The walls have come down, and the curtain lifted. Blizzard have finally let us of the hook and revealed the big announcement they have been working towards for a few days now. And the announcement is:
Diablo 3.
The link to the page didn’t work when I checked it out, so I can’t see what features the game will have, but I guess that will be up in due course.
Updates when I find out more.
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You know how important someone is to a particular industry by the fuss they cause.
A few years ago a certain president who was the daddy of another certain president — do you like how I’m not being political here? — made the statement that he hated Brussels Sprouts. All of a sudden there was an outcry. A thunder was heard in the Heartland. The combined Brussels Sprout farmers of the USA rose up and delivered quite a lot of the ‘orrible little veggies to the White House. A big fuss over what was quite an innocent statement of culinary preference.
Now if I make the statement on this blog that I consider Brussels Sprouts to be hideous lumps of green putty that grow in Satan’s nether regions — which I do — it is unlikely that I will wake up tomorrow morning with several tons of the nasty things on my front doorstep. Nor will I likely be vilified by the Brussels Sprouts farmers of Australia and issued nasty threats. That might just be because I am considered somewhat less important of a commentator than president G.H.W. Bush.
So it’s interesting to read all the comments about Richard Bartle that have surfaced over his comments regarding the current state of MMO games, World of Warcraft, and Warhammer Online. A recent comment about Warhammer, "I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft" while not really particularly helpful, or accurate, has garnered quite a bit of animosity around the traps.
Of course Richard Bartle was (one of?) the designers of the original Multi User Dungeon (MUD), the text based role playing adventures that are the grand-daddies of the modern MMO game. Since that time, Dr Bartle has spent a great deal of his academic career studying and commentating on the virtual world phenomenon. This of course makes him an authority, and subject to scrutiny.
And he’s received a lot of that recently with his ongoing commentaries on World of Warcraft. Much of it highly critical. Of course criticism is to be expected when you have a go at a phenomena like WoW, Warhammer, or Whatever in which a lot of people are emotionally invested.
When anonymous readers criticize they fall into one of three categories.
The Rationalist usually writes well thought out responses to a post, and to other commenters on the thread. Sometimes these don’t appear to be well thought out, passion and bias for a subject can make an argument look odd, but at least they are trying. They don’t tend to start off by name calling.
The Zealot, aka the Fanboi, will tend to take the blogger to task for what they have written. The better ones will often have a good argument, but will tend to be one eyed ignoring the bloggers arguments all together. Often though the Zealot will attack the blogger personally, resort to name calling, and present straw-man arguments. The worst of these will attack quite viscously.
The Troll often comes across as a Zealot, but the motivation is different. They don’t tend to care about the topic, the only motive is to start a fuss. They can often come in on the side of the blogger, but will resort to the methods of the worst zealots in order to stir up trouble.
Tobold, and most of the other bloggers I read, fall into the first category, the Rationalist. But they are also passionate about their subject. You don’t end up with a blog career of more than a couple of months if you aren’t passionate about your subject and Tobold has been writing about the MMO subject for quite a few years now. That can lead to passionate words being used when posting, and if the issue is controversial the conversation will be inflamed. But a lot of that depends on how popular and authoritative the blogger is.
Tobold too is now finding out — maybe he knew already — his place in the MMO culture. In some of his recent posts, Public Figures and Public Figures - Part 2 he writes about the recent abuse that he has received from some of his readers, ironically in response to some of the comments he made about Bartle.
So now I’m a bit at a loss what to do. I could pull a "reverse Lum" and turn into "Tobold the Mad", with an angry rant blog, and not care about all the comments with foul language that would undoubtedly attract. But that isn’t really my style. I could write much less, or shut down the blog for a long period unless I’m out of the public eye and thus regain the ability to say what I think. Or I could shut down the blog completely and open a new one as "Dlobot", without telling anyone, and escape scrutiny that way. But I think the most rational is a mix in which I use the current summer MMORPG slump and holiday period to write less, try being myself without self-censorship, and wield a heavy banstick if that causes the language in the comments to deviate from my Terms of Service.
Honestly, I hope Tobold doesn’t let the negative comments affect him and keeps posting with the same frequency and quality that he has been. I enjoy reading his ongoing commentary, and while I don’t necessarily agree with everything he writes, I respect that it’s written with thought and introspection. And frankly, I also like that Tobold’s blog is a good source of ideas for my blog when I’m having trouble coming up with my own.
Tobold, Richard Bartle, Scott Jennings (Lum), Raph Koster, and others have become an important commentators in the MMO world. You can tell that by the controversies over their words. What everyone, including the Zealots — forget the Trolls, they’re not interested anyway — need to realize is that commentators are as important in this field as they are in every other. They are representative of the culture in which they interact, and in no small way shape that culture with their conversation.
And the more voices in a conversation, the healthier it is.
Those voices don’t have to agree all the time. In fact, it’s better that they don’t. Strong cultures are made up of diverse viewpoints. Cultures where everyone is of the same opinion stagnate and fall away. The world of MMO games only benefits from the diversity of ideas and viewpoints that come from the individuals engaged in conversation.
Richard Bartle has done us all a favor with his comment comparing World of Warcraft with Warhammer. While it’s certainly controversial, and where I don’t really agree with it, it has stimulated a conversation. It’s made us think. And that’s important.
Tobolds response to Bartle has continued that conversation. For those of us who are rational, and for those of us who are zealots we have also been forced to think and perhaps even to have considered where we stand. And that’s also important. As long as we do it without resorting to abuse.
If a voice is silenced through an onslaught of vicious criticism, we have all lost.
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Have you ever noticed how important the end of something is?
You’d think that by now MMORPG designers would realize that there will be a considerable portion of their subscribers who will, in the first month of release, reach the level cap. These players will do that because they either like playing the game and never leave their computer, or because they want to get to the end game, or both reasons. There’s only one game I know where this doesn’t happen, and that’s Eve Online, and that’s only because it takes a certain amount of real time to level up the skills (a single skill might take a couple of weeks or more to get to max level.)
So I gotta ask, why are game developers still neglecting the end game?
A month after release Age of Conan has had two sieges. Sieges were touted by Funcom as the big thing for PvPers. They were supposed to offer PvP battles of up to 300 players per side and the use of siege weapons and mounts to breach walls. These epic battles were supposed to be the pinnacle of Age of Conan PvP.
Problem is. They just don’t work.
The first siege was a disaster. Players were experiencing frame rates of less than 3 frames per second. Walls were either exploitable, or when breached, didn’t allow access as intended. Siege weapons didn’t work. The siege was no where near 300 players. The second siege wasn’t much better. Funcom managed to improve performance. Players are now getting 15 FPS. It’s an improvement I guess, but not much of one.
The thing is. The whole siege mechanic just wasn’t tested during beta. From what I’ve learned since release, the only part of the game that was thoroughly tested in beta was Tortage. Yep, that’s right. The one to twenty area. The beginners game.
Of course Funcom isn’t the only culprit here. Recently, both Lord of the Rings Online and Tabula Rasa were also released without a lot of end game content. You might remember that LotRO really got hammered for that in the months after launch. And these games weren’t the only ones. Even World of Warcraft was end game incomplete at launch.
You’ve got to give Funcom a lot of credit for the Tortage area. It’s one of the most polished and complete newbie experiences in a MMORPG that I have played, even with its downsides. It’s a great hook to catch new players and get them passed the first free month. But it’s not enough.
It doesn’t really matter if the content in the middle game thins out a bit. Sure, players will complain, and it is important in the sense of keeping players involved, but it’s the end game that will really advertise a game.
You see, the players who rush through to the level cap two weeks after release are also going to be the ones who make the most noise if the end game is not there. They’ll roll another alt, and then they’ll post on the official forums about how the end game sucks. And they’ll keep posting. Sooner rather than later, this will get out of the official forums onto the forums of game sites, the main pages of game sites, blogs…
In no time at all, the game will be thought of as shallow. What started out as a rush of sales at release, dries up. After the free month, subscriptions start to drop off as those players who rushed to the top and now have two or three alts at the level cap don’t have anything to do and don’t wish to start another and go through the same content again. Without some solid intervention by the developer team, server populations drop, severs are merged, the game gets sold to SOE…
Even if the devs recover and add a whole bunch of new and end game content within a few months of release, the damage is done. Players have left and have left a preconception of an incomplete game in the minds of the public.
Look at Lord of the Rings Online, Tabula Rasa, and Vanguard. Vanguard in particular has made leaps and strides in quality and content of the last year, or so I’ve heard — it might be time to have another look — but people still think of it as the train wreck it was at release. Turbine was lucky with LotRO. It was a good, bug free launch, and managed to get a loyal following. Lord of the Rings Online’s player base has even grown since launch, but how much better would it have done if it had a decent amount of end game content at launch?
There are three things the developers should do before launching a game:
Okay. So there should also be a decent amount of middle level content. The game should also have a certain amount of polish, and a good portion of the promised features should be included. If the devs have promised ten major features, at least seven of them should be included with a promise to finish the others as soon as possible. If a feature has to be cut, do it well before launch, and tell everyone about it loudly.
Don’t ignore your power levelers. They get a bum rap most of the time. Other players think they’re idiots for rushing through the content, and wonder why they expect the end game content to be there anyway. Developers probably see them as an anomaly. A blip in the subscriber data, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t resubscribe. But, they should be thought of as the trail blazers. They’re going to find the bugs first. They’re going to find the crappy content before everyone else. And if you treat them badly, they’ll tell everyone how much your game sucks.
Unfortunately, there seems to be an attitude that publishers and developers have where they believe that no matter what state they release their game in, players will buy it and they can add content and fix bugs later. I had hoped that Vanguard had shown how wrong that attitude was.
It seems that Funcom didn’t get the point.
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It’s a pity that my favorite games don’t have a Lazy Bum class. Or maybe that’s a good thing or I might have spent the whole week playing it.
I’ve spent a goodly part of the week recovering from my recent trip sitting in front of the television, doing a bit of reading, and of course, playing games. It’s a good thing I’ve got this time off. I usually finish my vacation holidays moments before I go back to work and spent the next two weeks at work recovering.
The big thing about this week is that it’s been the calm before the storm.
Age of Conan has been released in the US. (I know. You’re sick of hearing about AoC.) And it appears that Funcom has not vanguarded the game. There have been a few teething problems, especially with the early access program, and there have been a few oddly timed server downtimes, but all up it appears the release has gone well.
I mentioned that I was called when I was on holiday by the game store with the news that my preorder card has come in. I picked that up a couple of days ago.
At the time I was given an update on the date the box would be arriving in the store. Apparently it was supposed to come in today (Thursday 22nd) for sale tomorrow. The shop was going to phone me when it came in.
Well, it hasn’t arrived. Apparently the local EB Games were inundated with calls asking when it was coming in, so they preempted my call and phoned me telling me the game wasn’t in.
I feel strangely calm.
I’m not worried.
I have an interview for a new contract tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, and it’s my Mums birthday tomorrow too, so there’s a birthday dinner planned for tomorrow night. And there are plans afoot to see the new Indiana Jones on Saturday evening with a visit to the obligatory Indian restaurant before hand. Oh, and I’m scheduled for Lasik surgery on Monday so my eyes will be out of action for a couple of days after that.
As you can see, there’s a lot happening. And I feel strangely calm about Age of Conan. I’ll get to it when I get to it.
Don’t get me wrong I want to play it. I’m excited about playing it, especially with all the positive news. I’m also a bit nervous. I really want it to live up to all the hype and expectations of the last year. I don’t want to get a month into it and get bored.
In the meantime, I spent much of this weeks gaming back in LotRO. One of my real life friends told me a few weeks ago that he subscribed to Lord of the Rings Online. It’s his first MMORPG so I created a Hobbit Hunter called Stroppo Swiftfoot on his server this week and started the leveling.
I reached 16 this afternoon and joined up with my friend when he logged in this evening. He has a 18 Guardian and handles it very well. We ended up running through the Strider quests together and, just the two of us, entered the Great Barrow. Needless to say, two isn’t enough for the end of the instance. We managed to get most of the way through, but the multiple elites got us. This instance really needs a Minstrel. Never mind. Next time.
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Over at MMOCrunch, Geoff is asking if Diablo 3 will be announced soon.
It’s a fair question given that Blizzard recently purchased the Diablo 3 domain name from the fan group was using it as a fan site pushing for Diablo 3. The purchase as I understand it was amicable, no lawyers involved, though I’m not sure what Blizzard paid for the domain. (BTW, even though I’ve linked to the domain, it’s currently not working for me; again my understanding is that there is a site there.)
I think an even better question is: will Diablo 3 be Blizzards new MMORPG?
Considering that:
I believe that D3 is the likely candidate here.
With Starcraft 2 still being in development, it’s unlikely they’ll want to dilute sales with a MMO. Don’t forget that the original Starcraft is still a hot property in Korea some ten years after the game was released. A MMORPG released even a year or two after SC2 may hurt that game.
Diablo 2s online component was getting close to a MMORPG, perhaps without as much of the Massive that a real MMO has. It makes a lot of sense that the game mechanics of Diablo 2 could be extended into a full MMORPG without too much hassle. Of course, modern MMO mechanics would have to be added to make the game acceptable to modern MMOers.
Of course I could be wrong. Blizzard could be developing a completely new IP for their new MMORPG. Or, they could be working on World of Warcraft 2, but I really doubt that.
I think Diablo 3 Online is the likely scenario.
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Tobold has an interesting post up about the eventual decline of all MMO games. His argument is that with time players grow bored of the game, and as the game ages, the players depart for greener pastures. I touched on that idea a few days ago when I asked why game developers don’t upgrade their games.
However, I’m not going to post about that. I’m on a different track here. Tobold made the following comment:
EA certainly regrets earlier decisions to have canceled UO2 twice, because now the Ultima brand is dying.
I think Tobold is correct here. There would have to be at least some amount of regret in the EA camp about the cancellation of the sequel to Ultima Online simply because that game is now fading into obscurity.
I find it quite ironic really. The reason given for the cancellation of Ultima Online 2 was that EA believed UO2 would hurt UO by dividing its subscriber base. Instead, by not having a successor to Ultima Online, subscribers ended up drifting off to other companies products. Business rule numero uno — When you manage to get a customer, do everything you can to keep him.
So. Is it game over for Ultima Online?
Not yet. Ultima Online is still operating. It still has subscribers, a loyal bunch who won’t go quietly into that virtual night. But Ultima Online’s days are numbered. Eventually EA will consider the cost of running the game outweighs the benefits of keeping it going, and will switch off the servers. Then Ultima Online will exist only in our memories and on the countless unofficial servers running it.
The only hope of keeping the Ultima Online legend alive is for EA to, as soon as possible, revive the development of Ultima Online 2.
It’s important that a new version of UO isn’t WoWified. It also shouldn’t simply be a modernization of the original game. Here are a few ideas.
Do you think that it’s even worth saving Ultima Online?
What sort of features do you think the successor should have?
I’d like to hear your opinions. Leave a comment below, or continue the discussion in the forums.
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I was just reading a report on Game Politics about the Take Two shareholder meeting. Yep, I know. Boring stuff for most of you. You want commentary about games don’t you. Read on, there’s not much about the meeting there anyway.
It’s this snippet I’m interested in, a comment by T2 chairman Strauss Zelnick.
We’ve already received numerous [GTA IV] reviews, and to a one, they are perfect scores. My mom couldn’t write better reviews…
Maybe if he paid his mum more, she’d write better reviews.
I’ll make it clear first off that I haven’t played any of the Grand Theft Auto games. I play more MMORPGs than anything — and as we all know, a MMORPG doesn’t really leave time for other games — so aside from the the time deficit, the GTA games have never been my cup of tea.
Having said that, over the last few years, the GTAs have got some great reviews, and deservedly so. Rock Star has produced some dreck in the past, but Grand Theft Auto doesn’t qualify in that category.
But perfect. Sorry. There’s no such thing. And if game reviewers are giving 100%, 5/5, 17 thumbs up, or any other perfect score, then they aren’t doing their jobs.
With the recent controversies over Gamespot sacking reviewers because they gave games poor reviews and lost sponsors, how can players trust sites that give perfect scores? The first thing that came to my mind when I read the quote above was that Take Two must have been spreading the lurve around to get those ratings.
Nothing is flawless, not even GTA.
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There have been a few bloggers lately posting about going back to games that they haven’t played for a while. A sort of trip down a virtual memory lane. The latest is Stargrace of MmoQuests who has just reinstalled Everquest 1, and is finding it a bit frustrating remembering how to do everything.
This all started because Tipa of the West Karana blog recently challenged her readers to go back and get into the MMORPGs that they played a long time ago.
I must admit I gave it a bit of thought. I recently mentioned that a few months ago I checked out Anarchy Online, only to find it much the same as Stargrace is finding EQ. But this new wave of nostalgia making the rounds got me thinking about my first MMORPG, Asheron’s Call. So I checked it out.
I got as far as the web page for Asheron’s Call before I had second thoughts. Perhaps if I wasn’t focusing on getting to 70 with my WoW hunter, didn’t have an EQ 2 Shadow Knight on the backburner, a lifetime subscription to LotRO, and an eagerness to play Age of Conan when it is released in a month, I might have been more inclined to reload AC.
In a lot of ways the cliche — You can never go home again — is completely true.
Maybe it’s the law of first impressions, but the first MMORPG that a player gets into is often looked on more fondly than later games, even if those later games were better. With AC being my first game, I still find myself being influenced when judging new MMOs. I have some great memories of that game.
AC had a lot of great features. Big world, great story and lore, regular monthly updates, an interesting magic system, and an innovative use of armor and weapons. It also had a sense of wonder. I recall traveling across the countryside to climb a mountain to see what the view was like, something I still do occasionally.
I know that if I did reload Asheron’s Call, I would be disappointed. The game is old. There were a number of flaws, especially economic. The interface is now quite dated, and I’m not sure how they manage quests anymore. I expect that the features of modern MMORPGs, absent from the early models, would be too much missed.
Trips down memory lane are not all they’re cracked up to be. Everyone has experience at some time or other, returning to a place of fond memories, only to find that the memories had glossed over many of the negatives.
Nostalgia is best left where it belongs. In the memory.
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Twitter is one of those Web 2.0 things that has been on the edge of my radar for quite some time now. I don’t remember where I first heard of it, but lately there has been a lot more fuss about it. Apparently Twitter has gathered quite a few followers and has reached a sort of critical mass and is now a force to be reckoned with.
For those of you who haven’t looked into it, Twitter is a micro-blogging and social networking tool. It’s designed so that a user can’t write Lord of the Rings in a single post, it has to be a short, less than 140 characters message. Here’s an excerpt from their FAQ.
What is it?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!
The idea is that Twitterers would post lots of messages about what they were doing, where they were going, and follow other Twitterers doing their own things. In my case, I won’t be posting when I feed the cat, go to the bathroom, or do the ever more exciting going to work — aside from the fact that my employer has blocked all social networking, dating, and games sites from the office network. Doh! Can’t even check Stropp’s World at lunch!
I’ve been wondering for a while if I should be including any of the social networking applications in Stropp’s World. I’ve played with widgets like MyBlogLog in the past, and have done some stumbling with Stumbleupon, but not much else. With the growth of Twitter, I thought I’d give it a go.
You can expect to see me twittering about this blog, what I’m playing, and perhaps what I’m doing in game if I can Alt-Tab myself away for a few seconds.
Twitter has a number of widgets that can be added to web-sites. I decided to use the Flash version in the sidebar. It’s just above the Poll. You may need to enable or install Flash to see it, if you haven’t already.
Speaking of the Poll, now that I have the forums installed, I am considering moving the monthly Poll from the front page of the blog to The MOG Life board. The reason is that the Democracy plugin simply doesn’t have the features I’m looking for. It’s a reasonably old plugin, and the creator hasn’t done any work on it for well over a year now. The polls that the Simple Machines forums provide are light years better, not to mention I can have more than one at a time. Forum users can add their own as well.
So April may be the last month of Democracy.
I’d also like to hear from you regarding the forums. I’ve put a post up there asking you to contribute some ideas about what you would like to see in the Stropp’s World forums. I’ve got some ideas that I’m working out, but I’d love to hear yours.
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As I mentioned in my last post, and a few weeks ago in Guest Posters Wanted, I’m going on a driving holiday in a few weeks from Adelaide to Sydney. All up the trip is about 2000 kilometers each way, and should take about five or six days to get there. (I’ll be taking it slow.) I’ll then spend a few days with friends, and about four days drive back (across the top this time) and I’ll be gone for a full two weeks.
During that time I won’t necessarily have access to the Internet, or enough time to write for that matter. So I’m looking for some help in filling out the blog while I’m away.
If you’ve always felt that urge to write for a blog, then give in to that urge, feel the freedom, write up a post on anything MMORPG related, and send it in. You can use the contact form to do that, or email me directly at mcstropp@gmail.com
You’ll need to submit it by April 30th so that I can put it in the queue by the time I leave on the 4th, but aside from that, that’s all there is to it.
Too easy, eh?
And, if you’re interested, here is the route I’m planning on taking to Sydney.
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