Category: General

General

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Things To Do

Good version: the game has lots of content that remains meaningful at the level cap. Depending on your game, that could be a collection of dungeons, PvP, things to make or collect, areas to explore, or procedurally generated content that does not feel formulaic and repetitive.

Bad version: the game has lots of things to keep you busy and subscribed at the level cap. Depending on your game, that could be a variety of treadmills and grinds, or PvP and procedurally generated content that quickly becomes repetitive.

This is mostly an Explorer perspective, because I find it easier to think of what would make good post-cap Explorer content (new things to do) and bad post-cap Achiever content (do them each 5 times a day until you reach some new cap, to give us time to add more grinds to keep you busy until the next expansion pack). The distinction comes down to whether you would do X as an activity in and of itself, whether or not it produced some new numbers to add to your character sheet.

: Zubon

On the Blogroll: Player Versus Developer

The hot topic these past couple of weeks has been MMO pricing models, and you will have trouble finding better discussion than at Player Versus Developer this month. Even if you do not agree with Green Armadillo on all the points, these are the critical points for discussion. Skip the distracting side issues and cut to the core. Here is a post on Facebook game scams, with an article I’ve been meaning to discuss. How about the conflicts of interest inherent in running a game with a cash store? You don’t need to fix balance issues if your players can buy their way around them. And there is the question of what is left to do if you are one of us not necessarily thrilled with the shift to RMT.

This last one reminds me of last week’s elections, because there is a sense of inevitability about the item shop. I cannot see the trend moving in the opposite direction. There will definitely be a place for subscription games, but the paradigm shift is already over if your position is reduced to “there will still be a place for it” or “we are still the majority.” Yes, for now, but winning 53-47 when it would have been 93-7 a little while ago means you are about to get steamrolled.

: Zubon

The House of Cards Return

So many of us are MMO tourists.  There might be a current base of operations, but even that will ebb and flow.  It’s just that most MMOs (perhaps, all) cannot create content faster than even the slow-playing majority of their players can take it down.  The mind wanders with all the times we were having fun, and soon enough we begin the inexorable internal debate of re-upping with an MMO that has accumulated some digital dust.  Syp portrays this gamer struggle in a delightful script form here, which amazingly enough happened to me with the exact same game this morning before he posted. 

The mind’s last argument is also its strongest.  One can’t argue the amorphous concept of fun very easily against rational points because rational points can always be irrationally hand-waved away.  The mind needs irrational reasons to bring down the house-of-cards that you will have fun where the grass might be greener.  Of course you can also spend $15 and hours of installing and patching and more hours figuring out why you left in the first place and rationally win.

–Ravious
on the homefront

Why Not Sell Epics?

Walk with me on a thought experiment. When the last Lich King dungeon opens and loot goes to tier 10, what if WoW adds an item shop selling tier 9?

As Blizzard PR, I would immediately describe this as a way of opening content. We want everyone to be able to experience everything in Wrath of the Lich King before Cataclysm goes live, and this is a way of bypassing gating. Of course, you can still earn everything in-game, so we’re not taking anything away from you, just providing more choices for our players.

I would assume that the game designers would immediately recoil, just because they are gamers. The kind of people who make WoW are the kind of people who play WoW, and it became a raiding game because they recruited raiders to design it. Achievers do not sell Achiever content to non- or lesser Achievers.

As a Blizzard business analyst, however, this sounds like win-win-win. First, some number of people will buy the items. That number is probably larger than most would like to admit. This is almost free money, as the content being sold was already in-game, and the item shop already there. Second, some smaller number of people will quit in protest. You lose their $15/month, but that is going to be less than the new revenue. You now have more revenue from fewer players. Furthermore, many of the people leaving are the ones who feel that their previous accomplishments were trivialized. That is, these are the hardcore raiders who are always pushing the bleeding edge of content. These people cost you money. They play 40+ hours a week (with all the costs associated), they place CSR calls that cost you more than $15/month, and they constantly complain that there is nothing to do because they burned through the content as fast as possible. So they now are complaining about something different; who cares? Third, that complaining is just more visibility, where people who disagree with the decision are out advertising it. I am increasingly accepting that there is no bad publicity, since everyone still seems happy to talk about EA games after #EAFail.

I do not like the idea as a player, but I cannot see how it fails to make business sense. Too extreme, too many people would quit? What if they sold tier 5? Would you quit over that? I can get a long way down the slippery slope before many are willing to step off.

: Zubon

Cheat

I increasingly view my Achiever tendencies as a mental disease, a bit of neurological programming from our ancestral environment being over-stimulated by modern tools that provide all the signals without the underlying substance. Parts of our brains react to the bigger numbers and flashing lights in our Skinner boxes, but running on digital treadmills will not get us anywhere.

Today, I encourage you to separate the reward from the activity, the pellet from the lever. If it really is the journey rather than the destination, you should still want to go on the journey without a prize at the end. Would you keep re-running that dungeon if there was no more loot to gain? Would you farm if you had unlimited gold? For some things, you would. Good. Do those, freed of any worries about winning a roll on a 2% drop.

There is an easy way to test this: cheat. Grant yourself the reward at the end. This will not work in an MMO, but if the game saves to your hard drive, you can edit the save file. Are you really farming for experience or gold in some flash game? Are you running Diablo II or Borderlands bosses to try for better equipment? Backup your game, download a save game editor, and just give yourself the gun you want. There, now that you are no longer pulling the arm on a virtual slot machine, do you actually want to fight that boss multiple times per night?

Because let me tell you, we may call them Achievements, but they just measure time spent, and if you do not enjoy what you are doing along the way, you could be spending your time elsewhere. If your game gates the fun content behind that kind of repetition, throw the game away and find something that will not make you crawl through barbed wire. If you find that it is the getting rather than the having, I hate to tell you this, but desire is the root of all suffering. There will always be more useless crap to want, and apparently it is useless crap to you if you no longer want it once you have it. If you are really willing to work long hours for a digital gold star, I need some wallpaper replaced in the guest room. I’ll e-mail you the imaginary star, gold piece, or sniper rifle.

: Zubon

MMO Restaurants, Again

I walk past Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli twice a day on my way to and from work.  I don’t work in New York.  The Deli opened with much fanfare about a year ago, and I remember going there on opening day with some co-workers.  The management and staff were excited with the turnout.  I could see some sparkle in the owner’s eyes as he tried to get his staff to churn out New York/Jewish deli style sandwiches.

Having actually had a Jewish-deli sandwich in Manhattan, I was not impressed.  The prices were not very good either, but the worst part was for the two-block radius around my workplace (my campus has 9000+ workers) there are six other sub shops.  Heidi’s brought absolutely nothing, except a shadow of a New York reuben, to the lunch scene.  I could get a cheaper lunch at the two equi-distant Subways or the Potbelly’s, a larger lunch at Jimmy John’s or Quizno’s, or a meatier lunch at that cheese steak place.  What we needed was a McDonald’s, or an Indian buffet, or a BBQ place; not another deli-meat sandwich shop.

So is it any wonder that they closed yesterday?  I walked past the shuttered windows this morning, and I felt some sadness.  I was there at the start, and all that is left is a show of failure.  I knew it was inevitable though, the stink of death had been there for weeks.  My only hope is, as always, the next risk-taker doesn’t just copy what is already permeating the successful local lunch culture.

–Ravious
on the other hand, you have different fingers

Playfish Buyout

EA has bought the makers of my favorite Facebook games. I’m glad they got paid, and this could lead to a lot more exposure for the games. Given EA’s advertising plans, I expect to see lots of ads for their virtual pets saying:

Electronic Arts wants you to
Commit Acts of Bestiality*
with your pets to earn fabulous prizes!

*by which we mean, take pictures of them

: Zubon

An Ale For the Fallen

I’ve heard you can either leave it graveside or pour some off.  The choice of action is mine when the events leading up to it are well out of my control.  This is not so dire as a real life death, but when a core guild member abruptly leaves the feelings follow a similar path of remorse and remembrance.

The guilds I find usually have two basic principles: (1) play the game the way you want to spend your precious time playing, and (2) keep the air clear.  What my guilds lack in purpose is well made up for it in community.  People come and go (mostly leaving for something less casual), but a core group of guildies remains.  Occasionally someone in the core group will leave as well.  It sucks, but it sucks more when they leave on bad terms. Continue reading An Ale For the Fallen

Her Way of the Shield

I am not a tank. If you need a healer or ranged DPS, I have more MMO experience than I sometimes care to admit. My view is that having something beating on your head is a bad tactic, to be avoided. In group situations, however, I love my tanks, and they love their shields. Blocking with a shield is much better than blocking with your face.

I do not often post just to toss out a link, but that is a great post about a rather different approach to the game than mine. If you are anything like me and want to see how the other half lives, check out the shield on that lass.

: Zubon

Hat tip: Syp