01/17/12

The horror of dismissing in space [SWTOR]

It was on the way to an unknown planet that I, your host, killed my entire crew! I must confess a certain, softness in my trepidation before doing it, but then, I only meant to penalize the one for being so mopey. I would have freed you Khem Val, my ol’ buddy, if only you’d given me the option. But damned if he wasn’t a depressing kind of guy to hang around with.

I couldn’t help myself. Since you can’t summon them inside the ship, I targeted him with my selector and clicked. He always glowed a little when I did that. I opened the chat window and the characters rained down like hammer falls from Heaven itself. /__D__I__S__M__I__S__S__ . And with that keystroke he looked at his feet and disappeared.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It worked. All that was left was a red lightbulb were he had stood. Heading out into the hallway, I thought that Khem would meet us at our next stop, safe and sound. The light from the holoterminal bloomed in my eyes as I passed it. We’d be fine. In the meantime, the robot or our new-hire, some Tatooine pirate or some such, would take over responsibilities.

But there was no robot. R2-NV isn’t allowed to leave his charging point by my very orders, yet his receptacle stood empty. It looked downright eerie. The light from the red blub above gave the compartment a blood-slicked look.

This wasn’t good. Oh no, the pirate – the cockpit – manning the flight! I raced into the cockpit, tripping over the heavy metal. All three seats stood empty. Auto-pilot had been at some point engaged. I turned to where he most often stood, leaning against the rear wall.

Another red light.

Red is the color of blood and something I’ve done here is staining my ship with it. I had to get out.

I sat down at the captain’s chair and open the galaxy map to resume controls. I select ‘fleet’ where I had a room to think. The screen flashed red. I couldn’t afford the fuel cost. I ran to my room and checked my coffers and found them empty. It was then the alarm started to sound. LOW ON FUEL. LOW ON FUEL. Red warning lights flashed at me in rhythm. They were against me, the whole damn ship, it knew what I had done. Red is the color of blood and blood is the truest color of guilt.

There was no way we’d have enough fuel to make it to the next station. What was this? Did those Tattoine bastards not fully restock us?

And just like that, all the lights went out on the Fury. All of the buzzes and whirrs ceased entirely. Even the repetitious beeping of things requiring attention stopped. No more thrusters. No more ventilation. The only thing that remained was the feeling of drift as we floated through space.

I clawed my way to the cockpit and looked outside. A planet! Alderaan. Probably only a few light years away. The computer was unresponsive. I tried it, again and again, until I relented and began beating upon it in earnest. Close enough to see saving and yet too far to ever reach.

So now I sit in this empty, black shell that used to be a spacecraft and dwell. I have enough food to last me several months, and there is enough air that seeps in to prevent my suffocating. But there is very little to do in space and I fear I’ll lose my mind before rescue comes. Already, just so soon in, I feel the tendrils of darkness begin wiggle and burrow inside my mind.

Heed this message! And learn: Don’t /Dismiss on your ships!

Seriously, it’s kinda creepy when a crew suddenly disappears mid-flight. I made Khemmy-poo sad and wanted to get rid of him. Dismissed! Then, I see the robots gone, except for a second where I could see his silhouette through the light of the holoterminal. The pirate left no trace since he just seems to be catching a ride. Reminded me of an old sci fi story by George R.R. Martin.

12/21/11

SWTOR: Impressions and _Impressions_

Like most of the MMO world, I’ve spent the last week knee-deep in The Old Republic. Talk about a good game. Single player? You bet, more than any other MMO I’ve played. Featuring more group content than our other darling child, RIFT? Without a doubt. And isn’t that something? We can have the most exclusive type of single-player questing, the kind that drives the anti-themepark nuts, and yet have more and better reasons to find friends than in recent memory. Bioware, you’ve struck gold.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and step back from the jaded, “I’ve seen at least THREE MMO releases and that means I’m vet” self, and admit that TOR has inspired more awe in me than any MMO since my first. I was skeptical of their very stylized art style right up until I played it in beta – and I’ve been blown away since then. There is a level of detail here we’ve never seen in this genre before. From the spaceships outside the fleet dock, to the arcs of lightning in your first real instance, TOR delivers the periphery better than I ever thought they could. It is, in a word, immersive.

I’ve been playing a Sith Assassin and having a fun time, if a little disappointed in the side quests. The main questlines are fantastic. Sure, you get your fair share of “go here, collect that” but between the lines are some real nuggets of good storytelling. For every kill quest worthy of skipping, there are three well-acted, well-told story quests. I often listen to podcasts as I play, yet I find it almost impossible to do so when entering a cut scene for my class. There a simply too many interesting characters, twists, turns, and lore tidbits to offer half my attention. It’s engaging to be sure.

PvP is an interesting proposition. It doesn’t change from start to end; you have three warzones, no brackets, and skippable cutscenes. The battlegrounds are two-thirds fresh. Huttball is a good time, especially when you can knockback players into walls of fire or acid pits. Voidstar is an MMO take on Battlefield’s Rush mode. Alderaan is Alterac Valley… or Domination or Conquest, take your pick. The Assassin is an incredibly capable class and I’ve managed to top-three every match I’ve played – and this from the self-professed mascot of noob-PvP. Once again, I must remind rogues that you are overpowered and should be loving every minute of it (the assassin is effectively a rogue if specced right). My one issue is that PvP gear is only awarded at levels 20, 40, and 50. Successful PvPers could easily acquire all of the available gear as soon as they ding, leaving little reason to grind the in-between. PvP specific players will very likely have earned the vast majority of commendations needed to buy a full PvP set before they even reach those levels. Or so says an Assassin.

Overall, I’ve been extremely impressed. I’m on Dromund Kaas, almost finished, and if one thing has sunk in, it’s this: it took millions and millions of dollars, but a game has finally matched WoW’s level of polish right out of the gate. We wonder why TOR took so long or cost so much, but the answer is effectively this: they set to match a seven year shined game and succeeded. People said that was impossible and Bioware just did it. Even if you hate themeparks, that deserves a nod.

Thanks for reading,

12/14/11

EA-Bioware: Intentionally leaving you out

I’m going to share a thought that may sound like a conspiracy theory but so be it. I think that EA-Bioware is intentionally making the early access process slower than it needs to be. Full disclaimer: No, I’m not in the game yet, but yes, I fully understand and, as a matter of fact, endorse the staggered launch concept; it sounds like people are having a great time with it. I question intent for two simple but related reasons: 1) this is the EA hype-machine we’re talking about; and, 2) the invite process has been prematurely ended each day it’s been live. That opens the door for questions.

I’ve thought about how things are going over the last two days and, internally, things seem to be going nicely. Players aren’t overcrowded, lag isn’t bad, queues are, as of this afternoon, still non-existent. Bravo for that, guys, it’s a nice feather in your cap. Although, then I look at the invite process and it starts to become clearer. People who pre-ordered the game five months ago were lucky to get in yesterday. Not all of them did. Today, it looks like we got up to September in invites, if the forums are to be believed (a big if).

Then we look at how invites have been distributed. Yesterday, if you didn’t get your invite by 3PM EST, you didn’t get one. Today, if you didn’t get yours by 1:30 EST, you weren’t getting one. Um, what the fuck? Okay, we’re staggering. Sure, right on, maybe they invited 100,000 people in the four hours the doors were open. It’s doubtful to the point of wishful thinking, but hey, maybe 100,000 people pre-ordered in the first few months.

But something doesn’t add up there. This is the biggest video game project ever. In the history of video games, this is the pinnacle. You mean to tell me Bioware is on a 9-to-5 schedule when they’re finally ready to show it to the world? No wait, you also mean to tell me that keeping servers on low-to-mid load at peak hours is necessary to keep things running “smooth”? Please don’t buy into that. It’s a lie. Anyone who has ever played through a launch should be able to tell. A server can function fine when the population is “high.” As a matter of fact, a server can function fine when the population is “full.” If you don’t believe me, please explain what the purpose of a queue is if not to ensure “things run smooth.” But there is no queue, because waiting in line with the promise of playing that day is worse than waiting in line not knowing if you’ll play at all.

Now if they did invite 100,000 people this morning, maybe we could see how they’d need the afternoon to keep things in line. Except, yeah… no. Not unless EA-Bioware is totally and completely inept should that be believed. Trion let everyone in and regulated through queue limits. So did Blizzard when Cataclysm came out. So did Aion. So did LotRO. You get the picture. I refuse to believe that things are so tough as to prematurely cease invites unless there’s a second motivation.

Hype. What’s happening this week? The launch of TOR. What’s a good way to keep it a #1 Google search? Keep a lot of people in anticipation. Everyone NOT in the game, rapidly writing blog posts (like this one), tweets, and forum rants ensures the game stay on the forefront of MMO player’s minds. It keeps us chomping at the bit until we can join our friends in the fun. You can be sure that EA wants this to be as big a deal as possible. This type of marketing is nothing short of viral… except insidious is probably a better word.

And it’s worked. People are going bat-shit crazy that they’re not playing yet and gamer’s everywhere are turning to take notice. Win for EA – and a great way to be a douche on the first day your product is out. EA being EA. Bioware being influenced by their main corporate backer… not unexpected.

That’s all okay, though, because they told us this would happen. You remember, back when they pressured everyone into buying a game they were still being tight lipped about. It was the Faith Pre-Order and be wary ye’ of little faith. Everyone playing the game right now fell easily into the “give us money now” camp for whatever reason and are being rewarded for it. That’s good for them but, again, it’s a pretty lousy thing to do as a company.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t expect to get in. My “official” pre-order went through Sunday, so I’d have been crazy to. That said, the true story is, they stole $5 from me, messed up my order, and precluded me from early access because I wasn’t going to sign up for them to do it again. Origin, taking $5 pre-orders, holding $65 for the next week, and then forgetting the whole thing happened. That’s why I’m not in – I figured, hey, they kept my $5, they must charge when the game actually releases. Nope. Friday evening, I opted to ask for it for Christmas and be done with it. (What, you can be 25 and still get Christmas presents from Mom and Dad!).

Anyways, I am a little bitter that their system messed up, but whatever. This isn’t a post to say that they’re some evil company, out to get us, and laughing as they count their bills. I just think you have some clever marketers who think we’re sheep and too dull to see what they’re doing. Sheep who will pay for a product on “it’s the next big thing!” alone. That kind of makes them marketers. Then again, meh. We’ve waited this long, another few days won’t kill us!

You know what I so vainly hoped? That Bioware would keep up it’s reputation of respecting their players. If there is any truth to my theory, they’ve thrown that out the window. That lack of respect for our intelligence, expectations, and our money, is what leads MMO companies to make major mistakes. It’s what leads Blizzard to cockiness at one Blizzcon and apologetic fan service at the next. It’s what leads to suits who know little if anything about video games directing business strategy. Tell me, does that sound too unlike the EA you know?

06/10/10

The Multiverse – Episode #19 – “In Defense of Gold Buying (and the Point of MMOs)”

Afternoon, gang! Another week, another Multiverse. This episode we discuss the week’s new (LotRO going F2P, MMOs have no point, and more) as well as tackle a very on topic discussion: what is the point of MMOs and what keeps us coming back. Later, Ferrel and I debate about buying gold in MMOs. He thinks it’s time to move past shunning these players and for studios to start giving us their own options. I disagree and it leads to some interesting banter.

This was a good show. The chat room was booming and, at one pointed, a heated debate even broke out. Thanks to everyone who came out to listen live! We’d love to see even more people in there, so join us this Friday at 7:30PM EST by clicking the link above or checking out our sidebar.

I will say this though, we had a couple of technical problems with the stream this week and had to break to fix them. On the plus side, it allowed some very strange audio to come through on Skype. Gavin’s and my mind run amuck
and fun ensues.

Without further delay, to the notes!

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01/11/10

How we pay is pretty much up to Bioware

SW:TOR is an important game. Not only is it the next entry in a long list of Star Wars titles, but its even got non-MMO players eager to log in. It’s lofty aspirations for full voicing and deep, mutable, story aim to shape the genre and push it into the next generation of development.

If it succeeds, that is. But, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume it lives up to all the hype and buzz currently surrounding it.

We’ve all heard about the fourth pillar and all the neat little things Bioware plans to do, but what rarely gets mentioned is the payment model. By most indications, SW:TOR won’t be based on normal subscriptions. We first heard about this way back in December of ’08, when EA let it “slip” that the game would be microtransaction and subscription based, instead of the normal $14.99 fee. Of course, at the time, item shops were still a hot button issue for most gamers, so they were quick to recant the statement. More recently though, the subject arose again, this time supporting the RMT model with the use of “points.”

What’s different about this second time? The lack of outrage. The climate has changed and most players can accept the use of item malls as long as it doesn’t cut them out of the loop. By the time SW:TOR releases, the idea of a AAA MMO that doesn’t require a monthly fee will probably be greeted with open arms.

And Bioware is all about setting precedent. From the start, they’ve been out to make waves with this game. The hype machine has been in constant motion for the greater part of a year now, and, even though we probably won’t see the game for another year, people have already marked this as the game to watch. It’s the WAR of 2010, flush with a great development studio behind it and lots of money to make it the “next big thing.”

So, the payment model is important. If Bioware does release a game to rival WoW, and even come close to their goal, it’s going to change the rules for the games that follow it. Companies are starting to recognize that we don’t enjoy being tethered to a monthly sub, and if TOR shows that the next generation of games doesn’t need them, those fees might just find themselves relics of the past alongside 3 day spawns and 20 hour AV matches. And honestly, we’re all better for it.

A simple fact of our genre is that the subscription fee stops people from joining. Unless you’re friends with someone who’s already “in-deep” with an MMO, the idea of paying by the month for seems ludicrous. Console gamers scoff at it and, frankly, there’s more of them than us. Why? Because gaming is a casual hobby and casual doesn’t mean putting it in the same class as your utility bills. We accept it, and justify it (rightfully, to some extent), but they are, and always will be, the first and biggest barrier to entry for non-MMO gamers. To these players, dropping the fee moves the game from “dumb” to “cool” in as long as it takes to read the back of the box.

If Bioware hits the big one with this, and decides they don’t need to charge every month to do it, we’re going to see games with subscriptions become the minority in new titles. We’re heading that way now and all it takes is one rock to make a big splash in a little pond. Personally, I welcome it, and, if I have a way to earn money for their shop in-game, I’ll be all the happier for it. The future is coming and its name is TOR.