On SWTOR and F2P

July 31, 2012 by Belghast

While I anxiously wait on The Secret World to patch in the background, I thought I would take a few minutes to respond to today’s big “un-news” story. Pretty much every news source from IGN to Forbes is reporting that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going to the free to play model by this fall. I am not really sure if this was any surprise, since in mid-june there was another similarly placed article hinting that Bioware was looking at the model.

Roar of the Crowd

What is also fairly unsurprising is the immediate upwell in the gaming community, including much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. This really should shock no one at this point, and is really deserving nothing more than a polite “I wish them well”. I know for me personally, the subscription fee was no barrier, and had nothing at all to do with my reasons for leaving the game. I completely believe in the concept of voting with my dollar, and I have no problem supporting the causes I believe in.

By that token, I guess you can state that I just stopped believing in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was an amazing rollercoaster ride of riveting story. But at the end of the day, there just was not enough content to hold my attention. By the same token, I don’t feel a need to “Rage against the machine” and try and bring the game down. I still have several friends playing it, and reportedly they are still enjoying themselves.

Enter the Pundits

I find it annoying that this move is being treated like the sign of something bigger. On one side we have groups of players that are mad at the game, feel betrayed by it, and are already signaling this as the desperate act of a dying game. On the other side you have groups chanting “death to subscriptions”, and ushering this move in as the beginning of a brave new era. I tend to think this is the act of a company, doing what they feel is best for their product. While this might be the highest profile conversion, it is far from the first, and likely will not be the last.

While I personally find the subscriptions a much more honest business model, Free to Play is not necessarily a bad thing. I know at least in the case of the games I have played, the free to play status has done a lot to lower the barrier of entry. I’ve seen the server populations bolster in Everquest 2 since the conversion. While there are a lot more ruffians on my roleplaying server, the vast majority have been seemingly well mannered. The only thing I am uncertain of, is whether or not these players actually stick around for the long haul.

Negativity and Zealotry

I think one of my biggest frustrations with this whole situation is that there will be so much negativity in the coming days from all the camps. I realize this makes me seem like a hypocrite, because I’ve ranted about more than my fair share of games in the past. If you look back through my archives you can see many an angry tale featuring my favorite boogeyman, the dreaded Blizzard. I would like to think that over time I have mellowed.

I’ve reached a point where I am just tired of both the rampant negativity and zealotry in the community. Do we have to hate all other games just because we are playing something different? If we love a game, do we have to shove it in everyone else’s faces until they accept our choice as the “one true game”? I guess I have reached a place where I am happy to play the games I like, but equally happy to hope the other games succeed as well.

We Need More Success

We have built a zero sum climate in massively multiplayer gaming, that really doesn’t need to exist. While every game is in essence competing with the games that came before it, when did we start having to tear the others down? I feel like in order to keep the MMO culture thriving, we need each one of these games to find their own niche, and their own kind of success. Ultimately we have to redefine what success means, because there will likely never be another 10 million subscriber game.

I know personally I have stopped looking for a WoW Killer that will never exist. So long as we keep using that as the bar for success, we are setting every game up for a failure. Maybe I have grown up a bit, but right now I am just looking for some enjoyment in whatever I play. Currently that happens to be a mixture of The Secret World, Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft.

While I have joked that “If you don’t like TSW, you have no soul”, I do not literally mean that. Not every game, has to appeal to every player. I think part of what has had me so excited about The Secret World for example, is that it is a very niche game, and seems to be happy with that fact. We need more games that are OK with catering to a specific niche. We as players, need to be okay with not winning the subscription race and playing the game with the most people.

No Free Ride

So I think this announcement heralds neither the doom of Bioware or the subscription model for that matter. Players will always be willing to pay good money for good content. Free to play, simply means that these companies are giving us the game, and hoping we like it enough to give them money in return. Ultimately we the players have to fulfill that social contract and give them that hard earned money in one form or another. If you don’t then honestly you are just a drain on that games community. At the end of the day someone has to pay for it, because there is no such thing as a free ride.

Rediscovering Dungeons

June 25, 2012 by Belghast

Here in Oklahoma it has been insanely hot and by Thursday it is supposed to be in temperatures over 107F. As a result, I have been actively trying to avoid leaving the comfort of air conditioning. This meant that this last weekend, I spent the vast majority of it logged into Argent Dawn in World of Warcraft. The game still has a pretty firm resurgent hold on me.

Am I Really Back?

Honestly at this point I am still not 100% sure if I am really back, but I have moved from seven days of free time to actually paying for the first month. I had planned on doing this anyway, just to make sure my friend got his mount, but I have to say I am already finding myself making plans for the future. Right now I have a stable of sub 85s, and I admit I am looking forward to leveling them.

I spent the largest portion of the weekend working on Exeter, my Paladin. This was actually my very first character in World of Warcraft, and I had grand ideals about playing it as a main. Due to not being able to keep up with my friends, and the failings of protection paladins early on in vanilla, this never quite panned out. But nonetheless the character has always had a special place for me.

When I last played the character over a year and a half ago, I had just started on Vashj’ir and decided to swap from Retribution as I played in Wrath, to full on protection. With some minimal ability swapping, I was able to pick up the character pretty quickly and continue on questing. I have to say the Cataclysm Tankadin is a blast to play. I have given paladins crap over the years, even on this blog, but the gameplay is extremely infectious.

Over the course of the weekend I finished Vashji’r, quested through Hyjal, mined my way across Deepholme and finally reached 85 while doing the first few quest chains of Uldum. I have no clue how many actual hours of play it took me, but with all the perks granted by a level 25 guild, it seemed like it just flew by. Instead of watching my xp bar I found myself just following along the quests, and before I knew it I had hit the cap.

While I have complained about “kill ten” quests before, I have come to realize that at the end of the day I really do prefer them. Having a traditional questing structure gives me a sense of purpose as I check things off my list. When I have played more open ended games, like Guild Wars 2, I have felt like everything I did lacked that same sense of purpose. As much as I had complained about the disconnected feeling of Cataclysm, the quest flow is pretty nice and has enough other kinds of quests to break the monotony of the kill tasks.

Grouping Should Be Fun

When I left WoW originally it changed my game play deeply. I went from being the center of each group as the main tank, to actively avoiding grouping all together. I had developed a phobia of being needed at all, since I had spent the previous seven years responsible for the happiness of so many others. I grouped when I absolutely had to, but the rest of the time I was off by myself and seemingly happy.

With the release of SWTOR, I gave grouping another try. However choosing to level as a dedicated duo, left me feeling chained to having to play whenever someone else was online. When it came time to run flashpoints, I just found them not as much fun as I remembered dungeons being. I think in part, I just didn’t like the design of the Star Wars hard modes. I don’t mind hard encounters, but I have always felt that they should be an endurance game, not twitch reflexes.

Many of the SWTOR hard mode flashpoints, just felt cheap and irrationally punishing. Colonel Daksh in Maelstrom Prison for example, goes into this phase where you have to avoid getting in line of sight of him. Essentially 2 or 3 times per fight, everyone in the group has to do an intricate dance avoiding being seen. If you are seen at all, it is essentially a one shot death. If you aren’t dpsing him fast enough, you also die from the incredibly short enrage timer. As we wiped over and over to one thing or another, the attempts just ceased to be enjoyable, and given time flashpoints were just something I completely avoided.

Remembering It Can Be

Thanks to the coaxing of my friend, coming back to WoW I have been grouping again. I eased into it by duoing some old raids, until I built back up my tanking ability to some extent. Once I got back into the swing of a heroic, including the “new to me” hour of twilight five mans, it felt like coming home. Unfortunately it seems like we can only muster full guild groups on Friday or Saturday nights. But those last few nights, have been some of the most enjoyable gameplay I have experienced in years.

Friday night we gathered up to work on various achievements, that each of us had outstanding. We knocked out a couple still remaining from the Icecrown five mans, and then moved on to the redesigned Zul’Gurub. ZG has always been one of my favorite places in Azeroth, and in vanilla I spent hour after hour there both tanking and healing it. When I heard they were removing the raid and making it a heroic, I was extremely disappointed. However, considering they went from a raid to a five man, they’ve done the zone justice. While none of the fights are exactly the same, they each feel very similar in nature and still have a very epic feeling to them.

In an hours time, we had knocked out every available Zul’Gurub achievement. While there really wasn’t much in the way of gear upgrades for anyone involved, we had a complete blast doing it. I am remembering the side of gaming I used to love so much, but the circumstance of having to be both guild and raid leader robbed me of. Running around with my friends taking down baddies, has re-awoken a piece of my inner child I thought was too jaded to ever feel this way again.

Well Rested Return

One of friends, mused that I just needed some time away from the game to get my perspective. I think that honestly might be the case. Too much frustration had built up, over too many things not directly related to gameplay. Coming back now, I have a new pair of rose colored lenses and my buffer of bullshit has been emptied out. I never thought it would be WoW I was returning to however. I really thought with my recent return to Rift, that it would be the one that held my attention. As much crap as we have all said about “pandas and pokemon”, I think the upcoming expansion will breathe some life back into the game. I just hope that my return, others will be willing to give it a fresh start as well.

A Quiet Evening in Norrath

May 4, 2012 by Belghast

I have to say, it has been a fairly crazy week. At work I have been dealing with a “brand marketing” company, as we try and stand up a brand new promotional website. On the blog, the Newbie Blogger Initiative has kinda kicked me in the ass, and made me start trying to post some useful stuff on a regular basis. In game, as I mentioned yesterday I picked up TERA on a whim, so I have added it to my rotation of SWTOR and EQ2.

Checking In On The Republic

After spending the weekend in the Guild Wars 2 beta, and a good chunk of the week playing TERA, I felt like I needed to spend last night in SWTOR since the troops were getting restless. Leading a guild in Star Wars has been an interesting transition. I lead a very active guild in World of Warcraft for a little over seven years, so since the Star Wars guild is a combination of the same people, one would think I would be used to it.

I have to say however, it has been an interesting experience. I’ve talked about it before, but I really am not the same player that my friends knew and loved form WoW. After being committed to raiding 3-4 times a week, I find myself having trouble even committing to running a dungeon as a group. I’ve developed this resentment towards anything that ties me down, or forces other players to depend on me.

The Reluctant Guildmaster

After several nights of piddling around in other games and a weekend of soloing while testing, coming back to SWTOR last night was a bit jarring. I logged into a sea of tells, similar to like I used to get on a nightly basis in WoW. Each person that contacted me, had been waiting patiently for me to show up again, because they had some real need of my attention. But I have to say, it almost invoked a fight or flee instinct in me. Instead of actually going out and trying to get into my new Chiss Smuggler, I wound up simply logging in my 4 characters all night and running slicing missions.

I can happily report however, that the last patch did in fact seem to fix the slicing bugs. I was able to make a meager profit from running high end slicing boxes. When 1.2 came out, I ended up blowing through around 300,000 credits, trying to figure out a mix of lockboxes that actually was able to at least break even. Our guild crafters really relied on getting materials from those slicing missions, so it will be nice to be able to provide them once more.

I’ve hit a wall right now in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have 3 characters at 50, each of them geared at least in purple mods in moldable gear. All that is missing from my stable is a smuggler. I made a push to do dailies on all three of my max level characters, and farmed up the 1.5 million credits to unlock the Chiss race I was wanting. Problem is, I just can’t seem to push forward anymore. At almost legacy 30, there really is nothing left for me in the system that does not involve prodigious amounts of credit grinding.

Norrath Calling

After last night feeling very much like returning to a job after a vacation, and knowing that tomorrow would be spent on the road, I decided tonight I would relax over in Norrath. Everquest 2 is one of those games I can always return to, and always find something interesting to do. I seriously think there is more content in that game than I will ever be able to complete.

I have a level 90 ShadowKnight, with around 300 AAs, so I could be off doing the new 90-92 content. Problem being that I don’t really feel like doing anything that serious. The rest of my guild seems to be moving happily through the content, and from all accounts it seems like the Withering Lands and Skyshrine are extremely awesome. For whatever reason though, I just have more of a desire to play my level 80 Dark Elf Dirge, and my level 20 Froglok Paladin.

Belglorian of Marr

Tonight I decided to log into my little frogadin, and take a trip to Stormhold. Over the years this has been one of my favorite dungeons. I love the way Norrathian dungeons are laid out, and anytime you give me one filled with tons of undead I am a happy camper. Other games have pretty dungeons, but for whatever reason they don’t feel like something the mobs would actually use. EQ2 dungeons are replete with kitchens, store rooms, audience chambers, and are populated with everything from the butler to the chef. I honestly think this was why I liked Karazhan so much. It was the only wow dungeon that felt like someone could actually inhabit it.

I’ve completely stacked the deck on my Belglorian, my paladin. I picked him up one of Fippy Darkpaw’s swords during the chronoportal event. In addition I have crafted some nice armor, including the level 20 reactant “of authority” chest piece. Essentially my gameplay is to keep him locked at 100% AA at level 20 until I can get at least 100 AA levels. Right now I am sitting at 45, and each AA makes life a little easier. There are so many good level 20ish spots, and I find running around killing random stuff in Everquest 2 really relaxing.

I had a bad pull deep down inside of Stormhold, wound up getting two bosses and wiped. I took a quick break to come over her and write something up, but I can hear the soft crackling of the braziers near the entrance in the background as I right. It is softly calling me back, to come bash heads again. I hope you all have a great weekend, mine will be busy chaperoning a college trip with my educator wife. As a result not sure how much playtime I will actually get other than tonight, so I am planning on savoring it.