Content is a crutch for the weakminded. Real men (and real women) need nothing more than a deep flexible set of systems, and they will generate their own content. Immersive pregenerated storylines, classes with vastly different playstyles, and crafting systems that don't require a PhD in the game you are playing are all the the products of weak minded fools catering to the mindless masses of sheep that pollute our hobby.
This sarcastic post inspired by this post at Ancient Gaming Newb. He makes a great point.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Klingons in Star Trek Online
Mmorpg.com has an interview with Jack Emmert up that describes how Klingons will work in launch STO. Highlights include:
-The PvE game on the Klingon side will not be nearly as deep as that on the Federation side. Klingon missions will focus largely on PvP, and Klingon PvE will focus largely on randomized encounters in deep space.
- Initially all PvP will take place in instances. There will be ten instances at launch, and the max players per instance will be ten per faction.
-Klingon ships will be able to stealth out, while Federation ships will not. Klingon ships will be more maneuverable and better at close range fighting than Federation ships. Klingons will get the only ship capable of launching fighters.
All in all, I have to say that sounds pretty exciting to me. Two factions at launch with vastly different playstyles sounds like a good thing. Some commentators are up at arms because it turns out the Klingons won't have a PvE game of the same depth that the Federation has at launch. However, I don't see it as a problem at all. I imagine that the majority of players drawn to the Klingon faction will be there mainly to "kick Federation ass!" If you are there mainly for the PvP, not being forced to screw much with a PvE game is a good thing, not a bad thing.
-The PvE game on the Klingon side will not be nearly as deep as that on the Federation side. Klingon missions will focus largely on PvP, and Klingon PvE will focus largely on randomized encounters in deep space.
- Initially all PvP will take place in instances. There will be ten instances at launch, and the max players per instance will be ten per faction.
-Klingon ships will be able to stealth out, while Federation ships will not. Klingon ships will be more maneuverable and better at close range fighting than Federation ships. Klingons will get the only ship capable of launching fighters.
All in all, I have to say that sounds pretty exciting to me. Two factions at launch with vastly different playstyles sounds like a good thing. Some commentators are up at arms because it turns out the Klingons won't have a PvE game of the same depth that the Federation has at launch. However, I don't see it as a problem at all. I imagine that the majority of players drawn to the Klingon faction will be there mainly to "kick Federation ass!" If you are there mainly for the PvP, not being forced to screw much with a PvE game is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Habitat
I did not hype this article nearly hard enough in my last post. I skimmed the article and linked it because it looked good. Only tonight did I get down to really reading it. "Prescient" would be an utterly idiotic understatement when describing it. It was published in 1991, and many of the major issues in modern MMO design were described with perfect clarity nearly a decade before UO and EQ came out. A few quotes:
On bandwidth requirements for future games:
Even in a more technically advanced network, however, bandwidth remains scarce in the sense that economists use the term: available carrying capacity is not unlimited. The law of supply and demand suggests that no matter how much capacity is available, you always want more. When communications technology advances to the point were we all have multi-gigabaud fiber optic connections into our homes, computational technology will have advanced to match.
On procedural versus handracfted content design:
It is really not a problem if every apartment building looks pretty much like every other. It is a big problem if every enchanted forest looks the same. Places whose value lies in their uniqueness, or at least in their differentiation from the places around them, need to be crafted by hand.
On what happens when you let real human beings loose in a carefully crafted virtual space:
Social engineering is, at best, an inexact science, even in proto-cyberspaces. Or, as some wag once said, "in the most carefully constructed experiment under the most carefully controlled conditions, the organism will do whatever it damn well pleases."
Really a great read, imo. Well worth wading through even if it is a bit stuffy in places. As an aside, I plan to track down the book this article first appeared in. If the date is not legit, I'll update this post.
On bandwidth requirements for future games:
Even in a more technically advanced network, however, bandwidth remains scarce in the sense that economists use the term: available carrying capacity is not unlimited. The law of supply and demand suggests that no matter how much capacity is available, you always want more. When communications technology advances to the point were we all have multi-gigabaud fiber optic connections into our homes, computational technology will have advanced to match.
On procedural versus handracfted content design:
It is really not a problem if every apartment building looks pretty much like every other. It is a big problem if every enchanted forest looks the same. Places whose value lies in their uniqueness, or at least in their differentiation from the places around them, need to be crafted by hand.
On what happens when you let real human beings loose in a carefully crafted virtual space:
Social engineering is, at best, an inexact science, even in proto-cyberspaces. Or, as some wag once said, "in the most carefully constructed experiment under the most carefully controlled conditions, the organism will do whatever it damn well pleases."
Really a great read, imo. Well worth wading through even if it is a bit stuffy in places. As an aside, I plan to track down the book this article first appeared in. If the date is not legit, I'll update this post.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Quick Hits: December 11 Edition
1up up has an article up about the first graphical MMO. I had never heard of it, apparently it came out in 1986 (!?!) and played a lot like King's Quest meets Ultima Online. Another more academic article with a screenshot here.
Mirkwood may be a lot of fun, but the last two nights I've actually been playing Wizard 101. Huh, almost broke into poetry there. In any case, it's hard to say what I find so compelling about the game. One major element is definitely the strategic feel of the combat. Last night for example, I figured out a new simple four turn strategy with my existing cards that made a spell that I thought was nearly useless shine. Then I got a new spell that forced me retool my deck and drastically changed my basic combat strategy once again. I also like the "buy hunks of content and own them forever" business model. I tend to play the game in randoms bursts, usually involving a new alt, so it's nice to "own" access to the first three worlds.
The 3.3 patch in WoW has been getting fairly rave reviews. I'm considering firing up my account for an experiment that involves trying to level up as much as possible entirely in single party instances. Would it be fun, or would the average inhabitant of WoW turn out to be such an asshat that I'd quickly get turned off? I know how I think it would go, but I'd love to be mistaken. . .
I have my main gaming rig back online again. I have to say, being able to play anything I like at a good frame rate while running i-tunes in the background is ten kinds of awesome. Although it makes the fact that I'm playing so much Wizard 101 (which runs fine on most pocket calculators) a bit ironic.
Mirkwood may be a lot of fun, but the last two nights I've actually been playing Wizard 101. Huh, almost broke into poetry there. In any case, it's hard to say what I find so compelling about the game. One major element is definitely the strategic feel of the combat. Last night for example, I figured out a new simple four turn strategy with my existing cards that made a spell that I thought was nearly useless shine. Then I got a new spell that forced me retool my deck and drastically changed my basic combat strategy once again. I also like the "buy hunks of content and own them forever" business model. I tend to play the game in randoms bursts, usually involving a new alt, so it's nice to "own" access to the first three worlds.
The 3.3 patch in WoW has been getting fairly rave reviews. I'm considering firing up my account for an experiment that involves trying to level up as much as possible entirely in single party instances. Would it be fun, or would the average inhabitant of WoW turn out to be such an asshat that I'd quickly get turned off? I know how I think it would go, but I'd love to be mistaken. . .
I have my main gaming rig back online again. I have to say, being able to play anything I like at a good frame rate while running i-tunes in the background is ten kinds of awesome. Although it makes the fact that I'm playing so much Wizard 101 (which runs fine on most pocket calculators) a bit ironic.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Mirkwood
This just in: Mirkwood is a lot of fun.
Maybe it's simply a relief to have a normal outdoor questing zone after spending a year in Moria and Lothlorian. Moria was an amazingly well realized dungeon environment, but it was also oppressive and at times stressful to level in. Lothlorian had to be the most anti-climatic final zone I have ever seen in an MMO. You spend weeks struggling through challenges of epic proportions, only to be told that you need to spend a few evenings cleaning up orc filth before you can be trusted to even set foot in Lothlorian. Once in Lothlorian proper, exciting tasks like picking grapes and meditating await. The 1-60 game ended on more of a whimper than a bang for anyone that wasn't a raider.
Mirkwood addresses this issue pretty well. Now, after spending some time recovering from Moria in Lothlorian, you have a new final high level zone to move on to. The quest chains you need to get through to enter Mirkwood are combat heavy and fairly challenging. You'll want to get into a PuG for them if at all possible. There is also a steady stream of NPC elves coming along to help you fight in most spots. This simple device makes you feel like you really are part of an invasion force, rather than some lone chump that does all the work while NPCs laze about in camp and come up with new missions for you. So far, Mirkwood is a much more satisfying cap to LoTRO than Lothlorian was.
Maybe it's simply a relief to have a normal outdoor questing zone after spending a year in Moria and Lothlorian. Moria was an amazingly well realized dungeon environment, but it was also oppressive and at times stressful to level in. Lothlorian had to be the most anti-climatic final zone I have ever seen in an MMO. You spend weeks struggling through challenges of epic proportions, only to be told that you need to spend a few evenings cleaning up orc filth before you can be trusted to even set foot in Lothlorian. Once in Lothlorian proper, exciting tasks like picking grapes and meditating await. The 1-60 game ended on more of a whimper than a bang for anyone that wasn't a raider.
Mirkwood addresses this issue pretty well. Now, after spending some time recovering from Moria in Lothlorian, you have a new final high level zone to move on to. The quest chains you need to get through to enter Mirkwood are combat heavy and fairly challenging. You'll want to get into a PuG for them if at all possible. There is also a steady stream of NPC elves coming along to help you fight in most spots. This simple device makes you feel like you really are part of an invasion force, rather than some lone chump that does all the work while NPCs laze about in camp and come up with new missions for you. So far, Mirkwood is a much more satisfying cap to LoTRO than Lothlorian was.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Double Dipping: Greed or Necessity?
Whether we like it or not, it seems than mainstream sub based MMOs are switching to a “double dipping” approach where they charge us a sub fee (or an enormous lifetime access fee up front) for access to their servers and then try to get us to pay for additional content and services on top of that. Sony has been doing it for years in Everquest II. They were the first to have paid “mini expansions” in between the release of full expansions, they were the first to have RMT servers where they take a cut of all the action, and they recently added trading card games to all of their main MMOs (EQ, EQ II, SWG) where you can buy booster packs that might have in game items.
These days, it's spreading. Blizzard has been flirting with the double dip for years. First via licensing their IP to Wizards of the Coast to make a card game that could grant in game items, as well as by charging exorbitant fees for services like server transfers and race change operations. More recently, Blizzard dropped all pretense and offered a in game pets for sale on their website. Given the success of the offer, I’m sure we will see similar offers in the future. City of Heroe and Champions Online both offer a plethora of optional costume elements in their online stores. Even Turbine seems to have caved. The free content updates since Moria launched have been positively meager compared to what they did in their first year. Turbine seems to have saved all of their substantial new content up for the Shadows of Mirkwood mini-expansion.
Some commentators have argued that you simply can’t fund ongoing development of a top teir MMO with a $15 dollar a month sub fee these days. I personally find that very hard to believe. Let’s take a successful 200K subscriber MMO. I think it’s safe to say that LoTRO and EQ II are at least in that ballpark, and others like FFXI and WoW have a lot more subs than that. At $15 a month per user, that’s about 3 million a month in revenue (36 million per year). If you release a full expansion once a year, at $50 per user that’s another 10 million dollar cash injection, plus random cash injections over the year due to new users and resubs (who need to buy the expansion to get up to date).
Do ongoing content updates for an existing MMO really cost that much to make? Given that entire MMOs can be made for a few million, you’d think 30 million a year in sub fees would cover one or two new zones a year in an existing game. What about the paid expansions? It’s not as if a sub based MMO developer really needs to make a profit on expansion boxes. As long as they break even, profit will come from the sub fees. Further, if the revenue for boxes alone isn’t enough to cover the cost of making an expansion, then how on earth do so many video game developers stay afloat charging absolutely zero sub fees for access to online shooters or subless “MMOs” like Guild Wars and Borderlands?
From that perspective, the new trend towards double dipping in sub based MMOs seems much more likely to be motivated by greed than necessity. However, I would argue that I presented you with a somewhat false dichotomy. It is neither greed nor necessity that primarily motivates double dipping, it is “common sense.” If you have a product, should you make as much money as you can off of it or less? If you answered the latter, you are running a charity and not a business.
What it really comes down to is this: double dipping will rarely hurt your bottom line. A tourist won’t be around long enough to notice or care whether you are double dipping. A core user is unlikely to leave due to double dipping as long as the additional goods and services seem optional. Nothing short of an NGE shakeup of core mechanics is likely to chase those guys off. The sub income from small number of core users that will get ticked and leave due to double dipping will likely be more than offset by the additional income from those that remain. Now that MMO developers have figured this out, expect to see a lot more double dipping in mainstream MMOs.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Online Agenda
So it appears that I'm stuck on my backup PC for at least a few more weeks. What can you do with a PC that was pretty good five years ago? In no particular order, these are my planned gaming endeavors for the next few weeks:
Borderlands (on the 360): I am up to about 24 on a Support Gunner and 19 on a Hunter. I've finally been able to dabble in online play, and it is a heck of a lot of fun. Very little lag and voice chat works like a charm. However, I'm still playing mainly offline so that I can take my time and carefully dig through all the loot that drops. I'll likely be online a bit more once I've been through the main story at least once.
LoTRO: everyone in my kinship likely thinks I'm dead, it's been almost a month since I've been able to log on a weekend. Planning to catch up with things there. I'm also considering starting an alt on Landroval. Maybe a human burgler?
i-tunes: I absolutely need something I can play on my backup PC at a decent frame rate and still run i-tunes in the background. Harsh electronica makes killing things more fun. Wizard 101 and World of Warcraft both fit that bill, I may go back to one of them. DAoC is also very friendly in terms of system requirements, I might stick my head in there to see how the game is getting along (poorly I suspect).
Borderlands (on the 360): I am up to about 24 on a Support Gunner and 19 on a Hunter. I've finally been able to dabble in online play, and it is a heck of a lot of fun. Very little lag and voice chat works like a charm. However, I'm still playing mainly offline so that I can take my time and carefully dig through all the loot that drops. I'll likely be online a bit more once I've been through the main story at least once.
LoTRO: everyone in my kinship likely thinks I'm dead, it's been almost a month since I've been able to log on a weekend. Planning to catch up with things there. I'm also considering starting an alt on Landroval. Maybe a human burgler?
i-tunes: I absolutely need something I can play on my backup PC at a decent frame rate and still run i-tunes in the background. Harsh electronica makes killing things more fun. Wizard 101 and World of Warcraft both fit that bill, I may go back to one of them. DAoC is also very friendly in terms of system requirements, I might stick my head in there to see how the game is getting along (poorly I suspect).
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