Lens on Friday Quickies VII

Time for another quick round through the interesting little tidbits of the week.

A bit slow, but here we go...

PANDAMONIUM COMMENCE!--So another WoW expansion has arrived, and this time it arrived via motorcycle jumping over a tank filled with sharks.

It's amazing how little attention this has received in the gaming press...or maybe it's not amazing.  Sure, everybody wrote about "New WoW expansion!" but that was pretty much the limit of the coverage outside of the WoW-specific sites.  But I think we can truly see that while WoW is still the single biggest player in the MMO field by far, for the first time I think I can say that it's no longer the 800 Pound Gorilla.

In fact, except for those still playing, I don't think WoW is very important or even very relevant any more.

It's certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, but it's like McDonald's now:  sure a lot of people eat there, and a lot of people occasionally go back for a taste of the fries, but unless you're a little kid, who cares about McDonald's?  (In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it is necessary for me to state that while I strongly dislike McD's, every couple of years I get a massive Big Mac jones.  I buy two, eat 'em, and that's McD's for me for a couple more years.)

And then there's the analyst estimates that put "Mists of Pandaria" box sales at 600-700K copies.  What that means is that even if they sold a digital copy for every box copy (unlikely), they still sold less than half of what Cataclysm sold (3 million copies) at launch.

Whether this is due to increased quality competition (Guild Wars 2), general WoW-fatigue, or former players turning away from the continuing dumbing-down of the game systems and inclusion of Pokemon-like vanity pet battles and Farmville-like farming mini-game, it's hard to know.

Maybe it's because the whole goddamned expansion is based on an April Fool's joke!

Some of the more discerning customers (such as your humble author) found that insulting.

First Diablo III sells a shitload, but disappoints.  Now MoP sales disappoint.

Blizzard, it seems, has lost its mojo.

SAVE THE PANDAS!--And in an enormously clever PR move, the guys at Rift are donating $1 for each pre-order of their new expansion to a fund to actually save pandas.

Their announcement also included a smartly written disclaimer about how the offer is limited by certain states and their inscrutable laws about such charitable behaviors.

A funny and clever way to weasel a little publicity out of the other guy's launch at a measly cost.

Again, Trion shows their savvy.  My admiration continues to grow.

THE CITY NEEDS A HERO--So the fans of "City of Heroes" and some of the (former?) employees of Paragon have been desperately trying to find a way to save the game from the November execution date that NCSoft has set.

They've signed petitions, they've contacted potential buyers, they've "had discussions", and I feel quite secure in saying...none of it will work.

NCSoft (and Nexon, who now are the owners of NCSoft) have decided to simplify, and they prefer to do so with simple, clean, deep cuts.  They are killing a profitable (we are told) business to simplify.  To most of us, this is just insane.  Why not sell it or spin it off?  Why just through away an asset?

Because to them, it's cheaper to toss it away with minimal fuss than expend the effort to keep the players happy and people employed.

Anyone working for an NCSoft/Nexon company should take close note of what they've done with CoH and Paragon.  Should they decide to "simplify" further, they'll unsmilingly do the exact same thing to you, and not look back.

It would be easy to say "See what happens when the Asian corp comes knocking at your door?" but on the other hand, there's Perfect World.  With the support they've given Cryptic (Champions/Star Trek Online, upcoming Neverwinter) and the guys making Torchlight (which just launched TL2) they've taken, to my mind, the vastly smarter move of building up and out with smaller, more niche products, into the US market.

As a gamer, right now, if two new games came out, one through NCSoft and one through PW, all else being equal, I'd go with the PW game...and not look back.

PRESSURE VALVE--And in further NCSoft/Nexon news, there are rumors that they are looking to buy Valve for about a billion dollars.

First, given Gabe's recent statements that he'd rather Valve "disintegrate" before selling out, I have rather severe doubts that he's sell, unless Valve is having some severe cashflow problems that nobody knows about.

Second, I find it unlikely in the extreme that if Valve was going to be acquired that it would end up under NCSoft and Nexon.  Because of moves like what I described above, the public view of these companies (at least in the US) is not very good at all.  If Valve went to NCSoft/Nexon, I expect a lot of Valve's talent would go to the door.

So that rumor?  I smell bullshit.

Far more interesting rumors coming out of Valve are the hints and winks we keep getting that they are working on their own hardware.

We know they are working on a Linux-based Steam, so the rumors of a Linux-based "Steambox" console have the ring of credibility to them.

Time shall tell.

Unless they get bought out by NCSoft and Nexon, in which case they're screwed.

THE SECRET WORLD HAS ISSUES--Hah!  I fooled you!  You see, they call their content patches "issues", like a comic book or pulp magazine.  I'm so clever.

Yeah.  No.

They had their first content patch on schedule, about a month after launch.

The second content patch was late...about 3 weeks.  So much for a monthly schedule.

The third content patch...came out a week later.  Whuh!?  OK...back on schedule patches every month!

Seriously, that's good news for the TSW fans (including me) and players (no longer including me, sorry).  Getting themselves back on their original schedule (assuming they can maintain it, of course) should be a very cheering note.

Regular new content is probably the best hope Funcom has of growing the niche audience, and I wish them luck.

The guys at SWTOR have certainly failed on their attempt for a monthly "cadence" and are continuing to fail on their attempt for a six-week content "cadence".

Keep an eye open for SWTOR announcing new content on a "two-month cadence" any day now!

TIME TO PICK THE BONES--There are a couple of auctions in October for the remaining assets of 38 Studios.  Hundreds of computers and monitors.  Lots of various hardware and equipment.

Six refrigerators.

This is the sort of thing that always happens when any company goes bankrupt, but it seldom makes news.  Last one I remember was the auction of the office assets from Bernie Madoff.

Far more interesting to me will be the final "resting place" of the IP, codebase, art and programming assets, etc.

Will those get picked up for a song and...dare I dream...have the breath of life put back into them?  Will a dashing Doctor Frankenstein purchase this beautiful corpse, tie it down in a thunderstorm, and run a bajillion volts through the moribund body bringing life back to the dead?

Probably not, no.

The refrigerators are probably a wiser investment.

IT SEEMS LIKE I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOREVER--But it's only 15 years.  Yeah, yeah, I know, there were MMOs before it, and lots of MUDS, but 15 years ago this week, "Ultima Online" was released.

I tried it and didn't like it way back when.  But I sure as hell can't say it wasn't important.

What's odd is that our hobby as we know it is only 15 years old.  So much and so little has changed.

We still have levels and hitpoints (I'll be writing a column on that real soon) and hot bars.

But we also have seen the number of players explode into millions and the number of dollars into the billions.

The games have become simultaneously much simpler and much more complex.

And 15 years later, after EverQuest and World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, after huge successes and vast failures, after billions of dead mobs and millions of dead players, one thing remains unchanged:

Goddamnit a lot of people who play MMOs are dickheads.