Lens on The Secret World Launchblog

Today will be my second go-round with live-blogging...headstart launch day for "The Secret World"!

9:41--Coffee started.  Brain comatose.

9:46--Brain still waiting on coffee injenction.  Brain thinks "injenction" is an actual word.

9:56--First sip of coffee.  Brains cells slowly open their bleary eyes.

10:16:--Second cup obtained, wakefulness rapidly approaching.  Time to double-click!

10:17--According to the launcher notes, the "trading house" has been disabled for the headstart "after evaluating the state of the various functions."  That sounds slightly ominous.

10:20--Ugh...a guildie informs me that I probably have a gig and a half to patch in.  So there will likely be a long gap in the times in this blog.

10:23--1.59 gigs.  Blech, that's 3 hours of download time, give or take.  Why this couldn't have gotten patched in...oh I don't know...yesterday, I have no clue.  This is what I would describe as a Bad Start.  Seriously Funcom.  Really dumb.

10:39--Final cup of coffee, 128 meg complete.

10:46--Another Funcom = Failcom moment...the appallingly underwhelming character creation options from beta are all we have at launch.  Evidently the "more options are coming" wasn't for launch, as was implied, but for, maybe August.  Most hilariously stupid of Funcom is the part of the announcement:

"In light of recent discussions about character creation, however, we decided to prioritise and push these features into development a lot sooner"

Seriously, asshats, EVERY SINGLE REVIEW OF THE GAME has talked about how shitty the character creation options are.  "Recent discussions"!?

And so we have our first Launch Day Stroke Job.  The trading house being down for the headstart?  Meh, OK.  The 1.6 gig patch.  /frown  But the character creation fail is a serious fuck-up and then bullshitting to cover your ass.  That pisses me off.

11:07--Coffee consumed, full wakefulness achieved (or as close as I get to it).  385 meg downloaded.  Fury unabated.

What has me really pissed is the phrase "In light of recent discussions about character creation".  The amount of disingenuity in that one sentence is mind-boggling.  Seriously, just about every review/article I read in the media commented on the dreadful paucity of character creation options.  Dozens of posts on the beta weekend forums did the same.  To pretend that it's "recent" is the very worst kind of bullshit PR.

11:24--From the Beta Weekend #2 "known issues" thread on the forums, "Character creation will be improved and expanded for launch, with more customization options added for both appearance and clothing."  Once I can get into the game I will be able to more definitively call "bullshit" as BWE 2 was my first stab at the game.  And yes...I am hung-up on this issue.  Character creation is important to a LOT of people and lying about it during beta and lying more at launch really pisses me off.

11:59--811 meg down.  Also down...lunch.  OMNOMNOM!

12:25--Weeeee, 1.0GB completed!

12:46--1.18GB

1:13--Antici

To Be Continued...

1:37--Pation!  Download completed.

1:42--I sure hope you can escape through the various start-up screens after the first time.

1:49--Character creation complete, and on a positive note, while clothing options were vastly reduced from the last beta (more available for Real Money purchase!) and overall choices still dreadfully limited, at least bald head is now an option and the facial options for markings and tattoos have been implemented. 

Wee.

And "Lens" was taken when I tried to reserve the name, so I'm using my second choice reserved name...

I am:  Lens "Spongo" Licious  (note, the middle "nickname" is the character name, so "Spongo").

2:00--I wonder how long before Fox News has a talking head complaining about the implied oral sex in the Dragon starting intro.

2:20--I have selected my initial skill tree...and it's Hammer Time!  I liked the hammer/assault rifle combo in beta so that'll be my starting point.

2:29--I killed a zombie.

2:39--Good news, the game seems to be more polished and less clunky in release than in beta.  I'm not sure what, other than an increase in frame rate, is accounting for it.  Maybe it's just me, maybe their last build is better, but my overall experience seems to have improved.

3:02--Deed for 25 dead zombies.  I am a zombie-killin' mo-cheen.  Of course, there's lots more where those came from.  Seriously, for a small town, Kingsmouth has a shit-ton of zombies.

3:51--100 dead zombies!  I am generally feeling more positive about things than before.  It's maybe only a false perception on my part, but things are _feeling_ a bit more polished and responsive.  And I suppose that's what matters.

4:18--I have my first elite ability!  A hammer-based column attack with a 3 second knockdown.  Feeer mie leetness!  Y'know...or not, maybe.

4:31--The in-game item store says "Coming Soon" on the greyed-out front page, but I know it's working for some/most people.  I don't want to buy anything, but I'd like to browse!

4:47--Time to start dinner aaaaand take a short break.

To Be More Continued...

4:56--Yeah, kinda making dinner and browsing the forums.  Two BIG ups for Funcom on a couple of bugs people are seeing.

First, if you didn't double click to pick your server, some people are ending up on the default server.  They'll give you a free one-time server move if that happened.  Correct Response Funcom!

Second, a number of the life-time subscription people are unhappy with the colors on the snakeskin outfit they got.  Seems silly, right, but unhappy is unhappy.  So Funcom will be bringing out a lighter, more natural-colored snakeskin outfit in the future and they'll get it in addition to the darker one.  Correct Response Funcom!

Congrats to Funcom for getting both of these problems responded to in exactly the right fashion (no snakeskin pun intended).

5:01--Wanted to do a quick check, and guildies and I are on the correct server :-P

5:29--Dinner consumed.  Zombie consumption, re-commencing.

6:13--25 missions completed!  That's almost one quarter of the way to 100!

6:14--Oooooooo, I can browse the store now.  Window-shopping time!

6:16--And it's how you collect your in-game goodies...if the free "purchase" ever actually goes through...

6:18--Browsing and waiting.  The bunny slippers are a nice touch.

6:25--Done browsing, still waiting.  I can't pick up the other goodies until the first one is delivered.  Silly me I got the cosmetic first without thinking and now have to wait for the ones with in-game bonuses :-|

6:44--Still no delivery.  Also noting some slow NPC load-ins.  Maybe a quick reboot in a minute or two will clean up a bit of cruft.

6:49--Wee, cosmetic for finishing out the "inner wheel" skills for hammer.  Evidently us big time sledge-hammer zombie murderers wear a nice pocketed tactical vest.  Stylish in green cammo!

6:52--Yep, definitely slowing down.  Quick app restart will hopefully fix it.

6:57--Yay!  You can escape out of the splash screen stuff after the first run through.

7:05--Town infested with zombies?  Hey, I know, I'll go down into the sewer!

7:21--I have named the path all the PC's run down the streets of Kingsmouth, zig-zagging to avoid packs of the undead, as "zombie slalom".  

7:32--"Draugnet".  Draug are water-based zombies.  Clever name.  Crappy quest.

7:46--So my cosmetic hasn't arrived, but the store did manage the delivery of my two free pre-order goodies, but one is kind of already deprecated by quest loot.  The kitteh is nice though!

8:22--I found, and killed...the Pirate Zombie!  Beat that!

8:45--Died for the first time!  In my defense, you have to die to advance the quest!  Because ghosts can see things living people can't.

9:18--OK, I've finished up most or all of the quests in Kingsmouth proper, leaving the skate park/junkyard/airport and Black Vans (with Men [and Women] In Black) to go.  I think that's about it for the first zone, so maybe 85-90% complete.

Think I'll take a break and close with some thoughts on TSW's headstart launch day.

Summary of Headstart Launch Day

331 dead zombies!

Not a perfect launch but a VERY good one.  Congrats to Funcom, for the most part they dodged the launch day bullet.  Now this is only the headstart, but I expect that to be a good-sized chunk of their user base was partaking having pre-ordered the game.

I'll have to dock them a point for the issues with the store.  If people bought a pre-order package with bonus goodies, they need to get those goodies in a timely fashion...say, before they outlevel them.  I eventually got two of my three goodies (the two that mattered most for my first character) but I don't figure I'll ever see the last without a support ticket.  The store shouldn't eat items, even if they are free.

Any more store problems though, with Real Money being involved, and that's a potentially HUGE problem.

I'll dock them another half-point for the unfulfilled promises of a lot more options for character creation at launch (we got a few) and the trade house not being live yet.  I'd dock another half point for the character creation options, but that would be overreacting to a bit of genuinely disingenuous PR spin.  I haven't gotten a chance to check out if the bank works or not so far...if not, that's another half-point.

So overall, I have to give very good marks to Funcom on the launch.  I can't promise anyone that the game will be to their taste, but the headstart launch merits:

Headstart Launch Day Rating  8.75/10

9:54  I've checked...bank and mail are in-game so that's almost worth another half-point right there.  So I'll edit the rating up, say, another quarter point (yes, I'm splitting hairs, but I can't quite give 'em a '9') to 8.75

Lens on the Guild Wars 2 Stress Test

So today I'll try liveblogging my stress test experience.  I'll buy another character slot with my leftover gems and start up a new necromancer.

8:51--Up a bit early to prepare for GW2 stress test.  Coffee is percolating.  Cardio-vascular system is partially functioning.  GODDAMMIT, the servers aren't on yet.  WTF is wrong with these Arena-Net clowns!!!

9:05--Come ON guys!  It's 55 minutes before the servers are supposed to be up, so why aren't the servers up?

9:20--Sigh.  /pointsatwatch  Hey fellas!  Let's get this party started!

9:36--AaaaaaaHA!  This time I briefly got a "connecting..." message before it told me that nothing was going on and I should get a life!  This means (in my perception of an improbably consequence-filled existance) that some part of the infrastructure is now on that wasn't on before, probably the authentication server.  I can almost taste the necrogoodness now!

9:45--Where game?  Why no game?  Hulk SMASH!

9:54--Purple/green/white on my chroma hash so my password is right...I don't understand why they won't let me PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

9:56--I know why it's called a "Stress Test"...it's because I'm about to pop a fucking aneurysm.

9:58--One of my guildies said "Connecting!" over vent.  False alarm.  That lying bastard.  I shall hate him forever.  Or until the servers actually come up, whichever comes first.

10:00--OMFG the servers are UP!!!

10:04--It looks like the character slot purchase option isn't working right now.  No necro for me :-(  What's to do, what's to do...

10:18--Ding 8 on my guardian!  But I was all keyed up to do some necrotizing (without the fasciitis).  Ah well.

10:24--Doh...I need a bathroom break!  I must be getting old, I don't think I'll be able to hold it for the 3 hours and 35 minutes left in the stress test.

10:29--There's 5 minutes of my play time wasted!

10:42--Hah!  There will be no poisoning of the water on MY watch, evil NPCs!

10:49--Time to quickly check the forums to see if it's just me that can't by character slots.  Sigh...report bugs in a beta!?  What is up with THAT?

10:52--Yup, some issues with the store.

10:58--Wow...some of the names.  I wonder where "xTEXANx" is from.  And there's "O M Gawd".

11:02--And we have a scatplay sighting!  Picking up a "Cow Pie" gives you the "Throw cow pie to damage and confuse opponents" option.

11:04--I kind of want to stand in this field next to this clearly labelled "Brown Cow" for a while, yelling "How now?"

11:33--More bad names.  "Censual Seduction", "Angels Deathblade", "V E R M I L L I O N", "Lik A Som Bo Dee", "Elly Mentia" (the elementalist), "Peowpewpew" ("Pewpewpew" undoubtedly and unsurprisingly being already taken no doubt) and so on.

11:37--Doh, I should have made lunch in advance...I'm missing game time!

11:47--Zug zug, lunch complete!  Meatloaf w/ melty cheddar and swiss on whole grain toast, chipotle mayo and roasted garlic hummus.  Sweet pickle chips on the side.

11:50--Character slot added via store successfully...necromancer incoming!

11:56--My first choice for name was taken (or inappropriate) so...you may call me Zombiemuffin!

12:12--I'm doing better with necro this time by aggressively using Death Shroud.  Because...helLO, it's like being shrouded in death!

12:21--Ding 2!  Killing things with death is redundantly fun.

12:49--Dammit!  Barely an hour left!

12:50--It would be nice to get a couple more weapons to train up...I kinda feel like I'm going to have to grind later rather than skill them up more organically.

1:12--Ding 4!  Still no weapon additions though :-(

1:28--Ding 5!  Skills!  No more weapons yet...unless a trident counts.

1:34--And a new harpoon and a new focus...but no new main hand/off hand goodies to skill up unless I want to fight underwater :-|

1:49--Aaaaaand a pistol.  Necros can't use pistols.  I would weep if I weren't a stoic necro.

2:06--An extra hour of stress test!  We <3 you ArenaNet!

2:07--Finally...an alternate item!  War horn for off-hand.

2:17--Dammit, I'll now have to watch the Euro Cup semi shoot-out.  Gah.

2:27--Penalties are the worst way to decide an important game ever.  No wonder so many Americans don't "get" soccer/football...the famed passing and ball control of Spain and one of the most explosive scorers ever on Portugal and it ends 0-0 and goes to penalties.  :-(

2:35--Hmmm, stop the bandits from burning down the hospital or the orphanage?  This hero business is hard!

2:48--Wooo, ding 7!  Weapon swapping...if only I had more than just the axe for a weapon.  So about 3 hours to level 7.  Of course I am already familiar with the content.

3:01--And we're done.  I laughed, I cried, I kissed 5 hours goodbye.


So a few points in summary:

Necro worked better for me this time.  Either I read up on it enough that I had a better grip on it, or it received a buff.  Probably I was just less dumb at it second go-around.

Divinity's Reach is the best-looking and most alive-seeming city I've ever seen in a game, especially a fantasy game.  There are places where it looks like people actually live.  In WoW, where do the people of Stormwind live?  How many houses does it look like there are in Bree in LotRO?

I bought The Secret World over the weekend (the headstart begins Friday, my next blog!) and the difference in polish between GW2 and TSW are staggering.  And TSW expects people to pay $15 a month?  I'll drop $50 for a month of diversion, but I don't think I'll buy a single month in subs.  I expect TSW will be free-to-play inside 6 months and I'll have gotten whatever the benefits are of buying at launch.  Maybe F2P sooner, especially with GW2 coming.  Seriously, the difference in polish is really stunning, going from one to the other in the course of a couple days.

As far as game polish goes, GW2 looks just about release-ready.  I obviously have no idea what the Sylvari/Asura starting areas look like as we haven't seen those yet, but the rest of the game seems damned close to done.  But I'm willing to wait because I want this puppy to be so polished it freaking glows at launch.  I'm still thinking October.

Have I mentioned that I wants it now?  Me wants my Precious!

-Lens

Lens on Real Money

Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay
And you're OK.
        -Pink Floyd

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
        -Cabaret

I've got 90 thousand pounds in my pajamas
I've got 40 thousand French francs in my fridge
I've got lots of lovely lira
Now the Deutschmark's getting dearer
And my dollar bills could buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.
        -Monty Python


I could go on, obviously.  Like it or not, money is a huge factor in our lives, both actual and virtual.  It's the place where those two things meet I'll be writing about today, where real money interacts with out unreal game lives.

Online gaming was born in an environment where most people were paying just to get online.  Back in the online paleolithic, before the Internet was known to any but a few people in academia and government, people generally paid by the hour just to connect.

Once online gaming truly came alive with the sudden ubiquity of the Internet, the "logical" way of paying for a gaming service was to simply continue with the same mechanism, going from "per hour" to "per month".  And that's how the major commercial MMOs were all structured.  Buy, then subscribe with a monthly fee.

While in Asia they started to play around with other revenue generation mechanisms (free-to-play, for instance), in America the reliable recurring revenue generation of subscription fees was standard operating procedure.  This became even more carved in stone when WoW started producing quarterly recurring revenues of a magnitude to make Scrooge McDuck weep from pure envy.

The industry-wide changes we've seen recently all started innocently enough, improbably enough, with "Dungeons and Dragons Online".  DDO had been, charitably, a disappointment for Turbine.  With one of the best known names in all of gaming at their disposal, they had produced a disappointing product that few people were interested in and fewer still were willing to pay a subscription for.  So somebody at Turbine had the bright idea, "Why not try a free-to-play model and see what happens?"

There are only a few ways a suggestion like that gets implemented.  First, the person making the suggestion is sleeping with the person making the decision.  Second, the person making the suggestion IS the person making the decision (unlikely).  Third, the suggestion also includes the words "and if it flops, it'll give us an excuse to just kill the game."  Fourth, pure desperation.  My money (so to speak) is on the fourth, although the third may have been included.

So Turbine implements free-to-play into DDO.  The announcement is met with much laughter, mockery, and almost universal proclamations of the certain death of the game.  And then it comes out and revenues go through the roof.

That sound you heard wasn't a bell going off.  It's not a gong.  It's the cha-CHING of a cash register, and every game company in America heard it loud and clear.  It was a new day for alternate methods of game revenue generation. 

(And nobody heard the cha-CHING more clearly than Turbine.  The change of LotRO to "free"-to-play was inevitable the moment the first batch of DDO revenue numbers came out of the bean counters' offices.)

I have already written about the failed elements of LotRO's F2P implementation (in my column on the Bad in MMOs), so I won't go into much more about that, other than to note that in an effort to keep revenues up (or perhaps grow them more) Turbine is ratcheting up the commerce-driven design elements and is, I think, squeezing more $$ from a smaller number of people.  And that is the Herald of Game Doom.

I'll talk a bit about Real Money and three other games...EVE Online, then Guild Wars 2, and finally how the Diablo III Real Money Auction House might change the game (so to speak) as much or more as the F2P option has.

EVE Online

EVE allows real money into the game in limited ways.  They added a store with cosmetic items at ludicrous prices and implied that game-imbalancing items were coming in time...and the player base went bugfuck crazy.  An absolute shitstorm erupted on the forums and players started to quit and move to other games in organized fashion.

To give the talented amateurs at CCP credit, they realized they'd screwed up big-time and backpedalled so fast that everything in front of them red-shifted.  They did a bunch of public mea culpas and completely overhauled everything they were planning for their store.  Let this be an object lesson in Real World Money and gaming...you can squeeze money out of your customers, but if you squeeze the wrong thing too hard, you're not going to like what you've got on your hands when it's done.

The second way EVE allows real money into the game is via PLEX (Pilot License EXtension).  A PLEX is an in-game item you buy for Real Money that can be converted into 30 days of playtime.  It can also be sold for in-game money via the "auction house".  This is a fairly elegant method for allowing Real Money into the game (but not back out) and legitimizes the process by giving CCP the profit and removing the "gold farmer" from the interaction.  It allows rich players (in-game) to buy 30 day time cards for in-game currency (called "ISK" in EVE) and it allows players with more Real Money disposable income (out of game) to buy currency from other players.

It's also in keeping with EVE Online's generally laissez faire way of looking at in-game interactions.

Note that because $ ---> ISK, there is a direct, if fluctuating, actual dollar value to the virtual in-game currency of ISK.

So when it comes out, as it did this last week, that a small group of players discovered a...flaw or exploit, call it what you will...in one of the game systems and use it to manipulate a game mechanic to acquire a number of valuable in-game items which they then sell on the open market to amass 5,000,000,000,000 ISK (theoretically worth about $175,000) it both opens eyes and brings up a number of questions.

Did the players involved break the TOS of the game?  Unclear, that's being investigated by CCP.  If so, what will be done with the players directly and indirectly involved, and their ill-gotten gains?  Is there any way for them to get the cash value OUT of the game?  Not within the TOS, certainly, but gold/ISK sellers do operate in-game and $175k is a lot of cheese.  Were the developers aware of this flaw?  Absolutely, there were a number of forum posts questioning if exactly the sort of system manipulation might not be possible and CCP went ahead with it.

Can the players trust CCP?  For me, this answer is a resounding "No", which is one of the reasons I stopped playing.  They have encouraged a player-base with a "if it's not explicitly against 'the rules' (presumably the TOS) then it's totally fair play" mindset that encourages a great deal of anti-social game play.  It's not much of a step from game-stretching to game-breaking.  And with at least one case of in-house cheating where the person involved wasn't fired, and countless anecdotal reports of other CCP employees "helping" friends, I personally find it difficult to invest my time and money into the game where a potentially game-breaking economic bug is pointed out by players in testing but still gets released and, inevitably, exploited.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is actually looking at a similar mechanic to EVE's PLEX for working Real Money into the game.

You will be able to buy "gems", the game store currency, for real money.  Those gems will be able to buy things like additional character slots (I'll take 3 please!), bank space (bank storage is account shared, so I'm OK with this one), additional bags (character-based, so unless these are dirt cheap I'm not nuts about this), cosmetic outfits, etc.  Mostly pretty standard stuff for a F2P (in this case, F2P after purchase of the game, so no sub fee).

What's a little unusual about the GW2 F2P model is that players will be able to sell gems (purchased with Real Money) on the in-game auction house for in-game currency.  Similarly to PLEX, this is a "Real Money In" system.  So those with an excess of time on their hands will be able to turn their extra gold into gems to buy stuff on the store, and those with less time to play will be able to turn a little extra cash into gold for in-game purchases.

While I inherently am not nuts about this particular method for in-game goods acquisition, the negatives are greatly outweighed by one, overriding positive:  it disincentivizes the "gold-farmer".  Far fewer players will choose to buy gold from some shadowy Internet company (how can you trust your credit card number to people who are cheating and perhaps stealing to get what you're buying in the first place?) when they can take an extra step and sell store-bought gems for gold totally legitimately.

There might be a few people who will opt to go with the "gold-farmers", but not many I expect.  And with less demand, we'll see a lot less gold-farming and a lot less spam from the gold-farmers trying to sell, over time.  And the fact that all of the Real Money goes to the guys making the game is good for them and, hopefully, us.

Diablo III and the Real Money Auction House

And lastly we get to the 800,000 Pound Gorilla...The Great And Terrible Experiment...the winner of this years award for "New Feature Most Likely To Become Ubiquitous And/Or Fuck Up Things For The Foreseeable Future", I give you...

The Real Money Auction House from "Diablo III".  This is the potential game-changer of a magnitude unimaginable.  And all it adds is one, small addition to the equations of $--->PLEX--->ISK of EVE and $--->gems--->gold of GW2.  D3 has gold--->$  It allows Real Money OUT of the game.

On the surface of it, it doesn't seem like THAT big of a deal...the only change is that you can get your money back out of the system.  But I can't imagine how many hours Blizzard/Activision's legal departments have spent hammering out every little detail.  They better have, or they will be spending the rest of the decade in court.

Because once you can cash out, every single thing in the game, every trash drop and every single shiny gold coin on the ground, has real world value.  Since one of the commodities supported on the RMAH (Real Money Auction House) is "Gold", you'll be able to buy/sell gold for Real Money (I believe commodities like gold and gems and crafting mats are not yet enabled on the RMAH, although they are in place and ready to go).  So that junk loot worth 4 gold to a vendor is, given the reported minimum price of gold of $.25/100,000g, worth about 1/1000th of a cent.

It doesn't sound like much, but if everything has Real World value, that changes everything.

Because now every mob you kill is a lottery ticket.  Most of the time it's worth a fraction of a penny...but you might get lucky and win $250 (the current max dollar value an RMAH transaction can have).  You might win more, once the gold commodity becomes available, if you could sell an item for enough gold.  This changes the dynamics, both individually and economically.

There's good reason that South Korea is banning the RMAH (and similar gaming mechanisms)...because it takes a lot of legal questions off the table.

Is playing the game gambling?

How are in-game profits going to be tracked and taxed?

What can be done about market manipulation?

What legal exposure is there if you nerf something somebody just paid Real Money for (as Blizzard did with the nerf to attack speed)?

What about any bugs/exploits that can be used to, in essence, steal from other players by item-duping, trade-spoofing, or worst of all, gold-duping?

Can the RMAH be used for money-laundering?

Are they doing enough to secure accounts (Blizzard's case-insensitive passwords, for example, qualifies as The Worst Idea Ever)?

How can players be sure that there is no insider hanky-panky going on regarding game mechanics or simple data-base hacking?

It's questions like these that have me hoping that the D3 RMAH is a one-off experiment that doesn't catch on.  But with D3 becoming the fastest-selling PC game of all time, and with Blizzard taking a cut of every single Real Money transaction...a lot of game companies are paying close attention and considering their options.  And none of those options are about improving games or making them more fun.

Real Money is a Real Problem facing gamers and game makers.  We are in an interesting and dangerous place right now.

And we can't buy our way out of this.

-Lens

Lens on The Perception Of Progress

A few years back I was in the beta for "Star Trek Online" and wrote a beta forum post entitled "The Perception of Progress", detailing why the game wasn't working for me.  If memory serves, it got a dozen or so responses and is mostly noteworthy in that it seemed like, for the only time ever, everyone agreed with me.  Clearly a moment to savor.

I'd like to restate it it here, comparing it with WoW, and use it as the basis to discuss my one concern about "Guild Wars 2" (other than how long I'm going to have to wait...because next week's 4 hour stress test ain't cuttin' it!).

I love MMOs.  I play them a lot.  And sometimes, when an MMO hits a sweet spot, for a time, I'll play more than a lot.  That phase doesn't last terribly long, but for a brief time life will consist of  food, my daily ablutions, sleep, and game.  And I'll even wake up early and be unable to get back to sleep (nowadays I'll take naps later in the day when that happens) and head off to play.

It's not to the level of obsession.  If a friend wants to go out to dinner, I'll go.  If I need to make a supply run to the store, that's not a problem.  It's not unhealthy, it's just an adult's version of Christmas morning that lasts for a few days.

A much milder strain of the same...disorder...is what makes MMO players keep playing the games for months and years.

I've seen discussions of whether MMOs are like Skinner Boxes (wikipedia it if you don't know the reference) and we are like rats pressing the button repeatedly to get an ort of food.  Whether or not it's really a Skinner Box type deal, I lack expertise in behavioral conditioning to comment, but there are certainly some obvious parallels.

So what keeps us pressing those (WASD, and 1-0) buttons?

The Perception of Progress.

When you first begin playing a game (let's go with WoW because, despite the amount of crap people throw at the game, most people have at least a passing familiarity with it so WoW functions as a "shared vocabulary" for discussing a lot of MMOs) you are weak.

So you decide to play a mage because...hey, fireballs!  Well, not to start...  (Note, I tried to track down a list of skills from WoW's launch and no-can-do.  This is the Internet, it must be there somewhere, but my search skills weren't up to the task.  So I'll be doing this from memory and will get stuff wrong!) 

You start with frostbolt.  And a staff.  And a plain robe.  And a song in your heart.  You're a human, so you're hanging out in the Elwynn Forest, near the abbey.  You pick up your first quests and attack your first critter, a wolf.  Frostbolt, Frostbolt, then a couple thwacks with your staff.  And so it begins!

You kill more wolves.  You kill some kobolds and, yes, take candle!  You are a quest-completing machine and pretty quick you've levelled up a few times and got...hot damn, Fireball spell!  Oh, and a new staff that adds to your hit points.

Soon you finish up around the abbey with a couple more levels and some other nice new gear.  You've got a few more spells to add to your repetoire.  You quest throughout Elwynn Forest and eventually move on to Westfall.  More quests, more levels, more spells, more loot, new zone, and so on.

Sure you are mostly just hitting a very few buttons for your "rotation" of spells, but you're getting more powerful with every quest, every level, every zone.

This embodies the Perception of Progress.  Generally, for any given fight (outside of instanced "dungeon" play) you're only hitting a couple of keys.  Probably the same keys as you move spells around to make it easier to handle your rotation.  For me, the 3 becomes my spammed skill with 4 and 5 for other commonly used ones.  Generally 1 is whatever my defensive "oh shit!" skill is and 2 for an instant damage type spell.  The buttons don't change, the skills do.

But as you level up...you get new skills (new spells in this case).  Fireball does more damage than Frostbolt.  Frost Nova freezes a bunch of critters in place where Frostbolt slows one down.  You have more options and those options just feel more powerful.

And you're getting new equipment.  A lot of MMO players are loot whores.  I love getting a cool item.  It's like winning a very small, virtual lottery.  And that plain wood staff gets traded in for one with +2 stamina.  And that for one with +4 int.  And that gets upgraded, and so on and eventually you're wielding "Zin'Rokh, Destroyer of Worlds".  (Yes, I know, that's a sword not a staff.  But it's got such a great name I had to go with it.)  Again...you feel mighty!

You're going to new zones.  The pastoral Elwynn Forest borders on the haunted Duskwood filled with werewolves and zombies (and the one of the creepiest storylines in an MMO ever).  And soon you're in Stranglethorn Vale and then the Plaguelands (quite the vacation destination) and Upper Black Rock Spire and Molten Core...and in every one of these the monsters you're killing are tougher, the sights are more spectacular or daunting, and you are all the awesomer for it!

And here's where STO had the problem with me.  Those things I mentioned above are the kinds of things that drive me.  That make me keep pressing the same buttons over and over.  That Perception of Progress.  And in STO, they just weren't there.

Oh you got new skills...congrats, now your weapons officer can overload your photon torpedos once every 45 seconds to do 20% more damage.  That's nice, but it just doesn't evoke an emotional response.

New items?  Yep, my new phasers do 106 damage a shot instead of 100.  That's like...6% right?  Uhm...OK.  Nice.

Oh, I get to move to a new sector?  Crap...space just looks like space.  And most of the time the ships are so far away they look the same.

The progression in STO was in no way fundamentally different than that of WoW, but my perception of it was.

And that's why STO never "grabbed" me.

And now to my one concern for Guild Wars 2.

It's got zones to progress to (and you can even go back to redo old content and get some value out) that look cool and awesome and are filled with uglier uglies than the last.

It's certainly got nice "Phat Brand Lewtz(tm)" to make you look and feel cooler.

But it's missing one leg on my three-legged Stool Of Planted In Front Of The Computer For Hours...the skills.

Yes, as you level up you get the traits to flesh out your spec.  The traits are where you can really tune your toon, so to speak.  But the skills you'll grind out in the first few hours.  You'll want to, just to be able to play the way you want.  And, just a few levels in, you'll have (in large measure) all the skills you'll be using for the next 75 levels or so.

In WoW the buttons never changed, but the skills did.  In GW2, neither will change.  Yes, I know, you can change the skills by changing weapons, and some classes have addition mechanisms, but I was LOVING elementalist with double daggers and fire.  So much fun.  Now, in groups and such I'll mix things up, but I can see myself spending a looooooong time with just double daggers in fire.  Hitting a small number of buttons for the same skills for many levels.  Yes, I can change my weapons (or element), but that same problems exists...in this one segment, I won't perceive much progress.

It's not a huge deal (I hope)...but it does concern me.  80 levels is a long way pushing the same 5 buttons for the same 5 skills.

-Lens

Lens On The Worst Quest Ever Designed

I couldn't even begin to guess the number of quests I've played in MMOs.  I lied, I can (and will) guess...200,000 maybe?

According to a quick Google (wowwiki), WoW has 9500 quests and I have 5 max-level characters and 4 more high-level.  Obviously I haven't done all quests on all characters, but there are also a lot of daily quests that have been done repeatedly.  So I'll low-ball it at, say 5500 quest per toon average.  That's 50,000 quests in WoW alone, ignoring the characters on other servers and such.  According to lotro.mmodb.com LotRO has 4433 quests, last updated in 2009.  I had 9 max level toons at 10 levels past that.  Lets call it 5000 apiece, another 45,000 quests.

That's 100,000 on two games.

The total number of quests I've played in all MMOs would be precisely:  a metric shit-ton.

I've had quests I loved and quests I loathed.  I've had quests that made me laugh and others that made we want to punch a puppy.  I've had quests that made me want to bear the children of the designer and I've had quests that made me want to stare in their eyes as I choked the life from them.

But even with all the escort quests (for fuck's sake designers, all players HATE escort quests, so just stop!), there is one quest that towers above all the others as:

The Worst Quest Ever Designed

When I hit L40 back in WoW I could finally train riding...but I couldn't afford a mount.  So I played 3 or 4 more levels, saving every copper, skipping out on training up skills I wasn't using so that I could finally buy my horse...and then it was great.  You felt like you'd really accomplished something in the game.  It was like passing a test...you'd gotten the level and the money and your mount...congratulations!

Ah...but it's not always so easy.  For instance...

LotRO's quest to get the riding skill.  <---the worst quest ever designed

In LotRO (at release, now things are a LOT friendlier because, well, you have to pay for every little thing) you had to get to level 35 before you could get riding.  Not too bad, as in the old school MMOs they made you wait (and watch while all the cool kids rode by you) until you reached the appropriate level.  But as in WoW, the level wasn't enough, you needed the money too.  And in LotRO 4 gold and 220 silver (if memory serves) was an awful lot of cheese for a L35 to get.

So...you slowly work your way up to L35.  You then grind out the really big chunk of cash.  Finally!  It's time!  Off to Hengstacer Farms in the Bree Fields and you'll have riding at last!

Nope.

Hengstacer's got a quest for you...Fresh Steed for Bree.  Ride a horse and drop it off at the stable in Bree in a generous amount of time.  OK...not too bad.  Before he'll let you BUY your horse (and give you the riding skill), do him a favor.  Not huge deal.  A couple minutes to ride to Bree, more than a couple to run back for your new horse!

Nope.

Hengstacer's got another quest for you...Fresh Steed for Michel Delving.  Really?  Uh...OK...I guess.  That's a longer ride for sure.  Across all of Bree Fields and the Shire.  Annoying, but what choice do I have.  Ride, ride (careful you don't hit any open water lest you get dismounted and have to start again!), ride, reach Michel Delving, in plenty of time, drop off the horse, catch a fast ride back to Bree, and run back for your new horse!

Nope.

Goddammit, give my horse!

Hengstacer's got another quest for you...Fresh Steed for Othrikar.  This is ridiculous.  I want to give you my money but you insist on making me do your scut work?  Screw you, asshole.  Oh...I don't have any choice if I want a mount and riding?  Crap.  Off to the North Downs I go.  And I'd better be careful that I don't accidently hit the water and get dismounted.  Oh...and the last half of the trip you're in an area where mobs will aggro you...and they can knock you off your mount so you get to redo "Fresh Steed For Othrikar", you lucky fellow!

You finally reach Othrikar (unless you're a friend of mine who confused it with Ost Guruth, rode off in entirely the wrong direction and timed out the quest and had to restart) and drop off the horse.  You take a slow pony to Esteldin then a fast pony to Bree and run back to the Farm From Your Nightmares for your new horse!

Nope.

Fuck you Hengstacer.  I hope your shitty little farm gets overrun by goblins you rat bastard.

Hengstacer has another quest for you...Proving Your Quality.  Now it's time to complete the obstacle course that runs around the perimeter of your own personal hell, Hengstacer's Farm.  Ride from gate to gate, hopping over obstacles, avoiding water, find the not-always-obvious next gate and as you near the finish line...you run out of time.

At this point you no longer want Hengstacer to die, you simply want to die yourself.

So after two or three more tries at the obstacle course, swearing and sweating, you barely make it in time over the finish line and can now, at last, buy your horse and get the riding skill!

Yep.

Wasn't that fun, exhilirating, and rewarding?

No, it was...The Worst Quest Ever Designed.

Let me explain further why it's the worst.

Getting a mount in many/most older MMOs is a signal moment, a transition that's obvious to all the other players.  "That guy is x level".  It's fairly subtle, but it's a big transition in ease of play, and frequently of the perception of the character/player, to themselves and others.  Welcome to the big leagues kid!

It's something the players want to celebrate.  In WoW I remember people "woo-hoo"ing in chats when they got their mount.  It's like a mega-ding, a landmark, a Big Deal.

And LotRO turned what should be a moment of elation and empowerment into an extended act of frustration and punishment.  I've heard guildies say something along the lines of "Ugh, level 35.  Now I have to get my mount.  What a pain in the ass," more often than not.

That's what makes it The Worst Quest Ever Designed.  Because it turned a moment of celebration into one of disgust.

And I did that fucker 9 times.

-Lens

Lens on The Secret World Beta Weekend

So since I spent most of the weekend playing the beta (and most of Friday just patching), I suppose I should write about TSW while it's still fresh in mah haid.

I like it, but not enough to be certain I'm going to buy it.  I most likely will, but I'm still not completely convinced.  I hope that come Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll be jonesing for it, and that'll make up my mind for me.

Will you like it?  Hmm...that's a tough call.  There's a lot to like about it, but a lot of it is quite different from most MMOs out there, and some people don't react well to change.  Certain things may just plain turn you off.

Perhaps you might appreciate it if I told you what things I think are most likely to pique your interest or piss you off?

Good call bro!

NO CLASSES, NO LEVELS, NO PROBLEM!

Some people's minds will boggle at the mere thought.  Most have probably never played a game that wasn't class/level based.  Me, I've always had issues with the "level" concept of growing power since I got D&D...so for almost 40 years.  Wow...I really have had a problem with levelling up in games to represent an increase in power for that long.  I am old.  ("You didn't like levels in D&D?  Well what DID you like then?"  "Take a look at Runequest, noob.")

Anyway, no levels or classes!  So how does it work.  It has over 500 abilities in an "ability wheel", broken up, more or less, into 9 sections.  Each of the nine sections (3 melee [sword, hammer, hand weapons], 3 ranged [assault rifle, pistols, shotgun], 3 magic [blood, chaos, elemental]) has an inner ring and an outer.

As you gain xp you will earn ability points and select abilities from the wheel in a hierarchical fashion, inside out.  You can learn as many as you want, but only have 7 actives in your hotbar and 7 passives.

You also gain skill points which allow you some side benefit as you spend those, especially using higher quality weapons and items.

The game's depth comes from the way the abilities can interact and leverage from each other.  Maybe 3 of your active abilities are dots.  Maybe you've got a passive that everytime you apply a dot, you gain an increased chance to penetrate for 5 seconds.  Maybe you've got another passive that gives you a small hot every time one of your attacks penetrates.

With 500+ abilities, you've got a lot of potential interactions.

As far as content goes, however, the classic level-based advancement has one large advantage in that it can inherently "ballpark" what quests you should be doing and what mobs you should be killing.  Levelless leaves more wiggle-room, and not necessarily in a good way.

Classlessness also has its drawbacks (being classless myself, for instance, I seldom ever get invited back to people's houses after one party).  Putting together a group will be tougher...you can say you're running a heal spec, but it's going to be difficult for people to know whether or not you're actually spec'ed up to the task.  A WoW non-shadow priest can probably heal.  A TOR sage can probably heal.  A shotgun/hammer Illuminati...maybe not.

QUESTS THAT REQUIRE RESEARCH

Sure, the game has some quests that amount to "kill 10 zombies".  But not a bunch.  And where the game really shines is the quests that make you work...if you want to work as little as possible, you'll no doubt be able to find spoilers...but if you'd rather have FUN (y'know, why we play games?) the research will be entirely different.

You'll be able to Google "Bannerman's password" on day one and get the password to his computer.  But...you can do it the "hard" (i.e. fun) way instead.  [Minor Spoiler!]  He's got a broken holiday picture on the floor that mentions the couple's favorite music.  The computer has a hint function (like many actually do) that says "Music of the Seasons".  For some people, that might be enough.  You can hit the hint again for "1678".  You can then use the in-game browser (yes, in-game) and search for those terms to find the name of the composer which is the actual password.

Not terribly challenging, but requiring a rewarding thought process if you choose to follow it.

You start levelling up (after your intro) in the zombie-infested town of Kingsmouth.  Need some info on it?  Use the in-game browser to bring up the real (faked) website the developers have created.  Go ahead, open a tab in your browser and enter http://www.kingsmouth.com/  There are hints and pointers to a bunch of quests there.  Is it necessary?  Probably not.  Is it fun?  Definitely.

The quests have a lot of variety and depth...and often take unexpected turns.  If you choose to skip the spoilers and work for everything in the game it will take a lot of time and, occasionally, significant frustration.  But it really is rewarding when you've worried at a problem like a dog on a bone for a few minutes only to have a "Eureka!"

One big advantage of this sort of questing is that it kind of self-corrects.  If you're finding a quest too frustrating, you can always use the Internet directly to track down a spoiler, and then continue on the old-fashioned way.

One disadvantage is that if you want to earn your advancement, you'll probably need to turn off general chat (not a big loss in most games) because for every 20 people willing to offer a hint, there's bound to be one halfwit griefer keen to shout the spoilers.

If I had to pick TSW's biggest strength, it's the questing system.  It's got a lot of awesome ideas.

COMBAT

Here is where things might get a bit dicey.  It feels kinda clunky.  As mentioned above, the skill system works pretty well, but at least throughout the Kingsmouth area (and slightly beyond) most combats have the same dynamic:  use a ranged skill, the mob or mobs charge you giving you time for maybe one more ranged skill, then sorta dance around in melee range until they die.

There don't seem to be many mobs who stay at range or skip around a lot (there are a few).  Now they do have skills that show an induction bar you can interrupt and other big-hitting skills where you get a ground animation showing you where you probably don't want to stand, so that adds a nice dynamic element, but it's a lot of circle-strafe in-close action.  And I'm not even sure the circle-strafe gets me anything.

It also has the double-hit a movement key to dodge mechanic, but except in the case of an induction/ground-effect I don't think you gain much there.  GW2 does it a lot better.

Also a lot of the character/mob movement and animations are, well, again...clunky.  At least in solo play combat doesn't feel like it flows, like you have a firm command of what you're doing.

I don't find it terrible, or even bad...just...clunky.

GRAPHICS

Definitely a mixed bag here.

Character creation options are dreadfully limited.  The devs have said there'll be more options at launch, and there'd better be because right now it's pretty awful.

The characters themselves, PCs and NPCs alike, aren't great up close.  The quality just looks a bit dated, like it's from a last-gen game.  Maybe two gens ago.  And compared with, say, GW2...they look like crap.

And a lot of the animations are a good match to the character graphics...old-looking and clunky.

So what's the "mixed" in this bag?  The scenery, buildings and the like are much better.  Mind, they still look a touch dated, but overall I am satisfied with these much more than the character models.  Perhaps it's because it's set in the modern day, things looking a bit more dated feels fine.  If everything looked pristine, it wouldn't feel right.

THE SETTING CREATES A MOOD

I've described the setting as "The X-Files" meets the old "Call of Cthulhu" paper-and-dice RPG, set in the modern day. 

The old CoC game had a lot of investigation and poking around, punctuated by occasional (usually horrifying lethal) combat.  TSW obviously has a lot more combat, but still embodies the investigation and poking around.

"The X-Files" connection is (barring aliens, I think) that everything you've heard of is real.  Monsters, magic, mythology, mystery, m-words I can't think of, all of it.  Let's see, in Kingsmouth alone we have zombies, draug (water zombies), a boatload of Lovecraft references, Witch Trial victims, ancient Illuminati symbolism everywhere, Black Helicopters with their concomitant Men in Black...oh, and you get there via the Hollow Earth and Agartha.

I like the setting A LOT.  Of course part of that is just that I'm so goddamned sick of high fantasy, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and dragons that I could just barf.  Seriously MMO devs, can we please try something else?

PLAYER VS. PLAYER

When aren't they?  Oh, in-game PvP, sorry.  I don't know, I didn't try it.  I am concerned that it will turn into an arms race between players trying to come up with degenerate ability combinations and devs trying to keep things balanced.  500+ skills sounds manageable when everybody's got 7 each passive and active, but start grouping up and the numbers of combos get astronomical.

DUNGEONS

Do gateways to hell and shipwrecked supertankers count as dungeons?  Close enough.  Like PvP, I didn't get a chance to try out the first couple that are available, so I don't know.  I mentioned above the somewhat loose definition of roles from the classless system of advancement.  Got a tank?  Got a healer?  Need either one?  Not sure, but it could be an issue going forward.

USER INTERFACE

Here's that word again:  clunky.  I'll make no bones about this one, the UI in the beta is functional, for the most part, and not one hair better than that.

Maybe it's a design decision to go minimalist, but I don't find it a successful design if so.  I like a character window to fit my expectations.  It should have the stats and a paper doll (with representative picture) in a convenient and informative layout.  TSW has boxes for your items and tiny little click-arrows to bring up other information.  It's difficult to read and not like what I'm used to in a jarring and unpleasant way.

The quest UI is a bit better (and definitely improved over the previous beta weekend I took part in) and works acceptably well.  But there are problems here too in that the quest "glowies" are often vanishingly small, occasionally stuck in scenery, and seem to always require multiple clicks to activate.  Overall, still not great.

Certain expectations are in place because they work and there's no reason to change them..."Escape" should ALWAYS close windows, front to back, and bring up the game menu if all windows are closed.  I consider this to be mandatory.  And missing, in the case of TSW.  Really annoying.  Left-clicks and right-clicks for whatever reason don't always feel appropriate in their game functions in TSW.  That one I'll put on me though.  YMMV.

CRAFTING

It has a couple of odd conceits (the product you get out depends on the shape you lay out the components in the crafting window grid.  8 metal in the shape of an elongated "t" gets you a sword.  8 metal in a circle gets you ring.  I'm not sure what is really gained by this over a recipe list other than novelty.

Take 40 metal, refine it 5:1 to 8 better metal, get a better sword or ring (yeah, you'll need a "kit" too).

Pretty straightforward once you get the hang of the item-shape input, but functional.  You'll be able to emphasize the stat bonuses and such in the final outcome.

A bit weird at first blush, but it seems it'll do.  I suppose the shape and material system does open itself up, eventually, to something more nuanced, interesting, and compelling.  Let's hope.

MISSING GAME COMPONENTS

Evidently Funcom has said that mail and banks and a couple of other absolute must-haves will be in at launch, but they ain't there now.  Some kind of travel other than "run" and "port to Agartha" would seem to be required at some point, but I don't think it's in yet.  No auction house either.

These would qualify as "gaping holes" if they're still absent at launch.  Nota bene.

THE END GAME

No clue, sorry.  Hell, I'm not even sure how much game there is!  Because it's got no "levels" in the way that most games do, it's tough to measure.  You can play through the Kingsmouth map and most of the questing in the area in probably 4-8 hours if you move at a good clip, double that if you're moving at a more leisurely (and I think, enjoyable) pace.  Then it's off to the Savage Coast.  Is that all for Solomon Island?  I'm not sure.  I believe the top-end for skills is 10, so the top-end for gear would be quality 10.  By the end of Kingsmouth you're getting a lot of Q3 items, but because skill point costs go up, that's by no means linear.

How long to reach the "end game"?  Dunno.  What is there to do once you're there?  Dunno.  Although as long as ability points can still be earned, 500+ abilities could be do-able!  Have fun!

SUMMARY

TSW, like a lot of the quests, is a bit of a puzzler.  There are things I like a lot, some I'm fine with, some I don't care for, and some holes that I'm worried about.

Will I buy it?  Probably.

Should you buy it?  It's such an idiosyncratic game, I wouldn't even try to guess.  Two of my friends have tried it out.  I figured one would like it, and one wouldn't.  I was right.  I just guessed wrong on which was which.  One bought into the questing and setting enough to coast on past the clunky bits and is leaning toward buying the game. The other was a bit put off by the abrupt appearance of Agartha as subway system and really put off by the general clunkyness of various game parts such as the UI and the combat movement (especially compared to GW2), and he won't be buying.

What should you do?  If the positives sound intriguing to you, do a little research.  Check some videos.  Check some reviews.  Weigh they hype, both positive and negative.  And see if they squeeze in one more beta before release.

Dark days are coming.

-Lens

Addendum:  I realized I left out that TSW will be a subscription-based game and will be offering a lifetime sub.

EDIT:  Open beta this weekend starting the 22nd:  http://www.funcom.com/news/massive_final_beta_weekend_for_the_secret_world_starts_june_22   Try it for yourself and find out if it's for you or not!

Lens On The Future

Having made my first few entries (including the near legendary magnum opus of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of MMOs"), my plan at present is to try and make a new entry every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  If the geniuses (geniuii?) at Penny Arcade can manage what they do thrice a week, a dumbass like me should be able to pour his own particular brand of stupid through the keyboard and onto the Internet where it can ferment.  Like jenkem.

Time will tell!

-Lens

Lens on the State of MMOs: The Bad

And so we come to it at last...The Bad.  What is it about us humans where a "List of the Best" elicits far less interest than a "List of the Worst"?  We must have a gene for schadenfreude.

"Star Wars: The Old Republic" almost made it here, but there's enough quality in the game (at least one good go-through for just about anyone) that I can't call it bad.  But the "Rise and (Rapid) Descent of SW:TOR" would have to be one of the biggest MMO stories of the first half of the year.  And the "descent" part of that might just qualify as Bad.  If it continues, it'll definitely fall into Bad.

The Bad (Lee Van Cleef as "Angel Eyes")

38 Studios and Project Copernicus

If the disappointing SW:TOR was a kick to the testicles of Triple-A MMOs, Copernicus is a bullet to the temple.  If TOR made potential investors nervous, Copernicus has made them thoroughly lose bowel control.

The failures here are so massive that the collapse of 38 will be THE biggest story in MMO gaming this year, and the repercussions will last for a while.  The success of WoW ("Wait...how many million dollars per month in recurring revenue!?") brought a huge amount of capital into the MMO-making market.  38's failure will have the reverse effect, scaring off investors in droves.

And the combo platter of TOR's tepid (at best) return-on-investment of huge amounts of risk, together with 38 cratering into the ground will make the entire proposition of making an MMO, especially a big-money AAA title, largely untenable in the minds of most potential sugar daddies.

On a personal note, I'm really pissed about this.  No, it didn't directly have an effect on me or anyone I know.  As a human being (well, close enough), I deeply sympathize with those whose lives have been upended with little or no warning (see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/172303/38_Studios_Spouse_speaks_out.php for info on how badly the employees got fucked).  As a gamer, I just see a vast amount of wasted effort and emotional, professional, and financial investment in something that appears to have been a mirage.

There still isn't a whole lot of hard information about what happened (although I expect more will seep out over time, like toxic waste from a rusty barrel), but I think as an outsider and follower of the industry I can point one finger at a huge, glaring, obvious failure...

Nobody (outside of the people directly involved) cared about the game.  Because nobody knew anything about the game.  The execs at 38 were evidently working on new financing at the time of the failure, but here's something that eluded them...investors are more likely to invest when there's a lot of interest in the product.

Just before the studio went tits-up, 38 claimed the game would launch in June, 2013.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this is relatively accurate.  If true, they should have started the hype train up a year ago.  At least.  Because they didn't start showing character screenies or area fly-throughs until the company was on a respirator.  And that's beyond "way too late".

Pretty simple:  Investors want to know the game will succeed.  A good indicator of success is a slavering base of fans willing to sell organs to get their hands on a beta invite.  You can't have that kind of fan base if you insist on keeping the wraps on the game.  For Christ's sake, we don't even know what the NAME of the fucking game was going to be!  Kind of tough for the fans to get worked up.  Even tougher to convince investors.

Whatever else led to the crash-and-burn, as an outsider, I feel safe in saying that this was a factor in the death of 38 Studios and the fact we'll never see "Project Copernicus" (seriously, even now you don't know or can't tell the fucking name!?).  And a totally avoidable factor.

I don't know, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill (why moles?), but I wanted to care about Copernicus.  I wanted to know more and look forward to it and get excited.  And they denied us even that much.

And they crapped in the stew for everyone else looking to make MMOs.

You want Bad?  Hard to get more Bad than that.

Lord of the Rings Online

The game's not bad at all.  It's pretty good, actually.  Sometimes it even borders on great.  When it went free-to-play I expressed my opinion that if this led to the developers cranking out a stream of quality content to encourage player retention and new-player enlistment, it would be a big win-win for everybody.

Ah, such a dreamer.

Since LotRO has gone F2P it has gone Bad.  Really Bad.

LotRO has been my MMO home almost since launch.  As I type this I'm on vent with a bunch of my LotRO buds chatting.  But none are playing LotRO right now.  Only one of the six plays regularly, and she mostly just PvPs.

Turbine (and/or WB, exactly who's driving the train[wreck] is open to debate) have an astonishing gift for alienating people who loved their game.  It was, once upon a time, a game where the design was driven by lore and gameplay.  Now it's an exercise in commerce-driven game design, and what enrages so many former devotees is that it's so brazen about it.

They've perfectly demonstrated their naked avarice with the announcement of their latest expansion, "Riders of Rohan".

The previous expansion, "Rise of Isengard" was priced at $30/40/50 with various amounts of virtual goodies and Turbine Points (the post-F2P currency) and included the raid and the at-the-time unfinished instance cluster.

This expansion, "Riders of Rohan" is priced at $40/50/70(!?) with fewer virtual goodies NO Turbine Points and NOT including the unfinished raid or unfinished instance cluster which will have to be purchased at additional cost later.  Their reasoning for the increased price?  "Well, this expansion covers a lot more terrain!"

What.  The.  Fuck.  Are they thinking?

Unsurprisingly, the community went absolutely foaming-at-the-mouth batshit crazy and Turbine has thrown in the towel and will now include Turbine Points and the (still yet unfinished) instance content with purchase.  It only took countless deleted threads on the forums for them to get the message.

Now comes the really interesting question:  Did they really think they wouldn't get a rabidly unhappy reaction (in which case they are so clueless it's Bad) or did they know they'd get the reaction they did and intentionally plan to backpedal and "give in" to make it seem as if they listen to the community and give a shit about the players (in which case they are evil, which is kinda inherently Bad).

This is what LotRO has turned into...Turbine are greedy, lying bastards.  Oh wait...I didn't mention the lying?

"We'll never sell gear through the store that is better than what's craftable or drops at level in-game."  Yeah, they started doing that a few months back and have changed their story to "We'll never sell endgame gear through the store that's better..."  Mmhmm, pull my other leg.

And they've told PvPers before every expansion (and it seems like before every content patch) that there was a new PvP map in the works.  Just this week they admitted that a new PvP map is not in the plan any longer.  Somehow, even if they tell me they just came to that conclusion, I won't believe them.  After the one-shot money grab of selling advanced PvP traits for Turbine Points, there's just no revenue for 'em in PvP...so screw it.

The whole game design mindset is commerce-driven now.  It permeates every decision that gets made.  How does fixing bugs directly monetize?  How does improving play balance improve the balance sheets?

There are still good people doing good work on LotRO, but even the most dyed-in-the-wool fans I know are turned off by what Turbine's doing and trying out other games.

F2P isn't bad.  Converting a subscription game into F2P isn't bad.  Lord of the Rings Online is driving loyal customers off, and that's really Bad.

The MMO Players

Yep, us.  You.  Me.  How can I blame us for what's wrong?  Easy-peasy, let me count some ways!

1)  Infatuation with Triple-A titles...Guilty, as charged!  How many smaller games have I talked about so far?  Yep, that would be zero.  A few months back I spent some time in the Glitch beta.  A very nifty, extremely atypical browser-based game.  In fact, at some point, I'll have to write about it.  But I have to admit, I obsess about the big-name big-game MMOs.  It's easy to miss a small gem while staring at a great big pile of ordure.

2)  Whining...Guilty, as charged!  If it seems that MMO players act like entitled whiny little bitches, it's probably because we act like entitled whiny little bitches.  The signal to noise-ratio on game forums isn't almost zero or even zero, it's negative.  The real problem is two-fold, we usually complain indiscriminately and unconstructively.  I still tend to complain about things big and small, but I am getting better at doing so in a constructive fashion.  This blog is meant to help me continue to increase my...constructivity?  Is that a word?  The blogging tool says "No!"

3)  Gold farming...no, not the semi-slave labor in China or wherever doing the work, or even the soulless creatures selling the product...the stupid bastard players buying it.  Really, if you've ever bought gold and complained once thereafter about gold sellers, do us all a favor and swallow a few handfuls of tacks.  Most players absolutely loathe everything about gold farming, but if no players bought gold, no sellers would exist.  D3 is trying to deal with it by legitimizing it (and boy will that have a HUGE impact on MMOs going forward if it works for them), but I'm more hopeful that GW2 has found a good way of de-incentivizing it with their approach on their gem store.  /fingerscross

4)  Gaming Assholes...Guil...actually, no.  I am sometimes an ass, but I'm not a Gaming Asshole.  Gaming Assholes are the guys (mostly guys) who do things like:  sexually harass female players, gank, flame, tea-bag or /spit on PvP corpses, calling others "noobs" who "suck", throw around racial/religious insults, make inflammatory political statements, ninja-loot, etc.  We all see behaviors in-game every day where somebody treats it like it's zero-sum...they increase their enjoyment by decreasing the enjoyment of others.  It's pathological and sometimes even sociopathic.  If your real life is so miserable that you feel the need to inflict unhappiness on others in a game to feel better...seek professional assistance.  Actually, I don't give a crap if you seek help or not...feel free to sit and fester in your own filth, but please log out first.

5)  Fanboys and haters.  Pretty simple...fanboys do MMOs no favors when they blindly and unquestioningly support the makers.  Tell the guys in charge what you love but also what could use some work.  That's positive feedback that will improve the game you love.  Haters do nobody any favors when they blindly slag everything a company does or says.  Did SOE fuck all of the SWG players with the NGE?  Of course they did.  Should they have had their feet held to the fire over it?  They sure as hell deserved it.  But it's been YEARS...get over it.  Because PlanetSide 2 looks pretty goddamned good!

I could probably come up with more, but you get the idea.  MMOs are made for us, and we make up the community.  We can't make a bad game good, but we can make any game better.  When they give us a theme park, remember the Disneyland is more fun if the guy next to you in line doesn't punch you in face and pour his beer on you (yes, I know, no beer in Disneyland, nitpicker).  When they give us a sandbox, remember that no one likes what the cat may have buried in it.

Don't be what the cat buried.  Because that's Bad.

Lens on the State of MMOs: The Ugly

Wait...why The Ugly before The Bad?  Because in the movie, The Ugly wasn't good (well, The Good wasn't very good either) or bad, he just wandered around in the expanse of territory between.  He and The Good blew up the bridge together to stop the mindless fighting going on, but he was also a murderous thug.  Ugly is a mixed bag.  Bad is just bad.

The Ugly (Eli Wallach as "Tuco" ["Wanted in fourteen counties of this State, the condemned is found guilty of murder, armed robbery of citizens, state banks, and post offices; the theft of sacred objects, arson in a state prison, perjury, bigamy, deserting his wife and children, inciting prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, receiving stolen goods, selling stolen goods, passing counterfeit money, and contrary to the laws of this State the condemned is guilty of using marked cards and loaded dice..."]).

See?  A mixed bag.

TERA

How, you might ask, can I call this game ugly when it's one of the best-looking games around?  Because pretty is skin deep but ugly can go clean to the bone.

I saw a lot of buzz when this game was in the works as to how the action-based combat was going to revolutionize the MMO genre.  There were a few problems with that analysis...  In general, the MMO audience is more mature than, say, the console-based action game audience.  (Chronologically mature...general chat in most MMOs is often somewhere between an elementary school playground and a bunch of excrement-flinging howler monkeys on meth.)  Us Elderly Folk are generally not as good at, or as interested in "action-based combat" as you Young'uns.  So much for the revolution.  I understand the action-based combat is awesome.  I think I speak for a good-sized chunk of the MMO players (although not necessarily the majority) when I say "Yay?"

But where the game is truly Ugly, is in the bones and muscle of the MMO.  Gabe from Penny Arcade (who absolutely LOVED the game and the combat especially) put it this way, "Tera suffers from the worst sort of old school MMO grind bullshit. As bad as the quests were I kept doing them because I wanted to keep fighting. But there is something wrong with an MMO when you would rather grind than do their quests."  Now that's what I mean by Ugly...embrace evolution in part of your game while reducing other parts to the bare minimum expected and required.

One more thing about TERA...at the risk of sounding like a cultural imperialist running dog, the social norms of the developers are different (not inherently better or worse!) than most Americans.  Google up images of "TERA elin".  That's the playable race a friend of mine, who was in the beta, referred to as "twelve year-old slut bunnies".  He also said they seemed to be the most popular racial choice.  That's creepy enough to call Ugly.

World Of Warcraft:  Mists of Pandaria

If you turn an April Fool's joke into an expansion, you have a bad case of the Uglies.

Make no mistake, WoW is a GREAT GAME.  I wanted to capitalize it because it's clearly both true and important.  Too many MMO players love to crap on WoW.  But it changed the MMO world in just about every way imaginable.  Here's my summary to explain how it changed things...

Everquest 2 launched on November 8, 2004.  WoW launched on November 23, 2004.  The difference between the two was simple...EQ2 was designed to be an MMO for MMO players.  WoW was designed to be an MMO for game players.

Before WoW, MMOs were for a relatively small segment of the gaming populace.  That's the single biggest reason WoW has been the success and influence it has, because it has redefined what an MMO player is.

Having said all that...Mists of Pandering.  Ugh.  Lee.

When it was first noticed that Blizzard had nabbed the trademarks, I hoped it was a feint to keep people off balance.  I commented that if true, the cover art needed to be a panda on a motorcycle jumping over a tank of sharks, thumbs up, going "Aaaaaaaaayyyyy!"

"How are pandas any worse than space goats?"  Let's see, the space goats are descendants of red-skinned, horned, cloven-hoofed servants of evil.  Nothing says "cute and fuzzy" like the blue-headed stepchildren of pure demonic evil!

All the rest of the stuff in WoW has a basis in literature or mythology.  It has some root reason to be in our collective "fantasy worldview".  Pandas?  Nope.  Ugly.

Let us examine the overarching narratives of the various releases, all based on the lore of the previous games, including the RTS's...  WoW:  defeat Onyxia and Ragnaros.  Burning Crusade: journey to Outland and face Illidan.  Wrath of the Lich King: defeat the Lich King Arthas.  Cataclysm: survive the breaking of the world and foil Deathwing (yeah, OK, I'm sick of dragons by this point too).

Mists of Pandaria:  oooo, look at the cute pandas!

The idea of facing Illidan or Arthas gave a lot of WoW players WoWoodies.  These were established characters that the players already had given a certain gravitas, a narrative inertia (well, as much as you can get from a cartoon).  Pandaria is a complete tonal shift from the primary narratives we've seen in the game before.  Silly has always had a place in the game (I got what you need!).  Cutesy has had a place in the game (Daylight's burning!).

Diablo 3 has Whimseyshire, but I can't see them making a Whimseyshire-based expansion.  That's what Pandaria is.

That's ugly.  Titan anyone?

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Because of my level of disappointment with this game I was sorely tempted to put it on The Bad list, but that wouldn't be a fair assessment.  I will, at some point soon, do a thorough post-mortem of SW:TOR, but not today.  Today I'm about The Ugly.

My first day in the beta I had a friend ask me how the game was.  I said, "It's exactly what I expected, a multi-player BioWare KOTOR RPG with MMO trappings stapled on."  Towards the end of the beta I had another friend ask me if I expected it to be a hit.  I said, "For it to succeed for any length of time, they are going to need a very aggressive pipeline of new content or people will play through once and unsub."

Sometimes, rarely, I am right on the nose.

I talked above how TERA had embraced evolution in part of the game while skating by on the bare minimum in other parts and that is true in spades for TOR.  They have greatly improved the story-telling part of MMORPGs with the use of voice-over everywhere.  This is good, but not sufficient for success.  If the BioWare Boys had a nickel for every time they used the phrase "story-based MMO" the game would be a runaway financial hit.

The root of The Ugly goes back to the moment of creation, where they said "We'll turn KOTOR into an MMORPG!"  That's the problem, MMORPGs aren't just MMO RPGs.  If you take the components for an MMORPG and Krazy Glue them onto an RPG, you don't have an MMORPG.  No, I'm not joking!  For that matter, RPGs aren't just single-player MMORPGs either!

Let me give an example...what made the KOTOR games so compelling (metacritic gives KOTOR a 93-94 and KOTOR II a 85-86) was choice.  You could choose which planet to go to when, what quests to follow in what order, what Big Storyline Choices to make (especially in KOTOR).  These options made for, arguably, the best computer RPG ever.  (Yes, I know, "Baldur's Gate", or "Skyrim", or "Dragon's Age: Origins" or "Mass Effect", or...shutup!  I said "arguably"!)

Your choices made KOTOR, and the other BioWare RPGs, so successful.  And TOR (the MMORPG) has almost none.  Because things like "alienating Khem Val (Hah!  See what I did there?), your companion, to the point he leaves, never to return" or "killing your companion Mako because she keeps disapproving of your ruthless nature" which were the source of so much of the narrative power of KOTOR, simply are antithetical to a successful MMORPG.

BioWare removed "choice" because they had to.  Because somewhere late into development somebody said, "Y'know, people are going to be pissed and ragequit when they hit the level cap and realize they don't have access to a healing companion and have nerfed themselves at level 15."

They built TOR as an extension of KOTOR, but in the act of making it MMO, they had to gut what made the RPG so great.

The design needed to go the other way...they needed to take the things that make a great MMORPG (now that's a design document I'd love to read), whatever they thought those things were, and then pull the desired parts of the RPG across into the MMORPG framework.

That way the question would have been asked early on, "How can we make choice both important and practical in an MMORPG?" instead of getting late in development and saying "Choice is breaking our MMORPG."

One last ugly...Money.  They spent a lot.  They needed to earn it back.  So they fell back on tried-and-true (or is that tired-and-true?) game mechanics because they couldn't risk alienating vast swathes of potential customers.  People have called TOR a "WoW-clone", but it would be more accurate to call it an "everything-clone" because they needed people to understand the game mechanics and be comfortable playing right away.  So, excepting the VO work, TOR is like most of the other games out there.  With lightsabers.

TOR will likely be the last Big Huge Money MMO that ever gets made.  The numbers bandied around have been big (likely, inaccurately big in most cases).  The risk was huge.  The game will probably be profitable in time, but nowhere near the return investors will consider worth the risk in the future.  The lure of WoW-type-billions will be outweighed by TOR-type-risk.  GW2 isn't cheap, I'm sure.  SOE is putting some big bucks into Planetside 2.  Ain't nothin' gettin' nowhere's near TOR money.  Maybe ever.

One more thing...imagine everything you know about SW:TOR the game...

And...remove the Star Wars.  Now that's an ugly game.


Next time...The Bad.

Lens on the State of MMOs: The Good...

It's an interesting/challenging/transitional time in the MMO landscape these days.  Paradigms standing strong, crashing and burning, or being completely ignored.  Things fall apart, the center cannot hold (mere Anarchy Online is loosed upon the world?).

So here's my take from the front lines...

The Good (Clint Eastwood as "Blondie")

Guild Wars 2

Yes, yes, I know...it's the Exciting New Product with twice the flavor and half the calories!!!  I tried Guild Wars a few times, but it just never grabbed me.  I saw this one coming and was solidly "Meh".  But it started looking more interesting as time went on, so I went ahead and pre-purchased to get access to the betas.  After about 4 hours of the first beta weekend I was thinking I had made a mistake.  About 8 hours in, I was feeling better about my purchase.  By the end of the weekend I was so upset it was going away I was tearing out my hair in distress (Metaphorically, as I'm not actually limber enough to get a good grip on my back hair and that's about all I have left).

One stress test and another beta weekend later, I'm still very excited for it.  Sure it has a lot of standard MMO tropes (fantasy setting, phat lewtz, hot bars, etc.), but a lot of the design is avoiding the standard MMO implementations.  It looks and feels new and interesting.  It's still got issues and needs polish, but it's the one game I'm most looking forward to right now.  And that's Good.

Please hurry guys.  Please.  Pleeeeeeeeeeease.  Me wanty.

EVE Online

On the other end of the spectrum, is EVE Online.  This is a game I've subscribed to 3 different times, for varying lengths.  I consider the guys at CCP to be enormously talented amateurs because of some of the mistakes they've made, and the game is certainly not for everybody, but I put this in the Good is for two reasons in particular.

First, they started small and have grown in the right way, organically.  They either grew their niche or outgrew it.  They should be a model for the way small MMOs can have a serious impact (and make some serious bank).  Don't shoot for the stars, aim for the Moon first (oooooo, space game humor!).

Second, they've screwed up.  And when they've screwed up, they've (eventually) admitted it and done whatever they can to ameliorate the damage.  Because they've been willing to take good-sized risks to improve the game substantially over time, they've taken some missteps.  Too many games won't even TRY anything new for fear of derailing the gravy train.  And if they do screw up, the standard response of most of 'em is to delete forum postings and feign good cheer.  CCP is willing to take their lumps.

But they should have fired the employees who cheated in-game like a fucking shot.

Rift

I played Rift at launch for a few months and again for a number more, just earning my 6 month veteran rewards (on the day I cancelled my sub, coincidentally).  At first I found it too...vanilla.  When I went back I found they'd added some very nice sauces and sprinkles onto the vanilla and now it was quite tasty indeed.  Why'd I unsub?  I'd level-capped 3 of the 4 classes and was a bit bored.

But I'll be going back soon.  Why?

Because these guys crank out (quality) content like nobody else in the MMO business.  Nobody else is close.  1.9 will be adding a huge new PvP system, instant adventures anywhere, mentoring, and hopefully training little critters on the landscape into cosmetic pets.  Then comes the EXPANSION with Storm Legion.  Tripling the size of land area, new level cap, 4 new souls, etc.

They are not screwing around.  This game is much better than release and it was the most polished MMO at release I've ever seen (by FAR).  These are professionals expanding and improving an already-good piece of work.  They should be a model for companies trying to grow a triple-A, mainstream game just like the EVE guys are for growing a niche game.

EQ/EQ2/AO/UO/DaoC/CoH/Vanguard/DDO/CO/STO/etc.

Why these guys?  Simple...because they are still running.  Too many games that people enjoyed are gone.  Some went away for purely financial reasons...you can only pour so much money down a hole.  Some went away for convenience reasons (I'm looking at you, the people who killed "Tabula Rasa" and "Star Wars Galaxies") where the guys in charge simply wanted 'em gone.  But too many are gone.

Here's an idea, MMO Peoples In Charge...when your game is about to go tits-up, remember those customers who have invested so much time and emotion into your game, and try to find a way to keep it alive.  Even if you have to give it to somebody else.  Or sell it for $1.

Hell, I bet the SWG Emu people would donate internal organs for the source for a game you chose to simply turn off.

Neverwinter/Wildstar/Elder Scrolls Online/PlanetSide 2/Defiance/The Secret World/Firefall

Why these guys?  Because they're still coming.  These are all games (some are only MMO hybrids) on the horizon that are showing promise.  Neverwinter wowed people at PAX (I believe it was).  ESO did almost as well at E3 (despite a LOT of negativity a few weeks earlier when it was announced).  PlanetSide 2 has been getting absolutely stellar hands-on press.  Defiance will have the synergy with the TV show.  Wildstar and Firefall look very interesting and polished but are still fairly early in their development cycle.  The Secret World is the only one I've gotten to try, and even though I liked it (a cross between the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG and "The X-Files"?  Sign me up!), and I can't see it being more than a niche success...thank Nyarlathotep it doesn't have goddamned elves and dwarves!  Sorry Neverwinter and ESO, but I am SO sick of high fantasy I even roll my eyes at GW2 and that game is MMO Viagra for me right now.


To be continued...

-Lens

(Several years later...) First Post!

What's all this nonsense?

So...who am I?  I am like everyone else on the Internet, an asshole with an opinion.  Actually, lots of opinions.

In an attempt to reduce the amount of clutter that I, personally, am adding to the Internet, I will limit my opinionation to the subject of MMOs.  MMORPGs.  Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.  Yeah, them.

Why should you care?  Actually, you probably shouldn't.  But you're here because I personally pointed you at it and you feel obligated, or because I said something so incendiary that someone linked it just to get a reaction out of you, or you're here by accident.  Regardless, thank you for your attention and please note the tip jar on the counter, but save your singles for the lap dance.

What makes me qualified to write, pontificate, wax rhapsodic, or rant about MMOs?  Well I've been playing them a long time, I've played a bunch, and they have been my primary entertainment for years.  I even play them more than I read these days.  No, I'm not proud of that, but pretending that something doesn't exist won't make it go away.  Like necrotizing fasciitis or the Kardashians.  (ASIDE:  "Necrotizing Fasciitis" would make a fine character name.  Generally, a lot of diseases make for good character names.  I've gotten a number of compliments on my toons named "Yersinia Pestis".  I've considered a GW2 character named "Heliobacter Pylori" but I think it's too long.  END ASIDE)

More generally, I have a LONG history with games of all sorts.  I got a copy of Avalon Hill's "Luftwaffe" when I was about 12.  I got the original boxed set of D&D (fake brown woodgrain box!) in 74 or 75.  I bought my Apple ][+ in 1979 expressly to play games (especially those from SSI [ASIDE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Simulations,_Inc.  END ASIDE]).  And I've modified them endlessly, changing, mutating, morphing, combining, supplementing, excising, and a whole lot more verbs where those came from.

I've mathematically deconstructed some games to the point where I could only lose by random factors or getting ganged-up on (ASIDE:  The original "Star Fleet Battles" and "Circus Maximus" to name two END ASIDE).  I've kept records on games that would do an OCD APBA player proud (ASIDE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APBA respectively END ASIDE).  I own and have read more than a dozen books on MMO design and theory...AND I'VE NEVER WORKED FOR A GAME COMPANY (ASIDE:  Unless working for a game store counts.  I worked a few years at Games of Berkeley.  Both locations.  END ASIDE)

So my opinions may not be relevant.  They may not be logical.  They may not be right.

But they are not uninformed.

-Lens