To the time machine, we need to correct a grave mistake!

A good topic making the rounds in our blog community asks the question ‘what MMO would you unmake?’ The point being what game do you feel the MMO space would be better off without? Too many blogs to link here have already commented on the subject, yet I don’t believe anyone has mentioned the following game: (comment and correct me if I missed something)

Shadowbane.

Why would I unmake Shadowbane? Because at its core, Shadowbane is everything I dream about in an MMO, and in my opinion has the base structure to be an amazing game. It’s a PvP focused, dark fantasy, player controlled game that revolves around guilds laying siege to towns built by other guilds. Many other games have incorporated some aspects of those ideas, like DAoC with player controlled keeps and some siege weapon use, EVE Online with player built Outposts and Corp vs Corp focused PvP, the upcoming Warhammer Online and Age of Conan games featuring PvP, etc; yet no game before or since has focused on the guild vs guild, player build and controlled city vs city gameplay of Shadowbane.

So again, why would I unmake it? At launch, Shadowbane was a technical mess, released long before it was ready. It also never had the commercial backing of a major release. As a result, it was a commercial failure, and now resides in ‘free to play’ land with all the other failed MMOs. Developers looked at that failure and assumed a PvP-focused MMO was not commercially viable, and along with the success of the PvE friendly WoW, MMOs went away from PvP and into pure PvE (WoW, EQ2, DDO, AC2, LoTRO, the list goes on). Only recently are we seeing the return of PvP focused MMOs with WAR and AoC, along with the continued success of EVE Online.

In a world were Shadowbane never came out, perhaps it would not take as long for the PvP community to get some love. And perhaps we would actually see a quality PvP based fantasy game without the trappings of PvE elements like gear dependency, quest grinds, leveling treadmills, etc. It would also be tough to sell the idea of a dark fantasy, city vs city PvP game now to a major publisher, considering we supposedly already have that game and we see how that worked out.

Remove Shadowbane, use those core ideas, give a good studio enough money and time to actually finish the game, and I’ll be one happy MMO gamer.

Pirates of the Instanced Sea, mini-game madness.

Now that the PotBS NDA is officially down (oops…) plenty of opinions are popping up around the blogosphere, most along the lines of ‘fun game, but not the usual addiction you get from a new MMO’, and I completely agree with this. Even free, the game now sits on my desktop and is generally my 3^rd or 4^th choice when deciding what to spend my gaming time with.

I want to like PotBS, I really do. I think the ship combat is excellent, the game runs well, looks good, and overall has a solid feel. So why don’t I? Yes the sword fighting parts are very sub-par, the interface feels arcane and ancient at times, and there are still some bugs. But those are not the factors that are really driving me away.

My first major gripe is that you see the loading screen more than the game itself. The game is so heavily reliant on instancing that you get the feeling you just bounce from one room to the next, never actually getting a feel for the world. Gather a bunch of missions in town, head over to the dock, and fire off one mission after another off the list, until you are done. Then you head back into down to cash them all in, and you repeat until you are done with that town. For some reason, this feels far more unnatural in PotBS than it does in say WoW, or even DDO. At least in DDO, another instance-heavy game, you get the feeling that each instance is in its correct place, a part of the city. In PotBS, it feels like you teleport to magic sections of some random body of water to face a few ships, and then teleport back. I understand that they want to get you to the ‘good part’ as quickly as possible, but in doing so they really alienate you from the world, which brings me to my next point.

Many people complain about travel in EVE, how you have to jump multiple times and how boring that can be. Well I’ll take EVE’s travel over PotBS any day. Not only does Pirates feel slower, it also adds a somewhat ‘cartoon’ feel to the world, with ships the size of small islands zooming back and forth, reminding me of some hyper child playing with his boats in the tub. If the instance-jumping does not kill the immersion for you, the travel will. It just feels so unnatural. In addition, any fight that takes place between ships in this view is represented by ship icons to others, since any combat will place you in an instance once again. It would have been far more interesting, and immersive, if you could sail by ships in actual combat, giving you the option to join in or continue on your way right there, without zoning. In this regard EVE trumps Pirates easily, since during any gate jump you might go by ships fighting it out, right there in front of you, letting you see what kind of ships are involved and their status.

To me Pirates feels like a bunch of mini-games thrown together, each one being decent on its own, but as one packages it all does not mesh well. The ship combat mini-game is fun, but once it’s over you hit the magic button, and get placed in the ‘run around town’ mini-game. You then play a simplistic wack-a-mole mini-game, followed once again by the magic button and back to the town game you go. I think this disjointed style is the reason PotBS does not grab you like other MMOs do. You are constantly pulled out of the game, breaking any rhythm or flow you might have had, and I think this flow aspect is a highly underrated component to general MMO enjoyment. Pirates lacks it, which along with it’s other issues, is likely the reason why it’s icon is 3^rd or 4^th on my list of games to fire up. I’ll give it some more time, but unless something drastically changes, I don’t think Pirates will be a buy come launch.

More EQ2 bashing. Is it just me…?

Something I ran across today while browsing around some blogs. This just floored me. I mean I read it and had to re-read it to make sure the comment was about EQ2 like I thought it was.

By Jason, a comment left on The Server is Down,

“Like many other folks out there…I am sort of a MMO “whore”, for lack of a better word. I have played them all and most to max level and some raiding. I have to honestly say I think EQ2 offers the most complete package. From lore to looks it has the most and does it very well.”

So we know Jason has played a lot of MMOs; how do you see stuff like WoW, LoTRO, DDO, EVE, even random stuff like SoTNW, and end up saying EQ2 offers the most in terms of looks? I mean seriously now, how does that happen? Put EQ2 and LoTRO screens next to each other, and you are going to honestly tell me EQ2 looks better? No matter what setting you have them at, LoTRO will look better, even with LoTRO turned down and EQ2 at max I’m not sure even then EQ2 looks better. I really must be missing something here. Maybe EQ2 looks really good on a small monitor or something, or on some odd screen size that fits it just right… something… like I said, this just shocked me.

Group work.

When I think of Dungeons and Dragons, one of the first things that come to mind is a group of players sitting around a table and adventuring together. From its very foundation D&D is designed to be a group activity. Each class serves a very specific role, and is fairly limited to it. Rogues pick locks and disarm traps, clerics heal, fighters fight, mages cast spells. When taken outside of that base roll, the classes don’t do so well. Rogues have a difficult time fighting alone, as do clerics, and mages are extremely weak once something survives that first burst of damage from a spell.

With that kind of base, one would think D&D would be the perfect system for an MMO, which are all about interacting with others, right? Well as most people know, Dungeons and Dragons Online is overall a disappointment, while games like Neverwinter Nights shine. Why is it that a system designed to be played by multiple people works so well in a single player game and fails in the massive field?

I think PART of the reason DDO failed was that is forced players to group, which works well when you have a set group of friends that meet and play, but does not work that well when you log online and group with random people. The problem is that everyone plays differently; you have people who just rush through everything for the end reward grouping with those that like to take their time and explore. Either the rush player gets bored, or the quest is ruined for the explorer, but one way or the other a player is left upset with the game and the system. When you take the game offline, and let one player control the entire party, you allow them to play at their own pace without interference, maximizing the enjoyment a player gets.