Reverse WoW-thinking.

Working on Book 3 in LoTRO last night reminded me why MMOs are as great as they are. When you get a group of people together, and everything goes well, the experience is far greater than anything a single player game could offer. The big problem of course is when you get people together, and things don’t go well, it’s often far worse than any single player experience. At best you waste a lot of time, at worst you get reminded what High School was like.

A bad grouping experience can make a player jaded, and turn them into a solo player, even in an online world. WoW provided the perfect game for those sick of pick up groups, as you could now solo all the way until the level cap. While a nice feature, the side effect is that now 4 million or so MMO players in the USA and EU view PuGs as something to avoid. WoW has taught them not to group until the level cap, where it then forces you into non-committal groups (BG) or forced grouping (raiding).

One of the things I’m most excited about with Warhammer is the ‘open group’ system, along with Public Quests. It certainly looks like Mythic is trying to get people to play together again in an online world, to work together with strangers and not fear them like the plague. WoW had a culture of bad groups, so even those that might not usual bail on a group did so because that was the culture. Hopefully WAR will foster the opposite, and the mindset of the majority will be to cooperate. Undoing the WoW-mentality will be a tough hurdle, but hopefully Mythic has the tools and design to do just that.

Quick LoTRO update.

Yes I still play LoTRO, just don’t have too much to say about it. It’s a very solid MMO that is well worth playing. It does not break a whole lot of new ground, or do any one thing particularly well (aside from perhaps using the LoTR license effectively), but its just solid.

Aria and I are currently level 32 and climbing, and looking forward to 35+, the spot we quit last time. I’m hoping I will be able to see most of LoTRO before WAR is out and grabs what I expect to be most of my MMO time. We will see…

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?

Graphics don’t age like wine.

Plenty of people have already broken down every single frame and image of Diablo3, so I won’t go into it here save for two concerns:

1)      It looks good (but not Crysis amazing) now, but given that it won’t be released for a good bit, will it still look good at release?

2)      Is it not a bit too early to start hyping a game so far from release, especially when you have StarCraft2 and a WoW expansion still unreleased?

Now that said, I’m still very much looking forward to 2010 and D3. I’m glad they kept the camera angle the same, and the basic gameplay (mass murder) similar as well. No need to reinvent the wheel, a fresh coat of Blizzard paint will do.

It’s been a slow week in LoTRO land for Aria and I, just not much time to play. We are approaching level 30, and currently questing in the North Downs, a zone I overall like. We still need to finish the final part of book 2, as well as getting into a GA group at some point. Overall though, our second time in LoTRO is another very enjoyable ride.

As for EVE, I actually put in some time and got stuff in order. I picked up about 20 or so new skill books from the Dresi academy for my combat pilot, and started training them up. Knowing I will need good drone support if I intend to solo level 4 missions in my Rohk, that’s become a new training goal. I still need to finish up a few skills in order to use tech II large hybrid guns, but that goal is not far off. Not wanting to rush in too fast, I took on a few level 3 missions using the Rohk, but it was more overkill than I remembered it being. Guess an extra 8-9 million skill points help. Wanting to focus on the combat pilot, my miner is going to be reduced to mission junk recycler, as well as mass producer of ammo. I figure once I start knocking out level 4 missions, the ISK fill flow and I’ll finally be able to afford that Hulk the miner still needs. Perhaps once he has that, I might go on an asteroid murder spree and get back into the production game.

Oh, and I am currently looking for a Corp for my combat pilot. 15 million skills, looking to run level 4 missions and also do some Faction Warfare. I play casually, so won’t be able to make any required fleet ops or anything, but could work my schedule to make an event or two. I would prefer a Corp near the Kador region, but if someone has transportation, I would be willing to relocate. Anyone got anything?

One year of blogging done, and what a year it has been!

It’s been a year already?

I initially started blogging for what I believe is the most common reason: to have a place to keep all my thoughts and ideas about gaming in one place. What originally started as just ‘something to do’ has slowly grown into a very enjoyable hobby and craft. Over the course of the last year, I’ve been rather heavily involved in the MMO blogosphere, be it commenting, linking, or podcasting. Through it all, I’ve had a great time and gained a huge amount of insight into not only MMO games, but my own approach to them as well. Not to mention all the great bloggers and podcasters I’ve gone back and forth with, something that would likely not have happened without the blog.

I figured the best (easiest?) way to break down my first year as a blogger was just to go over the great statistics that WordPress provides, and comment on anything I found interesting or surprising.

First up, the very top-level stuff.

Blog Stats

Total views: 104,123

Busiest day: 11,852 - Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 253

Comments: 1,658

As I recently posted here, the blog hit 100k views not too long ago, a nice round number. I never gave traffic much thought when I started, but I must say I’m very happy hitting 100k in my first year.

The busiest day, way back in September, is the result of getting linked by the BBC tech page, a quote from a somewhat random post I made about WoW and the future expansion. That was an exciting day, especially since it came so early in this blog’s life. Sadly the retention rate from all that traffic was rather low, although it certainly helped. As the stats below will show, no other day/post has really come close to that huge, single hit boost from the BBC, although if the current traffic trend continues, it will happen eventually.

The total posts number, 253, is overall rather decent considering I generally don’t post on Saturday or Sunday. If my math is correct (odds are low), that means out of the remaining 261 days, I posted on average almost every single day. Clearly days with multiple posts help offset days I posted nothing, but even so, a near post-a-day average not counting the weekend is fine by me. Now to keep it up in year two!

The 1658 comments stat is what I think I’m most proud of, as to me it means people actually cared enough about what was posted here to say something about it. Comments are what really drive a blogger to continue and to stay active, and they are a great source of motivation, so thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write something. (yes, even you random troll)

Top Posts for all days ending 2008-06-25

The love and hate game, WoW style. - 16,875

Screen shot comparison. - 2,636

Looking in the mirror; the sickness that was WoW raiding - 1,918

EQ2, trial of the never-ending download. - 1,632

Throwing down the gauntlet, the great MMO challenge - 1,414

Ebolt anyone? - 1,230

Funcom to AoC players, GTFO! - 1,176

Can my toaster run AoC? - Concerned Walmart Shopper -1,143

Stuck in easy mode. - 1,059

Ghost town, population you. - 704

As mentioned above, the first post is the one linked by the BBC, and as you can see, it’s far and away the top post. The next post is somewhat interesting, in that the concept was rather simple, and it was also one of the few posts with pictures. Also of interest is that the post was about EQ2, a game that I overall spent a limited amount of time with. This trend continues in a few more examples, showing that the EQ2 community is very active, and that EQ2 itself drives a lot of MMO traffic. Top post three is one of my favorites, as it was a very personal retrospective look of my time in WoW, and in particular the endgame raiding grind. In addition to the post itself, a lot of really great comments have been left by others sharing their own experiences and methods of escaping that trap. I won’t go into detail about the rest, other than to say a few more recent posts have snuck into the top ten, and that my original post, ‘Ebolt anyone?’, is holding on strong despite originally getting very little traffic due to the blog being new. UO reminiscing still gets peoples attention, a clear sign that you never really forget your first MMO, as UO was for so many.

Referrers for all days ending 2008-06-25

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default - 11,015

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default - 3,159

wowinsider.com - 2,922

virginworlds.com/home.php - 1,831

google.com/reader/view - 1,288

tobolds.blogspot.com - 1,055

eq2-daily.com - 838

keenandgraev.com - 650

killtenrats.com - 499

crazykinux.com - 398

Again the BBC dominates the top spot, and even spot number two, despite that link being on the back page. WoWInsider, being the huge a site that it is, is not a very surprising number three, followed by the ever awesome VirginWorlds news feed. Tobold, the blog overlord himself, is not surprisingly the first blog on the list, along with Keen and Graev, KTR and the link-happy man himself, Crazy Kinux. Thank you to everyone who has linked me, it drives traffic, which leads to comments, which leads to happy blogging!

Search Terms for all days ending 2008-06-25

Syncaine - 334

vanguard trial - 312

hardcore casual - 267

eq2 - 259

wow progress - 219

hardcore - 195

warhammer podcast - 132

eq2 trial - 119

sotnw - 92

switch mmo - 77

shadowbane reset - 70

This list is a little surprising. Spots one and three are all about me, and you know, I’m kind of a big deal on Google (clearly kidding). The big surprise is spot number two, people looking for a Vanguard trial. How does that game NOT have a trial? Seriously, I’ve been looking to try Vanguard for a long time now, if just to see what all the fuss is about, and yet without a trial it’s never going to happen. It’s silly that SOE has not gotten around to this yet. Another random surprise is the amount of searches that lead people here about Sword of the New World (sotnw). I only briefly posted about the game, and generally concluded that while pretty, the game was an afk-grind with little point. Maybe that’s what people are looking for though, who knows…

Finally here are two charts (remember, people like pictures) showing overall traffic flow. On the monthly chart, you can clearly see the spike from the BBC link, followed by a return to the more normal, steady growth. Hopefully the trend continues, and one day that BBC spike won’t look quite as dominant.

The weekly chart shows that while monthly traffic might be fairly steady, week to week traffic is very sporadic. This is due no doubt to a combination of who linked me, what exactly I posted that week, and how active I was commenting on other blogs and generating hits from that. The one thing I have learned after a year of blogging is you can never really predict what will drive traffic. A well-crafted post (imo of course) may get little attention, while a quick post about something random will start a firestorm. The important thing to remember is to post about what YOU want to talk about, and not worry about posting the next ‘major hit’ blog post. If you write honestly and with passion, people will pick up on it and drop by.

To sum it all up, it’s been a crazy first year for me in regards to this blog. It’s been a huge learning experience, and hopefully I continue to improve and provide interesting reading for everyone. I’m very much looking forward to year two, especially since the ‘next big think’ in Warhammer will hit, and no doubt spur some good debate in our corner of the Internet. I can’t wait!

Thanks again to all the reader!

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!

Focused crafting, not just a bullet point on a box!

Psychochild breaks down the general ideas behind crafting in his recent post, a topic that was addressed here on this blog not too long ago.

While I don’t want to rehash the great discussion we had from my previous post, I do want to touch on a point that I might have missed, and that Psychochild mentions; who are we designing crafting for?

He points out that many socializers enjoy crafting, as it allows them to chat and be social while still getting something done. While you create 100 bronze daggers, you might as well chat it up with your guild mates, right? In this case, the actual crafting is just a side event to being social, and since it’s a side event, how engaging or useful the actual crafting is might not be that important. More important is that the crafting does not interfere with chatting, so active input systems like EQ2 tend to be less favorable to something like LoTRO, where you can queue up those 100 daggers, click a button, and chat until all 100 are finished. Sure you are just going to vendor all 100 daggers, but again, that’s not really the point, the point is that crafting is an excuse to stand around and just chat without feeling like you are doing nothing. No matter the play style preference, we all like to feel like we are advancing our characters, be it levels or crafting skill.

So at least for socializers (incoming generalization, relax), crafting being actually useful is great, but not make-or-break important. Systems where 99% of all crafted items are worthless vendor trash are not seen as broken, but rather as ‘just the way it is’. If you are aiming crafting at socializers, you focus more on creating a simple, unobtrusive system rather than something that will significantly impact gameplay or power balance. This might explain most crafting systems in MMOs. If you are not primarily a socializer, you might miss the point of crafting.

But what if we wanted to target crafting at other play styles like achiever, explorer, or killer? Would there even be an interest in such a system? EVE, for instance, has a vastly different crafting system, one that appeals more to the min/max crowd than to the typical socializer. If dumping data into excel and analyzing it is your idea of fun, you will love the crafting/market game in EVE. And lots of people do love it, to the point that that is all they do in EVE. Whole Corporations (guilds) exist to focus on mining/production/selling. And that aspect of EVE has a profound impact on all other aspects of the game. Regardless of what you do, the crafting system in EVE has impacted your game. In contrast, you could go from 1-70 and see almost all the content in WoW without ever coming into direct contact with crafting. You can ignore the nodes, ignore the crafting section of the AH, and never need to use a single crafted item.

At some point during this rambling I got a bit off track, sorry… My point is that it’s important to identify who you are targeting with your crafting system, and design reasonable expectations around it. If we are targeting the socializer, what the system does not do, impede chatting, is more important than what it does do, create useful items. On the other hand, if we are aiming at the min/maxer, you better make sure your system is not only useful, but centrally important to everything else, and deep enough to appeal to the number crunchers without excluding everyone else. Above all, what should be avoided is a crafting system simply thrown into an MMO for the sake of a bullet point on the back of the box, or because someone in design just assumes all MMO’s need a crafting system, regardless of how it actually fits into your game.

Maybe if crafting was targeted more to a specific audience it would receive less hate for being worthless or misguided. Just like raiding or PvP targets an audience, why can’t crafting?

Stupid cool.

Found the link at Kill Ten Rats, but THIS is amazingly cool. The writeup is also quite witty. Job well done!

Stop raising the level cap, it’s not working!

For years now MMO gamers expect a level increase when their MMO of choice releases an expansion pack. Bumping up the level cap a few levels is as natural as adding new items or monsters, but is it really needed? Is WoW a better game because the cap is 70 and not 60? Did all those level increases in EQ1 really push the gameplay? Will LoTRO be that much more fun once Turbine lets us level to 60 instead of 50?

First let’s break down exactly what more levels means, because too often player will lump a bunch of changes and assume they are all the direct result of a level increase. First, it means gaining experience again, something that is a very natural process in an MMO until you cap. People like to see the XP bar fill up and finally ding. It’s solid confirmation that you are making progress. Next you get new or improved skills as you gain levels, which again people really like. It’s fun to go to a trainer and see what new tools you can use. And finally, leveling again means a gear reset, as the older top tier stuff is quickly replaced with higher level quest and common drop items, putting everyone back on a more level playing field, at least until the next wave of grinding/raiding/pvp takes place.

All of the above sounds like fun stuff, and I would venture to guess is what most people think of when they hear ‘level increase’. Yet all of the above can be accomplished without a level increase, albeit in more non-traditional ways.

Want players gaining ‘experience’ from quests and mobs again? Allow specialized progression paths, something similar to EQ2’s AA point. Instead of just blatantly making everyone more powerful, allow players to specialize more, with more choices on how to kit their max level character. Healers could focus on either single target healing or AoE healing, same with DPS, and tanks could pick between increased magic or physical mitigation. However you structure it, the system would allow character growth that would feel similar to gaining experience and leveling, without actually changing the level cap. Quests and even monster kills could all contribute to an ‘alternate XP’ pool, and players could spend those points on growth paths of their choosing. Imagine questing and gaining more talent points in WoW, without the actual need to gain a level to get a point.

As for new skills, why not create some challenging quests and encounters with the rewards being class specific skills. Instead of just handing new abilities out when someone dings, give players a clear path in the form of a quest chain, perhaps something similar to the epic feel and pacing of LoTRO’s book quests, and allow them to pick what skills to pursue and in what order. All players like choices and feeling in control of their characters, and this would be the perfect way to facilitate this.

The gear reset is a cheap copout. It’s an admission that the games itemization is broken, and the quick fix is to return everyone to point A and let them grind all over again. Players for the most part hate gear resets, as any item that was hard fought or required great effort is now worthless. Gear resets also completely screw with an economy, as top level items and crafting materials sink in value. The fact that you can once again gain quick upgrades to your gear, like you normally do when leveling, is not reason enough to turn your game upside down. Plus that quick gear gain is very temporary, as players will quickly hit the new level cap and once again fall into the slow grind for gear that happens in most MMOs.

In addition to issues with gear, raising the level cap also has many other negative impacts on a game. Old ‘end game’ content is quickly forgotten and never used again, meaning all that development time and effort is completely wasted. Zones that once served as tougher ‘end game’ zones, like Silithus in WoW, are skipped by most players as they race towards the new level cap. Often these zones contained the more complex chain quests, requiring former level capped players to put in substantial effort to gain a reward. Once you raise the cap, you remove the motivation to put in that effort for those rewards, as there value has been greatly diminished thanks to the gear reset.

Along with unused zones, you also make all high level crafting obsolete as well. Why chase after rare materials to make an epic former level cap weapon, when in a few levels it won’t be useful? All of those rare materials drop in value, and the need to acquire a rare pattern is lost. Most expansions ‘expand’ crafting by adding new patterns, but in reality for every pattern added, an older pattern is rendered obsolete. In the end crafters generally have just as many, if not less, options to craft useful items. Not that much of an ‘expansion’, is it?

And finally, the most common problem with raising the level cap is that you stretch your player population across more zones without increasing the size of that population, while also raising the amount of time required for new players to join their maxed out friends. You either allow this problem to persist, or you add in another quick fix and change early leveling speed, like WoW did. As with most quick fixes, you end up breaking up the pacing of older content in an effort to rush everyone to your end game. The same end game your expansion and level cap increase seek to fix…

Time to get all Nostradamus with WoW.

Tobold has a post up today talking about the future of WoW and how sustainable it might be, a topic Brent over at Virgin Worlds also recently mentioned in his latest news podcast. The importance and influence WoW has on the MMO space is undeniably huge, so it’s only natural to try and predict its growth or ability to retain subscription numbers. Adding fuel to that fire is the fact that Blizzard has been very slow to roll out expansions, and that those expansions so far have been a little too much of ‘more of the same’.

Depending on how much weight you put into rumors, Blizzard is currently working on a Starcraft MMO, to be released in similar fashion to what we had with Warcraft 3 and WoW. StarCraft 2 is set to release ‘soon’, and following that up a year or so later with an MMO version makes a lot of sense. It is entirely possible that Asia might completely shut down for weeks/months due to the release of a StarCraft MMO, and making release day a national holiday would not be shocking. Not sure if you have heard, but StarCraft is like… kind of a big deal in Asia.

It’s long been thought that the only true competition for WoW would be whatever MMO Blizzard releases next, and so far that prediction has held true. Yes LoTRO had a nice launch and is doing well, and so far AoC seems to be off to a good start, but both are candles in the sun that is WoW. Warhammer Online is getting a lot of buzz, but even the most diehard fans would be hard pressed to think that WAR will seriously challenge WoW and go multimillion in subscriptions. It could, sure, but odds are rather slim. Which is not to say WAR won’t impact WoW, I truly think it will, especially drawing away the Arena PvP crowd that Blizzard has focused so much attention on lately, but WAR certainly won’t ‘kill’ WoW.

And I don’t think a StarCraft MMO will either, but it could have a huge impact. How many people would switch over to SC if it had the same polish and gameplay of WoW, just in a brand new setting, with all new graphics and content? Knowing this, is it a huge surprise that Bliz might be in ‘cash cow’ mode with WoW, just feeding people enough content to string them along until they come over to SC? Why would you drastically alter WoW, with the possibility that you drive more people away than you keep, when you know that you have the ‘next big thing’ coming out soon? Feed them ‘more of the same’, keep them content, and then bring them all back in with your new game, one that is built on a fresh graphics engine and takes all the lessons learn from WoW and implements them on day one, without the need to go back and tweak/nerf anything people are already comfortable with.

So with all that said, what exactly is my prediction for WoW? I think until the release of StarCraft Online, it will remain the dominant MMO. WotLK won’t set the world on fire, but it will bring hordes of people back in to check it out, play around for a few months, and perhaps move on again. It will still make a boatload of money, and right around the time WotLK begins to show its teeth to the majority of players, SC Online will be gearing up for release, ready to captures all those people who left, and also bring over a huge chunk of current WoW players. WoW will remain popular, but will no longer be the ‘it’ MMO, with that title going to SC. And like MMOs of the past, but on a much larger scale, WoW will remain up and running in ghost mode, being updated sparingly and retain a solid, ever slowly diminishing base for years to come.