The Cost of Per-Hero Games

The Marvel Heroes "free to play MMO Action-RPG" is rolling out pre-launch prepurchase offers that include a $200 "Ultimate Pack" for access to all heroes and costumes announced for launch.  Traditional MMO's with a premium package this expensive have typically had to throw in a lifetime subscription. In the case of Marvel, the pack is very clear that it does not get you anything beyond the heroes announced for launch (some of which have since been delayed but will be included in the pack when they are completed).  Instead, they are marketing the $200 as a discounted price - "a $750 value" compared to what it would cost to buy the characters individually.

The sub-$10 character
Looking at Marvel Heroes' cheaper pre-launch packs, individual heroes are bundled with some costumes and exp potions for $20, but my guess is that you will be able to get your characters for less than the psychologically significant $10 price point to encourage impulse purchases post-launch.  There seems to be broad consensus around this type of price point across a variety of other games in a variety of genres.  A few examples:

• Champions in the MOBA League of Legends
• Mechs in the mech-based FPS Mechwarrior Online
• Heroes in the Warhammer Online Spin-off MOBA Wrath of Heroes
• Most monster player classes in LOTRO (free to those who take the optional subscription)
• Premade PVP "legends" characters in DCUO
• The $9 action figures that grant access to DLC characters in the popular Skylanders console game series

We live in an era of consumer objections to cash stores in MMORPG's and DLC's in console games.  In this context, it's remarkable how much customer acceptance there appears to be around business models in which companies sell access to individual pre-made characters for $5-10, even when this bumps the cost for access to the entire character roster into the hundreds of dollars. 

What you get for the money
A big part of the secret may be that you are getting something comparatively tangible for your money.  If you are playing the Marvel MMO then maybe it is worth $10 per head for you to pick up all of the Avengers who appeared in the movie.  Even the cosmetic costumes are potentially meaningful when you look at long-standing characters who have been depicted in dramatically different art styles over the decades.  Like DDO's paid content packs, it feels more rewarding to pay something to get something, compared to the model in various other games that charge players to remove restrictions that are added to make non-subscribers want to pay. 

This particular model isn't broadly transferable to traditional MMO's because our genre has focused more on vertical progression using a single character.  Games like Marvel Heroes that were designed from the ground up to take advantage of non-subscription payment methods also have a big advantage over MMO's that were designed for a subscription, only to be revamped when the market refused to tolerate that model. 

Even so, I find the concept vaguely compelling and perhaps even promising.  Most of the evidence from the last few years calls into question whether the prices the market is willing to pay are sufficient to support the development of the traditional MMO content model.  Meanwhile, here is an alternative in which studios are putting out regular, sustainable updates that customers are actually happy to pay for.  It's certainly not perfect, but it beats going out of business. 

New Year's Resolutions for 2013

My annual New Year's Resolution post is usually lengthy but not that insightful - half of the items are short term goals that get done soon afterwards and the other half are more pie-in-the sky things that don't happen at all.  My year for 2012 can be summarized with two lines of facts:

• Prior to October: Level capped characters in seven different MMO's simultaneously, posting on the blog every 2-3 days (11-18 posts/month)
• Post-October: Level capped characters remain in only three MMO's due to expansions I have yet to catch up to, posting to the blog once or twice per week, +1 infant

I'm happy with this turn of events, but it does put realistic constraints on what I can aspire to in-game during the coming year.  A few resolutions, which are more qualitative than specific:

Work on what I have

2012 wasn't all bad when it came to trying new things.  I started and capped characters in STO and SWTOR, along with some very brief (often one-evening) visits to Aion, Tera, EQ1, and TSW.  That said, it was a tough year to carve out time for anything new, and that does not figure to change in 2013.

I currently have what I need (access and game time as appropriate) for content I have yet to use in WoW, LOTRO, DCUO, TSW, DDO, STO, and SWTOR.  I don't expect any of these titles to fold in 2013, but it really makes more sense to focus on my backlog at this point.  I'm fine with my budget where it currently sits, but it's pointless to collect more stuff that I don't have time to play - the best sale price is still a waste if I don't use the content.  

Learn when NOT to beat the business model

While my time is scarce, I do get enjoyment out of snagging a good bargain.  Sometimes, when the payoff is high enough, it can make sense to grind in-game to "beat the business model".  

For instance, according to SWTOR Spy's Cartel calculator, I have unlocked more than 10,000 Cartel Coins' worth of stuff by purchasing the relevant unlocks on the GTN for in-game credits.  This would have cost me $80 in the cash shop, while species and inventory unlocks I picked up for alts during my last month of subscription time could potentially have cost another $40.  I did spend a fair amount of extra time in game sending my companions on slicing missions and farming daily quests (which also awarded several high end pieces of gear for my main) to pay for all of these unlocks, but this was definitely a major payoff for my time.  

Even so, cash shops are a reality of the market today, and I should really make better use of them.  If an unlock is purely cosmetic, it makes sense to do without or set it aside as a reward for earning the credits in game.  When it comes to exp potions and other things that affect the rate of advancement, it's worth asking whether the game is worth playing if it's worth paying to play it less.  However, when an unlock actually impacts quality of life - e.g. not being able to harvest materials I encounter in the world because one of my crewskill slots is locked - it really makes more sense to pay a couple dollars and move on.  

Focus on my perspective

This blog will celebrate its 1000th post early next year and its fifth birthday in the spring.  While limited time has been the most immediate cause for my current drop in posts, the results are somewhat positive. 

I don't view reporting the news as one of this blog's strengths.  I will post immediate reactions sometimes, especially if I have an opinion I'm not seeing from other folks, but often the "breaking news" of the MMO world does not even come with enough detail to support in-depth analysis.  Because I know that most of my posts will not be timely, I'm free to spend most of my limited time working on more of the big picture, such as trends that tie recent developments into past experiences.  

I intentionally don't have a set format or schedule for the blog, because this is a hobby and I prefer flexibility to write what I want.  That the schedule happens to support the kind of posts that I like to write is a happy coincidence.

Thanks to all of my readers, best wishes, and a happy new year!  

2012 MMO Expenditures

I've been keeping detailed logs of my MMO spending for roughly two years now, and I elected to publish them for the first time last year.  My experience probably isn't typical, as I spent a total of $275 on eight different MMO's in 2012, where most people probably stick to a smaller number of games.  That said, two broad observations:

• Game time for specific two subscription titles - WoW and SWTOR (well, it was) - represents about half of my total ($125, counting the first $15 of the SWTOR box cost as payment for the first 30 days).  This number is higher than it could have been due to the annual pass.  Even so, my spending on these two games EACH nearly doubles the next highest item on my ledger.  
• Setting aside those two subscription payments (WoW's was technically discounted), I did not pay full price for anything that I purchased this year - I'd estimate that I paid about half of the asking price overall.  Some of these savings come from retailers looking to dump stock, but many of them were provided directly from the publishers.  It's not accurate to look at all of this as lost revenue for the studios - some of the lower priority titles would not have made the cut at full price.  Even so, sales are a reality of the business, and are going to be a factor for anyone looking to base their business model primarily on one-time buy-to-play transactions.  As the number of games I play increases, it is easier and easier to wait for the sale before pulling the trigger, especially if there is any reason to be concerned about quality/polish.  

And now for the full ledger.  My accounting practice is to bill purchases of content and cash store currency in the year they were paid for, but to bill game time in the year in which it is actually used.  Titles are listed in chronological order.

World of Warcraft: $80 (+$60?) (+$35 to 2013)
I wrote an annual pass post-mortem when the year of game time I purchased through that promotion lapsed.  The short form is that I don't regret the approximately $80 for ten months of game time that I used in 2012, but the $60 Diablo III purchase (which I'm not counting against my MMO budget because it isn't an MMO) that I made in order to get that deal was a bit of a fail.

One big difference between this and past expansion cycles was the early availability of holiday discounts on the brand new expansion.  Through holiday sales and promos, I was able to snag the Pandaria box and a 6o day time card with which to play it for $35. (I have yet to use these things, so I'm counting them for next year.)

Rift: $10.72
As a brief recap, I had paid for the box at launch last year, ended the included month at level 36 or so, and leveled the rest of the way to the game's cap using Trion's frequent free retrial weekends.  Just when I was thinking of coming back for a month, I ran into a firesale on game time cards - 90 days for less than a single month.  Perhaps they were afraid they'd be stuck with unsold inventory if the game went free to play?  In principle, I still have some time left, though I'd have to purchase the expansion - even if I did want to re-roll, I'd probably want access to the new souls.

Star Trek Online: $11.40
I went foraging for an old retail box of this game to snag one month's subscription time.  This is useful because you get to keep any additional storage granted by being a subscriber at each rank (10 levels) tier.  I also spent $5 on the smallest quantity of Cryptic points so I could purchase an early increase to my duty officer cap.

SWTOR: $70
I waited until patch 1.2, which was widely viewed as the patch that was going to finish all of the odds and ends that didn't get done in time for release.  As a reward for my patience, I got the account key direct from EA for $40 instead of the list price of $60.  (I also somehow qualified for the "loyalty" bonus minipet that was granted to current subscribers for sticking with the game during the early months, despite having shown up that week.)  I subbed up for an additional month to get my first character to the level cap, and subbed up again just prior to the free to play relaunch in order to take advantage of some of the grandfathered perks former subscribers get.

EQ2 AND DCUO: $20
I don't remember exactly why I chose to throw $20 at a station cash sale sometime around April/May.  Through a series of sales so aggressive that they forced all content and game time out of SOE's in-game stores for good, I ended up turning that $20 into the $40 Age of Discovery expansion and 6 months of subscription time in EQ2 (I forget the exact discount you get for six month subs, probably $75ish).

(I also snagged the three DCUO DLC packs I did not already own at the time of the "we are taking DLC out of the cash store because our marketing people have broken the payment model" final sale in August, but I think that was from the Station Cash leftover from last year.)

Setting aside the absurdity of how long it took SOE to notice this was going on, I'll be the first to admit that the status quo could not continue.  EQ2 may also have finally tweaked its payment model to the point where paying on a non-subscription basis is worthwhile.  That said, some of EQ2's recent expansions have been so thin that there really wasn't much more than a month's worth of entertainment that a solo player could carve out of them.  It's hard to justify $50-60 for an expansion box plus either subscription time or unlocks if I'm going to get so little time out of them compared to all the other titles on this list - no wonder Smedley wants to get out of the content creation business.

LOTRO: $43
I paid $8 for a small Turbine Point bundle to snag the barter wallet upgrade.  It is irritating that Turbine is so heavily focused on charging for fixes to longstanding design issues (in this case, their addiction to non-stacking character-bound token rewards), and I probably could have earned the Turbine points in game, but I decided solving this problem was worth the $8.

Then Turbine decided that the first expansion to player inventory since 2007 would be exclusive to the $70 Rohan expansion bundle for several months.  Fortunately, Turbine can be counted on to discount expansions aggressively, so I just waited a few weeks and got the bags and whistles edition for 50% off, i.e. less than what people paid for the regular edition at launch.  This bundle also included a fair number of Turbine points, which I will no doubt need to spend on unlocking basic UI improvements over the next year.

DDO: $25
Speaking of Turbine expansion discounts, I also snagged the DDO expansion for 50% off through a Steam sale.  Apparently I was lacking in patience, as Turbine slashed the price further down to 75% off for Black Friday.  I hadn't spent any real world money on this game since mid-2010 (albeit only playing the game sporadically during that window), I suppose a few extra bucks isn't the end of the world.

One could argue whether I actually needed this expansion in the first place, as I do not have any high level characters.  The one thing that I have gotten a fair amount of use out of is one of the bonus throw-ins: a greater tome of learning.  I generally don't favor paying for experience boosts, but this particular bonus actually changes the way that you play the game by adding a hefty bonus to each quest the first time you complete it (reset if you true reincarnate).  This effectively removes the requirement to repeat midlevel content for exp.  I'm happy to repeat DDO's content eventually, but I'd rather not do it immediately, and now I don't have to.

The Secret World: $15
I was poised to skip every single MMO that launched in 2012 until a last minute switch in payment model, followed by an Amazon sale offering the newly buy-to-play title for $15, made TSW too intriguing to pass up.  I had initially passed on this title as much due to my crowded schedule and a few rough edges during my very brief visit to the beta as to anything on the game's merits (such as its subscription model).

The game-changer with the buy-to-play switch is not the amount of money, but rather the amount of time I would need to invest immediately to determine whether the product is worth future subscription payments.  I've spent a few hours with the game so far and it does show some promise, especially as a secondary title.  I can't see how my one-time payment suddenly props up the game's finances, but I suppose it couldn't hurt?

Grand Total: $275 (not counting DIII)
Subtotal for Content/Currency Purchases: $123 (includes $25 of the $40 SWTOR box price)
Subtotal for Game Time: $152

Re-Tiering DCUO

DCUO rolled out a major revamp of content tiers in this week's patch.  Four tiers' worth of currency tokens were condensed into one.  Strict "combat rating" (think gearscore) requirements remain on all endgame content, but there has been some redistribution of the content amongst several tiers - in some cases adding additional content to ensure that each tier is not too sparse.

For example, the game previously featured six "challenge" modes that upgrade leveling instances to level 30, along with two bonus challenges that were new content added in patches and offer increased difficulty.  This content could help you get your introductory item level 46 tier set, but you'd be looking at a long grind to get gear that still won't get you into most endgame content - including the solo content from the game's second DLC pack.  Meanwhile, once you'd upgraded your gear beyond this level, there was no reason to ever return.

With the revamp, all content awards the one type of currency, with increased awards as you hit the higher tiers.  The existing challenges were mostly placed on the first difficulty tier, while two additional tiers are filled out using the hardest of the old challenges and a handful of new challenges (based on leveling content that wasn't previously available as level 30 challenges).  There is also a once weekly award for clearing a tier one challenge. 

Five of the classic challenges sit in tier 1, while tier 2 is populated with the sixth classic challenge, the two patch challenges, and one new upgrade.  Four more new challenges occupy the third tier.  I elected to run the Meta wing for the weekly bonus, because you can beat Dr. Psycho to death relatively easily with a giant dumpster thing.

There are some problems with the progression - for instance, the zergable outdoor quests in South Gotham (all outdoor quests in DCUO are public quests) award five marks each (20 per day - enough for a T1 piece every other day), which is far faster than what you can get doing challenges.  These dailies were always a bit out of progression order, but it's more noticeable now that the currencies are fully interchangeable.  Also, unless I misunderstand, the higher tier gear requires more currency than the cap allows non-subscribers to carry unless you pay real money to make a one-time withdrawal from escrow. 

That aside, the new system definitely flattens and accelerates the progress curve somewhat.  I picked up three pieces of T1 gear (and one random ilvl 53 drop) in one evening by cashing in all my old marks and doing one round of daily quests.  Perhaps I will finally get enough gear to actually see most of the content I paid for? 

Aside: players display the last item appearance you collected unless you specify otherwise.  My character logged on wearing this atrocity of an outfit - you may or may not be able to see the Batman logo boxer shorts. 

What I've Been Working On: DCUO

DCUO gets the next slot in my Labor Day round-up in recognition of other news in comic MMORPG's.   I picked up all of the remaining DLC's when I was dumping my now generally useless Station Cash.  As a result, I now own the new Captain America shield weaponset for all characters, along with the Green/Yellow Lantern and the Earth powersets (if I make new characters), along with a few additional chunks of content. 

One of the newer additions - I can't tell if this required DLC or not - are soloable daily quests that award two of the tier two dungeon tokens daily.  On the plus side, this can help grind out the tokens needed to get the gear required to access some of the content I already owned - on the downside, this doesn't make the daily quest grind any less of a daily quest grind.  I'm keeping an open mind, but overall I'm not spending much time in game.

If you'd told me that one superhero MMO had abruptly announced plans to close today, I would have guessed DCUO over City of Heroes/Villians.  SOE is not NCsoft, but DCUO never really took off and is shackled with the costs of a licensed IP - the only significant scenario in which SOE has been forced to pull the plug on MMORPG's.  By contrast, Paragon Studios' offering was an original IP that recently went free to play, and had an eight and a half year history behind it.  I guess we finally have hard evidence that a business model change is not guaranteed to save every MMO that makes the attempt. 

Aggressive Marketing Vs. Content and Convenience

No Content For Station Cash
As Wilhelm's analysis notes, SOE is getting out of the business of allowing Station Cash to pay for anything that was previously worth paying for under the old subscription model - no expansions or other content and no subscription fees.   They are fully entitled to do this.  Indeed, it's puzzling that they are just now noticing that Station Cash sales were reducing the cost of their product - I'm pretty sure that February 2010's Sentinel's Fate expansion was available for Station Cash (after the one-week retail exclusive window).  As Bhagpuss notes, they even managed to announce it properly and in advance.  (On the downside, they just learned that lesson the hard way, but at least they learned it rather than repeat it.)

The last time I took part in a triple Station Cash sale, sometime around April, I was on the fence about whether to purchase $15 or $20 worth of credit.  I elected the latter, rather than fund the stuff I wanted to purchase out of my existing balance - I figured that I would likely use the extra SC to pay for content or game time in either EQ2 or DCUO.

Having learned that this month is my last chance to spend the SC on content, I elected to call the $5 a relatively cheap reminder of what happens when you purchase more virtual currency than you have immediate plans to spend.  I cut my losses and grabbed three DCUO DLC packs that I may not ever use, rather than continue to hold a SC balance that increasingly cannot be used to buy anything that I want.

Aggressive Marketing
As Spinks kindly noticed, just last week I was rambling about whether the DLC model for MMO's is actually sustainable.  I'll be the first to concede that paying SOE $20 for all of the paid content they added to both of the two SOE games I played over the course of a year certainly does not fall into the sustainable category.  That said, I'd have more sympathy for their desire to receive an honest day's pay for an honest day's work if it weren't for their own self-inflicted and self-described "aggressive" marketing practices.

The problem is that the cost of Station Cash item can vary by more than six-fold if you stack a triple station cash promotion with a 50% off sale and a Walmart-exclusive point card bonus.  Players did not create that situation, and you don't see SOE similarly crying about the need to "protect the revenue they need to offset costs" of the mounts and vanity items they will continue to offer in the SC store for nominal prices that exceed $10 per item per character.

To preserve this "aggressive" regime, they are cutting off the ability to pay with store-bought cards.  To my knowledge, EQ2's most recent expansion was not offered in retail stores (presumably due to the retail cut), so SC was one of the last avenues available for those who don't want to provide a company that got hacked last year with their credit cards.  They're also removing a mechanism for price discrimination by players like myself who don't play enough to justify $220 annually in expansion and subscription fees but who would otherwise be happy to support the product.  Given how thin this year's content is, I'll be hard pressed to justify yet another $40 expansion box - potentially the third in 20 months - this fall if I have to pay full price.

P.S. In a mostly unrelated story, Bioware's single player DLC division has some commentary on how successful the model is  - the comments have a distinct feel that people who don't like it are out of luck because every single player game will be diverting content from the release game to paid DLC within five years. 

The Free Side of the Force

In February, EA announced that SWTOR had sold 2+ million copies and retained 1.7 million subscribers.  Executives claimed that 500,000 subscribers was the break-even point, and that "At a million, we'd be making a profit but nothing worth writing home about".

In May, they announced that the number was down to 1.3 million.  This was followed by two rounds of layoffs - the first rumored to be 40% of the staff - and mergers of 90% of the game's servers.

On today's conference call, EA described the numbers as below 1 million but "well north of" the 500,000 subscriber break-even point.   It's not clear whether any writing home took place, but they did end the lengthy and unusually public discussion of the game's business model by announcing that it will go free to play sometime around November. 

The Path to the Free Side
Just from the public and not especially hard numbers, we now know that the game has failed to retain over half of its customers and has almost certainly set an all-time record for fastest MMO to lose a million customers (in fairness, partially due to how few games have sold a million copy).  If you make up numbers of 2.1 million total copies sold and 700K current subscribers - which are completely fake but plausible given what we've been told - you're looking at more like two thirds attrition within six months. 

In response, they will be converting the game to a payment model that the studio heads had previously said would not support the scope of their product. Let's be clear, the studio didn't go bankrupt and leave the state of Rhode Island on the hook for a nine-digit bill.  Setting aside the connotations of the word "failure", reasonable people can agree that this was not the outcome that EA had in mind when they ponied up a nine-digit sum of money to have this game made. 

As I wrote last week, the game may be a victim of its times.  Non-subscription payment models are lowering the cost of switching games and may be diminishing the appeal of the repetitive mechanics that previously sustained subscriptions.  It's certainly possible that large numbers of copies were sold to non-MMO players - fans of Star Wars and/or Bioware's single player efforts - who were predisposed against paying a monthly fee.  Even so, the numbers EA cited today are staggering.  If 40% of players who quit cited the subscription on the survey and over a million players have quit, you're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of votes specifically against the subscription. 

(If memory serves, you're required to complete the survey in order to cancel your subscription, obviously the impact of the number would be greatly reduced if I'm wrong and this step is optional.)

Outlook
The details are sparse, but the forthcoming SWTOR free to play model appears to be the industry standard for F2P conversions not owned by Turbine - no fees for content or the level cap, with restrictions on quality of life for non-subscribers (races, currencies, etc) and possibly a complete lock-out from endgame group content.  If the game's problem was that players were finishing the game's single player story and then quitting, I fail to see how a payment model that does not charge until players have completed the single player story is going to work out for them. 

While I personally will most likely pay less for SWTOR under the new model, I'm not celebrating.  SWTOR is a quality product, albeit one that may have been especially ill-suited for the subscription model.  The quality and direction of the game's future development, with the reduced staff and revised business model, are likely to suffer. 

More generally, if you are a subscription MMO that has been around for at least a year and you are not named WoW, Eve, Rift, or possibly Final Fantasy (the jury remains out on XIV after it launched so poorly that Square had to decline to charge for an entire year), you're either trying to retrofit a new payment model or abandoned in maintenance mode.  I get that there is more to the current MMO scene than the catastrophes of Copernicus and Prime and the disappointments like SWTOR and DCUO.  Even so, as someone who has very much enjoyed and benefited from playing in an era of multiple high profile MMO's, I can't say that I'm liking the way things are going.

Musings At The Six-Fold Cap

In my post about re-acquiring the level cap in LOTRO, I failed to mention a minor milestone; I now have eight current max-level characters in six separate MMO's.  These are:

WoW: Greenwiz (85 Gnome Mage) and Greenraven (85 Tauren Warrior)
LOTRO: Allarond (75 Human Champion)
Rift: Telhamat (50 High Elf Cleric)
DCUO: Green Armadillo (Level 30 Sorcery Hero)
Star Trek Online: Green Armadillo (50 Federation Engineering) and Narilya (50 KDF Tactical)
SWTOR: Aldabaran (50 Cyborg Trooper)

Allarond just graduated from a shorter list of characters who had previously been max level prior to some previous cap increase.  The folks remaining on that list are:
EQ2: Lyriana (90 Fae Dirge - current cap is 92, increased in April 2012)
WoW: Greenhammer (70 Human Paladin, capped during TBC) and Cheerydeth (80 Gnome Death Knight, wiped at the end of the Wrath beta in 2008, but I count her for posterity's sake)

What I did mention was that I expect this achievement to be temporary.  LOTRO and WoW both have expansions out in September, Rift has an expansion slated for "fall", SWTOR plans to increase its cap in a patch "this year", and EQ2 (assuming I get back to the cap in the first place) will almost certainly have another expansion this year (though it is unknown whether the cap will rise again).  I'm half tempted to focus on EQ2 solely because it may be my last chance to claim seven different MMO's with capped characters for a while to come. 

I don't know that there's anything bad about my current plight - indeed, it's probably for the best that games are adding new content.  If anything, there may be upsides to having the cap increase more frequently but by smaller numbers of levels (2-5); some games have struggled to generate enough leveling content for larger increases, and many have suffered to come up with any significant changes in the way characters play at higher levels.  That said, yet another reason why I'm struggling to find time to try new games (though I'm certainly tempted).

A few random superlatives:

• Most time spent in groups while leveling: Rift, courtesy of public groups, and later an instance finder - I even healed
• Least time spent in group while leveling: SWTOR and STO - as far as I can recall, none of my capped characters in either game has ever joined a group for any reason (my low level sith warrior alt once took a blind invite from someone who needed a second warm body to collect a datacron).  
• Most time in endgame groups: hands down WoW  - worth noting that EQ2 is the only other MMO where I've spent significant amounts of time in endgame group content
• Most time in PVP: Other than a few weeks playing a LOTRO Warg back in 2007, WoW is probably the only entrant here.  
• Favorite Crafting: EQ2, best crafting-related content
• Favorite minigame/system not already named above: STO Duty Officers
• Favorite Story: LOTRO, they have an unfair advantage in the license, but they have executed well given the opportunity
• Least Memorable Lore: Rift.  Unfair I suppose since the competition is Azeroth, Norrath, and a bunch of licensed IP's, but nothing about Telara sticks out in my mind
• Best Races: I'm still inclined to tip the hat to EQ2 here with its selection of scaly and furry races, but I have to admit that WoW is doing about as well these days with the non-Tolkien races.  LOTRO has an excuse, but what does everyone else have to say for themselves?
• Lowest Mob Life Expectancy: WoW - even con mobs for your typical kill ten quest are lucky to survive for ten seconds each.  It's probably not a coincidence that WoW is the only game where I have a pure ranged character for a main - I'm willing to kite on special occasions, but I find it tedious if that's what I'm doing every mob.

In an unrelated story, MMOGC has a post up today along similar lines.

Voting with Non-Fantasy Feet?

I would not characterize myself as explicitly "burned-out" or tired of the fantasy MMO.  That said, I belatedly noticed an interesting fact in what I've been up to of late.  Since DC Universe Online went Free to Play in November, I have capped characters in three non-fantasy settings - DCUO, Star Trek Online, and SWTOR.  

In fairness, I've also spent some quality time in fantasy settings as well - I cleared the patch content of Cataclysm, I picked up half of the levels I was missing in LOTRO, and I finally capped out my Rift character.  I'm also not planning to jump on The Secret World, which is the newest non-fantasy launch.  That said, perhaps there is a trend here that I wasn't paying attention to? 

Canada Day Resolutions For 2012

Another half year has gone by, and Canada's national holiday remains well positioned for a mid-year look at my New Year's Resolutions.  Let's see how things have gone.

WoW (Pre-Pandaria)

• Complete quests of Cataclysm: I'm still not finished with Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, or Firelands on my main - I tend to work on dailies first, and there are enough dailies that I haven't gotten around to these.
• Finish out armor set from 4.3 heroics
• Use the raid finder to kill Deathwing
• Cap out TBC-era dungeon reputations: Most of these rep's stalled out at Revered when the content was new.  Two expansions later, these heroics are quick and easy rep farming.

These have gone remarkable as predicted.  As of now, I have completed the quests of Hyjal and Twilight Highlands, I have beaten the raid finder, and five-man dungeons hold no more loot for me.  I have not yet completed the Firelands storyline, primarily because it's gated by daily quests.  I also have a way to go with both Therazane and Wildhammer factions.  Overall, if the sun sets on the Cataclysm era, I won't have many regrets in terms of goals.

Pandaria, on the other hand, seems poised to arrive no earlier than late August and possibly as late as October, with Blizzard's announcement that the expansion cinematic will be unveiled on August 16th.  Not exactly what I was hoping to hear, though I suppose I should have known better to hope that Blizzard could manage an expansion in a "mere" 20 months. Meanwhile, I suppose I might as well go on the record now and predict that the 5.0 PTR will hit within a few days of the 28 August Guild Wars 2 launch, since that's how Blizzard always does it. 


LOTRO

• Reach the new level cap on my main (currently 67 of 75)
• Don't feel obliged to "save" content for future level cap increases

LOTRO is an odd duck out this year.  I'm currently at level 70, halfway though the new levels for the Isengard expansion even though I'm only just barely into its content.  I would really like to finish the remaining content before the next expansion so that I'm not once again forced to choose between skipping high quality content and outleveling the new stuff.   Unfortunately, LOTRO never quite seems to make it to the top of my plate.  I plan to work on this one sometime over the summer.


Rift

• Finally reach the level cap
• Investigate the endgame

I did reach the level cap, but I continue to find the game's solo content (and especially the dailies) underwhelming.  The lore has failed to make any impression on me, and solo combat feels like it drags out - probably intentional so that the second and further players in a leveling group actually have something to do.  As an aside, I'd rate this game as probably the best out there if you're spending most of your time in a group (small or raid) of folks you know, but unfortunately that's not me.

I'd say that the monthly fee is what is holding me back, but I've actually got a time card in my back pocket and I haven't even been tempted to use it.  Perhaps with the new expansion?

EQ2

• Enjoy world events on my main without having to subscribe
• Try to complete current dungeon content
• Betray to the evil side to see content, collect houses, perhaps try the Troubadour

This entire heading was somewhat blindsided by the surprise decision to raise the level cap in April's game update.  As far as I can tell, this is the new content that wasn't ready in time to be included in the "optional" expansion last fall - it feels quite a bit like it was balanced for players who have access to "optional" mercenaries.  Fortunately, I was able to abuse the triple station cash + SC store sale loophole to pick up the expansion and six months worth of game time (a loophole they have finally closed, albeit with typical poor communication) for $20.  Sometime between now and November I'd like to reach the new cap and also betray over to the evil side to test drive troubadour (probably betraying back to good and Dirge before the gold time runs out). 


DCUO

• Gear my main up for DLC content
• Work on one or more alts to see the other storylines

After hitting the level cap, this game has largely fallen off my plate.  The focus of the game is grinding group content for gear, and, unlike most MMO's, SOE has thus far stuck with strict tiering requirements.  New DLC content continues to strictly require gear from the old instances - even the solo content in the DLC I paid for can't be accessed without grinding gear in PUGs that frankly don't want players like myself in their groups.  Oh well, at least I can spend my SC in SOE's other offerings.  

SWTOR

• Play one or more storylines

So far, so good, Trooper story complete, Sith Warrior in progress. I will almost certainly do the Agent story next, since that's a well-regarded plot that covers an additional class buff archetype, allows the Chiss race, and would also let me try a class that can heal.  I could hypothetically chart a course through all eight class stories, but I'm not inclined to go quickly, with new legacy options potentially opening up over time.

Star Trek Online

• "By the time the dust settles, there will probably be at least a dozen major MMO's I haven't played that originally launched as subscription games - I could literally try a different one every month for 2012."

I'm nowhere near a dozen, but I have one in Star Trek Online. Ironically, the main reason why I tried it when I did was because of an anniversary promo for an Odyssey-class cruiser that I eventually cashed in and christened the U.S. Faydwer.  I'm definitely spending much less time in game now, but there were enough unique things about this game that I'm glad I took the time to try it out.

Other MMO's
DDO is perennially in this category, because I'm still sitting just shy of level 8 on my highest level character.  Everyone gets a free respec as part of the new expansion, but there are also a fair number of things that got blown up - changes to hit and spell mechanics, with more changes to the entire enhancement system yet to come.  DDO is very unforgiving when it comes to respecs - for the most part they are cash store only - so I'm inclined to wait and see what happens with the enhancement revamp before I mess with any characters, new or old.

I've also spent about an evening each in Aion, EQ1, and the Secret World Beta.  I haven't really played Runes of Magic, in which I have a mid-level character and which now offers a new race with new classes.  I will probably try Mechwarrior Online when it goes live for the free-to-play masses. Vanguard is going free to play, though I didn't exactly stick with it when I paid for access last year. 

Beyond all of that, I hesitate to predict what other MMO's I may or may not try over the year.  I have a fair number of clients for free to play games that I have yet to try installed on my computer.  I'm not chomping at the bit to be first in line for either Secret World or Guild Wars 2.  The bottom line continues to be that any new game is really going to have to fight for more than a one night trial on my current schedule.

PS3
So far, I've finished off Assassin's Creed II, Arkham City (though I enjoyed this enough to try it again on the higher "new game plus" difficulty, which allows use of all the bat-gadgets from the beginning), and a chunk of the Tomb Raider trilogy.  The push for Uncharted 3... did not end so well.  Other games on my playlist include Infamous 2, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, followed by Revelations (and eventually followed by ACIII), and perhaps FFXIII-2.

PC Building
I did indeed build my first desktop gaming PC this winter.   Overall, it's been a pretty big success so far.  I am still running with an old graphics card salvaged from my old desktop, primarily because it doesn't seem to have any problems with any of the games I'm playing.  I'm in wait-and-see mode on the nVidia GTX 660/660Ti, which will supposedly blow the current mid-range cards out of the water - or at least drive their prices down dramatically, such that I could snag an upper-mid-range card.  I'd be in more of a hurry on this front except that I just am not finding that I need the increased performance on any games that I play. 

The Blog
I published 84 posts in the first half of the year, which continues a bit of a downward trend.  I haven't hit 15 posts in a month since February.  Part of that trend may be that I stuck with both STO and SWTOR beyond the points in either game where I have significant new things to say about them on a near-daily basis.  Part of it is longer posts like this one.  And part is life - a trend that I don't expect to change (in fact, quite the contrary).

In any case, thank you for reading, happy Canada Day to our neighbors in the True North, Strong and Free, and here's to the rest of the year!

The Tough 2012 Schedule Continues

I hadn't really planned on spending the better part of two months working on the level cap in Star Trek Online, which has probably another month or so left of content in the game between missions on my Federation and Klingon characters.  This detour, marking the fifth MMO where I have a current level capped character - only drives home a point about how crowded the MMO marketplace is these days.

• In LOTRO, I'm still working on Enedwaith, the pre-expansion content prior to the Isengard expansion.  Remaining in front of me are the entire Isengard expansion (which I already own access to) and the newly released pre-expansion content for this fall's Rohan expansion (which I would have to purchase with Turbine Points).  I hate to skip content in this game given that it's both high quality and relatively limited in quantity compared to other games.  That said, I'm already way over-level for Isengard as a result (currently 68 and climbing).  I'd say that finishing all of this content before Rohan hits is a top priority so that I can do the next expansion at the correct level. 
  
• EQ2 is rolling out a new zone next month with a two level increase to the game's cap.  While I continue to have misgivings about the direction this game is going, this content is effectively free to me, as I have enough Station Cash to pay for unlocking the new gear that will mostly likely come with the inevitable gear reset. 
  
• While I see no reason to be present for the inevitable week or so of bugs and issues with SWTOR's patch 1.2, that game remains high on my to do list.  I'm also still waiting for a graphics card, but again, high on my list.
  
• Diablo III lands on May 15th, and, well-advised or not, I own access to this thing on launch day courtesy of the WoW annual pass.  It also seems reasonably likely that the Pandaria beta will kick off at some point in the near future (less clear is how quickly annual pass customers will get in), though that was a comparatively small consideration in my annual pass purchase, and I never intended to spend large amounts of time on this.  I do expect to continue to duck into Azeroth proper intermittently, and have a larger chunk of time penciled in for after the expansion launches. 
  
• DDO's expansion lands in mid summer.  Realistically, I don't own a max level character in DDO, and I'm not near owning a max level character in DDO, so this is relatively a non-issue, but the emerging hoopla only reminds me that this game continues to be somewhere on my to do list. 
  
• Games where I have max level characters not yet mentioned in this post and no immediate plans include DCUO (where I have some shared Station Cash balance with EQ2) and Rift (where I have a pending time card). 
  
• Free to play or newly free to play games currently on my radar include Lineage 2, Aion, Allods, and possibly Forsaken World (or one of the other Perfect World F2P titles).  Major AAA releases scheduled for the remainder of the year include Guild Wars 2, Tera, Secret World, Wildstar, whatever they're calling Prime/Dominus these days, and Copernicus/Amalur. 

Overall, it's a pretty good time to be an MMO player, other than the potential for crippling indecision, and a really tough time to be competing for a share of players' attention.

DCUO Removes Holy Trinity

Interesting news out of DCUO this week - the next patch will add a set of buffs to the game's group-finder that removes the need for tanks, healers, and controllers in the game's four-man content.  Tankless groups will take less damage, healer-less groups will gain passive health regen, and controller-less groups will regain power.  If there was any question about which role is not scarce in-game, there is no mention of a damage buff for groups with no DPS. 

My post title may be a bit misleading.  For the moment, SOE plans to continue to require group roles in the game's eight-man raid content.  They've even taken a page from Blizzard's book, with a new "novice" difficulty setting for raids.  I can't imagine that this requirement will stand in the long run. 

The team is making this move because we're looking at a playerbase that solo DPS'es their way to the level cap, double-DPS'es their way though the endgame duo content, and will now quadruple-zerg their way through the group content, spending their hundreds of emblems on DPS gear that cannot be used to heal, tank, or control.  Nothing in MMO history suggests that the easier raids will be any more successful in converting solo players to group roles.  If anything, the system raises the bar for new players who WANT to try the roles, by moving the playerbase further down the gear grind and skill curve - I can definitely imagine being told to switch to DPS mode because the group will move faster with higher DPS and automated healing. 

Before dismissing this move as desperation by an MMO that was stuck with weird console demographics, consider the context.  NPC companions are spreading across the genre, raising thorny issues about how to avoid having them become more attractive than a live player.  So is scaling content like public quests, rifts, and whatever Blizzard is calling their new feature, designed around the reality that players are unwilling to tank and heal in sufficient numbers to sustain the old school holy trinity.  Most games are building in multiple roles to most or all of their classes (before shooting themselves in the foot by requiring double the gear grind to support these roles) but DPS queues remain high. 

If Blizzard announced that this feature was in for Pandaria's launch, the only shock would be that they acted so quickly.  Perhaps modern MMO's have too much invested in the old model to change now, but at this point I'd be very surprised if the traditional holy trinity is implemented in Titan. 

If this is the deathknell of the holy trinity model of MMO's, it's vaguely ironic to have the company that made Everquest wielding the fatal dagger. 

SOE on "Free to Play, Your Way"

"We've introduce[d?] non-recurring passes into EverQuest II, which have been really popular for some of the newer players that aren't quite as committed yet. It's a great on-boarding tool so that people can feel like they can buy a one-time pass using virtual currency, see if they like it, and then see if they can move on to a recurring fee"

- Laura Naviaux, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at Sony Online Entertainment, in an interview with ZAM

In the early days of the EQ2X beta, devs expressed concerns that existing subscribers would cancel if allowed to buy their way out of all the restrictions on non-subscribing accounts.  They are not wrong to fear this - I would suggest that SOE's competitors, such as DDO and LOTRO, have ended up with models in which almost all players will pay less in the long run by paying for unlocks rather than subscribing. 

However, the results have consistently left me feeling that SOE never intended for the non-subscription model to be a viable and attractive alternative to the subscription.  For all the studio's talk about how they want to give the consumer flexibility, both EQ2 and DCUO intentionally retain restrictions that non-subscribers cannot lift in any way other than subscribing.  Their model has always felt like players were expected - as close to required as the studio could get away with - to "move on" to the old monthly fee if they wanted to continue playing. 

I just was not expecting to have my impression confirmed by their marketing chief. 

Guide to Moving/Copying MMO Client Installs

As I've been setting up and testing the new computer, one of the questions I ran into is how to avoid re-downloading the 100+ GB of MMO clients I had installed on my old machine.  I tried Googling the question of how to move/copy an MMO installation and got very incomplete/fragmentary information which varied by game.  I decided it would be quicker to break out the portable hard drive and test for myself.

All testing was done on a fresh 64-bit Windows 7 install.  I was able to log into a character on every game except where noted below.  This is presented for informational use only, and PVD takes no responsibility for any technical support or performance issues.

World of Warcraft

• Game Version: Cataclysm Patch 4.3
• Files copied: Entire WoW directory (28.3 GB, including screenshots and UI mods)
• File to launch: Launcher
• Comments: No issues, game immediately launched as if it had always been there.

Lord of the Rings Online

• Game Version: Rise of Isengard, Update 5
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (14.3 GB)
• File to launch:  Turbine Launcher
• Comments: The first time I tried to log in, the launcher crashed just after selecting my server.  Undeterred, I tried again, and got in fine.  I'm pretty sure I remember the same thing happening on my other machine the last time I did a clean install. 

Dungeons and Dragons Online

• Game Version: Update 12
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (6.46 GB)
• File to launch:  Turbine Launcher
• Comments: Same issue as LOTRO, probably unsurprising since both are the same engine.  Second login attempt went fine

Runes of Magic

• Game Version: 4.0.6
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (10 GB)
• File to launch:  Runes of Magic
• Comments: No issues - real relief to have this one installed fully patched, because their patcher is a very slow and painful process.  

EQ2 (streaming client)

• Game Version: Game Update 62 (Age of Discovery launch update)
• Files Copied:EQ2/assetcache folder (14.2 GB)
• File to launch:  Launchpad
• Comments: I did this one by downloading the installer for the streaming client, installing it, and then closing the downloader.  I then added the assetcache folder to the new install.  This folder contains all of the fixed data about content (e.g. textures, music, etc).  After copying this over, I re-launched the downloader and let it mop up what was left, which was under one GB.  No issues.  

DCUO

• Game Version: Game Update 8
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (17.7 GB)
• File to launch:  Launchpad
• Comments: This time I encountered an issue - the launchpad took my login and downloaded the updates, but I did not have any version of DirectX installed on the machine and was not able to launch the client.  I downloaded the DCUO installer from the DCUO website, and it offered the option to "repair" an existing installation (rather than install a new one or uninstall an existing one).  I selected this option, it downloaded the missing DirectX, and the game launched smoothly with extremely limited download time.

Rift

• Game Version: Don't remember, probably 1.5 or 1.6.
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (~10 GB)
• File to launch:  RiftPatchLive
• Comments: I initially tried running the "Rift" executable before I got DCUO up and running and received the same error message for missing DirectX.  Apparently DCUO installed a version that Rift was happy with because the game launched without issue.   It's entirely possible that Trion also offers a repair tool that could have rescued this issue, I just happened to have done DCUO's first. 
  
  Update: I initially copied this to Program Files on my SSD for faster loading, but noticed that screenshots were not saving, apparently because Windows does not want the client writing to the program directory.  I moved the game to Users/Public/Games and the problem was resolved.  

SWTOR (see note)

• Game Version: Thanksgiving Beta Weekend
• Files Copied: Entire Directory (18.5 GB)
• File to launch:  Launcher
• Comments: I don't actually own an SWTOR account yet, so I don't know for sure whether this works.  The patcher patched itself and gives me a login screen, but I can't download the updates (or log in, obviously).  This entry is included primarily because people often find posts like this through Google months after they've been written - I will edit this once I actually have a SWTOR account to verify that it works, but I do not anticipate issues. 

Conclusions I've heard conflicting things about whether MMO clients could be copied without issues, but it appears that the modern MMO patcher is able to recreate whatever it needs to function (e.g. registry keys) if deposited in a new location with minimal issues.  This has a few practical implications:

• If you're moving from a still-functioning older machine to a new one ,you can move the data over via a portable hard drive, network sharing, or whatever other means are at your disposal.  You could probably even use multiple DVD-R's for clients that won't fit on one disc, as long as you can break it up and reassemble it correctly.   
• If you are using an SSD that has room for some, but not all of your MMO's and you do not play all of them every month, it is possible to copy over your current favorite, and send it back to the data drive the next time your subscription lapses.
• If you have just the one hard drive (with enough empty space available to duplicate the clients you want to copy) and you need to reinstall Windows for whatever reason, you could, in principle, create a new partition and send your clients (and/or other files, though I would definitely back up anything that can't be easily re-downloaded given time) into that area for temporary storage.  Then you can format the original system partition, reinstall windows, recover the files, and remove the partition. 

Breaking news?  Probably not, but it was useful for me, so perhaps it will be useful for someone else out there.

Three Predictions for 2012

Here are a few predictions on the state of MMO's in the coming year.  Ironically, though I hadn't planned it this way, the three topics I came up with address (albeit in a different order) Wilhelm's top three questions for 2012. 

Go Big, Go Small, Go Free, or Go Home
The subscription MMO isn't dead, but there are basically two very specific circumstances under which it can work:

1. Have a nine-figure budget like the reported $100 million in venture capital that founded Trion or the even larger figures that EA is rumored to have spent on SWTOR.  Ever notice how the three corporations able to foot this type of bill - Blizzard, Trion, and EA-Bioware - are the ones who are still touting the subscription model?
2. Serve an un-filled niche, such as sandbox PVP (see Eve, Darkfall, or perhaps the forthcoming Dominus) or old-school group MMO (see Vanguard, lots of room for a newcomer in this genre).  The big-budget one-size-fits-all MMO that includes solo, group, raid, and PVP has to make compromises  to fit all these activities under one roof.  This makes it possible for a more specialized game to offer something that the big guys cannot.  However, as CCP found out last year, this also means that your entire company lives or dies by its ability to continue to keep one segment of the market satisfied.

Note what's not on that list.  The best licensed IP's out there don't guarantee you $15 a month - see DCUO and LOTRO.  Neither does implementation of a specific feature in what's otherwise a one-size-fits-all MMO (e.g. RVR in Warhammer and PvPvE in Aion).  Even the huge budget is no guarantee of success - probably the most remarkable thing about Rift's progress is how much discipline the team has shown in implementing only what they can actually accomplish and accomplish well.

The bottom line is that if you have yet another fantasy MMO, you're not solidly in one of the two categories above, and your business plan depends on collecting a $15 monthly subscription - FFXIV and Tera come to mind, along with Copernicus if they're not thinking F2P - you are in for a rough time in today's crowded market.  Of course, you're also in for a tough time in the crowded free market, but at least the bar is lower to get potential customers to actually try your product.   

SWTOR will have high churn... and high revenue
Both sides of the discussion on SWTOR's longterm prospects tend to assume that the game will be a failure if there is a mass exodus by the 90 day mark.  Ironically, there has never been another MMO so well-positioned to handle a high rate of churn. 

Yes, the game has guilds and PVP and dungeons/raids, all the traditional MMO trappings that tend to do poorly with high churn.  As long as Bioware was spending whatever ungodly amount they spent on this game, there was no reason NOT to support these playstyles and collect the associated revenue.  However, the core thing that has everyone raving is the Bioware story.  With the past Bioware games, the customer pays once for the box, and maybe once more if the expansions/DLC are worth purchasing, no matter how long it takes the player to complete the game or how many times they replay it.  With the monthly fee, EA gets paid every month for every playthrough and replay, regardless of how little or how much content Bioware actually adds to the game in future patches.   

With such a focus on a highly replayable single player story, SWTOR doesn't need half a million year-round subscribers.  They can get the same effect with 1.5 million players who pay 4 months out of the year when new content is added - or when players choose to replay the old stuff.  I don't see how Bioware can lose here - which is probably why they got so much of EA's money to spend in the first place. 

Mists of Pandaria Will Ship This Summer, Or Heads Will Roll
Many intelligent people are predicting that Pandaria won't ship until Q4, and there is strong basis for making this call - Blizzard is not known for shipping its products on time.  This round, however, I think the stakes are higher. 

Blizzard spent 2011 losing subscribers by the millions - to Rift, or wherever else - and SWTOR will not help this situation.  No amount of spin about how the lost players are in the less lucrative Asian markets, or how players have returned to WoW after the launches of past competitors, can change the reality that Blizzard will continue to lose customers and money until something changes.  A scenario in which the content that was available in early December 2011 is still the only content available in early October 2012 is unacceptable. 

My guess is that we will see the paid closed beta phase of Pandaria (courtesy of the annual pass) kick off in May-June, with an aim for an early Q3 release.  Delaying this product further is not like delaying Starcraft II or Diablo III, which do not have monthly fees - every month means more subscribers lost from the current live WoW service.  I'm prepared to believe that Blizzard might let the expansion slip anyway, but I think that there will - and frankly should - be consequences if this occurs. 

What do you all think will happen in 2012?

New Year's Resolutions for 2012

Having detailed what I did (and what it cost) for last year, it's once again time to look ahead to the new year.  The year ahead has a blessing and a curse; there are many games I would like to play, and I can already tell that there won't be time for all of them. 

WoW (Pre-Pandaria)

• Complete quests of Cataclysm: I'm still not finished with Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, or Firelands on my main - I tend to work on dailies first, and there are enough dailies that I haven't gotten around to these.
• Finish out armor set from 4.3 heroics
• Use the raid finder to kill Deathwing
• Cap out TBC-era dungeon reputations: Most of these rep's stalled out at Revered when the content was new.  Two expansions later, these heroics are quick and easy rep farming.

The picture with Pandaria will depend a bit on how it shapes up and when it arrives.  I will very likely level my main to the new cap and complete the new dungeons the requisite once each.  I will also likely level the requisite Pandaren Monk through the newbie zone, but I haven't felt any pressing unmet need for more WoW alts and I don't know that the newest additions will change that.  If Pandaria arrives before my annual pass runs out in October, I may do more work on the new expansion's endgame.

LOTRO

• Reach the new level cap on my main (currently 67 of 75)
• Don't feel obliged to "save" content for future level cap increases

I had a bad experience with LOTRO's original launch - though it took me several months to get into the 40's, it took Turbine about a year to produce enough content to make leveling to the original cap a pleasant experience for solo players.  Since then, I've been very nervous about completing content at the level cap, for fear that the next expansion would be similarly lacking in sources of exp.

Fortunately, Turbine's actions since have proved my fears unfounded - even if some future expansion does launch without enough solo quests, there are now enough forms of repeatable content, such as daily quests and skirmishes, to make up the missing exp if needed.

Rift

• Finally reach the level cap
• Investigate the endgame

Rift spent most of 2011 as the best MMO that just never reached the top of my to-do list month after month.  While I respect the reasoning behind Trion's pro-subscription stance, the need to set aside a month at a time to focus on this game like it was still 2010 is definitely hurting this game's appeal in the crowded marketplace.  I would gladly pay by the day or the week, but this game is not sufficiently better than its competition for me to be excited about setting aside an entire month to play it.

In any case, Trion is supposedly going to give me 3 days of game time as compensation for their servers being hacked, which will get me to the game's level cap.  From there, it will be a question of how much I like what I see.

EQ2

• Enjoy world events on my main without having to subscribe
• Try to complete current dungeon content
• Betray to the evil side to see content, collect houses, perhaps try the Troubadour

The good news is that I no longer need to use a throw-away EQ2X alt to see holiday and world event content in this game, now that I can have year around access to my main. The bad news is that my progress kind of screeched to a halt due to Velious' highly regimented dungeon progression, and attempting to deal with the plat cap for non-subscribers is not going to make this easier.   

Will new dungeons continue to ramp up in difficulty, even though the current ones are already unpopular for PUG's?  Will there be new solo content?  Or will they tune all future content to require the use of NPC mercenaries, and thus the purchase of the AOD expansion, much as all solo quest rewards are now "legendary" quality to require the purchase of gear unlock tokens? 

One project that I am seriously considering is taking my main and having her betray over to the evil faction to see the revised Freeport content, collect some houses in the evil cities (you don't lose houses when you switch sides, though you will be kill-on-sight with the local guards as appropriate), etc.  This might also be an opportunity to take the Troubadour class for a spin, though doing so may or may not require a paid class unlock.  I've never been interested in sticking with alts in EQ2 to date, so I might as well take my main over to see what the rest of the content looks like. 

DCUO

• Gear my main up for DLC content
• Work on one or more alts to see the other storylines

Ironically, my challenges with DCUO are similar to what I'm facing in EQ2.  The currency cap is not friendly to non-subscribers, and will likely keep me out of the game's more challenging content.  This, in turn, affects my ability to gear up to qualify for the content that I actually am willing/able to run (and pay for).

SWTOR

• Play one or more storylines

So, I hear there's some game that's like an MMO about Star Wars or something?  :)

Seriously, my current computer situation (more on this in a minute) has me holding off on SWTOR, but I fully expect to pick up this game and spend some time working on the various storylines in 2012. I had originally figured that I would play a Sith Inquisitor based on the theory that I can play a guy with a gun in any number of other gameworlds.  However, I ended up really liking both the personalities and the gameplay for both the Smuggler and the Imperial Agent.

Other MMO's
So now I'm on my seventh subheading without having covered DDO or Runes of Magic (both of which I have spent money on in the past).  Lineage 2 just went free to play in North America, and Aion became the first major MMO I'm aware of in which the European market beat the North American to a non-subscription switch (which I assume will force the US servers to follow suit, if that was not already planned).  By the time the dust settles, there will probably be at least a dozen major MMO's I haven't played that originally launched as subscription games - I could literally try a different one every month for 2012.

I don't think I'm going to go to that extreme, but it raises a point about how tough the current marketplace is for new entrants. Not only must version 1 of your new game be competitive with version 7 of the competition's, but your game has a $50 buy in and a subscription while their's has no buy-in.  In my case, even the time to download the client (and the hard drive space to store yet another one!) and try a new game for a night or two is starting to approach prohibitive. 

PS3
Games on my Christmas loot haul include Uncharted 3, Arkham City, and the Metal Gear Solid trilogy.  I have yet to finish Assassin's Creed 2, and it has two sequels out that will be somewhere on my playlist.  Other games on my wish list include Infamous 2, Tomb Raider Trilogy (and the new one if/when it arrives), and possibly FFXIII-2.  The discerning reader will note that only two of those are not currently released - my time crunch on the console is as bad as on the PC (though at least on the console showing up a year or three late means paying dramatically less for the games).

Computer Building
I am thoroughly dissatisfied with my Alienware M11x (original revision), which has had a number of problems.

• First, the hinge broke when the machine was less than three months old - Dell replaced this because it was a well-documented issue, but it was an inconvenient situation for a week or two until this could be resolved.  
• Then the power cord plug started slipping out of the back of the system, which left the machine unexpectedly shutting down for lack of power when I thought it was plugged in.  
• Then the battery, which has a 12-month warranty - went completely dead at the 14 month mark.  (This is also a commonly reported issue with the machine.)  Now I own a "portable" 11 inch laptop that has to be tethered to an outlet, unless I want to throw good money after bad by spending $200-300 on a new battery for a $700 machine.   
• On top of all of that, I apparently did not comprehend exactly how slow the processor was in all the hype about how the machine would run this that and the other thing - even overclocked (which Dell will not guarantee will work) the specs are below the minimums for Rift and SWTOR. 

Anyway, it's time for a new machine, and I'm finally steeling myself up to build a computer.  I find the first step or so - the one where you can physically ruin a $300 processor - intimidating, but the difference in cost and quality makes this a skill I really should have in the long run.  I will most likely build something in the $800-1000 range with an i5 and a single graphics card (possibly a cheaper placeholder so I can spend more on components that are harder to replace later).  I'd love to have an SSD, and it seems like there is something to be said for avoiding current hard drive shortages, but I do need a fair amount of storage due to the number of games I play.

In any case, I'm sure I'll be writing more about this topic once I actually go through the process.

The Blog
This will be post number 185 for the year, which is the lowest postcount I've had since I started the blog partway through 2008.  There are several drivers for this - I'm doing less work on the blog over the weekends, I'm writing longer posts, and I'm not feeling obliged to post something just to bump the update time on the RSS feed.  Overall, though, the current schedule - where I do 2-3 posts during the week and maybe a post on the weekend - seems to be working.
In any case, there's going to be plenty to do - and write about - in the coming year.  Happy New Year, and I look forward to hearing from all of you in 2012!

2011 MMO Expenditures and Accomplishments

I'm never quite sure how to handle my New Year's/Canada Day resolution wrap-up for the year - realistically most of them are blown by July in any case, and the discussion invariably bleeds into what I'm planning for next year.  This year I'm going to try something different and focus solely on the past; what I spent on each title I played, and what I got for my money.  

For the sake of my sanity, I have chosen to bill content/currency purchases (expansions or free to play content packs) in the year that I actually paid for them (even though I may continue to consume it in future years), and to track subscription time in the year it was actually used (rather than paid for).  Games are listed in the order in which the accomplishments appeared in my twitter feed.  


WoW: $54.40

• Completed a tour of the newbie zones post-Cataclysm
• Advanced my mage the last level to 85, completed all Heroic dungeons (both Cataclysm launch and patch additions) at least once, still working on rep and gear but qualified for the looking for raid finder.
• Advanced warrior from level 82 to level 85, completed all of the holidays through mid-summer to obtain my second violet protodrake
• Actually healed some PUG 5-mans on a mid-level priest alt.

With Cataclysm launching in December 2010, I had just paid for the expansion and was on the tail end of a 90 day subscription at the beginning of January (approx $8.40 for 18 days).  I paid $30 for two months of time (around world events in late April and late June).

I signed up for the annual pass in late October - I'm choosing to account this as $16 for two months this year, with $60 for DIII and $80 for 10 months both applied to next year's budget.  This will either be a bargain or a budget buster depending on how much use I get out of it.  So far, I'm not spending nearly as much time per month under the discounted annual plan as I was when it was costing me $15, but I'm enjoying that time more because I don't feel that I have to force myself to grind day in and day out to maximize the value of the $15 one-month subscription. 

Rift: $48

• Playtested a bunch of alts during the paid beta phases
• Settled on Cleric, leveled from 1 to 48 (and 3/4).  
• Leveled alts to the 10-19 range on the other three callings.
• Actually healed some PUG's using the dungeon finder

I paid $48 for a digital collector's edition back in January, and have not paid since.  Note that this included access to the paid portions of the "closed" beta, as well as three extended retrial weekends.  

LOTRO: $20 in cash and $10 in gift card (which I value less than cash)

• Comleted solo-ified Volume II
• Currently working on Enedwaith and associated book of Volume III

I paid $20 for the Black Friday sale Isengard bundle, which came with 1000 TP's.   I wouldn't have paid $10 for 1000 TP's and a cosmetic outfit, but the half off sale made this a $5 upgrade.  I also turned a $10 gift card at a brick and mortar store into a 750 TP card (which is a terrible exchange rate, but the store had nothing else I wanted for $10).  I've used some of the TP for the Enedwaith quest pack, a second milestone destination, and the 30 minute milestone cooldown reduction for my main, which are collectively definitely worth the price of the points I paid for them.    

My remaining LOTRO playtime was in content that I paid to unlock via expansion purchases in 2009.

EQ2: $85

• Completed Lyriana's enervated mythical
• Advanced from 191 AA's to 267
• Beat first seven dungeons in the Velious progression, obtained about half of my T2 armor   

I paid $45 for three months of game time, and $40 for the DOV expansion.  I also received 45 days of compensation time for the hacking debacle (cost: my identify, dun dun dun).  Up until December, I occasionally used a silver EQ2X account (purchased last year with promotional Station Cash balances that I didn't pay for) that I occasionally used for world events or limited-time quests.

I was expecting to spend about $20+ to unlock my character after the free to play switchover, but SOE's decision to grandfather in existing characters meant that I only had to pay to unlock my current gear, which I was able to do out of my remaining promotional SC balance.  That said, I did decline to purchase the year's second expansion box, along with the $20 paid add-on race that arrived with Velious.  This game would have been exceptionally expensive for someone who actually stayed with it the full time and paid full price for stuff as it was released, were it not for all the freebies for being hacked and for changing the business model.. 
 
Runes of Magic: $15

• Advanced from 30 Druid/30 Rogue to 57 Druid/53 Warden/50 Rogue
• Test drove a bunch of alts into the 20/20/20 range

I spent $15 on diamond currency.  I purchased a mount and some daily quest tickets, and I have just over $5 left. 

Vanguard: $5

• Escaped the generic Isle of Dawn
• Leveled character to 11 Disciple/10 crafter/12 Diplomat

Spent $5 to upgrade my EQ2 subscription to Station Access for one month so I could extend my Vanguard free trial by a bit. 

DCUO: $10

• Reached level 30 on a hero, completed solo campaign
• Experimented with some alts on both factions, platforms 

I spent $10 in the December's triple Station Cash sale for 3000 SC and immediately spent 999 SC on the Lightning Strikes DLC pack, which unlocked the new powerset and upgraded my account to Premium.  I'd been considering paying the full $10 for the pack anyway, so it became an absolute no-brainer with an extra 2000 SC.

Note that some of this balance may eventually get spent on EQ2 instead of DCUO, such is the perk of SOE's unified account system.  I will also tip my hat to SOE for allowing players to purchase currency in any increment of $5, without getting hit with funky/punitive exchange rates. 

DDO: $0
No additional expenditures this year.  I spent $100 in 2010, and spent about $70 of that on unlocking the content and character options I continue to use sporadically.
 
Kingdom of Loathing: $0
No additional money spent, I did sink something like $20-30 in this game back in 2007-2008 or so.

PS3/PSP

• Beat Portal 2 ($35)
• Beat Infamous 1 (PSN hacking debacle freebie)
• Beat Uncharted 1 (Christmas present in 2010)
• Currently working on Assassin's Creed 2 ($10)
• Currently working on Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (PSP, Christmas 2011 present)

These obviously really MMO purchases, and aren't included in the totals below, I just record them for the sake of perspective. 

Grand Total

All told, I spent basically $240, not counting the $10 gift card, the PS3 games or the $140 committed to Blizzard products next year.  (Nor, I suppose, do I count the amount of patience and attention it takes to await and grab some of the more substantial deals I got this year.)  When you consider that a single subscription MMO with a $40 expansion box and $15 in monthly fees will run you $220 annually, that's really not bad for what I'm getting for my money.

Speaking more generally, 2011 was the year when I actually learned to take advantage of non-subscription gaming models.  I spent a fair amount of time in non-subscription games in 2010, but I continued to play them the way I would approach a subscription game - focusing on one game at a time, playing it until I had completed everything I was aiming for and moving on.  As increasing numbers of games that I wanted to play anyway are offering more flexible options, I'm routinely logging into 3-5 games per week, and on rare occasions even per day.

Ironically, this hasn't blown my costs through the roof the way I wondered that it might when I started tracking what I was spending this year.  The "all-inclusive" subscription model has never included either the initial account nor the paid expansion boxes.  I'm definitely spending more on content than I was - and sometimes I'm putting up with irritating restrictions because I don't feel like paying to remove them - but I'm not then turning around and paying again to continue accessing the content I have paid to unlock.  I may or may not be paying more, but I'm certainly getting a lot more.

Looking ahead to next year, my totals will almost certainly be higher - if you budget the payments to Blizzard and likely boxes for both SWTOR and Pandaria, I already have about as much in total MMO expenses for next year as I did for this year.  Several of the non-subscription games I paid into this year may not require additional funds next year (in particular, EQ2 should be way down), but the fact that I'm already down for $60 on DIII - more than I spent on all but one MMO I played this year - is already looming as the potential difference between the budgets.  Guess we'll find out how this goes next year.

Beating DCUO

Yesterday, I beat what could be considered the single player portion of DCUO - the Green Armadillo has now completed every story mission from the launch game up to the end of Batman's story arc, all six original "challenge mode" versions of leveling dungeons, and the Catwoman Challenge Mode dungeon that was added in one of the game's few pre-F2P patch updates. 

The World's Greatest Detective checks his notes to make sure that yes, I really did just qualify for membership in the Justice League, while Superman appears to be pondering my death behind my back, perhaps because I made fun of his half of the story content.

I hit "cooperative" reputation with two of the game's three factions, allowing me to purchase entry level gear (blue quality item level 34) that was more than enough to get me through the finale of the Batman missions.  There's one more solo challenge mode zone, where I would face off against The Penguin (though this zone is notoriously difficult, to the point where I gave up after a few attempts), and then it's on to (or to attempt to get to) the DLC.  To borrow the analogy that Tobold dug out of his archives today, I have finished the content and am largely left with the gameplay.  As I wrote last week, that's not necessarily all bad, to the extent that DCUO's combat is fun (and different from your average MMO).  At the same time, as Tobold suggests, new story content is a part of the deal, and that particular part is largely over. 

So, about that DLC that you thought you purchased...

Speaking of the DLC, I did decide to pull the trigger on the new "Lightning Strikes" content when the triple exp sale rolled around last weekend.  This does immediately grant access to the new powerset, which I'm test-driving on a new Villain character.  It also, in principle, contains content.  The catch is that players aren't even allowed in the new zone until they hit a Combat Rating - DCUO's version of the gearscore - of 53. 

Again, my gear right now is sitting at a 34.  To put this number in perspective based on info from the guide forum, the best items that drop outright in hard mode T2 alert content (the best non-raid drops in the game) are item level 52.  The T2 vendor armor is item level 56, but a full set of this requires around 400 T2 "marks of distinction".  These marks aren't available in solo content - I can get one daily from the daily "duo", two more from the daily T1 hard mode alert, and around four per hard mode T2 alert (which themselves require a combat rating of 43 to access).  While it's theoretically possible to meet this bar inside of two weeks, it's likely to take far longer due to the extremely low liklihood that I am going to complete seven T2 alerts and a T2 duo each and every day. 

Prices on the T1 vendor also call for about 400 marks, but these are much easier to obtain - even solo players can obtain a dozen or so per day, and these also drop in greater numbers in small group content.

Two additional quirks:

• The entry level reputation gear I currently own is geared for DPS.  I have a few drops for healing, but I would need a separate set of Healer-role gear if I wanted to pursue that route, and the need for an additional 400 marks to obtain this set makes that outcome extremely unlikely. 
• The business model as currently designed makes it extremely challenging for non-subscribers to run content that actually incurs significant costs (either repair bills for wipes or - especially for healers - "soda" potions to restore health and power).  I spent nearly $1000 on a less than full repair after failing to clear the Penguin challenge mode.  I cannot have more than $2000 on my character ($1500 before I spent enough money to flag for premium). 
  
  I generally keep my bags at least partially full of sell-able items to restore my cash supply after taking this kind of hit to the wallet, but raiding is out of the question and even the hard mode 4-player content may be limited.  In principle, I can pay 200 SC ($2 if there's no sale going) to withdraw $10,000 from my escrow balance (if I actually had the $10K, currently I spend the excess money on cosmetic armor skins to try and avoid ever sending money to escrow), but this is both costly and not a fun thing to spend money on.  Realistically, it's easier to just pass on content that my account level does not support. 

The escrow withdrawal purchase

Overall, my experience is still generally more positive than negative, but it appears that accessing the new content I paid for is going to be a long term goal indeed.  I don't entirely regret the one DLC purchase because I am using the new powerset on an alt, and the purchase did upgrade my account to premium status, but at this rate I'm unlikely to qualify for future content updates if I did want to pay for them. 

In the mean time, I do have the option of replaying the game as a Villain.  There are three story missions that are unique to each of the six hero/villain mentors.  That said, the challenge of leaning heavily on storytelling is that you have to enjoy the story that's being told.  DCUO's take on the Villains of the DC Universe feels a bit less nuanced than I'm used to from the Batman comics - there's a lot of sucking the souls out of the innocent to summon demons into the world and testing mutagens on innocent college kids by the Villains who populate Metropolis.  Then again, at no additional charge I suppose I have nothing to complain about. 

Soonspeeder, my new Electricity/Superspeed Villain, arrives sooner than any MMO patch.  Also, she probably needs to set more ambitious goals for herself.

Answer to an EQ(2)-uestion

On Tuesday, I questioned whether SOE could afford to offer double or triple Station Cash sales now that these deals also slash the subscription price. A mere three days later, I have an answer, with a one-day triple station cash sale.  Not only is the studio apparently unconcerned about the reduced subscription rate, they're also unconcerned that players who paid $40 less than two weeks ago for an expansion that will now be on sale for under $15 will take that personally.

(If this move surprises you in any way, you haven't been paying attention for the last year.  To quote what I wrote in April when they did something similar after the Velious launch: "There's a line between smart price discrimination and making your existing customers feel that you value potential customers over current ones, and repeated incidents like this over the past year have left many current players feeling that the line has been crossed.")

If there's one thing I've learned about being a consumer of non-subscription games, it's that the size of the discount matters not if you buy something on sale that you don't end up using.  My level of interest in the Age of Discovery expansion is so low that I'm willing to take the chance that I will eventually pay more for it later.  The increased AA cap is the only thing I see as must-have in the package, but I'm still 40+ AA's shy of the Velious cap, so I'm not likely to need this increase for a while.  Besides, double and triple SC weekends have come around several times per year, and now that I know they're not gone, there's no reason to think that I can't wait for the next one. 

I will definitely put some money into this promotion - the new Electricity powerset, paired with a permanent upgrade to Premium account status and incidentally some additional content was already on my shopping list for DCUO at the $10 price, so it's a slam dunk at $5 with 500 SC left over.  I'm tempted to go a bit higher than that - $10 would give me the SC to purchase the Green Lantern DLC as well (while I'm less interested in playing a Lantern, the actual content comes before the Flash stuff in progression).  The only way I'd go to $15 would probably be if I found myself near a Walmart and was able to pick up one of their extra bonus SC cards - 2000 SC for $15, which would then be tripled, would leave me set for a long while... but might also be the trap of paying now for points I'm unlikely to use until later.  Guess we'll see how my mood is running tomorrow.