The Threat of Travel Time

The inclusion of travel times in MMOs has always been an issue of keeping up appearances. Fantasy worlds seem less realistic to players if every location is only a few seconds from one another. As a result developers usually include some real world time cost when you try to move your character from point A to point B. One notable exception is of course the use of teleportation and portals but these almost always come with some sort of limitation. Games that don't put a limitation on instant travel usually run into problems of too many players entering into the same zone/area at the same time.

NCSoft gets around this issue by doing automatic instancing of common areas where players tend to congregate. While this gets rid of the lag problems related to instant travel it also has the unpopular side effect of forcing players to coordinate zone and instance numbers when trying to meet up. Most other MMOs instead elect to limit instant travel skills to major common areas where more processing power can be focused. This makes the game a little bit more sociable and allows players to use common areas as short cuts. A common criticism of some games like Guild Wars is that the over emphasis on instancing and instant travel makes it not a true MMO.

Even with the strategic location of portals players can still run into occasions where they are forced into insane travel times. Poorly developed quests are one of the leading cause of this problem. Especially, those quests which require you to deliver a item from point A to point B. Often after the delivery you have to go back to the original point A to get the reward for the quest. I noticed while recently leveling up my Horde druid in World of Warcraft that I kept completing quests that required me to go back to Ogrimmar to get the reward. At the time it wasn't worth the 15 minutes to fly there and back. By the time I did find myself close enough to Ogrimmar I had 3 completed quests all green which barely gave experience.

Lord of the Rings has a very good travel system which works a lot like the flight paths used in World of Warcraft. The main difference being that the travel time between major cities in Middle Earth is instant. Thus a player can travel quickly between any starting city and some of the major ranger outposts. Instant travel does cost more but its usually well worth the effort when the player is on a major quest line. Could you imagine how useful it would be to have an instant flight path to any of the goblin cities in World of Warcraft? Nothing is worse then some of the back and forth flying that players are forced to do before they can bind themselves in Shattrath.

Another new trend in MMOs causing increased travel times are economic based games which give a local value to goods. These games basically say that goods sell for less in areas where they are produced but can be moved in the game to other areas where they might sell higher. This actually is a more realistic design for a virtual economy and it better uses the law of supply and demand. Unfortunately, games like EVE and PotBS only allow players to move goods by manually piloting ships through mostly empty space or water. While this is realistic it also is quite boring and prevents a lot of players from enjoying the best game economies out there.

Looking at all the games on the market its easy to see where travel times have grown out of control and taken over our gaming experience. While maintaining the appearance of a true virtual world is important developers also need to realize that MMOs have moved into the next generation. There needs to be a travel time limit which makes it so players don't have to spend 20 minutes doing nothing to reach their goal. Unless of course the developers are preparing the next generation of Alterac Valley participants.

Does WotLK have a trick up its sleeve?

Last year when Tobold wrote a parody article that made fun of what features Blizzard would put into its next expansion it was treated as a joke by most players. Sure, a couple people thought he was serious and started arguing about his claims on the comment thread but most people got it. Later on in the year though Blizzcon shocked most of us when the feature list for Wraith of the Lich King looked very similar to what Tobold had jokingly posted. While this is old news it starting to have more importance as the unofficial deadline for another WoW expansion gets closer.

You see back in the beginning of Febuary last year we had less of an idea of what kind of competition World of Warcraft would be facing. But since then we have gotten a much better picture of Age of Conan and Warhammer. While Age of Conan was originally supposed to be a push over they have made some smart decisions lately. One they reduced their class base which I think is a smart move looking at how much trouble Blizzard has just balancing 9 classes. Secondly, they have moved their release date back several times to avoid releasing with an unfinished game. While this drives some people crazy I think its a good decision especially considering Tabula Rasa and Pirates of the Burning Sea which both would have benefited from a month or two extra development.

The major competition for Wraith of the Lich King is of course the marketing giant Warhammer Online. While some people think they are a little too full of hype they do have the talent and funding to release a great game. There is also something just exciting about the concept of Vivendi/Activision fighting EA through our favorite form of media. While Warhammer is promising some raiding and PvE content the real upper hand is their PvP content. Recent trends in World of Warcraft have suggested that raiding was mostly supported by having a exclusive lock on epic items. As soon as decent rewards for PvP were introduced it became apparent that a lot of people didn't like hanging out with twenty-five people and having some guy named Bob telling them what to do.

That's not to say raiding is dead or even that its a bad game mechanic. Its just that fantasy based MMOs are starting to look at alternative forms of end game content. That's really where Warhammer thinks they can dominate World of Warcraft. When people hit max level in their game they can fight people for castles, territory, and better items instead of just killing raid AI #318. Blizzard has realized that Warhammer might have a point here and that's why they introduced the open PvP zone in Wraith of the Lich King. Details are sketchy but it looks like the threat of competition finally got Blizzard off their asses and put siege weapons into the game.

Still while Blizzard is probably patting itself on its back for Lake Wintergrasp you have to wonder about Warhammer. They are going to have several zones like the one World of Warcraft is making and they have had longer to make them. Also Blizzard doesn't exactly have the best record on making World PvP rewarding and fun. Anyone remember the open world Silithus quests? Nothing like a zone people avoid like the plague to highlight a weakness in your game design prowess. Still Blizzard isn't stupid and they do have a tremendous amount of talent.

That's why I simply don't think Lake Wintergrasp, one hero class, and ten more levels is all that Blizzard has up its sleeve. The feature list is too small and we haven't heard anything for too long for Blizzard not to be holding onto one or more aces. Either they are waiting a bit closer to release date to announce something big or else the development of Starcraft 2 and their new MMO really ate up all their personnel. While a hero class is a major feature it can't hold the expansion up by itself. No matter how good you are at polish you can't make the same old stone look like a diamond.

Progressive Questing: What LOTR does well

Lord of the Rings has fallen out of the spotlight since its release last year though its probably still in the running for second most popular MMORPG on the market right now. Turbine was lucky that it impressed so many people with its newbie zones since it helped garnered lots of extra revenue in the form of lifetime subscriptions. I think this has allowed the game to weather the huge exodus of players that occurred when the quality level was found to dip sharply in the middle to late levels. Players have said this is slowly changing in patches but I think its a little late since most people have returned to either Everquest 2 or World of Warcraft.

Its a shame really since Lord of the Rings does one thing better then either one of those games. It really has the best storytelling I've run across in a MMO. The series of quests organized into "Books" are exactly like playing through your favorite fantasy story. While early quests in the books are your standard kill ten rats most of them branch out into really unique dungeon crawls. The rewards are well balanced and include titles for completion which are often irresistible carrots to some players.

Its funny in a way since most modern MMOs seem to be moving away from RPG elements. Quest text is routinely ignored by players for being poorly written and overly obtuse. Players have gotten in the habit of simply looking at a quest title and checking for rewards at the end. If the rewards are good enough then they go to an online site to actually look up how to do the darn thing. While older gamers are aghast at how much easier we have it nowadays versus when Everquest ruled the market, it doesn't really matter. Today, a good portion of the MMO player base is on a casual gamer time frame which often translates into little time to waste.

When I first started playing Lord of the Rings I found myself actually reading the quest text for the first time in years. In World of Warcraft I had stopped around the time I got to the Barrens which probably accounted for why I was stuck on the sempholange quest for two days. While I like to say it was something unique that made me follow the quest storyline in LOTR but the truth was that I simply wanted to find out what happen next. Each quest in a Book was a small part of the overall story and they lead into one another which is probably why they are called chapters. doh!

Now that I think about it even in earlier games like World of Warcraft the best quests tended to be the chain quests which told a story. Things haven't changed much with Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm both receiving praise for their quest lines when the Burning Crusade came out. I mean who didn't want to accidentally free Teron Gorefiend and get that spiffy helm of second sight? Lord of the Rings does questing and progressive storytelling on that scale much more often and only a couple of things detracted from the experience.

One was the lack of classes able to heal a group through the harder quest lines. At the time of my quiting LOTR in October 2007 only the minstrel was really able to heal a party through most quests. The other thing was that progressive quest lines have the same problem that raid backflaging has in most games. People are almost never on the same part of the quest at the same time and people quickly get tired of helping people catch up.

Those issues were minor in the earlier levels where the quest lines didn't step up the difficulty too much. But at the later levels I'm sure it started to become a problem and contributed to the exodus. If only quest instances had a cross server queue or something so people could join parties more easily. I think Warhammer has a good idea with the public quests where everyone in an area is contributing to a common goal. In the future I think ideas like this combined with better LFG tools might bring back more RPG elements into our MMO. Until then I think LOTR is the role player's best friend at the moment.

How many MMO types are there, anyways?

If you look at the MMO market from a high level perspective all you really see are two categories of games: Fantasy and Other. If you ignore the subscription numbers and look at all the titles equally then you can see some differentiation but its not very healthy. Most games are not only locked into one genre but also have very little innovation in their combat or advancement systems. Most of the time innovation in the market is only done on small scale games. Publishers then expect to be able to charge the same subscription price as the most popular games even though their ideas haven't proven their merit yet.


In my mind their are three big categories when describing what type of MMO you are going to make.

Genre
Options: Fantasy, Science-Fiction, Historical
As you can see there aren't that many choices for each area. Genre especially has had little variation with fantasy and science fiction being the only choices for a long time. Pirates of the Burning Sea will be the first commercially viable MMO with a history background though ATITD and WW2 Online are both in the same category.

Combat
Options: Melee and Special Powers, First Person Shooter, Vehicles
Combat has had probably the most tinkering done to it but mostly because developers have just ripped elements from others types of video games and stuck them into a MMO. Most of the time while this greatly changes the game from its competitors it doesn't integrate very well with the persistence of a online world.

Character Advancement
Options: Skill Based, Level Based
Advancement has had the least change over the years with games based on levels being easier to implement and more popular because of their reward curve. However, over the years fans of player vs. player combat have express a desire for skill based systems that reward better planning and research instead of blind grinding.

List of Realistic Current MMO Categories

1) Fantasy + Melee/SPower + Level: EQ, WoW, LOTR, FFXI, Lineage, GW
2) Sci-Fi + FPS + Level: Star Wars Galaxies, Tabula Rasa, Planetside
3) Sci-Fi + Melee/SPower + Level: City of Heroes
4) Sci-Fi + Vehicle + Skill: EVE Online
5) History + Vehicle + Level: Pirates of the Burning Sea

There is really no next most popular category after the number one option. Developer's trying to be different usually go for a science fiction setting in hopes of gathering those who don't want yet another elf based MMO. A recent popular trend is making science fiction based MMOs that use first person shooters elements for their combat. These games then make use of a level system which controls what type of weapons/vehicles players can use. While it makes for interesting game play none of them have been a success even by pre WoW standards.

The big alternative success story really has been EVE Online though its reputation has been marred by several developer scandals. Still its the most different from the popular fantasy games which is probably why its attracted so many players to itself. All combat is ship to ship fighting and it uses a interesting real time skill training system for advancement. Its mostly focused on realistic PvP combat (aka unfair ambushes) and people argue whether this is a positive or minus for the game. Whatever the case the game has slowly been increasing is subscription base since release which usually signifies the developers are doing something right.

I think this hints at the future of the MMO market in the years to come. Most of the games slated to be released in 2008 are yet more fantasy games but with a higher emphasis on PvP combat. After the upcoming PvP storm I think players and developers will be looking for something different. Since science fiction has started to prove itself viable in the market I think we can look forward to many releases in 2009-2010 being in that genre. Off the top of my head there's Stargate, Starcraft, and Knights of the Old Republic all being rumoured to be released in the next few years. While Stargate is the only one confirmed most people are pretty sure about the other two. In the end I have a feeling that while true innovation will be slow, the stranglehold of the fantasy genre on MMO's will start to weaken.

Blizzard's Unintended Consequences

Blizzard is the undisputed king of polish in the MMO landscape but they sure seem to suffer from short sightedness in their game mechanics sometimes. Maybe this is not because of any fault of their own but rather the size of the game they manage. Its hard to predict the effects of a patch on a virtual world when it has over 8 millions random variables running around. A high amount of players definitely seems to increase the odds of someone finding a way to exploit any new changes. Human nature and competition makes sure knowledge of the exploit spreads quickly. Lets look at some recent unintended consequences Blizzard created and ignore the classics like Hakkar's Curse of Blood incident.


AFK Reporting Feature

The Why?
Alterac Valley was suppose to be the ultimate PvP experience in World of Warcraft but has never quite lived up to its imagined glory. After two zone revamps Blizzard decided that it was impossible to balance since so many players were using methods to stay AFK in the starting caves. This was more a problem on the Horde side then the Alliance though make no doubts but sides had plenty of slackers.

The Unintended Consequence
The reporting feature was suppose to prevent players from being able to farm honor by sitting around AFK in the battlegrounds. In Alterac Valley it initially made the odds more fair but within a few weeks people had figured out places on the map where they could go AFK and still look like they were in battle. Even worse the newest form of Alterac Valley gave little honor to the loosing side. Originally thought to discourage being AFK all it did was force them into all the other battlegrounds.

The Causes
1) Blizzard should have know that making Arena Season 1 rewards available for honor would make people looking for easy ways to earn honor. 2) They might have guess that the reporting tool was only effective in long games because the amount of time it took the tool to flag someone AFK. 3) And they definitely should have known that victories in Alterac Valley were usually very one sided and it might not be the best thing in the world to make it so the losing side gained little honor. Add all three factors together and you now have the situation today with even more AFKers spread across all battlegrounds.


Required Arena Ratings and Smurfing

The Why?
Blizzard noticed the trend of raiders only participating in arena games so they could save up points for epic quality weapons. It was much easier to get weapons from arenas then raiding because of the lack of a weapon token system in PvE content. To prevent this trend Blizzard put a rating requirement on season 3 weapons when they came out.

The Unintended Consequence
People Starting selling spots on high rated arena teams. Blizzard created a personal arena rating in season 3 to prevent this practice but it soon became apparent there was already another exploit in use. This exploit was called Smurfing and involved players using multiple dummy teams to feed a single team easy victories late at night. A lot of the top winners of Arena Season 2 were caught using this method which of course meant that most of Blizzard's development on the rating requirement was negated.

The Causes
The arena rating problem has been caused by a single factor and its one the developers seem unwilling to recognize. Buying arena spots, creating a million smurf teams, and moving characters around to each of them is still easier then winning a roll on a good epic weapon. If a token system was introduced for weapons or perhaps the raid loot adjusted to drop more weapons it could have fix this problem. But instead the developers choose to focus only on the PvP side of the equation to achieve a balance.


Conclusion

Now why I may have been a little harsh on Blizzard, I was purposefully highlighting features where they had made mistakes. Traditionally, the company's commitment to class balance and dungeon design has been very high with a lot less mistakes then their competitors. Their good record on the raiding and combat side is in part due to their talent pool from classic Everquest. However, if there is one thing Blizzard needs to work on its reacting to symptoms of a problem instead of tracking down the source.

The introduction of daily quests and the revamp of elixirs was a great example of Blizzard attacking the source of why people bought gold instead of going after the symptoms. However, it took them quite awhile to figure it out since it wasn't in their area of expertise. World of Warcraft's PvP systems are in a similar situation where they have been tinkered with for years but have yet to provide that perfect experience. Still they keep getting better and this has had the unintended consequence of taking people away from raiding. Now blunders on the PvP side are very dangerous since they could make it too easy to get rewards or too hard. If its too easy then WoW risks losing more raiders and if its too hard they risk feeding Warhammer.

Finding a MMO Diversion

I've been experimenting with several other games since my friends started signing into World of Warcraft less often. We've simply run out of content and as a result we probably log in about half as much as we did before the summer. We have the most nowadays by competing in the arenas. We like experimenting with different class combinations and trying to see which bracket we can score the highest in. We almost never get out of the 1600 rang so we know we mostly suck but its still a lot of fun. Doing the same old dungeons in an attempt to save up heroic badges just doesn't hold the appeal it used to.

Lord of the Rings - June to September 2007

This game has one of the best starting zones I've ever seen and it made me roll several hobbit characters. The leveling curve was nice and the amount of quests made World of Warcraft look like Everquest. I played several characters to the thirties before I ran into the dreaded "problem" with Lord of the Rings. For some reason the fun just seems to vanish in the game in the late thirties. Its a combination of several things and unfortunately it didn't look like Turbine could fix them quickly enough in patches.

-Started to be less and less quests you could solo
-Dearth of new Character abilities in the late levels
-Only 4 real dungeons though lots of quest instances
-Few zone options for leveling after 40.

I heard they've fixed a couple of these issues in the following patches but the lack of new character abilities still really hurts the game and seems to make it so that the classes have less depth to them then their World of Warcraft counterparts. I think this is a result of their option not to use magic in the game which really restricted the normal leeching from D&D that most fantasy MMO games do. I quit playing around September-October and starting leveling up a shaman in World of Warcraft, which was a new class for me.

Everquest 2: October - December 2007

I only played this game for the free month but I would recommend it over Lord of the Rings for the experienced MMO player. If you are new to the genre or you think World of Warcraft is hard then I wouldn't recommend Everquest 2. In general its a more complex game then either WoW or LOTR and includes a lot of stuff you just kind of got to figure out on your own. The user interface in particular pissed me off until I finally figured out how to put another hotbar on the screen. Its still a lot of fun with combat being very similar to the other games I've mentioned

I picked up Rise of Kunark to upgrade my trial account and I considered it well worth the money though I only played this game for about 2 months. The new starting zone for the Sarnaks was very nice and the quest rewards were much better then other starting areas. I enjoyed trying to figure out things on my own in the game and not having everything spoon fed to me. In particular I enjoyed completing Collection quests and learning the lower end Crafting skills. The only reason I didn't stick with this game longer was that I was unfortunately unable to convince any friends to go back to a SOE game. Some people still have Omens of War issues.

Tabula Rasa: January 2008

With it being a new year I figured it was time to try something besides a fantasy based MMO. While Pirates of the Burning Sea looked interesting I unfortunately was getting too much of a EVE Online vibe from the game. Tabula Rasa was generally agreed to be much improved since its last round of Beta testing despite the mediocre reviews it got when the NDA was lifted. So far I'm having a blast though I'm only level 7 and still forget that guns take bullets. In general its refreshing to learn different play mechanics then the classic ones I've used since Everquest.

Each gun in Tabula Rasa has a optimal range at which you get the best damage. In most fantasy MMO games you simply go for max range if your a caster or min range if your a melee. Tabula Rasa throws a curve ball since each type of gun has a different range. The logos system is a little weird but does give you something useful to collect as you move through each area. Basically as you gain advanced class abilities they require you to know certain logos symbols. There might be other benefits to collecting them also but I'm still a newbie to the game.

I do know that so far the game plays like Halo but with a huge collection of weapon and armor to choose from. I had a great laugh when I found an upgrade for my chest slot and noticed it gave me a +2 resist vs lasers. It seems it pays to collect the right type of resist gear and weapons since enemies are immune to some types of damage and can use devastating special attacks. You laugh but I kept getting one shot by some sort of flying giant squid because I had no ice resistance. Eventually I learn the squid only had melee attacks so kiting with a rifle worked just fine. This game requires quick thinking on your feet when leveling that seems to be missing in most modern games. I can't wait until I start getting missions that require squads.

2008: The Upcoming PvP Storm

After reviewing the games released last year it became apparent that new entries into the MMO market were going to have to bring more to the table then just "polish" if they wanted to compete with the current market leaders. This was proved true as Lord of the Rings lost a large amount of subscribers after its initial content was consumed by players. The polish attracted people to the game but it wasn't enough by itself to keep them there in the face of the current market leaders. Future games coming out are going to have focus on either a new genre or a new game mechanic if they want to make a name for themselves.

Whether by accident or by purposely copying each other it looks like the three big releases of 2008 are focusing on bringing a better PvP experience to the table. In the past most players agreed that the best avatar PvP combat has been in Dark Age of Camelot. Other games may have had a more innovative combat systems or a wider selection of skills but they suffered from elitist design flaws that made them unfriendly to new players. Dark Age of Camelot was the first game to come up with a cooperative PvP system that put less emphasis on individual gankage.

Its sort of surprising to see that games released after Dark Age of Camelot have mostly ignored the demand for cooperative PvP systems. World of Warcraft initially launched with very little "War" in their game but they have slowly filled it out by adding battlegrounds, arenas, and world objectives. This has given World of Warcraft a slight edge over other games that stuck mostly to raids for high level content. Unfortunately since these PvP systems were added into the game at a later date they aren't well integrated into the core game. This has made the PvP mechanic a tempting target for new games which are coming out this year.

Warhammer
Warhammer has the best advantage in 2008 to put a solid claim on the PvP market. A lot of developers in EA Mythic worked on the original Dark Age of Camelot and its almost guaranteed that the game will have several large scale PvP systems in place that are both fun and fair. Even better for Warhammer is that they have had time to analyze the major problems with the class system in World of Warcraft and how it prevents players from being good in combat against both computer and human controlled opponents.

Basic information from the game suggests long time PvE abilities such as taunt will also have applications in PvP combat. Another bone of contention that Warhammer is trying to fix is the classical usage of healers which keeps them from being in the middle of the action. Historically speaking the healing classes have suffered from the most burnout and been the least played class. Warhammer claims that their healing classes will have to be in the middle of the fray to be effective which if true would probably make it the first fantasy MMO without a healer shortage.

Age of Conan
The underdog of the major releases this year is definitely Age of Conan. Its being put together by a company with little MMO experience and has alienated some players with their overly machismo approach to advertising. However, despite these drawbacks the game has some really good ideas they are planning on implementing. Already I'm impressed with the descriptions of how they are doing player housing, mounted combat, and more realistic combat. While Warhammer and World of Warcraft are eventually planning on doing some of these you can tell they haven't put as much thought into it as the Age of Conan team.

The problem of course is that good ideas in game design are a dime a dozen. Since this MMO is coming from a new developer you never really know how much is brainstorming and how much will actually be in the core game. Most bloggers have written Age of Conan off because of this and their pursuit of the older male demographic. However, despite the number of articles claiming younger players are stereotyped there is still a huge perception that they are the ones responsible for horrible pugs, gross spam message, and a majority the asshat behavior in World of Warcraft. While this is probably not true its still going to make a more mature PvP game look enticing to some people.

Wraith of the Lich King
Ahh, the game that has probably gone through the most changes in its lifespan and its approaching its second expansion. While World of Warcraft has had some moderate sucess in their PvP additions they have been plagued by balance issues. PvP either gave really crappy rewards not worth the time investment or else very good rewards which made dungeons and low level raiding obsolete. Also over time to try to achieve class balance they started introducing crowd control abilities to every class. Now a lot of times people die without getting to use a single attack or ability.

What Wraith of the Lich King does have going for it is the introduction of a entire PvP zone that will have siege warfare. While they did steal the idea from Warhammer I have feeling they are going to better polish the experience then EA Mythic. Then again I expect Warhammer to have three or four of these zones all of which will be decent at the very least. Also you can expect Blizzard to reset the gear quality with the expansion which should take care of the balance problems between the raiding and arena rewards for a little bit.

Release Schedule
I expect Warhammer to release first around early summer which would give it a decent amount of time to make improvements from their latest round of beta testing. World of Warcraft knows its in the weaker position here and will move up on developing Wraith of the Lich King. I expect them to release about a month after Warhammer with maybe a couple dungeons to be patched in at a later date. I expect Funcom to release Age of Conan competitively which means letting Warhammer and WoW duke it out. I think an early spring release would give Age of Conan the best chance of building up support but Funcom will probably wait for the others to release first.

Subscriber Predictions for end of 2008
aka: Why no one is giving players a release date.

WotLK will shoot the numbers up to 10 million the first month of release.
WotLK will be down to 5 million three months after release.
Warhammer will match WotLK numbers if they release afterwards
Warhammer will only have 2/3 of WotLK numbers if they release first.
Age of Conan won't pull in 50,000 if they release within 1 month of War or WoW.
Age of Conan could pull in much higher numbers if they release early before Wow or War

Escape from Orgrimmar

I just got back from a very extended vacation but wanted to post about the new Illegal Danish movie that finally made it onto the Myndflame website. It had been hit heavily by fans and some trouble makers which apparently caused the site to be down for most of yesterday. The website should now be back up with the movie available on the front page at www.myndflame.com. Go ahead and check it out and see if it was worth the 2 year wait.

The MMOs of 2007: Year End Review

I wanted to do a post about the big MMOs that are being released next year but during my writing I kept referencing games from this side of New Year's Eve. I realized that as much as I wanted to avoid a year end review, it was probably best if I organized my thoughts. Despite what a lot of people are saying 2007 wasn't that bad of a year for MMOs. True we had at least one horrible disaster but the majority of games released were highly polished.

The New Games

Vanguard
The only game that seemed to purposely ignore the lessons of the last three years was Vanguard. Sigil originally intended to release Vanguard as a hardcore raiding oriented game but changed gears when they saw how successful World of Warcraft was doing. Unfortunately, the company didn't have enough money to do the full circle redesign they wanted and the game launched filled with bugs and with fun not included. In the end the game went where most independent MMO failures go, the SOE all access pass. Reports are coming in that SOE has a small team slowly but surely fixing Vanguard but most of the original fan base seems to migrated to EQ2.

Lord of the Rings Online
Turbine got much needed respect with the launch of LOTR especially after their so-so work on the Dungeons and Dragons license. Many people loved the game in beta and signed up for lifetime and special rate memberships when it went live. The Shire has often been quoted as being one of the best looking and well designed newbie zones ever created for a MMO. However, everything in the game which attracted people to it at first seemed to disappeared after a 3 month period. Most reviewers attribute the declining subscriber numbers with problems that don't really become apparent until late in the game.

1) No class customization system like talents/achievements.
2) Small number of dungeons for a fantasy MMORPG
3) Questing becomes group required in the higher level zones.

Tabula Rasa
This was a very high profile game that had repeatedly had its release date pushed back over the years. Initial beta reviewers gave it mediocre reviews and proclaimed it only held their attention for a short period of time. Richard Garriott was the lead developer for the project and had often called it revolutionary and genre breaking. In the end the bullshit and bad beta reviews affected how many people picked Tabula Rasa. However, the game seems to be picking up the pace a bit as people remark the game has improved greatly since beta testing. Tabula Rasa seems to be the polar opposite to LOTR in terms of how its subscription base started out small but is slowly growing.

The Sequels: Current Market Leaders

Guild Wars: Eyes of the North
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Everquest 2: Rise of Kunark

The sequels of 2007 either sold more units or kept more subscribers then any new entry into the MMO market. This might be the reason why some gamers look back negatively on the year. It seems as if new MMO games haven't really improved that much overall except that "most" of them now released polished and mostly bug free. This was especially obvious when a sizable portion of World of Warcraft fans left the game to explore Lord of the Rings when it first released. Several sources tracked a dip in subscriber numbers for WoW and later on a corresponding increase three months later as these fans returned.

This seems to highlight a trend of the current market leaders really having perfected their games since 2004/2005. If subscribers do leave them for a new game it seems that its mostly because they want new content and not a new game. A World of Warcraft clone is never going to be better then the original but it might steal some subscribers because it has new content. However, once players get to the end of the content they are going to choose the better game. A game that has three years to perfect its design is always going to win over one that has just released.

As I see it there are only going to be two ways to break this trend. One is to make a game that is clearly better then the current market leaders, probably not going to happen. The other is to focus on areas which are ignored or done poorly by the current market leaders. The second one is where I think we'll start seeing some rising stars. Tabula Rasa might even become one since it combines FPS elements into its game play in a way clearly superior to Planetside. The only other game on the radar that is attempting the same tactic is Huxley which has been extremely secretive on details or a firm release date.

Next Post: The MMOGs of 2008: The Coming PvP Storm

Did WoW's success cause MMO's to become Mainstream?

I've recently mentioned in a couple of my posts that the MMO market was in its infancy and a lot of design elements have been reused from earlier iterations of role playing games. Multi User Dungeons, Console RPGs, and D&D have all had major design elements used as building blocks to fast track the development of MMOs. As time goes forward though we are starting to see developers replace major parts of the standard MMORPG design. What used to be a niche market is expanding and flawed design elements are being reworked to appeal to more people.

World of Warcraft is probably the MMO out at the moment with the broadest sense of appeal and has the subscription numbers to prove it. While there are many casual MMOs out there with larger followings, their numbers don't reflect a large monetary value like the subscription base for the AAA games. Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, and other ammunition in the casual MMOs are more popular argument only have monetary values in viral and web marketing. While these areas have grown in popularity and will probably replace traditional media advertisement in the future they are still a long way from beating the value of a large subscription base.

This is good in the current market since casual games just don't produce large enough revenue to justify mainstream advertising to investors. In the past, hardcore MMO's were limited to numbers in the low 100,000's which restricted traditional advertising to only well targeted avenues. Thus before World of Warcraft you were only ever likely to see a MMO advertised on Comedy Central, Adult Swim, or G4TV. Nowadays we have commercials where a warlock kills a dragon using a Tacoma truck coming on during prime time football.

Also important to note is that references to MMOs have started to creep into prime time television shows. This is a result of the broader appeal of modern MMORPGs working their way through the population and eventually reaching a writer here and there. Within the past year I've spotted references to MMORPGs in How I Met your Mother, Chuck, South Park, The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, and Stargate. In the days of classic Everquest/Ultima Online such references would get a blank look from most t.v. viewers. Nowadays though most people who follow pop culture or the news know what a online game looks like and that its somehow connected to the acronym MMO.

Its important to note that MMOs with players in the millions did happen before World of Warcraft. Games like Runescape and Lineage have long had a multi-million player base. Runescape did this by being playable over a web browser while Lineage was created in the most game crazy country in the world. Neither's success did much to push MMOs into mainstream awareness though. It was World of Warcraft hitting the 1 million subscriber mark in North America and then again in Europe that gained the attention of investors.

They approved the budget to improve the game and eventually to advertise it like a modern product. Mainstream awareness is a result of two things; media coverage and advertising. While corporations can run advertising until they dry up the budget it takes the other side of the coin to make a name on the tips of every one's tongue. Unfortunately for MMO's most media coverage has been negative news stories but times are a changing.

Positive stories about MMO's improving leadership skills, online friendships, and business acumen have started to emerge. Also despite being consider a "free votes" issue by most politicians some presidential candidates like Fred Thompson, Barac Obama, and John Edwards recently made it clear to Common Sense Media that they don't support legislating game content. We might be seeing a turning point where all video games stop being the easy to hit pinata for politicians. A lot of this has to do with high profile games becoming more mainstream and less scary to the older generation. After all its a lot harder for someone to be fooled into thinking a game is a murder simulator when they see footage of it advertised during the latest Patriots game.

How fast should MMO expansions be released?

The number of MMO's released is surprisingly high for a form of entertainment that is only just now approaching its ten year anniversary. Numerous and wildly differing MMO's have been produced over the past ten years but if there is one constant its been that they all offer players a persistent online world to explore. This exploration doesn't last forever though since these worlds all have finite lifespans dependent on how much content they contain. When the first MMO developers realized that their customers wanted their favorite worlds to continue forever it became apparent that expansion was needed. Thus most popular online worlds began to have teams of developers not only working at maintaining the current world but also growing it.

The problem of course was knowing how fast to grow their worlds. Quality content generation was always going to be a step behind the players especially in the early days when the vast majority were more fanatic about playing long periods of time. This resulted in some developers cutting corners in an attempt to keep up with their player's demand. Other games used a more layed back approach to expanding their worlds by offering constant free updates in hopes of keeping a stable subscriber base. Still others decided to skip the entry barrier of a subscription fee all together and just charge a one time fee for each expansion.

Out of all these methods a few proved disastrous but the majority of them had at least a minimum amount of success. Players tend to establish deep relationships with these persistent worlds and the friends they made in them. Thus the basic rule of thumb for expansions seems to be, keep a steady stream of new content incoming over time without changing the basic game play too quickly or charging too much. Of course too quickly and too much are relative terms but I'm going to give some examples of where it became obvious that companies broke this rule.

Chart of Expansion Rates and Quality

1 - Horrible (Timing: Bad, Cost: Bad, Quality: Bad)
Star Wars Galaxies

I almost hate to use SWG as the poster child for bad expansions since it gets brought up so often but there are just several factors that make it stand out. The first box expansion Jump to Lightspeed was so filled with bugs that it took months for the developers to get the major "selling points" working correctly. Later on the infamous CU patch completely rewrote the combat system of the game with very little warning to the players. If that wasn't enough the NGE patch introduced just 7 months later rewrote combat again combined with every other game system. While the overall quality of the content was okay it was effected by a very unstable player experience.

2 - Mediocre (Timing: Bad, Cost: Bad, Quality: Okay)
Everquest

After the third expansion Everquest really tanked in its quality department. It soon became apparent that the expansion team was stealing developers from the maintenance teams. Bugs started taking longer to fix while expansions started being announced almost back to back. In the expansion Planes of Power a guild actually made it to the highest zone in the game only to find it only half way completed though developers originally denied this fact. It all culminated in a player organized boycott of EQ expansions until bugs were fixed.

3 - Okay (Timing: Okay, Cost: Okay, Quality: Good)
World of Warcraft, City of Heroes

It was at this point that companies started learning from the earlier SOE dominated days. World of Warcraft regularly held back specific content to make sure it was bug free before release. It was slightly annoying to buy a game that advertised Black Temple but didn't patch it in until 3 months later. Still holding back content until it was perfected is a better approach then fast tracking expansions filled with bugs.

City of Heroes never really could grow their player numbers with their constant release of small amounts of new content. City of Villains did a lot to fill out the game play by giving an opposing side and introducing PvP elements. Still in general while continuous releases every 3 months is nice its seems that its more effective have a longer production cycle which can produce more content.

4 - Good (Quickness: Okay, Cost: Good, Quality: Good)
Guild Wars

Guild Wars has followed a okay production timeline for its expansions which fall into either a 6 or 12 month cycle and reportedly contain a good deal of content even when compared with the market leader, World of Warcraft. Since the game doesn't require a monthly a fee it can even be thought of as the better deal. Unfortunately, each subsequent Guild Wars expansion has been rated less then the previous one. Reviewers have pointed out that Guild Wars is probably due for an huge overall especially in its chat system and introducing a persistent overworld. However, the box only revenue for the game has limited what the developers can afford tp do in a expansion. As a result the latest full expansion Utopia was cancelled in favor of creating a sequel to the franchise.

5 - Excellent (Quickness: Good, Cost: Good, Quality: Good)
Everquest 2

This might be a controversial choice but I believe Everquest 2 really epitomizes the perfect release schedule for an MMO expansion. They follow a steady 12 month cycle and with the last two expansions included all previous game content. Since Guild Wars is dependent on box sales they are unable to follow the same practice. Quality wise each expansion in EQ2 has introduced a sizable amount of content for solo, group, and raiding game play. In fact I believe they do a better job of balancing new content for different play styles then any other current game. So what hurts the top rated releaser of MMO expansions? Well one was first impressions since EQ2 in the style of SOE was very bug filled at the initial release. Two is definitely the UI which is still ugly and not as easily customizable as newer games such as WoW and LOTR.

6 - Godly
Theoretical Category made up of the best qualities of several games.

Quickness: Everquest 2
Cost: Either City of Heroes or Guild Wars
Quality: World of Warcraft without the wait

Relmstein's Guide to Poaching Raiders

With the start of arena season 3 its becoming harder and harder to fill all the spots in the nightly raid. When people do log on their talents are all wrong like enhancement or retribution. What's a hardcore raiding guild to do? Well you could advertise by running dungeons or questing with random strangers but then you might get noob all over your boots. No the only obvious answer is to slip into secret agent mode, start making conversation with other raiders, and link the hell out of your gear. After all once they know how much better your guild is then their current one they'll be dying to join up.

1) Accidentally link your best guild weapon whenever you send someone a tell.
* "Opps I'm sorry was that the Twin Blade of Azzinoth I just linked. Sorry we just got our ninth one and we're having to force a hunter to take it."

2) Next time before your guild kills Kazzak or Doomwalker yell out "This villainous speech brought to you by ".
*There's no such thing as too much advertising especially when it signals a zone wide buff.

3) Brag about how quick your guild can kill Gruul/Mag.
* "Oh, your guild can kill Gruul in less then a hour. That's nice. I think it once took us 15 minutes but of course our mage was tanking."

4) Be that Creepy Tier-6 guy who hangs outside of Karazhan.
* "Hello, newbie raider. How would you like to hang out with the big boys." Its a lot like a 30 year old trying to get a date outside a high school except in WoW it doesn't lead to restraining orders.

5) Post Anoymously on other guild recruiting threads.
* Make sure to spread lots of rumors on other guild forums also imply that they follow the FOUL loot system. You know the First Officers, Underlings Later dkp system.

6) Link your guild's YouTube Illidian kill video as a low level alt.
*Make sure to link it with comments like "Look how quickly they do it." and "I heard they're recruiting" Bonus points if you point out how good your main character peforms in the video.

7) Drop hints that your guild leader works for Blizzard.
* "Yeah, we don't like to brag but our GL is Eyonix." You could also try Tigole but everyone knows he runs Nihilum now.

8) Talk about how your guild doesn't force people to raid if they don't feel like it. Maintain straight face.
* Also make sure to follow up quickly with "Offer to pass on raiding void for all level seventy shamans, druids, paladins, priests or warriors."

9) Vaguely describe you DKP system as giving epics to those who most deserve them.
*Details will kill you here since most people just blank out when you describe a DKP system. Instead by just saying it gives epics to those who deserve them you make the recruit think "Hey, who deserves epics more then me? This system sounds cool."

10) Two words ... "Punch and Pie".
* punch = potions, pie = stat food. free stuff = new recruit.

Why Items keep players coming back

One of the primary reasons for the popularity of modern day MMOs is their heavy reliance on statistical combat and items. While its not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your favorite game feature it has a huge impact on player involvement. In most games there is a baseline system for improvement which all players can max out on. Usually this system is comprised of experience points which are used to grant statistical improvements in the form of levels or skills. However, its after this system has been maximized that the importance of items really becomes a factor in whether players stick with a game or leave.

The truth is that even back in the days of text based dungeon games the item centric ones tended to be the most popular. Many a university computer ran a multi-user-dungeon back in the early 90's which players connected to by paying outrageous fees to their phone company. In the midst of such high prices the item (DIKU) based games emerged as the most common type since players stuck with them longer. Just ask any of the MMO old timers or MMOOTS as I like to call them and they can tell you the sordid tale of how the DIKU model took over like kudzu.

The reason items keep players in these types of games is that they form an easy reward system which can be used to reinforce a player's perception of improving at the game. Most players realize that the only reason they are hitting for 50 more damage is because they just won that new sword. However, over time that improvement becomes associated with a player's perception of how good they are in the game and not the item itself. A week after getting the item a player has mentally switched from "this sword really kicks ass" to "my warrior really kicks ass". This does a lot to keep people involved in the game since they feel they are getting better at playing it.

Games that don't allow items to influence the main game system (usually combat) have to depend on actual player skill improving at the same pace as the game's challenges. City of Heroes is a good example where their was a huge disparity between player skill and the game's challenges. At the time of the game's release most of the MMO market were from the hardcore games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. Players from these games had no problems learning how to use the power set system in City of Heroes and quickly mastering it. This fact combine with how easy it was to get enhancements, the only item in the game, created a perception that the game had no challenges. In general games that have no challenges are not considered fun. Thankfully the character creation system combined with high role playing potential kept the game alive.

Ultima Online can also be used as an example though I have less experience with it then the other first generation MMOs. If you back track the history of the game though you can see Ultima Online had very little reliance on items and depended on a fluid skill system. The only real challenge in the game was staying alive since it was filled with dangerous exploits and armies of people who wanted you dead. As soon as the game allowed people to choose to get out of the PvP realm the only real challenge in the game was eliminated. The game bleed subscribers quickly after that since most people found the PvE challenges very easy compared to dealing with the sadistic player killers.

These examples show how hard it is to balance game challenges on something as ephemeral as player skill. With the amount of money MMOs take for their development cycle you can see why most developers would rather tune game challenges to something they have more control over, like item power. Luckily, while developers feel like they are locked into an item based genre they are experimenting. Games like Pirates of the Burning Sea and Tabula Rasa have introduced wildly different combat systems compared to most other games. While neither has gathered critical acclaim it at least proves that item based games don't all have to be based on sword and sorcery combat

Why I Love the Daily Battleground Quest

I must say the introduction of the new daily quests have had a huge impact on World of Warcraft. A lot of people seem to like the cooking one and I already see people running around with the "Happy" buff from the new cake recipe. The heroic daily quest also seems popular with groups actually using the LFG tool. I almost died of surprise when I got invited into a heroic group and found out they weren't doing the Mechanar. The normal dungeon daily quest is a lot less popular on my server and I usually only see one group forming in LFG for it. I'm guessing the reward probably needs to be adjusted a bit or perhaps people are unfamiliar with the purpose of the etherium prison keys.

Despite that one small set back Blizzard more then made up for it with how they implemented the daily battleground quests. The reward of 400 honor and 11 gold is nice but what I really enjoy is the effect its had on queue times for my battlegroup. Basically after the patch all battlegrounds in my battlegroup are being played equally. Even during the Eye of the Storm holiday not a single queue had over a 10 minute wait time. Plus the rewards for the daily quest seem to be influencing the drive to win in most battlegrounds. This weekend I didn't hear a single person shout out the Alliance motto of "Just let them Win". It seems a decent percentage of people in each of my battlegrounds also had the daily quest and thus needed to win.

The next part of this post is conjecture but I believe its probably similar to how Blizzard actually assigns the daily battleground quest in each battlegroup.

1 Battlegroup = 10 Servers = 20 factions
20 factions / 4 Battlegrounds = 5 factions per Battleground

If you have noticed, everyone on your server and faction will have the same daily battleground quest that day. This was probably done to encourage forming pre-made teams but in reality its helping each faction in another way. Its basically guaranteeing that people play that games to win rather then try to farm honor. Since battleground teams are form from different servers chances are that at least some of the people in your group have the quest requiring them to win. This was just the encouragement players needed since some people had very negative outlooks on being able to win. Nothing worse then spending a entire game guarding a flag only to lose and gain little honor. This is why just farming honorable kills became standard practice.

I honestly don't think the daily battleground quests would have had the same effect if Alterac Valley wasn't changed at the same time though. Both sides now use a much stronger defense in the game and as a result usually only the captain and the first few objectives are destroyed. Choke points have become widely used and every game I've been in but one has had victory decided by reinforcements. This makes the game about whose defense can hold off the attackers without dying. Unfortunately in this new Alterac Valley having level 61-66 players on your side becomes a huge disadvantage since they tend to explode against level 70s with epics.

However, while all of these changes make this battleground tougher on the lesser geared side it does have the effect of discouraging the farming of Alterac Valley. If Alterac Valley still gave bonus honor just for killing elites the alliance probably would not have dispersed to all the other battlegrounds even with the new daily quest. This is great news since I am seeing less people leave in the middle of the other battlegrounds because their AV queue popped. With the win/loss ratios getting better in the other battlegrounds the honor rate doesn't seem to have changed as much as I was worried about. Now whether the new system will continue to work after everyone has bought their Season 1 arena gear I don't know. But at the moment the battleground system seems to be working like a well oiled machine.

Class Systems and Player Identity

After playing a couple rounds of Arathi Basin last night I came to the insightful conclusion that every class but my shaman was overpowered. My constant deaths were in no way related to me only hitting 70 last month and everything to do with the developers favoring other classes over mine. I mean sure enhancement shamans got buffed but that was a "just reward" for being under utilized in raids for so long. We're still the only class without any crowd control and .... It was about midway through this thought that I realized that I had somehow switched over from my paladin concerns and was now a full time supporter of shaman rights. It's amazing how quickly you can be sucked into the viewpoint of the class you play.

I think one of the strongest draws for a class based system has to be the strong connection players start feeling towards their characters. Sometimes this can cause problems as players become very touchy over balance changes to their class but in general they keep it on the forums and out of the actual game. Plus the positives for using a class based system seem to outweigh the negatives. For one its an established system with documentation going way back to the beginning of Dungeons and Dragons. While its not the most innovative system it does allow the introduction of whatever new combat or spell systems you might want to introduce. Take a look at Guild Wars or Dark Age of Camelot to see an impressive assortment of classes which stray from the standard mold.

Skill base systems on the other hand are a little more vague in defining a role for a player. This tends to give you more freedom in deciding how you want to play the game but can often leave people adrift in a sea of choices. Also its very hard for a skill base system not to penalize new players. Eve Online which is probably the most popular skill based MMO out right now and its very brutal on players choosing the "wrong" skills when starting out. Often this results in new players being obvious to recognize and easy pickings when they venture out into PvP space. Plus until a new player has joined a corporation (guild) they don't really have an identity they can associate with their character.

In most class based games a new player who is familiar with the Internet can find the official forums and just ask for advice on being new to a class. In most cases they will get a plethora of real information and useful advice in addition to the standard troll bait. I think this has to be one of the main reasons why we see so many class based games out right now. MMO's are still a young industry and we're continually getting new people who are unfamiliar with how an online RPG works. Classes provide an easy way of organizing information for new players. How many people do you know who are experts at all 9 classes in World of Warcraft? It much easier to compartmentalize and focus abilities in groups so that you play the game without information overload.

Still you want a little information overload for those players who want the freedom to slightly change how their class is played. Its because of this reason that World of Warcraft has talent trees which work like a mini skill system. It makes balance a little bit harder but adds a degree of complexity that actually allows customization. I think the talent system combined with the very distinct classes in WoW contribute a lot to its popularity. It may not be the main reason behind its success but I do like it better then the Alternative Advancement points of Everquest or the limited class abilities of LOTR.

Effects of the 2.3 Spell Damage Bonus for Healers

In the upcoming patch its been widely touted that healing gear will also start providing a partial bonus to spell damage. This change is intended to offset some of the woes healers had when trying to experience any other part of the game besides grouping. Having no damage output is a serious handicap when trying farm, grind, quest or simply survive on a PvP server. Most healers still have access to some damage spells when they are heavily holy/resto but their gear simply has no effect on improving their dps. What use is it to have a full set of Karazhan epics when it still takes you four minutes to kill a level 68 mob?

Now with patch 2.3 coming out one third of all +healing bonuses will also give spell damage. This means that a lot of healers will be getting a serious boost to their offensive spells. This should make it more easy to quest without having to spend a large amount of gold on talent build changes. Also as a side effect it should reduce the number of gear arguments between healers and dps classes. Since healers are required for raids they often gain DKP points a lot faster then other classes which sometimes results in epic fights, especially over weapons.

For an example of how the change to +healing gear will effect an average healer I'm going to use the stats of my paladin.

1450: Healing Bonus
224: Healing/Damage Bonus
------------------
1226 Pure Healing Bonus

On average my holy shock spell does a minimum of 660 damage and I believe its base is around 540 damage

660 Average Damage done by Holy Shock
540 Base Damage of Holy Shock
----------------
100 Damage applied to Instant Spells

Based on my 224 Damage Bonus I can assume around 45% of it is applied to my instant cast spells. Since paladins don't have any damage spells with a real cast time I can expect this bonus to be the same on all my spells. Of course spells with longer cast times get more of the Damage Bonus applied to it. Healers like Shamans and Druids will see a much higher increase on their spells like Wrath and Lightning Bolt.

Since my healing gear will give 1/3 spell damge I'll end up with an increase of 409 spell damage. Thus my paladin's new spell damage should be around 633 after the patch. Applying 45% of my new spell damage to my instant cast spells mean that I can expect my holy shock to hit around 825 after the patch instead of 660. This means that the change increased the damage of my offensive spells by about 25%. In general expect healers to be hitting about 25% harder then they used to before the patch. This could be especially important in arenas where healers will often throw out instant cast damage spells on stunned targets.

Calculations for New Base Damage
1226 / 3 = 409 Increased Spell Damage
224 + 409 = 663 Total Spell Damage
633 * .45 = 285 Instant Spell Damage
540 + 285 = 825 New Damage on Holy Shock

Calculation for Overall Increase
825 - 660 = 165
165 / 660 = .25 (25%)

Will the Alterac Valley changes hurt the Alliance?

Alterac Valley has long had a reputation for favoring the Alliance with geographic advantages that give an edge in conquering the Horde's graveyards and bunkers. In reality the edge is very small but it became exaggerated in player's minds over time until it became an accepted fact that the Alliance would win a majority of the Alterac Valley games. This mentality of losing started to affect the Horde and a lot of players begin to use AFK bots and simply hung out in the starting cave until the game was over. This further contributed to the Horde's losing record and the queue population for AV became unbalanced resulting in long wait times for the Alliance.

With the introduction of the AFK reporting feature in the last patch the queue for Alterac Valley has become more balanced between Horde and Alliance resulting in reduced wait times. The Horde now get a full forty active players on their side which has greatly increased their win/loss ratio. Despite the increase in Horde wins the Alliance continues to favor Alterac Valley over the other battlegrounds. This would seem a bit counter-intuitive but can be explained by how honor is distributed in the other battlegrounds.

Warsong Gulch, Arathi Baisin, and Eye of the Storm all award bonus honor directly based on competition with the opponent. The more you kill your opponents and take the flag the more bonus honor you get. Alterac Valley on the other hand rewards bonus honor based on how many elite NPC's your side has killed and how many bunker/graveyards they own. In general only the graveyard closest to the offense is well guarded thus allowing the Alliance to back track and recapture them after the main Horde offensive has passed.

Now why do the Alliance prefer to not directly compete with Horde to get honor? In general its simply a matter that the gear of the average Alliance is a lot worse then the average Horde player. Mainly this is a result of the difference in queue times with the Horde having near instant queues in most battlegroups because of unbalanced populations. This has resulted in the Horde being able to gain battleground gear at a much quicker rate then Alliance. Now other factors such as organization, maturity, and racial abilities get thrown around a lot when discussing the Horde's pvp abilities. But in truth these probably only matter as much as the terrain does in Alterac Valley. These factors may cause a slight disadvantage for the Alliance but most of it's in the player's head.

Now the changes to Alterac Valley on the PTR make it more like the other battlegrounds with a scoring system called reinforcements which will act a lot like the battle points used in Eye of the Storm and Arathi Baisin. This scoring system is directly impacted by players dying in the battleground thus you can count on gear inequality greatly effecting the amount of bonus honor awarded. Now in general if you are going to award items for PvP in battlegrounds it make sense to encourage direct competition instead of the race to kill elites that Alterac Valley had become. However, the current changes on the PTR could turn the battleground into something similar to Warsong Gulch where the out geared side loses with little bonus honor and very few honorable kills.

Getting the New Arena Shoulders: Now Its Personal

Ever since Blizzcon the announcement of a rating requirement for top-end arena weapons has been met with disdain by the World of Warcraft community and labeled as red tape. Some players compared it to the hour long wait on auction house sales which was recently implemented. Most players saw it as another annoying rule being put into the game which could easily be gotten around by those who wished to exploit. After all wouldn't people just simply buy a one week spot on a top arena team so they could get the weapons? Well it seems as if Blizzard has uncharacteristically put more thought into rating requirement then originally suspected.

Basically the developer's hope to prevent farming the arena system for high quality weapons by implementing a personal arena rating which is associated to a single character and not a team. This prevents players from saving up points while doing badly in the arenas then purchasing a spot on a high end team. While a week on a high end arena team will probably improve your personal arena rating it wouldn't effect it enough to allow you to buy a restricted items. Also in a move which is sure cause some drama they decided to put an even higher rating requirement on the new arena shoulders.

While nothing specific has been revealed on how the personal arena rating will be calculated it's probably going to be similar to how team ratings are turned into weekly points. This means that winning a lot of 2v2 games will probably effect your personal rating less then winning a lot of 5v5 games. Also you can probably expect Blizzard to put a hump into the formula so that making a new team to reset your rating to 1500 has only a minimal effect on your personal rating. Don't expect that joining a 1200 rating team and winning 10 games in a row to effect your personal rating that much.

With all this math going into the arena system we're lucky that Blizzard is going to show our personal arena rating through the pvp tab. Hopefully it will be updated after each match since its a personal rating and should only be dependent on the matches you participate in. However, since this is a counter "exploit" feature it might be that Blizzard decides to only update it weekly to slow down the min/max number crunching crowd. Whatever time schedule they go with, the idea of a personal arena rating is a good idea. I can already see it being invaluable for teams trying to find a replacement for a lost member.

About the only thing I don't like about the personal arena rating is that its going to be used to restrict the new shoulder models. I can only assume that Blizzard caught on that the shoulders are every one's favorite piece of set armor and they decided to make it the "big reward" of the arena system. I blame all the forum whiners who bugged the CMs and developers when the shoulder models started shrinking on the public test realms. Now that they know we really like big, scary shoulder pieces of course they're going to put them behind a 2000 personal arena rating.

Bringing Decent Players back to PUGs

I had just recently leveled my shaman to 70 and this weekend was the first time I tried doing some dungeon runs to improve my gear. The only problem was of course that most of my friends don't have any alts who just hit max level like me. As a result I was basically asking for 1-2 hour commitments without any benefits for their characters. Now most people don't mind helping out a friend but you can only bug them ever so often before you start to become a pest. After all most players fall into the achiever category and they also want to improve their characters. Unfortunately, the only other option left to me was to use the LFG tool and try to find a pick up group.

Weekend PUG Attempts

Attempt 1: Shadow Labs
Our tank would only use sunder on one mob in a single pull. Our healer eventually asked him why he wasn't thunderclapping and he replied "I have to tank in defensive stance and can't use it" Could only kill the first boss. Rogue continuously went afk without telling anyone but was always back in time to roll on armaments.

Attempt 2: Mana Tombs
Our dps was comprised of me and two mages who continually broke each other's sheep. As a result the ethereal casters that summon mana elementals continually killed us. Eventually the priest left after dying five times before getting to Tavarok, the second boss.

Attempt 3: Durnhold Keep
Once again we had two mages in the group but this time they knew to coordinate crowd control. However, our paladin healer continuously went afk and died during the escort of Thrall because of it. When he came back to the keyboard he exclaimed "WTF" and left even though we were just waiting for him to start the Epoch fight. Still the most successful pug attempt this weekend.

Most of the people I grouped with were moderately skilled players but the problem was of course that it only takes one bad player in the group to cause a wipe. A lot of times this player was someone who was obviously unaware of the abilities and skills to use in group content. Other times a player was just completely rude and lacked any sort of group etiquette which eventually rubbed someone the wrong way. Percentage wise it seemed like about 1 out 4 players in a pick up group were either unskilled or a complete jerk.

So where are all the decent players and why aren't they using the LFG tool?

Why Decent Players avoid PUGs?

1) A large number of level 70 players can no longer get any upgrades from dungeons. The epic items for badges of justice are only about equal to Karazhan loot thus most raiders in a guild that can beat Nightbane don't even bother with heroic dungeons.

2) Good players mostly depend on guild members and friends to form dungeon groups. They might use the LFG tool to fill in that one last spot but they tend to avoid using it.

3) A lot of players only do PvP nowadays since a combination of arenas and battlegrounds can get you better loot then any 5-man instance in the game.

Blizzard has noticed the decline of players participating in group instances and has planned out several changes in the next patch which should encourage people to return. Most of the changes seem oriented at offering a reward to higher geared players for doing normal and heroic dungeons. Now most of these people are going to try using guild chat first to start a group but chances are some of them will end up in the LFG channel. This should do a lot to flush out the average pick up group since one well geared player can make the difference especially if its your healer or tank.

Patch 2.3 changes for 5-man instances

1) New Daily Quests for a random heroic and normal mode dungeon.
Earn gold and reputation by helping out your lesser geared brethren

2) New Armor Set available via Badges of Justice
Should encourage the running of Heroics, Karazhan, and Zul'aman

3) Heroic Keys now only required Honored faction
Now alts wearing half Karazhan hand me downs can be useful.

Small Example of Paladin/Warrior Numbers

Gwaendar raised an issue on the last post that the popularity of the warrior/paladin combination could be more of a urban legend then a reality. He could be right since paladins are under represented in the 2v2 teams though this could be because they can easily get spots in the higher point brackets.

A quick look at the top 5 teams in the 5v5 bracket for four battlegroups show that warriors and paladins are present in a majority of the teams. Since I think players try to earn the most amount of points by getting into a 5v5 team I think this bracket heavily influences how people perceive the popularity of classes in arenas.

Data was pulled 10/15/2007
Teams with less then 5 members are not counted

Shadowburn
1)FapFapFap Boom: 1 paladin, 2 warriors
2)TwopointoThreeFourfive: 1 paladin, 1 warrior
3)Jolly Asian Clams:No paladins or warriors
5)Steam Rolled: 2 paladins, 1 warrior
6)Narutards: 1 paladin, 2 warriors

Vindication
1) Clan Hex: 1 paladin
2) Lucky: 2 paladin, 2 warriors
3) Team NoobSauce: 1 paladin 2 warriors
4) Pento Supremo: 1 paladin, 2 warriors
5) Arena Point Bandits: 2 paladins, 2 warriors

Vengeance
1)Mein Kampf: 1 warrior
2)Nerve: 1 paladin, 1 warrior
3)Jenox and the Pooteytats: 1 paladin, 1 warrior
5)Team AG Carnage: 1 paladin, 2 warriors
6)Who Knows: 1 paladin

Stormstrike
1)Pretty Standard: 1 paladin, 3 warriors(2arms, 1fury)
2)Trounce: 1 warrior, 1 paladin
3)Jonald Danklin be Ballin: No pallies or warriors
4)Game Over: 1 paladin, 2 warriors
6)IDK my BFF jil: 1 paladin 2 warriors

Teams with no paladins or warriors: 2
Teams with paladins but no warriors: 2
Teams with warriors but no paladins: 1
Teams with paladins and warriors: 15

I think these numbers are going to be the same in most battlegroups with about 75% of arena teams having both a warrior and paladin. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that they are better or more popular then other classes since most teams are going to have a full 10 members. However, from what I've seen in the arenas, warriors and paladins tend to be the classes that are played more often while the other three spots are switched out. Then again as you can see two teams made it into the top five without either class. Skill at crowd control and coordination with your team members also plays a important role.

In the end the only conclusion I can really make is that the warriors probably scale quicker in arena gear when compared to others classes. Paladins on the other hand don't really scale in power quickly with arena gear especially since resilience is missing on their set. Instead its the functionality of being able to throw off dps concentration with shields that makes them so desired for arena teams.

Why Paladins and Warriors rule the Arenas

If you have spend any amount of time in the arenas in World of Warcraft then you have gotten the feel for the popular class combos that players like to use for making teams. Some of these combination revolve around class tricks like stealth while others go for strategies like massive crowd control or insane burst damage. Yet despite all these gimmicks almost every arena team with a rating over 1600 is going to have one thing in common. They are all going to have a charging juggernaut with a huge 2-hander who wants to introduce you to Mortal Strike.

Not since the days that the Arcanite Reaper ruled the battlegrounds has World of Warcraft seen such a multitude of mortal strike warriors. They are the number one class in all three brackets of arenas right behind their bosom companion the paladin. Rogues with their healing reduction poison are also in high use but lack the survivability of a warrior when focused on by multiple dps classes. Thus you often see rogues in 3v3 teams but they tend to become a little sparser in the high end 5v5 teams.

Still as most teams have found out through trial and error their chances of winning are highly effected by whether they have a mortal strike warrior in their team or not. The ability itself is not as efficient as some of the fury ones for dealing damage on targets but in the dynamic and fast moving world of PvP it's king. Unlike standard PvE fights, targets do not stay in one place which makes melee damage very spotty unless it can be concentrated into a burst. Mortal strike fits this requirement and also reduces healing by 50% on the target which is vital if the other team has a healer.

From my experience having 50% reduced healing on a target is enough to allow any two competent dps classes to kill it as long as there is only one healer on the opposing team. If the opposing team has two healers then there is a chance that they can keep the target alive. If one of the healers is a paladin then they can usually interrupt the 50% debuff with a blessing of protection. This is especially devastating when there are multiple melee dps on the target since they often go into a feeding frenzy and don't notice the target is immune to physical damage.

Just like in world PvP the one thing that makes paladins so hated in arenas are their bubble spells. Though whether paladins deserve the disdain for using a cheap spell or whether melee dps deserve disdain for not switching targets is debatable. Either way the one sure-fire effective way to negate Mortal Strike is to have a paladin healer in your arena team. I've made a little ladder that shows the stereotypical advantage one team has over another based on mortal strike and healers.

2 Healers (paladin) and Mortal Strike
1 Healer (paladin) and Mortal Strike
1 Healer and Mortal Strike
1 Mortal Striker
1 Healer
0 Healers or Mortal Strike

* This ladder is built on the assumption that mortal strike allows a team to negate the effects of one healer while a paladin negates the effects of all mortal strike warriors. Two mortal strike warriors do not negate a paladin simply because dps must focus to be effective in arenas and blessing of protection blocks all physical damage. Also in my experience most healing priests are not quick enough or reluctant to spend the mana for mass dispel so I chose not to include their effect.

Now there are a couple of ways to combat the juggernaut that is mortal strike and paladin healing but most of those ways revolve around classes that are easy to kill by focusing your dps on them first. The number one example I can think of is using a shadow priest to mana burn the paladin constantly. A more conventional team that uses mortal strike might be beaten by such a tactic if the paladin runs out of mana before the dps can kill the other team's healer. However, this usually only works once since the next time the team will focus on the shadow priest first. Well I've gone off enough on mortal strike and paladin shielding and I think next time I will talk a bit about other interesting class combinations I've seen.

Law and Order uses MMO as a crime scene

If you were watching this week's Heroes episode then you might faintly recall a commercial for the next Law and Order: SVU episode. The teaser made heavy use of pixelated strip clubs and the well endowed avatars which most MMO fans automatically recognize as coming from Second Life. This bizzaro virtual world has become the Grand Theft Auto of the MMO universe where practices that would earn a banning anywhere else are commonplace and profitable. Still Second Life's unique entrepreneurial opportunities and wild west atmosphere has often garnered it free advertising from the press who for the most part ignored its huge red light districts. It looks like the cat is out of the bag though as it seems to be the main focus for this episode.

Of course whenever mainstream television mentions gaming its usually in a bad context and it looks like Law and Order isn't setting out to disappoint. Its very ironic how television almost always portrays gaming in a bad light while movies are a little more forgiving. Its almost as if television shows see themselves in direct competition with video games while movies know they rule the weekend. Also it could be because movies tend to get video games and the Internet mixed up whenever they write a script. Its like they can't differentiate between a MMO and cyberspace, its all just the Matrix to Hollywood.

Still anything is better then the drek these crime shows tend to come up with when they talk about video games and virtual worlds. A couple of years ago it was CSI: Miami that had a video game episode which was straight from the daily diary of Jack Thompson. In it fans of a popular FPS were modding the game as practice for a real shooting they had planned out. If you look in the archives from http://www.gamepolitics.com/ you'll find a couple cases of teenagers being expelled when they modded Counterstrike with they layout from their school. Not a really smart move but hey they're teenagers. None of them were ever charged with anything or found to own a gun or live in a house that had a gun.

Now not having watched this episode of Law and Order yet I can't tell you for sure that they will portray MMO players as creepy people with the urge to kill. But based on the teaser it certainly seems this is the direction they chose. In my past posts I've made fun of residents of Second Life for all the weird things that go on in that game but honestly killing demons in the Outlands is just as likely to get looks from non gamers. I recall one quote from the teaser that was along the lines of "And now she's dead cause of your sick fetish." and I can't help but wonder if they are aiming it at all gamers in general.

P.S. In the episode they never actually name the game as Second Life.