This week, Turbine somewhat unexpectedly delayed LOTRO's expansion, set to go live in about two weeks, back into mid-October.
I haven't been in the beta, but Spinks made a round-up and it sounds like the expansion was in pretty good shape other than the mounted combat system. It's certainly possible that this is part of the problem - mounted combat is reportedly a substantial chunk of the expansion, and some of Blizzard's experiences with vehicle/dragon combat in the Wrath era suggests that players do not love being forced into something that changes their playstyle. Some of LOTRO's game systems already have a bad reputation for being grindy, and I could see some concern if this one was also buggy to boot.
That said, the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering that the real problem is the release date calendar. Turbine claimed the September 5th date back on June 5th, but on June 28th Guild Wars 2 declared that it would "launch" (early access aside) a mere week earlier, on August 28th. Blizzard responded by placing WoW's expansion on September 25th, and later added to the scuffle by putting patch 5.0 with talent changes and other system updates on August 28th.
Turbine isn't new to this game, and they're not afraid to launch against competition - the Moria expansion launched the week after Wrath of the Lich King. (Then again, Turbine has never placed another product in physical stores since that day.) That said, I'm wondering if they just didn't like their odds of seeing their expansion drowned out by most of the known MMO world descending on either WoW or GW2. They'll still be up against Rift with its un-announced expansion launch and possibly some other tidbits (perhaps the end of the year EQ2 expansion, or SWTOR's relaunch), but I like their odds better in October than right here and now.
Digital Retail Undercutting
Last week, there was a one-day 50% off sale on DDO's new expansion. There is no box to purchase or mark down, and the client is downloaded through the conventional patcher - I had it fully installed and up to date before I made the purchase. So, effectively all I was purchasing was the key for access to the expansion content. This was provided at a 50% discount not by Turbine, but rather by Steam, as their daily deal.
Turbine, perhaps understandably, did little to promote this sale to current players who do not yet own the expansion - I only found out about it when DDO Cast re-tweeted a tweet about the sale. In fairness, the expansion has been around for a few months now, so most dedicated players probably snagged it at full price. Personally, I was almost certainly going to wait for a sale anyway, so it's not like I jumped on this instead of paying Turbine directly, though at least they would have gotten to keep the whole $25 through a sale on their own store.
Much like physical retail, the daily deal on steam does get a slot on the frontpage that all steam users see when they log in each day - I have no idea whether the studio provides Steam with a discount in exchange for this coveted placement, but it would not surprise me. Presumably, being discoverable by steam customers is the primary incentive for games going on the service in the first place, especially for online games that can generate ongoing revenue that cuts out the steam middle man.
The Secret World's investor update states that increasing distribution through channels that include Steam will somehow help their current predicament. They may not be the best exemplar, but most MMO studios not named Blizzard seem to think Steam's cut is worthwhile. They can't all be wrong, can they?
Turbine, perhaps understandably, did little to promote this sale to current players who do not yet own the expansion - I only found out about it when DDO Cast re-tweeted a tweet about the sale. In fairness, the expansion has been around for a few months now, so most dedicated players probably snagged it at full price. Personally, I was almost certainly going to wait for a sale anyway, so it's not like I jumped on this instead of paying Turbine directly, though at least they would have gotten to keep the whole $25 through a sale on their own store.
Much like physical retail, the daily deal on steam does get a slot on the frontpage that all steam users see when they log in each day - I have no idea whether the studio provides Steam with a discount in exchange for this coveted placement, but it would not surprise me. Presumably, being discoverable by steam customers is the primary incentive for games going on the service in the first place, especially for online games that can generate ongoing revenue that cuts out the steam middle man.
The Secret World's investor update states that increasing distribution through channels that include Steam will somehow help their current predicament. They may not be the best exemplar, but most MMO studios not named Blizzard seem to think Steam's cut is worthwhile. They can't all be wrong, can they?
Incentives For World Events
My initial take on rumors of a SWTOR world event this month was that it would be a good time to re-subscribe to get characters in order for the free-to-play relaunch. I'm going to want a couple of races - especially Chiss - that are unlikely to be free for non-subscribers, and they have announced that races for existing characters will be grandfathered at the relaunch. Then the event actually landed.
Rohan and Werit have some good qualitative impressions of the event, while full spoiler/guides can be found at places like Darth Hater and Dulfy's. My first - apparently incorrect - impression from the reward list was that this was a daily quest gear grind, in which case I was decidedly uninterested. In reality, the event is a scavenger event designed to be done once per character - most of the rewards are legacy-bound, allowing players to spread the token farming amongst multiple characters. In fact, we found out today that the event will wind down on Tuesday, after having been live for a mere week.
On one level, I respect the willingness to make an event that is NOT designed as a multiple week grindfest. However, while having such a short event does make for a unique experience for people who happen to be around, I'm not sure if I will have the time to play it, even if I do decide I'm willing to resub for this purpose. Between this and the Rakghoul infection, one-time events have represented a surprisingly high proportion of Bioware's post-launch content in the game. I suppose the event may still be a bigger draw than a comparable number of quests in a patch, but it's a tough call whether this is a good use of developer resources.
Rohan and Werit have some good qualitative impressions of the event, while full spoiler/guides can be found at places like Darth Hater and Dulfy's. My first - apparently incorrect - impression from the reward list was that this was a daily quest gear grind, in which case I was decidedly uninterested. In reality, the event is a scavenger event designed to be done once per character - most of the rewards are legacy-bound, allowing players to spread the token farming amongst multiple characters. In fact, we found out today that the event will wind down on Tuesday, after having been live for a mere week.
On one level, I respect the willingness to make an event that is NOT designed as a multiple week grindfest. However, while having such a short event does make for a unique experience for people who happen to be around, I'm not sure if I will have the time to play it, even if I do decide I'm willing to resub for this purpose. Between this and the Rakghoul infection, one-time events have represented a surprisingly high proportion of Bioware's post-launch content in the game. I suppose the event may still be a bigger draw than a comparable number of quests in a patch, but it's a tough call whether this is a good use of developer resources.
Rift To Remove Player Factions
Today, Trion announced plans to functionally all but remove factions from Rift. As far as I can tell, all guilds, group content, instanced PVP (the random groupfinder already puts "mercenaries" into cross faction groups, so this is only a change to queueing), chat, and most other functional portions of the game will now be shared between factions. Quest content, lore, and the two capitol cities will remain in place, presumably because re-writing all of the above would be a prohibitive amount of work.
Trion is spinning this as the two factions recognizing the need to come together against common foes after having beaten four of the six elemental dragons. This isn't actually new - we saw it in the game's first world event, back in March 2011, and frankly the faction system added so little to the game that I was questioning what purpose it served before launch even happened.
One area that may be kind of screwed up is non-instanced PVP. Residents of PVP servers will be locked out of most of these features - good I suppose if you rolled on that ruleset because you really like it, but bad if you are being left behind for PVE purposes. At least Trion offers free server transfers? There could be some odd quirks in terms of faction spying, trash talking, etc, but some of these are already possible. Trion also recently added a three-way PVP system where players choose to join one of the sides independent of their racial faction alignment, so I suppose they may intend for this system to replace the game's original lore.
As always, tip of the hat to Trion for doing what they think is necessary, rather than allowing a situation they clearly felt needed to be corrected to continue - most developers would not consider doing something this dramatic to a launched game. As long as the two factions are always fighting the same enemies anyway, there is very little value to the two faction system. Since developers don't really have the time to develop completely separate content for their factions, this is a logical alternative.
(Meanwhile, Blizzard is supposedly ramping the Alliance/Horde rivalry back up, other than the detail that the Horde's hated warchief is the final boss of the expansion. The whole Galactic War thing kind of rules out merging the SWTOR factions. I don't know that anyone is going to come scrambling to follow suit in retrofitting their games, but it will be interesting to see whether future developers stop doing two factions simply because that's how WoW did it.)
Trion is spinning this as the two factions recognizing the need to come together against common foes after having beaten four of the six elemental dragons. This isn't actually new - we saw it in the game's first world event, back in March 2011, and frankly the faction system added so little to the game that I was questioning what purpose it served before launch even happened.
One area that may be kind of screwed up is non-instanced PVP. Residents of PVP servers will be locked out of most of these features - good I suppose if you rolled on that ruleset because you really like it, but bad if you are being left behind for PVE purposes. At least Trion offers free server transfers? There could be some odd quirks in terms of faction spying, trash talking, etc, but some of these are already possible. Trion also recently added a three-way PVP system where players choose to join one of the sides independent of their racial faction alignment, so I suppose they may intend for this system to replace the game's original lore.
As always, tip of the hat to Trion for doing what they think is necessary, rather than allowing a situation they clearly felt needed to be corrected to continue - most developers would not consider doing something this dramatic to a launched game. As long as the two factions are always fighting the same enemies anyway, there is very little value to the two faction system. Since developers don't really have the time to develop completely separate content for their factions, this is a logical alternative.
(Meanwhile, Blizzard is supposedly ramping the Alliance/Horde rivalry back up, other than the detail that the Horde's hated warchief is the final boss of the expansion. The whole Galactic War thing kind of rules out merging the SWTOR factions. I don't know that anyone is going to come scrambling to follow suit in retrofitting their games, but it will be interesting to see whether future developers stop doing two factions simply because that's how WoW did it.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)