No, You Can't Have My Stuff: Warhammer Online Part 1
Posted on
Friday, November 14, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Every forum with even a marginal interest in MMOG's has experienced the "I Quit" thread. These are usually started by a self-important jackass who feels the irresistible urge to not only inform everyone on the Internet that he has quit his latest MMOG to end all MMOG's, but also to wax eloquent on all the myriad reasons why said MMOG is a failure on how it could be improved by just following his suggestion. Of course, most of these first posts, no matter how well-reasoned or how utterly incomprehensible they are, will be followed by a reply that says, "Can I have your stuff?" This is the first in an irregular series of posts by this self-important jackass who just quit Warhammer Online and wants to tell you why. No, you can't have my stuff, but you can have my opinions.
My first impressions of Warhammer Online contain the seeds of my dissatisfaction. Perhaps I should have gone with my first instinct and resisted the urge to play the game after release, but I was weak. One of the most obvious flaws in the game design was the levelling curve. I predicted that players starting six months from release would have a devil of a time leveling, because much of the content players use to level is in public quests and scenarios, both of which require other players to succeed. One cannot finish a public quest without at least a 3-man group in the early stages, and for a scenario to launch requires 2-3 full groups on both sides. What I did not foresee was that not one month after release, many of the public quests for the midlevel ranges were completely deserted, and thus the quick experience and gear received from public quests was just not available. It was not uncommon for my witch hunter to be completely alone in the tier 3 zone Talabecland, unable to complete most solo quests in the zone because he was too low level to compete against the mobs he was forced to fight. Adding insult to this injury was the realization that most of the quest rewards would not be usable for another two levels.
The gear and level disparity problems could be solved easily, but the public quest problem cannot. One simply cannot progress a public quest beyond the first stage without help. In most cases, one cannot progress past stage 2 without the "holy trinity" of groups, including a tank, healer and damage-dealer of some kind. Stage 3 invariably requires a full group which must have the holy trinity as its core. Had the population not been so spread out among so many faction areas, this might still have been a problem based on faction imbalances. For instance, until Mythic adds the Knights of the Burning Sun class back into the game, the Empire faction does not have a tank class. It must rely on a dwarven Ironbreaker or a High Elven Shadow Warrior to make the trek to the Empire area just to be able to absorb the damage that stage 2 champions can inflict. The Empire healing class, Warrior Priest, must be involved in combat to build power for healing; without a tank to absorb the blows from stage 2, he will fall too quickly to succeed. Stage 3 is an even worse proposition.
So why are the zones deserted? Without even floating the idea that people have left the game, I can offer one hypothesis. The zones are deserted because even if one had the perfect party to complete these quests, the rewards for completion are a joke. While the elite gear is certainly nice, the amount of influence required to get to elite gear is high. It requires completion of all the public quests per chapter, as well as returning to some of the quests to continue to gain influence. Each PQ creature killed gives 100 influence - unless of course, it is killed by a group, in which case the influence is split proportionally. Remember that you need a group to survive stage 2 of a public quest? Yep, that's right, in order to finish a public quest, you need a group but to get the rewards of the public quest system, grouping actually means you elongate the time it takes to reap the chapter rewards. But yes, finishing all stages of a public quest do give the participants a random roll on a random piece of loot. The more group members you have, the less chance you have of winning the best rewards, which makes soloing the quest more rewarding if you could actually finish the quest solo - which you can't. Once that flaw in the system is exposed, there really isn't anymore reason to do the public quests unless you have another quest that leads you into the area and you have a steady group you can call on to help.
What makes this even more infuriating is the rate of experience in public quests. Again, during the tier 3 levels, the experience needed per level continues to increase. At level 25, I was staring into the abyss of over 300,000 experience points needed to advance. Some of the more challenging PVE mobs in public quests gave no more than about 1000 xp. Killing those mobs in a group would slice that number proportionally. Compare this to PVP scenarios such as Tor Anroc, where a typical loss yields somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 xp for less than 10 minutes of PVP, which I can access from anywhere without needing a ready-made group. Even the less rewarding scenarios would still give me as much if not more experience than killing public quest mobs until my eyes bleed. Is it any wonder people in tier 3 choose Tor Anroc, the most rewarding scenario (and unfortunately, the least fun) over and over again? Tor Anroc gets really old after 10-15 tries, but nothing and I mean nothing compares to the experience gained.
Meanwhile, the selling point of the game, the whole thing that is supposed to separate Warhammer Online from its competitors, is the world PVP, called open RVR or oRVR. The rewards for oRVR are pitiful. While yes, you can get passable experience killing other players in oRVR, you are not likely to find them because you can get better, more reliable experience in Tor Anroc. Going into one of the 6 RVR lakes for your tier doesn't guarantee you any action, and without action, you get no experience. Solo play in the RVR lakes is a dicey proposition at best. In order to be successful, you must be really good, as well as lucky enough not to meet one of the classes for which your class has no hope of defeating in one-on-one combat. If one is lucky enough to be able to get a warband of 2 full groups, you can then participate in the taking of a battlefield objective (which yields no chance at gear drops) or a keep assault. Keep assaults are great in theory, but if no players come to the keep's defense, it is essentially a drawn out public quest - pure PVE where experience is often minimal because there are so many people splitting the pitiful experience gains. And once the keep is taken, a public quest random roll for a few pieces of random gear is given as the reward, and there are many anecdotal stories of this system being buggy at best, incredibly broken at worst.
The largest flaw in the whole oRVR process is the fact that defenders get no rewards for defense. Other than points for player kills, defenders are shit out of luck. Why defend? The keeps have nothing of value to a player. Sure, there are some skill trainer NPC's, but these same skills are available in the capital cities. Guilds who claim a keep get no benefits from the keep, only the significant money drain of maintenance costs. So why defend? Or for that matter why participate in oRVR at all, seeing as how scenarios like Tor Anroc offer so much more bang for the buck? Why burden yourself with the hassle of getting a group to finish a public quest when you'll have to do that quests over and over again to get any sure rewards from it? Just go to a warcamp, grab the quest that rewards you for participating in the Tor Anroc scenario and queue up.
MMOG developers can channel player behavior in very simple ways. Reward the things you want the players to do. Make sure the greatest rewards are given for playing the game "as intended." When the game rewards scenarios more than any other activity, then scenarios will be what most of the player base will do. Since scenarios are also more convenient than any other activity, even if the rewards were exactly even between all three phases of the game, people would still choose scenarios because convenience is a reward too. If Mythic wanted to make a game that was nothing more than a lobby for instanced, even-sided PVP fights, they should have skipped the whole "massive world" business and just focused on making a Guild Wars clone. As it is, they have an entire world of content that people either ignore because it's not rewarding enough, or that people suffer through to get to the good stuff. That is the definition of grind.
oRVR has got to have great improved rewards unless scenario rewards are horribly nerfed. Public quests either need to be made soloable, or grouping needs to give experience and influence bonuses, not splits. But the real culprit isn't so much the out of whack reward structure. The real problem is that an exponential leveling curve is horribly horribly bad. It is my self-important jackass theory that most developers believe that the longer the leveling curve, the longer a typical subscription will last. This is no longer true. Games like World of Warcraft have proven that you don't need a 6-month to cap leveling curve to succeed, even when the choice of activities after the cap is fairly weak. In a PVP environment, the endgame content is other people - a dynamic source of content that costs the developer nothing to develop. And yet we still see the idea that without a long PVE-focused leveling curve, people won't stick around. The opposite is true in PVP. The longer the distance to the cap, the fewer the number of people who will stick it out. In PVP, the Haemish Rule of 11 is a universal constant: If the dial goes to 11, 10 will never ever do.
This is not the only flaw with Warhammer Online, but it's one of the main ones driving my cancellation. Come back next week to see the self-important jackassery continue. No, you can't have my stuff, and neither can Warhammer Online.
My first impressions of Warhammer Online contain the seeds of my dissatisfaction. Perhaps I should have gone with my first instinct and resisted the urge to play the game after release, but I was weak. One of the most obvious flaws in the game design was the levelling curve. I predicted that players starting six months from release would have a devil of a time leveling, because much of the content players use to level is in public quests and scenarios, both of which require other players to succeed. One cannot finish a public quest without at least a 3-man group in the early stages, and for a scenario to launch requires 2-3 full groups on both sides. What I did not foresee was that not one month after release, many of the public quests for the midlevel ranges were completely deserted, and thus the quick experience and gear received from public quests was just not available. It was not uncommon for my witch hunter to be completely alone in the tier 3 zone Talabecland, unable to complete most solo quests in the zone because he was too low level to compete against the mobs he was forced to fight. Adding insult to this injury was the realization that most of the quest rewards would not be usable for another two levels.
The gear and level disparity problems could be solved easily, but the public quest problem cannot. One simply cannot progress a public quest beyond the first stage without help. In most cases, one cannot progress past stage 2 without the "holy trinity" of groups, including a tank, healer and damage-dealer of some kind. Stage 3 invariably requires a full group which must have the holy trinity as its core. Had the population not been so spread out among so many faction areas, this might still have been a problem based on faction imbalances. For instance, until Mythic adds the Knights of the Burning Sun class back into the game, the Empire faction does not have a tank class. It must rely on a dwarven Ironbreaker or a High Elven Shadow Warrior to make the trek to the Empire area just to be able to absorb the damage that stage 2 champions can inflict. The Empire healing class, Warrior Priest, must be involved in combat to build power for healing; without a tank to absorb the blows from stage 2, he will fall too quickly to succeed. Stage 3 is an even worse proposition.
So why are the zones deserted? Without even floating the idea that people have left the game, I can offer one hypothesis. The zones are deserted because even if one had the perfect party to complete these quests, the rewards for completion are a joke. While the elite gear is certainly nice, the amount of influence required to get to elite gear is high. It requires completion of all the public quests per chapter, as well as returning to some of the quests to continue to gain influence. Each PQ creature killed gives 100 influence - unless of course, it is killed by a group, in which case the influence is split proportionally. Remember that you need a group to survive stage 2 of a public quest? Yep, that's right, in order to finish a public quest, you need a group but to get the rewards of the public quest system, grouping actually means you elongate the time it takes to reap the chapter rewards. But yes, finishing all stages of a public quest do give the participants a random roll on a random piece of loot. The more group members you have, the less chance you have of winning the best rewards, which makes soloing the quest more rewarding if you could actually finish the quest solo - which you can't. Once that flaw in the system is exposed, there really isn't anymore reason to do the public quests unless you have another quest that leads you into the area and you have a steady group you can call on to help.
What makes this even more infuriating is the rate of experience in public quests. Again, during the tier 3 levels, the experience needed per level continues to increase. At level 25, I was staring into the abyss of over 300,000 experience points needed to advance. Some of the more challenging PVE mobs in public quests gave no more than about 1000 xp. Killing those mobs in a group would slice that number proportionally. Compare this to PVP scenarios such as Tor Anroc, where a typical loss yields somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 xp for less than 10 minutes of PVP, which I can access from anywhere without needing a ready-made group. Even the less rewarding scenarios would still give me as much if not more experience than killing public quest mobs until my eyes bleed. Is it any wonder people in tier 3 choose Tor Anroc, the most rewarding scenario (and unfortunately, the least fun) over and over again? Tor Anroc gets really old after 10-15 tries, but nothing and I mean nothing compares to the experience gained.
Meanwhile, the selling point of the game, the whole thing that is supposed to separate Warhammer Online from its competitors, is the world PVP, called open RVR or oRVR. The rewards for oRVR are pitiful. While yes, you can get passable experience killing other players in oRVR, you are not likely to find them because you can get better, more reliable experience in Tor Anroc. Going into one of the 6 RVR lakes for your tier doesn't guarantee you any action, and without action, you get no experience. Solo play in the RVR lakes is a dicey proposition at best. In order to be successful, you must be really good, as well as lucky enough not to meet one of the classes for which your class has no hope of defeating in one-on-one combat. If one is lucky enough to be able to get a warband of 2 full groups, you can then participate in the taking of a battlefield objective (which yields no chance at gear drops) or a keep assault. Keep assaults are great in theory, but if no players come to the keep's defense, it is essentially a drawn out public quest - pure PVE where experience is often minimal because there are so many people splitting the pitiful experience gains. And once the keep is taken, a public quest random roll for a few pieces of random gear is given as the reward, and there are many anecdotal stories of this system being buggy at best, incredibly broken at worst.
The largest flaw in the whole oRVR process is the fact that defenders get no rewards for defense. Other than points for player kills, defenders are shit out of luck. Why defend? The keeps have nothing of value to a player. Sure, there are some skill trainer NPC's, but these same skills are available in the capital cities. Guilds who claim a keep get no benefits from the keep, only the significant money drain of maintenance costs. So why defend? Or for that matter why participate in oRVR at all, seeing as how scenarios like Tor Anroc offer so much more bang for the buck? Why burden yourself with the hassle of getting a group to finish a public quest when you'll have to do that quests over and over again to get any sure rewards from it? Just go to a warcamp, grab the quest that rewards you for participating in the Tor Anroc scenario and queue up.
MMOG developers can channel player behavior in very simple ways. Reward the things you want the players to do. Make sure the greatest rewards are given for playing the game "as intended." When the game rewards scenarios more than any other activity, then scenarios will be what most of the player base will do. Since scenarios are also more convenient than any other activity, even if the rewards were exactly even between all three phases of the game, people would still choose scenarios because convenience is a reward too. If Mythic wanted to make a game that was nothing more than a lobby for instanced, even-sided PVP fights, they should have skipped the whole "massive world" business and just focused on making a Guild Wars clone. As it is, they have an entire world of content that people either ignore because it's not rewarding enough, or that people suffer through to get to the good stuff. That is the definition of grind.
oRVR has got to have great improved rewards unless scenario rewards are horribly nerfed. Public quests either need to be made soloable, or grouping needs to give experience and influence bonuses, not splits. But the real culprit isn't so much the out of whack reward structure. The real problem is that an exponential leveling curve is horribly horribly bad. It is my self-important jackass theory that most developers believe that the longer the leveling curve, the longer a typical subscription will last. This is no longer true. Games like World of Warcraft have proven that you don't need a 6-month to cap leveling curve to succeed, even when the choice of activities after the cap is fairly weak. In a PVP environment, the endgame content is other people - a dynamic source of content that costs the developer nothing to develop. And yet we still see the idea that without a long PVE-focused leveling curve, people won't stick around. The opposite is true in PVP. The longer the distance to the cap, the fewer the number of people who will stick it out. In PVP, the Haemish Rule of 11 is a universal constant: If the dial goes to 11, 10 will never ever do.
This is not the only flaw with Warhammer Online, but it's one of the main ones driving my cancellation. Come back next week to see the self-important jackassery continue. No, you can't have my stuff, and neither can Warhammer Online.
Labels: Game Design, Game Reviews, MMOG, Video Games, Warhammer, Warhammer Online
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:34 AM
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I Am So Weak
Posted on
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Yes, it was just last week that I reviewed Warhammer Online, giving it a mediocre rating. I gave the game a bit of stick for not really innovating on the MMOG formula, labelling it an inferior WoW-clone. I also said that I would not be buying the game. However, I am a weak, weak man, and throughout the rest of the week, I felt the urge to play the game again. Something about MMOG level grinds and character creations is addicting, and when my wife offered to buy the game for me, I finally relented. I lasted about 4 days. As of last night, I began playing Cromwell, the Empire Witch Hunter on the Ulthuan server. I feel so dirty... so unclean. Yes, that pretty much makes me a hypocritical, raging douchebag.
Labels: MMOG, Raging Douchebag Week, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:24 AM
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Evolution in Action: Warhammer Online Open Beta (MMOG PC) Review
Posted on
Monday, September 15, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
I have not been eagerly anticipating the impending release of the PC MMORPG Warhammer Online. As a matter of fact, I've been critical of Mythic Entertainment for the conduct of their beta. Not only did they not bother to invite me to the beta, giving me the free preview of the game I demand before I will spend money on an MMOG these days, but they held the non-disclosure agreement over the heads of the testers for entirely too long. Keeping an NDA in effect until just a few weeks before release always makes me seriously doubt the quality of the final product, reminding me of the bad old days prior to the release of Anarchy Online, World War II Online and other such notable flops. But once I finally gained access to the Fileplanet Open Beta this past weekend, my fears were allayed. Warhammer Online is not a colossal failure, a bug-ridden cluster fuck or an empty clone of other games. Unfortunately, while it certainly iterates successfully on the formula of previous successes in the genre, the new features of the game don't raise it beyond the level of other competitors.
Before I begin my obvious comparison, let me be clear. I am well-versed in the Warhammer universe, having played the tabletop miniature version Warhammer Fantasy Battles for many years. I am quite well aware that the Warcraft universe was an almost direct homage to the Warhammer universe, and that all things Warcraft owe more to the Warhammer universe than Warhammer Online owes to World of Warcraft. And yes, I'm also aware that the Warhammer universe is a darker re-imagining of the Tolkien universe through the drug-addled lens of British metalheads. So do believe that I have ample background to claim that Warhammer Online is at its heart a fun mashup of World of Warcraft and Dark Age of Camelot, taking parts of both games and successfully creating a PVP-focused, casual-friendly MMORPG.
If you've played any of the ever-growing number of fantasy DIKU-based MMORPG's that have infested the medium since the success of Everquest, you know the mechanics Warhammer Online. Create a character of various classes, move him with the WASD key configuration, attack monsters or other players and hit hotkeys 0-9 to launch special abilities until you gain enough experience to raise your level and purchase new gear and special abilities. Along the way, your character will perform quests for various NPC's that wait around in warcamps. Some of those quests will bring the player in conflict with other players from the opposing faction. The gameplay is really nothing new. In execution, it lies somewhere between World of Warcraft's frantic style and Dark Age of Camelot's slower version of the same thing. In short, if you aren't sick to death of this style of game, you'll enjoy WAR as well as you would other games.
WAR improves on its predecessors in a few areas, namely the public quests, tome of knowledge, open parties and integration of PVP objectives into each character's narrative. The public quests are entertaining and easy to find. As a matter of fact, the player will usually trip over a public quest without even knowing it exists. As long as that player is in the area, he can contribute to the quest by killing certain mobs or completing objectives, all of which are tracked on the player's HUD so long as he remains in the PQ area. One need not be in an existing party to contribute, and all who aid in the quest have a chance at getting one of six rewards which are comparable to the best gear for that player's level. Combining the best parts of raiding without the catassery normally required, public quests are a fun way to gear up and gain experience.
The tome of knowledge takes the place of the quest journal from other MMOG's, and improves upon it greatly. Not only is every monster cataloged in the bestiary, but maps, quests and just about any other useful information in the character's career is tracked and cataloged. The tome is rife with achievements that grant custom titles to the player, and is a OCD collector's wet dream. The tome is a feature that every MMORPG developer needs to copy and improve on, because it is a slick way to build a character's individual place in the world.
Open parties is another improvement on the normal MMOG grouping mechanic. A group can declare itself open, meaning that anyone can join the party just by being in the area. In a game where many objectives will require groups, removing the need for the traditional "looking for group" tools is genius. A party can turn off the feature if it desires to avoid the pitfalls of pick-up groups, but for the solo player, the ability to find a group that easily is a godsend. In addition, if the normal group is filled but finds it needs more slots for friends or to increase its strength, it can declare itself a "warband," opening up more group slots. Guild leaders should trumpet this feature from hill to dale, because it should significantly improve the problem guilds have had in the past with certain members feeling they are being ignored for groups.
Finally, the integration of PVP into the natural narrative of the character's career is almost seamless. While PVP isn't required ever, it feels so natural both for the setting and the mechanics that I can't imagine why anyone would avoid it. The PVP is very similar mechanically to both World of Warcraft and Dark Age of Camelot. Both open world obejctives and instanced battleground scenarios are available, and all PVP progress is tracked zone wide, leading to bonuses for the side winning the most battles in the zone. Level disparities in PVP are diminished in comparison to other games, as all players are boosted to three levels below that area's maximum level. While this does help lower-leveled players compete in PVP, there are drawbacks. While levels are added, the player does not get that level's commiserate special abilities, making them underpowered against the highest level characters in the area. Lower level characters aren't quite speedbumps in the RVR areas, but they aren't exactly what I would call competitive. It does encourage players to achieve at least the minimum level before engaging in significant PVP.
All is not rosy with WAR, despite the positives I have mentioned. There are certainly bugs, as one would expect of an MMOG these days. Network lag was also a bit of a problem at various times during the weekend, which is again to be expected during an "open beta." As the game matures, new players will find their progress stunted because the majority of the population will outlevel the starting areas. I shudder to think of the grinding difficulties a player starting the game six months from now will find when trying to finish public quests all by their lonesome. Population imbalances among different factions may also become a significant problems, and I'm not sure anyone has found a solution this problem that plagues all PVP-enabled games.
The game is fun, of that there is no doubt. Still, during the entire time I played, I couldn't help wanting more out of the game. At its most basic level, the core gameplay isn't that different from World of Warcraft or other games of its type. And as someone who is entirely too experienced with that sort of gameplay, I am inevitably bored by it. While the world is well-realized, and is worth exploring, I don't think it has enough new features to be worth my money. For those who aren't hopelessly burnt out on DIKU, I can recommend it as an entertaining alternative to World of Warcraft. I can't say that it is better or worse, just different. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give the game a 7.5. It's not spectacular or innovative, but it's entertaining for those who like that sort of thing.
Labels: Entertainment, Game Design, Game Reviews, MMOG, Tolkien, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:51 AM
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Misplaced Priorities: The Age of Conan PVP Weekend Beta Rant Review
Posted on
Sunday, April 27, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Last weekend was the Age of Conan PVP Beta weekend for those like myself lucky enough to get into the extra-special free preview of this upcoming MMOG. I would have reported my thoughts earlier, but I've been suffering from the chest cold from hell all last week. Said cold is still lingering in my concave chest, and though my head is fuzzy, my thoughts on AoC are clear. The game releases in May and I can safely say I will not be buying this game.
Age of Conan, for those who were unaware, is Funcom's follow up to Anarchy Online, an MMOG based in the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan character, Hyboria. It boasts of an innovative, action-packed combat system, a mature attitude containing both copious amounts of blood and nudity (except in the US!), mini-game and world-based PVP and the buzzword of all unreleased MMOG's, innovation! It also boasts a DX10 capable graphics engine that is rumored to be gorgeous. As someone whose computer was not built next year, I can't vouch for that, as what I saw was butt ugly.
The PVP weekend consisted of the first five levels of the PVE game, which can be played solo offline, and a couple of PVP minigames that bump your character's level to 20 automatically and allows the player to select different skill options and respec those options at will. The player could make multiple characters, so I dialed up both a melee character that I played into the PVP minigame and a caster that I did not.
The combat gameplay is "innovative" in that unlike other MMOG's, it doesn't have a form of auto-attack. You must actively produce every attack, every swing, every special ability and power and spell. Similar to Guild Wars and City of Heroes, this type of combat system is much more immersive than the auto-attack systems, but it means combat tends to be a lot of furious button-mashing. Where AoC differs from other games is its addition of attack zones. Each combatant has three zones it can be attacked from, left, center and right. The player can choose to both attack into one zone, as well as shift his defenses to favor one zone over others, leaving him vulnerable in another zone. Attacking a zone that is not shielded causes extra damage. In addition, special abilities can be used in conjunction with specific zone attacks to increase damage, add buffs or debuff opponents. Compared to older auto-attack systems such as say Everquest, it's a fun take on typical MMOG combat. It works particularly well for PVE content, because the player can always see where his opponent's shields are gathered, while this information is hidden in PVP. The combat wasn't so incredible that it could override my biggest complaints about this beta.
Limping Through Mud
Age of Conan was built to take advantage of DirectX 10 and the latest greatest hardware available for the PC. What that means, however, is those with less than stellar computer specs are shit out of luck. If you are one of the unlucky many who do not upgrade your computer every 12-24 months, if you do not have a video card made in the last year, you will likely not enjoy this game very much at all. I'll start by listing my meager computer specs:
AMD FX64 2800+
1 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 w/ 256 MB RAM
Windows XP
Yes, I fully realize the video card is decrepit, probably even out of spec for this game. However, I'm flabbergasted at just how badly the game looked when I finally got it to a playable framerate. I don't mean it was mediocre, I mean it looked like it had been rendered in crayon by a crack-addled five year old. Not only that, but any length of playtime resulted in the screen exploding in gigantic polygonal artifacts, or worse, the interface going kablooey and becoming totally unreadable. This might be acceptable if that made the game playable, but it couldn't even approach that. Framerates were dismal and the artifacting caused me to restart the game every 20 minutes or so. Again, if my card just won't render this game at an acceptable level, the game should just tell me that upfront and refuse to run. The fact that it doesn't is going to lead me to expect at least some level of playability.
And this is where the review turns into a rant. The MMOG market is becoming more crowded every day, even if one discounts the glut of cloned Korean MMOG's being foisted off on the American market. Even where it not crowded, the competition from World of Warcraft is likely insurmountable, especially considering the type of gameplay (both PVP and PVE) is targeted at those who also like World of Warcraft. From a technical perspective, someone leaving World of Warcraft for another MMOG of similar playstyle is going to expect performance that is at least comparable to their departed MMOG. AoC doesn't provide that. A very large part of World of Warcraft's raging success has to be chalked up to its tolerance for older, mediocre machines. Guild Wars success can likewise owe something to its tolerant, yet capably-degrading graphics performance. Running like a hobbled pig in slop with graphics that can be charitably described as "wouldn't fuck her with YOUR dick" ugly is suicide. It's a guarantee that the service will suffer from lower than expected subscriptions.
Now, Age of Conan is never going to get WoW numbers, even if it did degrade gracefully. But every barrier to entry thrown up for little gain is one less subscriber. In a market as crowded and competitive as subscription MMOG's are right now, there is nothing more damaging than poor performance. In a game with a significant focus on PVP, performance is going to be critical to the most vocal proponents of that gamestyle, because performance is the difference between life and death. Making players lose matches because they don't have a $500 video card in a $2000 machine is yet another barrier to entry. Competitive PVP'ers are people who turn off shadows immediately to gain 2 FPS. All the money and development time you spent on specular lighting and shading, pixel shaders for DirectX 10 and the like are going to be completely wasted on the PVP customer.
It's all a damn shame too, because I had looked forward to AoC, and from my limited playtime, I could tell there seemed to be a worthwhile game underneath all that fluff. But I fear it will be wasted on a Vanguard level of failure, simply because the developers wanted to create for only the latest and greatest without any thought to the rest of the pack. If you have a decent computer and the will to sit through what will likely be a bumpy release with multiple bugs, I'd say Age of Conan might be worth it. If not, wait for something like Warhammer, which is almost guaranteed to be more tolerant to aging hardware.
Age of Conan, for those who were unaware, is Funcom's follow up to Anarchy Online, an MMOG based in the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan character, Hyboria. It boasts of an innovative, action-packed combat system, a mature attitude containing both copious amounts of blood and nudity (except in the US!), mini-game and world-based PVP and the buzzword of all unreleased MMOG's, innovation! It also boasts a DX10 capable graphics engine that is rumored to be gorgeous. As someone whose computer was not built next year, I can't vouch for that, as what I saw was butt ugly.
The PVP weekend consisted of the first five levels of the PVE game, which can be played solo offline, and a couple of PVP minigames that bump your character's level to 20 automatically and allows the player to select different skill options and respec those options at will. The player could make multiple characters, so I dialed up both a melee character that I played into the PVP minigame and a caster that I did not.
The combat gameplay is "innovative" in that unlike other MMOG's, it doesn't have a form of auto-attack. You must actively produce every attack, every swing, every special ability and power and spell. Similar to Guild Wars and City of Heroes, this type of combat system is much more immersive than the auto-attack systems, but it means combat tends to be a lot of furious button-mashing. Where AoC differs from other games is its addition of attack zones. Each combatant has three zones it can be attacked from, left, center and right. The player can choose to both attack into one zone, as well as shift his defenses to favor one zone over others, leaving him vulnerable in another zone. Attacking a zone that is not shielded causes extra damage. In addition, special abilities can be used in conjunction with specific zone attacks to increase damage, add buffs or debuff opponents. Compared to older auto-attack systems such as say Everquest, it's a fun take on typical MMOG combat. It works particularly well for PVE content, because the player can always see where his opponent's shields are gathered, while this information is hidden in PVP. The combat wasn't so incredible that it could override my biggest complaints about this beta.
Limping Through Mud
Age of Conan was built to take advantage of DirectX 10 and the latest greatest hardware available for the PC. What that means, however, is those with less than stellar computer specs are shit out of luck. If you are one of the unlucky many who do not upgrade your computer every 12-24 months, if you do not have a video card made in the last year, you will likely not enjoy this game very much at all. I'll start by listing my meager computer specs:
AMD FX64 2800+
1 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 w/ 256 MB RAM
Windows XP
Yes, I fully realize the video card is decrepit, probably even out of spec for this game. However, I'm flabbergasted at just how badly the game looked when I finally got it to a playable framerate. I don't mean it was mediocre, I mean it looked like it had been rendered in crayon by a crack-addled five year old. Not only that, but any length of playtime resulted in the screen exploding in gigantic polygonal artifacts, or worse, the interface going kablooey and becoming totally unreadable. This might be acceptable if that made the game playable, but it couldn't even approach that. Framerates were dismal and the artifacting caused me to restart the game every 20 minutes or so. Again, if my card just won't render this game at an acceptable level, the game should just tell me that upfront and refuse to run. The fact that it doesn't is going to lead me to expect at least some level of playability.
And this is where the review turns into a rant. The MMOG market is becoming more crowded every day, even if one discounts the glut of cloned Korean MMOG's being foisted off on the American market. Even where it not crowded, the competition from World of Warcraft is likely insurmountable, especially considering the type of gameplay (both PVP and PVE) is targeted at those who also like World of Warcraft. From a technical perspective, someone leaving World of Warcraft for another MMOG of similar playstyle is going to expect performance that is at least comparable to their departed MMOG. AoC doesn't provide that. A very large part of World of Warcraft's raging success has to be chalked up to its tolerance for older, mediocre machines. Guild Wars success can likewise owe something to its tolerant, yet capably-degrading graphics performance. Running like a hobbled pig in slop with graphics that can be charitably described as "wouldn't fuck her with YOUR dick" ugly is suicide. It's a guarantee that the service will suffer from lower than expected subscriptions.
Now, Age of Conan is never going to get WoW numbers, even if it did degrade gracefully. But every barrier to entry thrown up for little gain is one less subscriber. In a market as crowded and competitive as subscription MMOG's are right now, there is nothing more damaging than poor performance. In a game with a significant focus on PVP, performance is going to be critical to the most vocal proponents of that gamestyle, because performance is the difference between life and death. Making players lose matches because they don't have a $500 video card in a $2000 machine is yet another barrier to entry. Competitive PVP'ers are people who turn off shadows immediately to gain 2 FPS. All the money and development time you spent on specular lighting and shading, pixel shaders for DirectX 10 and the like are going to be completely wasted on the PVP customer.
It's all a damn shame too, because I had looked forward to AoC, and from my limited playtime, I could tell there seemed to be a worthwhile game underneath all that fluff. But I fear it will be wasted on a Vanguard level of failure, simply because the developers wanted to create for only the latest and greatest without any thought to the rest of the pack. If you have a decent computer and the will to sit through what will likely be a bumpy release with multiple bugs, I'd say Age of Conan might be worth it. If not, wait for something like Warhammer, which is almost guaranteed to be more tolerant to aging hardware.
Labels: Entertainment, MMOG, Video Games
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MMOG Developers Still Don't Get It
Posted on
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
I was treated this morning to an interesting MMOG post-mortem courtesy of MMORPG.com. The subject of the post-mortem was the failed NCSoft/NetDevil car warsy game Auto Assualt, a game I wouldn't play for free, much less pay for because it was truly a stinker. The concept of the game was brilliant, a game of dueling, Road Warrior-esque vehicles in instanced arenas with destructible environments. How could anyone screw up a concept with such promise? NetDevil, makers of the failure Jumpgate proved they could screw up a wet dream. And the lessons they impart in their post-mortem shows a startling level of incompetence that properly explains why both of their games are so terrible.
Scott Brown, the game's producer, starts off the idiot's parade with this stunner:
There it is, right there. The incompetent's first best excuse, it wasn't our fault, the publisher just wanted milestones. A milestone, for those unfamiliar with the term, is merely a deadline, a date by which some part of the development process must be completed. In terms of the developer, it means that if the milestone is completed on time, the publisher gives the developer a nice fat check with which to continue work on the game. Developers who are not massive successes like Blizzard generally live off those milestone checks like they were food stamps. I'd wager that 80% of the game development houses out there are one missed milestone check away from closing their doors for good.
But what Mr. Brown seems to be advocating here is similar to the douchebaggery exhibited by Brad McQuaid in his recent f13.net interview about the failures of Vanguard. Both seem to be saying that publishers should just give them one gigantic barrel of money to start with and then leave them alone until the game is done. Milestones, benchmarks, deadlines are BAD for MMOG development because they unnecessarily hamper the development process. This is horseshit, of course. All software development needs milestones. It needs clearly quantifiable processes with concrete deliverables on a schedule, with plenty of time built into the schedule for testing for bugs AND for usability/playability. McQuaid decided one QA person was enough for Vanguard, and Scott Brown seems to think milestone schedules are anathema to MMOG development because no one knows what they'll be working on a year from now. That's what project management is about, you ninny, figuring out who should be working on what and when they should be working on it. If you cannot do that, you are in the wrong business. There is nothing special about MMOG development that makes milestones useless, and the more you believe milestones are useless, the more you need them.
They did get a few things right.
Just calling something a beta does not a beta make. Beta is the first real test of the hype machine, not of the game engine. There should be no real testing for the players in beta. That's when you are stress testing the server, the client and everything else. Any real changes to the game's underlying mechanics in beta is sure to result in crap. If it wasn't fun in alpha, nothing you do in beta is going to add the fun. And as he says in the post-mortem, if the game's developers aren't playing it in alpha and beta, your game WILL suck.
But the most irritating thing about this post-mortem, and the ass-covering simpering done by McQuaid since Vanguard's release is that both of these teams should have known better. It isn't like these two were fresh out of college with no game experience beyond developing a level for Counter-Strike. These two teams had both shipped working MMOG projects, with varying degrees of success. These lessons should have been learned long ago. NetDevil has even less reason to make these mistakes. McQuaid was insulated from his own failings by the success of Everquest, a success his ego wrongly attributed to his creative vision. NetDevil's first project was nothing like a success, and fell into the same traps. By most accounts, it just wasn't fun to play. This team should have learned from their first failure, and shouldn't have made some of the same mistakes. Being able to talk about them in a post-mortem does not mean you've actually learned anything unless you can take those lessons and not make them the second time around. And now NCSoft has given the boys more money to produce another game. Why? What have they done to prove they should be given anything more than skeleton crew duty guarding a brick shithouse?
MMOG publishers and investors keep throwing good money over bad to the same sets of assholes that screwed the pooch their first time at the plate. As a result, the only innovative products are unmitigated trainwrecks and the only decent products are derivative yet polished clones like World of Warcraft. Auto Assault should have been fantastic, or at least playable. The fact that it was an atrocious mess means the lessons of failure weren't learned.
Scott Brown, the game's producer, starts off the idiot's parade with this stunner:
"Want to make a great game?" asked Scott Brown, "Don't make a deal with
milestones. There are better ways to do a game deal."
There it is, right there. The incompetent's first best excuse, it wasn't our fault, the publisher just wanted milestones. A milestone, for those unfamiliar with the term, is merely a deadline, a date by which some part of the development process must be completed. In terms of the developer, it means that if the milestone is completed on time, the publisher gives the developer a nice fat check with which to continue work on the game. Developers who are not massive successes like Blizzard generally live off those milestone checks like they were food stamps. I'd wager that 80% of the game development houses out there are one missed milestone check away from closing their doors for good.
But what Mr. Brown seems to be advocating here is similar to the douchebaggery exhibited by Brad McQuaid in his recent f13.net interview about the failures of Vanguard. Both seem to be saying that publishers should just give them one gigantic barrel of money to start with and then leave them alone until the game is done. Milestones, benchmarks, deadlines are BAD for MMOG development because they unnecessarily hamper the development process. This is horseshit, of course. All software development needs milestones. It needs clearly quantifiable processes with concrete deliverables on a schedule, with plenty of time built into the schedule for testing for bugs AND for usability/playability. McQuaid decided one QA person was enough for Vanguard, and Scott Brown seems to think milestone schedules are anathema to MMOG development because no one knows what they'll be working on a year from now. That's what project management is about, you ninny, figuring out who should be working on what and when they should be working on it. If you cannot do that, you are in the wrong business. There is nothing special about MMOG development that makes milestones useless, and the more you believe milestones are useless, the more you need them.
They did get a few things right.
They admitted that Auto Assault went into beta too early. Beta too early = bad press and players trashing your game. "Getting everything crappy and calling it alpha, a little bit better and calling it beta is just plain wrong," Scott said. "It's great for stress testing, but it's not for testing functionality. Like it or not, beta is marketing. It's when the public is playing your game and you want to put your best foot forward."
Just calling something a beta does not a beta make. Beta is the first real test of the hype machine, not of the game engine. There should be no real testing for the players in beta. That's when you are stress testing the server, the client and everything else. Any real changes to the game's underlying mechanics in beta is sure to result in crap. If it wasn't fun in alpha, nothing you do in beta is going to add the fun. And as he says in the post-mortem, if the game's developers aren't playing it in alpha and beta, your game WILL suck.
But the most irritating thing about this post-mortem, and the ass-covering simpering done by McQuaid since Vanguard's release is that both of these teams should have known better. It isn't like these two were fresh out of college with no game experience beyond developing a level for Counter-Strike. These two teams had both shipped working MMOG projects, with varying degrees of success. These lessons should have been learned long ago. NetDevil has even less reason to make these mistakes. McQuaid was insulated from his own failings by the success of Everquest, a success his ego wrongly attributed to his creative vision. NetDevil's first project was nothing like a success, and fell into the same traps. By most accounts, it just wasn't fun to play. This team should have learned from their first failure, and shouldn't have made some of the same mistakes. Being able to talk about them in a post-mortem does not mean you've actually learned anything unless you can take those lessons and not make them the second time around. And now NCSoft has given the boys more money to produce another game. Why? What have they done to prove they should be given anything more than skeleton crew duty guarding a brick shithouse?
MMOG publishers and investors keep throwing good money over bad to the same sets of assholes that screwed the pooch their first time at the plate. As a result, the only innovative products are unmitigated trainwrecks and the only decent products are derivative yet polished clones like World of Warcraft. Auto Assault should have been fantastic, or at least playable. The fact that it was an atrocious mess means the lessons of failure weren't learned.
Labels: MMOG, Video Games
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Raging Douchebag Week: Day 4
Posted on
Thursday, April 26, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Day 4's Raging Douchebag comes from the world of video games, specifically Massively-Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, or NAMBLA. You might think I'd honor such luminaries as Derek Smart, or any one of the mouth-breathing executives at Sony responsible for the PS3. You might even believe my favorite pigfucker John Smedley would be honored, as he's had a banner year. But no, today's Raging Douchebag isn't the Head Pigfucker, though he's been linked with the Smed in the past. Raging Douchebag #4 is none other than Everquest and Vanguard creator Brad McQuaid.
Mr. McQuaid has been a very public douchebag for a long time due to the success of his original MMOG, Everquest. Never one to attribute luck and timing to the success of Everquest when his ego could take the credit instead, McQuaid was the founder of The Vision™. A thoroughly execrable mindset, The Vision™ was utterly convinced of its own infallibility, much like the Bush administration. Nothing was ever broken with Everquest, the players just weren't playing to The Vision™. Camping? That was an exploit, not mandated by the punitive death penalty. Kiting? Another exploit because The Vision™ says no one should be able to solo for experience. Corpse runs? They added excitement to the game, implying the game was dead boring otherwise. Alchemy? Working as intended, even when clear evidence indicated it was doing no such thing. Everything that didn't fit McQuaid's tiny mindset for how the game of Everquest could be played was a bad thing, including swift leveling, quick travel, and most things that removed tedium from the game.
You'd think that after years of consumer dissatisfaction and complaints and being removed from any contact with the Everquest brand he founded would have given his ego a humbling blow. But Raging Douchebags do not realize their mistakes, they repeat them, because nothing is ever wrong with their attitude. It's always the other asshole's problem, never the Douchebag's.
That ego led him to leech off of Microsoft's considerable teat for years, building the game that was going to the first THIRD generation MMOG (as if we'd ever left the first generation). Vanguard, Saga of Heroes was to be the be-all end-all game that pushed the MOG medium into new levels of immersiveness. It would be the hardcore game for the hardcore, the game for the people who loved Everquest and were disappointed in the "dumbing-down" or "easy mode" of later MMOG's, particularly World of Warcraft. It wouldn't be Everquest 2 with a new name, no it wouldn't be that. There would be corpse runs, and grouping and a heavy emphasis on endgame raids. There would be no quick travel from continent to continent, there would be harsh death penalties, and all the things that made Everquest an absolutely soul-grinding experience. This wasn't the game for WoW-tards as some of the more vocal members of the Hardcore Community dubbed those who liked games that didn't punish players. This would be HARDCORE!!!!
And then beta happened. Microsoft gave up on the zombie turd that Vanguard had become, pulling its funding of the game that shambled like an undead monster. Sony Online Entertainment, home of Brad's original creation Everquest, signed up to publish and host the game. But in what appears to be a canny move on their part, SOE only gave McQuaid a limited amount of time to release the game. The resultant release has been a trainwreck, made bearable only by the fact that certain things like billing were handled by SOE and thus weren't going to be screwed up by lack of testing. The game itself, on the other hand, was a bug-ridden mess.
Gameplay reeked of Everquest 1 with a few updates pinched from other games. The graphics engine choked even the fastest computers. Features like diplomacy, long-promised as a defining innovation in gameplay, turned out to be poorly implemented and poorly-supported. High-level content, especially raiding content, appears to be sparse when it exists at all. And one by one, all of the features that were touted by McQuaid as things the hardcore begged for have been whittled away. Leveling has gotten faster. Fast travel methods have been added in. Corpse runs are no longer necessary. Death penalties have been lessened. And through all of it, McQuaid has claimed that this isn't a lessening of The Vision™. No, Brad, it really is and that's ok, because The Vision™ sucked. It was a horrible way to design a game, and a horrible standard to put players up to.
Your game appears to be on life support. Rumors about the closing of Sigil abound. Subscribers numbers you once claimed would be around the 500,000 mark have struggled to get above 100,000 by all accounts. The game has failed, and with it, your vision. Perhaps if you stop thinking of yourself as an infallible gaming god, you could make a good game. Everquest had a great deal going for it, including a vast world with tons of lore to explore. Had you listened to the customers just a little bit, it might have become the game we all envisioned it could be. But instead, you chose to be a Raging Douchebag, and so I honor you with the title Raging Ranger Douchebag of Mithril. That's not a flaming sword, douchebag, but it sure does burn.
Mr. McQuaid has been a very public douchebag for a long time due to the success of his original MMOG, Everquest. Never one to attribute luck and timing to the success of Everquest when his ego could take the credit instead, McQuaid was the founder of The Vision™. A thoroughly execrable mindset, The Vision™ was utterly convinced of its own infallibility, much like the Bush administration. Nothing was ever broken with Everquest, the players just weren't playing to The Vision™. Camping? That was an exploit, not mandated by the punitive death penalty. Kiting? Another exploit because The Vision™ says no one should be able to solo for experience. Corpse runs? They added excitement to the game, implying the game was dead boring otherwise. Alchemy? Working as intended, even when clear evidence indicated it was doing no such thing. Everything that didn't fit McQuaid's tiny mindset for how the game of Everquest could be played was a bad thing, including swift leveling, quick travel, and most things that removed tedium from the game.You'd think that after years of consumer dissatisfaction and complaints and being removed from any contact with the Everquest brand he founded would have given his ego a humbling blow. But Raging Douchebags do not realize their mistakes, they repeat them, because nothing is ever wrong with their attitude. It's always the other asshole's problem, never the Douchebag's.
That ego led him to leech off of Microsoft's considerable teat for years, building the game that was going to the first THIRD generation MMOG (as if we'd ever left the first generation). Vanguard, Saga of Heroes was to be the be-all end-all game that pushed the MOG medium into new levels of immersiveness. It would be the hardcore game for the hardcore, the game for the people who loved Everquest and were disappointed in the "dumbing-down" or "easy mode" of later MMOG's, particularly World of Warcraft. It wouldn't be Everquest 2 with a new name, no it wouldn't be that. There would be corpse runs, and grouping and a heavy emphasis on endgame raids. There would be no quick travel from continent to continent, there would be harsh death penalties, and all the things that made Everquest an absolutely soul-grinding experience. This wasn't the game for WoW-tards as some of the more vocal members of the Hardcore Community dubbed those who liked games that didn't punish players. This would be HARDCORE!!!!
And then beta happened. Microsoft gave up on the zombie turd that Vanguard had become, pulling its funding of the game that shambled like an undead monster. Sony Online Entertainment, home of Brad's original creation Everquest, signed up to publish and host the game. But in what appears to be a canny move on their part, SOE only gave McQuaid a limited amount of time to release the game. The resultant release has been a trainwreck, made bearable only by the fact that certain things like billing were handled by SOE and thus weren't going to be screwed up by lack of testing. The game itself, on the other hand, was a bug-ridden mess.
Gameplay reeked of Everquest 1 with a few updates pinched from other games. The graphics engine choked even the fastest computers. Features like diplomacy, long-promised as a defining innovation in gameplay, turned out to be poorly implemented and poorly-supported. High-level content, especially raiding content, appears to be sparse when it exists at all. And one by one, all of the features that were touted by McQuaid as things the hardcore begged for have been whittled away. Leveling has gotten faster. Fast travel methods have been added in. Corpse runs are no longer necessary. Death penalties have been lessened. And through all of it, McQuaid has claimed that this isn't a lessening of The Vision™. No, Brad, it really is and that's ok, because The Vision™ sucked. It was a horrible way to design a game, and a horrible standard to put players up to.
Your game appears to be on life support. Rumors about the closing of Sigil abound. Subscribers numbers you once claimed would be around the 500,000 mark have struggled to get above 100,000 by all accounts. The game has failed, and with it, your vision. Perhaps if you stop thinking of yourself as an infallible gaming god, you could make a good game. Everquest had a great deal going for it, including a vast world with tons of lore to explore. Had you listened to the customers just a little bit, it might have become the game we all envisioned it could be. But instead, you chose to be a Raging Douchebag, and so I honor you with the title Raging Ranger Douchebag of Mithril. That's not a flaming sword, douchebag, but it sure does burn.
Labels: MMOG, Raging Douchebag Week
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The 30-Minute MMOG: Lord of the Rings Online Beta
Posted on
Thursday, February 15, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This week brought news of another soon-to-be-released MMOG lifting the curtain of secrecy surrounding its beta. Lord of the Rings Online dropped the NDA prohibiting public discussion of the beta. As a beta participant, I'm now ready to give my impressions of the game. These thoughts are based on my play in the Stress Event as well as a bit of time in Beta Stage 2. As with any new MMOG I evaluate these days, LotRO got the same 30-minutes that Vanguard got, and the same 30-minutes any other new MMOG I write about will get. For those who haven't read my 30-Minute MMOG Rules, I'd suggest you do so now to understand what I mean. 30-minutes is all MMOG's get from, and is more than most deserve. Lord of the Rings Online actually managed to squeeze almost two whole hours out of me before I came to this conclusion.
I've been here before.
I don't mean that I've traveled to the virtual places pictured in Tolkien's books that are represented with loving care in this MMOG. I've read the Middle Earth saga, including some of the history texts on the world like the Silmarillion, and am quite familiar with the lore this game is based on. No, the familiarity with which I view LotRO is a similarity that is sure to raise my ire and lower any score I might give the game.
You see, I've played this game before. I've played it. It is at heart the same gameplay I've experienced countless times before in every other Diku-based MMOG since my first experience with Everquest in 1998. I've played with this graphic engine in Dungeons & Dragons Online, I've played with this interface in World of Warcraft and I've used this combat engine over and over again. In two hours of play, I can honestly say I saw absolutely nothing new other than the setting. I leveled a human burglar to level 4, I bought skills and armor, I did a number of quests, I wandered a bit and then I logged off in boredom.
What is this game supposed to bring to the MMOG medium? Instancing? We've done that, in WoW, DAoC, DDO and others. Is it a sea change to combat mechanics? No, it feels just like DAoC combat, slow and plodding and even worse, it feels like DDO combat with all of the "twitchy" components removed. I say that having been brutally disappointed by DDO's combat. Both DDO and LotRO combat suffer from something I'll call the slog effect. The underlying numbers and mechanics to this combat doesn't bother me, but something about the pace, something visceral that i feel down in the sub-cockles of my bloodthirsty heart, is off. I can't pin an actual name on it, but the combat feels like a guitar with a delay filter on it, as if the actions I'm taking with my keypresses are only implemented seconds after I make them, instead of concurrent with my keypresses. Perhaps others do not experience this, but for me, it makes me feel as if I'm only watching combat instead of actively participating in it. Again, this is a problem I had with DDO's combat, and since both games seemed to based on the same underlying technology I'm going to have to lay the blame for this one at Turbine's feet.
So if the mechanics, leveling, and quests are the same, what about LotRO that I experience in the first 30 minutes is supposed to make me want to test or even pay for the game when it's released? All of the "innovations" to the medium like Achievements and Monster Play are so much farther down the leveling track that any hopes of me getting a gander at them after 5, even 10 hours is remote. Why would I pay for this game?
Don't get me wrong, LotRO is not a BAD game. I'm sure were it my first MMOG and I could get over the slog effect, I might enjoy it quite a bit. But it isn't my first MMOG, and I'm guessing it won't be for a lot of other people as well, especially the potential hordes of WoW castoffs. It's only distinguishing feature then is the Tolkien license, and I'm not quite sure that's enough of a draw to hang this game on, at least as it has been built.
The sad part of LotRO is that with such a rich heritage as Tolkien's works provide, the results of years of MMOG development is something so bland and uninspiring. Every single one of my 30-Minute MMOG Rules gets broken by this game. Every single one. As such, I won't be buying this game on release, and unless it would be your first MMOG or you've such a hard on for Tolkien that you must play as a hobbit in an MMOG, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. If I had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it 6 meh's and go play something fun.
I've been here before.
I don't mean that I've traveled to the virtual places pictured in Tolkien's books that are represented with loving care in this MMOG. I've read the Middle Earth saga, including some of the history texts on the world like the Silmarillion, and am quite familiar with the lore this game is based on. No, the familiarity with which I view LotRO is a similarity that is sure to raise my ire and lower any score I might give the game.
You see, I've played this game before. I've played it. It is at heart the same gameplay I've experienced countless times before in every other Diku-based MMOG since my first experience with Everquest in 1998. I've played with this graphic engine in Dungeons & Dragons Online, I've played with this interface in World of Warcraft and I've used this combat engine over and over again. In two hours of play, I can honestly say I saw absolutely nothing new other than the setting. I leveled a human burglar to level 4, I bought skills and armor, I did a number of quests, I wandered a bit and then I logged off in boredom.
What is this game supposed to bring to the MMOG medium? Instancing? We've done that, in WoW, DAoC, DDO and others. Is it a sea change to combat mechanics? No, it feels just like DAoC combat, slow and plodding and even worse, it feels like DDO combat with all of the "twitchy" components removed. I say that having been brutally disappointed by DDO's combat. Both DDO and LotRO combat suffer from something I'll call the slog effect. The underlying numbers and mechanics to this combat doesn't bother me, but something about the pace, something visceral that i feel down in the sub-cockles of my bloodthirsty heart, is off. I can't pin an actual name on it, but the combat feels like a guitar with a delay filter on it, as if the actions I'm taking with my keypresses are only implemented seconds after I make them, instead of concurrent with my keypresses. Perhaps others do not experience this, but for me, it makes me feel as if I'm only watching combat instead of actively participating in it. Again, this is a problem I had with DDO's combat, and since both games seemed to based on the same underlying technology I'm going to have to lay the blame for this one at Turbine's feet.
So if the mechanics, leveling, and quests are the same, what about LotRO that I experience in the first 30 minutes is supposed to make me want to test or even pay for the game when it's released? All of the "innovations" to the medium like Achievements and Monster Play are so much farther down the leveling track that any hopes of me getting a gander at them after 5, even 10 hours is remote. Why would I pay for this game?
Don't get me wrong, LotRO is not a BAD game. I'm sure were it my first MMOG and I could get over the slog effect, I might enjoy it quite a bit. But it isn't my first MMOG, and I'm guessing it won't be for a lot of other people as well, especially the potential hordes of WoW castoffs. It's only distinguishing feature then is the Tolkien license, and I'm not quite sure that's enough of a draw to hang this game on, at least as it has been built.
The sad part of LotRO is that with such a rich heritage as Tolkien's works provide, the results of years of MMOG development is something so bland and uninspiring. Every single one of my 30-Minute MMOG Rules gets broken by this game. Every single one. As such, I won't be buying this game on release, and unless it would be your first MMOG or you've such a hard on for Tolkien that you must play as a hobbit in an MMOG, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. If I had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it 6 meh's and go play something fun.
Labels: MMOG, Tolkien, Video Games
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The 30-Minute MMOG Rules
Posted on
Monday, January 08, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
I love MMOG's. I love them with a passion. And like all love, my passion for the perfect MMOG has led me to cross that thin barrier betwixt the love of MMOG's and my absolute hatred for what MMOG's have become. I've played almost every major MMOG released, either in beta or after launch, since Everquest's release in 1998. When it comes to the subject of MMOG's, I have been there and indeed, I have done that. I have not been subscribed to any MMOG since at least the summer of the previous year, and the various betas I've experienced since that time have failed to attract more than cursory looks. Those dismissive glances have been followed by equally dismissive growls until I finally hit the last stage of MMOG acceptance, despondency. That stage is heralded by an exhausted sigh.
These evaluations often take little time, most on the order of thirty (30) minutes. Why so little time? Because like all games, if I am not captured in the first thirty minutes of play, there's precious little else an MMOG can show me that will capture my heart in the addictive, lifestyle-changing manner that the original Everquest did. Thus, I give you my 30-Minute MMOG Rules. Any transgression against these rules in the first thirty minutes of play will cause me to place your MMOG in the mental trash bin where lie cancelled subscriptions and abandoned betas.
Why only thirty minutes? Thirty minutes is long enough to learn the basic controls and get a feel for the gameplay at least enough to competently slaughter your first monster or solve your first quest. Even the most complicated, deep games will yield at least some glimmer of their true mechanical nature within the first half hour of play. Games which do not are over-complicated and often not worth the trouble except for those with OCD and time on their hands. The key to interesting gameplay is simple MMOG mechanics with intuitive interfaces which slowly unveil added breadth over time, whether that breadth be in more quests, more skills, more crafting or some other form of content.
Notice that the social dynamics of the MMOG are not mentioned once in that list of criteria. The social aspects of MMOG's, while vastly important for the so-called "stickiness factor" are not the game. The social dynamics of MMOG's are their own set of games, almost none of which are actually designed or even understood by the developers. These social games develop of their own accord, designed consciously and unconsciously by the players themselves. While these games lengthen player subscriptions, if the gameplay from the first thirty minutes is not compelling, no player will ever join in the social dynamics game. Thus, the MMOG that fails to generate interest in the first thirty minutes never forms proper social structures.
First Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Involve the player actively. MMOG's have for too long relied on the auto-attack style of gameplay, whereby the player hits a button and watches his avatar perform a pretty picture show of motion bereft of all but the most infinitesimal of input from the player. If I'm involved in combat in the first thirty minutes (and I should be), make me feel involved, whether that be twiddled many buttons or making meaningful decisions about how such combat should be undertaken. I'm not saying that "twitch" or button-pushing gameplay is absolutely required, but I had better damn sure be given some activites to accomplish. If at any point I can look away from the screen for thirty seconds or longer during combat and not be afraid of having my ass handed to me, your MMOG has failed.
Second Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Don't make me Billy the Rat-Catcher. At no point in the first thirty minutes of an MMOG should I be killing a rat unless said rat is three times larger than my avatar or there's a damn good reason for it. Rats are not fearsome creatures, New York City rats notwithstanding. This rule uses rats as its motif, but really, any harmless, potentially cute woodland creature should not be the target of my martial ambitions. The only reason I should be hunting rabbits is that I've been hired for good money to kill, skin and prepare rabbits, and don't even get me started on squirrels. If the hardest thing my opponent eats is a goddamn acorn, I will not feel my avatar is being threatened.
Third Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Take this important note to your trainer. I realize that all MMOG's need some form of newbie tutorial that teaches the player how to move around, get quests and interact with friendly NPC's, but the "IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO HOGETH HORNBLOW!" style of quest has been done to death. For that matter, quests which involve me transporting a letter from one NPC to another across lands that are not filled with the deadliest of enemies should never be labeled important. Ever. If the letter that the major wants to get to the general is that goddamned important, why is a rank newbie who still can't figure out how to equip their cheap ass armor being given the task? Do I really want to aid an army that entrusts critical dispatches up and down the chain of command to a potential idiot? I think that army should really just be lured into a canyon and put out of its misery. An important message is Paul Revere's ride, not Pee Wee Herman's trip to the corner store.
Fourth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Give me a shiny. I realize that MMOG's focus a great deal on the acquisition of material goods, but it is what it is. Getting shiny doodads kicks off a rush of endorphins in even the crustiest of brains. Whether that shiny be some spiffy-looking armor or a weapon above the level of butter knife, showing the player that he can expect useful, regular upgrades to his apparatus is good. It doesn't even have to be incredibly potent. A +1 something of something still says "I'm getting better." On the other hand, not giving me at least a little happy in that first thirty minutes means you plan on dribbling the goods out to me at a trickle for as long as you can keep me hooked on that morphine drip. Nobody likes a stingy pusher.
Fifth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Other players are the devil. While MMOG's are meant to be social experiences, the experience of dealing with the unwashed masses of other clueless newbs like yourself can be off-putting. Letting those same unwashed masses spew their stupid zonewide is a mistake. After all, I'm trying to learn how not to get killed by the swarms of rats I'm required to best, hearing homophobic dribble and all-caps verbal slapfights about how much paladins do/don't suck makes me want to load shotgun shells and cruise the mall for the Abercrombie & Fitch labels. Even worse is letting other players kill me. I'm a big fan of PVP, but having DJ Humperspittle club me to death like a little baby seal when I still don't know what button to hit to open a chat window sends me to the cancellation screen.
Sixth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Familiarity breeds contempt. Standardized interfaces are a good thing. Standardized gameplay is not. There isn't a great deal of difference between the hotbutton rows of World of Warcraft and Everquest, but the play is a good bit different due to the speed of the combat and the context of the combat. Nothing makes me run screaming from an MMOG faster than thinking "I've played this game before." Vanguard's beta is an egregious example of this. During the entire thirty minutes I played, I couldn't help but feel I was still playing the first Everquest, only with shinier graphics and shittier performance. As much as I loved Everquest for the two and a half years I played, that is no longer a flattering comparison.
Other things will put me off an MMOG for good, but none so much as these rules. Take heed, developers. You'll be spending an awful lot of money to give me thirty minutes of unending contempt.
These evaluations often take little time, most on the order of thirty (30) minutes. Why so little time? Because like all games, if I am not captured in the first thirty minutes of play, there's precious little else an MMOG can show me that will capture my heart in the addictive, lifestyle-changing manner that the original Everquest did. Thus, I give you my 30-Minute MMOG Rules. Any transgression against these rules in the first thirty minutes of play will cause me to place your MMOG in the mental trash bin where lie cancelled subscriptions and abandoned betas.
Why only thirty minutes? Thirty minutes is long enough to learn the basic controls and get a feel for the gameplay at least enough to competently slaughter your first monster or solve your first quest. Even the most complicated, deep games will yield at least some glimmer of their true mechanical nature within the first half hour of play. Games which do not are over-complicated and often not worth the trouble except for those with OCD and time on their hands. The key to interesting gameplay is simple MMOG mechanics with intuitive interfaces which slowly unveil added breadth over time, whether that breadth be in more quests, more skills, more crafting or some other form of content.
Notice that the social dynamics of the MMOG are not mentioned once in that list of criteria. The social aspects of MMOG's, while vastly important for the so-called "stickiness factor" are not the game. The social dynamics of MMOG's are their own set of games, almost none of which are actually designed or even understood by the developers. These social games develop of their own accord, designed consciously and unconsciously by the players themselves. While these games lengthen player subscriptions, if the gameplay from the first thirty minutes is not compelling, no player will ever join in the social dynamics game. Thus, the MMOG that fails to generate interest in the first thirty minutes never forms proper social structures.
First Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Involve the player actively. MMOG's have for too long relied on the auto-attack style of gameplay, whereby the player hits a button and watches his avatar perform a pretty picture show of motion bereft of all but the most infinitesimal of input from the player. If I'm involved in combat in the first thirty minutes (and I should be), make me feel involved, whether that be twiddled many buttons or making meaningful decisions about how such combat should be undertaken. I'm not saying that "twitch" or button-pushing gameplay is absolutely required, but I had better damn sure be given some activites to accomplish. If at any point I can look away from the screen for thirty seconds or longer during combat and not be afraid of having my ass handed to me, your MMOG has failed.
Second Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Don't make me Billy the Rat-Catcher. At no point in the first thirty minutes of an MMOG should I be killing a rat unless said rat is three times larger than my avatar or there's a damn good reason for it. Rats are not fearsome creatures, New York City rats notwithstanding. This rule uses rats as its motif, but really, any harmless, potentially cute woodland creature should not be the target of my martial ambitions. The only reason I should be hunting rabbits is that I've been hired for good money to kill, skin and prepare rabbits, and don't even get me started on squirrels. If the hardest thing my opponent eats is a goddamn acorn, I will not feel my avatar is being threatened.
Third Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Take this important note to your trainer. I realize that all MMOG's need some form of newbie tutorial that teaches the player how to move around, get quests and interact with friendly NPC's, but the "IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO HOGETH HORNBLOW!" style of quest has been done to death. For that matter, quests which involve me transporting a letter from one NPC to another across lands that are not filled with the deadliest of enemies should never be labeled important. Ever. If the letter that the major wants to get to the general is that goddamned important, why is a rank newbie who still can't figure out how to equip their cheap ass armor being given the task? Do I really want to aid an army that entrusts critical dispatches up and down the chain of command to a potential idiot? I think that army should really just be lured into a canyon and put out of its misery. An important message is Paul Revere's ride, not Pee Wee Herman's trip to the corner store.
Fourth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Give me a shiny. I realize that MMOG's focus a great deal on the acquisition of material goods, but it is what it is. Getting shiny doodads kicks off a rush of endorphins in even the crustiest of brains. Whether that shiny be some spiffy-looking armor or a weapon above the level of butter knife, showing the player that he can expect useful, regular upgrades to his apparatus is good. It doesn't even have to be incredibly potent. A +1 something of something still says "I'm getting better." On the other hand, not giving me at least a little happy in that first thirty minutes means you plan on dribbling the goods out to me at a trickle for as long as you can keep me hooked on that morphine drip. Nobody likes a stingy pusher.
Fifth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Other players are the devil. While MMOG's are meant to be social experiences, the experience of dealing with the unwashed masses of other clueless newbs like yourself can be off-putting. Letting those same unwashed masses spew their stupid zonewide is a mistake. After all, I'm trying to learn how not to get killed by the swarms of rats I'm required to best, hearing homophobic dribble and all-caps verbal slapfights about how much paladins do/don't suck makes me want to load shotgun shells and cruise the mall for the Abercrombie & Fitch labels. Even worse is letting other players kill me. I'm a big fan of PVP, but having DJ Humperspittle club me to death like a little baby seal when I still don't know what button to hit to open a chat window sends me to the cancellation screen.
Sixth Rule of the 30-Minute MMOG:
Familiarity breeds contempt. Standardized interfaces are a good thing. Standardized gameplay is not. There isn't a great deal of difference between the hotbutton rows of World of Warcraft and Everquest, but the play is a good bit different due to the speed of the combat and the context of the combat. Nothing makes me run screaming from an MMOG faster than thinking "I've played this game before." Vanguard's beta is an egregious example of this. During the entire thirty minutes I played, I couldn't help but feel I was still playing the first Everquest, only with shinier graphics and shittier performance. As much as I loved Everquest for the two and a half years I played, that is no longer a flattering comparison.
Other things will put me off an MMOG for good, but none so much as these rules. Take heed, developers. You'll be spending an awful lot of money to give me thirty minutes of unending contempt.
Labels: MMOG, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 12:30 PM
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CROM! Age of Conan Gets Greenlight for XBox 360
Posted on
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
Yes, that's right. Microsoft wants MMOG's on their flagship console, and Age of Conan is the first to get the greenlight. The press release follows after the bump.
From the press release:
That's right, the makers of Anarchy Online are going to release an MMOG on the PC AND a console. I'm one of the ones hoping Conan is a really good game, but I cannot ignore the absolute disaster that was Anarchy Online's initial rollout. I can only hope that a console's standardized hardware will mean the 360 version will be a more stable release. I hope that the game will be good, nay great, instead of just a rehashed Diku grind fest with shouts of "CROM!" replacing "LEEEERRRRROOYYY JEEEENNKINSSSSSS!" in the main cities.
I can also hope that pixies will sprinkle fairy dust on my unicorn as I ride off into the butterscotch gumdrop sunset.
Funcom has my interest but only a beta slot or a steady release will earn my subscription. You have a unique opportunity, Funcom. Don't screw it up.
From the press release:
Durham, USA – December 12, 2006 – Funcom announces that ‘Age of Conan’ is
approved for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. The announcement means that the
highly anticipated Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) has received the
green light from Microsoft, and that Funcom can start official development of an
Xbox 360 version of the game.
“This is a groundbreaking leap forward for Funcom. The fact that we now get
the chance to develop ‘Age of Conan’ for the Xbox 360 means access to a
potentially whole new and large MMO market,” said Trond Arne Aas, CEO of Funcom. “The fast-paced and innovative combat system in ‘Age of Conan’ will suit the demanding console audience perfect. We believe the amazing online capabilities
of Xbox 360 will be a great match for MMOs like ‘Age of Conan’, and as one of a
handful officially approved MMO games for the console we aim to create a unique,
brutal and powerful online gaming experience.”
That's right, the makers of Anarchy Online are going to release an MMOG on the PC AND a console. I'm one of the ones hoping Conan is a really good game, but I cannot ignore the absolute disaster that was Anarchy Online's initial rollout. I can only hope that a console's standardized hardware will mean the 360 version will be a more stable release. I hope that the game will be good, nay great, instead of just a rehashed Diku grind fest with shouts of "CROM!" replacing "LEEEERRRRROOYYY JEEEENNKINSSSSSS!" in the main cities.
I can also hope that pixies will sprinkle fairy dust on my unicorn as I ride off into the butterscotch gumdrop sunset.
Funcom has my interest but only a beta slot or a steady release will earn my subscription. You have a unique opportunity, Funcom. Don't screw it up.
Labels: MMOG, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:18 AM
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Vampires in Space! CCP and White Wolf Merge
Posted on
Monday, November 13, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
There are some corporate mergers that make me shake my head, and there are others that make a lot of sense. Then there are mergers that at first glance seem like a "HUH?" moment, but on further reflection are good for the consumers of that industry. This is one of those mergers.
White Wolf, the makers of the World of Darkness pen-and-paper/live-action RPGs (Vampire, Werewolf and Mage) and CCP, makers of the indy hit MMOG Eve Online, have agreed to just such a merger. From the press release:
CCP hf. and White Wolf Publishing, Inc. today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement to merge. The creators of the singlelargest persistent online role-playing world and the world's second-largest developer of offline role-playing, strategy and collectable card games will create the industry's largest independent Virtual World developer. CCP is the publisher and developer of EVE Online, the world's largest virtual gaming universe. White Wolf is the creator of some of the world's most recognized role-playing titles including: World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) and Exalted. The combined company will introduce new online and offline gaming
products across the science-fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.
The merged company will enable CCP to integrate White Wolf's leading expertise in offline gaming development to enhance and create physical products for its MMOG, EVE Online. Products to be introduced in 2007 will include strategy guides, enhanced collectable card games, role-playing systems, and novels all based on EVE Online. White Wolf will leverage CCP's industry-leading technologies to bring its offline role-playing titles online. Conceptualization and early development has begun to bring White Wolf's World of Darkness, one of the world's strongest gaming properties, into the online world.
...
The combined company will continue to operate under their respective names. White Wolf will be operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CCP. Hilmar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP, will be CEO of the combined company. Mike Tinney, President of White Wolf, will continue as President of the independent subsidiary. Further, White Wolf will continue development and enhancement of their entire portfolio of gaming products.
Though I've never much liked the game systems White Wolf produces, nor the players of those game systems, I have always been intrigued by the backstory of the World of Darkness products. Similarly, EVE's mechanics bored me to tears, but I appreciate its design, its insistence on PVP as a main focus, and CCP's commitment to build the game slowly and surely. The MMOG medium could use a whole lot more of that.
With CCP creating the World of Darkness MMOG, I have some measure of hope that the game will be stable, and might actually be fun. I only hope it goes beyond the typical MMOG kill/level/kill formula and embraces a PVP-focus. White Wolf could have done a lot worse than CCP in picking a development company.
Now if only they could sterilize the player base of the World of Darkness games, the future would look bright.
Labels: MMOG, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:56 AM
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Breaking News: Video Proof that MMOG Innovation is Dead
Posted on
Monday, November 06, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
Maybe not dead, but it sure is walking with a limp. I direct your attention to the video embedded below, thanks to YouTube, from SOE's upcoming MMOG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising.
The above linked video depicts a PVP fight in Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming mythologically-themed MMOG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. It's probably not necessary to repeat that SOE is one of the worst places to look for innovation. Their best innovation was yanking the rug out from loyal (though insane) users of Star Wars Galaxies by implemented the NGE without proper testing or development.
But the video above really takes the cake. It's pretty. It's shiny. It's also boring as Quaker porn. Not knowing anything about character classes, interface or anything else, I can predict what the gameplay will be like.
If you've played EQ1, or Dark Age of Camelot, you've played this game. Hit a button for attack, hit a button for a special attack, wait for your timers to refresh, repeat. Sure, the animations are ripped straight from a fighting game like Soul Caliber, but the heart of it appears to be sadly pathetic, a rehash of the exact same game mechanics from 1998. It's old, it's stale.
Get some new moves please, and I don't mean animations. The NGE may have been an unmitigated disaster, but at least it was an attempt to move away from "hit auto attack and get a fucking sandwich." But I see the normally risk averse mavens at SOE have shied even farther away from anything resembling innovation. Keep that re-iteration woobie blanket snug around you, SOE. It's a hard cold world out there.
The above linked video depicts a PVP fight in Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming mythologically-themed MMOG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. It's probably not necessary to repeat that SOE is one of the worst places to look for innovation. Their best innovation was yanking the rug out from loyal (though insane) users of Star Wars Galaxies by implemented the NGE without proper testing or development.
But the video above really takes the cake. It's pretty. It's shiny. It's also boring as Quaker porn. Not knowing anything about character classes, interface or anything else, I can predict what the gameplay will be like.
If you've played EQ1, or Dark Age of Camelot, you've played this game. Hit a button for attack, hit a button for a special attack, wait for your timers to refresh, repeat. Sure, the animations are ripped straight from a fighting game like Soul Caliber, but the heart of it appears to be sadly pathetic, a rehash of the exact same game mechanics from 1998. It's old, it's stale.
Get some new moves please, and I don't mean animations. The NGE may have been an unmitigated disaster, but at least it was an attempt to move away from "hit auto attack and get a fucking sandwich." But I see the normally risk averse mavens at SOE have shied even farther away from anything resembling innovation. Keep that re-iteration woobie blanket snug around you, SOE. It's a hard cold world out there.
Labels: MMOG, SOE, Video Games
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:51 AM
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