Why WoW is utterly broken

Yes. I admit it: I started playing WoW again. I was convinced by Tzirrit – the plan sounded too reasonable: escape the WoW grindmill by leveling our chars to level 29 or 39. Outfit them with some nice low level instance and other equipment and enjoy the accessibility and coolness of WoW in the Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin PvP battlegrounds – while waiting for the release or beta test of Warhammer Online or Pirates of the Burning Sea.

My subscription will end in a few weeks. We both underestimated the stupidity of people. Our chars are now in the early 20s, the frustration hit at lv19 while trying out the 10-19 Warsong Gulch. My char was somewhat nice equipped, with some loot from Ragefire Chasm and the Wailing Caverns. With some more planning, there could also have been items from Shadowfang Keep, but well, we were planning for the lv29 or lv39 battlegrounds anyways. Warsong Gulch 10-19 was just for fun, but the fun quickly vanished like a rogue using sneak.

We 1st started with a warrior / paladin duo on the PvE shard Baelgun, but the server and PvP server cluster quickly made us change the server: the waiting line for lv10 WSG was 1-2 hours, and it didn't get any better at lv 20ish. Thus, we switched to the Blackmoore PvP server. And that was were the frustration really hit me: It turned out we were not the only ones with the idea to enjoy some low level PvP. Every (!) level range (10-19, 20-29, 30-39,...) PvP battleground is full of imba-twinks. Expect them to wear the best available equipment (blues or even world drop epics) for the concerning range, with the most powerful enchantments (+100 health, Zul-Gurub-Enchant, fiery weapon, crusader,...) with the worth of several 100 gold. Here's what happens when you encounter one of those: klick.

If you don't invest several hundred gold in your low level character, expect that you will have an item-based (not skill-based!) competitive disadvantage of several hundred or even thousand health/mana and quite a lot of DPS. Here are two profiles of those twinks: Imba-Rogue Âo, or Imba-Rogue Grimlitz. Same thing for higher levels.

Well, I don't have those 500g. And I will also not contact one of those Asdfjklm-Chars spamming the capital city chats to exchange virtual money for real money. Even if I get very good equipment for the desired level range, I'll still won't have all those enchantments and rare world drop items and have several hundred health and several XXish DPS less than the main-char-financed twinks. I might still get some skill-based killing blows, but still get killed a lot due to crusader crits or just because that +20 stamina enchantment ate all of my burst damage.

I knew that WoW = money/time >>> skill. I had hoped this was not the case for everything /quit WoW, /uninstall.

About a button...

„So here is a bothersome question.

In order of importance for a button on the screen how do you rate...

The design of the button
The position of the button on the screen
The action that button will do
Feedback that the button is available
Feedback that the button has been activated
Feedback on cooldown (assume it has a cooldown)

It's been bothering me for a while.“ - P. Barnett, creative director of EAMythic.

Not very bothersome imho. They are all equally and utterly important. Let me explain why, from an MMO design standpoint of view.

The design of the button
Very important for players that are new to the game and thus tremendously important for the game. They have not yet figured out how the controls are working. They still need to learn when to use which ability to play efficiently,... The design of the button is the safe anchor: it tells them by art design what the ability generally does („Hm, a sword with guts on it – it's probably a close-combat damage ability!“). After a while, they'll have learned the buttons use and the action which is activated by it – and will mostly only use it's visual design to rearrange their individual keybinding-defined hotbar.

The position of the button on the screen
Again, very important for players that are new to the game and thus tremendously important for the game. If they can't klick on it as fast as other buttons, they will probably use it less often because they think it is not important. In general, you have to differentiate between standard attacks (e.g. fireball) and situational attacks (e.g. a counter-attack after parrying). The standard attacks should be arranged close together, due to tradition and 'WoW standard' preferably at the bottom of the screen. Situational attacks should pop up close to the character model when available to give feedback of „You did X, now do something cool out of it!“ and to provide easy attainable and instant gratification. Later in the game, they won't care too much about the (standard attack) button positions anymore since they'll mostly be using their keyboard for activation.

The action that button will do
The available actions define your character. They provide meaningful choices and reward correct decisions in a way that can decide between victory or defeat. Every single action should have a significant impact on the situation that causes its activation. Utterly important.

Feedback that the button is available
The player will require standard attacks to be accessible at all times and that situational attack buttons pop up and textually & visually notify the player as soon as they are available. If that's not the case, it's bad feedback design. A design flaw that should immediately be taken care of. Tu sum up: it's more than important – it's a gameplay requirement.

Feedback that the button has been activated
There are two kinds of feedback: the button feedback (e.g. it greys out until the cooldown is finished) and the screen feedback (e.g. a special attack animation that is being performed by the character). A button has to react immediately upon activation. Everything else will confuse the player, cause unintentioned double-activation and thus frustration due to unwillingly performed actions. Again: more than important – it's a gameplay requirement.

Feedback on cooldown (assume it has a cooldown)
Another gameplay requirement, this time for the opportunity to strategically plan in advance. Which ability do I want to activate next? Are there cooldown-related dependancies („When I slow him now I could fire my ranged ability a second time to finish him off.“)?

sneak preview: PotBS

Pirates of the Burning Sea preview - sounds awesome.

However, I don't see where the acclaimed 'next generation' is. It rather sounds like a thoughtful combination of many nice and interesting game / MMO features. In a good way. Even though the game was delayed several times, now being five years in development.

That's probably the advantage of boing funded by multi-millionaires, not being dependant on a solely profit-oriented new economy investor.

thoughts on Tabula Rasa

Well, the NDA on Tabula Rasa is lifted. So... what is TR? TR is a sci-fi based MMO-shooter. The setting: an alien race, the Bane, almost extinguished mankind - and several other races on other planets. The humans main allies are the somewhat shamanistic Eloh who teach the survivors the use of logos, some sort of language which letters (logos) you can find spread around the different planets. Futuristic human and Bane (an alien race that almost terminated humanity and several other planets / races, the main enemy) structures, weapons, dropships etc.

With the combination of firearms and logo abilities, you fight the Bane, the animals corrupted by the Bane, and other enemies in mostly medium-sized quest-driven (instanced) zones and small very story-driven instances.

Your main source of damage are your firearms. There are three basic weapons (pistols, rifles, shotguns) and one specific firearm per career tree option (however, most of those career tree weapons use way to much ammo to be efficient). You have to target your enemy FPS style. However, it's not completely FPS-style, you rather get a bonus on your hit chance and I think also damage when you correctly aim at your target. The upside: it's different. The downside: it's kinda hard to control what you are shooting at because the interface displays all health/armor bars of the direction you are looking at.

Additionally, you can use logo abilities that you can learn and improve by spending training points. Speaking of character advancement: all players start with the same class. At lv5, you can choose b/w soldier (damage-oriented) or specialist (support-oriented). There are other career choices at lv15 and lv30. Each lv-up, you get 2 training points for skills and 3 attribute points. Increasing a skill by one rank costs previous rank +1 training points. So to skill up to rank 5, you have to spend 1+2+3+4+5=15 of 100 available training points. That means you can max out not more than six abilities of which two or three are passive and not active-use.

The problem (currently?) is: there are some skills that are way superior compared to other choices, e.g. 'firearms' greatly increases damage of all three basic weapons (pistols, shotguns, rifles) vs. an armor type that increases your run speed by up to 5%. So differentiation b/w characters actually starts at lv15 or so, from lv1-14 they somewhat all feel the same because of certain "must-have" skills (lv5 firearms, lv3 tools for medi-kits + rez / lv3-5 rage, lv3-5 lightning --> 15+6+6=30 of 100 training points are somewhat pre-defined).

Due to the lack of character difference in early levels, there are also no different roles or something like 'control of the enemy'. When you group, there are (almost) no synergies, instead of one player it's several players shooting at (many) health bars. That enhances egoistic behavior, plus you can just overrun enemies with your combined firepower without the use of any tactical planning. So you basically see a lot of comparably large bars. Quite confusing. Because of that, it's also quite hard to control or focus or assist mobs / enemies, instead of "I control the situation" you rather have the impression of shooting at bars until there are none to shoot at any more.

Only at lv15, the basic archetypes / roles start to flesh out: commandos = heavily armored brutes, rangers = stealthed damage dealers, sappers = use of mechanical and explosive support, biotechnichian = healer. I playtested a biotechnichian and it was pretty senseless: the most effective tool for healing were still the armor repair and heal discs I already acquired as a specialist. At lv30, those archetypes flesh out even more - I hope in a better and more unique way... However, you don't get the impression of making meaningful choices in the early levels which makes it quite hard to delve into the TR world in the beginning due to the lack of personification / identification b/w the player and the character.

The crafting also doesn't contribute to character individualization: you can loot crafting recipes to enhance your weapons / armor, craft colors to customize your character appearance or tools like medikits and ammunition. However, as soon as you use one of those recipes, it's gone forever - you don't learn it, you have to find a new one to craft it again. Not very achiever-friendly and rather tedious. Plus, the weapon enhancements are quite costly and it's way easier to find new and better weapons then improve your current one for tons of credits / gold.

In short: there are some new and nice elements / ideas (FPS style fighting, logo language, career choices), but they could have executed them a lot better / more appealing. Destination Games has one more month to fix those issues. If they don't, I'd guess TR aka Destination Games will have the destination of being Sigil'ed: famous person + crappy game design = epic failure.

Collecting tester feedback

While scanning through the Tabula Rasa closed beta test forums today, I kinda noticed that approx. 97% of player feedback is absolutely useless.

Beta test means: the key elements are implemented in the game and the testers are now asked to provide feedback about those elements, find bugs, and come up with suggestions and ideas of how those key elements should be combined to make the game fun and appealing. This process is iterative, meaning the developers continuously add more features like more races, more classes, secondary features, and improved key features. However, the key features are not and just cannot be subject to change since they define the core gameplay aspects of the game. Or, to say it frankly: devs will probably ignore (maybe even cry about) suggestions that would cause shipment delay of several months to implement. Really, they are just not interested in things that would require implementation or even extinction of the key elements that are already in the game because all those key elements are connected in many different ways. Well, I think you got the point. The question is: how to get qualitative and valuable tester feedback?

There's even one more challenge to keep in mind: only a very very small part of the beta testers participates in official testing-related feedback mechanisms (e.g. beta forums) at all.

Many games seem to use basic empiric and mandatory evaluations to collect feedback, e.g. whenever you complete a quest or level up, you have to answer a few questions like „did you like that quest?“ or „do you think your current equipment if ok for your level?“. This method may provide general gameplay happiness feedback, but won't really help in collecting broad qualitative feedback about the different key elements of the game.

Preselection of beta testers? Nigh impossible if you have 50k+ beta signups. And the applicants might've just copied well-written texts from somewhere else. Game exterior feedback collection? Only a small percentage of beta testers will even use it. So basically you need ingame-collected qualitative feedback. How do you get that? Well, I'd say by making your QA employees secretly interview the beta testers ingame. Tell them to found guilds and continuously form groups and then chat / talk to them about the game – within the game / current build without ever revealing their actual position within the company. [This of course would only work for multiplayer games.]

MMOGs = social

Surprise, surprise...

75% have met new friends in MMOs.
50% of them have met those friends in person.
40% preferred discussing sensitive issues with VL-friends.
10% have developed physical relationships.

The last one's ratio is a lot better than any online partnership website.

"Please help me - I'm a geek?!" Nah, sorry. I think I'm fine.

G|C Leipzig 2007

There was the Leipzig Games Convention several days ago. I attended it. 
There was a WAR beta key contest / lottery. I won a key and I am eagerly waiting for it being send to me.
--> check out my GC coverage on my GuildCafe blog

 

Barnett Interview

Epic interview. No marketing-based interview where it's all about telling what great product you'll be delivering to the people. Nothing but a game designer enthusiastically talking about what he is doing. 

Speaking about WAR... Freakin' aweseome movie!

character customization in WAR

Q: Why is this a smart move?

Lance Robertson: We are going to have a lot of changeable faces, for certain races like the Greenskins. There is really going to be a lot of variety.

What we really want to concentrate on though for the customization of your character in general is more your silhouette so to speak. I’ve got spikes on my shoulders or I have trophies hanging off of my body that shows pretty much how much of a badass I am. Our artists call it the 20 Foot Rule. We really want to make it so that the guy from 20 feet away is obviously different from the other guy in terms of their race, career, and how high a rank they are.

A: 1st of all, it saves workload. Make ONE model, not 3,000 different customization combinations where you have to check at each one of them if the animations are alright, if some equipment causes certain illustration errors etc., so basically a lot less required QA and manpower ressources.

2nd, it provides time for dynamic character customization: you can't only read in your tome of knowledge, what badass you are, you can also determine it by just looking at yourself. You become a walking trophy collection, bragging about your achievements and heartily inviting enemy players to give a damn about (trying to kill) you.

And 3rd... Well c'mon, who cares wether your nose is 2 inches long or what your exact skin color is when you are covered in full armor and helmet anyway?

just a short WoW rant #4

Comment on this picture: "Seriously: What must Rob Pardo think when he sees an image like this?"



I know what he thinks: "Paying customers. Yay!"

"Get a life!"

what can you do in real life? you can stick to the rules. you can live according to the overall conditioning principles of society (don't steal, don't scare old people,...). you can experience things within the vicinity that you already know or may have experienced in another way at a similar place. you can meet people that mostly try to get along, but not people that stick to their own individual and interesting personality.
well ok... you might also journey to another country on the other side of the world, or join an interesting community that fits to your needs. but let's be honest: the later two are rather a rarity than a common occasion.

what can you do in virtual life? you can go kill a dragon - or virtual people you don't like. you can make your own rules. you can do things you could never accomplish alone in the real world, like crafting a nice peace of armor or brew a potion that makes you stronger (forget about spinache!). you can meet fellows and achieve something together in a collaborative struggle.

the next time people tell you to "get a life", tell them to try out YOURS. ;)

WTB Gold?

"We never believed in the ancient prophecies... like fools we clung to our old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations. Until the day the sky rained gnomes."

It is raining gnomes. Everywhere! This is just impressive, hilarious, very creative and perfectly executed concerning synchronisation. My earnest respect for that! 

How do they do this? A player who used to play on a private server assumes the following:

They use a program that hooks into the World of Warcraft client and modifies the memory address that handles player location. They then alter their location to be at specific point and drop from the sky.

Anyway: "Our gnomes will blot out the sun!" *rofl*

WAR vs. AoC

If you say "Lets go smack my bitch up!" in Warhammer Online, you are going to be banned.

If you say "Lets go smack my bitch up!" in Age of Conan, you are probably going to a tavern.

E-penis++

Playing virtual god anyone? ;-) 

Lad: You play World of Warcraft?
Randy: Well, I have a level 65, but I've never been to MC as I'm not in a raid guild.
Me: I've pugged it a few times. I have three 70s, a 60 and a 20-something.
Lad: I have two 70s. Hey, I think it's really great that people of all ages play WoW.
Me: Well, we have been playing this kind of game for a while...
(Randy glances at me with an "are you going to do it?" look).
Me: What was World of Warcraft based on? What game did the developers look at and think, "we can do that, only better"?
Lad: Er, was it called EverQuest?
Me: That's right. Do you know what EverQuest was based on?
Lad: No, but I think there was some guy at IU who gave a talk...
Me: EverQuest was based on DikuMUD, which was a textual world developed at the Datalogisk Institut Kobenhavns Universitet in Denmark. DikuMUD was based on AberMUD, written at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. AberMUD was based on MUD, written at the University of Essex in England. MUD wasn't based on anything. I co-wrote it.
Lad: You wrote it?
Me: The first graphical virtual world was Habitat, written in 1985 by — who wrote Habitat, Randy?
Randy: Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar.
Me: We've been writing and playing these games since before you were born.

Designers don't like farmers

I told you so. :-)

Having worked with designers, I know they hate farmers more than a lot of players do, because the farmers are finding and exploiting design weaknesses in products they've worked on for years. Some people would say, "Hey, tough luck. If your design is weak, it's your own fault."

Source

Btw: interesting Escapist issue this time.

/who Warhammer Online?

www.bullseye-games.com?

Some of you might have noticed that this blog may now also be reached via www.Bullseye-Games.com.

What's this all about? See, I have been thinking about working in the computer games industry since err... well since a very long time, maybe even since I played a computer game ('Mission Elevator' on an Amstrad Schneider CPC) for the 1st time, 12 years ago.

But over the years, I learned that the working conditions in the computer game industry are not very well – crunchtime 12 hour work shifts for several months short before launch, financial and contentual dependancy on your publisher (if you have one) or a run only millimeters away from the financial abyss (if you're an independent game developer).

Thus, when I started college, I joined the students radio to work as a journalist to look for other career options. I worked together with fellow students that kept praising the content of private radios, that generic 'the best hits from the 80s, 90s and today!', those constantly grinning moderator-entertainers who like themselves more then their listeners... So I applied for an internship at the WDR, the largest public radio station in Germany, hoping to find journalistic quality and an overall vision of how to spread information. Actually, I did. But I also found very discouraging bureaucratic structures, very slowly working windmills, hierarchy pyramids, and very few space for personal development and personal contribution...

So what IS Bullseye Games? It's back to the roots. It's a project, an idea, that buzzes through my head since my internship at the WDR, which has been two years ago. It's the understanding that if I really want to work in a company that fits my personal expectations and needs... Well then I probably have to found it by myself.

I know it is risky, that there will be downsides like long working hours and a huge responsibility. But from my 'leadership experience' (editor-in-chief at the students radio for a year, founder and leader of a non-guilded 'World of Warcraft' raid), I think I also got the impression of the advantages: a lot of personal freedom, advancement and independency. And the opportunity to change and greatly contribute to a self-made community. I hope this dream, this idea of 'Bullseye Games', will come true some day.

Southfury Banks v0.6 released!

The battle for the Southfury River begins! Up to five players fight side-by-side to defeat the other faction's general and to take over the control of the riverside.

The core feature of 'Southfury Banks' are the player-controlled units. These can be upgraded to mighty warriors, stealthy rogues or bright druids, greatly supporting each other.

Together, they fight against the opponent players, seek control of flag points or summon a mighty creature to help them vanquish the enemy general and his officers. At dawn, they try to recover - until the drums of war thunder once again for the battle of 'Southfury Banks'.

• Fight against enemy players in team-based PvP skirmishes.
  
• Obtain Tomes to upgrade your unit up to one of six unique classes.
• Tomes are dropped by killed players or can be bought at Horde Sages / Alliance Librarians.
• Capture neutral or enemy flags to get additional spawn points and income.
• Kill the enemy faction's officers to destroy your enemy's towers and to kill their general more easily.
• Hand in Flasks of Mojo (Horde) / Arcane Crystals (Alliance) at your main base to summon a mighty NPC.
• Make life harder for enemies by upgrading your faction guards or reviving Sages (Horde) / Librarians (Alliance).

Mary can NOT be butchered.

EA Mythic hires ex-Sigil employees

Do you remember that epic failure? Well, apparently some of the ex-Sigil workers have found a new job position:

We also picked up a few ex-vanguard people here at EA-Mythic central, they are all good people, they have to be to get passed our recruiter bulldog and the interviews we have here. ... At first they looked a little like deer in head lights. It can be quite daunting entering our place and seeing people smile, laugh, be joyous and basically loving their jobs. But we have a great team of people and we are making them feel at home.

They are being immersed in the whole Warhammer-ness of our project and the way we do things around here. I told them to wear their sigil t-shirts with pride. They worked hard, they tried, I know that this time it didn't work out but that's not reason to hide what you have been doing with your life. To use a phrase from GW HQ. "The Emperor will not judge you by your medals, he will judge you by your scars."

That's cool. I hope they hired some of the crafting coders since the Vanguard crafting system put some innovation into that section of virtual worlds.

Plus, by reading WAR newsletters and several interviews it appears that EA Mythic employees are treated better than EA used to (or still does?).

just a short WoW rant #3

WoW - Version 2.1.2 patch notes

change: "Druids in Swift Flight form can no longer loot herb nodes."
reason: several Tauren players complained about being called 'honey-beef'.

just a short WoW rant #2

Omg, they cut off the basement of the pyramid. *lol*

... a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content.

Yeah. Very surprising indeed... *rolleyes*

The life of a gold farmer

Long article, but very interesting to read. To sum up: being a gold farmer in China means you earn as lot cash as you did before in your hometown. With some differences... (1) You are constantly killed by players who think the visible supply is the problem – and not the anonymous demand. (2) If you are killed by other characters, you actually earn less money since you are paid by every 100g you farm. (3) You do 100% repetitive boring actions for 12 hours per day, then leave the sweatshop to pick up some food and then fall asleep right away. (4) You dream of a better life, of saving money, marrying a nice woman – but keep going through the grind treadmill, not going any step further towards a better life. (5) You were better of back home – if there weren't those official and unofficial institutions who made you leave your home base by their actions.

But well, at least you are working in a somewhat safe and vastly growing industry. Your position is safe. So basically you've got a stupid, very repetitive and machinimous job, but at least a safe one. Yay...

The next time you meet a china farmer... Will you still gank him or will you rather think about promoting accusation on the demand, and not on the supply?

Age of Conan update

Some interesting news about Age of Conan were revealed in this AoC developer interview:

First of all, every guild with more than 30 members may build its own guild village (guild bank, crafting places, guild hall,...). Solo players won't be able to construct a house. I like this decision since it enhances community building which is vital for MMOs. Plus, it provides the players with community individualization - the possibility 'to return home', to have a place where you can easily find your friends - or foes. ;-)

Second, they'll introduce (Roleplay-)FFA-PvP-Servers ("RPvP"). "because in Hyboria (Conan's world) there is no Role Playing without being able to kill someone." Exactly. No more carebear-RP à la 'uh but we're on the same side / fraction - you CAN'T kill me, this would be SO MEAN! And an Orc is not SUPPOSED TO kill an orc!' If someone argues that way in Conan, you can just stuck a sword into him to prove he is wrong. Yay.

They are not yet sure about the PvP rewards. There'll be PvP-only rewards called 'blood coins', but what I like even more is the consideration of implementing item looting, be it everything, one item, or back-pack items.


Shameless playerkilling will punished by putting the PKer in jail where he has to do a repetitive quest to get out. This is a somewhat nice idea since you can't just log onto another character and wait for your main to finish his imprisonment... still, it's repetitive and one-dimensional - no opportunities to form bonds, to found thieves / assassins guilds or to bully cell inmates? It's good to require actions from the player to get out of jail, but there should still be different actions available. But well, this somewhat continues the rather boring design philosophy of the AoC-quests... And there are other things where AoC really excels compared to other MMOs (combat system, magic system, crafting career, PvP sieges, guild enhancement,...).

„randomness“ of drops

In this forum post, the WoW GM Issuntril is quoted to confirm that item drops in World of Warcraft are not random. Which items are going to drop is rather determined by „many variables“.

First of all: this is not surprising at all. The „random“ outcome of any roll in a software-based environment must always be calculated with a formula. A computer program is never random, it can only try to simulate randomness.

The interesting thing about drop calculation is another issue, namely the economical one. Since the variables of an item drop can be influenced by the game developer, the playtime of a player can artificially be increased, e.g. by decreasing class item drop chances for the players in an instanced dungeon. Or by increasing drop chances of very rare items the larger the sum of playtime of all players is to enhance „hardcore gaming“.

Economically this would make „sense“: the more time it takes a player to complete a specific goal (e.g. completing an item set), the more subscription fees the player will (have to) pay. One more reason why item boni suck.

WoW - anti-spam

With the new WoW patch, Blizzard introduced a feature to report spamming for gold farming services. Players are already complaining about the largely increasing number of random (raid) group invites. The spam report feature only works with mails and public chat, spam in consensual and private chats can't be reported.

As I said: if you want to prevent gold farming, don't implement the mechanics that support this... „feature“. To kill the Hydra, don't cut of its head, tear out its heart.

just a short WoW rant

/who World of Warcraft



Carrot on a Stick
Binds when picked up
Trinket..................Miscellaneous
Equip: Increases mount speed by 3%.

gold farming

Well this is interesting. The table in the middle claims that another reason for the demise of Sigil was their bug-handling concerning gold farmers. While Sigil started with a zero tolerance strategy, it states that as they couldn't get rid of a dupe-bug (cloning items by a caused zone crash oder zone server reboot), prices for gold farming services were minimal, and the game and crafting economy collapsed.

Blizzard is now even considering to sue gold farmers (y'know, they don't like them Chinese, only them Koreans). 

So yeah, gold farmers are evil. Nothing new. What about a different approach?

What the gold farmers do is exploiting existing game mechanics, nothing more. If a MMO publisher wants to avoid gold farming, it has to make sure it doesn't implement the according mechanics. Or introducing mechanics that make it hard for gold farmers to do their job.

Starcraft II

So... it's, surprise, surprise: Starcraft II.

I won't comment on the title but rather talk about certain decisions Blizzard made. And there are PROs and CONs.

PROs
First of all, they continue a successful brand and develop their own IP further – nothing you can really blame them for. It has worked before, the setting, units, and characters are recognizable,... Second, Blizzard will provide tools that enable the players to customize their UI, which was already a smart move on World of Warcraft: it enhances sub-communities, learning (scripting languages, UI design,...), and adds additional player-driven game-depth. They are re-using code, e.g. the Protoss stalker will be able to blink (Warden spell from Warcraft III). It'll be released when it's „fun, balanced, and polished“. They'll overhaul battle.net for an even better multiplayer experience. Multiple cinematics incoming, yay. Starcraft II will be PC-only, no more console experiments [1]. The engine will be very scalable so that the game runs on a wide range of computer systems.

CONs
Starcraft II will be a „fast paced real-time strategy game“ and „fast-paced“ results in stress and strive for perfection when you want to be successful on battle.net. It's about being quick, not necessarily being smart / strategic / tactical. The description of the Protoss units sounds tactically promising, though. Ingame-ads might be introduced – at least the techniques for it seem to be implemented. The Protoss look like the Draenei [1]. No new race, just new units and abilities. Overall, I haven't found anything new yet, nothing innovative. Which again is nothing new since I don't know of any innovation that Blizzard introduced.

[1] thought contributed by Tzirrit

Ex-Sigil Interview on F13

Epic interview. This explains just about everything concerning what went wrong with Vanguard / what can go wrong concerning MMO / game development.

In short: during the Microsoft years, they handed over fake demos to their investor. As the investor (Microsoft) found out, they got out ASAP. Management was apparently quite... unsensitive regarding funding („Oh well we'll get it done and financed somehow...“). So was SOE. When they took over, they just put some money in. They weren't really involved, meaning they seemingly didn't really care to find out why Sigil was looking for new funding midst in development. This may be due to Brad McQuaid being „one hell of a salesman...“.

The producer thought WoW was a bummer – he didn't really KNOW it though cause he never played it. McQuaid didn't communicate important (any?) news to his colleagues. Overall, every decision maker behaved like an arrogant monarch, didn't really care about the opinions of those who were actually making the game, and didn't dare to help in any kind. For example they didn't see a need for a scripting language tool even though everybody demanded it thus severly hindering game development. And resulting in 9+ months crunch mode.

Problems were ignored. Not fixed. Because the one in charge was „one hell of a salesman...“ and „passionate“, but not rational and realistic, he didn't even know about the actual state of the game. When he played the beta, he realized what was going on – and ran away like prey. And the new management was scared to make decisions.

After all this mis-management, people were told to gather at the parking lot after work by email (!) – and then emotionless told that they were all fired, with some having the chance to be re-hired by SOE. Brad McQuaid wasn't there.

Right now, Vanguard has around 90,000 subscriptions and sold 200,000 copies of the game. That is 6,000,000€ out of sales and about 1,100,1000€ / month. The development of Vanguard cost Microsoft about $30,000,000, I'd suggest Sigil probably paid round about $10,000,000.

Well, let's end with a legendary quote:

f13.net: How was QA treated through the course of development?

Ex-Sigil: QA?

f13.net: QA.

Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.

f13.net: What.

Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.

f13.net: What? How? This is an MMOG.

Ex-Sigil: Vanguard had one internal tester for probably 95% of the design cycle.

I have been wii'd

I just played "wii-sports" on the Nintendo Wii console. Wii has one main weakness. Which is that the avatar's actions aren't predictable.

Example: if I, the player, physically imitate a backhand, I demand from the game that it executes a backhand. In my play, many of my actions weren't performed as I demanded.

Nice idea but the programm code lacks in precise execution of the players actions.

Still a nice idea in my head to play tennis in a large living room, with two TVs and two players each in front of a screen bashing an invisible tennis ball. ;-)

Google...

... playing THE virtual sage again. Now aiming for user data of MMO players.

This is scary.

Barbie MMO

Cool. Can I kill other player characters by throwing pink fleece balls at 'em?

No? Damn...

Hellgate: London

Did you like Diablo II? Remember the retarded search for inventory space, mules, and places to store your Gems and Runes? Well, the designers from the Flagship Studios found a solution! In their upcoming title, Hellgate: London, for only 9.95$ per month you can buy additional stash space!

You like socialising and communicating with other players in a social network environment? Go found a guild, it only costs you 9.95 HLM [Hellgate London Monnies] per month!

You like PvP, hardcore difficulty, or roleplay? Count to ten, spare some cents for soda and send the rest to Flagship!

You like your personal e-penis? Great, then transfer nine-ninety-five to get access to uber elite items. But don't forget to pay regularly or your rares will be frozen.

No. There are NO 2nd class players.

Oops, pardon me. My mistake. It's just "new content", nothing more. My bad.

Funcom

I'm starting to like these guys.

First of all, there's Age of Conan which looks and sounds great. A game I'm really looking forward to. I like the barbarian setting, the combat style and the PvP Features (Sieges!).

And then there was this interesting marketing campaign for their lately announced follow-up MMO on Age of Conan, 'the Secret World'. And yet another promising setting (real-world conspiracy theories).

Plus, they are using the AoC-Engine for 'the secret world' which is smart from an organisational point of view, using the powerful in-house engine a second time.

$econd Life

"Your World. Your Imagination."?

Something is missing... Let's see... 144,510 players had a positive monthly Linden dollar flow, 302,665 spent money ingame (April 2007). Thus, at least 158,155 players lost money within the last month playing Second Life.

"Your world. Your Imagination. Your Moneys."

Thank you. $incerely your$, 
Linden Re$earch, Inc.

Impatience

"Mummy? I wanna know it NOW!"

Alright then. They are developing a game that will be hard to enter...



... but easy to hamster.



Happy Now? Great. Then get the hell back to business!

Sanya Weathers leaves WAR

So what's that all about this woman leaving WAR?

She's pregnant - with an orc. Happy now?

Great. Then get back to f***in' business.

the hamster and the tomb

More rants incoming:

1. I have to correct myself: WoW is not a hamster wheel, it's a hamster pyramid.
2. Vanguard - R.I.P.. (additional info)
3. Err... is that "next-gen MMO" the one you are planning to relaunch? A short hint for those who are considering to apply: you cannot set sail with a boat that doesn't have a mast.
4. you better always stay in character.

Sometimes it just doesn't need that many words...

some light in the darkness?

For a short time, there was hope. In a recent forum post, Blizzard announced to adjust the way elixirs and buff potions work.

"In an upcoming patch we will be changing the way elixirs function, allowing a player to only have two elixirs on them at any one time. The change will allow you to use one offensive elixir, and one defensive elixir. All elixirs will be set into one of these two categories."

The short glint of a candle in the cold and retarded farming grind. A deadly backstab into the spine of the WoW farming lemmings. And the loss of an e-penis:



Blizzard even admits the buff elixir system forced the players to farm:

"In many cases this resulted in the spectrum of elixirs being necessary for dungeon and raid attempts as they were balanced to be more difficult. ...

The need for herbs and materials, and thus the strain on a guild or individual alchemist to collect these items is lowered substantially, ..."

A late insight, but an insight at least? Not necessarily. Mana, health, and resistance potions will stay the way they are. And even though the change 'removes the need to design and balance encounters around the potential use of all possible elixirs' it does NOT remove the need to design encounters to maintain the item grind hamster wheel.

another McQuaid

That guy is funny:

"I think if we had got the message out that Vanguard was not just another EQ with all of its time sinks, tedium, leveling times, necessary raiding, need for contiguous time commitments, and somehow got that message clearly and strongly through we would have launched more strongly."

Source

Ok, let's see...

1. no time sinks - wrong. Long-lasting travel times and journeys, farming hours for crafting,...
   
2. no tedium - wrong, bashing on many different but soulless mobs to gain a level is tedious.
   
3. no leveling times - wrong. Leveling takes comparably long in Vanguard.
   
4. no necessary raiding - wrong. That'll come as soon as enough players have reached lv50 and when they demand more and new content.
   
5. no need for contiguous time commitments - wrong. It's even three meaningless grinds: adventuring, crafting and diplomacy.
   

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mr McQuaid, you fail.

Meaning

The dynamic world embodies the concepts that will become the future of MMORPGs. As the Internet and gaming communities continue to grow, gamers are taking an increasing interest in plugging the community itself into the game world in such a way that everyone can experience a world that follows one rule: what you do means something. Meaning is what everyone searches for in everything they do and is exactly where the spirit of all these details becomes apparent. Meaning enthralls and grabs us. It holds us to our seats and doesn’t let go. For thousands of years mankind has used the ideas of conflict and emotional attachment in stories to move us and compel us.

Great article. *clap*

Sigil - planless

A recent forum post of former Sigil-worker Kendrick sheds light on some of the things that went wrong in the development process of Vanguard. 

1st, Sigil planned a way too large game world:

The world size at launch WAS cut down dramatically.

Plan A was to ship with Thestra, Qalia, Kojan (a much larger Kojan) as "starter" islands, 3 "intermediate" islands about 75% of the size of the starters, and one huge "advanced" continent 4x as big as a starter, and quite a few small theme islands, with a level cap of 100 on release. The starter continents would have contained 1-30 content, intermediates 30-70, the advanced 70-100, and the theme islands would vary. [...]

Plan D is what you see now, with a downsized Kojan, and that started around 2005.

They planned to implement the quadruple (!) size of a current world. A world that is so large right now that you often feel lost in the middle of nowhere. Not until 2005, three years after the start of the development, they discovered the weight they took on their shoulder might be a little too much. And switched to the somehow doable current version of the landmass.


2nd, their staffing was unbalanced:

For the entire time I was with Sigil, the Art department was the largest department by far. It was only at later stages, after a goodly bit of the world had been constructed, that they ramped up designer staffing.

This may explain why many classes appear generic and superficial, why several class-race combinations lack of game world background. Why interracial and cultural conncetions are missing,...


3rd, Sigil exploited their art workers:

And almost the entire time I was there, the Art department was in crunch mode, furiously trying to build as much of the world as they could, at the same time having to go back and rework things as engine tech and building methodology evolved.

Four long years of crunch mode. Four years work-weeks of 60+ hours. This is madness?! *looks angry* This is [Sparta] Sigil!

When do companies finally learn that demaning 'the extra mile' every day does not lead to better results? Art is a creative job. If you don't give your workers some time to regenerate and to develop new ideas, the creeps and characters they design become soulless digital things you just bash on.


4th, content overload and lacking gameplay / code depth:

It was still easier to tweak geometry and apply new shaders than it was to just throw out already built work, btw.

The oft-cited "redesign(s) of the game" last year were almost entirely gameplay and code, both much easier to do than reworking art assets that had taken nearly 5 years to construct.

Art content can easily be added. It's 'just' feeding the databases. Gameplay is what matters. What makes the people play the game.


5th, too much self-esteem, over-estimation of their ressources:

Do it better than they (Blizzard) did, and do it bigger, while still retaining what we liked about EQ1.

Translation: produce a wonder. You CAN make it better than Blizzard - but then you'll have to make it smaller if you want to get done within 3-4 years. Or you make it bigger but similar in design. But you can't make both.


6th, quantity but quality in staffing:

Polish does need help, partly because the content designers there need more experience under their belts (and they're getting it...the hard way), and partly because things were rushed. Bugs happen, especially in a rushed environment, but they're doing a fair job of squashing those.

Translation: we hired tons of content designers - still they had no idea what they were doing. Maybe instead of teaching it to them "the hard way" they should've down-sized the content mass and give the experienced designers some time to share hints and tips?


7th, hardware requirements:

From my point of view, that's Vanguard's biggest shortcoming. Poor performance is real for many. Gameplay decisions, art style, etc, are subjective, some like it, some don't. But it's hard to decide if you like it or not if you simply can't run the game.

Exactly. When you release a game, you better make sure a lot of people can play it. Especially MMORPGs where a lot of marketing and information is spread by word-of-mouth. If the word spreads but not the game because the people don't want to or cannot afford a new computer system, you won't be able to refinance your development investments. Brad McQuaid, the producer of Vanguard, said they developed Vanguard 'for the long term'. As soon as players' hardware catches up, they would buy the game. Well, when I get a new computer system, I want to play the latest releases to test my new power horse on high details.

When the players have catched up to Vanguard hardware-wise, Vanguard will have to compete with Age of Conan or Warhammer. And that competition, I'd say, will be won by the later two due to overall better game design.

the never-ending grind?

In many MMOs players spend a lot of their time grinding. Meaning: stupid and repetitive killing of monsters without influencing the virtual world at all to gain experience, faction points, reagents, gold, and so on. That's because the actions of a players are and have to be limited and because there isn't really a difference to the normal „real life grind“ (earn money to live, repeat certain actions daily / weekly / monthly).

But what about the escapism? Don't we log in virtual worlds to escape from the daily real life grind? So why do we accept grinding in virtual worlds? Economists say this is due to the 'homo oeconomicus' – the benefit is greater than the cost. But are we really benefit- or even profit-oriented in virtual worlds? The other model is the 'homo sociologicus' – we repeat actions to take care of our character (we farm health potion ingredients to increase our survivability in cooperative battles).

Overall, it's all about gratification: we grind to increase our character's abilities and skills, to fill some bar to it's end to gain access to the ultimate abilities of our character. We are rewarded, but the reward is fleeting. This lacks in long-term motivation, though. And this is what makes players stick to a game, to continue paying their monthly fees. Thus, games should provide long-term motivation, put an intrinsic meaning in every action of the players. And not provide another time sink.

self-portrayal...

... but data mining, please.

It all began with players sharing their WoW character profiles with each, comparing their virtual e-penis. Anything below purple was 'em casual gamers. You're only something in Azeroth if you wear the best items available on the instance and PvP market.

This has now been automized. The development studios themselves provide websites where players profiles are automatically updated and published. It links the players to their virtual properties like houses, guild achievements, items, or professions. The Vanguard character side even creates automated blog entries when a character discovers something for the 1st time and so on.

What matters is not the player but the property he owns. Players care less about the personality of the character and care more about the players possessions. A part of the desired escapism is reversed.

„You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank, you're not the car you drive, you're not the contents of your wallet, you're not your fucking khakis. You are the all singing, all dancing, crap of the world.“

Instead of data mining the players, the developers should rather provide web space for the players to portray their characters. To freely express their experiences, their game-related views but properties and virtual monnies.