Tag Archives: wow

This Carrot Is Looking A Bit Moldy

Posted on by
Reply

It’s no secret many MMOs lock desirable things behind content, it’s a normal practice and not inherently a bad thing. However, after the recent 6.2 patch for World of Warcraft the carrot which is being dangled for me is looking less and less worth the effort. The whole concept of forcing players to do different types of content just to be able to be fully prepared for the content they want to do is a bit ridiculous.

First let me give some brief personal history so you can understand where I am coming from on this issue. I started playing wow back February of 2005, at first I was just focused on PvP but I switched to raiding after attaining the Commander rank. I kept actively raiding through every expansion except MoP. I was never in a World First guild or anything crazy like that, but I do enjoy raiding and theroycrafting a lot.

Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry were both raids I enjoyed a bunch, though I like Highmaul a bit more but that might be due to just getting back into raiding again. I didn’t mind doing garrison missions as they seemed to have mostly taken the place of doing dailies, which is something I appreciated. In general I don’t usually like doing dailies very much as there are normally other things I’d rather spend my time on, so being able to send followers out to do those things instead was awesome. Plus finding followers through questlines and dungeons was also a ton of fun. Gave each of them a backstory I could relate to and I felt a bit of attachment to them.

Given all of that you might be thinking I love the shipyard… well you’d be wrong about that. Shipyards have so many issues for me it’s hard to know where to start. I’m not a fan of how completely separated shipyards are from the rest of the garrison. It makes me feel like all my hardwork with my followers was completely pointless. Sure I still send them out for oil. gold, and garrison resources but that’s about it, most of my followers now stand around idle with not much to do. I don’t even feel like there was much point to getting them to 675 ilvl at this point.

Failed a 93% chance mission and lost a ship -_-

Failed a 93% chance mission and lost a ship -_-

The really sad thing is most of my ships also sit around idle with nothing to do. The problem is if a mission is failed there is a chance to lose a ship. The goal of this risk was probably to make succeeding feel much better and to add a bit of excitement. Unfortunately what it does is add a ton more stress and frustration. Losing any ships feels bad but losing an epic ship or a ship with a buff you don’t have on other ships is especially painful. Also losing ships on missions with a 90%+ chance to succeed feels exceedingly punitive.

To mitigate this I have started sending out my ships on missions only if the percent chance is at least 70%, though I know others who don’t send ships out on missions with less than 90% chance to succeed. The upshot is we are severely slowed in progressing through the Legendary Ring quest, which is the only reason I am doing any of the shipyard stuff in the first place. Sure I could be more cavalier about it and just send my ships out on all the missions… but holy crap that would be expensive in terms of resources and would mean having to do even more of the Taanan Dailies.

As I mentioned earlier I don’t generally like doing dailies very much. I’ve slogged through the rep grinds and dailies in all the expansions and at this point I can’t help but wonder why this is a thing. I’m not practicing skills useful for raiding by doing these dailies, I’m pretty much for the most part just out running around on my own which is completely different than raiding. I’m just doing random quests to get oil or rep for things I need for my shipyard just so I’ll have a chance of succeeding at the legendary ring quests.

It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed daily areas in the past. Molten Front dailies were interesting because the story involved with them was rather interesting. I was more personally invested in it and the payoff with the storyline was well worth it. The Argent Crusade was a ton of fun because it was completely different than anything in other parts of the game. I’ve reached the point in WoD where I just don’t care about the story anymore and the quests are just more of the same. Which is sad considering heading in I was really into it and the payoff in Nagrand was awesome. Sort of funny though Gul’dan is now a problem… Like it wasn’t obvious letting him go in the beginning was a bad idea.

I don’t mind having rewards being gated behind doing things, after all that’s the basis for most games. What I do mind is having a reward which is only useful in one sort of content gated behind doing completely different unrelated content. It’s almost like requiring PvE people to take part in PvP just so they can remain competitive (or vise versa). The Legendary Ring is only really useful for raiding, sure it can be used outside of raids but its effects are minimal in those settings. Of course I could get into a whole thing about how legendaries are being done now… but that’s a whole different post.

The only argument I’ve heard for having the legendary ring quest be tied to the shipyard and doing things in Taanan Jungle is if they weren’t tied together no one would do them. Well that’s the point isn’t it? If the only way certain content will be done is to tie highly desired things behind doing it, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the content. I mean yes, locking raiding gear behind non-raiding PvE stuff is one way to get all of your raiders participating in the content… it is the easiest answer. But come on Blizzard, you can do better than that.

Going back to the subject of Taanan Jungle for a minute, mob tapping and racing for resources is so ten years ago. There have been improvements, sharing rares and some of the harder mobs is a thing and it’s great. I know I can start attacking one of the gronn in the Iron Front and multiple people will automatically help. That’s great, why are we still fighting over the other things? It’s much nicer to see other people out in the world and want to help them as opposed to having to worry about people being jerks and taking an objective from you while you are killing a mob. Honestly this would be a huge QoL improvement which would personally make me much less annoyed about trying to get stuff done out in the world.

Anywho, that’s where I am on things with WoW right now. raiding things should deal with raiding things, out in the world things should be out in the world and don’t try to strong arm people into doing content they aren’t interested in.

What Classifies A MMO As Successful?

Posted on by
Reply

A few months ago at a Media and Telecom Conference in New York Take-Two Interactive’s Chairman Strauss Zelnick commented on how they are pursuing online gaming and MMOs they just aren’t doing it in the US because MMOs don’t work here. To put some context on this Take-Two is known for games like Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, and Red Dead Redemption, so they aren’t exactly slouches when it comes to video games. I’ve had some time to really mull over my thoughts and feelings on this topic, so here is a consolidation of the most important points.

This is his exact quote:

We’re actively investing in online and MMOs, we’re just not doing it in the U.S. MMOs don’t work here. A couple of our competitors have found out that through very, very expensive lessons… at any given time 10 to 20 are successful in China and generating revenue.

There are a few weird things going on with this statement. The first and obvious question, why is he only thinking about the US and Chinese markets? I don’t know about everyone else but I sure know a lot of European and Canadian people who play MMOs, not to mention all the South Koreans who are also part of the larger Asian market. Maybe he just overlooked the rest of the MMO gaming world and happened to mention just the US and China. I really hope he didn’t intend to lump all the Asian countries in with China, and I REALLY hope he wasn’t intending to lump the rest of the world in with the US.

To support his claim Zelnick followed up by saying “How many MMOs have been successful in the U.S.? Two. World of Warcraft and EverQuest.” Now there is no arguing Everquest and World of Warcraft definitely are examples of successful games, but they certainly aren’t the only two. Eve Online is not only a successful subscription MMO but it also has been consistently growing throughout it’s lifespan (something WoW actually can’t claim). Another very successful subscription game is Ultima Online, and these are just two examples off the top of my head.

Additionally if you consider the fact he picked two sub based games it seems like for him the definition of success is having a sustaining and profitable subscription model. That’s a perfectly fine way to model success. It makes it even stranger he wouldn’t include Eve Online if that is his measure of success. It boggles my mind to consider how anyone can consider Eve Online to be anything but a success.

However, if that’s how he wants to define success then his choice of using China as an example of where MMOs are more often successful is really strange because the dominant model for MMOs in China is free to play. It’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges, especially when there are certainly more than two successful US MMOs if we include free to play and buy to play games.

Which brings us to the whole debate about how to judge the success of MMOs. With games like Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic transitioned to free to play models does that automatically make them failures? Reportedly SWTOR has been doing better now after the addition of f2p than it was before, so it could be viewed as a success. However, the fact they had to change their model definitely can be argued as a failure. The same thing goes for Rift. Ever since they transitioned over the game has been booming, but I can see the argument for having to change at all being a failure. I am still not sure I would class either as a failure overall though.

If you start looking at free to play or buy to play games it can get even harder to tell what a success is since you can’t go off sub numbers. Guild Wars 2 has said a few times their gem store sales more than cover their costs and they have the most aggressive content schedule in MMOs currently. It’s really hard to see how GW2 isn’t a success. We are almost a year after the launch and they are doing so well they are focusing on giving content away instead of focusing on paid expansions.

In an interview with Massively Scott Hartsman (former Trion GM and CCO) talked about how the current business model for AAA MMOs is fundamentally broken and part of the reason is the development costs has risen exponentially over the last few years. While it might sound like a good thing companies are putting more money into MMOs, it puts greater strain on companies because it narrows the margin of error. We have gone from a model where a company could make mistakes and still have some room to cover.

In addition to the rise in costs player expectations have also drastically risen. It used to be a company could make a few mistakes but they could then learn from them and fix the mistakes and gamers would stick with them. Now it seems like as soon as a MMO has an issue a certain segment of players is out, and will go play something else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing gamers want more for their money, but it is another factor putting increased strain on game developers.

There is also something to be said for developers just not really being in touch with the MMO market as a whole. One example of devs being out of touch with the MMO community is SWTOR devs never expected people to play in one sitting for more than 3-4 hours at a time. I remember having a conversation with Cory Butler, Bioware Live Producer, at Pax East 2012 about that and being absolutely astonished. Even super casual players will have play times longer than that from time to time, and not being aware of something like that when you are making a MMO is a huge oversight.

It doesn’t end there either. Just in my general observations of MMOs in the last few years the standard life cyle is, a new MMO launches and tons of people buy it and start playing. Then a month or so later some percentage of players stop playing. Then the publisher sort of panics because for some reason they assumed it would just be clear sailing with no bumps in the road. Whereas, at least to me, it seems like they should plan for the drop off and have the ultimate goal to slowly grow the MMO over years. Instead it often feels like publishers just look at MMOs as quick money (after they launch) and if it doesn’t blow everything else out of the water they decide to abandon ship.

Personally I think the real measure of success should be if a game grows over time and if it is making enough to sustain itself. I get the argument about if a game lives up to expectations or not, but with publishers being so out of touch it seems a silly measure to go by. That goes double for living up to consumer’s expectations as well.