A blinding hatred caused by fear is showing in their eyes
They want their truth all black and white
But a rainbow never tells no lies to a
Stranger in a strange land
What's a man supposed to do?
I'm just a stranger in a strange land
When will the light come shining through?
--"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Triumph, fromThunder Seven*
I was thinking the other day about how WoW Classic/Vanilla is different than MMOs that came after it. And that includes the expacs for WoW that have accumulated over time.
There are some MMOs that are completely different and have very little actual story, such as Black Desert Online, and there are those that are little more than an excuse to PvP, such as ArcheAge. But as far as story driven MMOs are concerned, Classic/Vanilla stands out from its future self and its competitors in that not everything devolves to a single conspiracy.
Sure, in SWTOR the original version has each class story's own Big Bad, but the game's storyline points to the same ending in Corellia. LOTRO's big bad is, well, Sauron. Age of Conan has it's own storyline with Atzel at the forefront, ESO's original storyline had Molag Bal, and Rift's original storyline pointed at Regulos, the Dragon of Extinction. And starting in Burning Crusade, each WoW expac had an eventual Big Bad that had to be confronted at the end of the storyline.
But Classic/Vanilla? Not so much.
There is no defined "Big Bad" at the end of Classic/Vanilla, but instead there are a variety of different Big Bads that covered various WoW stories: Onyxia, Ragnaros, Hakkar, Nefarian, C'Thun, and Kel'Thuzad. What is most interesting about the various Big Bads is that their stories don't intersect. Sure, Ony and Nef are brother and sister black dragons, but their stories don't intersect at all. The same goes with Ragnaros and Nefarian, despite them sharing Blackrock Mountain.**
There are a plethora of other questlines that likely were designed to lead to other raids and raid bosses --Varian's questline, the Syndicate/Alterac, Burning Blade, Scythe of Elune/Deadwind Pass, etc.-- that were either shut down entirely as Blizzard changed the focus to Burning Crusade or were retconned for later expacs (the Worgen in Cataclysm and Deadwind Pass/Karazhan at the end of BC, for example).
Here's the kicker, however: if you take WoW Classic/Vanilla at face value there was no defined story, no overarching Big Bad, that who was the ultimate mastermind and you had to eventually deal with. With the benefit of hindsight and a metric ton of official stories/comics/expacs out there, we now know that everything devolves into either the Burning Legion or the Old Gods. And a great argument could be made that it's really the Old Gods being responsible for everything, from the lowest Defias cutthroat or Hexxed Troll up through Sargeras itself.***
But Classic/Vanilla doesn't have such an escape valve, and we have to take each storyline at face value. This means that, as far as a world is concerned, Classic/Vanilla Azeroth is more complex than many of its successors. The enemies aren't all in this together, and in fact they frequently feud with each other just as much as they do with the Horde and Alliance.
If there was one true disappointment in how WoW developed over time, it was the loss of all of this complexity at the expense of pushing a singular narrative. While a singular narrative was easier to sell as part of an expansion, it made the WoW-verse smaller. If there was a problem in one location, it could be traced back in one form or another to the Old Gods' or the Burning Legion's corruption. Even if it wasn't obvious initially, don't worry. It'll eventually get there. It's kind of like the Elder Scrolls Online, where almost all quests eventually devolve to a Daedric issue. Which is a shame, because it takes away the agency of everybody involved and they all simply become pawns moved around on a chessboard.
Move over, Mongo, you've got company. (Made from a WoWHead screencap.)
*Here's a link to a YouTube video of the song, since it's one of Triumph's lesser known songs. For those not from the 70s/80s, Triumph was the "other" power trio from the Toronto area.
**And are also supposedly on the same side as C'Thun. Of course, there's nothing directly in the quest texts that indicate that all three are working for the same overall team; that came later.
***Talk about the conversations surrounding a misbehaving child in Azeroth: It's not my fault, Dad! The Old Gods made me do it!!
I've been poking my nose into a few of the MMOs that I've tried and not really done much of anything with, such as Rift and TERA, and found that the environments are somewhat stable.
Well, kinda.
For example, the last several times I logged into Rift I was practically the only person around. Just about any sign of life would be better than what I found at the time. After it was pointed out to me that it was likely that a particular server might be more active when I was logging in, I made an effort to try various times and days of the week. Still, I saw hardly any activity.
The past few weeks, however, I've seen an uptick in the activity in Rift on both factions to the point where I can be reasonably certain that if, say, I needed an assist on taking care of a Tear, there would be someone in the vicinity to help out. I would definitely not call Rift as having a healthy population, but it's better than the "dead" it certainly seemed to be several months ago.
***
TERA is in a better situation than Rift, but that's not exactly saying much. Unlike Rift, TERA is still being actively developed by Bluehole --they recently released a new race/class combo, for instance-- but TERA still has that "shameless"* look that a lot of Korean MMOs have. For better or worse, that look tends to attract some people and repel others.
The look aside, TERA had finished server merges and gotten down to two servers: one PvE and one PvP. From my end, I think the server merges where absolutely the best thing to do for TERA, because there's a viable population in both. What I can say is that there seem to be more people active in TERA at any given time than Rift, but I'm not sure if the population is at the level that is good for the long term health of the game. Let's put it this way: if TERA were owned by NCSoft, I'd be a bit nervous about NCSoft shuttering the game.
***
Which brings me to ArcheAge.
I've been seeing YouTube videos for a couple of years about how "ArcheAge is dead" and "when will they kill ArcheAge?", but ArcheAge is still here.
I do have to wonder how much longer, however.
I have two toons in ArcheAge --one of the quirks of the game is that you get EXACTLY two toons total across all servers, unless you subscribe-- and with one parked in a mid level/upper level capital and another in the intro/low level zones, I simply don't see the population there. In Rift, at least, you do see people creating new toons in the intro and low level zones, but ArcheAge feels dead. Perhaps the decision to allow only two toons total has something to do with that, because if you want to experiment on different servers with race/faction/class combos before subscribing you have to be in a constant state of deleting toons. And lets face it; not everybody is so keen about constantly zapping toons because of that artificial limitation.
But the thing is, ArcheAge seemed a bit healthier in the intro and low level zones before the server merges** than after.
Even though the population is likely higher than Rift, at least Rift is in maintenance mode while the devs for ArcheAge are still trying to put new content together. And there are other, glaring problems that are more obvious to an English speaker than to a Korean speaker, because the English port is, well, a bit inconsistent. You have NPCs speaking to you when you walk around, and at first I thought the reason why I couldn't understand them was because I was an Elf and they were Human. It turns out that they were speaking in Korean, and the devs for ArcheAge never bothered to provide English voice acting for these NPCs. I wouldn't necessarily mind, but having to constantly check out the text box to make sure I'm not missing anything does get really annoying after a while.***
Okay, I doubt the English port is a deal breaker for most people, but the overall lack of toons to work with in the free portion of the game is. And I'll be honest, outside of the lack of toons and the English port, there's not that much that sets ArcheAge apart from its other Korean MMO competitors (Black Desert Online, TERA, etc.)**** And when you've got such a low population as ArcheAge seems to have, that's a problem.
***
Anyway, this wasn't by any means an in depth analysis of the state of those games. These are just overall impressions of hopping back in after having been away for a while, and just seeing what's around.
One MMO that I really ought to get back into playing is Neverwinter, because despite the overall generic nature of the Forgotten Realms I do look on that D&D setting a bit like comfort food. Now, if someone had created an MMO based on the D&D world of Krynn, I'd be up for that. I still have my copies of the original Dragonlance Chronicles around, and if you gave me a chance to hang around with Tanis and company....
*As Rohan put it, which is likely the best way to put the toon and clothing choices.
**They took place a year or two ago, right when I was testing the game out.
***I'm used to "make sure you pay attention to everything because you might need it later" mode you get when playing RPGs for as long as I have. Besides, if you're an Elf and you're in Elven territory, you ought to be able to understand everything said (presumably in Elven). Wandering into Human territory is a different thing, and I'd not expect to understand the language. But having a foreign language everywhere just breaks immersion for me.
****All the P2W debacle aside, you could argue that was a problem with Rift. While I found the story intriguing and the fact that Rift deliberately kept the talent trees around, if you're looking for a new game to play Rift would have a hard time standing out from the crowd. Other fantasy MMOs had better known properties (Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, D&D, Conan, Elder Scrolls) which give it an initial leg up on Rift, and that becomes hard to overcome.
I got on Rift the other day, in the early evening. Alas, I felt I was the only one there.
I went around the Defiant's capital city, and much to my chagrin I found only one other person hanging around. Surely, I thought, this is a mistake, so I went out into some of the low level zones and barely encountered another soul.
Well, if Gamigo thought they were going to get an active MMO, they've gotten quite a wake up call.
Even Wildstar and Marvel Heroes were more active than this before their shutdown announcements. (As is ArcheAge, which is often linked to being not long for the world.)
But this.... This just makes me sad.
You can say that the Trion's P2W strategy killed Rift, but what truly seems to have driven a stake in the game was selling the game to Gamigo. While I'll freely admit I could have logged in at just the exact wrong time, but it was truly disheartening to see what was a vibrant game turned into an empty shell.
It feels like only yesterday that Rift was in it's Beta, and disaffected WoW fans were leaving Cataclysm and giving the game a very serious look. I remember getting a Beta key and poking around the starter zones, thinking that although there were Beta issues the game seemed incredibly polished with a really good story to build upon.
And now... Well, I don't see much future for Rift. The dragons have won.
No more than a month ago I thought that Rift Prime was doing well enough that Trion has kept the server going for the time being. In retrospect, I should have likely not invoked the Gods of Irony, because there was some pretty eventful news surrounding Trion.
Trion, developer of MMOs such as Rift and NA publisher of ArcheAge, has been sold to the German company Gamigo. While sales or spinoffs of games and game divisions isn't unheard of in the video game world*, what is more unheard of is what happened after the sale was announced: Trion laid off almost all of its staff.
That has happened before in the game world, when boardgame company Avalon Hill --best known for games such as Diplomacy, Civilzation, Squad Leader, and other wargames-- was bought by Hasbro. Hasbro's representatives at the time expressed displeasure at the loss of the AH staff**, because they thought they were getting the entire TAHGC staff, but I chalk that up to the owners of Avalon Hill, the Dotts, being greedy asshats.***
So why Trion laid off its staff is currently an unknown, I can't imagine that Trion's staff knew that it was coming to that degree. After all, the Rift Prime server just released the Storm Legion update, and there were still livestreams scheduled even as of last week. Obviously, all of this is going to come crashing to a halt while Gamigo takes over assets, but given that Rift Prime is still in existence (as of this morning, at least) the Rift portion of Trion is still hanging in there. They even set up the Autumn Harvest event on servers as of last week, so Trion's staff was planning on being in place at least.
As for ArcheAge, Trion was the publisher, so basically Gamigo takes over the publishing portion of that arrangement.
But what portends for the ex-Trion staff? Its entirely possible that Gamigo hires them on as a third party, or they'll simply take the assets and then change direction. I perused the games that Gamigo currently has, and I don't think they have a game out there like Rift. I'm only vaguely familiar with Aura Kingdom, and most of the others seem to be MOBA, PvP, or strategy oriented games. Even the games listed as "MMORPG" don't really fit what we're used to in AAA MMO space. I raised an eyebrow when multiple game descriptions include "an engaging story" while at the same time emphasizing the eye candy in the toon pictures.
If this is the sort of game that Gamigo puts out, then I'm not sure how exactly Rift will fit in. ArcheAge will fit in much better than Rift, for certain. Even Devilian would have fit in better in Gamigo's lineup than Rift, to be honest. If Gamigo tries to change Rift to match its other game titles, I'd imagine that Rift would become unrecognizable to its current and former playerbase.
So here's wishing the best of luck to the Trion employees who were laid off.
EtA: I've done some more digging on Gamigo, and apparently they are a "maintenance company". They purchase F2P games and then amp up the cash store and P2W purchases to a level that would have made the "old" Rift P2W controversy tame by comparison. No new development, just a bit of fluff, and that's pretty much it.
About the best thing for Rift would be that some company with deep pockets and a love for the game would step in and purchase the game from Gamigo, but things look pretty grim for Rift.
As for ArcheAge, all bets are off. They do fit in with Gamigo's lineup better, and their development house is separate from Trion, but I've no idea what will happen there. I was working on a "Fun With MMOs" post on ArcheAge, but I might shelve that entirely. Or maybe I post it with the caveat that "this will likely be obsolete by the time you read this".
EtA: And here is the link to the official announcement from Gamigo AG. Here is one very pertinent part of the article: "It is expected that the Trion Worlds acquisition will add on gamigo group level revenues of at least USD 18 million in 2019." I have no idea where they're expecting those revenues to come from --outside of Trove, which according to the forums is apparently Trion's most profitable game-- without adding tons of cash shop items and P2W items. I could also see them attempting to sell some of the assets as well, or even license the game engines to other companies.
*For instance, there's Standing Stone, that was formed from ex-Turbine developers, that bought the assets to LOTRO. And even Activision-Blizzard itself was spun off from parent Vivendi into the "capable" hands of Bobby Kotick and his fellow investors.
**I can't find the reference to it, but it was in the Usenet group that followed board games, rec.games.board.
***They were arrogant enough to try to sue software developer Microprose for its release of the wildly popular Sid Meier's Civilization in the mid-90s, and they actually lost that lawsuit. The net result, however, was that both Microprose and Avalon Hill were financially weakened to the point of being sold off. Both, ironically enough, to Hasbro.
LOTRO has this method of "upkeep" that forces people and guilds who own houses to login periodically and pay for the privilege of keeping your house, in much the same way that you have to pay property tax to keep your own house. The idea is to keep people from buying a house and then taking up the space after they stop playing the game. ArcheAge has a similar methodology on upkeep, in which it is explicitly described as taxes.*
However, those two housing systems are set up in either a separate group instance (LOTRO) or in the open world (ArcheAge), not in an individual instance. Other MMOs, such as SWTOR or Rift or Wildstar, are completely different, existing in an individual instance and therefore doesn't require a recurring fee to maintain the privilege of keeping your housing.
I could handle this. That'd make a helluva side area to hang in. From rebrn.com.
But you know all that, right? (Or at least have some passing familiarity with it, anyway?)
Well, I began wondering about MMO housing while I was trying to find out where a leak was coming from in the bathroom in our house**. Specifically, I was wondering why MMO housing doesn't incorporate repairs and maintenance into the ownership of an MMO house (and/or dimensional space). Sure, there's the "monetary approximation" of taxes, but nothing that says "hey, this broke, we need to fix it", or "this needs repainting". Before you say "well, that's just too much of The Sims or something akin to Stardew Valley to incorporate into an MMO", incorporating problems in a living space has appeared in RPG video games before: Baldur's Gate II, to be precise.
Back in BG2, Bioware adhered to the traditional D&D rite of passage that once you reached (roughly) 10th level, a PC had the ability to obtain a stronghold of some sort and attract followers. Fighters would get a fortress/castle, Clerics would get a temple or church, Thieves would start a Thieves' Guild, etc. BG2 took that and ran with it, adding in extra quests that led to you handling some of the issues of your stronghold, and protecting it from attack***.
If that sounds a little like the PvP guild fortress area of Age of Conan at max level, that's because it is. But what it most sounds like is WoW's Garrisons from Warlords of Draenor.
But I do have to wonder why MMOs tend to shy away from more complex maintenance and whatnot surrounding your housing when they've frequently developed crafting to an insane degree. Look at people who play WoW just for the auction house, or ArcheAge for its complex crafting/farming system, and you can't tell me that there isn't a subset of people out there who wouldn't get invested in maintaining/developing their own housing system far beyond what is already available.
I figure that if someone could be so dedicated as to get the Insane in the Membrane WoW achievement, there is likely a subset of people who would be very happy if WoW's Garrisons weren't consigned to the dustbin of past expacs, but expanded upon and kept up to date.
And while I drop into my own housing in SWTOR and LOTRO (for instance) just to chill from time to time, it would be nice if there were actually things to do in there outside of move furniture and artwork around.
I have to admit that there are times when it feels like I'm doing this when hanging around in MMO housing. From pinterest.
NOTE: For some reason Blogger automatically unpublished this, although the content is about running an inn or housing in an MMO. Given that there's nothing here that violates the terms of agreement, I can only speculate that this post was zapped by some automated system that finds certain keywords. If the Insane in the Membrane WoW achievement was the trigger, I'd have to think that a lot of old time blogs would have similar issues.
NOTE: This post has been reinstated.
*ArcheAge also has a much more complex housing build system as opposed to a lot of other MMOs. First, you have to have a Patron account (something that doesn't require you to pay money for, but paying some dollars is frequently the easiest way to do it), then you have to get blueprints, then find a plot, then get the materials, then.... You get the idea.
**The porcelain lined bowl had rusted through at the drain. This means I have to replace the bowl, but since the bowl is integrated into the rest of the vanity, I have to replace the entire damn vanity. Yay me.
***I was a fighter in BG2, so that was what happened to my character. Not sure if that's the case for other classes.
Well, there's Neverwinter heading to Ravenloft, and there's WoW's Battle for Azeroth inching closer to release. LOTRO had their 11th Anniversary livestream on April 25th, and SWTOR dropped game update 5.9 last month as well. Funcom finally released Conan Exiles, and at the same time finished up their Saga of Zath server event.* Rift has continued to expand their Rift Prime offering with a new PTS server, and Star Trek Online is inching closer to their June expac release "Victory is Life", which is their homage to Deep Space Nine.**
But closer to home, I've been splitting my playing time between SWTOR (yet another Trooper) and Guild Wars 2.
Yes, GW2.
Still a bit silly wearing all of these party type outfits, but compared to TERA's I can handle this.
I've been making a push to explore more of the world, and also try to complete the personal storyline. It's been interesting, seeing an MMO with as many people active in the field as GW2 currently has, as I'd grown accustomed to not seeing much of anybody in the low-mid level zones in just about all MMOs I play.*** However, the neverending series of events seem to keep people engaged in the game to an extent that you don't see in other MMOs. The fact that GW2 seems to have the low level toon adjustment better behaved than in other MMOs (such as SWTOR) has an impact here too. In SWTOR, once your gear gets overleveled enough, you become harder to kill even after adjustments on low level zones. In GW2, I actually have to keep an eye on my health because I've come close to dying numerous times in low level zones I've been examining.
One thing that does seem to be the case on MMOs that adjust your level to match the zone, however, is that those low level zone visits seem to encourage some bad habits, rotation-wise. I've discovered that going from a low level zone back to a zone that matches my current level I have a more frequent history of dying than if I'd have just stuck with a current zone, because I can get away with fewer combos on those low level zones but I absolutely need them on the high level ones.
The one thing that I've discovered about GW2 that allows them to keep costs down is that it is only the main storyline that requires voice acting. It's not unusual to do this; Age of Conan had done it for years, and WoW only put a lot of effort into voice acting in the cutscenes and parts of the raids/instances, but GW2's elegance is making the interactions look involved without utilizing the cinematic camera like SWTOR does.
At its core, the interactions are kind of bland, but they reduce development cost and are still very effective at communicating emotion without the cinematic lens.
I personally prefer SWTOR's cinematic camera for all quest and story interactions, but I also recognize that is not cheap at all. And if there's one area that Bioware is likely to skimp on to keep the game going, it's on the cinematic camera like they did for KOTET and KOTFE.
The one thing that still makes me shake my head about GW2 --aside from the pristine clothing people wear-- is the Norns themselves.
I understand the basic concept of the Norns, as there's a long history in Nordic tradition of the race of giants as well as in F&SF literature (Robert E. Howard's Conan stories) and RPGs (the AD&D classic module series "Against the Giants" as another example). But come on. As food becomes scarce and conditions in the frozen areas of the world get harsh, our physical growth is actually stunted due to lack of food. That makes the concept of the Norns all the more difficult to swallow.**** I wonder whether the Norns were merely created to satisfy a desire to play a giant, in much the same way you see games such as TERA or ArcheAge where you find the equivalent of succubi/incubi playable races to satisfy that specific desire.*****
But that notwithstanding, I'm actually enjoying GW2 in a way I hadn't expected to when I started playing the game several years ago. I don't mind the group events much at all, because there's no guild or specific grouping requirements for the events. I know, imagine enjoying group activities in a Massively Multiplayer Online game. [Insert sarcasm here] But the thing is, the MMO environment can be pretty toxic, or in the case of guilds, come with drama or other requirements that I may or may not have the time for. The GW2 group events, like the rifts from RIFT, make it easy to feel like you're part of a positive online community without excessive commitment.
Believe me, I can handle that.
*No, I didn't participate in the Saga of Zath server. It took me forever to reach the point where I am at Atzel's domain, so I didn't exactly relish starting over.
**I watched the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but didn't watch DS9, Voyager, or the others. Something about not having a television during several of those years had something to do with that....
***It may have been several years, but even after the "don't call them mergers" WoW server merges I didn't see hardly anybody in the field once you got out of the intro and first low level zones.
****I remember watching a science series years and years ago that talked about climate change and its effect on humanity, and in one scene the presenter (I want to think it was James Burke) stood in the location of the last known written record of the Nordic settlements in Greenland, which was the remains of a church in which a wedding had taken place. The presenter had taken pains to mention at how the climate change had drastically reduced the food available for the settlements and how consequently the people living there were barely more than 4 feet tall, as was evidenced by the graves archaeologists had discovered.
*****I could say that this crosses into fetish territory, but I'm hesitant to say so. Just because someone plays a specific race doesn't mean that they fetishize that race. But I also can't deny that it happens, either, in much the same way that people fetishize the Sindorei, Kaldorei, and Draenei in WoW. (Many years ago, I once tried searching on some of the back story on Jaina and Thrall and typed in "Jaina and Thrall WoW" into Google. THAT was a big mistake, as there were things there --even with safesearch on-- that you can't unsee.)
While the MMO community has been watching for further developments in the WoW Vanilla initiative, Trion has actually gone ahead and implemented their own version of "Vanilla RIFT".
Called RIFT Prime, it was implemented a month or more ago and is for subscribers only. The idea behind it is to provide more of an original RIFT experience, but with some newer amenities (portions of the cash shop) still around. RIFT Prime is starting out without expansions, and will slowly add them over time to simulate the progression of the original MMO.
From my perspective, this is a grand idea for these two MMOs. RIFT and WoW are two games that would be well served treading down this path as they have a player base who pines for the original environment, although in WoW's case I could make an argument that they could have servers that stop at AQ40, the end of BC, and the end of Wrath, and people would be fine with that. In LOTRO's case it might be worthwhile to see something like this happen, but I'm not so sure that it is in as dire need of a reboot like the Vanilla WoW project would be, and an original SWTOR would be actually counterproductive given that SWTOR really found its legs about 1-2 years into its run.
The ironic thing is that Funcom is doing something similar with Age of Conan in that they've created a brand new server for people to play on, but it's only temporary and mainly done for rewards.
--Cinderella, Don't Know What You've Got ('Till It's Gone)
In the eight years since we've started PC, I've watched the MMO market change quite a bit. Sure, some things never change --WoW being the 500 lb. gorilla of the MMO genre the chief among them-- but the MMO genre as a whole has changed quite a bit.
Looking back, I can say say with a high degree of certainty that I entered at the high point of the MMO genre: WoW was at the height of its popularity, other MMOs were doing well for themselves, and there were new MMOs on the horizon in Rift, SWTOR, and GW2. DOTA 2 wasn't released for a few years, and MOBAs in general hadn't exploded in popularity.
Of course, it wasn't exactly a true Golden Age.
There was the disaster of Age of Conan's release, and the bait-and-switch promise from the Tortage into zone into a standard grindy MMO. There were also the bugs --lots of bugs-- and the perception that a fairly significant number of people were there for the nudity.
Speaking of train wrecks, there was also the Warhammer Online MMO, which didn't last long and was mercifully shut down shortly thereafter. Perhaps AoC and Warhammer were a harbinger of things to come, where some of the MMO population was looking for the Next Big Thing that would displace WoW at the top, and whatever they found never measured up.
***
In light of all of the changes in the MMO genre over the past 8 years, I've put together a few "awards"
The How is this MMO Still Running Award: Age of Conan. Over 9 years old and reduced to just two servers, this MMO is still active and has a few players. (I occasionally run into one or two out in the wild.) I've speculated that if AoC shuts down that Funcom loses the Conan license, and given that Funcom has devoted all of their "Conan" resources to Conan Exiles, there may be some truth to that.
The It Keeps the Mathematicians Busy Award: Every WoW update. While theorycrafting is its own cottage industry in MMOs and MOBAs, it seems that every WoW update --no matter how small-- is overanalyzed to determine optimal rotation and class emphasis. The latest hotness in BGs and Arenas can change with one little tweak to a cooldown*, and raids can live or die based on healing changes. WoW's size has an impact on the amount of heat generated by the theorycrafter set**, which is why I chose WoW over other MMOs.
The Wednesdays at the Pub Award: LOTRO's band concerts. When the mini-Reds were a few years younger, Fridays at 5 PM were required online time for LOTRO. A band on the Gladden server would play every Friday at 5 PM EST by the western entrance to Bree,*** The devotion the mini-Reds displayed to these regular concerts is not surprising to me, as I've seen regular crowds around toons playing music throughout LOTRO. This is part of why LOTRO is still an active MMO and gets full marks for immersion.
I still wonder how those Hobbits all
got in sync.
The Wrath of the Fanboys Award: Rift. When Rift went F2P, Trion said they were going to "do it right" and not be slaves to a cash store. Of course, by the time I got back to checking Rift out, the cash store was present and heavily hyped, which pissed off the long time players to no end. That and several other moves by Trion to keep the game afloat has generated even more dislike by the fanbase than the random "This game SUX!!!!1!!" comments you still see from SWTOR ex-players who were salty about the lack of WoW-style endgame on launch.
The I Need a Shower Afterward Award: TERA Online. While a strong argument could be made for Age of Conan and it's nudity,**** TERA gets the nod for this award because of the Elin. Every time I login to TERA just play out in the field for a while --because the gameplay is very good, lack of coherent plot or writing notwithstanding-- after about 10-15 minutes an Elin toon wanders by and reminds me why I find the Elin so disturbing.
The Taking Physics a Bit too Far Award: ArcheAge. The more I watch the female toon animations in ArcheAge, the more I'm convinced that the developer staff kind of missed the point with "breast physics". The amount of effort put into breast physics in ArcheAge and other Korean MMOs shows that the dev staff likely spent a lot of time conducting "research", because breasts --especially larger sizes-- do move like how they designed it in-game. But here's the kicker: that movement is for only some types of breasts, and they have to be bare or skintight covered breasts, not breasts covered in more normal fitting clothes or armor. Giving breasts covered by armor or even hidden by normal clothing the same movement characteristics of bare breasts simply makes the breast physics in ArcheAge look, well, weird at times. And far more obvious.
The Will They Ever Learn Award: Wildstar. The entire modus operandi behind Wildstar was that they were going to take the Vanilla WoW experience and crank it up to eleven.# The thing is, the Vanilla WoW experience was fine enough as it was without trying to outdo it. Wildstar was, in effect, doubling down on the belief that the harder and more grindy the goal, the better. And that didn't exactly go over quite so well for Carbine. Wildstar is still alive and kicking --still putting out new content, at least-- but I'm not totally convinced that Carbine learned their lesson. They may look at Blizzard's decision to create Vanilla WoW servers as a challenge, rather than the correction they so desperately needed to their design philosophy. Some of their ideas were fine, but others were a bit too much.
Yeah, whatever gave me the idea that they overdo
it in Wildstar?? From geek.com.
The Pride Goeth Before a Fall Award: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Cataclysm was a complete reboot of the original two continents of Azeroth, the Old World. Sure, there were five new zones, but the revamp of the Old World brought back a ton of old subs and pushed WoW's subscriber base to new heights. Looking back, nobody saw that those few months of returning subs were the high point of WoW's subscriber base. Blizzard's decision to revamp Azeroth was deemed to be worth it despite the major story holes that the revamp created. But my belief is that the same major story holes basically shut the door on new players picking up the game and starting from scratch.## And now? Blizzard no longer releases subscription numbers in their quarterly statements, ostensibly because they have better means of tracking the profitability of WoW, but likely because subs have fallen to the point where WoW has fallen back to the pack in terms of subscriber base.
The No Clue it was Coming Award: Employees of Gazillion Entertainment, the publisher of the now extinct Marvel Heroes. Much has been made of Gazillion's financial problems --and the hiding of the same-- but the extent that management went through to hide these problems from the development staff to the blindsiding of the staff by the company's inability to pay for paid time off when the company fired them all still makes my blood boil. I've been in that situation when the company looks like it might not meet payroll, and it sucks. A lot. And my ire goes to management not leveling with the staff. We're all adults here, treat us like one.
The You Must Learn Patience, Grasshopper Award: The stereotypical "Go" Guy. We all know this person that was so easily skewered by Crendor, because we've all encountered the Go Guy. This is the Warrior that wants to speed pull all of the trash in the first area of Halls of Lightning and yells at the healer for not keeping him upright. Or the Jedi Guardian who just has to jump off of the platform in Cademimu because it was taking too long for the elevator to arrive. Or the Agent yelling "SPACEBAR!!!" in chat because the group wasn't moving fast enough. Ironically enough, WoW created instance speed runs just for the Go Guy to test their mettle, but that hasn't exactly rid normal instances of the purveyor of timeliness.
Ah, narration by Worgen Freeman.
And lastly, The Golden Trinket Award: To all of the people who would stop and help a new player, or a player needing an assist, or a player struggling along. All of the people who reach out and assist others, play well, and encourage players to find a home in their chosen MMO world. All of the people who treat each other well, both in chat and in the world###, and make the MMO genre a better place.
*I've seen it happen where people picked up Hunters and then dropped them from BGs based on an update in a WoW downtime.
**I know that the SWTOR raiders/PVPers will argue that theorycrafting is alive and well in their part of the MMO world.
***The last I checked, they're still there, playing away.
****Even the succubi and incubi are nude, which actually gives them an unnerving appearance. Unlike, say, WoW succubi, you can look at an AoC version and not get it out of your head that this succubus is something totally unnatural.
#Please please PLEASE tell me that someone gets the Spinal Tap reference.
##Add to that the rise of the MOBA, which peeled away players from the WoW subscriber base, and you've got problems.
###Well, PVP notwithstanding. Being mean to the other faction is kind of the point, there.
EtA: Fixed a grammatical issue and a sentence structure in the Gazillion area.
EtA: Fixed another grammatical error, which leads me to believe I shouldn't be writing at Midnight.
For those of you outside the US, there is a consumer publication called Consumer Reports that tests and evaluates products. They do not accept advertising dollars, and the entire enterprise is funded by their subscriber base. Their testing is considered top notch, particularly with household appliances and cars.* If you end up looking for a new (or used) car in the US, odds are very good that you'll have at least one Consumer Reports magazine with you as part of the process.
As part of the review process, Consumers Union (the entity that publishes CR) not only covers the specifics of how an item behaves, but also provides clues on how well an item will last. They send out annual surveys to their subscribers to provide input on items they own, as well as whether they would purchase that item again. This last one gives CU a decent idea as to whether people are happy with their purchase decision, which when we're talking about cars is a multi-thousand dollar purchase that people may own for over a decade.
This brings me to Chrysler.
Chrysler, the US manufacturer now owned by Fiat, has had a checkered history. Chrysler created the minivan**, and were among the first car manufacturers to add standard airbags. At the same time, Chrysler has been in bankruptcy more than once, and that last bout of bankruptcy ending in the purchase of Chrysler by Fiat.
Why, you may ask? Partially it is due to the economic meltdown of the late 2000s, but also because Chrysler cars have a reputation for poor quality.
Both word of mouth and data acquired by CU point to Chrysler having --by far-- the worst quality results of all US domestic automakers. Even when Chrysler makes a well received vehicle, such as the newly released Chrysler Pacifica minivan, in the new car issue of Consumer Reports CU hedges their bets on the quality of the new vehicle, saying they expect it to have poorer than average quality. Essentially, it's a "until you prove to me otherwise, we'll assume that this is going to be a car that will be in the repair shop a lot."
***
When I posted my review of Rift the other day, I knew peripherally about how Rift had gone F2P and how it had burned through its fanbase's support by moving in the direction of a more "pay to win" cash shop. Still, I decided to post without dredging that up. However, Shintar's comments about how she felt that Trion had turned Rift into a cautionary tale about how to destroy a fanbase's goodwill, I felt that it is important to address the elephant in the room.
Should a development house's or game's reputation/behavior have an impact on game reviews? I'm not talking about specific posts about a company, because I've got tons of those over the years that are critical of development houses, but rather a review of the game itself. In other words, should the previous actions/reputation of a development house be reason to dismiss a game, or at the very least give the player pause before deciding to play?
In a way, this is the Playstation/XBox debate in a nutshell, where people take sides and sit in their glass houses, lobbing grenades at each other. This could also describe how people respond to EA or Ubisoft games*** with the "burn it all down!!" or worse. (Much much worse.)
But at the same time, a development house's reputation can't be ignored, because there's frequently a reason why a company/dev house has that reputation. If a coworker has a great reputation, you're likely to cut that employee some slack if they screw up. And on the flip side, if you've a coworker with a reputation as being a screw-up, you're thinking "yep, expected that" when things don't go well.
Look at Blizzard. When Cataclysm launched, it got a lot of nice reviews. I distinctly remember one review saying that the only real drawback to Cata was that you had to subscribe and have the previous expacs. But now, looking back on it from a 5+ year distance, Cataclysm was the expac that began the slow descent of WoW.**** It broke the story continuity, it had several meh major content patches that didn't excite the base, and the changes to the guts of WoW disappointed many who complained that WoW was being "dumbed down." Blizzard's reputation was such that it took a long time to admit that Blizzard could still lay an egg.
***
So what to do about Trion, and these reviews in general?
In this case I believe it is best to separate the game from the development house, and examine the game on its own terms. I can't control what Trion does and how the community reacts, but I can report on what I find in the game. If the game feels empty, I'll report that. If the community is toxic, I'll report that. And if I find bugs and crashes in what ought to be basic stuff, I'll report that too.
But I shouldn't let dev companies off the hook for their product, either. So another series, examining the dev houses behind the games, would be a good idea.
As for my statement about Rift being a survivor, I still stand by that statement. A six year old game still getting expac releases is not a small feat. I work in an industry that considers three year old equipment "ancient" and "in need of replacement", so anything that lasts six years is an impressive achievement.
Shintar, however, is also right in that Trion Worlds made some bad decisions that will likely jeopardize Rift's ability to be around another six years, which is a shame because the game right now is pretty darn good.
The review of the game still stands, but a study of the dev house... That still needs to happen.
*Back in 1988, it was their review of the Suzuki Samurai that exposed the rollover problem of the Samurai during certain avoidance maneuvers, and their "not acceptable" rating of the car helped kill the Samurai in the NA market.
**I know that minivans are not well liked, but I like them. They work and they get the job done. When our old minivan died last year, I missed it.
***Think of the reaction to the buggy Mass Effect: Andromeda or Assassin's Creed Unity (or Syndicate).
****To borrow a Boromir quote in Fellowship of the Ring, "WoW wanes, you say. But WoW stands, and even at the end of its strength it is still very strong." WoW still likely has more regular players than the #2-#10 MMOs put together. MOBAs, on the other hand, are a completely different thing.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth --Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Back in late 2010, WoW released Cataclysm. There was a lot of initial enthusiasm for the expac and the number of subs to WoW swelled to their highest point at that time of 12 million. However, by March 2011 the number had fallen back to 11.4 million and some of the playerbase had become restless. There were the usual gripes of "nothing to do" on reaching max level as well as the "instances are too hard" refrain, but there were also complaints from some traditionalists who missed the talent trees and a lot of quirks that Blizzard had eliminated in their desire to make WoW fresh and exciting.
Into that atmosphere came the software company Trion Worlds with their new MMO Rift.
This is one of five copies around the house, courtesy of Gen Con 2011's
goodie bag. Yes, even the youngest mini-Red got a goodie bag, which
inclued a mini-deck for Magic: the Gathering, a.k.a. a free sample of crack.
There's quite a bit of buzz out there about Rift these days.
Some people I know in WoW have been seriously considering letting their subscription lapse in favor of Rift, and others are planning on playing both games concurrently. That a decent subset of the WoW community seems to be grumbling over the current state of WoW only heightens the call of Rift.
I can attest to the allure of the "shiny!" that Rift provides; I spent several days poking around the last open Beta and was impressed with what I found. The story seems very interesting, particularly the aspect of the Rifts themselves. Imagine the Elemental Invasion Cata event, but with the Elementals moving in and taking over world areas if you don't beat them back. Throw into this the faction conflicts of religion vs. technology and insiders vs. outsiders, and you've got a very entertaining backstory. Of course, the story starts out with the bleakest of outcomes, and your job is to prevent that disaster from occurring.
The concept of selecting three souls (talent trees) from a large pool of available souls is a customizer's dream, and a theorycrafter's nightmare. From what I've seen online, there are theorycrafters working on optimal builds for each class (naturally), but it may take a long time before things are hammered out. FWIW, I found the array of choices almost too much, and I can see where a noob would be overwhelmed.
As for the introductory quests, I found them straightforward enough. If you've done intro quests before, there's no real surprise here. What did surprise me was that once you got out into the regular game world, you're thrown to the wolves. Imagine an entire world where your low level areas are mixed with the high level ones --like Scarlet Monastery in Tirisfal Glades-- and you end up getting thwacked by high level NPCs before you knew what was happening. Well, that's what the Rift world is like. You don't mess around in this world, that's for certain.
What do I think of Rift?
Well, Rift is not a world for beginners. Although Trion does take pains to lead people along throughout the intro quest line, the overall player customization and world design implies that their target audience is the experienced MMO player who is dissatisfied with their current game. If you came into the game cold, you'd be lost.
Rift is also following the WoW model with raiding as endgame. For those who were hoping for more of a sandbox environment, this has to be disheartening. As for the non-raider, it gets a big /shrug out of me.
Rift also takes pains to level the playing field. There is no customization for the UI beyond what the game is currently capable of. All of those nifty third-party addons you have in WoW will have to hit the road. And from what I can tell, that's causing no small bit of angst in the message boards. Of course, I leveled Q to L80 with the original UI largely intact, so I don't think it that big a deal.
Will I switch to Rift? Not right now, no. I can only afford one pay-per-month MMO, and WoW is the one for me. Given that I'm still leveling my main and my two primary alts to L85, I haven't exhausted my interest in the game yet.* That said, I can see it's appeal. There's potentially a great story to work with, and an entirely new world worth exploring. I doubt Rift will be a WoW-killer --I suspect an MMO based on Bioware's Dragon Age would be that game-- but it will find a niche market. I wish Trion luck, and if Rift succeeds, so much the better.
*That's one small side bonus in taking it nice and slow in the leveling, there's no "is that all there is?" feeling with 4.1 hitting the PTR servers.)
