End-game content is not the ONLY content.

Tobold, MMOCrunch and Random Battle are three blogs which have recently talked about solo vs group play in an MMO, and everyone brings some good points to the table. One major issue during the leveling process is that far too often, grouping actually slows progress down, and hence players solo instead.

The quick fix to this would be to make grouping more rewarding than soloing, while not going as far as EQ1 with forced groups. Players avoid groups in WoW because they know they can accomplish more solo, and hit the level cap faster.

What stuck me however is not the group vs solo aspect, but the whole ‘rush to cap’ notion. Why do we just assume everyone want to hit the level cap as fast as possible?

The easy answer is, ‘Blizzard said so’. It’s no secret the ‘good’ stuff in WoW is at the level cap, at least according to Blizzard, which is in sharp contrast to what most people really like about WoW; the questing and fast paced progression.

Before WoW (yes, people played MMO’s before WoW), rushing head first to the level cap was not how most people played. No one rushed to 7x GM in UO. You blatantly could not rush to cap in EQ due to how long that whole process use to be. In Asheron’s Call, after a certain point, level gains were insignificant due to diminishing returns. DAoC had plenty of PvP pre-cap. The list goes on.

Yet today, in WoW/LoTRO/AoC (and I’m sure others), you have the ‘leveling game’ and the ‘end game’, and the two are usually night and day. Will that be the case with Warhammer Online as well? The reason I ask is because for months now, we have been reading about all these great Public Quests and PvP areas, which are zone/level specific. What if I really love doing a certain Public Quest, or enjoy how PvP works at a certain level? Will I still need to rush and hit cap, just so I can join the ‘official’ endgame of city sieges?

Unlike questing, PvP is almost endless content, and since WAR is built around PvP, who is to say people won’t slow down and enjoy each tier of PvP, instead of always looking at their XP bar and grinding out another level. Perhaps the whole ‘group vs solo’ issue will be a non-factor, as players instead focus on their current tier and battling the enemy, enjoying what is currently in front of them, instead of rushing towards the end-game carrot. One can hope, right?

Power to the MMO people!

/begin rant

A good game is one that you enjoy (or enjoyed) playing. You can ‘burn out’ on a good game. (see WoW)

It sounds so simple, yet lately I’ve been reading a whole lot of contradictions in both posts and comments. You don’t think AoC is a good game if you just quit. Point blank, you don’t. It’s too early to be burned out. You can say it has nice features, that you see the potential it has, that you find some aspects of it interesting, but if you stop playing the game, it was NOT a good game for you.

And if you don’t enjoy it (even if you can’t actually explain why), you SHOULD cancel. The only vote MMO gamers have is with the dollar. You vote ‘yes, I support what this company is doing’ whenever you pay a monthly sub, and vote ‘no, your product is not what I want right now’ whenever you don’t. No amount of forum posting, blog bitching (this site included), podcast ranting is going to send as clear a message to a company as you hitting ‘cancel’ on the account page.

Don’t support unfinished games, we are beyond that point now.

/end rant

Breaking down MMO burnout, and ways to avoid it.

Rick over at /random expressed concern that his longtime guild may not be as hyped for WAR as he is, and that their time together in the game may be rather limited due to general MMO veteran burnout, a legitimate concern for anyone hoping to find the next ‘it’ game to play with friends.

As someone with a great deal of MMO experience, having played Ultima Online heavily at release and MMO gaming ever since, Rick’s post got me thinking about the general idea of MMO burnout. On a somewhat recent podcast, Michael Zenke expressed his jealousy for anyone able to enjoy one MMO for great lengths of time, as he himself was unable to focus on any one game for long. This brings up the question, does the appeal of MMO gaming have a limited shelf life? Do we all reach a point where we are no longer entertained by ‘kill x’ quests, grinding another level, or killing a mob in the hopes it drops the item we desire? How many times can you hit max level in an MMO before all you see is the same formula with a few twists, instead of the rush to explore a new world and see what is around the next corner ?

I think part of what contributes to the burnout is that initially, an MMO is a very different beast than all other games, especially during the initial ‘big three’ era, before Xbox live and all computer games having an online component made multiplayer fairly common. Just the fact that you logged into a world populated by thousands of other real players was new and exciting. Seeing another real player, and not an NPC, run by you for the first time was special, as was the first time you got together with other players to tackle some common task. The very basics of MMO gaming are what hook us initially, but those same hooks exist in all MMOs, and are nothing new the 3^rd or 4th time around. Your first group experience in MMO 4 is much different than it was in MMO 1. In MMO 4, you know what to expect, you know exactly why you are in the group, and worst still, you know that joining a PUG could result in disaster; disaster you no longer have patience for. What you and everyone else could once laugh about now generally results in people leaving the group at best and a massive flame fest at worst.

UO was able to get away with a LOT of issue in part because for 99% of the players, just being online was a source of newness and entertainment. When Warhammer Online goes live, what percentage of the players will view just connecting to a server and being in a virtual world as entertainment? It certainly won’t be 99%, or 50%, but will it even be 10%? Regardless of the actual number, it won’t be many, and as a result, WAR and all other future MMOs need to deliver compelling gameplay right out of the gate to satisfy the needs of a far more demanding MMO crowd. In addition, not only does that content need to be compelling day one, it also has to continue at a much more furious pace than in days past. We all want new surprises around every corner, and those corners better come at a far more rapid pace than before. MMO gamers today won’t be logging on to hit a practice dummy for hours in order to work up their sword skill high enough to kill field rats. They want awesome day one, day two, and expect that awesome to continue to deliver for months on end. In many ways, it’s an almost impossible task for today’s developers to satisfy the needs of veteran MMO gamers.

With all that said, is there any hope for all the old whiny bastards like Rick and I? Can any MMO today or in the future rekindle those types of feelings we had for our first MMO? Glass half full guy says yes, glass half empty guy is not so sure. On the one hand, playing with a great group of people in a solid environment will always be entertaining. Playing on a beer league softball team is just as fun today as playing baseball was in high school, even though the feeling of hitting your first homerun will never be eclipsed by another homerun in the future. The actual activity, while still fun, is greatly supplemented by the people you play with. In that regard, any solid MMO with good gameplay should be able to entertain us, as we hope WAR will. It won’t, however, bring the same rush you had during your first relic raid in DAoC, or the first time you tried to run away from a PK in UO. And perhaps our tolerance for the general MMO grind, something all MMO games feature in varying degrees, is a bit lower. To me, that just places an even greater importance on playing with quality people early and often, as without them, that burnout sets in hard and fast regardless of what MMO you are playing.

MMO history, that Bartle guy, and why WoW2 won’t blow your mind.

It seems we had a busy weekend in the MMO blog world, fueled by an interview with Richard Bartle done by Michael Zenke over at Massively. As with anything remotely interesting posted on the internet these days, the responses to the interview, and the multitude of blog posts related to it, range from the ‘you’re an idiot stfu’ to ‘exactly what I was thinking’.

The real headline grabbing line of the interview is the comment “I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft“, which when taken out of context or misinterpreted is all the internet needs to jump on the nerd rage bandwagon. When clarified (Bartle was talking about the setting itself), he is actually only 50% correct. Originally WoW was indeed the Warhammer setting without the official license (they lost that at some point in development), but only until Blizzard started putting their unique spin on the world. The Warhammer IP is lacking such gems as pretty evil elves, noble aliens that are descendents of the super evil alien guys, and a world where everyone (aside from said super evil aliens) is a good guy, just misunderstood. Even the undead are good guy freedom fighters, yay! It might be a world, but outside of a magic arena, there is very little war being crafted.

Bastardized lore bitching aside, Bartle does bring up an interesting point to someone who has been in the MMO scene since Neverwinter Nights; MMOs really are fairly similar now. Think about it, when Ultima Online came out, it was totally new. So new that the term MMO was a few years off, and everyone was a damn noob just logging on and wandering around (and getting PK’ed). Then came EverQuest, and how many people looked at EQ and said ‘eh, it’s UO with elves, who cares’? Right, no one. What you did hear was ‘EQ is carebear land, gtfo newbie’. Which was accurate, EQ was carebear land compared to UO, but more importantly, EQ was radically different than UO in almost every single way. While UO catered to the explorer and the killer, EQ was designed for the achiever and socializer. The final piece of the original ‘big three’ was Asheron’s Call. When AC came out, was it considered ‘EQ in a random setting’? Again, no. And AC had its own charm and gameplay that was again different than UO or EQ. The original ‘big three’ where all successful in their own way, and offered gamers at the time three unique choices in setting, gameplay, and overall game design philosophy.

Fast forward to 2004 and World of Warcraft, and you start hearing talk of ‘a more polished EQ’. Sure the setting was different, WoW brought a huge host of design changes that later became MMO standards, and above all it was a damn fun game, but it was not the radical change that UO/EQ/AC were when compared to each other. WoW followed the EQ formula, gave it a bigger budget, and polished it until it was done.

Finally, we have Age of Conan and soon Warhammer Online, two major games that from day one were being billed as ‘WoW but with feature x’. Which is not exactly a bad thing in terms of good MMO gaming from a pure fan perspective (readers know I’m dying to play WAR), but it does say something about the current trend in MMO gaming, and what the future might hold. With budgets as big as they are today, and with so much at stake financially, perhaps the days of great innovation are gone, and the best we can hope for in a triple A title going forward is the EQ formula + twist x. Look at any major trend that blew up, be it shooter games (Doom), sports games (Madden), or racing games (Need for Speed, Grand Turismo), and what do we see? Madden (insert current year), the same game as last year but with one new gimmick. Is it really that shocking that MMO gaming, which officially became ‘kind of a big deal’, has followed the same pattern of success?

Innovation is still alive and well, but you won’t find it in games with millions of subscribers. You will find it in games like EVE, A Tale in the Desert, Shadowbane, and countless other ‘niche’ games. And has history has shown us time and time again, the niche will be culled; the best features harvested out, and ‘polished’ for the release of WoW2. And like you, I’ll be there day one, like a good little fanboi, dying to get into beta.

AoC bashing, LoTRO update, ISK talk.

Ah Friday sweetness.

Heartless and Rick over at /random both commented on a Massively report about AoC and it’s troubles with its much-hyped endgame PvP. It would seem that massive amounts of high details characters letting off fancy spell effects all in one place cause lag. Odd right? And the solution? Turn off the fancy stuff, reduce the visibility of said masses, and /pray. Oh, and point out that while it’s a known issue, it really only effects those fools who, god forbid, played the game too much and leveled too fast. Everyone who goes at the desired pace Funcom set ‘should’ be fine. Looks like Funcom has some PR positions open, someone should apply, soon.

In functional game news, Aria and I are just about finished with the Lone Lands in LoTRO. I know some people hate the zone, but I personally really enjoyed it. The theme, a barren landscape with old ruins (ok, so every zone in LoTRO has old ruins, but whatever they look sweet) and a long road running down the middle just works for me, plus Weathertop looks fantastic. We are on the final part of Book 2, and really looking forward to getting a group and finishing it up. After that, it’s back to the North Downs and maybe some early Evendim action.

In EVE-land (space?), I’m building up my bank account running missions with my combat pilot. The long time off really increased his power due to all the skill gain, and I’m having a much easier time with all the missions. Once that bank account is good and healthy, it’s going to be PvP time. Really, really looking forward to that.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Quest pacing, and why killing boars is cool.

Being part of the blog community, and spending a decent (read: too much) amount of time reading other blogs, you pick up on trends and common rants. Having been around the MMO block since UO, I’ve also seen my fair share of MMO launches and the general response to them. No matter how similar or different two games may be, a few common themes from the player base generally pop up, and today I want to break down one of those, questing.

In many ways questing has evolved a great deal since UO. Actually since EQ, since the ‘quest’ in UO was to get from point A to point B without getting ganked. (best quest ever IMO) EQ was not quest driven like most of today’s game, but rather the quests were side tasks you attempted while making your way to the level cap. In comparison, in WoW 1-70 almost every mob you kill, or location you see, is due to a quest goal. It’s very rare to just wander out and kill stuff for the sake of killing, be it alone or with friends. Different games today have varying degree’s of ‘must quest’, but almost all of them place a much greater emphasis on quests than EQ or UO ever did. EVE stands out (as it usually does) as the exception here, because much like UO, it’s skill based rather than level based, but even EVE has a questing system that many players participate in.

Along with an increase in importance, the overall quantity of quests has increased dramatically in today’s MMOs, with many games today having more quests than one character can complete before out-leveling them. With this increase in quantity, you very often see a complaint about quality. ‘Too many kill x, collect y quests’ is something you hear and read about constantly, the most recent example being AoC. Before a serious amount of content was added to LoTRO, a common joke was that each area featured its own ‘kill boars’ quest, each time for a different piece of boar, the quests being almost identical with the only difference being the size or color of the boar. PoTBS at launch (and maybe still?) did a copy/paste job with their quests, as each starting area had the exact same set of quests, making creating an alt rather pointless.

All that said, I sometimes wonder what exactly DO people want from quests? Almost everyone skips the flavor text in the quests, no matter how well written, so a better story would be rather tough. Any kind of tricky ‘go find it’ quest gets Googled rather than attempted, or just skipped if the reward is deemed not worth it. Tough group quests are bashed for ‘forced grouping’, so we can’t have that. Travel quests are old news, and we want instant travel now anyway, right? Well we want instant travel while still maintaining a worldly feel, but that’s another topic. So that leaves us with our good buddy the kill quest. Simple, focused, generally short, it’s not hard to understand why the kill quest is the most common type of quest we see in MMOs.

But is the kill quest really that bad, even when it’s for boar parts or rat tails? And what the hell would we do if suddenly all MMOs removed all kill quests, what would fill that massive void? Meaningful travel! Kidding…

The fact is MMO’s are generally one big grind, broken down to many little grinds in order to bleed $15 a month out of us. We love the abuse. And while we bitch and moan about kill quests, the fact is we love them as well. We love killing something and seeing our little quest tracker go up by one, or opening up the loot window to pick up one more tail/hoof/eye. How cool is it when you have 4-5 quests all revolving around boar genocide, and with one mighty kill you progress all those quests at once. Exactly, it’s awesome. We are MMO gamers, we are sick, and little numbers going up does it for us. The more +1 we get, the better we feel.

The key to questing, as well as life itself, is variety. If you do the same thing day in, day out, it’s going to get boring and old, no matter what the activity. Good quest design is not about removing kill quests, but pacing them correctly. If I just devastated the local boar population, the last thing I want Mr. NPC to say is ‘go kill more boars’. But I’m very OK with killing them in step one, then finding some boar relic, and finally facing off against some uber boar to finish it all up. And while I’m doing all that, if I also have a quest to discover some boar shrine, which just happens to be along the way, bonus for me. Just be sure to mix it up in the next area a bit (but not too much, we are creatures of habit remember), and I’ll happily continue to grind away.

Finally, Syncaine has come BACK to blogging!

Ah finally back. After so many days off, the ‘blogging itch’ has certainly hit me hard, especially with MMO land finally seeing some activity with the AoC release. I’m still not sold on the idea that AoC will become a major MMO hit, despite its somewhat promising release. I think the relative strength of the release can be credited more towards WoW burnout than anything AoC actually does. We will find out when it’s time to start paying for more than just the box if people hang around once the ‘new and shiny’ has worn off.

Speaking of WoW, I cancelled my account. Paying a monthly fee to raid Kara once a week just did not make sense, especially considering how enjoyable our return to LoTRO has been. Overall I was fairly impressed with TBC, although it does have a ton of ‘more of the same’ to it, which is good at first but does not last very long. Quitting also makes me even less excited about WotLK, as so far that just seems like more of the same with some gimmicks tossed in. I’m not sure what I WOULD like to see in WotLK, but I do know the stuff announced so far does not leave me anticipating its release. WoW also starts looking very long in the tooth (for a graphics whore anyway) when compared to other MMOs now. The low res textures, the lack of complex shadows/lighting, the low poly count, it has all started to add up. That ‘charm and style’ is still there, but now with a blurry and muddy overtone. If WAR and WotLK come out at similar times, I think the major graphic difference between the two will be very apparent, as everyone will be making direct comparisons.

As for WAR, I’m still waiting for my beta invite on that one. Over my little break I took some time to look over some screen shots, and I really don’t understand the whole ‘it looks like WoW’ argument. To me it looks almost nothing like WoW in terms of style and feel. I made a comment to Aria when looking at one shot that if this was a WoW screen shot, the trees would be pink and impossibly shaped, while in WAR they are dark and almost real, with just a bit of fantasy/cartoon to them. It’s a minor example, but I think sums up the overall feel WAR is going for. Yes its fantasy, yes it has humor and some over-exaggeration, but it’s not the neon lovefest that WoW has become, where literally everything has to be big and glowing. It’s a style that makes WoW what it is, but it’s not the style WAR is going for. Just based on SS and video, WAR certainly has that dark and ‘war is everywhere’ aspect to it, and I think the art style goes a long way in setting the mood. Plus 8 pointed snowflakes in the symbol of chaos are awesome…

*bonus points to the first person to get the title reference and post it in the comments.

Out for a few, and a quick AoC update.

I’ll be out of the country for a few days, which means no blog posts for a bit.

In other news (is me not posting news…?) it sounds like AoC is improving rapidly, which is good to hear. As an MMO gamer, having more options is always a good thing right? I’m still not going to pre-order or buy it anytime soon. If anything I’ll wait for a trail account to be offered and perhaps try it then, depending on what else is going on (WAR basically). Should still be an interesting launch to watch however.

Funcom to AoC players, GTFO!

I’ve been fairly harsh on Funcom and Age of Conan here on this blog. I ripped them for the whole ‘open’ beta fiasco, then for releasing a crash prone client due to a last minute ‘fix’, and finally the entire 1-20 ‘single player but not’ deal. Today’s news takes the cake though; I mean we have stepped over the bounds of stupid and are now firmly in the realm of insane.

Somehow Funcom can’t handle everyone who PUT DOWN MONEY and preordered AoC to download the client, so they have cut off access to the early start. I can’t even begin to image how pissed I would be if I had put down money for AoC, partly for the early access, and been told access has been cut off. We are talking about paying customer now being denied a promised service, and no the whole ‘while supplies last’ thing is not an excuse, as we see that little message attached to every spoon and toaster sold in stores or TV. I think we are only a few days away from Funcon announcing the servers will only support 100k players total, and once that limit is reached all other accounts will be shut down. I mean seriously, how can one game go through so many issues pre-launch. Is anyone going to be surprised if on go-live the servers just implode and AoC goes down for a week?

Mythic really did Funcom a huge favor by delaying Warhammer Online. Image the WAR and AoC open beta start on the same day, and you download both clients (lets assume you could actually download the AoC client when you tried). You fire up AoC, and get a black screen. Quit, find a fix, launch again. You have a decent rig, but AoC runs like crap, so you turn everything to low, resulting in it looking like something from 2002, and finally get 10-15fps, until you get a BSOD. Restart again. Now you start up WAR, and with near-max settings you get a solid 30fps, 6 starting areas, and a rock solid client. You play for 2-3 hours having a great time. Next day you again fire up AoC, download a huge patch, get a corrupt file message, find a fix, get a BSOD 2-3 more times, and finally receive a message that your early access is denied even though you already put down money. Are you telling me any sane person would still go through and pay for AoC if they had a choice?

Now granted WAR might have similar issues when it gets into open beta, but I think odds are good that it won’t be anywhere near the disaster Funcom has dragged AoC fans through, I have a bit more faith in Mythic than that.

It’s honestly shocking to see so many people jumping through so many hoops just to play a new MMO. Maybe it’s all the anticipation for something new, combined with the massive burnout from WoW. I mean when you view more organized grinding (daily quests) as a huge content update, you have clearly reached a desperate level of boredom.

So while watching the whole AoC train wreck from the sideline has been somewhat amusing, it’s getting borderline sad now, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse for AoC fans. At least those of us on the sidelines have something interesting to watch and write about, so thanks for that Funcom…

Can my toaster run AoC? - Concerned Wal-Mart shopper

There has been a good amount of debate lately about Funcom’s decision to release a high system requirements game with Age of Conan. The debate often drops into the very familiar ‘gameplay vs graphics’ debate.

Leaving the gameplay aspect aside, let’s talk graphics. We seem to be in an odd age where we are confusing computer gaming with consoles. People seem to think going out and dropping $500 at Wal-Mart is enough to play today’s games at high settings, and if they can’t, it’s the games fault. You know what box at Wal-Mart can play games at max settings for $500? A PS3 or an Xbox. I’m sorry your on-board graphics, or that $1000 PC you bought two years ago can’t run Crysis at 1900×1200 with 16xAA, go figure…

It’s amazing to read people bitch about performance in games, only to find out they have the graphic power of a toaster in their machines. Rumor has it you get crazy lag online with a 14.4k modem too…

The system specs for AoC are fairly clear; it’s a high-end game. Maybe if you have a midrange system you can turn everything down and play it, but then don’t be surprised that it looks like shit, and don’t blame AoC. If you have a Wal-Mart system, WoW runs great on those, play that or Runescape.

As for all the ‘killing their market’ talk, consider this: maybe Funcom is only aiming for the high-end niche? If a movie makes 50 million at the box office, is it a hit? If it’s got a Blair Witch budget, it’s a smash. If it’s Waterworld… well someone just got fired. My point is looking at sales or subscription numbers is rather pointless if you don’t know the budget and expectations. Is it that unreasonable to think that maybe Funcom thinks they can make a profit catering to a certain niche, that niche being 18+ with high-end rigs? Does every MMO going forward need to compete with the WoW demographic?

AoC, right from day one, made it fairly clear they don’t aim to please everyone. Instead of getting caught up on how the average gamer might not find AoC accessible, lets instead focus on the fact that Funcom is trying something different, trying to bring a little diversity to the MMO space. If you hate the combo system and PvP focus, you have plenty of other options.

To expect every new game to run well on old hardware is foolish, as is the assumption that there is not a market for graphic whores like myself. Yes I’m still looking for quality gameplay (news flash: everyone is), but bonus points if that gameplay comes with DX10 graphics. Last I checked, Nvidia is doing quite well as a company, which means there are plenty of others willing to spend $200+ on a newer card to enjoy some eye candy.

Graphics are also a two way street. If I can’t run a game, that’s a deal breaker. But if a game is stuck in 800×600 with low res textures, that’s also a deal breaker for me. For example, while StarCraft or Diablo still have amazing gameplay, the fact that they look like pixel throw up on a 24′ monitor means I won’t be playing them, or any game with similar graphics.