Once upon a time, long, long ago, in the late 90's when the internet still was young, I was playing Magic the Gathering. With cards, not online. But the place to be when online was the Magic Dojo (long dead, link is to an archive), where people discussed decks and wrote tournament reports. Probably the best writer there was Jamie Wakefield, whose tournament reports were so good he ended up publishing them as a book. And one day Jamie stopped writing about MtG, because he had found a new hobby: MMORPGs, or more specifically Asheron's Call.
The reason why people study history is that history constitutes the roots of the present and the future. Jamie Wakefield certainly has been an influence on me. I moved from Magic to MMORPGs a bit after him, and even later ended up as a blog writer. Blogs weren't even invented when Jamie wrote on the Dojo, but that was basically what he did back then already.
Thinking back about what Jamie wrote about Asheron's Call (can't find that post), I remember him enthusiastically telling about the AC allegiance system. I only played AC for a few days much, much later, and never experienced the system. But apparently it worked like this: New players could swear allegiance to experienced players. As a result of that, every time the new player gained experience, his patron would get some experience points too. And that could work in a pyramid, with the patron being the vassal of an even more advanced character. In return the more advanced players would look out for the new players, as it was in their own interest to get them geared up and leveling fast. Furthermore some abilities depended on the size and your rank inside an allegiance structure. Thus leaving an allegiance hurt both you and allegiance, which encouraged people to be nice to each other.
The comparison with how a guild in World of Warcraft works is striking. In WoW the more advanced players have not much incentive to help the less advanced guild members. And leaving the guild has no disadvantage at all for them. So guilds constantly break up or change, because it is easier to leave one guild and join a new guild with people who are as advanced as you than to try to gear up the less advanced players in your existing guild. I called that the Kleenex guild system once. You don't need a degree in social studies to see that the WoW system isn't exactly fostering long-term relationships and loyalties. There has been a distinctive backward development from AC to WoW in social game functions.
Now the AC allegiance system is one way to improve guilds, but certainly not the only one. It is easy to imagine other systems where being in a guild has other advantages than getting a raid slot. EQ2 has a less powerful system, where the guild gets 10% of all status points their members gain. I got recruited into a guild pretty quickly after I rejoined that game. But as far as I know the guild doesn't lose my contribution to status if I leave (unless I'm promoted to patron), so the guild isn't much more helpful to the newbies than a WoW guild is.
A good system would enable guilds to work together towards a common goal, regardless of level and gear (unlike WoW where the common goal is often the raid advancement, and that doesn't depend at all on the lower level guild members). The contribution of new players should be valuable, so the more advanced players would have an interest in helping the newbies. But even if the advanced players don't help much, the system should already reward players just for being part of a powerful guild, for example by giving them access to stuff based on guild level. Leaving a guild should have negative consequences for both the leaver and the guild, encouraging them to work out their differences instead of splitting. Guild membership should be an obvious advantage for everyone involved, with bonuses for loyalty and cooperation.
Unfortunately we are now in a period where new MMORPGs are heavily influenced by World of Warcraft. WoW set some standards, even in places where it is weak. The problem is that developers often don't really know what made WoW so successful, so they copy instead of risking innovation. I didn't read anything about any of the upcoming games that suggest a better approach to how a guild works than WoW has. You're lucky to get a guild chat channel, and that's it. For anything else: forums, event calendar, any sort of reward system, you'll have to rely on third-party software and the leadership of the guild officers. The time when developers learn that fostering loyalty to a guild equals fostering loyalty to the game is apparently still years ahead. What a pity!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Station Access
I'm thinking about whether I should get a SOE Station Access subscription next year. I am already paying for an EQ2 subscription, and I will buy Pirates of the Burning Sea, which would be a second SOE subscription once the free month runs out. The Station Access would be the same price as two game subscriptions, and would allow me to access all the other SOE games as well. I could have a trip down memory lane to the original Everquest, I could see how SWG plays now post-NGE, or I could even see if Vanguard improved since release. I would even get some stuff for the "collectible" SOE games, like Star Chamber.
But of course there are also good reasons not to pay for a Station Access. There has been lots of controversy (link leads to MMOG Nation, which then links to everybody else) on the price increase of the Station Access to $30 earlier this year. I would need to play more than two SOE games to profit. Half a year of Station Access costs as much as a LotRO lifetime subscription. Do I really want to play a bunch of outdated old games like EQ or SWG?
In the end it all comes down to the question of how many MMORPGs you can play at the same time. I have a lifetime subscription to LotRO, a regular subscription to EQ2, and I'm in 3 different betas (actually 4, but I didn't even download the new client for the 4th yet). But in the last month I basically only played one of those betas, with which I have a love/hate relationship. It draws me in every night because of the extraordinary gameplay, leaves me unsatisfied because of the lack of polish, and then I can't even rant about it on my blog due to the NDA. When I get fed up or the server is down, I play a bit of EQ2, but I'm still only level 18 there. I might be better off with just one single subscription plus the LotRO lifetime fallback option.
What do you think?
But of course there are also good reasons not to pay for a Station Access. There has been lots of controversy (link leads to MMOG Nation, which then links to everybody else) on the price increase of the Station Access to $30 earlier this year. I would need to play more than two SOE games to profit. Half a year of Station Access costs as much as a LotRO lifetime subscription. Do I really want to play a bunch of outdated old games like EQ or SWG?
In the end it all comes down to the question of how many MMORPGs you can play at the same time. I have a lifetime subscription to LotRO, a regular subscription to EQ2, and I'm in 3 different betas (actually 4, but I didn't even download the new client for the 4th yet). But in the last month I basically only played one of those betas, with which I have a love/hate relationship. It draws me in every night because of the extraordinary gameplay, leaves me unsatisfied because of the lack of polish, and then I can't even rant about it on my blog due to the NDA. When I get fed up or the server is down, I play a bit of EQ2, but I'm still only level 18 there. I might be better off with just one single subscription plus the LotRO lifetime fallback option.
What do you think?
Wife Aggro on guild drama
Poor Pvthudson, not only does he have Wife Aggro, he now also has a guild drama. Copra linked to it in comments of the last post, but Blogger doesn't turn URLs in comments into clickable links automatically, you need to proceed them with the full <a href="http://www" etc. HTML code. So as this guild drama is such a typical one, I took the link and made a post out of it. Danger being that Pvthudson doesn't really like people linking to that post, as the fact that he wrote about it on his blog already got him kicked out of his guild.
The lesson from his long guild drama post is that if your guild has a Karazhan A team and a B team, you're guild is already near certain to experience guild drama in the not-so-far future. Having the TBC raid circuit start with a mandatory 10-man raid with one-week lockout has turned out to be the greatest guild killer in the history of WoW. In many guilds it lead to an elite of 10 players advancing fast through Karazhan, because they always play together and have the optimal raid composition, and the remainder of the guild advancing far slower because the composition is less optimal and varies from week to week. That creates a gap between the A team and the rest, and can easily end with a permanent split, when the A team suddenly notices that you can't kill Gruul with just 10 players, but is unwilling to split up and help the other players to get through Karazhan often enough to be ready for the next step.
The lesson from his long guild drama post is that if your guild has a Karazhan A team and a B team, you're guild is already near certain to experience guild drama in the not-so-far future. Having the TBC raid circuit start with a mandatory 10-man raid with one-week lockout has turned out to be the greatest guild killer in the history of WoW. In many guilds it lead to an elite of 10 players advancing fast through Karazhan, because they always play together and have the optimal raid composition, and the remainder of the guild advancing far slower because the composition is less optimal and varies from week to week. That creates a gap between the A team and the rest, and can easily end with a permanent split, when the A team suddenly notices that you can't kill Gruul with just 10 players, but is unwilling to split up and help the other players to get through Karazhan often enough to be ready for the next step.
What to reward in a MMORPG
One of the constant criticisms leveled against most current MMORPGs is that they only reward time spent in game. Your level and virtual wealth depend almost linearly on how many hours you spent playing. You can actually predict with some accuracy how many hours an average gamer needs to play to reach the level cap. But what else could a MMORPG reward? I think I can summarize it with three points: money, real time, and skill.
Money and real time are somewhat related, via monthly fees. Did you know that you can buy 1,000 WoW gold directly from Blizzard for $40? It works like this: You pay them $40 for a 3-month subscription, and every day you log on for the 10 minutes it takes to do the daily quest that gives 12 gold. At the end of the 3 months you have 1,000 gold. The daily quest is a typical real time reward, but as your monthly fee is also due in real time, you could also consider it as being a reward for money spent. Other real time rewards are the xp rest bonus of WoW and other games, EVE Online's skill gains in real time, or the harvesters in SWG.
You can also reward players for money spent directly, without linking it to time. That is usually called microtransactions, the game company sells to players game items on their website for cash. Very popular in Asia, very much disputed as a model in the Western world. Which is strange, given how much higher the GDP of the USA or Europe is compared to Asian countries. Apparently in many games that have microtransactions the most popular items to buy are buffs that double your xp gains for a certain time. So basically you can substitute money for time, spending more of the former to spend less of the latter. Although some people are very much opposed to that in principle, it has to be noted that while games like WoW don't offer time savings for cash directly, there is obviously a huge demand for it, which is what fuels the whole gold farming business. Buying gold in WoW from a third-party website also costs money and saves time in the game. But it isn't allowed by the EULA and ToS, and is considered as cheating by many people, plus is gives rise to many secondary negative effects like gold spam.
The holy grail of MMORPGs is rewarding players for skill. That doesn't really happen all that much in mass market MMOs. Game companies have an interest in allowing even the least skilled players to progress, because they don't want them to quit in frustration. There aren't many people around for who World of Warcraft is too difficult, if anyone is not reaching the level cap it is due to not wanting to spend all that time, not due to not being skilled enough. Group play and raid play requires more skill, which is one reason why it is more popular with the more dedicated gamers. Pure skill-based MMORPGs probably wouldn't sell all that well, because they exclude the less skilled from advancing.
So if you have any ideas how to make MMORPGs more skill-based, please comment!
Money and real time are somewhat related, via monthly fees. Did you know that you can buy 1,000 WoW gold directly from Blizzard for $40? It works like this: You pay them $40 for a 3-month subscription, and every day you log on for the 10 minutes it takes to do the daily quest that gives 12 gold. At the end of the 3 months you have 1,000 gold. The daily quest is a typical real time reward, but as your monthly fee is also due in real time, you could also consider it as being a reward for money spent. Other real time rewards are the xp rest bonus of WoW and other games, EVE Online's skill gains in real time, or the harvesters in SWG.
You can also reward players for money spent directly, without linking it to time. That is usually called microtransactions, the game company sells to players game items on their website for cash. Very popular in Asia, very much disputed as a model in the Western world. Which is strange, given how much higher the GDP of the USA or Europe is compared to Asian countries. Apparently in many games that have microtransactions the most popular items to buy are buffs that double your xp gains for a certain time. So basically you can substitute money for time, spending more of the former to spend less of the latter. Although some people are very much opposed to that in principle, it has to be noted that while games like WoW don't offer time savings for cash directly, there is obviously a huge demand for it, which is what fuels the whole gold farming business. Buying gold in WoW from a third-party website also costs money and saves time in the game. But it isn't allowed by the EULA and ToS, and is considered as cheating by many people, plus is gives rise to many secondary negative effects like gold spam.
The holy grail of MMORPGs is rewarding players for skill. That doesn't really happen all that much in mass market MMOs. Game companies have an interest in allowing even the least skilled players to progress, because they don't want them to quit in frustration. There aren't many people around for who World of Warcraft is too difficult, if anyone is not reaching the level cap it is due to not wanting to spend all that time, not due to not being skilled enough. Group play and raid play requires more skill, which is one reason why it is more popular with the more dedicated gamers. Pure skill-based MMORPGs probably wouldn't sell all that well, because they exclude the less skilled from advancing.
So if you have any ideas how to make MMORPGs more skill-based, please comment!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Shooter-like MMOs
I'm reading news from the Leipzig Games Convention, with a description of new games announced or presented there. Most of them are shooters, most are multiplayer, and more and more of them got rid of linear levels and replaced them with a more open-ended free gameplay, often including exploration of zones. In short, shooters become more and more similar to MMORPGs. The most extreme convergence is probably Hellgate: London. From the other side games like Tabula Rasa are nominally MMOs, but gameplay resembles a shooter. I sense a collision ahead.
First victim of that collision will probably be Tabula Rasa. Not that this is a bad game. But with so many shooters offering MMO-like elements, who wants to pay a monthly fee for a MMO with shooter-like elements? I don't know whether Hellgate London is actually better than Tabula Rasa, but I'm willing to bet that it will sell much better. Action games with monthly fees won't fare very well.
It's time for MMORPGs to take a history lesson: The original Dungeons & Dragons from TSR derived from squad-based tabletop strategy games. In fact TSR stood for Tactical Studies Rules at the time. Tactics are the very heart of RPGs, all that pretending to be an elf only came later. MMORPGs should move towards offering more tactical gameplay, and try less to look like action games.
First victim of that collision will probably be Tabula Rasa. Not that this is a bad game. But with so many shooters offering MMO-like elements, who wants to pay a monthly fee for a MMO with shooter-like elements? I don't know whether Hellgate London is actually better than Tabula Rasa, but I'm willing to bet that it will sell much better. Action games with monthly fees won't fare very well.
It's time for MMORPGs to take a history lesson: The original Dungeons & Dragons from TSR derived from squad-based tabletop strategy games. In fact TSR stood for Tactical Studies Rules at the time. Tactics are the very heart of RPGs, all that pretending to be an elf only came later. MMORPGs should move towards offering more tactical gameplay, and try less to look like action games.
An unexpected link
Sitemeter and Feedburner both inform me about incoming traffic I get from links on other people's webpages. Most of those are the usual suspects: other bloggers, WoWInsider, gaming sites. I also get some traffic from Wikipedia, and of course tons of hits from search engines (curiously I get hits regularly from people searching for "t", but that might be some error or some search bot). But today I got a really unusual and unexpected link: from Google Finance, which links to my blog entries mentioning The9 Limited, the Chinese distributor of World of Warcraft.
I think I need some business cards saying Tobold - Financial Analyst. :) Or rather not, because I don't trust financial analysts. If they really knew what stocks will rise, why would they work for a measly salary instead of simply making a fortune on the stock market?
I think I need some business cards saying Tobold - Financial Analyst. :) Or rather not, because I don't trust financial analysts. If they really knew what stocks will rise, why would they work for a measly salary instead of simply making a fortune on the stock market?
Monday, October 1, 2007
Pirates of the Burning Sea stress test
From Thursday to Sunday Fileplanet subscribers have the opportunity to stress test Pirates of the Burning Sea. If you are not a subscriber, you can apply too, but "subscribers get in first" is the rule in this particular case. This being a stress test, server performance will most likely be worse than in the real game. But you should be able to play enough of it to form yourself an opinion on whether you like the gameplay. I'm most interested in the player-run economy, but I guess I won't see much of that in a 4-day test.
And yeah, I know I link to Fileplanet a lot. No, I'm not getting any money from them, just the opposite, it's me who is paying them for a subscription. I know some of you don't like the idea of having to pay for demos or betas. But I'm a sucker for buying games that look interesting. If Fileplanet gives me the opportunity to try before I buy, it takes just two games I decide against to pay for more than 1 year of Fileplanet subscription. So I usually come out ahead. For normal demos it's usually just convenience, I could get the same for free but slower. But MMORPG betas are quite often Fileplanet exclusives. Really worth it for a MMORPG fan and blogger.
And yeah, I know I link to Fileplanet a lot. No, I'm not getting any money from them, just the opposite, it's me who is paying them for a subscription. I know some of you don't like the idea of having to pay for demos or betas. But I'm a sucker for buying games that look interesting. If Fileplanet gives me the opportunity to try before I buy, it takes just two games I decide against to pay for more than 1 year of Fileplanet subscription. So I usually come out ahead. For normal demos it's usually just convenience, I could get the same for free but slower. But MMORPG betas are quite often Fileplanet exclusives. Really worth it for a MMORPG fan and blogger.
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