Merits of Intermission

One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a MMO tourist is to never finish your to do list.  In general, the fun goals - e.g. run every dungeon at least once - get done early, while the less fun goals tend to get put off til later.  When I stick around "too long", I find that I walk away from the game with less positive feelings and stay gone for longer as a result.

I'm at one of these crossroads in EQ2 at the moment - a bit over halfway through the non-raid dungeon progression, nearing the AA cap, and approaching the maximum on most of the current expansion factions (most of which I don't really need for anything, other than a passtime while I look for groups and some free AAXP).  Groups are getting a bit harder to find as I move away from the easy dungeons of the expansion, and the side projects I can do while I try to get a group are getting less interesting (e.g. grinding Desert of Flames factions for an additional housing option, now that we can have multi-housing). 

My subscription happens to be due, and now is about the time to cancel if I want to take advantage of the "winback" promotions that will most likely follow November's expansion - this year, the same amount of money spent on EQ2 would have netted me $20 worth of station cash and a vulture mount if I had planned my gaming schedule around EQ2's marketing promotions.  In and of itself, that's not necessarily reason to re-arrange my schedule.  Then again, if it happens to encourage me to take a break at a time that makes sense anyway, a little EQ2 intermission might not be a bad thing for everyone concerned.

Specifics of this case aside, I wonder if there is a niche for a game that actually plans on players wandering off every few months.  A Tale in the Desert is notable for doing something almost like the season finale of a TV show, actually bringing down the servers at the end of a "telling".  Obviously, no developer wants to not get paid during the "season break", and perhaps the effect on the community would be disruptive.  Then again, there could be long-term gains in avoiding player burnout, and I could see the new trend of story-driven MMO's - SWTOR chief amongst them - being well positioned to taken advantage of a tourist-driven playerbase that will naturally wax and wane as content is released. 

Vacation News Roundup

I'm still on blog vacation for another week and a half, but I've noticed a few tidbits that I felt like commenting on anyway.  Comments remain moderated, though I expect to be able to approve them over the next few days.

• Disliking the fourth pillar
  Spinks' rundown of the SWTOR classes mentioned a detail that I hadn't considered.  Apparently, George Lucas is continuing to maintain that Jedi cannot get married without turning to the dark side.  This makes me less interested in the game - not because I really had my heart set on cyborz with my NPC's, but because the notorious forbidden love story from the second Star Wars prequel was not the one part of the Star Wars Universe that I've been dying to re-live in an MMO setting.  
  
  Specifics of this particular case aside, I see a potential issue with the "fourth pillar" approach here.  If you are going to put the story front and center, it becomes a bigger issue if players dislike the story you are trying to tell.  Moreover, I would imagine that Jedi who romance their NPC's are going to be the majority of players - the former because of the lore and the latter because that's what you do in Bioware games. If the gameplay impact of being a Republic-faction Jedi with Dark Side status turns out to be disadvantageous to game mechanics, Bioware will have some unhappy customers. 
  
  


• WoW 4.3 update
  This week, we're hearing details of WoW's patch 4.3.  The mega-patch will include the now industry-standard cosmetic gear option that Blizzard has been resisting for about five years now.  There's a new storage system that will save Blizzard disk space by having a vendor who will create a new copy of item number whatever upon request, rather than storing all the details of your existing item (e.g. enchant, crafted by, what bank slot it is located in).  There will be new five-mans, which was basically expected.
  
  The one thing that I find surprising is that the patch will feature the Deathwing raid, and therefore will presumably serve as the Cataclysm finale.  I had expected this to be bumped to next year to shorten the window between Deathwing and the expansion now believed to be Pandaria.  While it's not uncommon for the last raid of a WoW expansion to sit for 9-12 months, Cataclysm is already somewhat widely viewed as a failure and nothing from this list sounds especially game-changing.  Unless Blizzard can finally deliver a WoW expansion in 18 months instead of 23-24, 2012 may not be kind to the WoW subscription count. 
   


• Reinventing Warhammer
  Werit has the details of the free to play Warhammer spinoff. My view on this project echoes Tobold's.  Back in 2008, I genuinely enjoyed Warhammer's instanced "RVR" scenarios but generally found that the PVE game these battles were attached to did not compare favorably to the many other options out there.  On paper, ditching the PVE game allows Mythic to focus on balance, while opening up the door to more exotic races/classes/heroes/etc that might have been harder to fit into a holy trinity PVE game. 
  
  However, as Tobold suggests, this revamp almost certainly guarantees that I will never pay for the existing version of the game again.

Overall, it's been an interesting week.  We'll see if next week follows suit. 

A Visit To Tatooine

I recently had the opportunity to take that Star Wars MMO people are talking about for a spin.  Though I can't say that this was anywhere near the top of my priorities list, I decided to bite - it was a limited time offer that not a lot of people will get. 

There were something like eight character classes to choose from, but I didn't have that much trouble picking one given that this was not a character that is going to be around forever.  With respect to everyone who gets excited about Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and Stormtrooper-equivalents (seriously?), if I'm going to spend an hour in a Star Wars MMO, I'm going to pick Jedi.  A couple appearance customization choices later and Farwel Stawag (Farewell Star Wars Galaxies - see what I did with those links?), an Ithorian Jedi, was ready to zone in. 

An eye trunk, my Jedi has.

I've never played SWG before, and I don't expect that I ever would have, were it not for the coincidence of upgrading to a Station Pass shortly before the game's final billing cycle.  As it was, I figured it was worth an hour of my time to take a quick look at the game before Lucas pulls the plug, if for no other reason than in case I decide I'd like to tourist the game's final world (galaxy?) events. 

I'm never going to know what this game was like before its notorious "New Game Experience", or even what it is now for those who still invest time in a product that is slated to come down in a few months.  Based on my early impressions, though, I can say that this is not the Star Wars MMO I would have been looking for if I was in the market for one. 

Why narrate the intro, when you have the Star Wars slanty text license?

Many details, including races, lore NPC's, music, and even the opening text crawl, are right out of the films.  Unfortunately, the feel of the game is about what NGE critics have always said - an attempt to retrofit a more action-based combat system onto a game that was not designed for it.  Tacking on a few quests to kill 10 Tusken Raiders does not bring this game up to par for what I'd expect of a modern quest-based solo MMO.  When I hear about what the game was before, it seems like a big price for SOE to exact from the players of that era for a revamp that would have faced an uphill battle even if the effort wasn't best known for driving the game's most dedicated fans away in dramatic fashion. 

My Jedi gained a few levels on the NGE's introductory space station, helpfully populated with lore NPC's and generic kill quests.  By level seven, I could throw my stick or knife (apparently handing out lightsabers to new Jedi is a line that even the NGE would not cross) and fire off force lightning.  In a game like WoW, this progression would have been fine.  In a world that is specifically set prior to The Empire Strikes Back, it seems weird to see Jedi of all shapes and sizes firing off force attacks every which way.  I suppose I should be grateful for the lack of lightsaber - I find the concept of whacking something with a blade of pure energy that can cut through anything and only doing 20 damage pretty darned stupid looking, whether or not they got the sound effect right. 

By far the more interesting part of my visit to the game came when I finally zoned off of the starbase and onto Tatooine.  There, I saw players with familiar vehicles and gear, going about their lives amongst NPC Jawas and Tusken Raiders.  Personally, I was a bit lost, since the highly structured introduction does very little to prepare the player for the wide range of crafting, factions, and other things that await in the game's real universe.  Even so, I have to tip my cap - this part of the experience was actually different from what other MMO's offer. 

(Aside: To the extent that this was not the Star Wars MMO I am (or am not) looking for, is whether TOR will be.  On one hand, I can definitely appreciate the concept of effective use of a license; Rift put a lot of effort into their original world, but I may actually have a better idea of what my level 7 Ithorian Jedi with an hour of play time is like than my level 40 High Elf with many more hours under her belt. That said, I remain skeptical primarily because I didn't enjoy the gameplay in Dragon Age, and nothing I've heard from people who have actually played TOR (as opposed to watching promo videos) reassures me that TOR will be different.) 

Regardless of what happens with TOR, the MMO community is losing a unique experience when SWG closes its doors in December.  Though this game is not something I was interested in, right down to the end, I still offer it a sad final salute.  No one wins when an MMO closes down, especially when even its revised state is still somewhat unique in the current market.  Moreover, SWG's continuing community demonstrates that some folks who have weathered all of this game's trials are definitely going to miss it when it's gone, and that's a day that none of us are eager to face.  

When riding off into the sunset, who needs a mount when you can have a speeder?
It hopefully does not smell worse on the inside.