Lens on Friday Quickies II (Electric Boogaloo)

More quick little blurbs on some of the news of the week in MMOs and gaming.

THE SECRET WORLD STRUGGLES--More industry layoffs...ugh.  Best of luck to those affected.  They announced some financials, saying they'd missed both of their potential targets (large sales/small subs versus small sales/large subs), probably splitting the difference with small sales and moderate subs.  On the positive side, their retention numbers are reportedly quite good and they look to continue with modest content patches every month (let's hope they can keep that up).  Funcom has said that the game is profitable.

One game commenter (I think it was Lum the Mad) noted that, as MMO players, "This is why we can't have nice things."  Funcom gives us something good and different and it mostly gets met with yawns.  Specifically, Funcom mentioned the Metacritic review numbers, which were solidly mediocre from the game press, and solidly very good from the players.  This has caused Funcom's stock to tank, and hence, layoffs.

Here's the thing...my reviews of the game were mostly positive, and I bought and played the game because I wanted to reward Funcom for "good and different", although I unsubbed after the first month because some of the playstyle didn't suit me (for me, individual combats took too long once you left Kingsmouth).  But in my reviews I was careful to describe it as a niche game, not for everyone, but worth trying because it might surprise you and be just what you were looking for.

I am unsurprised, but disappointed, by the result.  Let's hope it pulls an EVE and grows its niche over time.  There's a LOT of good in the game.

COPERNICUS RESURRECTION?  RHODE ISLAND LOOKS TO SELL 38 STUDIOS ASSETS--On the wishful thinking front...maybe, just maybe...Rhode Island can find a studio willing to take on the unfinished project.  One with enough financial and technical oomph to bring it to completion.  Hey...a guy can dream!

Also on the Copernicus front, Curt Schilling was quoted as saying that one of the big splashes they had planned for the game was that, at the end of the official announcement, they would do a Jobsian "oh and one more thing" and announce that it was launching, as always intended, as free-to-play with micro-transaction revenue.  I assume it would be more along the lines of GW2's buy-to-play model so they could recoup a quick $50-100M at launch to tide them over.

I still can't see the game pulling a Wesley and only being mostly dead.  Too bad, I'd really have liked to have seen it...more fantasy notwithstanding.

ANOTHER STRIKE AGAINST F2P--I saw that one of the speakers at the GDC in Cologne put out a pretty damning number...free-to-play has a rate of about 70% anti-retention.  Those are people who sign up and maybe log in once or twice and mostly never come back.  30% stick around.

While I completely agree that the "everything must have subscriptions" model is utterly dead, I think the "everything must be free-to-play" model is DOA.  Seriously guys...the model for any given game needs to be tailored to that game.  There is no one answer, and I think we'll see more hybrids in the future, along the lines of GW2's buy-to-play model.

This also means that those (hilariously) overstated numbers of 10-50M F2Pers coming to SW:TOR (seriously, a "games analyst" pulled those numbers out of his ass), means more like 3-15M.  And with the best part of the game being free...they are going to need a lot of "whales" (casino terminology for big-money customers) to squeeze any long-term cash out of TOR.

RIFT ANNOUNCES NEW MAGE SOUL (CLASS) FOR COMING EXPANSION--And it's...a melee dps mage (which sounds a tiny bit oxymoronic)!  Named "harbinger" it looks like it adds a number of nice abilities, and it's meant to combo well with a couple of the less obvious souls like chloromancer and stormcaller.

I look forward to a stealth cleric, a pure healer melee rogue, and a ranged warrior...or some other wacky combos.

The guys at Trion are machines...they crank out quality content at a rate that puts every other developer to shame.  The expansion they have aimed for a release by the end of the year will more than triple the land-mass, add 10 more levels, add 4 more souls (the harbinger and 3 more), 7 dungeons, 3 raids, dimensions (player housing) and when added to the free content drops since launch...kick the living shit out of every other MMO company out there.

I don't know what Trion has...better tools, more devs, demonic slave-driving project managers, coders cursed to never sleep, enchanted keyboards that create content via quantum tunnelling...whatever it is, everyone else in the industry needs some.

And this just in...in the middle of writing this, I came upon a link to some Rift info from Gamescom, so I decided, since I was writing about Rift, to pause and watch.  The harbinger video and the colossus fight video I'd seen before...but "dimensions", their take on housing is AMAZING.

I've already written about how much I love in-game housing, and based on a couple minutes of video I am willing to put Rift's dimensions in the running with the best that anyone's ever done.  Check from about 4:10 in the video here:  http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/gamescom-2012-rift-storm-legion-walkthrough/

Dammit...I may now have to buy the one year discount sub and get the free mount!  Curse you and your competance Trion!

SOEmote, BIG DEAL, SMALL DEAL, NO DEAL?--So the lads at SOE have added real facial animation to EQ2.  Your webcam reads your facial expressions and then animates your character to match.  But is this a piece of tech likely to change gaming?

Well, for EQ2, I'm going to go with "No deal".  For 99% of the gamers, it won't change their gaming experience one iota, even if they have a webcam.

The only people I can see using it (oh some people will mess around with it, but few will adapt it) are a small minority of role-players.  Most MMO gamers have their camera scrolled back so far that that they can barely make out the race of whoever they are talking to...let alone whether they are smirking or not.

In the near future, I'll go with "Small deal".  I don't see any major breakthroughs from it in the next year of two, at least in any games we know about from SOE.

In the far future, I'll go with "Wait and see..." This is the sort of tech experiment that you never know where it might go and what Sony might be able to do with it.

Short version, for gaming, no-to-small deal.

GUILD WARS 2 STRESS TESTS--OK guys, you are killing me by degrees here!!!

More tests, more stress.  They have had some issues during some of the tests, but then that's why they're tests!

They keep tweaking and polishing and it keeps getting closer...7 days and some number of hours to go!  We'll see if my preparations for launch involving moving sleep times around and naps and such will let me squeeze in a blog next Friday before they launch.  I may be reduced to a drooling idiot (more of a drooling idiot) by then.

Hell, I should probably just live-blog the launch Friday night...

ELECTRONICS ARTS LOOKING FOR A BUYER?--That's the rumor going around anyway.  Looks like SW:TOR, EA's "WoW-killer" kinda backfired.

The gaming industry, and gaming stocks in particular, are just about impossible to predict.  The two biggest 800 pound gorillas are EA and Activision...and now both are purportedly up for sale.

I should totally buy both...anyone got a few billion they'd like to loan me?  While I'm at it...maybe I can scoop up the 38 Studios leftovers too!  Game company bonanza!

RUNESCAPE PLAYERS ROBBED AT GUNPOINT--You probably saw the articles...one student tried to buy a bunch of Runescape currency with (badly) counterfeited money, then pulled a (real-looking pellet) gun on a guy, forcing him to call his friend to transfer the currency.

The amount of stupid in one person...and a college student yet...is astonishing.  Do you think they'll not notice the fake money?  Do you think they'll not report it if they don't notice at the exchange?  Obviously, you think they may notice, so you bring a pellet gun.  Are you going to shoot him with the gun if he says no?  You obviously think it will scare him into giving you what you want...you think he won't report SOMEBODY PULLING A GUN ON HIM?  Do you think, with the information they have, that the police won't find you?

I mean this moron went to the effort to make fake money and brought along a pellet gun...so this comedy of errors WAS PLANNED!

I am as big of an MMO whore as the next guy...OK, bigger than almost any guy...but I never thought about counterfeiting and armed robbery as a way to advance my character's leetness.

LAST ITEM...WHERE I ABUSE MY FRIENDS--We all carry shameful secrets.  Things from our past, terrible burdens that we'd rather carry to our graves than share, even with our closest of friends.  Some are old scars, some are festering wounds, and some are fresh and bleeding...

This week, several of my best gaming friends admitted that they were...keyboard turners.

Worse yet...they were unaware that mouse-turning even existed!

I know, in this day and age, that seemingly modern, well-adjusted human beings could live in such a blighted and primitive state as to turn their characters using only the 'A' and 'D' keys...I'm at a loss to comprehend the personal devastation and deprivation such a lifestyle must inflict on the poor unfortunates.

One asked a friend how he could turn his warg so quickly in Player-versus-Monster-Player in LotRO.  When we described mouse-turning, we were met with dumbstruck awe.

Later, while discussing this poor girl's epiphany, another fellow piped in with "What's mouse-turning?"

I simply couldn't stop weeping at the soul-searing agony these poor wretches have been suffering.

I was going to suggest that we start a charity to help these unfortunates, but I think they may fall under the Americans With Disbilities Act.

Keyboard-turning...just say "No!  Noob..."