Why Darkfall is Important

Darkfall is on the verge of becoming a reality. Shockwaves were sent through the MMO community on Friday as Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall will be releasing in European markets on January 22, 2009. This announcement was followed by the deafening silence of “vapor trolls” who were once over-spoken forum activists convinced the game would never see the light of day. Not only is Darkfall coming out, but it is only 6 weeks from going live.

Every MMO player who loves this genre even a sliver as much as I do has a vested interested in seeing Darkfall become a success. If you have been playing MMOs for any length of time, you are no doubt feeling somewhat disenchanted with the state of the genre over the last few years, especially if you are a veteran like me who remembers the way things used to be. You might remember a time where a new MMO didn’t look exactly like the one before it, a time when innovation was profitable to a developer.

The Death of Innovation

It is easy to figure out how and when innovation died. A certain company made an MMO some years ago that made unimaginable amounts of money by using a model that dumbed down the game to appeal to a wider audience. MMOs are expensive and risky business propositions, and in the last few years we have seen 40-80 million dollar debacles that have brought their developers to their knees or out of business. The safest route for profit is to look at the industries most profitable game, and build the same dumbed down model for mass appeal they used. The profit being rewarded to the companies who follow in the footsteps, combined with the innovative games being debacles, has sent a dangerous message to new developers and helped fuel a trend of linear copycat theme-park MMOs.

Sandbox games have traditionally offered their players freedom, something that most of the more recent games have been lacking and some newer-school players may have never experienced. The freedom is yours to go anywhere without being boxed in by mountains that always seem to mysteriously bottleneck into a loading screen. The freedom is yours to pick a character that is yours to shape, instead of being pigeon-holed into some specific role where for some reason can figure out how to use a single type of weapon. These are the promises that a sandbox game makes, but unfortunately there has not been a successful one made since Asheron’s Call.

Ending the Cycle

Whether you believe that Tasos will deliver what he has been promising us for years or not, before you jump on bashing bandwagon, stop and think about how a successful Darkfall will affect the MMORPG genre. If a sandbox game like Darkfall is financially successful, it will send a message to developers that not only is there a market for sandbox MMOs, but there is money to be made in innovation. Think back and imagine what this genre would look like today if Asheron’s Call and Everquest 1 had switched places in terms of who came out on top financially. If any of the sandbox games from then until now had done well, I don’t think we would find ourselves in a market full of copycat games.

When was the last time you played an MMO where the death penalty really made you fearful of dying? When was the last time you could explore in an MMO without hitting an artificial wall of mountains, or you actually were completely lost? These are the type of things that have long been gone from the genre. Now most of developers making the big name MMOs don’t even have enough innovation to make their own world. Is anyone else as sick as I am of watching these stupid prepackaged MMOs come out that are based on some old franchise? Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Warhammer are all games you are supposed to be excited about, and I feel like these devs are the same guys who used to play Dungeons and Dragons and buy those little premade box adventures because they didn’t have the originality to come up with their own.

Darkfall deserves your best wishes, even if you don’t plan on buying it. It is a vessel of hope to try to stop the madness that has turned what was once the best genre in all of video gaming and reduced it to an experience that is akin to sitting on a ride in Disneyland. You get in, you sit down, you go the one way there is to go, you watch the dolls dance, then you get up and exit with probably a lower IQ than you had before you got on. If you’re on the fence about buying Darkfall, think about the money you spent on MMO ideas far worse than this one. I think it is worth the chance to finally show support for someone who is willing to take the big risk, and show other developers that we are willing to pay for something that is original.

I know some of you will flame me and try to brand me a fanboi, and I would argue that I am a fanboi of the genre and what it should represent. I also know that for a lot of you reading, Darkfall is your last stand in MMOs. I can’t blame you for going all-in on this game after all that has happened.  If you have read my words here and agree with me, I ask that you make sure you tell a friend and pass the word along; we are going to need it now more than ever.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

AoC Server Merges – When Worlds Collide

When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.

There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.

So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.

One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO.  I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.

Paragus

Co-leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Warhammer Woes at 60 Days

I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little past the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.

1) Itemization

This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.

This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.

2) Overworld RvR Mechanic

The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.

Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.

3) Contribution System

In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.

After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.

The Billing Cycle

Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up.   A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.

If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Rant: Guards!

What is it about MMO developers and their inability to implement guards in their games in a rational manner. Going all the way back to the very first MMOs, we have seen paranoid developers either use guards to try and stop their players from running amok in their games, or for merely decorative purposes.

I was playing Warhammer Online recently in one of the scenarios when I became witness to a guard from the other team going berserk killing most of my team. I think what bothers me is not so much that the guards attacked us, but the fact that the guards are level 55 champions! I mean seriously, what the fuck are there level 55 guards for?! These bad boys are handing out 30,000 damage a hit to a level 40.

The scenario “Serpent’s Passage” revolves around the idea of 2 boats crashed on the same island fighting over some salvage part to repair their ships and get off the island. That is all well and good, but if the task is that important and critical, why would you send out the level 40s to kill each other and not send the level 55 super hero guard?! Hell, I’ll take it a step further! Why don’t they send out this guy to single handedly win the entire war?! He hits for 30,000 damage a pop, which sure to be enough to bring most keep lords to their knees in a few hits, and probably decimate the enemy king.

What were they thinking? Developers are so paranoid that players might actually have some freedom or inconvenience the other team that they have to use this as a method to keep us contains from going out of bounds. It reminds me of people who play Dungeons and Dragons with a Dungeon Master who uses one of the box adventures instead of giving their players the freedom to make their own decision. Unfortunately this problem is not just limited to recent games.

As far back as Everquest 1 we have seen guards gone wild, but even worse were vendors! I remember when Everquest first came out that I would sometimes accidentally attack the baker selling rations by pressing the wrong button on the keyboard. The result was me getting obliterated for obscene amount of damage. This also made me wonder why this lady is selling bread and not out hunting dragons, and what she is doing with that loaf to cause so much damage.

Final Fantasy 11 took a different approach to guards as a PvE game. Their guards looked bad ass usually sporting some amazing looking armor. You would think if there was ever guard that should be doing massive damage it would be them. Unfortunately we will never know because they are merely decorative. I will never forget my first night in FFXI where a bunny rabbit crit me and chewed my face off while the nearby guard stood motionless as I clung to him for dear life. It’s a good thing the police in real life didn’t train at the Vana’diel police academy!

World of Warcraft took yet a different approach. Their guards did not do massive damage and were very much killable. The bad news is that there seemed to be more guards in the town then people whenever one is attacked. My guild used to attack Red Ridge when the game first came out, and more guards ran out of that place then there were people living there. They just magically seemed to appear out what must have been a mysterious portal that connected to the biggest barracks of all time.

Age of Conan gave us Funcom’s take on the idea. The guards were not super high level and they did not hit terribly hard. The bad news is that you could not hit them back! We used to murder people in the Noble District on the FFA server, at which time the guards would usually chase us. I found it ironic that my character had the will to murder innocent players in the street, but did not have the will to defend himself from the town guard. Players were often left to finding ways hide from the guards, but sometimes this would result in Funcom handing out a suspension. Clearly the Funcom CSRs thought it as more important to prosecute people hiding from guards instead of those exploiting the raid content in the game, nice work there!

Can we please stop having developers try to box us in with guards? Let us have our freedom, these are RPGs after all. God forbid the players should do something the developers never thought imagined we would. God forbid another player might be inconvenienced by another on a free for all server. Look, there is nothing wrong with having guards in your game. I wouldn’t expect to be able to kill someone in real life without them coming, but be sensible about it. If you are a pure PvE game, then at least have the guards lend a hand if I am coughing up blood on them. If you are making a PvP game, the guards should be killable and in limited supply.  The use of guards in most MMO’s so far has hurt immersion and has served as a virtual bitch slap by the devs to keep their players inside the box.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Rant: RvR – Not One Step Back!

Order 227 was issued by the Soviet High Command and Stalin during World War 2 to deal with cowards on the battlefield. Order 227 was read out to all troops in the Russian armed forces and here are the critical parts of the order…

“And so the time for retreating is over. Not one step back! That must now be our watchword.

Is there something we lack? We lack order and discipline. This is our main shortcoming. We must establish the strictest order and iron discipline in our army if we want to rescue the situation and defend our Motherland. Panickers and cowards will be eliminated on the spot. Commanders of companies, battalions, regiments and divisions, along with their commissars and political workers, will be considered traitors to the Motherland if they retreat without orders from above.”

I have been recently playing Warhammer Online and have been spending a fair amount of my time doing overworld RvR now that I am 40. The game is built around massive combat between the realms, so it has become more common to see giant bloodbaths in places like Praag. I have seen a behavior pattern that I find disturbing that I have seen in previous MMOs, and I am sure both realms are suffering from it.

Cowardice

You are in your warband marching into battle when you encounter an equal size warband of the enemy team. There is a moment where you see each other and time seems to slow to a halt as the realization hits you that a battle is imminent and unavoidable. In this moment of truth, someone from the other team finds his balls while your comrades are still feeling in there pockets trying to find their yambags, and they start charging forward towards you. For some unexplainable reason, this man inspires the fear of God into your team and they start to retreat!

What the hell is the logic behind this? You both have the same number of people. You both were looking for a fight. You both are facing each other head on. All things being equal, you had the same chance of winning as they did. Now your army will be ran down like animals and scattered into the wind.

Is it confidence that inspires fear? This is the same type of behavior we see nature between animals when one animal scares off an entire pack, or how a mouse can spook an elephant. As it turns out, elephants may not be scared of mice, but scared by sudden movements (depending on who you ask).

My Theory

I play a Shadow Warrior which is by most accounts a back row class. From my point of view, I will be traveling with my warband or group until we encounter a group. Often times I my initial reaction will be to calmly step to the back of the ranks to allow the tanks to receive the brunt of incoming attack like they are designed to do, and to give myself the range I need to be effective. Naturally other back row classes, specifically healers, are also inclined to position themselves at the rear of the warband to avoid being damaged so they can keep the front line classes alive.

I suspect what happens is that front line classes in the warband see half of their force backing up and think they are fleeing, when in actuality they are repositioning. The front liners start to freak out when they see the opposing side advancing and the rest of their team backing up. Panic sets in and they turn and run. The back row watches the front row flee, then they in turn start to flee. The next minute or two consists of you and all your friends being rounded up like cattle and put down.

We need RvR Order 227. No army ever wins an RvR fight in any MMO with their backs to the enemy. Now don’t get me wrong, there are times where you are faced with hopeless odds and running may be the best course of action. People who wander off on their own are likely to encounter superior numbers. When you have even a decent sized force, I’d wager you are more likely to get more kills by standing your ground, then try to flee and being killed anyways without any resistance. Regardless, this is something I see all the time from my experience so far in Warhammer and previous MMO’s I have played. I suspect there are many other out there like me who do a collective facepalm on a regular basis from being the victim of this phenomenon.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Warhammer: Top 5 Issues

Well here we are about a month after the release of Warhammer Online, and I wanted to take some time to talk about some of the top issues in the game at the present time. I have previously written about two of the early issues already which no longer seem to be glaring problems to me, Server Queues and Goldspammers. I want to preface this article by saying that I do enjoy the game so far, but for the purposes of this I will be zeroing in on what I see as the top issues that I feel have the potential to derail the success of the game. If you read my early review of the game, which has been published on a variety of sites, then you should know that my goal is to be as objective as possible. Let’s start the constructive criticism.

1) Overworld Rewards

This is issue one for me and a lot of the community at the moment. The entire premise of Warhammer Online is the war in the overworld. I don’t think anyone bought this game to do instanced battlegrounds, but at the present time they seem to be the most rewarding option in regards of using RvR to advance your character.

Scenarios are by far way too beneficial and the overworld is far less rewarding at the present time. Scenarios require no effort to get into, you simply sign up and wait for it to let you know when to zone you in. The longest any given scenario can run is 15 minutes, and can yield large amounts of experience and renown. Overworld RvR requires you to physically travel to the front in hopes of serious combat going on. Overworld doesn’t lay a finger on scenarios in terms of experience points, and unless you are in a major bloodbath you won’t be coming close to the same amount of renown, especially when compared to what can be earned in a 15 minute scenario.

The good news is that Mythic seems to have been reading the feedback. They recently announced a 50% increase in leveling experience in the overworld RvR areas, and they are promising to announce some changes in the next week about renown. This issue is critical because most people will opt to take the fastest route to advancement, and if the overworld becomes empty this game will fail.

2) Class Balance

Since release we have seen a variety of bug fixes go in, but we have seen little in regards to class balance. Now I understand where they are coming from in this regard, but there are some balancing problems that need to be addressed or people will get turned off from RvR. If people are finding themselves saddled into a class that is extremely weak, it may lead them to cancel out of frustration with their class if they don’t have the strength to tough it out or reroll. These are my observations as someone who plays Order in Tier 4, so take it with a grain of salt as I will try to be fair.

Shadow Warriors and Squid Herders are in desperate need of a boost. Both of these classes are one of the rarest played from my experiences, and for good reason. These ranged DPS classes as they are marketed need a bit more DPS or a bit more range. I play a Shadow Warrior in Tier 4, and it is a hard life compared to some of the other classes that are capable of far more damage and have much better survivability. A Shadow Warrior wears the same level of armor as a Bright Wizard and does far less damage. If I am at my maximum range and shoot at someone running towards me, they will be in melee range by the time the move is finished executing. Kiting is not even close to being a viable option in RvR. My root barely works and is a melee attack, so by the time someone is close enough that I need it, I’m dead anyways.

Magus and Engineers need to be looked at as well. These are also uncommon classes because they suffer from similar problems. Both of these classes have an ability that is going to ruin this game if it is not fixed. Electromagnet on the Engineer and the Magus version is an ability that sucks in all plays from 65 feet away, has no casting time, only has a 20 second cooldown, has no line of sight check (can pull people through keep doors in sieges), and snares!  I wasn’t surprised when I found out that the addition of this spell was something that happened right near the end of beta, so probably has not undergone the proper testing. The sad thing is that this is one of the few good tools these classes have at end game, so they need to be brought up a little while this ability gets fixed.

Witch Elves strike me as a bit out of control. I often find myself unable to fight back almost every single time they attack me, even with all of my counter-measures up. They can kill me in about 4 seconds flat while incapacitating me. Now as someone who wears light armor I guess that might be feasible, but Ironbreaker guildmates of mine have been destroyed almost as fast.  The ability that damages you for moving has no limit to how much it can do, and when factored with how easy they can kill when you aren’t moving there is little anyone can do in most cases.  There is nothing fun about not being able to fight back, something DAOC was notorious for.

3) Performance

This is another major issue that needs to be worked on as soon as possible. The end game envisioned by Mythic and its customers is large scale overworld fights. If your computer crashes you to desktop, or reduces you to watching a slide show, then people will eventually quit. My computer is an absolute beast, and even I have found it being brought to its knees in some of the battles we are seeing in Tier 4 at this point. These battles will only get worse as more people level up, so they need to continue to tweak the code. Nothing sucks worse then crashing to desktop during a city raid, then logging back in 1 zone back and unable to rejoin because all of the guards have respawned blocking your way.

I have heard rumors that the game is sending too much data as a reason for some of the performance issues. Some have said that buff refresh data is being updated too frequently, or that chat being logged too often could be possible causes. There are some mods out there trying to experiment with these issues, but I have yet to try any to see if they work. The good news is that the game is running noticeably better after the last patch when I am in large scale battles, so I look forward to seeing if there are more changes coming that will help streamline with before everyone else gets to Tier 4.

4) Itemization

This is a minor annoyance at the present time, but could be a big problem as we move on into the coming months. If you go to the merchants in your capital city who sell the high end RvR gear, you can take a look at some of the rewards and stats on the gear we get to look forward to earning.

The problem is a lot of those high end armors have stats that don’t make a lot of sense. Many of my guildmates report to me that they are seeing the epic RvR gear with very odd stats such as willpower and intelligence on melee class armors and weapon skill for casters. Some of the items are not only lacking in the primary areas for their respective classes, but they have stats on them that are of little value to their class. If these items are deemed as junk by the player base, it will diminish the reward from RvR, and make people less motivated to try to earn them. Now I understand that a lot of these items are sets and have set bonuses, but a lot of these just flat out suck without the rest of them. Maybe they rushed them because the game was close to release and they knew nobody would get them for a long time, but they definitely need to be gone over again.

5) Bugs

These most likely won’t make people quit, but they will test the nerves of the players. The guild interface is absolutely amazing, but it has bugs that need fixing. Some players in my guild have to be manually promoted by typing out the command because the interface hates them. The alliance tab has some glitches making it hard to read at times. The guild heraldry shows to other players, but on my screen I don’t see it unless I toggle it off and on every time I zone. Altdorf still causes me crash almost every time I go there for no real reason.  I still can’t join a scenario from some zones randomly. I could go on but you get the drift.

By far one of the most annoying things is the current state of the mail system. It literally took me 5 minutes to open 3 mails and remove the items attached to them. As someone who is in a guild where people are always sending each other stuff, this can make going to the mailbox a dreadful experience. Every time you buy an item at the auction house you have to go get it from the mailbox, so if you buy some material for crafting or a set of new armor, you might as well go to the bathroom and drop a duece while you wait for your mail to get sorted out.

Conclusion

Overall the game remains solid for what it is. The overworld RvR is enjoyable when it happens, and the gameplay is overall good. When you compare this game in its present state after 1 month to games like WoW and Age of Conan, it definitely has a lot going for it. These issues however summarize what I believe are the top concerns of the community, as you can find on most forums and in game whining.

The good news is Mythic is definitely listening to the player feedback. Recently they made a change in a patch that has reduced the number of gold spammers noticeably. People were upset about the leveling curve in certain tiers of the game and Mythic reacted by increasing the quest experience in these areas of the game. They are keeping a sharp eye on the community and reacting to their needs. If they continue to maintain this level of communication and honesty with the players, this game will be around for a long time.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Rant: Gold Spammers

“They should be kicked down a burning flight of stairs covered in broken glass and AIDS.”

These were the words a guildmate of mine recently used to describe his feeling towards the parasites of the MMO genre we have all come to know and hate, the gold spammers. Every major MMO in the last few years has been infested with the likes of these scumbags. It doesn’t matter if the game is big or small, these blood-sucking leeches are ready to offer you their dubious services in order to make your gameplay experience a more enjoyable one.

They always seem to find you. Most commonly many of us will receive the random tell from a gentleman with an almost unprenouncable name, probably generated from rolling his face over the keyboard. These worldly scholars mysteriously also seem to share the same commanding mastery of english language. In more recent games like Age of Conan, they could be seen shouting in general chat and filling your in-game mailbox with advertisements. Hell, even some MMO based websites find their forums and blog sections infested with these dingleberries clinging to the ass of the genre. For only few measly dollars, they promise to introduce you into lifestyles of the rich and stupid of whatever virtual world you find yourself inhabiting.

2-Sided Problem

On one side of the coin you have to deal with how these people directly effect the game. To the honest player, they are an annoyance first and foremost. Often times they can obstruct the gameplay of players. Gold farmers who gather the money will identify an area that enables them to generate the most wealth per hour. This can in turn lead to bottlenecks in these areas which often times are places that normal players will have to pass through during the natural order of progression. If left unchecked over time, the flooding of gold into the online economy can often time lead to inflation driving up the costs of items sold between players via the auction house.

The other side of the coin is the fact that players are to blame as well. These spammer would not be in the business they are in if it were not profitable. It is profitable as long as players are willing to take the low road and shell out real life cash for in game cash. Let’s say a farmer buys a box for $50 to play the game, and manages to send an advertisement to every player on the server one time before being banned. In many cases, that farmer only needs to find one or two players willing to do business to justify the $50 for the new account that gets banned.

The Solution

Most MMO’s that are infested by these shortbus-riding window-lickers are proactive about trying to shut them down as fast as possible. Final Fantasy 11 was notorious for having tons of gold farmers, but oddly enough, no spammers. The reason why they don’t bother the player I am guessing is due to the fact that Square-Enix has been known to wipe out thousands of accounts at a time. Anyone who has ever played this game knows how hard it is to get to a level to make money so I can only assume they fear the time investment in releveling in this old challenging MMO.

I want to take some time to talk about Warhammer online as this seems to be the hot topic at the moment. Mark Jacobs at Mythic has expressed his feeling towards this in a recent blog entry where he says…

“I hate gold sellers/spammers. No, that’s not strong enough, let me try again. I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING.”

I think I speak for most of us when I say that we feel the same way. Nobody would shed a tear if these people decided to take a bath with their toaster, drank a bottle of Clorox, or took a leap down a slip-and-slide naked while carrying a scissors… but I digress.

Mythic has literally had the gold spammers invade Warhammer Online right at launch. The good news is that Mythic has put themselves out in front of the problem right away to face it head on, in a very transparent way. The first thing they have done is make it very easy to report the spammers. They have also built into the game’s mailbox mechanic a waiting period between sending mail to players of 20 seconds. This helps prevent the kind of mass mailings that Age of Conan still suffers from. When bans do come down, players have been receiving pop up boxes that have become somewhat comedic letting the players know certain players or sometimes entire guilds have been banned. I actually read a thread today where some people were actually complaining that the ban pop ups where just as annoying as the spammers, an argument which may get amplified over time. It was also pointed out to me today that Mythic has a counter on the War Herald site showing the number of bans handed out so far.

It’s good to see that the devs of all MMO’s are fighting back. Mythic seems to be leading the charge right now, so we will see how steadfast they remain as their game grows in popularity. Money is so easy to get in Warhammer right now, and other than buying a mount, I don’t see the demand for gold to be high enough to justify paying for it. I hope fellow WAR players will realize this and make it unprofitable for them to spam us in game.

One final note, a part of Mark Jacobs blog did jump out at me and raise an eyebrow that makes me question some of the other devs out there…

“I’ve been offered “a piece of the action” both personally and corporately in the past if I will either turn a blind eye or help them in their actions. This would have netted me and/or Mythic a very, very tidy sum, far more than we would see from box sales. My answer was and always will remain the same:

Go to hell.”

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

Rant: Server Queue

The release of Warhammer Online has brought us something we haven’t seen in a very long time besides good PvP, and that is the horror of server queues. I was lucky enough to pick probably the highest pop server for my guild to play on, but also unlucky enough to be faced with some of most serious queues of all of the servers. Now given at this point, we are only about 1 week into the games servers being brought live, but this seems to have become a hot button issue for many people finding themselves on crowded servers.

The downsides of queues are obvious and can be very annoying. All you have to do is read your forums of choice to hear the whining of people who are stale about this issue. People coming home from work and having to wait upwards of 30 minutes or longer to be able to log in. We have even had some guild members report that the queue was so long that they weren’t even allowed to join it! They then have to spam the join button in hopes of getting a spot in the back of the line. Now imagine going through all of this to get in the game, and then have a crash to desktop sending your ass right to the back of the line again.

Now that being said, the existence of queues obviously mean the game has sold very well. There are rumors swirling of over 1 million boxes sold right out of the gate, something that not even World of Warcraft to lay claim to. Also the queues may be a foreshadowing of the success this game may come to reap. We haven’t seen this sort of demand for an MMO since World of Warcraft was released years ago, which we all know has had subscription numbers soar over the 10 million mark over the course of its lifetime. I am sure the people over at Funcom are envious of this, the one problem their game does not have. At least if Mythic loses 50% of their subscribers like its competition it will still be on good shape.

As a guild leader, I intentionally wanted to pick a server with a high population because I have experienced what it is like to play an MMO on underpopulated servers in a variety of games. There is nothing worse then playing an MMO, especially one that revolves around PvP, and finding yourself having to go out of your way to find a fight.

Warhammer Online seems to have a lot of emphasis on the scenarios for the time being, hopefully this will change once people level up. The good thing about the high population is that there is almost always a scenario going on. There are reports that on some of the lower pop servers that the scenarios are taking longer to start up, even worse if you are playing Destruction. I can tell you as an Order player I often times find the scenarios popping up too frequently, not giving me enough time to finish my quest.

Mythic also seems to be aware of the problem and understands that nobody wants to have to wait to play. They have come up with what I think is one of the most interesting ideas to try to persuade people to try another server. Shortly after the population problem on certain servers became evident, they copied all of the characters from those populated servers to specific underpopulated servers. In past MMOs, we often would have to wait ages for devs to open up a character transfer option. When the time finally did come, players would have to go through a transfer process that quite honestly is a pain in the ass. Mythic’s solution seems enticing because they are telling you that if you want to switch your character is already on this other server ready to go.

One problem still remains in the fight against queues. On my server which still have queues, they have already done the cloning option for transfers, and they have also announced that my server is set to the maximum the hardware will allow. So where does Mythic go from here? The hardware is maxed and the transfer option has already been used.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am more than willing to tough it out. I expected this, and to me it is a price worth paying to get to play on the server I am on. My entire guild is in it for the long haul, there is nowhere else we would rather be. I know for a fact a lot of the other guilds on my server have adopted the same policy as well.

It makes me wonder if we are all playing a giant game of chicken against each other as players to see who has the stomach to ride this thing out. Players who are not attached to large guilds may have to really start evaluating their server decisions on whether or not it is worth the wait to play. Perhaps in the end everyone is hoping Mythic will come up with some way to upgrade the hardware to allow more players. It’s been a hell of a week Mythic, hopefully something will happen to help alleviate the situation, or maybe we will keep playing the waiting game. Only time will tell.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Rant: Potential

How many times have you seen a forum post or an article comparing MMO vs MMO.  If you have been around this genre for any length of time you have no doubt seen it time and time again.  One of the most common arguments used to try to justify the failings of an MMO debacle is the argument of potential, which I mentioned in my very first article about Unfinished MMOs.

I wanted to take some time and finally try to put this word to rest once and for all when it comes to this genre.   Potential is defined as the following by dictionary.com:

1) possible, as opposed to actual
2) capable of being or becoming
3) a latent excellence or ability that may or may not be developed

All of these definitions have one commonality, a separation from what could be compared to the reality. This is key to countering the potential argument that desperate fanbois will cling to like a life-preserver on a sinking ship.   Am I the only one to notice that when the word potential shows up next to an MMO, that the MMO in question always turns into a debacle?   Look at some of the biggest disasters in the industry and think about it.

Asheron’s Call 2 was the sequel to one of the most innovative games, yet Turbine practically threw away everything from Asheron’s Call 1 except the names on the world.   Dark and Light had potential to change the way we look at games, and that it did as the accusations of unethical business practices became rampant.   Brad McQuaid “vision” and “next-gen” MMO baby Vanguard culminated with its developers being taken into the parking lot and fired just in time for SoE to come in and rummage through the debris.   Funcom will forever be known to many as Failcom (go to www.failcom.com for a laugh) after giving us a game with the best graphics and music, but a side order of mismanagement, poor customer service, Exploits, and Undocumented Patch Notes.

3 Facts about the Fiction

1) Potential swings both ways.  If things have the potential to get better, they also have potential to be a debacle.   The history of this genre has shown us that games will try to justify their subscription to a game on the chance it could get better, when more often then not the potential they cling to favors the chance it will yield copious amounts of fail.

2) Potential comes with a cost.  Most of these games require you to pay money every month to play.  How much are you willing to pay to see the game get where it could be, or should have been at release?  Let’s face the facts here folks, potential is a mythical promised land that you hear is out there but nobody has ever found.  It is not a valid argument or a legitimate justification for paying some assclown devs for a hot steaming pile of shit.  It is no more real than the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, Brad McQuaids “vision”, or Funcom’s state of the game letters from the director.

3) Potential also comes with an expiration date.  Look at some of few exceptions where a game actually did pull its act together.  Anarchy Online was so bad when it came out, that the review should have been posted on ratemypoo.com (do not go to!).  Today it remains one of the complex MMO’s ever created, but after hitting the expiration date.  The expiration date is when people are tired of paying for hope, and if that hope ever does come, there aren’t enough people left playing to matter.  We see the same thing now with Age of Conan.  At a certain point, any headway made will be meaningless when players find themselves standing in empty servers, and with MMO’s on the horizon that actually have what is advertised, it may be very soon.

We need to stop using potential as an argument. It is the first nail in a failing game’s coffin, and something a fanboi clings to like a life-preserver to try to justify the belly full of bullshit they willingly swallowed. We as subscribers need to stop paying for what simply isn’t there. When we stop paying for hope, and start paying with reality, they will be forced to deliver what they promised or fail.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Review: Warhammer Preview Weekend

For this entry I am going to try something new and take a break from ranting about the usual MMO debacles. Instead, I am going to give my impressions of the Warhammer Preview Weekend from the perspective of an MMO veteran, guild leader, and a gamer coming off the of the AoC disaster.

As a guild leader, I and my members were recently burned badly by the Funcom bullshit.  I approach Warhammer Online with heavy scrutiny while trying to recover from the burns Funcom gave me and my members.

Character creation is nothing to write home about honestly.   I found it to be quite lackluster, and I could see where this could give people a negative first impression.   I wasn’t thrilled about my option, but like most MMO’s, my armor covered me up after a few levels and it became a non-issue to me at least.   I guess it could be justified that a lack of options helps performance in large scale PvP, I am not going to speculate to the validity of this theory, but after AoC’s performance I could see it having merit.

The user interface is probably one of most glaring similarities to World of Warcraft that will catch your eye.  It literally shares an almost identical positioning and style to WoW, which could be viewed as a positive if you liked this interface.  The good news is the user interface is fairly customizable, and Mythic has left the door open to 3rd party UI mods which will surely be in abundance.

As a guild leader, I am extremely thrilled to see a real Guild Interface akin to that of Everquest 2.  Guild Functionality has always been important to me, and Age of Conan’s left a lot to be desired.  The Warhammer Guild UI offers multiple tabs showing roster that is sortable, and gives me the ability to make notes next to each name to labels alts and such.   It also gives me the ability to rename all my ranks, set their permissions, an unlockable calender, a log showing me recent events, and guild battle standard options.  Guilds level up through the members PvPing and new functionality becomes unlocked.

The graphics in this game have been the subject of a lot of debate among the community.  Obviously no one will contest that Age of Conan has far better graphics, but these graphics are a lot better then WoW IMO.   Are they cutting edge?  Not be any means, but they get the job done.   Again I think some will argue that the games graphics will make it accessible to a wider audience, and help performance in RvR.  I do think some people are giving this game a lot more heat than it deserves in this department, once I turned the resolution up, it looked good, and in large scale PvP I ran smooth as a baby’s ass.

Character Customization comes to you in a variety of ways.  While I found the creation process lacking, as you progress through the game will you see that there are some ways for you to tweak your looks and skills to fit your playstyle.  First you will be able to tailor your “Tactics Abilities” to suit your needs.  These are basically passive abilities that you can put into the bottom right of the screen to enhance your character.  They deliberately limit the number you can use at a given time to force you to decide what to best use in a situation.   These can be changed at any time however, and I think you can cycle through layouts of these as easy as you cycle your hotbars depending on your situation.

There are also “Moral Abilities” which remind me of TP moves from FFXI.   The longer you fight and stay alive, the more jacked up your character gets.   He is able to then perform super moves that get stronger as he gets more moral built up.  These can be interchanged again to fit your playstyle, and add another layer of tactics to the combat.

The RvR rewards come in the ways of both gear and points.  The gear is strong enough to make it a viable alternative to gear earned through PvE, and better in some cases.  The points are spent much like talent points or AA points.  If you played DAOC, you are very familiar with their PvP reward system, which is fully functional and in the game unlike a certain rival game which still has yet to give an ETA on their system.

One other aspect of this game in regards to customizing your appearance in the use of armor Dyes.  This was one of the better features of DAOC that I am shocked was never stolen by more recent MMOs.  It gives you the ability to make yourself look a little different and it gives guilds a chance to add uniformity to their members.  Changing your armor colors can be done very easily by visiting a merchant.   A nice dressing room screen comes up where you will be able to see the colors before you buy them.

The PvE aspect of the game is pretty run of the mill from what we have seen in recent MMOs.  The game follows the same lame quest format of collecting X amount of dingleberries, killing Y amount of orcs.  Nothing to write home about honestly.  The game does break Quest mold from recent games by adding public quests.   Doing these will get you rep in that local area, and this rep can be used to claim rewards, which are usually very good if your rep gets maxed.   Luckily, maxing out your rep in a given area does not seem to take very long at all, and the public quests are always fun as long as other people are there.   They can be compared to the Besieged Mode found in FFXI where you are rewarded for your contribution, and acts a nice diversion from the collection quests.  At the end of the day, the PvE is just a means to an end, and that end is the RvR.

The RvR is where this game really shines.  Finally I feel like I am getting the RvR that World of Warcraft promised me but never delivered on.  You can PvP from level 1.  You get exp from PvP, and quests to kill people in PvP.   This helps makes PvP a viable way of leveling if you so chose.  The games does have a battleground type system called Scenarios, which honestly I am not a fan of being an overworld guy myself.   To their credit though, they are well thought out and usually contain some sort of interesting twist instead of the makeshift deathmatches we got in AoC.  I hope Mythic will make world PvP enticing enough to minimize the desire to play in these.  On the flip side, if you play on a server where the population is imbalanced, these do provide a level playing field somewhat.  If you are under leveled, the game gives you a buff to your level to help you remain useful, but a true level 10 is stronger than a buffed level 10 because he has better gear and new spells that a level 5 won’t have.

The castle sieges are very well done.   Finally we have real capturable objectives to fight over, and they are meaningful in the struggle to push your enemy back to the city gates.   Siege weapons are easy to get and funner to use.  Giant cannons that put you in an FPS view with a crosshair to bark fire on the oceans of enemies inside the castle or outside.  Rocks can be seen flying through the air from catapults, and it really adds a wildcard to the battle as well as making things a bit more chaotic in a good way.  It also helps give melee something to do in situations where enemies are out of reach.  After playing these sieges, I have no desire to go into the scenarios, and hopefully the population who plays will see it the same way.

Most of the PvP is group on group.  Do not expect to be some WoW superhero 1 shotting people like a God.  Combat in this game takes a bit longer, and as such I think a bit more skill.   If I wanted to 1 shot everyone I would stick with Call of Duty 4.  You feel like you are a unit in an RTS game, no one person is so superpowerful.   This makes it a very team oriented game, and hopefully the Community will be good.  Some have complained about the combat speed and a global cool down, but honestly it never occurred to me until I started reading whining on the forums.  The combat to me felt interesting, tactical, and I was not spamming the same ability over and over like other games.

In conclusion, the game is fun even though it lacks major Innovation.   First and foremost I think that fun is why we play.  The game delivers on its promises.  Mark Jacobs at Mythic has been honest about talking about flaws and problems with the game and I appreciate his straight talk.   It upset a lot of us with AoC that they were in denial about the game’s missing features and short comings.

This game will live and die by the RvR and the endgame.  The RvR looks amazing, the endgame we won’t know until we get there.  If it is anything like DAOC, then hopefully we will have a good RvR MMO that will last us a long time, made by a company that seems to be honest and competent.  I am hoping this game will help heal the burns Funcom gave me, my guild, and so many others like me.  Only time will tell.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

inqguild.dkpsystem.com