Mulling the last few months of bad MMO industry news has made me think of titles I’ve missed out on. I’ll be honest: I never played Auto Assault. Not once. I feel bad about it too, but it really didn’t appeal to me much back then. Now, mired as we are in the designs of today, a car-based fast-action game sounds like a ton of fun (and makes me kind of hopeful for Jumpgate Evolution).

One game I did play, and I’m really happy I did, was the short-lived Mythos. The stunted step-sibling to Hellgate: London, it was a quirky fantasy hack-and-slash that never made it out of Beta. You have to wonder if Flagship had gone after Mythos instead of the muddled mess that was Hellgate, would they still be around today? Their RMT payment concept was much more straightforward than what they floated Hellgate with, and the tried-and-true hack-and-slash genre was much more of a sure bet.

Read more

I’ve written before about the frustrations players have finding and following content in MMOs. Specifically I think it’d be helpful to have guides or aides that specifically connect players with level-appropriate content. In my discussion of ‘the Personal NPC’, I brush against the problem that players face when they return to a character after an extended absence. Back in the day Brent dropped all of his quests when we left World of Warcraft so that he could come back fresh, and I’ve been reflecting on that ‘coming back fresh’ element. More on that in a sec.

In some ways I think the bewilderment of a returning player is almost equal to the transition from a new player to a veteran. In games like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars there isn’t a lot in the way of a problem there. Point A to Point B, no problem. What about a game like EverQuest 2, though? Or Dungeons and Dragons Online? If you’ve never tried to make your way through that content without a signpost, you’ll know: it’s hard. My thought is that there are ways to solve the issues of contextless gaming and confusing leveling paths. Ways that involve cool instanced visitor centers! Read on.

Read more

In a comment to my post yesterday about Warhammer, Snafzg said: “If you’re releasing a product you’re damned right I’m going to compare it to another established product in the market. If you launch something that doesn’t compare in terms of quality, why should people give you the benefit of the doubt, especially as paying customers? We don’t do it with automobiles, restaurant food, or clothing. Why do MMOs get a free pass?”

Sorry, I just don’t buy these ‘we’re too easy on MMOs’ arguments. Should they be good? Yes. Should they run? Yes. Should they be fun? Yes. If any of these things are untrue at launch, I totally agree, that’s unacceptable. Witness: Vanguard, Age of Conan, Auto Assault, etc, etc.

But if the question is, “Should they be as good as a game that’s been running for four years?”, the answer is no. If you think the answer should be yes you’re dreaming. Seriously. Look at this realistically. While WAR was still deciding whether to wear boxers or briefs World of Warcraft was fiddling with PvP balance, raid tweaking, even superfluous fun content like mounts. Blizzard has had four years of live service to tweak, fix, and change their game. As a result (as I said on SUWT), World of Warcraft is the best MMO ever made, hands down, do not pass Go.

Warhammer has had two months. If you seriously expect a game that’s been out in the sun for two months to compare, polish/content/balance-wise with a four year old game, you’ve really got to re-examine your priorities. MMOs are not likes restaurants, automobiles, or clothing. If a car doesn’t run, it’s because there was a problem in the factory that could have been fixed on the drawing board. If clothes don’t fit, it’s because they were sewn wrong in the factory. If restaurant food tastes bad, it’s because it was prepared badly in the kitchen.

Get it through your heads:

Beta testing is a joke. We’ve talked about it for ages, about the motives behind ‘free players’ and the lack of actual testing. People do not play Betas like they play live games, it’s a demonstrable fact. As a result, the only way to know for certain if you’ve done the right thing is to launch your game. Warhammer did the right thing; they launched, they hit the waters, and now they’re swimming like crazy.

They’re trying to understand what exactly they’ve built in relation to how players interact with the systems, in relation to how the systems interact with each other, and so on and so forth. In a couple of months Warhammer is going to have more content, two more classes, and a lot more balance. That’s when I’ll go back, and that’s when we’ll start to hear a lot of amazing things about this great game Mythic has created.

So, say it with me: MMOs are different.

Tonight I finished Fable 2, and it made me extremely reflective. Suffice it to say that the end of Molneux’s masterpiece is evocative and (if you’re a softie like me) painful. I was specifically playing the game to be as ‘good’ as I could, and as a result had to make some hard decisions. I’ll be honest: it hurt. I didn’t get teary eyed. And, to be honest, I felt a little cheated because I thought some of the storytelling decisions were weak. It wasn’t quite as well told a story as I would have liked. I still really enjoyed the game overall.

Minor quibbles aside, Peter completely ‘hooked’ me. He really got those emotions he was looking for. I felt things, I really felt the impact of the story’s ending. I want a chance to go back and do it over again, it’s so painful. But I can’t, because Fable’s not that kind of game. I can’t help but think about our favorite game genre as it relates to these emotional and storytelling questions.
Read more

One of the things I’ve been really interested to note at 70 in World of Warcraft is the sheer variety of quests there are to do. My understanding is that this depth of experience is continued out into the leveling curve for Lich King, which is great to hear. What really raised my eyebrows is the realization that World of Warcraft already has one or two quests that are functionally very similar to Warhammer’s Public Quest concept.

I’m stretching a premise to make a point, but bear with me. There are two daily quests in particular associated with the Shattered Sun Offensive that surprised me. The first is The Battle Must Go On, a quest on the Isle proper. Essentially it’s just another ‘kill 6 demons’ quest, but it also requires players to stab a battle standard into a particular demon call the Emissary of Hate. Once he’s slain, you just use the item on him and your quest goal is ticked off. The public bit is that you don’t have to have killed the Emissary yourself – you can impale any old Emissary corpse lying around. I’ve seen numerous instances of cooperation with this part of the quest; more powerful 70s even going out of their way to slay an Emissary as an obvious public service.

Even more powerfully PQ-like is the quest Blast the Gateway, in the Throne of Kil’jaeden area of Hellfire Peninsula. It’s only accessible via flying mount (just behind Thrallmar), and is just crawling with critters for the two daily quests offered by the Shattered Sun rep in the area. One of the mobs thickest on the ground are the luminescent Incandescent Fel Sparks – bright green fire elementals, essentially. You’re given an item for the quest called a Living Flare, which when used creates a little flame pet that follows you around. Killing a Fel Spark causes a bright flash of light, and increases the size of your little Flare. Once it hits critical mass (indicated by a color change) you lead the Flare back to a magical gateway to blow it up.

Read more

I always find it really interesting when MMO devs stop being polite and start getting real. Like, say, in this thread over at the SWG forums. Especially in light of Sanya’s most recent – really excellent – post.

The loss of beast loyalty is NOT new, it just became apparent in GU5 due to a bug. A bug that we have now fixed. To get an understanding on how this wasn’t originally communicated to Beast Masters we have to do a little internal history lesson. Four score and seven something something…

Blixtev and company started working on an ambitious chapter that we called Beast Mastery. During this time we had X amount of designers, programmers, and artists to start our brainstorms/documentation phases.

During the weeks that followed designers, programmers, and artists started to leave the project. Where they went is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that other designers, programmers, and artists had pick up the torch where the others left off. As well as finish their own tasks. For some of those tasks we inherited, we were under the impression that the system/item was done, and just needed bug fixes/polishes. I will freely admit that I was the 3rd designer to touch loyalty/happiness pre chapter 6 launch. When I got this assigned to me, it was assigned as a “fix the bugs that come in, the system is done”. So that’s what I did.

Read more

From Tobold’s latest screed:

“Gold farming is a result of bad game design. Gold farming means that some regular player finds some particular activity in a MMORPG so boring, but necessary, that he is ready to pay somebody else to play the game for him … At some point in the future somebody will discover how to make a MMORPG in which all parts of the game are fun to play, and there are no parts to “grind” to achieve some result of virtual currency or level. And that game will have no gold farming. Not because it would be impossible, or because of being threatened with bans, but just because it wouldn’t make sense to pay somebody else to have all that fun for you. The impotent rages of game developers against RMT are really just a reflection of their own failure to make their games fun in all areas.”

Someday someone is going to make a perfect game, where things are always fun all the time? Can’t wait. I’ve played a few, sure … they were called First Person Shooters. Not a one had to entertain a player longer than, say, 15 hours. None had to entertain a player for hundreds the way even the most basic MMO is expected to.

Gold farming is the result of human nature expressing itself inside the designer’s world. Humans are amazing optimizers, especially when it comes to repetitive activities. Do something often enough, and we mentally do our own game design aimed at thwarting or subverting what’s already in place. This is why people buy gold and use powerleveling services – they’ve chosen the optimal path they see between themselves and their goal.

Read more