Hardcore Casual

Here is a quick recount of my first trip to the new area of LoTRO, Evendim. By design, you receive a quest to talk to a hobbit in the northern area of the shire. Having completed most of the quests in the Lone Lands, as well as making my way through half of the North Downs, the ol’ quest log was starting to look a bit empty, with only a few high level quests, some group ones, and a level 27 quest (my guardian is level 30 at this point) to talk to said hobbit. A few horse rides later, I notice that this area of the shire, which had previously been explored early in my character’s life, has changed slightly, with a pass having opened up leading into the new area of Evendim. Once there, I pick up a few quests, and ‘get after it’. The first thing that you notice about these quests is that while they are similar to the quests you have been completing since you started, they have a twist or two to make them a little more interesting. For example, one of the first quests we received was to kill a few locust swarms and queens in some farm fields. Normal kill quest stuff, right? The twist here is that locust swarms have a peculiar tendency to ‘agro’ you, but instead of attacking, just buzz and follow you around. This allows the developer to place a good amount of the things in a relatively small area, as well as giving them a large agro range. Normally this is not a problem, but as soon as you start fighting a queen, the swarms also become hostile. If you are not paying attention, you go from fighting one queen to having five or more mobs all over you, leading to a quick death. It’s a very small change, but makes a simple kill quest a little more memorable instead of the same old grind.

I think a common ‘trap’ developers fall into when adding new content is the balance between playing it safe, and reinventing the wheel. Keep it too similar, and you will hear complaints about ‘the same old stuff with fresh paint’. On the other hand, if you go too far away from the core design ideas of your game, you end up implementing features your current fan base might not be interested in. If Blizzard was to add a ‘fighting game’ component with the next patch, no matter how well done, its not what it’s player base expects. You don’t drop $15 a month to play a fighting game, you pay for character development and interesting areas to explore. And since we are talking about MMOs, it’s EXPECTED that you get this content on a regular basis. When this expectation is not met, that’s when you see subscription numbers start to drop. WoW was pitched as a MMO for the casual fan, with lots of solo content. It delivered, and you see record subscription numbers. Then you release The Burning Crusade, which focuses on raiding, and it’s no surprise that after the initial surge, subscription numbers are beginning to fall.

Evendim was Turbine’s first content patch, released shortly after LoTRO went live. I suspect they were able to get Evendim out as quickly as they did due in part to having such a solid launch. Servers stayed up, no major ‘quick fix’ patches needed to come out, and overall the game was very polished from day one. So instead of playing catch-up, Turbine was able to focus on improvements and future content. I think this bodes well for the future of LoTRO, and if Evendim is the standard used, players are in for a good time.

Note: I am aware that most of the complaints about LoTRO come from players who are level 45+ and have little content to tackle. I have little doubt that Turbine is aware of this, and has something good planned. While I don’t give them a completely free pass for not really having high level content in the game now, I’m willing to overlook it due to how well crafted 1-45 is now, and the future content that is sure to come.

MMO’s have one major goal, to build up your character/persona. You start very weak, and progress until you are able to take down demi-gods at will. That’s the hook. Developers place screenshots on the back of the box with high level characters on them, giving you a glimpse of what YOU could be.

Another selling point of MMO’s that you always see is the promise from developers to make yourself unique. Customize your character with four hundred different noses, eight hundred different hair styles, etc. You don’t want to be a clone of anyone else, you want to play YOU.

Both of the promises above have long since been broken. Take off all your items at level 70 in WoW, go duel a level 50, and see how it goes. That mighty character that is able to defeat Illidan has just lost a duel to some lowbie 50 in greens. The plus side is that you can finally see that nose and hair you spent hours picking out, now that it’s not hidden by your helm like it has been since level 13.

My point is that MMO’s now are far too item dependant. We are no longer personal heroes, but a walking bank with designated spots for gear. Add in the effect of such things as race choice being less and less important, as discussed by Tobold here, and you really start to see how little control we have with OUR characters. Sure you can change up specs, but that gives you two or three ‘good’ specs, down to one for most classes if you are a raider.

We are so use to character advancement being based around items that we now simply accept it. Going up a level means nothing more than a reset of the xp bar, some items falling into your level range, and being able to pick up the same one or two skills as everyone else at that level. It’s somewhat easy to see why a developer would do this. It makes it far easier to balance a game if all you are worried about is what items a character can have at what time. Tier 1 at this point, ok make the first boss hit this hard. Nice and easy. Remember how much controversy came from the Alliance about tauren tanks, because they had that HORRIBLY imbalanced 5% hp bonus? Why deal with that as a developer when instead you can make everyone the same, with access to the same items. We all know that’s the reason for the Paladin/Shaman change. Instead of balance, just make it equal.

But in that quest to make things fair and equal, we give up a major reason we play MMO’s, and a major reason we get addicted to them; our character. It’s hard to get attached to a carbon copy of half the server. What real motivation do you have to keep grinding when your next reward is a helm you have seen daily on other characters that happen to grind a little faster than you? In an effort to play it safe, developers are oversimplifying MMO’s and wearing away at the very source of their appeal, playing YOUR character.

Part two tomorrow; my thoughts on a solution, and what game could bring back the customization we are missing.

With my last post, I took a shot at Turbine for including a silly time sink in the form of mass kill deeds without really providing a good solution to the problem. Here is one possible solution.

Hard mode.

Make a server labeled ‘hard mode’ (or some far more clever PR term, like extreme mode, or die hard mode, or… well you get the point). It’s the same world, same quest, same everything, but turn the mob difficulty up, say, 10%. Give them 10% more hp, make them hit 10% harder, etc. Maybe make xp gain 10% slower, raise repair costs 10%, and auction house fees up 10%. You get the idea.

Hype the fact that if you want world first kills or feats, do it on this server to make it REALLY count. That should draw the hardcore players and guilds away from your normal servers, lengthen the current content you have in the game for the players who generally rush through it faster than everyone else, and above all, raise the difficult for that group without affecting the rest of your player base. Now you can stop releasing content that is initially tuned way too hard and later nerfed down. (Looking at you Blizzard) Plus this gives you a free pass on people complaining about an encounter being too difficult, at least on that server. Hey, its hard mode, that’s the idea, right? The top guilds will find a way to beat it anyway, and once they do, the other top guilds will follow suit. And nothing drives hype for an encounter than a top guild struggling but making progress.

Would it work? Would the hardcore buy into it? Post a comment and let me know.