LOTRO, EQ2X, and The Matrix

When two major non-subscription MMO's go "free to play" inside of a month, players are bound to compare the two.  This appears to tick EQ2 Producer David Georgeson off.  

"I really like our subscription matrix. People have compared it favorably or unfavorably to LOTRO...
...
I think they have some mechanisms in their matrix that look attractive at first glance but after people play it for awhile, they may realize it's not as attractive as they think it is. We've designed our matrix to be upfront as far as what the limitations are.
...
I think the biggest differences are in content. They lock a lot of content and make you pay for it as you go; we leave ours wide open.  I'm not really sure why people are complaining, because the more I do an analysis of it, I can't see anything that's more restrictive about our matrix than a lot of people's, and in a lot of ways it seems less restrictive. You can play for 30 or 40 levels in the current game without feeling massively restricted. The stuff like spell tiers and legendary equipment, the people that griping about stuff like that are the experienced EQII players. "
- EQ2 Producer David Georgeson, in an interview with Massively

For reference, here is the LOTRO Matrix, and here is the EQ2X Matrix.  What do we make of all this talk of Matrices?

You see, Mister Georgeson, I was there when the strength of men failed, when Isildur... wait, sorry, wrong Hugo Weaving rant.  Let me start again.

You see, Mis-ter Georgeson, the Matrix is a construct, created by marketing as a distraction from the true nature of these games; from the horrible truth that these "free to play" games are not actually free.  /gasp

Behind the Matrix
The truth is that LOTRO F2P is effectively an option to pay as you go for content.  You may or may not pay earlier and you may or may not pay more often.  However, other than Monster Play (which cannot be free to play because there is only one PVMP zone), you can access everything in the game and people who are willing to pay will be able to access all the content they pay for "without feeling massively restricted".

By contrast, EQ2X is effectively an extended free trial.  The one thing that has been non-negotiable from day one is that there will be restrictions that prevent players from reaching all of the content (including paid expansion content) that cannot be lifted without switching over to the subscription.  Time and time again, EQ2X devs have stated clearly that allowing players to buy out all of the restrictions for one-time fees and then drop their subscriptions "doesn't seem like a good long-term business plan".  Turbine apparently disagrees.  


Finally, the argument that the EQ2X matrix is somehow "more upfront" about its limitations is outright disingenuous.  By Georgeson's own admission, players will not "feel massively restricted" until they have played for "30 or 40 levels".  Personally, I would have given him until level 68 (the start of the Kunark expansion, and the first solo quest and rep reward gear that non-subscribers cannot equip).  Wherever the cutoff level is, EQ2X is designed to force players to subscribe at some point later on in the level progression.  

You may pay less for EQ2X if you solo to 80 and then quit, but you will end up paying far more in the long term if you end up locked into the $15/monthly fee - a year of EQ2X subscription fees costs more than permanently unlocking all the content in LOTRO.  Having the game conceal this reality for the first 40+ levels is actually the exact opposite of "more upfront".  

Updated WoW Cataclysm Justice Point Costs

Update 9/30: Blizzard has made the higher conversions official - emblems of Triumph and Frost will now be worth 11.58 Justice Points each.  Either my math is wrong or I got an extra emblem from somewhere after starting the PTR character copy.  This does not change any of my analysis, but I'm scratching out a paragraph of the below.  

Also, MMO-Champion believes that the patch will go live next Tuesday, October 5th.

Original Post

Two weeks back, Blizzard announced plans for a currency revamp in the 4.0 patch.  Though they did release enough numbers for MMO-Champion to make a currency converter, this was only half of the story - how many honor or justice points would we receive for our existing currencies.

The other question, if you're sitting on large piles of tokens currently, is what will happen to prices on existing items.  Do you cash out now for things like mounts and heirlooms?  Is your current stuff worth so little that you might as well burn it on soon to be obsolete level 80 gear?

I went on the PTR's today (9/28) to take a look.  Here's the bottom line up front:

If you are SURE want CURRENT Frost or PVP rewards now, spend your Frost Emblems and Honor Points before the patch.
If you're on the fence, though, you might be better off waiting and taking your chances that you might end up paying slightly more later.

Emblem Conversion

My first surprise was to log in and see that I had over 2400 Justice Points.   The currency converter told me to expect a quarter of that number.  I had to copy over a second character, compare justice point totals with emblem totals on live, and attempt some high school algebra I haven't thought about in years.  Where the previously announced conversion valued both Emblems of Triumph and Frost at 2.75 JP, the new totals are 11.58 JP per emblem.
, my possibly fuzzy math says that the new totals are:
Triumph: 12.05 JP

Frost: 11.34 JP

This does not make a lot of sense, as Frost Emblems are more difficult to obtain and yet appear to have converted into smaller numbers of JP.  If this remains true, it would actually be more efficient to downgrade your frost emblems into triumph emblems before the patch.   Either way, the payout in JP per existing emblem appears to have gone up by nearly 5-fold.  This makes sense if you look at prices.

On the live servers, the Khadgar's items (T9 set) cost 30 or 50 Emblems of Triumph, which works out to 15.93 or 15.94 JP per Emblem.  (Presumably, the costs were set to deal with rounding.)  The Bloodmage (T10) gear costs 60 or 95 Emblems of Frost, which works out to 11.6 JP per Emblem.  Again, strangely, the Triumph stuff seems to be valued more highly than its higher quality counterparts. 

My advice here is this: If you have frost emblems that you are planning to spend on a frost item ASAP, try to do so before the patch.  Otherwise, wait.  Though Triumph items will cost more emblems per item, I'd be less inclined to liquidate them simply because, at current exchange rates, they are worth better than 1:1 for Frost emblems.

It's also worth noting that, in the current beta build, level 85 JP reward gear is costing about twice what T10 gear costs.  Would you rather have two pieces of T10 that you will replace with quest rewards, or one new piece of entry level dungeon gear waiting for you when you reach level 85?  There's no right or wrong answer, it's your call based on your playstyle, and whether you expect to be over the 4000 JP cap (mid 300's total emblems of Triumph and Frost) after the patch, assuming no changes to that number.

Heirlooms

I was too impatient to wait for the item names to load, so you'll have to take my word for it that these are the existing PVE heirlooms

The PVE heirlooms are coming in at 10.88 JP per emblem in their existing cost.  Any low quality (heroism, valor, or conquest) emblems you still have will be turned into gold, so you should probably turn those into heirlooms ASAP.  Triumph and Frost emblems should NOT be turned into heirlooms unless exchange rates change again.

Stone Keeper shards appear to be converting at the previously announced rate of 1.6 New Honor Points per shard, and prices on these heirlooms appear to have scaled by the same factor.  I.e. your shards will buy exactly as many heirlooms after the patch as they do now.  In fact, these heirlooms will arguably be easier to obtain because you can use honor from ANY source, not just shards. 

New Honor Points

Because there are so many things that turn into the New Honor Points, I was not that inclined to double check the math - the number that the MMO Champion calculator reported was the number that I had on my main after the copy.  This means that Honor will convert at a rate of:
1000 Old Honor Points = 24 New Honor Points

Level 80 PVP vendors were not available, so I checked some of the older vendors. 

Guardian's Dreadweave Belt (S4 PVP gear)

18000 old HP = 3113 NHP (0.173 per)

Mounts

50,000 old HP = 8601 NHP (0.172 per)

We can't be sure if these numbers are final, but this is a potentially staggering increase in prices.  For perspective, 50,000 OHP = 1200 NHP (more than seven-fold below the adjusted mount cost!)

My advice on honor points is simple - spend now or hold them until level 85.  Also note that any old battleground marks you still have should be converted into honor points up to the cap (75000) because this offers a more favorable exchange rate.

Uncertainty

Though I hope that this post has answered some questions, it all counts as currency speculation.  As we have already seen, rates can and might change without notice.  (In fact, a new build went live while I was writing this post - the 2H heirloom weapons seem to have dropped in price from 707 JP to 700 JP.)  Moreover, we have no idea when the patch itself will go live, at which point it will be too late to make any exchanges.

This type of uncertainty is precisely why I argued and continued to believe that converting these legacy currencies retroactively was more trouble than it's worth.  Blizzard had to approximately preserve the relative purchasing power of these emblems to avoid screwing someone who was short by a single emblem on the night before the patch (especially since only the most attentive of players will even know this change is coming in advance).  Was all this really worth a slightly cleaner currency panel?

Brew Fail Four: EZ-Mode

Larisa has a poignant take on the state of the Brewfest boss, who has a life expectancy of about 20 seconds. The fourth incarnation of this never-quite-right holiday could use a Cataclysm of its own, as it really seems to lack direction at the moment.

Direbrew and the Mounts
The inaugural version of Brewfest in 2007 had a relatively straightforward focus; ride the frustratingly lag-prone ram race into the ground, and get your own version of the mount as a souvenir.  In '08, the mount (and its promised Horde-model counterpart) had been pulled from the vendors to serve as an incentive to get players find a group and travel halfway around the world to kill a boss who frankly wasn't that challenging even then.  Direbrew dinged to level 80 in Wrath, but there was so much raid gear inflation by the time October 2009 rolled around that his updated stats were already trivial. 

Today the automated dungeon finder finds a group and teleports you directly to the boss, removing the two previously time consuming portions of the event.  With even more raid gear, the fight runs so quickly that you probably won't be in the instance for more than 60 seconds counting time to buff, pull, and loot, even if your tank is some kind of incompetent noob (sorry PUG's, three Brew-fails was enough). 

As Larisa notes, the event is now so quick and easy that Blizzard might as well mail out the rewards to everyone once a day, for all the effort that it takes to click "join queue" and "enter dungeon" (generally 1-5 minutes later, actually doing DPS is somewhat optional since the fight will be over before anyone notices).

The Achievement Circuit
In place of the mounts, the ram race tickets now award items that are used in the infamous holiday achievement system.  This too has been nerfed into the ground.

Brewfest '08 happened before achievements were added to WoW, but those of us who were paying attention could see the planned requirements in the beta.  The Brewfest achievements which were listed in the achievement window when Wrath of the Lich King went live in December 2008 required that players obtain the rare mount, spend 550 Brew tokens on other items, and log in at least once a month for a year to collect and drink the beers from the "Brew of the Month" club. 

Blizzard had intended the coveted 310% mount reward to be as rare as its raid and PVP counterparts.  Unfortunately, the system did not do an adequate job of warning players that they were in for a difficult grind that most were intended to fail due to the vagaries of the random number generator.  Players (myself included) did not appreciate learning this lesson AFTER investing hours on frustrating event grinds, and Blizzard was forced to respond by nerfing everything.

By the time October 2009 rolled around, the mount had become optional and players were only required to join the Brew club, not actually stick around for a year to consume the beers.  This year's version nerfs the event even further, removing 350 tokens from the required count by making the festival outfit optional.  I'm not sure if this change was made because 550 tokens requires a lot of frustrating ram racing for a single year, or because Blizzard and/or the ESRB does not want to force players to consume in-game alcohol - another achievement for getting drunk and falling the maximum non-fatal distance was also removed this year. 

Either way, I had the Brewmaster title on my Tauren by the third day of the two and a half week event. 

Whither Brew Future?
I've long criticized Blizzard for turning its world events into time-sensitive grinds, as if the amount of time players spend on an event is more important than the amount of fun they have while doing it.   Perhaps the newly lowered Brewfest bar is a step in the right direction, or at least an experiment to see how many players will continue to do more involved achievements (such as collecting the outfit) even when they are not required for larger meta-achievement rewards. 

The situation with Coren Direbrew is a bit more difficult.  Though the new model is a bit too easy, finding a group and hoping that they weren't out to scam you out of your daily summons (each character was allowed to summon the boss once per day) was not an ideal way to set up something that the player is intended to do each and every day while the event is live.  The actual fight was equally easy, so the only "skill" the old model required was the patience to find a group each day. 

My suggestion would be to move the random chance to get the mount to a non-repeatable (once/festival/year) quest to track down Direbrew the old fashioned way, without the help of the dungeon finder.  This would leave finding the mount purely to chance (the drop rate would be improved to take the single chance per year into account), but that is already the case today.  The time investment to find a group and travel to the dungeon would be more reasonable as something that players only need to accomplish once in a relatively lengthy holiday. 

Like most of WoW, Brewfest this year is in a bit of a holding pattern as everyone awaits the new expansion.  I just hope that Blizzard comes up with something a bit less trivial for next year, once the dust has settled on the Cataclysm. 

Thrall's Farewell To Nagrand

I haven't heard officially whether the questline where Thrall visits Nagrand will be removed by Cataclysm, but it seems like an unfortunate but safe bet.  Garrosh Hellscream will sit in Thrall's chair in Ogrimmar, making it difficult to keep an old storyline about how the player enlisted Thrall's help to talk Garrosh into attempting to make himself useful. 

Assuming that it is gone, this story is possibly the biggest loss that Deathwing will inflict on Azeroth. 

Poor mechanics....
In terms of poorly designed quest structure, this quest is right up there with LOTRO's notorious Tomb of Elendil quest. 

First, the player must complete all of the solo quests in Garadar, along with a handful of non-instanced quests for small groups of level 68 players in the western end of the zone.  (Good luck finding a group for these, as level 68 players will receive far superior loot by going to Northrend instead of sticking around Outland.)  This opens up a few more solo quests, followed by a visit to the 5-man Auchenai Crypts. 

The Crypts are tuned for levels 65-67, though I guess that the original intent might have been that some players would run the dungeon as a level 70 heroic.  The good news here is that the random dungeon-finder ensures that there will be players willing to fill out your dungeon group in exchange for random rewards. 

To add a parting insult, however, the final step after the dungeon run is another non-instanced group quest.  This is the exact same flaw with the LOTRO Tomb of Elendil line - the sheer number of prerequisites drastically reduces the number of players who would be at all interested in teaming up for this final step.  (The other non-instanced group quests do not have any pre-requisites, so any players who happen to be in the area can immediately jump in if someone is looking for help.)

In short, finishing this questline at the apporpriate level in an out-dated expansion would not be fun for anyone who does not have a static group of some sort helping them out.

Meet over-inflation...
Fortunately for my hopes of ever seeing the end of this story, WoW has had far more gear inflation than LOTRO over the last three years.  I was able to solo all of the non-instanced steps up to the Crypts run at level 78, but the final boss of the Crypts was a bit too much.  Two levels and a bunch of gear upgrades later, the dungeon was relatively easy to solo. 

The final step was obviously very easy to solo at this excessive level, but it would have been hugely frustrating had I been working on this quest at level 68. 

... For a unique reward
As an Alliance player, I had been aware that this storyline would ultimately bring Thrall to Outland in order to tell the tale of the redemption of Grom Hellscream to his despondent son, Garrosh.  As thanks, the younger Hellscream has gone on to become the annoying sidekick of the expansion, and there are people who would rather follow the famous corpse of Mankrik's wife than Garrosh as the Horde's new Warchief.

What I did not know was that there was something else in the story for Thrall.  Upon completing all of the quests and failing to get Garrosh up off his rear end, the Mag'har Greatmother laments the absense of her son, Durotan.  This name is meant to ring a bell - by the end of Warcraft III, Thrall has named the new Horde's homeland Durotar, after his late father.  By doing what we normally do as adventurers, slaughtering our way across the zone, us players have inadvertently reunited the Warchief with his grandmother. 

Players have some close brushes with the lore in various places in WoW.  The Alliance has the now mostly removed storyline of the "missing diplomat" and Onyxia's stint as Lady Katrina Prestor in the very throne room of Stormwind.  In Northrend, the Alliance reunites Muradin Bronzebeard with his brother.  Horde players can hear a haunting melody by returning a keepsake to Lady Sylvanas.  Both sides experience the battles of the Wrathgate and the Undercity (the latter of which will be gone in Cataclysm). 

In these dramatic moments, though, it feels like the player serves in a supporting role to the real protagonists. We may provide crucial intelligence and support, but the final battle is fought under the banners of Bolvar Fordragon or Thrall or some other more significant character, with the player serving as a mere footsolier.  Though it is ultimately Thrall that returns Garrosh's resolve, this story succeeds in making the player feel that it was our actions that led the Warchief to return home.   

Getting this story done before the increasingly imminent Cataclysm was my highest in-game priority in MMO's, and the payoff turns out to have been well worth it.  If you have never seen the tale and you have a character anywhere near the appropriate level on the Horde side, I'd advise you to do what it takes to see this story unfold before it's too late. 

On the left, the legendary Doomhammer, weapon of prophecy.  On the right, a hammer I picked up off of a random Flesh Giant who forges weapons for the Lich King's grunts in the Pit of Saron.  Fill in your favorite joke about players and/or item designers overcompensating here.