I downloaded the RF Online beta from Fileplanet, and created a character there. There are three factions, one being a kind of robots, one race of mages, and some more human looking guys. Between the three races there is PvP, which I never experienced. That's because I didn't play the game very long before I got bored. :)
I didn't even play enough to write anything resembling a review. The game reminded me too much of the boring Asian mass-killing games like ROSE Online, right down to the badly translated English texts with Asian grammar. I have so much to do in World of Warcraft, I felt I was wasting my time even trying this.
Saturday, February 4, 2006
Friday, February 3, 2006
The casual vs. hardcore war
AFKGamer has a very nice article on Epics for Tigole's Mom, about an interview in the NYTimes (under "other sports") focusing on raid-level content, the protests by casual gamers following it, and Blizzard's countermeasures to calm down the casual crowd. Read the story there, I'm just giving some comments here:
The war between casual and hardcore gamers is based on some facts of life which are unlikely to ever change, thus the war will be with us probably forever. Fact is that some players in a MMORPG play far more hours than other players. And as one of the basic principles of MMORPGs is to reward you for your actions in the game, the people who play the most end up with the best rewards. So some of the complaints of casual players are clearly unjustified, you simply can't give out an epic reward for a soloable quest which is equal in quality to another epic reward for doing hundreds of hours of PvP or coordinating a group of 40 players several hours in Molten Core. If you would create an easy way to get to the same reward, it would simply destroy the PvP system and the raid system. Everybody would get the reward the easy way instead of the hard way, and then there would be nothing left to do for the people playing more.
The more difficult part of the war is the discussion on how much effort the game developers should spend for creating content for the different play styles. When Blizzard creates a new high-level 40-player raid dungeon, there are lots of players who will never be able to see it, because they don't have the time and the social network to go on a raid. On the other hand, hardcore players are consuming content faster than casual players, and spend a lot more hours online, so if Blizzard does *not* create new high-level 40-player raid dungeons, the hardcore players grow bored and quit.
The battle around the NYTimes article, which described upcoming new high-level raid content, is mainly caused because many people feel that Blizzard is adding too much hardcore content, and too little casual content. There has not been a single new dungeon for small groups below level 50 added to the game since release, but several high-level raid dungeons. Raid dungeons and PvP, which isn't casual player friendly either, together cover 90% of the content added to the game. Of course some of that was needed, because there was too little high-level content at the start. But now the casual players are getting restless waiting for their turn of developer attention, and not getting much.
The developers argument is based on looking at demography, at any given time there are now more level 60 players online than all the other levels combined, so they say they must create more level 60 content. That argument overlooks two important considerations: 1) There are a lot of level 60 players precisely because all the content is there, and people rush to 60 to attain all the new shiny content. And 2) World of Warcraft is not paid per hour. While the hardcore players might spend more time in the World of Warcraft, the casual players are more numerous, and thus are paying a bigger proportion of the monthly fee. If you can make only one of the groups happy, it would be financially more advantageous to lose 100 hardcore players than to lose 1,000 casual players.
The best decision Blizzard has made in this war is to raise the level cap from 60 to 70 in the upcoming expansion. That *looks* very much like a support for high-level players, but in fact will end up adding a lot more casual content than hardcore content. Unless the developers throw previous design principles over board, casual players should be able to level up to 70 without being forced to ever join a raid, and they might even be able to do so with nothing but soloing. That will give them a lot to do. I just hope there will be plenty of 5-man dungeons added on the way to 70. At the same time, once the casual players are level 70, they will be able to at least visit content that has previously been locked to them. They will still be excluded from the new level 70 raid dungeons, but they might well be able to do Molten Core in a smaller, less well organized group, ploughing through Lucifron and company considerably faster than a current level 60 raid group.
The reaction of Blizzard, announcing more casual content to be added in the next content patch 1.10, at least gives some hope that they are aware of who is paying their salaries. A lot of the war is based on appearances, caused by bad marketing from Blizzard, which is always announcing the hardcore content first, and hides the additional casual content somewhere deep in the patch notes that nobody reads. To be attainable by all players, content needs to be accessible by soloing or playing in small groups, with not too large consecutive blocks of time needed.
[Edit: Absolutely needed to include a link to Brokentoys, Scott Jennings opinion on the subject is a must-read.]
The war between casual and hardcore gamers is based on some facts of life which are unlikely to ever change, thus the war will be with us probably forever. Fact is that some players in a MMORPG play far more hours than other players. And as one of the basic principles of MMORPGs is to reward you for your actions in the game, the people who play the most end up with the best rewards. So some of the complaints of casual players are clearly unjustified, you simply can't give out an epic reward for a soloable quest which is equal in quality to another epic reward for doing hundreds of hours of PvP or coordinating a group of 40 players several hours in Molten Core. If you would create an easy way to get to the same reward, it would simply destroy the PvP system and the raid system. Everybody would get the reward the easy way instead of the hard way, and then there would be nothing left to do for the people playing more.
The more difficult part of the war is the discussion on how much effort the game developers should spend for creating content for the different play styles. When Blizzard creates a new high-level 40-player raid dungeon, there are lots of players who will never be able to see it, because they don't have the time and the social network to go on a raid. On the other hand, hardcore players are consuming content faster than casual players, and spend a lot more hours online, so if Blizzard does *not* create new high-level 40-player raid dungeons, the hardcore players grow bored and quit.
The battle around the NYTimes article, which described upcoming new high-level raid content, is mainly caused because many people feel that Blizzard is adding too much hardcore content, and too little casual content. There has not been a single new dungeon for small groups below level 50 added to the game since release, but several high-level raid dungeons. Raid dungeons and PvP, which isn't casual player friendly either, together cover 90% of the content added to the game. Of course some of that was needed, because there was too little high-level content at the start. But now the casual players are getting restless waiting for their turn of developer attention, and not getting much.
The developers argument is based on looking at demography, at any given time there are now more level 60 players online than all the other levels combined, so they say they must create more level 60 content. That argument overlooks two important considerations: 1) There are a lot of level 60 players precisely because all the content is there, and people rush to 60 to attain all the new shiny content. And 2) World of Warcraft is not paid per hour. While the hardcore players might spend more time in the World of Warcraft, the casual players are more numerous, and thus are paying a bigger proportion of the monthly fee. If you can make only one of the groups happy, it would be financially more advantageous to lose 100 hardcore players than to lose 1,000 casual players.
The best decision Blizzard has made in this war is to raise the level cap from 60 to 70 in the upcoming expansion. That *looks* very much like a support for high-level players, but in fact will end up adding a lot more casual content than hardcore content. Unless the developers throw previous design principles over board, casual players should be able to level up to 70 without being forced to ever join a raid, and they might even be able to do so with nothing but soloing. That will give them a lot to do. I just hope there will be plenty of 5-man dungeons added on the way to 70. At the same time, once the casual players are level 70, they will be able to at least visit content that has previously been locked to them. They will still be excluded from the new level 70 raid dungeons, but they might well be able to do Molten Core in a smaller, less well organized group, ploughing through Lucifron and company considerably faster than a current level 60 raid group.
The reaction of Blizzard, announcing more casual content to be added in the next content patch 1.10, at least gives some hope that they are aware of who is paying their salaries. A lot of the war is based on appearances, caused by bad marketing from Blizzard, which is always announcing the hardcore content first, and hides the additional casual content somewhere deep in the patch notes that nobody reads. To be attainable by all players, content needs to be accessible by soloing or playing in small groups, with not too large consecutive blocks of time needed.
[Edit: Absolutely needed to include a link to Brokentoys, Scott Jennings opinion on the subject is a must-read.]
Carnival of Gamers
The Carnival of Gamers is a roaming blog event, which is hosted on a different site every month, linking to different gamer blogs. This month it is hosted by Slashdot Games, and I participated with my WoW board game review.
It was difficult to chose a blog entry which was both recent and typical for my blog. I took the review, because I think the reviews are the most informative entries here, but I'm pretty certain that different readers prefer different sorts of articles. Blogs are a curious mixture of news, opinions, and a diary. By the way, feedback is appreciated on what kind of blog entries you liked or disliked here.
It was difficult to chose a blog entry which was both recent and typical for my blog. I took the review, because I think the reviews are the most informative entries here, but I'm pretty certain that different readers prefer different sorts of articles. Blogs are a curious mixture of news, opinions, and a diary. By the way, feedback is appreciated on what kind of blog entries you liked or disliked here.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
The Se7en Samurai
One of the dangers of the internet is repeatedly visiting the same circuit of known sites, and missing out on interesting sites you don't know yet. One thing I do to find sites that are relevant to my blog is looking up which sites linked to me, in the assumption that if somebody links to me, he is probably talking about games. One site I found today that way is the guild site of The Se7en Samurai, a guild for mature casual players on the US servers. Very nice vision statement for casual gamers.
I don't quite get why their game news section links to nearly every one of my blog entries, which are often not really "news". But of course everybody is welcome here. /wave Se7en Samurai
I don't quite get why their game news section links to nearly every one of my blog entries, which are often not really "news". But of course everybody is welcome here. /wave Se7en Samurai
Keep politics out of WoW
The internet is awash with a story on sexual discrimination of homosexuals by Blizzard. But on closer inspection Blizzard's attitude of not allowing a guild to market itself as being gay and lesbian friendly is quite reasonable. Blizzard is not taking a position in the culture war, it is trying to keep that culture war out of a game into which it doesn't belong.
Frankly, to people outside the USA the American culture war between the moralist right and the liberal left has become a bit tiring, and an object of ridicule. The right is quick to see moral dangers in the most harmless things, for example teletubbies. And the political correct left is as quick as labeling anything they don't like "discrimination". Meanwhile the world shakes it head on how serious people could start to get into a fight about somebody wishing you "merry christmas".
Whatever flak they are getting for that, game companies running MMORPG are wise to keep that culture war out of virtual worlds. There being no sex at all in World of Warcraft, we don't need gay-friendly guilds, nor would we need a NRA-friendly guild, a Democrat-only guild, or a christian guild. These are all concepts that only have meaning in the outside world, while being meaningless in-game.
The only discrimination in a MMORPG which *does* make sense is one of language. The recent story of discrimination against non-english speakers in WoW might well be misrepresented. If a group refuses to take on a 5th player who doesn't speak their language, it is often for the practical reason of communication, not some sort of racism. When I was playing Final Fantasy XI, which has international servers, I was often not invited by some Japanese group, because they didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Japanese. That is totally normal. On the European servers there are lots of language-based guilds, of every European language from Italian to Swedish. Who can blame the Swedes for wanting to have a guild chat in their native language?
By the way, if somebody sends me a tell of "we r goin to SM, u wanna join?", I will discriminate against him and not accept his invitation, even if I would otherwise like to join a group for the Scarlet Monastery. Not for reasons of racism, the writer of the above sentence is most probably white, but for the simple reason that I don't like to group with immature idiots. There is a strong correlation between bad SMS-style English, and bad behavior in a group.
Frankly, to people outside the USA the American culture war between the moralist right and the liberal left has become a bit tiring, and an object of ridicule. The right is quick to see moral dangers in the most harmless things, for example teletubbies. And the political correct left is as quick as labeling anything they don't like "discrimination". Meanwhile the world shakes it head on how serious people could start to get into a fight about somebody wishing you "merry christmas".
Whatever flak they are getting for that, game companies running MMORPG are wise to keep that culture war out of virtual worlds. There being no sex at all in World of Warcraft, we don't need gay-friendly guilds, nor would we need a NRA-friendly guild, a Democrat-only guild, or a christian guild. These are all concepts that only have meaning in the outside world, while being meaningless in-game.
The only discrimination in a MMORPG which *does* make sense is one of language. The recent story of discrimination against non-english speakers in WoW might well be misrepresented. If a group refuses to take on a 5th player who doesn't speak their language, it is often for the practical reason of communication, not some sort of racism. When I was playing Final Fantasy XI, which has international servers, I was often not invited by some Japanese group, because they didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Japanese. That is totally normal. On the European servers there are lots of language-based guilds, of every European language from Italian to Swedish. Who can blame the Swedes for wanting to have a guild chat in their native language?
By the way, if somebody sends me a tell of "we r goin to SM, u wanna join?", I will discriminate against him and not accept his invitation, even if I would otherwise like to join a group for the Scarlet Monastery. Not for reasons of racism, the writer of the above sentence is most probably white, but for the simple reason that I don't like to group with immature idiots. There is a strong correlation between bad SMS-style English, and bad behavior in a group.
WoW keys
Yesterday I finished the quest for the Seal of Ascension, the key to UBRS. I've been on that quest for a long time, because it requires you to find an amulet and three different gems in LBRS, and on several runs I didn't find a single gem. Once you got all parts and talked to the quest giver again, you need a group for subdueing a level 61 elite dragonkin in Duskwallow Marsh. Fun quest, you need to mind control the dragonkin when he is low in hitpoints, then use his dragon breath on the unforged seal to forge it. Go back to the quest giver again, and you get the key, which not only opens the door to UBRS, but doubles as ring giving +10 to several resistances.
So far, so good. Having certain dungeons locked and requiring a quest for the key is not a bad idea. WoW has a lot of them. For some places everybody in the group needs to have the key, for other areas only one guy needs to be able to open the door. The only problem I have with that is one of inventory space.
You see, keys are usually gained by quests, and quest are usually not repeatable. If I would throw away the UBRS key, I wouldn't be able to get another one, as I couldn't start the quest chain again. So I need to keep all my keys. And with time they accumulate, if you count all the key items as well, like the mallet for Zul'Farrak, or the sceptre for Maraudon. All these keys and key items are of course soulbound, so I can't send them to an alt, I need to keep them in my inventory or bank. And my space in inventory and bank is running out.
Buying all the bank bag slots, and getting 16-slot bags for all inventory and bank bag slots cost me over 300 gold, and I still don't have enough room. I need space for all my alchemy ingredients, for armor and weapons, for the different trinkets and magic items, and for those keys. Usually the seasonal events from Blizzard also give you nice but useless stuff, taking up further inventory slots. And there is no way to increase the number of total inventory spaces, unless I want to spend the rest of my days in Zul'Gurub looking for rare 18-slot bags.
What I would need is Blizzard labeling all keys and similar key items with a new label "key", and creating an additional "key ring" inventory. That key ring should *not* take up one of the old bag slots, like they did for quivers and soul bags, which is a serious disadvantage to playing a hunter or warlock.
What use is it to Blizzard to create new items with every patch, when the players simply don't have space to keep the stuff? I already had to throw away things like the Link and Zelda photo, because I just couldn't justify hanging on to them. And I'm already running one character as vault, mailing him everything that isn't soulbound and which I want to hang on to for a longer time.
So far, so good. Having certain dungeons locked and requiring a quest for the key is not a bad idea. WoW has a lot of them. For some places everybody in the group needs to have the key, for other areas only one guy needs to be able to open the door. The only problem I have with that is one of inventory space.
You see, keys are usually gained by quests, and quest are usually not repeatable. If I would throw away the UBRS key, I wouldn't be able to get another one, as I couldn't start the quest chain again. So I need to keep all my keys. And with time they accumulate, if you count all the key items as well, like the mallet for Zul'Farrak, or the sceptre for Maraudon. All these keys and key items are of course soulbound, so I can't send them to an alt, I need to keep them in my inventory or bank. And my space in inventory and bank is running out.
Buying all the bank bag slots, and getting 16-slot bags for all inventory and bank bag slots cost me over 300 gold, and I still don't have enough room. I need space for all my alchemy ingredients, for armor and weapons, for the different trinkets and magic items, and for those keys. Usually the seasonal events from Blizzard also give you nice but useless stuff, taking up further inventory slots. And there is no way to increase the number of total inventory spaces, unless I want to spend the rest of my days in Zul'Gurub looking for rare 18-slot bags.
What I would need is Blizzard labeling all keys and similar key items with a new label "key", and creating an additional "key ring" inventory. That key ring should *not* take up one of the old bag slots, like they did for quivers and soul bags, which is a serious disadvantage to playing a hunter or warlock.
What use is it to Blizzard to create new items with every patch, when the players simply don't have space to keep the stuff? I already had to throw away things like the Link and Zelda photo, because I just couldn't justify hanging on to them. And I'm already running one character as vault, mailing him everything that isn't soulbound and which I want to hang on to for a longer time.
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
WoW Journal - 1-February-2006
I'm on track for leveling my priest, Kyroc is now level 48, after spending the evening in a group in the Hinterlands, fighting in the troll temple of Jintha'Alor. We made it up to the altar, but couldn't finish the cave behind it. But at least I got the mallet for summoning Gahz'rilla in Zul'farrak finished, and can return there. Trolls have some of the best architecture in World of Warcraft, with some really good looking places. And at my level there are several quest series interwoven in the troll areas, from Hinterlands to Zul'farrak to the Sunken Temple, very interesting.
While I have been soloing with Kyroc most of the time up to now, I am slowly getting into a level range where finding a group is easier. And of course priests have an easy time to get into a group, if there is one. Fortunately I do like healing as much as I like tanking. I don't mind having to stand in the second row, often spending the start of combat still sitting and drinking some conjured water to replenish mana. And I'm reasonably good at it, having already played healers in more group-oriented games like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI. I much prefer healing in a group to the repetitive mindblast-shield-wand soloing mode.
I'd still say that tanks and healers are my favorite archetypes, but a part of that is certainly a consequence of my love of groups. Tanks and healers generally have an easier time getting into a group, especially specialized healers. In World of Warcraft, which has a strong soloing component, I learned to appreciate other archetypes, especially the pet classes, which I had previously not been very fond of. One day I hope to get around to playing a mage, maybe a blood elf when the expansion comes out.
Raslebol I only played very little since the weekend. Helped a guild group out in the Plaguelands to kill the Crimson Courier, but that was my only group. I did kind of solo LBRS, using 3 invisibility potions to get to the quest giver for the UBRS key, to hand in the gems I found during the weekend. Turns out the quest isn't finished, I still need to gather a group to subdue a dragonkin in the Duskwallow Marsh, and use his flame to forge the key. That promises to be interesting. Having some more UBRS keys in the guild can only help.
While I have been soloing with Kyroc most of the time up to now, I am slowly getting into a level range where finding a group is easier. And of course priests have an easy time to get into a group, if there is one. Fortunately I do like healing as much as I like tanking. I don't mind having to stand in the second row, often spending the start of combat still sitting and drinking some conjured water to replenish mana. And I'm reasonably good at it, having already played healers in more group-oriented games like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI. I much prefer healing in a group to the repetitive mindblast-shield-wand soloing mode.
I'd still say that tanks and healers are my favorite archetypes, but a part of that is certainly a consequence of my love of groups. Tanks and healers generally have an easier time getting into a group, especially specialized healers. In World of Warcraft, which has a strong soloing component, I learned to appreciate other archetypes, especially the pet classes, which I had previously not been very fond of. One day I hope to get around to playing a mage, maybe a blood elf when the expansion comes out.
Raslebol I only played very little since the weekend. Helped a guild group out in the Plaguelands to kill the Crimson Courier, but that was my only group. I did kind of solo LBRS, using 3 invisibility potions to get to the quest giver for the UBRS key, to hand in the gems I found during the weekend. Turns out the quest isn't finished, I still need to gather a group to subdue a dragonkin in the Duskwallow Marsh, and use his flame to forge the key. That promises to be interesting. Having some more UBRS keys in the guild can only help.
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