Once a MMO embarks upon the “new expansion, gear reset, more love for raiders” road, the danger is that the game becomes so linear and focused on the end game that players new to the game may feel they can never catch up — and that even if they have the desire, the largely unpopulated lands between them and the bulk of the playerbase could be very discouraging.
— Tipa

Sentence of the Weekend is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

An Open Letter to Our Blogger Compatriots on the Everquest Progression Server is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The usual concept of a western MMO seems clearly descended from DikuMUD, through EQ and terminating in WoW. I would tend to insert DAoC in there, sometimes described as “EQ without the parts that suck,” but I may be atypical. Perhaps I am uncreative, but I do not see much more room for the Diku model to evolve. It has reached its full flower in WoW. You can have refinements and variations (-raids, +PvP, +story, -classes, +Tolkien, -fantasy, +F2P), to say nothing of lousy clones, but it will take something massive to change the view of the most typical member. There is a lot of room (and money) in WoW’s orbit, but if you do not want to be (seen as) conceptually subordinate, you need to head a good distance away.

We have some less typical members, most notably EVE Online. You all know how I love to pull out “here is how City of Heroes solved that problem,” or how I mix a dozen niche games into my bloviations. These can be annoying in the MMO blogosphere when commenters contribute them independently, not in the sense of “here is an alternate way of implementing that” but rather “your entire argument is invalid because it does not apply to my game (or playstyle).” It is as if you were complaining about birds pooing on your car, only to have a passerby disdainfully remark that there are not any penguins in the area and they could not have flown over your car anyway. Well, no, that is not what I meant by “birds,” but thank you for contributing.

The archetypal example may not be displaced by a better example. I describe Torchlight as out-Diabloing Diablo (for the single-player experience), rather than referring to Diablo as an early example of a Torchlight-style game. (I think of Diablo II as the most typical member there; is that what most of us mean by “Diablo”?) Amusingly, the “most typical member” need not have ever existed. You probably picture some central tendency of a robin rather than a particular bird you once saw. You may think of Dracula as your most typical vampire, but while he never sparkled, he could walk in sunlight; see also Igor and brain-eating zombies. Because Halloween is coming.

: Zubon

Most Typical Member is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Bad/Unforgiving games tend to have very tight communities in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of way. You join a guild in WoW to raid some dungeons and get some loot. In old EQ or UO a guild was more like AA or a cancer survivor’s group or something, and naturally tight bonds formed.
…
So I guess the question I have about UO, and FFXI, and EQ, and all those great old “social” games is this : did those games have great communities because they created social interaction, or did they have great communities because they eliminated non-social players?
— Boatorious

Boatorious on Bonding is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

DDO has set the stage with a potentially lucrative business model that encourages players to play free until they are hooked enough to spend massive amounts of money, but it’s only the beginning. All the MMORPG companies will be watching these two titles to gauge their success, including SOE. If both these titles are a financial success, expect to see all of SOE’s other titles, as well as the rest of the MMO market, follow the trend.

Free to Play Future is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Ever wonder what the child of ToonTown and Everquest would be? Wonder no more.

First off, the name. Free Realms is meant to designate that you have no required tasks. This is loosely true. If you want you can spend all day making food one day, and then the next raising your pet. Ah, but wait, you can’t raise your pet, because that’s where it isn’t free. Free Realms has a monthly “member” charge, akin to your typical monthly fee for MMORPGs, of $4.99. This is fairly reasonable I think, but I did not pay to try these items in beta (yes, if you wanted to test these items IN BETA, you had to pay). As far as I know, only a few people tested these as the pay-to-play option only went up a few days ago, and crashed constantly. The content is roughly 60% free, 40% member, per Sony, but I would say it would be much closer to 50/50, or perhaps reversing the 60/40 split. Besides the member option, there are numerous member items you can buy via micro transactions that increase your character’s ability, change its look, buy a pet, or accelerate the exp. The exp, let’s talk about that next, in fact.

In Free Realms, there are assortments of skills you can learn, from Pet Training to Chef to Ninja. Sadly, Sony has reverted to its Everquest roots here and made these have heavy duty grinding to level up. The combat “jobs” like Ninja and Brawler make sense, in a way, in that you get experience or “stars” by killing monsters. I’m totally ok with that. But if you want to mine ore, you have to play a Bejeweled clone for 5-8 minutes for *1* star per bonus item collected in it (which appear randomly). This was lowered recently, to extreme backlash, with comments of “we will raise it”, as it takes several hundred stars to increase your level by one. Nothing yet though. The Bejeweled clone model is used by Blacksmith and Chef as well, making it very annoying very quickly. The Chef job also requires massive amounts of clicking to hit timed events, making it carpal-tunnel unfriendly. Posts complaining of this in Sony’s forums were met with “learn to play” type posts, or people suggesting that other players buy multiple mice so that they can click them simultaneously to get faster times. *boggle*

The member only jobs, such as Wizard, Blacksmith, Warrior, and others have gone largely untested. The promise was made to the beta folks that a “Free Agent program”, or free membership, would be offered to some to test these out. It never arrived, and with the launch on Tuesday, seems unlikely. There are dozens of bugs I myself have submitted that I still see, and I have no idea how all of them will be fixed plus these jobs released. Sure, you can say with an MMORPG you are constantly tuning, but you also dearly want to present the best you can at launch in order to continue.

Game play aside, let me now talk about this from the perspective of a parent. The game is clearly marketed at the pre-teen community, with a semi-aggressive yet inconsistent word filter that migrates young players from the click-to-talk interface of ToonTown to the world of normal MMORPGs. The cartoony models focus on looks, and try to market to both girls and boys with pets and clothes for the female player and a card game for the boys. The card game is incredibly expensive compared to others on the market, giving 3 cards for $10. Any other game you can find that has an online component has at least 10-15 cards for $10. The way this is pitched is that it is not just cards, but you also get an in-game item that has nothing to do with the cards (usually a pet) as well, but I see this getting changed very quickly as it is unreasonably expensive.

The game is fairly pacifistic, with the vast majority of the jobs being non-combat related. They are all very heavy in the grind mentality though, which does not seem like a long term struggle. I could not see either of my kids deciding to play another 500 rounds of Bejeweled just to get a level in miner (which is how many rounds it currently takes, by the way), as you just vendor the ore. The combat jobs, the ones that were open, are decent, but one job, the Ninja has so few quests that you must chain kill for hours to gain a level. Again, typical for the industry for mainstream games, but with this audience, you want to focus on things that keep their attention. The combat itself is fairly boring, and mob AI is lackluster, so much so that I nearly dozed off in several instances. One nice thing about the combat is that in the main game world you will never be attacked, ever. So you can explore all over, and the world is quite beautiful, without ever having to worry about dying. Dying itself is glossed over and called “knocked out” which I must say is appreciated. ToonTown has a similar mechanic, and I’ve always appreciated that difference. No corpse runs here.

So in summary, while I enjoyed many parts of the Free Realms game, based on it launching on Tuesday I cannot recommend it. It is simply not ready. There are many pros of the game I simply did not mention (maybe I’ll write up some more tomorrow) and many cons as well. The game needs at least another month of beta, and much more testing, especially on what they are going to charge for, the member items. If I was a new player, and ended up paying for the member services, I would expect to get them. Without them being tested, in bulk not just internally, they will have bugs. Game-ending bugs? No one knows yet, but this sudden launch, which is apparently not even the developer’s wishes by the tones of their posts, may likely be one of the worst business decisions made by Sony in recent times. This is a very deep but unforgiving demographic they are targeting, one that has many many free options out there. They must market a superior product if they wish to succeed.

Oz Does Free Realms Beta is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Seven long years I played Everquest, often called, correctly I’d say, Evercrack. My first character, a wood elf, died so many times his first day. From H-A-SMACKing his trainer, to one of his many falls from the tree tops, to being accosted by bats, that I literally lost count. My best friend, who bought the game for me so we could talk more (he had just moved to Texas for a job), was a staggering level 20 and suggested that we go to some place called Qeynos as life was better there. The journey was so epic, that Odysseus would alternately laugh and cry if told the tale, but a mere 12 hours later, we arrive and my young druid began his city life. Later, when I had leveled up and learned Spirit of the Wolf (a run speed buff, and always in demand), I would turn myself into a tree (another druid spell that increased your regeneration) and give this buff for free at the city gates. At this time in the game, and on this server, this was unheard of. It was customary and expected to charge for it, but I enjoyed just buffing random people. Because of this, a GM gave my character a title, something that was beyond rare at the time. My character proudly wore (and still wears, I’d guess) that title: Evadrepus Terramere, The Magic Tree.

Later, I would leave him behind and move to play on the Test server, where I stayed until I left the game a few years back. Test Server was like going to Mayberry, albeit one filled with random, item destroying bugs, constant, random downtime, and things even more confusing. It was the personal playground of the devs, chief amongst them being Khelbun, who was Test’s unofficial personal GM. I’ve never met him in person, and had only a brief conversation with him once, but everyone on the server (which was, at most, a few hundred people) knew of him. He was the one who brought Nagafen to the gates of Freeport for a laugh. He’d broadcast about breaking his chair, or how drunk he was. He was a legend, and the falling out between him and a senior member of Sony’s staff is considered the true reason behind The Great Wipe, or a wipe of all characters that happened abruptly in 2000 (there are at least as many conspiracy theories as to why as in the Kennedy Assassination). This caused such an uproar, that Brad himself called a meeting of the denizens of the server. We ended up with characters restored, but naked, but those who remained help gear each other back up. The server lost a great many fun personalities that day though, and was never quite the same.

I’d go on to help many devs with tuning events and instances, and forge strong friendships that I still have today. In fact, a guild of friends, upon hearing my depression over losing my job at Christmas a few years back, secretly got together and sent toys and gifts to my wife and kids so my tree would not be bare underneath. They got no experience points for this, nor in-game reward, but it is ETCHED in my mind and always will be. Its funny, but for all the complaining we did about how slow the game moved, it was those times that I remember the most. For months, a friend and I fished in every body of water trying to find a fish that had been left out of the game. When a dev finally snuck it in, I got a call, at work, about it from someone I didn’t even know. It was a random, minor obsession for me, but it helped pass the downtimes, but it was fun. Few games these days understand that – the journey is more often much more important than the destination. Even out here, in the real world, it’s not always about where you are, but often how you got there.

-Oz or in my EQ lives, Evadrepus Terramere The Magic Tree, Questaholic Dinomight The Keeper of Lore, Ozmandias Prime, and Prints Albert, plus hundreds of low level alts.

Everquest Turns 10 – Oz Reflects is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

To celebrate, Sony is putting together “EverQuest®: 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition” book, available later this summer. Enjoy the book and congratulations on 10 years!

- Ethic

Happy 10th EverQuest is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I don’t play EverQuest or EverQuest II so these codes are burning a hole in my virtual pocket. If you are interested in getting one of these codes, reply to this post with something about your EQ or EQ2 adventures. The most interesting (or funny … or ANY) two responses, chosen by me, will be awarded a code. I will give the codes away tomorrow so get cracking. If nobody enters, I will burn the codes slowly and painfully until they have left this mortal realm forever. The choice is yours.

- Ethic

Giveaway: EQ or EQ2 In-Game Items – CLOSED is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

All that said, I await the launch of the first expansion for LoTRO in a mere 5 days. While I sit in my hotel room, a bit over 100 miles away from my gaming computer. For the next week and a half. Are we having fun yet?

Vicariously Expanding is a post from: Kill Ten Rats