World Of Warcraft Archives - Page 136 of 139

Out to Pasture

August 5, 2013 by Belghast

I need to hustle this morning so the post may or may not be disjuncted. I had a generally lousy time sleeping last night as all sorts of odd noises kept waking me up. The end result is that I gave myself 15 more minutes to sleep at one point… and now I am probably more than 15 minutes behind schedule.

Out to Pasture

Yesterday my post about EQ next, its removal of role based combat, and my subsequent despair caused a pretty large comment storm divided up between my blog, Google+ and twitter. I have to say I had a vastly different gameplay experience than a large number of the posters. But that said it does seem like there are a massive amount of people disgruntled about tanking in general or even the concept of needing one. Rowan wrote a pretty great rebuttal with his post “Thanks, But no Tanks”.

I feel in many ways like I am being put out to pasture, like I am some relic of a bygone era. It reminds me of the same kind of feeling I had when Warriors in World of Warcraft went from the only viable tank, to by far the worst one. It’s like being told, “Thanks for tanking all of those years, but we really have no need for you any more”. I am sure that a lot of my healer friends will be feeling the same way. I remember going into GW2 with some of those folks, and ultimately they were extremely disenfranchised when they couldn’t find a healer to play.

Divide and Conquer

All of this is to say that I am not open to new ideas, but more that I am extremely disillusioned with the alternatives that we have seen before. Brian “Psychochild” Green who happens to be part of the Storybricks team, made a quick comment in my Google+ thread.

The holy trinity came about because of primitive MMO AI. Vastly improved AI means a new dynamic is needed. Wait before you despair.

And honestly I am completely fine with a new dynamic… but I want there to be a “Tanky” role in whatever it is. This can mean a lot of things but so long as there is room for strong defensive and protective gameplay, I will probably be okay. Taunt has always been a crutch, and a tool that the good tanks used only in situations where things were already out of control. I can live without the artificial construct of instant threat generation. Additionally I can live without the concept of the tank being the one person who gathers up all the mobs… in fact the “AOE it down” mentality while effective is extremely boring.

I want a role so that I focus on the biggest and hardest hitting mob, while the rest of my party burns down everything else. I want to engage and keep busy the big guys while my team either through the use of crowd control, or simply dps juggling takes out the rest of the group . I am completely fine with that kind of a paradigm. I just want a beneficial role to play, and this really has not been the case in any other game that tried to blur the lines of the trinity. A guardian in Neverwinter is about the most useless thing ever when it comes to grouping… I don’t want to be the sword and board guy that is dragging the entire team down.

Physical Mass

They could go down a completely different avenue and pattern the constructs off of pvp based tanking like Warhammer Online. I am again completely fine with this paradigm as well, as I really enjoyed tanking on my Ironbreaker. The different there and the construct that allowed this to function was that players had physical mass. You could not idly clip through other players or npcs… and as a result “Tanks” could create physical barriers to keep players from attacking the squishier targets.

This was an enjoyable mechanic and there was quite a bit of synergy between the support functionality I was supplying and the damage dealing my friends were doing. With the destructible and constructible world concept… I could definitely see a tank being an obstacle maker that slows down or impedes the enemy from getting to the party. So long as I play an important role in the party, and the addition of my abilities improves gameplay rather than drags them down… I will find a way to be happy with whatever defensive gameplay it provides.

DPS is Boring

Ultimately I play a tank most of the time because I like being able to take tons of abuse. I habitually level in every game as either a full tank or a custom tank hybrid build. It is the style of gameplay I always gravitate towards. The avatar I have in my head, always has a sword and shield and lots and lots of armor. My time constraints often times push me into a mode where I simply cannot be the lynchpin of the group, and cannot tank… so I fall back on dual wield dps generally. The problem is I find that style of gameplay boring.

DPS to me is avoiding stuff on the ground while trying to execute a “Simon Says” like pattern as quickly as possible to do the maximum amount of damage. Obviously from the comments in all the threads yesterday, this is a gameplay style that a lot of players enjoy. For me if I am not having to juggle targets, manage aggro, and protect other players I quickly get bored and zone out. My biggest hope is that whatever the new scheme ends up being with EQ Next that it gives me more to do than just run around idly and mash a few buttons blindly.

I realize that I am probably in the large minority of players that enjoy tanking, and do so even when NOT in a group situation. I know we are out there however, and that tanking to me is just something we do instinctually. I just hope was we move forward there is still a place for us to have a valuable team contribution without having to fall back on a gameplay style that just isn’t natural for us. I like grouping with my friends, and in many ways I took up tanking because I wanted to protect my friends… it ties into my deep protective instinct.

The problem is this same instinct just doesn’t really apply in the same way to strangers. The evidence of the lack of people who want to tank or heal that keeps being brought up are the long lines in the dungeon queues. I present an alternate explanation… those of us who tank or heal because of this protective instinct… simply do not want to tank for strangers. I love tanking for friends and guildies… but I have zero interest in ever queuing into a random because every experience I have ever had as a PUG tank was relatively bad. The tank in these groups is the focus of everyone’s ire, and until that changes you will always have able bodied tanks like myself unwilling to subject themselves to the crap storm… especially when we can form groups

relatively easily within our own guild.

Wrapping Up

I have rattled on enough for the day, and I probably will have opened up a few more cans of worms that will work themselves out during the day. I am open to new ideas, but every break from the trinity thus far has failed miserably in my eyes. Here is hoping that Storybricks will be the magic sauce that makes non-role-based gameplay enjoyable. I have a lot of hope about what Storybricks will do at least from a single player experience… but I just have yet to see any alternate scenario actually work as far as a grouping one. If they can deliver fun and non-chaotic group play I will be more than happy to hitch my banner to their wagon. I hope you all have a great day, and I hope nothing I have said offended anyone.

Blizzard Edition

July 27, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people in internet land… I am struggling horribly to get up and around today. I gathered up breakfast but did so while wearing a skullcap to hide my disheveled and unkempt hair. This is feeling one of those screw the world days… it is nice out but I don’t really want to go out and experience it. I am perfectly happy sitting on my comfy couch with my laptop and chilling out. The week had an odd amount of stress for nothing major actually occurring, and last night I had a temporary relapse of the panic attacks. Jury is still out on whether or not I will be drug out into the world to experience today kicking and screaming or not.

Blizzard Free?

The big semi-shocking news of yesterday is that Actiblizz managed to bail itself out of ownership by Vivendi and now is a relatively free agent. Granted for me so long as Activision is tacked on front of Blizzard it will never actually be a “free” company, but I feel that ship has sailed and the two companies will forever be joined at the hip. There have been a lot of news reporting that Blizzard is now the largest “indie” company… but I feel like these same outlets have zero clue what that term even means anymore.

Do I think it is good overall for Actiblizz to control its own fate? Sure… I feel that Vivendi was directly responsible for pushing out games before in an “unprepared” state in order to recuperate some of its money. Additionally there were several stories floating around just prior to this announcement talking about how Vivendi was planning in raiding its cash cow to try and repair its own bottom line. In essence this move fixes both problems… Blizzard is free from pillage, and Vivendi got a shot of money in the process.

The Footnote

Almost as a footnote the press release also casually announced that the subscriber base of World of Warcraft had fallen once again to 7.7 million. After watching the two stories play out in my RSS feed yesterday, there was a significant delay as individuals got over the shock of the first and began to Grok the second. Basically this was no real shock to me, because somewhere… and I am seemingly unable to find the source I saw a quote after their last big drop… that they were fully expecting to be at 6 million by the end of the year. Another 600,000 subscribers seems like they are on course for that possiblity.

This is more “Bel talking out of his ass” time, because I don’t really have references to back myself up… but essentially what I have heard thus far is that Blizzard is losing China. These losses are essentially the fallout of that problem. What happened in China then? Essentially there are so many WoW clones in the Chinese Market, that simply market and hit the culture touchstones better. Even more… WoW is no longer an aspirational game in the way it was. It used to be a brand that Chinese consumers wanted to identify, even Coke drew upon it to sell soda. From everything I have heard… this has changed and WoW is simply “not cool anymore”.

A Change in Model

I have said it multiple times… and I will continue to say it until November when I may or may not have to eat crow… but I believe this year at Blizzcon we will see the announcement of some form of a free to play model. They have already publically confirmed that a cash shop is on the way, and usually going hand in hand with that is a switch to one of the many now viable free to play options. My only hope is that they choose to follow the lead of Rift and giving players a Carrot, instead of following SWTOR and bashing players down with a stick.

Do I think going to Free to Play would help? Honestly I am not sure. I would likely poke my head in every now and then pending the model is not egregious. I figure there are lots of people with a mild interest in the game that would return every now and then and maybe spend a little money there. What I do think however is that there are probably still enough extremely devoted fans that the model would still be profitable for them. At this point I feel the subscription model is just no longer viable.

As I said yesterday a huge chunk of why I will not be playing Final Fantasy XIV is because I just don’t feel it is worth a monthly fee. Right now we have only a handful of holdouts still charging a monthly access fee, and the vast majority shifting to pay as you go or pay for perks schemes. I feel that regardless of when it happens, sooner or later World of Warcraft will convert and do so in a big way. Given their flair for showmanship and ability to spin something that would normally play as bad, into a positive for the Blizzcon audience… I feel that all the signs are right for them announcing the shift.

Vanilla Servers

Yesterday there was an interesting post by Syp over on Bio Break, asking if we would play on a Vanilla server if Blizzard created one. Essentially the post was spurred by comments that Drysc apparently made back in 2008 that hey had been seriously considering the model. Since that time however… Everquest has made a killing by creating Retro servers that allow players to experience the game through the eyes of history. Essentially SOE has proven that the model is completely viable, and viable enough that at last count I believe there were three different “retro” servers.

The most interesting part about Syp’s post however is the large batch of comments that occur afterwards. It seems like the majority of the posters essentially said “take my money now”. A few of us however were more “sounds awesome, but not for me”. I definitely fell into the second camp. I like the concept of a Vanilla server, but I feel as if it is probably best leave our happy memories in the rose tinted past. When I think about just how much WoW progressed as it went through its expansions… what would exist as a Vanilla server would feel like a primitive shell of what exists today. So while you would lose heinous inventions like the dungeon finder… you would also end up losing quality of life changes such as the ability to trade BOP loot in dungeons and even the “Need / Greed” loot system.

Ultimately while I am still interested in the advancement of that game… as evidenced to the fact that I devoted an entire blog post this morning to little blips about Blizzard in general… I just think I am done with the World of Warcraft as a game. I might return every now and then to check in on it… but I am not returning for the game itself… I am returning for the few people that are still there and rabid about it. I feel as if I have just moved past the limits of that game, and want more. In my “MMO Must Haves” series of posts, I rattled out all the features that I wanted in a game… and expectantly WoW has very few of them. On the converse Rift has damned near every one of them… so it is no shock that I am playing that these days.

I think eventually Vanilla servers will come to fruition, because there will come a time when Blizzard is trying to wring out every last drop of cash from an aging brand. I do not however think we will see it until they change their business model. There will likely be some access fee that you add to your account that allows you to roll characters on the closed Vanilla servers. I think the same kind of people that find the Everquest Retro servers alluring will also find the old world WoW servers that way also. I will admit… I would be more tempted if they started releasing servers for each era. Wrath of the Lich King was my favorite time in the game, and after we killed Arthas… everything felt tarnished.

Wrapping Up

I have a feeling that my wife is going to want to go out and explore the world… and as much as I do not want this at all… I figure I will end up being a good guy and aggressing to it. As a result I really should get up and around and get ready for the day. It is a lovely day outside at least, and the temperature is an unseasonable 80*. I just have zero interest in the outside world and would prefer to sit at home on my sofa. I hope you all have great weekends, and that you get accomplished anything you need to.

Abolish Faction Walls

July 25, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people out there. I joked yesterday about opening a real life air rift, but in reality I guess it felt a bit like that. We managed to get through the storm relatively unscathed, but not everyone did. Yesterday the report was that roughly 100,000 customers were without power, and in on the drive in there were numerous intersections that were reduced to four way stops. The neighbor across the street lost the entire fence on the front part of his yard, and the shopping center my favorite game store is in was pretty much demolished by the winds. It is so odd to have tornadic style damage without the Tornado.

Race and Class Restrictions

Yesterday Rowan posted a thought provoking pieces on whether or not there should be class and race restrictions in games. Namely this was spawned by Wildstar, but the question carries over to every game. Why does it make sense that fanatical characters should be limited by some sort of pseudo real world logic? In an example he gives… why CAN’T a robot do magic… isn’t that just imposing some kind of logic on fantasy gaming that doesn’t really exist? Is it not just as fantastical that humans can perform magic?

Ultimately I am against class and race restrictions… but even more so I am against faction based restrictions. My general theory is… that in every situation… ideology never breaks down solely along racial boundaries. There will always be people that play across the lines and are branded as either Sell-swords at the best, or Traitors at the worst by their own faction. One of the worst experiences you can have is when a new game comes out… and you are super pumped about one specific race… only to find out that every single friend you have wants to play the OTHER faction.

My mantra has been anything that gets in the way of you playing with your friends is bad. Faction based race restrictions get in the way of you playing what you want to play… and also playing with your friends that might have different tastes. I will go one step further and say that Factions in general… are generally bad, but more so games that try and set up an artificial “red versus blue” faction wall. That essentially feels like imposing artificial limitations on your players just to solve poor design problems. If have to rely on polarized faction based combat to keep your game moving, you made some bad decisions somewhere along the process.

Abolish Faction Walls

Some of the most liberating gaming experiences I have had come from games with much more flexible factional boundaries. The Everquest series probably takes the cake for its ability to give the player malleable faction alignments. Essentially you start out as either aligned as an Evil race or a Good race… and that sets up certain default racial relations that you have with other factions in the world. Given the time and the inclination… you can perform tasks that will alter these boundaries through lots and lots of player faction work.

Iksar for example started off hated by everything and could do business nowhere but the neutral Nexus and Cabilis their home city. However I had a friend who through lots of work managed to become maximum reputation with the Halflings… and he was treated as a favored guest in their territory. I myself took my Half Elf ranger which is natively a good aligned race… and managed to get him the same reputation with the Evil Erudite city of Paineel. This experience of letting the player dictate their alliances through their interactions with the world is the best possible scenario I have seen. Sadly… no one since has adopted this model.

In Everquest 2 you had something similar… defacto good vs evil racial set up… but over the course of the game you could decide to betray your home faction and begin gaining rep with the other. While this was not as rich and robust as the Everquest system… it was still a far better choice than the archaic “red versus blue” mentality. Additionally no where in the Everquest realm are you ever limited in who you can group with, communicate with, and trade with. All players can interact regardless of their personal choices.

Faction as Fiction

Singlehandedly one of the best choices Trion has ever made with Rift is to release the fabled “Faction as Fiction” patch abolishing strict faction walls in that game. While not as open as a game like Everquest that was designed NOT to have firm factions, it was a great way to “hack” that functionality into an existing game. Essentially in one pass they allowed Guardian and Defiant characters to group and guild freely, and set up a new neutral three faction based PVP system called Conquest. Players essentially act as mercenaries for three different political factions and wage proxy battles for them.

I feel like this decision point more than anything has allowed House Stalwart to grow so much recently. Many of the players that we were pulling in, tried it shortly after the release of Rift, but felt limited by the race and faction based choices. We were a Defiant guild, but many players just feel more comfortable with the kinder, gentler, greener… Guardian starter experience. Being able to tell them that “faction no longer matters” has almost become a rallying call as I get new folks invested in the game again.

I cannot help but think that games like World of Warcraft and Wildstar would not be far better served if they threw off the mantle of “red versus blue” and embraced letting players choose their own alignments. While we have extremely rabid Horde and Alliance players… I was one of those players that had friends on both sides of the pond. When Stalwart originally launched with the release of WoW, we had an Alliance Guild on Argent Dawn and a Horde Guild on Silverhand. The intent was to play in both places, so that we could stay together… but over time the majority greatly favored Alliance… leaving a skeleton crew manning the Horde bulwarks.

So instead of having like Fifty players all happy and acting together… we had 35 happy alliance players, and 15 unhappy horde players that felt abandoned. Any design choice that forces potentially pits players against their friends… is ultimately a bad one for the sake of building long lasting communities. Had we been able to BE an Alliance guild, but also had a number of “Horde” race sell-swords… I feel as though this would not have been a problem. The players didn’t care about the faction… they cared about the available races to play… and ultimately went to the side that they could play what they wanted to.

Looking Forward

One of the biggest detractors for me in everything I have heard about Elder Scrolls Online is the fact that once again there will be three distinct and insular faction groups. While choosing which faction to align to was easy for me… since I always play a Nord, Argonian or a Dunmer… it will not be quite so easy for my friends. I have a few friends that prefer Altmer for example… and I tend to go out of my way to kill them when playing Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls is a setting where there have NEVER been absolute race based factional boundaries. There are always Nords that are willing to sell their blade to the highest bidder, as well as Altmer that throw off their heritage and adventure freely in the world.

My biggest hope is that there will be a way for my friends to be in Ebonheart Pact where I plan on building the House Stalwart guild… but be able to play whatever they want to play. This will ultimately determine whether or not a Stalwart guild succeeds in this game. I realize that this is probably just a pipe dream, because everything that we have seen to this point seems to enforce the strict racial boundaries. But I guess I can hope… I realize factional boundaries are easy for companies to enforce, that they greatly simplify many aspects of the game. However this does not stop me from feeling like they are bad for the players.

ESO is still a long ways off, so I have the smallest glimmer of hope that they might rethink the firm racial limits, however Wildstar feels as though it is right around the corner and has set up the same tired walls. We are going through the same problems with that game as we have every other faction based title. Granted I am only really mildly interested in the game… but various Stalwarts are EXTREMELY interested. The problem is… each of us seems to natively align ideologically with one faction or the other… and currently it the sentiments seem to split down the middle. All of this is generally because we prefer to play one type of race over another. They could really serve to take a book from Trion and make guilds transcend factional boundaries.

While we are on pipedreams… one of the biggest flaws in The Secret World is the fact that Cabals are faction locked. This game is so liberating in certain fashions… you can group with any player on any faction or shard. However the fact that their guild system is limited based on a specific faction really throws a monkey wrench in this whole openness scenario. It has essentially forced guilds to manage three separate factional units… and then try and communicate between them using server channels. Everything would have been far simpler had they just said that cabals were free floating. I really hope this is a decision they revisit in the near future.

Wrapping Up

Well it is that time again… I have wasted another perfectly good morning rambling on. I had intended to talk about all the awesomeness that we did last night as a guild, but that yarn can wait for another day. On a related note however.. I totally suggest you check out Fynralyl’s blog post about her entry into the guild and reentry into Rift in general. Warms my heart to see that folks are enjoying themselves in an environment I have pulled together. Any questions I had as to whether or not forming a House Stalwart in Rift was a good idea… have long since gone out the window. I hope you guys have a great day, and that the weekend comes quickly.

5 Biggest MMO Disappointments

July 13, 2013 by Belghast

This is one of those days I have zero clue what to write about… but as not to break the chain of constant posts I am going to push through and post something anyways. In part this post about nothing has been brought to you today by the letters N, D and A. So instead of a normal post about what I did last night, or what I want to do today… I am going to make a post about my top five biggest MMO disappointments. This is kind of the bookend to my post about my five favorite MMOs, so hopefully I can do this without coming off overly negative about each.

The Disclaimer

Some of my picks for this list will be rather controversial… but they are my picks nonetheless. This list is not about what I consider to be the worst MMOs, or even bad MMOs at all. In fact most of the ones included on this list are games I have played over and over again… and will likely play again in the future. On the converse… these are the games I have been the most disappointed by over the years. This could be due to lack of content, lack of depth, lack of features… or just simply lack of follow through. This is by no means a death sentence for an MMO… it wouldn’t be on the list at all if I didn’t care. For example… I do not care at all for TERA or Aion… but I was not necessarily disappointed in either because I was not expecting to like them in the first place.

5 – World of Warcraft

If you remember… I included World of Warcraft as number five on my five favorite MMOs list… and I think placing it in the number five spot on this list adequately represents the love/hate relationship I have with this game. Without a doubt I have had some of the best times playing WoW, but I have also had some of my biggest disappointments in the path they have chosen to grow it. It feels like an old high school friend… that you were extremely close to… but after years of being apart you grew in two completely different directions. While you want really badly to be happy for it… you can see the potential that was there… and how it has been squandered.

World of Warcraft was a game that I expected not to like in the first place. I remember my very first thought when I heard about it… was where the hell would they get their story. Until Warcraft 3… every Blizzard game had essentially only had enough storyline to keep the game from completely falling on its face. After experiencing the deep and rich world of Norrath… I did not think that Blizzard could pull off anything that engaging. I was wrong… they wove together a world that was deep, rich, and filled with lore. Additionally they incorporated the best features of every game that had come before it… and remixed it in a way that truly represented the absolute best of breed for the time.

However over the years… they have butchered the lore… and instead of continuing to incorporated the best features on the market… have instead created half assed versions of them. I have to keep coming back to the Transmogrification system… because it personifies this concept of the modern Blizzard approach. They took something awesome… alternate appearance systems… and instead turned it into an extremely cludgy money sink. The same thing happened over and over as they tried to incorporate features of popular mods… but the official version was never anywhere near as solid as the original mod that inspired it.

Then on the other side of the coin… the content was just lacking. When new content was introduced… it was too little to late. Like a quick appetizer that never quite turned into a meal. Shortly after the release of Cataclysm… I started a brand new Worgen Druid… and managed to level it without much effort in under 5 days played time. Additionally the raid content just felt more and more uninspired… remixes of previous encounters. So I will admit… at times I am one of those guys… that views the golden area of vanilla through rose colored lenses.

For certain players the new mix of content and the pacing works. I have a ton of friends who are still knee deep in the thrall of this game… and more power to them. I just reached a point where I could not view anything but the disappointment. As a result I am not playing, and trying my best not to complain on a regular basis about the game. But… additionally I do not feel this post would be honest if I did not include WoW in the mix. I feel like it still has so much potential, and maybe if they changed to a content driven DLC style free to play model… they would have the endorsement to build content other than the raid ladder and dailies.

4 – Guild Wars 2

This is another title I did not really expect to like when I first heard about it. I was never a huge fan of Guild Wars 1 despite everyone telling me just how amazing a game it was. I liked some of the concepts presented, like the Magic the Gathering style ability system and the ability to multi-class… but everything else about that game I really despised. If I do not like your games user interface or control scheme… no matter how awesome a game it is underneath I just cannot bring myself to play it… no matter how many times I try. So all of this said I really had written off the concept of Guild Wars 2.

This all changed however when the folks at Arena.NET posted their Design Manifesto. It basically said everything I thought I wanted to hear, and laid out a great vision for a new game. So I was amped when I was able to get access to the testing program. However I was immediately disappointed in the experience I had there, and lack of what honestly felt like a game. I was disillusioned enough that I actually resigned from testing and wished them luck. One of my friends remained in the test a little bit longer than I did… and eventually bailed himself. I hoped they would find some direction and turn the project around.

When it came time for open beta testing… I gave the game another shot. The lowered expectations of expecting to dislike the game… caused me to view it through slightly different eyes. I enjoyed the game enough that I picked it up when it came out. The problem is… there just was not enough meat on the bones to hold my attention for long. There are definitely some aspects of the game that I enjoyed, but the whole experience felt very disposable… more so than any game I had experienced.

Additionally it did not feel like I was progressing my character at all. By the time I reached level five, I had unlocked all 5 abilities for my primary weapon choices and the signets and other related abilities… just did not feel like they had enough weight to them to make them something worth striving towards. The game set out to abolish the holy trinity of tank, healer and dps… but the problem is that it didn’t really replace it with anything in the process. Group content felt like a chaotic mess, and I was extremely disappointed when I did my first dungeon and realized the zerging a boss down from a spawn point was totally a viable tactic.

In the Manifesto they proposed that – Shouldn’t Great MMOs be Great RPGs too? The only problem is the key means for moving the story along in a role playing game is the questing construct… but they sought to abolish that as well. Once again… it is fine that they wanted to change the game… but they didn’t really replace it with anything meaningful in the process. As a result I felt extremely disconnected to the world around me. Things were going on around me… on scripted timers… but I didn’t really care about whether or not we won or lost. I didn’t care about the people and place… and the lack of questing did this.

In the Manifesto they stated that it was time to make MMORPGS more social. The only problem with that is that they introduced so much passive grouping, and took away any need for player roles… that the end result is one of the least social games I have played. When roaming around the world… you may be fighting along side other players, but you do not have to interact with them in any meaningful way. Each player is a self sufficient independent state… and as a result has no real need for anyone other than themselves. The game just feels like it is lacking reasons for players to actually be grouping together.

Let me reiterate, there is a lot to like about the game. It runs amazingly well on low end hardware, and presents a very fluid gaming experience. It has one of the prettiest worlds I have ever explored, and has a lot of things that incentivize exploration. While it is presenting a ton of new content in the form of now bi-monthly updates… the problem is most of it is limited time only. Instead of growing their world… they are creating disposable episodes that only serve to make the game play experience all the more disposable itself.

3 – Star Wars: The Old Republic

I’ve loved Star Wars since before I could even fully verbalize it. My parents tell stories about me seeing the movie when I was one… and then coming home and jabbering endlessly about “Darfa Bater”. So if there was any game that has enough storied lore to hold my attention… it should have been SWTOR. I was a huge fan of Knights of the Old Republic, and as a result I was completely committed to the genre they genre they chose to set the films in. Additionally I love the Bioware style of storytelling, and am a pretty huge Dragon Age and Mass Effect junky.

All of these things should have made SWTOR be the next 8 year game for me. The problem is… the experience while amazing… is overall disposable once you have made your way through the content. So much care and feeding were placed on making sure the quests were just right… and the voice acting was flawless… that it greatly cut into the total amount of content available. The three chapters that were available at launch… felt like an awesome introduction to the game… but the main course never really arrived.

I hear the Makeb release is extremely nice… and the continuation of the storyline extremely successful. The only problem is… that content came a year too late to stave off the players leaving. I feel like had they had more content in the pipeline and ready to release a month after launch, they would have been able to keep the majority of all the players that started playing. We just burned through the content way faster than they had expected. Additionally the fact that there was only one path per faction… and that essentially all the quests were the same minus the handful of class specific ones… alting became extremely tedious.

Additionally when they chose to go free to play… they adopted one of the most blatantly abusive models I have seen. Essentially with free to play, you can choose to take the carrot or the stick… and things like gear locks, pay walling what should be base features, and rolling out a never ending stream of unique lockbox gear just feel too much like being beat with the stick for me. It has however been extremely lucrative for Bioware… and enabled the game to keep its doors open. If it means they continue to release new content… then in the long run it could be good for the game as a whole.

I am still disappointed however at what could have been. Had they been able to launch a continuation of the main storyline each month or so… it would have kept me glued to the game. The original storyline was amazing… and there is no taking that away from the game. The Jedi Knight storyline is probably one of the most epic story arcs I have experienced in any game. It was just over way too soon, leaving me nothing really left that I wanted to do. The problem is… that content was extremely expensive to produce. There was never a way that they ever could have kept up with the demand.

2 – Champions Online

One of my all time favorite pen and paper games is Heroes Unlimited by Palladium games. I had early experiences with D&D and AD&D… but this was the game that really hooked me on the possibilities of role playing games. What made the system so cool is that it had rules to create literally any type of super hero or super villain you could imagine. Of course I created my share of Wolverine or Batman clones… but the game system was this fertile group that through a series of roles I could create some unique characters as well. What made the game so engaging was that the sky was literally the limit in the types of things you could create.

I was a huge fan of City of Heroes, because it gave me some of this same rich character building… but did so in an easy to digest MMO form. That game however had a lot of short comings… and when Champions Online was announced it looked to be addressing all of these base issues and creating this wild open ended super hero creation system. You could mix and match power sets… creating your own custom mix for your character… and this was placed on top of a character generator that was even more robust than City of Heroes. Everything sounded like the perfect super hero game… and I was hooked on it early.

The problem is… the power sets were grossly imbalanced. This is the first game I had ever played where certain power sets were literally unplayable. You could reach a point where you just simply could not progress any further due to the choices you had made. On the other side of the coin… certain power sets were so grossly overpowered that they completely removed any challenge from the content at all. You could steam roll over the top of anything, while your friend that chose one of the broken ones… could not even fight the lowest rank mobs.

The major disappointment is that they did a very poor job of mitigating the different power sets. They would buff one…. but then another power set would become the broken one… making it a constant cycle of your favorite power set potentially becoming the unplayable one. The game had all the potential in the world… and just became grossly mismanaged. Instead of understanding that this constant state of power flux and un-playability was what was driving their players away… they instead decided to streamline the content.

I really do not remember the timing, but I believe this happened around the time of the free to play conversion. Previously there had been a pretty interesting storyline that had multiple paths your characters could take. The end result ended up with everything being a big jumbled mess. The thing that ended up as the nail in the coffin however… is that coming back as a free to play character… I could not play any of my existing characters. Each and every one included some costume bits that were not open to free players. This should be a lesson to anyone… grandfather existing characters… because holding players characters hostage behind a pay wall is never a good call.

1 – Warhammer Online

I had to put this one at number one… because really this game turning out the way it did is one of my biggest gaming regrets. I love Warhammer… have since I was in middle school and painting my very first citadel miniatures. I love the world and the lore… and the sheer brutality of the chaos gods. They took a failing IP and placed it in the hands of MMO veterans… Mythic games… who had brought the world Dark Age of Camelot. It seemed like a no-fail proposal. I thought they knew exactly what players wanted… and could borrow from the success they had with DAoC and all the nuts and bolts that make a game work.

Unfortunately Warhammer Online is really the tale of two games. The one to twenty experience was amazing. The PVE content rich, the new public questing construct extremely fun, and the early battlegrounds extremely inventive and enoyable to play. I still think that the early experience in Warhammer Online ranks among some of my favorite leveling experiences. The problem is that when you hit about 20-25 the bottom fell out… the PVE content ceased to be interesting… and became increasingly more sparse. The game changed from this fun questing experience to this “go grind pvp to level” experience.

I feel like the game as a whole was a clash between these two seperate games… one of which I enjoyed immensely… the PVE experience… and one I really could care less about.. the PVP experience. Had they given me a pure PVE warhammer game… I would probably still be playing it. The game as a whole did so many innovative things, and there were so many mysteries around the world to unlock for your book of deeds. Additionally it shipped with an Addon system that was on par with World of Warcraft, and presented some extremely interesting class and race choices.

If only they had focused on giving equal time to both the PVE and PVP experience. The only problem is… I feel like the makers of this game have come to completely different conclusions about why it failed. Mark Jacobs has gone on to create Camelot Unchained… which serves to be a purely PVP game completely casting aside any PVE aspects. I feel like his take away was that it failed because it just was not PVP enough. In truth not a single friend that was playing left because of lack of PVP. We had a guild of around 40 players… and all of us left when the post 20 forced pvp experience began. Harecore PVP players are a niche within a niche, and I just don’t feel that you can really build any game solely around them as your target audience.

This is probably the game I feel would beneift the most from a free to play conversion. Awhile back I signed up for a new free trial account just to give the game a spin and see if it really is as good as I remembered. Overall the starter experience is still extremely fun, even though they have dumbed down the richness quite a bit by funneling everyone into the empire lands. I feel like a free to play version, might pump a bit more life into the title and allow it to survive. The problem is… this has become the textbook example for MMO failure… and I doubt EA would spend a dime on it going forward. As a result I will always be left with the thoughts of what might have been had the direction been a bit more sound.

Wrapping Up

This post ended up going a lot longer than expected. I’ve been typing for around an hour and a half now, but finally have reached a point where I have said what I needed to say about each of them. Hopefully none of them came off as too terribly ranty. I hope you all have great weekends, I will mostly be trying to relax a bit before Monday. I am already stressing out quite a bit, because I know going back I will be having to fill in for my boss as he is going out of town.