Dear SOE,

I think it’s probably pretty obvious where I fall on your new microtransaction content. I like the idea quite a bit, and I’m happy with some elements of what you’ve rolled out so far. The 100 coins = $1 component, for example, is a very wise choice. Making costs easily understandable is one of the simple things a company can do to remain in the good graces of its players, Microsoft notwithstanding.

That said, I think there is big-time room for improvement. If you guys are serious about making a go at this, I think you should consider some elements carefully and perhaps reconsider some of the elements you’ve already apparently decided on. Here’s my list for the suggestion box.
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This is something that I have to say, I love about my job. Despite the pain, suffering, and etc, there is never a truly ‘empty’ week in MMO gaming news. The doldrums of regular game releases just never hits my favorite part of the industry thanks to patches, updates, and (this year) drama out the yin-yang.

Last two days alone:

• SOE Launches Proper RMT services for EQ/EQII
• Warhammer adds two of its missing classes
• Infogrames/Atari purchases Cryptic Studios
• Age of Conan server merges delayed
• Mythic won’t skimp on WAR Updates for Expansion

The EverQuest team has their own blog! Go check it out.

Right now they’re talking about  stuff like QA, stability, and even new avatar models!

New player models are not a dead issue… as a matter of fact, we have new Elves being worked on right now!

Clint Worley aka Jourdian

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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While I’d like to once again register my belief that honesty is something to be lauded … I’m going to step back and agree that Brad McQuaid’s commentary hasn’t helped at all.

A press release totally unconnected to Massive games actually convinced me of this. The release that changed my mind was a recent missive from Palladium Books. Palladium is a publisher of table-top roleplaying games, and is helmed by a gent named Kevin Siembada. I dunno if things have changed since I followed tabletop closely, but back in the day he was regarded as a right proper ass. My nose wrinkled like I was smelling something foul as I read his dripping message to Palladium customers:

My goal and the goal shared by every Palladium staff member, as well as our freelance artists and writers, is to create some of the most dynamic, exciting and fun role-playing games and sourcebooks on the market. Not just for our own survival, but for the survival and advancement of the role-playing game hobby. We are disappointed by the low number of RPG products being released by other game companies. All of us at Palladium Books know role-playing games have a bright future, and we aim to prove it. In addition to RPG sourcebooks and games, you will soon see an offering of three, new T-shirts, Rifts Postage Stamps, the John Zeleznik Art Book, and a new product line I think is fun, different and something you and ALL fans of sci-fi and fantasy artwork will enjoy. I’m sure some of our detractors will shake their heads, but we think it’s something people will enjoy and use.

I read this, I recalled Siembada’s asinine plea to fans to keep the company afloat (which obviously worked, unfortunately), and I can’t help but think of Brad’s comments to the Vanguard fanbase. Yech. They’re honest, yes, but as with Siembada’s drooling exhortation to buy more of their crap to ‘advance the role-playing game hobby’, they’re essentially penitent excuses laid at the feet of the gamers who are subsidizing Sigil’s existence. “We really really tried. We tried so hard. I know it’s not as good as it could have been. Also: please keep giving us money!”

Moreover, and this is what has been weighing on me, they’re far too little too late. Yes, money was tight. Developing a game on your own often is. Yes, SOE forced them to launch sooner than they were ready. That happens when you let an older boy play with your toys – they might get broken. The bottom line here is that McQuaid and Co. had FIVE FUCKING YEARS to make this game. The official press release wasn’t until 2004, but Sigil has been around since January of 2002. They’ve had that long to get with the times, make changes, realize they were making a horrible mistake, or at least … you know … fix the bugs. The stink is rising from the shambling carcass that is Saga of Heroes, and already the vultures are beginning to take strips of flesh:

Kageru: Meanwhile I have no idea what happened with the game coding. The code seems to already have reached an unmaintainable state where bugs just can’t be fixed. I can’t imagine how else the act of forming a group, or not falling through the world, can still be so flawed. Meanwhile the rate of introduction for new bugs is scarily high.

I honestly can’t see the game holding enough subscriptions to fund the development it needs to be decent.

That, of course, is now the question: Will SOE buy Vanguard from Sigil? There has been lots of discussion on the subject of just what went wrong, and folks are on both sides of the fence. Is it worth saving? Is there any player interest? What does Brad think? (You’ll note he’s been fairly quiet on this particular front.)

My two cents: No, it’s not worth saving. But yes, if SOE can swing it they almost certainly will.

The reason it’s not worth saving? When I talked about throwing a MMOG and no one coming back in Summer of last year, I was talking about Auto Assault. From everything I’ve heard, even though there’s no one (really) interested in playing it … the people who *are* playing it are having a blast. It’s very different, it’s a little hard to understand, but they went out there and they tried something really different. And they fell on their faces. Which happens sometimes. Just like Pauly Shore – at least they tried. Vanguard, on the other hand, is a five-years-in-the-making retread of a game released in 1999 that isn’t even as good as the original game. Yeah, you can make ships and fly cool mounts etc. etc, but the metric shit-ton of content SOE has crammed into EQ over the years makes those extra features look like chump change. The diplomacy game is really neat. I’ll totally give them that. But em … what else is there to get excited about? LOTRO’s got Hobbitses and fancy titles … and you’re offering me a glorified card game?

Now, all that said, SOE is definitely going to buy it if they can. The reason: Because they can. They’ve already got their foot in the door by publishing the thing, and I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Vanguard would probably be pretty cheap to pick up right now. Poor dealings with Microsoft in the past and awful subscriptions rates in the here-and-now have to be making it hard for those guys to be making payroll let alone focusing on future development. So SOE slips some cash in a few pockets and bingo-bango: a 95% complete Massive game that just needs a few months of work to get the kinks ironed out.

Yes, it’s a lot like their two flagship products. Yes, it’s leaving a really bad taste in the mouths of gamers right now. Yes, people are going to yell at them and call them mean and nasty names for ‘butting in’ to ‘Brad’s sacred realm’. All those are good reasons not to. But, as I’ve tried to point out in the past, at the end of the day the Massive industry is a business. From a business standpoint, there’s a wounded competitor lying at their feet. You pick him up, dust him off, and soon enough he’s working for you. Why let the guy die when you can turn misfortune into an opportunity for profit?

(I’m mentally picturing Ferengi rubbing their lobes right now, so consider that as you mentally say the word ::profit::)

All this is just conjecture of course, but why not? Hell, it’s SOE’s money to throw away, not mine. At this point I wouldn’t invest in Vanguard with um … a twelve foot pole.

You tell me, though: What’s a real and honestly good reason for Sony Online Entertainment not to purchase Vanguard?

This may just be cranky, but to counteract my tip of the hat this morning – BAH.

Second Life to Charge For Last Names

The company’s business development team decided to create a vanity name feature in part to help legitimize the growing number of executives, political candidates and other famous people who stage rallies and give stump speeches in the virtual world. With the new feature, Linden Research will try to verify that avatars with high-profile names belong to same-named owners. For now, it’s nearly impossible to determine the offline identity behind any avatar.

They’re going to be charging $100 upfront, and then $50 a year after that. What. The. Hell? I … don’t have words. I’m not really the biggest fan of Second Life, but I’ve always regarded the place as a good place for artistic folks to do their thing. Gimme a break though, charging that kind of dough for a last name? Hey guys, maybe you should work on your server code instead of holding people up at gunpoint for what amounts to an addition to a database table?

A Late, Incomplete, and Pessimistic Review of the Buried Sea

I should really spend more time playing through more of the missions before snapping to a judgement about The Buried Sea. What I have seen so far is a lot of running around in huge complex zones to hunt down instances and hope that something along the mission doesn’t get fowled up along the way. My time is the most important commodity I have. I only have a few hours every week to play these games. More and more hobbies take up that time and I have to decide exactly where my time is best spent. Should I keep trying to slog through poorly designed missions until I find the ones that are good enough, well tuned enough, and rewarding enough to spend my time? Or should I go somewhere where I know the sort of output I am likely to expect?

The end of the review kind of trails off into complaining about The Burning Crusade, with Loral saying how he’s basically tired of EQ’s shit and is happy he has something else to play. This is Loral Ciriclight, Mobhunter, saying this. Yee-ikes. I guess you take a step forward, and then you take a step back, eh EQ?

The Station Access Pass has been one of the best deals in online gaming for some time now. At around $25, it was less than the monthly price of two games and offered access to half a dozen. If you played one SOE MMOG primarily, and dabbled with a second, it was a no-brainer decision. Unfortunately, the price has gone up. As Krones, Abalieno, the Noob, Tipa, DingGrats, Cuppycake, Amber, and Aggro have all observed … that’s dumb.

I initially began writing this post at the end of last month. I stopped because it occurred to me that John Smedley might have some insightful additions to any statements I made here. He asked if I could hold off on it for a bit, and I did. GDC came and went, and because they’re still wrangling to get the legal terms on why they made the price go up nailed down we’ve still heard nothing. I don’t envy you sir, I imagine it’s something you very much want to get out here.

That’s a shame, because I can only assume they do have something vaguely cool planned. As Val, Rot, and the rest of the folks at EQ2 Daily mentioned in their most recent podcast, there has to be a good business explanation for this; otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.

Here are my own negative reactions:

1. The real loser here is Planetside, which has received a price hike of its own. I thought that the game should have been $5 a month when it launched. Lo these years later, it’s worth nowhere near the $15/month they’re now charging. Above and beyond that, I’d be willing to bet Planetside was that ’second mmog’ played by a number of Station Access users. With gamers pulling out of that deal, the PS playerbase will grow even smaller and make the price hike look even more asinine. This game only has players, in my estimation, because Tabula Rasa and Huxley have yet to launch. Whichever of those games pops first is going to get the remaining PS players day one.
2. EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies are the two least likely to be affected by this, I think. Anyone playing those games in 2007 are playing for keeps; they’ll sluff off the Station Access and keep on trucking with their chosen fix. If SWG still hasn’t broken its current players by now, nothing they can do will stop them. (So merge servers already, darnit!)
3. EverQuest 2 and Vanguard are the two that people will be forced to choose between. I know a lot of EQ2 players have been checking out Vanguard on the theory that it’s a lot like the olden days of EverQuest; with the price hike folks now have to choose between nostalgia and the now. While Planetside slipping even further into obscurity isn’t that big a deal to me, this seems like an act of arrogance on SOE’s part. Vanguard is still very much an unproven element on the Massive scene. While folks are interested and they’ve claimed over 100,000 users, how many of those are bored WoW players checking out the countryside? How many of those are Station Access players? Both of those sources of subscription fees could evaporate in the next few months. EverQuest 2 is, I feel, pretty darn safe. With TBC’s charm fading faster than some folks expected, I think a lot of folks are looking at column B as a nice way to spend some time while they wait for their WoW itch to come back or for another game to launch. If SOE wants Vanguard to stay on the upslide over the next six months, it seems like this would be the last thing they’d want to do.
4. This is a dangerous time to be raising services like this. LOTRO’s never-ending membership is probably looking like a good deal right now. You never have to pay a monthly for the game, ever, if you fork over the equivalent of 7 months worth of Station Access. That’s crazy. LOTRO may or may not be a critical success, but given the license you know they’re going to run that thing for at least four or five years. Assuming five years that’s $200 for LOTRO or $1800 for Station Access. That’s some grim stuff there. Likewise, games like Tabula Rasa, Warhammer, etc, will not be available on Station Access.
5. At $30 a month you’re requiring people to make SOE games their only source of gaming. $30 is a used game, as has been pointed out by a few other folks. That’s an entire single-player used game a month, for the cost of Station Access. At $30, you basically have to be playing SOE games all month every month, or it’s not worth your time. The death of player choice in how he spends his time is really kinda shitty. For $30 a month, you’re offering two fantasy MMOGs, a crazy sci-fi world based on a movie series people don’t like any more, a sci-fi world people don’t like any more based on a movie series people love, and a mediocre FPS. That’s just not a lot of options for the now hard-core-dedicated SOE player.

Whatever they’re adding to the service that ‘justifies’ this bump had better be magnificent. In one year, a jump of something like 25-30% in price is outrageous. I know, I know, there’s a lot of value there, but that just leads back to point five: you can only play SOE games. It seems to me the Access pass has one of two purposes: either it makes big money for the company, or it gets bodies into SOE games that wouldn’t otherwise be there. These two purposes are at direct odds with each other; unless Smedley’s holdup is the announcement of another tier of pricing, purpose 2 is going to be simply inviable.

If I were going to pull the strings on the Station Access pass, it’d go something like this …

Welcome to Sony Online Entertainment’s ‘4 Tiers of Fun’ Website. Here’s what we we can offer you today:

• Tier 0 (Planetside) – $4.99/month. This is the ’soldier tier’, reserved for the special members of Planetside’s unique combat forces. Log in and go get em’!
• Tier 1 (Single Game) – $14.99/month. This offers you complete and unfettered access to one of our six [Gods and Heroes, remember?] high-quality Massively Multiplayer experiences. In addition, you’ll be able to play one of our highly engaging Station Arcade titles, like Cosmic Rift, Infantry, or Tanaurus. This Tier and every one above it also allows you access to Planetside’s unique engaging FPS gameplay.
• Tier 2 (Floating Access) – $19.99/month. Offering an affordable price and ultimate flexibility, Tier 2 is for gamers who like the option of moving around a bit. Choose from three of our six premium titles, and you’ll have unrestricted access to groundbreaking entertainment like EverQuest 2 or Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. This Tier includes the option of, for a nominal one-time fee, unlocking extra perks like downloadable episodes or extra character slots! Station Arcade and Planetside access is also included, insuring that you’ll be getting plenty of ‘bang’ for your buck.
• Tier 3 (Station Access) – $29.99/month. The ultimate offering from Sony Online Entertainment: Station Access. With unlimited access to all six of our premium titles, you have the freedom to play any time and any way you want. Elements like downloadable content, extra character slots, premium character and guild benefits, and reduced rates on the Station Exchange service are all included. Additionally, the client for every one of the games SOE supports is available for digital download absolutely free. That’s right, there’s no need to buy a box for one of our titles: You can download it at no charge, with every update already included. For the cost of a single, used console game, you’ll be purchasing six high-quality titles, the unique MMOFPS title Planetside, and all three Station Arcade games. It’s an unparalleled deal, and an unparalleled offering – take advantage of it today!

Ultimately, I want what the folks at SOE want: success for games in the Massive genre. Considering some of the positive steps forward SOE has taken as a company in the last 6 months, I am confused and concerned about their decision with the Station Access price. I really hope that Smed and the rest of those folks can give us the lowdown on the changeup soon, because I know we’re all dying to understand the plan.