Going small

April 2, 2013

Edit: Camelot Unchained kickstarter is live today, which is relevant to today’s topic. I’ve not donated yet, but more on that in a different post.

After the WAR bubble burst, one of the many complaints was a lack of population in the RvR areas and PQs. Many attributed this to the general decline in the number of players playing overall. Pushing that line of thinking further, many believe you need hundreds of thousands of players AT LEAST to make a game feel populated and ‘alive’.

That’s horribly wrong.

For WAR, the game’s poor design lead to the feeling of under population. Unless you were part of the initial population surge through the leveling game, most areas felt empty, and RvR battles were non-existent. This would have been the case had WAR retained 1m subs, 500k, or 100k.

On top of those poor design decisions, WAR’s population was always spread across multiple servers. Some retained population well, while others were ghost towns from basically day one. If you happened to pick such a server, you got screwed. And as the population overall started to decline, more and more servers dropped below ‘critical mass’.

How many players do you need on a server for things to feel alive? In Ultime Online: Forever, the concurrent population often hovered around 300 (I believe), and yet the game felt lively. Some of this is due to UO’s design, which on most fronts is simply superior to themeparks, WAR included. But design aside, you really don’t need that many people to give the world a lively feel.

The reason we had not seen MMOs with only one ‘normal’ server (EVE is different, as always) in the past was due to cost. The theory was that MMOs had to be very expensive to produce, and so you needed to attract a lot of people to make any money. As many games have shown recently, and will in the coming years, that theory was about as accurate as the 4th pillar being a core value in an MMO.

This is a huge win for MMO fans for a number of reasons. We get away from the cookie-cutter “MMO for everyone” WoW-clone design. We get MMOs that are more targeted, be they PvP-focused or otherwise. We also get MMOs that (hopefully) won’ succumb to chasing the ‘everyone’ crowd later on and watering down things for the core that is actually playing.

At least, that’s hopefully the trend something like Kickstarter can help start. We’ll see if devs and players alike actually see it through.

15 Comments | Camelot Unchained, MMO design, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Camelot Unchained has a release date!

February 5, 2013

More on this tomorrow or the next day, but just a quick comment: we are making hype videos with a date for launching games on kickstarter now? Bit… odd, right? And do they expect to get all 10m from kickstarter?

Spoiler alert: I’m actually semi-interested in this and forgive Jacobs for WAR. Still find his old blog title hilarious too.

9 Comments | Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

WAR’s legacy

January 23, 2013

Nice interview by Massively with Mark Jacobs. He makes some good points.

WAR’s hype was inexpensive and very effective. The point of hype is to get people interested enough to buy; for WAR, that worked. My only question would be whether the hype would have worked as well with a more measured tone. If ‘bears bears bears’ was not in the game yet, or was not how the game really worked, would a more toned-down video have been just as effective for hype purposes? Or did the hype only work because it was as crazy and outlandish as ‘bears bears bears’?

The whole third-faction, RvR vs PvE focus; obviously I retrospect this was a bad decision. As I point out frequently here, aiming at 300k and getting it is better than aiming for 1m and getting 50k. WAR/SW:TOR and many others aimed at a ‘broad audience’. They appeal to no one enough to retain them. A game like DF:UW only appeals to a tiny subset of the MMO population, but is able to retain that group because for those players, it’s the best game out due to its focus. Why this continues to be a pitfall for others I’m not sure. I get greedy is a powerful thing, but with almost 10 years of examples, it’s pretty crazy that people are still willing to throw money into the fire like that.

Finally, if you look at what WAR brought to the genre, and compare it to SW:TOR or the ‘genre fixing’ GW2, WAR win’s in a landslide in terms of contribution. Public quests, evolving cities, how they did instanced PvP, the Tome of Knowledge, map functionality, etc. Yes, at the end of the day the game did not work enough to succeed, but many of its parts were brilliant and the blueprint going forward. Other than convincing everyone NOT to do voice acting, what did SW:TOR bring? Is there one feature of GW2 that is new and worth copying into another MMO?

24 Comments | MMO design, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Darkfall: Unholy Wars – Voicing the Manifested Vision in White Shades

December 20, 2012

Darkfall is under NDA right now, so while I’m writing about it, I can’t post details until the NDA is down. Whenever that happens (current date I have is Dec 27th) expect either a long post, or a bunch all in rapid fashion.

Without breaking NDA, I will say that DF:UW is indeed a sequel to DF1, rather than the suspected ‘large patch’. It’s also already provided a single high point above anything in my one month trip to 80-ending in GW2, and done more to encourage grouping than any ‘fix’ to the formula that Anet aimed at. Wish I could say more, but ‘soon’.

I’ll be deleting any comments that break NDA here, so save me the clicks and don’t if you are in the beta.

5 Comments | beta, Darkfall Online, Guild Wars, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP, SW:TOR, Vanguard, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

WAR’s RvR or GW2’s WvW?

November 9, 2012

Better PvP experience: WAR’s RvR near release, or GW2’s WvW?

Instinctively I wanted to say GW2, because lulz WAR, but I spent a hell of a lot more time in WAR’s RvR than I did in GW2’s WvW. The same goes for the guilds I played with. That’s hard to ignore.

Then it comes down to which is more flawed. I think GW2 gets more of the little things right, like siege equipment and zone layout, but WAR gets more of the big picture stuff right, like PvP actually going somewhere, and you actually going someplace with it. I’d say which has the better combat system is a tossup. GW2 has better skill balance, but has the silly invuln-dodge mechanic and basically no itemization (far too easy to get BiS everything just by visiting the AH), while WAR had massive CC issues but felt like you could do more with a well-balanced group, and not all skills in that game blended into one giant blah of AoE.

I bring this up because Keen mentioned the two in his post about TESO, where he too makes the assumption that GW2 WvW was better than WAR’s RvR, and I’m just not sure it’s that cut and dry.

Either way, both models ultimately pale in comparison to MMOs that get/got PvP right (EVE/DF/DAoC/SB/AC-DT/UO), and to Keen’s point, I don’t expect TESO to rise much higher (if at all) above that lowly set bar of GW2/WAR ‘PvP’. :queue “lowered expectations” theme song:

19 Comments | Guild Wars, RvR, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Bernie Madoff was a great investor. Used the wrong payment model.

November 8, 2012

“I think there will definitely be failures within the next 12 to 24 months. Many who are entering the market right now are doing it as almost a money-grab. But subscription is dead. [Star Wars:] The Old Republic was the biggest possible swing for the fences. There is no longer any argument over whether that can be done.” – Craig Zinkievich, COO of Cryptic Studios

Do you think Craig said/wrote the above with a straight face? And if so, do you think he really believes it? It would take a pretty epic level of stupid, but then this is someone from Crypic, so I’m kinda 50/50 on it.

On the other hand, Craig is right. The ‘argument’ that sub games can be done is indeed over, mostly because it was never an argument to begin with. Pretending WoW, EVE, Rift, etc don’t exist must be nice, but probably not helpful in terms of sanity. Maybe Craig will also consider the argument over once EA shuts SW:TOR down for good. Time for a new ‘6 months’ meme I guess.

“I suspect that if you’d launched Fallout 3 as a free-to-play title rather than paying $60 for the disc it would have had equal or greater success.” – Someone working on games not as successful as Fallout 3.

“Riot Games’ Brandon Beck sees the matter differently. As a co-founder of the company that created League of Legends, Beck is at the top of the West’s biggest free-to-play success story, and perhaps the most compelling example of a free game that rivals the experience of the very best $60 AAA products. However, he stops short of proclaiming a free-to-play Uncharted as inevitable – it’s an easy thing to say, but actually making it work would be a daunting challenge, with higher upfront costs than the typical free-to-play game.”

Great stuff right? The failures in the pack telling the ones who are successful how to do their job. How about instead of making F2P ‘awesome’ games like Star Trek or Champions Online, you make outdated and ‘dead’ model games like Fallout, Skyrim, or Grand Theft Auto? Maybe then you won’t get bought out?

This really hammers home a major problem in the industry today; devs think their shitty game doing poorly is not because they made a shitty game, but because ‘market conditions’ ‘payment model’ ‘timing’ ‘toothfairy’ etc. Try making a good game. I’m pretty sure more than enough people will drop $60 for it. Or if you want, try making a good game that is worth playing longer than a month, and I’m sure people will be willing to pay the measly sum of $15 a month to do it.

Or yea, keep making SW:TOR, Star Trek, Champions, WAR, LotRO, DDO, etc, and keep thinking it’s not the game sucking that’s the problem. The magic future where people pay for crap is coming.

Update: Magic future already came? Zynga made a lot of money selling trash games? Magic future is over now? Zynga is worth a buck? Damn.

So close Craig, so close.

23 Comments | Combat Systems, DDO, EVE Online, League of Legends, Lord of the Rings Online, Mass Media, MMO design, Random, Rant, Rift, RMT, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The long list of mass market MMOs that everyone is playing

October 2, 2012

So if you did not pick up on the fact that yesterday’s post was a long-winded setup to tell you that EVE is the best MMO ever, you are either new here or not paying attention. Also if you are someone who likes to dismiss EVE because it’s a niche MMO in a genre full of mass-market MMOs, this should prove educational.

Let’s cover the niche part first though, since it’s pretty easy. WoW is an outlier with millions of subs, so I’m going to put it aside for now. Yes, EVE is niche compared to WoW, but based on that logic GW2 selling 2m boxes is also niche because 12m subs > 2m boxes. Same goes for SW:TOR, LotRO (who had a lovely “come play with millions of others” ad campaign pre-release. How’s that working out for ya?), or… actually any MMO not called WoW in the NA/EU (silly Asia).

So WoW aside, how do the 400k subs (I know I know, it’s just one guy with 400k accounts, and he buys PLEX in-game so even he is not paying anything, but let’s pretend for a moment that somehow magically those 400k subs still somehow count as 400k x $15 per month for the sake of CCP’s revenue) stack up to everyone else? Well no one has 1m subs, so now we are talking thousands rather than millions.

A whole slew of ‘mass market’ MMOs are now F2P because not enough people found them worth $15 a month. SW:TOR, which will soon join the F2P fail-ranks because it could not keep its 500k or bust target, cost more money than any MMO before it, and EAWare famously stated that if you are not spending $300m, you can’t compete with WoW. I guess if you DO spend $300m+, you can’t compete with EVE either. In fairness to EAWare EVE probably cost somewhere close to 300m to develop as well. Well 300m Yen anyway.

GW2 just launched and rewrote the whole MMO formula, including that nagging issue of having to pay to keep playing, because really, who likes paying when you can get the exact same thing for free? Not surprisingly GW2 sold fewer copies than Skyrim though, another “buy the box and play forever” fantasy title. To be fair, Skyrim is in the more mass-market sandbox genre, while GW2 has to carry the heavy burden of being a themepark. Also the NPCs in Skyrim are more helpful and less likely to go poof after a month, and the dynamic events don’t repeat as often. Both games do feature loot piñata dragons, meh combat, and nice visuals. I’ll be kind and not compare the main storylines.

Rift is still a sub-based MMO, and it’s a mass-market themepark. It has fewer subs than ‘niche’ EVE if various data sources are to be believed, and somehow if Trion retained half a mil subs I think we’d here about it. Plus get back to me when Rift has 400k subs at its ten year anniversary. Hey only about 8 years to go, but to be fair when EVE launched it had way fewer subs too, so maybe Rift will grow much like EVE has. Maybe. That said, out of the last few years, Rift is the only major MMO to actually stay a sub-based MMO for a year+, so it would not be totally unreasonable to call it the most successful launch since… WoW?

So I ask, what ‘mass-market’ MMO are people talking about when stating EVE’s 400k subs is ‘niche’? I thought we got over the whole “WoW or bust” thing in 2007? Or are people really still thinking the ‘MMO market’ is 12m strong, and surely the NEXT title is going to hit that mark? Because if you do I’m sure EAWare has a spot for you on the team! Or maybe Funcom. Or Mythic. Wait is Mythic still a thing? No, why, what happened? Didn’t they have that huge surefire IP and mass-market MMO that was going to crush WoW? (I hate you whiteshades.)

And once you realize that 400k subs is not niche, but near the top of the not-WoW market, you can reasonably set expectations for design and market size if you are actually aiming to design a game that is intended to be played beyond the first month. You know, an MMO. Or what the old folks called an MMO before Anet came along and ‘fixed’ it for all of us.

Furthermore, if you can’t make $18m in yearly revenue work for you and your dev team (100k subs for a year, and assuming zero box sale money), you are doing it wrong. Probably to the tune of $300m wrong that leads the head doctors to call it quits because people pointed out that you delivered $300m worth of garbage while helping to shut down a game people loved (which may or may not have had more players than SW:TOR currently has actually playing).

But seriously, $18m a year is not peanuts, and I don’t think retaining 100k people for a year is asking for the moon. Hell, maybe would call that hyper-niche and laugh while they go back to their 1m+ subs MMO not called WoW, so it must be easy! And look, if EQ1 got 500k people back when you had to use a rotary dial to login, I’m pretty sure a team of devs can make something today to get 100k. Or 50k and try to survive off $9m in revenue. The horror.

Or you know, keep pumping out those ‘mass market’ MMOs all the kids are talking about. The ones just crushing it in terms of numbers like… WoW. Release in 2004.

Yea, those!

62 Comments | Age of Conan, Aion, DDO, EQ2, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, FreeRealms, Global Agenda, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Pick a group, design for it, don’t get greedy

September 28, 2012

When I see people write that no MMO can hope to retain people beyond 3 months now, like they did back in the big 3 days, I can only shake my head, laugh, and think about my recent two years with Darkfall, my almost three with EVE, and the infinite amount of time I’m about to spend with MMO baby jesus DF:UW.

Snark aside, the reality is that most MMOs after 2004 are designed, either intentionally (GW2) or not (SW:TOR), to be short. The first time I heard EAWare mention the 4th pillar is the first time I said SW:TOR is going to fail (look it up kids). That one single design decision is all I needed to know about the game, because NOTHING could have saved SW:TOR from being a short-burst game after the 4th pillar was announced. (Short of going in the total opposite direction after the story end. Gee I wonder what EAWare is focusing on of late?)

Consider these two stark contrasts. In GW2 you have access to EVERYTHING your character can do combat-wise at level 30, which lets be really kind and say takes 30 days to reach. In EVE, you won’t be able to sit (forget flying well) in one of the biggest ships (Titan) in the first 177 days, assuming you do NOTHING but straight train towards that (and completely ignoring how you would actually acquire one).

The question at hand is not which method you would prefer, or which one is more ‘fun’. The question is simply this: out of the two options above, which one sounds like it’s designed for a game that the devs expect you to play long-term, and which one is designed to be played in a short burst?

Of course for the 177 day training to be found worthwhile, everything else around it must also work to some extent, and in EVE it does. I’m by no means saying that long-term retention is as simple as extending the ‘grind’ and calling it a day. As I’ve said thousands of times now, long-term retention design is HARD. Really, really hard. But hard does not mean impossible, and under the right conditions, long-term retention done well can yield WoW (12m subs). Most likely it yields EVE (400k subs). Maybe if you really go niche it yields Darkfall (100b subs). So long as you properly identify your market size and deliver something for it, you can be successful on a variety of levels. Not everyone (anyone?) can be WoW, and that’s ok.

And it’s important to remember that much of the current MMO population is not interested in long-term retention. Whether someone outright states they don’t want to play something longer than a month, or has a playstyle that reflects it (solo), these people are not looking for the same thing people interested in living in a virtual world are. They might drop in and visit (tourists), but regardless of the design, you just can’t retain them. (WoW is the MMO first-love for many, which is why it draws them back time and time again. It’s another perfect-storm situation that can’t be repeated. It’s also dying and something like 5 people bought into Panda-time and 3 of them have already quit, so whatever).

The mistake so many devs have made is believing that they CAN retain them, if only they tweak the design and add more solo PvE content to a PvP game (WAR), or put in a 20 level pre-game to the core game (AoC), or spend a billion dollars on one-off voice acting (SW:TOR). These design decisions sacrifice the long-term for a quick burst, and the expected result happens; you get your short burst at the expense of your long-term. It’s why MMO release after MMO release looks exactly the same, and why it has convinced some that that’s just how things are today.

The reason I cheer for games like SW:TOR to fail is because, hopefully at some point, developers will wake up and realize you can’t attract the millions of short-burst players AND retain them by trying to design for both.

If you want to make a short-burst MMO like GW2, go for it. Sell the box and don’t expect more after, have a business plan that supports that expectation, and make the best one-months-worth of content you possibly can. If you do it right you will sell a whole lot of boxes and people will move on happily a month later. Just don’t do PR where you proclaim to have ‘fixed’ the MMO genre and all will be good.

And if you want to get $15 a month from a few hundred thousand people, please design accordingly as well. That group has shown a willingness to deal with valleys if the peaks are worthwhile, but they better have something to do in six months, and that something better not be the exact same thing just reskinned from the first month. Plan your business model accordingly, figure out a way to handle the tourists initially, and don’t get fooled into thinking you have something bigger than you actually do. Long-term retention MMOs are a niche. It’s a pretty sizable niche, and $15 a month for 6 months is more than $60 once, but yea, it’s hard to get right.

As players, we have to be honest with ourselves. You can’t expect the highs of long-term moments to fit into your ultra-casual schedule. The peaks and valleys will be more muted because in the MMO genre, you get what you put in. That said, it’s not nearly as hard to be part of something big as some make it out to be. World-first raiding and the time/dedication it requires is not the only way to get a huge high from an MMO. Just being a regular member of a guild doing something big/cool might be enough.

Of course, that guild can’t do something really cool if everyone moves to the next game in a month, but that’s the tradeoff you accept when deciding between the two styles.

21 Comments | Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Splitting the genre in two

September 27, 2012

Let’s move past why GW2 sucks and onto a bigger topic; why so many recent MMOs suck, shall we?

Chris thinks all MMOs are good for 3 months or less, and that’s just how things are today. Keen has a pretty solid counter, but it raises the question that will (hopefully) clear the air here: are you looking to play a game for a while, or not?

Because I think that really cuts to the root of the issue. In the ‘good old days’, I think the vast majority of MMO players WANTED to get sucked into something long-term (group 1). Much of the original hype behind an MMO was that it was an RPG that never ended, and that is EXACTLY what people wanted. New Ultima game but with unending content? Hell ya! Take my money!

Today not everyone is on the same page. There are a lot of players who DON’T want to get sucked into something long-term (group 2). They WANT a 3-monther or something to do for a month and move on, and nothing short of a miracle (WoW) is going to change that.

One group is not more right than another, and however you arrive at either group is an unrelated issue (got old, more money, kids, whatever).

What does matter is that the two groups are looking for very different experiences, yet are being lumped into one group (MMO players). Worse still, studios are designing games with the impression that they can design content for the short-term group, and expect long-term retention. SW:TOR is the latest poster-child for this, but it’s just one of many such failures. And make no mistake, these games ARE failures, because the target they are aiming at is WoW, which prints money not because it sold a ton of boxes, but because it RETAINED millions of players for years. EAWare expected SW:TOR to RETAIN at least 500k subs, and at one time the expectation was 1m+. They sold a ton of boxes because group 2 wanted something new. They failed because solo-story content does nothing for group 1, and even if it did, group 1 is just not that big.

Both markets, the short-term ‘MMO’, and the original model, are viable. EVE is an undeniable success, DESPITE the fact that it’s a niche within a niche product (non-IP Sci-Fi with no avatar). CCP is successful because they understand who their market is, and they design the game around the long-term retention of their core rather than the short-burst of group 2 (Incarna aside). Misleading talk aside, GW2, much like GW1, will likely do fine because the model is not around providing long-term entertainment, but rather just a short burst every now and then.

This also clears up the F2P vs sub aspect as well. F2P ‘works’ because a tiny subset of your entire base is willing to pay enough to subsidize everyone else. That’s why so much of the design around a F2P is aimed at catering to that tiny minority, or to convert some of the unpaying masses into cash cows. By contrast, the sub model is designed to provide enough content for the long-term majority, in the hopes that most people will stick around and play/pay.

And if you combine the intent of group 1 or 2 with the business model and content design around a game, you have your target.

Developers are doing a decent job catering to group 2. There are countless F2P titles that are good-enough to play for a month, and occasionally one will get some cash out of you. Those that don’t, shut down or get their support slashed, but even the most marginal titles end up surviving in one form of zombie mode or another.

Designing a solid title for group 1 is much harder, in part because it’s so different from the rest of gaming. Instead of just making sure the current content is fun once, the devs must consider how the content will play in a year, or for the 100th time, or when someone with 1000 hours plays alongside someone with 10. That’s hard. Just as EAWare, Mythic, Turbine, or any other studio that has tried and failed. Maybe the original big three were really lucky, or really good, or understood the market better than most do today. Regardless, it worked then, and it continues to work today.

The extreme example of success in group 1 is WoW, but that’s misleading if you buy into the fact that WoW’s success was as much good timing as it was solid design. Make no mistake, 2004 WoW was very well designed, but that’s not the entire story IMO.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that we will see another WoW-like success. Far more likely is someone hitting EVE-like numbers. And again, CCP is making very good money off EVE. But that’s happening because they understand the size of the market, in addition to how best to cater to it.

You can’t spend $300m today because you predict 1m+ subs. It’s not going to happen. Plan to get 100k with a solid title, figure out the budget to make that happen, and good luck. And let’s not kid ourselves, with 100k subs you can make a VERY solid game. Maybe you won’t have all your dialog voiced by professional actors, but you won’t be limited to Pong-like graphics either. Spend smart, spend S-mart!

46 Comments | Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

GW2: Review at the midpoint

September 5, 2012

I hit level 41 last night on my Human Elementalist. In that time I’ve completed (all items checked) three zones, done all storyline quests up to my level, have two crafting skills to 130ish, ran the first instance in Story Mode, done a bit of WvW, and completed two cities. I also have an alt at lvl 12 that I’m playing along with my wife.

Let me just get this out of the way: GW2 is a fun game. It’s worth the $60. It’s a solid MMO and a good step towards what all themepark MMOs should play like. It has its flaws, but none of those flaws (save one, WvW queues) are crippling or have a seriously negative impact on your enjoyment overall. Anet has some work to do, but what is there now is very good.

Some of the highlights:

Classes play differently in a substantial way. Even my Elementalist (ranged magic) plays different from my Ranger (ranged physical), which is a huge credit to Anet. Double bonus for how classes play in group situations. A lot of people make a big deal of the holy trinity not being present, but the real major step here is that every combo of classes brings something different but still viable to the table (at least for PvE and WvW. I’m sure in 5v5 min-maxing is king). Playing your class well is also noticeable, which is great.

Except.

That you can still skill-smash 95% of the PvE and progress (at least to 40, blablabla it gets harder), and in large-scale WvW player skill falls to the all-mighty zerg. (Programing note: In Darkfall even in a zerg player skill matters, a lot, so the idea that in every MMO zerg>skill is wrong and should not be accepted as a simple truth.) At the end of the day, GW2 is still a mass-market themepark, and while it’s a very good one, it would be silly to assume niche-market design, which player-skill>zerg is most definitely a design decision. Not a huge detractor from the fun, but worth mentioning.

Zone design is mostly solid. While the areas within a zone are grouped by level ranges, they are not as hard and fast as in most themeparks, and you will find yourself going back and criss-crossing often. This gives the zones a fake-life feel. They are still zones that don’t have any impact on the world (there is no world), but the smoke and mirrors are high quality.

The big thing I’ve noticed is that certain zones have a LOT more content than others, especially in terms of events. Those zones really keep you busy, while the less-designed zones play more like a hub-to-hub themepark.

Gear is plentiful and easy to acquire, while at the same time feeling like it makes little impact. Upgrading to a Master-level weapon five levels better than my old one was not noticeable. I’d say this would be a negative, but with the way GW2 combat plays, it does not bother me all that much. I’m more focused on kiting while dropping skills than looking at the numbers that pop up, and mobs tend to die at a similar pace whether I’ve just upgraded or I’m due for one.

WvW is a lot of fun and is well designed. I’ll cover this in more detail in its own post, but from what I’ve experienced so far Anet got a lot of things right, including the all-important scoring system. That said, the one massive issue is the queues. The Eternal Battleground is well named, because that’s how long the queue for it is on our server, and the three side zones also feature lengthy (1hr+) waits. As more players hit 80, this will only get worse (unless the game itself fails and people drift away at a clip faster than new ones come in, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. GW2 is a good game). It’s also bad enough when trying to get in solo, but organizing a guild group is basically impossible unless everyone has a 2hr+ chunk of time.

The tricky part about the queues is how different servers feel about WvW. Our server was pre-planned to be a powerhouse, with both Darkfall and DAoC guilds/alliances joining. We all enjoy PvP, and we wanted to play with and against quality opponents. The derpfest that is going to happen at the bottom of the server rankings is not something we want to be a part of, but in return we get horribly long queues. Bad design, and something Anet hopefully fixes soon by increase the cap. The derp servers will derp amongst themselves anyway, while the top-end servers will have plenty of people to fill out WvW even at 150 or 200 caps. The zones are big enough to handle that, and people can always transfer off non-WvW servers if that’s something they really care about.

I’ve talked about ‘dynamic’ ‘events’ before, and at level 40 I’ll just repeat myself: they are, at times, interesting quest chains that you forget as soon as the UI fades away, while still being flawed thanks to current player zerging of zones. Missing the ‘world’ ‘event’ stuff is not game-breaking, but for that much design effort to be spent for so little reward right now is less-than-optimal. They are overall slightly better than WAR’s PQs, but not by much. That said some of the dialog or fluff around them is cute and solid attention to details. 99% of the player base will totally miss all of that though.

GW2 crafting is themepark crafting. It’s a gold sink and a grind, and the rewards are meh. Discovery is completely forgettable other than being an XP boost. I’ve always said MMO crafting is more about the ‘what’ than the ‘how’, and the ‘what’ in GW2 is as flawed or pointless as it was in WoW and all other themeparks.

The UI is overall great and very responsive. That said, why do crafting mats go into your bags? You can already one-click send them to your bank, so why not just have them automatically go there? Must I really open my bag every few minutes to click the little gear icon? Also wtf is the point of crafting-specific bags that are the same size but require more mats as a regular bag under this system? Other games have those for a reason, but GW2 lacks it.

The one dungeon I ran was interesting, and played very different from a traditional themepark instance. More on that in another post as well.

So again, GW2 is solid and worth your money. It’s the direction I’d like to see themeparks go if themeparks must exist. But MMO Jesus it is not, and cancer has yet to be cured. Anet has some work to do, and they have already had some missteps like getting ban-happy over nothing or over-fixing karma gear pricing (lvl 40 gear for 9600 karma is silly).

21 Comments | Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Guild Wars, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP, RvR, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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