My husband has been playing the open beta for Mortal Online for the last week. All throughout this process he has been excitedly showing me everything that’s going on in his game time and talking about the game non-stop. For example, he was excited to tell me about how he was chopping at a tree in town before he found out mining the rock on the edge of town was more profitable. He enjoyed regaling me with epic tales of how he nearly died to a small rabbit. He told me how he yelled for the guards and ran back towards town whenever a red named player came near him.
Author: Suzina
Suzina is a 27 year old who usally plays the same MMOs as her husband.
Games played: UO, EQ2, FFXI, SWG, LOTRO.
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.Star Trek Online: Second to WOW?
A lot of blogs are talking about Star Trek Online’s successes and failures. Atari announced today that STO had over one million accounts activated. The blogs like MMORPG.com, gamerant, and even us at killtenrats have noticed. However, we’ve also noticed that we’ve heard this story before. We heard it from Age of Conan, we heard it from Warhammer, and recently we heard it from Aion.
Where World of Warcraft was able to drastically increase it’s numbers after launch, these new MMOs have been unable to duplicate the success. Droves of people tried Conan and were turned off by the lack of content. Many people tried Aion only to be turned away by it’s massive grind. I like to think that if any of these games had been of higher quality, everyone who tried it would be impressed enough to tell their friends about it. In a word, these games failed to “wow” people, no pun intended.
And lets remind ourselves, Cryptic may not be honest. Having “one million accounts” could refer to forum accounts, or include the multitude of people who pre-ordered the game from target for 99 cents and are currently playing a preorder’s free-download with no intention of ever spending any more money. Sounds a bit like Free Realms doesn’t it?
Even if Cryptic’s claims about initial success are accurate, there’s no doubt in my mind that the game was not ready to launch. Lack of content is Cyrptics “kryptonite”. Considering Cryptic says they tossed all the previous developer’s work in the trash and started development from scratch just two years ago, it’s impressive they have as good an MMO as they do. But still, the game doesn’t feel complete. This lack of quality will drive away any non-Star-Trek fan who sets up an account with Star Trek Online.
So can Star trek Online hold it’s numbers post launch? No, probably not.
Virtual Worlds and Action Movies
MMOs are supposed to be virtual worlds. But just because it’s virtual, doesn’t mean it’s a simulation. In the real world, we have ugly people. Sure, we try to make ourselves look better via nice clothing, diet, or by using make-up and photoshop, but none of that is necessary in an MMO. You can make yourself look however you want, and everyone wants to look good.
For all the multitude of options you have in the Star Trek Online character creator, you can’t make a big fat “Scotty” character. Few MMOs actually let you be ugly or unattractive. People want their MMO to have a simulated economy, or simulate the process of building a star-ship, or simulate the weather. But MMOs are not simulations, they’re more like action movies.
In an action movie, everyone is beautiful. Something interesting is always on the verge of happening. There are no bathrooms or tax-collectors. The entire world in an action movie exists for the sole purpose of being an interesting setting for the main characters. The boring, ugly, and annoying aspects of life are minimized or ignored. The real question is, do players actually want a virtual world or do they really want the action movie they’ve been getting?
STO: Beta Events
Today was the last day of beta for Star Trek Online. For the last day of beta, the developers gave the fanboys a chance to play what they were asking for.
A lot of PVP fanboys were asking for open-world PVP. That was part of the event. Klingons could fly all the way to the starting location for humans and attack enemy players as they loaded in. Unfortunately for the Klingons, there are far less of them than there are of Federation players, so once they loaded into the zone, they found themselves to be the ones being spawn-camped. I heard Klingons complaining that they were dead before they could move. I heard federation players complaining that killing the same Klingon player over and over at the spawn-point was boring. For all the requests I read on message boards about wanting open-world PVP in STO, I only heard complaints from both sides in zone chat today.
A few Star Trek fanboys were complaining that the Borg in the game were too weak. In the tv-show, one Borg cube destroyed an entire fleet of ships. In Star Trek Online, you easily kill dozens of Borg on your own during the tutorial. During today’s last-day event, the Borg were everywhere. They spawned in the earth spacedock by the dozen. Individual Borg-drones one-shotted Klingon and Federation players alike. In space encounters, no fleet of players could hope to take out a single Borg-cube. The reaction to the Borg invasion was less negative, but I doubt even Star Trek fanboys would enjoy being one-shotted in the starting area once the game launched.
So why is Cryptic giving players in open-beta a chance to test things that won’t be in the game? Partially, this kind of event is a chance to celebrate the end of beta. But also, this gives Cryptic a chance to show what things would be like if they actually did something like this during launch. In Champions Online, their last-day of beta event in Millennium city was a slide-show for most people. The Borg invasion and open world PVP showed that some ideas fans have are more fun as concepts than they are in-game.
Massive Delays
Gamers love when Blizzard says that a game will be “released when it’s ready” because they believe it indicates the final product will be of high quality. However, we don’t really react well to news of a delay, do we? When Bioware announced that Star Wars – The Old Republic was being pushed back an extra year into 2011, the community on their forums went into a nerd-rage.
STO: The real SWG2
In June of 2003, a much hyped science-fiction MMO launched. It was the first MMORPG to take advantage of such a lucrative license. Unlike previous MMOs, it had a “skill based system” of advancement. Due to either a lack of time or a design decision, very large open areas were populated with randomly generated content. The system used to generate the random content was called the “dynamic spawn” system and championed as an innovation. Despite a long development time, the game felt incomplete when it launched.
Anyone who’s been intently following Star Trek Online already knows how Cryptic’s game compares to pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies.
Grinding in it’s purest form
There’s an online game with terrible graphics, terrible PVP, terrible gameplay, terrible controls, and it’s a massive grind. Yet the game has several million more player accounts than World of Warcraft. They call this terrible game Mafia Wars. I must admit, this is a free game that doesn’t require a graphics card, so it’s hardly a fair comparison to MMORPGS. But so many people willingly grind levels in bad games that there are implications for how MMORPGS handle the grind.
For the uninitiated, Mafia Wars is a browser-based game popular on social networking sites. You are are rewarded for recruiting other people to join your team. Gameplay consists of clicking on buttons that say “Do Job” or “Fight”. There really isn’t any gameplay to it at all. The only thing that happens when you click one of these buttons is that a leveling bar goes up, you gain some stats, and you’re closer to clicking on buttons for bigger jobs or clicking the fight button next to higher level players.
So the question is, why do people grind levels in a game with no gameplay?
Token Economy
A typical looting session of the Watcher for my kin will look like this:
“OK we have a Platinum Coin of Spirit.”
“Is that shoulders or helm?”
“One sec… googling it”
“I think it can be bartered for either one can’t it?”
“No that’s the American servers. We have to wait until Mirkwood comes out in the UK for it to barter for either.”
“Spirit sounds more like it’s in your head than your shoulders. I think spirit is shoulders”
“Back. I just checked google and it’s helm.”
“So, if I need shoulders I could use my DKP on it now, and then get the shoulders for it later right?”
“Uhhhh…. need to check google. BRB”
Sometimes when it comes to exchanging tokens for things in games, its just a headache.
Unimpressive Trailers: The Final Frontier.
These are the chronicles of MMO developer Cryptic. Their continuing mission: To seek out new players. To create new trailers that will generate excitement for their game. To boldly take a popular license and make a profitable game.
Judging by the trailer they released earlier today, their mission will be a failure. Clocking in at just over a minute, the trailer actually seemed to decrease interest in the game despite having a prominent spot on the front page of gamespot. The voice-over was uninspired. The game-play footage was too devoid of music to give it a cinematic feel, yet also devoid of the user-interface that makes game-play footage seem genuine.
By contrast, when SW:TOR wants to show off it’s gameplay, they actually played it; user interface and all. When SW:TOR wanted to give a cinematic trailer, they did that too. Both of these efforts had me reaching for my wallet and saying to myself, “God, I hope there’s a lifetime subscription!”
Star Trek Online’s trailers have me reaching for my mouse while saying, “Meh”.
The Ultimate Sandbox MMO
What if I told you there’s a MMO that had the following features:
What would you say?
Continue reading The Ultimate Sandbox MMO