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May 23, 2012

Tag: mmo

February 16, 2011

Savoring The MMO

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — Leave a comment

Unlike the tasty steak on the right, which I would probably devour with reckless abandon, I kind of like to savor the MMO releases that come around the corner. Savoring in this context means many things, but the meaning that comes to mind is appreciating what you like before you consume it.

I get how hard this is, though. The siren call of open beta, events, promotions, and convention appearances sometimes screws around with your need to keep things a bit sane until release. When you get a taste of what you could be playing, for some it becomes a bit of a drug, causing people to obsessively check forums, camp RSS feeds, and overall unabashedly show their desire to have more.

But there is a value to allowing yourself to build your appetite a little instead of taking little nibbles or bites. For one, the prospect of burnout is farther away. Yes, having that MMO steak is very much an awesome thing, but there is no such truth like “too much of a good thing”. Even if you could eat steak all day, every day, eventually, you’d get sick of it. Trust me – a known chocolate addicted friend of mine went to work in a factory and years later cannot stand even the smell of chocolate in the room. It’s a dangerous thing, I tell you.

I do honestly think that the most beneficial thing to savoring your MMO appetite, though, is the fact that it allows you to enjoy it for what it is, as I said when I started this post. I think that in an effort to sate a constantly unsatisfied hunger, a lot of people will tend to obsess over the little things (and get upset over them) rather than understand the big picture, the whole experience, and the entire meal. I’ve employed this for the last 3 or 4 years, and trust me – when you finally get to the table and start to eat, it tastes that much better.

February 13, 2011

De-Necessitating The MMO Ranking

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet — Tags: — 1 Comment

You’d think that by nature, the discerning geek would shun the pecking order and hierarchical nature of society that sometimes tends to get attached to them in real life. After all, the labels attached to one’s physical appearance (such as height, weight, and whether or not you eat at fancy steakhouses or McDonald’s) aren’t the kind that someone wants to bother with when it comes to the great big anonymity of the internet. While I by no means have very many physical features to be ashamed of (other than perhaps an overbite that I’ve always been too lazy to fix), I don’t necessarily want to communicate anything that might put me in some ranking amongst the other males (read: most) of the internet.

That being said, when it comes to MMOs, unsurprisingly geekery is as bad at creating a social ladder to climb as the people who watch and perhaps live the Jersey Shore life. If you don’t believe me, find any blog more traveled than mine about MMOs (which is most of them, granted) or check any forum for online games and you’ll see the full smorgasboard of elitists, shallow folk, and shunned people that you’ve come to know and expect in today’s bar scene. What’s worse is the fact that most of the people who post in these places defend and rank their favorite MMOs with the fervor normally reserved for kids wanting entertainment at a Chuck E Cheese. Whether they think WoW is the ultimate in the bee’s knees or maybe sandbox EVE Online is the best thing since sliced bread, there are always people looking to call the best and the worst of MMOs.

I don’t know about this, really. It might seem like a silly notion, but when was the last time you played a game because you felt that it ranked somewhere in some agreed-upon hierarchy of MMO-dom? While playing what appears to be the most popular and well-liked of games does have its advantages (not the least of which is no shortage of internet personality), I’m not sure that it is necessary for you to really enjoy a game. The problem is that when enough people have this mentality, the Multiplayer in MMO – an actual necessity for a game to be sustainable – suffers, causing the population to decrease and eventually die out. If more people simply played a game because it spoke to or made it fun for them in a way, this would be less of an issue.

I’ve probably written about this before, but people love to defend their MMO of choice to death. This in and of itself isn’t bad, but to participate in the pseudo caste system people try to assign the various titles out there is sort of a self-defeating battle – mostly because people on the internet all have their own opinion of something. It just so happens that some of them align together into similar ideas about their game of choice. If someone just happens to like the fact that an MMO that is ranked, say, 20th on the scale of MMOs is their cup of tea, then I say, more power to them. The idea of ranking MMOs is kind of a blah thing in part because it is anti-variety, implying that a game with only a few wide-spread appealing features is an acceptable game. A dangerous game to play for both developers and players – players being the ones driving the market for what is considered to be a successful mass-market MMO and developers making the decisions in their design to accommodate that (or not).

To this I say – play the MMO because it makes you feel like your toon is worth playing regularly, not because a ranking system tells you such. You’ll be happier for it.

February 10, 2011

The Value Of An MMO Leader’s Masochism

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Social Geekery — Tags: , — Leave a comment

Recently, one of my readers (I do have them!) turned me onto this little gem of a book called “The Guild Leader’s Handbook” on Amazon, which is this little compendium if tips and tricks about being a leader in a group of people towards a mutual digital goal. I have to say, it’s about time that something like this came out in actual print, mostly because I think there are always some tried and true facts about being a guild leader in an MMO that frankly needed to be committed to the written word. I haven’t cracked the book at all, but I do hope that one vital and salient point about what is needed to be a guild leader isn’t missed.

To be a guild leader, you have to be a masochist. And people have to appreciate the positive value of that level of self-punishment.

I was never really a guild leader, but I did climb as high as to be suckered into being a sort of senior officer and a raid leader, which meant such fun tasks as posting raid strategies, using my barely coherent mathematics skills to determine points for our raid/loot system, and listening to people talk my ear off about how the purples needed to be on their toon instead of another’s. The thing is, someone has to do the job, and the job of a leader’s, especially in an MMO’s, is just sometimes as painful as sticking a pair of scissors in your hand and twisting.

Perhaps the worst day I ever had involved:

-Me somehow finding a bug in the raid point software that gave someone hundreds of points and minused a ton of random points from others

-Listening for two hours to 3 people involved in a crazy online love triangle that was affecting our ability to raid

-Having to sit in vent and hearing the unfortunate sound of someone on the raid that had the stomach flu, and

-Misassigning the best warrior weapon in the entire dungeon to a gnome mage.

…but on that day, we killed a raid boss we’d been working on for weeks. Somehow, it made the masochism all worth it. I’d say that the next time you see your guild leader or raid leader, or if you ever pop open the book I linked, make sure you give them a virtual hug and perhaps even some cookies. Trust me – they’ll need them.

February 2, 2011

The Outside The MMO Box View

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — 3 Comments

Today’s image is not so much about my subject matter as it is the conditions outside that I am currently writing in.  If you’re in my neck of the woods in the Midwest, you know what I’m talking about, so stay safe!

While bundled up with a blanket in front of the computer, I popped a look over at other blogs as I usually do and caught Syp’s post about being an outsider looking in when it comes to following an MMO and what different perspective it might bring. Focusing in on one particular word, it’s perspective, I think, which can ultimately help fuel a positive outlook on whatever MMO you happen to be following at the time.

As Syp said, following a title and getting caught up in the drama and community subculture is definitely an effect which manifests itself in the types of opinions you have on the MMO in question. But it’s not just the community or drama – it’s pretty much everything in terms of decision-making, methodology, and consequences. I’ve had the pleasure of having varying degrees of involvement, and it does certainly change your idea and perception of the scope of executing an MMO project. Being in does give you a bit more insight on not just the community, but all the moving parts it takes to get an MMO off the ground.

That being said, being on the outside isn’t so bad, either. You don’t have the inside track, but what you do have is an ability to look objectively and globally at the way things are hashing out for an MMO. If you’re a fan who casually follows a particular product, you’re not as invested in the happenings and inevitable ups and downs of said product. It allows you to pull back, take a look at everything at a 30,000 foot level, and perceive the far-reaching effects much more than someone caught up in the drama, as Syp tells us. Think about how something like Sim City works, where you can zoom in to catch your people at work or pull all the way out to take a look at the city proper and how it operates. That’s the kind of perspective that being on the outside of an MMO box brings.

Casual fans of an MMO always seem to get short shrift for the fact that they don’t instantly know the latest news, that they can’t see right away how much a decision can impact the product, or how they seem two steps behind the latest and greatest opinions. But I don’t find it to be too bad and say it’s a good thing because of exactly that. The opinion of a casual, outside follower always has a chance to open up a new way of looking at an MMO that people hadn’t really thought of before. It also allows those who are in the inner circle to gain an idea of how their fellow fans who aren’t so hardcore are responding. And there’s also the fact that it’s the critical mass of it all – one thing the hardcore followers and fans of MMOs talk about is how their voice represents a certain portion of the playerbase, one that is credible and meaningful. But what they don’t understand is what kind of positive impact having the true majority of average MMO players, the casual player, has on the overall vision and idea of how to make an MMO fun.

The best part about being an outsider looking in? You’re the target market that is desired. I think we’ve all seen and know that the hardcore and devoted followers, while they certainly have needs to be catered to, are more or less guaranteed one way or the other to either love or hate a game. But the casual, outside the box followers are the ones that are desired because they’re either on the fence or looking for a reason to get into a game and check it out. In the hopes of creating more of a core userbase, we’ve seen that many MMO developers will tweak their design, tout certain features, and overall provide a friendly presence to those outside looking in, hoping that they’ll take a chance and get into the MMO house. This, more than anything, is probably a good reason why you could stay a casual outside the box follower – because who doesn’t like having to be competed over for your affections?

January 28, 2011

The Comfortable, Familiar MMO

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , — 1 Comment

Oz of Kill Ten Rats had something short and sweet to say about detractors who dismiss an MMO for being “just like (insert game here)”. The familiar argument of imitation being a part of evolution (everyone steals, essentially) was used, and it is, if nothing else, to the point and direct.

But the argument that everyone copies from everyone else more than a Xerox machine isn’t really the only good thing about an MMO that has elements that are recognizable from other titles. To be perfectly honest, the good thing that an MMO with familiarity has for people that play it is simple comfort – the kind of comfort you get from a bath or shower at the right temperature, a familiar spot on the couch/recliner, or worn clothes that fit well. Why do I say this? Well, part of the reason why comfort is so important in MMOs, at least among my geek friends, is that despite the (legitimate) desire for innovation and new features, folks are really most at home in the MMO genre with a backbone of expected, familiar features.

Part of this is probably due to the fact that as MMO players, we do expect to do a bit of repeated, grindy-type tasks. Whether it is reputation, a bunch of fetch quests, or the ever-present leveling treadmill, people who play MMOs know that at some point they’ll be doing something over and over for a particular goal of advancement. In that respect, innovating a notion that you might level, say, through juggling wild badgers rather than gaining experience might not be the best thing to introduce to people. Knowing and expecting the grind makes people feel at least a bit more at ease about playing a game.

Another reason is for the casual player market in general. Now before the hardcore geeks dismiss me outright for the fact that casual players aren’t “real” players, I do want to say that aside from championing more people playing the genre in general, there’s a level of practicality to my positive argument for casuals. From what I’ve seen, if you have an MMO that has an amazingly innovative feature that seems fresh to the obsessive MMO player that has played it all, but which looks like the DaVinci code to an average player, you really aren’t going to get the casual, average player to buy in. If a casual player is comfortable with sitting down and picking up a title with features they’ve come to expect in an MMO, it’s more likely that they’ll decide they are willing to keep playing it, even if it is only for a few hours a week. It’s nice to have a high learning curve for innovative features if you have a certain kind of player, but there is something to be said to having features from other games that people can identify with.

Lastly, to return to Oz’s evolution argument, even the familiar and comfortable can sometimes breed a bit of unexpected evolution. Just as the next generation of species down might have a variation in color, feature, and overall adaptive ability, so too do MMOs with features from other games tune and evolve them. If you don’t believe me on that one, there’s Blizzard, who have made it a bit of a lucrative career of taking features from other titles and polishing them to their sort of sheen, with some rather successful results. Even excusing the current MMO king of the hill, if you think about how something like quests work, from the addition of an onscreen count, to circles of areas where to go to NPC identification, the old and familiar has been taken by title after title and made better. It really just boils down to the core of why people shouldn’t be so worried about how a game “is like this other game I played”. Ultimately, it’s a process of improvement regardless of whether or not the MMO succeeds, and is, if nothing else, one example of how other developers can improve.

It’s a comfortable evolution that I’m more than happy with – even if I can’t stand recliners.

January 24, 2011

Today’s MMO Noob Is Tomorrow’s Hero

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , — 1 Comment

The other day I had the sort of disturbing idea that I would go ahead and read other forums in an effort to see how to improve relations with ones I work with. Of particular note was observing how new people, or the term by which they are (mostly) affectionately named, “noobs”, were treated in the grand scheme of communities and games, specifically with regard to MMOs.

Now, I’m well-traveled and even though I’m an optimist and an idealist, I know there are bad places on the interwebz where people aren’t so nice. Still, I was a bit taken aback to see in other places how unwelcoming people were to new folks. I’m not just talking about being straight up mean to someone – that’s, well, unoriginal. I mean someone asking a question and getting all manner of sarcastic answers that don’t lead the noob to the proper pasture.

I think it’s safe to say that the cultivation, not the destruction, of noobs is how we should be behaving. Any character or any hero was a noob at some point, after all. Link had to get that crappy first sword from the old man, Mega Man started out with just a pew pew pea shooter, the Onyxia Raid Leader and Leeroy Jenkins were all level 1 – you get the point. The thing is, while new people should have some meaningful expectation to do a little research, a new question is a question we’ve asked of ourselves or others at some point when learning a game, and especially an MMO.

I suppose this is why I understand why elitism happens but I don’t necessarily agree with it as a long term solution for any MMO. There’s a certain level of appeal to any community that remains small, but any community does need to have some way to grow and add to itself. This is why successful MMOs are able to thrive and continue to appeal to players – they’ve got a way to turn their noobs into players and eventually, for some, into elite community members. But there’s always space for a new person to be the next hero. I think that’s what people miss when it comes to treating noobs with sarcasm or just plain rudeness in MMOs. The noob you help today could be the world’s top player in a few months, and not helping them and putting them off means you’ve lost something that could potentially elevate the state of your own community – all without having to do something beyond being pleasant and understanding.

So the next time you want to join in on the noob sarcasm bandwagon, be kind and rewind the “stfu noob” vibe. You’d be surprised at how far it takes you, eventually.

January 9, 2011

There’s One In Every Game…

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , , — Leave a comment

Dorkly tends to put out some funny game-related stuff, and the below video is no different. As someone who plays a support class (not like that though!) it made me chuckle.

January 6, 2011

Not-The-WoW Marches Forward

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Ah Babylon 5 – I still pay homage to you today with badly formed post titles.

Anyway, over at Broken Toys, the ever-prolific Scott Jennings has chimed in with a few thoughts on MMOs for 2011, with a ton of titles set to ship to eager customers everywhere, including a detailed analysis on a title near and dear to my heart, for blatantly obvious reasons (similarly in the same vein as Scott, yes I work for BioWare, no, I can’t tell you anything about Star Wars: The Old Republic, and no, cheesecake and brownies are not acceptable bribes even if I was accepting them). It sure seems that these days it seems like doing so is more like releasing rabid hounds on a fox, but such as it is with the world of games.

The one part I’d like to cherry pick from Scott’s rather insightful post is the fact that this is a year of “NotWoW”, and that we’re poised to see a realization that imitating the giant in the industry is not the way to create a long-lasting game. I know I wrote about this only a couple days ago, but part of all that Cataclysm hate stems from the fact that people are afraid that the game of their choice will simply be stomped into so much pancake by the DeathKnight-booted foot of Blizzard’s current titan (yes, I saw you saw what I did there).

There’s a bit of burgeoning optimism in what Scott is saying about the MMO market and I not surprisingly have to agree with it, for a number of reasons. One is the fact that despite perceived failures in the MMO industry, from the now-defunct Tabula Rasa to first-impressions-rushed Warhammer Online, the industry and its sleep-deprived developers have learned from every bump in the road that every title before it has driven over. And even games that haven’t done as well as folks hoped they would still contribute in some way to making the age-old formula better. Age of Conan gave us a story-driven and immersive introduction zone. Warhammer Online introduced us to public quests and achievements. Aion toyed with the z-axis for players. Stargate Worlds told us developers kind of  require salaries to work. Yes, most if not all of the titles out there showed players and developers lessons and thoughts and ideas that have, for better or worse, added puzzle pieces to the MMO mystery formula for success.

2011, I think, will be the realization of a couple years of refining the frontier of “innovative” features that paved the way for new and fresh titles. Sure, it might seem a little morbid, stepping over the battlefield of mangled and chewed up MMOs to do better against ravenous, picky fandom, but if it ends up being a better game overall, that means competition, and competition is good for the industry as a whole. Despite what some people perceive to be cynicism about the success potential of the upcoming crop of games, even the worst of them that bother to post about it have at least a little hope that something that comes out is going to be an amazing success. I think there will be, especially since people have cycled once again from a “love WoW but nothing else” mentality to a “want to play something different from WoW but still just as polished and fun”. 2011 is poised to bring us just that with MMOs, so I wish everyone out there, from the players that are eager to devour the content to the friends I know in the industry that are developing it all the luck and well wishes in the world.

January 4, 2011

MMO Free Agency

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet — Tags: — Leave a comment

Ah, LeBron. How you make today’s post ever so slightly better with your presence, even though much of the geek world has no idea who you are unless they played NBA2k11.

In my travels around the Interwebz I came across an article from Maeve of Multiplaying about the apathy she feels about MMOs after being unsubbed from, well, everything for the first time in a little while. She’s even feeling a little down about the fact that none of the current crop appear to be doing it for her. We can’t have that now, can we?

I too am not currently subscribed to any MMOs, and unless you count the fact that I play Guild Wars on a semi-regular basis, I’m not playing any at all. You’d think after the churn and burn I’ve had over the years with a few of the more popular titles out there that I, too, would not be feeling my oats. After all, it’s so very easy to feel disillusioned after trying and failing to find long term appeal in the games you want to play.

But not having an MMO to play at the moment isn’t so much a bad thing. Take, for example, the freedom that you have. There are reasons why an NBA star like LeBron James decided to have a one hour special talking about where he was going to play – putting aside perceptions of an ego the size of a blimp, it’s the simple delight of knowing and expressing that you’ve got the free will to go wherever you fancy. This is better than you might think, because just like sports teams schmooze the hottest free agents on the market in the offseason, MMO companies are always on the lookout to capture your interest if you’re not feeling the MMO scene at the time. Whether it’s through cinematic awesomeness or interesting gameplay mechanics or social media outlets and giveaways, people want your business and your subscription, and not having one currently makes you as hot a commodity as someone who can jump vertical a foot or more in the air.

Aside from the freedom, there’s the objectivity to formulate an opinion. Sure, this may be colored by (sometimes bad) experiences with MMOs you’ve since left to the wayside, but without emptying your wallet of some of your cash every month, you aren’t inherently biased towards a particular title. When you’re shelling out the dough, it’s a little easier to deal with the fact that you can’t log in for hours, your dungeon run ended up in you winning the armor that makes you look like a monkey clown on crack, or that you got rolled back a few hours grind. When not having to do this, reading the articles or the news on the latest success or blowup on MMOs is approached with a better, more global view.

And what about the simple fact that you now have more of your time back during the week to do other things? Yes, I know it’s hard for us geeks to tear ourselves away from the computer or a good game, but to be able to spend that 5-16 (or more, if you’re really hardcore) hours a week doing something else with your time like watching TV, going out, or reading perpetually optimistic blogs. We all know life’s about more than just the next piece of raid or PvP gear, so if you’re not attached to an MMO, get to it. Trust me – the MMOs will be waiting for you with open arms when you get back.

January 3, 2011

…In Which I Most Certainly Do NOT Play Geek Nostradamus

by Frank — Categories: Computers, Social Geekery — Tags: , , , , , — 2 Comments

Before I get started today, a random question…what is with the whole “mysterious hands floating around a crystal ball” thing, anyway? While searching for images to yoink for today’s post there was an eerie similarity in how people handle crystal balls (insert “that’s what she said” joke here). I mean, c’mon people – it’s not like it’s going to burn your hands or face off like the end of an Indiana Jones movie. Ah well.

Anyway, the imagery of a crystal ball is supposed to evoke that age-old tradition of bloggers to make predictions for 2011 or so. You can find a sample of this among the geek bloggers I follow, like Keen, who takes a….well, keen eye to the future of MMOs. Another interesting read is a post from a few weeks ago from Lum/Scott Jennings where he looked back at what he predicted for 2010 in games and saw how accurate it was.

But you’re not going to really find any such posts from me. Don’t worry – I’m not bashing these kinds of posts (that would be negative, and you know how I feel about that), but I also refrain from making them for a few reasons. One of these would be the fact that more than likely, I’d be completely and totally wrong. I’m not really an industry luminary by any means, and my current association within the gaming business is more focused on people and communities rather than on product, per se. As far as the rest of geekery, I’m plugged in but I don’t have an ear to the ground like most people.

This makes any sort of prediction I make about how geek media is going to change (or not) equally likely to be accurate and true. I could tell you that all the slated MMO releases for 2011 will launch with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and it would be as accurate as if I told you World of Warcraft will allow you insta-roll a max level character for money. I could tell you something safe like predicting that games will be played by people, and it might have the same chance of coming true as us discovering that aliens are among us, and they play Call of Duty obsessively as a means of education about earthling behavior. No, I don’t trust my ability to accurately and credibly predict anything, and neither should you.

The other reason why I wouldn’t make such a post is really the fact that it’s A)more fun to discover what happens in geek media on our own and B)geekery is so unpredictable it’s hard to see what they latch onto from year to year. For examples, look no further than recent history, which probably couldn’t predict that a service which allowed you to tell people what you were doing and also cruelly forced you into a 140 character limit would be wildly successful. Or how about the fact that streaming media would begin to encroach (or in the case of poor Blockbuster, kill) on traditional markets of “modern” media consumption. What about how viral media and a familiar term from sci-fi rocketed an alliance of companies into a contender to unseat the iPhone? I’m telling you, sometimes you can’t predict this stuff – especially in the world of geekdom, who have taken on a mantle of not only being hyper-analytical about things but also vulnerable to the next shiny thing that comes along.

Really, though, it’s a testament to geekery that its gadgets and software and games and the like are not easy to predict. It’s a dynamic, flowing, changing segment of consumerism, and it has the backing of industries and workers that have a clear and seemingly limitless path of advancement. With such “sky is the limit” behavior, it’s no wonder that the darlings and surprises of the geek world have appeal just because they come out of left field and impress. In the end, I plan on sitting back and watching to see what will be successful and amazing out of the geek media world in 2011 – and you can be sure I’ll be trying to write about it in my own, sunny, perpetually happy way.

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