Back in early 2004 the first superhero MMO, City of Heros created by Cryptic Studios, was released and from what I can remember with decent reviews.  The game has done pretty well peaking around 200,000 users at its height and as of Sept 2008 had around 125,000 subscribers.  Not a huge success by any means but enough for other developers to throw their hat into the superhero MMO rink.

Marvel at one point had a deal with Cryptic Studios to create Marvel Online, but has since been canceled.  Instead Cyptic is now working on Champions Online, the unofficial sequel to City of Heros/Villains.  Then we have Sony (SOE) working on DC Universe Online.  Considering the age of CoH it’s about time we had a new superhero MMO on the market.

DC Universe Online

From what I’ve read and heard about this MMO it’s sounding pretty good, but there’s still not enough information out there for me to get really excited.  Here’s a quick list of some of the key features.

• Highly customizable characters.  You can even base them off of DC characters with 1 click of a button, then modify them if you want.
• PvP Combat in a Open World.
• Quests are called Cases and Capers depending if your a Hero or Villain.
• Fighting along side or against some famous DC characters.  Superman, Batman, Joker, etc.
• Environment Manipulation, stuff like throwing cars
• Fast Movement/Traveling, depending on your powers

From those features nothing really jumps out at me as ground breaking.  I think the most interesting is how the Cases and Capers are going to work.  Basically if you’re a hero you might get a case where you have to protect someone, but a villain might get a caper where they have to kill that same person.  So now you have a quest that turns into a PvP fight, which sounds pretty cool to me although I’m not exactly sure if that’s how these quest will work.  I do know that I’d much rather be fighting a real person then NPCs all day.  For a peek at the actual gameplay, checkout this video out at Allakhazam.com.

Champions Online

• Cross-Platform gaming between X-box360 and PC
• Highly customizable characters
• Your own Nemesis! A villain the becomes part of your storyline

After watching the gameplay and interview with Design Director Bill Roper on G4, I was not very impressed by the game.  (Videos: Part 1, Part 2) In fact it game looked pretty boring. Being a big fan of PvP I wasn’t able to find much about how Champions will handle PvP, but from my search I get a sense that this game will concentrate more of PvE sorta like LoTRO.   Another thing that struck me as I watched some of the footage is that it doesn’t really feel like a Superhero game.  I mean “Monster Island”, sorry but is this Godzilla?  I don’t want to fight random monsters on some random island, I want to be in a big sprawling city where most comics take place.   Looking through the sceenshots at Champions-online.com I don’t see one city pic, only forests, mountains and indoor locations.  To be honest, nothing at all about this game made me interested in it.

Even thought both games are pretty far from release, I’m definetly in DC Universe’s corner right now.

DAOC Origins: 6 Months of Silence

A long time ago old Dark Age of Camelot fans were rejoicing when Mythic announced that they were going to be releasing their “Origins” server. Many of the game’s original fans had become disenchanted with DAOC after the release of some controversial expansion packs, and fans had been longing to relive that original DAOC experience.

On June 2nd, 2008, Mythic announced on the Camelot Herald the Origins project and revealed their plan:

“This server is designed to return DAOC to the great game experience it was in 2001/2002, while also applying wisdom from the lessons we have learned since then. DAOC is still a great game, but this server has its own appeal that we ‘old school’ players really enjoyed, and our goal is to get back to that while also continuing to support the other rulesets. Origins will not exactly replicate the game as it was is 2001; we are keeping as a part of server the ‘best features’ we have put into the game since launch, such as housing, horses, the market explorer, UI changes (to name only a few) and many of the improved systems introduced over the years.”

The announcement also goes on to lay out their timeframe for the project:

“The most common question continues to be, “Is this really going to happen?”

Origins has been in development for a couple of months now. We have been working with our Team Leads (as part of the Team Lead program) to work through the various gameplay details, ideas, and issues, while also collecting and reading your feedback. Our schedule requires around four to five months of development. This means that since the server has been in development for two months already, we still have another two to three months before it’s ready for primetime. Right now, launch is slated for the August/September timeframe.”

On July 29th, 2008, Mythic amended their stance regarding their plans for origins by releasing another announcement:

“Initially, we had an aggressive timetable we wanted to meet in order to get this into the players hands as soon as possible. Now, looking at all the feedback and re-examining our own internal goals and objectives for this server, we realize that it’s better to take a step back and take our time with Origins. What this means in practical terms is that you won’t be seeing Origins in the original Aug.-Sept. timeframe. When we are happier with the overall design and functionality, we will begin talking about a launch date. Until then, we thank everyone for participating during this phase of the Origins project.”

It has been almost 6 months, and DAOC fans are left scratching their heads wondering, “Is this really going to happen?” Mythic has yet to give their fans any official updates on the status of the project since then, and now it appears that Mythic has been hit by personnel cuts EA has made due to economic concerns. Mythic no doubt has their hands full with Warhammer Online, which has been wrestling with its own issues. Mark Jacobs made this comment on the Warhammer Alliance regarding the layoffs in regards to Warhammer support:

“It isn’t any more complicated than that other than to say that we have a very large studio and pretty much every person there has been and will continue to work on WAR for quite a while (meaning we haven’t started work on another game yet),” he continued. “When we launched, we had over 400 people working on the game in one capacity or another so it’s not like we had a small team at launch or even a small team now.”

There definitely seems to be a demand for Origins, and you would think that given that demand, Mythic would recognize the opportunity to generate some more revenue from their DAOC brand. I find it amazing that there hasn’t been much of an update on the official site in almost 6 months, and one has to wonder if the revenue opportunity is getting smaller the longer they remain silent.

Hopefully the economic turmoil and layoffs have not derailed Mythic’s original plans to give their old fans a taste of DAOC’s original glory.  Perhaps Jacobs is telling the truth about “pretty much everyone” working on Warhammer, but you owe the DAOC customers who made your company successful at least some form of an update on if and when this project will see the light of day, or if it has been canceled.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

This is a bit late, but last week EarthRise started accepting applications for Beta testing.  If you’re not familiar with EarthRise it’s an upcoming FPS MMO set in the aftermath of World War 3.  Some of the main features are dynamic targeting, similar to any FPS you’ve ever played and PvP.  There isn’t a whole lot of information out about this game yet, but from some of the screenshots the game is absolutely beautiful.

I’ve already signed myself up and have my fingers crossed.  I think for the next MMO I get into I want it to be a FPS.  Right now EarthRise and Jumpgate Evolution are the two MMOs I’m most looking forward to in 2009.  Hopefully I get into at least one of those betas.

Darkfall Survey Predicts Playstyles

With the slated release date for Darkfall Online approaching, forums have been buzzing with speculation on various aspects of the game in order to try and forecast what players could expect to see once the game goes live.  Often times in the static of forums post and polls, something interesting gets drowned out in all the noise. Darkfall EU, a fansite for the anticipated MMO, ran a detailed survey that asked future players about their plans and views for when the game goes live. If you have been following Darkfall for a long time like me, you might find the results of this very interesting.  The survey claims to have sampled a pool size of over 1600, and projects a margin of error near 3%. For the purposes of this article I will be using the combined European + North American data tables.

The Race Poll

The Alfar seem to have narrowly won the race poll, but when you consider the margin of error, they are roughly tied with the Humans.  Remember that the premise of Darkfall has the races divided into 3 teams which break down as Humans / Dwarves / Mirdain Vs. Mahirim / Ork Vs. Alfar. If we add up all the percentages based on factional distribution, we see that the Alfar have roughly 25% of the population, the “good” races come in with about 47%, leaving the Mahirim and Orks with roughly 27%.

We can see that the “good” races seem to definitely have the population advantage assuming this data is correct, but we have to take into account that their team also has the most races included in it.  The Orks on the other hand come in last place in terms of popularity by a substantial margin.  On a personal note, I have always been fascinated by the races people pick in MMOs.  I suspect a lot of people may tend to play races that are pleasing to the eye, which could also explain why the Orks might be dead last.

The “Evil” Poll

This is another poll I found to be very interesting. It looks like 2/3 of the players said they would kill someone on their team depending on the situation.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the context of that situation, or your viewpoint.  The poll doesn’t allow people to describe that situation, which could probably range from self-defense to capitalizing on a moment of weakness.  We just can’t tell for sure, but what we can see is that about 1/4 of the players are ready to commit murder.

The other table also is very revealing as it asks those who are willing to commit murder what race they plan on playing.  We see that a staggering 38% of them plan to roll Orks, and 36% of them plan to be Alfars, which means the “good” races are the least likely to commit murder.  You have to wonder about the psychology behind this.  Orks are generally perceived to be an evil race in most fantasy settings, so perhaps players who pick Orks are more committed to follow through on being evil? The Alfar on the other hand are on their own team, so many players perceived this as being the hard road, especially with the population against them. Some people speculated that maybe this shared mutual struggle would make the Alfar work together out of necessity, but I am guessing that Alfar players have committed themselves to taking the hard road, so may be more willing to take it all the way.

The “Safe” Poll

Here we can see the people most likely to not be killed.  I find it surprising that the thing people seem to have the most respect for are players engaged in a duel.  Given the number still shows that more than half would kill a person in a duel (if you look at the inverse of the number), there is something to be said about respecting 2 people settling something the old way.  I suppose one could also argue that after a duel the targets will be at their weakest, so I guess I’ll let you decide. Crafters and newbies seems to find a little more love than I expected, but I would argue that a newbie may be harder to identify in Darkfall because you are unable to con players with there being no levels at all. I guess its best to be a good aligned newbie in a duel, if you roleplay or look like a challenge people will be eager to bring you back to reality.

Playstyle Poll

This poll shows us the playstyle the future Darkfall player tends to learn towards, and who the game is appealing towards.  It is no surprise to see that the PvP crowd makes up over half the of target audience, but it also seems that the zoneless and seamless world idea definitely seems to have those explorer types interested in going out into the wilderness to see what secrets the world is hiding. One bit of troubling news is that crafters seem to be in short supply, and according to Darkfall EU he elaborates on this point.

“What may be of some concern is that 67.50% of crafters plan to be in the Human alliance, whereas only 9.90% will be Alfar crafters.  If we assume that 1/4 of players roll an Alfar, it looks like they could be struggling to find a good crafter.”

The “Sausage” Poll

I call this one the sausage poll because it pretty much confirms something I think all we knew deep down.  Darkfall Online will indeed be one of the internet’s biggest sausage fests.

The guys over at Darkfall EU seems to have put a lot of effort into this survey, and hopefully you found this as interesting as I did.  There are a few other tables over there that I didn’t touch on just for the sake of time, but if you are bored you might want to go look over to the Survey Results Page over there, take a look at the entire thing, and read their analysis.   I’m curious to hear your take on the results.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Since I reached Rank 40 a bit over 2 weeks ago, I’ve basically been doing nothing but RvR.  Keep sieges, Battlefield Objectives and so far two Fortress sieges.  I did do open RvR while I was working my way to rank 40, however I would say it only made up about 20% of my game time online.  Now that I’m doing nothing but RvR, the design flaws are becoming more apparent to me.  Lets get to it.

Flip Flopping Keeps

My biggest issue with RvR is that it’s setup in a way that Order and Destruction just take turns assulting each others keeps and BOs, flip flopping back and forth.   While I do enjoy defending, it seems most players would rather be attacking to get a chance at a loot bag.  So the few times I have tried defending, with what’s usually a small warband, we get steamrolled.  Mythic has taken steps recently to try to make defending more worth while, but from what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t appear to be enough.

Choke Points

The problem with the keeps and fortresses is that they all have impossibly difficult choke points.  Usually one staircase leading to the top floor.  Now I know from a fortress designers point of view this is the way to be most effective.  However if Mythic’s going to take that stance, then attackers should be able to fire catapults into the tower to blow it up.  It’s no where more ridiculous then when doing a fortress siege and you have 50 defenders all stacked up in front of the stairs at the top level.  There’s absolutely no chance to get through.  Those 50 people could stop 200 attackers.  Keeps need to be redesigned, there way too small and the choke points are ridiculous.

Zone Locking, Timelimits & Resets

In open RvR, once you have locked all 3 zones, you can then assault the other teams Fortress.  My problem with zone locking is it shouldn’t reset, not until the other team comes and takes their keep/fortress back.  I’m not sure the exact time limit, but once all 3 zones become locked you have 1 or 2 hrs to sack the Fortress, which just seems incredibly stupid to me.  I not only don’t understand why there is a limit, but I hate the fact that everything resets afterwards if the attackers fail.  If Mythic wants epic sieges, just think how epic it would be if your sides Fortress has been sieged for 3 days straight and you are finally able to drive them out.  Or if you’re on the other side, how exciting it would be if you’re there when the fortress finally fell.  You wouldn’t be sitting there saying “I hope I have enough participation points to get a loot back” no, you would be setting off your fireworks celebrating.  I won’t go any farther then that cause City Sieges have yet to be implemented.

My Overhaul

The way I think zone locking should work is sorta like a tug-o-war.   Lets say everything is neutral and there are 3 zones.  Each side should only be able to start out locking the zone nearest their capital city.  Once those 2 zones are locked by their respective side, they battle for the middle zone. Once a winner emerges the newly claimed zone is locked for 24 hrs and the winners below zone is locked indefinitely.  The winners can then assault the next zone.  If they cannot claim it within 24 hrs, nothing is reset, however the middle zone will unlock.  If they can claim the 3rd zone, then it becomes locked for 24 hrs and the two below it become locked indefinitely.   Now that all 3 zones are locked, the winners would get 24 hrs minimum to sack the fortress.  After the 24 hrs, the top most zone will unlock, making the attackers have to defend that zone if they wish to continue the attack on the fortress.  If a keep in the top most zone is lost then the fortress siege ends and the below zone also unlocks.  Making it now 2 zones that are attackable and giving the defenders a chance to try to swing it back the other way.  Did I lose anyone? No!?  Good.

This scenario slows down RvR battles significantly, eliminating the constant zone and keep flip flopping.  Instead it creates an atmosphere where players would feel a greater sense of accomplishment and spend less time worrying about if there going to get a damn loot bag or not.  I want it so that each side has to fight tooth and nail to maintain their lands, which is definitely not the case currently.

I’m not the type of player that wants to do the same runs over and over again.  I want to be working towards a goal that’s challenging and right now Warhammer is making me feel that most of my time online is kinda pointless since everything is so easily accomplished.  Ok Fortress sieges aren’t easy, but only because of server crashes, time limits, and ridiculous choke points.  I do think Mytic is taking steps in the right direction in dealing with RvR, so hopefully it only gets better from here on out.

Rant: Warhammer RvR Population Capped!

Mythic released an announcement on the WAR Herald today that I find stunning.  Here are some excerpts from the announcement:

“When the Fortress population reaches certain population thresholds, players who are attempting to enter the area of the besieged Fortress that are Rank 35 and below will be teleported to the warcamp for the region they are in. When the next area population threshold has been met, players that are Rank 37 and below will be teleported to the warcamp. The final population threshold applies to players that are Rank 39 and below. Once the total population cap has been met for the area surrounding the Fortress, all players that attempt to enter the area will be teleported back to the region’s warcamp.”

“Because of the strategic advantage that players will always have when defending a Fortress, the attacking forces will have a numeric advantage when attempting to wrest control of a Fortress from the opposing realm.”

“The purpose of this change is twofold: to improve server stability, and allow even more players to participate in, and benefit from, capital city sieges.”

Now I know some fans of the game and Mythic are trying to spin this into a good thing, but take a step back a moment and think about what is going on.  This game was marketed as a massive RvR game.  The servers are capable of holding thousands of players online at the same time.  Did it not occur to anyone at Mythic during the design phase of Warhammer Online that most of a servers online population of several thousand players would be in Tier 4 at any given moment?  It also seems they are prematurely stacking the population numbers in favor of the attackers.  Can someone explain how capping the population levels will allow even more players to participate?

Mythic finally seems to be admitting what the rest of us knew all along.  Their servers simply can’t handle massive amounts of people fighting in one area at the same time.  Fortress sieges have often times led to the crashing of zones and servers leaving both side throwing their hands up in frustration.  Just like the Contribution System debacle, they are sending out their PR monkeys to try and make their subscribers feel better about the fact that the game was launched fundamentally flawed.

The question going forward now is where is this going to end?  Forums are stirring with speculation over whether or not instancing will be an inevitable step to stop the servers from crashing, or if Mythic can really do something on the hardware end of this problem to make their game work as advertised.  Even if instancing does not happen, capping the population on participation in a siege will make Warhammer Online’s fortress sieges not much different than those found in Age of Conan (which is not a good thing).

The fact that they are trying to spin this by saying “to allow even more players to participate” by capping population in a given area only makes me feel better about pulling my guild out of this game.  I’ll be waiting for the flames from Warhammer fans.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

We’ve all done it, doing the same raid over and over again hoping to get that kick ass item everyone is desperately trying  to get.  My questions is not why we do it, that’s pretty simple, it’s because we want that damn item.  The question is why are MMORPGs setup like this to begin with?  The whole point of a quest, raid or big boss fight is the challenge of completing it.  Finally completing a raid or killing a boss that’s challenging is a great feeling, but only seconds after victory you’re presented with a slap in the face as the item you were hoping to get wasn’t dropped or worse yet someone else got it.  So what now?  Well we all know what’s next, time to run it again and again and again until hopefully one day we’re lucky enough to finally get the item.

No matter what quest your doing, after running it a dozen or so times you can’t help but start hating it.  And lets hope you’re not in a small guild and have to run it with a random group, cause you know there’s going to be one guy that f@cks it up wasting 2 hrs of your time.

What I’d like to see are raids that are meant to only be completed once.  Once completed everyone in the group gets the item they wanted, preferably class specific.  I think this would help put a stop to item farming, which you know you hate doing and puts more emphasis on the challenge of the game.  I know when I complete a raid or big boss fight, even if I don’t get the item I was looking for, I don’t want to have to do it again.  Why should I?  I already beat it, there’s no replay value in fighting the same guy again.  Sure if someone in my guild hasn’t completed it yet, I’ll help out, but aside from that I don’t want to have to do it again.  I want to move on to the next challenge.

Consider a MMORPG where there are 12 (arbitrary number) raids.  Each raid is extremely challenging and in order to get all your epic items you need to complete all 12 raids.  Compare that to most MMORPGS today where you first find out which raids/areas drop the item you want, then run those 5-6 raids over and over again until you have all the items.  I’d much rather have to do 12 where once I complete it I’m done and can move on, instead of doing the same 5-6, completing each one a dozen times hoping to get a favorable drop.

For me I’d like to see the repetative aspects of MMORPGs removed and concentrate more on the challenge of the game.  The fact that item farming is such a big part of MMOs is one of the main reasons why I end up quiting a game once I reach the level cap.  There’s only so much I can take and when that time comes I’d rather quit playing then have to do the same quest/raid again.