Warhammer Online haz Blades!

If you didn't know I'm a tech geek. Have been for over 20 years and currently work for a fortune 500 company as an IT consultant. So it's with some interest that I read the Gamasutra article about Warhammer Online's Virginia server farm. Keep in mind it's an "Intel sponsored" article, which is a euphemism for "advertisement". And it is repleat with what one would expect from that sort of thing. However, the grist of what I was really interested in starts on page 2 and gives you a bit of a glipse into how those pixils come to life.

"Our Server Farm in Virginia, for example," Mann said, "has about 60 Dell Blade chassis running Warhammer Online-each hosting up to 16 servers. All in all, we have about 700 servers in operation at this location."

Problem is that Lum predicts Warhammer will have all of one "server" (meaning world cluster) as 2010 comes to a close. Unfortunately I'm inclined at agree as Mythic has been forced to shutter 3/4's of their "servers" over the past several months. Warhammer just didn't pan out like many claimed it would and from most accounts Mythic isn't doing the things they really need to be doing in order to correct the underlying issues that have lead to that exodus of players. All we really know is that Warhammer has somewhere less than 300k players currently, though I suspect they are south of 200k.

This is the part I think a lot of people really need to become more aware of when they question development decisions. Why exactly do you not want Auction Houses in Dalaran for instance. Answer: because that would certainly concentrate too many people in one small place too often.

As might be expected in a game scenario in which the levels of participation vary dramatically at different times of the day, in different regions, and with different types of activity, performance scaling is an essential component of successful server operation.

"One of our ongoing challenges," Mann commented, "is where to distribute people in the world. Our processes-that we distribute across the physical hardware-correspond to locations in the virtual world. One of the focuses of our game, the big focus, is to get a lot of people in one place and have them all fighting with each other. And that, unfortunately, works against us in the process distribution model."

"When you put a lot of people in one place, you're putting their entire server load onto one piece of hardware. We do have some technology to mitigate that. Our scenario system (which spawns up smaller arenas for smaller teams dynamically) allows us to split people off to different pieces of hardware if we need to, dynamically, in smaller chunks."

Using this approach, the application, instead of coping with 800 people in an area on one system, can take 400 of those people out of an area and engage them in smaller fights. Most of the parallelism for these kinds of operations, Shaw noted, is done by process, not by thread.

Most players are simply ignorant of the fact that for every pixil they push around on a screen, there has to be CPU cycles and RAM on the server side that keeps track of it. Not only must it keep track of "it" but also broadcast your location to every other player in the vicinity. And every NPC in that location as well. Along with weather elements, and anything else that must be tracked or rendered. Your client might make the pretty renders for you, but it's the server backside that is coordinating the show, so when you complain about "lag" it's usually one of two things. It's either the "server" experiencing rampant processes, induced by code errors or it's a simple matter of cpu utilization. It's amazing how tuned these clusters have to be to operate a virtual world, and when you have too much activity going on in one zone the server eventually gets to a point where it simply exceeds norms. Player meet lag, lag meet player. Now, don't QQ when you ahve to hobble back to the old world for your auctions!

Tobold and Syncaine going at it again

I have to be honest when I say I enjoy the somewhat regular back and forth between Tobold and Syncaine. Yesterday Tobold began the tet-e-tet with an innocent post that asked if the MMO market was "rationale". You wouldn't know from reading the headline, but he was referring to WAR's recent announcement that they were shutting down two more servers, going on to theorize two reasons why WAR might have "failed". Having my own theory about how the game market acts akin to larger economic models, I replied

Like you, I was expecting WAR to do a bit better than it actually did (http://iggepsrealm.blogspot.com/2008/09/war-expects-1-mil-subs-in-year-3-mil-at.html). But not even I was anticipating just how far it's fallen, despite writing "Lets be honest here. What have we heard about WAR that we haven't heard about every other MMO that's debuted in the past two years? Nothing, really."

Like you, I believe theory number one personally. It didn't take me long once I did start playing to figure out there were a host of things I really didn't care for, or felt just weren't good enough to encourage me to stick with it. Theory number two has it's impetus in that there are many people (myself included) who are getting weary of WoW. But the problem with other games is what is keeping us in WoW. Not WoW that is keeping us from those other games.

I think a lot of the problem is that games are trying too hard to not "be" WoW, and are creating features which I look back on and say to myself "what were they thinking". Games don't have to be clones obviously, but why fix something that isn't broken. Obviously Blizzard figured out over time just what the market wanted, so why are other developers trying to disprove the point? Different features and mechnanics does not mean they should be changing the equation which Blizzard has proven.

As I said, it was an innocent enough post, and certainly worth discussing. But then Syncaine came along and posted his reply on his blog, postulating a ridiculous and unsupportable figure that he claims shows why WAR "failed". I have no idea what rock Syncaine pulled that 60% figure from, but he lost complete credibility with me in the dialogue. I'd railed against his "tourism" theories previously, but if you are simply going to pull numbers out of thin air and pass them off as if they are credible and supportable, then you really have nothing left to add to any meaningful conversation.

Tobold found his response lacking for other reasons as well. And I have to say I agree with him 100%. Trust me, I don't need a full month, let alone longer, to tell whether I'm having fun or not. And I think the market has shown it doesn't either.

When will people learn?

Seriously. If there is just one aspect of our lives that you would truly think people would learn from, it would be the MMO market. Considering how much time we all spend within it. Yet, every new MMO that comes down the pike is trumpeted to the tunes of the "WoW-killer" or the "best MMO evah!", or the like. Every. One. I would like to point the community to the dictionary and ask that you all look up the word "lemming". Then I would like to direct your attention to the axiom that a "fool and their money are soon parted".

Aion is apparently beginning to feel what other games have experienced in the recent past, if you believe what players are saying. Games such as WAR, LotRO, AOC, and Aion were marketed at a fanatical pace, and game sites and blogs galore spoke glowingly about each of them . Seldom was heard a disparaging word about any of these games in the months leading up to their release, and the people who frequent those game sites and blogs ate up the praise like it was mana from heaven.

Though the community at large bears a very healthy helping of responsibility for the mess that is now the MMO market, I think another healthy helping belongs to sites like Massively, MMORPG, Ten Ton Hammer, Eurogamer, and others. These sites quite often act as mouth pieces for the developers and hardly ever critique or offer critical analysis of a game during development or beta. True, many things often change during development, but the point is the community at large do not think critically and if you are going to take on the roll of a journalist, then you must also take on the responsibility of one as well. You have a responsibility to point out the downside while also pointing out the upside or else, in my view, you lose a level of credibility.

And that is something I strive very hard to maintain here at Iggeps Realm. Despite my love for the Star Wars franchise, I have been quite vocal about my concerns with the Old Republic. Likewise with Star Trek Online. And anyone can see my often scathing criticism of Blizzard for it's handling of various issues with WoW. I may not be as large, or command a following of loyal readers like many other blogs out there, but I can assure you that no level of notoriety will ever change my core beliefs. I will not sell glowing coverage of any game for a free beta pass or comp subscription.

Nevah Evah?

In light of my post from a few days ago I think it necessary to expound of my viewpoint a little more. I think it's a valid point that someone reading that and nothing else I've written about SWTOR might assume that I believe it's going to be a terrible game. Let me be clear--I do not. Bioware is a very mature and well respected company with a long track record of award winning games under their belt. They're renowned for the quality of their games, like another certain game developer called Blizzard. Like Blizzard, Bioware had no previous MMO experience when they announced their MMO, and as we know, Blizzard went on to dominate the MMO landscape. I believe a good part of how an MMO prospers is rooted in its lore, which is something The Old Republic obviously has troves of. It's also an intellectual property that people can easily invest themselves in.

So the door is there, and quite inviting. But as Mythic, Funcom and Turbine found, lore simply isn't enough to keep you once you enter. They also have to build an engrossing and entertaining game that delivers well enough on the tenants of player desire. Deliver on those to one degree or another and your MMO will become just one among many others in the market. Deliver well on them all and you become the market leader. It would be foolish to assume that timing doesn't have it's place in this discussion, because very clearly it does. It's no longer 2003 when Blizzard had just a handful of competition from which it needed to differentiate itself. It's now 2009 when the market is flooded with competition, and to make it worse, you have to compete against other games that have had years of polish and content added. In other words, any game that comes out now has a higher hurdle to overcome if they wish to grow beyond the glut into a truly upper tier game.

The devil is in the details, and that is entirely what we're all waiting for with baited breath. It's not enough to simply know that PVP, or crafting, or an economy will be present. But it is hopeful when we see statements from Bioware that they understand what has been released thus far looks surprisingly like a first person game, instead of an MMO. It means they are fully aware of the criticism, the expectations, and the desires of their community members (and the market) and should be working diligently to ensure a truly entertaining and original game is developed.

That is fully my expectation, and I have no reason as of yet to believe that won't carry it out. I have my concerns, and we have only to wait to see them addressed.

Too many options

I have been thinking more and more lately that part of the problem with some MMO's flopping is that we have too many options to choose from. The market is flooded with MMOs, and there are many more currently on the way. Back in 2003, when WoW was released there were only a small number of MMOs on the market to choose from. None of them, singularly, might have been the end all and be all of an MMO to any one individual. But because options were limited, people played MMOs that were entertaining, and stayed longer generally than I think is the case today.

One big difference, that I think WoW showed us, is that the market is quite a bit larger than it was assumed to be in 2003. WoW, with it's behemoth 11.5 mil plus accounts has certainly stretched the market. But in real terms, has it? No other MMO even comes remotely close to that level. Most games still fall in the 300,000 or less account range, which was considered quite good in 2003. Would some of those in the 300,000 range today be in the 500,000 or million account range if there were less options to choose from? Would more money availabililty to fewer developers lead to more highly polished MMOs?

Many problems with a slate of the current MMOs (WAR, AOC, AION, LotR, etc) is that core mechanics, or game play require a high population in order to keep things rolling along. Once a population falls below a certain level there simply aren't enough players there to keep the play afloat. That is especially true of games that feature strong sand-box and PVP components. But it's largely the same with other MMOs that are more PVE oriented. MMOs are by definition "multi-player" and it is intended that players will group play to some degree. If the population level is at such a level where content becomes inaccessible because other players can't be found to assist, it becomes a grave problem. Typically players will hang on for a time, but there remains a tipping point where they will eventually move on to other games.

Every developer believes they are going to make a better mouse-trap, and that is itself part of the problem. For all the grandiose claims pre-beta, every one knows that a great many of them will simply never pan out. I think it would be far better if grizzled old developers were left in charge of things to slap some of the more idealistic and bombastic claims out of the park, instead of allowing them to mold community expectations like they currently are. Much is the case with SWTOR right now. Player expectations are extremely high, and I'm having trouble accepting that some of the ideals expressed by Bioware will work well on a grand scale. Those same old Grizzled developers should shut down efforts that clearly won't be worth the effort. like about half of the MMOs listed at MMORPG.com. Playboy Manager much?

Why would I, as an interested player, want to invest myself in a game that might not be around in two years? Why put myself through a year of hell and boredom looking for people to complete some quest or dungeon with if it's going to limp off into oblivion anyway? I've already skipped several other MMOs for exactly that reason, and likely to do so for many more in the coming years.

The question isn't whether I'm willing or able to play other MMOs. Rather, the question is if developers will see the forest for the trees. They're collectivly causing the problems they are experiencing individually. Competition is one thing, and understanding how you would (or should) be able to compete is another.

Do you invest yourself in your characters?

I saw an interesting article last week that tickled the synapses and had to do with personal investment in our characters and how that relates to the games we play. I have related many times that Sony’s Star Wars Galaxy (SWG) was my first MMO, and that I played it from July 2002 to March 2005. With many years of MMO play under my belt now I can look back and realize what a terribly developed game SWG was. It was a near complete sand-box, which relied almost exclusively on player created content to entertain. PVP was the corner stone of the game, yet the technology of the time would not support the “massive” battles that the game advertised, and players clearly wanted. Battles over bases were like slide shows—frustratingly so.

Prior to March 2005—before the “Combat Upgrade (CU)” was released SWG had 32 different classes; had no levels, as each character was allotted a set number of skill points to spend in any tree of any class they wished; and there was absolutely no PVE content beyond a number of horrifically boring missions that you could run repetitively for money. Class balance? Let us just say that class balance was something aspired to, but never achieved.

All of which begs the question “then why did you stay and play”? First, it was my first MMO so I really didn’t know better. But more importantly I loved my characters. In fact this blog and my tech website are named for my first character (Iggep) and I continue to use that name in WoW today. I’ve come to a curious conclusion about how people generally grow attached to a game, and then stay over the long term. For many, I believe the back story, or lore, is very important. It’s what turns a 2-d experience into a 3-d experience; creates the depth into which immersion happens. It’s what sets apart MMOs like WoW from other MMOs like AION, though obviously that is just the beginning. Afterall, Mythic’s WAR has as rich a lore as Blizzard’s WoW does yet the outcome of those games is very different. And if we want an even better example, Funcom’s Age of Conan should have been the blow out MMO if the decade if Lore was the only factor that mattered. Clearly it isn’t.

Lore is the beginning and sets the tone—draws us in and creates that rich keenness of anticipation for many, but not for all. If that is the beginning then what keeps us is the tone and activity of the game and allows the player to reach that attachment to their characters. MMOs that achieve the basic tenants of player desire do well, but don’t necessarily rise to the top. Not only do those MMOs have to deliver on those core principles, but they also need a level of level polish that impresses. Games like SWG pre-CU had the lore and the immersive qualities and polish that enabled players to create those character attachments, but it also ultimately failed because it didn’t deliver on those core player desires. If it had delivered that crucial element players like me would still be playing it. Yet I believe the only people playing it now are those that started playing it after NGE. It essentially became a completely new game yet I had already let go. I’d passed onto another MMO and eventually grew immersed in it.

WoW became what it is—something that was by no means expected back in 2002 and 2003—because it had a rich back story, and enough of the immersive qualities to keep its players beyond the free month of play. And enough of those players formed strong attachments to their characters, on which the rest of the community that we see today was built. Though I have grown somewhat weary of WoW lately I continue to play because of my “oldest” character -- My Druid. If I didn’t have a character that I was that attached to I am absolutely certain I would not be playing WoW right now. I probably wouldn’t be playing any current MMO because none of them seem to deliver on what I want, other than WoW.

Even Aion doesn’t attract me. I don’t know enough about the lore of the game to get that interested, and it doesn’t deliver on enough of the core player desires. And even more importantly it doesn’t learn from previous MMO mistakes in that it more or less forces players to PVP in order to advance beyond a certain point and doesn’t cater to a varied type of content. In short it’s just another in a long list of PVP centric MMOs that ultimately relies—absolutely relies—on a high population to keep that type of content active. Once the population starts to drop there won’t be enough “content” to keep a majority of players active and happy and the population will start to drop even more dramatically. Sorry Aion, but I’ve been there and done that already and have no desire to do it again. Little known lore; few of the core desires delivered upon; content contrary to my playing tastes—means I just wasn’t all that attached to my character and didn’t see the point of continuing with the game. I gave it a shot, but I’m one of many that already cancelled within the free month of play and a lesson to NCSoft.

Developers, if you want to create truly engrossing games then select an IP that has roots. Then create a bridge that enables players to attach to their characters.

Now that a corner has been turned

Now that we know the SWTOR beta will begin soon, it's time to begin (again?) thiking about the unanswered questions we want answered. What is the strategy of SWTOR? Some might not care over-much, but for others (like myself), I am keenly interested in this game shaping up to be a truly dominant force in the MMO market space. I want SWTOR to suceed, and suceed big. And I want to play this game.

The problem is, I think I want more from SWTOR than a lot of players do. And more importantly, I think I am expecting more from SWTOR than I think Bioware might be looking to provide. I would have expected a lot more information to have been forthcoming about the "end-game", possible sandbox elements (player created content - crafting/gather, player-based economy, etc), and PVP, to name just a few. Yet we've only been treated to the vaunted "Story-driven" aspect of the game. And that has a lot of people worried. I count myself among them.

I think Blizzard has shown the market what you have to do in order to prosper. You have to provide accessible content that suits various play-styles. You have to provide vibrant PVE and PVP content. You have to provide a means to "progress", through gear (power) and achievements (prestiege). And probably a host of other factors that I am neglecting. Many other MMO's have attempted to supplant WoW as the market leader, but they all failed because I don't believe that any one of them has yet delivered successfully on all aspects of what the market desires. The market clearly will not contenance a game that deliveres on one aspect, even if it does it very well. Truly, the market wants its cake, and wants to eat it too. Unfortunately for developers, this is not 2003, and they have to deal with the situation as it stands now. WoW is here, and players now see it as the bar against which all other games will be judged. Developers either meet that bar and succeed in the market space, or they don't meet the bar and will shamble along as an also-ran.

I personally will not be happy with a SWTOR that is completely "story-driven". Story-driven is just another word for PVE (questing), and in this case would mean SWTOR is nothing more than KOTOR with coop elements. MMO-ized as I've related it previously. All the fancy new combat abilities (cover!) won't change this for me, or for the vast majority of the player base, and I sincerely hope that Bioware understands this.

Do not misunderstand. I want the story-driven elements, though I am not all that excited about the voice overs. People do not want to have to stand around waiting for "quest text" to render in a bubble before they can accept the quest and be on their way. Only in this case it would be listening to quest text. I'll reserve final judgement on this until I can actually see it for myself instead of limited views in videos released thus far. Along with this, of course, means end-game progression.

That means different things in different MMO's, but I look at it from a WoW perspective because it's clearly been the most successful model to date. At first I had a hard time envisioning "raids" in a Star Wars setting, but then I realized I was wrong. It wouldn't be that hard to implement raid encounters that are unique and "Star Warsy". The truth of the matter is that how Bioware implements this (if at all) matters quite a bit, and whether they succeed or fail is entirely up to them.
Yes, I want the questing aspects in SWTOR, but I want so much more too.

I want a vibrant PVP aspect to SWTOR. What kind of Star Wars game are we really talking about if you can't act out the war? Fighting NPCs is one thing, and fighting against living, breathing players is quite another. I want the war to have meaning, and I want it to be pervasive. That being said, I think the market in general has spoken on the relative desire for full PVP versus an ability to PVP on demand. People want to be able to PVP but do not want to do it all the time, and most certainly do not want to thrust upon them. How will Bioware answer this, I wonder?

I want sand-box elements (player created content). I want a player created, and driven economy. Which of course means a strong crafting and gathering system. The crafting and gathering system was the only aspect of SWG that I still think of fondly. WoW is an example of a crafting system that is largely superfleous. Items crafted at lower levels are relatively worthless and are only crafted in order to level up. Items crafted at the highest levels of the profession can be worthwhile, but usually only if you haven't gotten something better through PVE raiding or PVP. It's perhaps the weakest aspect of WoW and an aspect I never cared for much. In fact the only crafting professions I would even recommend anyone take are Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, and perhaps Inscription. You can very easily ignore Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, and Tailoring and never blink and eye.

Instead I would like to see crafting professions that mean something within the construct of SWTOR. Craftable items should be useful and sought after at all levels of a profession, but perhaps also compete against items that are obtainable through PVE. Is that doable? Can it be balanced? I hope so.

I have been unable to access the beta signup form, but I will continue to attempt to do so. Outside of WoW's expansions, I have not concerned myself too much with traying to access other MMO's betas. But I feel a very strong desire to participate in this one. You hear that Bioware? Hook a brother up!

Aion initial thoughts

I bought Aion last week and spent a few hours creating characters and playing. Unfortunately the long queue times prohibited me from playing more, so I haven't gotten very far yet. In fact I'm not even level 10, so my thoughts all surround the starter zones which are visibly beautiful. However, they are also colored by my experiences in other MMOs. Massively believes every MMO should be judged on it's own merits, yet that simply isn't possible. The very act of judgment is learned, and it's based upon previous experiences. Hence our MMO desires, likes and dislikes are factors of our previous experiences.

As I said, AION is quite beautiful. Not only the landscapes, but the characters are quite nice but I wasn't able to access any content where I could judge what the lag would be like later on. One thing I did notice right away however, was in the relative difference between the low level WoW experience and Aion's. In WoW you start off relatively powerful against anything you experience. You basically walk through quests and kill everything without much effort. In Aion it's not much different in that all the initial quests are brain-numbingly simple. Collect 4 of this, kill 6 of that sort of thing. But there was a surprising difference in the amount of damage you take from creatures. I was very surprised to see myself at half life on my Scout after killing two creatures.

Perhaps I am not using the movement bonus system properly, yet when I would try to give myself defensive bonuses by moving backward I quickly found myself out of range of the creatures I was attacking because I could back up faster than they could close the distance with me. And strafing to the sides to give myself avoidance bonuses didn't seem to matter much either. In the end I found it more simple to just stand at a creature and bang away at it. I'll continue to try to make some sense of the system, but thus far I see no real benefit from the contextual bonus system what so ever.

Thus far Aion reminds me much more of Warhammer than it does WoW. In WoW the zones are generally large and the questing is more non-linear, than linear in nature. You gain access to several quests at any point and can do them in any order you desire. Completing a quest will often lead to another quest (chain) and so forth. But in Aion the questing is akin to what I experienced in Warhammer where you have quest chains that you are more or less ushered to and are meant to follow those along. The quests also move you geographically along linear paths in each zone. I don't mind that per se, because there were plenty of times in WoW where I wish something similar had been implemented. WoW players often miss many quests in a zone because they simply don't know they are there, hidden away in some nook.

I appreciate that NCSoft is being cautious about rolling out new servers, but I wonder how many people like me they are turning off because they can't log into the game to play?

[edit]
Remember how I said I hadn't experienced any lag yet? Well I just logged on to excruciating lag. And everyone in general chat was complaining about it. Happens to every game from time to time though, so I wonder how much of that was due to the many people in the zone, or whether it was a server issue non-related to my specific zone. In any regard, there goes my opportunity to play Aion for the afternoon.

NCSoft, meet Mythic

Do they not learn from one another? Mythic launched the "most anticipated" MMO of 2008 only to fall so low that all the pre-release trumpeting caused great embarrassment within a month after release. One would think that developers would be more wary about how the marketing babble they use to attract players can come back to haunt them after release when people figure out the latest MMO isn't the "WoW Killer" after all.

As with WAR, my son convinced me to check out AION. I am apparently one of the 400,000 people who have now pre-ordered it, but NCSoft would be greatly mistaken if they believe my pre-order means anything other than I am just going to be checking it out. I already hate the size of the client, which is even larger than WARs was. All the pretty graphics don't mean a damn thing if it leads to greater lag. And it will.

Though I have had my beta access for several weeks now, I haven't been all that interested to log in and try it out. From what I hear AION is a nice MMO, but will it be enough to drag me away from WoW? Perhaps this weekend I will see.

He said what?

I've spoke about my experiences in WAR before. Though I am by no means an expert on that game, I saw enough to know that I had zero interest in ever playing it again. When I saw this quote today --"ease of PvE gameplay and a game that doesn't inspire social interactions." -- I just couldn't help but think, no wonder WAR tanked. They haven't a bloody clue as to what the problems are with it.

You mean to tell me that making WAR require more group effort is the means through which they will resurrect it? Are you kidding?

Good luck with that Mythic.

AION and why players are silly

People are creatures of habit—even bad habits like predicting each new MMO that is getting ready for release will bury WoW. It’s a refrain we’ve all heard a dozen times or more by now, and such is the current refrain of AION admirers. One would think that after jumping ship and buying new MMOs only to quickly learn that the new MMO wasn’t as good as they had once believed, that they would be more skeptical about developer claims. One would think.

I can only look on amusingly as thousands of AION fans attack anyone that speaks ill, or even deigns to speak of AION in neutral terms. Death to those who are not rabid fans! Such has been the case recently on Tobold’s blog, but he’s hardly the only such example. Forums and Blogs everywhere that write about MMOs are feeling the same phenomenon and it really makes one wonder why people get so upset that someone they don’t know likes something somewhat less than they. I like the color green, and you like the color blue much better, how dare you!

I’ll admit I haven’t played AION yet. I didn’t even try to get a beta key and I’m certainly not well enough known to be sought out by NCSoft so my information comes only from those who have played. As Tobold found out some of that information may be wrong, but in my case even if select facts are wrong it still wouldn’t change my overall impression. AION sounds like a very polished game. Afterall, it’s not a new MMO. Its been in operation overseas for some time now and its just being ported to the U.S. By all accounts the character creation system sounds fantastic. I’d love to see something like that in WoW. I also like what I’ve read thus far about the profession system, which allows you to learn all of the professions but enables you to learn only one to maximum skill level. That is something I would also love to see in WoW.

AION sounds a lot like WoW in many respects, but also sounds like it has flavors of WAR thrown in as well. Like WAR, AION’s combat abilities are multi-tiered. Using tier one abilities enable you to then use tier two abilities. There are similarities in the class system as well, though the implementation is different. In AION you assume one of a handful of base classes, then at level 10 you specialize. Unlike WAR you can’t cherry pick talents from different “trees”, so you are locked in to whatever specialty you choose. Very linear.

Initial game play revolves around PVE questing but I haven’t read enough to get a sense of how many quests are available, or whether raw grinding is also required. The latter stages—otherwise known as the “end-game” revolve around PVP. What I’ve read gives me more of an impression of WAR than of WoW, and I already know I wasn’t impressed with the system in WAR which requires a stable, substantial character population to maintain indefinitely. My negative impression isn’t so much a result of AION itself, but more of that type of implementation. It only works so long as you maintain a high level of subscribers and the faction balance isn’t out of whack. How often do those things happen?

In any regard, I’m confident that AION will garner a few hundred thousand subscribers, but I’m also certain that it will not unseat WoW as the next best thing. If it follows the typical MMO pattern many people will jump ship from WoW when AION is released but will generally come back in a few months when the newness of AION wears off. I’m someone who invests a great deal in the characters I play, so it generally takes a lot to lure me away from my game of choice. In fact the state of my game of choice has more to do with whether I continue to play it, or leave it, than anything else. I’m happy with WoW, so any competing MMO would have to be truly great to lure me away. And would have to be better than great to keep me.

I may stop by and play AION when it’s released to see for myself, but as of right now I’m just not feeling an overwhelming desire to play it. And that probably isn’t the mindset NCSoft is really shooting for.

Land of the Dead

Got an email from Mythic today regarding the new Land of the Dead expansion. One of the links was to this trailer which I found interesting, but when I was watching it the first thought that came to mind was "the Mummy came to WAR?". :)

More on Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacob's departure from Mythic continues to echo around the gaming industry today and bloggers are beginning to comment more than their initial reactions by this point. Tobold and Lum published their takes on Marc Jacob's departure from Mythic this morning.

Marc Jacobs given the sendoff

I think everyone knew that WAR was somewhat of a disappointment, and as head of Mythic's development Marc Jacobs is taking the fall. I'd take this as an indication that subscribers have fallen well below the 300k range they were at earlier in the year. Perhaps Bioware can turn it around, but it doesn't usually work out that way.

XP in BGs

We finally found out and I am optimistically hopeful that this turns out to be a boon for players like myself that have been clamoring for Blizzard to do this ever since WAR hit the streets.

War is an experience that few would choose to have in their lifetimes, and yet, in Azeroth, it is the way of the world as the Horde and Alliance continue to struggle against each other even as more imminent dangers split their focus. It is this experience that forges the novice into the hardened veteran and drives them onward to fame and glory. In Call of the Crusade, the opportunity to gain experience through war will become a reality.

With the upcoming content patch, players will be able to gain experience within the Battlegrounds for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in them. These objectives include (but are not limited to) capturing flags in Warsong Gulch, gaining resources in Eye of the Storm or Arathi Basin, or taking objectives in Alterac Valley. Player level will also affect the amount of experience that can be gained within the battleground.

For those that would like to opt out of gaining experience while in the battleground, you will be able to visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold. Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off. Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would’ve been accumulated if experience gains were not turned off cannot be recovered.

Find out more on Battleground Plans here-
The Future of Battlegrounds - Q&A with Cory Stockton: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/battleground-qna.html

This sounds fantastic on the face of it, but with most things the devil will always be in the details. How much XP will we get for each of those objectives? Why not grant XP for each kill? Will everyone get XP for objectives, or only the person that actually accomplished them as some achievements require?

XP via Battlegrounds was the one aspect of WAR that I absolutely liked and I'm encouraged by the fact that Blizzard is finally implementing this too. Ensuring that an adequate amount of XP is earned for each objective, and for participating in PVP will be essential to ensuring this is as popular in WoW as it is in WAR.

Leveling through PVP?

Earning XP via PVP was the one aspect of WAR I really liked and always wished Blizzard would introduce into WoW. I had lost all hope until now that they would even do this:

It's something we're very interested in doing. I'm confident you'll find out more soon. :)

Now wouldn't that just be the bomb? Original post here.

Mythic closes 2/3's of WAR servers

There is just no way of sugar-coating this, though Mark Jacobs is attempting to. The fact that they are closing this number of servers--a major number of servers--can not but stand as testiment to how few people must have come back to WAR after the rollout of patch 1.2 last week.

WAR? What is it good for?

A few days ago I decided to reactivate my WAR account and see what was what with the 1.2 patch. Don't get me wrong, WAR is a good game but I feel the same way now as I did last September when I was playing it. What is the purpose of the game? Long term, what is it I am supposed to be doing? Seriously, I wish someone would tell me. With WoW there is no question what you are meant to do in the end game. You either raid or PVP or some combination of the two. But as far as I can tell the end-game for WAR is about endless pvp grinding in order to control regions. And I guess, city raids.

It took very little time for me to recall just how messed up PVP is in WAR though. Even more than it is in WoW, in my opinion. Melee classes tear ranged classes a new one but in WAR, ranged classes have little to no escape abilities. I'm certainly no WAR PVP specialist, but in a nutshell that is the problem. If you want to be successful in PVP roll a melee class.

Alas, even though I think WAR is a fine game, it's just not for me. I think it's less polished than WoW is, and there is much less to do than there is in WoW. If I had only $15 to spend on an MMO each month I think I'd rather spend it on WoW than in WAR. Sorry Mythic.

WoW Timeout

"Long time" readers of my blog will note I haven't really said anything about WoW in about three weeks. That would be because I haven't logged in to WoW but three times in that period, and that was for raids. Two of which ended up being canceled due to no-shows. I had mentioned previously how raid drama was causing some problems for my guild and it has really sapped my will to play the game at the moment. This isn't the first time I have gone through all that, and it's not something I greatly enjoy. So I've been casting about recently trying to figure out whether I wanted to continue playing WoW or find another game to play. I might eventually go back to WoW, but I realized last night that I am fine not playing WoW, which tells me quite a bit.

I've been playing WoW since March 2005 and I wouldn't be exagerating to say that I absolutely loved it. Part of the problem for me now though is that as an alt-a-holic I've leveled many characters and just don't have it in me to level another. With two level 80 characters at the moment, I don't even feel like leveling my real "main"--my Druid, who is my real pride and joy. He languishes at level 70. Why level yet another character--even one at 70--only to find oneself in the same mess you are in with the other two? The mess is called end-game and can be a political mudbath. Unless you are fine with running the same 5-man dungeons with PUGS day after day; running endless quests and dailies; and farming, then you have absolutely nothing to do other than raid or pvp. I love to raid, but the whole guild drama over it tends to dampen your enthusiasm after awhile. Unless of course you happened to have found a solid guild that gels and has no problem fielding a full raid team. I haven't had such luck myself.

Then of course there is the news of all the upcoming nerfs and changes to various class, including my favorite--the Druid. A very well written piece on WoWinsider yesterday summarized the problems Blizzard is currently having with the tanks and how Druids are getting the royal shaft yet again. Frankly it pisses me off because Druids weren't even viable until patch 1.8, which was implemented two years into the game. Then Druids underwent the larges single nerf in the history of the game shortly after BC went live. And there have been a slew of nerfs in WotLK as well. Including those incoming in patch 3.1. On top of that the mana regeneration changes (NERF) make me very unwilling to play a mana using class any longer. I used to love tanking on my Druid, but I don't even want to do that any longer. And that uncertainty about what I want to do with him is why he sat out of WotLK while I leveled a Shaman and a Death Knight to 80.

Outside of character specific differences, I have general differences with Blizzard how they have unfolded WoW over the last several months. I think they made a huge mistake unveiling the Death Knight as a class and the first "Hero Class". I said before, and I believe it even more now that they should have created sub-set classes for each of the existing classes instead. Druid --> Arch-Druid, etc. Introduction of the Death Knight as a separate class has caused all kinds of problems. For raid design, for PVP, and everything in between. And Blizzard has every indication of not knowing how to fix any of them. With each patch comes numerous class changes with no apparent long term goal in mind for any of them. They're simply trying one solution after another with all of them eroding the fun and ability out of the classes along the way.

And so I decided finally that I really need to step back from WoW for a while and see what else is out there. I've been playing EVE for the past three weeks but with all other player created content games it gets rather boring unless you find a niche in a well populated guild. I'm a noob who has a long way to go to get to anything exciting and I'm already well bored running vanilla level missions. And mining is a little too much for me when you have nothing else to do.

My wife and I are talking about trying WAR again though. So we'll log in to night and see how that goes. I haven't touched WAR since last September so I'm a little rusty and need to figure out what is what again. Guess we'll see how it goes. In the mean time, so long WoW.

End-games are important

Tobold has an interesting post on his blog this morning, that made me recall some principles I learned from Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) back in 2005 and was at least in part responsible for me switching to WoW. Although not exactly the same, SWG is much like WAR in that the games end-game is player created and largely revolves around mass PVP. Unlike with WAR, SWG had absolutely nothing else to do at end-game, outside of a wonderful crafting system which I still look at as the pinnacle of crafting systems I've yet observed in the online games I've played.

I recall toward the end of my SWG playing days in Dec 2004-Mar 2005 that I would troll around the Bria server for hours looking for PVP. I would run the towns on the various planets looking for Rebels to snipe (I was an Imperial Master Rifleman/Doctor), but unfortunately there often times were very few to be found. As the weeks passed by I grew more despondent of the situation and utter boredom quickly set in. I did have a second account which was a Master Droidsmith and I spent more and more time attending to my Droid business and collecting materials I needed. I enjoyed my Droid business, but that isn't what the game was meant to be in its entirety. You simply needed something more to do.

Of course there were city and base raids in the evenings, and while great fun could be had, was also an illustration of a problem area for games centered on player created content--Lag. On Bria in 2003 through my leaving in March 2005, the Imperial faction was dominant. And we prided ourselves on our organization and impregnable fortresses. The main Imperial guilds created a council and coordinated our joint effort in fighting the Rebels. In this way the placement of Imperial bases was also controlled, making defense easier. We didn't have bases strewn about willy-nilly through Bria. Instead we'd have perhaps 2-3 main base complexes on a couple planets, and perhaps an odd base on others. We'd form defense units on the vulnerable evenings and guard these, with the remainder of the Imperial guilds being on call to come to the aid of any base or complex that was attacked. Bases and complexes were not attacked during every vulnerability period however, so those evenings were often times passed in conversation on teamspeak or ventrillo.

There would be periods of time where the Rebels would attack regularly--sometimes more than once in an evening at a given complex, or at multiple complexes. But there were also periods where there would be no activity at all. We of course would also attack rebel bases when we weren't forced to guard ours but there were long stretches where rebels guilds refused to place bases leaving us nothing to do most nights. It was a serious source of friction between the Imperial council and the various rebel guilds and caused much drama on the official SWG Bria forum.

I did play WAR for a brief period after it was released. I played many hours during the first week, though that lessened during the second week and didn't play at all after that. I quickly saw what I had come to hate about SWG. And that was that if you weren't leveling you were completely out in the cold if there weren't enough people to conduct scenarios as they are called in WAR. From reading various blogs I saw that that became more of a problem as time passed.

Tobold relates the end-game in WAR as being problematic because of LAG. Its the same LAG I experienced in SWG, and its something that is completely outside of your control. Because both games rely on player created content you have no idea how many are going to show up for raids. We'd often see 40 or more attackers at our complexes, and we'd of course have a similar number of defenders. And there were many nights where there were even greater numbers involved. Even with somewhere around 80 people in a given zone horrible lag was experienced by all. We'd all be frustrated by it and would joke on Vent that we were living the "power-point", meaning you would see a screen update every now and again and that was about it. And that was if we didn't crash the server to begin with.

As people started to leave SWGs in the run up to the first Combat Upgrade in March 2005 PVP came to a near stop anyway, but on those occasions where we were able to get something going it was beyond frustrating to have it ruined by this phenomenon.

WoW on the other hand has a completely different end-game. It's provided in the form of dungeons. While there is also a PVP centric end-game, it is also largely controlled via the use of instanced battle-grounds. Lag is controlled by controlling the amount of participants. And by focusing on developer content instead of player created content there is almost always something to do.

I didn't continue playing WAR because I didn't want to relive the experiences I had with SWG. While lag is still something to be contended with it is nothing like I remember in SWG. All I can say to the WAR brethren out there is have fun while you can.