Category: General

General

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We have not, do not and will not accept free product, subscriptions, advertising, or any related items from any game company. We feel that any payment of any sort creates doubt in the readers’ minds about our opinions being honest. Rest assured that all opinions stated on this site are our own opinions, no influence will be accepted or tolerated.

– Ethic

Ethic turns down money all the time. I’ve seen the e-mails. I’m just not important enough to be bribed. [Update: someone once offered me an exclusive screenshot.]

: Zubon

The Operational Wisdom of Head Starts

Wow, that first day hit to your new MMO’s servers is going to suck, isn’t it? It will be the busiest time your game has ever had, and it will be the first time you see all its problems. Thousands of people will be hitting your account creation, billing, download, patching, and log-in systems at the same time, and thousands are already prepped to go complain about how slow/crowded/whatever these things are.

Enter head starts. People will pay you a bit more for your game in advance, or they will pre-order, or both. Open the server a couple days early and let them give it a dry run. If the account creation system has problems, oh well, you already know these are paying customers. You’ll get it fixed by the time the masses arrive. When those masses arrive, a first lump of players has already moved past the very beginning content, spreading server load and reducing crowding in the newbie areas. These are probably the hardcore players anyway, so get them in a little early to start setting up guilds and the player-based in-game infrastructure your game expects. You have spread out account creation, downloads, patching, log-in, and early content, and you got people to pay you more/sooner for the honor of helping you. Good call!

: Zubon

If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing, At Least Do What You’re Told

Do you know how you can tell a game is still getting new blood? Mid-level group quests full of people that have never done them before. Early level might indicate free trial folks, and many people have not done everything at fifty, but The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ epic books are something I expect every veteran to have done at least once.

Do you know why you level faster solo? Your time is worth nothing to your teammates. They are quite happy to make you wait for them, to go in some random direction rather than following a lead, and to ignore instructions from people who have done the quest before. If someone is two steps later than you on a quest, he has probably just done those steps, so you should listen to him if he says to run a town over then come back. No, you won’t just wait there for him, run to the next town to talk to whoever or else you will be stuck a step behind on the quest chain.

Do you even know how to read the quest instructions? It says to talk to someone in the next town over. You cannot catch up with us if you will not follow the quest instructions or the repeat of them from your teammates.

If you have a partner or a group on which you can rely, you can level faster teamed than solo. A nice thing about being in a guild is that even if half of them are idiots, you know who the idiots are.

: Zubon

Actual Imbalance

What happens when that silly post is true? Keen and Graev and their commenters tell me that the classes I was considering really are some of the weakest in the game. Unless your developers are philosopher kings who have overcome the Hayekian knowledge problem and defied the dark lords of the Matrix, someone will be on the bottom of the pile, and this problem will probably be worst at launch.

First impressions matter. What if playing a Squig Herder that weekend was my first experience with the game? I would post about how lousy everything was, with RvR being a bloodbath in which all the Dwarf classes are stronger than their Greenskin counterparts, horrible imbalance with only one decent Destruction class on that entire battlefront, just keep cutting classes until you get some decent ones Mythic, rant rant rant. Hey, I segue that into rant rant rant about the state of Conan four months into it and how nothing is ever fixed or done right ran rant rant. Good times.

Continue reading Actual Imbalance

RMT Threat

If this doesn’t worry you, you didn’t understand it. If you really own your in-game property, all MMOs are illegal under US law.

At IMGDC, few people seemed to take very seriously Richard Bartle’s questions about legal and governmental issues facing MMOs. I would like to explain why, in a few easy steps, RMT could lead the US government to shut down all MMORPGs.

You only need one premise: in-game currency has meatspace value. You can establish this by looking at goldsellers as de facto currency exchanges, or by establishing some players’ bill of rights that grants property claims. There is no such claim with legal standing in the United States, to the best of my knowledge, but many have wished it to be so. That would immediately kill the golden goose.

Because: every goblin is now a slot machine. Any enemy you defeat has a chance of dropping coin and items that can be converted into coin, and coin has meatspace value. World of Warcraft is a casino with fancy decorations. The US bans financial transfers for online gambling, thus the US bans any bank, credit card company, etc. from transfering funds to or from Blizzard. Or any other MMO.

When a regulation applies to “online gaming,” it usually means poker. It could very easily mean you.

: Zubon

Grimwell is worried about creative control of games. I am worried about the US government arresting non-citizens for activities done in other countries.

Grouping as the Better Option

Some games require grouping. We hate that, especially when certain classes are required, because you can easily spend half your in-game time looking for group members. Some games encourage soloing. We often like that, but single-player games deliver a much better solo experience. Some games discourage grouping, often as an accident of game mechanics, which is just poor. Some games encourage and reward grouping without requiring it, which is the best of all possible worlds.

I have a very long version with many examples after the break, but that is the core of my message today: encourage grouping, do not require it, and make sure the game mechanics really do encourage it.

You encourage grouping by increasing rewards for groups and adding abilities that require groups to take full advantage of them. You require grouping by giving enemies ridiculous numbers of hit points, failing to scale encounters for different numbers, or making encounters that demand (or all but demand) several specific abilities that are spread across the classes. You discourage grouping by making quests difficult to do together and failing to scale encounters for different numbers. Yes, a lack of scaling can both require and discourage grouping.

Continue reading Grouping as the Better Option

Imbalance

I said before that I am interested in the Greenskin classes. I like ranged damage, support abilities, and pets. Looking around, I really like what I hear about the turret pets of the Dwarf Engineer and Chaos Magus. I never got to play that Lugian Tactician in Asheron’s Call 2. I am even looking at the tanks and melee DPS classes.

All this is preface to my real message: whatever class I end up playing, I would like the devs to know that it is underpowered and desperately in need of buffs, both in PvE and PvP. In PvE, it takes my class far longer to level than other classes, both my allies and my equivalent on the other side of the war. The gear available is also underwhelming. In PvP, I find myself at a large disadvantage with an inadequate trade-off between damage and survivability. Others can defeat me much faster than I can defeat them, and this holds true in solo or group settings. I have combat logs to prove it. Yes, I will admit that there are some situations in which I have a small advantage; those situations are rare, unimportant, and/or easily negated by my foes. If this situation does not improve, I am cancelling my account and taking my entire guild with me.

Thank you.

: Zubon

Prices as Signals

I was listening to Michael Munger’s podcast on price-gouging last week, and it reminded me of the price of silver in Middle Earth. “The only way you get low prices is by letting people charge high prices.”

Silver is a bottleneck for jewelers. There are two types of metal nodes at each crafting tier, and silver is the less common one in tier 2. If you want to advance a jeweler, you make a lot of silver jewelry or polish a double-lot of gems. As a tier 2 resource, it is where the level 15-20 folks hang out, not the level-capped masses. Because it is a less common resource with relatively few people collecting it, price is high. It was selling for higher prices than ancient silver, the tier 5 (top-level) jeweler metal (which was just made more common).

Continue reading Prices as Signals

10 Steps to Better Roleplay

Just as a PSA. Not that I’m the super expert in these things, but in the few years I’ve been RPing I’ve noticed there’s always common mistakes made which can hold back everybody’s enjoyment.

Besides, I didn’t get into that Warhamster thing the kids are playing, and I didn’t get that other one. The Age of Clonan game. So I have nothing to write about except this.

So, basically, it was either this or an essay on the barren wasteland of sociopolitical commentary that is the modern MMO. Hm? What’s that? Oh, you want the 10 steps? Thought so.

Hit this mofo right here.

Continue reading 10 Steps to Better Roleplay

Warhammer Online: Biggest Failure Ever

Not.

I’m really getting a kick out of reading all the reviews for Warhammer Online. People hate it, people love it. It’s funny. There has not been any real significant change in the MMO industry since Day 1 and yet still people expect each game to be the one to change it all. These are games. If they are fun, play them. If not, don’t. Why get your panties in a bunch because there is a new game available? Check it out if you want.

Continue reading Warhammer Online: Biggest Failure Ever