My general rule of thumb is that when I see something I want to comment on negatively out in the blogosphere, I tell my wife (she rolls her eyes) and I feel better. I’m an opinionated jerk but I’ve managed to keep some of my particularly assy tip-of-the-tongue snark to myself. But … I’m sorry, I just gotta vent a bit. On Thursday Tobold made me want to rip my eyes out of my head. He starts with a provacative statement, offering a possible future where Blizzard offers microtransactional autoleveling for World of Warcraft. It’s a joke, of course, but he follows that with:

“You were probably disgusted by the thought that somebody could pay dollars to reach a certain level or get a set of epic gear without playing the game. But the sad truth is that some people do exactly that. There are powerleveling services, honor point grinding services, arena point services, and anything else you can think of. If you wanted, you could create a fresh account, make a level 1 character on it, then give the userID and password plus a bundle of dollars to a powerleveling company, and receive the account back some weeks later with your character now level 70, having an epic flying mount, two tradeskills at 375, and a complete set of PvP epics.”

I know he’s making a point here, and my eye-ripping isn’t directed at Tobold per se. That said … the level of bigotry, snark, and close-minded aggression people have towards the idea of microtransactions and alternative business models is staggering. While I’m not sure I buy Cameron’s ‘rent a friend’ idea, it’s a pretty compelling argument. Even on top of that why would it be a bad thing, exactly, for Blizzard to offer up special servers that had a buy-your-own-70 service? They’re already offering characters on the Arena servers for a low, low cost; that gives you one specific slice of the WoW experience, at high level, on a microtransactional level. What would be wrong, exactly, with extending that to the raiding experience?

A green-decked 70 would get a ton out of mechanical utility out of high-end raiding, on top of the personal satisfaction from taking on that content. All Blizzard would be offering would be another way to experience a slice of Azeroth. The best thing to do would be to keep those characters locked at 70, too, and offer a bump to 80 (for a fee) some predetermined time after Lich King content is generally conquered.

I think they’d make a bundle on this service, and if the price was right I’d probably even partake. This would be the perfect way to get a static instance group going; everybody chips in to kit out a group, you grab your gear and go. Meet once a week to take on a new instance, and enjoy all the fun of that content without the months of grind to get there.

I really hope they offer this someday. It’s obvious that Blizzard is intent on the max-level experience being ‘the game’, and every barrier between players and that goal seems to be made to be broken. They’ve already reduced the time investment required … now all that remains is to demolish that fence completely.

Via another post at Broken Toys, a few things have come to my attention. Namely, that content in this post about the Debonneville/Pierce case is something lawyers don’t want on the internets, or pointed out to people. Hmm …

For almost 5 years, Debonneville has dedicated his entire life to the creation, development, and success of IGE US, LLC (”IGE”). IGE’s meteoric rise from an under funded startup to the market leader culminated in a Goldman-Sachs investment of $60,000,000, which set the value of IGE at the time of $220,000,000. While Pierce, a flamboyant former child actor, has always been the public face of IGE, Debonneville has been the tireless working founder, responsible for the expansion and operation of the company … After living and working in Spain for a few months, Debonneville observed that Rector and Pierce had a very close relationship, one that did not seem normal between a 40-year old man and a 20-year old young man … Apparently, there were a multitude of charges related to the prior operation of a company specifying that Pierce, Rector, and Shackley had stolen money from the company and wasted corporate assets for things like the purchase of illicit drugs, living a lavish lifestyle, and criminal allegations of transporting a minor across state lines for sexual purposes. Upon learning this information, Debonneville questioned Pierce regarding the allegations, and Pierce stated that the claims were false and contrived as a setup by some competitors and former employees …

More after the cut.

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Mark Ward, the very nice gentleman at the BBC who threw a quote from me up on the BBC technology site a while back, has been emailing me once in a while to chat about them thar online games. The result is me getting quoted in an article. Which is … a bit strange. But British strange! And thus, good.

The quote is me being skeptical of the Live Gamer service. Which … yeah.

Michael Zenke, an editor at online game website MMOG Nation, expressed scepticism about Live Gamer’s prospects. Despite the rampant participation in real-money trade by players, it’s still a big taboo to talk about it,” he said. “‘Legit’ outfits are going to have a hard time getting an edge over the farmers of today, because there are certain companies (EA, Mythic, Blizzard) that will never ally with them,” he told the BBC News website. He expected that Live Gamer would find some success with those players who want a reliable source and a further few who did not like the tactics of gold sellers. “Otherwise,” he said, “I don’t see there being much room for traction there.”

In a nutshell, I think it’s great that they want to make the RMT business legit. They’re only going to work with companies that agree to the idea of RMT. They’re going to avoid buying from farmers, and if they find out they’ve been scammed they can blacklist them from future transactions. Theoretically this means they can slowly push out the undesirables while allowing folks who want to engage in the practice some measure of safety.

The problem is that some companies are never going to play ball. Mythic and Blizzard have just as many problems with the farmers as anyone else, but I find it extremely unlikely that they’ll agree to a service like this in order to solve those issues. So every game those two companies run will (by definition) have an underground RMT component. Even if every other company jumped into Live Gamer’s lap, I’m relatively certain the profit to be made for selling gold in Warhammer and Wow would be enough to make the venture worthwhile.

It’s been an amazing year in MMOGs. I think 2008 is going to be just as big a deal, though … and in some ways maybe even bigger. As I did last year (relatively well, I might add) I’m going to try to call some shots. Again, I’m just a guy and this is all in good fun. But I’ll keep myself honest: we’ll see how I did this time next year.

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