A bunch of truly fantastic news and features have gone across WoW Insider and Massivley in the last few days. I had to share me some love:

• A wrapup of the pounding that cross-gender ‘research’ took at the hands of Bartle and the Freeman.  I particularly liked the comments on Raph’s blog; almost nothing from him and several really nice retorts from the peanut gallery.
• Will Dobson put together a fantastic look at the Spring Festival going on over in LOTRO. It’s not only interesting and informative but a great chance to show off our new gallery software. Nice!
• The WoW Insider team headed to the Tourney test realm and came away with some amazing stuff. Amanda Miller has a writeup of the events, but you really have to check out the gallery of their experiences. I want to ride a giant Raven Lord!
• A FANTASTIC announcement from NCsoft as they unveil the beginnings of Issue 12 for City of Heroes. I really love the sound of this content - definitely going to have to check it out. In fact, talking it over with the EQ2 group, it sounds like CoH might be our next destination once we hit max level sometime near the end of this year.
• I remember seeing the flying mounts at the end of Vanguard Beta over a year ago now, and only now are they getting put into the game. A little sad, but still great news for the players who have been waiting patiently for this content to drop. Game Update 4 is live!

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

Feelings in the blogosphere (and indeed in online gaming generally) towards Sony Online Entertainment are decidedly mixed. While they’ve made some amazing strides with EverQuest 2 and other titles under their umbrella, some folks are still left with a sour taste in their mouth over past stumbles. Whether griping over the Star Wars Galaxies NGE or complaints going all the way back to the Verant days, people love to grind their axes on Sony’s mega-subsidiary.

So I’ve been kind of surprised that more of a big deal hasn’t been made of the talent drain the company has been undergoing for the past year or so. From high profile folks like Moorgard, Blackguard, and now Scott Hartsman to lower-level community folks, programmers, designers, and artists, there seems to be a general current of talented people flowing away from the monolith.

So why are people leaving the company? What’s prompting this trend? Is it very widespread and (more importantly for the players) what does it mean for their games? And, of course, you can’t help but wonder what this means for the industry in general. Or, at least, I can’t.
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This has been a crappy, crappy year.

• Blizzard releases an expansion that’s great - and I’ve barely played it.
• Vanguard flops
• Cryptic sells CoH, and now is completely silent.
• WAR and Conan are delayed until 2008.
• Ryzom goes under, again.
• Perpetual explodes, sending shards of two unreleased games flying.
• My EQII experience has gotten kind of crappy.
• Auto Assault closes.
• LOTRO releases to relatively positive reviews - and I’ve barely played it.

Most distressing for me, personally, is that in the last two weeks I’ve killed both of my gaming PCs. I now have no way of playing even World of Warcraft, let alone something like AoC or Pirates. You wouldn’t believe how much you want to play a MMOG when you can’t.

About the only thing I have fully appreciated this year is Eye of the North, which I’m now really enjoying on my wife’s PC.  I’m almost done with the Norn quest line … more about that later.

The thing that prompted this post was Fury’s demise. I said publicly in a few different places that I thought it had potential, and that I was hopeful for the little Aussie game studio. Just embarrassing. Maybe I thought that they’d take a little more time to get it right before releasing?

Whatever. Burning Crusade is obviously an unqualified success for Blizzard and the Massive industry as a whole. In fact, this year could be considered the year that Massive games went mainstream. Truck commercials, South Park appearances, Mr. T and Shatner … the only problem is that one game in the genre has gone mainstream. As a whole, new ventures this year have floundered or been delayed, while several existing titles have sunk beneath the waves. For better or worse, most of my MMOGnostication predictions have come true. That makes me bloody sad.

So: screw you 2007. Hopefully ‘08 will offer bigger, better things.

Semi-related to my post from Monday about Mil’s attempt to get CS satisfaction, Mike from MMO Crunch passed me a link to his frustating experience with Turbine.

I have recently stopped playing LOTRO. So today I went and officially canceled my account, however while doing so I saw no option to remove my CC and billing information from their system. Having been a victim of random charges by unsaid company in the past I wanted to remove my info so that my subscription would not accidentally be restarted. Seeing no way to do this from Turbine’s website, I contacted support, who basically said, You either keep your CC information in our system or the game that you PAID for will no longer work, ever.

I thought we were all in agreement that these things are services now?

Last week Cameron got to talking about Dungeons and Dragons Online, and it made me a little misty-eyed.

DDO … is all about the dungeon crawl with friends. It can be summed up as follows: kill monsters, disarm traps, break stuff, and loot chests … I find the combat in DDO much more satisfying than in NWN2. It also captures the “adventure with your friends” aspects of D&D much more convincingly than NWN does, in my opinion. It mimics the tabletop version much better in this respect. My biggest complaint about DDO so far is that the fun is directly proportional to how many people you can get playing in your group. Solo play is alright, but gets old fast (and only certain classes can do it well). Duoing is lots of fun, but you’re still pretty limited depending on the classes. Either monsters will be tough or traps will be tough. Once you get up to 3-4 people it starts getting really fun because you have such a wide variety of skills to draw on and can tackle the hard mission setting … As always, and especially in DDO, grouping with your friends is far more fun than grouping with strangers. I still intend to do a full write-up of my impressions on it eventually and detail what I like and don’t, but I want to play out the trial first, at least.

Y’see, lo these many months ago, the party of adventurers that have now taken their characters all the way to just-shy-of-level-40 in EverQuest 2 were going to tackle Xendrick in Turbine’s DDO. We made characters, and Katie and I logged in to begin our first night of adventuring with Brian. I was going to do Cleric, Katie was going to be our Fighter, and Brian was slated to be a Wizard.

We never even made it to the tutorial rooms on the docks.

Brian’s computer kept crashing, over, and over, and over again. We were really looking forward to DDO, because the idea behind the MMOG-play in the first place was that it would partially take the place of the weekly D&D game we’d been playing with Brian for quite some time.  But the DDO client just refused to work on Brian’s system. He’s a system administrator for a living, so when I tell you that he troubleshot the crap out of his system, I mean it. Cards were reseated, drivers reinstalled, FAQs consulted, support systems referenced … but still Eberron refused to play well with Brian’s machine.

He never did get it working, and our interest in playing together before the idea died led us to Norrath. Katie and Brian got EQ2 core installs on the cheap, Brian’s friend John joined us, and off we went.

Brian and Katie accuse me of having MMOADD, and it’s posts like Cameron’s that make that thing in my head go off. As much fun as I’ve had in EQ2, a part of me really wishes we’d been able to give Turbine’s under-appreciated D&D title a proper go. I still wish those folks a lot of success. Here’s hoping they’ve found their niche.

All the same: Sorry we never got to be friends, Turbine. I think it would have been cool.

Here’s the deal: quests and quest journals are the reason I like Massively multiplayer games now. I played EQ and SWG and etc, etc, before World of Warcraft, just like all the other jaded MMOG hags. I thrilled to the social gaming, the hackery and the slashery, the obtaining of loot, the joy of a new expansion, and all the other things that make Massive games great. But I didn’t realize how much I could love Massive games until I played World of Warcraft and grabbed my first proper quest. It was in Dun Morogh, of course, and I remember it clearly: Dwarven Outfitters, given out by Sten Stoutarm. Here’s the quest text:

“What do we have here? You look as though you might need something to keep your hands warm, hm? I’ll tell you what would help: a pair of nice, warm gloves. And, being the kind soul that I am, I’d be more than happy to provide you with a suitable pair. I’ve one condition, however. I need you to go get me some wolf meat. Nice arrangement, hm? You bring me some wolf meat, and I’ll make sure you don’t lose any digits to frostbite. Well, what do you say?”

Yeah, it’s a ‘whack the foozle’ quest, with an item requirement no less. Thankfully, the drop ratio for that wolf meat is near 100%, so eight wolves later and you’ve a.) finished your first quest and b.) dinged level 2. It’s cheesy, and it’s lame, and WoW doesn’t offer you a ‘completed quest’ journal so you’ll quickly forget about it.

For me, though, ‘Dwarven Outfitters’ was my first step into a wider world. Sten’s offer was novel, because it didn’t require me to guess what he wanted. It didn’t require me to guess what he’d give me. If I needed a reminder of what I was supposed to do, it was instantly checkable. And, most importantly, it gave me a clearly understandable goal rooted in a story.

That story part is enormously important for me. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about what’s a critical element for me in a game, and that story bit is tantamount. Bioshock and Mass Effect are two of my most anticipated games of the year not because of game mechanics (though I like what I’ve heard) or graphics (thought I like what I see). I ‘m looking forward to those games because of their different and engaging stories. Story makes the difference for me between meaningless exercise and fun.

Thousands and thousands of quest like this later, I’ll admit that sometimes I read just long enough to determine “you want me to kill how many?” That said, there is a story here. A cold newbie adventurer wanders up to this dwarf, and the guy offers this bum a chance to kit himself out with new gear. It’s short, it’s to the point, and it works. The very next quest you get, though it’s just another whack the foozle quest, begins to set up the Dwarf v. Trogg conflict that is pervasive in the Dwarven zones for the rest of the game.

From the get-go, WoW roots you in the story of the gameworld with a simple quest structure that grabs the player. Does this ’suck’? Thousands of kill ten rats later, I can understand why a player would be bored by such a thing. That said, I’d much much much rather have nice simple quests like this in the game than not. Not every quest can be gryphon bombardments.

Quest designers are already coming up with better alternatives. DDO’s dungeon-based experience system is an improvement. WAR is working on several improvements to multiple kinds of quests. PotBS will have a bunch of quest variants, from the sounds of things quests that EVE players will be a bit familiar with. One can only assume that the folks at places like 38 Studios, Heatwave, Colony, and Bioware are working to bring together all-new ways of having fun and telling story to players in a Massive setting.

Fundamentally, though, I shiver at the blanket suggestion that ‘quests suck’. It all comes back to ‘Dwarven Outfitters’ for me; I don’t want to go back to my days before I met Sten Stoutarm, and you can’t make me.