With The Shattering having added tons of new low-level content to World of Warcraft, and the new high-level content still over a week away, me and many other players rolled alts to explore the new "new player experience". I rolled a whole bunch of low level characters for comparison, and except for previously mentioned complications with the new troll starting area, the experience was quite pleasant. The low levels are more than ever a tutorial, there are even quests now that teach you how to train new skills and abilities and use them. The structure of quests is close to perfectly streamlined, you will never run into the "what should I do next?" problem; there are now even "Hero's Call" / "Warchief's Command" boards with a big quest marker prominently displayed in all cities, which based on your level and quest history send you to the appropriate quest hub.
With all that hand-holding some players tend to forget that you of course still have total freedom to stray from that given path. Just because there is a big neon arrow pointing towards the next quest hub doesn't mean you're forced to quest. Not only can you decide to go adventuring elsewhere, but there are two major activities where you aren't led to: Dungeoneering and crafting. At level 15 you get access to the Dungeon Finder, but that news isn't all that prominently displayed. And as most dungeon quests have been moved to inside the dungeons, there is very little leading you there. And there are absolutely no quests asking you to check out crafting; you'd need to stumble upon a profession trainer by accident to get explanations about that. Not only does questing not necessarily get you into dungeons, but dungeons also might mess up your questing. At level 15 I used the Dungeon Finder to run the Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm, and Wailing Caverns once each, and ended up making 4 levels; I'd basically need to delete all my current quests and use the Warchief's Command Board to find the appropriate quest hub for me. I think I'll just continue with dungeons, the new Deadmines were a lot of fun, and I want to check out the new Shadowfang Keep.
Of course while I'm discussing the "new player experience" here I'm well aware that the vast majority of the current low-level players aren't new players at all, but bored veterans waiting for Cataclysm. That leads to another interesting observation: The "Twinkability" of different classes is different. Casters don't benefit much from stat bonuses, 4 out of 5 of their stats have no influence whatsoever on damage output, and intellect has only a mediocre effect. What they would need is spellpower, but the only enchantment that gives spellpower to items under level 35 is a rare drop from Molten Core. Even a heirloom staff at level 1 gives only 1 spellpower bonus. A fully twinked mage is better than a mage in his starting gear, but not by a huge amount. Melee classes are far more twinkable. The first big difference is that their damage at low levels depends a lot on what weapon they are wielding, and a heirloom weapon or blue weapon from the AH is significantly better than what you can get from questing. And then they profit more from stat bonuses like strength and agility. Thus a fully twinked warrior or rogue is far more powerful than an untwinked version. All that is somewhat balanced, or unbalanced depending on your point of view, by the fact that a mage starts out far more powerful than a warrior or rogue, with his first ever attack doing three times the damage of the warriors first ever attack. Once twinked, the classes are more even, but there are obvious pros and contras to design class balance at maximum twink level.
Another observation about playing a new character is at what pace he earns new abilities. In its current state, World of Warcraft's only single-role characters are damage dealers. All healers and tanks are hybrids. And while some hybrids are as good as pure dps at the level cap, they do suffer in the early levels. Not only are their spells less powerful (e.g. Smite deals less damage than Fireball), but the damage dealers get more damage spells and abilities faster. Hybrids at some levels only get spells or abilities useful for tanking or healing, which don't help at all for the soloing part. No wonder we have tank and healer shortages: A new player trying different classes for a few levels would quickly conclude that tanks and healers suck in comparison to damage dealing classes, not knowing that this balances out later.
Apart from those balancing problem, I found the new "new player experience" quite pleasurable. There are now more interesting quests and events, and even before you get your mount at level 20 there are often rides on rails (literally in Azshara) that take you to the next quest hub. For those not into questing, the Dungeon Finder makes finding a dungeon group a breeze. And Blizzard even added a bunch of mini-games, like the Plant vs. Zombie game in Hillsbrad south of Dalaran Crater. Of course, if you don't like accessibility and "theme park" MMORPGs, World of Warcraft still isn't for you. But for the average player, the low-level game is better than ever.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Social engineering in MMORPGs
Imagine a tiny change to the code of World of Warcraft: When in a group, players would get twice as many xp per kill as they get now. That tiny addition of "x2" to the code would completely change the face of WoW. It would suddenly be far more advantageous to level up while grouping, instead of soloing. The forums would explode with some people calling this "forced grouping", some people would continue to solo, but a large number of players would simply adapt to the new situation and group a lot more on the way to the level cap. The dungeon finder would get used more, because, hey, if you already group, you might as well tackle the content with the good reward. But even when just questing and killing 10 foozles, you'd throw an invite to the other guy you come across killing the same foozles.
Chris Smith from Levelcapped this week responded to Syp's question of "If we are lazy and resistant to being social in MMOs (the path of least effort, etc.), is it the game’s/devs’ responsibility to encourage — or even force — us to do so?", by wishing for an Unsocial MMO. That resulted in an intense debate with Spinks on Google Buzz, who wants developers to encourage people to make friends.
Although some people tend to respond to this sort of question with polemic, like "if you don't want to play with others, play a single-player game", the problem is actually deeper than many people imagine. There is a sharp disconnect between short-term and long-term motivation to play MMORPGs. While in the short term players tend to react strongly to rewards, many surveys have proven that social connections are one of the major reasons for long-term motivation. The question of "should a game encourage/force people to be social" thus isn't just a philosophical question, but also fundamental to the perenity of a game.
After 6 years of World of Warcraft, the activities that occupy the player's minds are mostly social. There is far more discussion about raids and pickup groups than about solo gameplay. Solo gameplay is considered "not important", and dismissed as the tedious obstacle you have to play through with new characters before you can get to "the real game", which is social.
But while you might keep playing because of your friends, and your best memories of the game are about moments shared with other people, your worst memories probably also involve human interaction. Obviously the biggest idiots and jerks you meet in the game make for the best stories afterwards, thus what one reads isn't necessarily representative of the average pickup group. But grouping with complete strangers admittedly has its pitfalls; and a combination of the "barrier to entry" of forming a group in the first place, and the risk of that group failing to reach its objectives, makes grouping often less attractive than soloing, especially for short play sessions.
Using rewards in a clever way can overcome these obstacles. As I repeatedly wrote on this blog, World of Warcraft is failing to do so for groups outside dungeons, which explains why leveling has been nearly synonymous with soloing before the dungeon finder lowered the barrier to entry into high-reward group content during leveling. Many quests get actually *harder* to do when you group up for them, and the xp per hour in a group is lower than soloing the same content. Furthermore most leveling content is easy enough to be soloed. While changing the rewards could turn leveling in WoW into a more social affair, some players resent such social engineering. The term "forced grouping" is often applied for situations where in fact nobody is forced to group, but grouping is just the more efficient way to gain rewards.
Blizzard is currently introducing a system of rewards that encourages players to guild, by handing out guild rewards. It isn't quite clear yet whether that will work in a positive way, we will have to watch the system in action. There is a certain fear that the system inadvertedly favors huge guilds over smaller ones, which might actually end up counterproductively destroying social interaction, and lead people into huge, impersonal guilds instead. On the other hand the reputation you gain for your guild should prevent some of the worst excesses of guild hopping.
In summary I think it is a good idea for developers to use rewards for social engineering players into groups and guilds, because this can improve the long-term stability of the game. But as social engineering is difficult, care has to be taken not to inadvertedly do more harm than good. It is okay to offer better rewards for players to play together, but not to a point where solo players would feel punished, or where impersonal mega-guilds have huge advantages over closer knit small guilds.
Chris Smith from Levelcapped this week responded to Syp's question of "If we are lazy and resistant to being social in MMOs (the path of least effort, etc.), is it the game’s/devs’ responsibility to encourage — or even force — us to do so?", by wishing for an Unsocial MMO. That resulted in an intense debate with Spinks on Google Buzz, who wants developers to encourage people to make friends.
Although some people tend to respond to this sort of question with polemic, like "if you don't want to play with others, play a single-player game", the problem is actually deeper than many people imagine. There is a sharp disconnect between short-term and long-term motivation to play MMORPGs. While in the short term players tend to react strongly to rewards, many surveys have proven that social connections are one of the major reasons for long-term motivation. The question of "should a game encourage/force people to be social" thus isn't just a philosophical question, but also fundamental to the perenity of a game.
After 6 years of World of Warcraft, the activities that occupy the player's minds are mostly social. There is far more discussion about raids and pickup groups than about solo gameplay. Solo gameplay is considered "not important", and dismissed as the tedious obstacle you have to play through with new characters before you can get to "the real game", which is social.
But while you might keep playing because of your friends, and your best memories of the game are about moments shared with other people, your worst memories probably also involve human interaction. Obviously the biggest idiots and jerks you meet in the game make for the best stories afterwards, thus what one reads isn't necessarily representative of the average pickup group. But grouping with complete strangers admittedly has its pitfalls; and a combination of the "barrier to entry" of forming a group in the first place, and the risk of that group failing to reach its objectives, makes grouping often less attractive than soloing, especially for short play sessions.
Using rewards in a clever way can overcome these obstacles. As I repeatedly wrote on this blog, World of Warcraft is failing to do so for groups outside dungeons, which explains why leveling has been nearly synonymous with soloing before the dungeon finder lowered the barrier to entry into high-reward group content during leveling. Many quests get actually *harder* to do when you group up for them, and the xp per hour in a group is lower than soloing the same content. Furthermore most leveling content is easy enough to be soloed. While changing the rewards could turn leveling in WoW into a more social affair, some players resent such social engineering. The term "forced grouping" is often applied for situations where in fact nobody is forced to group, but grouping is just the more efficient way to gain rewards.
Blizzard is currently introducing a system of rewards that encourages players to guild, by handing out guild rewards. It isn't quite clear yet whether that will work in a positive way, we will have to watch the system in action. There is a certain fear that the system inadvertedly favors huge guilds over smaller ones, which might actually end up counterproductively destroying social interaction, and lead people into huge, impersonal guilds instead. On the other hand the reputation you gain for your guild should prevent some of the worst excesses of guild hopping.
In summary I think it is a good idea for developers to use rewards for social engineering players into groups and guilds, because this can improve the long-term stability of the game. But as social engineering is difficult, care has to be taken not to inadvertedly do more harm than good. It is okay to offer better rewards for players to play together, but not to a point where solo players would feel punished, or where impersonal mega-guilds have huge advantages over closer knit small guilds.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Troll overengineering
Quests in World of Warcraft have come a long way in the last six years. While most quests in vanilla WoW were of the “kill 10 foozles” variety, with a few FedEx quests and rare escort quests thrown in, we now have scripted events, phasing, NPC interactions, vehicles and even mini-games in quests. That is a huge improvement, and questing has become a lot more fun over the years. The Shattering brought many of these improvements to the old level 1-60 zones, in an effort to improve the new player experience. Having said all that, I must nevertheless question the wisdom of using some of the most complicated quest technologies in the level 1-5 new troll starting area.
Now for a veteran, rolling a new troll character is fun; and the facts that trolls are now able to become druids, and not every Horde player wants to play a cow as druid, has led to a newbie zone full of troll druids. Far from being the usual fare, the new quests have you collecting a posse of baby raptors using a whistle, lasso an ultra-fast raptor mob and get a taste of riding, get a NPC druid friend/henchman named Zuni to help you through a dungeon full of nagas, and help the leader of the trolls Vol'jin to kill his nemesis, the Sea Witch, during which fight your friend Zuni tragically dies. But while these quests are interesting to veterans, they are often badly described and confusing to new players. For example the quest text for the final battle against the Sea Witch tells you to kill that witch, but as she had 600k health and you are level 5 that isn’t actually your role in that fight. Instead you battle low-level “manifestations”, and extinguish three braziers, none of which is listed in the quest text or the objectives in the quest tracker. You do this quest by *not* doing what the quest asks you to do. Furthermore many of the new quest texts were not very precise with directions. As a result the general chat in Durotar was full of players asking about this and other troll newbie quests, being unsure what to do. That is not the new player experience that would persuade a larger percentage than the current 30% to get past level 10 in the free trial.
So after playing a troll warrior to level 7, I created an orc mage to see how the old orc/troll starting area had changed. Except for introducing the orcs vs. humans lore aspect earlier, and grouping the first mobs to kill closer together, the orc starting experience was basically unchanged. Mostly kill quests, a quest to collect cactus apples, and one quest to hit lazy peons with a cudgel to get them to work. Simple, but still fun. The only depressing thing about it was to see in direct comparison how much WoW is skewed against melee now, and how much Blizzard still hates warriors: The mage at levels 1 to 5 was easily twice as powerful as the warrior in that level range, killed mobs with two shots, and got the more interesting and universally useful abilities at levels 3 and 5, while the warrior at those levels got only abilities that can be used only once per combat (Charge and Victory Rush).
So while I very much welcome added quest complexity and a Plants vs. Zombies mini-game in Hillsbrad, I think that for new players at least levels 1 to 5 should have remained simple, like the orc starting area is now, and not overly elaborate, like the new troll starting area. The troll newbie experience is simply overengineered, showing off all the new bells and whistles Blizzard added to their arsenal over the years, but somehow misses the basic purpose of a newbie zone when it comes to really new players.
Now for a veteran, rolling a new troll character is fun; and the facts that trolls are now able to become druids, and not every Horde player wants to play a cow as druid, has led to a newbie zone full of troll druids. Far from being the usual fare, the new quests have you collecting a posse of baby raptors using a whistle, lasso an ultra-fast raptor mob and get a taste of riding, get a NPC druid friend/henchman named Zuni to help you through a dungeon full of nagas, and help the leader of the trolls Vol'jin to kill his nemesis, the Sea Witch, during which fight your friend Zuni tragically dies. But while these quests are interesting to veterans, they are often badly described and confusing to new players. For example the quest text for the final battle against the Sea Witch tells you to kill that witch, but as she had 600k health and you are level 5 that isn’t actually your role in that fight. Instead you battle low-level “manifestations”, and extinguish three braziers, none of which is listed in the quest text or the objectives in the quest tracker. You do this quest by *not* doing what the quest asks you to do. Furthermore many of the new quest texts were not very precise with directions. As a result the general chat in Durotar was full of players asking about this and other troll newbie quests, being unsure what to do. That is not the new player experience that would persuade a larger percentage than the current 30% to get past level 10 in the free trial.
So after playing a troll warrior to level 7, I created an orc mage to see how the old orc/troll starting area had changed. Except for introducing the orcs vs. humans lore aspect earlier, and grouping the first mobs to kill closer together, the orc starting experience was basically unchanged. Mostly kill quests, a quest to collect cactus apples, and one quest to hit lazy peons with a cudgel to get them to work. Simple, but still fun. The only depressing thing about it was to see in direct comparison how much WoW is skewed against melee now, and how much Blizzard still hates warriors: The mage at levels 1 to 5 was easily twice as powerful as the warrior in that level range, killed mobs with two shots, and got the more interesting and universally useful abilities at levels 3 and 5, while the warrior at those levels got only abilities that can be used only once per combat (Charge and Victory Rush).
So while I very much welcome added quest complexity and a Plants vs. Zombies mini-game in Hillsbrad, I think that for new players at least levels 1 to 5 should have remained simple, like the orc starting area is now, and not overly elaborate, like the new troll starting area. The troll newbie experience is simply overengineered, showing off all the new bells and whistles Blizzard added to their arsenal over the years, but somehow misses the basic purpose of a newbie zone when it comes to really new players.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Not for profit blog
Ah, Thanksgiving, a time of relentless shopping sprees. At least that is how I explain my inbox overflowing with mails from people who want to use the popularity of my blog to sell their goods. Offers range from actual games, over 3D virtual chat room pretending to be an "MMO", over Cataclysm gold making guides for "only" $97 (how I hate that sort of scam), over the promotion of gaming websites, to things that don't actually have anything to do with MMOs. It seems the bad idea that websites exist to make their owners a profit is alive and well, in spite of having caused the first stockmarket crash of this millenium.
As I'm getting tired of saying no to each of these offers individually, here again my stance in public form: I consider this to be a not for profit blog, and I don't advertise stuff because somebody asked me to. I write honest opinions about the games I play, played, or consider playing, and about news and stories from elsewhere in the MMO blogosphere. While that might end up with positive publicity for a product or site, I am not in the business of promoting stuff for money.
I do accept donations, as tokens of my reader's appreciation, which I reinvest into buying the games I then blog about. That is more of a theoretical exercise, after an initial wave the donations slowed down to a trickle. If I were in it for the money, I'd be a lousy businessman, with overall lifetime earnings of about 10 cents per blog post. Fortunately I didn't give up my day job for this, and can write just for fun.
So please stop sending me mails offering me linkbacks or a share of the profits if I promote your site or goods on my blog. I am really not interested. If you really think that I'm sitting on a valuable piece of virtual real estate, you might want to know that I never retracted an offer I once made on this blog: You can buy the whole blog including the "Tobold" brand name for $100,000. Any other offers of deals will be rejected.
As I'm getting tired of saying no to each of these offers individually, here again my stance in public form: I consider this to be a not for profit blog, and I don't advertise stuff because somebody asked me to. I write honest opinions about the games I play, played, or consider playing, and about news and stories from elsewhere in the MMO blogosphere. While that might end up with positive publicity for a product or site, I am not in the business of promoting stuff for money.
I do accept donations, as tokens of my reader's appreciation, which I reinvest into buying the games I then blog about. That is more of a theoretical exercise, after an initial wave the donations slowed down to a trickle. If I were in it for the money, I'd be a lousy businessman, with overall lifetime earnings of about 10 cents per blog post. Fortunately I didn't give up my day job for this, and can write just for fun.
So please stop sending me mails offering me linkbacks or a share of the profits if I promote your site or goods on my blog. I am really not interested. If you really think that I'm sitting on a valuable piece of virtual real estate, you might want to know that I never retracted an offer I once made on this blog: You can buy the whole blog including the "Tobold" brand name for $100,000. Any other offers of deals will be rejected.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Shattering vs. Cataclysm
For people who do not currently play World of Warcraft, and/or aren't keeping up to date with all the details, the upcoming "Cataclysm" can be somewhat confusing. What does the Cataclsym mean for you if you don't have a current WoW account, but would like to either try the game for the first time, or come back after a long absence? What exactly do you need to pay?
The confusion stems mainly from people associating the name of the new expansion "Cataclysm", with the changes to the world of Azeroth. And that isn't correct. The changes to the world of Azeroth, regarding the zones from level 1 to 60, are called "The Shattering", and are technically NOT part of the Cataclysm expansion. The Shattering happens in a patch 4.0.3a today on the US servers, and tomorrow on the European servers. The Shattering changes the look of all the level 1 to 60 zones, their quests, and also changes some other things, like the possible race/class combinations, and the healer talent trees. All of this is completely free, and requires only the basic World of Warcraft game and a subscription.
"Cataclysm" is an expansion. I costs about $40, and requires both of the previous expansions Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. It has some additional low-level content, namely the two new races goblin and worgen, with their starting zones. But most of it is content level 81 to 85 (which is why you can't run Cataclysm without having the expansions that allow you to level from 60 to 80), with new zones, dungeons, and raids.
If you have never played World of Warcraft and want now to play a goblin or worgen, or if you want to play WoW up to level 85 and raid with people at some point, you will need to buy not only the expansion, but also the basic game and the two previous expansions. The good news is that those are on sale until November 29th: World of Warcraft for $5, The Burning Crusade for $5, and Wrath of the Lich King for $10. Add Cataclysm for $40 and the whole bundle will cost you $60. Plus of course a subscription for about $15 per month (but I assume the $5 WoW basic pack comes with one free month).
If you played World of Warcraft previously, and just want to see how Azeroth changed, without leveling past 60 or playing a goblin or worgen, you only need to renew your subscription, as "The Shattering" is free for everybody without the need of any expansion.
Finally a personal comment: World of Warcraft is a huge game, with thousands of hours of content. Thus the cost of the monthly subscription will quickly be much more than the cost of the game itself. If you don't have The Burning Crusade and/or Wrath of the Lich King yet, the current sale for these two costs just the equivalent of one month subscription. That is well worth it, whether you then decide to buy Cataclysm as well or not. You pay the same subscription with or without expansions, so playing the game without expansions is the less good deal.
FTC Disclaimer: I do not receive any money or other considerations from Blizzard. Never have, except for a press pass to a Blizzard convention once in 2008. It is actually possible to recommend World of Warcraft without being paid for it.
The confusion stems mainly from people associating the name of the new expansion "Cataclysm", with the changes to the world of Azeroth. And that isn't correct. The changes to the world of Azeroth, regarding the zones from level 1 to 60, are called "The Shattering", and are technically NOT part of the Cataclysm expansion. The Shattering happens in a patch 4.0.3a today on the US servers, and tomorrow on the European servers. The Shattering changes the look of all the level 1 to 60 zones, their quests, and also changes some other things, like the possible race/class combinations, and the healer talent trees. All of this is completely free, and requires only the basic World of Warcraft game and a subscription.
"Cataclysm" is an expansion. I costs about $40, and requires both of the previous expansions Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. It has some additional low-level content, namely the two new races goblin and worgen, with their starting zones. But most of it is content level 81 to 85 (which is why you can't run Cataclysm without having the expansions that allow you to level from 60 to 80), with new zones, dungeons, and raids.
If you have never played World of Warcraft and want now to play a goblin or worgen, or if you want to play WoW up to level 85 and raid with people at some point, you will need to buy not only the expansion, but also the basic game and the two previous expansions. The good news is that those are on sale until November 29th: World of Warcraft for $5, The Burning Crusade for $5, and Wrath of the Lich King for $10. Add Cataclysm for $40 and the whole bundle will cost you $60. Plus of course a subscription for about $15 per month (but I assume the $5 WoW basic pack comes with one free month).
If you played World of Warcraft previously, and just want to see how Azeroth changed, without leveling past 60 or playing a goblin or worgen, you only need to renew your subscription, as "The Shattering" is free for everybody without the need of any expansion.
Finally a personal comment: World of Warcraft is a huge game, with thousands of hours of content. Thus the cost of the monthly subscription will quickly be much more than the cost of the game itself. If you don't have The Burning Crusade and/or Wrath of the Lich King yet, the current sale for these two costs just the equivalent of one month subscription. That is well worth it, whether you then decide to buy Cataclysm as well or not. You pay the same subscription with or without expansions, so playing the game without expansions is the less good deal.
FTC Disclaimer: I do not receive any money or other considerations from Blizzard. Never have, except for a press pass to a Blizzard convention once in 2008. It is actually possible to recommend World of Warcraft without being paid for it.
Monday, November 22, 2010
We'd be ashamed to take your money for this
In the complicated game of public relations and customer relationship management between MMORPG companies and players, giving out free play time to your subscribers is one of the stronger signals. Thus the decision by Square Enix to grant players not one, but two 30-day extensions of their original 30 free days that came with buying Final Fantasy XIV raised some eyebrows. Other companies hand out maybe a few free days as compensation for servers having been down, but Final Fantasy XIV players receive 60 free days as compensation for the game not being well received. Final Fantasy XIV has a miserable 51% review score on Metacritic, and sold only 630,000 copies worldwide by November, a result that disappointed financial analysts and contributed to Square Enix’ share price dropping by 15%.
One good thing in this story is that Square Enix obviously got the message the players were sending. Not only do they let buyers of the game play 90 days for free instead of just 30, but they also announced various major patches to address the main points of criticism, adding for a example a search function to the player economy, and promising to improve the tutorials. Unfortunately all this will take time, with some of the improvements scheduled for November, others for early 2011. And, as always when a MMORPG has a not-so-stellar launch, questions abound on why these obvious shortcomings haven’t been addressed earlier. It wasn’t as if the beta players weren’t sufficiently vocal about the game’s flaws.
Now optimists might claim that between major improvements and free months of playtime, Square Enix might be able to turn around Final Fantasy XIV, hold onto their 630,000 players and gain some more, to get to an overall quite respectable and profitable number of subscribers. Final Fantasy XIV is still planned to be released on the PS3 next year, and it isn’t as if Square Enix could silently drop a game with the “Final Fantasy” brand name on it. The pessimistic interpretation is that the 630,000 subscribers are a pure book value, because none of them had to actually pay for a subscription yet, and that the moment Square Enix will actually demand money for their game, that number will drop precipitously. With both WAR and AoC having lost two-thirds of their subscribers after the free period ended, that would hardly be unprecedented.
There isn’t exactly an abundance of console MMORPGs, and it appears logical that console players might have different requirements, and are used to different control schemes, than PC players. Thus the PS3 launch of Final Fantasy XIV might still be a success. On the other hand, even console players might check out the reviews of the PC version before paying for this game, and those reviews aren’t exactly likely to encourage people to buy it. So my best guess at this point is that the future of Final Fantasy XIV depends on the success of the PS3 version. For the predecessor Square Enix said at the time that they broke even at 200,000 subscribers, a number that is still well within reach of Final Fantasy XIV. So all isn’t lost yet, but as it stands Final Fantasy XIV is likely to be remembered as one of many MMORPGs with a botched release, and not as an instant success.
One good thing in this story is that Square Enix obviously got the message the players were sending. Not only do they let buyers of the game play 90 days for free instead of just 30, but they also announced various major patches to address the main points of criticism, adding for a example a search function to the player economy, and promising to improve the tutorials. Unfortunately all this will take time, with some of the improvements scheduled for November, others for early 2011. And, as always when a MMORPG has a not-so-stellar launch, questions abound on why these obvious shortcomings haven’t been addressed earlier. It wasn’t as if the beta players weren’t sufficiently vocal about the game’s flaws.
Now optimists might claim that between major improvements and free months of playtime, Square Enix might be able to turn around Final Fantasy XIV, hold onto their 630,000 players and gain some more, to get to an overall quite respectable and profitable number of subscribers. Final Fantasy XIV is still planned to be released on the PS3 next year, and it isn’t as if Square Enix could silently drop a game with the “Final Fantasy” brand name on it. The pessimistic interpretation is that the 630,000 subscribers are a pure book value, because none of them had to actually pay for a subscription yet, and that the moment Square Enix will actually demand money for their game, that number will drop precipitously. With both WAR and AoC having lost two-thirds of their subscribers after the free period ended, that would hardly be unprecedented.
There isn’t exactly an abundance of console MMORPGs, and it appears logical that console players might have different requirements, and are used to different control schemes, than PC players. Thus the PS3 launch of Final Fantasy XIV might still be a success. On the other hand, even console players might check out the reviews of the PC version before paying for this game, and those reviews aren’t exactly likely to encourage people to buy it. So my best guess at this point is that the future of Final Fantasy XIV depends on the success of the PS3 version. For the predecessor Square Enix said at the time that they broke even at 200,000 subscribers, a number that is still well within reach of Final Fantasy XIV. So all isn’t lost yet, but as it stands Final Fantasy XIV is likely to be remembered as one of many MMORPGs with a botched release, and not as an instant success.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Pilgrim's Bounty
I am not a lore geek, and in general when given the choice between making a feature more playable or more immersive, I'll vote for playable. Having said that, I find it rather strange that the Thanksgiving-themed holiday event Pilgrim's Bounty is going on in the middle of the Shattering leading to the Cataclysm. Right now, standing in front of cities like Stormwind or Orgrimmar during an elemental invasion, you can see the city burning in the background with NPC citizens fleeing in terror. At the same time another NPC crowd is standing in front of the gates demanding to be let in, for a quest that requires you to search them. And right next to them there are the Pilgrim's Bounty tables having people throw food at each other. Isn't that somewhat incongruous?
Rumors have it that the actual Shattering of Azeroth into pieces, with zones breaking up and Deathwing appearing, will happen on Tuesday. And the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday event will still be going on for the whole week. Strange!
Rumors have it that the actual Shattering of Azeroth into pieces, with zones breaking up and Deathwing appearing, will happen on Tuesday. And the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday event will still be going on for the whole week. Strange!
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