Fun with (some) numbers.

Posted on December 14, 2007 by SynCaine

Wilhelm over at TAGN has a nice post pointing out some recent stats released by X-fire.

The Top 10 games, based on average hours played daily over the course of the month (without WoW), were:

  1. EVE Online
  2. Lord of the Rings Online
  3. Lineage II
  4. Star Wars Galaxies
  5. Final Fantasy XI Online
  6. EverQuest II
  7. City of Heroes
  8. Dark Age of Camelot
  9. Ultima Online
  10. EverQuest

He asks at the end of his post what others think the numbers mean, and halfway during my response I realized I was rambling, so instead of a comment we get this post here.

While I agree with Wilhelm that X-fire is likely used by more hardcore players than casuals, I think the numbers it gets do give us a fairly accurate view of the major MMOs. Many guilds will point players towards X-fire to improve guild communication, be it a hardcore raiding guild or a casual one. It’s also one of those ‘load and forget’ types of programs, that don’t impact your system much and can be left on un-noticed.

On to the list itself, here is what I get from it. EVE players are very dedicated, and can often spend hours upon hours in-game, be it camping a gate or mining. I can see why EVE more than any other game could have a higher ‘hours per week’ total than the other MMOs, due to its play style. In other games, you can set out with a goal to finish a quest, or run an instance, and once complete you log out. In EVE, every activity can be drawn out for hours on end. As I’ve mentioned here in this blog before, PvP also tends to be a virtually limitless supply of content, and as PvP is EVE’s big ‘end game’, this could lead to the hours being run up. I think this is also the reason we see Lineage II as high as it is.

LoTRO’s newness, and overall success, is my reasoning behind it being number two. It’s not heavy on end-game raiding (yet?), and its early to mid game is very casual, so I don’t think the hardcore players playing really runs up its hourly count. Sear volume of players is the likely cause here.

Other than that, I find it interesting that UO is one spot above EQ1, if only because back in the day EQ1 was always dominant over UO in terms of numbers. Being spots 9 and 10 of course this does not say much, but yea… I’m a little surprised DAoC is as low as it is, considering its PvP roots. Not having played it in a long time, perhaps it has not aged well? Or has its user base dropped so low to overwhelm my PvP theory? Another surprise is how low EQ2 shows up. Below FFXI and SWG is certainly surprising, considering the recent release of an expansion pack that had a retail presence.

As always, it would be great to get full numbers on all these games. To have access to subscription numbers and a count of all currently logged in players, like EVE displays. I really think some interesting trends could be tracked, and many design lessons could be learned. Sadly the corporate dollar supersedes the learning potential.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments

Holding Pattern.

Posted on December 14, 2007 by SynCaine

Dear snow, thanks for that four hour drive yesterday. Nothing like leaving work early, at 2pm, and finally getting home at 6pm. That was awesome…

On to a happy topic, gaming, I find myself in somewhat of a standstill. Currently I play EVE, WoW, and a bit of Puzzle Quest and online Poker. I have PotBS on my computer, but little draw to play it. NWN2 MotB is there, but I’m waiting for the 9000 series of graphics cards to come out from Nvidia before I return to that game. Same delay issue for getting The Witcher, or returning to LoTRO. I’m a bit burned out on Civilization 4, done with EQ2, done with Sword of the New World. Mythos is still there, but I just never find myself loading it up, and when I do, I find after about 30 minutes I’m done with it once again. Due to the 180 many people are pulling with Tabula Rasa, my interest has been raised, but I think I’ll wait a bit more before jumping in. Some people report boredom setting in after level 15ish. I have little interest in Hellgate:London, not sure why, but it just does not seem that appealing right now. Still waiting for WAR, and maybe AoC.

I think that about covers it. I know I’ll be playing Fire Emblem after Christmas on the Wii, but who knows for how long. I only play WoW about 5 hours a week, and EVE 4-10 depending on what’s going on. Basically I’m waiting for something to come along and really grab me, to make me look forward to loading it up regularly and being entertained each time. Hopefully WAR is that game, but with all the crazy stuff happening in the gaming world, I’m not betting the farm on that one. Anyone else find themselves jumping from game to game is small spurts, just stuck in a holding pattern?

Posted in Civilization Series, Console Gaming, EQ2, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Mythos, NWN2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, SotNW, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 6 Comments

PvP, better than MMO purgatory.

Posted on December 13, 2007 by SynCaine

Lum over at Brokentoys has an interesting post up about PvP, and his thoughts on how to do it right. It’s a great read, even if you don’t particularly care for PvP yourself. As with any very debatable topic, I don’t full agree with all his points.

His first point, that your game can’t focus entirely around PvP, uses some questionable examples, Planetside, WW2 Online, and Fury. Aside from PvP, those games also have something else in common, they are bad games. Not because they are PvP based, but because they are not well executed. You can Google reviews for any of them and find countless examples of each games shortcomings, most of which don’t address the PvP. Along with these games, we have games like Shadowbane which further cast a negative light on PvP-based MMOs. Even a game like DAOC, overall considered a success, has some serious flaws concerning its PvP implementation. All it would take is one successful PvP-based MMO to change this perception of PvP as a viable model for a big time MMO.

PvP has its barriers, but it’s also one of the big ‘hooks’ of an MMO. PvP content far exceeds questing and raiding, as the same castle or town can be raided over and over, each time the battle changing in meaningful ways. This would allow the developers to tune and tweak their game, instead of having to pump out a new zone or instance as soon as the old content has been conquered. PvP also brings out strong human emotions, things like pride and loyalty. If your guild gets smoked by another in a battle, that only fuels you to get back at them. If you wipe on a raid boss, does that really fuel you, do you feel personally insulted that he took you down? One look at EVE’s COAD board and it’s very clear people take Corp reputation very serious, and that each victory is a source of pride. You just don’t get that from downing the same raid boss that half the raiding guilds have already taken down.

What I really get out of Lum’s post is that PvP has yet to be implemented in a way that works on a large scale, because to do so is very difficult. UO had some great PvP, but it was flawed, same with DAOC, and now EVE. Each game is a source of great stories and memories, yet for every great story you have a group of players burned by that experience, forever bitter at PvP. Equally important is to send the right message about your game. Make it known to the players that you are PvP focused, and that they should expect some lows along with the highs. Too many people have been cuddled by WoW-like games, those games being their first and possibly only exposure to MMOs. They expect everything to be handed to them at little risk. With so many options, people are quick to jump ship at the first setback, never seeing or experiencing the upside of PvP. If a game was able to hook players early enough, they would be motivated to push through their first setback, and get into more situations that exemplify the highs of PvP, rather than the lows. Far too often you hear something along the lines of “well I play games for fun, so if something is not fun, I quit”. Fair enough, but at what point is a very fun experience worth a slightly less fun one before it? Would you rather go from highs to lows and back, or remain in purgatory forever?

But again, PvP is not for everyone; there is no magic formula that will get everyone into the game and loving it. That said there very likely is some formula that will allow PvP to be viable on a greater scale than it is now. Once out, that formula will show that PvP can be just as viable as questing or raiding as a base for an MMO; that you can design a game from the ground up to focus on PvP. When we will see that game is anyone’s guess, and while WAR looked like it might be that game, the recent rumors about it going WoW-like are troubling. Hopefully those are over-exaggerated, or that AoC will deliver the goods. As a long time fan of PvP, one can always hope.

Posted in Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, MMO design, PvP, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 3 Comments

Mining in EVE > washing dishes.

Posted on December 12, 2007 by SynCaine

With a random day off yesterday, I spend the better part of the day mining away in EVE. Mining in EVE is one of those love/hate things in an MMO. I love getting minerals to produce things with, in order to develop a market strategy and make some serious ISK. I hate it because on its own, mining is terribly boring.

But being terribly boring has some advantages. For instance, since mining with strip miners is very slow, you can walk away for a few minutes, come back to put ore in a can, and walk away again. This is perfect for grinding real life stuff, like dishes or laundry. By comparison, mining seems really fun when you are washing dishes. You also get a surprising amount done, both in EVE and out. Win win really.

Of course I was doing this in high-sec, and the ship I had was easily able to tank the random rats that pop up in the belts. As it was a rather random sector, traffic was also very light, meaning little interference.

As a Corp buddy offered to transport all the ore back to our home base to refine it at 100%, I don’t have a minerals total, but it should be decent, more than enough to produce a good amount of missiles/ammo at least.

My combat pilot is still on the long trek to tech two frigates, only 8 days or so to go. Should be fun to take one of those out and destroy level 2 missions, just for kicks. While flying a battleship is very enjoyable, there is just something about zooming around at high speed in a deadly frigate.

Posted in EVE Online | Comments Off on Mining in EVE > washing dishes.

Sifting through the junk.

Posted on December 10, 2007 by SynCaine

Try as I might, I just can’t get into Pirates of the Burning Sea. Having taken a break since the close of beta, I logged in this weekend to find my old character wiped, and had to start from scratch. Out of all the MMO’s I’ve played, I honestly can’t remember dreading leveling up another character as much as I did with Pirates. Each quest feels like an awful grind when you do them for the 2nd or 3rd time, and the early game is so limited in terms of skills and tactics. I tried to break up the monotony by going out into the open sea and taking out random NPC boats, trying to level that way. Unfortunately in a starting ship, you can’t take out anything high above your level, and enemy ships will often chase you to engage, quickly sinking you and sending you back to town.

After some time, I just lost the desire to give the game more time, and logged out. Very disappointing for a game with as much praise as PotBS had. While I still think there is an interesting game in there someplace, its not there yet, and might not be even a year after release. Far too often the fun parts get bogged down by very weak parts, be it running around town, sword fighting, sailing the open sea, you name it. The great ship to ship combat gets sadly overshadowed by all the other attached junk.

Moving on to a game that gets ‘fun’ correct, our ‘former raiders turned casual’ instance group is having a good time with WoW again. Amazingly enough a few of our members have never played the Alliance side of the game (we raided as Horde), so stuff like The Deadmines and all the questing areas are new to them. I must say the Draenei starting zones are very well done, with interesting quests and good rewards.

Currently we have completed the deadmines, and are set to hit Blackfathom Deep this Wednesday, with a level cap of 21, just to keep it interesting. As we generally have more than 5 people online, we enter as a raid, hence the level cap being below the ‘recommended’ level. We had 7 people for our deadmines run, and that was somewhat easy even though we had a limit of level 18. With the recent changes to all the instances in patch 2.3, it’s a little harder to judged exactly what the perfect level would be to give us a challenge without setting ourselves up for failure. More to come…

Posted in MMO design, Pirates of the Burning Sea, World of Warcraft | 7 Comments

So sweet…

Posted on December 7, 2007 by SynCaine

This story seems to be making the rounds on blogs.

That kid has a bright future, what a hero!

Posted in Random, World of Warcraft | Comments Off on So sweet…

When less is more, a lesson learned.

Posted on December 7, 2007 by SynCaine

The upcoming release of Pirates of the Burning Seas has highlighted some interesting discussion points about MMOs and the importance of certain features. As is often the case, it is not until we see both sides that we realize how important certain aspects are, and how we perhaps over-value others.

We know now that PotBS was once VERY similar to EVE Online in terms of avatars and how much time you spend in your ship. Initially PotBS did not have avatar combat or land missions, and your character was represented in a similar manner to EVE, a portrait. At some point in development, someone at Flying Labs thought that adding land combat would make their game better, so after a lengthy delay we now see the fruits of that labor. Regardless of whether you like or dislike Pirates, almost everyone agrees the weakest part is the land combat, and by a large margin. The divide seems to be whether this feature breaks the game for you (as is the case for me) or whether it simply annoys you, but the other parts are enough to keep you playing.

When reading reviews of EVE, the lack of an avatar is often sighted as a negative; that players can’t relate to a ship in space. Before Pirates, it was hard to argue this point, as everyone assumed adding avatars could only be a good thing, right? Well clearly not, as Pirates has shown. When you have something that works, like EVE overall and the ship battles in Pirates, sometimes adding more detracts from your game, reducing the impact your good parts have and forcing players into aspects that you are weak in.

I can only imagine how much better Pirates would be if they had not added the avatar parts. Instead of running around a copy/paste town, would Pirates not be a better game if it handled towns like EVE handles stations? Would it not increase immersion to see an image of you rowing into town as you load, and then having access to all town functions (auction house, production, quests) from a menu, with the image of your ship docked at the harbor? If nothing else, it would certainly get you back into your ship and out to sea faster, instead of having to run from quest to quest, loading small rooms to talk to a shopkeeper or auctioneer. And would anyone really miss the sword fighting quests? If the sword combat was limited to boarding actions, it would not appear as shallow as it is, since its screen time would be greatly reduced.

Fans of Pirates must now hope Flying Labs improves sword fighting enough to make it worthwhile, and even then, will it really matter? If you want to play a sword fighting game you have a lot of options that are far more competent in the subject than Pirates will ever be. The appeal of Pirates is… well being a pirate and sailing the seas, engaging in ship combat using your cannons, or sailing the seas as a merchant dodging said pirates. It’s not running around a copy/paste cave or fort, using your two or three abilities to take down the same generic enemies until the game lets you get back to the ‘fun’ part, your ship.

Posted in Combat Systems, EVE Online, MMO design, Pirates of the Burning Sea | 5 Comments

Patch.

Posted on December 6, 2007 by SynCaine

EVE patched, looks so good…

Posted in EVE Online | 16 Comments

Trinity

Posted on December 5, 2007 by SynCaine

Can’t….wait….for….new….EVE….graphics…..

Posted in EVE Online | 2 Comments

Pirates of the Instanced Sea, mini-game madness.

Posted on December 4, 2007 by SynCaine

Now that the PotBS NDA is officially down (oops…) plenty of opinions are popping up around the blogosphere, most along the lines of ‘fun game, but not the usual addiction you get from a new MMO’, and I completely agree with this. Even free, the game now sits on my desktop and is generally my 3rd or 4th choice when deciding what to spend my gaming time with.

I want to like PotBS, I really do. I think the ship combat is excellent, the game runs well, looks good, and overall has a solid feel. So why don’t I? Yes the sword fighting parts are very sub-par, the interface feels arcane and ancient at times, and there are still some bugs. But those are not the factors that are really driving me away.

My first major gripe is that you see the loading screen more than the game itself. The game is so heavily reliant on instancing that you get the feeling you just bounce from one room to the next, never actually getting a feel for the world. Gather a bunch of missions in town, head over to the dock, and fire off one mission after another off the list, until you are done. Then you head back into down to cash them all in, and you repeat until you are done with that town. For some reason, this feels far more unnatural in PotBS than it does in say WoW, or even DDO. At least in DDO, another instance-heavy game, you get the feeling that each instance is in its correct place, a part of the city. In PotBS, it feels like you teleport to magic sections of some random body of water to face a few ships, and then teleport back. I understand that they want to get you to the ‘good part’ as quickly as possible, but in doing so they really alienate you from the world, which brings me to my next point.

Many people complain about travel in EVE, how you have to jump multiple times and how boring that can be. Well I’ll take EVE’s travel over PotBS any day. Not only does Pirates feel slower, it also adds a somewhat ‘cartoon’ feel to the world, with ships the size of small islands zooming back and forth, reminding me of some hyper child playing with his boats in the tub. If the instance-jumping does not kill the immersion for you, the travel will. It just feels so unnatural. In addition, any fight that takes place between ships in this view is represented by ship icons to others, since any combat will place you in an instance once again. It would have been far more interesting, and immersive, if you could sail by ships in actual combat, giving you the option to join in or continue on your way right there, without zoning. In this regard EVE trumps Pirates easily, since during any gate jump you might go by ships fighting it out, right there in front of you, letting you see what kind of ships are involved and their status.

To me Pirates feels like a bunch of mini-games thrown together, each one being decent on its own, but as one packages it all does not mesh well. The ship combat mini-game is fun, but once it’s over you hit the magic button, and get placed in the ‘run around town’ mini-game. You then play a simplistic wack-a-mole mini-game, followed once again by the magic button and back to the town game you go. I think this disjointed style is the reason PotBS does not grab you like other MMOs do. You are constantly pulled out of the game, breaking any rhythm or flow you might have had, and I think this flow aspect is a highly underrated component to general MMO enjoyment. Pirates lacks it, which along with it’s other issues, is likely the reason why it’s icon is 3rd or 4th on my list of games to fire up. I’ll give it some more time, but unless something drastically changes, I don’t think Pirates will be a buy come launch.

Posted in Combat Systems, DDO, EVE Online, MMO design, Pirates of the Burning Sea, World of Warcraft | 7 Comments