Month: June 2009

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SWTOR – Guessing at release dates

I love guessing games, and that’s what keeps me thinking about SWTOR (Prounced Sweator according to Yivvits and Mr Bubble). This time I’m guessing at the targeted release date. Developers like to say a game will come out “when it’s done”. After all, that’s what Blizzard says and look how well it worked for them! But I’d be pretty surprised if they didn’t have a particular quarter or holiday season targeted at this point. So when is it? Their site updates hold the clues.

You know Bioware has it all planned out. Their online comic book, their revealing of classes, their revealing of planets, and their updates are all ticking down to release time.

Nal Hutta was announced the 2nd Friday in February. Bounty Hunter was announced the 3rd Friday in March. Ord Mantel was announced second Friday in April. Then Trooper was announced the second Friday in May. It alternates between a planet and a class each month.

This is why Smuggler hasn’t been announced officially even though it’s been unofficially announced as a class. We just had trooper announced last month, and they prefer to alternate between planets and class announcements. If anything, with such a fantastic E3 trailer, they could stand to skip this months’ announcement and let people continue to talk about it’s awesomeness till July.

So lets assume they continue to alternate between the remaining 6 classes in their announcement schedule… That gives them 12 months to reveal 6 classes and brings us to E3 2010. At this point, with all classes and planets revealed, it’s time for a playable demo and an announcement of a release date. At this point the team makes a decision, “Can we get this out in time for Christmas?” If things are going well, and the answer is yes, then the closed beta begins to prepare for it’s debut on shelves the day after Thanksgiving: the last Friday of November.

Separate Games in Games

If you’ve played SWG, you know space and ground are separate. There’s a divide there. When you earn space-xp, it doesn’t help you very much on the ground and vise-versa. In Lotro it’s the same story for creep play and freep play. Nothing you do with your elf feels like it has anything to do with your orc.

When I think about all the different kinds of xp to work on in games, such as crafting xp, entertainer xp, and faction/reputation points, I think there’s a similar feeling of separation. It’s like having a large number of games and mini-games smashed into one big game.

On the other hand you could have a world like EVE. In EVE there is no xp per se, just Isk (Money). Whatever you’re working on, you’re working on Isk. Could you imagine if all the fantasy MMOs and Sci-Fi MMOs out there only had the gathering of cash as the sole form of advancement?

Having a lot of different kinds of xp or different games to play in one MMO makes for a lot of variety. On the one hand, doing vastly different activities to advance different things makes for a lot of variety. Sometimes you can be working on two or three things at once (XP / Cash / Quest rewards) and it feels extremely satisfying. On the other hand, if you get really excited about something like PVP or Space-xp, it feels like that’s the only thing that’s in the game. Everything else is just a diversion with rewards that don’t influence your “real” game.

The Horrors of Free Chat

On the free DDO announcement post, a commenter asks, “what exactly does ‘limited chat’ even mean?” Another commenter responds, “Unlimited chat for free in an MMO = GOLDSPAMGOLDSPAMGOLDSPAMGOLDSPAM”

What worries me more is the chat itself, and this is not DDO-specific. I have been toying around with a FTP RMT (free to play, real money transaction) game, and the newbie chat… omg lol u girl? This must be what you WoW players call “Barrens chat” or some such. Every stereotype of online and juvenile idiocy: there it is.

Look, kid, it doesn’t matter if anyone else in the channel is a girl. If someone claims to be, he could be lying. If she really is, she is not going to e-mail pictures of her girl parts to random people in-game. Or maybe she will, but in that case, she probably has already them posted somewhere, so go Google them up.

Look, kid, we get that you like Runescape. Yes, great, best game ever, much better than this one. Shut up. There are lots of good evolutionary psychology reasons why humans shout about how great the tribe is, even when it is completely inappropriate. Convince your simian lower brain functions that this is one of those inappropriate time.

At least the constant guild recruiting spam blocks out most of the pain, and the Chuck Norris jokes cover a bit of the rest.

: Zubon

New DDO Business Model

This is relevant to my interests.  I liked Dungeons and Dragons Online enough, but like so many other MMOs, it was just not worth the subscription to me.  Now Turbine is offering a new business model that seems to borrow a lot from Wizards101, which is a fantastic thing.  My favorite business model is by far the “buy content packs” that Guild Wars, Wizards101, and lifetime Lord of the Rings Online players have.  It seems that Turbine will offer “convenience items” as well, but they are quick to premptively reply that the best items come from playing.  I am not as happy about “convenience items,” but I see it as a necessary evil when converting a subscription-based game in to a “buy content packs” type of game.  Can’t stop progress.

–Ravious
j’ai creusé la terre, j’ai découpé la lune

Guild Wars 2 Concept Art!

The floodgates are starting to leak, but only in the most unusual way.  It seems that Kekai Kotaki, the Guild Wars 2 Concept Art Lead, and Daniel Dociu, Art Director, were allowed to use some of the concept art he produced for Guild Wars 2 to advance ArenaNet’s and the artist’s standing in the art world. Not that said artists need said boost… like at all.  Regina Buenaobra was kind enough, in her teasing, to confirm that this one was indeed Guild Wars 2 concept art.  The two pictures (plus bonus) after the break: Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Concept Art!

Deceived

I’m sure everyone’s seen this by now but just in case you haven’t, here’s the trailer for SWTOR that was released at E3 last week.

No matter what happens next and however good – or bad – SWTOR turns out to be, this not-quite-4-minute gem of a teaser is worth savouring. To this aged, jaded and cynical old reptile, it is everything the lamentable prequels should have been but weren’t.

Aion Weekend Wrapup

This weekend (and thanks to a most awesome person) I was able to get into the first beta event for Aion.  The game has been live in Korea and China for some time, and it seems that very determined people in NA and EU can play on the Chinese servers with some language hacking mod.  Anyway, I was going to wait for the NA product, which NCSoft West has spent all this time re-customizing for this culture.  I had a lot of fun, and I am excited about the further forthcoming events.  It is definitely high on my list for remaining 2009 games.  Now a quick diptest review:

Continue reading Aion Weekend Wrapup

/back

Well, I’m back. Move went well. Nothing lost, nothing damaged (except for several of my muscles). Still tons of things that need to be done, but we’re slowly getting back into the rhythm of things in the new place.

Had a bit of a hiccup with the internet deal but, credit where it’s due, we got it solved thanks to some great customer service from AT&T. On a sunday. Almost at midnight. That CSR is getting a wonderful survey straight back to her manager, because she was that good. She was the difference between being connected and not.

Now that the move is slowly getting behind us, time for my new master plan to begin.

Group Size

Star Wars Galaxies started out with a 20 person group as the default. Early on, this could mean a group of 20 people running around on a planet ganking alien beasts that would take several minutes to solo. Sometimes, this meant gathering outside a place with tough-mobs like Fort-Tusken and killing everything that came out of there. There were even multiple 20-person groups there sometimes. This made you feel like a small part of an army. But you know what? You felt powerful because the group is powerful. You were a very small part of a very powerful force.

Five years later, Jedi’s had a boss unique to them and them alone. In order to obtain the best cloak in the game, each Jedi was forced to face two bosses solo. Anyone could stand and watch the Jedi fight these bosses, but no one could help. Unless a player read strategies ahead of time, they would fail both fights. Even when someone knew of strategies that worked for fighting these bosses, it was still a difficult set of fights. Complaints from players on the forums about the absurd difficulty of the fights only served to make the eventual victory more sweet. You felt powerful because you knew you had become skilled as a player.

Feeling skilled and feeling powerful. Can these two feelings exist in the same combat scenario? To me it seems they are at odds. The larger the group becomes, the greater the diffusion of responsibility a player feels. Too big a group, with a role shared by too many others in the group (like DPS in a raid) and I feel as though I don’t matter at all.