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.

The Curious Case Of The Dissappearing Rift Podcasts

As someone who plays and writes about many games, podcasts are a hugely important source of gaming news.  Anyone can type up an article to convey the same information, but a good podcast will give you a real sense of the game's community, and why the stories matter (or do not).  Throw in the fact that I can listen while not in front of a computer, and I literally don't know if I'd still be able to do this blog without podcasts. 

Which is why I find it interesting, sad, and perhaps a bit disturbing that, as Rift hits the six month mark of release, I'm on my third Rift Podcast in search of a fourth. 

The Rift Podcast
Around a year ago, when I started hearing rumblings about this game called Rift that people were getting excited about, my first real info came via The Rift Podcast - the oldest post I have tagged with Rift is actually a link to one of their old episodes.  To this day, I associate Rift's login screen music more strongly with the podcast than the actual game, and the interviews definitely played a major role in letting me know what this game was about. 

The partnership formed by the three girls - Arithion and Desikis the podcasters, and Cindy "Abigale" Bowens at Trion - accomplished something that may never have been done before, at least on such a scale.  Ari and Desi were given pre-beta NDA's so they could come in each and every week and hold live interviews with the people actually building the un-released game.  Exclusive access to the devs sounds like any podcaster's dream, but some of the stories Ari told late in the show's run made it sound like managing this working relationship was much more work and pressure than a typical podcaster has to go through.  Likewise, I'm sure that Cindy was taking at least somewhat of a risk in bringing outside people onboard to talk to everyone from the community team up to Scott Hartsman.  Fortunately for everyone, it paid off.

The Rift Podcast shut down shortly after the game finally launched, as Ari was suffering from health issues, and I was genuinely glad to hear that she's fully recovered.  In the mean time, the dedicated Rift slot in my podcast playlist was up for grabs.

Rift Watchers
I'd actually been listening to several of the other podcasts that opened up as the game hit open beta, but my new favorite was Rift Watchers.  There was no hot Austrailian chick, and Gavin did once threaten to hunt down and camp the corpse of Brian "Psychochild" Green because of something I had tweeted - apparently he thought "Green" Armadillo was somehow a cover name for the more famous developer.  Other than that, the show was great, with player round tables and a notorious call-in phone jingle. 

Then literally everyone involved suffered from nigh simultaneous cases of new or more involved jobs, additional projects, etc, and the folks decided to go their separate ways.  (Amusingly, poor Ferrel was finally promoted from recurring guest to official co-host the week they canceled the show, which sounds like something Joss Whedon would do.)

Player Versus Rift
So, it was back to the podcast pool yet again for a third podcast.  This time, I settled on Player Versus Rift.   Their sense of humor is a good change of pace from some of the other shows on my playlist, and I suppose I can support their choice of the name (which has absolutely nothing to do with me as far as I know).  So everything has been going well for like all of a month... and then out of the blue Casey announces that they're ending the show because he has a new job or something. Planes bleep it all. 

Morals of the story
The first moral of the story is that if any of you know a Rift podcast that you'd really like to see shut down in a week or two, let me know so I can add them to my hitlist and make that happen for you - this post is really all about me after all.  :)

That said, I wonder if there is something up here.  Podcasts open and close all the time, but this rate of Rift-related podcast attrition seems unusually high, especially since everyone seems to still like the game as of when they signed off.  Is it just inevitable that pre-launch enthusiasm will die down, as podcasters realize how much of their potential gaming time they have to spend working on their shows?  Or is there something else going on here? 

I don't know, but I suppose I have some dead air in which to think about it as I debate which Rift podcast to kill next.  :)

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: EQ2

EQ2 marked Labor Day with a double exp weekend, and I took advantage by finishing off all of the solo content I had yet to complete from the current expansion.  As a result, my AA count shot up from 241 to 258, finally entering the new ground from the current expansion, with a mere two months to go until the next one.

Having 10 points on the third tier of the DOV AA tree means that one of my default buffs now offers a 10% boost to the coveted Crit Chance stat.

After picking up the new AA abilities and trading in some more shards for Ry'Gorr shard gear (now including the gloves, bracers, hat, and boots, along with the T1 chest), Lyriana is sitting about midway through the heroic instance progression.  Her stat sheet includes 118% Critical Mitigation (with a few empty adorn slots I could fill if I wanted to spend shards on adornments), 205% crit chance, 125% crit bonus, and 164% multi-attack.  Instances in DOV are strictly gated by these types of numbers - especially the Crit Mit and Crit Chance - but I've got the gear to get my foot in the door of the KD instances. 

Overall, EQ2 is generally the game I go with given the choices amongst all the MMO's in my stable, and that's usually the criteria I go by when deciding what games to pay for and play.  Unfortunately, SOE is consistently testing my resolve on this front. 

Unfortunate updates and decisions
The last Game Update brought in a messy revamp of every item in the game - Arkenor has been covering the ugly and unpredictable details.  The mere fact that there were some issues with items that pre-date the current design might have been forgiveable if the current design was good.  Unfortunately, it's hard to recommend the itemization plan.  A Scout like Lyriana requires a specific amount of crit to auto-crit all mobs in a given zone, and a corresponding amount of crit mit to avoid being one-shot by AOE attacks.  Once you're at that number - if and when they get the itemization progression in the order they plan, this will be a highly regimented progression from tier to tier - you're just after multi-attack and crit bonus to improve your DPS.  It's neither creative nor interesting. 

Meanwhile, the weekend featured SOE's latest Winback promotion.  If only I had let my account lapse no later than August 2nd, I would have received three days of free game time, an exclusive mount, and $5 worth of Station Cash just for resubscribing.  As someone who routinely comes and goes between MMO's, the message is really clear - when my EQ2 subscription runs out, I should not renew it until the next time SOE offers me a bribe to do so. 

Between this promotion and another one that was carefully designed to exclude players who came back voluntarily for the expansion earlier this year, I have missed out on $20 worth of Station Cash that I would have received had I been willing to schedule my gaming time around SOE's marketing gimmicks.  That's half the price of an expansion, which would have done wonders to soften the blow of having SOE ask me to open my wallet for a second paid expansion box in nine months come November.  This goes doubly when the allegedly feature-focused expansion consists of a bunch of features I'm not that interested in bundled with an AA cap increase that will presumably be mandatory. 

Outlook
Amidst all these adjustments, cross-server grouping is en route to EQ2, possibly as early as this month.  This could have a major impact on my EQ2 play.  As a Dirge - a class that provides crucial and arguably overpowered buffs to melee party members - I have routinely enjoyed quick group invites which have made it possible for me to spend time in Norrath's heroic dungeons.  Depending on how the automated system plays out, it is very possible that this gravy train will be derailed shortly. 

Beyond this milestone, and the expansion, lies an interesting thought experiment - how long can an otherwise enjoyable gameplay experience remain so in the face of what I see as major issues with the game's itemization, mechanics, business model, marketing, and general development direction?  I suppose I'll keep y'all posted.