- I got some comments from the Gods and Heroes Team on my post about my brief visit to the game's beta. I chose to play the game as a level one player would experience it at that point in the beta. Massively's Beau Hindman went the opposite route, accepting a higher level character so he could get a better sense of the game's high end potential. It hadn't occurred to me that you could get non-human minions, and that does indeed sound amusing. In a few short weeks, we'll find out whether players are prepared to accept the possibly rough-around-the-edges experience in order to get at the more interesting potential at higher levels.
- It was another bonus weekend in Runes of Magic - triple exp AND TP this time - and I got in a few levels on my Druid (who is now 52 Druid/43 Rogue). I've cleared out the solo quests of Dust Devil and I'm part of the way through Ravenfell. I'm also slowly working on getting the Rogue side up to 45 so I can add the 45/45 Elite skill to my spellbook, since it has a marginally useful passive benefit. (The 50/50 requires a questline that I am unlikely to complete anytime soon.)
- Sony also announced a cut in the price of the Station Pass, which now costs $20/month. One can only speculate that relatively few players are actually using the service at the old price (and it's possible that many are/were EQ2 players who are only paying for the upgrade to rent extra character slots back when you could not purchase them). For me, that means $5/month for any second game in addition to EQ2, which makes some of the other options in the SOE stable more interesting.
I wanted to play DCUO on the PS3, but the PC version is so much cheaper - $40 for the box to start with and then effectively $5/month with this Station deal compared to $50 for the PS3 box and the full $15/month on the PSN - that PC version is starting to look like a no-brainer by comparison.
There's also the curiously en vogue Vanguard. I've been feeling under-challenged by solo games of late, so it's possible that a game that's aimed more at small groups would actually be refreshing. I would definitely play Vanguard differently than other MMO's - I don't think the game is going anywhere, but you can't be certain given how much population has dwindled, so my willingness to tolerate any less-fun segments of the game as an "investment" to get at more interesting high level content would be basically nil. That said, for a low enough price point and some bonus blog topics, it might be worthwhile. (Incidentally, does anyone know whether Station Access holders need to pay for an account key, or can you just download the client and go?)
G&H, ROM, and Station Access
I don't often do posts of random odds and ends, but that's what I've got today.
Two EQ2 Mea Culpa's
Earlier this week, EQ2's producer told Massively that the game would be getting a 25th class this year, and I promptly speculated that it would be headed to the game's cash shop. I was not alone, and I was wrong. This prediction failed out faster than usual because I'm not the only one with a mea culpa - Smokejumper revealed that he screwed up when he disclosed the class so soon.
If he hadn't said anything, no one would have known that it had been a slip-up; developers drop this kind of hint all the time without elaboration. The problem was that the morale of the EQ2 playerbase is so low when it comes to new features that the speculation that the new class was going to the cash shop became widespread in the absence of further information.
During the two evenings after the interview was posted, I saw about half a dozen conversations about the news in general chat. Each one went about the same - someone expressed disbelief, someone provided the link that confirmed the news, at least one person suggested that the new class would be the famous EQ1 Beastlord, and then conversation turned to what the class would cost in the cash shop and whether it would obsolete any of our current characters in order to encourage sales.
It's hard to get an accurate feel of the opinions of the "silent masses" of MMO's, but my experience has been that any subject that comes up repeatedly in public chat channels is much more serious than your average forum thread. My guess is that SOE did not like the way the conversation was going, to the point where Smokejumper had to issue a clarification that the new class - whatever its other merits or issues - will not be in the cash shop.
Time will tell whether the class will be the oft-rumored Beastlord, whether it portends an expansion focusing on Luclin (which was blown up in between EQ1 and EQ2 lore) or how it fits into the game as a whole. If the curtain actually is coming up at Fan Faire, I guess we don't have that long to wait.
If he hadn't said anything, no one would have known that it had been a slip-up; developers drop this kind of hint all the time without elaboration. The problem was that the morale of the EQ2 playerbase is so low when it comes to new features that the speculation that the new class was going to the cash shop became widespread in the absence of further information.
During the two evenings after the interview was posted, I saw about half a dozen conversations about the news in general chat. Each one went about the same - someone expressed disbelief, someone provided the link that confirmed the news, at least one person suggested that the new class would be the famous EQ1 Beastlord, and then conversation turned to what the class would cost in the cash shop and whether it would obsolete any of our current characters in order to encourage sales.
It's hard to get an accurate feel of the opinions of the "silent masses" of MMO's, but my experience has been that any subject that comes up repeatedly in public chat channels is much more serious than your average forum thread. My guess is that SOE did not like the way the conversation was going, to the point where Smokejumper had to issue a clarification that the new class - whatever its other merits or issues - will not be in the cash shop.
Time will tell whether the class will be the oft-rumored Beastlord, whether it portends an expansion focusing on Luclin (which was blown up in between EQ1 and EQ2 lore) or how it fits into the game as a whole. If the curtain actually is coming up at Fan Faire, I guess we don't have that long to wait.
Bringing Endgame To Leveling
I've been busy offline of late, which has meant short play sessions, and Runes of Magic daily quests have been beating out games where I'm actually paying a subscription for this limited time. It's not exactly accurate to call ROM's dailies "grindy" because they're literally grind - you're in for easily 150-200 mob kills if you want to max out your daily allowance. Moreover, if you're not supplementing your exp with dungeons or bonus exp weekends, you will have to do some amount of daily quest grinding to get the exp to keep leveling even one of your two classes.
Quest designers these days build MMO leveling curves with the assumption that having solo players ever run out of non-repeatable quest content is a cardinal sin. So why am I not only tolerating this mechanic in ROM but actively choosing it over other games that also offer daily quests? At the end of the day, complaining about grinding in ROM is like complaining about shooting people in a first person shooter - if you don't like it, you're playing the wrong game, and I won't hesitate to leave my ROM dailies unfinished if I'm not in the mood or I have the chance to do something more interesting.
In their Dev watercooler this week, Blizzard talks about the challenge of selling solo players on transitioning from one-time story-based leveling content to repeatable daily quest grinds at level 85. One seemingly obvious solution that does not appear to be on the table is the one that ROM already has. Instead of trying to transition players after months of playtime, offer the same experience - in this case, grinding daily quests for fun, profit, and exp - from the earliest stage possible. That way, you can focus your development efforts on making that one type of gameplay as appealing as possible.
Blizzard appears to have chosen to go the other direction. Based in part on beta feedback asking for more quests, they appear to have concluded they could sell more copies by covering the grind-like aspects of the genre behind a constant but unsustainable change of scenery after every 10 killed rat-equivalents. The good news is that 11+ million players appear to agree, opening their wallets each and every month and handing over their local currency to choose Blizzard's product over the competition. The bad news is that the content has to run out sometime, and the transition is that much harder because of the choice (which most other studios have copied) not to prepare customers for the change.
Quest designers these days build MMO leveling curves with the assumption that having solo players ever run out of non-repeatable quest content is a cardinal sin. So why am I not only tolerating this mechanic in ROM but actively choosing it over other games that also offer daily quests? At the end of the day, complaining about grinding in ROM is like complaining about shooting people in a first person shooter - if you don't like it, you're playing the wrong game, and I won't hesitate to leave my ROM dailies unfinished if I'm not in the mood or I have the chance to do something more interesting.
In their Dev watercooler this week, Blizzard talks about the challenge of selling solo players on transitioning from one-time story-based leveling content to repeatable daily quest grinds at level 85. One seemingly obvious solution that does not appear to be on the table is the one that ROM already has. Instead of trying to transition players after months of playtime, offer the same experience - in this case, grinding daily quests for fun, profit, and exp - from the earliest stage possible. That way, you can focus your development efforts on making that one type of gameplay as appealing as possible.
Blizzard appears to have chosen to go the other direction. Based in part on beta feedback asking for more quests, they appear to have concluded they could sell more copies by covering the grind-like aspects of the genre behind a constant but unsustainable change of scenery after every 10 killed rat-equivalents. The good news is that 11+ million players appear to agree, opening their wallets each and every month and handing over their local currency to choose Blizzard's product over the competition. The bad news is that the content has to run out sometime, and the transition is that much harder because of the choice (which most other studios have copied) not to prepare customers for the change.
EQ2 Plan: Subscription Content, Expansion Features
SOE wisely waited for the second day of E3 so that their EQ2 interview with Massively would have a bit more of the stage to themselves. Unfortunately, their recent history has me a bit skeptical about what they're selling.
What they say...
In the short term, low level players can get "leaping" and "gliding" mounts to tide them over until they qualify for flight. (Personally, I think the leaping sounds cool and far less likely to trivialize outdoor quest content than flight, guess it's too late to trade the latter back out of the game.)
In the medium term, Smokejumper envisions providing regular content in the quarterly paid subscription updates and concentrating on "adding features to the game" in paid expansions. In the long run, the producer claims to be considering a la carte sales of the expansion features in lieu of fixed expansion sets.
What do they mean?
The catch is that having content in the content updates was something that the game used to do on a more regular basis in expansion eras past. (In fairness, the leanest patches were probably set in motion before Smokejumper arrived.) Meanwhile, earlier this year the game made a point of adding an expansion-ish feature - a new race - for an a la carte fee IN ADDITION TO the paid expansion box, which also contained most of the new content that the game has received over the last year.
It's possible that they do legitimately want to run an expansion that focuses on the low to middle level range, which is presumably where free EQ2X players are petering out over on the game's new most popular server. Currently, free players have no reason to pay for any expansions until they hit level 80. Revamping Freeport and Qeynos into "multi-level quest hubs" fits with this theme, as does a greater emphasis on new features (since there is already a decent amount of content in the low levels). Some of these - notably cross server grouping - are potentially a double edged sword when it comes to retaining current players, but I guess that's what they say about omelets and eggs.
Of course, they're going to want to sell expansions to veterans too, so the "features" might be expected to include something that gates content in practice (if not strictly by expansion ownership). In that context, we get the last teaser - a game that already has 24 classes, which is arguably 12 or more classes too many for actually designing class niches - will be getting a 25th sometime this year.
Much as I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, a new class isn't content, and it isn't an expansion feature (since that is confirmed for next year), so it sure looks suspiciously like we're going to see a new class land alongside a new race in the cash store in a game that also charges a subscription and $40 per year for an expansion box regardless of how much content is ready to go in that box. If there is an extra fee involved, the odds that the new addition will be on a level playing field with its 24 compatriots goes down rapidly. I'll be happy if I have to quote this post and eat some crow in six months, but I think the odds against are pretty good.
What they say...
In the short term, low level players can get "leaping" and "gliding" mounts to tide them over until they qualify for flight. (Personally, I think the leaping sounds cool and far less likely to trivialize outdoor quest content than flight, guess it's too late to trade the latter back out of the game.)
In the medium term, Smokejumper envisions providing regular content in the quarterly paid subscription updates and concentrating on "adding features to the game" in paid expansions. In the long run, the producer claims to be considering a la carte sales of the expansion features in lieu of fixed expansion sets.
What do they mean?
The catch is that having content in the content updates was something that the game used to do on a more regular basis in expansion eras past. (In fairness, the leanest patches were probably set in motion before Smokejumper arrived.) Meanwhile, earlier this year the game made a point of adding an expansion-ish feature - a new race - for an a la carte fee IN ADDITION TO the paid expansion box, which also contained most of the new content that the game has received over the last year.
It's possible that they do legitimately want to run an expansion that focuses on the low to middle level range, which is presumably where free EQ2X players are petering out over on the game's new most popular server. Currently, free players have no reason to pay for any expansions until they hit level 80. Revamping Freeport and Qeynos into "multi-level quest hubs" fits with this theme, as does a greater emphasis on new features (since there is already a decent amount of content in the low levels). Some of these - notably cross server grouping - are potentially a double edged sword when it comes to retaining current players, but I guess that's what they say about omelets and eggs.
Of course, they're going to want to sell expansions to veterans too, so the "features" might be expected to include something that gates content in practice (if not strictly by expansion ownership). In that context, we get the last teaser - a game that already has 24 classes, which is arguably 12 or more classes too many for actually designing class niches - will be getting a 25th sometime this year.
Much as I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, a new class isn't content, and it isn't an expansion feature (since that is confirmed for next year), so it sure looks suspiciously like we're going to see a new class land alongside a new race in the cash store in a game that also charges a subscription and $40 per year for an expansion box regardless of how much content is ready to go in that box. If there is an extra fee involved, the odds that the new addition will be on a level playing field with its 24 compatriots goes down rapidly. I'll be happy if I have to quote this post and eat some crow in six months, but I think the odds against are pretty good.
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