Slash and Burn

Coming off the news that Funcom is consolidating its Age of Conan servers from 40 some down to 18, I pondered the status of the few people I personally know who still play a MMO. Two friends strike me in particular, a (now) married couple whom I met back when I played Everquest II. Around the time I quit EQII, they did too. Whilst I wandered back to World of Warcraft, they cranked up the then recently released Lord of the Rings Online. Some months later, I read of their heroic antics on the old EQII guild board and got inspired to try the game. At that time, both had toons in the low 40s, some ten levels shy of the cap. I ran with them and their tiny guild for a couple of weeks, but it turned out their interest was waning just as mine waxed. One day I noticed neither had logged in for a days. Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. They never did return.

I kept following their exploits though. They continued posting on the same forum board, this time under the then newly released MMO Tabulas Rosa. They chewed through that Sci-Fi game pretty quickly, moving on to Pirates of the Burning Sea. And then Age of Conan. And then Warhammer. They threw in some WoW somewhere in the middle of that mix, I couldn't honestly tell you when. Or how. And with each new MMO, they created a matching guild or clan.

I'm not sure what my point is here. I'm not criticising them for playing multiple MMOs because I do the same thing. The difference, I guess, is I don't continually form and reform guilds. Guild management, everything from formation to maintenance, smacks too closely to that of a real world job. It puzzles me to no end that the couple never seems weary of the chore.

Scratch that.

They do weary of it, but then turn around and start the whole process anew with a brand new shiny MMO. I'm guessing they crave character creation and early leveling over end-game content; they have a blast at early to mid levels, but then grow jaded with the game (or MMO gameplay in general) toward the cap. Which is fine in and of itself. It's perfectly natural, even healthy, to play a variety of games. But constantly hammering together guilds with each flavor of the month MMO? That's not so good.

As often as they've created and abandoned guilds, I guess my advice to couple would be to continue trying the latest and greatest of the MMO genre, but forgo founding their own guilds and instead join something already established. There are plenty of casual guilds across all MMOs and most don't mind adding anonymous folk to their ranks. A fan of early to midland MMO content could play to their heart's content and then walk away when the experience sours, all without one single drop of sweat devoted to guild creation. It could be they get satisfaction from creating and running guilds, but I'll bet my highest level WoW toon that their membership likely tires of their inevitable abandonment.

Which makes MMOs some of the strangest, most frustrating social experiments of the last decade. I'd advise a budding sociologist biding to make a name for themselves to tackle this topic; I think it's ripe with critical analysis.

10 Day Free Trial of Wrath of the Lich King

Watching X-Play the other day, I observed scrolling across their news ticker that Blizzard was offering a free 10 day trial to Wrath of the Lich King. Up till now, I haven't been motivated to buy and play the new expansion. But I am curious enough to try it for free.

After I downloaded all the necessary files and updates (which went flawlessly, by the way), I immediately logged in my mage, headed for Undercity, and took the zeppelin to Northrend. I grabbed some quests and completed them and then . . . got bored, logged out, and played Lord of the Rings Online.

The next day, I spurned Scepter my mage and rolled a death knight, the new hero class. I played all through the death knight story, right up to the last quest that sends you to Orgrimmar to throw yourself on Thrall's mercies. As you walk through Orgrimmar (you can't ride because you've been mysteriously silenced), the denizens of the city throw rotten fruit, spit, and shout out insults until you finally reach Thrall. The orc leader sympathizes with you, however, and commands the Horde to accept you into their fold.

All that was a lot of fun, but when I then made my way to Hellfire Peninsula, my interest faltered again. Not to mention that the death knight absolutely chews through mobs. I can see the nerf bat coming down on this class hard from a mile away. My mage can't kill stuff as fast as my dk can, and the latter is clad in plate and can heal himself!

I've got seven more days to play for free. I'll decide after break if I want to actually buy the game. It seems doubtful though. For every hour I play of WoW, I quit and play two of LotRO. We'll see though.

Requiem Moves in on Naxx

I’ve been monitoring my old guild’s website, but the members of Requiem haven’t been documenting their experience with Wrath of the Lich King. Could it be they’re too busy playing to wax poetic about their adventures? Hmmm? I could be wrong, but I think most of them view the leveling process a necessary inconvenience to their real goal, hard core raiding. Already a smattering of members has hit 80 and I know the guild is preparing for a 10 woman Naxx run this week.

Of course, WotLK now offers 10 and 25 woman versions of all its new dungeons. I surmise that Requiem’s strategy is to run the 10 womans to learn an instance’s boss strategies, and then later step up to the 25 to farm out the best loot. I’m not sure if strategies are the same for identical 10 and 25 woman dungeons. It could be the strategy remains the same, with boss statistics spiking to account for the fifteen extra people. It wouldn’t surprise me if Blizzard did design two different strategies for the identical dungeons, if only to prevent guilds from learning the ropes on the 10 woman and then using that experience to decimate the 25 version.

Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing how the run goes.

No, My MMO Is the Best!

I enjoyed a flawless install last night and logged in with only a minor hiccup. Turbine shut down all its servers to install a hot fix late in the afternoon. But the game was only down for less than an hour and I got to play nearly the entire evening.

Lukenbach is still only level 47. As such, I stuck to the Angumar zone. Which wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as my guild reported throughout the evening the opening MoM zone completely clogged with rapid hordes of level 50 players, all competing for the same mobs. I’ve experienced that before in WoW, particularly with Burning Crusade and patch 2.4. It’s negative fun to fight with five other players for a spawning goblin, so I’ll continue chipping away at level 50 before I venture forth in the new content.

With so many returning kin in chat, I read a multitude of conversations where chirping crickets formally nested. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the talk revolved around WoW bashing. Now, I’m not WoW’s biggest fan, as evidenced by the fact that I don’t play it anymore. But my opinion of WoW isn’t a zero sum game. I can play another competing MMO without loathing WoW. It’s true that Lord of the Rings Online does some things better than World of Warcraft. The reverse is also obviously true. Who plays what has more to do with personal preference than empirical merits of either game. My fondness for LotRO stems largely from the aesthetic: plain and simple, I think it looks and plays better than WoW. Does that make WoW the devil? Of course not. Plenty of people have tried a competing MMO like LotRO and gone straight back to playing WoW. They obviously think the latter looks and plays better. Who’s right?

Let’s all gather in a circle, hold hands, and agree that everyone is.

PS: WoW is the suxxors.

WoW's Silvermoon Server

I've been monitoring Requiem's (my old raiding guild) message boards to get some firsthand accounting on how the new expansion is going. Based on the few postings I've read, it would seem not well. Guildees are reporting queues that exceed one thousand! Another guildee reported that his WotLK DVD didn't even work. After multiple install attempts, he had to download the game from another source.

I haven't read any feedback regarding actual gameplay yet.

French Speciman Hits WotLK 80 Cap

He did it in just 27 hours which is likely 27.5 hours after the game was released.

You can read about it here.

Wrath of the Lich King Out Today

Wrath of the Lich King comes out today and I expect sales to be brisk. World of Warcraft continues to fend off all comers as Warhammer Online and Age of Conan both failed to dethrone the king. Actually, I don’t think either one even came close. Still, I hear rumblings that Blizzard’s projected subscriber estimate of 11 million is a paper tiger. I’d love for some industry transparency regarding monthly subscriber totals to definitively shine light on MMOs customer base. WoW is rumored to be supreme, but without actual numbers, nobody really knows for certain.

It’s interesting how much market share WoW holds. Empirically, it does the best job balancing PvE, PvP, and raiding. No other game on the market polishes each of those MMO aspects as well. And I say this as someone that hasn’t played WoW in months and doesn’t plan on picking up the expansion today or anytime soon. Despite the fact that I don’t play it, I recognize Blizzard’s quality control and the failings of the other MMOs.

I have friends who took a break from WoW, but will likely fire their subscriptions back up for WotLK. I know Requiem, my former raiding guild, has been recruiting these last weeks in anticipation of the new raiding opportunities. I’ll be interested to hear what they think of the new 10 man versus 25 man raiding instances. Requiem is a hardcore raiding guild, so I expect that they’ll entirely avoid the 10 man stuff in favor of the 25 man’s more intensive loot tables.

As for me, I’m content with Lord of the Rings Online. I haven’t played it much these last few weeks; Fallout 3 has completely dominated my gaming time. But LotRO also has an expansion coming out, Mines of Moria. It’s out next Tuesday, November 18 and offers a slew of new and interesting content, including legendary weapons. Lukenbach is still well short of the game’s current level cap of 50. I plan on taking my time, however, focusing on leveling Lukenbach to the new cap of 60 and master artisan all his trade skills. I have no short or long terms plans to raid in LotRO. For now, the journey to the cap provides plenty of gaming goodness.

Legendary Items and Character Differentiation

It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited about an MMO. I’ll never forget my stress-test play of World of Warcraft, the thrill of roaming Azeroth’s lowbie zones, killing and leveling and looting to my gamer’s content. Lord of the Rings Online has rekindled that same feeling and the game’s upcoming expansion, Mines of Moria, has me looking forward to many more hours of MMO play.

Mines of Moria includes two new classes, a level cap raise to 60, and brand new content. The game’s most recent developers’ diaries talked about another innovative feature of the expansion, legendary items. The idea behind legendary items are weapons that grow much like a character. They earn experience from killing mobs, gains levels, and can interchange traits that grant their user unique skills, powers, and buffs.

If it works, legendary items might be the most creative idea to come out of an MMO since World of Warcraft remade the entire genre four years ago. Indeed, WoW seems to be following LotRO’s lead in a few areas, most notably WoW’s new feature, achievements and character titles. The deed system in LotRO actually props up a character’s traits, which in turns control how a toon is specced and individually tailors how which statistics are buffed and modified. The same system grants a slew of titles as well. It’s an elegant approach to making a toon unique. Most of all, it’s a lot of fun.

I don’t foresee WoW drastically changing how its characters earn skill tree points. When I last played, a toon earned their first point at level 10 and then continued receiving a point up until the level cap. You didn’t do anything other than level to earn these points. They arrived automatically, to be spent immediately. WoW’s primary focus is on character specc optimization and balance, both between a class’s three skill tress and the classes themselves. I think LotRO does too, I suppose, but it’s not so deliberate and much more forgiving.

In WoW, you CAN pick the wrong specc. You’ll know when you join a 10 or 25 woman instance and fellow players observe your play. If you’re specced wrong in a PUG, you’ll be called a retard. Or worse. If you’re specced wrong in a guild, especially one that raids, you’ll be told to respecc. Not in the general sense, like, “Your specc sucks, go change it,” but rather “Your specc sucks, change it to THIS.” Every point will be dictated to you. There won’t be any debate about an alternative. If you don’t change a “retarded” specc, you risk a boot from the guild.

Which makes me wonder why Blizzard includes skill tree abilities that go one of two ways, widely used to almost exclusively ignored. To be sure, there’s a difference in game play between PvE, PvP, raiding. And in most instances, WoW’s skill trees address those differences. Still, I found it confining to specc my shadow priest according to the universally agreed upon raid template specc. The most commonly accepted raid specc for a shadow priest varied by at most a point or two. There was really only one way to specc my toon. There was really only one way to play her. In retrospect, that contributed greatly to my waning interest in raiding. Not only did all raid boss fights blur together into a vague conglomerate of dancing and jiving, starting and stopping, and full out fighting, but the way I played my priest never varied. I followed the same dot clock rotation every time, yet another aspect of the class that had been tested and retested and optimized. With the exception of dynamic movement, raiding boiled down to pushing the same button sequence over and over and over again till my eyes bled. If you brought in that bird that bobs up and down from water displacement, it could likely peck out my dot rotation just as well as I did.

I guess what I’m complaining about here is min/maxing. What I really want from companies like Blizzard and Turbine is a skill tree system that is deep and balanced enough to allow multiple permutations, all equally effective, rather than the current system which involves some very smart people tracking down THE ONE class specc that nearly everyone reverts to using. I think it makes for more interesting game play to have multiple interpretations of a class role. I see Turbine expanding on that with the introduction of their legendary item system. I see Blizzard holding the status quo. I think the most critically acclaimed MMO (note, not most popular), will be the one that grants varied approaches to class play that can easily defended in multiple arenas, everywhere from PvE to raiding.

I’m looking forward to seeing of Turbine’s legendary item system moves closer to that.

Blizzard Sues Pants Off WoWGlider

The design company behind World of Warcraft won $6 million from the lawsuit, money the company desperately needs, cash strapped as they are.

Still, it's a worthy suit. Hackers and gold farmers should burn in a section of hell all to themselves. Preferably a hell without broadband access. Or Mountain Dew. No Funyons either.

I'm scaring myself.

Wrath of the Lich King, Nov. 4th

X-Play reported the other day that Wrath of the Lich King is due out November 4th. Inexplicably, they also reported that the game will be sold at 7-11s. Yes, the convenience store. No word if the release is exclusive to the convenience store or supplementary. I would guess the later since some area of the country don't have 7-11s.

But why 7-11s? It seems completely random. My only guess is that some market genius pictured all those fan boys standing in line, waiting to buy the expansion. Bored, hungry, thirsty fan boys standing in line, waiting to buy the expansion. If that is the theory behind 7-11 sales, I want very much to their sales figures the day of the release.

"Yeah, pump number four. A Snickers. Gimme a bag of Funyons. Oh, and a copy of Wrath of the Lich King."

That's weird.

WoW Killer Made in China?

I'm beginning to think that the MMO that ultimately kills WoW won't be one that sells at retail and charges a monthly fee. Take a look at Perfect World. It's a MMO developed in China that was originally slated for a retail/subscription model, but has since morphed into free-to-play. I'm not saying Perfect World is better a better game than WoW, only that a game like it will likely prove the only real method for breaking Blizzard's hegemonic control of the market. I don't completely understand the economics behind free-to-play but if such a model could sustain a quality MMO, Blizzard could be pressured to follow a similar pricing structure, or at the very least, lower their current monthly subscription charges.

All this could shake out within the next year or two. MMOs like Perfect World will either be successful or they won't. If they're not, I don't see anything retail threatening WoW. Maybe Bioware's KotOR MMO. Now there's a MMO I'd like to see as free-to-play. There's probably as much chance of that happening as there is of me ever playing WoW again. But stranger things have happened.

Like John McCain announcing Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate.

Wrath of the Lich King Dungeon Footage

Some dudes at Gamespot have some video of them plumming the depths of WotLK's darkest dungeons.

Haircuts for Horde?

1UP reports that World of Warcraft is getting a pre-Wrath of the Lich King patch, which will include the inscription profession and barbershops.

Which is good because there are a lot of fugly toons out there. I'm not sure a haircut can help them, but it certainly can't hurt.

Some MMO Tidbits

The Warhammer MMO comes out in the middle of September. I know next to nothing about it, but the little of the game play video I've seen does little to distinguish itself from the well-represented fantasy MMO crowd. I don't see this game surpassing Age of Conan sales; AoC may not have been a revolution in MMO play, but it did offer some interesting twists, limb and head lopping prime among them. But I haven't heard anything remotely innovative coming from Warhammer. In fact, I recently read a report that the developers had to scale back the breadth of the content, including removing entire cities.

Xplay reported Blizzard is going a step further in getting current players to recruit their friends. In addition to the standard thirty free days of play for getting a friend to sign up, World of Warcraft also offers players the option to give a friend a free level. In addition, newly recruited friends earn three times the xp when grouped with their recruiter. Those are some interesting carrots that Blizzard is dangling. I'll be interested to see to what other lengths they'll go to retain their current subscriber base.

Preview of Beta Wrath of Lich King

A 1up minion got his mitts on the beta of Wrath of the Lich King. He spends a lot of time talking about the Death Knight class. Beware of spoilers.

WoW 60-70 Leveling Hastened in Upcoming Expansion

A Blizzard representative confirmed that leveling between 60 and 70 will be sped up in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

That's good news for the 10 million deathknights about to be unleashed on WoW servers throughout the world when the expansion goes live. I can't imagine there's even one person left to roll a level one toon, so the news is moot for everyone else.

Lrn2Vacuum Nub

The Penny Arcade cartoon today applies to Wifezilla in spades. She understands WoW lingo, especially the raiding terms I've used to describe a particular epic encounter. Via smokey black tendrils, the vocabulary has seeped into her vocabulary insidiously, making her a more well-rounded person from my perspective.

Ask her, and she'll tell you she hates herself for it.

Requiem Downs Illidan

I've been peeing my pants to be able to type that heading. The guild downed him nearly two weeks ago and Havak has performed his usual magic in capturing the historical moment.

I long ago stepped down from raiding, so I did not attend this milestone. Having raided, I know the work and organization that went into finally defeating Illidan and so I tip my hat to the good people that make up Requiem.

Conquer!

Now Taste Cold Vinyl Foul Beast!

From GameSpot, a couple of grad students managed to hack a Wii Fit board to control the in-game movements of a World of Warcraft character.

Combine this with the peripherals that come with Rock Band or Guitar Hero and I can't help but wonder if one day we'll all be wielding plastic sword and shield to play our favorite MMO.

The Post-WoW Era?

Silvermoon raiding guilds have been dropping like flies lately.

Last week, the guild leader for Manifest Destiny announced he and some key members were quitting WoW. Another MD member posted a few days later that he and some others were going to try and keep the raiding guild alive, but certainly their raiding potential is in dire straits. A few days later, Chaos and Mayhem also indicated a halt to end-game raiding in WoW. Just this past weekend, I read that Apocalyptic is also done.

A forum poster quipped that it would be easier to create a thread of raiding guilds that weren’t quitting.

So what’s going on here?

Well, Age of Nanoc is certainly a factor. In nearly all the recent guild-disband announcements, a poster responded with “See ya in Age of Nanoc!” MMOs have come and gone and few if any have put a dent in WoW’s hegemonic control of the market. That may very well end with the official release of AoC. I say “may” because AoC is largely untested. I have no idea if it will have the casual and raiding appeal that is unique to WoW. It’s very easy to get all excited about the latest, greatest MMO. It’s quite another for that game to prove itself as solid a game model as WoW.

However, I do think that many, many people are burnt out on WoW raiding. Eager for a fresh start and a new experience, I can foresee people shelving their uber-WoW raiding toon (at least temporarily) to try a novel spin on the MMO concept. Will Age of Nanoc prove as appealing at WoW? It’s just too early to tell, but I think a lot of people are going to check it out and see for themselves.

I myself have to admit that I am beginning to resent WoW a little bit. The game’s demands on a guild member’s time are immense. Case in point: Requiem raids four nights a week. Some sessions last a short time, maybe three hours, while others last five plus. For the sake of argument, let’s say the average Requiem raiding night lasts four hours. Multiply that by four nights and that’s sixteen hours a week.

Compared to a forty-hour work week, that’s nearly a part-time job.

I used to raid three nights a week a few months back. To stave off burn-out, I trimmed it back to two. Which is manageable. And yet, killing the same bosses over and over again, it takes its toll. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting in front of a slot machine and the instant a boss goes down, I’m pulling the lever and waiting for the cherries to line up. End-game raiding has for me, to a large extent, condensed itself down to learning a movement and attack pattern for each boss and executing that pattern week after week, month after month for a chance to win gear that will . . . allow you to repeat this same pattern with new and more difficult bosses. I’m not experiencing new content as much as gambling at each boss’s loot table.

And that’s where I start to resent WoW. Grand Theft Auto IV came out last week to much popular and critical fanfare. The hype that surrounds that game gives me pause: wouldn’t it be fun to run around an urban setting pretending to be a criminal instead of killing Naj’entus for the fifteenth time? I don’t even have a console to play GTA IV, but hearing and reading about it sparks my most base enthusiasm for gaming. It hearkens me back to the days when a new game would come out and I would rush to the mall after work to pick it up and then spend frantic days playing the hell out of it. It’s been too long, too infrequent since I’ve felt that way about a game.

And that’s largely because of WoW. Mass Effect is coming out for the PC at the end of this month. By most accounts, it’s a great game. Will I buy it? Probably not. It would be a waste of money. It would sit on my desk gathering dust because of the time WoW raiding demands.

Which kind of depresses me as a gamer.

I think the release of AoC may be perfectly timed with a general apathy for WoW. If the game turns out to be good, with a nice balance between casual gaming and raiding, it could very well shift some serious market share from WoW. At the very least, it’s going to make people rethink why they raid in WoW: what am I actually accomplishing? What do I contribute? What do I get out of it? Is this new content, a new experience? Or am I just spinning a giant treadmill, full of artificial blocks and time sinks to keep me subscribed and playing?

It could be I’m being unfair of WoW and I’m just in the middle of one of my many low ebbs with the game. Maybe I shouldn’t blame WoW for a game model that most other MMOs share, including AoC in all likelihood. I probably shouldn’t blame WoW for taking my time away from other games I could be playing because I am after all an adult and more than capable of making decisions for myself that might lead me to more enjoyable gaming experiences.

I shouldn’t blame WoW, but I am beginning to. And if there are more like me, we could very well be at the beginning of the post-WoW era.