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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

Come Back to Age of Conan, Get Beta For The Secret World

I just got an email from Funcom making me a reasonably tempting offer:

Special subscription offers and double XP throughout November!

Today we launched a new campaign with some massive rewards on purchases of longer period subscriptions.

If you extend your subscription to Age of Conan in November, you will receive some amazing rewards:

  • Extend by 3 months and get a guaranteed access to the beta test for The Secret World *
  • Extend by 6 months and get an epic helmet for Age of Conan with a 10% XP boost + the reward above
  • Extend by 12 months and get the Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer expansion for free plus both rewards mentioned above **
  • If you just recently extended your subscription, don’t worry. Those who have committed to the 6 month or 12 month subscription after the 6th of October 2009 will automatically receive the corresponding reward too. Gametime purchased now will immediately give Veteran Points.

    • This offer is available until December 1st 2009, so don’t miss it!

    To properly celebrate this campaign we also activate double XP in Age of Conan for everyone all through the month of November! Use the /claim command to receive potions of double XP!

    * Access to later stages of the closed beta, date of access to be announced
    ** When launched in first half of 2010
    Each bonus item can only be received once per account. The helmet is made available to all characters on your account.

    This will require some quick contemplation. Most likely I’m going to pass.

    – Ethic

    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

    Fallen Earth Goes Mobile

    I’ve seen this sort of thing talked about with other MMOs but it looks as if Fallen Earth will soon offer a mobile interface to the game.

    FALLEN EARTH, LLC, and Icarus Studios Inc., developers of the self-titled massively multiplayer online game (MMO), announced today the development of a cross-platform iPhone application, which allows players to connect into the live game server and interact with the game remotely via their iPhone.

    Through the new iPhone application, players will have constant access to Fallen Earth, which has been one of the most critically acclaimed releases this year. Through its interactive features, the application will allow Fallen Earth players to view their in-game character stats, mutations and trade skills as well as provide access to equipped and stored items. Players will also have the capacity to view maps for each of the three sectors in the 1,000 square kilometers of the game’s landscape.

    “Fallen Earth fans will have the ability to interact with the game when away from their PCs in a way never before seen in an MMO,” said Dave Haydysch, Project Manager of Fallen Earth. “With the Fallen Earth iPhone app, players will be able to play many aspects of the game in real-time while on-the-go.”

    Scheduled for release in Q1 of 2010, the application will feature extensive real-time management of several key in-game systems. Players will be able to manage their crafting queue, view recipes, craft items, buy and sell items at the Auction House as well as interact with friends, Clan members and other online players through multiple chat channels, mail and private messaging.

    Sweet.

    – Ethic

    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

    Borderlands Review

    Previously: Ravious’s comments

    An FPS with Diablo-style quests and loot set in the weird west. You go to the planet Pandora in search of the mythical Vault. You spend most of your time gunning down bandits. Everything has a bit of attitude.

    A playthrough is on the order of 20 hours. You can shave off some time by skipping side quests and being less cautious than I was, but there are limits. First, if your recklessness gets you killed, you lose time. Second, there are levels, and skill will only get you so far if half the map can one-shot you. If you want to keep playing that character after opening the Vault, you can start more playthroughs, starting over with higher level enemies.

    I am not a great connoisseur of FPSes, but it gives you fun ways to shoot things. It is neither realistic nor cartoonish, just a bit wacky. You can play 4-player coop, but there is no shooting at your friends beyond dueling. It is fun, although I do not know how lasting the fun will be after you have shot 100 of everything.

    Continue reading Borderlands Review

    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