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ver two weeks bringing with it a level cap increase that i d rather pass on until i finish the current content i have about two more months of paid time in eq2 remaining from the insane discounts back in may we don t have a firm re launch for swtor but they had previously suggested november i have every reason to believe i will eventually get around to pandaria and no reason to believe it will be disappointing if anything it will be interesting to see whether blizzard succeeded in returning the game more to its original roots in the interim if i do have time there s actually a relatively large amount of stuff that i can pursue without owning the expansion pet battles low level panda alts and trying to catch up on archeology without having the gathering exp affect my leveling experience all come to mind the reality is less of a no vote and more of a not now vote not the message blizzard wants to hear i m sure but it certainly could be worse somehow i think they ll survive posted by green armadillo at 9 01 pm 4 comments labels business models pvd wow tuesday september 25 2012 f2p necessary at all costs one man indie mmo producer eric at elder game has a math problem the costs that he faces for hardware alone mandate that his game must maintain a certain benchmark in revenue per user below that threshold he must add additional servers faster than he gets revenue with which to pay for them and the game actually loses more money more rapidly if it becomes popular this is no academic blog discussion eric has been doing unpaid work on this project since at least june 2011 and will only see a return on his considerable investment if the game is successful and yet he considers and immediately dismisses the idea of not supporting free players supporting free players is a fact of the market because the amount of competition in the genre makes it hard to keep people around unless you have a compelling free play option this decision made eric will do his best to optimize his server code and assume the risk that his business model will render the product literally unsustainable if the proportion of non subscribers is too great readers of this blog will know that i am no great champion of the mandatory subscription fee however two factors make me wonder if it would not be the lesser evil in this case when you consider a the potential consequences in terms of sustainability and b the fact that the one man team now needs to take time away from making the best game possible in order to plan how to support a free and a subscriber tier with the relevant billing and game mechanics in place incidentally i m hardly the game s target demographic it sounds more sand boxy and group oriented than my usual far but the model he s describing sounds like precisely the type of optional subscription model that i generally don t end up paying for all of that said i m not certain i can say that his premise is wrong having a monthly fee is not a complete deal breaker for me but i am increasingly biased in favor of games whose business model does not meddle so directly with when and how i play the game case in point the secret world which is still limping along with both a box price and a subscription fee rolled out a free trial program recently there is no rational reason to complain about a trial that does not cost money but i find myself unusually irked that the terms say you only get the fourth and fifth days of trial time if you play enough during the first three perhaps we really are at the point where a free to play option is actually essential because the alternative is too restrictive on players ability to try your product if so perhaps eric is going to need a bigger boat posted by green armadillo at 10 21 pm 4 comments labels business models saturday september 22 2012 scenarios continuing fun or coddling aggro having gotten over the initial disappointment surrounding the story in wow s theramore scenario i ve played through the thing several more times 7 total judging from my stack of fireworks through this experience i have found that the scenario is more fun the less optimal your group is looking ahead to pandaria s endgame though this makes me wonder if blizzard has only further delayed the point at which players will be forced to learn how to play in a real group the trinity and soloing the central tenet of the holy trinity approach to mmo s is that dps should not be taking damage even if you personally are capable of pulling one of the mobs and soloing it this is strongly discouraged as your healer will feel obliged to heal you whether or not you need the help if you are wrong and you die your mob gets loose and all of the mobs will survive longer because your group s dps is split when blizzard added solo play as an intentionally supported form of gameplay to the mmo genre at wow s launch in 2004 they had to change this model when you are alone there is no one else to take the damage for you thus every character needed their own mechanism for avoiding healing or mitigating the attacks of their enemies however the game and most others that have offered solo leveling since transitions to the traditional model at max level and players nigh universally note that the leveling experience does little to prepare new players for this shift cooperative soloing a scenario group with a tank functions largely like a traditional trinity group a scenario group without a tank functions like a trio of solo players cooperating on paper at least there s no problem with individual players intentionally pulling aggro and using all of their tool to survive and conquer the one issue arises if a player sees my mage fighting stuff assumes that i can t survive and adds my mobs onto the ones they had already pulled for themselves taking on more than they can tank indeed designing scenarios with large pulls of soloable mobs rather than single mobs that lone players can t survive seems to have been the whole point of the design this puts scenarios in an unusual niche in the overall context of pandaria s endgame it sounds like the intent is to offer a gradual transition into group content with a finite endpoint as you get the requisite gear the catch is that while players are probably introduced to more group concepts than they would be solo they are by design free to continue disregarding the holy trinity concept this is a good thing if the solo playstyle is what you find fun and you are now free to continue that fun for one more tier up the progression this is a bad thing if the longterm goal for yourself the playerbase as a whole or blizzard is to break players of bad aggro habits before they get to real group content posted by green armadillo at 9 37 am 1 comments labels pvd social wow wednesday september 19 2012 early impressions of borderlands 2 if you d told me that i was going to be active on launch day for one game that has a more action oriented combat style marked differences in how you play based on the weapon you have equipped and a name that ends in the number 2 i would have guessed guild wars instead thanks to a promo that snagged me a free copy with the new graphics card i finally ordered last month i ended up in borderlands 2 bl2 is a first person shooter with rpg style quests and stat progression the gameplay reminds me a lot of the combat in the uncharted series you will die quickly if you stand out in the open against multiple mobs instead the focus is on taking cover and preferably sniping from range where your aim is probably better than the mobs and you have the luxury of ducking out of sight while your shields regenerate the big difference is that you gain levels earn skill points and loot guns and other gear that offers improved customized stats that allow you to outlevel your foes much like you would in a more traditional rpg format the game is set in a post apocalyptic world that features a harsh sense of brutal slapstick humor and lots of guns my character already owns four major classes of firearms as of level 8 pistols assault rifles sniper rifles and the shotgun along with grenades and two more weapon classes submachine guns and rocket launchers i have yet to obtain you will literally find npc s with punctuation over their heads offering quests and rewards just like an mmo and those quests will take the same basic form as an mmo offers kill loot interact bl2 offers four character classes who use the same gear but have some different special abilities i m playing a commando which seems like a solid beginner class due to a robotic turret that adds to my dps picks off flying mobs that are hard to aim at and off tanks by pulling enemies for me the other three classes include a gunzerker who can dual wield rifles a robot stealth assassin with a focus on melee combat and a siren psychic character who seems to focus more on crowd control and support the latter is not the subject of the notorious girlfriend mode comment made by a developer a few months ago that is a new mech pet class slated for dlc but it may be worth noting that the one existing female character seems the most focused on support in terms of incentives people make a lot of the loot because there are so many varieties of weapon but this part doesn t really stand out to me there are tons of random properties but many of them are useless for example i found a shotgun that takes 3 rounds per shot and had a clip bonus allowing it to carry a total of 11 rounds i e still one shy of being able to shoot four times between reloading so it could have just as well been a 1 clip penalty for all the benefit it added perhaps if i play through more than once i will try a different playstyle but on my first character it seems that really 2 3 stats matter the most and i will only consider gear that upgrades those stats one thing bl2 does do that s a bit more novel is tying the in game achievement equivalent system to passive stat increases dcuo does something similar but in this case supposedly the bonuses while generally small will apply to future characters on your profile it is a neat little incentive to try something other than taking all foes out with max range sniper shots to the head one other unique mechanic is the fight for your life status upon running out of health the player has a few seconds in a severely weakened and limited state to attempt to kill something which will inspire you to get up and continue fighting this probably won t help if you got gunned down at range by half a dozen guys but at close range you have a decent chance of unloading your clip into the enemy s face and hoping to finish them off before you die and respawn the death penalty seems mild something like 10 of your cash on hand overall i m not seeing where the replay value is going to be in this game i had a really rough time for the first few quests as the story very quickly dumps you into level 5 content at around level 3 4 but once i survived a few side quests and obtained more optimal weapons things started to fall into place very quickly by the time i finished the newbie area i was level 8 and frequently one shotting the level 5 content i could see challenging yourself by trying to finish just the story quests with as few side missions as possible in order to limit your access to loot and exp but that approach comes at the expense of missing most of the content that said the ability to out level content for an easier path is probably a big part of why i m enjoying a genre that is usually not my favorite if i do end up sniping mobs one by one through the entire storyline bl2 will be more of a success than many games i ve played business model aside there are announced plans for four dlc packs one of which was free to paid pre orders not sure if i will get this with my free copy but that s a small price if i decide i want it compared to a free game with an already announced bundle to buy all four for 30 versus 10 each i guess it s an odd quirk of the business that you want to get your dlc out there early and paid up front your theoretical market for dlc increases as more total copies are sold but it s harder to capitalize as more players finish or quit the game and aren t as interested in more dlc sadly this is what bioware was getting at with their comments on how those of us who don t like day one dlc are out of luck posted by green armadillo at 10 32 pm 4 comments labels business models pvd tuesday september 18 2012 watching npc story in theramore wow s expansion launch non event is live which means that level 85 players are now free to preview the level 90 fall of theramore scenario five levels early for one week only i suppose my expectations should have been low given that blizzard has been going out of their way to note that they did not want to spend lots of development time on an event that would be here for one week and then gone forever even so i have been disappointed and the biggest factor has been the story as rohan notes we re effectively reduced to watching a small window into a tale that only makes sense if you have read the associated novel assuming that you aren t afraid of spoilers wowhead s summary details what appears to be the entire contents of the book it is only with this additional context that the story even begins to make sense both the motivations of the characters to upend a truce that has been in place since warcraft iii and the details such as how the focusing iris widely seen by players in the puggable raid finder version of dragon soul ends up involved this is a bit disappointing coming from a company that originally made the decision never to spam players with more than 250ish characters of quest text when they could instead be showing players the story in game part of the mystique of the old alliance onyxia attunement questline was how the players actually were the heroes who unveiled the black dragon s treachery reading the synopsis of the novel there are numerous places that could have been opportunities for players to participate in a major lore event that does not seem to have needed to happen prior to the expansion launch instead all of these things are reserved for another medium and players in the actual game are just left to view the aftermath don t get me wrong i don t always expect my characters to be the most powerful important characters in the lore of the game lotro somehow manages to make the player characters seem significant even though some npc noobs named aragorn gandalf and legolas stereotypical elf hunter et al keep stealing all of the best kills blizzard just doesn t handle the presence of external story material as well hasn t done so for a number of years now but they seem happy with how they re doing it ironically and cleverly author christie golden has written your alliance characters yes yours personally into an un named cameo appearance apparently someone failed to tell her that the scenario was 3 player instead of the customary 5 but the...
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