Features of LOTRO's Update 5

LOTRO's Update 5 rolled out this week, containing a number of new features and the new group content for the expansion (which was technically launched in September).  The update reminded me that I haven't been in to check out the new Enedwaith and Isengard content I picked up on super-sale for Black Friday, and I'm been impressed with what I've run into so far.

The big feature is the new instance group finder, which does approximately what we've come to expect out of this feature.  Probably the biggest innovation in the system is the decision to include solo skirmishes in the queue.  This may seem funny - you get the message that you have entered the queue and then are presented with a ready check to jump into a solo skirmish you could have started yourself - but it's actually really clever. 

Because content for larger groups award more marks, I might be tempted to click the higher group size buttons.  If there's no tanks or healers available, no harm, it can just dump me in the solo skirmish I would have done anyway.  If it happens that there are players available, it's an easy way to lure solo players into group content, in a game where frankly I've done very little group content.  Not a bad trade in exchange for using this system to mediate the old daily rewards for running skirmishes. 

Fourteen different rep items that had been cluttering my bank

Elsewhere, the update features good quality of life improvements.  Items whose sole purpose was to collect 10 and turn in to an NPC for reputation have been changed into consumables so you can use them immediately to get the appropriate amount of rep (e.g. 30 rep for an item that used to give 300 for a stack of 10).  This allowed me to clear 14 different types of tokens out of my bank, all of which were there because I either needed more for a complete turnin or did not want to travel back to the NPC who wanted them.  LOTRO still has way too many currencies that don't go in the currency tab - e.g. tokens for Lothlorien, the Malledhrim, the Grey Company, and probably more in Isengard - but at least this is one type of item that's not taking up space. 

In another change that Doc Holiday posted, old Moria class quests that required group content no one does anymore are now optional.  Previously, you had to run a dungeon or do without the capstone class trait for your class.  Now, the trait is automatically granted for the second to last stage of the quest (the final solo step), and I immediately received 20 TP for the deed upon login. 

One unfortunate Uruk got stuck between my Champion and most of the Grey Company

These changes aside, I've been forging into the content of Enedwaith - a zone added during the free to play rollout last year which I declined to purchase at the time because I was already level capped.  I definitely do not need this content for the exp - I'm already level 67 having barely started the zone - but I'm glad I decided not to skip it (as I was considering).  I play LOTRO for the story, not necessarily for pushing the envelope on gameplay difficulty (though LOTRO supports that too, with the option to scale Skirmishes up above your level).  I've been enjoying the content greatly, and it would have been a shame in hindsight to waste it.  Meanwhile, I'm also likely to complete a few deeds for TP and traits while working on the epic storyline in the zone, and I would not have received credit if I had not purchased the content pack. 

In any case, things in Middle Earth seem to be going pretty well.  There is an argument to be made that they should have held the expansion until this update was ready, but it does seem that longtime players have gotten good use out of the portions of the expansion that were done in the mean time.  This game has never been especially competitive on quantity and that does not look to change, but the quality remains superb.  If they can keep making small but steady improvements to quality of life, coupled with the superb storytelling the game is known for, LOTRO will likely continue to hold down a niche for a while to come. 

MMO Black Friday

Here's a few MMO-related Black Friday sales that are or will be available from the comfort of your own home computer. 

• Rift Client free with game time purchase:
  Via MMO-Crunch, there is currently no charge for the Rift client with the purchase of game time.  I assume that any of the normal sub-plans are available - $15 for one month or multi-month deals that may or may not be in your best interest.  Note that, while the most recent Digital Collector's edition is included on the sale page, the $10 upgrade package is available for $10 at any time, so there's no need to snag it now.
   
• LOTRO Isengard Expansion 50% off for Black Friday
  After a highly aggressive pre-order campaign, which misled several people (myself included) into believing that the $30 price was pre-order only, that price will now be slashed by 50% less than two months after the expansion launch, albeit for a single day.  My patience in refusing the hard sell is rewarded with a major discount, and I will certainly remember this the next time Turbine tries something similar.   
  
  There's an additional wrinkle in that the sale does not specify which of the three packages is included.  At the full prices, I would not pay for the fancier editions - normal Turbine Point sales let you get the equivalent of 1000 TP for the added $10, and I don't care about the cosmetics.  At 50% off, the choice between the $15 base edition and the $20 edition that adds 1000 TP for $5 becomes much more interesting, as I don't think I've ever seen a rate that favorable.   
  
  (If the Legendary version is included, this deal would be spectacular for new players - $25 would be all you would need to spend from level 1 to the cap, including the not-yet-released new endgame content.  I own most of the quest packs included in this bundle, and I'd still be strongly tempted just because this blows any other deal they've ever offered for the two zones I'm missing out of the water.) 
  
• WoW Speculation
  As of now, the only WoW deal I know of is a black Friday price at Gamestop, offering the base game (which now include TBC) for $10, with Wrath and Cataclysm at $20 each, in exchange for potentially risking your life in the retail stampede.  I only mention this because Blizzard offered a similar price on their web store last year, and has Starcraft II on sale for half off through Monday.  I'd watch this one if you have a WoW account that you have not yet upgraded, but I could turn out to be incorrect. 

I'm primarily interested in game clients/expansions/etc, but feel free to post anything else interesting in the comments and I will try to update this post with your info.  For example, EQ2 has an unspecified sale, which could be interesting if EQ2X race/class or gear unlocks that will be usable in the base game next month are included.

Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Commerce, everyone!

Combat Pacing and Feel

A few semi-related ramblings about combat pacing, which are aimed in the vague general direction of this question: To what extent can/should the mechanics of actually playing the game (pushing buttons etc) influence what roles the player can perform?

• LOTRO got a bunch of complaints in the early days for "sluggish" feeling combat.  I think this can be chalked up to several different factors; the time to kill a solo mob is much higher than in WoW (which was the only other MMO that focused on solo content at the time LOTRO launched), there were some issues with lengthy animations that would have to complete before characters to execute their next attack, and there may have been some other factors as well.  Regardless, this was a major critique of the game at the time of its launch.
  
  Speaking of things dying quickly, I've been getting much more interested in healing now that I'm actually grouping in games that aren't WoW, and a big part of that may be that WoW has always had faster paced combat - with less reaction time for the healer. 
  
• I blogged about DCUO weapons last week, and I've since earned enough skill points to allow my main to equip any weapon he wants (though he only has special attacks for a handful).  Weapons differ drastically in their combat speed, what types of click combinations are necessary to execute special attacks, etc.  Some, like the slow 2-handed weapon and brawling types, I dislike for slow speed.  Some, such as dual pistols and staves, I'm not so fond of due to the attack sequences.  The assault rifle I dislike because it has a really bad habit of hitting far away mobs that I did not intend to pull, which I suppose is a valuable lesson in firearm safety courtesy of SOE and Superman.
  
  At the end of the day, I have some options I can live with - Bows and 1-handed weapons are my current favorite.  I think these are passable options for my two roles (DPS, healing), but it's certainly possible that there is a more optimal choice that I'm not using because I don't like it. 
  
• When talking about their plans for the new monk class in the Pandaria expansion, Blizzard admitted that the design of not having an auto-attack may be so far out there that they will have to fight to keep it through testing.  DCUO meanwhile has confirmed its new Flash-themed DLC pack, and stated that the new "Lightning" powerset will do some sort of ward-based smart-healing.  Given my namesake, you'd think that I've be playing a Green Lantern, but I'm less interested in their group role (crowd control/regen) than in healing.  I'm reasonably happy with the Sorcery powerset I'm using on my main, but the Flash powerset may or may not make the new DLC more appealing, even if the subject matter is of less interest.

I don't know that I really have a bottom line today, quirky/pensive mood I suppose.  

F2P Assault on the Hard Drive

Yesterday, I posted a full run-down of five separate free to play games that are currently installed on my computer: LOTRO, DDO, EQ2X, Runes of Magic, and now DCUO.

In addition to these, I have clients for WoW (annual pass subscription), EQ2 Live (yes, this requires a separate full client install) and Rift (the latter two of which I do not want to uninstall because I want to be able to patch up quickly for free retrial weekends).

The net result of all these clients, all of which I could potentially use on short notice, is that my hard drive is 77% full and climbing rapidly.  Already gone from the hard drives of this and my previous machines are various games that I'm not actively playing, including Age of Conan (tried sometime last year pre-F2P, did not feel any particular desire to return), City of Heroes (tried back in 2007 or so), FFXI, Guild Wars, Torchlight, Warhammer, Free Realms, Vanguard, and Star Wars Galaxies (soon to be a moot point).  This does not include betas or test server clients (none of which I currently have.) 

In addition to all of the above, my post and the following comments identified half a dozen high quality F2P or formerly paid games that I have never played in any form, including: Champions Online, soon Star Trek Online, Fallen Earth, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Allods, and Wizard 101.  (Honorable mention to the soon to be closed Lego Universe.)  I'm sure there are plenty I've missed in that number, feel free to post shout-outs in the comments. 

A year or two back, I remember someone mentioning on a podcast that they had installed an MMO to an external hard drive and thinking that this was a weird call.  Now I'm vaguely considering whether I should add an external drive (perhaps SSD?) to my Christmas list, as hard drive capacity is about to become a limiting factor in my ability to try additional games.

Is anyone else's hard drive buckling under all the MMO clients, now that it is increasingly both possible and desirable to have so many at your disposal?  Any suggestions on creative or high quality external storage solutions? 

F2P Business Model Rundown

An anonymous commenter on my post from last week asks the following:

I want to start a new free to play game in December. (I've done LOTRO and been pretty good at it, paid about 30 dollars in a year and a half and had enough TP to get Isengard).

Which would you recommend for this? It seems like you've spent alot of time in EQ2, but I worry about the stability of that game (do alot of people really still play it)?

A rundown of all the F2P titles I play, even excluding LOTRO, is a bit long for the comments field, so my answer is posted below.

EQ2X
Update, December 11th, 2011: EQ2X has now been merged with EQ2 Live.  I have posted an updated rundown of EQ2's new model, which is similar to what EQ2X but with some changes.

The EQ2X server is the game's most popular, so I doubt it's going anywhere.  If you can tolerate limited bagspace, you can play completely free until level 80 (or pay the one-time $10 fee for silver status), which is a decent chunk of content, probably on par with what you got out of LOTRO.

One somewhat significant catch is that 2/3 of the game's classses and a similar portion of its races are premium unlocks for something like $7.50 (for one class or bundles of three races).  I don't consider that completely prohibitive if you correctly identify what you want to play the first time (or if you're willing to tolerate a free race/class combo, such as my Half-Elf Inquisitor), but this is not necessarily easy if you've never played the game before.  My advice would be to look into whether the new free trial program for the EQ2 Live game has started, so you can go in there to audition classes before committing to unlock one.

Unfortunately, your costs are going to go up sharply if you want to advance beyond 80.

SOE has yet to announce pricing for the new expansion, so I'm speculating that it will be $40 for an all-in-one box that also contains all previous expansions, which has been the model to date.  If this is the case - look for news on this front over the next month - the all-in-one for Age of Destiny will be your best bet, as it would include Sentinel's Fate (2010's expansion, raised the cap), Destiny of Velious (Feb 2011's expansion, more AA's and all of the new content including the next year), and Age of Destiny (presumptive release in the next month or three, another AA cap increase, will also contain the Beastlord class if you're so inclined).  Whenever AOD launches, it's probably safe to bet that SOE will hit you up for another $40 within a year.

In addition to expansion boxes and character build options, non-subscribing EQ2X must pay per item posted to the broker (last I checked, this was something like 10-20 cents per stack), along with 50 cents per spell upgraded to the Master level and 50 cents per piece of legendary/fabled/mythical gear unlocked for use on the non-subscription tier.  Starting in DOV, the first expansion launched after EQ2X, there is no more gear of lower than legendary status, even from solo quest rewards, so you will be hit for that fee early and often.  The good news is that this will still work out to under $15/month if you're running dungeons - how often do you get 30 loot upgrades in a month? - but the bad news is that it is going to be a recurring cost in a way that LOTRO's content unlocks aren't.

Finally, if you care about endgame group content, you might want to investigate what the demographics look like.  The low levels are definitely dominated by free classes, but there are definitely more players in these level ranges than you'll find on the live servers, but there are by definition no complete freeloaders at the level cap, and many are transferred characters from the live service.  (Note that this is a one-way transfer.)  I haven't put in the time to determine whether the upper levels have a skewed population, how the grouping scene is, etc.

(Full disclosure: I have not copied my character over to the F2P server, even though I would probably pay less under that business model than I do for my occasional one-month visits to the live game.)

Runes of Magic
Again, the good news is a low barrier to entry - I would recommend purchasing a permanent mount (under $10 even at the bad exchange rate with no sales), and this is the only thing you need between level 1 and 55.  Depending on how much you enjoy experimenting with class combinations, this could last you a while.

The bad news with ROM is the major investment - you have a bit of choice of investing time versus cash - that it takes to enhance your gear as you get to higher levels.  Some people have gotten to the highest tier of content without paying a dime, but they may or may not value their time less than you do.  There are shortcuts - it is possible to unbind your old, fully enhanced gear and sell it for gold, which you then use to either buy someone else's old gear or to pay someone else to buy you cash shop items to enhance your new stuff.  Again, though, you're looking at a recurring cost.  Because this cost is per gearset, it also means strong pressure not to continue to use more than one of your six possible class pairings.   

DCUO
Good news here is that, as I posted this weekend, non-raiders can get a free ride for the entire launch game, and I doubt they'll be able to produce DLC often enough to be prohibitive on your pocketbook.  Bad news is, I don't see how this model gets them more revenue, because 1000% more players who pay $5 once is not a lot compared to what they were expecting with a $60 box price and a $15 monthly fee.

Games based on licensed IP's are the only games that SOE has ever cancelled, and I do not have much confidence that this one will avoid that fate unless I'm deeply mistaken on the longterm revenue potential of this model . That said, it's a pretty darned good ride to get for mostly free, catch it while you can if you're so inclined.

DDO
This one is last on my list because I figure that you probably already considered and rejected it if you're already playing LOTRO and looking elsewhere.  If you're not in the mood for the game's action combat, there's no real helping that.

The good news is that, like LOTRO, you're looking at a model where you only pay when you want more content, and you get to keep everything you unlock indefinitely.  It's also completely "stable" to the extent that it's been on the F2P model for the longest and shows no particular signs of giving up ground. 

Summing Up
I may or may not have fully answered the question, in part because I'm not certain exactly what you're looking for.  Maximum reasonably fun solo questing time for the money?  Access to endgame content with no recurring real money fees?

My best advice is to try a bunch - these and others that I haven't gotten to yet (e.g. the Cryptic games, Age of Conan, Fallen Earth, Allods, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Wizard 101, probably many others).  The biggest advantage we the consumer have in the F2P marketplace is that we can try more than one of these before we make some big commitment in time and money.

That said, my paradoxical conclusion is that the most gamer-friendly "free to play" models are the ones that are in the business of charging for content, as LOTRO/DDO do.  Under this model, the developer is forced to keep the game fun and deliver content often, or not get paid.  Models that are designed to have recurring payments may or may not be an improvement over $15/month - for EQ2X I'd say that answer is yes and for ROM I'd say probably not - but my experience has been that this encourages the developer to make the game require more of whatever it is that you're paying them for.
 
Edit: LOTRO
Joe in the comments here asked for the LOTRO summary.

The game mechanics of LOTRO are going to be much more familiar to WoW players than something exotic with click-to-swing combat like DDO or DCUO. 

You're looking at a more standard MMO hotbar setup with autoattacks, global cooldowns, etc.  DDO is more of a lobby-based world with all the action happening in group-sized instances (up to raid size), while LOTRO's standard MMO quests happen in non-instanced open world zones.  Note that combat is definitely at a slower pace than you find in WoW, which may leave you feeling like kill ten rats quests are tedious because they're taking way longer than you're used to. 

Unlike DDO and EQ2X, all of the races and all but two of the classes are available for free players.  With DDO, you might start a character that you have to re-roll once you've decided to pay, and that will not happen with LOTRO unless you have your heart set on a Warden or Runekeeper.  You can advance into the late 20's without paying a dime, and what you see is basically what you're going to get going forward. 

One weird quirk to LOTRO's model is that there are a number of things that are permanently unlocked on a per-character basis for any character that you sign onto while you have a valid subscription.  Bags, currency cap, trait caps, riding skill requirements (provided you'd rather do a tedious questline than pay 50 cents), all go away with a single month's subscription, which also includes rental access to all of the level 1-50 content and 500 Turbine Points for future use.  The best value for your money is to level until the end of the free content, then pay for a single month of subscription (so that you're ready to use the content you are only renting) and see where you stand at the end of that month level-wise before you decide what else to purchase.

In LOTRO, you are never obligated to pay for level cap increases - if you are prepared to grind away at mobs and repeatable level-scaling content (e.g. skirmishes), you can in principle reach the cap eventually.  You will also have free access to the game's epic story quests (generally the best content, worth doing even if you don't need the exp), whether or not you pay for the associated zones.  If you do think that you will pay for the current expansion, which costs $30, spending an extra $20 (for a total of $50) for the "legendary edition" will get you enough content to get from level one to the cap, all of the new endgame content, and 1000 TP (plus what you earn while questing).

One downside - in my personal opinion, which others may disagree with, is that endgame group content is not Turbine's biggest priority.  There is a single new raid in the expansion (a single encounter, not a full dungeon), and three group (6-player) instances that will in principle be implemented in the patch three months after the expansion launched.  The previous expansion launched with a single raid, a single group zone, and three three-man zones, and added a couple in a patch a bit over a year later.  Turbine has tried to make due with less, focusing on revamping old instances to scale with player level, but the bottom line is that LOTRO gets new dungeon content at a slower rate than any of the above games. 

That all said, LOTRO may be the best choice out there if you want a traditional fantasy MMO.  The game stays true to the lore, which means just the four Tolkien playable races, no flying mounts, and the occasional klunky work-around for minor details like death and fast travel.  It's clear that they spend serious time making Middle Earth work as well as it can within the MMO genre, and that is a good thing if you like Middle Earth.

Mopping Up Mirkwood

The rollout of LOTRO's Isengard expansion is a bit unusual in that the level cap increase in included for all players.  As a result, all of the left-over content that I never finished in Mirkwood was now worth real live exp towards my next level (66, which I snagged tonight).  In the process, I also capped out the Malledhrim faction (the reputation of Mirkwood), which snagged me some Turbine points, a title, and the right to purchase a skill that teleports me back to Mirkwood once I earn enough daily quest tokens to do so. 

In an earlier post about the expansion pre-order plan, a commenter asked what the point would be of obtaining the ten additional levels in the expansion if you were not going to purchase the content that you would experience with these levels.  My answer would be to see the epic story, which is open to all players (provided you can attain the appropriate level).  The finely crafted story instance content - which does occasionally pop up in regular quests, but is primarily seen during the epic story - is one of the places where LOTRO shines.  The regular quests, which had my Champion greatly exceeding Legolas and Gimli's combined kill counts at Helm's Deep through sheer grinding, is less inspired. 

Ironically, I might enjoy the new portions of Middle Earth more if I did NOT have access to the epic story, so that I would just leave the uninspired kill ten wargs/goblins/orcs quests behind their paywall and only do the quests that matter.  Unfortunately, this does not look like the most practical option.  Turbine originally announced a cap increase of five levels, and doubled that to ten levels during the development of the expansion, I'm guessing in part to deter players from doing just what I'm suggesting. 

Detour to Enedwaith?
As an interesting side note, I'm faced with a choice of what to do next in game.  There was one new zone prior to the expansion, Enedwaith, which I declined to purchase as a non-subscriber because I was already at the level cap.   Now that I'm at level 66 and halfway to 67, there is a case to be made that I should just skip the entire zone, other than the epic quest line that runs through it, so that I don't hit Isengard content even further over-level whenever I decide to pay for the new expansion.  Then again, this would mean skipping a large chunk of content - the only content that was added in nearly two years between Mirkwood and Isengard - and missing out on deeds that I could be getting credit for as I work on the epic story anyway. 

If I did choose to stop in Enedwaith, there'd be a second choice - how to pay for it.  I could pay for a permanent unlock as a Premium player, which would cost me 695 Turbine Points ($7) before sales.  This would allow me to experience the content at my leisure, including the right to go back and complete kill deeds (though I haven't done this for large amounts of older content that I can currently access, because it's more boring than it's worth).  Then again, I have no intention of ever getting a second LOTRO character high enough to do this zone a second time.

As a result, this may be one of the cases where paying for a single month of LOTRO's subscription might actually be a better deal.  For $15, I would get rental access to the following for one month:

• The Enedwaith zone, including the ability to complete any kill deeds that I start but do not complete. Unless this zone is much bigger than I'm expecting, a month should be plenty of time.  (Value: 695 TP)
• Crafting Guild progression.  I currently have enough crafting rep to reach the new tier, and I would be able to keep the recipes after dropping back down to non-subscriber status - as the system currently stands, I wouldn't need to get access again until the next crafting cap increase.  (Value: 295 TP for "permanent" access to something that I may not need again for years)
• 20 slots of cosmetic wardrobe storage.  If I understand the system correctly, things I put in the wardrobe would remain there until removed, even after my subscription lapses.  This would clear a fair number of items that I don't expect to need again anytime soon out of my bank and house vaults.  (Value: 495 TP grants permanent access to 10 slots worth of cosmetic storage, but the real value is getting this stuff out of my bank without permanently destroying it)
• Rested exp - I had some on my character for some reason and was allowed to "spend" it, but my understanding was that ONLY subscribers are allowed to earn additional rested exp.  (Value: unclear, I guess I'd have to price it versus some sort of exp boost potion?)
• +500 Turbine Points (monthly stipend)

As I've discussed at length, the Turbine point option for the expansion purchase is not that attractive, which raises the question of why I'd want Turbine points if they aren't useful for opening content.  That said, there are some decent permanent quality of life improvements, such as teleports to cities, additional hearthstone locations, additional legendary item slots, or even a trait that halves the cooldown on the hearthstone, all on sale in the 295-495 price range.  Less time traveling has a definite cash value, especially with LOTRO's emphasis on Fed-Ex quests.   

I don't think this is something I'm going to do in the short term until I'm ready to pull the trigger on Isengard, but it's interesting that there is a scenario where the subscription may still be useful.  I still think that LOTRO's subscription is not a great idea for long-term players, because you're re-paying every month for stuff you could unlock just once, but apparently even a high level player can find some value out of a single month of VIP every now and then. 

LOTRO's Conflicting Payment Plans

LOTRO's Isengard expansion has arrived, and it appears that my post on the pricing (which got quoted by Syp, who in turn was quoted on the Multiverse) turns out to be partially incorrect. 

I had gotten the impression from Turbine's marketing materials that the two choices were to pre-order the expansion for $30 or to buy the expansion in the LOTRO Store for $60 worth of Turbine Points (albeit with the option to save money by declining to purchase the group content).  Apparently there was a third option, which, in my defense, they chose not to emphasize.  The $30 offer, minus a cosmetic cloak and an exp boost for low level alts, remains valid in Turbine's website store. 

Long-term value of the VIP?
While I'm sure that Turbine didn't object to trying to pressure people into purchasing early, I think that Spinks (who also quoted me) was much closer to the mark than I was.   This pricing model was aimed primarily at long-term subscribers (especially life-timers) who have excess points as a result of not spending their monthly stipends on consumables and fluff items.  The Turbine store does not accept Turbine points, only additional real world currency. 

This seems like an odd move.  There's significant value in a single month of VIP subscription to LOTRO, because any character that has been played with a current subscription gets a bunch of permanent unlocks that cost well over $15 worth of points in the in-game store.  There may even be value in subscribing for a few months to "rent" content that you intend to beat quickly and never play again.  In the long run, though, you could permanently unlock almost everything that a VIP has through the Turbine Point store for less money than it costs to keep a subscription going for a year or longer. 

By pointing out that additional cash is going to be heavily favored over Turbine Points - yes, there could be a discounted bundle later, but waiting three months will not be satisfactory to active, long-time subscribers - Turbine could very easily kick some of these folks over the fence to the Premium non-subscription side, costing themselves money in the long run. 

(Incidentally, does anyone believe Turbine's excuse for the lack of a bundle - that they are technologically incapable of selling a bundle in the in-game store that will grant access to the future instances?  You'd think they could implement some sort of place-holder if they wanted to.) 

Arriving at the wrong conclusion
I was not alone in reaching the conclusion I did about Turbine's pre-order campaign, but I should not have been surprised.   A 2009 pre-order deadline for Mirkwood also turned out to be a bluff that got extended, because Turbine priced the expansion and the price they wanted to sell the expansion at.  There's very little incentive for Turbine to risk having late-comers decline to purchase some or all of the expansion after the price effectively doubled on launch day. 

(Aside: The in-game store makes no mention of the out-of-game discount.  Is it really a good idea to let players pay for $30 worth of Turbine Points to unlock the solo content, only to find out later that they could have had all the group content for the same amount of money?) 

P.S.
All LOTRO talk aside, this was an interesting lesson for me in that my reaction focused on the specifics of my own situation, as a non-subscriber who was undecided about the expansion.  By posting quickly, I missed the bigger picture of the story about VIP's.  I don't think of PVD as a news site, but I do think there is some value in having my analysis up while the topic is still news.  Then again, perhaps I would have caught more of the story if I had thought and waited a bit longer before posting (if for no other reason than because other folks figured it out).  Ah well, perils of being a blogger I suppose. 

Easy Raids And Player Conversion

Rohan at Blessing of Kings is looking vaguely prophetic.  On Thursday, he wrote about a split between what he calls "transient" players - those only willing to tackle content designed to be completed in a single session - and "extended" players - those willing to invest greater amounts of time over multiple sessions in traditional raid content.  He wrote:

The single biggest problem with the endgame of WoW is that it persists in believing that if the incentives are just right, Transient players will transform into Extended players, and everything will work out properly.

In a followup post on Monday, he suggests that having a lower difficulty raid setting with automated group finding is a compromise solution that could provide transient players with an endgame, while preserving the more traditional endgame.  Today, we learned that Blizzard has been hard at work implementing his suggestion, and that the looking for raid tool in patch 4.3 will indeed send players into a lower difficulty level. 

Dealing with Transience
To greatly abuse numbers, I'd suggest that transient players make up 80+% of the MMO market - that's the approximately 5 million NA/EU WoW subscribers versus the approximately 500,000 subscribers to the most successful MMO's that pre-dated WoW. Some portion of that increase may be the fabled Blizzard "quality"/"polish", the popularity of the IP from previous games, etc. However, I just don't think that these things account for an order of magnitude. Instead, I believe the additional numbers are transient players, who Blizzard chose to invite into a previously closed genre by allowing them to solo to the level cap.

The challenge ever since has been how to entertain transient players now that they are here, providing the majority of the revenue for the genre and voting down the extended players (including the EQ1 vets who now work as developers at places like Blizzard) on questions about whether it's appropriate for expansion storylines to culminate in raid zones that only elite players can complete. 

Some games, like LOTRO, have effectively punted - that game's core story is now soloable, with group content as an optional additional-fee add-on.  Others have struggled to find the resources to tack a solo game onto a model that was intended for something else.  Meanwhile, a few hold-outs, notably WoW, have tried to hold the line for the extended old-guard, selling everyone the same expansion with the same storyline, but reserving the ending for not merely regular raids but harder "heroic" raids, with heroic-only encounters like Sinestra and the final phase of the Firelands Ragnaros encounter. 

Continuing the trend?
Assuming that this does play out the way it sounds like it will, transient players will indeed get to see all of the zones in the game.  The real question I'm wondering about is "why".  If the answer was "to provide more content, without having to re-design raids for 5 players", this plan would make sense.  However, according to the interview summary, the one of the goals of the system is to teach players how to raid for future efforts in the "real" difficulty settings.  If so, I believe the effort is doomed to failure because it continues the mistake that Rohan pointed out - the belief that somehow players who are paying to play a game on their own schedules can be convinced to switch over to more structured raid schedules, if only they can be made to see the light. 

Nothing that Blizzard or anyone else has attempted since 2004 has succeeded at this, and I don't expect that exposing players to 24 strangers in WoW's notorious random dungeon pool will do the trick.  Meanwhile, if Blizzard intends to reserve the real ending of the raid storylines for players who do the traditional non-easy versions of the raid, I doubt that most transient players will be impressed. 

In principle, this whole thing should have limited impact on "real" raiders, who are supposedly raiding because they actually enjoy raiding.  If the plan succeeds, real raiders might even see more experienced recruits coming out of the raid finder.  That said, to the extent that some raiders are motivated by exclusivity, Blizzard may see some customers heading for the exits. Whether this number will be offset by increased retention among players who can now PUG all the raids remains to be seen.

Buy Now Or Else

With the unveil of Turbine's pricing plan for players who fail to "pre-order" the Isengard expansion, the model feels more like a threat than a bargain. 

The Offer
Under pre-order pricing, $30 gets you the solo content, the (single) raid, and the 3 single group instances (to be released later), along with some pre-order bonuses of various value. 

Under the Turbine Point pricing, a $30 Turbine Point bundle on "double bonus sale" (one of the best sale exchange rates, comes around every other month or so) will buy only the solo content.  If you want the raid and the instances too, you're going to have to wait for the double bonus sale and drop $50 (which will leave you with about 900 TP left over). There may eventually be discount bundles or sales that increase the number of "leftover" points players have after unlocking the expansion, but I suspect that the minimum real money pricetag of a bundle large enough to get the expansion will likely remain around the $30 range. 

Unlike the game's low level content, it does not appear that there will be an option to purchase individual zones worth of content for smaller amounts of money - players will be forced to purchase all three zones at once for $30, or attempt to grind out 10 additional levels using unfinished content from previous expansions and scaling content like skirmishes.  (One wonders in hindsight if the decision to increase the level cap from by 10 levels to 75, increased from the originally announced 70, was intended primarily to make the latter option less attractive.) 

How to respond?
The irony of the situation is that the hypothetical $30 is not a terrible deal - that would represent the only real money I would have spent on the game in possibly a three year period between when Mirkwood content dried up and whenever the next expansion hits, and the purchase would provide full access to the endgame if I ever wanted to pursue it.  Unfortunately, Turbine's decision to use strong-arm tactics makes choosing to pay under these circumstances feel less like getting something I want and more like giving in to a blackmailer - buy now or you'll be sorry when we make you pay twice as much later.

At the end of the day, I'm strongly inclined to call Turbine's bluff.  If I "win", I get to see the game's epic core story without paying Turbine a dime (or, alternately, the experience is sufficiently unenjoyable that I quit the game outright).  If I "lose" I eventually end up paying the $30 for less stuff, but I probably wouldn't have used most of that stuff since I haven't done much with the access to instances I currently own from past LOTRO expansions. 

If Isengard actually turns out to be worth the money, this high pressure sales pitch was unnecessary - place a fair price on the thing and I would probably have purchased it.  Instead, Turbine has chosen to reinforce every negative stereotype of the non-subscription MMO model, and I'm none too keen to support them as a result.

What I'm Working On: Round-Up

I'll come back to EQ2 after the bonus exp weekend wraps up, so for the moment that leaves me with the games that I haven't done much with recently to round up my MMO update tour.

WoW is simply not a high priority for me at the moment.  I will, in principle, want to clear out all of the level 85 heroic dungeons sometime before the next expansion, and there are some new features, including cosmetic items, to be tried whenever 4.3 happens.  What I'm really not interested in is signing in on a daily basis to earn a few more tokens towards Firelands dailies that could someday award me gear that I'm not even going to use before the next gear reset.  At least in EQ2 (and soon Rift) I can earn AA exp that will stay with the character beyond the next patch if I do spend time on daily quests.

LOTRO has an expansion launching this month, and I have yet to make plans.  It's not entirely clear to me how the thing will work with the business model, which currently includes the level cap, physical access to zones, and the epic questline for all players regardless of payment.  If this is the case for Isengard, I don't see why I'd want to pay $30 for the "expansion pre-order" instead of $5-15 for the content I need a la carte.

(I'm not sure if the world of Middle Earth isn't slightly more atmospheric if I make a point of NOT owning all the generic quests so that the only quest available to me at a new camp is the Epic story, rather than having the wilderness campfire lit up like a Christmas tree with quest icons.  I still have a bit of Mirkwood content that I have yet to finish, along with epic storyline in Enedwaith and scaling skirmishes, so there is, in principle, content I can use to earn exp if I don't buy all of the new stuff.)   

My current plan here is to wait and see how much content I actually end up needing, rather than rushing to pre-order now and ending up with content that I don't bother to use.  DDO has basically fallen off my plate, leaving me with about $30 worth of unspent Turbine points and a fair number of quest packs that I paid to unlock but have yet to play because my characters are not high enough level.  Because it's a free to play game with no real time limits, it's possible that I will still come back one of these days and get good value for that money.  Even so, this situation is what I don't want to have happen in LOTRO - no matter how much of a "better deal" the pre-order is, the money is still wasted if I buy it before I plan to play it, and don't end up using it once I do so. 

End of the PAX Turbinica?

MMO News during the first half of my vacation was interesting enough to lure me out of hiding for a round-up post.  Spinks has a good summary of the news out of PAX week, which seemed like a slower convention by comparison.  What caught my eye was a pair of seemingly unrelated posts that suggest the honeymoon may be over for Turbine's touted and popular hybrid free to play business model.

Underwhelming DDO and LOTRO updates
Over in Middle Earth, players are concerned with what they're getting for their money in LOTRO's new expansion.  Syp's column at Massively calls Isengard "the Unfinished Expansion" and writes that it "feels a little weak" in comparison to the game's previous paid updates.  Turbine's CM's had to rush to head off a controversy by confirming that there would be no additional charge for the level 75 instances that would not be ready by the players who pay full price at the expansion's launch. 

Meanwhile, seemingly the biggest news for DDO out of PAX was that the new Artificer class will initially be limited to players who pay in the cash store.  The class will eventually be available as a favor unlock (think reputation or faction reward), but there will not be enough quests in the game to obtain the required favor until the next patch, which will presumably come 2-3 months after the class rolls out.  Non-subscribers should be relatively accustomed to this aspect of the DDO business model, but this marks the first time that subscribers will be forced to spend Turbine Points for access to a major character-building feature. 

Double-edged popularity?
One one level, I'm not sure how many stones should be thrown in this situation.  Both games are still delivering far more content to players than they were before their changeovers, and the premium options in both games allow players far greater flexibility to get by for less than $10-15 per month.  I would still prefer to pay a developer when they actually deliver something worth paying for, rather than paying a monthly fee whether or not they've done anything to earn it other than not kicking me off of the servers. 

That said, I think these two stories illustrate a shared flaw in the premium model used by both games, and one of my earliest observations of the DDO model - for a player who doesn't spend money on cosmetics and consumables, Turbine's monthly revenue will only drop each and every month as that player permanently unlocks the features they want and lives without the features they don't want.  This bargain is precisely the feature that makes the Turbine premium model so popular with players, but it leaves Turbine getting less and less money for the same amount of work as the playerbase matures.

In this context, it makes sense that Turbine would be interested in some combination of higher prices and less content.  Unfortunately for Turbine, players may not cooperate, and the flexibility of the models give players unprecedented leeway not to pay for stuff that isn't worth the price tag. 

Canada Day Resolutions For 2011

It's July 1st, which means it is once again time to hono(u)r our neighbors to the north with PVD's annual Canada Day Resolutions.  How have my New Years' Resolutions been going so far?  What's on deck for the rest of the year? 

WoW Resolutions

• Get both my Gnome mage (currently 84) and my Tauren warrior (82) up to the new level cap of 85. 
  My mage came up just short of hitting the milestone this year for reasons I've discussed. 
• Complete every normal and heroic 5-man at least once on both high level characters.     
• Explore some of the revamped old world on new alts.
  Currently, I'm a bit over halfway through a tour of the newbie (1-12) zones with a small army of new alts.  My favorite lowbie specs right now are Subtlety Rogue, Survival Hunter, Destruction Warlock, and Discipline Priest.  It's possibly telling that none of those are traditional leveling specs, which tend to make life too easy.

The mage made it to the cap in early February, though I was in no hurry to get there.  The warrior hit the cap last week.  I have beaten all of the normal dungeons on the mage, but I'm nowhere near through the heroics, much less the two bonus heroics that arrived this spring.  I will probably finish this on my mage next month, and I'm not sure if I'm going to bother on the warrior or not.  As to the alt tour, I did finish the level 1-12 newbie zones, but the low difficulty of playing the game as intended really sapped my interest in continuing with this project.

Revised Resolutions are:

• Finish the heroics (including new ones) on the mage.
• Check out the new daily campaign in 4.2.

DDO/LOTRO Resolutions

• Actually get a character into the mid-high levels.  [DDO]
• Complete the Vol 3 Book 2 content in Enedwaith (added during the F2P switch)[LOTRO]
• Await Isengard [LOTRO]

Fail.  I've barely logged into DDO this year.  I did spend some time in LOTRO because they made the missing chunks of Volume II soloable, but I still haven't quite caught up to the present.  That said, I've also not paid anything for either game this year, and they're both waiting for whenever I want to sign in.  LOTRO does have its expansion coming this fall, and I'm sure I will play it eventually, but this may or may not be at launch depending on what else I'm up to in October.  Revised resolution is to take both games at whatever pace I feel like, which is basically unfailable. 

EQ2 Live/Extended

• Write fewer news posts about the EQ2 business model.
• Either find a Velious bargain or skip the expansion entirely

I haven't completely steered clear of the EQ2 business model, which is still mind-boggling at times, but I think I've done a better job of not over-covering minor changes, especially on the EQ2X side.   Ironically, I think I would actually pay less money under the F2P model, but I'm not prepared to take a one way trip away from my new server (after LDL finally merged with Crushbone in February).  Despite my expectations, I actually picked up Velious and have enjoyed it.  In general, I log in when I have a full evening to spend on a PUG dungeon run, and I've been saving the solo content so that I will have something to do while I look.  Overall, it's been going pretty well so far. 

Revised Resolutions:

• Wrap up the Velious solo timelines, including any new content as it arrives.  
• Complete each heroic dungeon at least once (I've currently finished the first six, leaving the three KD zones and the new ones in Drunder), and try to finish up the major dungeon questlines.  

Runes of Magic

At the start of the year, I had no plans to return to ROM.  Probably the biggest thing I did to improve my experience was to stop worrying about keeping my secondary class up to date.  Focusing on the druid side, which is the side that I really enjoy anyway, literally halves the grind, and the result is a level that I can enjoy as a pleasant non-subscription diversion. 
Revised Resolutions:

• Advance towards the level cap on the druid (or as close as I can get before the grind and/or the need for gear kills it)
• Pick my third class (probably either Warden or Warrior, leaning Warden if they improve it in upcoming patches) and take some of the additional options for a spin.
  

PS3 Resolutions

The original plan here was to sightsee in DCUO and pick up some misc single player games.  Unfortunately, the more I've heard about DCUO - including today's half-hearted introduction of a cash shop - the less impressed I am.  I may eventually pick this up on the PC if the price gets low enough, now that the station pass upgrade costs only $5 more for EQ2 subscribers.  On the single player side, I've beaten Portal 2 and Infamous, and now I'm working on Assassin's Creed 2.


Rift Resolutions

I had planned to take a pass on the launch rush, but relatively reasonable pricing ultimately tipped me in favor of signing up at launch.  I let my sub lapse at the 30 day mark, I haven't been back, and I can't really articulate a rational reason why; I just didn't feel like sticking with the game over the other options.  Though the launch went exceptionally well by all MMO standards, there were some rough edges that got balanced out, for better or worse, over the last few months.  I figure that the game that I will eventually return to will be better than the one I declined to pay for back in April, so there's no hurry, especially with how quickly Trion releases new patches.

Revised Resolution:

• Get to level 50 on my Cleric, PUG some dungeons to see how the experience compares with WoW and EQ2.  

Other MMO's

At the top of the year, I said that I'd consider Vanguard and STO if they went free to play.  The buzz on Vanguard has since gotten interesting enough that I will likely take it for a free trial spin, even though no business model change is in sight.  I remain not so interested in SWTOR or GW2 because I didn't care so much for their predecessors, and I don't feel like there have been enough hard details about TERA for me to say much about the game. 

The other game I'm vaguely curious about is Allods, which a lot of people seemed to enjoy until they discovered that the publisher intended to make money on the product, and which is supposedly adding its own take on dual/multi-classing.  That said, time is really the limiting factor in trying any MMO's I'm not currently playing, and I'm just not sure that Allods or anything else is going to fit in the calendar.

The Blog
As I predicted, I'm limping along at around three posts per week due to limited gaming/blogging time.  Some weeks, I've had so little time that I realize it's been several days since I posted anything.  Others, I've got something to talk about every day.  It's not ideal, but it's what I've got for now.

As always, thanks to my readers for sticking around, and we'll see how these resolutions fare in six months.

Incorrect Convention Predictions for Summer/Fall 2011

My track record for incorrect Blizzcon predictions is so epically bad - last year all my calls were proven wrong before the show even started - that I've decided to get a head start and expand my coverage to be sure that I can be totally wrong about even more 'con's.   Without further ado...

Inaccurate Predictions for SOE Fan Faire (to be disproved by 7-9 July)
The new EQ2 class will be the fabled Beast Lord, and the new expansion will have something to do with the destroyed moon of Luclin.  The new expansion will come out sometime later than previously (perhaps May 2012) and will NOT increase the game's level cap.  Given that EQ Next was no more than concept art last year, it won't be playable this year. 

There really isn't another choice of class that I've ever heard anyone suggest serious interest in.  Of course, I didn't hear much call for a premium vampire race either, but finding a home for a new class in a game that already has more classes than it knows what to do with is a bit more work than a mostly cosmetic new race.  It really wouldn't make sense to spend the time on something that no one would care about, the melee pet class is the only option I can think of that isn't covered by the game's two dozen existing classes, and the Beast Lord was tied to the lore of Luclin in the original EQ.

My guess on Luclin arises partially from similar reasoning - this game isn't getting any younger, so it doesn't make sense to save its most recognizable expansion ideas for some future rainy day.  There is the minor issue that Luclin doesn't exist anymore, but my guess is that this expansion will be very light on new content.  Smokejumper came out and said that he'd like expansions to be more about new features than new content, and I would guess that the additional content that is being added in the content patches of Velious is coming out of the dev time that would have been available for the next expansion.  In that context, a Cataclysm-like plot in which chunks of the old moon fall on underutilized zones may fit Smokejumper's plan.

Finally, the level cap.  I have not heard a single complaint that DOV did not increase the level cap this year, or a single desire for it to be increased next year.  Quite the contrary, the only thing we absolutely know is coming next year is the Qeynos revamp (following this year's Freeport revamp), and there was the whole kerflaffle about giving away max level characters, which only gets worse as the game accumulates more than its current 90 levels.  Meanwhile, last year's TSF expansion was a mess in large part because they raised the level cap far more than the limited new adventuring content could support, and nothing suggests a different scenario this year.  I guess they could go for 1-3 levels as Ferrel has suggested from time to time, but I don't see a real reason why there need to be any this year, and thus I'm predicting zero.

Inaccurate Predictions For Pax Prime (to be disproved 26-28 August)
I don't even know who is exhibiting this year.  I'm guessing that Trion and Turbine are in, since they were in last year, and that Blizzard and SOE are out, because they have their own events.

The Turbine booth will assuredly be busy hyping the new LOTRO expansion, but I don't expect major news to drop a mere month out from the expansion launch.  The real news here will.be the mystery non-druid class to be added to DDO.  My guess here is a modified version of the pen and paper Mystic Theurge, which can cast both arcane and divine spells at the cost of reduced progression in both schools.  I predict that the DDO version will be a stand-alone class (i.e. does not stack with other classes) with a single set of spell slots for both schools (since DDO uses a more MMO-like SP system instead of DND spell slots).  Someone will find some creative use for it, and it will be easy for Turbine to make because it doesn't require large amounts of new mechanics; it's basically a Sorcerer with slower spell acquisition and a wider spell list. 

The Trion side of things is harder to predict - to my knowledge, they've said next to nothing about patch 1.4, other than the assumption that it will contain the guild banks that were not ready for 1.3.  At their current pace, patch 1.4 will be in final testing or live and they'll be hinting at the contents of 1.5.  Six months post-launch is too soon to be talking paid expansions, so it would surprise me if anything of the sort came up.

Incorrect Blizzcon Predictions (to be disproved 21-22 October)
Having been told last year that Diablo III will not launch in 2011 and Titan, the Mystery Fourth Project, will not be announced until 2012, takes much of the guesswork out of this year.  DIII will take center stage, accompanied by the SCII expansion (which finally got some face time this year). 

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Blizzard will opt NOT to announce the next World of Warcraft expansion at this event.  This would break past precedent - all three past WoW expansions were announced at Blizzcon, and you would ordinarily expect the new expansion to roll out at this con - 10 months post-Cataclysm - to start building hype for its launch at the 18-24 month post-Cataclysm launch.  The problem is timing. 

Blizzard planned 2-3 patches for Cataclysm before they ended up breaking 4.1 in half and spending seven months to get both parts out the door.  At their customary 6-month patch cycle, we'd expect to see the patch that was previously the second patch of the Cataclysm era hitting the test servers around this time, with the third patch and the final battle with Deathwing presumably at least six months beyond that (i.e. June 2012).  If that's the timetable, October seems a bit soon to be looking beyond the Deathwing era.  Maybe they can hold Blizzcon 2012 earlier, or announce the WoW expansion at some other event in early 2012?

Whenever they do get around to announcing the expansion, I predict that Nozdormu and the Infinite Dragonflight will be the stars of the show.  I do not expect any significant changes to the now out-of-date lore of Outland and Northrend, but we could see a slight tie-in where players heading to those unchanged continents are specifically told that they're being sent into the past to prevent the Infinite Flight from changing (relatively recent) history.  I'm also going to predict neither a new class nor new races.  Blizzard has said that they like to alternate because of art demands of a new race, but I just don't see a niche for a new class in a game that is already struggling to deal with the 30 subclasses of its 10 classes.  I predict that there will be five new levels - unlike EQ2, I think there is a demand for more dings, but I don't think they want the talent point inflation that comes with 10 levels.


And that's what I've got for the year's three big cons.  Have fun pointing and laughing over the next four months.  :)  


 

E3 Impressions

In the run-up to E3, Zubon looked at the slate and saw sequels, tie-ins, and remakes as far as the eye could see.  I didn't put that much advance effort into analyzing E3, but I did leave a few quips in Keen's liveblog of the Sony press conference.  I don't follow console news nearly as closely as I follow MMO's, so it's a pretty sad state of affairs when I mostly already knew about all the stuff that I was at all interested in.  A few random linkspams:

• Sony's new phone/portable system seems ill-advised.  You can't sell games for a system that people don't own, which makes the system not worth owning because people don't make games for it.  If I were in a position to offer one piece of advice to someone trying to launch a gaming phone, it would have been not to make it an exclusive for AT&T.  Even the crowd of spoon-fed journalists did NOT react well to this announcement from Sony, and for good reason - the saga of how much iPhone users (and would be users) hated AT&T went beyond technology enthusiasts to the mainstream.  I'm sure not running out to pay $300 plus a data plan on a carrier I don't want, so I guess I'm just not going to be paying to play any of the game's they're making for the thing. 
  
  Note: Two commenters point out that the PS Phone (which was mentioned during the conference) is actually a separate device from the "Vita", which is available in wifi or 3G data versions (the latter shackled to AT&T).
  
  
• Speaking of PS Phone games, they showcased a Diablo-looking "MMO" called Ruin in which one of the hyped features was that players would build their own "lair", and other players could attack your keep and you'd be "rewarded" for responding fast enough.  What happens if you don't answer the phone alert was not specified.  Where do I go to NOT sign up for the game where I lose my keep because I had my phone off while I was at work? 
  
  
• Sony also unexpectedly brought CCP onto the big stage to announce that Dust 514 - the EVE-spinoff FPS - was bound exclusively for the PS3.  This game and the original EVE are in the same universe, and CCP has been saying since the concept was announced that battles in one game will affect the other. I have no idea how that will work (especially if there's a monthly fee attached to the PS3 game - will anyone stick around beyond the first month?), but CCP has been making stuff that wouldn't work for anyone else work for them for years now.  Also, I wonder how many people will "two-box" the FPS on the PS3 while their Eve ship does its mining-botting on the PC. 
  
  
• The thing that I was most excited about was the Star Trek game trailer - mostly because I'd forgotten that there was another Star Trek movie coming out.  On the plus side, I'm sure 'shippers somewhere can do something suitably inappropriate with a Kirk/Spock coop shooter that includes Playstation Move (that's their version of the Wiimote, which will come in a phaser-shaped model for this game) support. 
  
  
• Finally, in a bit of actual PC MMO news, Turbine has announced pre-order pricing and a September 27th release date for the Isengard expansion.  Doc Holiday has the important info - $30 for the expansion (three new zones and a higher level cap, though it's not clear how that will interact with free players), and additional packages that add $10 or $20 to the price tag in exchange for Turbine points, quest packs (if you don't already own them) and Rohirrim mounts/cosmetic outfits. 
  
  Personally, I already own the quest packs (from the old expansions) that might otherwise make the $50 a good deal for non-subscribers, and I don't care much about cosmetic mounts, so I'm inclined to wait and see.  In fairness, that's almost always my reaction. 
  
  (Note that these prices are in real world dollars, and may not be equivalent to post-launch pricing.  Turbine has not set a final Turbine Point cost for the expansion when it hits the in-game store, where it may be priced differently to account for TP sales.) 

It'll be interesting to see if anything more original emerges from the remainder of the show, but so far I'm relatively underwhelmed.

Rift To Get Appearence Armor Slots?

Rift Junkies reports that some sort of cosmetic armor set/wardrobe feature seems to be coming to the game's alpha server. 

LOTRO's outfit panel, back in the old days

I sympathize with folks who want the coolest looking gear to be saved for the truly challenging accomplishments.  If anything, cosmetics are one of the few places where a developer can save a little something extra to reward the hardcore crowd without keeping the best portions of the game locked away from the majority of its customers.  Also, as Ferrel noted a bit ago, it's very easy for developers to take cosmetic slots as an invitation for cash store abuse... and/or bleeping chainsaws if these Aion shots Chris posted really aren't a belated April Fool's thing. 

That said, the demand for this feature is significant and growing.  Developers can shake their heads at players for demanding it (as Scott Jennings does, to comic effect), but I do genuinely view LOTRO and EQ2's cosmetic systems as big assets to the respective games - even gear that I have no intention of using can become an exciting reward if it happens to be just what I needed for my latest coordinated outfit.  This feature also makes me more willing to grind out seasonal or world events for cosmetic outfits, where in WoW these items will just take up space in my bank since I can't ever wear them without losing massive amounts of stats. 

If Rift really is aboard the cosmetic train, we're probably never going to see another major MMO try to do without this type of system in the future.  On the plus side, this may solve the case of the missing extraplanar pants. 

Soloable Core Story, Group-Based Epilogue/Finale

Over the past few days, I spent some time in LOTRO completing the newly soloable Volume 2 Epic quests. With this set of changes, LOTRO has completed a shift in its storytelling style in which the game's core story is open to all players via soloing, while group content is presented in optional epilogues or side-quests. 

Revamping the content...
In more traditional MMO fashion, the story quests of Volumes 1 and 2 were designed with the intent of luring solo players into group content in order to see the unfolding story.  Unfortunately, for reasons I've decried at length, this approach didn't really work because the solo and group player demographics just don't match up. 

Starting with the Mirkwood expansion and the final Book of Volume 2, Turbine presented the epic storyline as soloable content, with a group epilogue that allows players to go back and tackle foes that the solo players could not conquer alone.  They also announced a change, implemented a few months later, which would revise the Volume 1 content from the launch game to allow players to complete the content without the need for groups of players that simply could no longer be found.  At the time, I wrote that it looked like Turbine was going to be using this approach going forward. 

It took over a year after that to finish the job, but last month's patch finally gave the non-soloable portions of Volume 2 (Books 4-6 and Book 8) the solo treatment.  The new Volume 3 quests that have been released since then have also been solo content, with a new optional side storyline leading players into the newly introduced group dungeons from the latest patch.

...to fit the audience?
Lord of the Rings Online is not a game that has had an overabundance of development resources; their decision to spend that limited time on removing the need to group for the game's core story strongly implies what those of us without access to the internal numbers can only assume from anecdotal evidence - that the audience for the game was simply not using the most crucial content because they were unwilling or unable to group to do so.  Moreover, the decision to continue this process book by book for over a year until the work could be completed implies that they liked the results they saw with the earliest changes. 

The MMO market in general, and LOTRO in particular now that it offers a non-monthly-fee option, is not what it used to be. Like it or not, the majority of paying customers are not interested in committing to raiding schedules that more closely resemble a job than a game.  The longer this goes on, the less willing the market is going to be to tolerate being told that they don't get to see the central story of the game they're paying for. 

This trend hit LOTRO first and hardest because it has always been a slower paced game that is more likely to appeal to a laid back solo player than a highly dedicated group player (who would quickly run out of content).  That said, the competition is starting to respond in a similar, albeit less drastic, way to the same problem.  If you look at the quests in the new zones of World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion, or in the newly-launched Rift, you will see an increasing push for exactly the same kind of storytelling - self-sufficient soloable zone storylines with the option to return for group content later. 

In some ways, it feels like MMO storytelling is shifting to be less like chapters of a book and more like episodes of a TV show - the new storylines appear meant to stand on their own merits, rather than merely setting up the real story for the few who beat the toughest dungeons.  Time will tell whether this compromise will prove satisfactory. 

LOTRO Legendary Customizeables Re-re-revised

Back in 2008, Turbine said a lot of good things about the forthcoming Legendary Item system.  The items were described as "mobile quest hubs" that would grow and stay with your character, much like the signature weapons carried by the Fellowship of The Ring.  What we got instead was a random item generator expressly designed to churn players through an indefinite number of disposable "legendary" items in the hopes of one day obtaining the perfect setup.  The game's most recent patch has finally replaced that system with a mostly time-based item customization system. 

Legacies Before And After

Allarond's rune is now fully customized with maximum bonuses to Ardour stance for soloing.

Since the LI system revamp in the Mirkwood expansion, your new item would start with 2-3 "major" legacies - upgradeable stats that generally improve DPS.  As you gained item exp, the item would get 3 additional legacies, which would typically be "minor" legacies that do more quality of life improvements (e.g. decreased cooldown on a Champion's sprint).  There was a chance that you would instead get an additional major legacy, but this didn't matter that much because the odds of having four random major legacies actually be useful weren't that great.   

With the changes, items will always start with 3 major legacies, and continue to have a random chance of obtaining an additional major legacy in place of a minor during the early levels.  Now, however, you can salvage the legacy of your choice from an item that has reached at least level 30 (relatively quick) and use it to replace a legacy of the same class (major replaces major, minor replaces minor) on a different item. 

You now definitely want an item that has a fourth major legacy, and you're slightly better off if the item comes with at least some of the legacies you want, since replacement legacies start at a low quality tier that will limit your ability to upgrade your weapon (until you grind more tqo upgrade the legacy quality).  That said, everyone can now have items with four major and two minor legacies of their choice given a relatively finite amount of grind time. 

Relics, Currencies, and Scrolls

The other big change to the system is a revamp of the relics used to fill the slots on your items.  You still obtain these relics by destroying priceless "legendary" items you have leveled, but there are now more stat choices available spread across fewer tiers, and there is a currency associated with the system that can be used to counteract the random number generator. 

Before the change, obtaining a specific tier 6 relic meant combining an exponentially increasing number of lower tier relics until you got lucky.  Now, you get a "shard" currency for breaking stuff (legendary items down into relics, and relics down into just shards) which can be used to pay to exchange your relic for the one you want.  The same system can be used to obtain most of the hard-to-get item scrolls (which have also been added into the cash shop, gogo free to play), and even new legendary items to level. 

(Speaking of the shop, the ability to unlock a seventh and eighth slot for additional items is cash store exclusive.  The formula for dividing item exp amongst your items awards more total exp for having more items equipped, so these additional slots ultimately mean faster acquisition of relics and shards.) 

A change in perspective

There was always an odd contrast between the ideals behind LOTRO Legendaries - in Middle Earth, a sword that glows and does +1 damage to orcs is a heirloom to be named and handed down for generations - and the disposable nature of gear in an MMO. Much like Moria's other major new mechanic, the hated Radiance system, the implementation fell far short of Turbine's aspirations.  When Narsil was broken, they saved the broken pieces for hundreds of years until there was a worthy heir of Elendil who deserved the reforged blade.  You don't replace that sort of thing with the first random quest drop you see. 

Under the circumstances, changing the system from a mostly random time sink to a mostly time-based time sink is an improvement.  While this does mean that weapons can now have cookie cutter builds, which would have been highly improbable under the old system, I don't quite know of anything exactly like this in other games.

That said, I can't help but look back and what might have been and feel that what we got here may not have been a fair trade for what we once were promised. 

F2P LOTRO Version 2

LOTRO had its update 2 patch this evening, adding in some long awaited group content, major revamps to the UI and some existing content, and significant changes to the game's store. 

Back in September, when the F2P model was newly introduced, I was underwhelmed with the game's non-subscription model.  Today, the premium free to play option is far more attractive, especially for infrequent players and tourists, but the higher end of the store does far more to push the limits on how much of what used to be gameplay is now for sale in the cash shop.  Update 2, feels like it has moved the F2P business model to version two, with all the blessings and curses that go along with the more traditional free to play label. 

More open for less money...
At the time of the free to play relaunch, the game's two pre-F2P expansions were mandatory purchases for the increased level caps.  This restriction was removed in a previous patch, allowing players to advance all the way to the cap if they were so inclined by grinding the freely available skirmishes and scaling dungeons. The Lone Lands zone was added to the completely free content, pushing players' decision points back to the neighborhood of level 30.  In another change, former subscribers are now allowed to use swift travel routes, which were previously restricted to subscribers only (one of the big things that I really disliked about the model back in September). 

The update two patch also adds a major update of the Evendim zone, which I happened to have picked up for cheap in a sale using points from retroactive reputation deeds after the relaunch.  With some sale discounts, I was able to get the riding trait for an old hunter alt for 57 TP, which is the only thing that you absolutely have to buy as a non-subscriber if you didn't have it from past VIP days.  I'll probably make that back while leveling the new character to the revised content, and I don't know that I'm going to need to spend very much money from here to the cap on that character if I really wanted to. 

...And more ways to spend
That said, Update 2 also adds many more ways to spend money.  At an approximate exchange rate of 1 cent per Turbine Point, you can now buy:

• Up to three additional cosmetic outfit slots for $5 each (account-wide).  No complaints here since we still get to keep the two slots we had.
  
• Up to five additional millstone destinations (LOTRO's version of hearthstones) for $3.50 each PER CHARACTER. All of your destinations share the 1 hour cooldown, you just get to pick multiple destinations for that one cooldown.  You can also halve the cooldown to 30 minutes with another paid unlock, that costs $5 PER CHARACTER. 
  
  (Note that this is separate from the reusable travel skills and consumable maps that were available at the F2P relaunch.  The travel skills share a cooldown with each other and any racial/rep teleports you might have, for $3 per destination per character - unlike the additional millstones, each skill has a single fixed destination.  I haven't ever used the consumable maps, so I don't know if they have a cooldown, but it would seem strange if they did.) 
  
• Up to two additional Legendary Item slots for $3 each PER CHARACTER.  This one starts to get concerning because having additional legendary items at your disposal can actually affect gameplay by giving you more options. 
  
• And finally, the big and controversial one: the Legendary Item system has been overhauled to be less random, but now there are even more consumables that you can use to upgrade your items... and they're all available in the store with no ceiling on your potential expenses.  The reaction in my kinship chat has been punctuated with the occasional "wait, you can buy what?!" as each player notices the new tab in the store. 

Throw in other stuff that's been here from the start, like outfits, consumables that raise you from the dead, consumables that let you track mobs, crafting materials, etc, and this store is starting to look much more like the traditional F2P cash shop, which is unfortunately not a compliment.   

Bargain for tourists, iffy for long-time residents?
The good news is that this game is far friendlier to low-spending tourists.  You probably won't enjoy the game you get if you try to play it without spending a dime, but you can see the world of Middle Earth for far less than $15/month - and, as with DDO, all the content you unlock is yours at no additional cost for future alts. 

The okay news is that this model is increasingly designed to get you in the door in the hopes that you'll buy stuff once you're there.  Only fair, I suppose, Turbine has to pay the bills somehow, and letting players choose what they want to pony up for is a relatively fair way to offer options. 

The bad news is what I feared when the game relaunched.  Things about the game that are not good - like the travel system or the random legendary item grind - are being preserved in order to sell cash store fixes rather than improved.  Maybe the game is still worth playing, and maybe it's even worth paying for the fixes, but it sets a dangerous precedent.  If you consider travel and legendary items "fixed", the biggest problem left in the game is the insane proliferation of bound-to-character tokens, none of which are allowed to go in the in-game currency wallet.  A dev commented that they have a proposal for this issue, and the fix may well involve another cash store purchase. 

The big reason why I like Turbine's other F2P success, DDO, is because they give you some of the game, which is good, and then you can pay them for more of the game.  The big thing that I have enjoyed less about other F2P models is that they give you the whole game, but the game is not good until you pay them to make the things they broke better.  I hope that LOTRO isn't going down the latter road. 

Lessons From Launch Queues

Rift Server Status Page, 9:15 PM EST, March 2nd 2011

Trion's Rift Server Status Page allows you to sort by number of players currently in the queue, which makes it easy to identify the game's most overcrowded servers.  At the time of the above screenshot, fifteen US servers had a queue.  The top twelve (the only ones in the triple digits at the time) were all amongst the seventeen servers whose names were announced prior to the beginning of the headstart.  The fact that the initial servers continue to make up such an overwhelming portion of the overpopulated list is potentially concerning. 

Chris has a post up on Rift Watchers comparing the game's queues, and addition of servers, to other game launches.  I was present for the launches of WoW and Warhammer, and can attest to the fact that they did indeed feature queues.  Blizzard, Mythic, and Trion all chose to launch with conservative numbers of servers and plans to expand rapidly if demand called for it.  The jury remains out on Rift, but I maintain that this tactic is a mistake.

The problem is that players who plan to show up in these games with their guilds are going to pick their server from the list that's available the night before launch, not the expanded list that's available after the queues hit.  The players who are able to change their server plans when they see a launch day queue are probably showing up on their own.

This means that the game's most dedicated players are going to end up stuck on a server with queues that may not get any better anytime soon.  Back in 2004, my guild opted to remain on one of the original 40 WoW servers, and we paid for that call many times over with multi-hour queues that persisted on and off for around three years.

Meanwhile, the servers that are added later fill up with players who have no social ties, making them more likely to change servers again or even leave the game outright (as Mythic discovered with Warhammer). Either way, I'd argue that having to double the number of servers after the fact is far more damaging than launching with a few servers too many. 

LOTRO aside
The one launch that seems to have gotten this question right is LOTRO.  The game had eleven servers during its open beta/headstart period, and it did not add or remove a single server until the free to play relaunch in 2010 (which added three new servers to the mix).  I was horrified when Turbine announced that they were not adding any new servers for the official retail launch, but they had gotten very reliable pre-order numbers and were able to make the correct call.

(The way the LOTRO headstart worked was that you could keep your characters from open beta, but ONLY if you pre-ordered by launch day.  By contrast, Trion's open beta was wiped before the headstart, so I'm guessing that players opted to wait for the final servers to arrive before submitting their pre-orders.)

The Curious $10 Multi-Month Deal

I learned from the latest episode of the DCUO-Unlimited podcast that the game is currently offering a discount subscription plan that comes out to something like $30/month.  While it's possibly telling that I didn't hear about this promo for a week after it rolled out (it's supposedly good through the end of the month), this type of rate is now increasingly standard.

Back in 2007, LOTRO launched with $10 monthly pre-order pricing.  (The game has offered $30/3 month plans nigh continuously since then.)  In the last few years, we're seeing this type of deal more and more frequently, including on brand new releases - I don't remember what STO did, but Cryptic's CO launched with a $60/6 month package, and Trion is offering that price for Rift. 

On one hand, the buyer should beware of some of the lengthier commitments - despite what MMO marketing departments tell you, these rates can work out to significantly more than $10/month if you don't end up playing full-time for that entire half-year.  (My guess is that publishers approve these sales because they like their odds.)  On the other, this trend has now carried over to too many big budget, high priority titles from too many studios to be purely driven by cynicism that the product isn't actually worth full price.

My guess has always been that development costs have been going up, while prices and subscriber numbers for successful MMO's have hovered in about the same range.  That would suggest that studios are feeling pressure to make more money through their subscription fees, especially if they're not offering a cash shop to supplement their income.  Instead, they're seemingly lowering their prices.    Maybe even us cynics underestimate how likely the player is to lose in the long run when they sign up for a six month subscription, or maybe there's something else going on here. 

I suppose I should be worried - the old saying goes that if you can't figure out who the sucker in the deal is, it's probably you.