Category Archives: Rants

Whereby I reconcile myself with micro-transactions

EVE Online is dead. It died on June 2011 when CCP introduced their virtual store with the patch for Incarna. Or so some say. RMT for virtual goods of purely cosmetic value. The player base has been ablaze, some proclaiming the end of EVE Online as we know it. Others not so much, as long as the items bought by real money aren’t game-changing, who cares? Well, plenty of people did judging from the controversy this stirred while oddly enough, the new items were not strictly speaking a first in terms of turning real money into potential ingame profits (hello Plex system). But then, EVE is srs bsns, not like the rest of them lowly MMOs out there, EVE players have standards!

I’ve never been a fan of RMT MMOs. I think one big reason for this is that the stereotype there is an FTP game with cheap graphics, horrible controls and dead servers. There are not exactly a lot of positive examples for RMT-based MMOs out there and even less of them manage to include the system in a way that won’t boil down to a divided society of those that choose to buy frequently and those that will not. Many of us feel that they make the better bargain paying subscriptions which ensure complete access to a game. Never mind that over the years we probably payed just as much in terms of fees, collector’s editions, server transfers, mini-pets et cetera. The psychological factor is huge. Also, ingame shops take self-control and we’re already spending enough money on Amazon.

One prime reason why players strongly dislike RMT though is when “game-altering” items come into play: re-sellables that might impact on the server economy, special guild features, raid power-ups or epic gear. We feel this messes up server “harmony”; we want a level ground between players and so do competitive guilds. Not that such harmony were existant in the first place in any MMO; we do never have an equal situation between individual players nor raid guilds, RMT or not. Or would you ever have called a game as merciless and elitist as EVE Online harmonic?

The classist fallacy

I’ve actually heard micro-transactions being called classist, as if virtual goods were somehow representative for the social rifts and injustices on this planet. As if there were truly poor MMO players, as if we were not all of us already among the most privileged, sitting in front of our PCs at night in comfy chairs, with our high-speed internet connections, our active subs and second accounts, enjoying free time in the safety of a warm home. There’s not one single WoW player out there right now who could not just as well afford to play an RMT-based MMO if he so chose. The classist argument is dramatic humbug and frankly offensive to those who are truly socially disadvantaged in this world. If you believe the lack of a shiny pixel horse makes you inferior to other players, you don’t have issues worth mentioning. Let’s forget too, that players who don’t buy pets don’t buy pets because they don’t want to buy pets. Duhh.

MMO “communities” have always been classist, always will be – but RMT has very little to do with it. Top guilds with high reqs are classist; hardmodes are classist; any sort of rare title/gear/achievement is classist. And a great deal of people think they are classist when they’re really just jerks with inferiority issues. As one commenter on an EO board added:

I’m sick of being beaten by people with more time than I have, more people skills than I have, having simply typed “spaced based mmo” into google before I did, or just plain old better game skill than I have.
Let me use my financial superiority to crush some of them into the ground. [*]

And while I don’t exactly agree with him because time spent should still have its place for me in an MMO, I fully understand his perspective. He is being out-classed and there’s little he can do subjectively. So, would the introduction of an item-shop in EVE, even a game-altering one, unhinge social justice? No, it wouldn’t. Would there suddenly be traumatic, social rifts because some can and some cannot afford a 10 dollar rucksack? Hardly. People will pay for these things if they want to.

Let’s be honest, if we don’t spend that money ingame, it means we’re spending it somewhere else like we do every single day. Maybe we’d buy an album less on iTunes in order to get that special armor, maybe we’d skip a cinema visit or buying that 5th pair of shoes. Outrageous? Maybe we’d even cut down to smoking half a pack per day instead of a whole one – you could do worse than that, I think. It’s a matter of perspective, more than competitiveness. You don’t “have to” buy tons and tons of items in an RMT-based game either, just like you don’t “have to” collect 400k gold in WoW in order to partake and compete. Developers want you to play their games long-term, they will always aim at a tolerable balance.

What the current, obvious trend of selling virtual goods in the MMO industry really is doing, is challenging players to deal with a new reality. Not a classist concept, certainly not in the sense of a more or less capitalist one – but a huge shift in paradigm. We used to pay for playtime, or so we thought. The new generation of games makes us pay for goods instead (or additionally), more explicitly than before. The acceptance of this indirect change is difficult to stomach. Really now, how’s 10 dollars spent on a mini-pet you enjoy for months “worse” than spending them on a movie ticket? Have we not continuously fought for the acceptance of our online worlds, adventures and friendships, pointing out how they are just as real as real life experiences because of the way they make us feel? Why wouldn’t / shouldn’t we pay for this more explicitly, when we’re already paying for it indirectly? And why can my co-worker spend a few hundred bucks each month for her horse-riding without wasting similar thoughts?

These are questions I have to face and frankly I’m running out of arguments. Am I a fan of micro-transactions all of a sudden? Hell no, my old-school heart is having troubles adjusting. Do I think that money could be spent much worse than on virtual goods? Absolutely.

Why the narrator in me keeps hyping Guild Wars 2

Blizzard recently dropped their bomb about introducing a real-money AH in Diablo III which, while “optional”, will impact on things like player progress in the game. My initial reaction was negative – that was before I actually pondered all the points listed in the above paragraph. It’s certainly not surprising in terms of where Blizzard has been going for years now and it’s a small step away from their Blizzstore and the virtual goods that already exist for WoW. Even if developers like to point out how items are purely for “vanity”, you could argue that things like a special mount are in fact game-altering. They undermine the achievement that used to be acquiring expensive, fast or rare mounts in the game, y’know back in a time when that was true. Mounts are loot and loot is social prestige. Now that prestige can be achieved by real currency as much as virtual, our two worlds collide.

Sucker for narrative and setting that I am for my MMOs, I actually still have a problem here: real money presents players with short-cuts. I’m not fond of that in the slightest. I would argue though that there’s a big difference between a sub-based MMO that introduces more and more RMT late into the game in order to make extra profits and one that is fundamentally created around that system. The fact that Blizzard promotes the feature as a purely optional yet powerful alternative, makes things worse in my eyes. Either we have an MMO where players are all meant to buy certain goods and that therefore balances content focus around it, or we don’t. To add the feature into a game as loot-/item-centric as WoW is worlds more problematic than for an MMO where the main focus lies on things like cooperative play or narrative for example. If epics are what your world revolves around, you don’t want a shop to sell more and more purples.

This is where my enthusiasm for Guild Wars 2 kicks in again. Already, GW2 has the complete looks, style and package to become the next AAA+ MMORPG and it comes free of subscription. Players will pay for modules/expansions and there will be micro-transactions. From everything I have seen, read and heard so far, NC Soft has every intention to heavily re-focus the game from the current classic MMO course out there. What added fuel to my excitement was a video I recently watched on youtube, summarizing pretty much every single reason why I personally look forward to GW2. I couldn’t agree more with all 10 points presented there, but see for yourself! I am a little weary of just how appealing the game is to me at this stage, I haven’t been excited like that ever since World of Warcraft. Beautiful art and music, dynamic content, no holy trinity, cooperative focus, a vast world with no flying mounts – music to my ears!

And yes, Guild Wars 2 will feature virtual goods. If the final game is nearly as good as it’s promising, I couldn’t care less.

Should Blizzard take a stand against killer game labels?

You know, I swore to myself never to write this post. This post on the boundless stupidity and ignorance of the media when it comes to video games and their supposed effect on 0.0000000….etc……..1% of all mankind. The common populist and propagandist strategy to blame anything for a society’s failure, just so the really hard questions must never be asked.

I swore never to sink so low as to even deem claims such as these with a reaction.

I have been known to make exceptions.

If you’re currently living in Europe (I don’t know how closely the US media follow the happenings in “teh old world”), there has been no way around reading and hearing about the recent, unimaginable tragedy that has befallen in Norway this last Friday, June 22nd. It is on every news channel all around the clock, in every regional newspaper and will be, I imagine, for a while to come. Understandably so, even though a cynic might add that more people die by violent crime on this planet every single day – people with no name and no face ever remembered in the news. But we won’t dwell on that here and it’s not really the point.

There’s no way to avoid the sad news and sadly, no way to escape the media of which the useless and ruthless majority is presently flocking to Oslo’s court like carrion birds, pressing for a picture or statement from one so unworthy of any further public spotlight. From the very beginning, they speculated, they published gross half-truths and adjusted them later (funny enough journalism knows no real accountability for spreading wrong facts). Worse: like a broken record they promptly recited the same old songs.

I shouldn’t be annoyed. I am certainly not surprised. What did surprise me in fact was a player’s post on WoW’s official, German boards* that I chanced on accidentally. After expressing his outrage about multiple news stations actually bringing up World of Warcraft as “one of the killer games” (along Call of Duty) which the psycho-shooter frequently played in his freetime, he left the following comment under point 1):

1. Die Bezeichnung “Killerspiel” wäre mal ein Fall für die Rechtsabteilung von Blizzard.

[English Translation:] 1. The term “killer game” would be a job for Blizzard’s legal department.

I have to say, I agree with him. Funny enough, many WoW players in that thread didn’t. Well, I’m fed up with WoW being called a “killer game” in the media. It’s ridiculous. Not just because WoW is actually heavily NPC-centric; it’s about freaking GNOMES and ELVES from pink fairy-tale lands fighting evil creatures in dungeons together. And yeah, you kill a lot of mobs all the time. You also pick a lot of flowers all the time, travel the world, spend hours auctioning shoes and dresses. There’s some PvP and the player is actually a powerful god-like figure, like for most games – but what serious person calls a fantasy MMO like this a violent killer game? What happened to online role-playing game?

Let’s forget of course that even if WoW actually was an FPS like CoD, it wouldn’t change a thing; in terms of culpability, intelligent people simply do not explain one individual’s readiness to brutally execute (and bomb) 76 people in real life with a love for popular video games. Really, my qualm is not with this (this goes without saying) for once – but: semantics. World of Warcraft, the killer game. Out of curiosity, what gave it away? “Warcraft”? So this is how far journalistic research reaches in the age of the internet.

I wonder: do Blizzard or other developers ever get touched by news such as this? They can afford to shrug it off with nonchalance, but I’d be vexed by this sort of continuous negative propaganda and false labels. And while I don’t know what the legal situation is in the USA, they’d be in their symbolic right (at least) to demand rectification for the defamation and stark misnaming of their product (as Activision would be for CoD’s case, also since the label “killer game” is not actually a genre, but a media slur). But who is eager to oppose the mass media, how would it be worth the effort? Should game developers in general react to such news, at least by commenting – or should they keep ignoring the underlying accusations? What’s your opinion?

I can’t decide what annoys me more; the shallow stereotypes or the constant slander against an entire genre I happen to love. A genre so full of beauty and wonder as fantasy MMOs, granting millions of player’s worldwide daily escape, a few hours of simple, harmless entertainment in the evening.

And they wonder why some people prefer online games to the real world. Oh, the irony.

*****

For the record

This is in no way an attempt to dismiss or trivialize any part of the horror that took place in Norway. I’m not comparing wrongs here – but wrong is wrong. And a much bigger wrong doesn’t cancel out smaller wrongs. It’s wrong not to speak up on this, like I have seen some gamers suggest in forums lest it not distract from the actual event. I think it is exactly the right time to speak up against it. I think we must always speak up against it.

Every time a news station, a daily paper or a radio channel mentions video games in one sentence with mass murders, it concerns every single player out there and establishes an ever-so-delicate bond between individuals that have absolutely nothing in common. Every time they so much as hint at video games when such a human tragedy occurs somewhere, they plant a subtle seed in the heads of the public audience. And while I can do nothing about this, I will never accept it – not for myself and not on behalf of my fellow MMO players. That allusion is outrageous on a personal level, and detrimental to the social acceptance of online gaming worldwide. It’s hypocritical and suggestive journalism such as this which perpetuates the idea of gamers as social weirdos and outcasts, isolating those further who might already feel alone. I blame sensationalist media for countless acts like this – I blame them a great deal more than MMOs could ever be blamed for any crimes committed. People who live in glass houses.

*Edit: It appears that the topic I referred to on WoW’s boards has been deleted in the meantime.

What ever happened to a/s/l?

Chatting to one of my still-WoW-playing friends the other night, particularly on the topics occupying me this previous blog-week, he shared a gem of conversation with me that he experienced some time ago on his PVP server; one example so telling it had me choking over a bowl of green curry, not the most pleasant sensation, I might add.

I know gearscore-hysteria is a big deal in WoW by now, and of course not just entirely of the player base’s own making. Yet, this was such a moment of unimagined heights that I begged him to send me the screenshots so I might share. Without further ado, this piece of interactive brilliance –

Wow…wow indeed! I admire anyone witty enough to come up with this/any kind of reply. I’m not sure my reeling mind would have recovered quite as fast.

“GS/GR/GA” – the essential 3 Gs of today’s World of Warcraft? Now you can say about good old IM/chat conduct whatever you like, “a/s/l” was at least somewhat more personal than this! GGG? – Ye gods, I’d rather be AFK!

Good is good enough. Or: a case for pioneering

Yesterday, Hugh over at the MMO Melting Pot summarized a little wildfire that’s currently spreading since WoW’s latest patch: the whole weekly Valor Point cap deal after 4.2. We can probably most agree that Blizzard’s continued effort to undermine the status of raiding in WoW is deplorable – on a more general note though, it was another old friend of mine piquing my interest in some of the debates: the ever-returning topic of gear. To be more precise, the importance of gear as a factor in beating WoW’s encounters.

Gnomeaggedon just had a similar article up, interestingly enough on PVP, yet with the same underlying issue: the fixation some players have with gearscore, item levels or stats in WoW. In WoW of all MMOs, that most flexible and accessible game of them all. Reading how his otherwise no doubt friendly and decent new guildie made a fool out of himself in BG chat, I cringed a little – people still really do this, huh.. Asking for your gearscore before a 5man run? An achievement before inviting you to a lousy pickup raid? Comparing meters? Ragequitting over purples?

Gosh.

Were we ever that young?

I am no stranger to progress drive or perfectionist mindset. I even sympathize a little with WoW players hopelessly lost in compulsive gear-rush-limbo. I used to be like that myself, a long time ago when 40mans were new and raiding was a more elitist club. Back in pink vanilla, everyone believed gear was where it’s all at. To be fair, we had more reasons to believe so too. People sported their shinies around AH bridge in Ironforge and oh, did those epics tell a story! For one thing because not everyone else and his sixth alt’s cousin had them, for another because it took a long time and 39 more people to get you that set. Enchants were few and precious, there was no jewelcrafting, no inscription, no reforging, no endless list of consumables and buffs. You really wanted a decent arrangement of gear and many encounters were rather unforgiving when it came to certain stats or resistances. So, we chased our purples eagerly from Stratholme to Molten Core, from Blackwing Lair to Naxxramas.

Then along came the Burning Crusade and we slowly began to smell the rat. Gear popped up from every corner, at increasing speed. Hardly a second to enjoy a completed set of Tiers, BOOM the next would follow – better, shinier, more purple than your purple! Then, there were suddenly all these craftable epics, some of them just as good or better than raid rewards. Plus cheap, welfare badge epics that would do the job just as well. As if all that wasn’t enough off the attunements went – in the talent and stat buffs came, in the content nerfs towards the end of the first expansion. More gear thrown at you, more gear than you could hope to wear in a hundred years. It was like purple Christmas at the shopping mall. And with the loot choice curve rising steep, another curve began to fall rapidly: the significance of specific items towards progress.

That’s when I finally had enough, somewhere at T6. I had this disturbing image in my mind, of myself as a donkey chasing a pixel carrot that Blizzard kept replacing faster and faster. I felt foolish and ridiculous. Not just that, I spent loads of time grinding epics just so they were a wee bit better than more accessible alternatives. Ridiculous. On our way to Black Temple, it was popular belief that you needed a complete mix of T5 and T6 to beat Illidan. Short time later, we saw Nihilum’s world first killshot with half their squad posing in Karazhan gear and craftables among the odd BT set item. Pardon? You need what? Ridiculous…

I still collected gear sets later on, make no mistake; I love gear from a cosmetic point of view, always have, and a Deputy GM can’t run around in rags. But I had come a far, far way from the rushing, pushing and obsessing over gear being the determining factor for Adrenaline’s progress. Bosses don’t rise and fall over blue gems or 20 more intellect on a trinket. If you think they do, maybe you’re looking for solutions in the wrong place? Especially with the complexity some boss encounters have gained over time in WoW, there are far bigger, more tide-turning challenges for a team than collecting the best possible gear at the highest possible speed. Gear is not performance and it never wins that duel (they make a good team though).

If it makes you feel more secure about your own performance or if you enjoy the maximizing frenzy, that’s one thing and knock yourself out. However, as long as you’re not in the sort of guild that raids for, y’know money or something and just needs to progress as fast as humanly possible, it does not matter if your gearscore is XX10 or XX50 and it won’t ruin a run if you didn’t upgrade medium Tier epic to super Tier epic. You can still be competitive and you can still progress at decent speed.

The min-maxing, the cookie cutting, the lengthy preparations – they are self-imposed. Let’s say it together: self-imposed. We’ve been through this before: Blizzard never forced their playerbase to min-max so extremely, it’s the players who choose to do it and tolerate all sorts of drudgery in return. The thing is, the list of all things you can always “possibly do better” is endless.

Good is good enough

A long while back, Tessy wrote a follow-up post on a not so unlike debate at the time – healers using healing addons (or not). And she nailed easily what was an embarrassing show-off in other places: if it works for you, it works for you. If you’re good with addons, you’re good. If you’re just as good without them, you’re just as good. It’s the outcome that matters and outcome is a collective term for a multitude of aspects that need to coincide. Especially in a team of 10 to 25 people.

Now for argument’s sake, if you really, really wanted to go there; well, then I’d say you’ve got guts for doing stuff with less – less preread strategy, less buffs, less gear, smaller numbers. Assuming that’s what challenges or entertains you. In terms of outcome though, it’s completely beside the point. A little harder, “cooler”, more “oldschool” (or whatever you wanna call it) doesn’t equal better or smarter – it only means you’re doing it differently. We can allow ourselves a bit of “private vanity” sure, as long as we don’t mistake our way for the one way.

Outcome is what counts. The rest is attempts to socially distinguish yourself or get a kick. I’ll admit freely to some ego myself, but I do know it when I see it (it’s bloated that way). I know my inner demons too, I don’t take them too seriously. The times I went overboard with my private perfectionism in WoW were when I wanted to, not because it was required. I didn’t speed race to exalted in Silithus (:trauma:) for that epic mace and offhand because Benediction wasn’t good enough. I did it because too many people had the yellow staff and I was a vain priest with too much time on her hands.

In my lengthy writeup on healing coordination a while back, I put emphazis on not telling other healers how to play their class. As long as they achieved their assignments consistently, I could not care less how they did it. And I hold to that lesson. My perfect raid team is a team where I do not have to adjust or check a single person’s spell rotation, gear or talent choices. You don’t second-guess what’s working. That goose might stop laying golden eggs.

My challenge, your challenge

Progressing through WotLK 25man, we often outgeared content we beat in my guild. I dreaded these kind of kills, such a lacking glory it was to challenge a boss in epics from head to toe when it was manageable with much less. I’m all for being well-prepared and knowing your strategy; but I actually love encounters that force you down on your knees. When your team needs to click like a well-oiled machine, when it’s all about individual performance, knowing your class in and out, situational awareness, reflexes, perfect coordination and communication. Funny enough, that’s usually also when people have more tolerance for each others mistakes than the pro geared and overconfident bunch.

Ain’t no victory like the victory of the underdog, carrying the trophy home, be it in PVE or PVP. It’s those kills we never ever forget. I’d say too, it’s when your team’s true colors show in all their shades, the way you can otherwise never tell. For similar reasons, some players attempt 2-manning content that is meant to be 5-manned. Or show up with 8 instead of 10 peeps. They want to test how much they can achieve, how far they can go together. Test the limits, raise the stakes – not lower them.

And that’s why the VP rush for Firelands strikes me as bizarre: players are supposed to have all that gear now BEFORE they even put foot in a brand new instance? Says who? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Don’t believe a word they say

I should mention that I don’t exclusively blame WoW’s playerbase for the optimization mania. Blizzard have had their share over the years, implementing features like the armory and designing the game to allow for such an approach. Still, you’re ultimately in control of your choices and I hope you farm 5mans for epics every day because it’s fun, not because you think you need rewards badly that will be outdated come next patch. Time and again Blizzard, the webforums or the blessed people of hearsay have tried to intimidate us by naming benchmarks, required specs or setups, “what you really need” and “what you really cannot do” to beat certain encounters.

You know what: we’ll see about that. In Molten Core, they told us there was NO WAY we could raid without protection specced tanks. We had zero, up to Nefarian. They told us we couldn’t use offspec healers when they were our majority, all our stubborn feral druids healing in resto gear and several shadow priests healing along with their Benedictions up (another proof of how gear mattered a bit more in WoW 1.0.). Next, they told us how we really needed so and so much fire resistance for Ragnaros. Right. Towards the end of vanilla WoW, all the cool kids went straight to AQ40 first, because “No way you can do Naxx before AQ!” Thank god we were such rebels…we’d never have experienced original Naxxramas 40 otherwise. You can keep your fugly Tier 2.5 to yourself, thank you very much.

Please, do me a favour: go see for yourself. Whatever someone else is telling you, take it with a pinch of salt. Consider too maybe how long the next content patch’s away. Do your best, but don’t let yourself be fooled or intimidated by talk and so-called guidelines. WoW’s not a perfectionist’s game, WoW is designed for a mainstream audience to enjoy. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re actually at the upper end of that mainstream. Good preparation is cool by all means, “good” preparation. The rest you can make up by other means, either setup/design-given or simply because you can or dare. I’ve gone through 21 years of what I’d like to call successful education and academia with a devil-may-care minimalist attitude and a great deal of Calvin. It works for MMOs too. Don’t feel rushed and don’t feel pressured to go along with whatever’s the latest, hysterical trend on the streets.

Do the wild thing: “TRY ANYWAY”.

Try and see. Talk later. You know, adventuring and stuff. You will never know how far you can go without trying. Be foolhardy, be reckless, be a pioneer.

Be full of spite.

P.S. In reference to my post title, I should probably give credits to Cynwise’s comment in another article on the matter. Happy following up and remember to keep it together!

The more alts, the more burnout

To pick up where I left the trail in my last post: Alts are pure evil.

No really, playing alts is a fascinating subject. Not just on a personal level, but in the greater scheme of things and how they affect MMOs. While I was rather outright about all the issues I perceive with alt-play yesterday, and the general misconception that playing alts is performance therapy, I do understand why people love to play different classes just like I agree it can be beneficial. I can see why trying out a new class is fun and makes for a more informed decision for a main. I do this myself when I start a game. However, personally I’d prefer the approach Final Fantasy XI had there: one character can learn and “equip” any given combination of classes available. That way your main character stays, but learns new things if you so choose.

I understand too, why players enjoy to re-visit content. I think it’s rather problematic if designers promote the feature in absence of actual, new content, but if you’re generally somebody who loves questing, exploring and traveling, leveling up a new class gives you a reason to do so and discover new things on the way. A new class and potentially new race is a new perspective. Shintar is one blogger who frequently let’s us in on her experiences while re-visiting lower content and zones in WoW. They’re fun reads that I enjoy and appreciate from that particular perspective.

Yet, I still wonder: do alts really prolong long-term player enjoyment or do they not rather make for a worse burnout?

Burnout, boredom or nothing to do?

“….but when and why did we get the idea that we must have max-level, max-profession, max-gear alts? That’s not an alt, that’s a second main! Is one main not good enough? Maybe we need more fun and more to do on our mains, rather than spamming alts and then getting sick of repeating quests.”

So, when did we get this idea? I’m not sure I ever played a game where alternative characters mattered more than in World of Warcraft. Some MMOs actually require you to buy a new account, others will restrict the level of benefit and interaction possible between your characters. They don’t want a single player to have that amount of self-sufficiency; to unhinge the intended speed of play or undermine social mechanisms and interaction in favor of more freedom, flexibility and soloability.

I’ve known a few extreme examples of players that considered leveling and gearing up a character the main purpose in WoW. They did so at ridiculous speed until they had all 10 classes (I got it right this time Shintar!) fully equipped at 85. After which there was “nothing more to do” so they quit the game. Or a guildmate who was so eager for the new expansion that he did not only raid Ulduar on his main 3 times a week, but on alts during offnights too. Something we’ve always watched with concern in our raid guild because we anticipated (and experienced) just how fast such players burn and bore out on content that you intend to raid for at least the next 6 months. We did even intentionally cut back on alt-runs at expansion starts for this precise reason.

I don’t believe boredom springs from the same things for everybody. Some players would undoubtedly quit sooner if there were no alts. Others spoil what’s actually there for themselves by altoholism and short-term thinking. I don’t blame anyone for either decision, but I think in terms of content development, it’s poor design that needs people to play multiple chars all over in order to keep things interesting. The crux is probably the entire idea behind expansions and how content is usually delivered in peaks, rather than a more natural flow. I am still waiting for an MMO where the developers approach this issue better.

Another problem with the availability of alts is that they’re too convenient a solution – in a way they prevent players from looking for further content and entertainment after they feel “finished” on their main. How does this notion even go together with a character that’s supposed to be your alter ego in an ongoing story and simulate world? It doesn’t; unless you think of the classic game avatar. So, let’s assume for a moment that there were no alts available in WoW: what would you do with your “excess time'”? Would you rather –

a) Turn off the game and do something else?
b) Look for other ways to play your main?

Would people maybe contribute more to the world and community by sticking to their main because they are forced to? Would it not drive them to become more innovative and creative about what to do next? Would they really just run out of things to do?

Ideally, in a more open-world MMO than WoW, I’d like to see no alts. I would rather see people invest time in interacting more and creating things in the game. Yeah, HA-HA, I know that’s not the way things are currently going in the world of MMOs, but it’s what I’d like anyway. In WoW’s case options are limited but let’s still have a look at potential side-effects. Without alts people would probably –

re-visit older zones and content on their mains more often
team up more with random strangers because they want/need that class*
help out lowbies more
invest more time in inter-guild relations
rely on each other more for crafting and trade
play more PVP, arrange more outdoor conflict
have less money and therefore do a lot more of XYZ

That’s just from the top of my head. You can think of more things to do without alts at your disposal. Depending on your perspective as a player and customer, all of the things listed can be either positive or negative. Maybe you don’t want to cooperate or rely on others more, maybe you enjoy having an alt for every trade, maybe you are after making money. I’m not – to me most of that list is positive, whatever actually makes people play together, communicate, cooperate, create. The more interaction you have, the more stories you will tell at the end of the day.

*The one big downside I see is group setup / guild related: in a game ruled by the holy trinity, alts give guilds flexibility to go ahead with a run despite the lack of tanking, healing or dpsing mains. Canceled raids are a sad affair. People can respec or if need be, relog. Without this option, guilds would probably just end up inviting more people as backup players for their roster and that doesn’t really work out so great during times when raiding is most popular. This is strictly from a WoW-centric view though, amending one bad with another. In a way specs and alts are Blizzard’s own saboteurs to the trinity, even if “bring the player not the class” is still a dream. A different MMO without the whole class/role hysteria would be fine without alts: you wouldn’t need them for group balance.

The road less traveled by

I will blow into last week’s horn a little and ask just how many opportunities and stories we’re missing out on because an MMO offers the easy alt road. How different could social dynamics and life on servers be if everyone only ever had one main? What would people come up with instead?

Just like short-cuts turn into delays, too much convenience can turn into boredom. I’m sure developers welcome players that spend big amounts of time on alts, but I’m not sure if it really works out long-term? If it makes for a massive and more terminal boreout later, convincing you to keep paying that subscription will become increasingly difficult. Not just that, but the pressure to deliver expansions fast and keeping things fresh and interesting gets worse and worse on the developer’s side.

Nobody likes the samey grind forever. Candy is yum, but eating too much of the same candy is boring and gives you stomach ache. Already my granny knew that.

The common alt misconception

In a recent comment on a not so different topic, Klepsacovic left the following comment:

What’s so great about alts? It’s nice to have something to tinker with and to learn a bit about how other classes see the game, but when and why did we get the idea that we must have max-level, max-profession, max-gear alts? That’s not an alt, that’s a second main! Is one main not good enough? Maybe we need more fun and more to do on our mains, rather than spamming alts and then getting sick of repeating quests.

This is particularly interesting: for one thing, it did remind me of a similar comment I had left on BBB where I stated that the gravitation towards alt-play in WoW was a bad sign for the game, not a good one. I’m no fan of alts for many reasons. But this recent comment brought another interesting notion to the table, one quite contrary to the popular belief that playing alts prolongs the fun of playing the same game for long. You hear it often in that context: playing alts makes people tire less fast of WoW because it provides them with the chance to review content from a different angle. Or maybe not.

Why alts are no friends of mine /open parentheses

I’ve never been into the alt business for several reasons. Firstly, I am a rather strict “alter ego” player that plays MMOs for virtues such as story, world, simulation, community and immersion. It always felt like diving headlong into a book or strange universe to me, one that I travel and explore as myself – my adventures, my continuous story. And for that simple reason, my toons would resemble my true self and there was only ever the one me. That’s a matter of preference and perspective – I don’t expect others to join me on this. Let’s just say that playing multiple characters in an MMORPG feels like I am sat in front of the start screen of some classic console game where I’m supposed to pick a random character to go with.

My second reason is that I cannot play a “second or third rate character”. Unless you have an endless supply of time and a more casual guild, alts inevitably end up being your inferior toons. A little less shiny than your main, a little less experienced, a little less travelworn, a little less access to things. A little less of everything. I hate that; I hate sub-par, I don’t do sub-par versions of myself. If I was to heal some random 5man on an alt, I would constantly end up comparing it to healing the run on my priest – it would seem absolutely pointless to me or even a little selfish (“sorry group, had my priest been here we’d be so much faster”). To make matters worse, I’d have to repeat a ton of content, let alone stupid daily and rep grinds that my perfectionism would force me to go through. Myeah, I think not.

Last but not least, one big reason is playtime. I already dedicated a lot of time to WoW as it was – raiding, guild leading, forum and webpage work, PVPing, collecting silly baubles and exploring the world, you name it. There were dailies and token runs and whatnot, I could barely keep up doing those regularly. So, if I ever truly felt I was “finished” with Syl for the day, I really did not want to relog and start over on some alt. I’d rather dedicate time to my other hobbies. The balance hasn’t always been there between WoW and other things I enjoy, but I used to draw the line at playing on weekends or playing alts.

To honour truth here: I levelled a shaman once into the early 70ies and played her on a few 5man and 10man runs. My total playtime at the end of WotLK was 12 days or something and it felt pretty much pointless, besides showing me that elemental is OP levelling up and that I pity the melee for constantly running after tank aggro. I think I did it mostly to have the chance to join guild alt-runs (:peer pressure:), but I never got there. Every time I logged to the shaman, I felt like forcing myself: this wasn’t an alt of Syl, this was a nuisance, a disturbing sidekick. And yes, I had a lot less gold than most of my alt playing mates, but here’s the thing: I like asking other people to help me craft something.

Besides this experience I never had any alt worth mentioning. Oh, I created toons aplenty and transferred them to Elwynn Forest where they became happy mules ever after. I can escort you from northern Kalimdor to Stormwind on foot with my eyes closed.. However, most available time must be dedicated to “maximize” my main. And if not, I log off (or alternatively, idle and chitchat while running through Dalaran in circles which is jolly good fun). I also believe that you are never “done” on your main, anyway. If I really had “excess time” besides my main focuses, PvP was always the next stop. Here I felt I was doing something meaningful towards my experience as a player and healer.

Personal parentheses closed.

The common alt misconception

Preferences aside, the longer I played and met various “altoholics”, the more I detected issues. Not with everyone mind, but quite a few people. The most prominent notion around is that alts make you a better player. Just like that. I remember a particularly mind-numbing conversation with a former maintank of our guild who wasn’t only one of our most fickle and unstable members, but such a screwup in various situations that we used him as melee whenever possible to “minimize the damage” (sorry DPS, it’s true) to the raid. So there I was, finding myself playing arena matches with the guy, probably by the machinations of some sadistic deity or something. We were short on a member and one of my team mates just grabbed the next best replacement before even asking me.

Wonderful. I spent the next 60 minutes listening to his blabber during queues, about how playing his priest and warlock had given him profound insights towards our raids and how he was definitely the best of our MTs in both PvP and PvE for this reason. He was also rather adamant about being able to give raiding priests and warlocks tips now because he had teh multiple perspective. He also finally understood all the “spell abbreviations they like to use”, like PoH and GS….Things between us went downhill from there.

The guy was just a hilarious example of the underlying issue. He was a shitty player with no degree of self-awareness and understanding of his own class – and therefore he stayed a shitty player despite his alts. Quantity is not were the insights lie. And WoW is not rocket science, no matter what some guys on Elitist Jerks would have us believe. Good players are good players, no matter what toon they play and vice versa. In fact, some of the best players I ever met were passionate about their main and the other half was excellent no matter what class they played. Because they set their mind to it, because they had a quick grasp or just a lot of ambition. They approached their alts in the same way they approached their main. The sucky players sucked no matter what character they played, some shades of difference granted.

So, to sum it up for kicks: You don’t go and play your priest and hunter because they will help you suck less on your warrior. It doesn’t quite work that way. First and foremost, you play alts because you have time to play alts. You play alts because you enjoy playing alts. And that’s all there is to it. If you truly want to improve on your main, play your main. In any possible situation: practise on your main. First stop to improve your flexibility: PVP. If you’re set on improving, surely you’re willing to go through the drudgery?

Playing alts can give you insights into other classes. It does not make you a better player. There is no direct causality between these two things.

Now, I can see why somebody who generally likes to “know everything” (aka walking encyclopaedia) or someone who loves to re-visit content would enjoy alts, or why a raidleader would consider it beneficial. It is. A change of focus is always beneficial if you actually know what you’re looking for. I’d never claim that playing alts has no positive potential, but it’s the player that makes it work or not. And it is not necessary in order to be a great player. There is also such a thing as “knowing too much” or thinking you know something when you do not quite yet. From years of personal experience and teaming up with great leaders, I have found this to be true: you don’t have to know everything about other classes in order to lead a charge well. That’s just airy nonsense some leaders like to intimidate you with or to boost their own ego. There is something called “functional knowledge” and that’s what I used when coordinating raid healing. I knew the things I needed to know about the other classes. I knew what was in any way relevant to our role, job and position in raids, about co-healers’ classes, about the tanks, about the DPS. And I knew these things from actually talking to those who had raided on their mains for years, from observation, from learning from them and working together. Plus being an attentive and active person on forum discussions and on healer specific sites.

So, this is my recommendation for all ye coordinators: do not be tempted to know everything about others to the point where you start doing all the thinking for them. They can be expected to know the things that concern playing their class properly. You should not have to know all the ins and outs for others or you will start babysitting every last thing much sooner than you know. Especially if you are a bit of a perfectionist or control freak, which is almost a given in leadership, save yourself by some intended ignorance.

Bottom line: do it all if you enjoy it, knock yourself out – but don’t think you “have to”.

Further issues with playing alts

Manalicious recently posted an article on how playing alts affected her raiding in negative ways. As mentioned before, I have very little personal experience with situations like these, but I can still relate. The few times I ran 5mans on the shaman, I was overly aware of the healer in my back, more than your average DPS would be. As a consequence, I was helping out with healing when I felt the healer struggling, too often than I probably should have. If you’re switching class frequently, it can be demanding to ask your mindset and routines to fully switch over every time. Maybe it is even impossible to perform on the same level as somebody who plays the same class for longer periods of time and has therefore a lot more “automatisms” in place.

But to get back to the beginning of this article: one big issue with playing alts is player burnout. I’m not at all convinced that alts really achieve long-term, what their short-term effect is being sold for – keeping people entertained longer and giving them more things to do. It seems to me that especially long-term, alts have the potential to lessen your enjoyment in the game and not just that, they have the potential to affect the entire world, the social mechanics on servers and their internal progress, negatively. This is the essence of the initial quote I posted and something I want to look into in a follow-up article tomorrow:

More alts, more player burnout? – Let’s find out.

Placeholders for real things – shortcuts to nowhere

Dear player: it’s time to remove the keys you enjoy so much, because let’s face it, they serve no purpose anymore besides a symbolic one. Games are not about symbolism, memories and emotions, this is SRS business. And it saves space on your bars.

We’ve removed the shiny gear and baubles you used to acquire by battling adversaries. It’s not practical. Instead, your rewards are tokens for everything. The tokens all look the same and they aren’t even real tokens, but numbers on a list – we know that’s not very exciting. But it makes loot distribution more even. Less waiting for you.

We removed the requirements for that instance, by the way. No more attunement to proceed. Plus, you can solo the chain if you’ve no patience for a group.

Please note that because of all this, we don’t have enough content since yesterday. However, we really don’t like to see you waste space or time on anything, so we’ll help you save on these things. We don’t know what you’ll do with all the excess, but we are sure you’ll think of something. We want you to be happy right now, not tomorrow.

Cutting out the real thing

So many things have become a currency in MMOs, a substitute; a token, an achievement, a note in the database. Why carry keys when the system can just record an achievement. Why have actual treasure to loot when you can take flexible tokens to shops later. Why carry spell ingredients in your bags, why travel somewhere to enter the instance gate, why visit an NPC in the barracks to join a battlegroud. Why indeed?

MMO players play in virtual worlds. And yet, apparently they need to save time. Apparently they need to save space. For what nobody knows exactly. Weren’t many of those things that get called “timesinks” what actually made for our world, our experiences?

The glory of short-cuts

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” [Robert Frost]

Sliding doors; an intriguing concept. Playing the mind game of “what if” – what if you had taken that other road, where would you be now and who? We’ll never know and most of the time, there won’t be second chances. But I believe that while short-cuts can be handy, they rarely make for the better story. In fact, let’s try an experiment. Or two.

Which one of the two pictures does appeal to you more? Which one sparks your imagination? Where would you rather take a hike?

Your way to treasure: Through that dark wood, down the steep hill. Wait for a boat at the river. Head for the city, convince the guard to let you in. Get some flint and tinder in the shops. Camp close to the distant mountain range. Only a little further from there.

Your way to treasure:
Just follow the road, you can’t miss it.

Same day, different stories

#Day 1a) in an imagined person’s diary –

“I got up this morning and made some pancakes. When I spilled the milk, I discovered my watch lying under the table. I would have looked for that forever… I got the letter you wrote in the morning mail. The pages smelled of you. On the way to work, I bought a newspaper at the kiosk. There was a little boy who kept smiling at me through his huge tooth gap. When I left, he waved at me winking slily. How odd. Because I was musing over that boy, I missed the bus and so I walked to work. On the way I ran into my friend Val. We had a laugh over this new show we’re both watching and he invited me to dinner in the evening. When I arrived at work, the meeting hadn’t started yet. We were still waiting on the secretary which is why I had some time to get another coffee.”

#Day 1b) same imagined person’s diary –

“I got up this morning and ate a pop-tart. Checking my iPhone, I saw your Email, thanks for that. On the way to work, I listened to the news on shout-cast. I noticed there was a traffic jam on the bus lane, good thing I have my car to get to work. When I arrived, the meeting was about to start. The secretary had not arrived yet, but we decided to get going anyway and just include her over voice conference. That’s when I realized my watch was gone.”

On life; real and virtual

Short-cuts are faster, more efficient. Maybe they get us straight to where we want or at least, to where we think we want to be. But they also rob us of opportunities; of the opportunity for life to step in and trigger a chain of events or add something unexpected. Many good things in life, surprises and chance encounters happen while we’re not on plan, not on time. They happen while we’re waiting. They happen on the side of a winding road. They happen because we got distracted and our eyes weren’t fixed on one point in the distance. Maybe “timesinks” are where life really happens.

If we remove all the “unnecessary detours” in games that people consider a nuisance, what exactly are we “saving and optimizing ” that time for? When you arrive faster at treasure and glory, where do you go from there? And just how much have you missed on that shorter journey?

Globalization is killing MMOs

Sounds weird? I have to agree.

BUT…

I happened to read a rather interesting article in the Spiegel magazine tonight which is no, not the Mirror people read in the UK, but happens to have the same name if you care to translate it. It’s the only piece of print news I read regularly, mostly because they spend humongous amounts of time on thorough background investigation and are dedicated to a kind of independent journalism that is rare to find these days. Also, I love reading more than ten pages on the same subject.

Anyway, I came across this long interview with the ex-chief publisher of the Vogue and shockingly enough started to read, although the whole fashion biz is one of those things I am not interested in in the slightest. But I like interviews on people’s lives; they tend to present different perspectives that we’d otherwise never brush in our own life. Also, my bathwater was still warm and fuzzy and I had no more articles to read otherwise.

Riiiight….it appears that Miss Roitfeld was chief publisher and a designer for the Vogue for 10 years and had a blast. For the most part. Not so much during the second half. Less and less towards the end. A lot is currently changing in the world of haute couture, less freedom and more pressure, which is why the lady decided to quit and kiss the Vogue goodbye. Here is an English extract from that interview:

Roitfeld: For 10 years, it was a hell of a lot of fun. But, toward the end, it unfortunately got less and less fun. You used to be able to be more playful, but now it’s all about money, results and big business. The prêt-à-porter shows have become terribly serious. The atmosphere isn’t as electric as it once was, and they now have about as much charm as a medical conference. But it takes just one good fashion show to get things exciting again.
SPIEGEL: If fashion can tell us anything about the age it’s created in, what do you think current fashions tell us?
Roitfeld: Today’s fashions don’t let people dream as much as they used to. Twenty years ago, fashion was a promise – something that was part of your life and perhaps enriched it, something that reflected a particular era. If you look at advertisements these days, all you see are handbags. They aren’t about dreams anymore; customers are buying objects now, not dreams.
SPIEGEL: Is that why you left Vogue in January?
Roitfeld: Ten years is a long time – and especially 10 years in a gilded cage. They were wonderful years; but, sooner or later, birds want their freedom again.
SPIEGEL: Your French publisher said the time for being provocative and trashy was over.
Roitfeld: I’d put it this way: Fashion needs glamour, provocation and broken taboos.
SPIEGEL: Was it your decision to go?
Roitfeld: Absolutely. And at the perfect moment. The French edition of Vogue had never been more successful, had never had more readers or advertisers. And it had never made as much money. For 10 years, my American publisher, Jonathan Newhouse, let me do what I wanted, even when he thought it might be crazy. But it couldn’t have gone on for much longer.
SPIEGEL: Is this the end of era?
Roitfeld: Creativity needs space and a willingness to take risks, but businessmen don’t like risk. What’s more, designers are coming under more and more pressure. Today, a dress can’t just please the women in Paris; it also has to please those in Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow and New York.
SPIEGEL: Is globalization making fashion more boring?
Roitfeld: At the very least, it’s leading to a lot of compromise. But globalization is only one factor. Today’s designers no longer have to create two collections a year; they have to create four: spring, summer, fall and winter. And some fashion studios also add haute couture twice a year. Who can possibly manage all that? Good designers are artists; they’re fragile people. [Source]

Ring any bells? If not, try the following experiment: substitute all the words highlighted in red with the following replacement words:

Prêt-à-porter shows = PR/game conventions, fashion = games/MMOs, handbags = item rewards, Vogue = Blizzard, French publisher = investor / Activision, Jonathan Newhouse = Michael Morhaime, dress = game, women = gamers, collections = content patches, haute couture = major content patches / special promotions.

And then let’s assume Roitfeld = Ghostcrawler. Maybe few years from now. Or let’s assume he joined Blizzard in 2004 and this is 2014. In any case you get the point.

The point of all this being…

The point is: it’s happening everywhere. Grey suits calling the shots. Grey suits finding their way into anything that has grown a little successful on its own through genius, vision and hard work. Investment, bigger business. You pay, you have more say. Even if you really shouldn’t. Roitfeld is just one example of when the world of art clashes with the world of more money.

The globalization claim is rather interesting in this context; after all MMOs live of being online and global. At the same time, the point the interview makes still applies: there’s a huge pressure today to please all markets world-wide, every type of audience, every type of player, maybe even on several platforms. Catering to all of that with the same game is a monstrous attempt that matters zero to the individual player. The pressure to produce (quantity) on game designers is high, the freedom restricted by so many demands. Risk taking is a big no-no. Cloning WoW is boring but safe(r). When it comes to business, globalization is just another word for capitalism.

And MMOs are business.

Burning through the pages

It’s Monday morning as I am writing these words, so be warned dear reader, because this is a grumpy Monday morning post. To honor code and good manners, I should ask first mayhaps how you have been, or more precisely how your weekend was and where your path has taken you – across the planes of Telara? Or maybe down into the Maelstrom of Azeroth? Up a mountain somewhere here on planet earth, down to the city, out to the sea?

And did you burn a lot of content along the way?

When Gods become consumers

Once upon a time there was an MMORPG that gave players a basic, functional setting and stage: a beautiful world of rock and stone, with maps and towns, woods, mountains and seas and a few roads to travel them. And the woods would be populated by beasts and animals and the towns would be bustling with vendors and tradefolk and the odd, suspicious looking traveler or merry minstrel in front of a tavern. And from there the world was the player’s: to explore, to do with and shape as he cared for, to build alliances and establish trades, to command and conquer, to build or destroy, to settle treaties or rage war against one another, within a ruleset and handful of laws.

And so life on that world was never-ending; as endless as the playerbase cared to make it and create their own adventures. There was no content to “finish” and no final goal to “beat”, because the heart of the MMORPG was a second world, not a high score or ending credits like for other, traditional games. Content was created while and through playing, making the player not just a hero inside a story, but hero and God of a much greater story.

That was a long time ago.

If you can burn through it, it’s because it tastes of nothing

Reading through Wolfshead’s most recent article, I came a cross a line that outraged me like no other, elaborated in more detail in a short commentary over at Gamasutra. And it wasn’t so much the whole shallow explanation attempt behind Blizzard’s reasoning, but the wording itself, the greater mindset and concept behind lines such as these:

“And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that’s why we’re working on developing more content.”

“We need to be faster at delivering content to players,” he added. “And so that’s one of the reasons that we’re looking to decrease the amount of time in-between expansions.”

Our player, the consumer. Our player, that hungry animal who’s wolfing down our content so fast, we have to keep throwing it at him faster and faster.

Without realizing it, the developers have not only reduced their playerbase to an insatiable cookie monster, but degraded themselves and their product to nothing but a fast food-delivery service, more scripted than ever, less dynamic and alive than ever. And like with all food that is so processed that’s it’s completely “dead” and devoid of any nutrition, Blizzard need more and more of it to keep their spoiled yet malnourished customers content. They have created their own vicious circle and now they suffer from the pressure to deliver at increasing speed. An entirely self-created pressure, because they want to do everything and let us do very little.

The player is no God in their world. He does not interact with it, only consume, he does not co-create anything, not cook his own food. It’s like eating 5 burgers a day and no workout on the side either. What’s the point of fantasy worlds if they start resembling downsides of the real one? Will future developers be forced to create “Slim-Fast”-servers to re-introduce overfed players to a more balanced MMO “lifestyle” and re-adjust things back to a more active and healthy playing environment? Metaphorically speaking?

Burning through the pages

Tonight after my work’s done, I will rush off to the local bookstore in town to pick up the sequel of “The Name of the Wind”, Patrick Rothfuss’ formidable debut fantasy novel of his Kingkiller Chronicles. I have burned through the pages of the first book this weekend, over 600 pages in merely two days – it’s been this gripping and entertaining, and overall I was just happy to read some solid high fantasy again after a longer drought in this particular corner of the genre. The second book is apparently even longer and I have no doubt that I will devour it like the first one. Then it’s over and finished until the author releases the next part in a couple of years.

And that’s okay – because it’s his story and his world, he’s the master of all things there, of a story that’s already been told. I’m merely a spectator he’s inviting to enter, I can make it a walk or rush-through, but either way my time there is limited. And you wouldn’t go and ask for more from a book; one volume, one ride for which you pay one time.

It’s okay to consume a book.

Never give up, never surrender

Before the weekend, a little comic I played around with (I added a link to the original version in the caption, just so my copyright infringement guilt feels a little lighter).

(Original version)

To end the week on a somewhat lighter note, two links you all want to look into:

Altnotes.com where Gilded has recently set up camp with a new MMO blog. He focuses on analyzing and discussing modern MMO design and mechanics in general, adding a new voice to the circle of blogging MMO critics in the blogosphere. In the spirit of supporting our newcomers, check his thoughts out sometime, it’s worth it!

Rift: The little things over at massively; I’ve always been one to look for the little things in my MMOs, the silly, fun and secret along the way which are all too easily missed in the rush. A formidable list with the very same focus, saves me creating one for Rift then, I guess!

Enjoy your weekend everybody, be it inside or outside those virtual worlds we all love so much!