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May 23, 2012

Tag: Massively multiplayer online game

January 4, 2010

The Premature MMO Deathwatch

Ah, zombies and a cricket bat. What a way to start off the new year’s worth of posts, right?

If there’s one thing I see flying around when it comes to MMO, it’s the declaration of death for one, the sort of funereal kneel that some people like to declare for titles that are going to the grave (read: that they don’t like or regret spending money on). The clarion call of hype for an MMO is only drowned out by the sea of cynics and pessimists that tend to declare “epic fail” at every turn of the key when patches come out, or when a bug is found and needs to be squashed, or when they die in PvP when they shouldn’t have. The amount of people that like to talk about a game as if it were dead (or worse yet, a zombie) is staggering.

I’ve never really put stock in these sorts of predictions – mostly because I use my own judgment to determine whether or not a game is worth playing, or if it is well and truly dead. In this respect, I’ve always been a bit selfish about my own opinions abut games, especially MMOs. Letting someone else shape that perception for me, especially as it relates to whether or not a title is going to die a fiery death, is not something I typically like to have happen. In fact, if I’ve just had an evening of fun and games with my current MMO of choice, and someone then tells me the game is dead the next day, I’m even less inclined to believe them.

MMO death – and I mean real death in the sense that games are shut down, is rare. It doesn’t happen that often, and many games keep going despite many peoples’ ideas about them not being worth the DVD’s they’re printed on. And any company worth their salt doesn’t run a game at an operating loss, either. The immense resources required to run any MMO mean that infrastructure and development costs are through the roof, and running that at no profit is company suicide.

However, just because it’s a bit off doesn’t mean that declaring death for MMOs doesn’t have an effect. This kind of premature cynicism has honestly creamed many an MMO within the last 2 years. Player perception is immensely powerful, especially when herds of players can drive design decisions and  complain louder online than any disgruntled customer at the local Target or Walmart. As an eternal optimist, I’m force to scratch my head and wonder what the motivations for people quick to declare terminal disease for an MMO might be. Could it be that people find that a game they’ve followed for years at a time doesn’t live up to their terribly high expectations and need to lash out? Is it the fact that so many players want a game to “kill” World of Warcraft so bad that they think anything less than millions of subs is an immediate failure?  Is someone pissed because there are no Twinkies in the vending machine? Your guess is as good as mine.

If this sounds a lot like a “give MMOs time/a chance/please sir may I have another”, it isn’t meant to be as such. THe debate about how much time an MMO should have before judging it is one I don’t want to really get into in today’s positive missive. Actually, it’s more of a call to people to not let others’ opinions cloud their own so easily. It’s real simple to take bloggers’ opinions like myself as gospel, or read the pundit stories from across the web and share their thoughts completely. Its a lot harder to only use those as subjective reference points to formulate your own opinion. I would hope that, regardless of whether your opinion on an MMO turns out to be negative or positive, that it’s one that you create on your own. You might find, when you do that, that reports of MMO death are greatly exaggerated.

December 7, 2009

Star Wars: The Old Republic Rolls Out The Jump To Conclusions Mat

331634958_387617c29fOne of the benefits of writing for more than one site is the birds-eye view you get of its community and those who observe the object of its content. By being able to read comments, digest information that others have posted about your articles, and submit your own feedback, you get a better sense of what people are thinking. Such as it is with my little minor gig at Darth Hater, where the December 3rd lifting of the embargo on new information on Star Wars: The Old Republic has led to a whole shitstorm of speculation and opinion.

Much of the opinion is centered around the Companion system, a way for players to augment their groups or go it alone if need be with an AI companion that fills a certain role. The reaction to this has been interesting, with quite a few notable folks hating on the idea so hard that they’ve written off SWTOR. Snarky tweets have also filled my “following” list, filled with folks who are creating 140-character long smartass comments about Bioware’s “newest single player game”. Such hate!

True believers and fellow writers, I know it’s hard to not judge something, especially an MMO mechanic, before it’s even out the door, but the whole notion of SWTOR suddenly becoming a solo MMO with multiplayer options is rather silly, right? First off, there’s the whole idea that we don’t really know much of anything about the Companion system aside from a couple of interviews, which for the most part, contain only a couple of real quotables. If MMO players should realize something, it’s that feedback, beta, and other factors can change game design for a title before it’s even out the door. Complaining or drawing conclusion about a system prior to knowing about it – it’s just, well, a little bit like using that famous Jump To Conclusions Mat from Office Space. If you could sell those to MMO bloggers and players, you’d make a fortune on all the wild and awfully conclusive-sounding notions people are making based upon very little information.

There’s also the idea that, well, by definition, the game is being developed as an MMO, and while we’ve arguably lost sight of the RPG part of that acronym, the “MM” part of it is still very much alive – and my fellow blogger Ravious puts it best. There are certain types of players who play MMOs, and while there are vast and sometimes significant differences between them, being antisocial to the point of completely soloing one is not one of them. Soloers do play MMOs, sure, but they are a subsection of a grand majority of folks who, on some level, enjoy playing them because they get to play them with other people. While my ideas are as speculative as the ones declaring epic failure, I do think in the fundamental definition of an MMO, we’re not going to see a system that supercedes one of its core concepts. Companions in SWTOR will exist as a secondary support system for those of us with little time on our hands, and they’ll probably have nice storylines as is Bioware’s trademark, but make no mistake about it – they’re making an MMO, and MMOs need other players working with one another in ways no AI can.

Perhaps the reason why I’m giggling and shaking my head has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t had enough coffee and everything to do with how premature, negative judgmental behavior hits against the core of why I write. I realize in the course of all this that it’s much easier to be a cynic than it is to be an optimist. This is because being wrong about being cynical is easier to cover up than being wrong about being optimistic. Honestly, I’ve always written with the notion that I will inevitably be wrong about something. No one is 100% right, ever, and that goes for any blogger whether you command a small, dedicated following like myself or the massive readership that most of us can only wish to aspire to.

In the realm of MMOs, where people have let their own judgments run away with them, becoming jaded, negative shells of themselves, I’m more than happy to be an idealist, even if those ideals don’t turn out correctly all the time. Why? Because an optimist is happy at least some of the time.

November 28, 2009

Overheard On Chat – Biblical PvP, BotSPAM, and Your Mom

So in Aion I soldier on, making an effort to get ever so closer to the upper echelons of the grinding ladder. Still, I could never get through this without the entertainment that chat ends up being, so without further ado, here’s what I’ve overheard on chat this week:

Religious education, MMO style:

Aionbiblical

We love those bots in Aion:

Aionbotcheer

The More You Know:

Aionlube

Yo Mama is So Fat…

Aionoutdated

Ah, the great MMO Restaurant comparison:

Aionmcds

November 24, 2009

Aion Infornography

There’s a small buzz around the ‘Net, and it revolves around NCSoft East’s 9-minute trailer introducing the expansion for Aion, including a ton of new features such as housing, town sieging, mounts, and more. Here be the trailer for said goodness:

Now, I’ve always advertised that optimism is a good thing, and that we should endeavor to manage our own expectations properly upon seeing cinematics and trailers. Still, this is a good strategic step forward for Aion, mostly because it takes advantage of a concept I call “Infornography”, a desire to fulfill one’s own desires through the overload of info that can only come from marketing craziness like the above.

The reason why I call this a smart move for Aion is that it has shown an anticipation for the MMO community’s tendency to be fickle and tourist-y when it comes to titles. While Aion has enjoyed some level of success, the inevitable march from honeymoon to reality (and all the problems that come with it) has led to some players feeling rather hesitant about making the jump to the natively Korean MMO. Some have even stopped subscribing altogether, due to shattered dreams or expectations not met – in other words, the same thing that has happened to almost every MMO release since WoW.

Just as the cusp of this love affair ending, NCSoft East comes out with the above “Visions” trailer, a visual orgy of features, graphics, and full-steam-ahead promises. For the players still subbed to Aion, the trailer provides with it a beacon of hope, a validation that the game isn’t going anywhere, and an exciting hype-buildup to brand new features and content to aspire to. For those who have chosen to stop subbing, “Visions” provides a roadmap, a marker to come check the game out at, and an interesting look into solving some of the game’s core problems. Either way, NCSoft wins.

More companies should work to be this strategic about their marketing. Taking into account the very real and sometimes depressing behavior of today’s MMO players, and then rolling with that, is something that can only really lead to success in the future. Regardless of whether you like or you dislike Aion, you probably took a look at the trailer – and no matter what the reaction, NCSoft has accomplished its mission in doing just that.

Well played, Aion. Well played indeed.

November 18, 2009

Rifting: The Appeal Of The Aion Un-Welcome Mat

img_4796_aion_005Last night my good friend Kristen and I managed to discover what I find most enjoyable about Aion. It isn’t the graphical detail or the simplistic class system or the flight. It isn’t the marked progression of gear and a very active economy system, either. Hell, it isn’t even leveling.

No, the thing that I enjoy most about Aion is rifting. For those that don’t know, rifting is a form of encouraging incidental, skirmish-based pvp in the normal areas of the game. Aion is divided into two sections with a pvp section in the middle. The two sections each belong to one of the two factions. Normally you can’t go to your opposing faction’s areas – until a rift appears which will take you there. From there, you’re in hostile territory and just about anything goes.

As I’ve written before, Aion is a game that has a “safe” mirror-sheen polish to very tried and true elements – classes, quests, and yes, even the soul-crushing expected grind – are all things that Aion does well to at least a fairly solid degree. This definitely explains some of its popularity since its release. Rifting, and the pvp that comes with it, is one of Aion‘s few innovations, and it’s great for a variety of reasons.

One is the dynamic factor. Sure, you could go to the Abyss, where you actually expect to pvp, but nothing beats a chance encounter in a zone where you don’t expect it. While there’s an occasional zerg, most encounters are small-scale and happen at random. The dynamic of finding targets to kill, or hunting down rifters, breaks up the monotony of “kill things, turn in quest, repeat”.

The other is the thrill. Not being welcome in a zone where you are clearly surrounded and outnumbered means you have to use different tactics to survive. Just ganking everything in sight will end your trip prematurely. No, the tactics involve sneaking around, moving quickly after a kill, and wandering in a manner that seems random, among other things. This, combined with the need to look over your shoulder, creates a potentially exciting experience that could end in 20 minutes or 2 hours.

Surfing the rift is definitely fun. I recommend it to those of you who are having a hard time keeping your eyes open after killing 20,000 mobs.

November 10, 2009

A Brighter MMO Future

neo…oh yes, so bright, Neo has to give me some of his cool shades for me to wear.

Two posts made me feel a disturbance in the MMO force today. One was Kill Ten Rats’ Ravious, who uses a restaurant comparison to paint a bleak picture of WAR, and perhaps MMOs in general. Spinks is not so doom-gloomy, but has an equally sobering opinion on 2010 perhaps being the last of the “AAA MMO titles”, citing lack of success for recent titles as evidence that MMOs are moving in another direction.

Obviously, I’m planning on shoving myself into this whole discussion with a bit of fresh morning sun, because I really do think that MMOs are evolving into a market past the WoW craze and into something that has a variety of options for potential players.

I’ve used restaurant analogies before in reference to MMOs, but I usually do so with regards to kinds or quality of food served, rather than the black and white comparison of success vs. failure that Ravious portrays. While there’s a high perception out there about the “failure” rate of MMOs out there that might match the high failure rate of the restaurant industry, the reality is that most MMOs don’t close up shop. Only a small fraction of those that have launched in the last two years have actually shut down (Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London), while the rest remain open. Where others see the crash and burn of recent releases, I see the maintenance of a market that now has a lot of choices for us players. Does this mean players can afford to be more discerning and make developers pay for that with their wallets? Absolutely. Does this mean that developers now need to create more realistic and unique expectations for their titles? Certainly.

If we’re talking restaurant food (damn you Ravious, now I’m hungry), the MMO business ultimately benefits from a omelette despite the inevitably broken eggs it takes to get there.

As for the lack of big budget titles past the 2010 year, the rise of social networking-related games and what that means for “MMO” as a definition, again, I really see that as a means of evolution in the MMO genre. It’s part of why I don’t really mind microtransactions, and don’t think of them as the pariah that lots of others do.

It’s just a part of the overall process of not just figuring out what the players want, as Spinks says, but the players themselves figuring out what the players want. It’s hard to tell what players want, post-WoW, which may partially explain why all of the titles released in the last two years have experienced a surge and a dropoff. If there’s been something silly about the big budget titles, it’s that they’ve created expectations for themselves that they ended up falling short to meet. This, however, does not mean that big budget titles are going away – merely that they will probably take a more cautious slant towards their hype machine. This is already apparent in Bioware’s approach to SW:TOR.

Certainly, my predictions of the future could most certainly be wrong when it comes to MMOs – but I’d like to think that despite hardships, the genre is in a place where there are tons of choices with players that can make them intelligently. You can’t really complain about that.

November 6, 2009

The Microtransaction Choice

ah110409monkThere’ve been a lot of folks this week that are buzzing about Blizzard’s decision to allow people to purchase in-game pets for a crazy price over in their store, in what is admittedly another step in the long line of paid services Blizzard has created with WoW. It was interesting to hear about all the furor over this, especially reading another perspective from a perturbed Gordon, who said that the price translation to the UK is more than the monthly subscription amount, and therefore, ridiculous.

I get why people facepalm over microtransaction stuff. The concerns range from folks with practical concerns such as Gordon to people who worry about the inroad into microtransaction is a smoking gun for more significant purchases (such as gear or levels). There’s also the whole side market of RMT, too, and how its influence has given developers pause about opening their own alternative services. Microtransactions is one of those things that affects both the present (as in WoW) and the possible future (as in SWTOR not having committed to a pricing model yet) of MMOs.

But I think that what people can and should realize is that right now, microtransactions as a whole aren’t a big deal. I don’t really mind microtransactions for the simple reason that they are a choice – an optional decision made by players to get something that isn’t essential to gameplay. Sure, the future of microtransactions might see players able to purchase a “fast forward” to their levels or to their gear, but again, such a decision would be a choice made by players, and not one they are forced into.

The reason why I believe this is what the outcome will be is because even though MMO developers might not seem like they have their pulse on the community feeling sometimes, they do have at least some idea of how their players feel. Right now, players feel that the idea of microtransactions are potentially something that could end up out of control, as more financially stable people are able to get a leg up on folks who live from paycheck to paycheck. Any MMO developer worth their salt is going to do things to minimize the impact of microtransactions, whether to make it so that purchasable items are not more powerful than getting things “the old fashioned way”, or allow players to be relevant no matter if they opened their wallet or not.

Honestly, even if a microtransaction-based major MMO came out without these balancing effects in place, the decision to subscribe to one is also a choice by players. While it may not seem like it, players vote with their wallets more often than not. While a microtransaction business model for MMOs might seem practically sound, ultimately if the players don’t like it, they won’t bother with it. Their voice is more powerful than you would think, and it’s that for that reason that microtransactions as a model ultimately don’t bother me in the slightest.

November 5, 2009

The Silly Subscriber Number Worship

prostrateIf there’s one thing that gets talked about frequently as a measure of success in MMOs, it’s the Great Subscriber Number. The number of players that are interested in the persistent world of an MMO is, after all, more likely to feel “massive”, more interesting in social dynamics, and, for the money folks out there, more revenue. It’s no surprise that a standard of success is attached to subscribers as a result.

But after reading what Up Past Midnight’s Aiiane had to say the other day regarding living and dying by the subscriber number, I begun really thinking about how worthwhile a simple number is for an MMO to be considered a success. To a certain extent, the argument holds water, but I think it’s more from a practical standpoint. I say practical because it’s obvious that every MMO out there has to have subscribers to actually pull a profit and keep a game viable and relevant. I also mean practical in the definition of the idea that “Massively Multiplayer” needs the “Multiplayer”, too.

Within the communities I’ve shepharded, however, subscriber numbers are really only used as a secondary means of declaring a game a success. Even if you say “11 million players can’t be wrong”, ala World of Warcraft, there’s an easy counter-argument to be made in that millions of people go to McDonald’s, but yet would not consider that quality foodstuffs. No, the real reason WoW has garnered the success that it has is through gameplay elements, features, and a little dumb luck, not through some number crunched through active account subscriptions. Developers reserve subscriber numbers for press releases and general “state of the game” addresses. The real meat and potatoes comes from changes, patches, and gameplay.

I guess the message I’m trying to send is that both players and developers can stand to look at subscriber numbers for an MMO and say “that’s more of an effect, and not a  cart-before-horse smoking gun”. Players should feel good about a game if they are having fun playing it, regardless of how many others share the same experience or impressions. Developers should stop worrying about how many subscriptions they are predicting or hoping to acquire and concentrate on creating fun gameplay experiences. Both should be extra cautious about using subscription numbers as the clarion call for success or failure, because looking at it from a deeper level, the reasons for both stretch far beyond monthly active playerbase. When more folks learn how to do that, I think they’ll stop fretting over game experiences and have a little bit more of a good time.

November 2, 2009

The Excellently Expected SWTOR Jedi Knight

episode_2_jedi_knightBy now, folks keeping tabs on Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic know that the latest class reveal is the Jedi Knight, the second in the line of Force users revealed for the upcoming game. While there’s the usual buzz of excitement surrounding any major information chatter for this anticipated MMO, there’s also an undercurrent of “exactly as we expected” among the TOR faithful. Moon Over Endor’s Ayane even expresses a bit of disappointment over reading the description and Q&A and seeing, well, exactly what was supposed to be there.

While I can agree that of all the TOR classes, the Jedi Knight was the biggest “duh” out there, I don’t know that seeing exactly what we expected is necessarily a bad thing. For one thing, if there’s one huge pressure that’s on Bioware, it’s to get the IP of the Star Wars universe correct for those that are expecting an authentic experience (not to mention for Lucasarts).

There’s certain tried and true ideas behind a Jedi that everyone is familiar with – the sense of justice, the idea of fighting for the greater good, adventure and excitement not being craved, and all that jazz. If we didn’t have these core concepts behind the Jedi Knight, I’d say it’d be difficult to sell on those who’ve been at the lore longer than some of you have been alive.

This kind of stuff needs to translate into gameplay as well. Defensive techniques, finesse rather than brutality, and the overall heroic aura are apparently the Jedi Knight’s stock in trade, making them the obvious mirror counterpart to TOR’s Sith Warrior. TOR class balance in this sense is extremely important, lest one lightsaber wielding ninja-monk be more powerful than another. If this means creating a bit of predictability in the two classes’ abilities, skills, and gameplay, then that will be a necessary evil. Besides, expected gameplay for the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior may translate into more people trying other classes to avoid the rush of lightsaber-y goodness on the battlefield.

All that being said, I also would hold out a bit more sunny hope for some alternative playstyles as well. I go into this in more detail over at Darth Hater when I write about the possibility of a morally grey Jedi Knight, but the morality and choice system creates some very interesting directions that a Jedi Knight could go. With exclusive abilities unlocked through aligning with one or the other side of the moral compass, there might still be a possibility that the Jedi Knight is not as straightforward as he or she may seem.

Regardless of all this, we’re now more than halfway done with the unveiling of the TOR classes, so there’s still more possibilities on the horizon that aren’t as expected as blue lightsabers. Keep the faith, TOR fans!

October 31, 2009

Good Lessons Learned The MMO Heartbreak Way

broken_heart-18231True to form, my self-proclaimed nemesis strikes again. At Hardcore Casual, Syncaine’s taking what seems to be an almost unhealthy and sadistic delight in the folks that have found recent MMO title Aion not to be their cup of tea and quitting. If you’re not quite sure that’s the right description, here’s the Eminem song line that my fellow blogger refers to when he’s reacting to the end of the Aion love affair:

“BLEED! BITCH BLEED! BLEED!”

Syn, my villainous counterpart, I’m thinking you need a little bit more caffeine in the morning so you don’t get so very grumpy and frumpy in your writings! I hear a morning cup of Joe does wonders for the disposition.

The place I will agree with Syncaine about with regards to folks not seeing Aion (or any other game for that matter) as the game they thought it would be, is that I’m glad for it. Not in the Sith-like Force Chokery way Syncaine does, mind you, but more of a “lessons learned” satisfaction that can only really come from mistakes made. While it’s never fun to go through the practice of MMO heartbreak, where the ideal title you’re with is nothing more than a cyclical love affair, what it does do is make you more mindful of your expectations, what you like, and what you don’t like.

Managing your expectations and keeping yourself realistic about a game’s trials and tribulations is a skill that, especially with MMOs, is difficult to do due to the hype train of marketing, pre-release. The idea of understanding this, and also getting an idea of what you prefer to play, can only be borne in part of going through the painful process of seeing that a particular title doesn’t tickle your fancy like it did in the gameplay trailers and early beta. To keep the relationship analogy going, you basically understand through breakups and multiple dating experiences what to do, what not to do, and what you should expect in the future. Such as it is with MMOs and the folks who somehow end up quitting one or two months out. It’s just not for them, and realizing that early is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Besides I’m not one to speak for what you all, or anyone else who doesn’t read this 100% sunshiny day of a blog, likes with MMOs. I find it a bit silly and wasteful to deride people for their chosen preferences – it’d be like someone who prefers to date blondes making fun of a person like me who has a weakness for redheads, when my latest relationship doesn’t work out. Ultimately, the choices people make are their own, as well as how they deal with them.  It’d be nice if we were all overly cautious and completely pragmatic and made good choices when it comes to MMOs, but that’d really just be uneducational, bland, and boring. Give me overly positive with my MMOs any day.

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