Could May 2008 turn into MMOpalooza?

Recent rumor had the release date for Warhammer being pushed back again after an article confused the difference between fiscal year and calendar year. A spokesman was quick to step up and clarify that Warhammer was still looking at a 2008 Q2 release date which would put it out between April and June. Age of Conan also looks to be on track and sticking with their end of May release date which will put the two game's release dates very close together. I wonder if people from Funcom and EA Mythic were giving each other the evil eye at the recent Game Developer's Conference?

Of course the big mystery is when the hell is Blizzard releasing its next expansion? They haven't even announced an estimated date yet! Recent forum mutterings have drawn parallels between the class changes in the recent 2.4 patch and the famous Before the Storm patch that prepared for the Burning Crusade. In general Blizzard likes to work in 3 month cycles and has said that the Sunwell will most likely be the last major patch before the expansion. If the 2.4 patch goes live early March this would give credence to an early summer release. Just one point to mention is that Jeff Kaplan has been reported as saying they do have more patch content in case Wrath of the Lich King needed more time. I'm thinking most likely the level 80 revamp of Naxx is already done and it could be tuned down to 70 in case of an emergency.

Still it looks like there is a distinct possibility we could see three new games all released within a month of one another. This would be an event unheralded in the history of MMO games though there have been several side by side releases. Such contests have almost always resulted in one obvious winner and one loser since gamers can't really afford or concentrate on two new MMOs at the same time. Also provoking the issue is the summer timeframe for all three games. The summer is often a rough patch for guilds in MMOs with vacations often causing key members to be take breaks or even quit. However, with summer vacations also comes lots of free time which needs to be filled with entertainment. This is why the movie industry targets the summer so heavily. New MMOs could see this time period as the perfect opportunity to break players away from their established favorites.

Funcom is probably the least worried about competing since they see their market as different from Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King. This is probably why they were the only ones to give a firm release date. However, I'm sure both Blizzard and EA Mythic are worried about the effect of a mature rated MMO. Could it establish a dominant bond with male players by its use of gore and boobies? Over the last few years designers have stressed political correctness in an attempt to appeal to a wider market, the reason a lot of the troll /silly jokes were removed. It’s almost refreshing to see someone ignore this and design specifically for a niche. Most people predict Age of Conan won’t surpass 200,000 but no one really knows the market for a mature MMO aimed at guys.

What should really be a two game competition between Warhammer and Wrath of the Lick King might be started off early by Age of Conan. As Hillary found out this primary season you can never guess how an unknown variable will affect a popularity contest. OMG, did I just draw a parallel between the presidential race and MMOs? All attempts at humor aside one has to wonder if this is a plus or negative for the players. Most MMOs because of their progressively increasing items and levels eventually become hard for new players to pick up. By the time a year has pass they’re riddle with inflation and a lack of low level players to group with. I would rather have my new MMOs spread out over the course of the year instead of all jam packed together. Then again I admit a burning curiosity to see who would win in a three way death match.

2.4 changes should keep "Ringers" out of Arenas

It’s funny but based on my arena rating I've always just assumed that me and my friends suck at PvP in World of Warcraft. We have okay class balance but we never seem to be able to get our rating above 1600. We do tend to win a lot in battlegrounds and we made a good run of it this weekend in Warsong Gulch. We only had a premade of about five people but we managed to beat numerous full premades and won about 20 games in a row. This was the most success we've ever had and actually resulted in me spending left over WSG tokens on potions. Never thought I would see that day!

However, in the arenas this weekend we got our normal ass kicking with every win giving us only around 8-10 points and every loss costing us about 16 points. It’s funny but our win/loss ratio is about 2-1 but we actually end up barely increasing our rating. Well it was about half way through our 5th game when we noticed that a lot of the teams that beat us in the mid 1500's had one or two people in full sets of Vengeance (S3 arena) gear. These were the teams with apparently much worse ratings then us and yet somehow they managed to have people who had already achieved the 2000 rating requirement for the shoulders.

Unfortunately, it’s become common practice for players to switch to lower rated arena teams once they have fully geared themselves out in the latest arena gear. Since the arena matching system is currently based on team ranking it ignores the obvious advantage a fully geared season 3 player brings to the table. The practice is especially brutal since most of these Ringers are high damage classes with MS warriors being the most common. This makes it especially hard to catch up at the end of an arena season especially if you didn't have an active team for the first month or two.

It looks like Blizzard has noticed the problem and is changing the matching system in patch 2.4 to prevent Ringers from smashing lower ranked teams. In the next patch you can expect the matching system to use the highest personal rating of a team member to match them against their opponents. All of a sudden having someone with a personal rating of 2000 in your team doesn't seem like such an advantage. This should reduce the amount of teams in the 1450-1650 rating range which make use of Ringers to artificially boost their arena rating.

Blizzard is getting closer and closer to cutting out most of the cheats for the arena system. People will always try to game a system to get rewards faster but for the longest time PvP has been more vulnerable to it then PvE. It’s only natural since massive PvP systems in MMORPGs are a lot less common then standard reward systems which use dungeons and raids. Still it looks like progress is being made and one only has to look at the greatly reduce gold spam to see that Blizzard can effectively change their code to restrict undesired behavior. Now if only they would work on the hack that allows people to start early in Eye of the Storm.

New Blog Layout

I went ahead and finally switched from classic blogger to the new and improved version. I had been eyeing several XML templates and decided to just take the plunge and switch over. I might be trying out several others until I get that perfect fit. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions and tell me if this layout is easier to ready.

Are MMO developers starting to overly specialize?

Yesterday the story about Cryptic Studios and its new game Champions Online gave me pause. While I like the fact that they are trying to make a better game than City of Heroes, I can’t help but get the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. The problem is that the one thing I’ve learned from watching the MMO market since 1999 is that sequels never do as well as their original. Games like Everquest 2, Lineage 2 and especially Asheron’s Call 2 have never gained as many subscribers as their predecessors and in some cases have had to be shut down.

It’s funny that Cryptic Studios would want to pigeon-hole itself into a super hero shop since they obviously have great talent. Now rumors have almost confirmed that they are working on the Star Trek MMO which they probably acquired from Perpetual. Still even if that is true they are going to need their first independent release to be a blockbuster. City of Heroes/Villains never really got above the 200,000 mark and that makes me doubt Champions Online can either. Now some may point to it being playable on the Xbox 360 as boosting its numbers but I don’t know how console owners will react to subscription fees. Whatever their numbers end up being, the point is that a studio obviously feels comfortable in the super hero genre.

Honestly, they aren’t the only studio who has a comfort zone. Just look at every major MMO studio and publisher and you’ll see that most have defined a niche where they do their best work. If they get involved in a game outside their area of expertise it tends not to do so well. SOE has had tons of bad experience with titles like the Matrix, Planetside, and Starwars Galaxies despite being the market leader for quite some time. NCSoft also has similar problems with a lot of recent non-fantasy titles falling flat on their face. Tabula Rasa is a personal favorite of mine but it’s recently release revenue numbers are atrocious.

EA Mythic – Fantasy PvP
Ultima Online Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer

SOE – Fantasy PvE
Everquest, Everquest 2, Vanguard

NCSoft – Fantasy PvP
Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage 2

What’s unusual about Cryptic is that they’ll be the first studio to define a non fantasy niche for themselves in the MMO market. CCP is the other studio which has had a successful non-fantasy game but has shown no signs of developing anything other than EVE Online. So even if Champions is only a moderate success Cryptic will become the premier developer of non fantasy MMOGs. However, I can’t help but think it would have made more sense for them to try their hand in other genres. I guess at the moment the fantasy genre looks taken with Age of Conan, Warhammer and WoW stuck in a death match this year. I just hope in the future that I see more then super heroes from Cryptic Studios.

Cryptic loses Marvel license but doesn't seem that broken up about it.

Cryptic Studios has been the unfortunate victim of their publisher getting cold feet at competing with World of Warcraft. Rumors had been circling around since November but it wasn't until last week that the head of Microsoft game studios announced that they didn't think it was possible to be financially successful in the current market. With Microsoft leaving they also take Marvel and the 60 years of back stories and characters that Cryptic Studios was planning on using for their game. Things don't look too grim though since Cryptic Studios quickly managed to get a hold of the Champions license.

If Champions sounds familiar then you probably experienced it at some point as the popular table top role playing game. It has a long history with paper and pencil gamers and its rule system for creating superheroes is seen as a natural fit with a MMO. While not as extensive as Marvel it does provide a large amount of lore which by its very nature was intended to be used in gaming. Recent comments from Jack Emmert and other heads at Cryptic suggest that the game is already playable and only content and polish is needed. A rough translation of that is that Cryptic just has to strip everything Marvel from the game and start replacing it with lore and characters created through the Champions license. At least they own this one and won't have to worry about a similar set back in the future.

I've said before that a MMO should use a license like a suit of clothes. It provides flash and context for the game but it shouldn't affect the underlying design. A lot of the problems I had with Lord of the Rings were caused by design decisions Turbine made strictly based on the game's lore. A fantasy game without magic seemed overly restrictive to me and indeed seemed to limit the skills and abilities of each class. If you go to the Champions-Online website which just went live a few days ago you can see that Cryptic is actually optimistic about the license change. The Marvel universe may have been a treasure trove of villains and back-story but it also would have severely limited Cryptic in what they could implement.

Already pie in the sky features are starting to be announced on their website that would have been a lot harder to do under the Marvel license. One feature is that players will apparently get to design their own arch-foe and eventually decide if they were going to permanently defeat them. The whole process reminds me of an episode of the Venture Brothers but it also has a certain appeal to it. Enhancing this appeal is the new art style being used for Champions which is a form of cell shading that is very reminiscent of comic books and games like Viewtiful Joe. This could work out for the game since we've all seen the advantages World of Warcraft gained by going with a unique art style.

The feature list from Champions reads like a wish list of everything players wanted added into City of Heroes. More customization on abilities, a more extensive loot system, and no more randomly generated mission instances. It’s actually amazing that NCSoft didn't try to force a no compete clause on Cryptic Studios when they sold City of Heroes. The odds that NCSoft can improve City of Heroes enough to compete with Champions Online is rather slim and you can probably expect a lot of subscribers to jump ship. Still Champions Online isn't scheduled to release until early next year so NCSoft has some breathing room.

Check Out the Website if you want the Overview:
http://www.champions-online.com/

What does WoW's success mean for a Mature rated MMO?

I recently just found out about a small feature in Tabula Rasa that I didn't find mentioned anywhere in the manual. Basically, mobs in Tabula Rasa don't always die right away and they'll sometimes do a death scene reminiscent of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. At first I just thought this was an annoying game glitch that forced me to wait a couple extra seconds to get my experience. But apparently you can prematurely end their death antics by running up to them and pressing "F" which performs a finishing move and grants you double experience. If that wasn't enough the finishing moves often involve you kicking the enemy and causing its head or entire body to explode. It reminded very much me of old mortal combat fatalities and I'm ashamed to say it gave me a little chuckle.

Thinking back I realized I hadn't seen anything that violent in a video game for quite some time. World of Warcraft has been my major MMO home since it came out and I've almost forgotten that video games could sometimes go into the same realm as R rated movies. Most people would argue that was a good thing. After all isn't there enough Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt clones out there causing negative publicity for video games? Well that’s true on one hand but on the other you've have games like Bioshock and Assassin's Creed which would definitely be R rated if they were movies. Both these games happen to be very good but probably would have been transformed into horribly bland crap if they had their violence watered down for a less mature rating.

I realized at this point that part of World of Warcraft's strategy to increasing accessibility to the MMO market was intentionally keeping its "rating" low by using stylized combat violence along with its cartoon art. It’s kind of a weird strategy for a game that has the word "war" in its title but sound reasoning since they were planning on releasing in China. The Minister of Culture for that country has some strict rules for games especially foreign titles. Blizzard was eventually forced to add some flesh to the arms and legs of the undead race but that was it. Apparently, skeleton arms are anti-communism or something. I've tried games with more realistic art like Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings but I quickly discovered I missed the models from World of Warcraft, especially the large-ass shoulders. I can see why Blizzard made the decision to use cartoony and stylized art.

However, just became I like stylized fantasy doesn't necessarily mean I want bloodless and fluffy combat. My childhood years are long behind me and I think my medium of entertainment deserves the right to maybe kick it up a notch. Some publishers have realized that a majority of their MMO audience is way past the 12-16 year old bracket that most news coverage always tries to associate with video games. I think that’s why we see Funcom taking a chance by pushing a mature rated Age of Conan and other games also experimenting with less adolescent styles of combat. Even the much anticipated Warhammer is going for a darker and more violent universe though they are keeping the cartoonish character models. In fact recent allegations that Warhammer looked too much like WoW were met with some scathing remarks on just how little war happened in Blizzard's popular MMO. I think the term "hippy playground" was used.

While this is just over confidence and marketing hype aimed at their largest competitor it did make me think. Maybe it’s time developers quit trying to capture a wide market by being as inoffensive as possible and realize that good art is a little offensive. I mean I don't want Rockstar games to get into the MMO market but then again I don't want every publisher to water down their games until everything plays like Hello Kitty Online.

Has over use of Crowd Control unbalanced WoW PvP?

It used to be back in the early days of World of Warcraft you knew what classes could effectively take one of your teammates out of a fight with a well time crowd control. Mages had the dreaded polymorph and warlocks had the very frustrating fear. Both were annoying but easy for support classes to dispel or cleanse away. Still the spells were useful for interrupting healing classes and people often clamored for similar abilities. Well since that time you can tell that Blizzard has moved away from long duration crowd control spells and started spreading short duration versions to everyone in an attempt at balance.

The most notorious of these new crowd control abilities is definitely the druid cyclone which is superior because it can only be broken through the PvP trinket. Recent changes to blind have made it almost as annoying as cyclone to break though some shields will also do the job. Theoretically there isn't anything wrong with having a hard to break crowd control spell but in PvP there are always side effects. Both rogues and druids have other abilities like vanish, travel form, and stealth which work very well in combination with blind and cyclone. In fact it works so well that both classes are highly effective in the smaller arena brackets at escaping death then returning quickly to sap or heal.

I'm not trying to argue that any one class needs its abilities nerfed or taken away. I'm stating that PvP has been deeply influenced in negative ways by the over abundance of crowd control. In particular the large amount of stun and silence procs in a couple of class trees have had an even more widespread effect then cyclone or blind. The widely spread ability to silence or stun an enemy for 1-2 seconds every 8-10 seconds is hell on classes that depend on long casting spells. In particular paladins and shamans are forced into the 5v5 bracket where they aren't the only healer for a team. In smaller brackets healers have to be able to cast an instant heal or a heal over time.

Another interesting side effect of the over abundance of short duration crowd control is that it made physical burst damage the most effective way to kill someone. Burst damage has always been the best way to kill someone in PvP but high damage spells require a decent cast time after initial cooldowns have been blown. This makes them very vulnerable to silence and interrupt abilities like earth shock and kick. However, mortal strike is unaffected by these and warriors are uniquely built to recover from short duration stuns with their intercept ability. As a result mortal strike warriors are easily the better choice over destruction warlocks or mages for doing burst damage in the small brackets.

If Blizzard is interested in a better spread of classes in the different arena brackets then they have their work cut out for them. I will admit they have done a great job recently with the hunter changes. Hunters used to be a joke in the arenas but now I see them much more often. They haven't quite reached the levels of warriors but I think the strength of the beastmaster tree will eventually make them second place for the burst damage spot on a team. However, what Blizzard really needs to do is replace some of the current short duration crowd control abilities that only affect casters with ones that only affect melees. Root would be a good method to use since it’s not overpowered but definitely effects melee more than casters.


Last Month's Arena Team Breakdowns
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/31/blood-sport-warrior-druid-overpowered/

Spore may pollinate player made content

Three years after the initial announcement of Spore an official release date has finally been set. Things had been getting rough for the game with an extended timeline pushing its development cost much higher than EA would have liked. I'm sure if any other developer then Will Wright had been in charge of the game it would have been shelved last year. However, the legendary game designer has long had a habit of making fun games which are easily expandable. This works very well with EA's method of making expansion packs and sequels with only small variations to the original game. While gamers mostly hate the practice it does give EA the capitol to spend on off the wall projects like Spore.

The main reason why I'm covering a regular computer game on this blog is that Spore has some interesting game designs which could eventually be adapted into our favorite MMOs. The creature creator in Spore is basically an easy to use 3D modeler and shares some similarities with avatar creation in games like Second Life. Will Wright has basically designed the game so that a central server takes the creatures made by players and populates the game universe with them. So eventually when your race of bee people start moving onto new planets they'll run into races made by other players. Since the game uses a player's choices to determine personality, aggressiveness, and intelligence you'll sort of get a feeling for each race's creator.

This basic premise of attaching a game to object creation gets around a lot of issues that MMO fans have with sandbox worlds like Second Life. Spore could almost be seen as a test for player made content in modern video games. If it sells well perhaps we could see future MMOs experiment with more free form avatar or even NPC creation. Why be limited to a race designed by a game company when you could use a 3D modeler, some base attributes, and your imagination to come up with something much better? Some people might think that game licenses would have problems dealing with the introduction of thousands of unique creations but honestly we've all seen how lore can be stretched to meet a poorly imagined race (cough draenai).

Plus the ideas explored with the creature creator in Spore could also be adapted for several different areas in MMOs. A weapon and armor creator could easily be controlled by a game system dependent on the discovery of ancient scrolls. Work your way to the end of a medium difficulty dungeon and be rewarded with the knowledge on how to add a cool cross guard to your swords. The stats of items you create could be controlled by different types of tokens dropped off bosses with varying degrees of difficulty. It’s like how heroic bosses have primal nethers used for low level crafting epics but higher level crafting epics require raid bosses. It’s funny but if you look at World of Warcraft you'll notice they made huge advancements in accessibility and leveling but really use a sub-par crafting system. This unfortunately may have influenced many developers that crafting systems weren't really in need of improvement.

Anyways on September 7th if you go out and get a copy of Spore see how much you like the creature creator system and ask yourself if such a system could work for MMOs.

EA Announces Spore Release Date: Sept 7th, 2008

Why Blizzard's Next MMO is probably Starcraft

I don't normally deal in absolutes mostly because everything tends to be more based on opinion then any sort of binary right or wrong answer. Still if there's one thing I'm 99% sure of is that the next Blizzard MMO is based on the Starcraft license. I may be setting myself up for a lot of friendly teasing if I'm proven wrong but I think its worth the risk. I mean honestly is anything more satisfying then a nice big "I told you so"? Plus Blizzard isn't exactly hard to predict like the current stock market. I mean their games are always released when "they are ready" and are related to either Starcraft, Warcraft, or Diablo.

The last time Blizzard released a new game universe was in 1998 with Starcraft. Every game they have released after 1995 has been related to either Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft. Based on this you can make a pretty good guess that the next big MMO will be based on one of these three licenses. Since World of Warcraft is going strong and most predictions have it lasting until the sun burns out it doesn't seem likely that Blizzard would cannibalize itself to make a sequel. If you look at the list of MMO sequels for eastern games like Asheron's Call and Everquest you see that they almost never do as well as the orginal anyways.

So basically my own weird Relmsteinian logic points to either Diablo or Starcraft being transformed into the next generation MMO. If you follow further along my winding path of assertions you can see Diablo isn't the most likely target for being transformed into a massive multiplayer game. The primary reason is that Diablo 2 was pretty close to being a MMO itself and was only a couple steps behind Guild Wars. I can easily see Diablo 3 eventually being released with enough new features that it does better then Mythos or Hellgate London. However, at the moment I think Blizzard realizes there are a lot of Diablo clones on the market and half of them are trying to edge into MMO status.

This argument might seem weak to some people but there's another aspect to releasing a MMO. If you look at the Warcraft series they had some lore in the first game which really got expanded when they released the sequel. However, if you took all the lore and characters from the first two games and combined them together they still wouldn't equal the lore covered in Warcraft 3. MMORPGs require massive amounts of fiction to give developers a background for making classes, characters, cities, dungeons, continents, factions, and of course bad guys. With Starcraft 2 already announced it gives a great opportunity to create the same sort of lead in that World of Wacraft got from its RTS cousin.

Summarized List I've used when debating with Friends.

1) Blizzard hasn't create a new game universe since Starcraft in 1998.

2) Blizzard's established brands have much more recognition and are more likely to gain players.

3) Blizzard isn't stupid enough to make a World of Warcraft sequel within the next 5 years.

4) Between Diablo and Starcraft the Starcraft license is better position to be turned into a MMO because:

4a) Starcraft 2 was announced and could serve as a lead in to the new Starcraft MMO.

4b) Having a fantasy and science-fiction game would expand Blizzard's MMO audience.

4c) A lot of Diablo style clones are out there cluttering the market.

4d) Ooops rumors have already leaked.

4e) Matt said a Starcraft MMO would be stupid and he's always wrong.

Will removing diminishing honor returns fix the AFK problem?

Its seems that the information dam around patch 2.4 has finally sprung a leak with lot of news from the community managers spilling out onto the official WoW forums. Previous information had been mostly limited to a round of interviews done by Tigole which dealt with high level overviews of the patch. Near the end of last week though both the European and American CMs started dropping little tidbits left and right. Not everyone goes to the forums though since its basically a text version of Xbox live. Thankfully sites like MMO Champion, WoWinsider, and Blue Tracker wade around in the muck for us and have listed most of the known 2.4 changes.

Its funny because more so then the new PvE content I find myself excited by a change to the honor system. In fact the lifting of diminishing returns on honor is like music to my ears. Make no mistake I'll probably run the new Sunwell dungeon a few times on heroic but its not going to keep me entertained for another three months. Now running my new horde characters through a fixed battleground system where they can actually earn honor at a decent rate might keep me around that long.

I suspect the primary reason behind the recent AFK phenomena in battlegrounds can be attributed to diminishing honor returns. Players had gotten into the habit of playing a battleground to win until one side gained a slight advantage. Then everyone would switch over to farm mode, abandon the flags, and just try to kill each other for a little bit of honor. WSG was especially bad with the first flag capture often causing everyone just to zerg the center for honor. However, things got worse as soon as the arena rewards became available for honor.

Everyone wanted the arena season 1 gear and despite what raiders said it still wasn't readily available to the average player. The battlegrounds became flooded with people who wanted to earn honor fast and thought offense was the best way to get it. No one really guarded flags and playing a battleground to win became less and less common. With people primarily focus on offense the diminishing returns became more of a factor and I think a lot people started running into nightly honor calculations that were off by more then a couple thousand a night.

This should have made it so that people started playing the battlegrounds to win but the problem was there were just too many new players. Estimated honor calculations are instant and a lot of players just couldn't believe that they were being effected that much by diminishing returns. I think this was the point where a lot of people started going AFK. If you couldn't really earn that much honor by fighting and you couldn't get more then five people to help defend then going AFK had to start sounding like a good option. The new reporting tool was really only good for getting rid of bots and was easily bypass by a player paying a little attention to the game.

With the elimination of diminishing returns we should see a return of player participation to the battlegrounds. Of course it might just be the same offense only participation we've seen before but that's still a degree better then ten people AFK in every Alterac Valley. Speaking of Alterac Valley, this change should make it a little less painful to lose the game due to reinforcements. In fact this might be the main reason why Blizzard is changing how honor is gained. I know I was hearing more and more stories of hour long games where the losing side only got 40 bonus honor. Then again this could also be a situation where Blizzard is addressing the cause of the AFK problem instead of throwing a band aid (reporting tool) on it.

Touring Tabula Rasa's Instances

I'm still learning a lot about Tabula Rasa and honestly I've been busy lately leveling up my horde characters in World of Warcraft. I thought the expansion might be out this summer but the lack of information from Blizzard has convinced me and many others that we have long time to wait for Wrath of the Lich King. With that fact in mind I managed to convince one of my friends to try out Tabula Rasa with me. I can already tell you that just like in any other MMO the game becomes even more fun when you are playing with friends.

Wanting to be in a good position for grouping my friend chose the specialist path which he eventually intends to level up to a medic. While Tabula Rasa's end game is a little sparse at the moment he figures eventually the developers will fall back on the classic raid scenario which requires healing classes. He might be right but I'm just happy in the meantime to have someone who can heal me as I figure out how to use a chaingun. Its can be quite the learning experience for someone not used to FPS shooters. Though its not really hard to play, you do have to approach combat differently.

The first zone in Tabula Rasa has three instances all of which have a different theme though they share some common enemies. Players get sent to each instance by completing outside quest lines which eventually point you to the scary instance/dungeon entrance. A video clip plays when you enter any instance giving you a mission briefing on what you can expect. Once inside you'll pick up other quests from NPCs in there and often you'll get radio transmissions giving you more quest objectives. Almost as if reading my mind from the last post it looks like Tabula Rasa makes use of radio transmissions to cut down on having to travel back and forth in quests.

While some of the quests in Tabula Rasa were similar to standard ones found in other fantasy MMOs, the sci-fi theme allows you to complete them in different methods. Having to place bombs on generators to cut off a force field was something I'm more used to doing in the few adventure games I've played. Also most of the instances are layed out more logically then those found in current MMOs. The bad guys actually have defenses in place and have them set up to keep away pesky outsiders. I always wonder why every dungeon in fantasy MMOs almost always had a undefended entrance. It was especially funny when the last boss acted surprised that you found your way to him.

Fighting enemies in Tabula Rasa requires a bit more situational awareness then in other games. It seems to stress pulling less and doesn't have the imaginary aggro line which allows you murder a single mob while in sight of his friends. Instead the fights are focused on large skirmishes where everything in sight will attack you. The skill in fighting such a large number of mobs is knowing their weaknesses and switching to a weapon or ability that can quickly eliminate them. Using cover reduces the damage you take and helps you survive the initial fire from multiple mobs. Mobs usually fire on the first enemy they see though they will switch targets quickly for a heal or a very threat intensive attack (think bazooka or grenade).

Instances scale up in much the same manner as City of Heroes so if you go in with a full group you'll get more mobs. Soloing can be tough depending on your abilities and class but seems doable if you just level up and come back later. From my experience protecting bases and killing bosses in instances has a better chance of dropping good loot though the loot tables seem randomized. I see a lot of similarities between Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes and I can definitely see this game taking up a similar place as I wait for Warhammer and Age of Conan to release. But while I quite City of Heroes very quickly once World of Warcraft came out I can see myself holding onto Tabula Rasa.

On a side note crafting in Tabula Rasa needs some work.

Bill of Player Rights: Travel Time Edition

1) If players use suicide and graveyards to move through a zone then chances are the average run speed might need to be adjusted.

2) The shortest route between two points is always a straight line by flight. Blizzard seems confused on this issue.

3) Quests should not force you to travel multiple times over the same path. Especially if you are moving across multiple zones.

4) A maximum travel time limit of five-ten minutes needs to be established for all automatic travel methods like flight paths. If your characters arrive AFK after using a travel method then the developers have FAILED.

5) Economic games need to use an automatic real time method of moving goods which don't require constant player attention. Players should be able to ship their goods without having to be at the helm doing nothing for twenty-five minutes.

6) Developers who make escort quests where the NPC moves slowly on a pre-set path need to be shot.

7) Methods of increasing run speed while out of combat should be available to all classes.

8) Player controlled mounts which increase movement speed should be cheap. The money sink should be the exotic and cool looking mounts.

9) Traveling back to your corpse more then once should never be mandatory after being ganked and corpse camped. Games should recognize level differences between players and offer the option of resurrecting you at a graveyard for free or deleting a item from that asshat's inventory.

10) Ships are cool but arriving at the docks right when the only ship leaves makes people want to kill kittens. Please consider having more then one ship at the docks so the wait time is less for everyone, think of the kittens.

*Serious discussion of Travel Time in my previous post here

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