So after 4 days of looking back on MMOs what have I learned?
To be honest I don’t know if I have an answer to that. I know I like games that offer some form of Player versus Player; however I don’t know if I like that being the focus of the entire game. I enjoy voice acting from NPCs and quest logs that are filled with entertaining lore but I don’t like quests that are chores. I prefer quests that are truly epic, that take more than five minutes to complete and require some thought and work. I despise the yellow ! above the NPC’s names now.
I want the world around me to change in a meaningful way like phasing. I want an entertaining tutorial that provides a solid foundation for how the game is going to be played and a look at what the end game will really be like so I can better understand if this is really the class I want to play.
I want grouping to be the first choice of every person playing and solo content to be something you do when you don’t have enough time to dedicate to a group. I want real challenges, not just stay out of the fire. I want the game to push my limits of how I play my character and force my friends and I to think outside the box.
I want to be my own unique snowflake. I want to design my class around how I want to play it. If I want to specialize at something I want to be better than someone who is balancing out their skills, but I want us to both have a viable place in a group setting.
I want the game to feel like a world and not a game. I want to feel as though I belong here, that what I do makes a difference and that I am a part of the community. I don’t want to play an EQ, WoW, AoC, WAR, or DAoC clone. I want to play a new game that has taken these ideas and improved upon them. I just don’t know what that game is.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
MMOs... the bad Part 4?
Of all the games I’ve talked about this week each also held features I did not like. I think it’s only fair to identify the short comings of each game if I’m going to praise their successes.
EverQuest only had one drawback in my opinion. It required far to large of a time commitment to do anything in the game. If I didn’t have 4 or more hours to commit to something it was typically useless to try. I’m sure if I played today I would find other issues but at the time I played EQ that was my only complaint. The only nice thing was most players understood the time commitment and when you joined a group you had a fairly good idea everyone else was going to be around for awhile.
World of Warcraft has a lot of little things I could complain about, but I don’t think that’s fair. Simply because I’m burnt out on a game doesn’t mean it’s a failed game feature. The few complaints I’ve had since my best days in WoW are that the quests always felt like chores. Collecting 10 of something or killing 8 of something isn’t a quest, it’s a chore for a lazy NPC. It wouldn’t be bad if they were rare but for 80 levels that is the primary type of quests you complete.
My other compliant is one I think a lot of MMOs are going to face and that’s gear inflation. The item quality in World of Warcraft is increasing so fast that it makes older gear trivial to fast. For comparison in EverQuest you could still use items that were 2 years old and they were considered good through a few expansions. My last complaint is that World of Warcraft has simply too much solo content. The primary method of leveling from 1-80 is by yourself. That doesn’t feel like a Massively Multiplayer Game to me.
Warhammer Online had a few issues too. I’m going to avoid the pitfalls of hardware issues because this is about game features, not technical difficulties. The major issue Warhammer Online had was the balance of power. WAR had two armies and one of them had to lose. As one army started to lose, more and more people would defect to other servers, causing a greater imbalance and thus losing even more.
WAR also suffered from class synergy balance. I know many games suffer from class balance but in a PvP game it is so much more pronounced. Certain classes, such as Bright Wizards, when stacked in a group could produce an unfair amount of damage. I’m sure it has been changed by now, or I hope so, but this was the case for 9 months of me playing the game. Certain group make ups synergized to well that they easily became over powered. My final complaint with WAR is just the lack of replay. You had to clear nearly all of the content in your given level range to advance. This left nothing new for you to play if you rerolled another race on the same faction.
Dark Age of Camelot only lacked one thing when I played it and that was a solid PvE experience. I never played through any expansions and I’ve heard horrid things about the PvE they did release but that was my only complaint while I played. When there was no one to fight we lacked many options at the higher levels for PvE.
Age of Conan lacked for lack of a better description the entire game past level 20. There just wasn’t enough mid to end level content to keep a lot of people entertained. Tortage had should us what could be done and the rest of the game just felt inadequate afterwards.
So there you have it. What I liked in a MMO and what I don’t like. Now let’s try and figure out what MMO would appeal to me the most.
EverQuest only had one drawback in my opinion. It required far to large of a time commitment to do anything in the game. If I didn’t have 4 or more hours to commit to something it was typically useless to try. I’m sure if I played today I would find other issues but at the time I played EQ that was my only complaint. The only nice thing was most players understood the time commitment and when you joined a group you had a fairly good idea everyone else was going to be around for awhile.
World of Warcraft has a lot of little things I could complain about, but I don’t think that’s fair. Simply because I’m burnt out on a game doesn’t mean it’s a failed game feature. The few complaints I’ve had since my best days in WoW are that the quests always felt like chores. Collecting 10 of something or killing 8 of something isn’t a quest, it’s a chore for a lazy NPC. It wouldn’t be bad if they were rare but for 80 levels that is the primary type of quests you complete.
My other compliant is one I think a lot of MMOs are going to face and that’s gear inflation. The item quality in World of Warcraft is increasing so fast that it makes older gear trivial to fast. For comparison in EverQuest you could still use items that were 2 years old and they were considered good through a few expansions. My last complaint is that World of Warcraft has simply too much solo content. The primary method of leveling from 1-80 is by yourself. That doesn’t feel like a Massively Multiplayer Game to me.
Warhammer Online had a few issues too. I’m going to avoid the pitfalls of hardware issues because this is about game features, not technical difficulties. The major issue Warhammer Online had was the balance of power. WAR had two armies and one of them had to lose. As one army started to lose, more and more people would defect to other servers, causing a greater imbalance and thus losing even more.
WAR also suffered from class synergy balance. I know many games suffer from class balance but in a PvP game it is so much more pronounced. Certain classes, such as Bright Wizards, when stacked in a group could produce an unfair amount of damage. I’m sure it has been changed by now, or I hope so, but this was the case for 9 months of me playing the game. Certain group make ups synergized to well that they easily became over powered. My final complaint with WAR is just the lack of replay. You had to clear nearly all of the content in your given level range to advance. This left nothing new for you to play if you rerolled another race on the same faction.
Dark Age of Camelot only lacked one thing when I played it and that was a solid PvE experience. I never played through any expansions and I’ve heard horrid things about the PvE they did release but that was my only complaint while I played. When there was no one to fight we lacked many options at the higher levels for PvE.
Age of Conan lacked for lack of a better description the entire game past level 20. There just wasn’t enough mid to end level content to keep a lot of people entertained. Tortage had should us what could be done and the rest of the game just felt inadequate afterwards.
So there you have it. What I liked in a MMO and what I don’t like. Now let’s try and figure out what MMO would appeal to me the most.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Figuring out MMOs Par 3... Triple Play!
Sorry for not having this prewritten, I’ve been busy. Today I’m actually going to cover 3 games. Two of these games I played for just under a year and one I played for 2 months. I played Dark Age of Camelot for 6-9 months off and on after release and I played Warhammer Online for more or less 12 months off and on plus 4 months or so of beta. I am also going to talk a little about Age of Conan which is the game that I feel had the most squandered potential, I played it for 3 months.
Dark Age of Camelot was my first real experience of MMORPG Player versus Player combat. Frontier’s made Dark Age of Camelot what it was. When you left the “safe” zone of your PvE area you felt like you were walking through the gates that held King Kong at bay. You knew from this point on dangerous things were out there trying to kill you. The driving factor that kept people out there other than PvP was that the best exp spots in the game were in the frontier. This provided our enemies with guaranteed prey and us with exp at a real risk. We could be safe for hours then have one ranger start picking us off one at a time. It provided a constant sense of fear and awareness.
Upon an EXP spot getting raided our realm would normally rally together to hunt down the culprit. It provided an excellent sense of community. The other great feature was that sense DAoC had 3 Armies no one was every truly out numbered. More often than not the two weaker armies would team up and attack the strongest. It provided a self controlled population and power balancing system.
Warhammer Online was suppose to be DAoC 2 to a lot of people. It missed the mark in some aspects but it did do some things better than the rest of the MMOs to date. Due to the detailed world Games Workshop created WAR had the most detailed and fluid Lore in a MMO I had ever experienced. A lot of the quests really felt like you were acting out events that would have occurred in a book. WAR was the first MMO were I ever looked forward to reading a quest log, even if it was a glorified chore at times.
WAR also stepped up the PvP and PvE unification by making most of their abilities have duel purposes. An ability that was often thought of as PvE only was given an alternate effect when used on players. Thus the tank classes could still use Taunt on other players rather than on just enemies. It solved an excellent situation of splitting your abilities up between PvE and PvP. Nearly every ability could be used in both portions of the game.
WAR also created an entirely new way to quest, called Public Quests. You could walk upon an area were a constant battle was going on between players and NPCs. You could join in at any stage of the quest and still have a chance at getting an item at the end. The longer you stayed at the PQ the better your chances got at winning one of the higher level items, until you won one. It was a great idea and during the games early stages it worked very well.
The last game which I played the least was Age of Conan. Age of Conan truly tried to set its self apart. The graphics were amazing and the AoC tried to reinvent combat. You got to choose where you attacked your enemy rather than just picking a type of attack. It was refreshingly different. That being said the thing that made AoC great, if even for a time, was the tutorial.
AoC offered the most in depth and well executed tutorial of any MMO ever. You entered the town of Tortage and got to experience voice over NPCs, a progressive story line, and adult plot themes. During this entire tutorial you had the option to solo or group through it. Level 1 -20 of Age of Conan is the best intro to any MMO I have ever played.
Dark Age of Camelot was my first real experience of MMORPG Player versus Player combat. Frontier’s made Dark Age of Camelot what it was. When you left the “safe” zone of your PvE area you felt like you were walking through the gates that held King Kong at bay. You knew from this point on dangerous things were out there trying to kill you. The driving factor that kept people out there other than PvP was that the best exp spots in the game were in the frontier. This provided our enemies with guaranteed prey and us with exp at a real risk. We could be safe for hours then have one ranger start picking us off one at a time. It provided a constant sense of fear and awareness.
Upon an EXP spot getting raided our realm would normally rally together to hunt down the culprit. It provided an excellent sense of community. The other great feature was that sense DAoC had 3 Armies no one was every truly out numbered. More often than not the two weaker armies would team up and attack the strongest. It provided a self controlled population and power balancing system.
Warhammer Online was suppose to be DAoC 2 to a lot of people. It missed the mark in some aspects but it did do some things better than the rest of the MMOs to date. Due to the detailed world Games Workshop created WAR had the most detailed and fluid Lore in a MMO I had ever experienced. A lot of the quests really felt like you were acting out events that would have occurred in a book. WAR was the first MMO were I ever looked forward to reading a quest log, even if it was a glorified chore at times.
WAR also stepped up the PvP and PvE unification by making most of their abilities have duel purposes. An ability that was often thought of as PvE only was given an alternate effect when used on players. Thus the tank classes could still use Taunt on other players rather than on just enemies. It solved an excellent situation of splitting your abilities up between PvE and PvP. Nearly every ability could be used in both portions of the game.
WAR also created an entirely new way to quest, called Public Quests. You could walk upon an area were a constant battle was going on between players and NPCs. You could join in at any stage of the quest and still have a chance at getting an item at the end. The longer you stayed at the PQ the better your chances got at winning one of the higher level items, until you won one. It was a great idea and during the games early stages it worked very well.
The last game which I played the least was Age of Conan. Age of Conan truly tried to set its self apart. The graphics were amazing and the AoC tried to reinvent combat. You got to choose where you attacked your enemy rather than just picking a type of attack. It was refreshingly different. That being said the thing that made AoC great, if even for a time, was the tutorial.
AoC offered the most in depth and well executed tutorial of any MMO ever. You entered the town of Tortage and got to experience voice over NPCs, a progressive story line, and adult plot themes. During this entire tutorial you had the option to solo or group through it. Level 1 -20 of Age of Conan is the best intro to any MMO I have ever played.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Figuring out MMOs Part 2... WoW
This week’s series of posts was supposed to be just one, but it grew too long. Please bear with me as I am trying to be as fair and rationale as possible with analyzing what I liked about a few specific MMOs that I played for 3 or more months. Today I’m delving into the powerhouse that is World of Warcraft, by far the most influential MMO of all time and arguably most influential game of all time.
I didn’t play WoW at launch; I actually played EverQuest 2 at that time. Two months after they both launched though I was mobilized to Iraq. Upon returning all of my friends were playing WoW so I decided to give it a try that was January of 2007 so it was only a few months before Burning Crusade came out.
In so many ways when I first started playing World of Warcraft it just felt like a continuation of what EverQuest was trying to do. They game was designed in a way that the moment you logged on you knew what you had to do. It was very straight forward which was refreshing.
As I leveled up I discovered a few things that I loved about WoW. The skill tree’s that WoW used was a lot like those found in Diablo 2. You could really feel all of Blizzard’s other games influence on WoW. The different skill tree’s offered a way to play the game in various ways with one character. My hope was that this would give me 3 play styles to fulfill essentially the same role, being a priest I wanted to heal. It offered variety and I could change my priest so he was a little different than all the others.
World of Warcraft took the dungeons I had loved in EverQuest and turned them into something amazing. I am still a huge fan of EQ’s open dungeon system but WoW made each dungeon feel like a real adventure. It was just your group in the zone so the dungeon became personal. You got to experience all the content the dungeon had to offer without worrying about being killed by other places uncontrolled mobs or fighting over rare mobs. WoW also designed the dungeons in a way to utilizie various class builds and group make ups. The holy trinity was there but the DPS roles could be varied more often than in EQ.
World of Warcraft would do one more thing that amazed me, and it wasn’t even their idea. Blizzard took an idea I believe Lord of the Rings invented with “Phasing”. With phasing the player could experience a change in the world without altering the world for everyone. A certain area of the map would alter or change based on what quests you had completed and the other players would still see the old area.
The one thing Blizzard is notoriously good at is polishing. They can take anyone’s idea and make it better. That’s not to say Blizzard hasn’t come up with their own good ideas, they have. It just seems to me that the best ideas Blizzard has implemented were taken from other games, not just other MMOs, and improved upon.
I didn’t play WoW at launch; I actually played EverQuest 2 at that time. Two months after they both launched though I was mobilized to Iraq. Upon returning all of my friends were playing WoW so I decided to give it a try that was January of 2007 so it was only a few months before Burning Crusade came out.
In so many ways when I first started playing World of Warcraft it just felt like a continuation of what EverQuest was trying to do. They game was designed in a way that the moment you logged on you knew what you had to do. It was very straight forward which was refreshing.
As I leveled up I discovered a few things that I loved about WoW. The skill tree’s that WoW used was a lot like those found in Diablo 2. You could really feel all of Blizzard’s other games influence on WoW. The different skill tree’s offered a way to play the game in various ways with one character. My hope was that this would give me 3 play styles to fulfill essentially the same role, being a priest I wanted to heal. It offered variety and I could change my priest so he was a little different than all the others.
World of Warcraft took the dungeons I had loved in EverQuest and turned them into something amazing. I am still a huge fan of EQ’s open dungeon system but WoW made each dungeon feel like a real adventure. It was just your group in the zone so the dungeon became personal. You got to experience all the content the dungeon had to offer without worrying about being killed by other places uncontrolled mobs or fighting over rare mobs. WoW also designed the dungeons in a way to utilizie various class builds and group make ups. The holy trinity was there but the DPS roles could be varied more often than in EQ.
World of Warcraft would do one more thing that amazed me, and it wasn’t even their idea. Blizzard took an idea I believe Lord of the Rings invented with “Phasing”. With phasing the player could experience a change in the world without altering the world for everyone. A certain area of the map would alter or change based on what quests you had completed and the other players would still see the old area.
The one thing Blizzard is notoriously good at is polishing. They can take anyone’s idea and make it better. That’s not to say Blizzard hasn’t come up with their own good ideas, they have. It just seems to me that the best ideas Blizzard has implemented were taken from other games, not just other MMOs, and improved upon.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Figuring out what I want in a MMO Part 1 of ??
Over the past 10 years I have played a large number of MMOs. Last summer during a gaming lull I went out of my way to try the free trials of the few major MMOs I had missed. The only one I have yet to play that I consider “major” would be Lord of the Rings Online.
Out of all of these MMOs only four have held my attention for more than 3 months and only two of those have held me for over a year. Of the two that held me for over a year they each held me for multiple years, so if a MMO can keep me for 12 months then they can keep me for 24 or 36 rather easily.
I played Dark Age of Camelot of 4 months at release plus 1 ½ months during beta. I played Warhammer Online for 11 months off and on after release and 5 months of beta. I played World of Warcraft for 2 ½ years starting 3 months before the launch of Burning Crusade and I played EverQuest for 5 years starting at launch.
Considering how many MMOs I have played I’m an currently trying to figure out why I liked each MMO and to come away from this with a better understanding of what I’m looking for in a MMO. This isn’t a blog about what I think the perfect MMO should have. This is a list of things a I’m going to look for in an existing MMO to better make a decision on purchasing and playing it.
Let’s start with EverQuest and what I loved about that game. Obviously it was my first MMO so the first one always gets a little extra helping of love when looked back upon but EQ really did have some good qualities. EQ was by far the most immersive MMO I have ever played. There were times where I would get lost in the game for hours just being an Iksar or High Elf wandering around your home city and exploring. When you went to a foreign city you really got a sense that you didn’t belong. Depending on your race and faction the guards would kill you out right and most merchants would ignore you at the very least or attack you.
Every race had their own home city. You leveled up in this area and it was extremely difficult to travel anywhere. Most low level areas were surrounded by areas with much higher level monsters that could kill you in one shot. In a way you felt trapped early on in the starting areas but it fostered a kin ship with other players. If you were a Gnome the first few levels were spent exclusively with other gnomes. You developed pride in your race as the first challenges you overcame were always with your own race.
It wasn’t just the feeling of immersion that fostered my long time love for EverQuest, it was the challenge. EverQuest was an unwritten rule book of how to play a MMO. Prior to it we had no basic training on how to conduct a raid, manage threat, how to conserve mana or do healing rotations. There was no boss walk through web sites to go and refer to. Each and every raiding guild kept their strategies a secret because raiding was hyper competitive. We had to die countless times to learn what a raid bosses abilities were, how much DPS he did, how much threat we could manage and so on. No one told us how to beat the bosses so when we finally did down one it was that much more of an achievement.
EverQuest didn’t just provide difficult raid encounters, the 5 man group content could be just as difficult at times if you cared to challenge yourself. In EQ we really did dungeon crawl. You had to move your group as a whole unit through tunnels avoiding respawns and killing deeper and deeper to get to whatever goal you had set, be it an item or rare quest piece. You could take a 5 man group and attempt some raid level content as well, I remember the first time we broke Plane of Fear with 5 people. Breaking a zone means clearing enough mobs to make it safe to enter. (PoF was one of the hardest zones to break in the game)
EverQuest provided a deep and never ending list of challenges for a truly dedicated gamer. You had to think outside the box to overcome challenges simply because we didn’t yet have a box. It also provided you with a sense of belonging, where everybody knows your name. You could run a pick up group every night of the week, it would be successful, and you would recognize friends from other guilds.
EverQuest fostered everything that I loved about online gaming. Community, evolving challenges, and immersion.
Note tomorrow will be on World of Warcraft. This is going to be a series of what I liked about certain MMO’s and next week I will do what I disliked about each one. By the time we are done I should know what I’m looking for in a MMO in the future.
Out of all of these MMOs only four have held my attention for more than 3 months and only two of those have held me for over a year. Of the two that held me for over a year they each held me for multiple years, so if a MMO can keep me for 12 months then they can keep me for 24 or 36 rather easily.
I played Dark Age of Camelot of 4 months at release plus 1 ½ months during beta. I played Warhammer Online for 11 months off and on after release and 5 months of beta. I played World of Warcraft for 2 ½ years starting 3 months before the launch of Burning Crusade and I played EverQuest for 5 years starting at launch.
Considering how many MMOs I have played I’m an currently trying to figure out why I liked each MMO and to come away from this with a better understanding of what I’m looking for in a MMO. This isn’t a blog about what I think the perfect MMO should have. This is a list of things a I’m going to look for in an existing MMO to better make a decision on purchasing and playing it.
Let’s start with EverQuest and what I loved about that game. Obviously it was my first MMO so the first one always gets a little extra helping of love when looked back upon but EQ really did have some good qualities. EQ was by far the most immersive MMO I have ever played. There were times where I would get lost in the game for hours just being an Iksar or High Elf wandering around your home city and exploring. When you went to a foreign city you really got a sense that you didn’t belong. Depending on your race and faction the guards would kill you out right and most merchants would ignore you at the very least or attack you.
Every race had their own home city. You leveled up in this area and it was extremely difficult to travel anywhere. Most low level areas were surrounded by areas with much higher level monsters that could kill you in one shot. In a way you felt trapped early on in the starting areas but it fostered a kin ship with other players. If you were a Gnome the first few levels were spent exclusively with other gnomes. You developed pride in your race as the first challenges you overcame were always with your own race.
It wasn’t just the feeling of immersion that fostered my long time love for EverQuest, it was the challenge. EverQuest was an unwritten rule book of how to play a MMO. Prior to it we had no basic training on how to conduct a raid, manage threat, how to conserve mana or do healing rotations. There was no boss walk through web sites to go and refer to. Each and every raiding guild kept their strategies a secret because raiding was hyper competitive. We had to die countless times to learn what a raid bosses abilities were, how much DPS he did, how much threat we could manage and so on. No one told us how to beat the bosses so when we finally did down one it was that much more of an achievement.
EverQuest didn’t just provide difficult raid encounters, the 5 man group content could be just as difficult at times if you cared to challenge yourself. In EQ we really did dungeon crawl. You had to move your group as a whole unit through tunnels avoiding respawns and killing deeper and deeper to get to whatever goal you had set, be it an item or rare quest piece. You could take a 5 man group and attempt some raid level content as well, I remember the first time we broke Plane of Fear with 5 people. Breaking a zone means clearing enough mobs to make it safe to enter. (PoF was one of the hardest zones to break in the game)
EverQuest provided a deep and never ending list of challenges for a truly dedicated gamer. You had to think outside the box to overcome challenges simply because we didn’t yet have a box. It also provided you with a sense of belonging, where everybody knows your name. You could run a pick up group every night of the week, it would be successful, and you would recognize friends from other guilds.
EverQuest fostered everything that I loved about online gaming. Community, evolving challenges, and immersion.
Note tomorrow will be on World of Warcraft. This is going to be a series of what I liked about certain MMO’s and next week I will do what I disliked about each one. By the time we are done I should know what I’m looking for in a MMO in the future.
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