Category: MMO Musings

A Matter Of Time

Posted on by Gazimoff

You’ve probably heard that Lord of the Rings Online is following in the footsteps of Dungeons and Dragons Online by becoming Free to Play. That’s right, there’ll no longer be a subscription fee to get your foot in the door. Instead you’ll be expected to pay real money for all sorts of in-game items, some of which may provide in-game benefits. Now I’ve never been a fan of the Free to Play/Item Store model, basically because it means that those with the nicest gear are also usually those with the deepest wallets.

But let’s take a different tack – say that there was an MMO set in the near future that was also free to play? Some kind of cyberpunk tech utopia kind of thing. It’d be perfectly conceivable to place advertising in the game environment – TV commercials, billboards etc that advertise products but give them a futuristic feel. pretty much just like Coca-Cola in Blade Runner. Would I still play it? Probably not.

It feels that as MMOs become increasingly popular, the subscription cost is going to either hold steady or head south. But that’s not the issue – I’m guessing that for a large chunk of players the subscription cost is only a small part of the equation. The biggest issue I face is getting the time to play the game in the first place. I work an 8 hour day, I spend an hour commuting either side and about 6 hours a night sleeping. That leaves me with about four hours a night – if I’m lucky – to spend on entertainment. carve that up between blogging, podcasting and other stuff and it’s a wonder I have any time for Warcraft, let alone any other game.

I think that anything new has to be something that doesn’t take a huge investment to get into. Something that will allow me to feel progression in 30-minute segments is what they need to be aiming for, so that I can build it around whatever else I happen to be doing. Making use of my “dead-time” also rocks, something that WeRule does very well. It maybe a Farmville Clone with a few extra bits thrown in, but because I can play it on the way to work means that it gets some playtime.

I don’t think that the MMOs will be battling over our wallets in the years to come. Quite simply, it’ll be all a matter of time. It’s the one thing there’s only ever a fixed amount of, no matter how rich or poor we are.

Mixing Mage Mechanics

Posted on by Gazimoff

One of the frequent accusations a Mage suffers from in Warcraft is about our buttons. Apparently we have two of them and we spam them repeatedly. We ignore everything else on the screen – for all we care we could just have a couple of small icons at the bottom, with large yellow numbers appearing when we press them.

As mages we all know there’s more to our class than the robe and the pointy hat. If there wasn’t we’d be little different to Warlocks, except maybe with a better education and less irrational fear of sunlight. But how often have we peeled back the robe and looked at how our class works? When it gets down to fundamentals, do we really have the best game in the world?

The Gatling Gun Mage

If you think of a Warcraft Mage, you’re thinking of this guy. He spends his time casting spells as frequently and as potently as possible. The player can frequently be found mashing buttons, frothing at the mouth and cackling wildly. It’s one of those very pure and raw mechanics that instantly provides you with feedback on how you’re doing. Push Button, Receive Bacon.

It also means that being a mage is directly linked to your performance. If you’re the top of the damage meters you’re good. If you’re somewhere in the middle you need to push your buttons harder. If you’re at the bottom you’re a Warlock. It doesn’t matter what spec you play or what gear you have. If you’re pro it will show.

The Spellweaver

For some mages, a thirst emerged for something more cerebral and involved than just mashing buttons. A further concept emerged, where a mage would start by casting one spell, but would then elaborate on it further by drawing on additional components to make something truly special. Age of Conan was a game that demonstrated this, although it began to become more of a caster version of Dance Dance Revolution than anything else.

There is still this unmet dream of a mage pulling off some incredible spell, the skies going dark and the boss being hit with a column of fire as a devastating finishing move is unleashed. It feels counter-intuitive that the most devastating mage a spell has in his arsenal is the same one he’s been using for the last seventy four levels but just hits harder.

The Master of Buffs

For the real back-seat mage, the concept of dishing out short duration buffs and debuffs is a possibility. Working in a similar way to a healbot, your sole purpose would be to apply damage buffs to your party members and vulnerability debuffs to their target. Your job is then managing and juggling all those buffs to make sure the rest of the group still does shedloads of damage.

The problem with this model is that you become a passive and boring symbiote that cannot exist without a group to support you. You give them buffs, they give you loot.

Besides, there are no big yellow numbers. Well, none that you’ll see anyway. And life’s all about big yellow numbers.

The Ritualist

You remember those Warlocks? They have a collection of spells that require others to help them – the common ones being Summoning party members and Soulwells. To be fair though they also have a couple of other tricks up their sleeve – have you ever played Doomguard Roulette for example?

The basic mechanic is that a cluster of mages group together to cast spells in the midst of battle, pooling their power to launch a powerful attack at the enemy. Trouble is it means you’d need to take more than one mage with you into battle. It would also mean that as your mages died (from standing in the bad stuff of course), the amount of power in the pot would drop.

So if you were to build your own mage from scratch which bits would you pick? What would you choose from the jumbled box of parts in order to make the ultimate wielder of spells? What would you avoid completely – what would be the last chocolate left in the box? As always, leave your ideas in the comments.

The Composer and the Engineer

Posted on by Gazimoff

Hail to the Chief chorus music

Cataclysm

Note: Minor mention about revised levelling system. Nothing that isn’t common knowledge already.

Over the last few months I’ve been using the Refer-a-Friend system to level up some new alts. It’s been a bit of a struggle – even with the perks and bonuses I’d forgotten how much of a grind the experience can be. More to the point though, it’s made me pay much more attention to the process behind gaining new skills and abilities, and how those abilities are then put to use.

Looking at it one way, learning how to play a class could be a bit like learning music. For a mage, you would start off with your basic nuking spell like Fireball, learning the rhythm of the class. You’d then build upon that with other spells, such as Scorch and Hot Streak, in order to create a rotation. The way that your fingers beat out a patern on your hotkeys is a similar pattern to a pianist – there’s a melody there that becomes increasingly complex as you gain levels. I think that it’s also true for Affliction Warlocks, learning how to weave their spells together in a well rehearsed pattern.

Looking at it a different way, you could treat it as an engineering problem, with each ability seen as part of an engine. To start off with you have a pretty basic engine that grunts along, but as you collect more engine parts you can start building some really fancy stuff. Of course if you put the parts together in the wrong way you get something that misfires horribly. Arrange the parts well and you have an engine that purrs, delivering meaty performance and incredible efficiency.

The trouble starts creeping in when you look at how you introduce new abilities to a player. Currently you hop along to your trainer, who teaches you both new skills and existing ranks of old skills at the appropriate level. And that’s it. There’s no real advice about when the new skill you’ve just learned is worth using, or if it’s helpful to your playstyle at all. Some of the best in-game resources for helping with this are other players, while Psynister’s Guides are a great “missing manual” for players levelling a new class.

But should we need these guides at all, or is this something that the game itself should do? Should the game be teaching this stuff to players instead, either through interactions with class trainers or by an extended tooltip method? Should we have to rely on the goodwill of other players in order to help us?

I think that Blizzard understand some of this problem by removing spell ranks in Cataclysm. It removes “trainer blindness” – that bit where you’re spam-learning a ton of skills. Most of the time they’ll be new ranks of spells you already know, with the occasional new one sneaking in. The idea is that by focusing your attention purely on skills that are new you’ll be much faster at incorporating them into your routine. I’m not sure if it’s sufficient to provide all the help a player needs, but I think it’s a welcome step in the right direction.

More fundamentally than this, I think that it’s a ripe time to have a look at how classes treat their skills. Do you want to treat players as composers, starting them off with the simple things and giving them a rhythm to build upon? Or do you want to treat them as engineers, handing them a Lego bucket of abilities with which to build an engine that roars? After all, the two different approaches require a different mindset and a different approach to how they are taught.

Personally I think that both are valid approaches, as players in general are a varied bunch. Some will prefer one style over another while a few will be able to handle both. By being upfront and helping to start that process, I think that players are much more likely to find a class that grips them to the end.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make an engine that sings.

Getting Real About Idents

Posted on by Gazimoff

Battle.Net Real ID Logo

Social gaming has been kicking around for a while. Anyone with a Facebook account knows what it’s like to be flooded with requests to join some game or another. Usually these games are joy-stealing fun vampires, purely designed to drain away any thought you had that they’re designed to entertain you. They thrive on being able to render players into such a catatonic stupor that they’ll pay real cash just to be able to press their buttons more often.

I’d lay odds that one of the big reasons people are turning off from Facebook in their droves (apart from the privacy concerns) is because they’ve had enough of being spammed by a horde of grovelling farmhands or inept Mafioso. The players themselves probably mean well, but finding hundreds of Xeroxed pleas for help is enough to try the patience of a saint. And even though you can ignore everything from one application, there’s soon another that springs up to spew forth a torrent of spam from its drooling mouth. It’s like playing whack-a-mole just to keep on top of it.

There are other ways to pull together a social gaming experience. Both the Xbox and Playstation networks use an ID that you can link to friends with and share messages. You can even use voice chat, see what your friends are playing and team up in games together. It’s a pretty slick experience and one that most gamers seem comfortable with. The key thing though about the setup on consoles is that it’s usually about playing single-player or basic team games. If I share my Xbox Live details with a friend, I’m not sharing details on all the characters I have in Dragon Age: Origins, just the games that I play and the achievements I’ve earned. I’m also using a nickname, not my email address or other information.

So why the big deal about Blizzard’s new RealID system? It initially feels like a good idea, providing players with a way to communicate with each-other no matter what realm, faction or even game you’re playing. Say you’re working on a refer-a-friend alt but a guild needs your help with a raid, it’s now possible for them to get you a message without having to resort to SMS messaging or ventrilo camping.

It’s also a big tool for Blizzard in order to encourage players to subscribe to both Warcraft and their next-gen MMO. One of my own experiences with dabbling in games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan is that I tended to miss out on things happening in Warcraft. Sometimes this is a good thing, such as when you’re after a break or suffering from burnout. Other times it can be a real hindrance – you become scared to try out your new game in case you miss something in your old one. By having a messaging system that works in both, Blizzard ensures that players can feel comfortably contactable whatever game they choose to play.

The difficulty comes with trying to match up a messaging system with more esoteric concepts, such as how gamers view themselves and their relationships with other gamers. There’s also the problems that arise from how you uniquely identify each player on the network, and how that player shares their identity with others. There are also issues with how gamers view their activities in-game and whether they feel comfortable disclosing those activities.

Gamers have traditionally given themselves aliases for use in the online world. Nicknames like my own are in common use, readily shared and exchanged. It’s how we identify ourselves and how we share that identity with others. The trouble is there are quite often several people who share the same nickname, resulting in names like switchblade6764. Blizzard’s solution was to use the only piece of information they have that’s different for each individual – our email address. In many ways it makes sense – it’s a logical identifier to build a system around. In other ways it’s a nightmare – we might use the same email address for our billing information, or for PayPal, or any one of a number of other systems. It pushes players into a situation where they have to think very carefully about who they would link up with over RealID, which in turn reduces the usefulness of the system as a whole.

As an example, I use a different email address for my guild’s website and other WoW stuff than the one I have linked to my Battle.net account. While my open email address gets tons of Warcraft related phishing emails, I know they’re fake by default because they’re in the wrong inbox. Tying my identity and my email address together removes this security. Personally, I would rather have seen a push towards nicknames instead of the current solution.

The other issue is related to presence and how that presence is handled. To give an example, when I fire up my desktop I’m automatically logged into Messenger. Across the world various people receive little alerts that I’ve come online. What they don’t get is status updates to say I’m checking my email, surfing the net, coding in Visual Studio or doing any of a hundred other activities that I can use my PC for. All they know is that I’m either online or not. And if I choose, I can set myself to “appear offline” and vanish.

The problem with RealID is that it overestimates how much of a social experience gaming really is. It’s true that MMO gamers like to talk to each other and have shared experiences. But it’s also true that sometimes a gamer just seeks peace and solace in a fantasy world, away from other people. By automatically linking a RealID to every character on every server in every game that you have, you remove that opportunity for gamers to have a solo experience in your game. You force gamers to go elsewhere and off your network if they want to play a game without being disturbed, without being watched or followed. It’s this aspect that doesn’t make sense to me, and feels like a strong oversight.

Gaming is evolving into a shared experience because players prefer them and developers want to provide them. It makes sense to try and stretch those shared experiences beyond a single game and into an entire fleet for players to meet and team up in. But it has to be done in the right way, understanding the social nuances and conventions that gamers have established and working with them. By going against these norms, developers risk alienating the very people they hope to bring together.

Hitting the Reset Button

Posted on by Gazimoff

Videogames seem to be full of choice these days. It could be the moral choices presented by games like Mass Effect 2, or the theoretical choices of gear selection in World of Warcraft, Heck, it can even be something as straightforward as choosing a driver in Mario Kart. But if you lost your saved game or started a new account, would you make the same choices? Would you choose the same character and take the same path, or would you try your hand at something new?

I’m trying to tackle this question for the BlogAzeroth Shared Topic this week. For me it breaks down into three chunks – would I still play a mage, would I still do the same things at endgame and would the character be roleplayed differently? I’m only going to try tackling the first one this time round – I’ve already covered how my playstyle has changed, while my roleplay histories would be another post entirely!

I’ve tried three other MMO’s while I’ve been playing Warcraft, and with each of them I tried something different. My mage was sitting unloved and unplayed while I saw healers and tanks become the heroes and stars. I decided that when I started a new game that I’d play one of these roles – that I would be the one that everyone would be wanting in their party or raid. As a result, with Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan I thought I’d try and be clever.

With LOTRO I tried playing a healing Minstrel, while with AoC I rolled a tanking Dark Templar. Both ended up as dismal failures – my minstrel felt unwieldy under my fingers, while the Dark Templar didn’t have many opportunities to actually tank leaving me with a boring solo grind.

After three months of play in both games I ended up cancelling my accounts. To this day I don’t feel that I gave the games a fair chance. I’ve since tried to go back and give LOTRO another go since but keep on getting stuck on a known issue between Windows Vista and the client software.

Aion was a different story. I rolled a mage and had a great time. I levelled up, specialised for even more damage and killed things even quicker. I felt like I was in my element, and general game engine clunkyness aside it kept me entertained for a while. The problem emerged when I started looking outside of magecraft and towards other areas like professions, crafting, dungeoneering and so on. It’s strange, but although the “mage” aspect was solid, the other aspects of the game weren’t sufficient to hold me. As with the others, I eventually unsubscribed.

So if I had to start over, would I stick with what I have or would I try something new? To me it’s pretty clear that when playing MMOs I have an affinity for a particular role. I’ve even played all the other classes in Warcraft to some degree and still keep coming back to my mage. That’s not to say that the other classes aren’t as good, but it’s because I know who I am as a player. I’ve tried to prioritise other roles in other games and it’s harmed my enjoyment of that game as a result. I’ve come to learn that being honest about what I prefer to play is better than trying to be tactical about what role I select.

I think that there are other players who feel the same –who have a core role or class that they’re happiest playing, but might occasionally dabble in other roles in order to try something different. Even though we might be playing a priest or a paladin, we always know that there’s a class that we’ll go back to.

Evolution or Revolution?

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been thinking recently about something that Tobold mentioned on his blog about Blizzard’s continued game development cycles. In it, he rightly describes that Starcraft 2 has a similar look, feel and playstyle to the original game. He also mentions that the Diablo 3 gameplay footage has a similar look and style to the original game, and that he expects it to play in a similar way. My question is “is this such a bad thing?”

Look at it this way. Starcraft is often held up as an example of fine game balance in a complex system. You have three different races, each with their own units and playstyles, yet they remain on roughly equal standing with eachother. In making a sequel, would you radically change things and risk destroying this balance, or would you try and evolve the concept instead by adding new mechanics and possibilities?

From another angle, I remember when Diablo 3 was originally announced. Fans were concerned that the game world didn’t look “Diablo enough”, that it was too bright and colourful. Samwise ran with the theme, creating the artwork for this T-shirt. It’s a really tough act – on the one hand you want to be creative and fresh, but on the other hand you want to keep the tone and feel of the game world that you’ve created. Mechanics and user interaction make up a lot of that look and feel – mix things up too much and things “just don’t feel Starcraft” any more.

Mind you, after ten years of working on the same franchises I’m expecting that Blizzard’s designers and developers are yearning to try their hand at something new. They’ve announced that they’re working on a next-generation MMO, but have little else to share. Currently circling the planet Rumour, it remains a black hole of speculation.

I’m hoping that what they’re working on is a brand new IP. A new game world that we’ll get to dive in and explore, with new stories to tell and new armies to battle. I’m hoping that they’ll innovate on existing ideas, making a game with deep and rich mechanics that aren’t completely alien to players, but still provide plenty of surprises and unique aspects. After all, in the time since Warcraft was launched we’ve seen an increase in computing power, graphics capability and broadband speed.

It also makes little sense for the new MMO to be Warcraft in Space, as players will just migrate from one to the other. What they need is a game that’s sufficiently different that players will want to try out and regularly play both instead of having to pick one or the other. It’s why Blizzard have spent so much time perfecting Battle.net, and why cross-game communication is on the cards. Playing the new MMO, but your old guild need a hand with the latest raid dungeon? No problem, it’ll all be in-game.

So while I share Tobold’s assesment of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, I’m not sure I agree with the feelings it evokes. My own experience from playing the Starcraft 2 beta is that it hits every single nostalgia button perfectly. I was able to play Terran quickly and comfortably, while I (still) suck at playing Zerg. But that’s what I want – a refreshed and evolved experience instead of a radically re-imagined departure.

Where I do hope we get something completely different is with this new MMO. After all, it makes sense for everyone to have two different games to play instead of just migrating from one to the other. And while I hope that some concepts remain, I really hope that it’ll be revolution rather than evolution that we’ll be experiencing.