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The MMO Siren Song

The dirges of 38 Studios and the many employees of BioWare passed me by last week as I lay in bed with a virus that wished it was strep. Thankfully at this cowboy ranch we call Kill Ten Rats, Cyndre was able to get up a heartfelt post for our team. My favorite two posts on the subject were the reawakening of Broken Toys as Scott Jennings penned an ode to the MMO genre, and Spinks hammering out an always amazing link post. A few days before as the virus began its assault on my tonsils, I wrote a few languishing thoughts that set a desperate preview of what was to come.

I’ll repeat part of the much quoted Jennings’ post where he writes “…the incredible amount of money wasted by EA on what was essentially a roll of the dice that came up 2 and 3, and the even more incredible display of massive hubris and utter incompetence on the part of Schilling and his management team, is killing the very concept of massively multiplayer gaming.” I thought a lot about his words as I lay there staring at the ceiling. Continue reading The MMO Siren Song

Giant Lag Spikes on Your Shoulderpads

Diablo III is doing hardcore mode wrong. … Let me get the most glaringly obvious point out of the way. Diablo III requires an internet connection to play. This means lag. This means that you WILL die due to circumstances which are beyond your control. No internet connection is 100% reliable. Sometimes the Blizzard servers cock it up, and this will happen no matter what premium you pay for your connection. Therefore, as enticing it is to take a hardcore character seriously, the fact that you are at the mercy of the internet connection turns what should be a test of skill and caution into a veritable lottery. If your name gets pulled out of the hat you win a one way trip to permadeath.
— The Mighty Viking Hamster

LotRO guides to the Undying title recommend against always running the easiest, safest content. If you have out-leveled the content, you are getting very little experience, while you are almost always safe enough on blue content. You are in a race with lag spikes and random perversity; given enough hours, your character will die due to no fault of your own, so if you want to achieve X before dying, you must reach it before “enough hours.”

: Zubon

38 Studios Lays Everyone Off

Via The Verge.

Items of note:

  • Reckoning was a “failure.”  They needed to sell 3,000,000 copies just to break even on the deal.  They sold 1.2M.
  • They are closing both offices completely.  Providence and Maryland’s BHG.
  • First internal communications grew ‘sparse’ then paychecks stopped coming, then email servers went down, they heard the bad news a few weeks later…

First of all…  3,000,000 copies!?!  Did anyone think it would sell that many?  I thought 1.2M sounded pretty good.

My thoughts are with all of the developers and their families who are dealing with a very difficult time.   This is a sad day for the entire industry.   Bioware laid off a ‘significant’ number of their employees working on SW:TOR and now all 337 employees of 38 Studios are unemployed.   Sad times, indeed.

~Cyndre

 

[Eve] Two Months

Today marks two months since I first set foot in New Eden.   It is hard to believe it has only been that long because I feel like I have seen and accomplished a lot in that very short period of time.   Let’s take a moment to reflect on what has happened over the last few months and take stock of my current situation and near term goals.

I joined INQ-E, moved into a C3 Wormhole, celebrated a 9th Anniversary, Burn Jita, Hulkageddon, the list goes on an on…  all in two months.  That is more that I would expect from a year in most MMOs.

Continue reading [Eve] Two Months

Non-Sequitors

A few news briefs that don’t really fit together in any coherent way:

 

  • My initial impressions of the Guild Wars 2 beta were wrong.   Go read the Facebook update from yesterday where ANet talks about how hard they are working on the client after the feedback from the BWE1 and Stress Test.   They aren’t even releasing a new BWE ‘until its ready.’  I can’t even begin to describe how happy this makes me.   Make it right, make it the best it can be, and I will help test when you want me to.

 

  • Today is patch day for the 17th Expansion to Eve Online titled Inferno.   My love for this game is no secret, and the pace at which CCP delivers content upgrades is simply amazing, and clearly leaps and bounds beyond what anyone else is doing in the MMO space…   add to that fact that the true game expansions are free, makes me scratch my head a bit, and really feel blessed to have found this game when I did, instead of letting one of the most impressive, and unique gaming experiences pass me by without ever giving it the proper due.

 

  • In a sad, but largely unsurprising turn of events, 38 Studios has started the process of downsizing their development staff.   For everyone out there commenting on the politics of this or that issue and forgetting that real people’s livelihoods are at stake, please take a moment to put yourselves in the shoes of the developer who was living their dream making games, and is now out of work.  This is a very difficult situation, and while you can hate on Curt Schilling if you want, try to temper your gloating by realizing that good people from our gaming  community are going through a hard time right now.

~Cyndre

 

Hearts and Bears

For those of you who missed those heady days, the launch of Warhammer Online was one of the best times in MMO blogging. Props to whoever at Mythic’s community team pushed it, the blogger community came together and decided we were all going to try this game as a group. This became the prototype NBI, and several of those bloggers are still around. And then the game launched, we all got to experience it, and we turned on it like an angry creature that turns on things.

One item I used for years as an example of failed developer promises what Paul Barnett’s “bears bears bears” video. For those of you who can’t click on videos right now, the idea was to never again have a “kill ten rats” quest pop up after you had just slaughtered dozens of rats, because the dude should notice the rat corpses. Warhammer Online then launched with a severely limited implementation of this, along with all the usual quest stupidity of being sent to kill someone you just killed on the previous quest stage. As I phrased it, “developers explicitly identif[ied] a problem, identif[ied] a solution, [and] then implement[ed] the problem exactly as described.” Oh, how I carried that grudge.

Four years later, Guild Wars 2 is moving towards launch. And what has it quietly implemented? The answer to “bears bears bears”! Through hearts, when you slaughter a path to what would normally be a quest-giver, s/he recognizes and appreciates the things you did along the way. Granted, sometimes it is silly that you know what fills the heart before you meet the heart-person (“I’ll just check this shrubbery for stray moas, in case anyone nearby lost one…”), but if the dude hates bears, and you just killed a bunch of bears, he recognizes that you killed a bunch of bears.

After four years, the circle is complete. Everyone who wanted WAR to be DAoC2 can now look forward to three-sided RvR with territorial control and a development team that has implemented the design described under “bears bears bears.”

: Zubon

[GW2] Time Lapsed Tyria

One Guild Wars 2 fan has a really cool site up that compares side-by-side the differences in the world of Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 called Project Tyria. For instance most of Guild Wars 2 charr country is built directly upon key locations in Guild Wars Prophecies pre- and post-Searing. There is the Barradin Estate:

I admit that I miss a lot of detail through the quick beta weekend playthroughs, and I usually regret not stopping to smell the roses when there is a lore discussion or someone talks about finding a quiet picnic spot with a Yogi-bear vignette. I can’t wait to see how Project Tyria grows after launch. I bet there are going to be a plethora of amazing side-by-sides.

–Ravious

Shopping By Customers

I recently read An Economist Gets Lunch by Tyler Cowen. Much of the book is advice on finding quality ethnic food (and barbecue) at reasonable prices, whether in the US or in their home countries. Don’t eat in the tourist district, do eat where there are several restaurants of the same type in the neighborhood (until I visited DC, it never occurred to me that you could have a half-dozen Ethiopian restaurants on one block). Being an economist, his insights focus on where the restaurants have the right incentives and efficiencies. A place with great atmosphere is selling that, rather than the food; the tourist district does not worry about repeat customers; American shipping systems are great but really fresh seafood and produce is only available close to the source.

Yes, this is one of those extended metaphor posts that takes an example from another setting and applies it to gaming.

The simplest guide is to look at the customers. If the restaurant has the right people eating there, the food is probably good. Who are the right people? The ones with interests aligned with yours. Continue reading Shopping By Customers

Languished Thoughts

I am withering away waiting for the next Guild Wars 2 beta event. I have dreams of a dagger-charged necromancer or elementalist that I can’t wait to realize. Yet, the gaming world seems to be darkening as the light of the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event is receding. I am trying to shake the feeling as best as I can with Steam sales, and the like. Then I hear what is going on in the news.

Scarlet “MMO”

Except for the aforesaid exception, the MMO genre seems to be bleakening. With a gracious nod to Beau Hindman, I would say that this only seems to be the case for so-called “AAA” titles as F2P titles seem to flood across the land like a scute mob. Continue reading Languished Thoughts

38 Studios

I am pleased to present the first comprehensive look at 38 Studio’s upcoming MMO code-named Project Copernicus. Thank you to Steve Danuser and Ryan Schwayder for sharing this with us, via their blogs.

I have to admit that I took the bad news about 38 Studio’s difficult financial situation this week rather hard.  I have been following this game since before the company was even formed, when Curt was talking about his desire to build something great, something he could be proud of and something he would enjoy playing after he retired from baseball.   When two of my favorite MMO bloggers and game designers, Steve and Ryan, joined the team, and then Salvatore, McFarlene, Rolsten the names kept coming…  I was excited.

The single greatest moment in my blogging career was related to 38 Studios and Copernicus.  In 2007 I wrote here at Kill Ten Rats about the game, and Curt Schilling stopped by to chat.   Curt is a hero of mine.  He is a legend in my hometown, a devoted husband and father, a pillar in every community he has lived, a vocal advocate for many worthy causes, and above all he is a gamer.   A sports giant that I can identify with on a personal level, and one who has proven himself to be an honest, honorable winner.

To read the troubling issues that Curt and the team at 38 Studios are going through right now, is heartbreaking.   I don’t know what will happen, but I hope for the best.  I want to play the Amalur MMO.  Keep fighting guys, give us a world we can fall in love with.

If you build it, we will come.

~Cyndre