The second-best part about running a blog is that it acts as an archive of your thoughts. I can look back over the entire year and see every single stupid thing I said about Gods and Heroes or Fury reflected back at me with crystal clarity. Of course, looking back, I also see a few things that weren’t so stupid. In fact … to toot my own horn a sec … there were a couple of fairly decent posts on MMOG Nation this year.

This post is meant to highlight those articles, with an eye towards the longer, more thoughtful work I’ve done. Yes, there is more than one post here like that. Shocking, I know. I’m also going to link back to some work I’ve done on other sites, while trying to provide a little color commentary about every link I offer.

The ‘best’ thing about this site, though, is how it’s grown from my voice in the wilderness last year to an actual conversation over the course of 2007. I don’t really care about my site stats, but I do want to share one: over 1,100 comments have been made on MMOG nation since January 1st 2007. That’s fantastic! I find it really hard to believe that you folks find my drivel interesting enough to talk about, and yet you keep coming back.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Please enjoy this ‘very special’ post, and your last day of 2007.

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It’s been an amazing year in MMOGs. I think 2008 is going to be just as big a deal, though … and in some ways maybe even bigger. As I did last year (relatively well, I might add) I’m going to try to call some shots. Again, I’m just a guy and this is all in good fun. But I’ll keep myself honest: we’ll see how I did this time next year.

So then:

1. Is It Cold In Here or Is It Just Me? - Wrath of the Lich King won’t come out in 2008. We’ll have a firm release date (of early 2009) for the expansion by late summer, and there are as-yet-unannounced features slated for the content update. Blizzard has Hydralisks to fry this year.
2. Nickel and Dime - The concept of RMT and microtransactions will continue to gain acceptance with North American gamers. This will be reflected commercially by further successes for MapleStory and Nexon’s other games in the US. Other companies will begin to consider alternatives to the flat subscription fee, even if outright RMT/microtransactions aren’t yet on the table. At least one newly announced game this year will feature a non-subscription schema.
3. Call Me Agent Smith - The Agency is going to go over like gangbusters. A flat box fee with only microtransactions for further goodies is going to make a big impression … if it can make it out this year. Sometime mid-to-late summer would be perfect. This could even be one of the killer apps for the PS3 this year. Which is good, because it needs it. FreeRealms, on the other hand, is going to have a rough go of it. Without clear player understanding of what exactly this humor/fantasy MMOG thingie is, it’s going to take some time for it to take off.
4. WAAAAUGH For the Win - Warhammer is also going to be a big hit … though it perhaps won’t be everything that EA is hoping for. Long-term MMOG fans are going to fall in love all over again just the same. By the end of the year the house that Jacobs built is going to be very happy for all the extra hard work they put in. Conan will be a much less resounding success. It’s not going to fail, but Funcom is going to end 2008 more than a little bit frustrated.
5. Sunglasses At Night - The CCP/White Wolf game is going to be big news this year, as they announce the scope of the world. It’s not going to be everything that World of Darkness fans would have hoped for, but there will still be a lot of happy gothsicles.
6. Out of Left Field - One of the newbie studios (Carbine, Red 5) is going to announce a project that will really excite and surprise Massive fans. 38 Studios will announce what they’re doing, and it won’t surprise anyone … but it will be somewhat interesting.
7. Pushback - There’s going to be yet another major AAA title whose release date is pushed back to late in the year. One of the big games that we think is going to come out in 2008, won’t.
8. The Age Gets Darker - WAR’s release will be a very dark day for the already dimly-lit Ages of Camelot. Their emulation of Mythic’s older game’s defining feature, coupled with a better PvE experience in essentially every way, will see a lot of players heading for the hills.
9. The Legacy of McQuaid - At some point, Vanguard players are going to get tired of waiting around for ‘the good’ to show up in their game. Expect to see some of Vanguard’s best features showing up in EverQuest 2.
10. With the Brim Pulled Way Down Low - We’re going to see another live game close up shop this year, and an in-development title will slip into the unseen depths as well.
11. Way To Cast - Another MMO dev or publisher will join Blizzard and SOE in making an official podcast.
12. Coming of Age - Tabula Rasa is going to maintain a steady playerbase throughout the year as folks enjoy the new and exciting flavour. Turbine will continue to not report LOTRO’s subscription numbers, for a reason.
13. Okay For Serious This Time - BioWare will announce what they’re making in Austin. For reals, guys. C’mon! :)

2008’s Winners: Warhammer Online, The Agency, MapleStory, New Studios

2008’s Losers: Dark Age of Camelot, Vanguard, Age of Conan

Almost exactly a year ago I put down some predictions for the year in Massive games. It’d be cheating if I didn’t grade myself, so that’s what I’m going to do here, looking back at my 2006 MMOGnostications. This will be a pass/fail test, class … pens at the ready!

Burning Problems - The launch of the expansion to World of Warcraft is going to cause Blizzard bigtime headaches.

Buzz! Bigtime wrong. The launch went almost flawlessly, and despite the huge impact it has had on the life of raiders WoW rolls along unbowed and unbroken. I always thought the expansion was going to be good, but I expected Blizzard to have problems similar to the game’s initial launch. Instead, big blue learned its lessons and scored a customer relations coup.

That Not So Fresh Feeling - At least one of the MMOGs slated to launch this year is going to end up being kind of a stinker.

Ding! This was kind of one of my ’safety’ options, but it came very much true nonetheless. Vanguard was a huge letdown for expectant fans, and the SOE team is still doing overtime work to make the ship sail in a straight line.

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Feelings in the blogosphere (and indeed in online gaming generally) towards Sony Online Entertainment are decidedly mixed. While they’ve made some amazing strides with EverQuest 2 and other titles under their umbrella, some folks are still left with a sour taste in their mouth over past stumbles. Whether griping over the Star Wars Galaxies NGE or complaints going all the way back to the Verant days, people love to grind their axes on Sony’s mega-subsidiary.

So I’ve been kind of surprised that more of a big deal hasn’t been made of the talent drain the company has been undergoing for the past year or so. From high profile folks like Moorgard, Blackguard, and now Scott Hartsman to lower-level community folks, programmers, designers, and artists, there seems to be a general current of talented people flowing away from the monolith.

So why are people leaving the company? What’s prompting this trend? Is it very widespread and (more importantly for the players) what does it mean for their games? And, of course, you can’t help but wonder what this means for the industry in general. Or, at least, I can’t.
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I should probably do this more often, now that I think about it. I’m posting some cool stuff over at Massively, and some of it might be of interest to you. Here are a few posts that I’ve done recently you might find interesting enough to read:

• The Great RMT Debate - A comprehensive rundown on the recent Tobold/Raph discussion.
  
• Warhammer’s December Newsletter - Just super awesome. I’m just saying. Watch that ‘welcome back’ letter from Paul and Jeff. Srsly.
• December MMOG Podcast 1 - Trying to switch to weekly starting this week.
• “HD” MMOGs - I just think the screenshots are pretty.

I was very much not interested in getting involved in the RMT fracas, but a comment I was going to put up on Common Sense Gamer blew into something I had to put up here. Darren called out Raph on something tangential to that discussion. Raph’s observation on what cheating is or is not was spawned by a post over on Massively.

Look, we all know what cheating is when it comes to a game.

It’s not simple, though - as Darren says in a comment to his own post. Darren’s argument is:

Cheating is the introduction of an artificial game mechanic, both internal and external, that gives one player an advantage over another player or over the game itself.

By his own definition here, the stuff he refers to later (Prima guides, Thottbot) is cheating. The thing to keep in mind is that everything is a game mechanic. Having a second computer on your desk opened to Thott is a game mechanic - it’s a component of your gameplay. Having a guide on your lap while you play is a game mechanic.

Moreover, even if you don’t consider those gameplay mechanics, passing gold to an alt is (by this definition) cheating. It’s an external way of influencing your play. I’m willing to bet there are very few players that feel that way. “Hey, it’s all ‘my gold’ right?”

Except … having access to a high level character to farm gold gives a player an advantage over other players. That’s ‘cheating’. Apparently. By the same token, this definition makes SOP in games like MapleStory ‘cheating’. I have more money than a ten year old, and therefore my artificial advantage over them is immoral.

My view on this in theory (though not in personal practice) is: Cheating is an activity that gets your account banned. You only know you’ve been cheating after you get banned.The rest of this business about whether you’re cheating or not is personal moral opinions handed out by individual players. It’s a given within the MMOG community that selling characters or buying gold is immoral.

In reality it seems like the only thing that’s really immoral is to admit to buying gold.

Is this simple? No. I think it’s a very complex issue, one that has no clear answer. Devs and GMs make their own decisions about these issues, and those are the personal moral views for individual virtual worlds. Is double-boxing cheating? In WoW or EQ2 it might be (according to the devs) but in EVE it’s so encouraged they’ll give you a deal on it.

The best we players can do is hope we stay within those guidelines as best we can. Everything else is opinion and conjecture.

Update: Raph put up a post directly addressing some of the issues I raise here, including nailing why online resources are ‘cheating’ by Darren’s definition.

Information is absolutely a mechanic. Look, I knock game theory often enough, but this is one case where those guys have the terminology and the logic to back it up, too. The key thing to realize here is that games provide information to you, the player, about the game state. What’s more, they provide it under defined circumstances. Once you have that knowledge, it’s certainly “in the wild” and you can do with it whatever you want, but the game releases it on a schedule and in specific places, by choice.

Update 2: World IV follows up with this issue by saying the words I was grasping at, and failing to reach:

players don’t get to decide what constitutes cheating.

The Gamasutra network is hosting a thing I wrote up looking back at the year in MMOGs. I just had to be all ‘me too’ with the top-5 thing. Raph gave it a once-over and found my list not terrible, which I appreciate.

A few notes:

• The pejorative ‘little’: I am (correctly or otherwise) generally of the opinion that most Americans still don’t know what MapleStory is - even despite the weird commercials. Hence ‘little’ when referring to non-AAAs. Of course, on that note, I’d bet most Americans have never heard of Tabula Rasa.
• I didn’t combine the failures and the ‘Titans’ in the w/u because I felt it important to note that big businesses are still investing, despite the setbacks. That said, I think it’s a valid point. I think if I’d combined them I think the fifth trend would have been something about the inclusion of big media into new Massive spaces (MTV, Games, Movies) or the public consciousness about non-game virtual worlds.
• There’s actually a Satellite network called ‘GamePlay’ that focuses on real games events (as opposed to G4), like the Guild Wars World Championships or the WSVG. I think an ongoing design/debate series there would be awesome. First one would definitely have to be Koster vs. Jacobs, rematch-style.