Category: MMO

RPG and MMO players: What does Grinding mean to you?

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of the more charged terms in the lexicon of gamers is GRINDING.

MMO players almost universally hate grinding, though there’s a certain breed of single-player RPG gamer that enjoys it. But what exactly IS grinding?

I think it means different things to different people and I think that leads to some confusion when we’re talking about games. So I’m hoping we can have a discussion about this. Let’s hear what YOUR definition of grinding is.

I’ll get things rolling:

To me, grinding is when a game forces you to kill the same mobs in the same place over and over again in order to progress. In the worst sort of grinding, there’s no quest or other reward involved: you just need to kill the same monsters over and over again to get combat experience to take you to the next level (or until a mob drops a required item) in order to move on. So kill, wait for respawn, kill, wait for respawn.

Substitute in similar monotonous tasks for grinding in crafting.

The best (worst?) example of grinding to me is any circa-2005 Asian MMO where you’d get 1 quest every few levels and in between you’d have exactly 1 type on monster that you’d have to kill at each level and no way to move forward except sitting there and killing that 1 mob every time it popped.

Conversely, if a game gives you a series of quests that require you to kill the same mobs, I see that as the ‘best’ kind of grinding since the monotony is broken up by returning for quest rewards that hopefully make you stronger. If there are alternate quests you can do instead, I don’t even consider this grinding (or maybe grindy) since you have other options that will let you move forward.

So that’s my long-winded definition. What’s yours?

Tera, Day 3 [video]

Posted on by Nimgimli

I kind of wanted to get to level 20 before I wrote this post but alas, it was not to be. Since my last post I took Bart from level 15 to level 19. So what did I learn?

Biggest thing: skill chains. Turns out you have to set these up yourself. Hit K to bring up the skills window and at the bottom is a Skill Chains button that opens a second panel. The ‘starter’ skills seem to be predetermined but you can drag whatever ‘chained’ skill into the various slots that seem like they’ll fit your style. At my level all the chains are 2 links long.

I also learned a new skill, Overhead Smash, that ‘auto-chains.’ When I spam my main attack a few times (which IS called a “Combo Attack”) I’ll get a prompt to chain (ie, hit Space) the Overhead Smash (don’t shoot me if I have the name wrong).

My friend Gwyn, who you see commenting here now and then, formed a guild with her sister and they invited me to join. OK maybe I begged them to let me join. Either way, I’m member #3. I wanted to check out the Guild Quest system. Turns out this is very similar to the repeatable kill quests that you can get, with the one exception that you can ‘store up’ extra kills. For example there was a Guild Quest to kill 12 Foozles. I killed 12 but as I continued with other quests I had to fight more Foozles. The counter kept going: 13/12, 14/12 etc. By the time I turned the quest in I had 17/12. As soon as I turned it in, the quest reset and restarted at 5/12. I assume that others in the guild will find those same numbers and can take up the baton where I left it.

I finally stopped to do some crafting and my sense is that it’s mostly a money sink in low levels. I opted to work on Alchemy in order to make some potions. To make a healing potion I started with some leaves I’d gathered. I bought and learned a recipe that turns the leaves into an intermediate material. To do that requires the leaves and a reagant that I had to buy from a vendor. Then to make the actual potions, I needed to buy the recipe. Then I combined the intermediate material I’d crafted, another reagant I had to buy from a vendor, plus some glass vials, also from the vendor. It got expensive fast.

You can skip that first step by extracting from items that have dropped from mobs. So the question is which is more lucrative. Here’s another example, this one using metals. I can gather ore, then combine it with a vendor-sold reagant to make Ingots which I can then use to make gear. Say a pair of metal armor boots drop and I don’t need them. I can sell them to a vendor and use the coin to buy reagants. Or I could Extract Metals from the boots, which should provide an Ingot, bypassing that initial combine. At low levels you probably want to sell gear and buy the reagants since you’ll skill up making Ingots but later it’s probably cheaper to just extract your Ingots.

Last thing to hit on for today: the difficulty level of the game. Yesterday I mentioned how easy Tera is, and it has been up until now. But all of a sudden battles are becoming more intense and more interesting. Suddenly dodging and avoidance are becoming essential as I’m encountering baddies that exude poison as their special attack (all mobs in the world of Tera have the same tell; their eyes flash red before they unleash their special attack).

Granted this is just combat difficulty that is ramping up a bit. The rest of the game is still very clear cut. You always know where you need to go next, and what you need to kill. Mobs that will help you towards fulfilling a goal have an icon floating over their heads: yellow for a personal quest, blue for a guild quest.

A limitation of the Unreal engine (I think) is that all zones are essentially very wide corridors, so there’s really not a ton of exploring; it’s more like sight-seeing as you travel through the world.

And yet…I’m REALLY enjoying the game. Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, or maybe it’s the progression hound in me who is so delighted at doing quests that give great gobs of experience and help you level up quickly. I still don’t know how much fun an alt would be, but I’m finding myself bummed to think of the open beta weekend ending and it’s going to be tough waiting for the game to re-open next week.

Here’re a few short videos I captured of me fighting. They were captured at half-size using Fraps so they don’t look as great as they might. Apologies to those who’ve already seen some of these on Google+.

Tragically, these corrupted unicorns must be put down. This fight has a good example of the great ‘staggering/falling down’ animations that mobs have. You almost feel sorry for the poor thing when it goes down. Almost.

You’ll do a lot of fighting against groups of enemies like this one. This demon thingie is surrounded by a bunch of fairies. The fairies die really quick to AOE attacks but if you don’t take them down they will suck away your health in a ‘death by a thousand needles’ kind of way:

A similar battle. I pop my Shout that gives me some MP to use, then charge into the fight. After a couple of swings I fire off Whirlwind — that double circular attack. That takes out most of the fairies and then knocks the ‘boss’ on his butt. Just before he dies you can see his eyes flash. It would’ve hurt had he gotten his special attack off in time.

I included this one because I love the creature design. Tera has a lot of really weird creatures and I’m enjoying seeing what they all do. This guy spits a nasty poison, though he never did in this battle. You’ll also see me do an overhead smash…into thin air. No auto-targeting in this game and you can get caught in a combat animation facing the wrong way. Just part of the challenge!

Tera, Day 2

Posted on by Nimgimli

Between Friday night and a couple hour session after the dog got me up early for her walk this morning, I’ve taken Bart The Slayer from level 8 to level 15.

In the course of this, I’ve left The Island of Dawn (the starter area which takes you level 1-12 or so), explored the main city of the world, the name of which just went out of my head, tinkered a tiny bit with crafting and finally moved on to the next zone.

Overall the game continues to be fun, mostly because of combat and having a new world to explore. I’m not sure how fun an alt having to do the exact same quests would be. I pine for the days when games like EQ2, WoW and LOTRO would launch with several different starting areas for different races. I suppose that’s much too expensive it today’s game development economy though.

I’ve been switching back and forth between using a controller and using mouse and keyboard. I find the controller to be a lot more fun when it comes to combat, but mouse and keyboard is much more efficient and much easier to use when it comes time to fiddle with your inventory and stuff like that. Mostly I like combat with the controller because I do a lot of moving around and moving a character (in a 3rd person game) with the left stick and moving the camera with the right stick just feels more natural to me than keys to move character and mouse to move camera. What makes the mouse and keyboard feel odd is that there’s no way to turn the character with the keys. A&D strafe and Q&E are bound to non-movement tasks. So you move the camera to turn the character. It’s hard to explain, but it all feels more natural to me with a controller.

Tip: Type /controller or hit the Back button on an Xbox controller to bring up a set of controller-specific options.

At level 15 I still only have a few skills and I think this is just the way the game is going to be. New since level 8 are just a shout that gives me 100 MP and a Retaliate command that only works when I’ve been knocked down. When that happens the game prompts me to use Retaliate by hitting the space bar (or the X key on the controller) so I don’t even think I need that one parked on a hotbar.

Once I got off the Island of Dawn I turned on general chat. Most of the idiocy was gone [side note: the new “I’m gonna prove I’m cool by telling everyone that a popular MMO sucks” target seems to be SWTOR, giving WoW a bit of a rest from the abuse] and I mostly eavesdropped on what was going on. There was a lot of talk about Chains (skill chains) and I remember Chains from the prologue but I still either don’t have them or don’t understand them. I do know the “hitting space to trigger Retaliate” is the Chain mechanic at work, and one time my Charge move ended with the option to do a chain but I missed it and haven’t figured out why it did it in the first place. So that’s a mechanic that still eludes me.

One thing I haven’t done AT ALL is customize my character. I mean I get better gear and use it and every 2 levels I go to the trainer and buy all the skills available (most of them upgrades to existing skills) but I haven’t had to make any decisions yet.

Between that and the controller-friendly combat, Tera just feels like a nicely casual MMO so far. I don’t say that in a derogatory way…sometimes it’s fun to have a game where you can just beat up on things while pretending they’re the CEO of your company or something.. 🙂

Yesterday I mentioned repeatable quests on the Island of Dawn. Once you get to the ‘main game’ you’ll get these too only so far they’ve all been based on kill tasks. Rewards for these are either a couple of Lucky Eggs (containing random loot) or some Tokens that act as a currency on special vendors. This kind of mechanic is fairly common when it comes to dungeon running in other games, I’m told (since I never group I never do dungeons/instances in MMOs) but I haven’t seen it often in the solo-able open-world parts of many games. These repeatable quests are nice “filler.” You get exp from fighting the things, exp from completing the quests and these tokens which I hope will offer nice gear. Combat is pretty fun in Tera so I was always killing random baddies anyway…now I have a reason to do it. There doesn’t seem to be any limit to how many times you can do these quests (they’re not Dailies and have no cool down), except once you out-level them they stop being offered.

I guess I should talk a little about crafting. Gathering is available from level 1 to anyone. You don’t have to train or buy tools..you just start gathering from nodes sprinkled around the landscape. Gathering gets you raw materials, of course.

Extraction lets you get raw materials from gear you don’t want. You can opt to extract Metal, Cloth, Alchemy Reagants or…um, magic bits? Or was it leather? There are 4 things anyway. Before you can extract you have to buy or find a scroll that teaches you how. There’s a scroll for each type of material and each tier of gear. So your first Metal Extraction scroll teaches you to get ore from Tier 1 gear. If you want to extract Metal from Tier 2 gear you need a Metal Extraction Level 2 scroll, which of course costs a bit more than the level 1. If you want to extract Cloth from Tier 1 gear then you need a Cloth Extraction Scroll to learn how to do it.

Finally there’s crafting. I haven’t done much of this but I believe we have Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Cloth Weaving, Leathercrafting, Alchemy and Magical Essences… I think that’s right. 6 of them anyway. In order to make something you need to buy a pattern/recipe/blueprint which then teaches you to make that thing. All I can make is Ingots and leather. In both cases I have to combine gathered raw materials with a reagant I buy from an NPC.

There doesn’t seem to be anything preventing you from learning all 6 crafting skills; maybe there is at higher levels, but newbie stuff seems open to all if you’re willing to buy the patterns.

And I think that’s enough of a Wall of Text for level 8-15. If anyone has any questions, ask away, though I there’s still a ton I don’t know!

But my feeling right now is that Tera would make a great F2P game. It’s fun and easy (I died once in the Prologue but since then haven’t really felt in much danger) and pretty. I just don’t know that people are going to be willing to shell out $15/month for fun and easy and pretty.

Thoughts on Tera

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night the Tera open beta started for people who pre-ordered the game. Today everyone can get in.

In my online community the general reaction to Tera seems to be something like “Meh, I guess I’ll try it.” I don’t know too many people who are super-stoked to play but I think people are curious since it’s been in the works for so long, and since it has such a controversial art style (female armor tends to be very very tiny).

I’ve been known to play a game just so I can slag it with authenticity and I think some of my friends are playing Tera for just that reason.

So here’s a report on my level 1-8 experience.

Developer En Masse has added a prologue to the game. They labeled a blog post about it “Improved Early Play” and boyo, did they get that wrong.

The Prologue is done really poorly in my experience. You’re thrown into the game at level 20 with somewhere between 6 & 10 skills that you won’t understand. You’ll be trying to read help text that pops up in different places and formats while all kinds of in-game chaos is happening.

Now in all fairness I was attempting to play with a controller at this point which probably made things worse. MMO players all know that Space is Jump, but they don’t all know that the B button on the controller is Jump (if in fact it is…I don’t remember). So I was trying to figure out that when the on-screen prompts said “Press F to speak to this scantily clad NPC” I needed to pull the Left Trigger, plus I was figuring out the skills at the same time.

Anyway it was a real mess to me and I almost quit. I’m glad I didn’t though. The Prologue lasts a few minutes and then you go back to the original start of the game where you’ll be level 1, learn all that stuff again at a more measured pace, and gain experience with the skills as you earn them.

At that point I went back to mouse and keyboard but tonight I’m giving the controller another go. Any time I can avoid a lot of mousing it’s good for my arm.

I decided to play a Slayer. That’s a melee class carrying a sword that’s taller than he is. He’s pretty fun to play. Early on I just had a basic attack and a dodge. I found I can dodge through enemies, so what I’d normally do is smack the bad guy until I saw he was going to unleash an attack, then dodge through him. The mob would then land his attack on empty space and I’d attack his back. Fairly frequently you’ll knock a mob down, which feels pretty satisfying.

The combat in Tera is a little different from most MMOs. You don’t lock on a target (maybe you can, but I never did). Instead you have to aim and swing. It can take some getting used to but I felt a little more engaged in combat than I normally do. On the other hand, it’s no Kingdoms of Amalur. This isn’t super-fast-paced arcade combat.

The Slayer generates MP by attacking, and then expends it by firing off skills. I have my main attack on left mouse button, dodge on the right, and by the end of the night I had skills bound to 1, 2 & 3. They were a knockdown attack, a forward dash and a whirlwind area of attack skill.

I have the feeling ranged classes will feel a lot different than melee classes, but we’ll see.

Beyond the combat, Tera is an Asian MMO. You’ve got Story Quests that unlocked every few levels, and side quests to fill in the gaps. So far I haven’t had to do any “grinding” but I’m already seeing a lot of mob model reuse. Y’know “Fight 4 Young Foozles” then “Harvest the spleens from 5 Foozles” and then “Kill 4 Elder Foozles” and then “Bring me the pelts of 5 Ancient Foozles” and all the mobs look the same except for the name over their heads.

Everything so far has been pretty linear but it’s early days yet.

There’re systems I haven’t really dug into. Your health is related to your Morale. You improve Morale by hanging out at a Campfire. As Morale drops, you max health and MP drop too. You can find pre-existing campfires or you can carry them in your inventory.

While you’re gathered around a campfire you can toss in Charms that you get as drops and quest rewards. When you do this, you get some kind of buff…and so does everyone else at the Campfire with you. I guess the idea is to encourage people to gather together to max out buffs.

Likewise gathering with friends is supposed to get you more materials. Stuff like that.

We’ll see. So far Tera feels like exactly the ‘tourist game’ I thought it would be. I’ll play it to ogle the beautiful landscapes for a while, but don’t expect it’ll be a game that holds me for more than a few weeks. In a year it’ll go FreeToPlay and I’ll come back and do it all again. 🙂

TGIF Gaming Wrap-up for 4/20/2012

Posted on by Nimgimli

MMOs are like crack [well, not really, I’ve never done crack but I’m pretty sure MMOs are a lot better for you]. I think I’ve quit the habit and next thing you know I’m sucked back in.

Purchases This Week
Some Gold to spend in Tribes:Ascend
And I switched my Dragon’s Dogma pre-order from 360 to PS3
Oh, and I bought the current Humble Bundle for $15

Played This Week
It’s been the kind of week where last weekend feels like it was years ago. I vaguely recollect playing Tribes:Ascend and enjoying it in limited doses. 2-3 matches is all I can take before I have to go do something more relaxing…I get really worked up playing that game! LOL.

I also got my first taste of Diablo III last weekend after I finally took advantage of the beta invite I got in November. As I feared, it played hell with the RSI issues I have in my wrist. But I enjoyed it. So much so that I’m considering just wearing a wrist brace and playing it, but that sounds really self-destructive.

I continue to plug away at Legend of Grimrock but honestly these online games have their hooks in me again. I managed 3 hours of it though. I was switching between Tribes and Grimrock Friday night and Saturday.

Sunday night I popped back into Guild Wars with the hope of adding to my HoM points. After I whined here I got some fresh advice from Jazz and Scott and played some more. My new goal is gearing up in order to make Eye of the North less brutal. Raptr says I played for 7 hours this week.

Then Dusty and Arislyn lured a few of us into trying the free-to-play version of Aion. I just got my wings when I got distracted AGAIN.

Last, the open beta of Tera. Raptr isn’t tracking it yet but I played until much too late last night.

Plans for the Week to Come
My plans never really pan out, do they? As of today I intend to play Tera over the weekend while the beta is going (our characters will roll over into launch so this isn’t ‘lost’ time) and then hopefully back to Guild Wars. On Tuesday the demo for Dragon’s Dogma comes out and I’ll be taking that for a spin. Otherwise…who knows? I’d like to dip back into Tribes before my slightly-angry skillz atrophy, though. (Get it? Instead of mad skillz I have slightly-angry skills…oh, never mind.)

It’s a crazy spring for MMOs. Diablo 3 (not an MMO, I know, but seems to be a game lots of MMO players are interested in) and Tera have open beta weekends this weekend. Guild Wars 2 has a beta weekend next weekend. Tera launches on May 1 and Diablo 3 on May 15th and The Secret World beta weekends have to start really soon given that game launches in June.

Busy busy busy!

Struggling with Guild Wars 1

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last weekend I picked up Guild Wars again. I had this vague idea that maybe I could accumulate some Hall of Monuments points for Guild Wars 2 (which, like so many others, I dutifully pre-ordered as soon as I could). It’s probably not a fair way to approach a game: I’m playing it to squeeze something other than fun out of it, after all.

So my first goal, according to some guides I read, is to complete all the campaigns, starting with Eye of the North. I log in, head to Lion’s Arch and jump into the crevasse. Off I go!

Now I am admittedly playing Guild Wars as a solo game, with a full team of heroes backing me up. I’m playing a Ranger currently, so mostly I stand back and pew pew arrows into the fray. Except I go through energy like a redneck goes through Old Milwaukee on a hot Saturday night. So I do a lot of waiting for energy to accumulate. Still, with this swarm of characters the difficulty isn’t too bad, unless we get adds.

But here’s the thing. One of the strengths of Guild Wars is there’s almost no leveling curve. Experienced players, I’m told, hit level 20 in 7.8 seconds or so. It took me much, much longer than that, but I’m at level 20 even though I’ve yet to complete any of the campaigns.

Today’s MMO players, I’m told by some, don’t like leveling…they like the end game, and Guild Wars is all about the end game.

But for me, leveling is damned fun! I love progression. It needn’t be levels. It could be skill points or something. But I like pushing some indicator forward. I know that’s shallow, but it’s what I like to do. Hey, I know people that squee with delight when you give them a sheet of bubble wrap and tell them they can pop all the bubbles. People are funny animals.

So I’m working on helping out the Asura in Eye of the North. Mostly I’m traveling. I don’t have any of the map explored so I gotta walk. And of course fight.

And here’s where Guild Wars grinds me down. I fight through a couple zones and then I do wipe. Actually things go totally to shite and I die and res and die and res a few times in a single fight before we wipe, so now everyone has a big fat death debuff. I look at the clock and it’s getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow. I have no idea if I just need to get to the next zone line or if I have several to cross yet.

And so reluctantly I fast-travel back to the Outpost I’d most recently vacated and shut down for the night.

And I feel kind of like I wasted my evening. The combat wasn’t very interesting, I didn’t get any levels, the loot that I found was mostly odds and ends to give to Collectors, or cheap weapons that I’m not sure what to do with. I just feel like I made no progress. Next time I play all those mobs will be back and I won’t be any stronger, or any better equipped, or any richer.

Now I get it. That’s what a lot of people LOVE about Guild Wars. For them, this is when it’s time to tweak out character builds so those fights are easier this time around. This is the SKILL involved in Guild Wars and is what makes the game so unique.

My problem is I dunno how to do that. I feel like, for my main character, I’m using all the skills that I have and that are worth using. And for my 6 heroes I’m frankly kind of overwhelmed. Mostly I dump most of their points into 1 specific attribute and 1 generic attribute (Expertise or the Energy one for mages that gives more mana) and then load up the skills associated with those attributes.

Studying the Wiki, trying new ways to arrange my skills and charging back into the fray to see how it turns out this time well.. it kind of feels like work to me. I just want to go out, kill stuff and get experience points and cool loot and get more powerful that way. I’m a simple guy. I play games for fun, not for challenge. My job is challenging…when I get home I kind of enjoy turning off the thinking cap and relaxing.

Lucky for me there’re 8,023 MMOs that let me go out and get experience points and cool loot and not think too much about it. I’m not faulting Guild Wars and for the people who love developing the perfect build, I’m really happy Guild Wars exists; those people don’t have many options.

But me, I’m just struggling. I need better gear and I’m not sure how to get it. I think my Ranger needs skills I haven’t found. He’s so dead dull to play at the moment. I want to get more powerful so I can slice through these mobs like a hot knife through butter so I can finish the endless quests these Asura want me to do, not replay the same zone over and over, coming away from it empty handed every time.

I just want my HOM points, darn it! And like I said at the start, that’s probably the single most unfair aspect of my relationship with Guild Wars. I’m not approaching it like a game now. I’m approaching it like a chore I have to get done before Guild Wars 2 comes out.

TGIF Gaming Wrap-up for 4/13/2012

Posted on by Nimgimli

Happy Friday the 13th!

Wow, I’ve had a crazy gaming week. Going to PAX really re-energized my gamer soul, as well as crumbling my will to resist new games. 🙂

Purchases This Week
I pre-ordered both Tera and Guild Wars 2 this week.
I pre-ordered Dragon’s Dogman for Xbox 360. Who will be my pawn!?
I bought Shoot Many Robots on XBLA.
Legend of Grimrock launched (I had it on pre-order).
I got a review copy of Anomaly – Warzone Earth on XBLA

Played This Week
Oof, where to start. Aside from the games I dipped into at PAX, I played Super Stardust HD on the Vita in the hotel room.

While at the show I got codes for a LOTRO mount and a DDO mini-pet; these prompted me to revisit both those games, playing about an hour of the first and two hours of the second.

I jumped into the Tera beta when I got home, got to about level 3, then the beta ended. Doh!

I also got codes for weapons in Shoot Many Robots so I bought that on XBLA (was planning to get it on PC…still might) and spent a couple hours playing that Monday night. For once in an Xbox game I sought out multiplayer matches and never managed to connect to one. Sad…it’s a really fun game.

Tuesday night I spent playing Anomaly and that, too, was a heck of a lot of fun.

Wednesday was about Grimrock. I was SO hyped for this game, and it didn’t disappoint. Loving it so far. I also tried out Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes, which hit open beta. I didn’t like that AT ALL (personal preference, not meant as a commentary on the quality of the game). Uninstalled that within an hour of installing it.

And Thursday Tribes: Ascend came out of beta. I played 3 really fun matches of Capture the Flag then had to quit before my heart burst from the constant adrenaline rush. I’m getting too old for this shit. 🙂 So I went back to Grimrock. Oh, and I logged into SW:TOR but felt kind of over-whelmed by the compulsion to tweak my UI and the need to re-spend skill point, so I quickly logged out. Did collect the pet Tauntaun I got from PAX though.

That was more gaming than I’d done in months. Lola Thunderpaws is pissed because our evening walks have been so short, and the house is a mess. I’ve moved catching up with RSS feeds to bedtime, but that means my novel reading progress has dropped to nil. Still, it was a damned fun week of gaming.

Not that I -touched- any of the games on my “Currently Playing” list. I guess I need a new list!

Plans For the Week to Come

Fluid. Tera open beta starts on Thursday for those of us who pre-ordered, and they say they aren’t wiping characters between open beta and launch, so for all intents and purposes the game is launching Thursday for me. I don’t expect Tera to be a game that holds my attention for more than a week or two but like I said, PAX eroded my will power. I’d had no intention of pre-ordering before I saw it on the show floor.

Until Thursday, definitely more Grimrock and I’d like to play more Tribes while I can still be semi-competitive (I figure the audience will get way better than me within a few weeks). I want to check out using a LOTRO soldier outside of skirmishes, and I was really enjoying DDO.

Seriously, I have way too many games to play. I think I’ll put all the names in a hat and just draw one out!

Bioware: No good deed goes unpunished

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yesterday Bioware announced that customers with a level 50 character will be getting a free month of access to SW:TOR.

In response a certain segment of gamers (a sub-section of those who play SWTOR and don’t have a level 50 character) got really angry. They’re pissed that Bioware values the level 50 owners over them.

I think Bioware’s mistake was wrapping this bribe (because let’s face it, this is a bribe) in a marketing angle. They called it a loyalty reward. I’m sure that’s not what it is. In fact, the title of this post is totally inaccurate because this free month isn’t a good deed at all. It’s an investment in SW:TOR’s future.

Here’s what I think is really happening:

Back at launch or even before launch, Bioware was talking up the story aspect of SW:TOR. Players wanted to know what happens once their character’s story was complete, and Bioware said they had a series of additional content planned to keep the stories going.

To the best of my knowledge, very little of this additional story content has materialized (I should note that I don’t have a level 50 character even though I’ve been playing since early access). I’m guessing the majority of the team has been working on getting version 1.2 out so the game has the basic functionality of other programs, like UI windows that you can move.

I’m betting that level 50 characters who aren’t interested in rolling alts are getting bored and leaving the game. Bioware needed to buy some time so they’re offering those players a free month to stick around while they aimed the team at delivering the next chunk of story content.

So I wonder what these angry customers would have thought if Bioware had said something like this:

——

To our level-capped players. We know we promised additional content to keep you engaged in our game, and we know we haven’t done a good job delivering that content. With Patch 1.2 out there we can now focus our efforts on extending your character’s story. This new content isn’t ready yet but it will be soon.

By way of apology, we are offering you 30 days of free game time in the hopes that you will stick around. We think you’ll find it worth the wait.

——

Would transparency have made a difference? I’m not sure. But by calling the free month a loyalty reward they definitely opened themselves up to very valid criticisms that customers who’ve been there since day 1 and have a gang of sub-50 alts are no less loyal, and in fact may be more loyal, than customers who joined in March and charged right up to level 50 on their single character.

Bioware’s logic must be “You haven’t hit 50, so you still have things to discover. These level 50 guys have seen it all so we need to bribe them to stick around.” but that isn’t playing well among gamers.

Tangential thought:

I wonder if we’re seeing the end of Beloved Bioware. Between the ending of Mass Effect 3 and SW:TOR in general, the developer seems to have gone from a company that can do no wrong to a company just like any other game developer: one that has both enthusiastic fans and vocal detractors.

Are MMOs the kiss of death? Blizzard was a beloved game developer before World of Warcraft came around. Now there’s definitely a loud Blizzard-hating group of gamers out there. Is Bioware going through that same transition?

The Secret World pre-orders: it’s all my fault.

Posted on by Nimgimli

I am what’s wrong with gaming today. At least, what’s wrong with MMO gaming.

As you’ve no doubt heard, Funcom opened up pre-orders for The Secret World today. To get a feel for how stoked I’ve been for The Secret World, here’s all the coverage I’ve had on the site: tag = The Secret World. (Spoiler: It’s 1 post showing a video.) I’ve also stated publicly that MMOs aren’t a good fit for me, and that I’m tired of subscription models that make me feel compelled to play in order to get my money’s worth.

The end result of all this? Of course I pre-ordered The Secret World this morning. I can’t help it. Curiosity about MMOs drives me. And I don’t even try to fool myself that this will be The One anymore. I’m sure I’ll play TSW for 2-3 weeks and then move on.

So why Pre-Order? Because I’m a sheep in sheep’s clothing. Oooo, I get to start 4 days early! Maybe. If I pre-ordered early enough. In those 4 days I’ll probably manage 2-3 hours of gametime! And I get to reserve a name! If I could think of one I felt like reserving. And play in beta weekends…though I’ve sworn off betas.

Essentially all Funcom had to do is throw up a bullet-pointed list of Perks and they had me. I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth. And in being so weak-willed I just encourage game companies to keep dangling silly freebies in order to entice players to pre-order.

So I apologize to the gaming community for encouraging this type of behavior.

Now let’s start the griping portion of this blog post!

Pre-ordering is supposed to get you a name reservation. I signed up, gave ’em my credit-card info, got my “Thank you for pre-ordering” email but when I click the link to reserve my name I’m told I don’t have any Name Reservation ‘slots’. Hmm. And I have a big alert that says “You have a pending payment. Click here to complete payment” but when I click the link I just loop back to the same page with no options. So maybe I just need to be patient and wait for that payment to go through. I’m not irate about this, but I am a bit confused. [Update: OK just checked again and I had my name reservation slot, so scratch this one.]

Pre-ordering was supposed to get you 1 of 3 combat pets: A Doberman, a wolf, or a kitty cat. The wolf is super-awesome, the Doberman is pretty cool, and the cat is, well, a kitty cat. After I signed up my account page shows, under Your Products, “The Secret World – Preorder (Cat).” So what does that mean? I sure didn’t pick the cute little kitty. Is it a random selection? Is “Cat” just a placeholder and I’ll be able to pick later? Not at all clear. If I’m stuck with that cat I’ll be annoyed. I mean, I like cats and all, but I like ’em curled up in my lap quietly purring, not out doing battle with me. That just seems silly.

Last up, during the process of handing over $50 to play the game, you’re already getting DLC marketing prompts thrown at you. In addition to that $50 for the pre-order you can spend $15 (a social pet, a set of weapons, and a leather jacket), $60 (30 extra days of gametime, and additional character slot, an additional name reservation, a high-end talisman for each new character, 10 experience potions and a 10% discount on all social clothing purchases) or $200 (everything in the $60 bundle plus a lifetime subscription and an exclusive leather jacket) more in order to get various bundles of extra stuff. You can also buy additional character slots and name reservations for $9.99 each.

[In days of yore I’d always go for Lifetime Subs because they (illogically) remove that pressure to get my money’s worth out of a subscription gaming experience, but these days I just assume every MMO will go F2P within a few years of launch so Lifetime subs no longer seem viable to me. Anyone else agree?]

I have to say that I found all these offers a bit off-putting. All I could think was that if they’re pitching all this stuff now, by the time I get in the game I’m going to be smothered under all kinds of RMT offers. Asking me to spend real cash is fine (well, acceptable at least) in a F2P game, but if I’m paying a subscription I don’t want to see a bunch of ads for additional cost items.

All in all, I came out of the pre-order experience thinking “Hmmm, maybe that was all a big mistake.” but I’ve certainly wasted more than $50 on other games I never played much (~waves at SSX~), so I’ll stick it out. But come launch, Funcom better bring their A game if they want to convert me into a fan.

BrowserQuest is a simple little time waster

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Mozilla folks, of all people, have launched a simple little multiplayer ‘RPG’ (mostly you fight and get better gear…no stats or levels or anything) called BrowserQuest. Bookmark it for one of those times when you’re sitting in front of your computer bored and want something to occupy your time for 10 minutes. Or two hours. Depends on how compulsive you are.

They created it as a way to show off how awesome HTML5 is. But aside from some guards with the HTML5 emblem on your shields, you’d never know it.

In Town looking for rats to kill:

And out into the wilds!