Wow, what happened to snarkily ranting Tobold? I really like this measured, thoughtful Tobold!

Syp is right in saying that the problem of gold selling is the demand of gold buyers. But his solution is wrong, because he short-sightedly attributes the demand to notions of “morality or honor”, which is just plain silly. Player’s demand for gold is simply a function of how grindy it is to get gold, and what you need that gold for. And that are all questions of game design. It is a lot easier to solve the problem with good game design than to start a successful crusade to stop people from cheating in video games. Google has 80 million hits in a search for “cheats”, most of which are about video games, that isn’t something we can make go away if we all just hold hands and wish for it very, very strongly.

Okay, if he was snarking about me I might be a bit more testy. He’s 100% right through that whole post, though, and about the only thing I can add is that I can’t believe people are still high and mighty about secondary in-game currencies in 2008. I mean theres, what, a kabillion dollar aftermarket for that gold piece you earned from your Dailies in WoW, right?

The truth, though, is that people wanking about the dishonor of goldbuyers and the scourge of goldsellers should really put it back in their pants. For better or worse goldselling is something that’s … well, I’ll say it outright: in my mind it’s not an issue that players have to worry about anymore. Every game I can think of has done their best to deal with goldfarming and spammers at this point. Every one.  It’s 2008, and if you are still getting spammed by goldfarmers in-game it’s becuase the game developers want you to be. It’s as simple as that.

To clarify: I am being mostly flippant with that statement; obviously the developers don’t *want* you to be spammed. Ultimately my belief is that goldfarming hurts game developers in actuality, whereas goldfarmers are really only a perceptive annoyance/negative impact on players. Scott has a fantastic, AAA-level writeup on his solution to this issue at Broken Toys. Go read.

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I imagine you have probably already seen this, but Gamasutra reported on the Ensemble MMO-that-wasn’t, Halo. Simon asked me for a few words on the UI, and I offered him up some semi-cogent statements regarding the possible use of what were undoubtedly entirely placeholder assets.

“The character pane shows a health bar and ‘mana’ — or Psion, as is referred to in this title… The upper right icons are for basic character functions. The one on the far left would most likely be inventory, represented by the outline of a man.

Moving right, I’d guess that’s a ‘talent tree’ screen for customizing your character, most likely a powers menu (a brain to represent the Psion?), a titles or achievements screen represented by the trophy, and a support ticket system represented by the chat bubble icon.

There are many obvious tips of the hat here to the World of Warcraft interface. Simplicity and streamlined play appear to be the object of the game, but it’s interesting to see so many strange icons on the hotbar.

From the choice of abilities, it’s easy to surmise that that the character would have been some sort of melee/magic brawler. The upper bar has some similarities to the WoW UI modification Titan Panel – a favorite amongst players.”

I don’t really care about my name getting around, but it’s nice to see Massively’s URL in such prominent places.

I’ve been looking forward to playing Warhammer, to be sure – but whenever I thought about it, I anticipated playing a Goblin Shaman. And over on Thorgrim I’ve got one – he’s a lot of fun. But interestingly I’ve actually adopted a Warrior Priest and I think she might actually be my main.

My Gobbo Experience:

• I still love the class mechanics. The Shaman may be the most fun MMO class I’ve ever played. It’s awesome to be able to bounce back and forth between damage and healing, all with that distinctive green grin.
• The Greenskin starting zone on Thorgrim is a ton of fun to play … unless you try to play with other folks. Maybe I just keep having bad luck, but in the single digits almost everyone seems to have funneled over to the Empire vs. Chaos pairing. The Mythic folks say they expect this to get straightened out as more players go up in levels, but initially it kind of stinks not to be around people.
• Add to this the fact that there are a ton of Destruction folks and few Order folks, and it takes a long time for Scenarios to fire.

My Warrior Priest Experience:

• Mechanically, she’s got a lot going for her. All of the heals the class uses, it seems, are either passive or HoTs. As a result I can wade into melee with my hammer willy-nilly, dropping heals on myself just before I reach combat. My only frustration is that I’m having a hard time healing other people. I thought that I was supposed to see the secondary target of opponents when they were selected, but that only seems to work sometimes. That means if I’m attacking a dude that’s attacking someone else, I have to guess at his opponent to drop a heal.
• She freaking rules in PvE. I’ve barely died at all, and that was just through poor planning. Really looking forward to being able to get into some higher level PQs and helping out.
• Already have run into some uncompletable PQs at lower levels. Even the first one is sort of sparsely inhabited at this point, as everyone presses firmly on to other content. I’m taking thing slower, doing Tome unlocks and enjoying lower level PQs, and as a result I’m by myself sometimes even in the high-traffic Empire/Chaos pairing.

Scenarios are so much fun, I really think it’s a shame that they’re working the way they are now. I know the Mythic folks can make them work better. This is what I’d like to see:

• Cross-server scenario queues to increase the overall number of players in the flow.
• Generic scenario queuing; you sign up for a queue in general, and the game slots you into one of the three scenarios in your tier. I love Fires of Nordlands, no doubt, but I really like Khaine’s Embrace and Gates of Ekrund too.

I’m honestly surprised by how much fun I’m having with the game. I really thought I’d be playing casually and working primarily to get my epic flying mount in WoW … dunno if I’m going to meet that goal now. Damn you, Mythic!

Mr. Musgrove with the Washington Post pinged me for a few comments on the WAR launch, and to additionally familiarize himself with the genre. I stand by what I said in his article … with the additional note that I think WAR will be the #2 AAA game in the US marketplace, not worldwide.

Among fans of this genre, the buzz about Warhammer is good, said Michael Zenke, lead blogger at the Web site Massively.com, a site dedicated to news about online world games. “Hopes are riding very, very high with prospective players of this game,” he said.

Zenke has spent many hours exploring the test version of the game this year; it’s kinda like Warcraft, he said, but there are enough enhancements to make it compelling. “They’ve taken the framework that Warcraft has perfected and copied it over as best as they can, and then they’ve taken a lot of those game elements one step further,” he said.

Warhammer will be the No. 2 title in the genre within six months, he predicted. Considering the success of Warcraft, that’s high praise. “There’s no such thing as a World of Warcraft killer,” he said. “You can’t just turn off 10 million people’s interest in the game.”

Brewfest! A full year later, the event that resparked my love of WoW is finally back on. I finally got the chance to get my reward. As I think I’ve probably said here before, I managed to get all the tickets required to buy my handstamp – and bought it – but I wasn’t even level 40 yet by the time the event ended. As a result, I’ve had that handstamp sitting in my bank for twelve months, just waiting for the event to return.

I was worried, I have to tell you. This year mounts aren’t a part of the daily quest experience, with the new Brewfest Kodo a rare drop from the event’s raid mob. So far I’ve just done the normal quest hijinks, grabbing my new novelty stein and making a barker run – I hope that my newly guilded self will have the opportunity to do the raid event this year. By the same token, really looking forward to Hallow’s End for the same reason!

Hats off to Blizz for letting me make use of last year’s content – even though for some reason they want to screw us out of fun cross-faction mounty goodness. To be honest I have to say I don’t understand why they aren’t putting out the Kodo the same way the Ram was available last year. I honestly don’t think that the company is biased towards one faction or the other, but it just seems weird that they wouldn’t give the Alliance a chance to get a Horde mount as easily as we Hordies got theirs. Then, next year, both could show up as drops.

Eh, their game. Just happy I’m going to have the opportunity (I think) to get into the holiday raid content. Yay guilding!

Working to get back on track now that I’m home (really really bad travel experience on the way back). To tide you over today, enjoy two of VirginWorlds’ first video presentations, walking and talking with the Brent and Darren over the course of this week in Austin.

AGDC Day One and Two Video
AGDC Day Three Video