Re-Capped In EQ2

Lyriana finished the newly added Qeynos timeline, and in the process hit level 92 - the EQ2's current cap.  There may have been a small amount of cheating - I took a detour to kill some fishmen in Velious to fill my exp bar to 99.9% prior to turning in the last quest, to ensure that Antonia Bayle would personally award me the final level.  This milestone puts EQ2 back on the list of games in which I currently have max-level characters - for almost two weeks until the fall expansions start launching, I can claim nine max-level characters across seven different MMO's. 

I was decidedly underwhelmed with plans for the Age of Destiny expansion when it was announced.  The "optional" expansion bundled 20 AA's (I currently sit at 311/320) with several features that I didn't really see a need for, but no new content.  I still don't plan to re-roll to try the new class, and I have no particular interest in the game's dungeon designing feature (which has had a mixed record).  However, one feature that I did not expect to get any use out of - NPC mercenaries - makes a lot more sense when presented in context with a level cap increase and new content. 

I still think there is a real concern that the amount of content in the new update may not have been quite enough for a full level/gear reset - in particular, the last two levels would have been much more painful if I didn't have some left-over subscription time, as non-subscribers must send half of their exp gain to AAXP.  Still, the content that they have added continues to be good and the mercenary feature is a big help in getting to see more of it.  Meanwhile, executive producer David Georgeson seems open to at least re-considering some of the non-subscriber issues I've been grousing about, so perhaps some of these will change in the future. 

I have a few in-game goals that may or may not get in this fall.  I'd like to take Lyriana over to the Freeport side to see some of the new content, collect evil-side housing and mercenaries, and incidentally try and fill out that AA cap for the first time ever since I've been playing the game.  Meanwhile, though there are limits to how much time I'm willing to spend on virtual house decoration, my house item situation is actually getting serious enough to merit at least some level of attention.   For now, though, another personal MMO milestone is in the books.

The Captive MMO Audience

Roger at Contains Moderate Peril suggests that MMO players tend to forget that they are also consumers.  He notes that we are fast to blame for-profit companies that kill games for monetary reasons, but slow to hold service providers we are otherwise fond of accountable for failure to provide services.  This sounds reasonable in the aggregate, but I don't find that I have either of these problems.  I also spend almost none of my time doing social activities, like raiding or PVP, that would tie me down to a specific product.  Perhaps these things are related? 

At issue are delays to the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase compensation package.  Roger correctly notes that Turbine accepted payment in full in advance for pre-purchase of a product with a promised date that Turbine failed to meet.  This might in most other circumstances be considered breach of contract.  Instead of complaining, I and various others actually praised the move as a way to deliver a more polished product at what may also be a more strategic time.   

The guys at Penny Arcade once quipped that Blizzard had developed a business model in which they rent players' friends to them on a monthly basis.  No matter how early or late, how buggy or how polished, everyone needs to buy the new content when it is released if they are to play together.  (This part isn't unique to MMO's - I've seen friends pester each other to buy new maps for FPS's, and I don't believe any of them ever received a cut from the games' publishers for this peer pressure marketing campaign.)  A player who does, as Roger suggests, feel that they are not getting acceptable service finds their friends held hostage - there may be various alternative games on the market, but the odds of reassembling the same group are low. 

By contrast, I have the luxury of acting like a pure consumer because there's no one waiting on me to get the new content to fill out their raid group.  I never considered pre-purchasing Rohan, because I know from past experience that Turbine will offer steep discounts within a month or two (the new date is not that far from Black Friday).  I'm not thrilled with Turbine's decision to bundle in a bunch of extras I don't want to justify a higher price tag for the expansion package, but I don't need to pay the premium that will be required of the captive portion of the audience. 

Ironically, the cost of expanding the MMO demographic beyond the traditional social, group-oriented player may have been that the market actually is less tolerant of the things that studios got away with in 2005 when it was a smaller but more loyal playerbase.  For good or for ill, perhaps millions of players are now free to quit games like WoW and SWTOR precisely because less of the MMO audience are captives.

Rift Expansion Sounds Like Guild Wars 2?

After hearing MMO Reporter's PAX Interview with Scott Hartsman, I'm struck by how his description of the leveling experience in the Rift expansion sounds like what I'm hearing others say about the leveling experience in Guild Wars 2.  Hartsman's declaration that MMO's should be about being able to play with all of your friends all of the time sounds like precisely what we've been hearing from ArenaNet. 

The Rift expansion will raise the level cap and add two new continents with solo quest content and a story quest arc.  However, Hartsman suggested that it would be more fun to do the other activities that focus more on exploration.  One example he gave was a quest alternative called "carnage" that does not require the intervention of a questgiver to get credit for killing mobs - a feature of Guild Wars 2 (and, as Tobold points out, something that Warhammer Online notoriously promised but largely failed to deliver).  Hartsman states that players will likely get the exp they need from completing one of the two continents, plus all of the side exploration and carnage bonuses and other activities.   

It's possible that Trion agrees with my speculation that GW2 may be a threat to their game due to some similar mechanics, and began planning a response well in advance of the competitor's launch.  If so, one potential downfall might be all of the currently existing content in the game.  Based on the interview it sounded like both continents were for the level 50+ crowd (though I'm not sure if this has been explicitly confirmed).  Trion's answer to GW2 cannot be gated behind 50 levels of old content if they want it to be effective. 

Re-Tiering DCUO

DCUO rolled out a major revamp of content tiers in this week's patch.  Four tiers' worth of currency tokens were condensed into one.  Strict "combat rating" (think gearscore) requirements remain on all endgame content, but there has been some redistribution of the content amongst several tiers - in some cases adding additional content to ensure that each tier is not too sparse.

For example, the game previously featured six "challenge" modes that upgrade leveling instances to level 30, along with two bonus challenges that were new content added in patches and offer increased difficulty.  This content could help you get your introductory item level 46 tier set, but you'd be looking at a long grind to get gear that still won't get you into most endgame content - including the solo content from the game's second DLC pack.  Meanwhile, once you'd upgraded your gear beyond this level, there was no reason to ever return.

With the revamp, all content awards the one type of currency, with increased awards as you hit the higher tiers.  The existing challenges were mostly placed on the first difficulty tier, while two additional tiers are filled out using the hardest of the old challenges and a handful of new challenges (based on leveling content that wasn't previously available as level 30 challenges).  There is also a once weekly award for clearing a tier one challenge. 

Five of the classic challenges sit in tier 1, while tier 2 is populated with the sixth classic challenge, the two patch challenges, and one new upgrade.  Four more new challenges occupy the third tier.  I elected to run the Meta wing for the weekly bonus, because you can beat Dr. Psycho to death relatively easily with a giant dumpster thing.

There are some problems with the progression - for instance, the zergable outdoor quests in South Gotham (all outdoor quests in DCUO are public quests) award five marks each (20 per day - enough for a T1 piece every other day), which is far faster than what you can get doing challenges.  These dailies were always a bit out of progression order, but it's more noticeable now that the currencies are fully interchangeable.  Also, unless I misunderstand, the higher tier gear requires more currency than the cap allows non-subscribers to carry unless you pay real money to make a one-time withdrawal from escrow. 

That aside, the new system definitely flattens and accelerates the progress curve somewhat.  I picked up three pieces of T1 gear (and one random ilvl 53 drop) in one evening by cashing in all my old marks and doing one round of daily quests.  Perhaps I will finally get enough gear to actually see most of the content I paid for? 

Aside: players display the last item appearance you collected unless you specify otherwise.  My character logged on wearing this atrocity of an outfit - you may or may not be able to see the Batman logo boxer shorts.