Progress Proceeds

For those who did not notice the tweet, I am officially unemployed. Job search is underway; I have little doubt that I will find something by early August at the latest, although it might not be something ideal.

The July 4 holiday involved large quantites of bratwurst. I like bratwurst.

In the world of World of Warcraft, a couple of milestones have been hit: Hippomenes and Atelanta (Mrs. Ardwulf and my Night Elf Druids) hit level 40 after much procrastination. And Hrishnak hit level 50.

Hippomenes and Atelanta made a point of doing the Fire Festival quests. Alas, these are set up in such a way that you can only get so far unless you’re level 70ish or higher. But we did get the Flames of the Eastern Kingdoms and Flames of Kalimdor achievments through great effort (including death-walking through Timbermaw Hold,) and managed to snatch Horde flames from Undercity and Thunder Bluff as well, the latter of which was murderously difficult.

We also ran a couple rounds of Arathi Basin; Mrs. Ardwulf is not into PvP but was tempted by the shiny rewards, which are relatively easy to get if you only want one or two of them. We didn’t get very far (both rounds ended in abject defeat for the Alliance,) but may try again at some point.

Hrishnak, my solo Orc Hunter, is now at 52 and is rollicking right along. To my surprise, there was very little training to be done at 50. To my utter lack of surprise, the Hunter quest chain that opens up at that level ends in Sunken Temple, which I didn’t want to bother to do for the rewards available. I’ve been doing the Fire Festival quests (really, just honoring the Horde fires and putting out the Alliance ones,) as I’m in those areas, but the net amount of experiemnce gain from them has been fairly substantial. I didn’t go after the achievements – I judged getting into Winterspring to be not worth the effort, even though I’m of about the right level to do it the ‘honest’ way.

And I saw the inside of Blackrock Mountain for the first time – not the instances, of course, but the open-world part of it. At some point (i. e. at 80,) I’ll hit up the dungeons as well.

 

How Will WoW’s Faction Changes Work?

Tobold writes today about race changes in WoW, based on the news that faction changes will likely be allowed at some point in the future, as reported yesterday.

Due respect to Tobold, but that’s not neccessarily going to be the way it works. From reading the announcement you might think that, but I’ll maintain that an EQ2-style betrayal mechanic is also a possibility; the tone of the announcement from Blizzard implies that it’s just starting to get looked at.

Yesterday I made the statement that changing your faction would likely be a paid option like appearance respecs, but an in-game betrayal system would eliminate the need for that, as well as making more sense in the context of the game itself, and probably alleviating the need to create a rather complicated system.

The sticking point is that no race in WoW can be every single class. Say you have a Human Paladin whose player decides they’d rather play Horde. Can you just choose a race to move to? Or is that limited by your class? Can our hypothetical HUman Paladin only change to Blood Elf on the Horde side because that’s the only Horde race that can play Paladins? Or can you change your class as well? And can you freely choose that? How do things like gear translate if you change to a different class that might not use the same stuff? If you have a level 35 Paladin, can you move him over to a level 35 Death Knight?

This becomes awfully complicated, as you see. From this perspective – and possibly this is wishful thinking on my part – it becomes a great deal easier to simply alow Gnome Hordies and Alliance Orcs. Following the EQ2 model, there’d be a quest chain to complete to do this, betraying your own faction and demonstrating your allegiance with the other.

Obviously there’d be some questions to answer and structural changes to make with this approach as well, but it seems cleaner and less problematic to me. Either way you can surely see why Blizzard’s announcement sounded so tenative.

 

New Look at Last

It’s here – feedback would be appreciated. It got so that even I was having trouble reading the old black tiny-print site.

Thanks especially go to Joe Freistuhler, who provided the very shiny graphic from images and screenshots I supplied.

 

Faction Betrayal Comes to WoW?

MMO Champion is reporting that a service which allows WoW characters to change factions is in the works. It sounds like this is very preliminary talk, and we all know how fast Blizzard develops stuff, so I’ll be curious to see how it’ll be implemented, as well as how it will work in practice.

Either way, I’d expect it to be a paid service along the lines of appearance respecs and server transfers.

 

Xfire Data for the Week Ending June 28

This week we introduce a new statistic called Ardwulf Points because of my overweening narcissism. Consider the number experimental for the time being, but it’s calculated from both the minutes per day and users per day figures, with a scaling constant. I’ll be fuzting with this number for a few weeks to see how it works out.

In the table, AR is Ardwulf’s Rank, as determined by Ardwulf Points, while XR is Xfire’s rank among MMOs only. There is a close but not exact correspondence between the two. You’ll notice that I’m tracking a lot more games now, inlcuding some free-to-play titles and Asian titles. I will likely add even more as time goes on and I accumulate statistics.

AR	XR	Title	APs	Minutes/Day	Users/Day
1	1	World of Warcraft	75,323,337	25,301,476	89,311
2	2	Guild Wars	457,557	1,631,607	8,413
3	3	EVE Online	145,338	994,555	4,384
4	4	The Lord of the Rings Online	85,673	859,203	2,991
5	5	Runes of Magic	60,634	638,930	2,847
6	6	Warhammer Online	49,559	635,104	2,341
7	7	Age of Conan	26,905	471,461	1,712
8	8	Second Life	10,409	277,339	1,126
9	9	Lineage II	9,285	261,063	1,067
10	10	Star Wars Galaxies	3,705	181,341	613
11	12	City of Heroes/Villains	3,545	152,349	698
12	11	EverQuest II	2,751	164,070	503
13	13	Aion (Not Yet Launched)	1,326	99,959	398
14	17	Entropia Universe	299	40,467	222
15	15	Anarchy Online	260	51,412	152
16	14	Darkfall	222	52,757	126
17	16	Ultima Online	184	42,855	129
18	19	D&D Online	168	34.497	146
19	20	Dark Age of Camelot	140	33,586	125
20	18	EverQuest	139	38,945	107
21	21	Planetside	61	21,832	84
22	22	Pirates of the Burning Sea	51	19,641	78
23	23	Vanguard: Saga of Heroes	41	18,006	68
24	25	Matrix Online	28	10,915	77
25	24	Chronicles of Spellborn	16	11,231	43
26	26	Asheron’s Call	2	4,951	15

Age of Conan ticks upward significantly this week, with the advent of Tarantia Commons. High-level content has been an issue for the game, and hopefully this big addition will represent a long-term solution.

EQ2 drops a bit, but it’s still higher than it was before GU52. It’ll likely continue to taper off a bit, but news out of FanFaire is that EQ and EQ2 subscriber numbers are both up. Vanguard’s not doing so well, but FanFaire word is that it’s stable, and I would expect StationPass players will drift back to it as EQ/EQ2 buzz decreases.

Aion’s numbers took a dip, but an expected one considering the way its beta is being handled.

LOtRO seems to be trending upward, although it’s difficult to say at this point, since I only have data for four weeks. It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s been very little variation in the WAR numbers over that same time period.

EVE Online’s minutes played dip below one million for the first time since I’ve been tracking them, but the users per day ticks upward a little bit (possibly because of the new free 5-day reactivations, which I myself plan to take advantage of,) and in any event EVE seems quite secure in its relatively high position of #2 traditional (i. e. subscription-based) MMO.

Data continues to accumulate. Expect some analysis of trends over the coming weeks. Meanwhile, I’m looking at GamerDNA to see if I can’t get some data from there as well. It looks like it won’t be useful, but I’m still looking for something I can use.

 

Status Report

We found a new apartment over the weekend, in Columbus. It is very nice and a great deal cheaper than where we’re living now, along with terrific amenities which we do not currently enjoy, namely a swimming pool, clubhouse and fitness center (which my fat ass desperately needs.)

The job hunt has begun in earnest. No real traction yet, but I have every confidence that I will land something pretty quickly, and I will in any event keep pressing hard.

More than anything else, it’s a lot of stress. Everything is going to be just fine, but it’s hard sometimes to not get angry or depressed. This big change in location and lifestyle is contributing to this effect.

I’ll have MMO talk later today.

 

Employment Woes

I’ve been informed today that my contract will “almost certainly not” be extended. This has hapenned before, of course, only for a reversal to happen in the 11th hour, but I am sure it’s for real this time. So expect to hear about our coming relocation and search for employment in this space over the next few weeks, intersprersed with the MMO talk.

If things get so dire that I have to cut out MMO costs, then, hell, there’s always Guild Wars and Runes of Magic, neither of which I’ve given the attention they’re deserved, and, soon, D&D Online.

Meanwhile, in what is becoming something of a neccessary catharsis over the last few weeks, Hrishnak reached level 42, moving on to the Badlands.

 

MMO Genius of the Day: Scott Jennings

Your browser goes HERE for the pointed commentary, or it gets the hose again.

I suspect that Scott is aware of the oft-unspoken rule that there is no position so repellent or asinine that one cannot find a legion to defend it on the internet. Adventurine’s position on this issue seems calculated to piss off an audience, but it’s actually not. Nobody seems to be playing Darkfall beacuse it’s actually any good (maybe it is – I wouldn’t know because Adventurine doesn’t let me play it, and if getting into the North America server is anything like the tribulation required to get into the EU server still is 6 months after launch, they will have demonstrated their desire to keep me away from it again,) they’re playing it to prove to all the world how überl33t they are. Paying twice for the game is very überl33t.

 

The Mythic/BioWare Merger and What it Means for SW:TOR

This is where we get positive, for those with high hopes for Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare, a company with long and deep experience and a sterling repulation with RPGs and none of that with MMOs, gets a lot of technical proficiency and code specifically applicable to MMOs brought in-house, such that they no longer have to develop these themselves, or farm it out. I strongly suspect that Mythic assets will have a minimal effect of gameplay design on SW:TOR, but a lot of influence on the less visible technical side of things.

One is tempted to say that the WAR server code and architecture will be brought over whole cloth into SW:TOR, which changes made on an ad hoc basis. The same type of server architecture, which I am tempted to call “WoW-like”, which has served WAR so poorly, is likely to be a near-perfect fit for SW:TOR, at least as I imagine it to be: a story-oriented game, which makes it strong in PvE, with reasonably robust PvP on the side, something Mythic is also good at. I expect simple, useful, but not mechanically potent crafting systems, a ‘world’ large enough to meaningfully explore, and a progression system that will be considered lightweight by the “hardcore”.

Sound like anything we know? Some other existing, successful title, perhaps?

But hold on just a moment – I’m not suggesting what you probably think I am, that SW:TOR will be a “WoW clone” in the usual sense. It may be, but I suspect that it will be just different enough to feel fresh and underivative. What I’m suggesting is that BioWare was in a similar position to that of Blizzard when they were developing WoW – a company with an exceptionally strong reputation for producing quality products rather than MMOs in particular.

The ugly truth is that MMOs are often bad games compared to their non-MMO counterparts. Those of us who love MMOs tend to gloss over this fact, but it’s true; the wider marketplace is much less forgiving than the MMO subset, which has been known to keep terrible titles around for ages. The MMO marketplace inculates some very bad habits in its providers, dependent as they are on a continuing subscription stream. This is why virtually all MMOs include lots of grind with carrots at intervals – they need us to stay subscribed – and those that don’t use something other than a subscription model. Grind is not considered fun even by most of the MMO audience, who put up with it for the sake of the massive mystique, and would be seen as intolerable by players of, say, Mass Effect, to the extent that it appears in WoW, which is in some respects the least grindy subscription MMO.

This is why we should not be surprised if BioWare makes SW:TOR a non-subscription title; because it gives them freedom to make a better game, without the incentives that keep people chained to their PCs for days on end, month after month. Blizzard suceeded by concentrating on gameplay more than massiveness, and I suggest that BioWare is in a position to do the same. Maybe they’ll muff it, as Mythic allowed the great potential of WAR to slip away. But they’ve got a better chance than anybody else right now, and it just got better still.

 

The Mythic/BioWare Merger and What it Means for DAoC

Probably nothing, for the time being. DAoC has aged remarkably well, although it has to be in a zero-growth situaton. I place a lower limit on its continued lifespan of a year and a half, and it could easily be two or three times that, depending on how great the abandonment rate is. I have no idea what kind of development team DAoC retains, but it’s probably small, and likely to get smaller some time in the next two years, as BioWare decides to go with the bigger moneymaker that is WAR, and sees DAoC as a distraction from their priority project, which is SW:TOR.

In any case, DAoC is doomed. But not neccessarily to any greater extent today than it was a week ago. Mythic alone was just as likely to make a decision to cancel it as BioWare will be. I’ll be surprised if it’s not still around a year from today, but I’ll also be surprised if it’s still here two years after that.