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 had the utmost pleasure last week to speak with Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer for EverQuest 2, about the process of making their upcoming expansion Rise of Kunark. We gabbed for quite a bit, and managed to cover quite a bit of ground, including:

• Highlights for tradeskillers and soloists
• The seamless zone tech that didn’t make it into Faydwer
• What the team did with those extra four months of production
• The design considerations behind Veeshan’s Peak
• A discussion of the original uber-ambitious content schedule for EQ2 and
• The zone that didn’t quite make it into the expansion.

I particularly enjoyed his commentary on the process of ’selling a relationship’ to players:

My dad the professional sales guy, for his entire career, he was one of the good guys where he would always describe the bad salesguys as the ‘used car salesmen’ trying to get you on the one sale. The good salesguys are the ones who understand you’re selling a relationship. I’ve always thought about MMOs the same way: they are all about the relationship. If you are not selling the relationship, as in you want to provide a service over a long period of time, you need to get out of the business. There’s no room for people who don’t want to play that way, and there’s no room for people who can’t afford to play that way.

Lots and lots and lots more below. Read more

MMOG customer service is getting better, right? Almost across the board, the experience of getting help inside your favorite gameworld is getting less onerous.

Well …

Herein lies the tale of one man in uniform who just wanted to get his Hero on while he was abroad, and has been given the run around for going on three months. I’ve done what I can to help without going public with this, and it’s gotten him nowhere. Soo … I hope this informs and entertains.

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The NDA on Tabula Rasa has been lowered for press-folks when it comes to impressions. I can’t share screens or specifics on missions, but I can give you an earful on the overall experience. As always, I want to preface this with a note that this is a game still in Beta. Lots of things can change before launch, and I’m just one guy with a very particular slant on Massive gaming. Your Mileage May Vary.

In short: Tabula Rasa is a fun, fluid, and un-samey take on the Massive genre. There are a ton of familiar signposts for the Massive gamer, but they’re couched in ways that are going to feel just different ‘enough’ that people are going to take notice. As I mentioned in the VW podcast over the weekend, I have reservations about this title’s impact on the industry as a whole. I’m particularly concerned about the game from a business standpoint. Just the same, the short time I’ve had with this title has convinced me there are going to be a lot of people who will really enjoy this.

Read on for the immediate highlights and concerns brought about by a week’s worth of playing Tabula Rasa.

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Why do MMOG hags wander? Whyfor is there the incessant need to flit, to flutter, from world to world? When I think about my MMOADD, I’m not thinking about the usual locust-like consumption of content that all dedicated Massive gamers do. That’s the norm: As new games come out we rise as one, swarming like the plagues of Northwestern Africa (been watching Planet Earth) into a new world to level, grind, and consume.

When I talk about MMOADD, it’s a much more serious disorder. I’ll cop to it: I’ve hit max level in precious few games. Alt-itis was the cure back in the days of EverQuest, when there weren’t really many alternatives and I couldn’t afford multiple accounts. Now, though, players have a bounty of choice. I have - no joke - 12 different Massive games installed on my machine right now. That’s not even all the games I have discs for, just the ones installed. Thanks to my somewhat laughable designation as ‘journalist’, I get to play some of those games gratis … which makes it even harder to focus on the here and now, like Yoda wants me to.

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Bartle’s List:

• Edward Castronova
• Raph Koster
• Jessica Mulligan
• Jake Song
• Roy Trubshaw

Matt’s List:

• Rob Pardo
• Timo Soininen
• Jun Zhu
• Andrew Gower

My List: (keeping in mind that Raph, Jessica Mulligan, and Rob Pardo are ‘taken’.)

• Richard Garriot - Cuz that Ultima Online thing was kinda important. All respect to Meridian 59 and Brian Green, but UO caused something of a stir with the massive and the multiplayer and the whatnot and the hey. A bunch of the crankiest of current Massive commentators are still quietly talking about the days pre-Trammel under their breath, in one way or another. If nothing else, the Ultima series got a lot of other people into the business in the first place. Heck, he was even the victim of one of the earliest well-documented griefings.
  
• Nick Yee - Nick has overcome personal hardship, sweated, toiled, and cried … all to tell us which age group is most likely to participate in gender play. Nick’s research is not only fascinating and well done, it’s compelling stuff. Via the player essays he takes in, it’s also deeply personal and always worth reading.
• Richard Bartle - Hah! Easy one. I suppose he sort of ‘goes without saying’, which is why he’s not on Matt’s list, but I very much think he’s worth mentioning. Above and beyond his work with Roy Trubshaw, he kind of wrote the book on the subject of making massives. He’s an engaging speaker, a funny guy and intelligent guy, and a personal inspiration. Well deserving of ‘most important’ status.
  
• Hiromichi Tanaka - One of the driving forces behind Final Fantasy XI, that ‘other’ really popular subscription-based Massively Multiplayer game. FFXI is incredibly important and (I feel) too often overlooked by western gamers. They have top-notch customer service, an amazing events team, the game is now on (PS2/360/PC) three separate platforms … and we owe a lot of thanks to Tanaka for all of that.
  
• John Smedley - So he’s done some unpopular stuff. Some gamers think he’s the closest thing Massive games have to a great Satan. And yet … SOE is profitable, pulling in more games via Platform Publishing and Station Access, and is branching out into F2P titles. I’d say that’s pretty important.

So … who is on your list?