September 2014 - Page 2 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Neon Ninjas and Knights

September 26, 2014 by Belghast

Its A Voxel World

Yesterday something pretty awesome happened… Trove Beta launched and overall everything went pretty smoothly. I have been a fan of the game since I got into the very first Alpha wave. You can check out my first video from November of last year and see just how much the game has changed. This is one of those titles that has changed at an almost staggering pace. I would pop my head in about once a month… only to find that the framework of the game was in a massively different place than when I last left it. I have to say during the Alpha this became a bit of an impediment to me playing it. I would want to just pop in and do something interesting and essentially have to relearn how to do anything at all. That said my friend Rae showed interest in the game early this week, and oddly enough we happened to both log in together on the very last night of Closed Alpha.

We had such a good time running around and smashing things, that we decided last night when the Beta launched to skip playing Final Fantasy XIV at least for a bit and dive straight into leveling up in Trove. The above mounts we found during the final hours of closed alpha, and they are essentially rainbow piñatas that shoot rainbows and confetti out of their butts as you ride along. Basically it is my goal to manage to get this mount again during beta. Nothing says Trove quite like leaving a trail of sprinkles everywhere you go. Unfortunately the mount comes from their version of a lootbox. I have no clue what the drop rate is for one of the piñata mounts but I know I purchased 10 of them last night and Rae purchased 5 with the points we were given going into the beta… and all we managed to get were a few crafting recipes.

Neon Ninjas and Knights

One of the brand new things for Beta was the introduction of the Neon Knight class. For most of the night this is what Rae ran around as while I played my Knight. The class is a bit of a stealthy melee in that your right mouse click causes you to drop a decoy and shift into stealth. From there you can throw shuriken at your target for a fairly devastating effect. The purple rings around you seem to be some sort of a charging up mechanic that indicates when you are ready to throw shuriken. Other than that if you attack from stealth you do a significant amount more damage. I personally found the class a little frustrating, since I like to rush headlong into combat and bash all the things in the face. For someone who wants more tactical game play however this might be the ideal option.

Fortunately or unfortunately I feel like the most “Bel” class in existence is still the Knight, which is essentially your default. For starters it is a melee class with pretty high survival in up close confrontations. The secondary attack is this impressive weapon slam that can knock back enemies and deal a cone of damage. The first ability you get is a charge and god knows I love charge attacks, but this one also doubles as a movement ability and a way to dash across gaps to get to places more easily. Finally the last attack is this shield that you can put up that causes you to take no damage for a period of time. The last one is on a long cooldown, but it serves nicely as an “oh shit” button for doing some of the harder content.

Content Density

One of the coolest things about late Alpha and now Beta is just how diverse and dense the content is. Early on in the game each biome section would have a single objective be it a castle or a tower or something of the sort. This time around you would be hard pressed to go for very long before discovering something that has a boss or a challenge or something of the sort. Granted by the time I came back later in the night, the world was getting more than a bit picked over… so I am hoping that the world reset happens pretty frequently. In any case we were able to roll around the map going to areas that had not been touched and doing the challenges we encountered along the way. The above shot is from this insane rainbow dungeon in the clouds that you get to by climbing up through the hollowed out tree pictured in the back. Each biome has its own challenges with is own mob types which make the gameplay feel fairly fresh.

Essentially the challenges that I have encountered break down into a few themes. The first involves triggering an event. These tend to say that there is something dangerous inside in the upper right hand corner of the screen. When you trigger the event you have to survive a few waves of enemies, and if you do so a chest appears. The negative is that both you and the mobs you are fighting have to stay inside a blue ring that spawns when the event starts. We had issues when fighting mobs up in the air, that they would fall off the edges. The positive is you can retry the event over and over by simply moving out of the ring and waiting for it to reset. The part that makes these challenging is that generally the area with the totem that triggers the event is covered in spikes or surrounded by these pillars that shoot fireballs in a Castlevania fashion. So while the half dozen mobs really isn’t a huge problem… keeping them from knocking you back into environment obstacles totally is.

Something Minecraft Doesn’t Give Me

At it’s core the gameplay of Trove is similar enough to Minecraft that you cannot talk about it without at least mentioning that game. You could call Trove Minecraft with more meaningful combat and MMO style loot, but the game itself feels richer than that might denote. One of the aspects of the game that I like the most is the existence of my Cornerstone. This is basically a plot of land that I control and can build permanent structures upon… but that also moves with me around the world. I can walk up to any plot that is presently unclaimed and the game will rebuild my cornerstone before my eyes. So I can have crafting machines travel around with me, and each time I do this it resets my spawn point. This gives me some permanence that I crave in an otherwise very flexible world. This however does not make for a great community, as folks are constantly picking up their home like a hermit crab and moving it with them.

What is more interesting is the fact that players can create clubs, which in essence give you guild like functionality. I’ve created a Club for the Alliance of Awesome, and as such we have a “Club World”. This is a fully instanced biome where we can control everything in it. This means you can build super intricate guild houses and give other players the ability to teleport into them. This is the more permanent structure from the looks of it, and gives folks a way to link up and meet in user created worlds. While ours does not really do much of anything at the moment, I have plunked down a few machines and will likely keep adding to it as we go along. You are given only the smallest of islands to start building on, but it looks like more or less you can freely build out over the ocean for quite some ways. There are a number of websites giving away beta keys right now, so I highly suggest you track one down and give this game a shot.

Of Social Networks

September 25, 2014 by Belghast

A New Challenger Awaits

Yesterday morning I rather easily allowed myself to get talked into a brand new social network account. Over the last few days there has apparently be inordinate amounts of buzz surrounding the self proclaimed “Anti-Facebook” known as Ello.co. The folks behind it posted a rather lengthy manifesto talking about their high minded ideals.

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

You are not a product.

Yesterday evening it got me thinking… do we really need another social network? I am a sucker for all things new and more than anything I accepted the invite as a way to go ahead and sign up and claim @Belghast like I have done so many times in the off chance that I want to use it. This morning I thought I would talk about the various social networks that I use and what they mean to me.

The Network I Care About

During the launch of many of the social networks I dabbled in them, but the first one I found myself using on a daily basis was Twitter. When I entered the world of games blogging it became my front doorstep allowing me to communicate and collaborate with other bloggers. It doesn’t hurt that the WoW Blogosphere has such a tremendous twitter presence, but even after fading out of those circles I stuck around and found new cornerstones of the non-Warcraft landscape. Over the years twitter has been a source of much enjoyment and much frustration, but at the end of the day it still remains one of my primary means of conversation with a lot of people that I care about deeply. Ironically I would not likely be as connected to twitter today, were it not for the fact that my wife found such deep and meaningful connections there before me.

There is something genius about the sheer brevity of the 140 character limit. It is just big enough to express a thought, but too small to go into much detail about it. I’ve found the more I blog, the more I need my social interaction to be in small bite sized chunks. So right now Twitter fits me perfectly. There was a time when I was not blogging when I craved something more. Ultimately if it is going to be a long discourse I end up posting it here, and simply echoing it to all of my networks for the sake of stirring up discussion either in the comments here or in the threads I post them there. The biggest problem I have with twitter is the fact that it is a very closed community to anyone who did not get in on it early. It also frustrates me that I have friends who cannot get the name they want because someone who doesn’t use twitter at all and never has, camped it years ago.

The Network I Had Hope For

When Google Plus rode into the social network scene I latched onto it with both hands. It was telling me everything I ever wanted to hear and more. I shuffled into that network during a period of time when I was not blogging at all. I’ve always found that I craved dumping my thoughts to the page, and need it as some sort of mental reset button. Google Plus became this reset valve for me and I essentially started blogging regularly through the network. The early days were pretty great when the only people that were on Plus were the people who cared enough to be on it. There were some really valuable networks of gamers and geeks to be found there, and it reached a critical mass around the launch of Star Wars the Old Republic. Folks used it as a way to find other guilds and collaborate with them for events bigger than themselves.

Then Google opened the flood gates, and the awesome people got diluted by a sea of all the frustrating parts of the internet. I watched awesome women go from being able to start genuine conversations about things… to having to constantly fend off the sexual advances of men making inappropriate comments in their threads. I watched the people I cared about on the network slowly taper off their usage or retract into private circles. Something happened for me at the same time… I started blogging again and more regularly, and my need to dump out my thoughts onto social media changed. I started to favor brevity again, and as such retreated back into Twitter. I still poke my head into Google Plus a few times a day because there are people I do care about that use it as their primary network, but I just don’t feel nearly as engaged as I once did.

The Network I Wish More People Used

When Anook launched it was yet another website that I signed up for but had no real use for. I simply didn’t get it. I expected it to be Raptr, but I saw none of the automatic games tracking hooks that I had come to expect. In a moment of frustration I exclaimed to Twitter that I didn’t understand what was so great about this network, and why various people were using it. At that moment as if by magic one of the hardest working community managers I have ever met appeared to explain. The fact that he dealt with my frustration and quite frankly abrasive commentary… and stuck around to try and explain the mission statement in earnest says a lot about his character. Lonrem explained that what they were wanting to create was not a new Raptr but almost a Facebook for Gamers for lack of a better description. I made it my mission to start trying to use the site, and I have really enjoyed the interactions I have had there.

In fact I use Anook often enough that I have started to fear that people might think I was somehow being paid by them. Truth is… no one is getting paid, not even the amazingly hard working community manager. This is very much a grass roots by gamers for gamers network, and that is why I have latched onto it so hard. The problem is that right now it is inconvenient, and simply doesn’t play nicely with other things. I can’t automagically syndicate my blog posts each morning to it, and there is no mobile client which for most of us is the real killer. The thing is… I believe in its mission and I want to see it grow so I keep trying to force feed it to people. I just wish it was a more active community, at least more active by the corner of the internet that I really care about. The biggest feature for me is the Nooks themselves, because it allows you to carve up little communities related to the games you play but still all be in the same broad network. I would really love it if more of you became active participants in what could really be an amazing community for gamers.

The Network I Actively Despise

Once upon a time there was this fledgling social network called Facebook. At the request of some friends I signed up for it, and I somewhat enjoyed the interactions there. There were these cool apps that let you do interesting things like draw pictures with other users, or make interesting buttons and post them on a virtual bulletin board. It was a fun place full of light hearted interaction. Then something changed… the world found out about it. Over a series of months it found like everyone that I really didn’t care about knowing still existed found me. There is a weird social pressure to accept an invite from people you don’t even like. I unfortunately did this over and over until my Facebook was full of things that frustrated me. Essentially it became all too much like High School all over again, as the majority of the people who tracked me down were folks that I went to school with. I decided I did not need that negativity in my life, and went through the overly difficult process of actually deleting your facebook account not just cancelling it.

The problem is in this world… not having a Facebook account can be a severe detriment. There are lots of things that can only be reached THROUGH Facebook. There were various contests and product giveaways that I wanted to participate in, and they all required that I have access to that network. As such I started a new Facebook account connected to my blog, with the express purpose of only ever friending other bloggers or gamers. It is pretty much a broadcast only medium for me, and I use it to syndicate my blog posts for the people who use Facebook as their social network of choice. It is an account I really wish I didn’t feel like I needed to have, but until companies stop focusing so heavily on Facebook… it will remain there. You can follow me and I will likely follow back, but just realize that everything you are seeing is an echo of either Twitter or my Blog, and I don’t actually log in and interact there.

The Network Of Lofty Ideals

Now it brings us full circle to the network that started this present discussion. Right now I have not made up my mind what I think of Ello. There is a lot of what they are saying in their manifesto that I really do like. The problem is the realist in me also thinks there will be a significant degradation of those ideals over time. Google Plus started out this awesome place to interact with other like minded individuals… but mutated into a frustrating mess that is for some reason integrated with the world possible place on the earth for discussion… Youtube. At some point they have to stop being a boutique network and think about becoming a business… and I simply don’t see that their feature focused approach is going to bring them enough operating capital to stay afloat. Granted the premium thing might work, especially for a niche site like Anook. I would totally pay money to unlock more automated functionality to make my life easier.

For the time being I am using it… because to be truthful it is the new trendy toy. I have a very small group of friends there, and for now it is a cool place. The problem is that there are literally no privacy settings of note. You either have a fully public account or a fully private account. As such I think that everyone is posting very censored bits of information until they figure out how things like that will work. Basically I would not post anything there that I would not also post on twitter or publically on Google Plus. The design ethic pisses me the hell off to be truthful. There is minimalism… and then there is crippling minimalism… and Ello tends to be the later. I’ve learned over the years that I am really just not a fan of minimalist design at all. Give me lots of buttons and gadgets that let me configure things until my heart is happy. For the time being I am somewhat rationing my own invites to the network until I see just how limited they end up being. It feels very much like those early years of Gmail, when you had to know someone in the know to get access… which has its positive and negatives. Folks seem to be broadcasting, but not that many people seem to be actually interacting.

Cancelling Titan

September 24, 2014 by Belghast

Bragtoberfest 2014

bragtoberfest_spooky

This month Izlain and J3w3l of Couch Podtatoes are running an event for the gaming community. The idea is to have an entire month of remembering the good things about gaming. The last few months have been frustrating to be a gamer, and the word gamer itself has been drug through the mud a bit by some misguided individuals with other agendas… and their willing or not so willing peons. The idea is to get back to the roots of gaming… and just play awesome games for the fun of it. I was brought into the equation to help out with some logo work, and I did a couple of them that you might see used during the event. For a better description you can check out what Izlain posted on his blog Me Vs Myself and I.

We all know that the last few weeks have been a frustrating time to be a fan of video games. There are sections of the Internet and our society as a whole that don’t necessarily see things the way we do, and a huge push back against women, other minority groups, and the industry have stigmatized the word “gamer.” I want to take it back. I want us to remember why we started gaming in the first place. I want you to enjoy being a gamer, and to brag about your accomplishments in games, be it a high score shattered, a nice piece of loot earned, or your name at the top of a leaderboard. That bragging can take place however you see fit, be it via your blog, on a podcast, in a video, whatever you want. Let’s just get back to our roots as gamers.

Bragtoberfest aims to make it fun to be a gamer again. We all game, and most of us also either blog, stream, vlog or podcast about games as well. Why not combine the two into a month-long event?

If you are interested you should definitely check out the Bragtoberfest 2014 nook as that Is where the contest will be running out of. There are four major events that Izlain and J3w3l are running, as well as a slew of prizes to be had. More importantly this is an embracing of the good that is left in gaming, and the enjoyment each of us have that first time we boot up a new game. Also to get some buzz going, don’t forget to mention #Bragtoberfest when you post about the events.

Goodbye Alpha

Monday night on a whim I hooked my good friend Rae up with a key for the Trove Alpha, since she had shown some interest in the game. So we spent the evening wandering around the game, and I wish to god I had been streaming it… because the running commentary of her and I “discovering” things had to be hilarious. Trove is one of those games that I really enjoyed early on, but have simply not played of late. Each time I do manage to boot it up the game has changed so massively since the last time that I almost felt overwhelmed to even begin to play it. If nothing else the game has shown players just how in a constant state of flux most game development is. Trove has broken some of the rules and for the most part uses Reddit entirely for its user forums, as well as communicating copious amounts of information back with the community about what it has done and intends to do.

As much fun as we had, Monday night was a little bittersweet. It was only after logging out that night and checking into the Reddit yesterday that I realized that it was in fact the end of Alpha events that we were seeing. So many awesome things were going on, mostly that people were throwing down these pinatas full of loot on the ground for us to combat. We both managed to get amazing Pinata mounts… that leave a trail of rainbows and sprinkles as you move around. Sadly all of this went away that night as the servers went down. We will not be able to play again until Thursday when the beta officially begins… and I have to say right now I am feeming to play again. In the past I had pretty much played by myself, but to be running around with someone else was an absolute blast.

Right now we have tentative plans to wander around Thursday night leveling. I plan on working on Knight since that tends to be my favorite, and at this point I am not sure if Rae will be a Gunslinger or a Faerie Trickster. At least a small part of me is hoping that the new Neon Ninja class will be ready at the start of beta. I have to say the game is so much more solid than at any point I have ever played it in the past. The biggest improvement is just how content dense the various biomes now are. Once upon a time there would be a single element in the biome that was worth finding and clearing, but we stumble across all sorts of points of interest, each with their own bosses and treasure chests to be found. Right now I have an Alliance of Awesome guild running, so if you are playing or plan on playing let me know and we can get you invited.

Cancelling Titan

Yesterday during an interview with Mike Morhaime the website Polygon broke the news that apparently the mystery project Titan has officially been cancelled. For those who are completely unfamiliar with the name Titan and the mystery surrounding it, you can check out this excellent post from Massively running down the short history of a game that doesn’t exist. For me I guess it feels weird to know now that Blizzard does not have a new MMO up its sleeve, and makes me wonder if they are completely abandoning the MMO genre in general in favor of games that are frankly easier to manufacture content for. Right now Hearthstone is by all reports doing amazingly well, and they have managed to find a mix of value in their micro transaction model so that it does not feel abusive to the players. Similarly with the ramping up of Heroes of the Storm, we have them formally throwing their hat into the MOBA arena which at least for the games that have done it right, is also a cash cow. The amount of effort that it takes to develop a new hero for example is so significantly less than it does an entire MMO expansion.

Statistic: Number of World of Warcraft subscribers from 1st quarter 2005 to 2nd quarter 2014 (in millions) | Statista

Find more statistics at StatistaI feel like one of the things that most players do not understand is that World of Warcraft is following a very bell shaped decline. Each time a new expansion is released there is a momentary bump, but the last one of these only raised the subscribers enough to cover the exodus at the tail end of the previous expansion before steadily declining again. I am not trying to claim doom and gloom about World of Warcraft, but it feels like fact that the game has long since entered its golden years. The positive is that both Everquest and Everquest 2 have enjoyed significant followings and stability long after the buzz died down. In both cases they continue to churn out expansions happily, and for the small but extremely devoted fan base they are great places to be. As such I more than expect that the same will be true for World of Warcraft. I expect the game will likely taper off and flatten the curve a bit around 2 to 3 million players. Looking at the number alone however, we can see that the game is at a level of subscribers that it has not been at since the sometime between the opening of AQ40 and the launch of Naxxramas in vanilla.

So I guess my question is this… does this really mean that Blizzard as a company is moving away from the MMO model that they popularized? Do they have another skunkworks project up there sleeves that they can surprise the player base with at a later date? I realize talk about the decline of World of Warcraft makes a lot of fans nervous. I am trying to do so with the least amount of hyperbole available, and in a way that is an non-incendiary as I can. The truth is right now World of Warcraft still brings in a very significant amount of money. As it ages however, that revenue stream keeps diminishing. The question is, can they make enough money from micro transactions to replace the stability of the subscription dollar? Will they be able to muster the same amount of fandom without an MMO to stir up the hysteria to eleven? What does the future of Blizzard look like, and is it as dominant a force as it has been to date?

#ProjectTitan #Trove #Bragtoberfest

Familiarity in Proximity

September 23, 2014 by Belghast

Mega Servers Continued

A few days ago I made a post on about launch issues and game servers, and the problems and solutions that come from various server scenarios. In my post I presented some discussion about the various styles of servers and the weaknesses that each have. Mega Servers are an awesome technology but there are problems with it, namely that it reduces the casual proximity of players. In my post Doone made a comment, and while I normally would have simply posted it as a reply… I am thinking that maybe I need more space to go into my thoughts. For sake of not having to make you jump through a bunch of hoops I am going to repose his comment here.

Im not sure why anyone thinks Megaservers make it difficult to build community? Do you mean that it’s too many people to build intimate connections? Because if thats the case, then we’re just talking about social tools, not megaserver tech. Players just need a reason to interact and that doesnt change because of megaservers.

AA’s current situation is embarrassing. Theres not any good excuses for their current situation. This isn’t the first MMO launch, not even the first MMO with land and other features that complicate server flexibility. Theyre simply unprepared for deliberate reasons. There’s just no way they didn’t know what they needed for a smooth launch.

It’s worse that people who shelled out hundreds of dollars to support development are reporting not getting that 4 day advantage they were promised. That’s a serious charge.

Should AA have gone Megaserver? I don’t see how this wasn’t mandatory given the kind of features it has. You need a vast server community that’s STABLE. And you can’t have that when your system is as inflexible as the one they’ve adopted. I think they’re sinking their own ship right now. — Doone

While I agree with the bulk of what he said, I thought I should maybe clarify my points about mega servers. At first glance they look like a magic bullet for the problem. At the very least I thought they were a magic bullet for launch day woes, however they have their own problems that do not always show up early on.

Informal Community

There is a certain kind of community that happens spontaneously by just being around the same players each and every day. For example the above picture is that of one of the late game hubs in Final Fantasy XIV Revenants Toll in Mor Dhona. Upon arriving at the Aetheryte crystal I am immediately seeing some familiar places that tend to frequent it. You can see a name marked in orange as someone I have already friended. However more than that I recognize if not the names, but the guild tags of many of the players surrounding me. There is a sense of familiarity in seeing the same players day in and out, and when one of them is in need you are more likely to step in and help out. This is the way friendships in MMOs used to be formed through shared activity, not just shared guild tag.

In Final Fantasy XIV it has instanced housing wards, where you purchase a house and in theory become neighbors with lots of other players. Our house is across the street from a Market Board which is the way that you access the auction house economy. Over the course of weeks of being in close proximity with several other players, we have struck up a bit of a friendship. One of which is the name in orange in the above Mor Dhona photo. There is lots of spontaneous interaction that happens just by being around other players and gaining that sense of common goals. This picture is when we just spontaneously put on our brand new Dragon Warrior inspired Blue Slime King hats and started dancing together. But the interaction has spread much further than that, and I’ve helped these players out in the world beyond our neighborhood, as well as had my heart warm each time I happened to see one of them out in the wild.

A Server of Strangers

I’ve played many games so far that have some form of a blended server environment. World of Warcraft for the last several years has blended the leveling zones for the entire battlegroup to make each server feel more populated. The most recent poster child for Mega Servers however was the Elder Scrolls Online. Before launch they made several promises about creating a situation that grouped like minded players together into virtual servers, while still all being part of a much larger farm. While we had one of the smoothest launches since they could easily scale up the hardware temporarily, and reduce it later as needed… there are a lot of problems that came from not being with a fixed set of players. Admittedly some of the issues are due to the poor decisions made with the user interface.

In the above image, can you easily tell where my group mates are? Can you tell the names of players surrounding me? In both cases the answer is a huge nope, and this poor design choice of obfuscating information about other players only served to make the mega server concept feel that more alienating. Everyone that was not you became another nameless faceless person taking up room and competing for your resources. While this is the extreme, I’ve had the same thing happen in World of Warcraft when I encountered players from other servers. It was like that they were somehow less important to me, since they didn’t share the same server lineage. I knew that I would likely never see them again, so why even bother trying to be friendly?

Familiarity in Proximity

In a traditional server structure there is familiarity in your actions. You end up noticing players that do the same things as you do. It might be farming a specific location on the map because you like the look of it, or crafting at a specific machine. In hub based MMOs like World of Warcraft, you spend inordinate amounts of time milling around whatever your faction end game city tends to be. I would spend hours running circles around Dalaran while dealing with raid and guild business over text. While doing this I used to favor certain areas of the town and vendors, and I started taking note of who else seemed to like milling around these same places. Over time I would start up conversations and get used to seeing the same people. If they were gone, I would wonder what they were up to and hope that they were okay. Over the years there are so many contacts that I have made… that ultimately turned into later guild members that I made only because I noticed they were in the same place as me and decided to strike up a conversation.

The problem with the mega server is that it destroys this kind of familiarity through proximity. I feel like Elder Scrolls Online was the absolute worst case of this, because not only did it rob you of being around the same people all the time… it also took their names and guild tags from you. One of the important aspects of a guild is it becomes far easier to recognize than individual player names. Over time you start to associate a certain kind of behavior with a certain guild tag, and then when you see one of those people leading an event you have an informed decision as to whether or not this is going to be a good thing. As a guild leader, my people were amazing and the absolute best advertising I could ever have created. I would get random messages from players who ended up running a dungeon with one of my people, and they wanted to take time to compliment me as guild leader on how nice they were. It is this kind of interaction with others that I hope to preserve with whatever ends up being the next server model.

The Happy Medium

As I said in my first post, I think there is a happy medium somewhere. I think the ultimate version of mega servers, allows you to checkmark certain characteristics that you favor and then creates essentially a virtual server populated with the same players every time. Similarly I think there are ways for games to maybe more easily identify players that you have interacted with in the past. The biggest problem with Elder Scrolls Online is that every player felt anonymous. Even my own guild members, I struggled to locate them in a mob. This should never be the case, you should always be able to pick your friends and guild members out of the biggest sea of names and faces. Similarly I think it is important to be able to identify players, because it allows you to form those connections in your mind that if I saw this player in my crafting hub and they are out here doing the same action… I am invested in maybe going that next step and inviting them to a group. I want us to keep the best aspects of the traditional server structure, and find new ways to scale them as we go forward.

I want to leave with an excellent post from Sig of Crucible Gaming called “How WoW Ruined MMO Gaming”. While the title is hyperbole, there are some really good thoughts contained within, and it seems like Sig mourns the interconnectivity of the previous era of gaming. Once upon a time we needed players, and as such generally treated them better. As games have removed the need for having other players we have eroded that base of civility. While in many cases I think that World of Warcraft has poisoned the well in doing away with some things that were absolutely normal previously, I don’t think we are in an unredeemable state. Final Fantasy XIV has proven to me that there can exist a game that is both social and modern at the same time… and that has a thriving and cohesive community. I think the ultimate trick will be finding ways to take what they have done there and scale it to other games.