Messing my brain in free to play

Human brain craves for novelty. It thrives on new things, learning new skills, seeing new things. This is why a new MMO is so interesting and this is also why there is a honeymoon after the launch before you can really say anything about the actual game.

But what comes of the brain which is succumbed to repetition and same mechanics for a prolonged period of time? Lazy and confined, like an animal in a zoo, which has been confined to a too small cage. If set free, it will continue the compulsive behavior without even understanding that the cage has been removed.

I've been going through MMOs which have turned from subscription based to free to play, and I can say that I'm pretty much full of the whole genre. I had confined my brain in WoW for too long to even recognize the lack of freedom the game is built with. The jump to EVE was obviously too big a paradigm change, because the freedom and solitude was too much to endure.

Now as I have grown both as gamer, MMO player and human being, I have viewed the games I have tried from quite a different perspective than earlier. Over the last few weeks I have meddled with Rift (ok, I have a sub in there), City of Heroes, Champions Online, Guild Wars and Fallen Earth, last of which came to me as a surprise that it had went F2P.

And boy are they different and strange learning experiences!

First of all, I have learned that I'm more into eye candy than I wanted to believe. City of Heroes, despite the upgrades to the starting story and all, is clunky and the graphics are appalling to me. It underlines the problem I have had with Lotro for example by having the character graphics at different depth or shade than the surrounding area. I would have expected that this 'graphic novel' style would have suited to a superhero game, but it just makes the character look like a sticky note on a report: an added feature. This is where WoW still excels the rest of the AAA games: the graphics are seamlessly in the same style and depth and belong together.

Champions was the next and change from CoH to Champions was like reinventing the superhero MMO! The graphics work like in a cartoon, the over exaggerated hues just bring out the graphic novel style stories and the starter zone flows like a cartoon: from one scene to another. But there is something lacking in the heart of the game, which comes apparent later on. Something I just cannot put my finger on, but it's not calling me to go any further.

Including GW, none of these have even tried to change the MMO in any particular way. Champions has been closest with some pretty nifty ways it handles the skill use and provides just enough choice in the character development to make the character feel own without overwhelming the player. A huge plus is also the fact that I have played Hero Games' pen and paper superhero game, so the basic concepts are very familiar to me... :D

Enter Fallen Earth.

I could rant, but the honeymoon has only begun. I can see some shortcomings in the system, but I regret that this game was not developed by a daring big studio. But then again, it would have never been this rough gem it is. The mere concept of shooter kind of MMO pushed me away when the game launched, where as it should have been the point to really go and try it. The basic "Aftermath"-type postapocalyptic MMO should have been one of the genres I should have tried right away (been a sucker for this genre since the first try of Gamma World way back when).

The game is in the right direction to be honest. Spinks just asked about how we are coping with the coming winter in MMOs and I responded that the MMOs have to evolve for the new spring to come. Fallen Earth has done that in a way I can see evolving the genre. It has a quest driven storyline in it. It has sandbox freedom which enables you to develop your character in a meaningful way even by crafting (guess who is progressing this way... ) and it has graphics which are not too clunky. And the economy, fully player driven, so almost everything above basic materials and guides have to be manufactured by someone.

What strikes me the most is the discussion and questions in the [Help] channel. It really shows how far we have gone from the adventure games of old where you really had to think and do and explore to even get along. These players wouldn't stand a chance playing any of the first four Ultima series' games! And still Fallen Earth is being gentle with players by showing resource nodes, merchants, enemies and all in the minimap and having the NPC telling you whatever you need to know to survive.

The best part of FE for me is the fact that I can pop in for a few minutes to start crafting, do some gathering or scavenging and log off, knowing that everything I just did progresses my character in a meaningful way. And while logging off in a town you can be sure that you have basic resources near by, you can get into the 'chores' right away.

Like I said, I'm still in the blissful honeymoon stage with the game, but my brain is really enjoying the novelty, the new thinking it has to come up with and the possibilities this game might hold in the future.

But today it's Three Dunces/Stooges again in WoW. I can live with that.

If not taking into account SWTOR and GW2, what game is satisfying your brain's craving for novelty?

Fool me around, dear

Level cap killed my fun in WoW. Several times over, especially the most recent 'grind rep till you really drop dead and quit' Firelands stunt.

Like I've said time and again, I like levelling up. I like the stories, sometimes even the feeling of being the hero of the day. But when I hit the cap, I really feel that this was it: the stories are told, there is nothing more to go for - especially storywise.

Raiding is no story. Raiding is a passtime for those who play the MMO to win. It's the cornerstone of competitive edge in the genre. Forget the RPG part of MMO's alltogether, as that has been forgotten way back when.

I had a lengthy post written in my head about all this, but the frustration got the better of it. I had clever statements in the lines of comparing the new MMO character's growth - or evolution - to the full blown hero and how that doesn't come anywhere near the concept of Universal Hero which Joseph Conrad coined and George Lucas (among others) later utilized succesfully. There is no such evolution of character in MMO's because everyone is as much a hero as the next player character!

I had also clever reasoning why raiding per se is outdated and faulty design, as it came to be from game mechanics present in Everquest. You had this huge, next-to-unbeatable monster for which you needed really huge amounts of people to beat. The mechanics stated that no single character could have ever fallen those monsters. It was part of the game. Then came the instanced dungeons and raids and it was taken as a norm that the 'final' monsters reside in instanced 'dungeons' with their ever breeding minions.

And the game was over for the heroic evolution on the player character.

Why? Because everything started to evolve around the gear required by game design to fell the beast. No amount of character development was needed, only hitting the cap and gearing up.

Take the quest system to it and you can easily see the current state of levelling: the speediest method wins by far. In Rift, which I currently play most, you get the 'veteran reward potion' which grants you 100% more experience for 2 hours. Clever way to give the players the choice either to level up fast or to take the scenic route. In WoW the 1-60 content has been watered down so much that when you earlier had trouble with world elites of your own level, you can now take down one 2-3 levels higher without breaking a sweat. And you level up the questing zones so fast that you cannot even complete the quest chains in one area without the quests in that chain going grey. 

In short, the story of a young farmer's helper growing into a world saving hero is not there. It cannot be unless the structure of the games is either changed or... we just move back to the single player games.

Bring back the world bosses, which are not contained in the instanced containment fields. Different ways to gain recognition, prestige and power.

And please, please... stop calling 'reputation quests' content. I mean, if you can show me one heroic fiction story in which the hero must do simple, menial tasks time and again to gain favour or influence only to be able to purchase that one shiny piece of gear for his next challenge, then I may accept this. Otherwise it's really just the game developers deliberately wasting the players time because they just couldn't come up with any better.

Content should be something that entices you, lures you deeper into the story or game, makes you feel emotions and grants eventually the sense of accomplishment. The best quest chains do that time and again, even if you know them by heart already.

Senseless reputation grind doesn't. Except for the feeling of accomplishment, which is usually described as being a relief.

How many times you have to be fooled before you see the vanity of it all and say that it's enough?

(Discussion in my Google+ )

A lost soul

I recently started a new toon, a dwarven shaman, who is now badly geared and seeking his way in the world. At level 25 he's Enhancement specced with high portion of gear of +Sta and +Int contrary to the current +Agi gearing.

The answer to the Why? part is that this toon is accompanying my son's dwarven warlock and helping him to level up to the group of Three Stooges. Then it will be Three Stooges (or Dunces) and son, for sure!

Now we levelled to the cap of trial, which is 20 (with 10g money cap which annoys my son immensely!) in less than two couple hours sessions. The starter area of dwarves at least till Wetlands is so streamlined that it's impossible to keep up with the exhilarating speed the story proceeds. As it happens, you overlevel the quests way too fast for the questing itself being meaningful except for the storylines present. Doubly so, if you do as we did, went for LFD right at level 15 when it all comes possible.

Only because my son kept dinging earlier than me - and got to 20 around the time I got to 18! - I had to try the warlock way of doing it. So I rolled a troll warlock on another server to see how it goes.

And it goes. Like wham-bang and so on.

Warlock is a killing machine.

But it didn't explain the difference in experience we saw, so the only explanation is professions. You see, my son had mining in his professions, while I had skinning/leathercrafting.

Note to self (and others): if you only want to level up a character in WoW, do pick Herbalism and Mining to go by. You increase the rate of gaining experience right away = shorten the time spent levelling.

By this experiment I learned two things about the game.

First of all, WoW has lost it's soul. The thing that made it special in the beginning. It has lost the questing and adventuring part which made it loved and special, as the quest content is overlevelled by design. This has resulted the fact that the LFD groups are worse and worse, as people are trying to level as fast as possible by killing the mobs in instances as fast as possible and not taking anything else into account. A simple boss with any other action than tank and spank is considered a poor boss, unless it can be downed in few seconds/minute.

The game actually forces the speed levelling on player. If you want to enjoy the quests and their 'challenge' at appropriate level, you have to freeze your experience. That is completely against the idea of level based RPG thinking and thus is out of the question for players. You cannot enjoy the easy mode way the Old World is crammed into your throat, even if you loved the story and quests. It's too darn easy and too darn fast to overlevel.

Secondly, I just like levelling more than doing the same old dailies in the level cap. Even though the quests get over levelled, even though the elites met along the way are too easy at equal levels, even though the greens just keep pouring in from each loot. The quests and the stories are worth it to me.

Beats reading a bad novel any - rainy - day.

But I'm not talking about sunny days anymore.

WoW has lost it's soul of questing in favor of speedy levelling to level cap.
.

One you remember, the other you don't

I've been lately playing on my banker/AH toon, that being resto/balance druid. On and off through the AH blast and all, I somehow got into the healing business and made it the chore of my choice. All in all, I blasted through Northrend by dailies, just a few quest chains to keep things interesting and PUGs.

Of the quest chains I have to say that I'm very, very disappointed by the fact how the Wrathgate episode ends. It's very much the same lackluster anti-climax which is so familiar from the Cataclysm areas final quests. The chains just... end. In Wrathgate the end comes by Alexastra whispering the character to come to her, but then there is nothing. Only a kind of separate text blurb without anything relevant and the worst part is the fact that this happens every time you come close enough to the Wrathgate area, where Alexastra and her consort stay, like keeping guard for the dead.

What a stupid conclusion.

No more raiding into Undercity, no more feeling epic with the faction leader, no more being belittled by the big bad Forsaken.

Also what is evident is the fact that the content has been nerfed otherwise, too. You see, I soloed at about appropriate level some group content which I had hard time to complete as my protection warrior in this druid's restoration spec... with no problem at all!

Anyhow, the title of the post claims that you remember one but not the other. By this I mean that as I was PUGging through the Northrend normal instances, I noticed that I would remember that bad tank from the first time I ran with him, but not the good ones with whom I ran even some instances in a row. And how do I rank a bad tank in levelling instances? How's this: imagine the Oculus start. The deathknight tank runs off to the mobs along the route, running to the farthest one in each group and just pulling this one and hoping that the D&D area would pull the rest. He reaches the final mob guarding the portal to the platform before the rest of the group has been able to finish the leftovers even from the first mob. Oh, yes, he also has this uncanny way of getting enormous amounts of damage in within very short time.

How about this: the same deathknight tank runs through Gundrak in the speedy manner, through mobs without checking even his chat window. There comes a quiet moment and as I have ran out of mana, I announce it in party and general. As I sit down to drink, the tank picks up his pace again and almost, just almost dies before I come to save the day.

As I mention to this tank that he should at least wait for the healer to be around when he starts, the response is mind numbing.

"Why do you slack then?"

At least four runs with this Griseflax (see, I remember the name even) and I still cannot understand the creep.

Sadly, there have been a couple of excellent deathknight tanks along the way, whose names totally elude me. Thank you, dear anonymous tanks, for saving my day and playing the game as it should be played.

As a concentrated group effort, by taking everyone into account and making the best of the group. Rather than being better than the rest.

Thank you good tanks. Sorry I don't remember your names.
.

Time to ride again

If a group of 10 or 25 is a raid, isn't a group of 3 doing the content for 5 a ride?

Anyhow, it's time for the three to do the job of five again, this time all at the cap. The only thing I'm nervous about is not to waste any Justice Points on vanities and to find as good upgrades before the round up as possible. Now where are the easy solutions when you are in a hurry, eh?

.

You really need a kick

Been absent. For several reasons.

Real life infection, meaning that the garden calls for duty as the spring is advancing.
Extended weekends due to national holidays of Easter and 1st of May.
Lack of interest to play.

No, wait. The last one is faulty, as I have been playing. Lack of interest to play at the cap is more appropriate, because I've been playing my druid banker herbalist scribe, and gotten him to level 76. My aim was to get him to lv75 and then level inscription up to the cap, but for some reason I started to work for the Kaluak reputation for the spiffy fishing rod.

Making gold in WoW has never been so easy as it is after capping the Inscription. Really.

All things are somehow connected, and yesterday I read Tobolds post which lead to the Pete Michaud's Achievement Porn post. Accompanied with the Meaningful Work post and there I stopped. To do some meaningful work, that is.

In nutshell, the quote which Tobold referred also hit a spot.

Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.”

But there was more in the essay which struck a chord in my mind. Am I really playing to avoid achieving something in real life? Am I playing to relieve the stress or feeling of not being able to achieve or feel achievement in my real life?

In short, yes. In longer terms, yes, because during the summer my real life activities and hobbies take care of that need. Whether its our dogs running or working in a dog event it's all the same, I'm getting higher kicks from them than from gaming anytime.

Even though the essays pinpointed some issues of my life to me, the message had to be hammered into my head with an extreme blow.

Our first Irish Wolfhound, our beloved Ness (European Champion in Lure-Coursing 2008), was put to sleep later the same day. Spleen tumor which was bleeding caused a total collapse and it was best for him to not extend the suffering.

Had I been enough with him over the six short years? Have I neglected him for the fake achievements I got in the games I play?

Could I have been there more to enjoy his short life?

Sad to say, but the answer to the last question can not be anything else than yes.

It seems to be human to appreciate things only after you lose them permanently.

This doesn't mean I will stop playing games. It seems I will be stuck with WoW, playing less but for the entertainment value with my brothers and spending more time with my family and three dogs who will depart us sooner or later.

It's never too late to take action. It's always too late to regret thing you didn't do when you had the chance.
.
.

Good, old remake

Spent last night with a browser game. Sadly it's done more to the remake than the original. I mean of course the Battlestar: Galactica game, which runs on Unity engine.

And quite honestly, I was impressed in a way. Even though the game is a pretty shallow space shooter kind of game, it works nicely, the story progresses nicely and you can go against overwhelming odds against the other faction and make a difference from the beginning. Though of course it's better to go the quest way to gain as much power as possible, but that didn't hinder me at all.

Went in the starter ship into a full out PvP combat over a solar system. Helped down at least one opposing faction frigate and another smaller ship before my meager starter ship was blown to smithereens.

While the game works nice and the improvements on the ships and skills really matter, what surprised me the most was the fact that after I got shot down I received another similar ship with all the improvements and stuff in the hold intact! If this is the case later on in the game, this game may have all the elements of a successful browser shooter MMO.

Then again... the characters were clunky, I couldn't take the cylon from the original series even though as human you could get the original series helmet, uniform and viper... Crap...

But it was fun couple of hours I was supposed to be working on the latest Gnomore episode, which was just an interlude of Gnomore having a mind of his own. That being the explorer one...


Laters.
.

Never so scared (yawp)

It seems that the nature is doing it's best - and worst - to make sure that my time at the computer, playing games to be more precise, is coming to end. Or at least very restricted. You see, the winter has been very snowy, resulting quite a lot of - now melting - snow. Which has a nice weight to volume ratio as of now, where it earlier was just fluffy lovely thing.

This has caused some nice structural difficulties to out sauna cabin, which has been built at the golden 70's, and has a surprisingly stupid roof construct. You see, the roof is flat. And yes, the drainage pipes are frozen solid. And yes, the water is weighing a ton on a roof where there is also ice tearing through the top material.

In short, it's spring and the roof is leaking. That's going to be my passtime after work from now on...

The games I've played... oh my. Like I reported earlier, I got my first ever love letter hate mail concerned merchant whisper from a 'gem magnate' on the server. The fuzzy tinges passed by right after I had logged in with my spriest and ran through some normals at level cap. Oh, bore. If I score among the best of the dps with less than reasonable gear, then I'm doing it wrong. In just one group out of five I ran I was dumped into the bottom of the roster, but it was redeemed as the rest of the group noticed they had logged into a normal by 'accident' instead of a heroic. My item level was at least 30 points lower than their...

Gnomore has now two sessions of pictorial available for crafting into posts, and I feel I've gotten good winds under him. More to come, for sure

Visited Rift, too, and finished the first part of the World Event. Nothing much to report except that I now remember again how I like the PvP while at the lower part of the level bracket. First you can't even get any damage on the higher ones (despite the 'tuning up') and secondly you are tossed around like a ragdoll. Still I had to run warfronts just for the sake of it. In the first one I got a nice revelation, though. I was wondering why my skills were greyed out on my UI, as I couldn't even get my buffs up. Never the less, I was beating some Guardian scum to dust with the aid of another player when I accidentally pulled up my souls... only to notice that the points had been resetted due to the recent patch!

Note to self: always read the messages which pop on screen after login.

The main attraction (besides Planescape: Torment and Crossfire) was, however, Penumbra: Overture. How on Earth have I been able to dismiss this game?!

More importantly, how on Earth/Telara/Azeroth/Sigil I was introduced to the game by my son!?

In a way, if MMO's are taking up too much time on single session, don't even think about taking up Penumbra or Amnesia from the same company. You either get so scared you don't want to see the games ever again, or you just cannot quit before checking behind the next turn of the tunnel... or the next door... or

oh my god... they found me... THE HAND!!

.

Warm fuzzy feeling...

I got my first ever 'hatemail' in WoW this morning as I was checking my dwindling jewel sales. I posted some gems at around 250g price range, while the competition there was at 550g, and I got a 'concerned' whisper from the owner of that bid, that I'm always undercutting so much and ruin his clever operation.

Let me make this straight right here and now. I have only once undercut forcefully, when this particular 'merchant' had outrageous prices for Reckless Ember Topaz. You could purchase the raw Ember Topazes below 35g at that moment, and the prices were over 200g. So I sold mine at the same price range as ever, bit higher, being 65g. Sold all five in minutes, posted five more and so on.

Now I just posted 6 of the gems in question and I was about to cease the AH game altogether. However, this kind of clever merchant conduct incited something at the back of my head, which I try to get rid of...

I may return and ruin that one market. Given the proper push, there may be a shove coming.

We'll see.
.

Just a short note

Have I told you how much I hate April's Fools?

Now you know.

.

Tale of two princes

After writing the yesterday's post about my son's way of playing and how jaded and serious we gamers in general are, I have been thinking the whole thing over and over again. The comments on that post have been very eye opening in many ways and especially the one Hirvox posted was a kind of a revelation to me.

In a way everything in this train of thought can be condensed into a story I've heard time and again, a story about two princes. The story can be interpreted in many ways and can be thought of depicting various issues in life as well as in gaming.

The Two Princes


Long time ago in a land very, very far away, there was a lovely kingdom. This being a fairy tale, the kingdom naturally had dragons, witches, damsels in distress and beautiful heroes to save them, but they are not important for this tale.


The kingdom had a King, who was loved by the people, and a Queen who was wise and admired, even by his hudband. After years of loving and trying to have a heir, they got lucky and the twin princes were born. Right from the birth it was clear that the princes, though born at the same time, were completely different. One was dark and gloomy, while the other was blond and joyful. Regardless of this difference, the King and the Queen - as well as the whole kingdom - loved the princes very much.


As years rolled by, the difference between the princes became more noticeable. The dark one always saw doom and gloom in everything, and there was nothing which could have cheered him up. On the other hand, the other was all joy and enthusiasm, finding only positive things from all things that happened in his life.


After watching the differences of the princes for six long years the King and the Queen decided to do something about this disparity. They decided to put their plan into action on the seventh birthday of the princes.


The morning rose on the princes' birthday, bright and warm as it always does in the fairy tale kingdoms. The King and the Queen had decided to woke the dark prince first to cheer him up even more, as he would be the first to get his birthday present. 


The prince woke up, and was lead to a shining new door at a new extension of the castle. Looking all sad and desperate, the prince was told that everything found behind the door would be his birthday present, his alone and no one else's. Warily the prince pushed the door open and saw a huge room full of  shelfs upon shelfs full of new and shining toys of all sorts.


"There, son! All that is your birthday present, each and everyone of them belongs to you", said the King, proudly presenting the present to his son.


Much to the King's, Queen's and the Royal court's surprise, the prince dropped on his knees and burst into tears. As they finally got their son calmed down enough to ask the reason to this, the prince said: "All these new toys are going to break down. I can't touch them for I may break them and there is no-one to repair them at the rate they will break and the repairs will cost a fortune and the kingdom will go bankrupt."


Shaking their head in amazement and desperation, the King and the Queen left their weeping son to the care of his valet and went to wake up their other son.


The joyful son jumped out of the bed immediately and started looking for his present. The King and the Queen took this prince to the backyard of the stables and showed him a huge pile of manure.

"Son, this is your birthday present on your seventh birthday. Happy birthday, son!", said the King, trying to hide his amusement of the situation.


The young prince stood still for a second and dashed back to the castle. The King and the Queen and the Royal court were amazed: What on earth was going on and where had the prince gone?!


After a few moments the prince ran back with a shovel and started to dig the immense mount of manure. The King asked what he was doing.

"If there is this much manure, the sparkling pony must be somewhere here", responded the prince.

First I thought that the two princes could picture the different kind of bloggers: one sees the doom, gloom and broken things even in a new sparkling game, while the other takes the time to dig the sparkling diamond out of the apparently broken game. (There was a third brother, too, but he died of asphyxiation and ecstasy right after birth seeing only the sparkling diamonds in a sparkling game which was sparkling before it even saw daylight.)

The other approach was to think the princes as the WoW players of now: one sees the game as broken and bent and keeps wailing over it, while the other still sees some good in it - even though recognizes it is broken -  and keeps digging the pile in search of the diamond (or next purple gear).

The question really is about the interpretation. How do you relate yourself to the story as a blogger or as a gamer?

Joy of being newbie

I recently read a post in Pink Pigtail Inn, where Larísa shows and tells an application her guild has gotten. The applicant - according to the application - was a 14 year old kid, with a level 82 deathknight, and the guild is pretty much a hardcore - at least serious - 25 man raiding guild.

Now the comments range from the typical evaluation of "fail" to Gevlon's mention of "M&S proper" to adoring mentions of cuteness of the applicant.

I told this in the comments, but I'll expand a bit.

My son, coming 10 years this May, plays a DK, too. Level 63, Unholy for dps and geared only from questing. My son loves to spend gold on trivial and unnecessary shinies: sure sign of M&S conduct by Gevlon's rules. He also likes to bash mobs, to a such an extent that he signs in PUGs every time he gets to play (because he's so young, he has this character on my account, under my supervision).

I have selected his spec, talents, skills and help with the gearing questions among other things. But that's it: I have never taught him on how to play the class, nor how to min-max the rotation. Never even occurred to me to do such a thing.

Taking into account that he's so young and English isn't his native language (in fact he's just started to learn it in school), he still gets into the PUGs. As it happens, he likes to play in group content: so much so that he automatically pops the LFD tool on when ever he gets the privilege to play. Yes, that is earned around our house.

To make this really strange - or in some others words showing the state of the levelling players - he scores to the top of the damage meters every time. Not necessarily the top, but in the top two usually.

And he has never - not a single time - been kicked out of a group. He's the epitaph of the current WoW thinking in group content: "shut up and deliver".

As I monitor how he plays and what he does, I'm constantly amazed how he finds the things I take for granted or have already trivialized to myself extremely interesting or amazing. The childish glee on everything new, strange and surprising is still there. He's loving the game for being as fluffy, cute and amazing as it is. He's enjoying the game, being the newbie he still is.

Now that wasn't the reason why I brought my son into the blog. The reason is that it's quite brutal how the 'jaded veterans' treat the newcomers, newbies, kid learning the ropes and each other in the game. The level of cruelness tells quite a lot about the state of the game itself. The only people worth the while are only those who make the min-max-game their main hobby, who know their class by heart (and the accompanying stats and bonuses) and play the abstract gameplay system regardless of the shiny graphics involved.

The elite who are not to be called elite, because the raid content is at everyones - and their cousins - reach. Provided that you fulfill the forementioned requirements of the gameplay mechanics.

Is this really the way the game, which we all started to play for fun, has turned to?

What have we lost when the game could be easily turned into a number crunching simulation with a few Simon Says scotch-hopping?

Is it the same game anymore?
.

Rift headstart

I did the unthinkable and skipped the brotherly love. Then again, Bishop is having some serious renovation going on, so as far as I know, he shouldn't have been online anyhow. If he was, they (both my brothers) will smack me in real when we meet next time. Too soon, anyhow.

Instead of WoW, I spent the evening in Rift. Headstart opened yesterday, and to my big surprise there was no queue to Argent where I started my first 'real' Rift character. Copraf will be the Pyro/Ele/Archon style character I had in the early betas, but we'll see how far I can carry on with him.

Anyhow, the game worked flawlessly. The population was high to extreme, even the population density in the earlier betas wasn't this stiff in the starter areas. And still the game was working like a dream: next to no lag, no disconnects (on me) and definitely no performance issues. Like my youngest son said: "Dad, that Rift works even better than WoW now". Pretty big words from a ten year old for sure.

What I did. I didn't even hurry, even though I had to take a breath every now and then from the killing (Gnomore does have its effect). The starter area was done in no time, I even had time to put the UI together, tweak it and gain some nice views of the area. The graphics are just as unbelievably beautiful as ever, and the color schemes suit the theme. However, it remains to be seen if the areas have as distinct schemes as - for example - WoW has for different areas.

After I came through the time warp to the distant past to save the day (with dozens upon dozens other Ascended), I immediately took all the gathering skills. Better to be safe than sorry, and to show that I follow my own advice, that is. As it happens, I had only started the quests in the entry area, when the first Rift event started: at level 7 I rushed with other players to the Freemarch and we started a campaign to close the Rifts and defend the settlements against the invasions.

At one point I suddenly noticed that I had gotten to level 10 and most of the quests I thought I would have done were still still undone and over levelled.

Along the way there was a Iron Giant which spawned from one of the Death Rifts, which was of level 20+ as it showed only as question marks on all of our screens. Undoubtedly the public quest raid at that point consisted of a couple of full raids and it took us a better part of half an hour to cut that beast down. But it was worth every second of the battle, for the atmosphere was just unbelievable! There we were, group of player characters just above lv10 beating on a giant way above our level range.

To be perfectly honest, Trion had a perfect+ pre-launch for Rift. The event worked perfectly, the invasions were huge and furious (I don't remember that scale even from the open beta where they were tested!) and the game just worked all the time.

How long does it take before I get bored to the constant running from Rift to Rift, from invasion to invasion for the few meddling Planar Essences and other planar 'trophies'? I can't tell. But so far the game has begun with flying colours.

More important question to me, though, is this:

How long will it take before the general chat isn't filled with WoW references and comparisons...?
.

Social design and lack of it

I've been writing and discussing about the lack of social tools in WoW, though I could as well talk about them lacking in MMOs in general. It just happens to be so that the MMOs we play teach to do things in their way, and the teaching aspect can be very, very subtle.

We joke about "kill ten rats" quests, mention the few somewhat controversial quests on the repertoire (namely Kirin Tor torture quest in Northrend and the Aviana kill or release quest come to my mind right away) and may have noticed how the game teaches you to care only about yourself and steal, kill, murder and main in the name of fulfilling you quest. How WoW teaches you that it's ok to steal the half-empty glasses in Dalaran Inn to present them to a paying customer for a daily, for example.

All of this is in the category of social design. Not only the lack of control and consequences of the LFD PUGs, nor the inability to add cross faction players to friend lists (except RealID, I think), nor the inadequate and antiquated social tools presented in the game.

MMOs are based on the ever evolving Skinner Box, which just sucks you deeper into the hunt for new shiny gear, achievement, entitlement, making the players eyes shine and jaws gape like the ringing bell effect on Pavlov's dogs. In finer language, the operant conditioning in the game results the typical classical conditioning results in the players.

This is social programming, too. It makes the players do as the designer has planned the players to do when the game has been designed. As the players learn to do thing #1 from the beginning of the game, the designer can predict that the player knows how to do thing #1 when this player's character advances in levels. Due to this it becomes later on in the game to break the thing #1 causing something to happen. However, this is what happens in WoW this very moment: the game teaches the player to solo up and do it in style fast, and as the character 'comes of age' and reaches level cap, the rules are changed completely. Be social, group or leave.

In a twitter convo sometime ago Wolfshead asked a valid question: Why cannot we debate with the mobs? Why can't we take the culturally viable way of avoiding the physical confrontation and use non-violent ways to reach our target? Currently the social design of the MMOs in the market are more in line with the Milgram Experiment, where the designer has decided how the game must proceed and the player must follow that train of thought or quit. The torture and killing quests are just excellent examples on how - in my humble opinion - the game designers are using their power to teach, condition and change the players views wrong.

The further we go along the line, the more closer we come to the Stanford Prison Experiment, where the ones given the authority by their role became the monsters they originally abhorred. We have a sort of situation already, where the established guilds already dictate the non-guilded players fates quite by a whim and in fact use their power pretty casually. "If you don't like it here, you can leave" is a very common statement in a guild if someone proposes a change or asks for an explanation for something.

Power without responsibility is violence.

If the game design teaches everyone take care of themselves, the designers cannot expect the players later on to take the stand and take care of each other. Especially if they make it clear that only one can get the leet loot and epics in a raid, when some have to settle for the greys and coins.

Also the MMOs currently have very binary quest system: either you take a quest or you abandon it. If you take it, you get reward. If you choose not to take it, you get nothing. What if there is a quest chain in which you get into a moral conflict with the story and would like to take another approach? No, you either continue and do 'wrong'/against your morals (or your character's) or you decline and lose the rewards.

The binary Yes/No choices are way too ancient for the current games and there should be more ambition in the designer/coding side to get around this crap. Already in the early adventure games there were multiple choices to go along, so why couldn't the current MMOs have even rudimentary set of choices to be presented?

Also the social aspect of reputation and factions is laughable at best. The effects of ones actions should have repercussions ingame, on the NPCs and factions far more tangible than currently. The social minigames like the persuasion in Morrowind/Oblivion could serve as a starting point, add a few nuances and see how it works.

Anyhow, I could rant on forever. I think it would serve the MMO or RPG designers and/or companies to have at least one person with sociologic and/or psychology as a background to help in the design from this side and point of view.

At least this way the game design could change towards more socially engineered instead of more achievement oriented.

Do you have any other suggestions on how the social design could be changed? Regardless of the players, of course...

.

Call has been answered

So Naithin and Gordon have answered my call for their dream MMO setting, both in their unique style and tact. I'm still waiting for the one from Larísa, the one she promised to do at some point or another.

That'll be worth a snatch post in itself, for sure.

For now, go and read what Naithin and Gordon have to say about their dream MMO (setting).

Shoo!

What would you like your MMO to be?

I have been pondering over the question of what story, IP or background I would like to see a MMO done. The setting of the game.

As it happens, as we bloggers and gamers generally are quite heavy consumers of different medias, I'd like to put  this challenge on some of the bloggers I greatly appreciate. So if it wouldn't be too much to ask, I'd like to see what would Gordon from We Fly Spitfires, Naithin from Fun in Games and Larísa from Pink Pigtail Inn would like their MMO be designed on. No, this is not a meme, but feel free to share the pain!

To clarify my question, I have to tell what I would like to see. I have earlier described my perfect MMO and in that post I have stated that I'd like to see a mysterious secret society setting a'la Lovecraft, and as it happens the Secret World is based on that premise. So I had to have one look at my bookshelf to understand that there is but one possibility. One perfect setting for a compelling MMO.

Urth of the New Sun MMO.

Gene Wolfe created a magnificient world, a living, thriving and very much compelling set of communities and events with unbelievable monsters, creatures and conflicts. Not everyone gets to be the young torturer who becomes the leader - and cause of destruction - of the world, but the mere living world itself calls for exploration.

I would like to have a character roaming the war ridden wastelands on a destrier, to wield a light lance and see the dream eaters. The sheer size and mystery of Urth is calling my intelligence, and this game couldn't be anything but hard, harder and time consuming. Talk about having WOW! in a game, this would have the constant amazement of a world freshly created.

It could be even set into the four year time when Severian is doing his off-world pledge to revitalize the sun, only to end the whole game to the catastrophe commencing after his return. The sense of wonder in combining the pre-space flight wonders with the wonders of the universe after the space faring culture has collapsed is just presenting unimaginable possibilities.

What backstory would you like to play as MMO? What would be YOUR dream setting for a MMO?

Preparation pays

Be prepared and you do not end up like this.

Or this.

Not to mention this.

.

When I get on a side tracked... (yawp)

What a weekend. Nothing I planned really happened, but a lot of other things did.

I planned on putting my main, warrior tank, on exp freeze and play through Mt.Hyjal and Vashj'ir, play some Gnomore to get him to LFD level range and do some crafting on my priest.

Did next to none of them.

Instead, for some curious reason, I played mostly with my banker (yikes!) as he was already in the level range for Blackrock extravaganza. The old raid instances have been 'lowered' to random 5 mans and Copramo spent most of the time in there, healing the heck out of ragtag groups, most of which didn't even know where they were. Heck, I didn't know most of the time, and as I mostly got picked up by a group which had lost their healer, I didn't even get the big picture of the place!

What was the most curious about this experience is something worth discussing about. Sure, all the high up "been-there-since-early-beta" people who have grinded (ground?) Blackrock as a raid instance way before Burning Crusade came out know the place like the bottoms of their (often forgotten) pockets. But there are an amazing number of players who have never, ever set their foot in the instances. And I mean ever. Myself included.

Especially Blackrock Depths is a dumbfounding whole as a 5 man instance: the LFD loading screen doesn't tell which part you should be doing. At one run it was just one boss (right,  from the start!), on another we had to plunge through majority of the map to get to the boss needed (another one!) and so on. I'm SO confused on which boss is the one the group should go and smack, and I'm definitely not the only one!

Blackrock Spire is almost as bad, except that there you have more linear approach. But... the LFD doesn't tell which one of the two you should go and complete! And you get quests for both from the questgiver conveniently inside the entrance - just in range of the first mobs, which is a bit of a design flaw in it's own.

It's nice they did this and 'force' the new players to go through the hellish depths of Blackrock Mountain while levelling, as the story will later on bring them back to Blackrock Caverns and all. But it would be nice to know which part or which bosses you are supposed to kill before you start: there was this one tank who said that he'd been in Blackrock for over two hours and he just wanted to finish the instance. He had had the whole group changed twice over and they hadn't found the boss they were supposed to kill for the dungeon to finish. Needles to say, we found it and one shotted it.

It was very nice, though, to find myself in the queue for the Burning Crusade instances at level 58 and after that one run (they were never this easy back when BC launched!!!) he was lv59. One to go and the sky is ours!

Of course, I had to dedicate some time to Gnomore, too. It takes about one hour for a level with this bugger, so the progress is very slow. It's especially rewarding, when you see a new character level from 5 to 15 in the same time it takes you from 11 to 13 yourself... and that newcomer has way better gear at that point.

C out
.

Detached from the world

Reading Twitter pays sometimes off. There was a nice little discussion about phasing and it's effect on the game experience earlier, to which some bloggers have commented (and to even more to which the tweeps have commented on) on their own. In a way the chit-chat - as far as I know - lead to Rowan's splendid post "A Little Player in a Very Big MMO", to which Pete from Dragonchasers later in Twitter added one link to a very, very nice post about the problems of phasing, that being Battle Priestess Moxiedoodle's post "Hey! What about that Other Game?", which in turn pinpoints one sore spot I've been trying to find myself.

Whew. What a monster of a sentence.

Anyhow, now that I have lured you off from the blog I'll return to the topic. Even though I think that the quests flow nicely from hub to hub and that the whole system guides you forward at increasing speed, it still detaches you from the actual game world. It works well - exceptionally well, in fact - when you start a new character who has to get to know the basics of her trade and get the feel of the world as it is before she can take it on herself.

Fine and dandy, like a tutorial.

But for the higher level character that seems a bit exaggerated solution. The freedom to go from one hub to another has been taken away, as you must follow the story of the area to 'unlock' the next hub or flypoint. I felt very much cheated as I flew around Mt.Hyjal when I could see the flypoint mark on my minimap only to disappear as I came on the spot where it was supposed to be. Even more disheartening was the fact - which Moxiedoodle also pointed out - that the mining nodes which showed on the minimap just blinked out when you come to the spot. And no, there was no-one to be seen around the area.

For me the feel of being part of the world comes from the freedom to roam around and find the quests you really want to do. Unnown was a great blow to my belief that Cataclysm still had that trait, even though Gnomore has done miracles to the attachment to the world itself. With Gnomore I'm effectively out of the loop of guidance and mandatory quests only because I cannot do them due to the killing restriction: most probably this will cause severe problems to the character later on, as the phasing and leading from quest hub to another will become an issue working against the levelling. But I'll deal with that when it's due.

The question is, has Blizzard gone too far with the hand holding, hub to hub leading and catering to the speed levelling?

Is it really so that Cataclysm was the first blow which will kill WoW as we know it?

C out
.

Morning quickie: Nothing to hide

In WoW, there is no need for censorship. Why?

Because there is nothing to censor. Period.

C out
.