On Server Transfers

by

I want to send out my apologies for lack of updates this week.  I had been on a pretty religious schedule of posting at least some new content five days a week.  If you followed the last post you know my world has been pretty rocked by the recent events in my neck of the woods.  My time has been spent in the evenings either worrying about incoming Tornados or alternatively mourning their devastation.

Quite honestly, with everything going on, it just didn’t feel right be be blogging about video games.  Joplin as I said earlier has for all intents and purposes been removed from the map.  The series have Tornados that hit Tuesday night left plenty of its own carnage, leaving a 3 year old boy missing, presumably sucked up by the storm.  This morning they mentioned on the news that this storm system has produced around 80 distinct Tornados over the last week.

The “Big News”

All that said, life just has not felt normal.  The concern and worry has left its toll, and frankly I am pretty worn out and just plain “fried” at this point.  However for the rest of the world, namely the rift playing public the “Big News” has been the announcement of free server transfers.  I realize I am well behind the new cycle on this one, and most of the blogging community has weighed in one way or another on it.  However this has been in the back of my mind while we have dealt with all our issues.

For those living under a rock, or dodging Tornados like myself… the original announcement can be found here.

RIFT™ TO OFFER FREE CHARACTER TRANSFERS

Gather your friends in RIFT and play anywhere, any time

When the next major RIFT™ update hits early this summer, subscribers will be treated to a surprise – free character transfers. Trion Worlds announced today that with RIFT 1.3, players will have the ability to move to select servers in their territory once each week, taking all items, achievements, and titles with them. Additionally, guild leaders will be able to move their guild’s level and experience.
“MMOs are all about playing with your friends no matter which server they’re on, and that’s why we’re offering this as a free service to our subscribers,” said Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer. “RIFT is both a game and a service, and adding free server transfers is just one more way we can make this the best possible MMO experience available.”
Whether you want to play with friends, check out a new server, or avoid queue times on highly populated servers, you’ll be free to move about Telara. As a part of this grand experiment, there will initially be no limits on the number of times you can transfer your characters or guild.
Character transfers will remain a free service for the foreseeable future, and could become a permanent addition to the RIFT experience. Subscribers will be able to perform the transfers inside of the game itself once the patch is live.
For More Information – Read the FAQ

 

Then a few days later they followed up with an FAQ outlining all of the changes (post here).

Hi all,
As announced, Free Character Transfers will be released in RIFT Update 1.3. These Free Character Transfers will be available to players on select shards via a new in-game feature. We are pleased to be able to offer this service to our players and hope you find it to be a great way to further enrich your experience and connect with others, we have provided a brief FAQ outlining this new feature below.
We’ll continue to release additional details as we get closer to the release of 1.3 and we encourage you to ask any questions you might have, we’ll do our best to answer all we can – thanks!
What are Free Character Transfers?

  • Free Character Transfers will allow you to move your characters to select shards through an easy to use, in-game feature.

How often can I transfer my character?

  • We’re allowing one free transfer, per character, to a select shard every 7 days. Please note this is subject to change while we continue to develop and test the new service.

What do you mean “select shards”?

  • We want the shard you select to provide the best experience possible. It is important that there remains a balance between Guardian and Defiant players and to that available shards do not become too over populated or unbalanced. For this reason you will only be able to move to specific shards we’ve selected to accept new transfers, please note the shards available for transfer may change over time.

Can I move from a PvP shard to a PvE shard or vice-versa?

  • Of course! The rule set of your current shard will not prevent you from moving to a shard of a different type. So PvP, RP, PvE, or RPPvP to your heart’s content – Just remember, you’re subject to the rules of your new home! (For example, non-consensual PvP on PvP shards and stricter naming policies on RP shards.)

What about my stuff?

  • We’ll have specific details later, but have no fear! You’ll be able to take your items, currencies, achievements, titles, pets, collections, and heck, maybe even the kitchen sink!

Can I transfer from a North American Shard to a European Shard?

  • Not right now, currently transfers will be restricted to select shards in your territory.

I’m a guild leader, can I transfer my guild?

  • Absolutely, we know you and your members work hard to level your guild and make it your own. We’ll announce more details about this feature closer to its release, stay tuned!

Will these transfers always be free for everyone?

  • For the forseeable future – yes! They could even become a permanent addition to the RIFT experience. This is very much an experiment we want to try and we feel this feature will add a unique way to play RIFT unlike other MMO’s. We’ll see how it goes and keep an eye out for any issues that arise.

So, when will 1.3 be released?

  • 1.3 is the next major installment for RIFT and will arrive early this summer. Keep an eye on www.riftgame.com and here on the forums for more details as we get closer to its release!

Updated – 05/23/11 @ 12:13PM PDT
What if my character or guild’s name is already taken on the shard I want to transfer to?

  • You’ll be warned in the event of a naming conflict, should you decide to continue with the transfer you will be forced to re-name your character or guild before playing.

Will I be able to change my characters faction (from Defiant to Guardian for example) when I transfer or transfer my Character to another active account?

  • Not at this time, while these options are something we might look into in the future they will not be available for the initial release of the Free Character Transfer feature.

Wide Variety of Responses

I have seen everything from elation and praise, heralding Trion as the saviors of game kind, to frustration that we will have to wait for this feature at all.  The cynics have seen this as a clever way of skirting the need to merge under populated servers, by allowing players to jump to new servers on their own.  I guess I can see all of the points, but tend to take my own view.

What I see that stands out is the fact that a server transfer system is being put in place, to allow players to move more freely between server communities.  In fact based on the information, they will be able to do this once per week, which can let you hop servers to play with friends and then return to the main server at will.  The most impressive thing about all of this is the fact that Trion will not be charging for this feature.

Syncaine over at Hardcore Casual however thinks we should re-evaluate our expectations.

Listen, if you are cheering because Trion has decided not to punch you in the face (charged transfers), you need to reevaluate your expectations. You pay that $15 for a reason, and it’s not (unless we are talking SOE) just to keep the servers online. Free transfers are, to me, about as special as a monthly content patch. It (should be) expected.

I understand the cynical view of the actions but honestly…  to me Trion has been giving us far better support than I have received playing any other game.  If you are thinking, I have not played many games then…  let me point you over to my gameography page.  While this may be the level of customer support we as gamers should expect, and I agree with this point, it is nothing we have ever received in the past.

One thing Trion has done, that no company to this point has done for me at least is make me feel like I am being heard.  After getting to know a handful of people in the company either through twitter, or the community outreach programs, I feel that they honest to god drink their own Kool-Aid.  I feel like they actually care about us, and care about our happiness.

Here is an example of an interaction between Assistant Community Manager Erick “Zann” Adams, and Rilgon a gaming blogger.  Shows the level of care these individuals take.

Rilgon: @3rickZann So did you guys find the Fountain of Awesome or something? Like I don’t get how you are routinely so awesome.
Erick Adams: @Rilgon No, but they put something in the office water that compels us to try and make our players happy. :p
Rilgon: @3rickZann It shows. 🙂

I guess I just have a hard time being cynical when I see this and other things on a regular basis.  There seems to be an Esprit de corps in this group that I have not seen in a video game company in a long time.  Blizzard definitely used to be that kind of “by gamers, for gamers” shop but since the activision merger they have changed in many ways. 

I regularly bought the pay per view Blizzcast feed, and I have to say the way they treated players this previous year shows the level of disdain (pretty much anytime Alex Afrasiabi spoke) they seem to have for us the gamers these days.  So while we as the gamers, should be expecting more from game companies, I am definitely going to support the ones out there that are doing it.

Brilliant Marketing Move

What makes this a massively brilliant marketing move, and extremely unique is not the fact that they are giving us server transfers, it is the fact they are doing so without a fee attached.  Basically Blizzard got us used to the concept of paying a premium convenience tax for getting things like this in the past.  Each new feature that gets added seems to get an increased fee, and players have been willing to pay up.  I’ve transferred characters, and race and faction changed them as well.

If you are playing World of Warcraft you are well aware of the number of premium fees associated with their monthly subscription based game.

  • Remote Access – $2.99/month
  • Name Change – $10.00
  • Cosmetic Pet – $10.00
  • Appearance Change – $15.00
  • Character Transfer – $25.00
  • Race Change – $25.00
  • Cosmetic Mount – $25.00
  • Faction Change – $30.00
  • Guild Move – ??
  • RealID Grouping – ??

Every company that has implemented a similar on demand service structure has followed suit.  So Trion could have easily put server transfers in place and dinged us with a money grab to do so.  However the most important thing as a take away is the fact that they didn’t.  While we don’t know for certain how the “selected shards” portion will work out, this definitely seems far more wide reaching than when a company in the past has offered free transfers off higher population realms to lower ones.

Most obviously the big difference is the fact that they have stated this would be an event that was throttled on a once per week basis.  This will let players test out a community and be able to move again if it just is not a solid fit.  Being the community minded player I am, normally I would be afraid of such a free form server move system.  At the end of the day this places the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the players on a given server to make something that players do not want to leave.  I feel sure that Shadefallen is an amazing server, and the community we have is such that it itself will glue players to our shard.

The Real Logic Behind It All

It was stated by Willhelm at The Ancient Gaming Noob that this may be a way for Trion to allow players to handle server mergers on their own.

Meanwhile, here is Trion Worlds, with Rift a couple of months old now.  I have to wonder if they are being clever about dealing with a contraction of population, if the initial rush has peaked and they now have more servers running that are really viable.

Announcing server mergers is always viewed as bad news.

If this really is the reasoning behind the addition I still applaud it as a great idea.  Personally I have tried to avoid the Rift forums, other than the patch notes and Shadefallen server forums.  However from what I hear, there is much gnashing of teeth going on about under populated servers.  Personally I have not encountered this, Shadefallen has remained a vibrant server since release, and if Rift Status is to be believed our numbers seem to have remained extremely flat.  We have not experienced queues since the first weeks of launch, but there have always been more than enough people online at any given time to get something done.

I think players are going to complain no matter what, and the forums always give you a snapshot of the people who are most angry in any game.  However I imagine the same people who complained about, and refused to play on a server with any queue time are now the ones complaining about there not being enough people around.  At launch queue times are the sign of a healthy server, and purposefully going off on a low population server will mean in the long run not being able to do certain things in an MMO. 

Low population servers are always slow to grow, because the majority of the experienced playerbase generally avoid those servers for that reason.  I played on a high population server in WoW, and quite frankly it spoils you.  During wrath you could trip in Dalaran and manage to fall into a PUG raid that could clear half of Icecrown.  If you thought of an item, you could search the auction house and find plenty for sale.  So to go from that, to trying to roll on servers where friends ended up with dismal economies and no pug culture to speak of, was a shock to the system.

So if Trion is giving players a way to abandon sinking ships, then Bravo.  Forced server mergers always end up disrupting a community far more than voluntary moves.  Players have a fresh start without abandoning the work they have already done.  Knowing that your decision isn’t set in stone, will allow players to try different server communities until they find a niche that really fits their play style. 

On Argent Dawn, there were many times we were offered free transfers to cull the herd.  If I knew I could have transferred back without charge, I might have considered taking them up on the offer during those 3000 player queues.  Problem is, these were a one way ticket off, trading a known evil for completely unknown ones.  In most cases, for the players that jumped ship, they ended up transferring right back, as the grass was not in fact greener on the other side of the fence.

My Overall Take

This is getting to be a really really long post, so I will try and wrap things up.  Basically I see this as a good move for the community.  Trion is once again giving some excellent support to the players, and in doing so giving us the freedom to spread out and find the server that works best for us.  The ground breaking news is the fact they are giving this to us for free.  While this will diminish some servers, it will cause others like Shadefallen to band together and build something worth staying for.  I think overall, this will be a major positive for all players.

Bel Gets Real: Finger of God (Updated)

by

I’m taking a bit out from the normal game posts to throw up something very important, and very near and dear to my heart.  Yesterday we were sitting at home, completely oblivious to these events until my wife started seeing some messages come through on Twitter.  It had been such a lovely day in the Tulsa area, that I never even thought that Tornados might have been a brewing.  They apparently were, and just across the Missouri state line Joplin was completely devastated.

joplin

This one hits really close to home for me.  Joplin is one of two towns that I would move to in a heartbeat if given the chance.  The town has an amazingly cool vibe, and before these events had 6 amazing used book stores we would frequent.  In fact we were there just two weeks ago, when we took my wife’s mother shopping for Mothers Day.  So when I sit back and realize that we have bags in the kitchen that we never unpacked, from stores that simply no longer exist is pretty hard to take.

Our first panic moment was trying to get hold of my Wife’s mother.  She lives near Joplin just on the other side of the Oklahoma line, and the town has always been her major shopping destination for when she needs to run errands.  When we couldn’t reach her on the cell phone, we began to fear the worst.  Luckily she had travelled to Tulsa Sunday, and was also blissfully oblivious to the nightmare happening just across the state line.

I’ve lived in “Tornado Alley” my entire life, and I have seen the devastation they bring on numerous occasions.  While in the past I have known the towns they have hit here in Oklahoma, I’ve never had a really close personal attachment.  This one hurts so much, because I know this town so well.  The town had so much personality, packed into a compact area.  I am really hoping that everything bounces back and the new Joplin is an even better place.

Here is the thing, it is going to take a lot of work to get there and the groups are going to need help.  As a result I am devoting this post to getting out information for how folks in the surrounding area can help.  When stumbling around for the support numbers I came across a post on a political blog (The Source), something I would never normally read.

You can donate to the State of Missouri’s Red Cross Fund for Tornado and Flood Relief, or you can call 800-427-4626.

Those with medical skills looking to volunteer in Joplin are being asked by the Missouri Emergency Management Agency to visit showmeresponse.org to sign up.

From the Missouri Department of Public Safety:

A list of major non-profits that operate regularly in Missouri can be found by visiting the National Donations Management Network Web site. At the site you can donate directly to your preferred charitable organization by clicking on the organization’s name. In addition to making financial donations, you may donate products and services, or lend equipment to relief efforts. For more details or to make a donation, click the link above or call (800) 427-4626.

Additional information about donating or volunteer opportunities is available from 211 Missouri, which can be reached by dialing 211, or (800) 427-4626. This information is also available at the 211 Missouri Web site.

Click here to donate to long term recovery efforts in Missouri. Often it takes a long time, months and even years, for communities and individuals to recover from a disaster. Your donation can make a difference.

Thank you, and please keep the people of Joplin in your prayers

Here locally in Tulsa, donations are being collected at:

Catoosa Police Department
208 S. Cherokee St.
Catoosa, OK 74015
8:00 am til 5:00 pm (or when trailer is full)

Owasso Keller Williams Realty
12150 E 96th St N
Owasso, OK 74055
donations will be transferred Tuesday morning.

I know this post is well out of the ordinary but I felt like considering the scale of local tragedy caused by the Tornado, I wanted to get the word out somehow.  I promise to return to normal posts shortly.

Edit: 5/24/2011

I am leaving this post as the top post for another day.  Above is an image that photographer Aaron Fuhrman took of the main area of devastation in Joplin.  The above image is pulled from google streetview to contrast the total devastation below.  You can see other pictures of Joplin on his flikr photostream.

I realize it is unusual for a gaming blog to be posting this kind of stuff, but like I said in the above post, this one really hits close to home.  Honestly it might hit closer than that.  Right now we are glued to the television as another supercell is heading our way.  The storm has already produced 3 tornados and appears to be on target to hit our town.  Here is hoping it skips over us like it has so many times in the past.

I want to personally thank everyone who has donated already.  I noticed there were several click-throughs to the Red cross link in the post above.  There has been a massive out pouring local.  I ended up taking a load of stuff to the Keller Williams drop point and was just taken aback by the volume of donations.  As I drove across town today I saw either the Tulsa or Jenks firefighters collecting donations as well.

Anyways thanks for understanding as I give this cause a little bit more screentime.

Rift Hotfix #5 and other goodies

by

I’m limping along today on minimal sleep.  Like I said yesterday my wife has picked up the remnants of my illness and been trying to get over it.  As a result she spent a good deal of the night coughing, which meant I didn’t actually get much sleep.  As a result you guys are going to get some random news blurbs.

 

Rift 1.2 Hotfix #5

We’ve been getting a good number of hotfixes this week surrounding the looking for group system.  It is really weird seeing a company work this way.  In my own job, I am constant doing minor builds until I get everything tweaked the way I want it.  It seems that Trion employs this logic of incremental improvements.  It seems like each additional pass polishes the feature a little bit better.

Original Link

GENERAL
* Fixed issues with usable objects in the world not respawning.
* Silverwood: The Rift ‘Red Scale’ will now count toward quests and Achievements requiring you to close Rifts in Silverwood.

LOOKING FOR GROUP
* Players added to a group as a replacement for a partially completed dungeon will no longer be stranded outside the dungeon if the leader is also outside when the match is made.
* Fixed a bug where group leaders did not correctly receive a popup offering to search for a replacement if the leader was outside of the dungeon when a group member left.
* Removed annoying LFG pop up replacement spam when an entire group is leaving one LFG-formed dungeon for another.
* Fixed lockouts not being set when finding Random LFG dungeons. Players doing Random LFG dungeons will be locked to them the first run as they would if they entered normally. The Random LFG tool will then bypass any instance locks of party members for any dungeons repeated before the lockout expires.

 

Create a Colossus Contest

colsusIt seems that Trion has tag teamed with everyone’s favorite indie art source, deviant art, to offer a contest.  Do you have an idea for an epic elemental themed rift colossus?  Now is the time to break out the sketchbook and scanner, or drawing tablet and commit your best ideas into digital glory.

All Semi-finalists win a copy of Rift and a 3-Month premium subscription to Deviant Art.  Other prises include cash, wacom tablets, deviantart clothing, and deviant art points.  First prize is $1500 cash, a Wacom Intuos4 tablet, 8000 deviantArt points, a dA PRO Digital Artist’s backpack, deviantWEAR hoodie of winners choice and a 1 year premium membership to deviantArt.

Full Rules and Information can be found here

You can view the gallery of submissions here

 

Mage Class Trailer

 

Trion also released today the new trailer for the Mage class.  This is the follow up to the amazingly awesome rogue trailer.  I have never gone in for “finger wiggler” classes, but this trailer makes me almost want to play my mage placeholder.  The rogue trailer had the same effect, and made me develop some extreme Ranger/Bard pride.  Either way it is fun to watch mages being badasses.

 

Pen and Paper Update

As I mentioned yesterday, last night was our first meeting of a new venture trying to play pen and paper online.  I have to say all in all, after a bit of a late start things went very well.  Always in the past when I have played or run a new campaign, the first night just ends up being devoted to administrata.  However we managed to get in, get the story set and straight into action.

One of the most amazing things is that none of the players communicated over what they were planning to play, yet somehow we ended up with an extremely well balanced party.  You have the soldier, who was given the unfortunate task of escorting caskets back to a dying town.  There is the treasure hunter, shipwrecked on the shores, nursed back to health by the townfolk.  The performer with her curious clockwork dog, down on her luck and performing for the innkeeper for rent.  Lastly the teacher, out of work since the mages college closed down.

Being ever the tank, I managed to draw first blood only to pathetically botch interrogating the bandit leader afterwards.  We have already begun to slide into various roles.  When brutal force is needed, my character the Treasure Hunter is ever at the ready.  But when we need to employ finesse, we are far better relying on the performer.  The encyclopedic knowledge of the teacher, and the sturdy arms of the soldier are always there to back the party up.

I am really looking forward to next week, because we left off at an exciting point.  I have to say that I did most of my tabletop gaming in high school and college, and being able to play with seasoned veterans that I have known for years is a real refreshment.  I am expecting we will have a game with minimal akward moments.

Bonus Stage: Deja Vu

by

I really don’t have anything terribly brilliant to say today.  Was a busy day at work, and I am steel reeling from finally getting that faction post hatched onto the page.  Still feel like I am not 100% over the sinus/pneumonia mess of last week.  Been dealing with it still because apparently I infected my loving wife, so she has been going through the all too familiar motions.

Down subscribers? Create new fees.

Yesterday Blizzard announced that they would be rolling out an exciting new feature for World of Warcraft.  Soon you will be able to run dungeons with all your RealID friends on other servers.  If that sounds exciting, prepare to shell out another monthly fee for this premium service similar to that of the mobile guild chat.

With the continued popularity of the Dungeon Finder, many players have been asking for a way to group up with real-life friends who play on other realms to take on instances together. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature currently in development that will allow players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.

As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We’ll have more details to share with you as development progresses — in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR.

This feels suspiciously like Activision putting the screws to a business unit that had to publically announce they were down 600,000 subscribers.  I have read somewhere in my travels that the number is more like 800,000, but at the time of writing this I was unable to find where I had read that.  Either way, just like any commoditized service, if usage goes down you have to raise fees somehow to maintain profit margins for the shareholders.  Since raising the monthly fee would be tantamount to suicide, seems like they are going to continue the tradition of nickel and diming its users with optional premium grade services.

PSN Down Again

This one seriously felt like Déjà vu.  Before lunch I was reading an article that the PSN network was coming back online, and that users could finally look forward to using it again.  I was happy to see that life might be returning to normal for their users.  Then about 3:00 I did a run through my google reader and saw the headlines that PSN was down yet again.

ZDnet has a decent article about what occurred today.  Seems like once again Sony was compromised.  Now it still isn’t certain if this is really an Anonymous attack as some claim, of if this is a group just trying to plant the blame squarely on the high profile group.   There are signs that it might be, considering Anonymous did issue a statement to Sony.  Either way, Sony has most definitely pissed off the wrong people.

I fear if PSN was compromised so quickly, another round of attacks at SOE will not be far behind.  At this point, I can’t really see how Sony can bounce back from this one.  A little over a week ago Tobold made the very serious pronouncement that SOE is Doomed.  If another round of compromises comes through, I seems completely set in stone that this will be the case.  With them already struggling before this debacle, I just can’t see them surviving intact.

Pen and Paper and Bytes

One of my biggest laments since venturing into the world of the responsible adult is that I really do not have time, or availability to play the pen and paper games I loved so much.  For years I have scratched this itch with various MMO titles.  While they are great in their own right, they still pale from the full on creative expression that pen and paper gaming gives you.

A friend of mine was feeling the same way, and proposed we try gaming online.  He found a cool tool called iTabletop, that allows the GM to present visuals to the players and deal with various rolls that are the trapping of any pen and paper game.  Only time will tell if this little experiment will work but I am looking forward to it.  We are planning on playing a custom Steampunk setting, using the World of Darkness rule set for simplicity sake.  The “d10” system of Whitewolf has long been a favorite of mine for ease of character creation and speed of play.

Minecraft meets Wonderboy

 

Lastly this week I have been playing with a new game that just got released on Steam, Teraria.  I have heard it most often called 2D Minecraft, but in truth it is a lot more.  What it really reminds me of is the Sega Genesis game Wonder Boy in Monsterworld.  Basically start with a side scrolling 16 bit title, and add construction elements similar to Minecraft, and you have what the game plays like.

I am not very far along, and being an alpha game like Minecraft was there are numerous bugs.  When I try and run the game full screen on my laptop it runs at something silly like 500 fps and becomes completely unplayable.  However the game itself is compelling enough that I can see this really catching on.  I look forward to trying it out on a multiplayer setting.  Some of the toys you can see in the above video really make me want to explore the depths of the randomly generated world.