The F2P Field is Getting Crowded

Not only is the original EQ going F2P, but Rift is following Blizzard's lead and releasing a Rift Lite, wherein the first 20 toon Levels are free.

To quote that German guy on Laugh-In:   Velly interestink!

That Great Gig in the Sky

"Nature just gave up and started again.  We weren't even apes then.  We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks.  And when we go, nature will start over.  With the bees, probably.  Nature knows when to give up, David."  --Stephen Falken, Wargames

Lately, I’ve been wondering how WoW will end.  Not the storyline, mind you, but how the game itself will shut down.

(In February, you get some serious brooding done.  Either that or I’m listening to too much Dar Williams and Pink Floyd these days.)

How will it look to those of us who have been around for a while?  Will we know the contraction caused by lost subs when we see it?  I’m reminded of what it would look like for people living in the decline of an empire, and whether the citizens would recognize the decline around them. 

I suppose the first sign would be the lack of activity on the servers themselves.  Of course, at this stage of an expac it would be difficult to notice real subscription loss versus the ‘end of expac blues’, so it would be quite easy to ignore the wide open spaces and empty zones.

But it wouldn’t be easy to ignore server shutdown.

I imagine there’s a certain level of subscription loss on a server that, once crossed, would place the server on a path to consolidation.  Corporations do this all the time to save money; they will go through periods of server expansion up until someone finally checks out the amount of support they’re paying for each server.  Once that happens, a corporation will consolidate as much as it can to retire old and underutilized servers.  Electrical costs, maintenance costs, and other items affecting the bottom line will push Activision, and they will in turn push Blizzard into making their server farm more ‘efficient.’

Eventually, that will happen with the WoW servers.  One day you’ll wake up, login, and find a message stating that Wyrmrest Accord is being folded into Argent Dawn.  Then it will hit you:  WoW really is contracting.

The large population servers may not even notice this contraction going on; they have, after all, a huge number of toons on them, and they wouldn’t have any mass migrations of their own.  It’s only when you check to see server availability on Patch Day and you mutter to yourself that the server list looks smaller than it used to be that you’ll start to wonder.

Tools such as LFR and LFD will hide declines very easily too, giving the appearance that server activity is up when the reality is quite different.

If server activity declines and consolidations occur, what about character/faction transfer?  Those will already be in decline due to LFR and LFD and cross server grouping, but as fewer toons are being played there is less incentive to take advantage of these offerings, so Blizz will see revenues fall in this arena too.

Once a decline begins, it is very difficult to stop it.  Typically, a corporation will cut staff in response to a lack of funding, causing development staffs to scale back release schedules and content, which only creates a feedback loop, accelerating the decline.

But at this critical period a development team needs more funding, not less, to dampen the subscription loss and reverse the long term trend.

In the end, if this cycle goes on for a while, the product will limp along with a small amount of hard core players, until some corporate boss will pull out a PowerPoint stack and demonstrate how cost effective it would be to simply shut the servers down.  People have moved on, he will say, and our resources would be more efficiently deployed on other teams.  Or maybe the corporation would be best served selling the product to a third party who would be more focused on the business than they can hope to achieve.

Such a spinoff, if any, might give an MMO a second chance at life, but these divestitures are often a complete crapshoot.  Either way, it may only stave off the inevitable for a few years.

And then the ghosts of SW:G and other defunct MMOs will gather on a specified day to watch their most well known cousin finally join them in the graveyard of software.  The cycle will be complete, and another will have taken WoW’s place.

(Hopefully I’ll come up with something a bit more uplifting next time, like people acting stupid in Isle of Conquest.)

And My City Was Gone

With the announcements that there will be no Blizzcon this year and that there will be a Battle.Net World Championships event to be held in Asia in 2012, it seems that Blizz is suffering from not enough personnel all around.

Okay, that's the face of it, but here's some other theories.

1. Focusing on Asia when an Asian themed WoW expac is released is a smart way to revive the WoW franchise.  Well, maybe.  Part of this depends on how the Asian population will feel seeing a culture that is an echo of their own in MoP.  If WoW sets a patronizing tone with the Pandaren culture, this whole thing could backfire and be a big release disaster.  The assumption that the pop culture references and snark found in WoW will play the same in Mists of Pandaria can be a very bad one.
2. Blizzard's focus is now on the Asian market.  Similar to #1, but in this case Blizz is going to develop and market with the Asian market in mind first.  Considering the worldwide appeal of their games, I'm not sure I quite believe this, but I do realize that the Chinese market will eventually dwarf all others.  Still, I'm sure that there are plenty of large overseas markets (hellllooo, Brazil) that don't like being passed over.  We don't know whether the Battle.Net Asian event is going to be located strictly in Asia or whether it is going to move to different cities each year.  Of course, it could be a one-off gimmick, too, but we'll have to wait and see.
3. Blizzard needs to realign staff to get their releases out the door.  Well, yeah.  They said so themselves in their post on the WoW website.  Still, for people who are wondering why they aren't hiring staff, consider this:  anyone who works in IT/software development will tell you that it takes at least six months before a new hire gets up to speed, and often that can stretch up to a year.  Contractors can fill in a pinch, but unless they are former employees even they will take some time integrating into your business environment.  Therefore, the best method of dealing with this situation is to peel personnel from other, lower priority projects and delay what you can.  Blizzcon, as the lowest priority among the staff, got the axe.
4. The three releases Blizz wants to work on are in significant trouble.  Although similar to point #3, this is more of a technical issue than a personnel one.  We haven't heard a peep out of Blizz since D3 was delayed, and as time goes on, this silence becomes more and more damning.  From being a week or two away from release to what seems an indefinite hold, the "tweaks" that D3 needed seem to be more major than realized.  If Blizz realigns staff (see #3 above), to deal with these major issues, this will have a ripple effect on the rest of the Blizz development projects.  In that case, Blizzcon as just the lowest priority item got chucked onto the woodpile.  Since Blizz keeps their development timeline so close to their vest, we won't know if there are other slippages in the release schedule at all until you wake up one day and say "hey, what happened to Heart of the Swarm?"
5. Activision/Blizzard is getting hit hard by SWTOR defections.  It's hard to tell right now given the lack of direct data out there, but judging by my personal experience I believe this is more a factor than some people would care to admit.  I never discuss guild material on the blog, so I'll only say that TOR has had an impact among the WoW players I know, and I'm sure it will have an impact with their quarterly subscription numbers.  If Blizz is feeling some pressure from TOR, then they may be shifting personnel around to accelerate development among all of their projects, not just the ones officially acknowledged. Like oh, say, Titan?
6. Activision/Blizzard is going to move development overseas.  I mean, really?  Come on, man.  You're going to read that into this move?  Get a grip.  If Activision/Blizzard decides to move development staff overseas, I'm sure there will be other signs than the movement of a con to Asia.
7. Activision/Blizzard is going to kill Blizzcon.  That's entirely possible.  The corporate world works in Byzantine fashion a lot of the time, but one truism often remains:  the money will go to the cheaper alternative.  If Activision, as the parent company, decides that Blizzard is flushing too much money down the drain by hosting a separate event when they could be better served integrating into PAX, that'll be the end of Blizzcon.  Given the history of some game companies to have less than stellar customer relations, it wouldn't shock me if this was merely the beginning of the end of Blizzcon.  That said, I'll believe it when I see it.  Of course, I said the same thing about Pandaren in the upcoming expansion, so maybe I ought to be careful what I wish for.

Overall, I expect that the next quarterly investor call from Activision/Blizzard to be very interesting, and will shed some light on the direction of WoW in the near future.

The Elekk in the Room

Remember how busy the Old World was when the Shattering happened?

Toons swarmed over the Vanilla zones like ants on a picnic, investigating the new quest lines and the leveling experience.  Many new alts were created, and a plethora of blog posts were written about the new zones.  This fed into the excitement surrounding Cataclysm’s release and for the first few months after, keeping Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms busy.  Blizzard’s gambit to revamp the Vanilla zones paid off in spades.

Or did it?

I’ve spent the spare time I’ve had in between battlegrounds catching up on my Eastern Kingdoms’ questlines, and what I’ve noticed more than anything else is how empty the zones are.  There are a few farmers around and maybe one other leveling toon out there.  Some zones, such as Arathi Highlands or the Hinterlands, are completely empty.  In fact, it seems like the only busy zones in the entire Eastern Kingdoms are the starter zones.  I’ve cruised up and down the Ghostlands right before Christmas, and there was nary a Horde toon around.  You’d think the sight of a Draenei riding on a blasted Elekk around the Dead Scar would bring some L85s out of the woodwork, but that didn’t happen.

Is it possible that all that work to revamp the Old World was wasted?

Think about it:  we’re back to where we were in terms of leveling zone population from mid-2010 in a bit over a year since 4.0.3b dropped.  It’s the equivalent of a kid ripping open Christmas presents, playing with them, and declaring “I’m bored!” an hour later.

Are there no players leveling toons?

Well, there might be toons being leveled, but there are LFD and BGs as alternate routes to max level.  Additionally, we can’t simply state that there aren’t any new players, either, because new players are typically shunted into the new, empty servers.  However, on servers that have been around for a while, there are definitely very few players leveling toons through questing.

Which again begs the question:  was the revamp worth it if very few of the existing player base take advantage of the options presented?

Now Mist of Pandaria is on the horizon, and without a further update –aka more money spent on these zones that have seen little long term interest— the Vanilla zones will be once again out of date.  A new player to WoW will end up scratching their heads if they try to level via questing.  (“I thought Mists of Pandaria was about Pandas!  All I see are all these Deathwing references!  And who’s Illidan and that Lich King guy?”)

I believe that the revamp was a bold move, but incomplete in execution.  Furthermore, by performing the revamp Blizzard set itself on a course where the story of Azeroth is told in a jumble, not in a series of sequential chapters.  A revamp is pretty much an all-or-nothing scenario, especially when you mix the expansion’s new zones in with the original Vanilla zones.  No amount of hand waving can make a new player forget about Outland and Northrend --especially when you have to pay for them!

Where is that d20, Anyway?

I’d say about 99% of the time I play WoW, I forget about the ‘RPG’ part of the ‘MMORPG’ label.  That’s neither a good nor bad thing, it just is.  I don’t play on an RP server, and there are just enough metagame pop culture-ish jokes in Azeroth to prevent me from being completely immersed in the story.  Oh yeah, and there’s the little fact that nobody else is RPing, either.

It just struck me how strange that was, given my RPG roots.

I’ve been playing RPGs for 30 years, dating back to the day a friend of mine offered to show me this cool game he’d started playing called Dungeons and Dragons.  Those early days were filled with homemade dungeons with a lack of plot and story, and plenty of “you open a room an inside are…. Three Red Dragons!” 

(What was the Loot chart for a Red Dragon, anyway?  Something like “Q” or “S” on the table in the AD&D 1^st Edition Monster Manual?)

We were too young to know any better about the story, given that we were in the Sixth Grade and we’d skipped the plot and flavor text in the old Keep on the Borderlands module and gone straight to the Caves of Chaos.  Kill the monsters, get the loot.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

I’m not exactly sure when, but sometime during my high school years the story became very important to my role playing.  The most important question you could ask a player –why—infected me, and I pushed myself to provide reason and logical underpinnings to my gameplay.  Ever since, I’ve played and/or GMed a story driven campaign.

They why don’t I roleplay more in WoW?

You know, I don’t have a really good answer.

Some of my toons –Q, Neve, and Tom—I have a backstory for, while most of the others are just, well, there.  I created some of them to address a need (Balthan to try out the Dwarf Paladin, Adelwulf the Warlock/Worgen, etc.) and others just for the hell of it.  Still, my big three toons do have a (semi-cohesive) story in my own mind, but I don’t act on it.

The game doesn’t really lend itself well to RP-ing without investing significant effort.  Blizz has spent a lot of time incorporating pop culture into the game, and while that may be amusing to me as a person, it also is the metagaming equivalent of throwing ice water in the face of an RP-er.  Even if you manage to avoid that pitfall, tools used to simplify life in Azeroth will throw you out of the RP zone too.  As Souldat once remarked on a post of mine about RP-ing LFD, it would be hard to RP when you’re ported into an instance on the fly.  Compound that with potentially four other players who aren’t interested in RP-ing, and you get the point. 

I’ve read several posts over the past few years about how RP-ing is an endangered species, even on the RP servers, and I can understand why.  In a sense, WoW is a victim of its success, in that even RP servers have significant populations who are more interested in the metagame rather than the world itself.  Their subs pay the bills, so Blizz can’t complain, but in a sense it makes the game smaller than what it could be.

Still, RPing does survive in WoW. 

I have a low level toon on Wyrmrest that I created just to check things out.  When she entered Silvermoon City that first time, she was hailed by a higher level toon passing by, asking the time of day and whether I needed assistance. 

“Just point me in the direction of the nearest inn,” I said.  “I’m tired.”

The Tauren did just that, and wished me well.

I sat back in my chair and smiled.  All was not lost.

Wanna run a BG? Um, what time is it?

No, seriously.

I've some time off this week, so my AV runs have been split into two separate groups:  early morning and mid-afternoon.  And believe me, there's a huge difference in group personality between the two times of day.

The early morning runs are quieter with less chatter, and more attention paid to details.  Call outs are the norm, defense and back-caps are common, and you'd better run in a pack if you're a glass cannon (aka Mage).  People actually thank you for the Lock cookies, Feasts, and Rituals of Refreshment.  If you say "need 1-2 more to defend SHB", you'll actually have 1-2 (sometimes 3) toons appear from nowhere to assist in defense.

Mid afternoon, on the other hand, is an exercise in confirming stereotypes.

I've rushed in, taken Iceblood Tower, and then watch everyone else as they moved on en masse.

"Need 2-3 more to defend IBT."

[silence]

When the inevitable backcap happens, a flood of recriminations spits over BG chat.

"You @#%&ing idiots!  What a fail group!"
"Somebody go back and get it!"
"Get it yourself, retard!"
"Doesn't matter, we can win pulling with two towers up."

When THAT strategy doesn't work, you get:

"What a fail group!"
"Yeah, healers suck!"
"You're tanking in Fury Spec, you idiot!"

Oh, and did I mention the 3-4 people who hang around the BG entrance, waiting for the free Honor?

Why the huge difference in group personality?

I can think of one reason:  the early morning runs aren't populated with the teens/college kids that the latter runs are.  After all, those folks are probably sleeping in until noon anyway.

If that's the case, then shouldn't the 5-man LFD runs mimic the BGs?  You know, I don't know, given that I haven't run LFD in ages, but it wouldn't shock me to find that out.  My experience from previous times, however, is that LFD is such a small sample and such a mixed bag that you never know what you'll get.  BGs, having larger numbers and are quixotically quicker than your average LFD run, tend to take on distinct group personalities.  And when those personalities change --due to an injection of teen hormones, for instance-- the result is noticeable.

Dealing with the mid-afternoon crowd isn't too difficult, just keep your expectations low and ignore most of BG chat.  Well, and also console yourself in the fact that the current AV queue time is 1-2 minutes.  At least you're not waiting 1/2 hour for LFD to pop.

How to Feel Like an Old Fogey

It's the end-of-the-year rush on at work, so I've had less and less time the past week or so to actually jump on WoW and play a bit.  That said, I did get some good AV time in.

Since colleges in the U.S. are now on Winter Break, you can find an AV run fairly quickly at all hours of the day.  The drawback is that the BGs are populated with college (and to a lesser extent) high school kids.

Remember the old EDS commercials about herding cats?  No?  Here's a reminder:

That is what BGs during Winter Break are like.

All the more reason to find a friend and group up with them, even across servers.  Even in as big a sprawling BG as AV is, a group of three working in concert can be enough to turn the tide.

Now, who among my WoW friends gets up waaay early or has insomnia?  Hmmmm.....