Bear models in WoW

The new bear models are driving me crazy. I think that the variety in models is a great idea. However, their hindlimbs are completely wrong and their butts should not be sticking up in the air. To whit, this is what a bear looks like from the side:


Notice that the back is close to flat, and that the shin of the back leg runs directly into the foot. In most mammals the only elements of the hindlimb that touch the ground when walking or running are the toes. If you have a dog or cat you should know what I'm talking about. However, bears along with primates (including humans) and a handful of other mammals have plantigrade hindlimb designs. The hindfoot consists of both the toes and ankle (running between them).

Here we have the World of Warcraft druid bear model:


Look closely at the back leg. Notice how the line of it bends three times, once just above the foot? That's because the skeletal design is non-plantigrade. As a side effect of adding this extra span of articulation to the hind leg, that shouldn't be there in the first place, the bear's butt sticks way up in the air. It makes druid bears look as if they are in lordosis at all times. This is a characteristic posture that females of rats and many other mammal species enter into when they are ready to mate (not to be confused with the medical condition of lordosis). Hips high and rotated.

Color me anal, but the hind quarters of the WoW bear model bug me. Druid is one of the classes I was really hoping to get into in my retry of WoW. The fact that my bear form is anatomically way off and begging to be molested at all times pretty much ruins it for me.

Borderlands

As near as I can tell, it's Phantasy Star Online, for modern systems, set in a post apocalyptic world, with insanely beautiful graphics. If it lives up to expectations, looks like that one will be in my 360 tray for a long long time.

Edit: apologies for the broken link earlier, should be working now.

Bump

One of my favorite bloggers has recently put up a post where a pen-and-paper roleplaying game design theory is explained succinctly and related to MMO design. A great read that I highly recommend. Another take on EVE versus WoW from a design perspective can be found here, but honestly I only punted a ball that Anjin has knocked out of the park.

Dungeons and Dragons Online

This is nothing like a review. Only a list of impressions from a few hours in game.

1. A surprising and stylish fantasy setting. A mixture of the fantasy races you'd expect and oddballs you never would have guessed. A standout is their take on halflings, more like short "punk" (go Sid!) elves than anything you are likely familiar with. Golems as a player race is also quite odd.

2. Runs really well even on my stone age backup PC. I get better frame rates than many free to play MMOs, despite graphics that are tons more detailed. Whatever engine Turbine is using is a winner.

3. Combat is twitchy. On a melee focused toon, you may as well be playing Diablo. It really is that fast paced. Reminds me quite a bit of Champions Online.

4. There is no reason to have more than one quest at a time. Each quest sends you to an instance that you have to clear. There are no quest objectives inside the instance. The objective is to finish your mission any way you can.

5. The game is a bit too easy on someone that is very good at melee combat, such as a Ranger or Fighter. Conversely, it's very challenging on a pure caster. For example, as a Wizard the instances you clear for missions start to feel like puzzles. You can only cast X spells, and those spells have to get you through the entire instance. It can certainly be done, but you may not get it right your first try.

6. The character creation system is crazy deep. Even as someone familiar with the PnP rules the game is based on and an experienced MMO player, I've been using their character templates so far (these make a ton of decisions for you). As a new player to the game, it's hard to guess where to place 20 skill points or what feat out of the twenty that are available I'll want on the character creation screen.

The future of MMOs is not a sandbox

As it stands now, World of Warcraft is the top western market MMO. Best guesses are that between North America and Europe it has around 4 million subs. It features classes, levels, quest based progression, and relatively restricted character customization compared to classless MMOs. These features are also found in Lord of the Rings Online, Runes of Magic, Everquest II, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and a screaming ton of other MMOs that are relatively sucesful. Between them (along with WoW), these class/ level/ quest based MMOs serve the bulk of the western MMO market.

This is hardly the only possible way to structure an MMO. EVE online is often held up as a counter example by hardcore/ oldschool MMO enthusiasts (and crazy hobos). There are no classes, what you can do is limited purely by your skills and what ship you can afford. You are free to develop whatever skills interest you. You don't develop skills by crafting, killing fools, or standing in line at the bank. Instead, you decide what skills you'd like to work on and they start ticking up whether you are online or offline (as long as you pay a sub fee). There are a ton of other things that set EVE apart from typical MMOs. The entire game takes place on a single server, the crafting system makes the crafting in most MMOs look utterly shallow, and my grandmother doesn't bitch me out if my casting rotation isn't what is should be.

Can a non WoW-ish MMO prosper? Seemingly so. EVE now ranks a among the top ten western market MMOs. Likely among the top five, but the list gets very fuzzy past WoW (the rank depends a lot on who you ask). If the learning curve to even get started in EVE wasn't so insane, it might be able pass the 500K mark that most non-WoW MMOs seem unable to crack (in the western market). If any non-level/ quest based MMOs passed that mark, it would in turn signal the folks with cash to fund development that new MMOs don't have to be WoW/ EQ clones to prosper.

Sadly, I doubt that will happen in the next few years. I seriously doubt it will happen for EVE, DF, UO, or any other current sandbox MMO. None of them is particularly easy for a new user to pick up and play. Sure, they are incredibly deep and rewarding once you get past the initial hump. But the average western gamer doesn't like humps. I think EVE is roughly as successful as the current generation of sandbox MMOs has the potential to be.

I predict, instead, that Bioware's new MMO will be the next one to crack the 500K mark here in the West. It will feature classes, levels, and fairly linear gameplay. The wild success of the game will be attributed to its emphasis on story and solid professional writing. This will be an accurate assessment, as far as it goes. LoTRO, Guild Wars, and the more recent content from Blizzard have pushed forward the envelope on presenting compelling stories in MMOs. However, Bioware will likely take this to an extreme that will make NCsoft, Blizzard, and Turbine look like rank amateurs. The new MMO from Bioware will allow us to experience several movie's worth of story, all while chilling out in our undies in front of a PC. We will all be astounded, hail Bioware as heros, and perhaps get tattoos. "This is what has been missing!!!" we will all proclaim.

All the while, the concept of a sandboxy MMO with a big budget and a learning curve less harsh than getting afflicted with boils by Satan will remain untested. EVE, Ultima Online, Darkness Falls, Saga of Ryzom, and the editor that comes with Neverwinter Nights simply aren't new user friendly enough to give us a fair test. After watching the market fall in love with yet another class/ level/ quest based MMO, it will likely be a long time before we get a more openly designed MMO with a decent budget behind it.

Having an Attack of Fanboy

I generally don't get excited about products that are still months from release. However, this really looks like someone is making a game just for me. Fast paced combat, deep storylines, and branching narratives are all really big on the list of features I enjoy in RPGs. Online, offline, or on a train...that really looks like a game I'd like to play.

Thoughts on the Seige of Mirkwood

The next major LoTRO expansion is going to be download only, and it will cost $19.99. You can find a full feature list here, in the official announcement. Major features include:

1. Five new levels, and new traits to accompany them. I really don't care much one way or another about the five levels, but new traits would be welcome. I liked the revamp of the trait system in MoM, but most of the new legendary traits seemed mediocre to me. Certainly not worth the insane rep grind you had to go through to get them for the most part. Hopefully the expansion will improve this situation.

2. A new skirmish system (more details here). A series of encounters that scale to party size, from 1 to 12 man. Anyone missing from your party is replaced by NPCs. As you complete skirmishes, you get "skirmish points" that are used to develop a stable of NPCs that you can use to solo or small party ever more challenging skirmishes. A really interesting system , that once again shows that Turbine is not afraid to experiment. The monster play system, the legendary item system, and now this are like nothing else I've encountered in MMO space. Whether it will ultimately prove to be any fun or not, who can say. But I'm definitely intrigued.

3. A revamp of the legendary item system, and a way to earn new slots for your items. All I can say is thank god.

4. A new 12 man raid. Assuming it weren't radiance gated, I'd be quite happy about it. However, as it likely will be this content is irrelevant to me.


There is a lot of wild speculation flying around right now, including that the expansion is a stealthy a way to ditch the radiance system before the next boxed expansion comes out (wishful thinking imo), and that it's an excuse to push out a major revamp of the legendary item system (well, since they say that in their press release...sure..seems likely).

There has also been a lot of complaining by some players that this doesn't seem like something we ought to pay for, and that we haven't gotten nearly as many free content upgrades post MoM as we got in the first year after launch. In terms of free upgrades, I'm sorry to say the whiners do have a point. Let me break it down:

New Geography: Last year we got Evindim, Foreschel, Goblin Town, and a big hunks of the Trollshaws and the Misty Mountains for free. This year we got Lothlorian, which we were originally expecting in launch MoM.

Instances: Last year we got the Rift (a 12 man raid) and numerous 6 mans for free. This year we got a 12 man raid, and two mini raids, as well as 3 mans and solo instances. Altogether I'd say that both years were about even on instances. The big difference is the focus on solo and 3 man content post MoM versus 6 man and up content pre-MoM.

PvMP: Last year we got several major revamps of the Etinmoors, a new monster class, and a Darkness Falls style PvP dungeon. This year we got nothing whatsoever for PvMP. Instead, the freep PvMP gear was rendered utterly obsolete by MoM. This glaring oversight was never addressed or even acknowledged by the devs. They murdered and abandoned one of the core pre-MoM systems.

New Systems: last year we got several upgrades to the music system, an appearance slot system, a housing system, a faction system, and chicken play. This year we got absolutely nothing I can think of.

So what do I make make of all this? Honestly, it's not as gloomy as I just made it sound. Obviously LoTRO has a smaller dev team and a smaller budget for updates than it did last year. The pace and quality of the free content that we have gotten since MoM launched pretty much proves that. I also agree with the whiners to some degree, LoTRO certainly has been much less of a value this year than it was last year.

Even given that, I'd say it's still one of the best values among MMOs if you enjoy solo and small party PvE content. The digital expansion that was announced sounds larger than anything we have gotten for free in the past. And in my mind $19.99 sounds like about the right price. I'll withhold judgment until more details emerge, but the sky seems firmly in place from where I stand.

Edit: If you would like to read more about the expansion, Middle Earth Adventurer has a a great post with comments on details I didn't mention as well as links to reactions from the blogosphere.