theramore in the Alliance Thunder Isle storyline (patch 5.2), and is left to piece together what happened to them in the time since last they were seen in game from random snippets of dialog. 

A Blackrock Orc named Malkorok is introduced in the novel as Garrosh's personal enforcer, at a minimum helping to enable the Warchief's fall to the dark side.  His actions - murdering anyone who disagrees with Garrosh and denying the Warchief's most closest advisors access to their leader - are apparently a big part of how the other leaders come to the conclusion that Garrosh must be removed, even if it means working with the Alliance to do it.  In game, this character is a throwaway character in one of the scenarios added in patch 5.3, and in a quest along the Horde storyline.  I guess he'll probably be a raid boss next patch, and most players won't know why. 

More generally, my initial impression of the Pandaria expansion storyline, NOT yet having read the book, was extremely mixed.  I felt that the Pandaren stereotypes (serene but hungry) were jokes that got overused and that the faction tension appeared artificial with the two sides in the conflict somehow taking on the same foes as they work across the continent.  Now I understand the narrative decision that brought us to Pandaria, and the seemingly odd decision to pre-announce that the Horde's own faction leader would be the expansion's final boss. 

The entire continent is a narrative gimmick, used to introduce the concept of "Sha" - physical corruption of people who have negative emotions - to take Garrosh's story to the end of his career as Warchief.  Knowing that this is what the story is about - and knowing all the context that was only available in the book - now makes me much more interested in seeing this seemingly bizarre detour in the story of Azeroth through to its ending.  It also emphasizes how inadequate the in-game treatment of the story was, when a player could go to the level cap, covering a fair amount of the content in the process, and have no idea what was going on. 

Things I Missed In Game

The downside to being away from MMO's for a month is that stuff happens when you're not around.  A few things I observed from afar:

• Another round of double exp weekends in SWTOR.  A bit disappointed to have sat this one out, the exp rate would have gotten my third character through their class story and made a decent dent in a fourth.  
• FFXIV's third closed beta phase (received invite).  Indifferent to having missed this, as characters were wiped at the end of beta 3, and supposedly characters will NOT be wiped at the end of the open beta/phase 4.  Not sure how they're going to have both a non-reset open beta and a pre-purchase headstart program, guess we'll know in a month or so. 
• Growing pains in Marvel Heroes.  The game's launch was a bit of a mess.  The patcher kept re-downloading the entire game client to the point where technical support was recommending that you install the game through Steam.  There were a variety of bugs and quality of life issues associated with quest rewards.  Perhaps most interesting, the studio has announced plans to move away from the completely random drop system for earning heroes in game and instead use a token unlock system.  Given that playing real characters from the IP is a central selling point of the title, I don't know if it's more puzzling that they refused to give ground on this point for so long, or that they reversed so suddenly.  Either way, the game looks like it's in much better shape than it was a month ago.  
• Other things I'm not tracking so closely include Rift's business model shift (came down just before I left, haven't really heard much discussion since) and TSW quietly putting out DLC at a decent clip after the game's relaunch and the relocation of its studios.  

It could have been worse, seems to have been a relatively quiet chunk of summer.  I also learned today that WoW's patch 5.3 world event is apparently going away in the next patch, but I'm hoping there's still time to catch that.  What else has been going on in game this summer? 

Character Transfer Diservice

I picked a server a bit over a year ago, after consulting with three bloggers who I knew were playing the game.  All recommended the same server and even the same bloggers' guild.  The third party stats sites guesstimated that the server was the number three RP server in the region.  Unfortunately, the guild didn't really work out - all the members seem to have gone off to other games, and I haven't even been able to find people to get guild invites for my new alts, leaving me on a server where I don't know anyone.  I can name at least three other servers where I would rather be playing today, but for the not-so-minor issue of all the time and even money I have invested on the server with my six current characters.

If you really follow my games and guilds closely, you might have guessed that the unnamed game experience described above is in SWTOR.  Most of you were probably scratching your heads, because a highly similar scenario exists in many MMO's. 

SWTOR's transfers
After promising for the better part of a year that character transfers were finally coming - a year which saw 90% of the game's servers closed, including the seemingly healthy one I picked several months post launch - Bioware has announced its paid character transfer service.  Transfers will cost $14-18 per character (depending on how you purchase your cartel coins), and it looks to me like they will NOT be available for resale in the in-game auction house. 

Bear in mind that this is a game that specifically promoted making all of your alts on the same server though the game's legacy system.  My six characters cover all the crewskill professions and each has probably a million credits worth of in-game currency investment in terms of character-specific legacy perks, collection items, companion affection purchased with gifts, etc.  More importantly, these characters share a large array of server specific legacy unlocks, a few of which I even purchased in the cash shop using my subscriber point stipends. 

Despite all of these reasons why I opted to make this many characters in the first place and all the claims that the transfer service would be "legacy friendly", there is no discount for transferring multiple characters off of the same server.  I would either need to leave behind characters - and not get any credit for their future efforts towards my legacy on the new server - or else be prepared to fork over $80.  Even if I did move to a server that's better today (the Harbinger server, home to the Ootinicast crew, would otherwise be a top contender), I'd have no guarantees that I won't be in the same boat in a few months if the new server also goes belly up.

An industry-wide standard
In a related story, Blizzard is running a one-week only sale on its paid transfer services - Azuriel points out that even at 50% off these prices are still higher than the SWTOR prices.  At the time Blizzard announced the service, the stated justification for such high prices was to recoup the development costs for the transfer feature and to deter frequent use of the service to enable antisocial behavior.  Apparently both of these arguments can be dispensed with if it encourages more transfer fees.   Tera also apparently had a window for open transfers that is coming to an end, with a new fee starting next week.

I get that locking players into static servers worked great for the industry in 2004, in part because that's what the technology of the era could support.  It's not 2004 anymore, and I don't think it's reasonable to punish customers for choosing "wrong" months or years ago by charging them to play with their friends in a genre that's struggling to find ways to keep customers engaged in the product.  It's not good for my enjoyment of the game as a customer, and therefore it's also not good for Bioware's revenue when my poor experience leads to less money spent on their product. 

It doesn't have to be this way.  Many modern games offer single-shard or cross realm functions in one way or another (Cryptic games, GW2), and we also have the example of Rift, which offers free transfers between its more traditional servers. Unfortunately, this feedback falls on deaf ears when developers can rake in nearly six months' worth of sub fees by selling a single customer in my position on paying to solve a problem that was not the customer's fault. 

Mid-April Outlook

It's been a few months since I posted a round-up/outlook post, though I suppose some of what I've been doing can be inferred from what I've been posting about. 

• I finally got back to the level cap in WoW a few weeks back, and I'm not opposed in principle to continuing on into the endgame.  The problem is more practical - where in my schedule to find time for this stuff.  The current expansion sounds like it is doing some interesting things in terms of story tied to daily quests (i.e. hit a new tier of rep, see some new plot).  The problem - not new to this expansion - is that I can get story of similar quality from other games without the grind requirement.  I never finished Cataclysm's Molten Front storyline, and I'm told that LOTRO has a similar feature around rebuilding a city in Rohan that will probably fall off my plate for similar reasons. 
  
• DDO remains a back-burner project for me, but it's one that I actually pick up from time to time (albeit usually just for one evening if the mood strikes me).  My character has some interesting things coming in his next few levels, and it's possible that his entire build is going to be blown up by a massive overhaul to the game's enhancement system that is now in early development.  If I can get to level 20 before that happens, I will have the option of true reincarnating to start over as a build that works with the new rules.  I'm willing to call this a goal, though I don't know if it will happen. 
  
• A year and a half into its run, SWTOR seems to have settled in as my current MMO of choice.  I have long-term concerns about the game's business model, but in the short term I have only scratched the surface of things that interest me in the game. 
  
  My Trooper is now halfway through the (brief) expansion story, my Agent will probably follow close behind, and I could see spending at least some time at endgame on one or both of these characters.  (Aside: One small but significant difference between SWTOR and other MMO's is that all reputation scores are shared amongst your legacy and mirrored across factions - both characters add to my legacy reputation while playing through the new content.)  
  
  Given enough time, I could imagine someday completing all six of the remaining class stories.  My next two 50's should be my level 20 Sith Warrior and either my Jedi Consular or my Sith Inquisitor (both currently level 12) to complete all four class buffs for my legacy.  The fact that I can look at my character select screen and legitimately consider clicking the "play" button next to five separate characters in the same game is something that I can't imagine in any other game at the moment. 
  
• I don't know that anything new is likely to make its way onto my schedule in the near future.  If I had to pick a wild card, though, based on current info, I'm surprisingly intrigued by the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV.  Perhaps this is more of a game that I WANT to like based on the IP than a game that is likely to be suitable for my gaming style.  Perhaps the magnitude of the improvements to the game won't live up to the hype.  I sat out the game's first launch and I probably won't be there for day one of its second launch, but I could imagine giving this game a shot sometime later this year if the word of mouth goes well, especially if they offer some form of free trial. 

What are you all looking forward to these days? 

A Week Post 2.0 In SWTOR

SWTOR's patch 2.0 has been around for a week now - along with the expansion for those who pre-purchased early enough to comply with EA's "early access" ultimatum. (Aside: I have heard no outcry, or even mention, of this unprecedented marketing move amongst the SWTOR sites I read, so presumably this tactic is here to stay.)  I chose to hold off in favor of waiting until the next time I would be subscribed anyway to play on alts, in order to qualify for the lower subscriber pricing. 

The timing mostly worked out for me, in that the extra week was enough to get my Operative across the line to level 50.  A few observations from the intervening week:

• Class Changes: Like most MMO's which award a point per level to spend on a talent/skill/etc tree, the SWTOR team faced the challenge of how to deal with adding five new points for the five new levels.  Their solution was uninspired - they added five points of generally uninteresting filler requirements to each existing tree to ensure that the five new points would be consumed getting back to the character build you had prior to the expansion.  My Operative felt especially hard hit, having just gotten to the point where she could have some off-tree points before the patch, only to immediately re-invest them back into her main tree. 
  
  This irritation aside, I don't have too many complaints on the class fronts.  There were some tweaks, in particular to some of my medium use cooldown (~60 abilities) on both my Vanguard and Operative.  Both seem to play mostly alright. 
  
  The other (mostly) minor annoyance is the addition of uncontrollable giggling to my Operative.  This audio cue is intended to provide players with a better indicator that they have gained a resource type used for certain special abilities.  Unfortunately, it does make you sound like a homicidal school girl, giggling every time you knife a foe.  I've chosen to play my Operative with some light and some dark so I guess it doesn't entirely kill my chosen characterization, but I've had other players comment on the giggling and it is a bit of a jarring addition.
  
• Currencies come and go: Each planet players encountered during the leveling game previously had its own planet-specific token currency.  The good news was that you had zero incentive to hoard the things to get better gear on the next planet.   The bad news was that you might finish the planet without enough to purchase what you wanted, and end up with multiple rows of unspent commendations in your currency tab.  (This was especially problematic for non-subscribers, who currently cannot lift the penalty on NPC vendor prices by any means other than subscribing.  Werit's datamining suggests that this unlock may be coming in the future.)  Now all the planetary commendations through level 50 stack, which effectively reverses the good and the bad.  Now you can save up, but you have an incentive to wait for higher levels to get the best possible gear.
  
  In other news, all old endgame currencies (four that I can recall) were merged down into one legacy currency, and there are now three new tokens for the new endgame (the lowest of which can be earned in some of the older content).  I suppose this is no better or worse than anyone else has done it - at least SWTOR has a currency tab so all these things aren't taking up space.
  
• Pleasant surprise on stability: For a patch of this scale, 2.0 has seemed remarkably stable.  Downtime to deploy the patch was minimal and servers came up ahead of schedule.  There have been some cosmetic bugs, like world bosses spamming red text to the entire planet, but I've seen much worse from releases with far fewer moving parts.  Kudos to the team for what looked like a smooth launch from where I sit. 
  
• A Non-Spoiler Word On Spoilers: Technically not at all related to 2.0, but I've found myself strangely willing to read spoilers for my class story.  This seems counter-intuitive, but also in some ways empowering.  To the extent that the game is a work of interactive fiction, knowing the major plot outcomes (if not necessarily everything that is going to happen along the way) means that I'm making an informed decision on what kind of story I would like to see.  I don't think that knowing all of the major decision points hurt my enjoyment of the tale any more than knowing the outcome of the Lord of the Rings trilogy or other tales harmed the enjoyment of the path it took to get there. 

 Next stop Makeb, and we'll see how this new planet fares.