Preying on the weak

January 26, 2012

I have a friend who is in the 1%. No, not the Occupy nonsense, but the 1% of F2P players that spend a silly amount of money in the cash shop. He is the guy who buys up every DLC regardless of what it is. He is the one who buys fluff just to own it. And he is the guy who runs XP pots/boosters/whatever because ‘he can’, even if they don’t make the game actually more fun to play. If it’s in the shop odds are high he has it. Cost is not a factor either, so whether a pony costs $5 or $50 is irrelevant to him.

And he is notorious for playing a game for a month or two and getting bored. He is also fairly anti-social, preferring to solo whenever remotely possible, and is someone who often gets excluded anyway thanks to his attitude. To put it bluntly, he is not someone I’d want in my MMO from an in-game activity/actions standpoint.

Yet in that month or so of playing something like LotRO, he was the ideal customer for Turbine. He certainly ‘counted’ a whole hell of a lot more than anyone not spending, or spending little, in terms of influencing what Turbine should work on next. His voice (wallet) was far more important.

Which brings me to my point: considering the above, is it at all surprising that F2P MMOs do what they do, and suck as much as they suck for people who like the sub model? Turbine selling you The One Ring next month is not done with consideration for the 99% that don’t pay and want the game to remain ‘fair’. It’s not done with consideration for how the average player will feel, or how the game will play once you buy the ability to turn god-mode on. The 99% don’t count. Game balance does not count.

What counts is my buddy putting down $100 for The One Ring, putting it on, one-shotting Frodo, and moving on from the game (because it’s too easy…). You can make a forum post about it, get 1000 ‘likes’ for it, and Turbine will feed you BS about “we never said we won’t sell The One Ring, we said we won’t sell direct passage to the Game-Over screen. God-mode is more of a convenience for our players”.

Now whether this practice is sustainable or not is another issue. We have all seen how ‘amazing’ the F2P conversion is the day after it happens. Announcements/tweets/forums posts all proclaiming activity is up 10,000% (from zero), that everyone loves the new ‘options’ in the shop, and that the game has been giving a new life blablabla PR speak. It’s odd that those same sources fail to continue telling us how awesome F2P continues to be a year after, but I’m sure that’s just a technical issue and not the reality of everyone checking things out the first day, seeing the same game they left (but now with pay-walls), and leaving after maybe buying a cute dress. Naw.

What’s even more disturbing is that the only way to keep a F2P MMO flying high is not by introducing great new content, or providing a long-term plan, but by ‘encouraging’ the 1% to keep spending. And the only real way that is going to happen is if the shop continues to get re-stocked with bigger and greater things. If The One Ring one-shots Frodo, then next month The Two Ring does it twice as fast and with fireworks after to announce your victory. And looks, its only $125! Soon as Two Ring sales slow, you better believe the devs have The Three Ring ready to go, along with super-Frodo, who is way too ‘epic’ to be taken down by unworthy adventurers and their outdated Two Rings.

And if you think the above is me being over-the-top to make a point, go check out the cash shop in Atlantica Online. Or just check back on this post in a year from now, after the latest LotRO update.

The whole model is also predatory. It targets those too weak/dumb to know better. Because let’s be honest, buying god-mode is not going to keep you playing anything long-term. Buying a pony that now gives you 20% more HP instead of 15% does not make a game more fun. A game does not get better or have more content when every month a new ‘convenience’ item that is more or less required is added. Solving the problem of low-level gear being ‘hard to get’ by selling it is not a smart long-term solution (it makes the cause worse, actually). SOE recently said that 25% of all their sales are ponies. Outside of pony addicts, what real benefit do EQ2 players get from more devs being focused on producing more ‘must have’ ponies? Because make no mistake about it, SOE is most certainly re-allocating more resources to ponies.

You can’t stop stupid. There will be thousands of Diablo 3 players who ruin the game for themselves by sending a silly amount of money to buy gear, just like there are currently pony addictions in EQ2 influencing SOE and One Ring buyers influencing Turbine.

And the worst part if it all is that while the stupid might be a niche, a tiny fraction of the overall playerbase, they are all that matter in the F2P model.

10 Comments | Allods Online, Atlantica Online, EQ2, FreeRealms, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, RMT | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

All the blame, none of the credit

January 26, 2012

Can people please make up their minds? Are raiders an insignificant niche that devs should not spend time developing content ‘exclusively’ for or listening to, or are they so important that they are the reason a seemingly unstoppable social freight train went off the rails and is losing millions of subs?

How can it be both? Why would it matter if the content for 1% of your playerbase is too hard? And how, if said 1% wanted harder content, would that then be bad for the niche that raids, and also somehow translate into about 20% of your population leaving?

On a serious note, frequent readers should know my stance on this: ‘hardcore’ MMO players > casuals when it comes to impact/effect on an MMO. Every SynCaine is worth 20 Casual-Billy’s. When I leave, the mod makers, guild leaders, guide producers, min/max/exploit ‘discovers’ leave. And all that’s left is Casual-Billy looking around for ‘something to do’. And his ‘something’ is un-subbing after he exhausted the most obvious and fastest-consumed content.

13 Comments | MMO design, Rant, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Lowering expectations across the board

January 25, 2012

To say that the SW:TOR launch has been mediocre would be an understatement, and if you want to go so far as to call it a disaster, considering the amount of resources BioWare had, I wouldn’t argue the point.

And that’s SHOCKING to me.

Now the first time I heard mention of the 4th pillar being the key to SW:TOR is the first time I said the game is going to fail as an MMO and as an overall venture. That has not changed.

What has changed is the timeline of it all. I’m floored by the number of “not going to sub after the first month” comments I’ve seen. I fully, fully expected the first 2-3 months after SW went live to be nothing but “greatest MMO of all time” posts from everyone and their mom. Of EA declaring victory, of Blizzard announced MoP will be fully voiced, and of SOE getting hacked.

Man is that not the case. From the 1.1 clusterfuck, to so many people not being interested in alts, to comments about the amount of side ‘filler’ quests in the game and their (lack of) quality, to people not being able to find a group in the FIRST MONTH of the game, to the silly and embarrassing bugs, it seems that every day brings another joke-worthy news item from the face-blasters. You know its bad when you have the fans saying this is ‘normal’ in an MMO and that everyone should just be patient with BioWare. Are you kidding me? 300m and EA banking the company on you is not enough? And let’s not forget that Trion launched Rift somewhat recently and did not have nearly as many issues, despite having a fraction of the budget and former SOE employees on the team (in retrospect, that totally explains that whole security loophole issue though).

And all of the above does not change the fact that, bugs or no bugs, SW is still a failheap when it comes to being an MMO. It just also happens to be having issue as an sRPG as well. That I did not expect.

Which brings me to my somewhat revised view for the genre, and in particular the miracle known as GW2. I want GW2 to succeed, assuming it’s actually an MMO and not a WoW-clone. I want it to be at least good-enough that I’ll buy it and play it with the Inquisition crew from launch until whenever ArenaNet turns it into WoW. Not because I personally can’t wait for GW2, or because I think it will solve all the genre’s woes, but because an actual MMO game doing well is better than only having failheaps like SW out and… well, failing. Because maybe if GW2 does well, other devs/VCs will look at that and think “hey, maybe we should try making an MMO to cater to the MMO genre!”

Maybe.

46 Comments | Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: There will be… wrecks

January 24, 2012

Last night we got a little PvP crew together to see what fireworks we could create in the last few hours of our current war-decs. We knew at least one target was active in our home system, and we also had eyes on a few others in the area. The goal for the night was just to get into some PvP-fit ships and see what would happen when we got into fights more or less on our terms.

Our first fight happened in somewhat of a scramble. As some of us were warping from one station to another, three enemy pilots in Destroyers warped to that station at about 50-60km. They quickly popped a cheap-fit Rifter we had, but I was able to use that wreck as a warp target. Once in range, I put my ECM jammers on the three ships, and got a jam on two immediately. At the same time a few other members our of fleet had warped in and begun to tackle and attack. Two of the three enemies warped away as soon as this happened, but we had one of them tackled and he popped rather quickly.

At the tail-end of that fight, another enemy from a different merc corp warped to that station. Our war with them had just expired, but a few of our guys still had aggression on him from an earlier station ‘fight’. The bad news was I was not able to fight him, and could only sit and watch as the fight played out.

As you can see in the kill-mail, he was heavily tanked, and relied mostly on his drones for DPS. He actually ended up killing Rusty’s first ship just before he ran out of cap, and the Ares on the KM is Rusty’s second ship, which he had as backup in the system.

It was both interesting and frustrating to be able to only watch as the fight played out. I was able to assess the situation a bit better, and call for people to over-heat as things got critical, but the fight would have been an easy kill had I been able to engage and jam him.

After cleaning up all of the wrecks, we then headed to a low-sec system we knew housed a pirate corp. While the numbers our scout reported did not sound great, we were looking for a fight and sent in our bait ship anyway. The ‘bait’ worked, and he was followed to the gate by a Tempest and a Hurricane. We jumped into the system, and the fight started.

I was not able to jam the Tempest despite counter-cycling three jammers on him, but my fourth jammer did get the Cain. We were working down the Tempest when more ships warped in. First another Tempest, and then a Megathron. Then some tier 3 BCs. Oh and then a carrier. Whelp.

Since it was clear that we had brought a plastic knife to a nuke fight, those who could warped off, those who could not died bravely. Seems we will need just a bit more firepower if we intend to stir that hornets’ nest again.

We scouted one more system for potential targets, but all was quiet and it was getting late, so we called it a night. Overall a good time, and another valuable learning experience. It was also good to take out a few of our war enemies right at the end to even the score a little bit.

7 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Didn’t want that faction ship anyway

January 20, 2012

I interrupt the fail-cascade reporting (they haven’t said/done anything embarrassing today, have they?) to talk about an MMO, PvP, and expectations.

Last night was INQ-E’s second PvP roam night, and again we had a good turnout. We started off once again in a nearby low-sec system, hoping to catch someone coming or going at the gate. This system is home to, as far as we can tell, a French Industrial Corp/Alliance, and they love to light Cyno fields and push Jump Freighters through em. We, on the other hand, love blowing up those cyno ships and scheming of a way to actually kill a Freighter (bittervets feel free to offer hints here).

Our first kill of the night was pretty spectacular. Oh, the target was just a cyno frig, but that’s not the good part. No no. The ‘good’ part is that our fearless, bloodthirsty pirate Dex, flying his newly purchased Faction Frig, got popped by the station guns after killing the T1 frig. Nothing like starting your night off on a laugh. Plus we needed him in a Battlecruiser anyway :)

Not long after, another cyno was lit, but this time a Carrier jumped in. Initially everyone wanted to run away, but what fun would that be? We started shooting at it with the ships we had (3-4 T1 battlecruisers, one cruiser), and were hoping the other guy would fight back. After a few volleys however, he docked into the station. Moral victory IMO. Our small gang chased away a Carrier.

We then went looking into other systems, either to jump into a gate camp or camp one ourselves. While we saw a few pilots flying about, nothing ever materialized. On gates we knew we were being watched we did not sit around long enough to let the enemy counter our fleet, and when we ran into other combat ships, they fled.

In our fleet we had a player fairly new to EVE (still on his trial), and it was interesting to listen to how he viewed low-sec and EVE PvP. It sounded like he expected low-sec dwellers to not only be eager to PvP, but waiting for it. He made a comment that for a PvP area, it sure seemed like the people there did not want to PvP.

I could only help but compare this to what must be the only MMO PvP experience many have, which is battlegrounds. In battlegrounds of course everyone there is queued up and looking only for one thing, to bash themselves against the other side in epic PvP combat. The numbers always line up, the levels are balanced, the action is impossible to miss, and the end-result is known in 15-20 minutes.

Low-sec, and EVE PvP, is of course nothing like this. The actual act of combat is almost an afterthought, and it’s the fleet makeup, scouting, and all the other pre-fight factors that really matter. As has been said countless times, if you find yourself in an even fight, someone screwed up.

The other thing to consider is that you can’t have the highs that one experiences in EVE if they are made available on-demand. A memorable fight is, in part, memorable because of its rarity. If you could queue up to have a Titans vs Titans fleet fight, killing a Titan would feel pretty meh after the second day.

And even on less-eventful nights, there are still things to take away from them and learn from. For instance, was there a way to keep that Carrier from docking? Is there a way for us to catch those Jump Freighters? What tactics can we use to trick a gate camp into engaging us? If the areas we are roaming in are slow, are their other locations we should be flying to?

Oh and we have another war-dec for the weekend. People can’t get enough of us!

22 Comments | Combat Systems, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Stop it already, let me blog about something else, PLEASE

January 19, 2012

I mean come on.

Stop the trolling already. Take a break. It’s NOT EVEN FRIDAY!

“We kept the team together” – Over/under layoffs get announced next month?

“Rise of the ghouls took over a year to produce” – No shit. Thank you for reminding us why you won’t be able to produce content fast enough to keep people around after the first month. Also, splitting something into two parts does not make it “epic”. It makes it a two-part update.

“PvP is going to be a big focus for us” – Clearly.

“Legacy system” - Please grind more character while we take a year to produce more voice-work. Thank you.

“Guild banks” – To be fair, Rift also failed to launch with guild banks, so BioWare are not alone in overlooking a critical feature. Also, since when do sRPGs have guilds?

“UI customization” – Tell that UI ‘team’ 2004 called.

“Listening to the community” – How’s that rollback coming?

Oddly no mention of allowing people to un-sub.

Also lack of white shades kinda killed this for me. I can’t take a PR guy serious without them anymore.

Is it 6 weeks yet?

16 Comments | Rant, SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Medical License Revoked

January 19, 2012

People are lucky I’m too lazy to find my own “told you so” quotes about stuff. You know, stuff like “EA might shut down thanks to SW:TOR”. Because, um… EA might shut down thanks to SW:TOR.

This is the best quote:

“Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions,” Mitchell wrote

In other words, even people who just remotely observe the genre can already tell that SW is god-awful in terms of retention. No big deal except that oops, our business model is based on retention.

Sure, certain bloggers told you that in 2010. No big deal. It’s why they make the big bucks (do analysts like that make the big bucks?) and I drive my ‘thanks Darkfall’ Ferrari to attend “how are we going to liquidate Zynga” board meetings, during which meeting I write up posts to entertain the little people (that’s you).

Luckily, EA has figured out, no doubt thanks to a tip from the one Mythic employee still left, that if you disable the ability to cancel an account, it stops people from leaving. I do like the tip to call support to cancel. It keeps with the whole 4th pillar ‘voiced’ content theme all the way to the end. Well played EA, well played.

EA's stock price, or SW:TOR retention rate?

I’m also amazingly entertained by certain people who, just now, are suggesting that, maybe, sandbox MMO design might work better for long-term retention. Where do people come up with such groundbreaking thinking?

Oh and don’t worry, the think-tank over there has already brought up some very valid, very informed opinions.

Personally, I dont actually like the Skyrim-type games. I find that there is just too much to do and get paralysed by choice.

The fact that I might play two or three characters to level cap in three or four months and consider myself ‘done’ with SW:TOR until the next major expansion is a huge plus from my point of view

Neither EVE nor WoW are actually very good at player interaction, because the range of interactions you can have with another player in these games is so limited compared to real life interactions

I feel like the more we ask “how can we increase the longevity of MMOs” the more we move away from “what is fun?”

They could probably ‘Skyrim-ize’ WoW today with not too much effort.

Personally I don’t think a Skyrim type mmo would be successful at all because there is too much. My friends bought skyrim and liked it but stopped half way story-wise because they got overwhelmed with side quests and such. It would captivate you for a good 40-60 hours playtime and then you’re burned out. while I agree some more variety or alternate leveling paths should be in games, you will need to have some linearity or you’ll lose all your 2million subscribers before the 2nd month

The only way to really make an MMO everlasting is to randomply generate the story of the PC. Not the quests he gets, but the story behind the quests, allowing go’n'kill quests as well as those more complex, both morally challening and epic.

Just think, any of the above might be in your next random dungeon group!

25 Comments | Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, SW:TOR | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Rebuilding the genre on SW:TOR’s ashes

January 18, 2012

I get the feeling that people misunderstand me when I say that I hope SW:TOR is the death of the AAA themepark MMO. I’m not saying the genre would be better if people did not spend 300m to make an MMO game. I’m not saying that spending 300m to make a themepark is wrong. I’m not saying spending 300m to make Darkfall would be right.

Ok that last part I am sorta saying, but more on that in a bit.

Here is what I do know. I do know that spending 300m to clone WoW does not work. Or rather, I know giving BioWare 300m (or 80, or 500, depending on the report) to clone WoW is a waste of money/time/effort. I also know giving Trion 50m to clone WoW is meh. I know giving Mythic any amount of money to clone WoW is doomed. I know that Turbine is one step away from directly selling you the One Ring if it helps save LotRO from shutting down. And finally, I know giving SOE anything is bound to have it hacked, stolen, and made into something you can’t download anyway.

What I, or anyone else for that matter, don’t know is what would happen if you gave someone not trying to clone WoW 50m. Or 300m.

I know that if you have CCP focused, they produce greatness. I know that when they try to go too mainstream and attempt to sell you jeans or vampires, they get into a lot of trouble. And finally, I know they are at least smart enough to realize it and correct that course.

We have at least one example of an MMO that has stuck to its core, and 8 years later it’s as alive as it’s ever been, and the future is looking brighter than most in the genre. It’s not F2P. It’s not “oh that old dated game”. And it’s not “just naturally seeing burnout like every game always sees” (Sorry Raph).

And look, if you are someone who is actually interested in living in a virtual world that evolves but always retains that thing that originally attracted you, how could you not look at EVE and be amazed and wishing that was the case with your favorite MMO? (If you are someone who intentionally jumps from MMO to MMO every 3 months, a bus can’t hit you fast enough. No offense but fuck off.)

What we also know is that when you give someone like Aventurine a bit of money, they release an MMO that has amazing combat (best in the genre IMO), produces some amazing moments, and is rough around the edges (to put it nicely). It’s also a game lacking in a lot of areas. The economy sucks. Crafting is meh compared to the genre norm, but sucks compared to EVE. It was buggy. It sucks that the population is low. Lack of updates. I could go on.

The point is, that even with extremely limited resources, Aventurine still produced an MMO that did a lot more for the genre than SW does, unless you count teaching the world that voice acting is a complete waste in the MMO space, but I’d say EQ2 already did that in 2004.

Furthermore, who is to say that with 50m, someone, be it Aventurine or otherwise, can’t make a version of Darkfall that not only appeals to its current audience, but also others? If Excel Online can get 400k people to play 8 years after release, are you really going to argue against the fact that Fantasy Excel Online would have no chance at 500k+?

We don’t know because, thanks to WoW being what it is, all of the big money has been spent futile chasing that pipedream. That’s why SW:TOR is so significant. It’s the biggest, most expensive copy/paste attempt yet, and when (not if) it fails in spectacular fashion, one would hope the beancounters will wake up and try something else. The world can’t possibly be stupid enough to throw even more cash down that hole, can it? Because make no mistake about it, it is a hole. It’s NOT working. No one has come even close to what EQ1 did, let alone WoW.

And for all of you non-EVE/DF/sandbox players, for those who only really know WoW and its redheaded stepkids, how do you know you only like what WoW offers? Yes, you don’t like EVE because it’s Excel Online. And you don’t like Darkfall because it’s PvP-only. And you don’t like ATitD because it’s crafting-only. And Wurn is dated, etc.

What if someone spent 50m to produce something of Rift’s quality, but with a world and mechanics that were closer to UO than EQ? That the dev team had a plan deeper than “repeat WoW, but with this tweak”? That the community was more than just the die-hard oldschool UO people (if you believe that myth)?

Could you, just maybe, find a game that had more than a few months of solo content to offer you? Could you, possibly, get into something that got its social hooks into you along with its gameplay? Something that, 6 months in, was just getting started rather than scrambling to tack grind on?

Maybe if that was a reality, you wouldn’t need to keep looking into the future, hoping that ‘the next one’ is going to last a little bit longer. That you would leave not when the ‘Game Over’ screen came up, but when you decided it was time for a break. And when you returned, in a month, a year, or five, the core game that you loved was still there, only expanded with a whole bunch of cool stuff as well. And when you did come back, familiar names were there to welcome you back.

Fantasyland.

Right?

(GW2 Jesus-MMO note: Assuming GW2 really is significantly different from current-day WoW, and assuming GW2 really is an MMO in the ‘oldschool’ sense, GW2 being successful, along with SW:TOR burning, may indeed be that ‘trigger’ event, moving us out of WoW’s faded shadow and into a strange new realm of money being spend on producing actual MMO games.)

Edit: Screw 3-6 months, BioWare is attempting to kill SW now! 80-500m can’t buy you a single glance at the history of ANY PvP MMO? I mean come on; this is 100% amateur hour on the grandest stage. It’s your 1.1 update and you DESTROY the game like this? And then to cap it off, your response is that you are “investigating the POTENTIAL issues”? We all knew this was BioWare’s first MMO. Is this the first time anyone on that team has ever done ANYTHING, including playing for an EG-minute, related to an MMO?

Just shut it down already.

Actually no, keep it online for another month, I’m waiting for 1.2 with more anticipation than I have for anything not called DF2.0.

47 Comments | Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Down the rabbit hole we go

January 18, 2012

Last night I went into wormhole (WH) space for the first, and it was pretty impressive. The thing that hits you immediately is how different the space functions and feels. You don’t see people in local, you don’t see items of interest in your overview, and the whole place looks different. You are still a spaceship in space, but this space is just a little bit different visually.

Another big aspect of WH space is the Sleeper race; mobs that are smarter than the average rat. They change targets during combat, use things like neuts, and when killed drop items that can be sold to NPC buy orders in empire space rather than pay direct bounties. They also look different, having a creepy ‘living machine’ kind of vibe to them. The little bits of flavor text you get when you warp into one of their areas are a nice touch.

WH space is also lawless. This, combined with the changes in local and the overview, create a new sense of danger, or at least of the unknown. The fact that WH space is also not thriving in terms of pilots (at least the spots we have scouted) adds to this. 9/10 times the space being empty is both a good and a bad thing, right? Getting blown up 1/10 time is fine if you are in a frigate, it’s less cool if you are flying some decent PvE ship or heading out to mine. And then of course there is the subject of defending the space, should one choose to live there out of a POS.

And that last bit, the whole “live there” aspect, is yet ANOTHER possible goal for the Corp. In terms of profits, I think even a C3 WH would be better than low-sec. I’m not sure, of course, but it’s looking like it. But this raises the issue of having everyone ready to make that jump, of making sure people can scan down exits and such. Of putting up a POS, fueling it, etc. It’s all very exciting, potentially very profitable, and could all end in flaming wrecks if the wrong group comes along.

Fun stuff.

EVE-related blog post notice: If you would like to join us, comment here or shoot me an email. If you don’t have an EVE account, I’m more than happy to send a 21-day trial invite, and split the PLEX-related profit if you decide to sign up. Again just comment or email me.

7 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

You should return those glasses to their rightful owner

January 17, 2012

Syp over at Biobreak has a post talking about the pre-2003 MMO market and todays, and how you can’t pay him enough to go back to that time.

First I find this odd, as looking at his About page, I’m not seeing pre-2003 MMOs on his list of games he has played extensively, but maybe that’s just an omission on his part? Maybe he is a pre-2003 MMO vet? Is he just hiding the fact that he was Dreadlord Syp?

Anyway, here is his list of reasons why the genre is better today:

The quest system, dynamic events, full voice-overs, customizable appearances, public grouping, hybrid gameplay (such as STO’s ground/space combat), genre blending, business models

The quest system of 2012 is Cataclysm and SW:TOR. I’ll leave it at that.

‘Dynamic Events’ are a buzzword today for games like Rift, which are painfully static. Dynamic events in games like UO or EQ, which were player-driven, were actually dynamic. And actual events. The killing of Lord British anyone?

Voice-overs – Yup.

Customizable Appearances – In UO you had more options for this than you do today in WoW. With more impact as well. The game also had customizable housing on a scale most games today can only dream about (or declare technically impossible, depending on how little the devs think of their player-base).

Public Grouping – UO had this feature. Only it was called “Talk to that played, see what they are doing, and do stuff together”. When this happened regularly, it was called a guild. And since people actually lived in those worlds, rather than just ‘progressed’ through one hub to the next, knowing the locals meant something. I’d be dying to hear how someone who has experience with that prefers the random dungeon finder instead, as relates to group quality and the overall enjoyment of grouping.

Hybrid gameplay – The genre is better now that we have a poor man’s version of Starfox that we have to pay $15 a month to play? Odd, I was under the impression that when I loaded up an MMO, it was because I wanted to play an MMO, and when I loaded up Starfox, it was because I wanted to play Starfox. That said, UO had chess, although it required two players, so I understand why it would not work today.

Genre blending – We sure are.

Business Models – I love Pay-2-Win enhanced games like Atlantica. That game would suck as a pure sub game. I also love an immersive experience like LotRO turn into a slot-machine. Finally how can you not love what accounts being free does to server communities (lulz what is that?). In all fairness this can work sometimes. LoL being F2P is cool. EVE having PLEX is nice. Games like DDO/EQ2/LotRO/AoC not shutting down but instead milking a few dummies is cool, I guess.

And finally on to his real argument as to why those who enjoyed the genre pre-2003 love it today.

Oh wait he’s done? I see. Fine, let’s move on to the horrors of pre-2003 games, shall we?

You think the quest grind is bad today? Try simply grinding mobs endlessly for no reason other than a lack of other options. Or the horrible death penalties. The lack of real support for solo players. The incredibly obtuse nature of game mechanics and stats. The lack of free-to-play resulting in fewer gaming options on any given day

What game was Syp playing where he was grinding mobs endlessly because he had no other options and that was it? Doesn’t sound like UO to me. Nor AC. Nor DAoC. EQ1 players? The original carebears? Is it you?

Death penalties – The funny thing about WoW-only players is they just don’t know better. Tell them that if they die they lose all their stuff, and their heads explode. Now Syp, I guess being a pre-2003 vet, (right?) knows better. So he knows why the death penalty in UO was awesome. Just how much gameplay came out of the penalty in AC (Darktide, the only version of the game that mattered). And how many of you original carebears have epic corpse-run stories? I don’t think I need to talk about dying in DaoC, do I?

Solo players – What a horrible crime, that in a genre called massive MULTIPLAYER, we don’t cater to solo players. One can only imagine how horrible server communities and guilds were back when the only people playing were those who wanted to be social, who wanted to play something with others, who cared for group progression over personal. The horror! What would I do without little solo-Billy never talking and always being in his personal instance? Do you know how much worse my MMO experience would be without people like him… not around?

Game stats – I’m so glad the genre moved away from needing a website like EJ to play ‘the real game’, where groups are no longer formed based on gearscore, and that we no longer suffer with FOTM builds in games like Rift. That finally, we did away with obtuse things like being stuck playing a character in DAoC and making the best of it, rather than just re-spec’ing. That finally, rather than having to work towards a new build like we did in UO, you can just instantly hop from one solo-build to another. Amazing progress has indeed been made, and it’s clearly reflected in not just the games, but their communities as well.

Lack of free-to-play – Ah yes, the land of infinite quality, where only the best and brightest games dwell, and where only the finest of citizen reside.

I think I get where Syp is going with this. Now that I think about it, the 1997-2003 years were indeed horrible. Dealing with server communities, playing with tight-knit groups that stuck around longer than a month, building a server reputation, being judged not by my epics but by my personality. Just terrible, nightmarish days.

And remember all those awful days of Relic keep raids? Of invading Darkness Falls? Or all that time spent ‘grinding’ away in Minoc? Just talking to other players around your house because, damnit, you had no other options? Remember how painful it was to go into a dungeon in AC-DT, only for it to escalating into a server-wide brawl? Do any of you know how much time I ‘wasted’ fighting over a city in that game? How many people I knew by reputation, how deep the connections were? It was just awful man, awful. Not a single solo instance around, no ‘epic’ gear handed to me, absolutely no way to instantly teleport to a dungeon with some bots to go on an ‘epic’ quest to kill a god (for the 400th time).

Syp didn’t mention these things, but I will. You know what’s awesome about 2012? That thanks to $300m budgets, the games of today are bug-free (just don’t /dance), that they get prompt content updates (delayed until next week), look amazing (SW retro 2004 vibe is great), run great (just don’t turn on those now-gone high textures), have awesome server hardware (up to 10 people in one area) and they offer such a wide variety of things to do compared to games of old.

I mean look, when I’m tired of listening to those B-rate voices on my main solo-quest, I can go and do this side-quest. Solo. While listening to B-rate voices. In only one zone (sorry, planet) See? It’s awesome. So much better than being ‘forced’ to grind the same mob camp (one out of about a few thousand, if we’re talking UO) all day. Assuming I’m not a crafter. Or a shopkeeper. Or a PK. Or an anti. Or exploring. Or sailing. Or acting like an orc. Grinding mobs all day, yo!

Man I’m glad it’s 2012!

(Apologies for it not being Friday)

81 Comments | Asheron's Call, Atlantica Online, EQ2, Housing, MMO design, Random, Rant, Rift, RMT, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 49 other followers