I’m working through my Flickr feed updating and cataloguing content from the last few months. I put up my photos from my visit to Mythic Entertainment’s offices; whereas the lengthy Massively Goes to WAR series covered the game content I saw, these are just some random photos from behind the scenes. I particularly found the inspirational/development posters really interesting. Check em out.

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

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.

Less Is Better Than More – The monthly fee-less games will continue to gain in popularity in 2007. With Dungeon Runners and Guild Wars both proving out NCSoft’s wisdom, other companies will begin to consider changing up the usual box-and-a-monthly-sub costs. At least one major U.S. Massive game will offer a substantially different payment setup than the monthly subscription by the end of the year.

Ding! I’m going to give this whole thing to me. Both DR and GW are doing great, and RMT/microtransactions are on everyone’s lips. I consider SOE’s decision to use microtransactions for Agency and FreeRealms a win for this point.

Raph’s Rabbit – Whatever Raph has planned will prove to be an eyebrow raiser. Even if it’s not the Next Big Thing, Areae’s product announcement will end up sounding like a pretty good deal and will be a constant topic of conversation towards the end of the year. We won’t see whatever it is live in 2007.

Ding! Another ’safety’ one, kinda, but the buzz for Metaplace is high and rising.

Later is Worse Than Sooner – One of the big MMOGs slated for release ’soon’ or in 2007 is not going to make it out this year. Whatever game it is, gamers will increasingly think of it as a lost cause, and you’ll see less public interest in the game going forward.

Buzz! Surprisingly, folks are still as fascinated as ever for all the delayed titles. I had kind of expected Conan to lose some steam from a delay, but the anticipation still seems to be there. Warhammer is hotter than ever.

Bio-Shocking – Whatever Bioware has planned is going to make people really excited.

Buzz! No announcement. Dangit!

Beggar’s Canyon – SOE is finally going to get off its ass and do *something* with Star Wars Galaxies.

Ding! I’m actually going to give this one to me. I never would have imagined the something to be ‘actually make the existing game something people would want to play’, but there you go. The housing event, beast mastery, the upcoming space stuff … SWG is looking really great in the here-and-now and the fans are taking note.

Ever Awesome – 2007 will be the year EverQuest 2 finally gets its due. Good fallout from Faydwer and hype for the next expansion, as well as players looking for an alternative from WoW, will swell the ranks of SOE’s flagship. We’ll start hearing boastful subscription numbers out of them, as they start to get back into the range EQ Live inhabited back in the good old days a few years back.

Errr … ding? Sort of? Faydwer had tons of great fallout, the higher players get into Kunark the more they’re liking it, and there are definitely more people playing … but not quite the amount I predicted here. I’m going to call this half a ding? Is that okay?

Newbie – A company that has, as of yet, not published a Massive game will announce their intention to do so. They’ll promise the moon, and will have already failed and announced the end of the project by December.

It was close, but Ding! From publisher signing to dev shop closure, all in one year. Life’s tough.

Fallout Fallout – The Fallout MMOG will be canceled, with little explanation as to what happened.

Buzz! More’s the pity.

In Space … – Eve Online will continue to do crazy-awesome well, with their end-of-year numbers at the end of 2007 simply blowing peoples minds.

Ding! The rest of this prediction didn’t come true, but Trinity has ended a really strong year for the game, so I’m going to give this one to me.

Gutshot – The release of one of the new generation of heavyweights will prove devastating to a member of the old guard. A game we all think of today as stable and healthy will be a shadow of its former self by the end of the year.

Buzz! You have to remember, though, that I was assuming that WAR, PotBS, and Conan were all going to be released this year. Ahh well.

2007’s Winners: Warhammer Online, Eve Online, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars

Not grading on this one, but I think this was mostly right. Even if WAR didn’t release, I think it’s got a ton of mindshare going into next year.

2007’s Losers: Star Wars Galaxies, Gods and Heroes, Vanguard, Dark Age of Camelot

SWG doesn’t belong on this one, but the others seem pretty much right on. DAoC ‘lost’ a bit, I think, because now everybody knows Mythic is cribbing the best of its RvR system for WAR … meaning there’s what reason to play the older game again? I got asked a long while ago why Gods and Heroes was on here. In December of last year it still looked mighty promising. The answer then (and up through most of the summer) was that it just looked too generic to work. Despite my rising enthusiasm through the fall it looks like I wasn’t the only one that felt that way.

That means the grand total is-

Right: 6.5
Wrong: 5.5

Hey! I didn’t do to bad, all things considered. Go me.

Did I let myself off too easy here? Let me know about it. And if you want my MMOGnostications for 2008 … that’s tomorrow’s post.

I tried to approach this interview with a bit more of a ‘high level’ approach than most other folks probably did for interviews with Mr. Jacobs that week. I’d really enjoyed the MMO’s Past, Present, and Future talk the night before, and we spent some time touching on the subjects that event brought up. We do, of course, talk Warhammer as well, but there’s lots of ‘other’ stuff in there too. Specifically, Mr. Jacobs opines about being a small developer in the modern MMOG market, the RMT business and the SOE White Paper, and the role of viral marketing.

Read on for my transcript of our discussion, or feel free to download the whole thing and give a listen yourself.

I sat down with Mr. Jacobs at around 1:30pm on Thursday, the 8th of March 2007. We spoke on the auxiliary expo floor of GDC, in the North part of the complex.

MMOG Nation: I found the event with you folks last night very interesting; obviously I’d like to talk about Warhammer but I was wondering if we could start on that tack?

(quick exchange with a co-worker)

MN: So, my first question is … is the Massive genre saturated?

Mark Jacobs: Touche’ (laughing) [ed: This was a question Mr. Jacobs had stated the previous night that he 'hated being asked in interviews.']
MN: No, really, my first question is, do people really ask you that, that often?

Mark: I get asked that question at least once every couple months.

MN: Really? And why do you think that people don’t really understand where things are going with this? Because, I don’t really think that was something you guys got into much last night. These are springy chairs.

Mark: Yeah, I noticed that too, be careful. Why do I think people ask that question? One, because I think they really haven’t studied history. Two because it’s a really easy question to ask, and three because they want to ask a somewhat controversial question without coming out and asking a controversial question.

MN: Um, I totally agree. One of the things I found really interesting about the talk yesterday as far as the future sort of things was the comment … actually I’m not sure if it was your comment anymore … long night … your comment about “do one thing at least 100% better.”

Mark: Yup.

MN: What do you think … I guess I’m going to jump around, my apologies. What do you think Warhammer does 100% better than anything else?

Mark: Oh, our RvR. That’s something we did obviously quite successfully with Dark Age of Camelot. If you talk to our players, even players of other games, they think that Camelot’s implimentation of RvR and PvP was the best in any MMO. Certainly our longevity, our subscriber count, all of that attest to that. The market is kind of unforgiving. If you produce a very bad product, you don’t do well. Obviously, because we’ve lasted so long, because our game remains very popular, we produce a very good product. Hopefully, a great product. And since the core of this game is also RvR and Player vs. Player, I think it’s a safe thing to say that that is what people really liked. So we have that going for us right from the beginning.

The other thing we have is, really, a lot of experience, not only with Camelot, but all the other games we’ve done. I’ve been making games, online games now, for over twenty years. Mythic has been making games for over 11 years. There’s only a handful of people, let alone companies, that can say the same thing. So, we are now in a position, as being part of EA, that we don’t have the same constraints on us that we did as an independent developer. If I need to say “Boy, I could use another 25 artists on a project” or, “I need a few more months” or, “I want to spend an additional X on programming resources”, I can do that. As an independent, I couldn’t. And so … I think that, when you look at what we’re doing today with a game, what we can do over the next X months until release, I think it is very safe to say that we are going to focus on RvR and PvP in a way that we didn’t do with our game that we had in production prior to that, Imperator, and certainly as much if not more so than we did with Dark Age.

MN: So in general you would say that the EA situation has been overwhelmingly positive?

Mark: The situation with EA, as you can imagine, going from an independent, and certainly my company and I … I am certainly known as a very independent soul, going for the first time now, frankly in my life, of having a boss, and having multiple bosses, that’s certainly been challenging. But it’s not a bad challenge, it’s a good challenge. We had had investors before, so we were prepared for it.

On the other hand I have to balance that against the huge impact that EA can have on release of this game. EA has some of the best, if not the best, distribution worldwide. I think and certainly EA thinks that we are the best worldwide. So when Warhammer comes out we’ll be able to get it into more stores, worldwide, than we could have as an independent. Even as an independent with multiple deals. So if I want to go into Asia, more heavily, we’re already into Europe very heavily, and obviously the United States, I have a huge advantage with EA that I didn’t have as an independent.

I also have great access to technology and teams within EA. When you’re as big as EA is, and you’ve done as many games as EA has, and you’ve had as much success as EA has, there’s a lot of institutional knowledge. I get to draw on all that knowledge.

Playtesting. The game has been in playtesting, beta testing right now, for months. Internal only. But when I say internal, if it was Mythic, it would be just, you know, just our company and a few Q&A guys because that’s all we could afford. Now I have everybody within EA that I can call on and go “Hey, you want to be a tester, come on in”, “You want to play the game, come on in”. That gives me extra time to help balance the game, to get feedback on the game, from very trusted testers. Testers who I know aren’t going to post on a site, testers who have no axe to grind, just testers from EA.

MN: Just to kind of poke at you one more time, Daniel James, yesterday at the thing, was very much in favour of smaller companies doing, I guess, more innovative projects. Do you think that most folks who are doing smaller games would jump at the chance to do something like what you folks did? Do you still believe that it’s possible for smaller companies to make Massively Multiplayer Games?

Mark: First of all, as I said yesterday, Daniel James is a guy who I respect so highly. Here’s a guy who took a game, that really nobody believed in when he launched it, and it’s been a great success. So all credit to him. We need more people like that in the industry. I mean, we were like that, we were a small company our entire life. We had no venture funding. The founders had no money. Neither myself nor Rob Denton were independently wealthy. And so, when I see someone like Daniel have that kind of success I think it’s great for the industry

Do I think that most small developers would jump at the chance to do a large-scale game, yeah, probably. I think that the guys like Daniel are the exception rather than the rule. I think that he’s a very dedicated, very bright man, and he wants to do his thing. And that’s great. Again, we need more like that. I think most small developers have dreams of being large developers. We certainly did.

Now, what’s going to happen within the industry, I think that in the MMO space it’s going to get increasingly difficult to compete with the big boys. Frankly, I think that it’s almost impossible. Again, this sounds slightly egotistical, but the day of the “Mythics”, company that started in the basement. And that’s where we started, Rob in his basement, my in my basement, those days if you want to compete in certain genres …

MN: Like Fantasy.

Mark: Like Fantasy MMOs, those days are gone. It’s not going to happen. You need too many resources now. Back even when we released Camelot. … if we had released Camelot today, with the assets we had, with the game as it was, we would not be as successful. But even in that case we spent two and a half million on it. We were able to sell part of our company to get the funding to do the game. If we were doing this on our own, there’s no way. You need funding to do it. Now, that’s for the MMORPGs. There’s lots of other games [genres], as well as MMOs, that you can do it much, much cheaper and compete. But when you have Blizzard spending a lot of money on games, when you have Sony spending a lot of money on games, when you have Turbine spending a lot of money games … you know, the day of as they used to call us “The Two Brothers in the basement”, making an online RPG, it’s going to be very, very, very tough.

MN: Okay. You mentioned Camelot, and its situation today if you were to release it now. What do you think the situation is with Camelot now? When you folks release Warhammer a couple few months down the line, what do you think that Camelot is going to look like considering that both games have very similar feature sets?

Mark: Historically, and this is going back to the days of online games, not even Massives, one game has never killed another game. WoW did not kill any other game. It hurt other games, but it did not kill it. The only ones that generally kill the games are the developers, or the publishers. Either they didn’t do a good job in the beginning, in which case they don’t survive, or they abandon the game. Gamers are at times like sharks, when they smell blood that’s it. And if they smell the fact that the developer and the publisher no longer cares about the game, and there’s something else that they can play that’s like the game, a lot of them will move over.

In our case, we’re continuing to support Camelot. We will support Camelot until the players tell us it’s time to turn off the lights and burn down the castle for good. And I hope that day does not come for a long time. We’ve had a five year run, we’re already entered into our sixth year, we just did another expansion pack, we’re still working on the game … I hope it has a ten year run or more.

MN: Okay, something I found very interesting to kind of get back to Warhammer for second, something that I found very interesting with the approach you guys are taking is the enthusiastic support on your website with video blogs, regular type of blogs, that sort of thing … letting people like Paul Barnett speak in public … *cough* … what, I guess, what’s the tack there, what made you decide to let people into the development process a little bit?

Mark: One of the reasons that Camelot was successful back in 2001, was that we had to do a lot of thing virally. We didn’t have a lot of money. Our total marketing budget, and this wasn’t for a year, this was our entire marketing budget including E3, was $600,000. That was an unbelievable small amount of money for a game over a two year development cycle. Including, again, having a big booth at E3! So if you take away the big booth at E3, we spent very little money on marketing. So we had to work smarter.

Having Paul speak publicly, as you say, is a great thing. I’ve known Paul for a very, very, very long time. He’s a long-time friend from the MUD days. He’s a MUD creator, I’m a MUD creator. And we’d always hoped to work together. And when I got the opportunity to get Warhammer, I convinced him to come onboard to work with me. And his enthusiasm, his love for the IP, his love for the game, his love for the development process, I wanted to share with everybody. You know Mythic, I think, has shown over the years how much we about our players. We’ve resisted things like advertising in games, we don’t do item sales in games, we’ve even been in lawsuits with these people. You know while we’re not perfect, and no developer is, I think we’ve shown that we care more about the player than any other developer out there.

But sometimes we come off, and I come off I know … I have a weird bi-polarness about me. On one hand I’m the business guy, I’m the CEO of Mythic. I’m the guy who does or did all our negotiations, I have a law degree. On the other hand I’m also the lead designer, I’m a programmer. So I’ve got this kind of … I think bi-polarness is a good way to say it, that sometimes people think that I’m a suit or the company is a little bit too stuffy, and Paul’s a good way of showing how we’re not. And we have people like Sanya Thomas, who’s always been Sanya, and others. But I think having Paul was an important addition, to show that we’re anything but corporate, but we can have a guy like him happily represent the company, and happily do things internally for us as well, that are crucial to game development. He’s working with me as a design manager, we work very well together. I’m the big vision guy, I write the big documents, he takes them and puts his spin on them. We talk about things, we argue with things, and it’s great. It’s made for a better game.

MN: Okay. Just to touch on something you mentioned: Real Money Transfer. SOE’s White Paper recently ..

Mark: *cough* Ayeah.

MN: Yeah. SOE’s White Paper was very interesting, but for me personally I think there were some very troubling conclusions reached at the very end of the paper, and I’ve written about that. I just wanted to gauge … I know you’re very much against RMT, but specifically from the White Paper, what did you take away from that?

Mark: Well, I looked on the White Paper in the same way I’d look at a study by the Tobacco industry saying that cigarettes don’t cause cancer. When you have a company that is already participating in RMT that has, you know, you have EQBay, when you have a company that has announced that they are working on a game that is going to feature item sales and RMT, that having a White Paper supporting it shouldn’t shock anybody. So as far as I was concerned, there was nothing in there that I found interesting. There were some things I already knew, there were some things I don’t frankly agree with. My stand remains, frankly, unchanged, even with the EA acquisition. I think that RMT in a game that is not designed for it, is a very very bad thing. I think the companies who participate in it, as everyone knows how I felt, about the Black Snow guys and now the IGE guys, I think they are destructive forces. I think they care solely about making money. They have no interest in helping the gamer even though they say they do, and I don’t want them in any of my games.

On the other hand, if somebody was to design a game for RMT in the United States, which could really change the nature of RMT. See, my big problem with RMT is not the fact that players are buying gold. Right? It’s the behavior that players, and not even players, that companies have to engage in in order to get that gold. See, if Sony in a way was just selling gold on its own, I would be less opposed to that on one level. Because they’re just selling the gold, right?. I think there would be legal issues and other things would concern me, but their behavior wouldn’t be affecting the enjoyment of players. But as we all know from playing these games, if you’re looking to complete a quest, if you’re looking to grind to gain some experience, or even gold to level up your character, and you go into an area and you see the farmers there, and they don’t want you there, they will train monsters on you, they will be rude to you, they will try to keep killing things to try to drive you off … that is a game-changing experience for me. That has made certain games that I’ve played, me stop playing them for a little while, because I needed to go into these areas, and I got sick and tired of getting cursed at in Chinese. Or I’d go somewhere to try to kill a monster, and guys that were many, many levels above me would cast one spell, aggro the whole group and I’d have to wait and wait and wait.

My stand against it isn’t “oh my God, selling everything is bad”, my stand on it is anything that affects the behavior or the enjoyment of players in the game, especially when it’s caused by people looking to make a few bucks off my game, is bad.

The second reason is the EULAs. I’m a real big believer in EULAs. EULAs are what help keep these games online. The day that developers in the United States lose the ability to enforce our own EULAs, is the day that MMOs will start to dissappear. These companies are breaking our EULAs, they’re flouting them in our face, their behavior’s in our face, saying “we can do whatever we want”, and I’m sorry, that’s just wrong.

MN: Okay. Just to turn that around a second, in the last conference call that Paul and the other folks had, they mentioned that very specifically Warhammer is being designed to kind of thwart RMT folks, and I’m sure you don’t want to get into great detail, but can you give us any information about what specifically you’re doing?

Mark: No. But, I can say when I wrote the game design, the initial game design for the game … every game design that I do I have certain things that I call guiding principles, certain key things about the game we must follow. It’s not, what was it from that great South Park episode, the Sword of a Thousand Truths?

MN: Indeed.

Mark: You won’t have a Sword of a Thousand Truths, that’s not a guiding principle. A guiding principle is something like, in this case, design the systems to discourage farming, and limit impact that gold farming companies can have on the game.

MN: What’s your favorite faction? In Warhammer. Online.

Mark: Ohh … hmm … that’s a tough one … Dark Elves, I really like the Dark Elves.

MN: Really? Because we haven’t really seen those folks yet, we don’t know a whole lot about them.

Mark: I like the Dark Elves, I like the Vampire Counts that aren’t really going to be in this game right now, at least at launch. [ed: Woot, expansion material!] Umm … what else? Those are probably my two favorite.

MN: I won’t ask why. What is there, that has been released, with the four factions that have been talked before, which of those gets across what Warhammer is all about?

Mark: I’m sorry I don’t follow the question.

MN: I’m sorry. So we’ve got Dwarves …

Mark: Dwarves, Greenskins, Empire, Chaos.

MN: Right … there’s been many colourful adjectives used to describe them. Which of those four do you think people should really associate with Warhammer?

Mark: Oh, I think that right now Chaos has it down best of all of them. Empire is coming along nicely. Dwarves and Greenskins also came out really well. But if you were to look at the areas we’ve done so far and go “This area is the best”, the area we’ve done best with so far, is the pairing, the Chaos and Empire pairing. I mean, you come in, you’ve seen them, you come into the area, there are rocks with runes on them, we’ve got eyeballs that follow you, it’s really creepy: That’s Chaos.

MN: Excellent. Well, I think that’s pretty much everything I had. But I always like to end an interview with one last question: for the people who will listen to this, who will read this, what is there about Warhammer that you want them to know about?

Mark: Specifically … ooop … yeah, let’s spill the Diet Pepsi all over the keyboard, that’d go over well. “War is Everywhere”, that’s the key. You’re going to come into the game, it’s not going to be sweetness and light, and tea and crumpets and all that. It is going to be war, cannons are going to be firing, bodies are going to be flying all over the place, it is War, and you are in it right from the beginning.

MN: Well, thank you very much sir. I appreciate it a lot.

—-

And I do. Many thanks again to Mr. Jacobs for sitting with me on what, I’m sure, was a busy day.

Abalieno: Well, there are many different aspects to it. Let me take this from an unconventional perspective. Just yesterday I watched the second movie of “Ghost in the Shell” and it talks a bit about the concept of “external memory”. It’s something both modern and ancient at the same time, also deeply connected to the “nostalgia”. What I can say is that it’s something I’ve always done a lot. That I have the “urge” to do. Before I started writing on a website I always went around with a voice recorder. I have thousands of hours recoreded with my thoughts about everything. Then I have notebooks. The ideal would be about using a videocamera and record just everything, every single second. The particular light of an evening, your thoughts in that moment, and so on. It’s like an obsession (Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World” is also about this).

More specifically, I think everyone who participated to a community like a forum knows the frustration when a site goes down or a database gets wiped. Or an hard drive crash, in a more personal case. I don’t think I’m the only one who freaks out when things like that happen. Well, starting from the “golden age” of Lum the Mad there’s so much that was lost. Millions of messages, articles. That’s our history and it’s priceless. At least I’m a firm believer that it is priceless. And all lost at the same time.

You can go pick randomly an old post on my blog/webiste, or any other blog and I’m sure you can find plenty of broken links and severed discussions. That’s one reason why I tried to include as much as possible in my posts, quote a lot, save the news, comments from devs and so on. The website basically has two purposes, work as a memory and a workshop.

Initially the website was the result of a whole lot of frustration. I beta tested “Wish” for a couple of months and poured a lot of thoughts on the beta message boards. There were many interesting discussions going on but shortly after Christmas everything changed, Dave Rickey, the lead designer, was fired and the game took a completely different direction. It was very clear that it was all going down the toilet. And in fact it did. My shouts at that time were really awkward and out of place, but also a true description of what was going to happen.

I saved some forum threads before the beta boards were closed. The frustration was because I couldn’t accept that all the community had done, and all the good premises of that game were going to be wasted. I couldn’t accept that the time I passed there was going to be simply useless. So I felt the need to save all that, give it a “following” so that it wouldn’t be all lost and forgotten. Keep a memory of things. Learn lessons. Be part of a process. It was an attempt to contrast all that, and also the natural “volatility” of the forums, where threads and meaningful discussions disappear in the span of three days. You say something and two seconds later it is forgotten. Or repeated anew every two months, which is worse. Like living in a loop of redundant forums’ habits.

People today mock me with the phrase “I predicted this on my blog”.

So my site served the purpose of “fixing” some stuff. Maintain a memory and use it as a value to fuel a learning process. My own. I think working on games is exciting also because there’s a lot going on, a lot to absorb. And I’m a sponge. The site was a way to embrace all that.

I also have to say that my site wasn’t just about game design thoughts, but also about reporting news with some commentary. This is something I’m looking for even when I’m a reader. I like when on VodooExtreme or Evil Avatar I can occasionally find some “unsolicited commentary” from the editors. Many think that those are out of place and unecessary, often going too far. Instead it’s exactly what I’m looking for as a reader and what I tried to provide with my own site. Not just the “polite and clean” press release handed to you right from PR staff, but also some objective and subjective commentary that tries to delve deeper. For what is possible, as we all know that “game journalism” isn’t something easy to pull.

I’m always looking for different opinions and points of view, as long they are backed up by solid arguments. And I think there’s always the need to put beside the blind fanboysm some more objective and critical commentary. It builds consciousness when the trend is to get rid of it, uproot it systematically through polls and surveys. Today eveything goes through polls and surveys. You aren’t anymore entitled of an opinion that isn’t pre-made.

From that point onward, meaning the reason why I continued and now pulling
the handbrake, is simply for one reason: addiction. An endless passion that I fear is way beyond what I’m allowed to do. So the dead end.

Michael: On the site, in commentary, and in your discussion of why you started the site, you show an obvious passion for Massive games. What got you ‘into’ the massive genre in the first place? Was there a friend or game that drew you in? What was your first MMOG?

Abalieno: Well, should I answer? ;) Because here it shows how I’m FAR from the stereotype of the hardcore gamer who has been there since AOL and played and beta’d so many games that you would need three pages only to list them.

None of my friends play online games and none of them could be considered “gamers”, so I’m mostly a loner. Even today I’m not really part of any community, in the sense that I’m not an active part of any guild, I don’t use any Instant Messaging programs and my e-mail is relatively silent, if you don’t count spam. Sure, I post a lot on various forums, read a whole lot, but I was never able to feel at home in any group, even if I don’t know how to explain this part. I’m somewhat elusive and often people fail to recognize and understand me. It’s not a choice, just the way things are. So it’s not the hook with a group that led me to online games by chance. Instead it was something I looked for all by myself and that I strongly wanted.

Previous to mmorpgs I had some experience on MUDs, both as player and as maker, but as maker I just wrote a whole lot of ideas, so much that is not even funny. Months passed, I keep writing and nothing was ever implemented… I liked the kind of experimentation that Tarn Adams is doing today on Dwarf Fortress, and I wanted to bring that to a MUD. At that time I was also inspired by another MUD very popular here in Italy and absolutely impressive (The Gate, now closed). It was one of the most innovative, deep and articulated MUDs I’ve ever seen, sadly never exported outside Italy. It was similar in complexity to Dwarf Fortress, completely skill based, roleplay enforced and with an impressive building/crafting component. Even in that case I spent very little time playing and a whole lot discussing features, development and more, but I wasn’t part of the team (and all of the design and coding was done just by one guy) so I was just there creating and participating to discussions. Then, with the time, the MUD kept growing and drawing in more players and the focus moved more toward the game itself, worldbuilding and less on the experimentation and creative design, so I slowly lost interest and moved my attention somewhere else.

I’m not particularly smart, nor particularly creative. But I’m a sponge. I absorb, understand and learn very rapidly. And as a sponge I think I’m one of the best in the world ;) This means that everything had a strong influence on me at some point and that I owe a lot to my experiences, the communities and so on.

My first “real” mmorpg was Ultima Online. I was in a mall with my friends, around the end of November of a few years ago and I noticed the boxed set of the “Second Age”. So I was already “late” on the mmorpg thing. When was that? I don’t even want to remember… Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of all kinds of RPGs and obviously also of the Ultima series. My first computer was a Commodore 64 and I never had an Ultima game for it, but I remember that I kept rereading hundreds of times the same reviews of those Ultima games, the Bard’s Tale series, Wastelands… For me they weren’t games I wanted to play, they were dreams. Playing those games was for me like the ultimate wish, so I created a myth in my mind that wasn’t necessarily tied to the reality of those games, but just the way I imagined them. That kind of approach still influences me today. It’s something extremely strong. When I was young it didn’t matter the *quality* of the game. I remember that I played and loved games that from the design perspective were terrible. Despite this I still preferred them to much better games because I saw in them the projection of my myths, my desires, and that was stronger and more important than everything else. This is something I have a strong nostalgia about. The sort of feelings I had by playing those game when I was young are lost and elusive. And when I try to imagine something today I try to go back with my mind and try to seize those feelings. The possibility to see in a small group of pixels the most incredible things. The more time passes and the more you feel detached, and you need more and more so that you can feel a similar emotional bond. But at the end, even today, that’s what keeps me hooked to games and, inherently, to game design. The immersion. The “magic”.

If I forget what time it is, then the game I’m playing is a good game. Which is still the exact opposite of forcing long playsessions and get bored to tears.

Anyway, I was in the mall and I saw this box of Ultima Online: The Second Age. If I turn my head I still see it there in the pile of chaos behind me. They don’t do anymore good packages like that. Even “holding” the box triggers sensations that are part of that magic I wrote about above. ANYWAY, less digressions, I obviously had read about the game and I had a decent enough PC at that time to make it run. The only problem was that the game was online and I didn’t have a credit card to pay it, nor a decent connection, so I never considered the possibility. It was the REAL ultimate myth, the classic RPG love joined with the true “alternative world” where you could live with other real players the myth of the “virtual life” (at that time there was a lot of interest in the media for everything “virtual”). I was admiring the box in my hands, with the growing desire to play it despite the hurdles of the online play. It just wasn’t accessible, but the desire was so big that I decided to convince one of my friend to lend me the money (I didn’t have any available) and buy it, while starting to think all kinds of escamotages to find a way to pay it. I also knew there were unofficial shards, so in the worst case I could have continued there. Instead, in the ultimate effort, I was able to convince my mother to make a credit card just for that and the journey began.

I still remember when I logged in the game for the first time, after the long patching process. I made a new character in Trinsic (mimicking the start of Ultima 7) and the very first impact wasn’t too bad. I already knew how to use the UI as I had some experience from previous Ultimas and the inventory system was essentially unchanged. But while I didn’t have any problem with the basics, I still didn’t have any clue about what to do. There wasn’t any kind of NPC who came to greet me as the “avatar” as I expected. I was dumped in this new world without even a vague clue. After getting lost in Trinsic (and get disconnected twice because of crappy connection) I decided that a trip to Britain to visit Lord British should have been my first goal and I met another noob just outside of Trinsic. I remember we had a little chat as both of us didn’t have any clue about what we were supposed to do. So… You know what? We decided to call a GM. No, really. The game didn’t give you any direction, today players have a lot of initiative on their own, but at that time, despite being familiar to the Ultima world, I just couldn’t figure out what was the point of the game, what should have been my next step. So after a brief discussion with my occasional noob friend the most logical thing to do was to call a GM so that he could give us a clue. The problem was that the GM took some time to appear and he did in the worst moment. We were walking north toward Britain as in my initial plan, but, I don’t remember exactly, we aggroed something and neither of us knew how the hell to fight back. I remember that the GM appeared right as my noob friend died and I started to flee as fast as possible, leaving both of them behind.

That was the first and last time I called a GM in UO. I made to Britain only to be left clueless again. I was expecting to go straight to Lord British, but the throne room was deserted. Actually Britain in general was deserted. I was expecting to find it filled with NPCs, quests and stories to discover, and instead the more I continued to explore the game, the more it was impenetrable to me. For months all I did was to go from the inn near the center of Britain to the sewers to kill some rats and frogs while skilling up a little bit. When I had the courage to dare some more I learnt to go deep in the sewer till I was able to zone into the “Lost World” where I could fight some more challenging monsters, and in the case I died I could quickly come back and save my stuff. I memorized that path and that was all.

Really, for many months that’s all I saw of the game. Britain, the sewers and a very small fragment of the Lost World. I usually played during the evening for a short time and it became like an habit. I never grouped or talked with anyone at all if not to ask repairs or buy better armor. One year later my main and only character… well, still had just one GM skill (swordmanship) and another at 95 or so percent (tactics, I think). I could have won the medal as the worst player, but despite all that, I still liked the game even if I still wasn’t able to “get it”.

If I’m writing about this it’s because today if we talk about World of Warcraft, in a certain way, it is BECAUSE of those experiences I had. And I’m not talking about my personal case, but the fact that today “directed play” is one of the most important topic when mmorpgs are discussed (see the recent interview with Bioware). Or what I always defined “accessibility” (and not “polish”). And these are things I felt strongly and wrote about for a long time. It’s actually disappointing that we had to wait for that game to address very, very basic problems that were identified by our communities from a LONG time. Today everything seems foregone, but at that time it was like a crusade, or trying to fight the windmills. No one would listen or understand. And the first who did, got 8 millions of players. Heh.

Then, with the time, things slowly improved. I was able to join a guild and they introduced me to PvP, even if I was never able to do anything worthwhile due to lag issues. I was usually just the victim. I was the perfect goose for PKers and thieves. But at the end I had nothing worth stealing (despite veteran rewards, that I lost in some spectacular scams) and I learnt to avoid entirely those places frequented by gank/looters. I have never thought about complaining about them, or that a complain could be legitimate. I had accepted that part of the game and adapted to it. There were instead other things that bugged me in that game, for example the fact that there were more houses outside a town than inside it, or that I couldn’t find a two-handed sword. You know, when you play your first mmorpg you COULDN’T CARE LESS about what the game can offer to you. Instead you bring along your own expectations, your own imagination. Raph Koster actually wrote about this. I wanted to fight with a goddamn two handed sword, but there weren’t any, and I was pissed. Those are the sort of things that I never accepted. The shantytowns outside towns, lack of quests, lack of stories, lack of two-handed swords. And the dragons looked very lame and so far from my idea of a scary, powerful, huge, fire-breathing dragon. UO graphic could have been considered everything but awe-inspiring. It was very conventional and monotonous.

UO didn’t offer me sense of wonder. It killed it for good. It was a world with its own rules and habits. While instead I wanted to play my ideal of a fantasy game, with rules that came from books, movies and other games that were part of my experiences.

What fucking fantasy game is it if it doesn’t have a two handed sword? That’s what I thought.

I’ve never been an hardcore player. My interest moved from the initial fascination about RPGs to the creation of worlds and be part of that process of creation. Being a player was just the least interesting aspect. So, the reason why I care about this genre is because of the myth that lays in Origin’s slogan: “we create worlds”. I was a player as a reflection of the creative part. I like online games when they try to be something else and become worlds with their own depth. I’m still chasing that original myth and fascination. While with the time I’ve also learnt to see things from a different perspective, I’m still clinging to the same philosophy I always pursued.

If we build worlds, then numbers and sequels are retarded. And if we REALLY build a world, then there’s NO END to what you can do. You’ll never reach a point where you can sit back and say: “Ahh, I’m done. Let’s do something else”. A world can be as deep and interesting and varied as you want. And I think online games should capitalize on that, instead of progressively remove their “virtues” ( through instancing, sharding, sequels, mudflation). I often commented this from the point of view of the “ecology”. What all the developers out there are doing is BURN their worlds, and design them so that they can burn as quickly as possible. Till they become completely inhospitable to the new players who may arrive. I know this because I felt it on my skin as I felt those “accessibility” problems I described when I logged in Ultima Online for the first time. I hated all that from day one.

I use to say that this is the consumerism applied to online worlds. You jump on the new, burn it to the ground, throw it away and jump on the next. It’s all going to waste, and, incidentally, it has NO taste. It leaves very little to you. It becomes really just that compulsive, obsessive type of gameplay that gets you hooked through tricks but that lacks a deeper involvement and participation. Some players take the bait and do get hooked, but many others discard entirely the whole thing. As I wrote above, I’m not interested in this aspect, but in the “magic”. The way to create the “sense of wonder”, the awe.

This is why I often have no shame in saying that I have no interest for in-game economies. It’s not that I disown the public who likes them. But there’s very little sense of awe, “looking things as a child”, and “immersion” in an economic system. So I don’t think those parts shouldn’t exist, but they are parts that do not directly interest me. Parts that I cannot create strong bonds with.

It may sound as a contradiction as linear content can better represent the kinds of feelings I described, while a complete economic system can bring the participation and player’s involvement I was preaching about. But the real point isn’t to choose between one or the other. But find an agreement between the two. Coordinate and intersect them.

“Empowering” the players, give weight to PvP, while at the same time always try to make everything accessible for everyone. Removing the barriers. These are some of the interesting challenges. But instead I see the genre moving away from its innate “virtues” like persistence and the “massive” aspect, and those are losses that shouldn’t be underestimated, even if they lead to systems that are easier to manage and control.

But, honestly, my main interest is not even the “massive” aspect, but the “ongoing” nature of the development. As I wrote above I see these games as all-around “worlds”. They are never done and there’s always something to discuss, to learn, to imagine. Something without age. The endless craft. The endless journey.

And, of course, the desire to be there and be part of it.

Michael: What would you say your ‘proudest’ moment from a Massive game might be? The moment you’ll tell your grandkids about. Likewise, what would you say was the most memorable bad experience you’ve had in a MMOG?

Abalieno: Here’s a question not so easy to answer for me. As I said I’m a rather mediocre player and what I have achieved in MMOs is sometime even less than the “average” player. I don’t remember anything that stands out or that I’m really proud of, again also because I’m a loner.

I think the best moments I remember are still from DAoC. You see, in WoW there’s a lot of activity at the endgame in the raiding guilds, but the way this content was developed “segmented” the community a lot. There can be from ten to twenty raiding guilds or more, each with its own little world and ecosystem. These guilds rarely communicate between each other and, in a general sense, there’s no real community or identity on a server. There isn’t anything that you achieve as a whole or truly communal objectives. So the perspective of “success” or the maximum achievement is always personal and within the bounds of each guild. Outside a guild people simply ignore each other. They are phantoms. There’s nothing that really connect the players in a “world”. And the more you move toward the endgame the more your playtime will be focused on instanced content. The more your “footprint” loses consistence. More and more vaporous.

DAoC from this perspective was really different and *felt* different. You started as a phantom and slowly became tangible. That’s the reason why my memories from that game will remain stronger. The idea of the three realms at war is a very strong one and what everyone was expecting from WoW’s PvP and was deluded when instead we found just gameplay modes ripped straight from first person shooters with very little involvement and motivation. DAoC felt different because it gave truly communal objectives that were shared between all players. There was a community because we shared the world and we played always together in the same zones. The “war” was a context shared by everyone and where everyone could participate. Your own story, or the few hours you had available during an evening to play, weren’t just a personal experience that is relevant solely to you and your guildmates. Instead the RvR zones were a real battlefield, and every other player was playing a part in your game. Participation.

Those are my fondest memories. Playing for hours deep in the night (for me till 6 AM in the morning and later) to defend or capture a relic. Huge, truly epic battles between hundreds of players. A “campaign”. Aside bitching and discussing strategies on the raid chat channel I never lead anything, but even being there as one of those hundreds of players was a great experience. Sometimes the action was very slow due to some design issues. Waiting just too long inside a keep waiting for an attack that never arrived. But despite the downtimes you could feel the motivation and involvement. You could feel part of something. You could capture a keep and be sure that soon the enemy realm would come to take it back. Those desperate battles were something truly unique. It didn’t matter that at the end you would lose, what mattered is that it felt great and you had a part in a greater scenario.

Today we lost completely all that and I think this loss shouldn’t be underestimated. Today everything is relative. You could have killed Ragnaros, or its bigger friends, but it matters to you and maybe your guildmates. It’s a pocket experience that can give some “fun” feedback and maybe adrenaline rush, but when it’s over it is already past you. There’s no sense of “world” and participation. It’s just an experience to “use” and forget. It again gives you the feel of a well-trained phantom. You obediently walk along the line that was traced for you. You are just part of an herd. How’s this memorable?

(and it’s actually interesting that with Warhammer Mythic is going to remove some of those qualities from DAoC to be some more “like WoW”)

Instead I don’t know about the memorable bad experiences. I use to think about these from the perspective of game design. So I can remember bad experience because I was deluded by some decisions. Guild drama never touched me. I never fed it, nor felt it entertaining. I use to think that guild drama only really happens to those who are looking for it. Drama works till it has an audience and people like it much more than what they are ready to admit. Maybe because of my interest for game design, but everything that isn’t directly connected with the game seems to go over me, same for the drama. It just doesn’t stick on me. I’m actually sad of this, because there are some dynamics I think are interesting to observe.

I consider “Wish” as a bad experience for all the time and commitment I dedicated to it. It started abruptly as a nightmare. All at the sudden they decided to fire Dave Rickey, and from there the whole project went downhill till it was canceled a year later. The premises weren’t exactly brilliant but I had faith in that game. Today I’m still between those (few?) who would really love to see Dave Rickey working for a well-founded MMO company. I think he still has something interesting to show and I want to see it.

Maybe I could say I’m angry at Mythic because firstly they brought DAoC to the ground, and secondly because they sold out to EA, wasting in a second all that they had achieved and that was left. I had an infinite esteem for Mythic. But at some point they decided to make a backflip and throw everything in the air. From there they cruised in a downward trend that I still cannot believe it was even possible. They made a great entrance in the industry, they were a wind of change. And then they threw everything to hell. You have to have some great talent to ruin completely things like that. Of course, as a fan, I cannot forgive that.

Since I’m not aware about what is going on behind the scenes I slowly identified Mark Jacobs as my scapegoat. And the last interviews he gave confirmed my ideas. He’s an idiot and the first responsible of all the potential Mythic wasted. Whether he actually is or not.

They’ve worked together before, and it was very obvious. Jeff referred to himself as the ‘fun’, while Paul is the ‘fact’. That was … pretty much the way of things, though I wouldn’t call Jeff’s presentation boring. Between the two of them, they talked extensively about the Realm vs. Realm combat, and got into a little bit of what makes Warhammer very much *not* World of Warcraft.

I’m not sure that the differences between the two games are a slam dunk at this point, but I walked away from the call with a distinct increase in respect for the title. Which, of course, is exactly what the purpose of the call was. I’m going to admit to ignorance on my part with some of the game’s nuances, prior to the call. Halfway through I hopped online and found that some of the details they were handing out were easly accessible on their website. So. Shame on me.

They began by talking about their ‘Public quest’ system. Instead of going to NPCs for quests, you are given quests automatically by entering an area of the world. ‘As you come into the public quest area, you are given the quest, everyone gets the quest, everyone participates at the same time’. I like this idea, insomuch as it removes some of the book-keeping involved in what is (supposed to be) an entertaining experience.

Their stress when talking about quests was on the violent, epic nature of the world. Paul Barnett put it like so: “What am I going to do in most games? ‘Get killed by an eight-year old finger ninja.’” Instead, you go and do ongoing quests that captures the spirit of the game right from the starter village. They were very high-level here, and despite their example of ‘a giant coming to smash up the town’ (which sounds entertaining) I’m not sure I buy ‘epic from the get-go’. I’ve yet to play a fantasy MMOG that didn’t have me killing rats at the start of things. Here’s hoping though, right?

“What did you learn from DAoC that you’re bringing to WAR?” Their off-the-cuff funny answer was ‘everything’. Specifically, and obviously, realm vs. realm combat in DAoC is the basis for that functionality in Warhammer. Jeff refers to DAoC in the past tense. It ‘was’ very successful. Mr. Hickmans sounds like he’s moved past Camelot. RvR in Warhammer, meanwhile, will have ‘four levels of RvR’, with many places and ways to participate. They touch on this more later, and this really does seem like it will be a defining feature for the game.

They briefly discuss Guild management. Most games they (rightly) claim, have pretty crappy guild support. Again, they’re basing everything on what they’ve learned from Dark Age. DAoC really does get this right, so I can’t see that they’re blowing smoke here.

They touch on the game’s diversity of character classes. They have ‘about 44 classes in DAoC’. This, they say, was very hard to maintain, but very rewarding. They’re bringing that to WAR, with 24 classes. Each class has a defining mechanic, and each race has its own unique classes. Mmmm… That’s a lot of classes. I never understood DAoC’s obsession with lots of classes, actually, but if they say it’s rewarding I guess that’s their bailiwick. To my mind, it seems likely to introduce confusion amongst the playerbase.

“How are you addressing the MMOG Grind?” Paul took this one, and went off on a (very British) rant about how ‘naf’ is the usual newbie experience a MMOG offers. Their goal: Make it fun from the beginning. If you have to get ten pelts, just kill ten wolves. More impressively, they claim that the war (RvR) is everywhere, even in the starting village. Players who are interested in PvP won’t have to wait to get to it; the war will come to them. Paul claims that players can experience Warhammer on many levels, and goes on to cite all four Bartle types (thought not by name) as having things to do in the game. It was a very entertaining rant, but avoiding the grind is very hard to get right.

“What’s compelling for a casual player?” The game is meant to be accessible for both PVE and RvR. Playing only once a week will still be fun, as you’ve got ‘fast action’. While I could see this being true about RvR stuff (especially after later comments), how is this game’s PvE going to be fundamentally different enough to offer the super-casual player a rewarding 2 hour experience?

Paul takes a moment to talk about the tone of the world, which he describes as very very dark. “Not spitting babies on sticks and rolling them in salt, or blowing out the torch dark.” This is a dark, grim world, with dark humor, in a perilous time. He apparently bangs his hands on the table and shouts ‘Darker Darker Darker’ to inspire the troops. It’s interesting to hear him talk like this. As far as I know, there’s no word of what rating they’re aiming for, but unless they’re going to be joining Conan in the ‘Rated M’ category I can’t imagine they’ll be able to fully follow through with some of the ‘darkness’ they describe here.

“How deep is the character system?” 6 races. Most of the races have two sexes. (Greenskins are orcs and gobbos.) As characters get more powerful, they start to look distinctly different (dwarven beards get longer). Even if a player has no equipment on, you’ll be able to tell the difference between a 1st and a max-level character. You can further customize your character during gameplay, by acquiring trophies. They’ll be discrete items you can actually place on your character somewhere. Trophies will be acquired from quests, from events, etc. There’s a screenshot on the website that seems to show a dead cat hanging from a player’s belt. This is one area I simply can’t find anything to complain about. Extra character customization is something you can never put ‘too much’ into, I think. Paul broke in and said “The goal is to be able to line up 10 different orcs, all of the same level and of the same class, and to have each and every one of them look different.”

“Character Class + Race = Different?” Every race has different classes associated with it, and even though some classes might seem similar, their hope is that they’ll be different ‘enough’. IE: Once you’ve played through the game with the Orcish tank, you can turn around and play the Dark Elf equivalent without saying ‘gaah this is exactly the same.’ Another admirable goal … but really, how many different ‘ways’ are there of soaking up damage?

At this point they went into the different ‘levels’ of RvR combat. I have to admit, I find their ideas compelling.

Skirmish RvR = Each zone has an RvR area, as well as PvE areas. You’re flagged just by entering the area. Your goal is to kill the other guys. Real basic, nothing fancy.

Battlefields = Objectives within Skirmish areas that are focal points for combat. A tower on a hill, can be claimed for the realm.

Scenarios = Story points within skirmish areas. Instanced. “Evenly matched point-based combat.” Enter the lobby, get matched up with others from your realm to fight the other side. This sounds exactly like what WoW calls battlegrounds, but they were quick to stress there is no CTF or other gameplay types: you’re killing the other side and taking their territory.

All three of these plays into the overall campaign (the ‘fourth level’ of RvR). The different nations and races face off against each other over their commonly held borders. While everyone can fight the opponents of both sides, some fights will have an extra ’something’ to them. They’re working on making racial conflicts somewhat like football rivalries. Minnesota vs. Wisconsin == Dwarves vs. Orcs, for example. By participating in Battlefields and Scenarios, you can ‘own’ zones, and ‘push the enemy back’ from their territorial lands. If your side works hard enough, you can capture the capitol city. You can even ransack the city, kill the citizens, and capture the king. The king can be taken back to your capital city, where players can buy rotten tomatoes to throw at him.

They went on to say that, if one side is good enough, this state could be kept up for quite a while. Just the same, the capitols themselves will be very hard to keep for a long time. The goal is to make the losing side suffer, but not to make their gameplay experience miserable. There are lots of ways in which capitols fight back (guerilla missions?), and holding one for an extended period of time will be quite a feat.

I never had the chance to fully get into the RvR offered by Dark Age of Camelot, but all of this sounds quite exciting. Even if half of the things they’re promising make it into the final game, it would be very different than most of the other massive titles I’ve played. I’m showing my lack of experience here; DAoC was just not that big a deal for me. I’m skeptical and all (of course), but still … sacking capital cities? It makes me want to drink the kool-aid.

“What rewards will RvR offer?” – According to Jeff, it’s not possible to split out RvR rewards from their compatriots on the PvE side. Everything you can get from fighting mobs is obtainable by killing other players. You can earn XP, level up, and even get loot. The items are looted off of dead players, but aren’t ‘from’ the dead players. Players will apparently have their own loot tables. This is completely awesome, and is something I’m eager to test out. I’ve had more than my fill of whomping rats, thanks. If I could have played Arathi Basin for quest xp, I would have been in that queue from logon to logoff.

The idea of griefing comes up, and their response is succinct: “As long as there is still skill involved in taking on another player, you can fight. If there is no challenge in killing a player, or too much, you can’t do it.” A level 40 character in a level 10 zone just wouldn’t be flagged; he doesn’t belong there.

They talk a bit about the size of the game, and state at launch they’ll have 33 zones, 6 capitol cities, 3 PvE dungeons, one big RvR dungeon (what’s that going to be like?), and ‘bazillions of scenarios’. They’ve obviously put a lot of effort into the scenario part of the game. They certainly seem popular in WoW, so no reason to think they won’t work in WAR.

Things are kind of wrapping up and Paul goes off on a tangent about “Playing the game how you want to play it.” IE: Killing members of a guild take their banners, putting the banners on your walls as trophies. Kill people, take their heads, putting them on your guild banner and wave it around. He was a big fan of the “I’m better than you” moments in gaming.

My overall impression: Impressed. I really wish I’d had the chance to play around with the game at GenCon this year. My summer was ‘naf’ to borrow a term, and I never had the chance to set up a PR appointment before hand. My bad, and now it looks like I really missed out on the chance of seeing something different. I still agree with the folks who say that WAR *looks* like WoW, but it definitely seems to have sufficiently different elements so as to set it apart from it is popular predecessor.

If nothing else, the idea of leveling up through the game via PvP (but having the option of not doing so) is the best thing since … Shadowbane. :) Good game or not, here’s hoping the conflicts between the greenskins and the dwarves have a bit more staying power.

Thanks to Jeff, Paul, and Eddiemae for the interesting hour. I definitely learned a thing or two, and I’ve finally got a fantasy MMOG to add to my list of games I’m looking forward to. Good show.

My biggest beef was the assertion that the higher numbered MMOGs were somehow ‘better’ than the lower numbered ones. I realize it’s less interesing when a top ten list doesn’t imply ranking, but in this case I think that’s the way I would have gone. Otherwise, it seems somewhat offset to compare almost decade-old work to brand new stuff. Likewise, games built on a shoestring compared to juggernauts like WoW? Blah.

I don’t care that WoW was #7. It’s iteratively better, not evolutionarily. Totally agree. You guys are obviously approaching the games from the POV of MMOG snobs, and I respect that at least. No problem.

But Jeezus. The fucking Warden? You’re complaining about the Warden? You’re complaining about their bad Customer Service? “Hi, this is 2003, I want my complaints back.” You then go on to discuss how Asherons Call is better than WoW, because some of its shitty content was hidden from most of the players. That is the most ass backwards thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a game, guys, not a scavenger hunt or geocaching. The point is to have fun, not spend time searching for content. (Subtle glares at Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest.)

On top of that, you then ranked Everquest 2 above WoW on your list. The hell? I’d love to know what alternate reality you folks are living in where EQ2 is a ‘better’ game than World of Warcraft. EQ2 is just like the majority of SOE’s games: lots of promise, plenty of potential, flawed execution. The traditional SOE recipe for failure has kept the greatness of EverQuest 2 from dominating the MMOG conciousness, and positioning it higher than WoW on the list is not going to change that.

Other crankiness elicited by your list:

• Guild Wars is Multiplayer, and it’s Online, but it ain’t Massive by most definitions.
• You should be ashamed of yourselves, making us Westerners remember that Lineage II exists. You gave children nightmares and made our crops blight!
• Ryzom’s big ticket to fame is it Frenchness. Okay, the Ring is really good. I’d like it more if the game the Ring was built on wasn’t so damn boring.

Since it’s my blog and I’ll second guess if I want to, my list would have looked more like this:

1. Everquest – teh Winner!
2. World of Warcraft – your new lord and master
3. FFXI – the much overlooked asskicker
4. City of Heroes/Villains – tights make everyone happy
5. Dark Age of Camelot – PvP’s home turf
6. Everquest 2 – so much potential
7. Ultima Online – Grandpa
8. Eve Online – funnest screensaver ever
9. Puzzle Pirates – puzzles are the future
10. Star Wars Galaxies – what not to do

All whining aside, I liked the obvious effort you put into the feature. Nice work, gents. Just, less ganja next time you working on the Science.