Community Publisher update #2

Posted on December 23, 2009 by SynCaine

Holiday break time, which likely means no blog posting for a few days (unless someone calls DF crap, because then I’ll have to throw up a post showing how I’m genetically superior to them and that their opinion is completely wrong, fear not!), so what better time than now to make a post about the Community Publishing program from Aventurine and my experience with it so far.

As of today (December 23rd, 2009), a total of X copies of DarkFall have been purchased through my link, 95% for the NA server and 5% for the EU server. The first 30% of sales have already been deposited into my PayPal account; the rest will be deposited in the next pay cycle. Of all sales, 20% have been for the current special promotion of DarkFall plus a 6 month subscription for $83 (I get 20% of that $83), the remaining purchases have been for just the $50 ‘boxed’ copy and the one free month.

The busiest day has seen a grand total of two sales, and the longest time between sales has been five days. A quick comparison between site traffic and sales shows no correlation, nor was there a significant spike right after the release of Conquer the Seas. Out of all the sales, I believe I’ve been contacted either on the blog or through email by almost everyone who made a purchase, and I would say about half of those I’ve personally responded with starter tips or answered their specific DF-related questions.

In terms of clicks to sales, the link (according to WordPress, which I’m going to assume is accurate) has been clicked just over 400 times. I don’t know enough about internet advertising to say whether that’s a good sales rate, but it seems decently high to me. On any given day that I don’t link to something in a current post, the Community Publisher link is near the top in terms of clicks, which I attribute to its prime location on the site, and the fact that it’s a graphic. On a related note, I wonder how many people intended to buy DF through the link, but then because of a technical issue (perhaps reloading the page, or coming back in a way that does not link me) ended up doing it in a way that does NOT credit me. As with all things, I doubt the system is 100% accurate.

Overall I think the Community Publishing program is a huge success, both for DarkFall and as a source of content/entertainment for this blog. While the amount of money is nothing to start planning a career around (or miss a day of work actually), having a connection to new players joining a game I’ve recommended has been overall enjoyable, and getting ‘new user’ feedback has been very interesting. Even after all these years in the MMO genre, it still surprises me just how differently everyone approaches something like DarkFall, or what aspects of the game stick out to them as either great or annoying.

Aventurine has hinted at sharing some of their own info about the program as well, and I’m very interested to hear their thoughts and experiences with it. If the NEW clan on the NA1 server is any indication, a lot of people are checking out DarkFall, and I’d be curious to know what percentage of those players are coming in via the Community Publisher program, or how a CP-led player is faring compared to a totally random purchaser without that CP-connection.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to spend my blogging millions on another Ferrari.

Edit: Actual numbers were a last-minute subtraction based on advice from my father, who has more level 80 WoW characters than you do.  Sorry.

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

Posted in Darkfall Online, Site update | 14 Comments

300k subscriptions to fail, 50k to profit.

Posted on December 22, 2009 by SynCaine

Much like Tobold’s knowledge of MMO blogging history (Lum invented it, if you did not know…), his understanding of business success also seems to be a little off. Actually I’m going to go out and say the above-linked post is just a troll attempt to drum up traffic and get him more Blizzard freebies, because I believe Tobold is a lot smarter than that post would indicate, but sometimes its fun to play along and feed the trolls. Plus it seems Tobold is not the only one confused on this subject, so in the spirit of giving, here goes.

If one MMO has 300k subs, and the other has 50k, which one is more successful? If you answered anything but “that depends”, you are Tobold.

Because if that 300k MMO cost 50 million to produce, and the 50k one cost 5 million, guess who is going to get in the black sooner? If that 300k MMO need 500k subs to just break even based on all associated costs, while the 50k one needs 40k, guess who is profitable? If that 300k MMO spent 10 million on advertising to boost initial sales, and the 50k MMO spent nothing, who again needs to sell a lot more copies just to break even? If that 300k MMO is losing 5000 players a month, and the 50k MMO is growing at a rate of 10% month-to-month, guess which one is going to have a server shut-down party and an employee meeting in the parking lot? And finally, if you are an MMO dev, which title would you rather be associated with; the expensive failure or the small success story?

Numbers aside, it would be wise of Tobold (and anyone else in that camp) to research EVE’s history of growth, and compare it to the rest of the MMO genre during that time. I’d also look at the number of MMOs growing after 5+ years, because the list is rather short. Actually, the list of MMOs that continued to grow after just one year is rather short itself, although come February it will have another name added to the list, one that both Tobold and Lum wish would go away.

Posted in Aion, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Rant | 63 Comments

Failure post is fail

Posted on December 21, 2009 by SynCaine

This post by Lum is a little funny. Funny given the source, and funny given the ideas within. It’s also funny because in parts it’s more or less a time capsule of, oh, 5-10 years ago? I won’t bore you with all the details between Lum and DF, but let’s lay out some facts before we move on, shall we?

  • Number of MMOs Lum has launched in the last 5 years: zero.
  • Number of MMOs Tasos has launched in the last 5 years: one.
  • Current game Lum is working on (chasing bots): Aion
  • Current game Tasos is working on (not chasing bots): DarkFall.
  • Current MMO growing in the US/EU since launch: DarkFall.
  • Current MMO bleeding out in the US/EU since launch: Aion.

Amusing that Lum lumps SB, Fury, and DF together as one example in the post. Cute, but not exactly correct.

Fury was indeed a shitshow failure, but its PvP base was the least of its troubles. I would start with “The game failed to actually be playable” as my first item to address. I would then address “when playable, Fury was not remotely fun, for anyone, ever”. After that and perhaps another hundred or so issues, I’d start to think about PvP-related problems. I’d also stop calling a terribad medieval Counter-Strike clone an MMO, but that really does not matter at this point, does it?

ShadowBane had the problem of launching in a state that well, also made the game unplayable. SB.exe is a joke, but it’s really not. It’s more like dark humor, because sadly it’s true. That SB in any form was able to survive and last as long as it did is actually a tribute to its open-ended PvP base, considering once it failed at launch its financing was cut and development basically stopped. How many other forms of MMO content could survive YEARS without any meaningful updates?

And finally of course we have DarkFall, which Lum puts in the group above despite the fact that, you know, DF is growing, making money, and rapidly improving. Lum cites EVE in another example, so maybe he got his groupings mixed up?

Lum also mentions message boards and how they should be avoided at all costs by the developers. While 99% of ANY message board is at best garbage, in that 1% you CAN find some value. Consider this: if you were a teenager when Ultima Online launched, you are now in your late twenties or early thirties, hopefully educated and employed, and overall not a 13yr old basement dwelling degenerate yelling at your mom for another hotpocket. If you are the above-described gamer, you’re likely an Aion player anyway, since kids that age enjoy being an emo fairy.

Given that some of today’s MMO players have more MMO experience than some of the devs making the games, it’s not exactly out of the question that they might have an idea or two worth considering. Add in that we are talking about a genre that is still in its infancy, one that (unless you are making an EQ-clone) is still tossing out radically new ideas that may be sliced bread+1 or the next NGE, and you can’t exactly be an SME in MMO design. I mean Richard Garriott might count, but that expertise gave us Tabula Rasa, and then RG flew off to outer space.

And as Lum accurately puts it, given that a PvP-based MMO is more likely to attract the dedicated MMO player, that’s not the worst user-group to get feedback from. I’d safely say the Hello Kitty Online devs can avoid their suggestion forum however.

Looking over DF’s brief history, it would only take a little searching to see that many of the games positive changes (GC on spells, whirlwind) originated on the forums. Again, you don’t take everything written as gospel and write code based only on that, but to assume you can’t get any value out of such a dedicated and in-touch group is ridiculous. Add in the knowledge that had DF failed, those looking for a PvP MMO would either have to return to EVE or, god help us, play an emo fairy, and it’s not hard to see why those who truly are trying to help the game along are willing to put aside personal gain to improve things overall (players with high-end magic asking for magic nerfs, those who favor mounted combat explaining why it needs to be adjusted, etc).

Luckily for DF fans Aventurine does not share Lum’s stance on all of this, and so far DF is a better game for it. Good luck chasing those bots though, give em hell!

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

Posted in Aion, Combat Systems, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, MMO design, PvP, Rant, Ultima Online | 122 Comments

Keep your shiny, I’ll stick with my rules.

Posted on December 21, 2009 by SynCaine

It would seem that a ‘silly’ argument sure provides a lot of discussion, so after half a dozen posts and hundreds of comments, what exactly have we learned from last Fridays Blog War™?

For starters, the very fact that we DID debate which game has more content (DF or WoW), or whether Aventurine has added more content to DarkFall in one year compared to Blizzard in five says a lot. We are talking about a company here whose QA staff is larger than all of Aventurine put together, has far more money, and ITS FIVE FREAKING YEARS! Love it or hate it, if the biggest addition to your semi-annual content patch is a fix to your LFG system, that should raise some concern. So you either believe AV is just that much better at MMO design/implementation, or Blizzard really is that lazy. I’ll take a little of both, thankyouverymuch.

But “my game is better than your game” aside, the other big ‘discovery’ made over the weekend is that MMO fans can’t agree on what content is, or rather, they have different views of what they consider content. If you are an MMO dev, that should interest you. To oversimplify, it seems that some players are happy with a palette swap and a fresh texture over the same gameplay, while others will accept seeing the same art files reused if you just switch up the rules governing them.

And rather than looking for a ‘which is better’ answer, I think the correct one here is it’s a matter of preference. For me personally the rules are far more important then the shiny cover. Balancing PvP combat and creating open-ended virtual worlds is something I’ll take ten times out of ten over upgrading the visuals of an armor set or releasing another tank-n-spank or Simon Says boss encounter.

Playing with my fiancé, I have first hand experience with ‘the other side’, and while it still puzzles me, I at least know it exists. She does not really question the rules of a game too much, unless they are in-your-face broken, but will gladly complete dozens of ‘kill ten rats’ quests so long as they dish out item upgrades and are set in a different environment. When we played WAR, she grew bored towards the end because her character progression slowed, while I at the same time grew bored because T4 RvR is fundamentally broken. She could care less about the frequency of city sieges, while I was never bothered by the slower personal progression or fighting in the same location.

Posted in Blogroll, Darkfall Online, MMO design, Rant, World of Warcraft | 21 Comments

What I REALLY meant to say regarding content.

Posted on December 18, 2009 by SynCaine

It’s funny that in the wall of text below, I never actually got to what I originally meant with my line of “DF has had more content added in a year than WoW has in 5”. The straw man Tobold put up worked to distract me, although sadly even taken out of context I still believe DF has more ‘content’ than WoW, be it since release or overall. But my point was never that Aventurine has added more lines of code or art files in a year to DF than Blizzard has to WoW in 5. My point was that at the most very basic level of “stuff to do”, AV has added more “stuff to do” in a year than Blizzard has in 5. To me “stuff to do” = content.

And even with that, “stuff to do” needs some context. For example, I don’t put a ton of value in adding the 153rd edition of ‘kill ten rats’, this time with neon orange rats instead of neon purple ones, but I would say adding working overworld naval combat to an avatar-driven game as huge. To me the fact that DF has naval combat that is more than a gimmicky “jump in the vehicle and get a new hotbar” is more ‘content’ than all of WotLK combined. WotLK added a slew of new mob, armor, and scenery models etc, but all of those are just used to spice up the 154th edition of ‘kill ten rats’. Naval combat in DarkFall is basically a whole new game. What works in the water, or on a deck, is completely different than what works on land.

I look at things like player housing, the village system, the trade route system, the sea fortresses, the kraken, and character specialization as adding far more ‘content’ than a new set of instances that replace the previous set as ‘best in slot’ locations. WotLK added a bunch of zones/instances, just like TBC did before it. And just like TBC made all of vanilla WoW’s endgame zones/instances obsolete, so did WotLK to TBC zones/instances, and Cataclysm will do the same to WotLK. Those expansions don’t add MORE content; they just replace the endgame with a new one after a game reset (adding more levels).

Of course those new instances/zones have new graphics for all of the mobs and items, new lore written to explain the appearance of the space goats and the new ‘kill ten rat’ quests, and new abilities to spam in 1-2-1-3 fashion on those mobs, and if we are counting total content added in only that context, Blizzard wins.

I just don’t count that stuff as all that new. Sure it’s nice to see a new mob graphic or what the next raid set looks like, but once the shiny is seen, what then? How does a new gear set, that other than looking different and increasing your stats by 2% compare to something like the kraken being added? Ignore that the kraken is a new model with new animations and sounds, because that’s not the point. The kraken changes how you travel the ocean, the danger that exists, and the risk/reward of setting out in a ship. That to me is content. What was previously ‘empty’ space is now something to think about, something to consider and weigh in terms of risk/reward, and just one more random factor added to naval combat. That a kraken might show up in the middle of a naval battle is, imo, far more content than whatever a new instance brings.

The trade routes added recently are extremely simple in design. Four different locations were added to mainland Agon, you go talk to the NPC, give him some gold for a backpack, and then take that backpack to another NPC and get more gold as a reward. Very simple and nothing fancy.

In WoW this task would be completed however many times you need to earn your shiny before you would move on, bored and complaining because the content did nothing but make you pointlessly travel to grind out your shiny. In DarkFall the trade routes add a ton of ‘content’, because the four hubs become PvP hotspots, the travel involved adds attractive targets to the world, a player can set his risk level and try to make the journey, and a well organized group can use the system to earn a hefty amount of gold, albeit at a large risk. That to me is all great content, driven by Aventurines ‘simple’ addition of trade routes.

Apply similar thinking to villages, housing, player vendors, specialization, and yes, I believe Aventurine has added more content to DarkFall since release than Blizzard has to World of WarCraft in it’s five years of release.

Posted in Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, Housing, MMO design, PvP, Rant, World of Warcraft | 52 Comments

You call THAT content?

Posted on December 18, 2009 by SynCaine

Now this might be a first; Tobold starting Friday Blog Wars? Who is this guy, and where has the real Tobold/Gevlon gone?

The funny thing about all of this is we are going by ‘numerical’ measure of content, as if there is a science to MMO content or an official scoring system. It’s going to come down to “I don’t view that as content”, “Well I do”, but since this is Friday, and one can never back down from a Blog War, here goes (Plus if you visit Tobold’s site and increase his page views, Blizzard is more likely to invite him to Bliz Con and give him other ‘free’ stuff, just for promoting their game. Shameless these bloggers, just shameless!).

Tobold left out his biggest weapon in this argument sadly, as he should have said that because DarkFall is a sandbox, it by default has more content than a themepark. He failed to mention that, so I guess its fair game. The amount of content in a WoW starting zone is worth about 10 hours (probably less now with speed leveling), because once you level out of that content, its gone. You can re-roll an alt, but the entire zone is identical, so unless we are counting seeing the EXACT same thing as new content, each zone in WoW aside from the current ‘cap’ zone is very limited. Once you leave you never return, and the space and everything in it only has value for that short time (in MMO terms) you spend focused on it.

That the next zone is just a rehash of the same ‘kill ten rats’ quests you just did is another matter, but lets pretend the lore of WoW matters (hi space goats) and that the quests are in fact different. I think by Tobold’s scientific method, if farmer A tells me to kill wolves because he needs wool, and farmer B tells me to kill bears because he needs meat, that’s two very different sets of content. We are going to ignore that killing wolves/bears requires 1-2-3-2-1 for both, for now at least.

In DarkFall any area has value to a veteran and a new player, and it will never become obsolete because the level cap has been raised or a new instance with higher item levels has been added. It can always be used as a trade hub, staging points for an attack, or simply an area to pass through on your way to some PvP/PvE (and since travel time and location have value in DF, this can’t be discounted). The value of any mining node never decreases, unlike in WoW, and the goblins that you fought to learn the combat system can still be killed for ‘easy’ skill gains or some easy gold, not to mention whatever PvP may occur in the area.

Tobold is also funny in bringing up mob variety as a comparison, stating that in DarkFall you might only see a goblin in your first 20 hours, but in WoW you get to experience a wide variety of mobs. Now if we are speaking only in terms of graphic models (bonus points if you think pallet swaps count as content too), and we also assume the 20 hours of only goblins is true for DarkFall (it’s not, but lets pretend), Tobold is right, you will see more monster graphics in WoW than you will in DF on your way to level 80. Now once you hit 80 the amount of mobs you will fight is a fraction of the ones any player will fight at any time in DF, but that’s just a small detail we need to ignore.

But as graphics only go so far, what about combat? In those first 20 hours of gameplay, those very same goblins in DarkFall (scouts, warriors and shamans, since they all act differently) will do far more in combat than any mob you will experience in your first 20 hours of WoW. Actually they will do more in combat than ANY mob in WoW in terms of AI (not a set script). And that’s just goblins, which fight differently than say Deathless Mages, Menehirs, or any of the dragons.

Now for me gameplay is content, so while I’ll learn how to beat every mob without a script in WoW within 5 minutes (and even if I don’t learn, I’ll still kill all of them and collect ‘epics’), each mob in DF requires a more measured approach. If you just run in without a care, it’s very likely the mob will drop you, and since death in DF matters (in comparison to WoW anyway), you will quickly learn to play smarter or you won’t progress. In WoW, even IF a regular mob could kill you, the only thing you would need to learn is to come back after you ding or buy some no-risk gear on the auction house. Plus there is that little detail of terrain, where in WoW it has zero impact on combat, while fighting those same goblins in DF is night and day depending on WHERE you are fighting them. Add in that what a goblin drops is ALWAYS useful to any DF player, while once you ding gray mobs are POINTLESS in WoW, and the amount of PvE content available to any player in both games is starting to look very lopsided.

Factor in that at any given time, the total number of useful mobs, group options, and the amount of usable loot is greater in DF than it is in WoW, and well, I’m having a tough time seeing all this content Tobold thinks he has access to.

The comedy of course is that one game is basically PvE only (unless you find a challenge in playing the kiddie-pool economy with a gold cap, or you find zero skill cookie PvP fun). Because if we want to talk about the amount of content WoW provides in terms of PvP, and stack it up against DF, we are in for a really good laugh.

Let’s pretend the siege engines in DarkFall (the numerous ships, warhulks, and cannons, all with different costs, values, and power) are on par with the siege engines in WoW’s world PvP… hmmm wait that’s not possible, as Blizzard has come to the conclusion that world PvP is technically impossible in an MMO. Fine fine, lets compare the mass failure of WoW’s Wintergrasp’s world (err, instanced) PvP to a DF city siege. Which city out of the dozens you ask (and shhh about hamlets, Sea Fortresses and villages!), eh lets just pick one, even though every city requires a different approach and strategy, can be in a different state of completion, and owned by different clans with different alliance affiliations.

We want to keep this from being a slaughter, so let’s just pretend DF has only one city to siege. Lets also pretend we always bring the exact same number of combatants to that DF city siege, we all instantly travel to the siege location, and that everyone is hard-locked into one of two sides, with characters all basically equal in level, with zero-risk gear that does more to determine who wins than any actual player skill. Wait, what are we comparing again…?

If I’ve been to a single WG ‘match’, how much of that content have I seen? How different is one WG match from another? How different is the result, how does it alter the game going forward, and what politics and strategy factored into the match beforehand? Oh, there is no politics or strategy beforehand, and everyone just joins at random, with everyone getting a reward win or lose? Eh, let’s not count that either then. I mean politics don’t have a graphic model, so they don’t really count, and solo play in an MMO is basically the same thing as playing with a guild or the whole server, more or less. Plus the result actually mattering is a relic of MMO history, everyone knows the superior solution is to reward success AND failure, otherwise you might upset someone, and we can’t have that.

Ok whatever, PvP is stupid and it does not count as content, plus DF is negative sum PvP and failure-to-launch Lum says that model is doomed to fail, so clearly DF is not growing and gaining players almost a year after release, and will soon die because of that negative sum impact PvP. Plus player skill factoring into combat is dumb, I mean who wants to get rewarded for actual getting better at a game! I should win because my character has a higher item level than you damnit, not because you outplayed me!

Moving on, let’s finally compare the real strength of WoW, the economy! You know, that awesome game-within-a-game that some are so focused on. WoW offers just a ton of content here, as you can literally spend hours and hours every day running your favorite UI mod and opening your mailbox. Plus once you have achieved UI mod mastery, you can in turn use those hard-fought gains to buy awesome, game-changing stuff like… another ‘epic’ mount? I guess you could save up to buy a player house, and then use your player vendor at that house to sell a wide variety of player crafted gear that you either made yourself or ask others for, which in turn you could use THAT gold to hire mercenary guilds to protect you from your enemies. No wait, you can’t do any of that in WoW… but you CAN buy another epic flyer! And once you buy like 20 of them (that’s 20 examples of content, they have different graphic models people!) you get MORE content because an achievement pops up. It’s like a content rollercoaster that just never ends.

But this all comes back to Tobold being a little confused overall on what content really is in an MMO. I mean let’s look at this:

A repetitive part, for which the base rules are always the same, for example combat… (is not content)

I think everyone can see the problem here. In WoW combat is indeed extremely repetitive, to the point where you could spend a minute with your G15 keyboard and teach it to beat every non-scripted mob in the game, at any level, in any zone (for the scripted mobs you need to watch Youtube, or just have someone who out-gears the content carry you through it). It’s easy to see how combat is not actually considered content in WoW beyond the first five minutes, but that might be saying more about your game than anything else. Oh and good luck with that G15 script in DarkFall against those goblins.

The funny part is every class in WoW has dozens of skills and abilities to fill your hotbars with, and yet the combat is far simpler than the ‘click-fest’ combat in DarkFall. Cataclysm is sure to add new abilities, yet it won’t make combat any more skill-based, you will just have different icons in your 1-2-1-3 rotation. The next free expansion to DF (which won’t take 6 months to arrive) is going to add further specialization, and like the two before it, will require a fair amount of adaptation, strategy, and actual consideration.

Let’s conclude with this:

What’s next, “Darkfall has more players than WoW”?

My DF server has more players than your WoW server Tobold, and the thousands on my server impact my game to a far greater extent every day than they do on yours. But hey, I’m sure the hundreds of other WoW servers with millions of players add a ton of content to your game, at least by your scoring method.

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

Posted in Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, Housing, MMO design, PvP, Rant, World of Warcraft | 66 Comments

Initial overview of DarkFall’s Specialization system.

Posted on December 16, 2009 by SynCaine

At some point in development, DarkFall lost its skill cap and players were allowed to train every available skill to 100 without any penalties. It’s not clear when the cap disappeared, or exactly why, but it’s gone and not coming back. For the first few months players wondered about the future of character diversity in DarkFall, as eventually almost everyone would have everything maxed out and everyone would be exactly the same save for the player’s race.

Then with DarkFall’s first expansion, the Specialization system was introduced for magic, with promises of later expansion into both archery and melee. At its core, the Specialization system allows you to pick one enhancement at the expense of other choices and sometimes with some additional penalties, with the ability to change this choice at any time through the same NPC vendor at varying gold costs.

For magic currently this means making the choice between +10% damage, 40% faster spell travel, the ability to jump cast the spell, or a 100% range increase. There is no penalty when making a choice other than of course the inability to select all of them. While a good addition, it did not exactly revolutionize combat in DarkFall or bring about critical decisions. Most players pick one spell as their ‘jump turn’ spell, one (if that) as their long-range spell, and the rest go 10% daamge (if the travel speed is already fast) or 40% speed.

With the latest expansion both melee and archery received some notable Specialization options, ones that not only helped define roles, but also ones with some tough choices to make. I’ve held off on going into detail about all of this due to Aventurine still making changes, but I can at least cover the basics and give my overall opinion on the system and its future.

For both archery and melee, the biggest choice currently is whether you pick specializations that limit your elemental magic or not. You either receive a bonus to your magic resistance or a boost to damage vs staff-wielders if you decide to limit your magic, and the choice comes down to player preference. Personally I favor melee and archery, so giving up my one elemental school (earth) was not a difficult decision, plus with elemental now ‘off’ I no longer need to worry about skilling those up, and instead can focus my time/money on increasing my melee or archery mastery.

In solo combat against a magic user my specializations puts me somewhat at a disadvantage, as the elemental schools not only offer damage spells, but some good buffs and utility spells as well. In group combat or PvE, my choices benefit me so long as I get team support (for buffs, healing) and put myself in the correct situations (harassing casters, trying to be the focal point of magic damage). The extra magic resistance is noticeable and allows me to survive a bit longer, while my mana shield when wielding a bow also helps absorb some damage and gives me a nice edge verse casters and other archers.

The key to the system is of course getting something at the expense of something else. Any specialization the gives me something at the expanse of my mana is an attractive option for me, but it might not be for a magic-heavy character. What’s also tough to judge currently is just how far the Specialization system will go. The advancement from the first expansion (magic) to the second (melee/archery) was rather significant. Will crafting receive specialization options (damage vs durability, selection of damage type?), will melee and archery be further specialized, perhaps limiting melee to either a 2h or sword/shield? It’s difficult to say overall, but with some tweaking Aventurine’s second pass with the system in CtS has already increased combat diversity and options, which is the ultimate goal. It’s not about creating a ‘best’ build or locked-in character classes, but rather tailoring your character to do what you enjoy best, be it melee, archery, magic, or some combo of all three.

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

Posted in Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, MMO design | 17 Comments

Amazing DarkFall Promo Video of Astonishing Wonder

Posted on December 16, 2009 by SynCaine

Now normally my super secret plan to get rich from this blog by pimping DarkFall is super secret, but since I feel like getting a soda at lunch today, go watch this video and then buy DarkFall through the link in the top left. Thank you.

(In the interest of semi-full disclosure: Valroth is a member of VAMP, a nice guy, has one of the best characters in the game, and is way way too good at DarkFall. Plus makes better promo videos in his spare time using only in-game footage than some game companies put together for professional release :cough: STO :cough:)

Posted in Darkfall Online, Mass Media, Random, Site update | 17 Comments

A bit of WoW history to explain the LFG change.

Posted on December 15, 2009 by SynCaine

Yesterday’s post received a lot of good comments debating the merits of the new LFG tool and how it changes the social dynamic in WoW. What may have been lost or unclear in my post is that I believe the new tool is an improvement for the average WoW player, but it’s not an improvement for what MMOs are all about. The new LFG tool is not the first step WoW has taken to benefit the solo-hero at the expense of the MMO fan, and I think at least some people seem to forget this.

First let’s start with battlegrounds being added, which while a nice quick way to zone into some zero-impact PvP, killed any chance WoW had at world PvP (and back before WoW was released, a lot of attention was paid to, you know, that whole Orcs vs Humans thing WarCraft was based around, now long lost thanks to space goats and countless other additions). Now before BGs, world PvP in WoW was basically limited to one zone and guild raids on NPC cities, but who is to say it would have remained that way if instead of adding instanced battlegrounds, Blizzard added RvR-like zones similar to DAoC, or had come up with something new (I know, that would be a first, but back then the A-team was still at the helm so it might have been possible).

World PvP was removed in favor of instanced, pre-set, limited PvP. That’s fine as WoW was more about a set group interacting with itself rather than one big involved world. The first pass at battlegrounds allowed groups to queue up, which meant it was possible for a guild group to all queue into AV and play as one team. AV’s initial version was also more tactical, and winning often relied on coordinating the NPC special attacks and giving them proper support. When both sides lacked any coordination or tactics, you got a standstill, which was somehow regarded as a terrible, terrible mistake. Remember, if the cookies don’t rain down fast enough, WoW players start to cry. AV was ‘fixed’ by removing most of the tactical options, and the ability to queue as a group was removed to make things ‘fair’ for everyone. A win for the solo-hero, and another source of group-based activity removed.

Finally cross-server queuing was added because under-populated servers in WoW would suffer from long queues at odd hours, or for whatever battleground was the least efficient to grind out rep/tokens/cookies. While cross-server queuing did reduce the wait time, it also removed server rivalries and seeing familiar faces to fight with/against. How you view that change is a good indicator to the type of player you are. That many cheered the removal of waiting at the expense of server community is not surprising for WoW today, but at least back then it was somewhat shocking. It seems almost impossible to imagine a game like EVE or DarkFall with such a change, where the time to siege is shortened, but you are now sieging a random clan rather than a given target, yet that’s exactly what happened in WoW.

Looking outside of WoW, Warhammer Online gives us a perfect example of why random grouping does not lead to any sort of social interaction. One of the main complaints about Public Quests, outside of them being underpopulated, is that you run in, join a group, complete the PQ, and leave without ever saying a word to your group. This has long been the case in battlegrounds/scenarios, where outside of one capslock-kiddie crying for attention, everyone else was silent, but to see it happen in a PvE environment was something else.

When it becomes effortless to join a group, and the amount of familiarity needed to complete a group activity is so low, the need for socialization is minimized. You can champion ‘being social to be social’ all day long, but we all know MMO players are infamous for doing whatever it takes to get to the shiny, even if that means having LESS fun along the way. You can’t change human nature, but you can shape it by defining the rules your world plays by.

It’s the developers job to guide the players, and sometimes that guidance might SEEM like a bad change initially, only to later realized that you are having more fun with the game now than before. A good example of this is the recent PvE changes in DarkFall, which made many of the mobs in the game significantly harder. Initially of course players complained that they can no longer farm, that the game was impossible, and why is PvE being made more difficult when DF is a PvP game? A few weeks later, and group PvE is common, random group vs group PvP is occurring more often, and the whole risk/reward ratio is in better balance. It’s a change Aventurine knew they had to make, and it was one many in the community did not initially understand because the impact of the change was deeper than just the top layer.

The new LFG tool certainly makes getting into a dungeon easier in WoW, that is undeniable. What time will tell is how the tool changes the already weak social fabric of the game. WoW in 2004 was far more of a virtual world than it is in 2009, and with the continual changes to instant travel, anonymous grouping, and the reduced reliance on others, it’s not hard to see why many view it closer to a game like Guild Wars than something like EverQuest. Which is not a ‘bad’ change overall, as both GW and EQ are fun games for what they offer, but if I’m looking for a virtual world to interact in, which game am I more likely to pick, and which game is more likely to keep me around purely based on those social chains?

Posted in Darkfall Online, MMO design, PvP, RvR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 55 Comments

That’s not the kind of Multiplayer I’m looking for.

Posted on December 14, 2009 by SynCaine

It would appear that patch 3.3 has revolutionized World of Warcraft and ‘improved’ the game immensely, as everyone is discovering the amazing joy that is multiplayer in MMOs (Massively is still missing from the WoW equation, but one step at a time now) and previously abandoned instances are seeing (for now) new life. Although if Tobold’s post and comment section are any judge, it’s not the same type of multiplayer that has been the staple of the genre since 1997 (or before, but UO is an easy ‘starting point’). Rather than the pure enjoyment of simply doing something with others, 3.3 is being hailed as a great addition because the final hurdle for the solo-hero, group instances, has been conquered without compromising the solo-heroes greatest trait, the all-about-me attitude.

Finally all of the solo-heroes in WoW can rid themselves of the annoyance of a guild and go it alone, queue’ing up as easily for an instance as they have been for battlegrounds, reaping the benefits of showing up without the hassle of being concerned who else is there. It’s both an incredible leap forward in solo-hero gameplay and a sharp reminder that the WoW crowd is very different from the MMO crowd. It also makes you wonder how long such a benefit will last, or if eventually it’s a real benefit at all. While access to content is all well and good, once that very limited content has been absorbed, moving on will be a bit easier without any sort of social structure keeping you interested. At least in a guild-oriented environment, even if you are personally done with something, running it again (and again and again) with a guild group is common, and prolongs the need for something else. That ‘run it again’ approach is what has keep many subscribed while they wait for their 6 month update.

It’s somewhat interesting, from the outside looking in, that such a feature would be cheered in an MMO in the first place. Personally the social aspect has always been a huge draw for me, not just the aspect of playing with a set group, but also how that group’s progress and reputation is regarded among other groups and the virtual world as a whole. While personal glory is all well and good, being a part of something highly regarded or reviled is just another motivator to log in, work together towards something, and reap the rewards of some group-centric goal, a goal that is usually far grander than anything possible solo. It’s that same history of success and failure as a group that keeps people playing together, keeps certain rivalries going, and adds a layer of interest to whatever your group is doing. There is no better motivation to get something done as a guild than to know your main rival is also pushing for that very goal, be it raiding progress or PvP conquest.

Posted in MMO design, Patch Notes, World of Warcraft | 51 Comments