Three weeks ago I wanted to sit down, relax, and play Call of Duty 3 on my Xbox 360. I put in the disc, booted up the 360, began loading up my saved game, and within 30 seconds "Soandso invites you to a game". I don't want to play multiplayer, I want to play single player. I decline the invite, disconnect myself from Xbox Live, and start playing again. But now I feel guilty. The guy who sent me the invite is a friend I haven't seen in a while. All he wanted to do was go around shooting some newbs. What sort of ass do I have to be to disconnect from Live and play a single player game? So now I'm playing single player Call of Duty 3, sitting through the same stupid movie sequence I've seen fifty times, and feeling like an ass because I just blew off a friend of mine.

When did this sort of guilt infect our game play? Why should I feel bad for not wanting to connect to online games? When did these feelings of remorse and duty move us to play games we don't really want to play?

Often in war we hear soldiers say they aren't fighting for some doctrine or political mantra but for the buddy next to them. They're there to protect the friend sitting in the trench at their side. Like the Greek Phalanx, their shield protects the man to their left. They may not want to be in the war in the first place. They may disagree with the politics or the doctrine or the strategy or the tactics, but they are there because if they weren't, their friend's flank goes undefended.

Perhaps it is this philosophy that guide us to play games when we don't really want to play. How many times have I played Everquest for three or six or nine hours when my only real reason for being there was that other people could use my help? I didn't enjoy it. Likely I had played through the event many times. For example in the Plane of Sky for example, but the only reason I was there was because I knew that some warrior needed his sword or some mage needed a crown. Tunare knows I asked the same from others.

I never booted up Final Fantasy 7 because I was afraid Red XIII wouldn't like me if I didn't. That same pressure doesn't exist in single player games. I am reminded of those old Japanese LCD keychains where one had to take care of a virtual dog. Leave the virtual dog in a desk drawer for a week and you'd see this little sad dog, ribs showing, and sitting in its own filth. Who needs to feel the pressure of care and feeding from a device powered from a watch battery?

Single player games have very little guilt associated with them. You might feel pressure to finish a game even if you're not really enjoying it. You might consider it a waste of money if you don't spend some time on it. Right now I feel the desire to play Final Fantasy IV on my Nintendo DS not because its so wicked fun, although I do enjoy it when I play, but because I spent $30 on it and it's not seeing a lot of use.

As I write this I turn 70 degrees to my left and ask my wife, who is helping out a group in Everquest kill some tentacled cyclopean horror, if she *wants* to be doing what she's doing. "I don't mind it," she said "But I wouldn't be doing it if I wasn't asked to help." For a Saturday morning gaming activity, that isn't exactly a rave review. Yet this isn't uncommon in our MMO gaming. At best, it's something to do. At worst, it's stealing our own free time to focus on the desires of someone else. It is our desire to help others that drives us to spend our time in a game doing things we don't really want to do. When will that madness stop?

Twice before I wrote articles about the true strength of massive online games lying with the other players. The games themselves aren't the most exciting games ever created. There are bosses in God of War that outstrip just about every creature battled in a thousand hours of content in Everquest. It's the excitement of working with a team of other players, using our character's abilities as a part of a great mob-killing machine that drives us to play.

That strength can also be a detriment. Playing games with other players adds an overhead to our gaming experience. For every player added to a game, a hunt, or an event, there is the difficulty of coordination, scheduling, training, skill, and group balance. Blizzard knew this and designed World of Warcraft so that most of the game can be played without any of that overhead. A player can solo his or her way from level 1 to level 70. A lot of the most exciting events require a group and the overhead of building and leading that group often moves us to go back and collect 8 owl feathers simply because it's a lot easier to do so. There's no overhead and no guilt if you decide to leave after only collecting one.

I've spent a significant piece of my life over the past six years playing massive online games - Everquest in particular. I have over 10,000 hours logged in to my primary character. I've had a lot of fun over that career. Most recently my guild defeated Vishimtar in one of the best, most stressful Everquest battles I ever faced. I don't think I recall feeling so good after a game battle as I did then simply because of the added complexity and added responsibility floating on top of the 53 other players at the event.

The designers of massive online games would do well to recognize the overhead of multiplayer gaming. They should strive to make it as easy as possible for players to gather and get into the action.

At the same time, saying that all games will eventually go multiplayer is nonsense. Games like God of War and Zelda, Twilight Princess show us that there is a lot of room left for games that let players just sit back and play without having to worry about the social overhead of multiplayer gaming. Massive online games have the wonderful ability to, beyond any game style in the past, bring people together, help us meet new friends, and enjoy cooperative and competitive games far more than we ever could before. Other times, however, it's nice to be alone.

Loral Ciriclight
11 March 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

In the book "The Little Guide to your Well Read Life", Steve Leveen offers recommendation on choosing the right book to read. His first rule is simple. If you don't like a book after fifty pages, close the book and move on. Time is too valuable and there are too many good books out there to waste it on a book you don't enjoy. You may miss out on a book that gets considerably better after the past fifty pages but is it really worth slogging through material you don't like to find out?

I have a similar philosophy with console games. If a console game doesn't grab me in the first two hours of play, it's better to shelf it and play something I like. The only game I've played in the past few years that didn't follow this theory was Zelda: Twilight Princess on Wii. Zelda got considerably better after the first six hours or so and became the best console game I've played since God of War even with a very weak beginning. Gears of War, Crackdown, Elite Beat Agends, The New Super Mario Brothers; these games all grabbed me within the first ten minutes and never let go.

In my preview of The Buried Sea I talked about all of the basic features that the expansion had: sixty instanced group missions, two new sets of point-based loot, seven huge uninstanced zones and a whole variety of new mobs to fight. It all looked very exciting but given the preview alone, I had no idea if those sixty missions were actually any good.

I haven't played the Buried Sea nearly as much as previous expansions, but with the few missions I have tried, I found the answer to that question. They're not.

On a Sunday afternoon a few weeks past, myself and a group of friends tried out three of the missions involving the lost love of of some pirate. These are pirate missions, from the first set of missions one can acquire. These are supposed to be the easiest missions available, missions for sub level 75 low-geared characters and we were geared in Anguish level equipment.

Even getting to the instances proved a challenge. You talk to one NPC to receive the mission and then must purchase a ticket for one of two different boats (if they tell you which one you are supposed to take, I missed it) which will take you to the instance. Once you figure it out, you'll know it the rest of your days but it wasn't clear at all how the tickets worked until you actually got a mission and had someone point out the boat you need to take.

The missions themselves include a lot of the same "pick up 10 siren head" collection quests we've seen before. Each mission seems to have a conclusion, however, that takes you away from the standard. Unfortunately the drop rates for the collection quests are extremely chaotic - one time we received ten quest items out of ten within the first twenty kills, another time it took us two hours to get the same ten. Rather than focusing the missions on the exciting conclusions, the missions force you through tedius collection or kill X steps.

The third quest in line gives you two tasks: kill thirty sirens and collect ten siren heads. First of all, I can't imagine how a sirin won't have a head after we kill her, but more importantly, we shouldn't kill fifteen of our thirty sirens and only get one head. What is the point in having the "kill 30 sirens" if we'll need to kill ninety to get the heads we need? Well, it turned out that once you complete either step a ship wrecks and you must rescue the crew. Perhaps the ambushing sirens all have heads but we never found out because all ten to twelve sirens attacked us at once and wiped out our party. By this time we had enough. We quit the quest and called it a day. At least three of us planned to switch to Warcraft that afternoon.

Three missions out of sixty is probably not enough of a sampling to make a full judgement. The other fifty seven missions might all be wonderful dynamic stories and adventures. Perhaps it's only those three that are so poorly tested or developed. I should really spend more time playing through more of the missions before snapping to a judgement about The Buried Sea. What I have seen so far is a lot of running around in huge complex zones to hunt down instances and hope that something along the mission doesn't get fowled up along the way.

My time is the most important commodity I have. I only have a few hours every week to play these games. More and more hobbies take up that time and I have to decide exactly where my time is best spent. Should I keep trying to slog through poorly designed missions until I find the ones that are good enough, well tuned enough, and rewarding enough to spend my time? Or should I go somewhere where I know the sort of output I am likely to expect?

The Burning Crusade has some problems. Last weekend I made a spectacle out of myself in the general channel when my level 62 character had to collect owl feathers for a drunken dwarf. The feathers rarely dropped on big white owls that killed me faster than the demons of the Gate. What sad state in my hunter's career had I reached when my job as a Hunter of the Outlands is to collect feathers from owls? Needless to say, I dumped that quest and moved on.

That's not the only example of a poorly designed quest in WoW. It has lots of problems. However, per hour played I have more fun in WoW than I do in EQ. Granted it isn't doing what I prefer doing - grouping with friends - but it offers a better tangible and intangible reward for the time I spend. And the Burning Crusade only cost $10 more than the Buried Sea.

Tonight I went in with five of my guildmates to complete "Locating the Statue". We defeated the four statue guardians. We defeated Brendanus Riordan even with his billion hitpoints. We examined the statue of Prexus. I even took a screenshot. The transcript, however, never showed up in anyone's inventory. So now what, do the quest again? We spent our two hours. We finished the steps. Why should we have to do it again and hope that this time it isn't bugged? I wasted one evening, why waste another?

I'll likely get back into the Buried Sea and find some missions that I enjoy. At this point, however, I'm far more likely to have others slog through those painful poorly-tuned missions and tell me on the forums or in chat banter which ones are worth my time and which are not.

In the mean time, however, when ever asked by a new player which massive online game to play, I have little reason to point them anywhere else but World of Warcraft. It's a better game.

The Buried Sea has an excellent list of features but my first fifty pages makes me want to put the book back on the shelf.

Loral Ciriclight
3 April 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

Almost since its birth, players have been asking about the possible death of Everquest. Any game requiring a company's commitment as much as a massive online game will put doubt in the minds of the players. What happens if the company loses its motivation to maintain the game before the players lose the motivation to play? The remaining players of Asheron's Call 2 found out when it closed down shortly after an expansion's release.

Let's take a look at the current status of Everquest.

Is Everquest dead? That requires a personal definition for a dead MMO. For the sake of this article, I will define MMO death as the lack of any support at all. Only when the servers are shut down, when all the developers are moved off to other projects, when all the support shuts down, and when players are unable to play; only then is a MMO really dead. Everquest is a long way from dead.

Is EQ dying? As long as new expansions continue to be produced and released and as long as there are enough players to allow groups and raids to face existing encounters, a MMO isn't dying. By this definition, Everquest is not dying.

But back to the original question: Is SOE Abandoning Everquest?

This is a harder question to define but let us consider a few known variables.

SOE is a different sort of company than other massive online game producers. While other MMO companies might focus on a single title, SOE has built a business around running multiple games with the same back-end infrastructure. They act as a MMO service provider. Not only do they run games with few actual players but they even pick up games that might be struggling. Matrix Online is one such example.

One element easily used to gauge the health of Everquest is to watch Everquest Online Adventures. EQOA has a lot of difficulty to overcome. It is a console title for an older system. It required specialized hardware, a wired network adapter and keyboard, to run. It had very little expansion or patch potential since patches had to fit within a Playstation 2 memory card. How EQOA ever got out the door is somewhat of a miracle. It isn't a bad game but it required a lot of work from the player to even get started.

Everquest Online Adventures still operates today, four years after its original release. With the release of the Playstation 3, it would still seem that EQOA's future is even more bleak but still it hangs on.

EQOA is the MMO we should watch to see just how long SOE will keep a MMO alive before deciding to pull the plug. Right now it would appear that any loss SOE accepts in relation to EQOA is low enough to make it worth keeping around. They can lower this loss by tying it into the rest of the server, network, and support infrastructure used by all of the other games they support.

This broad MMO infrastructure means that any of the SOE-branded MMOs are likely to stay online for a very long time. EQ, as one of the more popular SOE MMOs, is no exception.

SOE continues to announce and release new expansions for Everquest twice a year. While some, like the Serpent's Spine, have more to offer than others, like Prophecy of Ro, a lot of new content gets released every year into a game now eight years old.

SOE recently made a strategic decision that had many questioning the health of the game. The Serpent's Spine, an expansion intended to bring new players into the game by offering a new player race and large hunting areas, quests, and encounters for levels 1 to 75, was released only digitally. They did not sell it retail and did not offer a boxed version. For an expansion intended to bring new players into EQ, this seemed a strange decision. This practice continued with the Buried Sea.

This shift to online only releases seems to dictate that SOE has changed its philosophy in relation to EQ. Rather than attempt to bring new players into EQ, SOE hopes to bring older players back to EQ and keep current players playing. Given the very stiff competition of World of Warcraft, this might be a smart move. In the mind of one pompous egotistical high elf, EQ cannot compete with World of Warcraft for new players.

SOE recently announced the release of a new compilation pack for Everquest called the Everquest Anniversary Edition. This $20 boxed package will be available retail and includes Everquest and every current expansion. That is an amazing deal considering that, for us old timers, the base game and all thirteen expansions cost about $400. The release of the Anniversary edition could do a better job of bringing in new players than the release of the Serpent's Spine. Only time will tell.

What of Everquest 2? How does it relate to SOE's attitude towards EQ? We cannot know what is in the minds of the management at SOE but we can make assumptions on their overt behavior.

Everquest 2 cost a lot of money and a lot of that money likely came from Everquest's profits. SOE put a lot into the technology and marketing of EQ2 going so far as to release an entirely new set of player models strictly to market to Asian gamers. One cannot help but wonder if the money spent on Asian-friendly player models might instead have been spent on new player models for Everquest. Since the first days players asked for new player models we heard that the costs were simply too high. Yet a short time later SOE announces the release of new player models for EQ2. It is possible that these models were financed by the Taiwanese developer of Everquest 2, Soga, but I could never get a clear answer when I asked this question to SOE.

While SOE chose to release The Serpent's Spine download only, they still released and heavily marketed Echos of Faydwer Everquest 2 expansion to retail shelves. Again one could speculate that this shows SOE's desire to market only one of these games to new players. We cannot know the exact resources SOE spends on one game over another but we can safely speculate that EQ2 takes up significantly more resources than EQ. When one company runs two games, or in this case even more, there are times when its resources have to go one way or another.

What does this all mean for existing Everquest players? Not much. As long as we desire it, Everquest is likely to continue. As long as expansions are profitable, we will continue to see them every six months. As long as SOE has a team of artists, designers, and programmers dedicated to Everquest, we should continue to see improvements in the game.

There are areas where SOE's focus on EQ2 hurts Everquest, however, and it is important that our voices are heard. Better quality control, new player models, better server and network stability, and improved exploitation prevention are all important topics to existing EQ players. These requests also require significant resources and only by speaking out can we clearly show SOE that it needs to spend the required resources Everquest deserves.

Is SOE abandoning Everquest? Only if we let them.

Loral Ciriclight
22 April 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

On 30 April 2007, Everquest's current producer, Clint Worley, announced that SOE would begin a yearly development cycle for Everquest expansions beginning this November and taking place every November thereafter. Today we discuss the possible impact of this large strategic change in Everquest's development.

During the original Everquest Community Summit SOE stated that predictable population drops occurred between expansions. The population would also predictably rise every time a new expansion was released. SOE argued that six-month development cycles helped keep the population more steady than the peaks and valleys seen in yearly expansions. Now SOE moves back to the yearly expansions, a release cycle we haven't seen since the release of Planes of Power.

This recent change brings up many more questions than answers. For example, what will this do to the development team itself? Will SOE reduce the amount of money spent over the year? Will the same number of developers remain on the staff throughout the year-long development cycle? How does this affect the developer's salaries? If it lowers the amount of money they earn, will they be more likely to find other projects?

What will this do to the product itself? Will the cost increase? Some players speculate that the cost will likely go up to $40 per expansion. A yearly release of the entire Everquest collection including all previous expansions and one new expansion could be another strategy. With the strength of competing MMO expansions such as Blizzard's Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft, SOE may have a hard time selling an Everquest expansion for the same cost.

What will happen to the in-game population over the year? Will the lands of Norrath become barren during the summer months? Video and computer game releases often relax during the summer months, hoping to focus attention closer to the holidays. The number of people playing Zelda: Twilight Princess during the summer matters very little to the overall health of any single player's experiences, but a reduced population in an MMO affects each player who wishes to play - especially in a game with a very clear focus on group and raid encounters.

What caused SOE to make this radical change? The quality of expansions released in the spring has always lagged behind the quality of expansions released in the fall. What happened recently to make them decide that a yearly release was a better idea? Was it the clear lack of quality in spring releases or some other decision based on player metrics and business trends?

What will SOE do with those extra months? Will we see larger expansions like Omens of War, The Serpent's Spine, or even Planes of Power? Will SOE return to a multi-tiered model where even high-end raiders need to progress through multiple sets of end-zones in order to complete all of the raids in a single expansion? Will SOE use the time to debug, tune, balance, and polish the release? We can certainly hope.

Why would SOE tell us this now? Perhaps they tell us to help quiet the voices that complain about the current twice-yearly release cycle or perhaps they are setting us up for future changes yet unheard.

It will be nearly nineteen months before we see the true result of this change. The November release this year gives SOE two more months to improve this fall's expansion but we won't see the full result of a yearly development cycle until fall 2008. That's a long way off and a lot can happen. With the recent release of Lord of the Rings Online and the upcoming Age of Conan, the competition for massive multiplayer online role playing games gets thick. Blizzard will no doubt release another expansion for World of Warcraft in that time. Rumors speak to a new Blizzard MMO release as well, possibly announced in May. This is also the first full year with consoles being able to fully support massive online games without any hardware modifications or additions. What will the population in Everquest be like when the MMO universe has many alternate worlds to explore and half a year before Norrath sees changes to its landscape?

The console market is ready for a good powerful console-based massive online game. All of these things may drastically change the landscape between now and the first full-year expansion release for Everquest since Planes of Power.

We will end this discussion with a few predictions and a few things to monitor over the next year.

First, I predict the next expansion will be a large one with a level increase, possibly even to 85, and multiple tiers of single-group and raid progression. The expansion will have to include a large amount of progressive encounters and rewards to keep people playing throughout most of 2008. It may also include a large amount of solo content, and may need to if the populations do begin to lower over the summer of 2008. I hope we begin seeing more regular releases of new player models. SOE cannot include new models in an expansion if they plan to change them for everyone, but it is clearly the most outdated feature of Everquest right now. Overall, I expect this year's expansion to be a big one, on the order of Omens of War, The Serpent's Spine, and maybe even Planes of Power.

Over the next year we should continue to watch the population of Everquest. I expect we may see a server merger in the spring of 2008 to off-set the reduced amounts of players over the summer. We should also keep an eye on the development staff itself. If we start to see some of the bigger names moving on to newer projects, that could bode poorly for the game overall. Eventually Everquest will make that transition from a fully developed and marketed product to one of maintenance and upkeep. This next year may be the time we see this switch.

At this time we have far more questions than answers. We can keep our fingers on the silk strands of our web, feeling for the vibrations that will tell us more of what may come to pass, but for now, the web remains still.

Loral Ciriclight
5 May 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

The circles of massive online gaming grows ever wider. The industry's reaction to the success of World of Warcraft is beginning to pay off as new games are released in a post World of Warcraft industry. Today we will talk about two of newer games; Vanguard and Lord of the Rings Online; as well as discuss Everquest's latest announced expansion, Secrets of Faydwer.

The criers cried loudly over the past few weeks in relation to Vanguard. A few months ago, Sigil announced that Sony Online would manage Vanguard's back-end maintenance including servers and support. Later in a highly publicized and brutal set of articles we learned that Sigil, the company behind Vanguard, brought the entire staff into the parking lot and fired them. While half of the staff ended up getting hired on by SOE, who now controls the entire Vanguard game, not just the back-end maintenance, the other half did not.

I was reminded of an article I read a few years ago when Microsoft shut down a major operation in Japan. In Japan, there is often an unspoken bond between employers and employees. Employment is often for life. When Microsoft's Xbox sales took a dive in Japan, they brought a large number of employees in to a conference room, told them they were fired, and escorted them out the opposite door outside the building. They had no idea how the employees would react and thought it safer than dropping a pink slip into a mail box.

An unofficial and anonymous interview with one of the Sigil casualties circulated as well giving an incredibly detailed, albeit one-sided, accounting of the development of Vanguard. Though clearly biased, this interview gave quite a bit of detail into the lack of solid development, the lack of clear direction, and the importance of saving face to the outside world while inside its a rats nest of office politics and duct-tape coding.

Held within the arms of SOE, Vanguard is likely to exist for a long while. Those few who enjoy the game can likely continue playing it as long as they desire.

If I had to make one clear statement about what caused a game like Vanguard to fail, I would point at system requirements. World of Warcraft made a few points very clear when considering the success of a massive online game:

1. You have to support lower powered systems.

2. You have to support soloing.

3. You have to give clear direction for progression with quests and a rewarding leveling curve.

In another case study, we have Lord of the Rings Online. While I have not played the game myself, I have seen it over my right shoulder on my wife's system. Lord of the Rings learned much from Warcraft in both the interface and the game design. The UI is clean and requires no customization to be effective. The quests are streamlined, well understood, clearly labeled, and polished. Though not as system-friendly as WoW, the game runs well on lower powered systems and flawlessly on current hardware platforms.

One aspect of Lord of the Rings Online has a clear advantage over World of Warcraft: Middle Earth.

Blizzard has done a good job over the past ten years in building a solid fantasy world but it's nothing when compared to the power J.R.R Tolkein's Lord of the Rings has held over the fantasy genre for the past fifty years. Much of the fantasy we enjoy these days comes from the original thoughts of Tolkein. No other story has impacted fantasy as much as Lord of the Rings and, with the recent success of the three films, there is probably no more valuable piece of intellectual property for a game world. Whatever Turbine paid for the rights, it was worth it.

Turbine, the developers of Lord of the Rings Online, or LOTRO to those who walk Middle Earth, learned well from their history. They developed three other massive online games; Asheron's Call, Asheron's Call 2, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. They developed a game that is easy to play, plays well on older hardware, and captures Middle Earth enough that fans of the world feel like they're part of the story. It has all of the makings of a successful MMO and, from initial reports, that success has been initially achieved.

Turbine's history is not flawless, however. The failure of Asheron's Call 2 is well known as one of the largest failures of any massive online game. If MMO producers learn one lesson from history, they would do well to learn it from Turbine's actions with Asheron's Call 2 and SOE's self-declared mistake in naming Everquest 2 as a sequel to Everquest. MMO sequels hurt not only the sequel but also the original. With three active MMOs, it would also do well for Turbine to consolidate the back end maintenance and support of all their games into a single infrastructure as SOE has done. Doing so builds a much more stable environment for the survival of MMOs with lower numbers of subscribers.

Lord of the Rings Online has a lot going for it and I expect it to do very well. It won't dethrone World of Warcraft, but it would not surprise me to hear of subscriptions over one million.

Now we turn our spyglasses to the west where SOE recently announced Secrets of Faydwer, the fourteenth expansion for Everquest due for release in November 2007. This announcement came shortly after Clint Worley's producer's letter which described a new yearly release cycle beginning this November and every November thereafter.

SOE released a few facts with the announcement including a level increase to 80 and the new spells and AAs required with any level increase. The expansion looks to be an overland expansion based in Faydwer with possibly two larger endzones, one the lair of a gnomish necromancer and the other surrounding one of Norrath's most notorious villains, Kerafyrm The Sleeper.

Those adventurers of the old worlds remember Kerafyrm as the devastating force released from the Sleeper's Tomb. Kerafyrm was the only monster to ever walk across zones in Everquest, killing every player and non-playing character in every zone in which it traveled. In a great tale captured in the legends of Everquest, Kerafyrm was actually killed on a single server, Rallos Zek, by over 150 players in a three or four hour period of constant attacking, dying, and resurrecting. Many old time players will enjoy facing off against the most powerful of dragons later this year.

With a year gap between the release of Secrets of Faydwer and the next Everquest expansion, Secrets must contain a lot of events, encounters, zones, and rewards to keep players happy and continuing to play throughout the year. It is unlikely any expansion beyond Planes of Power can contain enough to keep all players happy and playing throughout the year.

As we get closer to November, we will likely hear more of the features contained in Secrets of Faydwer.

Turning our spyglass to Blizzard, we see the release of the World of Warcraft 2.1 patch. We should all recognize the importance of us downloading a 300 meg patch so that the upper .001% of WoW players can have the Black Temple to feast upon. I kid, of course, but as a player who primarily spends his days hunting fel-gazelles in hellish grassy lands that look strangely similar to lands in which I hunted at level 25, I can only watch the most excellent Black Temple trailer and imagine that, if I had 20 extra hours a day, I too could walk those cursed lands and face Illidan himself.

Maybe someday.

Loral Ciriclight
26 May 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

Last week I spent a few hours playing the new Shadowrun demo for the Xbox 360. It is a very interesting evolution in first person shooters (FPSs). Rather than the standard run, jump, and shoot we find in most FPS games these days, Shadowrun adds "new verbs" as the marketing guys like to say. You can run, jump, glide, teleport, blast back, see through walls, resurrect, and heal. You can combine magic, technology, and firepower all as fast as you can hit your bumpers and triggers. It's a pretty amazing game but I'm not going to buy it.

It isn't the game itself that steers me away but the knowledge that I am never going to be good enough to compete with those who will have more time, more skill, and more dedication to it than I will have. Shadowrun focuses exclusively on online play and with an online game, there is no option for me to enjoy it in my own way. Other games like Halo 2 at least had a single player campaign but even those disappointed me when I knew how much energy went into the multiplayer portion of that game, a portion I would rarely play and never enjoy.

I've pontificated at great length on the difficulties of the non-raider in Everquest. For six years I played Everquest dozens of hours a week without ever reaching into the depths of Everquest's high-end raid content. Though I spent extensive time in Everquest, I never broke into the inner circles of high-end raiders until recently. Some players in Everquest, and also now in Warcraft, complain about the lack of support for those who have not the time, skill, or dedication to achieve the highest rewards. This problem isn't exclusive to these games. Recently, on the most excellent 1UP Yours podcast (43 meg MP3 file link), they discussed the barrier of entry for gamers who want to play competitive online games but cannot break into that circle of hard core elite gamers.

Building quality games for hobbyist gamers is extremely hard to do. Most games either focus on hard core elite gamers or focus on extremely short-duration gaming with little room in between. This has been a problem as long as gaming has existed but as games become more and more social, as more players interact with one another within these games, the problem becomes much more apparent.

Simple solutions cannot solve this problem. Adding features that automatically balance difficulties to even out the battleground will clearly show themselves as artificial. Hard core gamers won't like seeing their power limited and the victories of hobbyist gamers will feel hollow.

Before we dig too deep into this discussion, let us lay out some definitions.

Hard core gamers are gamers who have both the skill and the time to become the elite within any particular game. These are the high-end raiders in massive online games like Everquest and Warcraft. These are the guys who have ten times as many kills as the next highest player in Halo 2. These are the guys who make magic in Shadowrun really look like magic. These are the guys who post Youtube videos of themselves playing Freebird on Expert at 95% in Guitar Hero 2.

It would be easy for us to stereotype hard core players as jobless pimply teens hiding in their mother's basement but we'd be wrong. These can, and often are, adults with jobs and kids who just manage to have the time, skill, and dedication to be one of the best in their chosen battleground. Now that video games have hit an age where adults remember playing them throughout their lives, just about anyone can be a hard core gamer.

We can define casual gamers, a term I myself demanded to be tossed into the fires of the nine hells for its constant misuse, as gamers who play for very short periods of time, have little skill for more complex games, and who care little for the games themselves other than as a way to kill a few minutes. Casual gamers play solitare, they play flash games, and they play freecell when their boss isn't looking. They might play a Nintendo DS once in a while. They're the masses of people who still fawn over the bowling game for their Nintendo Wii. Any gamer who would take the time to read a message forum, read an article, or listen to a podcast about gaming spend very little time considering true casual gamers. We don't even consider them gamers. The marketing groups for the big gaming companies consider them constantly, however. They're building hundreds of new cell phone games a year just for this market.

hobbyist gamers is a new term for me. It defines those gamers who still consider themselves gamers but, either due to a lack of time, a lack of commitment, or a lack of skill, cannot break into the ranks of hard core gamers. Unfortunately for them, however, they know what a hard core gamer is. They know what the hard core gamers possess. These hobbyist gamers are the ones with one, two, or even three level 60 World of Warcraft characters but without a single piece of raid gear. They're the gamers who get destroyed dozens of times in an hour of Halo 2. Their corpses litter the battlegrounds of Azeroth.

hobbyist gamers didn't have much trouble in the past. It might take them twice as long, but on single player games, a hobbyist gamer could still complete it. Only on games with extreme difficulty or extreme time requirements would a hobbyist gamer simply quit. Online, however, these gamers face different problems. Instead of running at their own pace, they are in a race with some of the best and most dedicated gamers in the world. They may have done well against automated opponents but against real players they get destroyed over and over again. They feel as though they will never be as good as the hard core gamers and, when competing with them, either directly in combat or indirectly through content progression, they simply want to quit.

What can game manufacturers do to help? The companies that figure this out stand to make a lot more than the companies that focus on either the hard core or the casual gamers. There are no easy solutions, however. Everything must be carefully balanced. Double experience bonuses, instanced adventures, high-end loot purchasing systems; all of these have helped steer massive online games towards hobbyist gamers. Everquest and World of Warcraft could both reduce the amount of time it takes to complete meaningful group encounters such as the dungeon instances in WoW and the missions in Everquest.

Thirty minutes is all that can be expected when it can, for both of these games, take nearly that long to form a group capable of completing such an event. For player versus player games, there is no clear solution. Ranking systems don't seem to work. Equipment matching doesn't help make up for player experience. Dynamic difficulties are unrewarding for both types of players. Any game that is good enough to get the attention of a hobbyist gamer would likewise get the attention of a hard core gamer so there is no way to focus an entire game directly for hobbyists without also attracting hard core gamers.

The companies that find the right balance stand to make a lot of money. Right now that continues to be primarily single-player games like Zelda Twilight Princess, Crackdown, Grand Theft Auto, and the single player Halo campaigns. The designers of World of Warcraft made some smart decisions early on by keeping leveling fast even when hard core gamers hit maximum character levels in very short periods of time. Games like the multi-player Halo, Shadowrun, Battlefield, and Everquest will continue to reward those who put in the most time, have the most skill, and the highest focus. Many players would say this is as it should be. People trying to sell the games, however, realize the large number of players they're cutting off.

Breaking through the barrier of online gaming for hobbyist gamers is the greatest current challenge of gaming today. There exists a lot of potential for those who seek to break it.

Loral Ciriclight
22 June 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

In my last article I talked about three gross stereotypes in gamers: the true casual gamer, the hobbyist gamer, and the hard core gamer. I spent most of the article focusing on the attitudes and drive of the hobbyist gamer when compared to the powerful hard core gamer. However, the market for the casual gamer stands to be far greater in number and profit than either the hobbyist or the hard core gamer. Games built for hobbyist or hard core gamers may sell up to ten million copies worldwide for the most popular games released such as Halo 2 and World of Warcraft. Casual games, however, have the potential to sell to everyone else.

World of Warcraft changed the market of MMOs by many orders of magnitude. With its simple gameplay, low system requirements, extremely accessible quest system, and fast level increases; World of Warcraft brought in ten times as many players who had never played massive online games as any previous game published in the U.S.

It is unlikely another game will make as significant an impact on the PC as World of Warcraft. Other games may, in time, achieve the same numbers but it will require an incredible amount of work, a powerful infrastructure, and a lot of luck. Lord of the Rings Online had the most popular fantasy world, a tested infrastructure, and a lot of development. It came out strong and will do well for a long time, but it has no where near the numbers of players that World of Warcraft has. No doubt developers and publishers look at the market for MMOs and realize they have no way to make a dent.

Fertile lands lay open for those with the money, experience, and drive to seed it. The latest generation of gaming consoles all include the infrastructure for successful online games. Microsoft showed how successful a market built around online console gaming can become with Xbox Live. Yet no massive online game has successfully penetrated this market. Publishers have released a few MMO titles on consoles in the past but none have hit enough sales or subscribers to push the market forward. While this is likely due to poor marketing, a poor subscription model, or simply a poor game; publishers no doubt point to these few titles as an example of how MMOs overall would perform on consoles. Doing so is akin to pointing at the first few first-person shooters on consoles and saying a game like Halo can never work.

MMOs will likely make a significant impact on consoles in the next two years. It will only take one or two well done MMOs to push consoles into the realm of powerful massive online gaming. This doesn't, however, impact casual gamers. In order to tap into the market of massive online games for casual gamers, an entirely different platform must be considered.

There are over forty million Nintendo DS portable consoles in the world today. Even three years after release, the Nintendo DS outsells all other consoles. The top selling games on the Nintendo DS are often games with very simple mechanics, very little story, and often on focused game world. Games like Brain Age, Planet Puzzle League, and Nintendogs are hardly considered games by most gamers, yet they successfully tap into markets that games like Halo and Everquest can never touch.

The Nintendo DS has all of the hardware requirements needed for massive online gaming. It has voice input and output. It has built-in wi-fi. It has enough controls, including the touch screen, to accomplish a relatively complex game. Nothing prevents a publisher from releasing a MMO on the Nintendo DS except business and marketing decisions.

Even with 40 million consoles available, the Nintendo DS is dwarfed by a much larger infrastructure of inter-connected platforms: cell phones. There are over one billion cell phones in the world today. They cross all classes and all cultures. They have no pre-defined demographic. Release a game for a cell phone and you can reach just about anyone.

Not all phones have the capability to play games at all, much less network games. The platform varies so greatly that designing any game for all cell phones might prove impossible. However, as very popular phones proliferate like the Motorola Razor and the iPhone, this platform may stabilize.

A MMO for cell phones would hardly resemble any MMO we've seen so far. They'd be more like an online chat program or SMS client than they would a game. People may have avatars that represent them and might be able to engage other players in very simple games, but a full fledged roleplaying game is unlikely. Given the successes of casual games on the PC, game consoles, and portable systems, it is unlikely a casual gamer wants a traditional role playing game anyway. They are more likely to gravitate towards social networking and simple gaming. Over time, however, these games may become richer and richer, letting casual gamers escape into online worlds that shift from the abstract worlds of online chat to more defined worlds like Middle Earth, the worlds of Harry Potter, or more likely Poke'mon.

Now for some predictions.

I predict that in 2008 Microsoft will announce a Halo massive online game for the Xbox 360. The game will be released in 2009 and sell as many copies as Halo 2 and Halo 3. It will have as many if not more subscribers than World of Warcraft and it will begin a new age of massive online gaming on game consoles. Dozens of other console MMOs will be released within 2009 and 2010 but none of them will do nearly as well. All of the articles we've seen about World of Warcraft wrecking the MMO market on the PC will be rewritten to address Halo ruining console MMOs.

I predict that Nintendo or a third-party publisher will release a simple social online game with a persistent world for the Nintendo DS. The game will be similar to Poke'mon Diamond and Pearl except with persistent online play. Most hobbyist and hard core gamers will dismiss the game as overly simple but the sales will outstrip any PC-based MMO. It will also be the first online MMO to capture male and female non-gamers over the age of 30.

I predict that Apple will build an in-house game development team for the iPhone. As iPhone sales continue to increase, Apple will begin to release small and simple games designed for the iPhone. In late 2008, one of these games will include multiplayer and in 2009 Apple will release a massive multiplayer environment akin to online chat mixed with casual games. Again hobbyist and hard core gamers will dismiss this as a rich AOL chat client rather than a game yet it will outsell computer MMOs by a factor of ten.

I predict that computer MMOs will continue to be released but with decreasing sales and decreasing numbers. By 2010 most gamers will have gravitated towards console games for massive online games.

By 2020 over a billion people will be interconnected through portable massive online communities. Hundreds of different games from dozens of different players will let people interact and interconnect in the worlds and environments they find most comfortable. Such environments may be as sterile as an AOL chat room or as rich as Middle Earth. Portable systems will include enough resolution, enough control, and enough bandwidth to let people interconnect in text, voice, and image anywhere on the planet.

By 2030 we'll all be driving across a desert wasteland in supercharged muscle cars in search of gasoline. Our rugged off-road tires will crunch over the billion portable devices that have long since gone dark.

By 3051 robotic alien probes will land on earth and harvest all of the silicone and broken glass to build intergalactic starships.

Or perhaps that is just a MMO I'm about to play.

Loral Ciriclight
22 June, 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

It has been 3 years since I first began writing Evil Agendas. It seemed the best way to clarify and simplify the areas I felt would best help Sony improve Everquest. The game has changed greatly since then. Five other Evil Agendas have come out since then. Sometimes the items presented are addressed, sometimes not. Today we look again at the elements that would best help Everquest improve this year.

There are a few factors to consider before attempting to define what might best improve the game. For one, for who are these improvements meant to help? Is there an attempt to bring in new players? Is there an attempt to draw from those who no longer find World of Warcraft satisfying? Is the intent to help keep hard core players continuing to play? Should Everquest continue to refine and polish their high-end raid game? Without knowing the exact strategy SOE employs towards Everquest, I can only guess at what improvements might best help the game meet its goals.

The five areas of improvement listed below assume a desire to bring old players back in, keep existing players playing, and bring in new players where possible. I have stated many of these items before, but I feel they are important enough to keep currently in mind.

1. Rebuild the Plane of Knowledge.

The Plane of Knowledge continues to be one of the top three, if not the most popular, zone in Everquest. The current architecture for the zone is six years old. While SOE has attempted to make new city zones since then such as Abysmal Sea and Crescent Reach, none of these zones has drawn any significant number of players.

Rebuild the Plane of Knowledge and continue to use it as a hub zone for Everquest players of all levels. Build neighborhoods that remind players of the heritage of their characters. Add quests and instances for short duration events at all levels. Make it look good enough and perform well enough to remind us that this game isn't suffering from an eight year history.

2. Add new Player Models.

The existing player models continue to be a legacy from the Everquest of old. The poorly performing and graphically broken Luclin models end up pushing many players back to the original Everquest models developed in 1998. Although we saw a lot of board traffic discussing a new human model, that model, originally discussed a year ago, has not yet been released. Find a faster and more efficient way to release high performance and good looking player models.

3. Focus on 30 to 60 minute events.

With so many newer games out, the tolerance for long-duration events including single group quests, missions, and raids, has gone down. Many players no longer accept long duration 90 minute to two hour events from the older expansions. Shorter events let players get in, have fun, progress, and leave within a time period that is more acceptable to the rest of their lives. Newer games have shown these durations to be possible, rewarding, and fun. Tune these events towards the bulk of the players who go through them, not to those who are able to do them the fastest. Tuning content around the highest power and fastest players ends up hurting the event for everyone else.

4. Reduce flagging restrictions and Remove flags for zones older than two years.

Flagging high-end zones is intended to increase the amount of time it takes high-end raiding guilds to reach the end of any given expansion. When the flags are put in place and tuned, they are tuned towards guilds who raid five to seven days a week for four to six hours. When those expansions become forgotten by those high end guilds, a new tier of guilds, guilds who play fewer nights a week for less hours, then have to overcome those flagging restrictions only with less actual play time.

Remove flag restrictions on end-zones two years after the expansion is released. This will add new life to these zones and help guilds with less time or lower powered players progress quick enough to enjoy the higher-end content in newer expansions. Making a three day raiding guild go through the same steps as a seven day raiding guild strictly because that seven day guild got through content so fast doesn't make sense. Flagging continues to be considered nothing more than a burden to overcome; not something fun and enjoyable.

5. Reduce filler and focus on fun.

Recent expansions revealed more and more content containing large amounts of unentertaining and time consuming encounters. Both single group missions, flagging requirements, and raid zones have become filled with creatures strictly to slow players down. They do not add to the enjoyment of the event. While a certain amount of such encounters are required, they should be reduced from their current number. Going from Tacvi to Anguish to Demiplane have shown an increase in filler mobs. Single group missions also show a large amount of filler mobs before reaching the climax of an adventure. Instead of offering interesting encounters before a climactic battle, it becomes drudgery. Kill X minions to kill 60 minutes before we reach the event we actually intended to play. Reduce tedium and increase fun.

Loral Ciriclight
11 August 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

I began playing Dungeons and Dragons in high school in the 1989. Back then we played 2nd edition which, in retrospect, lacked a lot of the power of the original and current versions of D&D but managed to keep all of the complexity. Somehow we muddled through the rules of Thac0s, the lack of any demon princes and devil lords, and unique stat bonuses for every stat and still have a good time. I remember fondly the time when we battled Lord Manshoon and one of my players swallowed a spider in his big glass of lemonade at the same time.

Since then I've been playing D&D on and off for the past eighteen years, all of it as a DM. I love the low technology of a tabletop role playing game. I love working out the math and the stats myself. I love building a dynamic story at the table based on some themes, plot seeds, and characters I develop beforehand. I love having a group of friends laughing, rolling dice, eating Doritos, and having a good time.

This year my wife and I decided we would go to Gencon, the biggest tabletop gaming convention in the world. What follows is my account of the best four days in gaming. Everquest players take note that only a part of this article will discuss the lands of Norrath so skip ahead if you care not at all for the rest of it.

Stepping into the Indiana Convention Center on Thursday after lunch, I knew I was in trouble. Immediately I became aware that there was no way I would be able to pack in everything I wanted to do in four days. Looking through the phonebook-sized convention guide, one finds thousands of games going on. My wife, having the clearest head of the two of us, had pre-signed us up for a number of excellent events so we didn't have to scramble too much. Knowing what we know now, however, gives us a great idea about how to handle it next year.

Sometimes, while working at our day jobs, watching popular television, and walking around the malls, one forgets just how many geeks and nerds there are in the world. Walking into a convention hall with thousands of people who all know how to calculate a fighter's attack bonus is a wonderful thing. For a brief four days I learned what it would be like to live in a world of geeks and what a wonderful world it would be. Like the EQ Fan Faires, you get to hang out with thousands of people who all share a passion for a hobby that few in the outside world understand at all. Being this passionate about things like gaming, science fiction, and fantasy is a wonderful thing. It defines us when most people are defined only by their job, their family, or their in-depth knowledge of the political subtleties of American Idol.

Going to a tabletop gaming convention in a post MMO world is an interesting experience. The market is still very strong but one can see how the strengths of an MMO shine through. Throughout my eighteen years of D&D the hardest part is finding a good group. I've had about four or five groups in that time and all of them came to me by sheer luck. There has yet to be a good, efficient, and comfortable way to meet new players for a D&D game. This is where MMOs have such a clear advantage. I can log in, hang out in the Plane of Knowledge, and, though it may take some time, find a group of people who want to adventure. That's a pretty amazing thing compared to the trouble it takes to find a good D&D group.

Within the ocean of events and games, we did get to see a couple of interesting things related to EQ. Our first stop was to SOE's room. Here SOE employees ran demos of their latest in-game collectable card game. Years ago at the first Fan Faire, I talked to one of the other players on our bus ride to the airport. He mentioned that Smed had asked him what he thought of a Magic: The Gathering style game built into Everquest with certain rare cards as loot drops from in-game monsters and certain rewards that carried over to your character. I hadn't heard anything since but apparently that idea solidified.

The holidays literally fell upon us here in the north east. While the gaming scene last year focused primarily on systems such as the release of the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo Wii, this is the year for games. It usually takes a year before console games really start to match the power of the hardware and this year was no exception. Nearly every week since the beginning of October, excellent games have been released for all of the top gaming platforms.

Today we will take a look at some of the better gaming gifts this year.

Systems

Top Choice: Nintendo DS

The Gameboy sold 118 million units in its fifteen year lifespan and now the Nintendo DS looks to leap over it. The Nintendo DS could very likely be the most popular game system ever made. It accomplished this feat in the following ways: it is priced well at $130, it has a large library of very good games, and it is easy to play. It isn't uncommon to see many non-gamers playing games like Brain Age and Pokemon every spare minute. If Xbox Live Arcade and the Nintendo Virtual Console show the popularity of casual gaming, the Nintendo DS manifests it completely.

The Nintendo DS is the best of all game systems on the market. Unlike the Wii's Wiimote, Nintendo and other third parties clearly understand how to use the touch screen of the DS. While not all of the top games on the DS use the touch screen, others, like Zelda Phantom Hourglass and Brain Age, use it completely.

For strong Nintendo DS games, look for the New Super Mario Brothers, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Contra 4, Brain Age 2, Planet Puzzle League, and Geometry Wars: Galaxies.

The Nintendo DS will make an excellent gift.

Top Console: Xbox 360

Of all the current home consoles, the Xbox 360 is the best one. The controller is simple and elegant, a single device with enough buttons and controls to control some complicated games but ergonomic enough to make it easy to play some of the simpler Xbox Live Arcade games. Unlike the Wii's required classic controller and nunchuck, the 360's single controller is all that is needed for any of the 360 games save Guitar Hero or Rock Band for obvious reasons.

Technically the 360 is very strong. It includes in-game Dolby Digital sound and high definition graphics up to 1080p. If you want your new HDTV to look great, try out one of the better looking 360 games.

Xbox Live is an excellent online system and probably the biggest strength of the 360. One can buy the Xbox 360 basic system for $350 and immediately download ten game demos and maybe a hundred Xbox Live Arcade demos. Unlike the Wii's online store, a 360 owner can try out any of these game demos for free without any additional cost. Xbox Live also includes one of the best persistent player reputation systems. If you pay the 360 tax of $50 every six months, you can play games online with your friends as well. This multi-player tax is one of the drawbacks of Xbox Live, but it's a small one when you consider what you get for free.

Of all of the top systems right now, including the Wii and the Playstation 3, the 360 has the strongest line up of good games, the best characteristics, the best online mode, and at a decent cost. Save your money from the PS3 and save your time from the Wii; get the 360.

Games

World of Warcraft + Burning Crusade

The empire of World of Warcraft continues to grow with nearly ten million subscribers and generating over five hundred million in profit every year. For a game that requires staying power, WoW has it.

WoW continues to be one of the best, if not the best, massive multiplayer online game available. With beautiful graphics, a huge world, excellent solo, group, and raid play; the game has something for just about everyone. WoW can point its success to playing well on lower end systems, extremely accessible gameplay, and tons of polish. WoW itself can be purchased for $20 while Burning Crusade runs another $20. For forty bucks and $15 a month, it builds one of the largest and most beautiful virtual worlds ever to exist.

Everquest: Secrets of Faydwer

World of Warcraft isn't for everyone. While it appeals to the masses, others seek the worlds off of the superhighways of gaming. Everquest continues strong into its eighth year with the release of Secrets of Faydwer, a single package that contains the core game and all fourteen expansions. While not as newbie friendly or clearly accessible as World of Warcraft, Everquest contains years worth of content. Not bad for $25 on Amazon.

Halo 3

It's probably not worth mentioning considering the popularity but Halo 3 is the game to own on the 360. A strong single player campaign, excellent co-op play, and a deep reward system for the wide range of multi-player competition modes all combine into a game that will likely remain active for years to come. Halo 3 is the strongest 360 game available.

Orange Box

Half Life 2 on its own is an excellent game. The two expansion packs are each strong, although short, diversions back into the world of Black Mesa. Combine this with Team Fortress, a class based first person shooter, and then throw a 3d platform game in the mix and you have a lot to do in a single box. If you have only one game to buy, this might be the one.

Rock Band

Guitar Hero 2 changed how I understood video games. I have never had as much fun playing a game as I did nailing "Freebird" on Hard. I hosted "Dress Like A Rock Star" Guitar Hero 2 parties and played until my fingers went numb. Guitar Hero reminds us that the core of gaming is fun. The closer to fun the game keeps you, the better game it is. Rock Band appears to take Guitar Hero to the next level with new songs, additional instruments, and new modes of play. I've got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!

Assassin's Creed

Though I have not yet played it, Assassin's Creed appears quite strong. Some reviews point to repetitive gameplay as a failing but made up for with visual beauty and a very strong protagonist. This one appears to be a good one.

Mass Effect

Though the top Xbox 360 seem to focus on first person shooters, Mass Effect may break the mold. A powerful story and character driven dialog seem to be the strengths of this game with a solid RPG engine within. I'm looking forward to this one.

The wild shot: The Ott-Lite TrueColor Floor Lamp

For the big reader in your life, nothing beats a good strong natural light. The OTT-LITE floor lamp brings out the pure color of a good graphic novel and makes sitting and reading a book over hours a true pleasure. It may look expensive but Michael's usually has them on sale for 50% off. I love mine.

Avoid the Wii

Everyone either has a Wii or wants a Wii. Though it's been out for over a year, Wiis are still nearly impossible to get. I've had a Wii nearly since its release. I waited in line at four in the morning to get one. I've played through Zelda and Metroid. It is with this experience that I can say the following:

Don't bother.

Though Zelda, Mario, and Metroid are all strong titles, they are at the top of a small narrow hill. There aren't a lot of games for the Wii and very few have used the Wiimote in any strong or positive way. Though sold as a system for non-gamers, the Wii is surprisingly complex with two main controllers, a classic controller, and a game cube controller all required to play across all the games the system can play. I can't see how non-gamers will ever be able to figure out the complex controls of Zelda or Metroid. Even as an experienced gamer with 10 hours of time into Metroid, I still pressed the wrong buttons. Though far more classical, I found the Xbox 360 controller to be a lot simpler and a lot more intuitive for the games that use it properly.

The Wii also lacks Dolby Digital sound and high definition resolution. While some may point out that few people have HDTVs, they are a lot cheaper now than they used to be and all the HD consoles will still play on normal TVs. The time for low resolution gaming is over. With every Wii game I play, part of me always wishes that I could play the game in HD.

Nintendo's Virtual Console game download system also trails behind Xbox Live for one clear reason: no free trial version. While I can try out every 360 game before I buy it, it will cost me ten bucks to remember how much I hated Contra 3. People shouldn't have to pay just to try out the first level of a game they paid for 10 years ago.

When all is said and done, the Xbox 360 is the strongest console out there. The Wii, while very popular, has clear shortcomings and, until it has a stronger library, can be easily missed.

So there we have this year's Mobhunter Buyers Guide. This is a great year for gaming on nearly all fronts. With the initial battles of the console wars behind us, now the publishers focus on delivering the best games we've ever played. Now is the time to enjoy them.

Loral Ciriclight
7 December 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com

For over three years, World of Warcraft has dominated the massive multiplayer online market. With over nine million players and a billion dollar merger between Blizzard, Activision, and Vivindi; the impact of WoW cannot be dismissed.

Many things made World of Warcraft so successful. It is very easy to play, offers smooth character progression, is well polished, and is beautiful even on low-end systems.

With the Burning Crusade over a year old now, one would think that the popularity of WoW would be dwindling. The next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, may not be out for another year. Instead of a flood of abandonment, we see a new surge in popularity.

Besides the fundamental strengths of WoW, there exist a few other reasons why WoW is able to bring in new players and keep them. Today we will look at five of these features.

Equipment Progression

All throughout World of Warcraft, players find numerous item upgrades. From level 1 to level 70, players always find constant and continuous equipment upgrades. Only once players have exhausted every quest and every instance will upgrades become scarce and even then options exist for epic-quality equipment from a variety of sources.

Up to level 70, equipment rewards from quests continually upgrade characters as they level. It isn't uncommon to upgrade two or three items in a single play session, even at higher levels.

At high levels, Blizzard opens half a dozen paths to high-end epic quality gear. These can come from heroic five-man instance drops, heroic badge rewards, solo reputation grinding, player vs. player rewards, and ten-man raids. Most of these rewards are available to anyone - not just those in the best guilds.

While instances and raids continue to offer the best gear, high quality epic gear can be acquired with solo quests by way of reputation grinding. Though many consider it a difficult and repetitive path, it is a consistent way to earn epic gear from solo quests.

Daily Quests

Within the past few patches, Blizzard implemented Daily Quests, quests repeatable once a day with rewards similar to standard quests. Blizzard did a great job making these quests entertaining and rewarding even after having done them dozens and dozens of time. These quests offer both gold and reputation, leading eventually to the epic items mentioned above. They ensure that even the highest-end players have something to do every time they log in besides sit and hope to get into the next Karazhan run. These daily quests can lead to epic equipment and flying mounts including coveted Netherdrake mount.

Single-Group Instances

The 60-70 game in World of Warcraft includes a hand-full of very strong single group instances. These instances feel more like a small raid than a typical group hunt. The bosses require specific tactics to defeat, the gear rewards are very well balanced, and the zones are beautiful. Most of the rewards from these single-group instances come as drops from bosses, but heroic instances offer heroic badges which can be turned in for epic-quality gear. Daily instance quests also help focus players on new instances each day. While some of these zones require a key, they aren't too hard to come by.

Raids

World of Warcraft also made a big shift by focusing on 10 and 25 player instances. It isn't uncommon to find ten-man pick-up Karazhan runs forming. Blizzard clearly has its eye on the majority of the players, not the high-end minority. They know who makes up their nine million players.

Power Resets

When Burning Crusade came out, many players were surprised to see level 61+ common green quest rewards outstripping their hard-earned epic quality gear at level 60. Some were angry, some happy, but most of them kept moving forward.

This choice removed any progression gap that might exist between the old world and the new world. Everyone was once again on an even playing field whether they just reached level 60 or had been farming the highest 40-man instances for months. A new player doesn't have to complete every single instance and raid in the old world to move forward in the new expansion. Sources have confirmed that Wrath of the Lich King will likewise contain a gear reset like this, making all of the high-end rewards in Burning Crusade likewise worthless. Life moves on and if one didn't enjoy earning that gear at the time, one shouldn't have bothered to earn it.

Blizzard also made a smart move with reputation. High reputation with various factions in Burning Crusade can offer some very nice gear rewards but, once a new expansion comes out, those reputations offer no substantial power difference between the players who have it and those who do not. One level 75 player in Lich King may have exalted with the Sky Guard, Netherwing Drakes, and Cenarion Expedition while another has neutral and there is no substantial power difference between the two. As new expansions come out, that reputation no longer matters. Had Blizzard put in some other form of experience, like Everquest's Alternate Ability points, the power gap would continue from expansion to expansion. Those with high AAs are more powerful than those without.

It is these power resets that keep players playing alternate characters from level 1 to the highest level. It is what keeps new players coming in, knowing they can catch up quickly to the higher end players. Who knows if this will continue as Blizzard moves from expansion to expansion, but for the next two years it isn't likely to be a problem.

World of Warcraft has redefined the face of gaming. Both players and developers are watching what Blizzard does and how the game of Warcraft will evolve. As much as an impact as it has had, Warcraft is still in the early years. It has had only one expansion so far, with another not likely until the end of the year. Yet players seem to return to this favorite, even with new competitors releasing every few months. There is a strength and stability in this game that no other seems to possess. It is no wonder that many continue to call WoW home.

Too fanboish for you? Next article we'll take a look at five failures in World of Warcraft.

Loral Ciriclight
loral@loralciriclight.com
20 January 2008

In their patch notes for version 2.4 of World of Warcraft, Blizzard removed the attunement requirements for entering Mount Hyjal, Black Temple, and Karazhan. These three raid zones have been the cornerstone of raiding in the Burning Crusade expansion. Until now, these zones have required a series of quests and instances in order for a player to enter the raid. With this patch, that requirement will disappear.

The same week that this was announced, my wife's Everquest guild went back to Planes of Power twice to get a few guild members flagged for the upcoming Everquest anniversary Fabled boss mobs. Planes of Power is over five years old now. Five years and SOE still hasn't released the flags of Planes of Power.å

Flag restrictions break guilds apart. Flag restrictions alienate players. Flag restrictions make it harder for players in a massive online game to play together. It is contrary to the primary purpose of an online RPG: bringing people together.

Flags can kill an MMO. Blizzard understands this. SOE does not.

For six years I've discussed flagging with game developers and other players. I've read all the articles about it. I've pontificated about it with hundreds of players; some who take a practical big picture approach, some more narrow-minded and exclusive. Everyone has an opinion about flagging and I will admit that, in some circumstances, it has a place. However, that place is fluid and changing - not static.

I've discussed flagging in numerous interviews with designers for Everquest. They have stated to me that the days of flagging entire expansions, like Planes of Power and Gates of Discord, are over. They state that the difficulty of the content will be the requirement for entering and battling in a zone. They state that any flagging will be minor and require very little for those who wish to enter.

Yet flags remain. New expansions still require quests to enter zones. Older zones continue to have the flags they required upon release. The designs intended to keep guilds that play four hours a day, seven days a week, from progressing too fast now get in the way of guilds that play far less often.

Flagging has wrecked guilds. Struggling guilds that lose members often have to recruit new members without flags, forcing the guild to move back to previously defeated raids. Now long-time members find themselves spending hours on raids they already defeated a year back in order to flag a handful of new people. These veterans, seeing how their time is wasted on events they no longer enjoy, rightfully leave to find better ways to use their time. Now the guild itself is even further back than before.

I have watched guilds self destruct like this for years. The guild that first entered Plane of Time on my server broke apart because flagging for Demiplane of Blood became too much of a burden. Now I see the same thing happening again with guilds facing those same flags today.

Flags also prevent players from returning to their game of choice. A player might leave a game and return half a year later to find that their friends have progressed so far as to leave that player behind. The guild either chooses to spend their time in raids they have long since defeated or that player cannot rejoin them. In a game as old as Everquest, any barrier keeping older players returning hurts their business.

People were surprised when Blizzard announced they would be opening up the attunement restrictions for their top raid zones in Burning Crusade. There was a public outcry from those who had spent their time attuning their characters and their guilds. They felt the removal of this attunement cheapened the time they spent "working" to get into these high-end zones.

Blizzard didn't listen. Blizzard sees a game with ten million players and knows that most of those players don't post on the forums, don't read the websites, and don't have the time to attune and re-attune others for high-end raid zones. Though the game doesn't often stress social interaction, they know that flagging hurts the ability for players to play together in these high-end zones. They learned that the requirement for flagging to slow down top end players ceases to exist when those players are well past the top end. They learned that attunement should be fluid and changing - not static walls that must always stay in place.

I managed to acquire my attunement for Karazhan over about two weeks. I fought through all the solo quests. I begged my way in to the three required instances. When I first stepped in, I remember how it felt to finally enter the zone for which I had spent those hours. Like many, when I heard the attunement would be dropped, my immediate visceral animal reaction was one of jealousy and pack security. How dare those who worked not at all enter the zone for which I worked so hard! That moment disappeared quickly. I know why Blizzard did it, and they were right to do so.

It would be inaccurate to state that World of Warcraft's high numbers and the dwindling numbers in Everquest are strictly due to flagging. These flagging restrictions in Everquest aren't the biggest barrier for new or returning players. The steep level and alternate advancement requirements are worse. Flagging, however, is the largest barrier for high level players. Flagging grinds up guilds and spits out those who remain. Some end up in a smaller and smaller number of high-end guilds. Others leave the game completely.

All is not lost for Everquest's flagging woes. SOE could, and should, take an aggressive stance on the removal of flags for older expansions. Removing flagging for every zone and raid in every expansion up to and including Prophecy of Ro would be a good start. Removing flagging for every expansion older than a year would be the next logical choice. Alas, such aggressive moves are not SOE's style. They choose to play it conservative, making small changes over long periods of time. This is wise. Why alienate the players they have left? Yet this must be balanced against the damage that older flags inflict on lower-tiered guilds.

Flagging and attunement requirements work against the strongest draw of massive online games. They prevent players from playing together.

Loral Ciriclight
7 March 2008
Loral@loralciriclight.com

A recent article by the Hollywood Reporter states that recently over a million players from China were logged into World of Warcraft at a single time. The game now hosts over ten million players and hasn't shown any sign of slowing down despite long periods between expansions and a very sharp leveling curve that drives most players to the highest levels very quickly.

In a previous article I described five strengths of World of Warcraft as a massive online game. Today we will take a look at five weaknesses in this MMO powerhouse. Let us begin.

Weakness 1, A Focus on Solo Gameplay

Early on in the days of Everquest, the game designers stated that one of the strengths of their game was a requirement for group play. Characters would be very good at a particular slice of gameplay but not at others. Warriors could tank well but did only moderate damage and had very little ability to heal. Clerics could heal but were not able to tank or dish out a lot of damage. Rogues could pour out the damage but couldn't take much and couldn't heal at all. These dependencies forced players to work together which led to the true strength of an MMO - getting people together.

World of Warcraft built itself around soloing. Players can log in, play for ten minutes, finish a quest, get some experience, get a new item, and log out without worrying about leaving others behind. Characters can level from level 1 to level 70 without ever grouping with another player.

There exists a distinct lack of social interaction in World of Warcraft. Friendships aren't as easily forged. Relationships aren't as easily built. You're not very likely to meet someone in World of Warcraft the way you were in the old days of Everquest.

We have seen what sort of success a group-based game would have these days. Take a look at the popularity of Vanguard or the lack thereof. MMO philosopher Richard Bartle states that World of Warcraft has broken the ability for a new MMO to build the sort of world that conducts the formation of rich relationships. No one can make another game that forces groups and expect to succeed.

The ability to solo in World of Warcraft is a great strength, but for it we pay a heavy price.

Weakness 2, A Focus on Player Vs. Player

Unfortunately, one of the few ways players do meet in World of Warcraft is to kill each other. Many players enjoy the battlegrounds full of fast and furious battles but what sort of social interaction exists when the goal is to kill the other players? Player vs. Environment (PvE) is one of the great strengths of an MMO. That becomes broken when one of the primary reasons players play WoW is to fight each other. It has taken one of the deepest games and turned it into Halo.

Players also behave at their worst in the battlegrounds. Unless one forms a select team of people they already know, likely from either a guild or people they know in real life, they are likely to face completely silent allies who are there strictly to farm some honor. There is no longevity to the relationship and no interest in discussion. One simply kills the enemy and moves on to the next battleground.

Battlegrounds is the rotten core of World of Warcraft.

Weakness 3, Redundant Quests

World of Warcraft prides itself on the incredibly vast array of quests. When people saw how many quests World of Warcraft offers, they had to question Everquest's choice of name. There are more than enough quests to move through all of the levels in WoW. The quest system is very robust and easy to use. It is the single path that moves players through the game, often tying them to the lore and giving them reason to do what they do.

These quests are also often sterile and boring. Many of the quests revolve around killing some number of creatures and retrieving some number of items. Many of these quests have drop rates far too low to make them worth while or stories that seem scripted out of a fortune cookie. Sure, a player can quest through the entire game but how many of those quests are unique and interesting? Many are, but many are not.

Weakness 4, Long Duration Dungeons

The dungeons in World of Warcraft could be the one area that truly brings players together and helps them build the lasting relationships that a MMO should allow. However, after getting players used to completing quests in about 20 minutes, having dungeons that require a two-hour commitment is too demanding.

World of Warcraft should cut all of its single-group instances down to an hour. It should also include a few half-hour instances that can bring players together but ensure there is enough freedom to leave when needed. Longer instances should be limited to ten-man raids such as Karazhan. We have become spoiled by the instant gratification of World of Warcraft's quest system. The gap between the ease of solo questing and the heavy time requirements of WoW's instances is too great.

Weakness 5, No Console Support

This is the weakness that will likely raise the most eyebrows. With the ease of play of World of Warcraft, the beauty of its design, and the simplicity of the gameplay; it already feels like a console game. However, the complicating factor of the PC will always get in the way. Right now Blizzard spends a fortune tuning World of Warcraft to run on a nearly infinite array of possible machine configurations.

Were it a console game, WoW would only have to focus on a hand-full of possible configurations. While WoW would have to be substantially different on a console, the console world is clearly ready for a good WoW-like MMO and if Blizzard isn't careful, such a hit on a console system could steal their crown.

Ten million players is a lot, but there are currently 20 million Wiis and 18 million Xbox 360s in people's homes all networked and waiting for the next big MMO. If Blizzard is smart, they will begin using their talent for MMO game design on the next generation platform. If they don't someone else will.

Loral Ciriclight
19 April 2008
loral@loralciriclight.com