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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This is a truly epic week for Massive games … and in a good way , for flipping once! Hellgate, Tabula Rasa, Pirates of the Caribbean, EVE Fan Fest, and FFXI Fan Fest are all packed into these seven days. Go MMOGdom.

This week was a great one for MMOGs, as not one but three online games went live. Probably the highest profile is the much-awaited sci-fi experience from Richard Garriott, Tabula Rasa. General British has a thank you to everyone who has played the Beta so far. Last Friday, players got a chance to try to kill him (in-game, of course) and there’s a lengthy write up of the end-of-beta event at IGN. Next Generation has an interview with the man himself on what it took to get TR released.

“Tabula Rasa was very different from how I approached Ultima. In Ultima I came up with a series of virtues and tried to explore those. I wasn’t aiming for a system that was “the truth” or the truth of ultimate reality (though I think they make pretty good guides to live by) but they allowed for exploration and that was the key. So (when making Tabula Rasa) I took a step back and said to myself, ‘what was the point of that system, why did I do it in the first place?’.”

Meanwhile, Producer Starr Long has chat with Gamespot that tackles what the future might hold for the game.

“We plan to do yearly large expansions with other planets and all the creatures, missions, etc., associated with that. Between those times, we will be adding content to existing systems, like player-versus-player and military surplus every few months.”

Lead Designer Paul Sage has a few words about the game’s development from a more technical standpoint.

I feel like such a dip. First I go on about Allen Varney’s writing, and now I feel the need to pimp out the work of Jim Rossignol, Keiron Gillen, and Alec Meer over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Kerion’s most recent post (very germaine to the site here, don’t you know) is all about the Making of A Tale in the Desert.

Abstractly these are simple challenges, but its implications could lead to all manner of human problems. To see how players reacted to this, consider the Test of the bureaucracy. “A few people are assigned the precious opportunity to start a bureaucracy,” explains [Teppy], “You do well in this test by growing it as big as you can. It’s an organisational puzzle. Anyone in the bureaucracy can take it over, and so gain its resources. It’s easy for them to do it. In fact, people who are lower ranked in the bureaucracy, so are giving lots of points for you, but getting few for themselves… and there’s the most of them, they have the most to gain by taking over, ruining your hard work and taking it for themselves. It’s a test to see how you manage a large organisation.”

Other great posts from the site include:

• Commentary on the first EVE Econ report.
• The true story of yet another bughunt.
• An interview with Henry Jenkins.
• The making of Dungeon Siege.
• A pimp for Drift City, an F2p driving MMOG.
• The making of Sacrifice. (I really love this game.)

If you’re into PC gaming (and if you’re not, why are you reading this site), I highly recommend their work. Poets all.

Here’s the deal: quests and quest journals are the reason I like Massively multiplayer games now. I played EQ and SWG and etc, etc, before World of Warcraft, just like all the other jaded MMOG hags. I thrilled to the social gaming, the hackery and the slashery, the obtaining of loot, the joy of a new expansion, and all the other things that make Massive games great. But I didn’t realize how much I could love Massive games until I played World of Warcraft and grabbed my first proper quest. It was in Dun Morogh, of course, and I remember it clearly: Dwarven Outfitters, given out by Sten Stoutarm. Here’s the quest text:

“What do we have here? You look as though you might need something to keep your hands warm, hm? I’ll tell you what would help: a pair of nice, warm gloves. And, being the kind soul that I am, I’d be more than happy to provide you with a suitable pair. I’ve one condition, however. I need you to go get me some wolf meat. Nice arrangement, hm? You bring me some wolf meat, and I’ll make sure you don’t lose any digits to frostbite. Well, what do you say?”

Yeah, it’s a ‘whack the foozle’ quest, with an item requirement no less. Thankfully, the drop ratio for that wolf meat is near 100%, so eight wolves later and you’ve a.) finished your first quest and b.) dinged level 2. It’s cheesy, and it’s lame, and WoW doesn’t offer you a ‘completed quest’ journal so you’ll quickly forget about it.

For me, though, ‘Dwarven Outfitters’ was my first step into a wider world. Sten’s offer was novel, because it didn’t require me to guess what he wanted. It didn’t require me to guess what he’d give me. If I needed a reminder of what I was supposed to do, it was instantly checkable. And, most importantly, it gave me a clearly understandable goal rooted in a story.

That story part is enormously important for me. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about what’s a critical element for me in a game, and that story bit is tantamount. Bioshock and Mass Effect are two of my most anticipated games of the year not because of game mechanics (though I like what I’ve heard) or graphics (thought I like what I see). I ‘m looking forward to those games because of their different and engaging stories. Story makes the difference for me between meaningless exercise and fun.

Thousands and thousands of quest like this later, I’ll admit that sometimes I read just long enough to determine “you want me to kill how many?” That said, there is a story here. A cold newbie adventurer wanders up to this dwarf, and the guy offers this bum a chance to kit himself out with new gear. It’s short, it’s to the point, and it works. The very next quest you get, though it’s just another whack the foozle quest, begins to set up the Dwarf v. Trogg conflict that is pervasive in the Dwarven zones for the rest of the game.

From the get-go, WoW roots you in the story of the gameworld with a simple quest structure that grabs the player. Does this ’suck’? Thousands of kill ten rats later, I can understand why a player would be bored by such a thing. That said, I’d much much much rather have nice simple quests like this in the game than not. Not every quest can be gryphon bombardments.

Quest designers are already coming up with better alternatives. DDO’s dungeon-based experience system is an improvement. WAR is working on several improvements to multiple kinds of quests. PotBS will have a bunch of quest variants, from the sounds of things quests that EVE players will be a bit familiar with. One can only assume that the folks at places like 38 Studios, Heatwave, Colony, and Bioware are working to bring together all-new ways of having fun and telling story to players in a Massive setting.

Fundamentally, though, I shiver at the blanket suggestion that ‘quests suck’. It all comes back to ‘Dwarven Outfitters’ for me; I don’t want to go back to my days before I met Sten Stoutarm, and you can’t make me.

Just over a month now, and still (I’d like to think) going strong. Massive Update #5 is available for your perusal, at your leisure, if you so desire. Apparently, with a new format, too. Who knew? I know that 1up users have expressed enjoyment of the feature’s usefulness, but is anybody else liking it f’reals?

The Big Story

EVE Online’s tear-soaked drama session back in May has resulted in a stunning announcement: EVE Online is going to have a user-elected governance council.

This was unveiled in the New York Times article from last week, but a week has seen commentators taking up positions around the concept. Raph Koster is ambivalent about the decision, as he’s wanted something like that in previous titles he’s worked on. The inherently cynical nature of Massive game players, he fears, will stop them from treating it seriously.

“Anyway, the thing that makes me ambivalent about it is actually what the role of the group is, and how they do it. They’ll be flown out to CCP’s headquarters (on the company dime) and they will be there to check for evidence of corruption on the part of the staff. First off, a player-elected group of any sort can’t do this effectively in any way. Nobody just walking around an office can detect it effectively. Corrupt game admins don’t have posters on their walls saying “This is the gear I stole.” You can really only detect that sort of activity via careful monitoring of logs. In other words, an Internal Affairs department, which CCP already has.”

It’s not every weekend that I’m apparently involved in a scandal. It’s a tempest in a teapot, but I guess it’s more scandalous than my average day. Mental note: must take up more offers of buyoffs and hookers.

Last Friday I saw Scott Jennings’ note about the latest EVE Online Kurfuffle. I know we have a lot of EVE players on Slashdot, so I pulled a good submission out of the bin and put it up on the site. I was very explicit about the nature of the post:

It should be pointed out at the moment all of the evidence put forward is circumstantial; take with a grain of salt.

Despite my attempt at making the post neutral ground, there was a lot of spitting on both sides of the issue. The editors (ie: me) were specifically singled out in a few posts:

Seems like if BoB has an ‘in’ with CCP, Goons have an ‘in’ with Slashdot. Do you realize how fast this made it onto the Slashdot front page (before CCP even had a chance to respond that they would respond)? I personally think that game owners and site editors have whatever editorial discretion (which includes modifying game balance) they want over their game/site - it’s the player/reader’s discretion to play/read, so I’m not getting upset about it, but methinks there is a greater “meta game” going on here then most people are aware.

Today, once again, Lum comes to the rescue with a link to the official CCP IA investigation report. I’m guessing maybe I won’t be invited for more interviews in the near future:

The objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. In this particular case, instead of receiving notification of a possible problem and sufficient time to examine and address it, we faced a coordinated and hostile attack executed on our forums, Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and other outlets at the beginning of a three-day weekend. We believe this speaks volumes of the intention of the person(s) responsible for orchestrating this scheme. Verification of this can be readily found on the forums of the people responsible—or at least could, the last time we looked.

Soo … excitement. If you want actual commentary on this, go read Scott’s comments on his post. Thought-provoking as always.

Me, I’m just posting about this because I want to be absolutely clear: I hate everyone equally. The idea stated in the Slashdot comments and intimated by CCP’s writeup, that folks putting stories on Slashdot are somehow involved, is beyond ludicrous. The only bias I have in putting stories on the site is that they should involve complete sentences.

The first in what I hope to be a series of interview I’ll feature here on the site is now available … off site. I did an interview with CCP’s CMO Magnus Bergsson over at Slashdot, and I think it turned out really well. Here’s a sample:

Slashdot: Right, okay, so I think one of the things that people were really frustrated by with that, is I guess, the hardcore … EVE has this reputation as a very ‘tough’ game, and obviously there are a lot of people who really enjoy that. Why do you think the hardcore nature of the game appeals to so many people?

Magnus: Uhhh wow, that’s a big question. EVE can be very hardcore, and it can be also a very casual game. It really depends on how you play it. But most of these people who are commenting on the forums and so forth are the hardcore players, they’ve been with the game for many years. If you live in 0.0, it’s very hardcore. It’s a very you know, dog eat dog world, and I for one, I live there, I am one of those hardcore players. You know, it’s just the threat the, big death penalty and the amount of strategy you have to employ and the amount of thinking you have to do, and I think it’s a big big challenge, and I think these people really enjoy the challenge.