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Star Trek Online: Second to WOW?

A lot of blogs are talking about Star Trek Online’s successes and failures. Atari announced today that STO had over one million accounts activated. The blogs like MMORPG.com, gamerant, and even us at killtenrats have noticed. However, we’ve also noticed that we’ve heard this story before. We heard it from Age of Conan, we heard it from Warhammer, and recently we heard it from Aion.

Where World of Warcraft was able to drastically increase it’s numbers after launch, these new MMOs have been unable to duplicate the success. Droves of people tried Conan and were turned off by the lack of content. Many people tried Aion only to be turned away by it’s massive grind. I like to think that if any of these games had been of higher quality, everyone who tried it would be impressed enough to tell their friends about it. In a word, these games failed to “wow” people, no pun intended.

And lets remind ourselves, Cryptic may not be honest. Having “one million accounts” could refer to forum accounts, or include the multitude of people who pre-ordered the game from target for 99 cents and are currently playing a preorder’s free-download with no intention of ever spending any more money. Sounds a bit like Free Realms doesn’t it?

Even if Cryptic’s claims about initial success are accurate, there’s no doubt in my mind that the game was not ready to launch. Lack of content is Cyrptics “kryptonite”. Considering Cryptic says they tossed all the previous developer’s work in the trash and started development from scratch just two years ago, it’s impressive they have as good an MMO as they do. But still, the game doesn’t feel complete. This lack of quality will drive away any non-Star-Trek fan who sets up an account with Star Trek Online.

So can Star trek Online hold it’s numbers post launch? No, probably not.

Buddy Skirmishes

Perhaps the biggest change to come in Lord of the Rings Online Volume 3, Book 1 update will be that skirmishes can now be done with a 2-person party. It was the podcast by Casual Stroll to Mordor where the devs talk about the “need” for this and how they went about it. (I also learned a new meme, like how my mom just learned about the Google.)

The most interesting statistic was that 40% of players doing the 3-man skirmishes were using only 2/3 of their fellowship slots.  This gave the devs the oompf they needed to get their turbines in gear.  The way they made the extremely fine point between solo and 3-man was to use the 3-man mobs and apply a reverse Tier debuff to the 3-man mobs.  So 2-man skirmishes are basically a 3-man minus a Tier of difficulty to the mobstats.  Then the 2-man skirmish will use the solo mechanics instead of the 3-man mechanics such as how counterattacks or waves will work.

I want to posit that this will have good, unintended consequences because it further lowers the activation energy to group.  Players can nearly always find one person.  So there is a group for skirmishes right there.  Add another person, and you have a three-man.  This sequence of grouping is simply going to be smoother than the need to find two other people at the outset.  If I had to bet, I would say that 3-man skirmish play will increase and solo skirmish will actually decrease due to the advent of the 2-man skirmish.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled rants on Legendary Items where it is apparent that Turbine never listens to us.

–Ravious
down by the schoolyard

Making It As An MMO Blogger

I have been working on a project for some time.  It had its flits and spurts, and it is finally live over at Massively!  Thanks especially to Shawn Schuster who I approached with the idea.  He helped a lot; especially to whip some answers out of the elusive answerers.  I hope that if you run a blog or want to run a blog that you enjoy the articles!

–Ravious

Risk vs. Story

I got through Volume 2, Book 9 pretty quickly in Lord of the Rings Online Siege of Mirkwood.  Getting through the epic books is one of my favorite goals to set, and when a new Book drops, it is one of the first I usually attack.  Book 9 used the new gameplay type Skirmishes instead of the usual static 3 or 6-man quests.  This created a choice, where none really existed before.  A person could get through the Skirmish portions quickly by going at it alone, or they could choose to group up.  Except for one Skirmish Book quest, I went at it alone and regretted it. Continue reading Risk vs. Story

MMO Meme of 2010

Barely two months in and I have found a winner.  From the great podcast/site A Casual Stroll to Mordor in their latest podcast with Lord of the Rings Online Skirmish devs, getting hit by environmental effects or geometrical boss effects in MMOs that devs love to use shall now be called:

Standing in the Poop.

The saying is even better because Merric, Goldenstar, and I are parents of small children so it hits home.  Plus it’s not expletive.  I can’t wait to yell in voice chat for some minstrel staring only at health bars to get out of the poop!  The podcast is well worth listening to, and hopefully I will have time to comment on the super juicy bits contained in it later on.

–Ravious
If I weren’t real, could I sing this jolly Christmas song?

EDIT: Since I seem to be living under a rock (or in a too polite LOTRO guild), I will make this my meme for 2010, and use it every chance in-game I can get. I mean afterall, LOTRO needs to be more like WoW, right?

Break Time

That MMO break has been working out so well, it merits an extension. This is a good time for it anyway; the only interesting MMO release announced for this year is Cataclysm (I already beat WoW, done), and last year’s only sign of promise was Fallen Earth. This is a point in the industry when Raph is reduced to copying Farmville, and while that is probably a good financial decision, it is a bad sign.

To help make the break clean, I have uninstalled a bunch of “just in case” MMOs, deleted bookmarks, decimated my RSS feeds, and will be mostly absent from here unless I have something to say about any other games I might be playing. I had considered queuing up some previously written posts and ending with this on an Ozymandious note, “I did it [a week] ago,” but this is already pompous enough.

Don’t worry about me. No matter how many times you clear that boss, the villagers will still need me to deal with him if I come back.

: Zubon

Happy State of Grind

Last weekend I dug away at a repeatable quest for Guild Wars Wintersday Redux, which ends this weekend with a finale for those having hat problems during Wintersday 2009.  The quest is a fun one called Snowball Dominance, where the denizens of the Eye of the North go outside for a massive snowball fight.  Players can bring one other person along.  The quest can be a bit challenging for casual players that stroll in to the chaos, but with a few “exploits,” like waiting for the scrum to finish by standing outside of agro range on the left side then mopping up the remaining mobs, it becomes manageable.

Of course for farmers there is a different tactic.  Take a necromancer Hero, and run it into the middle of the enemy group before they turn red.  Pop Holiday Blues (AoE well degen), Snow Fort (temporary invincibility), and Snowcone (heal) to ball up the mobs.  The mobs waste their good skills on the sacrifice, and players and the AI allies can easily take out the clumped up enemies.  The rewards are very good for something that can be run in under 2 minutes. Continue reading Happy State of Grind

Increased Max Players

What I think of as my “home server” in Team Fortress 2 runs just one map (2fort) with increased teams (16 per side) and a long running time (up to 3 hours). I found this very helpful for learning the game, as I did not need to simultaneously learn a couple dozen maps (including stages), nine classes, alternate weapons, etc. One map, enough people for my beginning incompetence not to doom us, and time enough to settle in and explore without frantic NOW rounds.

I moved to that server after starting to learn on a 2fort server with instant respawn. Instant respawn is nice for a beginner who dies a lot but utterly unsuitable for a real game on many maps, especially 2fort. If it takes longer to reload than to respawn and get back to the fight, the game is an extended stalemate. Maybe one side will eventually get a lucky grab or a really good spawn-camp going.

I am coming to see increased team size as a similar problem. Rounds still end, because many shy from playing defense even as the intel is running out the door, but large teams mean that there is always more defense available. Killing one per second is barely keeping up with the respawn. Furthermore, that defense is always there, even while mounting a big attack. You can have 3 Engineers, 3 Snipers, a Demoman with stickies, and a Pyro spy-checking at all times, and half your team is still available to assault your similarly staffed enemy. If your assault is going well, the (entire) other team respawns behind you, while any replacement attackers are 10-20 seconds away across prime Sniper territory.

Hence the 3-hour running time. Unbalanced teams can sometimes end it early with a string of wins, but it is not uncommon to see time reach 00:00:00 with one win and a cap or two into a second round.

: Zubon

I have been enjoying an Arena server on the side. “No respawn” solves many problems.

Persistence Addict

Hello, my name is Ravious, and I am a persistence addict.  I try and play other games.  The one’s sitting solely on my hard drive.  The ones with no boundaries.  They are great games that I ignore.  But, to me, they are meaningless trifles when I can etch my accomplishments into a monolithic server farm one dead rat at a time.

The latest to fall was King’s Bounty: Armored Princess.  It was a truly excellent game for the hour or so I played. It was also pretty much free.  I know that I will enjoy it more if I play it more, but its pleasure is passing.  Any lonely accomplishment I will gain will be between, myself, and my Steam wall.  The game already lets me cheat by giving me a dragon anyway. Continue reading Persistence Addict