Between zoning out with headphones on, inter-office romance, being female, not showing up, ForumFall’ing while waiting for the server to come up, and doing a WoW review for EuroGamer, I now understand why the DarkFall expansion is delayed.
Fail Aventurine, fail.
While I’ll very likely be skipping SW:TOR for a few reasons (It’s SW, it’s ‘casual’, it’s a mega-themepark), the news about henchmen being added to allow you to solo everything makes that choice even easier. Hopefully the idea of designing an all-solo MMO will begin and die with this game, or at least pull all the solo-heroes back out of the MMO genre and allow them to play with themselves in SW:TOR.
One final note, don’t bring up Guild Wars as a “see, henchmen work!” example. There is a reason GW has no monthly fee, and it’s not because ArenaNet is doing you a favor. There is also a reason UO likely makes EA more money today than GW makes for NCSoft, even though by most accounts GW is a very successful game. A successful game can make a company a lot of money, a successful MMO can keep one going for years (SOE).
Ah patch day, a time for all those with a little too much time to swarm the forums, for the devs to order pizza and prepare for the worst, and for everyone to wonder exactly wtf DarkFall is going to look like tomorrow. Because unlike most MMO patches (or paid expansions for that matter), this update to DarkFall not only brings some updates to graphics and animations, bug fixes and balance changes, but also changes to critical existing systems (siege, AoE magic hit detection) and new systems/features altogether (sea towers, player vendors, roaming wildlife). Plus who can say what a seemingly minor change like altered geography or wall placement might do for the future value of certain real estate.
Until the official patch notes are released, it’s also not known if EVERYTHING has been previewed already, as just yesterday a short video was released showing new idle animations (using an orc female?) and earth magic spell effects. In-game last night saw a storm of siege activity, as clans/alliances made some last minute attempts to capture territory before the unpredictable changes arrive, and now all that is left is to wait and see what post-CtS DarkFall is all about.
Lets go AV, update already!
(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.)
I few days ago a wrote a post about why I believe Warhammer Online failed to live up to it’s potential/hype, and Tobold took the following line and ran (out of context) with it:
Because unless you are a believer in the Eurogamer method of MMO evaluation, for most players a month or less is not enough time to fully evaluate a game, especially an MMO, and especially in it’s first month of release.
What he read from that line is that you must play a game X hours before you can determine if you like a game or not, which is of course silly. Obligatory Eurogamer shot aside, the point of the above is that real MMO fans should know more or less what to expect in the first month of any MMO, and given that baseline, certain reasons for leaving a game in month one just don’t apply IMO.
For starters, anyone who has experienced an MMO from the start knows that a games worst day from a tech/coding perspective is always day one. There is a very good reason the first month of any MMO is when you will see the most hotfixes and last-minute patches. It’s also the reason many MMO gamers today apply a mandatory 3-6 month waiting period to avoid just these issues. For everyone else, you make the conscious trade of polish and functionality for the rush that is a new MMO, regardless of who makes the MMO (Yes, Blizzards next MMO will also have issues in it’s first month, just like WoW did, the least of which will be massive server queues/outages in the first week/month, and you will see Blizzard apply hotfixes and patches at a pace not seen since 2004). The amount and scale of the issues will vary from title to title, but the fact remains the first month of any MMO is always a give and take between excitement and frustration. Anyone who leaves an MMO in the first month because of a server queue should not be considered an MMO gamer, and hence falls into the 60% “you don’t count” crowd. Thanks for your $50, enjoy your Xbox. (Not that this is an absolute, obviously if a title is released and has CTD or BSOD issues every 5 minutes for a month, then yea, you can stop trying to play it. But if the mailbox is a little laggy? Welcome to the MMO genre.)
And before someone brings up “You are competing with WoW today, not 2004 WoW”, please don’t. If a game is going directly at WoW, like RoM, then that might apply, and a game like RoM has to do something (F2P in this case) to separate itself. But does anyone really compare Fallen Earth to 2009 WoW in terms of UI polish, engine performance, or total amount of content? If you do, you’re Xbox misses you, or you should have just stayed with WoW in the first place (but I’m sure the FE devs don’t mind your $50, and the players appreciate you funding future content for them). For everyone else, you go into it knowing that while some aspects won’t be comparable to any MMO that has been out and patched for years, you know that the selling points of FE outweigh a fancy (and in WoW’s case, player made) UI or a list of 100 instances. WoW can’t compete with FE in terms of its setting and survival-style atmosphere, and if that matches up with you, fancy UI be damned.
Moving past tech/code issues, you have the fact that for any game doing something actually new, the first month is when those new systems/ideas are really put to the test. Something that works perfectly with 100 or 1000 people in a certain environment (beta) might not work as planned with 100,000 players, or might show flaws when player mentality changes and things start to ‘count’. The more your MMO is actually about being massive and multiplayer, the harder it becomes to predict player behavior on a large scale.
WAR is the perfect example of this in terms of its RvR lakes and PQs. In beta players populated them ‘just because’, and played for fun (silly notion that is), but once things started to count, they went empty and it was time to chain-queue scenarios. If you quit WAR because you found scenario chain-queueing boring (while subjecting yourself to it…), welcome to the 60%. (This should not be confused with Mythic’s inability to correctly remedy the Scenario/RvR/PQ problem quickly/ever. If you quit because 6 months later RvR still had issues, that’s a little different.)
The final point I want to make related to all this is about judging games in general. Readers here know I don’t find Aion appealing in any way, and actually wish death on the game for various reasons. I’ve also never played release NA Aion, so how dare I judge it, right?
Aion’s top selling point is that it looks pretty, and I can get that from a quick tour and screenshots/videos, plus I don’t find anime-lite a particularly enjoyable art style. I also know, based on its heritage and some quick research, that Aion is a massive PvE grind followed by a massive ‘PvP’ (PvE still, but shhh) grind. Then there is the fact that it’s end-game is doomed by design (fixed two-sided PvP with an exploitable PvE faction used to progress in PvP), so even if you remove all the other issues, that won’t change short of a real third side being added (the long-lost hope for saving WAR ironically).
The point is, after you’ve seen an MMO or ten, you don’t need to play one to get a good (but not perfect, as surprises happen) idea of what a certain title is trying to offer overall. Sure I can’t speak about the specifics of dungeon X in Aion as it compares to instance Y in WotLK, but let me know when my overall assumptions are completely wrong about either game and we can talk. Fairy wings don’t fix a broken endgame and an unappealing gaming style, just like a Deathknight and ten more levels of solo PvE don’t fix WoW getting easier and cheesier since 2004.
Amusing among all of this is that I almost skipped DarkFall because I know the general trend for overly-ambitious MMOs (especially PvP ones) is that they don’t work at launch/ever (sb.exe, Fury, current MO). It was only after Tobold reported that it was technically solid that I became interested, and obviously I’ve been impressed and very happy ever since. The day I read that Aion is no longer a soulless PvE grind and that it’s true multi-faceted end-game PvP is actually fun and again not a grind, perhaps I’ll take the free trial for a spin (assuming NCSoft has not AA/TR’d the game). And hell, if I read that Cataclysm has brought WoW back to 2004 in terms of challenge/design/focus, I might just have to dust off my orc warrior.
But don’t be surprised when come Cataclysm, I won’t be overly impressed with Blizzard recycling one raid instance and latching on another ‘grind to cap for one item’ tradeskill, even though I won’t be personally grinding out that tradeskill myself (odds are good I’ve already completed the one recycled raid in its intended form though).
Sunday night saw VAMP and co (the alliance either has no name, or the name changes on a daily basis, so I’ll just refer to our side as VAMP going forward) siege another TRA city on Yssam. While there was some fighting, the siege was never in question and the whole thing overall was ‘easy’. After the siege the TRA alliance called it quits and their clans went their own way, even though many still have a number of holdings (I believe TRA had a total of 17 holdings, and VAMP only took three).
First let’s break down why VAMP had so little trouble with TRA. For starters, VAMP itself is a very strong alliance. Clans like VAMP, Nemesis, and Black Shields all have some of the servers best PvPers (both from a player skill and a character development standpoint), and when combined under one alliance you create a beast of a force. So while in many fights numbers were even or perhaps in TRAs minor favor, the average VAMP members simply outclasses the average TRA member. (Which is not to say I help in this regard, considering I was one of the few VAMP members do die during the siege, getting too close to a Wall of Force bubble out of curiosity. Lesson learned, and luckily I was rezzed and was able to witness the conclusion of the siege.)
VAMP also had a spy within the TRA high command, so any time they attempted anything sneaky, we knew it was coming. The main force trying to draw us out to the north while the elite attacked from the south might have been a good plan, except we had a welcome party ready for the south group, and never really chased the north group. Spies are a part of any war, but with TRA having such lax recruiting standards overall, it was not all that difficult to get a spy inside. Beyond the tactical advantage, I imagine it must also have been very demoralizing to watch your enemy react ahead of time to your every move. When you are already outclassed, you don’t need things stacked against you.
Finally there is the experience factor. Many of the leaders in VAMP have a great deal of siege experience from playing on EU and being highly aggressive there. TRA on the other hand has been inactive when it comes to sieging on NA, and while I’m guessing they have some EU-based leadership, from our fights with them it seemed they were again outclasses in this area.
With TRA gone, VAMP will need a new target to drum up PvP (the overall point of seiging to begin with). Who that will be remains to be seen, and with the expansion set to make some radical (hopefully) changes to PvP and siege mechanics, some time will no doubt be spent just figuring everything out. The launch of the expansion is also likely to trigger a return of former players who are currently on the sidelines, so perhaps some mid-sized clans will grow, and some returning veterans may shift power around a bit.
The one thing I currently find a bit off about a siege in DarkFall is how everything plays out overall. Basically in order to start a siege, the attacker must get to the targets bindstone to use a clan shard, and usually the best way to proceed at this point is to hold the city for the four hour timer and then smash the clan stone. In essence, the owner of the city is actually attacking and trying to push those inside out, which is odd considering they own the damn thing. And currently there is little that can be done to reverse this. If you happen to catch the attackers before they get inside, the clan shard is not used and the siege never actually starts.
It will be interesting to see if this changes with the coming expansion and the 24hr ‘warning’ window before a siege, along with the new siege stones that can be used. Already players are adjusting war funds to account for siege hammers not bringing down city walls and the need to destroy them, which means more warhulks and cannons will be deployed (hopefully at a reduced cost as well). What else changes will be interesting to watch.
(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.)
Taking a break from tourist talk and doomed MMOs for a moment, lets talk about what really matters to MMO gamers, DarkFall!
First off the next expansion got delayed until Thursday, with a notice that DF might be down for 24 hours as the patch is added and some last-minute-testing is done. Aventurine has stated that players will be credited for however long the game is down, which is a nice (and rare) move. Place your bets on how many things will get borked by the patch now.
Next up is a Q&A from MMORPG.com about the upcoming expansion, with some talk about what Aventurine will be doing after as well. Between expanding the DF staff, moving to a larger office, and hinting at finally have time/resources to devote to areas outside of game development (like advertising and community relations), clearly Aventurine is very happy with DF’s current and future success. Shame on the usual trolls over at MMORPG.com though, the comments section for the FAQ is far too friendly. Have the haters given up already? What happened to DF shutting down after 6 months because all the sheep would leave and the wolves would get bored?
Finally I just wanted to make a note related to my current in-game activities, which have mostly consisted of PvE around my new home city of Dagnamyr with the occasional PvP trip to mix things up. Around the city we have a great selection of PvE camps, from higher-end stuff like Blood Knights and Forest Golems to easier prey like Revenants and Wind Lords, all within a five minute ride. It’s also possible to ride around for an hour near Dagnamyr and not see a single mob if you don’t know where to look. Sure some of the camps are a bit more obvious (like the Blood Knight in the middle of some ruins), but others are not (like the Forest Golem in a random spot in, well, the forest). My point is, and this applies to basically all of Agon and DF in general, is that if you don’t know where to go, the world seems very empty as you ride past mob camp after mob camp. If you have a good understanding of your local surroundings however, you should never be lacking for PvE options. That understanding takes either some time personally exploring, or… wait for it… interacting with others in an MMO and asking for help. Stupid niche game design and encouraging/rewarding multiplayer play in a massive world. Who needs that, right solo-heroes?
(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.)
File this one under “Dark Humor”, but Mark Jacob’s (former Warhammer Online lead designer) now-dead blog was called “Online Games Are a Niche Market”, a title that at the time was used as a joke because Mark believed MMOs had ‘made it’ and were mainstream because of WoW. What Mark has now learned, and at some point people like Tobold will realize, is that the MMO genre IS a niche genre, and taking one pop sensation and trying to pretend that’s the actual market size is well… a good way to merge servers after a few months and a quick way to get fired.
Which is not to say that as a niche the genre can’t be hugely profitable, just ask CCP or Turbine. What’s not profitable is looking at one outlier and thinking your great idea is enough to draw that population in, a population that NO MATTER WHAT is not interested. They do a good job of pretending to be interested, sure, but the sooner you realize they are not, the better (for your game and your job security).
Sadly games like WAR, Aion, and soon enough SW:TOR don’t seem to understand this, and the aftermath can/will be brutal. The one big question I have is; does Blizzard understand this? Is their next MMO aiming to replicate the EVE model of slow but steady growth over 5+ years through superior MMO design, or will they go even further than WoW has and remove even more of what makes an MMO an MMO to appeal to the far larger but fickle non-MMO gamer segment? Are they prepping Blizzard’s take on sandbox MMO design, or a highly polished Mafia Wars?
Today Tobold is asking why Warhammer Online failed to live up to it’s mega-title expectations (expectations that I was grossly wrong about as well), give readers either the choice that WotLK killed it (tourists) or that WAR was just a bad game. While the obvious answer is “both”, it’s still interesting to break down exactly what happened here.
Lets assume WAR sold 1m boxes total (it’s a little higher than that, but 1m is a nice round number). (Oh and before someone mentions Paul Barnet, his job was to hype WAR, and WAR sold over 1m boxes. He did his job, and did it well, no matter how much you might hate him) Of that 1m, I’d say 600k (60%) were WoW tourists, who no matter how good WAR was were going back for WotLK. Because unless you are a believer in the Eurogamer method of MMO evaluation, for most players a month or less is not enough time to fully evaluate a game, especially an MMO, and especially in it’s first month of release. But whatever the reason, that 60% does not count, because no matter what your game is or how good it is, they are going to leave in the first month. Accept their one-time payment of $50 and forget about them.
The problem for WAR is that, even after we forget the tourists, you still have 400k or so customers who are interested in what you offer, and 400k is more than enough subs to keep even a AAA title profitable and happy. But WAR does not have 400k, or 300k, or probably even 200k subs today, and the WotLK/tourist effect has long since passed. WAR lost a significant portion of it’s remaining 400k because, quite simply, it’s a flawed game. It’s not an outright ‘bad’ game, because many of it’s systems and overall engine are very good, but none of that matters when at the end of the game you have the utter disaster that is T4 sitting and waiting for you. That end-game RvR is a disaster is told to us by Mythic loud and clear, as every major patch is another attempt to fix it, and as every patch passes, T4 remains worthless. And sadly, at this point, with all the budget/workforce cuts, it’s unlikely WAR will get the resources to get it right. It really is sad too, because I fully believe if Mythic had fixed T4 (and it was possible), WAR would have rebounded and would have established itself as a solid choice for MMO casuals looking for some friendly RvR.
Back to the original question, as applied to any upcoming releases (or most recently Aion), you can easily write off 60% of whatever your initial sales are for any MMO due to the pop sensation that is the Mr. T grenade of WoW. The worst thing any developer can do is try and retain that 60% by modifying their game, because most likely whatever change you make to please the tourists is going to piss of your core base, and the tourist will leave regardless.
Once the first month is over and the tourists have moved on, whether you retain the remaining 40% is indeed up to your game. We are seeing with Aion that, like WAR, it’s issues are driving players away in bulk (which is even more comical given that most of whose who leave never experienced the real flaw that is the end-game RvR), while titles like Fallen Earth and DarkFall are stabilizing and slowly growing after experiencing their own (but much smaller) cases of tourism.
The tourist population makes evaluating success in the current MMO space more difficult initially, because at first glance 60% of your customers leaving in the first month does seem drastic. But if you ignore and forget them, and instead focus on the group that is ultimately going to matter, the picture gets a little clearer (plus you get a nice one-time funding bonus). Regardless of market conditions or trends, good MMOs will prosper and bad ones will struggle, you just might not be able to identify who is who in the first month.
For the TL:DR crowd, I’ll just sum up the new spotlight for you: bla bla bla pure gold bla bla bla.
I’m curious to see how the new collision detection works with bigger ships pushing smaller ones, and whether this might lead to future changes of say, mounts/warhulks pushing (or better yet, crushing) players. The combination of nerfed and fixed AoE magic, cheaper and more useful ships, and more ‘stuff’ in the ocean should make life on the open sea far more interesting though. This also means a huge boost in value to seaside cities and hamlets.
And while this addition is clearly aimed at fixing/improving naval PvP, hopefully there will also be direct economic and PvE advantages to sea life in the future as well. Currently only a few mobs populate the water, and while sea towers will provide some monetary benefit, I think fighting over things like offshore mining platforms or some ocean-only resources would also be interesting. Grab your clan together, get on a boat, and head off on some water-based PvE adventure (with of course the ‘opportunity’ to get Pk’ed while doing so).
Assuming the hit their Friday deadline (ha), this might be a very busy weekend in DarkFall.
(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.)
I finished Dragon Age last night, and I must say the ending was somewhat disappointing. I mean the actual ending, not the events leading up to it and the final fight with the Archdemon (did I just spoil that for you? Sorry, and enjoy the rest of your first RPG). For a game with some much talking and cutscenes, the ending is some written text and a few pictures? Weak. Plus aside from one little “but wait, there’s more” hint, nothing else really gets progressed significantly.
The game itself though is, IMO, a masterpiece among single player RPG games. It’s technically very solid (crashed once for me?), looks great, sounds great, and has a familiar yet interesting and lore-deep story. I laugh whenever I read a complaint that the game is too linear or predictable, because in part that’s exactly what the RPG genre is built around. I’d compare it to complaining that an MMO requires you to play with others, but well, yea. You ALWAYS fight the big bad guy at the end to save the world here folks. It’s not about changing the outcome, but rather the journey you take to arrive at that outcome, and in that regard DA is excellent.
You can actual ruin a good part of the game if you ‘game’ it too much. By that I mean it’s easy to destroy most of the challenge if you stack your party with Cone of Cold-tossing mages, kit mobs around, or save/reload to make sure you get the ‘perfect’ dialog responses every time. Once I shut the gamer part of my brain off, and just played the game as it was meant to be played, it was a far more enjoyable ride that still remained a good challenge.
I don’t think I’ll be playing it a second time just yet, even with the option to change the outcome of major events. My plan is to allow the mod community to expand and refine the game, and perhaps take a second trip through once things have changed ‘enough’ to make it worthwhile. That and DarkFall is going to return to dominating my game time with the new expansion, so the pull to jump right back into DA is just not there. If you like traditional RPG games though, it’s hard to find a better way to spend $50.
Hardcore Casual 
