“Game Management Systems”
Hello, everyone, and happy holidays! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, and most of you are probably thinking “thank god I haven’t had to read any hateful posts from this asshole,” but who couldn’t do with a little holiday negativity? No, no, I’m not here to bash the countless holiday events that game companies host in their virtual worlds. I’m not even here to post a subjective evaluation of a game I’ve played for only 10 minutes a la my Atlantica Online review. Today we’re going to take a look at Game Management Systems, and a couple in specific: PlayOnline, and Steam. If you’ve never heard of PlayOnline, all you need to know is that it currently stands as the best example of how to not build a game management system.
What the hell is a “Game Management System”?
Truth be told, it’s just a term I use to describe applications that handle digital content to make it easier for the users to 
obtain, play, and keep their virtual assets up-to-date; it’s a way to juggle many games at once. The most prominent example of such an utility is Steam. Like in the days of old, not every person had imaginary encounters with minotaurs, dragons, or angels but most people knew what they were; much in the same way everyone knows what Steam is supposed to do, even if they’ve never used it. These utilities promise a reliable, and most importantly, safe way to acquire games for yourself or others. Not only that, they’ll keep your games organized, so that all you really have to do is run that application, then pick whatever game you feel like playing. Wait, it gets even better. This tool will even keep track of your friends, what games they’re playing, and even allow you to join your friend’s game through the utility’s friend interface. The application even provides you with an in-game overlay you can use to talk to your friends, change the application settings, etc. It promises the ability to use all your favorite applications while in-game. That is, unless PLAYXPERT beats them to it(hurry up with those 64-bit versions, slackers!). Sounds great so far, right?
Well, hold on, I’m not done yet.
Everyone benefits from the existence and support of these applications. Developers can make their games available to an international audience without having to ship boxes there, thanks to digital distribution. Additionally, it promises the potential to reduce the price of games. How can it do this? Think of Wal-mart. They can sell goods at a much cheaper price because they sell a broader array of goods. Wal-mart also keeps low prices on goods by reducing the cost to make them; irrelevant when it comes to what we’re talking about, though, as there is virtually no cost in digital distribution(no box, CD, etc). By having so many games under one roof, and completely eliminating cost of shipping, cardboard, plastic, and media, games can be made available to the public much more cheaply. These companies can even bundle a bunch of games together, and sell them at a very affordable price. Hey, who wouldn’t want to buy over a dozen games for only $75USD[1]?
There’s more. These management systems can prevent piracy. By making game activation possible only to those who have the application, and only allowing people who have legit serial keys to play on legit servers, you can successfully prevent piracy. Arguably, anyone determined enough to crack a game will eventually find a way to play it for free. If the effort and time comes out to be worth less than the 50 bucks , then great. You must be some sort of game-cracking prodigy. Unfortunately, you’ll still miss out on having the most up-to-date version of the game, and any mod developed by communities of people who paid for the game.
So that’s it. This form of content delivery:
- Is user-friendly.
- Saves a ton of time spent on organizing games with your friends, and gives you more time to actually play with them.
- Allows more people to purchase the games and encourages more companies to offer digital distribution to reach an international audience.
- Can ultimately make games cheaper, as the companies running these applications have more games to sell, and can often bundle them for an amazing price.
- Prevents piracy.
Good night, everyone!
Wait. There’s more in this article?! Damn it.
I’m sorry. I can’t go an article without some negativity. If I skipped this next part, I might lose some “street cred” and then no one would like me anymore. Corporate executives know that if you need to point out an employee’s shortcomings when speaking to them, you start with something good, then point out where that person can improve. I’m taking a similar approach. You’ve seen the benefits of such a system, now let’s take a look at a system that may not be as popular or well-known. For damn good reasons. Square-Enix manages and distributes some of their games digitally through a system called PlayOnline. The most popular game obtainable through the system is perhaps Final Fantasy XI. Some of the game’s expansions are even available for purchase through PlayOnline itself!
If PlayOnline had been the only system ever made to manage digital content, then it would have also been the last. It shits all over the idea of game evolution and progress. It makes it more difficult for players to get to the game they want to play, can cost you more money than buying the games at the store, and can drive you to set yourself on fire and jump off a bridge. The only thing it can do in comparison to the previously-mentioned system is prevent piracy. Seriously, though, who owns a cracked copy of Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, or Lord of the Rings: Online? I don’t know why I even mentioned this point.
PlayOnline will assume from the moment you start your registration that you’re an idiot. It may be right, but it’s no reason to punish the rest of us. PlayOnline will assign you a username, consisting of four letters and four numbers. I guess it prevents people from exploiting the fact that some morons make their account name the same as their character name in-game. Of course, this safety measure can often prevent the same morons from accessing their own account, if they forgot to write down the random gibberish that is their user ID. You also get registered for a sweet e-mail address that you should give to all of your friends. Mine is x261610402427@pol.com. I’m not fucking kidding. There’s user-friendliness for you.
Note: Only e-mail me if you’re the chick with three boobs from Total Recall.
If you’re not a moron, but you move a lot like I do, and you lost the booklet where you kept your user ID, then good luck to you. Square-Enix’s customer service is the worst when it comes to account recovery. Well, actually, their customer service can’t even usually solve a simple problem. We’ll save that for another post, though.
The client offered potential. Five years ago.
I’m going to be fair here. I liked PlayOnline when I first started playing Final Fantasy XI, back in 2003. It seemed like a pretty cool way to organize your games, and keep all the people you play with on a separate friend list than the people you talk to on AIM, for example. So you could organize everything you wanted to do in-game with your friends without having to talk to them on AIM/MSN/TeamSpeak.
Its one downfall, perhaps, is that it is now limited by outdated technology. Because this system is used across two other platforms: the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 2, it is limited by the technology of the latter. That means if they invented a PCI card to serve the purpose of telepathic communication online, then PlayOnline would never support it. Consoles like the PS2 are not updated. Ever. At least not anymore. So PlayOnline is stuck in the past. Maybe forever.
Let’s go back to hating it real quick.
We’ve talked about how these game management systems can help you keep your games up-to-date either through downloading patches or purchasing expansions. PlayOnline does that absolutely flawlessly. Wait, I think I used the wrong word. Yeah, I meant absolutely shittily. As far as keeping your game up-to-date through content patches, why even discuss that? Every MMO does it. It’s not complicated technology. Final Fantasy XI has four expansions, though. These are: Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, and Wings of the Goddess. Rise of the Zilart came bundled with FFXI as far as I can remember. I think the only place it wasn’t bundled with FFXI at release was probably in Japan. Still, they offer registration keys for Rise of the Zilart through PlayOnline for … $9.99? What the hell?! In fact, they offer every key except the one for their latest expansion[2].
Let’s pretend for a moment that some stores sell just Final Fantasy XI, no expansion. $9.99 would be a reasonable price, but let’s put it down to $4.99. You go home, install it, and you want to buy the expansions through PlayOnline since you weren’t even told at the store they existed. Possible scenario, happens with some games.
- Theoretical cost of Final Fantasy XI alone: $4.99
- Rise of the Zilart: $9.99
- Chains of Promathia: $9.99
- Treasures of Aht Urghan: $14.99
- Total: $39.96(no taxes)
So you get the game, and three expansions for about 40 bucks. You don’t get the last expansion, though. Sorry. Not available through PlayOnline. On the other hand, they offer the game with all expansions at every store and Direct2Drive for…20 bucks? Wait, so the company sells keys for expansions that no one will ever buy, because they come bundled with the original game for a lot less money. Isn’t the purpose of digital distribution to save the users valuable time and money? And let’s remember, it’s Square-Enix selling their own games, through their own system, for more money than retailers. What is going on here?!
You might be thinking “man, you’re a dick,” but you’re also wondering “Wouldn’t returning players who didn’t purchase the third expansion want to buy it through PlayOnline? They don’t need a whole new copy of the game.” Actually, they don’t benefit, either. The third expansion(Aht Urghan) is sold through PlayOnline for $14.99. If you spend just 5 bucks more, you get that expansion, and the latest one. As well as a few extra keys you can burn or keep for when you lose your user ID and have to make a new account.
So, if you’re keeping score:
- PlayOnline is not user-friendly. You’re forced to write down or remember gibberish user IDs. You don’t need to type it in every time you log in, of course, but if you need account support(god forbid) or anything else, you’ll be asked for this information. Oh, you’ll also be asked for your registration keys. I guess the fact that you need support for their game is not enough proof that you bought it…What?
- PlayOnline does not save the user money. Buying just two of their expansions through PlayOnline would turn out as expensive as buying the original game and all four expansions at the store.
- PlayOnline stops running when a game launches. So you don’t get a sweet overlay, or anything like that to help you mess with settings while in-game.
Oh, and:
- PlayOnline helps prevent piracy.
It’s okay. I’m full of shit, too.
Look, my arguments are not that great. It’s possible that Square-Enix had no intention of producing a system to manage their games effectively, like Valve did with Steam. Maybe Square-Enix just wanted to have a way to handle billing for Final Fantasy XI without having to do it via browser. Wait. Shit, it doesn’t even do that better than paying via browser. My street address has a “.” character. You know, like “Apt. 4.” Couple of weeks ago, I wanted to renew my subscription and so I hop on, and put in my credit card information. It gets declined about 3 times before I contact customer service. Since in PlayOnline you cannot type special characters, like “.” their brilliant staff suggested I call my bank to tell them to remove the damn period from my address so I could pay for the game. I digress. Like I said, let’s leave their customer service for another post. We’re going to have fun with that one, too. There’ll be public notaries and calls to the FDIC…I know, I know. I can’t wait, either.
Getting back on track.
I have high hopes for game management systems. Even PlayOnline. With a few updates it could become the bullet-train of digital content and distribution systems. I really think that in the right hands, utilities such as these can save users a ton of time and money. The video game industry rapidly advances. Some think it’s going down the wrong path, and that developers no longer care about gamers. According to these people, it’s all about the money. They may or may not be right, I mean, it is a business and they want to make money; game companies are not charities.
One thing I am sure of is that the future of video games, and MMOs lie within these systems. Much like retail has moved from tiny mom and pop stores to Wal-Mart, Target, and other big box retailers. Hell, no one can argue that you can’t find quality goods at any of those stores. I believe the same will happen with video games. How will it affect MMOs? Just look at the Station Pass SOE offers. You can play a ton of games for one monthly subscription fee. Sure, most of them suck, but you have to start somewhere. Eventually someone might bundle good games under one subscription fee. I don’t know why you’d want to, but maybe we’re not far off from paying one low monthly fee to play Lord of the Rings: Online, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy XI all together.
“Game Management Systems”
Hello, everyone, and happy holidays! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, and most of you are probably thinking “thank god I haven’t had to read any hateful posts from this asshole,” but who couldn’t do with a little holiday negativity? No, no, I’m not here to bash the countless holiday events that game companies host in their virtual worlds. I’m not even here to post a subjective evaluation of a game I’ve played for only 10 minutes a la my Atlantica Online review. Today we’re going to take a look at Game Management Systems, and a couple in specific: PlayOnline, and Steam. If you’ve never heard of PlayOnline, all you need to know is that it currently stands as the best example of how to not build a game management system.
What the hell is a “Game Management System”?
Truth be told, it’s just a term I use to describe applications that handle digital content to make it easier for the users to 
obtain, play, and keep their virtual assets up-to-date; it’s a way to juggle many games at once. The most prominent example of such an utility is Steam. Like in the days of old, not every person had imaginary encounters with minotaurs, dragons, or angels but most people knew what they were; much in the same way everyone knows what Steam is supposed to do, even if they’ve never used it. These utilities promise a reliable, and most importantly, safe way to acquire games for yourself or others. Not only that, they’ll keep your games organized, so that all you really have to do is run that application, then pick whatever game you feel like playing. Wait, it gets even better. This tool will even keep track of your friends, what games they’re playing, and even allow you to join your friend’s game through the utility’s friend interface. The application even provides you with an in-game overlay you can use to talk to your friends, change the application settings, etc. It promises the ability to use all your favorite applications while in-game. That is, unless PLAYXPERT beats them to it(hurry up with those 64-bit versions, slackers!). Sounds great so far, right?
Well, hold on, I’m not done yet.
Everyone benefits from the existence and support of these applications. Developers can make their games available to an international audience without having to ship boxes there, thanks to digital distribution. Additionally, it promises the potential to reduce the price of games. How can it do this? Think of Wal-mart. They can sell goods at a much cheaper price because they sell a broader array of goods. Wal-mart also keeps low prices on goods by reducing the cost to make them; irrelevant when it comes to what we’re talking about, though, as there is virtually no cost in digital distribution(no box, CD, etc). By having so many games under one roof, and completely eliminating cost of shipping, cardboard, plastic, and media, games can be made available to the public much more cheaply. These companies can even bundle a bunch of games together, and sell them at a very affordable price. Hey, who wouldn’t want to buy over a dozen games for only $75USD[1]?
There’s more. These management systems can prevent piracy. By making game activation possible only to those who have the application, and only allowing people who have legit serial keys to play on legit servers, you can successfully prevent piracy. Arguably, anyone determined enough to crack a game will eventually find a way to play it for free. If the effort and time comes out to be worth less than the 50 bucks , then great. You must be some sort of game-cracking prodigy. Unfortunately, you’ll still miss out on having the most up-to-date version of the game, and any mod developed by communities of people who paid for the game.
So that’s it. This form of content delivery:
- Is user-friendly.
- Saves a ton of time spent on organizing games with your friends, and gives you more time to actually play with them.
- Allows more people to purchase the games and encourages more companies to offer digital distribution to reach an international audience.
- Can ultimately make games cheaper, as the companies running these applications have more games to sell, and can often bundle them for an amazing price.
- Prevents piracy.
Good night, everyone!
Wait. There’s more in this article?! Damn it.
I’m sorry. I can’t go an article without some negativity. If I skipped this next part, I might lose some “street cred” and then no one would like me anymore. Corporate executives know that if you need to point out an employee’s shortcomings when speaking to them, you start with something good, then point out where that person can improve. I’m taking a similar approach. You’ve seen the benefits of such a system, now let’s take a look at a system that may not be as popular or well-known. For damn good reasons. Square-Enix manages and distributes some of their games digitally through a system called PlayOnline. The most popular game obtainable through the system is perhaps Final Fantasy XI. Some of the game’s expansions are even available for purchase through PlayOnline itself!
If PlayOnline had been the only system ever made to manage digital content, then it would have also been the last. It shits all over the idea of game evolution and progress. It makes it more difficult for players to get to the game they want to play, can cost you more money than buying the games at the store, and can drive you to set yourself on fire and jump off a bridge. The only thing it can do in comparison to the previously-mentioned system is prevent piracy. Seriously, though, who owns a cracked copy of Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, or Lord of the Rings: Online? I don’t know why I even mentioned this point.
PlayOnline will assume from the moment you start your registration that you’re an idiot. It may be right, but it’s no reason to punish the rest of us. PlayOnline will assign you a username, consisting of four letters and four numbers. I guess it prevents people from exploiting the fact that some morons make their account name the same as their character name in-game. Of course, this safety measure can often prevent the same morons from accessing their own account, if they forgot to write down the random gibberish that is their user ID. You also get registered for a sweet e-mail address that you should give to all of your friends. Mine is x261610402427@pol.com. I’m not fucking kidding. There’s user-friendliness for you.
Note: Only e-mail me if you’re the chick with three boobs from Total Recall.
If you’re not a moron, but you move a lot like I do, and you lost the booklet where you kept your user ID, then good luck to you. Square-Enix’s customer service is the worst when it comes to account recovery. Well, actually, their customer service can’t even usually solve a simple problem. We’ll save that for another post, though.
The client offered potential. Five years ago.
I’m going to be fair here. I liked PlayOnline when I first started playing Final Fantasy XI, back in 2003. It seemed like a pretty cool way to organize your games, and keep all the people you play with on a separate friend list than the people you talk to on AIM, for example. So you could organize everything you wanted to do in-game with your friends without having to talk to them on AIM/MSN/TeamSpeak.
Its one downfall, perhaps, is that it is now limited by outdated technology. Because this system is used across two other platforms: the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 2, it is limited by the technology of the latter. That means if they invented a PCI card to serve the purpose of telepathic communication online, then PlayOnline would never support it. Consoles like the PS2 are not updated. Ever. At least not anymore. So PlayOnline is stuck in the past. Maybe forever.
Let’s go back to hating it real quick.
We’ve talked about how these game management systems can help you keep your games up-to-date either through downloading patches or purchasing expansions. PlayOnline does that absolutely flawlessly. Wait, I think I used the wrong word. Yeah, I meant absolutely shittily. As far as keeping your game up-to-date through content patches, why even discuss that? Every MMO does it. It’s not complicated technology. Final Fantasy XI has four expansions, though. These are: Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, and Wings of the Goddess. Rise of the Zilart came bundled with FFXI as far as I can remember. I think the only place it wasn’t bundled with FFXI at release was probably in Japan. Still, they offer registration keys for Rise of the Zilart through PlayOnline for … $9.99? What the hell?! In fact, they offer every key except the one for their latest expansion[2].
Let’s pretend for a moment that some stores sell just Final Fantasy XI, no expansion. $9.99 would be a reasonable price, but let’s put it down to $4.99. You go home, install it, and you want to buy the expansions through PlayOnline since you weren’t even told at the store they existed. Possible scenario, happens with some games.
- Theoretical cost of Final Fantasy XI alone: $4.99
- Rise of the Zilart: $9.99
- Chains of Promathia: $9.99
- Treasures of Aht Urghan: $14.99
- Total: $39.96(no taxes)
So you get the game, and three expansions for about 40 bucks. You don’t get the last expansion, though. Sorry. Not available through PlayOnline. On the other hand, they offer the game with all expansions at every store and Direct2Drive for…20 bucks? Wait, so the company sells keys for expansions that no one will ever buy, because they come bundled with the original game for a lot less money. Isn’t the purpose of digital distribution to save the users valuable time and money? And let’s remember, it’s Square-Enix selling their own games, through their own system, for more money than retailers. What is going on here?!
You might be thinking “man, you’re a dick,” but you’re also wondering “Wouldn’t returning players who didn’t purchase the third expansion want to buy it through PlayOnline? They don’t need a whole new copy of the game.” Actually, they don’t benefit, either. The third expansion(Aht Urghan) is sold through PlayOnline for $14.99. If you spend just 5 bucks more, you get that expansion, and the latest one. As well as a few extra keys you can burn or keep for when you lose your user ID and have to make a new account.
So, if you’re keeping score:
- PlayOnline is not user-friendly. You’re forced to write down or remember gibberish user IDs. You don’t need to type it in every time you log in, of course, but if you need account support(god forbid) or anything else, you’ll be asked for this information. Oh, you’ll also be asked for your registration keys. I guess the fact that you need support for their game is not enough proof that you bought it…What?
- PlayOnline does not save the user money. Buying just two of their expansions through PlayOnline would turn out as expensive as buying the original game and all four expansions at the store.
- PlayOnline stops running when a game launches. So you don’t get a sweet overlay, or anything like that to help you mess with settings while in-game.
Oh, and:
- PlayOnline helps prevent piracy.
It’s okay. I’m full of shit, too.
Look, my arguments are not that great. It’s possible that Square-Enix had no intention of producing a system to manage their games effectively, like Valve did with Steam. Maybe Square-Enix just wanted to have a way to handle billing for Final Fantasy XI without having to do it via browser. Wait. Shit, it doesn’t even do that better than paying via browser. My street address has a “.” character. You know, like “Apt. 4.” Couple of weeks ago, I wanted to renew my subscription and so I hop on, and put in my credit card information. It gets declined about 3 times before I contact customer service. Since in PlayOnline you cannot type special characters, like “.” their brilliant staff suggested I call my bank to tell them to remove the damn period from my address so I could pay for the game. I digress. Like I said, let’s leave their customer service for another post. We’re going to have fun with that one, too. There’ll be public notaries and calls to the FDIC…I know, I know. I can’t wait, either.
Getting back on track.
I have high hopes for game management systems. Even PlayOnline. With a few updates it could become the bullet-train of digital content and distribution systems. I really think that in the right hands, utilities such as these can save users a ton of time and money. The video game industry rapidly advances. Some think it’s going down the wrong path, and that developers no longer care about gamers. According to these people, it’s all about the money. They may or may not be right, I mean, it is a business and they want to make money; game companies are not charities.
One thing I am sure of is that the future of video games, and MMOs lie within these systems. Much like retail has moved from tiny mom and pop stores to Wal-Mart, Target, and other big box retailers. Hell, no one can argue that you can’t find quality goods at any of those stores. I believe the same will happen with video games. How will it affect MMOs? Just look at the Station Pass SOE offers. You can play a ton of games for one monthly subscription fee. Sure, most of them suck, but you have to start somewhere. Eventually someone might bundle good games under one subscription fee. I don’t know why you’d want to, but maybe we’re not far off from paying one low monthly fee to play Lord of the Rings: Online, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy XI all together.
Why Darkfall is Important
Darkfall is on the verge of becoming a reality. Shockwaves were sent through the MMO community on Friday as Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall will be releasing in European markets on January 22, 2009. This announcement was followed by the deafening silence of “vapor trolls” who were once over-spoken forum activists convinced the game would never see the light of day. Not only is Darkfall coming out, but it is only 6 weeks from going live.
Every MMO player who loves this genre even a sliver as much as I do has a vested interested in seeing Darkfall become a success. If you have been playing MMOs for any length of time, you are no doubt feeling somewhat disenchanted with the state of the genre over the last few years, especially if you are a veteran like me who remembers the way things used to be. You might remember a time where a new MMO didn’t look exactly like the one before it, a time when innovation was profitable to a developer.
The Death of Innovation
It is easy to figure out how and when innovation died. A certain company made an MMO some years ago that made unimaginable amounts of money by using a model that dumbed down the game to appeal to a wider audience. MMOs are expensive and risky business propositions, and in the last few years we have seen 40-80 million dollar debacles that have brought their developers to their knees or out of business. The safest route for profit is to look at the industries most profitable game, and build the same dumbed down model for mass appeal they used. The profit being rewarded to the companies who follow in the footsteps, combined with the innovative games being debacles, has sent a dangerous message to new developers and helped fuel a trend of linear copycat theme-park MMOs.
Sandbox games have traditionally offered their players freedom, something that most of the more recent games have been lacking and some newer-school players may have never experienced. The freedom is yours to go anywhere without being boxed in by mountains that always seem to mysteriously bottleneck into a loading screen. The freedom is yours to pick a character that is yours to shape, instead of being pigeon-holed into some specific role where for some reason can figure out how to use a single type of weapon. These are the promises that a sandbox game makes, but unfortunately there has not been a successful one made since Asheron’s Call.
Ending the Cycle
Whether you believe that Tasos will deliver what he has been promising us for years or not, before you jump on bashing bandwagon, stop and think about how a successful Darkfall will affect the MMORPG genre. If a sandbox game like Darkfall is financially successful, it will send a message to developers that not only is there a market for sandbox MMOs, but there is money to be made in innovation. Think back and imagine what this genre would look like today if Asheron’s Call and Everquest 1 had switched places in terms of who came out on top financially. If any of the sandbox games from then until now had done well, I don’t think we would find ourselves in a market full of copycat games.
When was the last time you played an MMO where the death penalty really made you fearful of dying? When was the last time you could explore in an MMO without hitting an artificial wall of mountains, or you actually were completely lost? These are the type of things that have long been gone from the genre. Now most of developers making the big name MMOs don’t even have enough innovation to make their own world. Is anyone else as sick as I am of watching these stupid prepackaged MMOs come out that are based on some old franchise? Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Warhammer are all games you are supposed to be excited about, and I feel like these devs are the same guys who used to play Dungeons and Dragons and buy those little premade box adventures because they didn’t have the originality to come up with their own.
Darkfall deserves your best wishes, even if you don’t plan on buying it. It is a vessel of hope to try to stop the madness that has turned what was once the best genre in all of video gaming and reduced it to an experience that is akin to sitting on a ride in Disneyland. You get in, you sit down, you go the one way there is to go, you watch the dolls dance, then you get up and exit with probably a lower IQ than you had before you got on. If you’re on the fence about buying Darkfall, think about the money you spent on MMO ideas far worse than this one. I think it is worth the chance to finally show support for someone who is willing to take the big risk, and show other developers that we are willing to pay for something that is original.
I know some of you will flame me and try to brand me a fanboi, and I would argue that I am a fanboi of the genre and what it should represent. I also know that for a lot of you reading, Darkfall is your last stand in MMOs. I can’t blame you for going all-in on this game after all that has happened. If you have read my words here and agree with me, I ask that you make sure you tell a friend and pass the word along; we are going to need it now more than ever.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Why Darkfall is Important
Darkfall is on the verge of becoming a reality. Shockwaves were sent through the MMO community on Friday as Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall will be releasing in European markets on January 22, 2009. This announcement was followed by the deafening silence of “vapor trolls” who were once over-spoken forum activists convinced the game would never see the light of day. Not only is Darkfall coming out, but it is only 6 weeks from going live.
Every MMO player who loves this genre even a sliver as much as I do has a vested interested in seeing Darkfall become a success. If you have been playing MMOs for any length of time, you are no doubt feeling somewhat disenchanted with the state of the genre over the last few years, especially if you are a veteran like me who remembers the way things used to be. You might remember a time where a new MMO didn’t look exactly like the one before it, a time when innovation was profitable to a developer.
The Death of Innovation
It is easy to figure out how and when innovation died. A certain company made an MMO some years ago that made unimaginable amounts of money by using a model that dumbed down the game to appeal to a wider audience. MMOs are expensive and risky business propositions, and in the last few years we have seen 40-80 million dollar debacles that have brought their developers to their knees or out of business. The safest route for profit is to look at the industries most profitable game, and build the same dumbed down model for mass appeal they used. The profit being rewarded to the companies who follow in the footsteps, combined with the innovative games being debacles, has sent a dangerous message to new developers and helped fuel a trend of linear copycat theme-park MMOs.
Sandbox games have traditionally offered their players freedom, something that most of the more recent games have been lacking and some newer-school players may have never experienced. The freedom is yours to go anywhere without being boxed in by mountains that always seem to mysteriously bottleneck into a loading screen. The freedom is yours to pick a character that is yours to shape, instead of being pigeon-holed into some specific role where for some reason can figure out how to use a single type of weapon. These are the promises that a sandbox game makes, but unfortunately there has not been a successful one made since Asheron’s Call.
Ending the Cycle
Whether you believe that Tasos will deliver what he has been promising us for years or not, before you jump on bashing bandwagon, stop and think about how a successful Darkfall will affect the MMORPG genre. If a sandbox game like Darkfall is financially successful, it will send a message to developers that not only is there a market for sandbox MMOs, but there is money to be made in innovation. Think back and imagine what this genre would look like today if Asheron’s Call and Everquest 1 had switched places in terms of who came out on top financially. If any of the sandbox games from then until now had done well, I don’t think we would find ourselves in a market full of copycat games.
When was the last time you played an MMO where the death penalty really made you fearful of dying? When was the last time you could explore in an MMO without hitting an artificial wall of mountains, or you actually were completely lost? These are the type of things that have long been gone from the genre. Now most of developers making the big name MMOs don’t even have enough innovation to make their own world. Is anyone else as sick as I am of watching these stupid prepackaged MMOs come out that are based on some old franchise? Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Warhammer are all games you are supposed to be excited about, and I feel like these devs are the same guys who used to play Dungeons and Dragons and buy those little premade box adventures because they didn’t have the originality to come up with their own.
Darkfall deserves your best wishes, even if you don’t plan on buying it. It is a vessel of hope to try to stop the madness that has turned what was once the best genre in all of video gaming and reduced it to an experience that is akin to sitting on a ride in Disneyland. You get in, you sit down, you go the one way there is to go, you watch the dolls dance, then you get up and exit with probably a lower IQ than you had before you got on. If you’re on the fence about buying Darkfall, think about the money you spent on MMO ideas far worse than this one. I think it is worth the chance to finally show support for someone who is willing to take the big risk, and show other developers that we are willing to pay for something that is original.
I know some of you will flame me and try to brand me a fanboi, and I would argue that I am a fanboi of the genre and what it should represent. I also know that for a lot of you reading, Darkfall is your last stand in MMOs. I can’t blame you for going all-in on this game after all that has happened. If you have read my words here and agree with me, I ask that you make sure you tell a friend and pass the word along; we are going to need it now more than ever.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.
There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.
So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.
One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO. I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.
Paragus
Co-leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.
There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.
So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.
One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO. I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.
Paragus
Co-leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Warhammer Woes at 60 Days
I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little passed the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.
1) Itemization
This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.
This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.
2) Overworld RvR Mechanic
The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.
Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.
3) Contribution System
In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.
After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.
The Billing Cycle
Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up. A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.
If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Warhammer Woes at 60 Days
I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little passed the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.
1) Itemization
This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.
This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.
2) Overworld RvR Mechanic
The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.
Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.
3) Contribution System
In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.
After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.
The Billing Cycle
Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up. A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.
If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Warhammer Online: Iron Breaker + Patch 1.05
We’ll I’ve been playing my Dwarf Iron Breaker (tank) for about 2 months now and have reached level 28, I don’t game everyday so don’t kill me that I’m not lev 40 yet. From early on I found my character very well balance but as I’ve been playing more and more I feel my tank is getting the short end of the stick, mainly in RvR and PQs.
The main problem is that tanks have low DPS, because of this when doing a public quests or a Keep siege, I always finish in the bottom of the list when it comes to participation. My tank is meant to take massive damage, which it does, but when the roll comes for loot bags, I almost never get one, which is complete bs. Healers get participation points for the amount of points they heal, but tanks don’t get any for the amount of damage they take.
In the upcoming 1.05 patch, there are 2 significant changes for Ironbreakers which will make us even weaker. We have a Grudge meter where every time we get hit it builds and the higher it builds the more effective our attacks or buffs become. So optimumly we’d want this to be 100% at all times. Currently Grudge builds 5 points every time we’re hit, then after 30 seconds of not being hit decays at 5 per second. The change in 1.05 is huge, instead of 30 seconds it will be 10 seconds and instead of 5/sec, it will decay at 10/sec. This basically means if we stop to loot or need some time to heal, were going to start at zero for just about every fight. The only time my Iron Breaker does any sort of decent damage is when I’m at 100 Grudge, so this will not only make my character much weaker, but it will also mean I’m going to be getting even less participation points in keep sieges and PQs. How are tanks supposed to win loot if we can’t get any points in participation because our attacks are so weak?
Binding Grudge & Heavy Blow are the two attacks I use the most with my Iron Breaker, mainly because they do the best damage. However damage depends how much Grudge you have built up and both are length of time attacks. For instance Binding Grudge at 100 Grudge might do 700 dmg over 15 seconds. The problem here is when doing PQs or Keep Seiges, most enemies don’t last 15 seconds unless it’s a champ or hero. So while people that do high DPS get a ton of participation points, I don’t because the enemy dies in 5 seconds so the damage dealt was only 230 and I get much less points.
The second big change is with our Oath Friend. As a Iron Breaker you can select one ally and deem them your Oath Friend which will grant them and yourself bonus buffs. One of the big pluses is that every time your Oath Friend gets hit, you gain 10 Grudge points, making this is a great way to build and maintain your Grudge points. Not so in 1.05. Not only is this reduced from 10 points to 5, but it’s further reduced the more Grudge you have built up.
0 - 30 Grudge you gain 5 points
31 - 60 Grudge you gain 3 points
60 - 100 Grudge you gain 1 points
So not only are we going to lose our points much much faster, it will be harder to build it up. In essence their turning us into tanks with BB guns. I would have no problem with these changes if they also made changes to participation points. It’s going to be much harder for Iron Breakers to win loot once these changes hit the public server.
Warhammer Online: Iron Breaker + Patch 1.05
We’ll I’ve been playing my Dwarf Iron Breaker (tank) for about 2 months now and have reached level 28, I don’t game everyday so don’t kill me that I’m not lev 40 yet. From early on I found my character very well balance but as I’ve been playing more and more I feel my tank is getting the short end of the stick, mainly in RvR and PQs.
The main problem is that tanks have low DPS, because of this when doing a public quests or a Keep sieges, I always finish in the bottom of the list when it comes to participation. My tank is meant to take massive damage, which it does, but when the roll comes for loot bags, I almost never get one, which is complete bs. Healers get participation points for the amount of points they heal, but tanks don’t get any for the amount of damage they take.
In the upcoming 1.05 patch, there are 2 significant changes for Ironbreakers which will make us even weaker. We have a Grudge meter where every time we get hit it builds and the higher it builds the more effective our attacks or buffs become. So optimumly we’d want this to be 100% at all times. Currently Grudge builds 5 points every time we’re hit, then after 30 seconds of not being hit decays at 5 per second. The change in 1.05 is huge, instead of 30 seconds it will be 10 seconds and instead of 5/sec, it will decay at 10/sec. This basically means if we stop to loot or need some time to heal, were going to start at zero for just about every fight. The only time my Iron Breaker does any sort of decent damage is when I’m at 100 Grudge, so this will not only make my character much weaker, but it will also mean I’m going to be getting even less participation points in keep sieges and PQs. How are tanks supposed to win loot if we can’t get any points in participation because our attacks are so weak?
Binding Grudge & Heavy Blow are the two attacks I use the most with my Iron Breaker, mainly because they do the best damage. However damage depends how much Grudge you have built up and both are length of time attacks. For instance Binding Grudge at 100 Grudge might do 700 dmg over 15 seconds. The problem here is when doing PQs or Keep Seiges, most enemies don’t last 15 seconds unless it’s a champ or hero. So while people that do high DPS get a ton of participation points, I don’t because the enemy dies in 5 seconds so the damage dealt was only 230 and I get much less points.
The second big change is with our Oath Friend. As a Iron Breaker you can select one ally and deem them your Oath Friend which will grant them and yourself bonus buffs. One of the big pluses is that every time your Oath Friend gets hit, you gain 10 Grudge points, making this is a great way to build and maintain your Grudge points. Not so in 1.05. Not only is this reduced from 10 points to 5, but it’s further reduced the more Grudge you have built up.
0 - 30 Grudge you gain 5 points
31 - 60 Grudge you gain 3 points
60 - 100 Grudge you gain 1 points
So not only are we going to lose our points much much faster, it will be harder to build it up. In essence their turning us into tanks with BB guns. I would have no problem with these changes if they also made changes to participation points. It’s going to be much harder for Iron Breakers to win loot once these changes hit the public server.
