The Many Relms of Relmstein

Building a Better Battleground System

2009-06-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

The battlegrounds are going through a lot of fine tuning in the upcoming patch. It's not surprising since the developers have admitted that PvP in World of Warcraft is a little too focused on arenas right now. I seems like Blizzard might slowly be moving towards another revamp of the honor system in the future. However, before they upset the balance of power between arena and honor points they probably want to look at sprucing up the individual battlegrounds. At the moment a couple of battlegrounds are vulnerable to stalemates and honor farming expeditions and players can often find themselves trapped. Warsong Gulch is the poster child of the never ending death-match and a twenty minute time limit is a welcome addition.

The resource gathering battlegrounds are not quite as broken as Warsong Gulch, but Blizzard still has a couple of good modifications in the works. Both Arathi Baisin and Eye of the Storm are having their victory conditions changed so that only 1600 resources are required to win a game. Also it looks like Blizzard is finally rewarding players who defend flags by giving flags an aura which increase honor gains by 50%. Another corresponding change is that flags now only take eight seconds to capture instead of ten. This should encourage teams to have players on guard duty or else be very vulnerable to ninjas.

Strands of the Ancients is also getting a slight update, which I think is good idea. The Wrath of the Lich King battleground has surprisingly become a favorite for alliance players and their faction does seem to win it more often. I attribute this to the alliance always starting on offense first which seems to give them a slight mental edge when they manage to take the relic chamber. A sizable percentage of players don't like putting any effort into a game which at best can only become a tie. Thus, the horde suffers from more AFKs mid-game then the alliance. Randomizing the starting position should fix the issue though I'm sure it will make earning honor harder for alliance characters.

Beyond the small tweaks to battlegrounds in Patch 3.2, we can probably expect some major changes further down the line. I have a feeling that we'll be looking at something that allows epic weapons and armor to be earned without a high arena rating within the year. That's not to say that Blizzard will just hand out gear upgrades to anyone with a working battleground bot. Instead, I think we might be looking at some sort of battleground rating system. In the past Blizzard experimented with a match making system for battlegrounds that used the ilevel of a player's gear. It was quickly taken out though, since it caused the queue times to dramatically increase.

However, the current matchmaking system for the arenas is very efficient and I think it could be adapted to the battlegrounds. This might just be the perfect solution to the bots and afk players which have consistently plagued battlegrounds. The current system simply rewards players for being in a battleground and the reporting system really only works in the longer Alterac Valley. If a personal battleground rating was used on some higher level PvP gear it could solve a lot of balance problems in PvP. Currently, the smaller arena brackets suffer from better geared "Ringers" who run friends through late at night. This often results in players who attempt to bring their arena rating up fairly getting pounded. Battlegrounds are much more resilient to this type of manipulation since the games are opposing factions only.

Pimp My Gear

2009-06-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

I was a little mad when Champions Online and Jumpgate Evolution were delayed, but before I could even fume about it I actually got an invite into the Champions beta. I'm not going to go into any details, but I'm glad to see that Cryptic is keeping true to their history of awesome creation tools. I was always impressed by the character creation process in City of Heroes even if I found the actual gameplay quite boring. In fact a lot of my friends also thought that creating a costumed crime fighter was more fun than playing the game. In college I would often come back from class to find that my roommates had filled all my character slots with cyborg pirates. It's a shame that no other MMO developer has allowed players the same level of customization.

I guess the major reason is because most MMOs work off the diku model, which means that character progression is all about equipment upgrades. If equipment visuals were set at the beginning of the game then most players would probably start off with the most awesome looking weapons and armor they could imagine. Half the reason players like climbing the gear progression ladder is because the higher level stuff tends to look better. Thus, just putting a costume generator from City of Heroes/Champions into a WoW clone is probably a bad idea. Still this doesn't mean that a such a system couldn't be adapted for an equipment based game.

I think one good idea would be to meld the City of Heroes character creation system into crafting. It would require some fine tuning, but such a system would probably create a strong game economy as some players made their own gear. Developers could even use item rarity to limit the "awesomeness" of weapons and armor. A plain looking pattern or design could require crafting materials from low level mobs while the more spectacular ones could require items from dungeon bosses. While not everyone would want to design their own gear, I think a lot of players would appreciate more variation in equipment. This is especially true at the end game of MMOs like World of Warcraft where tier sets tend to make everyone look the same.

It's a very boring system and I don't know any valid reasons why everyone should look the same. I've heard the argument that it's good for PvP so that you can visually recognize weaker and stronger targets. That may have been true in the past, but the user interfaces for these types of games have improved over the years. Most now allow opponents to see hitpoints and mana, which are pretty good indicators of a player's equipment status. I don't think there is any good reason for not opening up a complex crafting system which allows players to customize the visual look of items they make. I realize that a lot of developers are afraid of "the time to penis", but City of Heroes has managed to avoid the issue.

I really hope the MMOs that come out over the next couple years start adopting the same level of customization seen in City of Heroes. I'm getting awfully tired of everyone looking the same when I raid or PvP. It's especially painful when the graphic artists are rushed and you get some of the ugly armor sets seen in Wrath of the Lich King.

Please Play Our Game Less - Go Outside or Something

2009-06-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Most players are aware that the next patch for World of Warcraft will be changing Wintergrasp into a somewhat bastardized mix of open world pvp and battelground instances. I almost used the term "hybrid" to describe this change, but I think that implies beneficial traits being mixed together. Nothing can be further from the truth in this situation since the changes are designed to make Lake Wintergrasp less popular with players. This trend was noted by a lot of different bloggers earlier in the year when Blizzard switched the Wintergrasp quests from a daily format to a weekly one. There's a definite sense of irony in trying to make parts of your game less popular so you can avoid latency issues.

It's not like changing the quests to a weekly format had any real effect in making Lake Wintergrasp less popular either. Both factions still desire loot from the Vault of Archavon and tokens for winning games are still useful for freshly minted level 80 players. That's probably why Blizzard has decided to take the limiting factor of battleground queues and mix it with the reset timer of world PvP objectives. Thus the servers only have to deal with about a hundred players being squeezed into a small area once every three hours. Of course I'm pretty sure more then a hundred people want to participate in Lake Wintergrasp, but hey it's their fault for playing such a popular game in the first place.

I might be overdoing the sarcasm here, but Blizzard seems to have this new attitude of ignoring any problems brought on by limited server resources. They may have broken all sorts of sales records with Wrath of the Lich King, but they sure aren't in a hurry to use that money on additional processing power for servers. I can't entirely blame them for not rushing to upgrade since the number of concurrent users has been dropping over the last few months. No reason to rush and spend money in a tough economy when the demand might not be there in the future. Hell, I can even run instances during the weekdays now without constantly running into the dreaded "Server cannot create additional instances" message.

However, Blizzard is walking a fine line by avoiding architecture upgrades by implementing bad game design. The next patch may reduce the lag problems in Lake Wintergrasp, but it's sure to cause a lot of resentment when people keep missing the queue. Also I wonder about the proposed changes to emblems in the heroic dungeons. I think it's a great idea to let dungeon players catch up with raiders. However, it's sure to have large numbers of players flocking back to heroic dungeons just as the new raid zone goes live. On the weekend it can still take me 10-15 minutes to create an instance for my group and I'm expecting the problem to only get worse after the patch. Hopefully, Blizzard has some sort of solution and it doesn't involve re-working the daily dungeon quests into a weekly format. Otherwise I fear World of Warcraft might be starting to implode from the weight of its own success.

Death and Passing on your Virtual Assets

2009-05-27T19:41:00.000-07:00

I don't really have that much experienced with real money transfers except in the form of spam advertisements. I know there's a pretty big market out there for selling gold to players and that this drives the theft and hacking of accounts. It's not all illegal though since I know some players routinely sell off their characters and virtual savings whenever they get tired of a game. While almost every game out there has a EULA that supposedly prevents players from cashing out, it's usually ignored. Theoretically, anyone whose played an online game for a couple months and earned some virtual cash could probably get a couple hundred dollars for their account. Some dedicated individuals who've raided or traded their way into a virtual fortune might be able to squeeze a couple thousand dollars from an auction site.

It's no wonder then that online services that protect virtual assets are also starting to mention game accounts. Usually, services like Asset Lock or Legacy Locker are for people that have a lot of money tied up in online sites like ebay or paypal. If you suddenly die then it can be quite hard for your immediate family to get access to any of your accounts. You could just write your account information down on a piece of paper and put it in a safety deposit box, but most of these services are cheaper. It's almost like a digital will without the lawyers. It's still not the most useful thing in the world and it seems kind of gimmicky at the moment. However, I'll admit that over the last ten years I've gone from maybe one or two online accounts to around twenty. Some of these accounts are just things like email, but a surprising number of them do have monetary value.

Like this CNN article says, we are spending more of our lives online and people are actually starting worry about this kind of stuff. This seems like an obvious sign that society is starting to associate more value to virtual property as they spend more time online. It's not actually that unbelievable. After all, the value of real world currencies have nothing to do with the ink and paper they are printed on. Virtual items tied up in accounts are the same way. They're worth what people will pay for them and in some instances that can be a lot. And since established institutions like banks are mostly absent in this market we are seeing companies pop up in their stead. It may be a little early for these companies to make a lot of money now, but in ten years who knows? I'm just thinking how much fun it will be ten years from now to track down this post and comment on how my bank finally started a similar service.

Blizzard Authenticator: Coming to a Credit Card near you

2009-05-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

User accounts for virtual worlds are the preferred target of high tech thieves nowadays. Not only is it relatively easy to liquidate stolen digital property, but there's almost no risk of prosecution. Virtual property isn't really understood by most courts of laws around the world and a majority of legal systems would find it hard to define stealing such items as theft. However, just because it's difficult to establish real world value for virtual property doesn't mean it's worthless. In recent years, digital criminals have devoted more effort into setting up phishing scams and trojan installers for game accounts then credit cards. This shows that there is obvious real world value to these accounts.

As World of Warcraft has grown into the largest subscription based MMO its become the main target of scams and computer viruses seeking out account information. It's safe to say that as the criminal activity targeting the game increased so has the load on it's customer service system. Since each case requires a fair amount of time to investigate and fix, the costs associated with customer service have risen. Also since Blizzard has several high level competitors they can't simply ignore requests to restore hacked accounts. It's because of this situation that Blizzard eventually introduced the authenticator. This relatively simple device can be registered with a player account and then provides a different password every time the player wants to log in.

I'll admit that it's a small increase in effort to log in with an authenticator, but players who have been repeatably hacked feel like it's worth the trouble. The device seems to be working quite well in preventing compromised computers from gaining control of World of Warcraft accounts. In fact it seems to be working so well that Visa is exploring a similar system for it's credit cards. Currently being tested is the Emue card which has a screen on the back which generates an additional pin number for every transaction. This doesn't help much if the card is physically stolen, but more then half of all credit card fraud is committed online nowadays. Thus just like the Blizzard Authenticator, the Emue card protects it's account holders with a layer of protection that can't be broken online.

The relative similarity between the two systems makes me wonder if Visa and Blizzard are using the same security company. Since game accounts and credit card information are two of the top targets for online crime I guess it makes sense that they use the same security measures. Of course just like the Blizzard Authenticator, the Emue card will probably only be adopted by people who've had their information stolen before. Still since Visa is planning on making the system backwards compatible that means stores will be able to handle both types of cards. If the Emue card becomes widely available for free then I expect anyone who shops online will adopt it pretty quickly. And the fact that the Blizzard Authenticator system has been working so well makes me believe this is a pretty secure technology and not a simple gimmick.

Can Blizzard survive being the most bankable game studio?

2009-05-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Blizzard Entertainment was recently announced as the most successful game studio this year as calculated by Develop magazine. I'm not really sure what qualifies them to rank game studios, but their website says their calculations are based on sales data, critical success, and industry standing. Still it seems suspicious since the Develop 100 had Blizzard Entertainment ranked 46 spots lower last year. I know Wrath of the Lich King moved a lot of boxes, but World of Warcraft has been dominating the PC sales charts hand and hand with the Sims for the last four years. So why are trade publications only now starting to notice?

Well its no secret that Blizzard doesn't make bad games. The management for the company seems slightly different from other game studios and allows for long delays in production to fine tune a game. That's not to say they would allow a project to become vaporware or a 100 million dollar disaster like Tabula Rasa. Just look at Starcraft Ghost which Blizzard had no problems axing when it became apparent the quality wasn't there. Blizzard's dedication to quality isn't something that recently appeared and earned it a spot on the list. No the real reason is most likely that it's becoming more widely known just how much money World of Warcraft is earning from subscription fees alone.

I've long suspected that Blizzard has been making close to a 100 million dollars a month on subscriptions and it's recently been confirmed in several earnings report. Additionally, a subscription service whose only real cost is server maintenance and customer support has to have a great profit to revenue ratio. It's been theorized that a AAA MMO takes about 50 million dollars to develop and that number has been thrown around a couple of times for Warhammer Online. That means even if only half of the subscription revenue is profit then Blizzard still recoups its initial investment on World of Warcraft every month of the year.

Those kinds of investment returns just stand out like a sore thumb and it's probably why Blizzard was swallowed up by Activision. I just hope Blizzard can survive the future as the most bankable game studio while still producing high quality products. Last year there were some rumblings about the decision to split Starcraft 2 into three separate games. Some people thought it seemed a little too much like a naked money grab, something a mega studio like EA or Activision would do. While the giants of the game industry are very good about squeezing every last cent from a franchise they also make a lot of lackluster crap in the process.

With a good percentage of the profits earned by Activision this last quarter coming from World of Warcraft you have to wonder if Blizzard will be pushed to maintain this pace. It's fine if they are able to keep their revenue up by making the same high quality games we've come to expect from them. If all three Starcraft 2 games introduce a fair amount of quality content then I'm not one to complain. I think most gamers have come around to the idea simply because it gets the multi-player version into our hands faster. However, the next "innovative" idea might not have the same silver lining. It's makes me wonder if Blizzard can juggle quality, quantity and profits equally in the future or if short-term profits will start to become the priority.

Off the Beaten Path - New MMOs for the Summer

2009-05-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of new MMO's coming out over the summer and I'm glad to see that they are quite different from the standard fantasy fare. Last year I tried out Age of Conan and Warhammer Online when I got tired of World of Warcraft. The year before I dabbled in Lord of the Rings and the Rise of Kunark expansion for Everquest 2. While all four games had very different game mechanics, they still used the same type of background setting. It's been awhile since a decent MMO came out that wasn't a fantasy hack and slash adventure. Not that I'm totally repulsed by the genre anymore, I'm just looking for a breath of fresh air.

Luckily, it looks like next month's Jumpgate Evolution will satisify my desire to try something different. It's being advertised as an EVE Online that's actually fun to play. While I don't have the best reaction times in the world, I'm still looking forward to trying out a MMO based around real time spaceship combat. The only previous experience I've had with a twitch based MMO could be considered Tabula Rasa. However, that game's equipment system seemed a little too disposable and FPS-like for me to enjoy. As long as Jumpgate Evolution has a decent equipment and talent system then I'll probably stick with it for a couple months.

Even if Jumpgate Evolution is a free-trial month only game, there's still Champions Online right around the corner in July. I've been following the development of this one for awhile now and I'm very impressed with the graphics. I'm a fan of the "stylistic" graphics approach and the cell shaded look fits my preferences quite well. I'm afraid that some of the same design flaws from City of Heroes might also make it into Champions Online though. I'm hoping that Cryptic Studios stayed away from procedural generated content this time around and that leveling through missions isn't so repetitive. I'm also hoping for a better equipment system, since I always felt like the original enhancement one was too trivial for a MMO.

After the summer there a couple MMO's that are floating around release days in the fall, but haven't set them in stone yet. The major one is probably AION: Tower of Eternity which is being released by NCSoft. NCsoft isn't exactly a favorite on my list of MMO publishers at the moment. They seem a little too eager to abandon low performing MMOs and they've cut back their presence in the West a bit. Still a game where angels and dragons get to fight aerial battles does sound very cool. The reviews from Korea and China also seem favorable for the game though popularity doesn't always translate across the pacific. If the game is actually entertaining and avoids a lot of the pointless grinding associated with the Lineage brand then it might nice to try out.

Ulduar and encounters with multiple difficulty levels

2009-05-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

While I'm primarily playing World of Warcraft at the moment, I've been unimpressed by the length of time its taken Blizzard to add content onto the end game. It's not that the current raid content is too easy, just that there wasn't enough initially in the expansion to support raiding guilds. It's a situation very similar to when World of Warcraft first launched and Molten Core/Onyxia was the only raid content available. Blizzard has taken steps to fix the issue by filling the new dungeon, Ulduar, with encounters that have multiple difficulty settings. The theory goes that as guilds gear up and get used to clearing Ulduar they will start doing the encounters on a higher difficulty, which will stretch out the life of the new content. It makes sense on paper and worked very nicely with the Sartharion fight. However, I wonder if it will have the same effect when used in a full length raid dungeon.

The problem I see is that a raid dungeon is structured differently from a single boss encounter and may not get the same mileage from having multiple settings. Guilds would usually save Sartharion until the end of a raid night then try a few attempts at a harder difficulty level. If the guild leaders didn't think they were going to win, they could always make the encounter easier by killing off a drake. The encounter was only as long as the guild wanted it to be. This is a bit different from a raid dungeon where after failing on a harder difficulty setting a couple times, a guild still has to complete the rest of the dungeon. This basically stretches out the length of time a guild spends in Ulduar compared to the early dungeons.

I do hear that the boss encounters in Ulduar are better designed then Naxxramas and are very unique. A friend of mine was recently giving me the rundown of a fight done on motorcycles, where you set fire to oil slicks. Still, no matter how entertaining the vehicle mechanics are in a encounter, its a bad idea to artificially keep players in the same dungeon. Players will get bored of the same fights in the same dungeon even if the difficulty can be changed. It makes more sense to put varying difficulty encounters outside the main dungeon so guilds can challenge themselves while visiting a different location. Of course none of this would be a problem if more then one raid dungeon per tier was available to guilds. However, I'm guessing the Blizzard staff is stretched pretty thin between all the new games in development. Plus, they most likely haven't yet streamlined the process of making 10 and 25 man versions of each raid dungeon.

In the future, I am hoping the next full length raid dungeon is accompanied by more single boss encounters. There's still a lot of room for additional dragons in the Wyrmrest Temple and other single boss locations could be added. Anything that encourages a raiding guild to move between raid instances is a positive in my mind. As it stands now I'm thinking that players will burn out quicker on Ulduar then they did on Naxxramas.

It Burns, it burns: Paladins and the changes to Mana Regen

2009-04-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

I was a little fearful when I first heard that Blizzard was reworking mana regeneration to make boss fights more challenging. I agree that most guilds effectively had unlimited mana with all the improved talents in Wrath of the Lich King. Still I couldn't help but feel that this was a perfect opportunity for an unintended consequence to sneak into the game. My fears weren't exactly put to rest when I first logged in after the patch and saw that I had lost around 150 mana regen on my paladin. This was especially troubling since my retribution gear isn't exactly loaded down with intelligence or mana regeneration. Luckily, I'm used to hitting divine plea whenever it pops and it seems to keep my mana bar going along with occasional replenishment.

Still one thing I've noticed is that this seems to have made paladins even more vulnerable to mana drain and mana burn. Paladins have always been particularly powerless against these two spells, but now it seems you only need to be hit by it once or twice to be rendered useless in a fight. Shamans and Hunters also have to go through the same issue, but generally have larger mana pools. Blizzard's constant experimentation with paladin itemization has created a class with a very small mana pool and a large dependency on it's mana regeneration abilities. As a result I'm seriously thinking of changing out a couple gem sockets to get a slightly bigger mana pool for my retribution paladin.

I'm not quite sure if Blizzard wanted to improve the importance of mana management in PvP situations also. The recent changes to replenishment in PvP makes me suspect that it might have been done on purpose. I know feral druids in particular were famous for switching forms and using healing spells before jumping back into high dps mode. I'm guessing now with mana drains/burns being so effective that this is no longer a good idea. In general, the changes to mana regeneration are going to greatly shorten the times for arena matches. Since they were already pretty short I'm not sure if this was the best decision for Blizzard to make.

Stuck between a rock and a cannot launch additional instances message

2009-04-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been helping some friends out by running non-heroic instances with their alts. It's fairly easy to mix and match our characters so that we can complete a dungeon quickly and still have a good mix of classes that use different armor types. Most of my friends have two talent builds and one of them is usually a damage build. Thus when we do an alt run we avoid using any tanks and just have all the mains switch over to their dps build. This allows us to speed through the non-heroic instances at the cost of a rare death or two on a large pull. It's a good system especially if we get two paladins using divine storm and seal of light. However, we been having problems recently with creating instances and keep getting the dreaded "Cannot Create Additional Instances at this Time" message. Last night it took 15 minutes of knocking our head against an instance portal before we finally got one created for our group.

Most of the issues are being caused by the high number of people returning to World of Warcraft for the Ulduar patch. I understand that the concurrent users for the game are highly cyclical and peak around patch releases. However, it seems as if Blizzard is using this as an excuse to ignore the problem or simply roll out additional resources at a slower pace. There's also the possibility their key network people are involved in milestones for other projects at the moment. Whatever the root cause the problem has grown much worse this week and seems especially noticeable if you try to do anything, but a heroic Northend dungeon. I'm guessing that Blizzard has some sort of resource queue on the instance servers which gives priority to certain instances. This is a real pain at the moment since it seems to me that lower level characters doing non heroics are more vulnerable to being stuck outside an instance. Plus, if a non 80 is stuck outside an instance for more then three seconds it seems to send a whisper to everyone on the opposing faction.

I don't really mind a makeshift battle royales when there is a fighting chance of winning, but its almost always a massacre when running a non 80 group. The entrance for normal and heroic instances are shared and that means you often have mid level seventies in blues fighting against players in Naxx gear. It's not pretty, especially since the "Cannot Create Additional Instances" message means the victors will definitely be corpse camping the losers. I used to think if you had some patience this wasn't too bad an issue. You just wait until the higher level group finally gets into an instance then you rez. However, a couple of times I ran into situations where after rezzing my group still couldn't create an instance and then a new group of eighties appeared. It can be very frustrating and if you have any PUG players in your group they tend to leave. Also I've seen evidence of high level players creating an instance and leaving one person inside it so they farm honor from people who are stuck outside.

It's an ugly situation right now and there's a few things that could be done in the future to prevent the issue.

1) Create additional instance servers for the love of god.
How expensive could they be? I have a feeling its not a matter of cost, but simply that all of Blizzard's network engineers are involved in getting the new Battle.Net ready for Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and the new MMO.

2) Design new dungeons with separate entrances for heroics and normals
It's doesn't require much additional effort and even a little distance between the two would prevent slaughters.

3) Improve the resource handling of instance servers
I'm not sure what sort of system is currently used by Blizzard. I hope they at least take into account how many people are in a the group that is trying to create an instance. A single level 80 trying to make money in a old world instance shouldn't have priority over a group of 70's trying to do a non-heroic nexus run.

Exorcism and the Pally Burst Damage Problem

2009-04-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't been playing MMO's as much recently with work being pretty busy and forcing me to cut down on the days I could raid. For the last couple months it pretty much came down to being able to play games or write about them. However, with the release of the Ulduar patch in World of Warcraft I thought it would be a good idea to go ronin for a bit and leave my guild. This gives me some actual free time to try out some of the non raid content in the patch and experiment with the new dual spec system. I'm still playing a paladin as my main and as a hybrid class he probably benefits the most from being able to keep two different specs. That's not to say other classes don't benefit greatly from the dual spec system. Even pure dps classes like rogues and hunters can tailor their talent choices for PvE or PvP damage.

Since I wasn't going to be raiding much I decided to try out having two damage builds for my paladin. My primary build was a classic retribution build which goes slightly into the protection tree for some increased survivability. However, for my secondary build I wanted to do something a little more off the wall. Since I have a decent collection of healing gear in the bank I decided to try a shockadin build by going just deep enough in the holy tree to grab holy shock. It wasn't that bad of a PvP build since holy shock, exorcism, and judgement dealt a nice amount of burst damage. Plus, the build had enough holy talents where it was possible to heal team members in arenas. I didn't get a chance to test it, but I figured that a paladin could quickly unload all three instant cast spells and still keep two team members alive.

Of course the problem with exorcism is that it's a class-wide spell and pure retribution paladins also got a decent boost to their burst damage from it. Blizzard obviously noticed this at the last minute and decided to change exorcism so it doesn't work on other players. It's a shame to lose a interesting build, but I can see why Blizzard felt they had to nerf the ability. Paladins have long had a problem with all their abilities being dependent on cooldowns instead of a system like rage or combo points. This allows very nice burst damage, but also makes their sustained damage much weaker then other classes. Blizzard was pretty much forced to make exorcism usable on living mobs since Ulduar doesn't have undead mobs. However, adding another ability dependent on a cooldown just further aggravated the burst damage problem.

Blizzard really does seem stumped on what to do here and moderators on the forums have actually asked players to share ideas. Rohan's idea of using stacks of vengeance as a resource which are consumed by special abilities is pretty good. I also like how Warhammer Online had a lot of hybrid classes that had abilities that were dependent on players healing and dealing damage. This isn't exactly doable for World of Warcraft at the moment, since the targeting system in the game makes it hard to switch back and forth. However, paladins do have a number of self healing abilities. Thus if new damage abilities were conditional on paladin's having a full health bar then you could successfully prevent overwhelming burst damage in PvP situations. It's an idea somewhat similar to the current incarnation of Seal of the Martyr.

Using Full Health to limit burst damage:

1) Change some current paladin abilities to work like seal of the martyr
Example: Make Crusader Strike hit harder, but also deal damage to the paladin.

2) Add an ability which can only be used at full health
Example: Righteous Scorn = Exorcism that can only be used at full health, but deals damage to the paladin. The cooldown could be rather short so that during a raid the paladin could use it more often if they are being healed.

3) Adjust healing effects on abilities like Divine Storm
Example: Ideally a paladin would have to use multiple Divine Storms to recover from the damage dealt by Righteous Scorn.

Which MMOs could be shut down in the near Future?

2009-02-23T19:29:00.000-08:00

SOE recently announced that the last full developer for the Matrix Online was leaving the company this month. The sci-fi MMO had been picked up from Warner Brothers after a disappointing launch in 2005 and been on life support since then. Luckily, the all-access pass has generated enough interest in the game that SOE felt justified keeping a small development team on the project. By all accounts this small dev team has mostly consisted of just Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain over the last few months. The quality and amount of updates are expected to go down as a result.

The news about the Matrix Online got me thinking about some of the 2009 predictions I made. One of which was that SOE would have to take a couple of MMOs off their all-access pass to make room for new games. While it probably costs very little to keep an already established MMO running there are other reasons why companies shut them down. Some publishers like NCSoft simply see under performing MMOs as an embarrassment which negatively effects their brand name. Still others like SOE have been keeping several games running which barely break even on subscription fees and take resources away from more populated virtual worlds.

In particular, SOE has two games on their all-access pass which are barely played by subscribers. If my understanding of the pass is correct then each game receives a percentage of the subscription revenue based on how popular they are. Planetside and the Matrix Online both have niche fan bases and I wonder if they can continue to support themselves. The recent announcement by SOE makes me suspect that future development for the Matrix Online will be sparse and that it could be shut down in the near future.

NCSoft is the other company that will be probably be shutting down more then one game in the near future. Tabula Rasa is scheduled to go offline at the end of this month even though subscription numbers were projected to be good enough to keep the game's servers running. Still as I said before NCSoft isn't interested in maintaining hobby sized MMO worlds that barely turn a profit. This policy is what has me worried about City of Heroes. Champions Online will launch this year and DC Universe won't be far behind it. While City of Heroes/Villains is currently staying above the 100k subscription mark I wonder if it can maintain those numbers in the face of so much competition.

Funcom is almost not worth mentioning since all of their games seem to be on shaky ground at the moment. Both Anarchy Online and Age of Conan were released with horrendous bugs and needed further development time. I get the feeling that Funcom is incapable of moving into the post-WoW era of MMO development and might not be around for much longer. If their next game, The Secret World, isn't a decent hit then I suspect the company might be sold off. At least Age of Conan is a good enough game that I could see another publisher keeping it running.

Turbine is probably the only development studio I'm not worried about. Even though the original Asheron's Call can't have more then 50k subscribers, I think it's enough to keep the game afloat. After all Dungeons and Dragons is only projected at having around 70k subscribers and Turbine is still producing updates at a decent rate. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Turbine eventually started their own all-access pass since they are gathering a sizable library of quality MMOs. Of course they would probably need to announced their next project to get a lot of interest in their all-access pass. Here's hoping that the rumors of Turbine acquiring the Harry Potter license has some truth to it.

Keep in mind this is just based on my opinion, but I suspect the following games of being shut down within the next year or two for a variety of reasons.

Guaranteed Closing in 2009
Tabula Rasa

Suspected Closing in 2009
Matrix Online (Crowded All-Access Pass)
Planetside (Replaced by newer FPS MMO The Agency)

Suspected Closing in 2010
City of Heroes/Villains (Competition from CO and DCU)
Anarchy Online (If Funcom bankrupts)

Jeff Kaplan officially moves on to the new Blizzard MMO

2009-02-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Everyone has their own two cents on what Jeff Kaplan leaving World of Warcraft means for the game. Most agree that the decision to move onto Blizzard's new MMO is related to the raid changes that Wrath of the Lich King brought to the game. One theory is that upper management demanded a reduction in raid difficulty and that caused a irrevocable difference of opinion with the lead developer. It's not a far fetched theory since Tigole has been know for being outspoken in his design ideas and achiever like mentality. After all as the developer who coined the phrase "welfare epics" he's sort of become a symbolic representation of everything casual gamers hate about raiding. Still if I remember correctly, during last year's Blizzcon he was already saying that a majority of his time was devoted to the new MMO.

This probably means that he's been working on the project for quite some time and hasn't been that involved with Wrath of the Lich King from the start. That not only explains why the raid content in the new expansion is easier, but also why there is so little of it. It must have somewhat slowed the development team down to lose their expert raid designer. While I'm not a fan of Jeff' Kaplan's high level design ideas, I'll admit that he does quality work. Under his lead the raiding in World of Warcraft had excellent art direction and some very interesting boss encounters. Of course most of us never got to see this content so I'm not that sad to see him moving on. In fact, one of the first posts on this site was about his focus on raid content and the problems it was causing. I only hope that Blizzard's new MMO benefits from his expertise without running into the same problems.

I also have to say I'm very interested to see what Blizzard's new MMO is all about. I've been holding out for one set in the Starcraft universe, but I just don't see that fitting in with Jeff's design style. In fact I'm starting to think more and more that Blizzard is working on a new fantasy IP for their next game. Jeff seems like a fantasy guy and I just don't seem him designing raid encounters for spaceships and marine squads. Then again I could be wrong, maybe after six and half years he's tired of elves and orcs.

Visiting the Old School

2009-02-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

Just a few days ago I actually ran through all of Blackwing Lair for the first time ever. It was a big moment for me since my original raiding guild had just started doing that instance before we took a break from raiding. Before that we had ignored a lot of the higher end raids and primarily focused on Molten Core, Onxyia, and Zul'Gurub. It was slow going to get loot from old world instances especially for a casual guild that only raided three nights a week. I remember sometimes going three weeks without any upgrades and I know some people who played more popular classes having even worse dry spells. That's probably why my guild sort of went on hiatus when the new honor system came out. All of sudden it became possible to see your progression towards earning a upgrade and everyone sort of forgot about seeing BWL, AQ, or Naxx.

Wrath of the Lich King changed all of that of course. It wasn't just that Blizzard reused Naxxramas for raid content either. The achievement system revitalized the idea of going back and playing tourist in old raid zones. Not only could players get a chance to see content they missed, but they could make some money at the same time. Daily quests may be a faster way to make money, but they get boring real quick. Also I don't know about you, but the old world armor sets seem to have more pizazz then what we have now in Wrath of the Lich King. Tier 7 makes me want to gouge my eyes out, especially when compared to the glorious Tier 2 from Blackwing Lair. I'm convinced half the interest in old world raid zones come from people who regret deleting their earlier armor sets. I'll have to admit I'm one of them.

It's funny that while I'm having a lot of fun in Naxxramas, I'm equally enjoying the other old raid zones that didn't get upgraded loot tables. It's all new content to me and I guess part of it is the challenge of figuring out how to do old raid content with a single group. None of us know these fights from previous experience so we are learning by trial and error. We could easily look it up on wowhead, but that would defeat the purpose. Encounters like Chromaggus and Ebonroc have tricks to them and it's actually fun to figure them out yourselves when a single misstep doesn't kill everyone. I think that's the idea that Blizzard is chasing with the move to more casual raiding. They may have started out by making the raids in Wrath of the Lich King a little too easy, but they are on to something. Now if they could just get the artists back from their other projects so we could get decent looking gear again.

Should developers design raids around Latency?

2009-01-30T07:49:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple weeks I've been having fun learning the raid encounters in Wrath of the Lich King. I've mostly been absent from the raid scene since the Karazhan hump broke up a couple of my guilds. However, I was tempted back after I kept hearing how casual the new raids were in the expansion. So far it seems true and I've found both the 10-man and 25- man versions a lot of fun. The fights I especially like are the ones that are more involved and require coordinated movements. I think my favorite is the DDR like strategy required for Heigan, but Thaddeus and Grobulus are also fun. However, I've noticed that these fights can be inherently harder on the 25-man versions because of random latency issues.

The effort of coordinating twenty-five players is always going to be harder then coordinating ten players, but that's not the only reason that the heroic raids are more difficult. Increasing a raid to twenty-five players also makes a raid more vulnerable to one person with latency issues causing a wipe. This is especially true on Thaddues where one person with the wrong polarity at the wrong spot can kill everyone. Sometimes just a second delay on a player's screen is all it takes. If that weren't the case then the frogger slimes after Patchwerk wouldn't claim so many people. I shudder to think how Naxx must have been back when it required a raid of forty players all having good latency.

I guess this is why back in the day Naxx was for hardcore raiders only. Hardcore raiders not only had the free time to devote to these encounters, but they also had stable Internet connections. Guilds that got to Naxx back when it was forty man had to kick anyone who was slow on coordinated movement encounters. The worst part is that it's very tricky to tell if a player was being slow because of skill or if they simply had a small bit of lag on their connection. Designing around latency has always been an issue with MMOs and limited their design. The reason auto-attacks and hot buttons are used by everyone is because real time combat is vulnerable to lag. Just look at how useless combos were in Age of Conan's PvP combat.

The developers originally designed fights like Thaddeus because Naxx was supposed to be for the most hardcore raiders. This meant the developers could assume everyone had perfect Internet connections. Now though with raiding being more casual it's probably irresponsible to design encounters like it. Oh, I admit the idea of the polarity shift mechanic is genius especially on a Frankenstein like monster. However, it shouldn't kill everyone in the raid if someone has a connection that lags out every once and awhile. At most latency issues should kill the one person in the raid who had them. This means that a casual guild only has to make sure the main tank and his healer has ironclad connections. If Blizzard is serious about keeping raid encounters more casual then they might want to take into account that all cable modem connections are not created equal.

Did the bugged Arena Matching System include ilevel?

2009-01-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

The aftermath of 3.0.8 continues to be felt as both Lake Wintergrasp and the Arenas were closed down soon after the patch went live. I was lucky enough to get a few games of Lake Wintergrasp in on Tuesday, but didn't have time to delve into any arena games. Apparently the entire rating system had become broken with matches resulting in weird and excessive rating changes. Sometimes a team's rating was changing by more then 50 points per match. The source of the problem was a new matching system that was snuck into the patch. Testing the arena point system is almost impossible on the PTR and apparently the issue snuck by internal testers. Hopefully, this isn't a sign that Blizzard had to lay off some of their QA staff like Warhammer.

Most of the items that were include in the patch were supposed to be bug fixes for items and classes. It doesn't really make sense to also include an update to the arena matching system. The previous system worked quite well at matching teams against one another based on their respective ratings. The addition of personal ratings prevented people from smurfing or buying spots on higher ranked teams. However, I've mentioned before that "ringers" or well equipped people joining lower ranked teams would still be a problem. This is because the matching system never looked at item ilevel when determining match-ups and thus ringers would pop up as players maxed out on current PvP gear.

I suspected that the new matching system might have used some sort of new value connected to a team's item ilevel. A similar system was introduced to battlegrounds a couple years ago, but had to be taken out because it caused queue times to become too long. Arena games are a different animal altogether and players most likely wouldn't experience the same increase in queue times. However, it looks like whatever change Blizzard made to the system adversely affected the rating changes. This is just conjecture, but I believe this new hidden value for match-ups was causing point changes to team ratings to be applied twice.

We'll know for sure when Blizzard reactivates the arena system though who knows if they will move forward with the new matching system or continue to use the old one. I personally dislike the practice of ringers and find a rating system that uses a combination of ilevel and current team rating the best for match-ups. However, I dislike that Blizzard felt the need to sneak this into a patch. I guess we all know how sensitive the issue of arena epics are to some players and Blizzard obviously wanted to avoid player outrage.

If the change in the matching system did add some sort of ilevel value to the formula then it would mean that lesser geared players could more easily increase their rank. Blizzard might have decided to not mention the change in hopes of avoiding trolls from bringing up the "welfare epics" issue. Then again this could have been a small change to the arena matching system formula which was mishandled. Though it does seems unusual for a small change to an old system to cause that many problems. Blizzard usually experiences unintended consequences on new content.

Lake Wintergrasp and Patch 3.0.8

2009-01-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

There were some changes made to Lake Wintergrasp in yesterday's patch which have influenced the standard strategy for the zone. The attacking faction still has the advantage, but the increased hitpoints for the exterior walls makes it harder to take the fortress from the sides. The horde in particular were fond of taking the back western wall and destroying the goblin workshop. This had the advantage of being close to the attacker's western graveyard, but far away from where the defenders respawned. However, this strategy only worked since the fortress cannons could easily be taken out by range classes. With the recent changes to the zone you can see how this won't be as effective.

Patch Changes that effect Wintergrasp Strategy

-Wintergrasp PvP vehicles have had their health increased.
-Wintergrasp Tower cannons have had their health increased.
-The Wintergrasp Fortress Exterior walls have had their health increased.
-The Fortress Keep door now has had its health decreased.
-The Orb is now instantly clickable.

Blizzard probably increased the health of the cannons to make it harder for individual players to take out the fortress defenses. The fortress cannons play a big role in stopping incoming siege weapons especially when the gunners spot them from far away. Games were ending much sooner then they should since players were able to ride under cannons and destroy them and then bring in the heavy siege weapons. I noticed that warlocks and shadow priests were particularly good at this since their instant cast dots allowed them to do a lot of damage even if they were quickly killed by alert defenders. The increase in cannon health should make it so that siege engines are necessary for defeating fortress defenses and not just knocking down walls.

This should slow down the pace of Wintergrasp a bit and make it so that 8-10min games happen less often. That's not to say Blizzard wants the attacking side to lose. The design of Lake Wintergrasp still favors the attackers and it makes sense to encourage the zone to change sides often. The problem was that the previous setup gave the attackers too much of an advantage and games were ending too quickly. The exterior walls and cannon health was increased to make Wintegrasp last longer, but the keep doors had their health decreased. It may take longer to get into the inner courtyard but once the attackers are there the game should be practically over now. This is especially true since the orb is now instant clickable and can't be defended by constant AOE attacks.

So what are the strategies for Wintergrasp now?

Defenders:
Catapults are going to be more handy for defending cannons from players. They've always been the best anti-personal siege weapon, but were fairly easy to destroy. The increased health should make the catapult less of a push over when facing groups of players on the ground.

Demolishers and Siege Engines are still going to be needed for taking out the attacker's workshops. The trick is to destroy the workshop and not just take control of it. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, defenders often move directly into the workshop instead of supporting the siege engines bombing it. This usually causes the defenders to take control of the workshop and prevents it from being destroyed. As a result when the attackers respawn they can easily retake the workshop and resume launching attacks close to the fortress.

There's no longer any reason to have aoe classes in the Orb room since its instant clickable. In general with the new patch there's more reasons for defenders to be fighting outside of the fortress. Basically once the attackers are in the inner courtyard the keep doors are so weak that the game is practically over.

Attackers:
The side walls will take longer to destroy and it should be harder to suicide attack the cannons on them. Walls should probably only be a target when there's no defenders outside to prevent attacks on the cannons. It doesn't seem like you can simply ignore defenders and quickly destroy the cannons anymore.

The front gates are weak compared to the walls now and should be a priority. The increased health on vehicles means they should be able to approaching the front gates and get a couple ram attacks off before being destroyed. Standing back and firing from a distance should only be done when firing in a tower's blindspot.

I think catapults are less useful to attackers now since demolishers and siege engines have more health. It used to be a problem getting vehicles into ramming distance and catapults helped defend the slower moving vehicles as they got into place. Now with the increased hitpoints I think there's less reason to bring catapults into the fray unless there are large groups of defenders outside the walls.

Tips for Twinking

2009-01-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's a sign that I'm getting bored with Wrath of the Lich King, but I started twinking out a druid that I've had sitting around on my account forever. I don't know exactly why I decided to start playing low level characters again, but it probably has something to do with the hundreds of stone keeper's shards burning a hole in my wallet. The new account bound gear has decent stats even at level 1 and makes it fun to start all over again with a new class. Of course by fun, I mean that you're completely overpowered and just face stomp everything in your path. Its very therapeutic to visit areas that terrorized my early characters and then lay waste to the surrounding area.

Blizzard showed some intelligence when they designed the new account bound gear. Players can either buy PvE gear using emblems of heroism or PvP gear with the stone keeper's shards. If you want to do the specialized low level battlegrounds then the PvP gear is the way to go. Just keep your eyes open for when your faction controls Lake Wintergrasp and then join a heroic dungeon group. Certain dungeons like The Nexus, The Old Kingdom, and Gundrak have five bosses on heroic and are perfect for quickly getting shards and emblems for both sets of gear. If you just want to level your character then make sure to grab the daily heroic quest each day from Violet Hold for two extra emblems. Personally, I used a combination of both so I could quickly get my character ready.

Basic Account Bound Equipment
Weapon: Both PvP and PvE versions
Shoulders: Both PvP and PvE versions
Trinket: Just a PvE version with spellpower or attack power

If you're playing a caster just be warned that the PvP staff seems a little bit more expensive to buy at 325 stone keeper's shards while the PvE version was only 65 emblems of heroism. If you really want to go overboard then you can track down some of the old ways to enchant items that didn't have level restrictions. One of my friends found out that the Zul'gurub shoulder enchants can be done on an account bound item with restricting it. Using a newer method like the aldor/scryer enchants prevent it from being worn by lower level characters. I'm not sure if this will be changed in a future patch since it does require you to have a character exalted with Zandalar. At the moment as long as the method of enchanting or improving the item doesn't have a level restriction then it shouldn't mess with the eligibility of lower level characters to wear it.

Also some of the enchanter recipes can still be done on low level gear. The only problem is that a lot of the low level materials are expensive or missing from the auction house. I think Tobold is right and too many enchanters switched to inscription and now we have a dearth of dis-enchanters in the game. I know on my server the greater planar essences sell for 10gp more then the greater cosmic essences because of low supply. Still any enchant that increases hitpoints or stamina is worth the cost of buying hard to find materials. Just remember that if you are planing on leveling your character instead of playing battlegrounds then its best not to spend too much. The pace of leveling is much quicker and normal enchanted items quickly become obsolete unlike the account bound items.

PvP gear less vital in WotLK

2009-01-13T04:00:00.000-08:00

The group of friends I play with has pretty much mastered the heroic dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King. We haven't yet finished all the achievements, but we've put a healthy dent into the list so far. As a result of all the heroic runs we find our characters maxed out on gear and emblems of heroism. We're trying to get into the ten man raids, but trying to get more then seven friends on at the same time is like herding cats. While waiting to get a working raiding group set up I tried out some PvP over the weekend. During the Burning Crusade I mostly focused on arenas and battlegrounds and got most of my gear upgrades from these activities. Imagine my surprise then when I found out the PvP rewards in Wrath of the Lich King weren't really upgrades compared to the heroic dungeon gear.

It looks like PvP rewards have been seriously cut in power because of the entire "welfare epics" problem from the Burning Crusade. Raiding in general suffered as a viable end game activity in the last expansion because the rewards for PvP were easy to obtain. Then again raiding had long enjoyed an obsessive focus from Blizzard's developers so I considered it fair turnaround at the time. This expansion though seems to have a more balanced reward system for both end-game activities. The different methods of earning similar quality gear makes it easier to equip your character no matter what you prefer to do. Also it seems that Blizzard has made it so players can effectively compete in arenas in both PvE and PvP gear. This is mainly because of two key changes to stats normally found on PvP gear.

1. Resilience
The developers were trying to put more importance on dealing damage and less on crowd control in this arena season. One way they achieved this was by putting less resilience on gear and making it less effective at preventing damage. So while a massive amount of resilience might help a little bit, it won't make you an indestructible juggernaut anymore

2. Stamina
I was very surprised by the small increase in stamina that most PvP gear has compared to PvE items. There was huge difference in hitpoints in the Burning Crusade depending on if you were wearing PvE or PvP gear. It looks like the developers decided to make that less of a factor in Wrath of the Lich King by making the stamina difference much smaller.

There are a couple other changes in Wrath of the Lich King that help prevent PvP or PvE from gaining the upper hand over the other. The ten man versions of raids make it possible for pick up groups to access higher level items and allows casual raiders to compete with the better geared arena teams. Also the improvements to the arena reward system helps prevents highly ranked players from unfairly keeping their rank by trading wins or smurfing. The only problem I see is in the introduction of new gear. But as long as Blizzard starts a new arena season whenever they introduce a new raid dungeon it should be fine. I do worry that players might be able to gear up too quickly in this expansion by doing a combination of PvP and PvE, but I don't know if this means they will burn out faster.

Relmstein's 2009 Predictions

2009-01-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

With everyone making grandiose predictions for 2009 I realized I'm a bit behind the curve since I didn't even bother to make any for 2008. I remember I did say this year would be all about PvP with Wrath of the Lich King, Warhammer, and Age of Conan coming out. But I must say I had no idea that Age of Conan would launch without a basic PvP system and people would only play Warhammer's scenarios. I thought for sure that Wintergrasp would be a pale imitation of a Warhammer keep siege, but I must say I'm having fun except for all the lag. As you can tell if I had made predictions for this year I would probably have been wrong on most of them, with maybe one or two exceptions. Still with so many bloggers putting the reputation of their intuition on the line this year how can I stay out of the fun.

1. No Micro-transaction based game will catch on this year
I get tired about people claiming that micro-transactions are the wave of the future. I just don't see this payment system becoming more widespread when a decent amount of western gamers see the subscription model as having better value. Micro-transactions will continue to enjoy some success in youth oriented games where players don't have access to credit cards. However, I feel that a large amount of gamers leave these games behind as they gain a steady source income and credit cards of their own.

2. At least one non-western MMO will become big in America.
A lot of MMOs last year were subjected to massive advertising campaigns and had problems with being over hyped by their fan base. This created a lot of unrealistic expectations with players and actually hurt the game in the long run. While initial box sales are important, the financial success of MMOs have always depended on establishing a reputation with gamers. I think this year a small foreign game can catch the market by surprise by circumventing the hype machine and allowing players to form their own opinions. EVE Online managed to do this quite well and other games can follow in its footsteps.

3. People will grow tired of Wrath of the Lich King in the summer
Blizzard really did put in a great amount of effort with Wrath of the Lich King and produced their best expansion yet. However, since the development time frame hasn't improved I see this expansion following the same pattern of decline as the Burning Crusade. The initial surge in subscription numbers should stop three months after release and the numbers should start to decrease after six months. Games released after the summer of this year should see a boost in their initial sales. Though we won't see anything like Age of Conan's surprising box sales until a year after Wrath of the Lich King.

4. Blizzard will announce their new MMO this year.
Someone will either spill the beans or kidnap a Blizzard employee to find out the truth. I still have my fingers crossed for a Starcraft MMO, but a new franchise is also very likely. I don't think Blizzard wants to cannibalize the subscription base for World of Warcraft so they are dragging their feet on announcing the new MMO. However, news from last Blizzcon made it clear that several lead developers (Jeff Kaplan) were spending most of their time on the new MMO. This hints that too much work is being done on the game to keep it quiet much longer.

5. The Old Republic will become over hyped
I'm disappointed in how many empty promises have already been made about the game. Bioware might actually mean what they say, but we heard a lot of this stuff before. I think the last three games that came out promised that player actions would really matter and that the game would have an epic storyline. Instead we've gotten mostly static worlds with recycled plot lines. If Bioware just promised to make a game better then Star Wars Galaxies and keep George Lucas away from the project I would be satisfied. Instead I fear the game will be overhyped and suffer the consequences.

6. Warhammer will become the 2nd biggest MMO in the west.
I really don't think Warhammer is dead though it needs some major changes before it becomes the PvP game that was promised to us. In the last patch a lot of things have already been fixed, but no one really cares because of Wrath of the Lich King. If Warhammer just keeps improving itself though it can take advantage of Blizzard's slow development cycle. I wouldn't be surprised if Warhammer surges in the summer this year especially if no new releases make a splash in the market.

7. Champions Online will consume the subscription base for City of Heroes
A large part of the attraction of MMOs is the constant introduction of new content. Unfortunately, for NCSoft this means that Champions Online will have a huge advantage over City of Heroes when it releases this year. Champions Online will have similar gameplay, but will also be filled with new zones, stories, and costumes. While I know the current City of Heroes fanbase is very dedicated I think they will start to desert NCSoft pretty quickly. Of course the future of Cryptic is cryptic because of Atari buying them out so there could be some surprises.

8. The Star Trek film will increase interest in the MMO
The trailer for the movie looked very good and J.J. Abrams is skilled at making great entertainment. This is basically free advertisement for Crytpic and if I were them I would have something to release in conjunction with the movie. I guarantee the web traffic on the games site increases drastically after the movie's release. It might be two years until the game is release, but it's never too early to start building a community around a MMO.

9. SOE will slash games from its all-access pass
SOE will finally have to make a decision to remove some of the older games from its all-access pass. Quite frankly I'm not that impressed with SOE's upcoming lineup of games and think most of them will have to be put on the all-access pass to turn a profit. This will cause the revenue to become a little too spread out and some games will have to be removed from life support. I have a feeling Planetside is the one most in danger.

10. If SOE has a hit, it will be Free Realms
While I'm not a big believer in micro-transaction games I do believe they serve a niche. There are a lot of low income gamers and young gamers dependent on store bought game cards who can't use subscriptions. Most of them are forced to play games like DOMO, Rappelz, and Maple Story. These games are heavily influenced by anime and eastern game design, which doesn't necessarily have universal appeal. There might be decent demand for a micro-transaction game which uses western art and game design. Free Realms could disprove my number one prediction.

Ten Things I learned from the Loremaster Achievement

2009-01-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

Ever since the achievement system came out I've been working on gaining the Loremaster title bit by bit. I've been playing my current character for quite some time and I thought I was familiar with almost every quest in the game. However, I quickly found out that I was severely mistaken since almost every zone had a few surprises waiting for me. It's really nice to see that I haven't seen everything in the game yet even though I've been playing since launch. I found quests off dead bodies at the bottom of huge ravines and up steep hidden paths. I really would like to put together a guide, but it would probably be a couple hundred pages. Instead I just decided to do a quick overview of the quests, mobs, and trends that stood out the most as I traversed Azeroth, the Outlands, and Northend.

1. Evolution can be Dangerous
I was doing a really annoying quest in Blade's Edge mountains that had me evolving netherdrake eggs for the deranged gnomes in the area. Using some sort of time ray I fast forwarded unhatched eggs into either proto-drakes, whelps or mature netherwings. Imagine my surprise when one of the eggs turned into an elite ?? dragon who started to giving me a speech about being freed from the time in between spaces. After declaring he would now destroy the world I gave him another shot of the time ray which caused him to shout Nooooooooo! and then turn into whelp. I couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes.

2. Ashenvale and Azshara suck more then Stranglethorn Vale
I always wondered why Ashenvale and Azshara were so lightly populated with people. After running and flying across both of them multiple times trying to track down quests, I now have my answer. Both zones are poorly constructed and prevent anyone from traveling in a straight line on the map. Azshara not only has this problem, but also has very few quests and has a lot of unfinished projects. The Forlorn Ridge in the zone was supposed to be another battleground but never got put into the game. Ashenvale got more quests when the Burning Crusade came out, but it's still a nightmare to travel across. Also all the guards in Ashenvale are low level, which attracts a lot of bored gankers from both factions. Overall I now have a couple zones I hate more then Stranglethorn Vale.

3. Blizzard is fascinated with poop
I heard this theory proposed on the wowinsider show and I hate to say that the evidence just keep mounting up in support. I know in Nagrand I had to devle through antelope crap for cherries and the same process repeats itself a couple times in Wrath of the Lich King. In Borean Tundra you have to poison worgs to give them the runs and reclaim microfilm they ate, yuck. And in the Howling Fjord you have to throw firecrackers under bats so you can scare the guano out of them. However, the worst is probably in Grizzly Hills where you actually have to gather the reagents for a laxative since you accidentally swallowed some priceless seeds. To complete the quest you have to use an outhouse which causes loud grunting noises and foul dust clouds to come rolling out. While I appreciate juvenile humour I think Blizzard may be over-using the gag.

4. Critters can Attack
I think Blizzard got tired of critters being the low man on the totem pole in Wrath of the Lich King. I noticed a couple events where they got tired of being pushed around and made a scene worthy of a FOX special. In the Howling Fjord if you try to get the Friend of Fowl achievement by killing 15 turkeys you'll earn a feathery reprisal. Also in the Grizzly Hills you can watch the young deer, Bambina, and his friends wonder around the northern alliance camp. If you watch them long enough you'll see a hunter come out and shoot the mother of Bambina. This isn't the Disney version though since this enrages the deer and it kills the hunter. Made me much more wary of killing critters though I still joined Nessingwary for the big hunt.

5. Doing the newbie quests will earn you multiple achivements.
I knew the easy way to complete the old world achievements was to go back and do the newbie zone quests. What surprised me though was the amount of faction each one gave you. Most of the early quests not only give you reputation with the quest giver, but also with the other alliance/horde races. As a result you can also quickly gain the Ambassador title just by questing in each race's starting zones. The other achievement that I earned almost by accident was the one to gain 50 mounts. Each race has 6-8 mounts and becoming exalted with them greatly reduces the price. To get the last 10 or so you just need to buy a couple of flying mounts and become exalted with one of the Outlands factions with mounts. I suggest the Kurenai since they sell Talbuks for only 50-80gp at exalted.

6. The Fallen Hero of the Horde is Long
There's a infamous quest chain in the old world that comes form a orc ghost located between the Swamp of Sorrows and the Blasted Lands. The chain has about a billion steps but resulted in a trinket and large bag that made it worth doing back when Dire Maul was the newest dungeon in the game. Still since the quest chain runs between both continents its well worth doing if your trying to get the classic loremaster achievement. I just wish it didn't sent you to Azshara, you all know how I feel about that zone. I will say one thing though is that I really appreciate long quest chains that result in a useful item. Northend had a couple ones set up in a similar manner and only required a small group for the last step.

7. Arugal is still tough
One my favorite dungeons in the game is Shadowfang Keep. It's a bit larger then most modern day dungeons, but isn't a sprawling mess like Maraudon or Wailing Caverns. There are a lot of similarities between it and Karazhan including that both are ruled by a mad wizard. The lord of Shadowfang Keep is Arugul who is the creator of the worgen and master of teleporting between hard to reach platforms. Probably trained under Gannon or something. Anyways I was surprised to run into a quest chain in the Grizzly Hills that eventually revealed that Arugul had been revived by Arthas. I was kind of expecting him to be a push over like most of the elite quest mobs, but he actually put up a decent fight. If you find yourself doing the quest chain be careful because once again he's on the top of a tower and surrounded by lots of werewolves.

8. Goblins are Awesome
Hunting down the last quests in Kalimdor would have been impossible without the surprising amount of goblin quest hubs spread throughout the land. And the best thing about goblins is they don't discriminate. Even outside the gates of Ogrimmar I was able to find a goblin willing to let met kill some harpies for him. Also in every goblin quest there's a good chance of at least one explosion happening at any point. I was seriously thinking of giving up on the Kalimdor achievement until I remember the race track in thousand needles. The goblins and gnomes there made it possible finish though it they did send me back and forth between Booty Bay a lot.

9. Every zone has at least one hidden escort mission
As I became desperate to find more quests in each zone I noticed there seemed to be a lot of escort quests I had missed. I know no one likes escort missions, but half of old world ones start with NPCs that are hidden in the middle of nowhere. I can only conclude that even the Blizzard developers hated these quests and really didn't want people finding them since they would probably complain. And there is reason to complain since most of the old world escorts are on timers and are either tuned too fast or way too slow for the quester. Also it seems like most escort NPCs are secretly suicidal and would like nothing more then to take you with them. Thankfully, the design has improved for escort quests lately since most of the newer ones have the NPC following you at the pace you set.

10. The quest quality in the game has really improved.
Azeroth: Quests are repetitive kill and collection types which require lots of travel.
Outlands: Quests are still repetitive, but better positioned to reduce long travel times.
Northend: Quests have little redundant travel and have unique methods of completion.

I would have to say my favorite quests are the ones that require you to travel around in vehicles. It didn't matter if the vehicle was a stealth flying machine in Icecrown or a pissed off storm-giant in Zul'drak, I really enjoyed them. I'm looking forward to seeing how Blizzard expands upon this idea in the future. I'm crossing my fingers for flying PvP zones with vehicles.

Little Big Planet gets a Movie (sort of)

2009-01-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

Little Big Planet may not be a MMO, but its provided me with hours of entertainment that I usually only find online. The best part of the game is seeing how other people use common household items to design monsters and animated landscapes. It's like someone took Super Mario Brothers and mixed it with an episode of Fraggle Rock. Anyways while browsing the interwebs I found a short animated movie that the makers of Little Big Planet probably used for inspiration. What's especially neat is that its being made into a full feature film this year and Tim Burton will be producing.

You can see the resemblance between the game and movie main characters.

The original short film actually came out in 2004 and its surprising that I've never heard about it. Then again so many really bad movies win film festival awards that I do tend to ignore them nowadays. Anyways check out the trailer on youtube and tell me what you think. Hopefully, if MMOs ever go the movie route they'll use CGI on scale with this.

Trailer for 9 the Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIpZxBczWUg

The Original Short Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0sCy_WwDWM&NR

Cartoon Network's MMO: FusionFall

2008-12-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

It seems just like yesterday that the kid friendly Wizard 101 was launched to the sound of a million Harry Potter fans squealing in delight. Despite not having the rights to that most illustrious license they've still managed to create a fairly nice wizard MMO. I'll admit that most fans of the game seem to be those who like things "cute", but others simply enjoy having a game they can play with their little ones. You have to admit that sometimes the focus of World of Warcraft and other MMOs really isn't the best place for kids. You leave a child alone in a competitive online world like most MMOs and you run the risk of making one of those XBL brats.

That's why I'm glad to see something like FusionFall being made by Cartoon Network. The trailer makes it look more like a 3D flash game then a MMO, but it's a nice to see another teen oriented game world. I noticed that the non traditional MMOs designed for kids are also the ones that tend to try out new game designs. Wizard 101 bases combat around a card game and it looks like FusionFall will play more like an action-adventure game. The weapons are varied and I've seen all kinds of cartoonish bazookas and guns. They also seem to be going for some humor since I swore I saw someone beating a monster over the head with a giant turkey leg.

The real draw for FusionFall is going to be the characters of course. It looks like Cartoon Network took almost every popular show its had over the last ten years and put the characters into the game. Of course to appeal to their target audience they magically aged everyone into a teenager. I thought the idea was a little bit ridiculous at first, but it looks like they put some thought into it. Dexter is apparently a young resistance leader who provides most of the hi-tech weaponry in the game. I also think I saw grown-up versions of the Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack running around. Overall it reminds me of a cartoon version of City of Heroes in some ways.

It'll be fun to see how Cartoon Network moves forward with the game. I know they are planning on have a small portion of the game free-to-play much like Wizard101. It's still up in the air though if the main game will be based on subscriptions or micro-transactions. I believe the small studio that designed the game said they were avoiding the traditional leveling system found in MMOs. Instead they have some sort of skill and item system which players use to increase their powers. If it follows the trend of other youth oriented game they'll also be lots of outfits and fluff to collect. I'll most likely be trying out the free portions of the game and seeing how it plays. While it most likely won't be complex enough to be serious competition for AAA MMOs, it does look like it could be fun.

www.fusionfall.com

Gearing up for Arena Season 5

2008-12-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

I had just started to feel well geared again when the new arena season arrived yesterday. I hadn't really been paying attention to when the season was going to start and I'm embarrassed to say most of my gear was tuned for DPS and not survival. As a result I wanted to avoid jumping right into arena matches and try some other PvP activities beforehand. This resulted in me discovering that my newly inflated hit points meant nothing without the resilience to back it up. I had forgotten how much I had increased my critical strike rating while leveling and that other people were probably doing the same thing. I mean everyone started off losing a lot of crit each level in Northend. But overall the new gear at level 80 seems to allow much higher critical strike ratings then we had previously.

And if you've ever done any PvP in World of Warcraft then you know that high critical strike ratings means instant death for anyone not wearing resilience gear. The only fun I had at all last night was when I had seven stacks of tenacity in Lake Wintergrasp and was going around hitting tanks for 8,000 damage. My hit points had actually ballooned enough with the tenacity buff that it didn't matter everything was hitting me for double damage. Still this made me realize that if I honestly wanted to try PvPing this time around I might actually have to collect two sets of gear. I don't really have a problem with using multiple sets of gear even though my bank is dangerously overfilled. The problem is how to go about it since I failed to think ahead and save up some honor.

Methods for preparing for Arena Season 5

1.) Use current dungeon gear and stuff high-end resilience and stamina gems into every slot.
Cons: Expensive and not as good as PvP gear. Will decrease effectiveness in PvE.
Pros: Saves bag space

2) Buy a set of player made gear that has resilience. (saronite, frostweave, etc)
Cons: Will have lower stats then normal level 80 gear. Will take up bag space.
Pros: Better resilience then trying to use PvE gear

3) Use the blue honor gear
Cons: Very time intensive to get, unless you had honor squirreled away.
Pros: Good advantage over other beginning arena teams

4) Just wear PvE gear while earning honor and arena points
Cons: Your rating probably won't be high enough to get many items
Pros: No cost and eventually you will be able to spend those arena points

I'm leaning towards either method 1) or 2) at the moment. I have a friend who can make the saronite plate gear and its might be the best solution since I only have 10,000 honor. I wasn't expected the battleground items to cost so much, but it looks like Blizzard raised the amount of honor you earn per battleground. It might be awhile before I get into the PvP groove again, but it still looks like a viable method of progressing in the game.

Arena Season 5

2008-12-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

The PvP patch is coming today and starting off the new arena season for World of Warcraft. With it comes the delightful addition of PvP armor and weapons that are sure to be on most player's Christmas lists. Still there are some changes to the way things works with the newest arena season. Blizzard has learned a lot about PvP rewards from the previous expansion and they're trying not to repeat any mistakes. In the Burning Crusade they made the season one arena gear a little too powerful compared to the gear from heroics. This sort of resulted in a dead period where people mostly ignored heroic dungeons. It really wasn't until the Badge of Justice loot started to get better that heroics and Karazhan started to see a resurgence in popularity.

This time around it looks like Blizzard is allowing multiple ways of getting the arena gear. Players will be able to use emblems, honor points, and arena points to gear up for their cage matches. Blizzard also seems to be using a more complex tier system this time around. The new arena season looks like it will have three tiers to start with. Most likely as new arena seasons are introduced the lowest tier will be dropped.

Main Set Pieces and Weapons (chest, legs, etc)

Tier 1 - Blue Arena Gear (Savage Gladiators)
(Honor and Arena points: No Ratings) or Emblems of Heroism
Equal to the Blue level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 2 - Epic Arena Gear (Hateful Gladiators)
(Arena points: Ratings from 1600-1800) or Emblems of Valor
Equal to the Epic level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 3 - Epic Arena Gear (Deadly Gladiators)
(Arena points: Ratings in the 1900-2100)
Equal to 25 man raid gear but with more PvP stats (stamina, resilience)

Secondary Set pieces and accessories (bracers, rings, etc)

Tier 1 - Epic Arena Gear (Hateful Gladiators)
(Honor Points: Ratings in the 1600-1800)
Equal to the Epic level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 2 - Epic Arena Gear (Deadly Gladiators)
(Honor points: Ratings in the 1900-2100)
Equal to 25 man raid gear but with more PvP stats (stamina, resilience)

I must say that I was not a fan of the introduction of rating requirements to PvP gear. There were too many ways to cheat the early versions of the arena system. Even with rating requirements a lot of players simply bought spots on high end teams or created a smurf team. By the time Blizzard ironed out all the bugs the cheaters were already a couple tiers ahead of most other players. This gear advantage made it impossible to compete fairly and I found myself wandering to other games that promised PvP glory. The same thing could happen again, but not unless a new flaw in the PvP reward system is found. Otherwise I think Blizzard has a fair chance of keeping a static, but somewhat satisfying PvP game going for quite some time.

Some good Arena Gear Links:
MMO Champion and WoWhead