This post over at Kill Ten Rats about The Secret World got me thinking about a more general issue.* Most of the arguments we use to "prove" that a given MMO is better than another, or that a given MMO "sucks", are arbitrary and subjective. The kinds of arguments I've seen commentators use to rank MMOs generally fall into a few categories. However, if you think about it there are clear reasons that none of these ranking schemes is a good universal metric of whether a MMO is "good" or not. For example:
Popularity/ Financial Success: used by players of WoW to argue that WoW is the "best" MMO. However, this leads to the McDonalds analogy (I stretched that one waaay too far in one of my early posts). It's kind of elitist, but I think it's also a fair point. How many folks reading this really think McDonalds has the best hamburgers that money can buy?
Innovation: used by players of EVE Online, TSW, and Guild Wars 2 to argue that their games are better than all the "WoW-clones" out there. I do see the importance of innovation. Anything that pushes the boundaries of mainstream MMO space is overall a good thing, since it potentially expands the audience. However, if we want to use innovation as our yard stick of what constitutes a "good MMO" then really bizzare MMOs with tiny audiences like A Tale in the Desert, Endless Forest, and Myst Online have to be considered the best MMOs. Arden: the World of William Shakespeare was innovative as hell, and development on it eventually was halted because players didn't find it fun.
Pooled ratings of Professional Critics: used by players of WoW, SWTOR, and LoTRO (among others) to argue that their games are "good" in an objective sense. On the surface this seems like a good argument, since it evokes the opinions of "experts." However, when it comes to it this is just another form of popularity. History is filled with examples of works of art that critics hated or ignored at first but later came to be considered classics.
Further, I don't find Metacritic scores to be a good guide to whether I personally will like a game or not. Wrath of the Lich King got an astounding score of 91, and when I first tried it I didn't even last out the free month that came with it. Diablo III scored an 88 and, at least among the bloggers that I follow, the overall consensus seems to be that it's a popcorn entry into the series with little staying power compared to Diablo II (no offense to Tipa!). Warhammer Online garnered an 86, and we all know how that turned out. Dungeons & Dragons Online scored an abysmal 74, and it's grown to be one of my favorite MMOs. The Secret World did even worse, and I find it to be extremely compelling.
Obviously what ultimately matters is whether a MMO is fun or not. Just as obviously, fun is in the eye of the beholder. What's perhaps harder to accept is that, like fun, suckage is also in the eye of the beholder. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean that it sucks any objective sense. Conversely, just because someone doesn't like an MMO that you like doesn't mean they have brain damage or aren't as perceptive as you. All you can say for certain is that they didn't think it was fun.
Few of us run around screaming at people over whether they enjoy boardgames (love them), tennis (hate it), or hiking (love it). I can list all the reasons I don't like tennis (I bite at it looms large), but I would never be tempted to claim that tennis sucks in some objective sense. Would anyone? Why then do we get so worked up over whether other commentators "get" or "don't get" the MMOs we play? And why do some commentators feel the urge to go out of their way to antagonize fans of games they don't like? In a some ways MMO enthusiasts tend to behave a lot more like religious fanatics then hobbyists. Do coin collectors and knitters have these kinds of debates? Well, maybe they do (thanks for the link Sente!).
I'm certainly not the first to comment on this phenomenon. But to me this is an issue that keeps rearing it's head. The internet: the great pit where the flamewars are not quenched and the horse dieth not.
*Note: the post I linked at KTR is absolutely not the kind of commentary that irks me. It's a well written post that raises some interesting points. Give it a read if you haven't. The post is simply what got me thinking about these issues again.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
SWTOR: a baffling design decision (on the latest world event)
The latest world event just went live in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Darth Hater has a very nice rundown on the quests and the rewards that you can get. Among the rewards available are some very nice high end rifles fitted out with purple mods. Here's the problem: very few classes and specialization lines can use rifles. In fact only three out of the 16 possible specialization lines if I'm not mistaken (I'm to lazy to check), at best roughly 20% of level 50 characters.
If you aren't one of those few classes, the other rewards are a 90% run-speed speeder (useless to anyone that uses the high end 110% speeders), a pet that's a re-skinned version of one we already got for free last month, and a set of cosmetic gear that will let you dress like a Sandperson. In other words, nothing all that great. Understandably, players are freaking the hell out on the forums. Bioware's official response from Online Community Manager JovethGonzalez is as follows:
Really, "Wait for the next event, maybe there will be something you can use" is the official answer? Really?!? I mean no disrespect to Joveth, he is but the unfortunate messenger.
This is only the second world event in the nine months the game has been live. If each world event caters to 1/5 of the classes, then some time in the next two years most classes should expect to have been offered at least one decent reward (hahahah). This event comes on the cusp of the release of Guild Wars 2, as well as the launch of major expansions for Lord of the Rings Online (Rohan) and World of Warcraft (MoP next month). The decision to not provide weapon rewards for all 16 specialization lines in the game is perhaps the most baffling display of ineptitude that Bioware has yet shown.
It certainly isn't going to hurt the game as much as launching with far too many servers and waiting too long to consolidate them. Or hyping the game so hard before launch that anything short of 1.5 million steady subs would be viewed as a disappointment. However, those are understandable mistakes. They fell into the same traps a lot of studios have. Launching an event guaranteed to annoy 3/4 of your playerbase just as some of your stiffest competition is coming online strikes me as utterly inexplicable.
Imagined design meeting:
"Hey guys, I have great idea. Let's include powerful weapon rewards that most of our players can't use. I'm nearly certain that will be extremely well received."
"Bill, you are a genius! Let's do it!"
If you aren't one of those few classes, the other rewards are a 90% run-speed speeder (useless to anyone that uses the high end 110% speeders), a pet that's a re-skinned version of one we already got for free last month, and a set of cosmetic gear that will let you dress like a Sandperson. In other words, nothing all that great. Understandably, players are freaking the hell out on the forums. Bioware's official response from Online Community Manager JovethGonzalez is as follows:
Hi folks,
I wanted to take a bit of time to explain the reasoning behind the weapon selection on the vendor. As you know, each SWTOR event that we do is unique and this also applies to the variety of items offered. That is, if you don’t find anything that you think is useful during this event, you may find a different assortment of items in the next one. Your feedback is definitely appreciated and we’ll look into different ways to improve our item selection in the future.
Thanks for participating!
I wanted to take a bit of time to explain the reasoning behind the weapon selection on the vendor. As you know, each SWTOR event that we do is unique and this also applies to the variety of items offered. That is, if you don’t find anything that you think is useful during this event, you may find a different assortment of items in the next one. Your feedback is definitely appreciated and we’ll look into different ways to improve our item selection in the future.
Thanks for participating!
This is only the second world event in the nine months the game has been live. If each world event caters to 1/5 of the classes, then some time in the next two years most classes should expect to have been offered at least one decent reward (hahahah). This event comes on the cusp of the release of Guild Wars 2, as well as the launch of major expansions for Lord of the Rings Online (Rohan) and World of Warcraft (MoP next month). The decision to not provide weapon rewards for all 16 specialization lines in the game is perhaps the most baffling display of ineptitude that Bioware has yet shown.
It certainly isn't going to hurt the game as much as launching with far too many servers and waiting too long to consolidate them. Or hyping the game so hard before launch that anything short of 1.5 million steady subs would be viewed as a disappointment. However, those are understandable mistakes. They fell into the same traps a lot of studios have. Launching an event guaranteed to annoy 3/4 of your playerbase just as some of your stiffest competition is coming online strikes me as utterly inexplicable.
Imagined design meeting:
"Hey guys, I have great idea. Let's include powerful weapon rewards that most of our players can't use. I'm nearly certain that will be extremely well received."
"Bill, you are a genius! Let's do it!"
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
SWTOR: the latest news (on interpreting fluid levels in glass containers)
This week two big pieces of news about Star Wars the Old Republic were released. Reactions have been mixed, but overall were pretty gloomy in most quarters. I think SWTOR is one of the most fun MMOs to come along in a while, and I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. However, I have to admit it's hard to say whether the latest news bodes well or ill for the long term prospects of the game.
On subs:
Yesterday EA released some rather vague subscription information about SWTOR, telling us that it has less than a million subs but substantially more than 500K. I'm guessing this means the game currently has roughly 700K subs, but whether it's 600K, 700K, or 800K ultimately doesn't matter a whole lot to the arguments you'd make about the numbers. Glass-half-empty-man would say this means the game has lost 1.4 million players in eight months, the greatest bleedout in MMO history (putting aside the fact that few MMOs have ever had that many players to lose in the first place). Glass-half-full-man would say that only four sub based MMOs in history have had more than half a million players 8 months out from launch (WoW, Lineage, Lineage II, and SWTOR being the only ones if I am not mistaken), and that only WoW has managed this feat in the west (putting aside the fact that this represents a drop of close to 70% of the players since the game launched). Both views of the glass are correct, if uninformative.
I'd argue that what really matters is whether the game is still bleeding out subs, or is hitting it's steady base of core users:
Since we only have four data points on the number of players in SWTOR it's pretty hard to say whether a leveling out of the current player base or a steady decline to Warhammer Online numbers is more realistic. My guess, based largely on my limited impression of populations since the server merges, would be that reality is somewhere between the blue line and the gray one, and that the game is likely settling in as the second largest sub based western MMO...at least until it goes FtP in November. X-fire numbers from July show the number of players as steady or in a very slight decline. SWTOR is no-where near the WoW challenger EA was hoping for, but it's likely still doing better than Rift, EVE, or even EQ at it's peak.
On the switch to FtP
On the glass-half-empty side of things, at the very least this announcement means that EA is not happy with the amount of money they are drawing in from subs. We still don't really know how much EA spent on SWTOR, but clearly the game took/ is taking too long to recoup that cost for even "substantially more than 500K subs" (at least 7.5 million a month in sub fees!) to seem sufficiently profitable to EA.
However, to me personally, this is very much a glass-half-full announcement. First off, the part of the game that I most like, the 1-50 leveling game and the class stories, is going to be free for everyone. That means that I probably will eventually get to see all eight class storylines, which I really doubt would have happened if I had to stay subbed long enough to play them all.
More importantly, I just don't like the "Pay $60 for a client and then $15 a month to sub" model. It's a really poor value compared to most FtP MMOs. For example, I've already spent more than twice as much on SWTOR as I've ever spent in most FtP MMOs, even ones I've played a lot like Everquest II and Wizard 101. Even in games like DDO and LoTRO where I pay the big bucks for a new expansion or set of modules every year (I own 100% of the content in both games; adventuring areas, classes, races...everything), I spend a lot less per year than I would on sub fees. Plus it isn't as if expansions to sub based MMOs are generally free, in most cases they are on top of your sub fee.
The breadth, depth, and quality of FtP MMO offerings is such that it's getting harder and harder for me to justify the expense of sub based MMOs.** "Pay only for what you want, and keep access to it forever" in my mind is a much friendlier business model than "You can't even log to check your mail unless you pay us every month." The switch of SWTOR to FtP is another nail in the coffin of the sub-fee model, and I can't say I'm shedding any tears over it.
*While if flopped hard at launch, current Age of Conan is pretty good (imo) and doing well financially by most accounts.
**I say this, and the three MMOs I'm currently playing the most are DDO, TSW, and SWTOR. I really thought SWTOR would be my last sub based MMO, but The Secret World impressed the hell out of me in during beta. Joke's on me?
What the hell do I make of this?
On subs:
Yesterday EA released some rather vague subscription information about SWTOR, telling us that it has less than a million subs but substantially more than 500K. I'm guessing this means the game currently has roughly 700K subs, but whether it's 600K, 700K, or 800K ultimately doesn't matter a whole lot to the arguments you'd make about the numbers. Glass-half-empty-man would say this means the game has lost 1.4 million players in eight months, the greatest bleedout in MMO history (putting aside the fact that few MMOs have ever had that many players to lose in the first place). Glass-half-full-man would say that only four sub based MMOs in history have had more than half a million players 8 months out from launch (WoW, Lineage, Lineage II, and SWTOR being the only ones if I am not mistaken), and that only WoW has managed this feat in the west (putting aside the fact that this represents a drop of close to 70% of the players since the game launched). Both views of the glass are correct, if uninformative.
I'd argue that what really matters is whether the game is still bleeding out subs, or is hitting it's steady base of core users:
Three scenarios for the future of SWTOR, based on 1.3 millions subs in May and 0.7 million subs in July. If the decline over this period were the result of a linear trend, SWTOR would be on the gray trajectory. Blue and red represent (somewhat arbitrary) best case and worst case trajectories. I chose 100K subs for the bottom of the red line since even abysmal failures like launch AoC* and WAR have tended to level out in that neighborhood.
Since we only have four data points on the number of players in SWTOR it's pretty hard to say whether a leveling out of the current player base or a steady decline to Warhammer Online numbers is more realistic. My guess, based largely on my limited impression of populations since the server merges, would be that reality is somewhere between the blue line and the gray one, and that the game is likely settling in as the second largest sub based western MMO...at least until it goes FtP in November. X-fire numbers from July show the number of players as steady or in a very slight decline. SWTOR is no-where near the WoW challenger EA was hoping for, but it's likely still doing better than Rift, EVE, or even EQ at it's peak.
On the switch to FtP
On the glass-half-empty side of things, at the very least this announcement means that EA is not happy with the amount of money they are drawing in from subs. We still don't really know how much EA spent on SWTOR, but clearly the game took/ is taking too long to recoup that cost for even "substantially more than 500K subs" (at least 7.5 million a month in sub fees!) to seem sufficiently profitable to EA.
However, to me personally, this is very much a glass-half-full announcement. First off, the part of the game that I most like, the 1-50 leveling game and the class stories, is going to be free for everyone. That means that I probably will eventually get to see all eight class storylines, which I really doubt would have happened if I had to stay subbed long enough to play them all.
More importantly, I just don't like the "Pay $60 for a client and then $15 a month to sub" model. It's a really poor value compared to most FtP MMOs. For example, I've already spent more than twice as much on SWTOR as I've ever spent in most FtP MMOs, even ones I've played a lot like Everquest II and Wizard 101. Even in games like DDO and LoTRO where I pay the big bucks for a new expansion or set of modules every year (I own 100% of the content in both games; adventuring areas, classes, races...everything), I spend a lot less per year than I would on sub fees. Plus it isn't as if expansions to sub based MMOs are generally free, in most cases they are on top of your sub fee.
The breadth, depth, and quality of FtP MMO offerings is such that it's getting harder and harder for me to justify the expense of sub based MMOs.** "Pay only for what you want, and keep access to it forever" in my mind is a much friendlier business model than "You can't even log to check your mail unless you pay us every month." The switch of SWTOR to FtP is another nail in the coffin of the sub-fee model, and I can't say I'm shedding any tears over it.
*While if flopped hard at launch, current Age of Conan is pretty good (imo) and doing well financially by most accounts.
**I say this, and the three MMOs I'm currently playing the most are DDO, TSW, and SWTOR. I really thought SWTOR would be my last sub based MMO, but The Secret World impressed the hell out of me in during beta. Joke's on me?
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
DDO: My Pack (a Preview of the Druid Class)
I don't often post here in character, but I'd though I'd try it as a way of spicing up my low level DDO Druid preview. You too can have a wolf pack by the ripe old age of level 2 in DDO if you own the Druid class. Overall the class is a lot of fun, but I have to say it feels OP at low levels compared to "stock" classes.
This is my pack in the world of Eberron:
The ferocious bitch you see on the right I summon from the Wilderness beyond our plane. Soldiers and thugs alike tend to underestimate her, until she draws close and they realize she outweighs them by 100 pounds of flesh and a magnitude of ferocity. She hasn't told me her name yet, but a half dozen times she has died for my causes and more times than I can count she has answered my calls to the Material Plane. She is always the first among us to snarlingly enjoin our foes, and because of that they often consider her the chief threat until it is too late.
[Game Notes: this is one of the two pets you can summon with Summon Nature's Ally I, which you get for free at level 1. You can't control summoned pets directly in DDO, their AI is automatically set to aggressive. The pet is quite powerful in low level content, but you want to replace it as soon as you can cast Summon Nature's Ally II]
Here you can see me in my preferred material form, along with my most loyal friend. I look similar to my more aggressive packmate, and so foes generally assume her to be our leader. As impressive as my immortal summoned friend is, to the sorrow of our foes she has but a fraction of my power. The spirits strengthen me. I can heal wounds, strengthen allies, and even call fire if need be. Such is the weave of my hide and the strength of my teeth that none have yet withstood me be they animal or man, shade or demon.
[Game Notes: a noticeable trend in DDO is that the classes you pay for seem to be getting more and more powerful as they introduce new ones. Favored Souls are quite powerful, but mainly at higher levels. Monks can be extremely OP from start to finish, but only if you build them well. Artificers with their strong pets and extreme ranged damage are OP compared to most stock classes unless you go out of your way to gimp one. Now, Druids seem much the same to me with their powerful pets and shape shifting abilities, not to mention healing, nuking, and buffing as well or better than the other divine casters.]
Surprisingly, much of my power also comes from a sickle given to me by a barkeep in exchange for my services against the cultists of Korthos Island. When I used the sickle in my natural shape I found it to be a clumsy weapon. However, when I held onto it while shifting to my wolf form, its true power was revealed. As long as I continue attack with tooth and claw, pausing only to find new foes when one ceases, it regenerates my skin and muscles. Sword wounds close the instant they form, arrow shafts are spit on the ground like seeds. Those that consider the fearsome bitch of our pack to be their primary foe soon learn otherwise.
[Game Notes: when I finished my third Korthos Island intro quest, I took the scimitar that was obviously added to the rewards list for druids. It gives you a 15 temporary hit points (a damage shield that works versus any attack to all intents) when you crit that regenerate every time you crit. In wolf form, you will crit an awful lot I. I don't think I used any of my "real" hitpoints more than two or three times in all of Korthos Island once I got it.]
As for my most loyal friend with the stylish blue collar, Dusty, I found him in market in southern Khorvaire just before I set out for Xen'Drik and Stormeach. He's not much of a fighter, but I can at least take him into town without fearing that he will kill anyone.
[Game Notes: a cosmetic pet pre-order bonus]
This brings me to the last member of our pack. The one that is most often underestimated, and the only one that truly frightens me:
He looks a pup, much like Dusty. But Snowfang is no pup. He is my lifelong companion blessed by the same spirits that grant me my powers. At present, with his awkward paws and tiny growl, most foes dismiss him. When he hits their chest with the weight of a cannonball, knocking them down to break bones and sever arteries as his tiny mouth grabs and twists, few live long through their astonishment. He is but a puppy yet. What will he grow into? How angry are the spirits I have chosen to worship? More importantly, who are they angry with?
[Game Notes: so far this pet seems right on par with the Artificer pet, though not as customizable. It has a ton of hit points, hits like a truck, and holds aggro well enough for you to get a lot of backstab damage in while using wolf form. Its only real weakness is that it doesn't have the best defense, I had to heal mine a lot. Whether this will become an annoyance at higher levels, or for that matter whether it's something you can fix with gear, I can't say.]
This is my pack in the world of Eberron:
The ferocious bitch you see on the right I summon from the Wilderness beyond our plane. Soldiers and thugs alike tend to underestimate her, until she draws close and they realize she outweighs them by 100 pounds of flesh and a magnitude of ferocity. She hasn't told me her name yet, but a half dozen times she has died for my causes and more times than I can count she has answered my calls to the Material Plane. She is always the first among us to snarlingly enjoin our foes, and because of that they often consider her the chief threat until it is too late.
[Game Notes: this is one of the two pets you can summon with Summon Nature's Ally I, which you get for free at level 1. You can't control summoned pets directly in DDO, their AI is automatically set to aggressive. The pet is quite powerful in low level content, but you want to replace it as soon as you can cast Summon Nature's Ally II]
Here you can see me in my preferred material form, along with my most loyal friend. I look similar to my more aggressive packmate, and so foes generally assume her to be our leader. As impressive as my immortal summoned friend is, to the sorrow of our foes she has but a fraction of my power. The spirits strengthen me. I can heal wounds, strengthen allies, and even call fire if need be. Such is the weave of my hide and the strength of my teeth that none have yet withstood me be they animal or man, shade or demon.
[Game Notes: a noticeable trend in DDO is that the classes you pay for seem to be getting more and more powerful as they introduce new ones. Favored Souls are quite powerful, but mainly at higher levels. Monks can be extremely OP from start to finish, but only if you build them well. Artificers with their strong pets and extreme ranged damage are OP compared to most stock classes unless you go out of your way to gimp one. Now, Druids seem much the same to me with their powerful pets and shape shifting abilities, not to mention healing, nuking, and buffing as well or better than the other divine casters.]
Surprisingly, much of my power also comes from a sickle given to me by a barkeep in exchange for my services against the cultists of Korthos Island. When I used the sickle in my natural shape I found it to be a clumsy weapon. However, when I held onto it while shifting to my wolf form, its true power was revealed. As long as I continue attack with tooth and claw, pausing only to find new foes when one ceases, it regenerates my skin and muscles. Sword wounds close the instant they form, arrow shafts are spit on the ground like seeds. Those that consider the fearsome bitch of our pack to be their primary foe soon learn otherwise.
[Game Notes: when I finished my third Korthos Island intro quest, I took the scimitar that was obviously added to the rewards list for druids. It gives you a 15 temporary hit points (a damage shield that works versus any attack to all intents) when you crit that regenerate every time you crit. In wolf form, you will crit an awful lot I. I don't think I used any of my "real" hitpoints more than two or three times in all of Korthos Island once I got it.]
As for my most loyal friend with the stylish blue collar, Dusty, I found him in market in southern Khorvaire just before I set out for Xen'Drik and Stormeach. He's not much of a fighter, but I can at least take him into town without fearing that he will kill anyone.
[Game Notes: a cosmetic pet pre-order bonus]
This brings me to the last member of our pack. The one that is most often underestimated, and the only one that truly frightens me:
He looks a pup, much like Dusty. But Snowfang is no pup. He is my lifelong companion blessed by the same spirits that grant me my powers. At present, with his awkward paws and tiny growl, most foes dismiss him. When he hits their chest with the weight of a cannonball, knocking them down to break bones and sever arteries as his tiny mouth grabs and twists, few live long through their astonishment. He is but a puppy yet. What will he grow into? How angry are the spirits I have chosen to worship? More importantly, who are they angry with?
[Game Notes: so far this pet seems right on par with the Artificer pet, though not as customizable. It has a ton of hit points, hits like a truck, and holds aggro well enough for you to get a lot of backstab damage in while using wolf form. Its only real weakness is that it doesn't have the best defense, I had to heal mine a lot. Whether this will become an annoyance at higher levels, or for that matter whether it's something you can fix with gear, I can't say.]
Friday, June 29, 2012
Will Players "Get" The Secret World?
Last night I pre-ordered The Secret World from Amazon. I have early access as well as a some in game goodies like a dog and some sort of XP boost. Oddly, I am not sure I'll be playing it at all this weekend apart from to logging in to save some character names. I've been traveling/ entertaining for most of the past week and feel more inclined to catch up in DDO and SWTOR than to jump into something new this weekend. I'll likely spend more time with TSW over the 4th of July weekend, and I am looking forward to it.
The game really impressed me during the beta weekends (Rowan has a great preview up that summarizes my experience pretty well). I like the story driven gameplay, the atmosphere and setting, and the classless character development system. I also think that, much like LoTRO back in the day, a lot of the players that try TSW are not going to "get it." The game requires real patience to get into. For example, the quests. Each quest that you take opens up a chain of quests that together form a narrative. The best way to do quests is to take one quest at a time and see it all the way through to the end. Most of the time when you finish one quest chain, if you explore the area where you end up you will find an object or NPC that will open up another quest chain.
The game is not catered towards completionists. It's not all that likely that you will even find all the quests the first time you go through a zone, much less do all of them. I have read estimates that you only need to do 25% of the quests in a given zone to be strong enough to head to the next one (my guess would be more like 50%, but certainly not all of them). The idea is that each character through a zone will experience a slightly to extremely different set of stories, and to encourage exploration.
Further, if you pick up a style of quest that you already have (e.g., an investigation quest), it will replace the previous quest of the same style in your quest log, though you can go back later and finish the original quest if you care to [corrected thanks to Rowan!]. In any case, If you try to play TSW like WoW where you pick up every quest in sight and run randomly around the map to quest objectives, you absolutely will be stymied. On top of that, the puzzle quests can be quite challenging (and are meant to be). TSW is not a good game for those with MMO ADD.
The combat system and the character development system likewise need a real time investment before they start to shine. The emphasis of the game on narratives is also likely to turn off a lot of players, now that SWTOR has "proved" that compelling scripted narratives have no place in MMOs. This is an absurd contention in my mind, but a lot of commentators do seem to feel that way and have somehow managed to conclude that SWTOR settling at a mere 600-800K or so steady subs (my best guess, 1.3 million subs was the last number released) somehow supports this idea.
I don't expect TSW to set the MMO world on fire. However, I do think it will have very strong appeal for players that enjoy exploration, well developed narratives, and are looking for something outside of the fantasy / sci-fi genres.
The game really impressed me during the beta weekends (Rowan has a great preview up that summarizes my experience pretty well). I like the story driven gameplay, the atmosphere and setting, and the classless character development system. I also think that, much like LoTRO back in the day, a lot of the players that try TSW are not going to "get it." The game requires real patience to get into. For example, the quests. Each quest that you take opens up a chain of quests that together form a narrative. The best way to do quests is to take one quest at a time and see it all the way through to the end. Most of the time when you finish one quest chain, if you explore the area where you end up you will find an object or NPC that will open up another quest chain.
The game is not catered towards completionists. It's not all that likely that you will even find all the quests the first time you go through a zone, much less do all of them. I have read estimates that you only need to do 25% of the quests in a given zone to be strong enough to head to the next one (my guess would be more like 50%, but certainly not all of them). The idea is that each character through a zone will experience a slightly to extremely different set of stories, and to encourage exploration.
Further, if you pick up a style of quest that you already have (e.g., an investigation quest), it will replace the previous quest of the same style in your quest log, though you can go back later and finish the original quest if you care to [corrected thanks to Rowan!]. In any case, If you try to play TSW like WoW where you pick up every quest in sight and run randomly around the map to quest objectives, you absolutely will be stymied. On top of that, the puzzle quests can be quite challenging (and are meant to be). TSW is not a good game for those with MMO ADD.
The combat system and the character development system likewise need a real time investment before they start to shine. The emphasis of the game on narratives is also likely to turn off a lot of players, now that SWTOR has "proved" that compelling scripted narratives have no place in MMOs. This is an absurd contention in my mind, but a lot of commentators do seem to feel that way and have somehow managed to conclude that SWTOR settling at a mere 600-800K or so steady subs (my best guess, 1.3 million subs was the last number released) somehow supports this idea.
I don't expect TSW to set the MMO world on fire. However, I do think it will have very strong appeal for players that enjoy exploration, well developed narratives, and are looking for something outside of the fantasy / sci-fi genres.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
The Post WoW Commandments of MMO Design (the perspective of a geezer on how WoW changed MMOs for the better)
This post over at Raging Monkeys really got me thinking about how I viewed MMOs pre and post World of Warcraft. Pre-WoW I had played Everquest briefly (it didn't really suck me in), and played Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest Online Adventures, and Phantasy Star Online (if you want to call the latter a MMO) for longer. There are those who think WoW ruined the MMO genre by being such a smash hit and appealing to the "lowest common denominator" among MMO players. I'm not one of them.
WoW certainly had a big effect on the MMO landscape. Even existing MMOs in many cases added in features from it. For example, DAoC, EQ, and EQ II all added easy ways to identify quest givers after WoW pioneered the "!" system (one of the few design elements in WoW I'm aware of that was not taken from a previous game). For better or worse, WoW ushered in some new commandments of MMO design:
1. Thou shalt give me something more interesting to do than standing around grinding mobs to level.
Pre-WoW, quests were few and rarely worth doing in most MMOs. If you did muddle through a poorly designed quest in DAoC or EQ, nine times out of ten you would have gotten better XP and loot by standing in a field killing rats for the same amount of time. If you really wanted to level at a decent pace, the best way to do it was generally to grab four of your closest friends and stand in one spot killing the same mobs over and over again as they respawned. I don't know why that seemed like an acceptable state of affairs to me pre-WoW, but it sure as hell doesn't now.
I'm not by any means saying that a MMO has to have a ton of quests, or any quests worth speaking of, to hold my attention these days. Other options include leveling via PvP (see WAR and modern DAOC), Diabloesce randomized dungeons and loot pinatas (see PSO and Dungeon Runners), puzzle based gameplay (see Myst Online: URU, and many of the quests in DDO and The Secret World), or advancement through pure crafting (see EQ II). But if the only reasonably rewarding activity a game gives me is standing in one spot killing gnolls for six hours, I'm not sticking around past the tutorial.
2. Thou shalt not hinder my solo play experience, nor shalt thou make whatever random class I pick a sucktastic soloer without giving me some kind of warning on the character generation screen.
Apart from PSO, WoW was the first MMO I played where any class could solo well. Sure, some classes are monsters at solo play while others are merely OK at it. But the fact remains you can pick any class you like on the character selection screen and have a pretty fun time, whether you decide to play solo or spend a lot of time in groups. That's generally true of most MMOs these days.
Contrast with olden MMOs like EQ or DAoC where the majority of classes could barely solo at all past very low levels. "What the best solo class?" was a really common forum topic, since a wrong choice on the character select screen meant that on any given night you logged you would have to stand around twiddling your thumbs until you could get a group together.
I enjoy playing with other humans, but I don't like being forced to. A game with forced grouping is one where you may was well not log in at all if you can't invest a few hours, and one where you are forced to be social whether you feel like it or not. The latter does not suit my temperament (and really never has), while the former doesn't fit my play schedule at all any more.
3. Thou shalt give me stuff more interesting to do in combat then watch as my auto-attacks slowly whittle down my opponent's health. Yes, even at low levels!
Even before WoW, it used to drive me buggy that at low levels on most melee classes all you did was hit auto-attack and then stand there like a drooling moron watching numbers creep across your combat log. Even at higher levels, it was often much the same save that you'd whip out a special ability once or twice a combat. DAoC improved things a good bit by adding melee attack chains and positional attacks to use while you slowly whittled down an opponent's health. However, WoW was probably the first "true MMO" (I'm excluding PSO here) I played where every combat felt fast paced and dynamic.
More modern MMOs have only taken this feeling to greater extremes. For example, there's nothing quite like flying through the air in Champions Online while raining down fireballs on the heads of your foes (cackling madly at their impotence). Allod's Online, DDO, SWTOR, and others have even gone so far as to dispense with auto-attacks altogether. Thankfully, the days of hitting auto-attack and then going off to make a sandwich are long behind us.
4. Thou shalt not design a MMO with graphics so poorly optimized that it's going to run and look like a turd on any PC I could reasonably be expected to own.
I was able to run many old school MMOs when they came out. But that always involved systems that were pretty well on the edge of my budget. At a time when I had been stringing along an older system so long that I couldn't run many current games at all, WoW looked and ran great on my aging PC. Around the same time, EQ II had far inferior art direction and was barely playable on my rig. That really cemented the idea in my head that there is simply no excuse for a MMO developer to release a game that demands cutting edge hardware to run well. With good art direction even relatively simple graphics can be immersive.
Since then, developers seem to have largely caught on to this. My three year old $700 gaming rig runs SWTOR and The Secret World just fine. Not at maxed settings by any means, but good enough to look pretty. For example, any screenshots you see of SWTOR on this blog are on my normal play settings. The last MMO to really screw this up, Tabula Rasa, I believe would likely still be around if more than 20% of the players that tried it didn't have to run it on minimum settings (where it was foggy and fugly). If a $300 gaming console can pump out astounding graphics in hi def, my PC that costs twice as much and has more than double the hardware specs sure as hell should be able to. If it can't, your engine sucks.
Wrap-up
I would count myself among those that believes WoW improved the MMO genre by making it more accessible. I wouldn't automatically dismiss a MMO that breaks one of the new commandments. But any two of them? Yeah forget it, whatever game you are designing is not aimed at me.
WoW certainly had a big effect on the MMO landscape. Even existing MMOs in many cases added in features from it. For example, DAoC, EQ, and EQ II all added easy ways to identify quest givers after WoW pioneered the "!" system (one of the few design elements in WoW I'm aware of that was not taken from a previous game). For better or worse, WoW ushered in some new commandments of MMO design:
1. Thou shalt give me something more interesting to do than standing around grinding mobs to level.
Pre-WoW, quests were few and rarely worth doing in most MMOs. If you did muddle through a poorly designed quest in DAoC or EQ, nine times out of ten you would have gotten better XP and loot by standing in a field killing rats for the same amount of time. If you really wanted to level at a decent pace, the best way to do it was generally to grab four of your closest friends and stand in one spot killing the same mobs over and over again as they respawned. I don't know why that seemed like an acceptable state of affairs to me pre-WoW, but it sure as hell doesn't now.
I'm not by any means saying that a MMO has to have a ton of quests, or any quests worth speaking of, to hold my attention these days. Other options include leveling via PvP (see WAR and modern DAOC), Diabloesce randomized dungeons and loot pinatas (see PSO and Dungeon Runners), puzzle based gameplay (see Myst Online: URU, and many of the quests in DDO and The Secret World), or advancement through pure crafting (see EQ II). But if the only reasonably rewarding activity a game gives me is standing in one spot killing gnolls for six hours, I'm not sticking around past the tutorial.
2. Thou shalt not hinder my solo play experience, nor shalt thou make whatever random class I pick a sucktastic soloer without giving me some kind of warning on the character generation screen.
Apart from PSO, WoW was the first MMO I played where any class could solo well. Sure, some classes are monsters at solo play while others are merely OK at it. But the fact remains you can pick any class you like on the character selection screen and have a pretty fun time, whether you decide to play solo or spend a lot of time in groups. That's generally true of most MMOs these days.
Contrast with olden MMOs like EQ or DAoC where the majority of classes could barely solo at all past very low levels. "What the best solo class?" was a really common forum topic, since a wrong choice on the character select screen meant that on any given night you logged you would have to stand around twiddling your thumbs until you could get a group together.
I enjoy playing with other humans, but I don't like being forced to. A game with forced grouping is one where you may was well not log in at all if you can't invest a few hours, and one where you are forced to be social whether you feel like it or not. The latter does not suit my temperament (and really never has), while the former doesn't fit my play schedule at all any more.
3. Thou shalt give me stuff more interesting to do in combat then watch as my auto-attacks slowly whittle down my opponent's health. Yes, even at low levels!
Even before WoW, it used to drive me buggy that at low levels on most melee classes all you did was hit auto-attack and then stand there like a drooling moron watching numbers creep across your combat log. Even at higher levels, it was often much the same save that you'd whip out a special ability once or twice a combat. DAoC improved things a good bit by adding melee attack chains and positional attacks to use while you slowly whittled down an opponent's health. However, WoW was probably the first "true MMO" (I'm excluding PSO here) I played where every combat felt fast paced and dynamic.
More modern MMOs have only taken this feeling to greater extremes. For example, there's nothing quite like flying through the air in Champions Online while raining down fireballs on the heads of your foes (cackling madly at their impotence). Allod's Online, DDO, SWTOR, and others have even gone so far as to dispense with auto-attacks altogether. Thankfully, the days of hitting auto-attack and then going off to make a sandwich are long behind us.
4. Thou shalt not design a MMO with graphics so poorly optimized that it's going to run and look like a turd on any PC I could reasonably be expected to own.
I was able to run many old school MMOs when they came out. But that always involved systems that were pretty well on the edge of my budget. At a time when I had been stringing along an older system so long that I couldn't run many current games at all, WoW looked and ran great on my aging PC. Around the same time, EQ II had far inferior art direction and was barely playable on my rig. That really cemented the idea in my head that there is simply no excuse for a MMO developer to release a game that demands cutting edge hardware to run well. With good art direction even relatively simple graphics can be immersive.
Since then, developers seem to have largely caught on to this. My three year old $700 gaming rig runs SWTOR and The Secret World just fine. Not at maxed settings by any means, but good enough to look pretty. For example, any screenshots you see of SWTOR on this blog are on my normal play settings. The last MMO to really screw this up, Tabula Rasa, I believe would likely still be around if more than 20% of the players that tried it didn't have to run it on minimum settings (where it was foggy and fugly). If a $300 gaming console can pump out astounding graphics in hi def, my PC that costs twice as much and has more than double the hardware specs sure as hell should be able to. If it can't, your engine sucks.
Wrap-up
I would count myself among those that believes WoW improved the MMO genre by making it more accessible. I wouldn't automatically dismiss a MMO that breaks one of the new commandments. But any two of them? Yeah forget it, whatever game you are designing is not aimed at me.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Played Lately: DDO, Gianthold
DDO has been one of my mainstay MMOs for a good long while now. I'm in a smallish guild there that I quite enjoy, and I log in one or two evenings a week to adventure with a fixed group. Our characters are now on the cusp of level 15, much further than I've made it before in DDO. Lately, we have been working our way through the Ruins of Gianthold adventure pack.
Gianthold contains a small village/ quest hub that has a suprisingly full suite of ammenities. It has auction house access, a bank, and most of the vendors you could want including one that sells hireling contracts. Obviously, it also has giants:
The giants hand out quests primarily to kill giants and their minions. Stone giants, fire giants, cloud giants, and even skeletal undead giants all make appearances (you spend a lot of time stabbing giants in their calves). The visual design of the giants I've seen so far hew pretty closely to the way they were envisioned in the original AD&D monster manual. It's been a treat to see the illustrations I remember from my teenage years come to life.
The quest rewards haven't really been blowing my mind. Of course due to time spent farming items with nice set bonuses in a lower level area, as well as the labors of a guild crafter, my character is quite well geared for a level 14. It's not really surprising the area holds few upgrades for me. The XP rewards, at least, are very nice. By the time we leave I expect to be at least close to level 16. Visually, the area is also really interesting.
For a really old game that runs well on meager PCs, DDO still looks quite good in my opinion. I also find the real time combat to be a nice change of pace from almost every other MMO I play. I find the depth of the character generation system in equal parts frustrating and entertaining. When a build comes together and works for what you designed it to do, it's exhilarating. When a build fails and you realize you have spent days leveling a gimp, it's not as exhilarating (to put it nicely).
Apart from DDO I'm still playing SWTOR nearly every night. Unless I am mistaken, character transfers will go live tomorrow night. It would certainly be nice to be able to move some of my abandoned characters on other servers to my current home, but I'm not sure they will qualify since they are all on slightly different server types to the one I'm currently playing. Regardless, I'm still having fun there and plan to see the two Imperial class quest storylines I'm now on through to the end. From there, the Republic awaits... and of course Secret World and GW 2 at some point as well. My interests over the summer look to greatly outstrip my spare time.
Gianthold contains a small village/ quest hub that has a suprisingly full suite of ammenities. It has auction house access, a bank, and most of the vendors you could want including one that sells hireling contracts. Obviously, it also has giants:
The giants DDO are scaled pretty accurately to what I recall from the pen and paper rules, which is to say massive. Here is my dark elf favored soul standing next to a cloud giant.
Yeah that's pretty much as bald and scary as I expected stone giants to be based on the PnP illustrations.
In general, the further along you get in DDO the more interesting the environments get.
Gianthold
was apparently once the site of a war between giants and dragons. How
both sides got crystallized I'm a little fuzzy on, but it makes
for some impressive sights.
Apart from DDO I'm still playing SWTOR nearly every night. Unless I am mistaken, character transfers will go live tomorrow night. It would certainly be nice to be able to move some of my abandoned characters on other servers to my current home, but I'm not sure they will qualify since they are all on slightly different server types to the one I'm currently playing. Regardless, I'm still having fun there and plan to see the two Imperial class quest storylines I'm now on through to the end. From there, the Republic awaits... and of course Secret World and GW 2 at some point as well. My interests over the summer look to greatly outstrip my spare time.
I leave you with another set of crystallized figures, this time on an island surrounded by lava. This really belongs on a heavy metal album cover.
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