Category Archives: Wishlist

A Future of better player housing – from LOTRO to Wildstar

It’s probably a fair claim that player housing is one of the most wanted features in MMOs and yet also one of the trickiest to design and often misshapen ones. While the potential of letting users create and shape their own virtual space inside a game is endless, promising not just for more social interaction but longterm player attachment, developers of past titles have often missed to include that one imperative ingredient to all housing: significance. (Interchangeable with meaning, relevance or impact.)

While it’s all good fun and giggles to decorate one’s own space and collect shinies, the attraction of housing is short-lived for the average player. Instanced housing is especially bad for this but even if an MMO offers outdoor housing or neighbourhoods such as LOTRO, there are only so many times one will invite friends over to marvel at interior design or enjoy tea at the expensive, golden party table. To make player housing an effective part of the game and community, there need to be more mechanics in place to create meaning and significance. There need to be reasons enough why people would want to spend time in/around their own house, why they would want to invite each other or explore homes. You want me to care about housing longterm? Tell me why!

Different ways to create meaningful player housing in MMOs

As romantic as the idea of an ingame “home” is, my guess is most MMO players aren’t looking to simply simulate a homebase. For one thing, we already have a home (duh). Secondly, players are already likely to pick individual homes for themselves – as in their favorite city or spot on the world map. One can build attachment to any place in an MMO. What really draws us in though are those places where we meet up, interact and do business. Places that have specific social functions, which is why cities have always been the heartbeat in games. They’re where stuff happens and where we want to hang out. I do not want to go sit quietly and alone at my instanced home’s doorstep in an MMO, even if it took me five days and as many corpseruns to get that doormat.

Ever since Turbine announced their player housing revamp for this year, I’ve been pondering on all the ways to bestow more meaning on LOTRO’s current housing model and better player housing in general. LOTRO is an interesting hybrid in the sense that while the system is instanced, neighbourhoods still hold a ton of social potential. It’s quite awesome how every single home has its own unique address which you can look up at the homestead gate. Alas, Turbine too failed at digging deeper with their housing system. For what its worth, here’s my round-up of suggestions on how to spice things up in the future and make player housing a more lively and exciting part of the game:

1) Cosmetics & Personalization:
Indoor and outdoor (yard) design should be a given. Design slots should be completely flexible within a building grid, similar to Minecraft. Do not force players to only put up “one painting per wall” or having to plant “small items in small slots, big items in big slots”. It’s limiting and makes decor feel generic.

Rather than offering x types of homes, let players build individual homes based on resources and property boundaries. Introduce painting, weaving, carpentering and farming professions. Make room and level expansions possible.

Feature nifty items such as a personal mailbox, message board, personal indoor tune, bookshelves (Skyrim), complete collectible themes/styles, quest/raid/guild trophies, pet barns and stables. LOTRO features an amazing score of collectible mounts, yet players cannot have any of them on display?

2) Social tools & opportunities
Instanced or not, every player home should have its unique address that can be looked up by others in a public “address book”. As an ever-curious and nosy explorer, I do not only enjoy traveling into the blue but looking up destinations an seeking out specific places. How about some yellow pages where home owners can add notes on what services or special features they offer?

Making a personal mailbox a requisite in order to receive any ingame mail comes to mind as a next step. Similarly extreme would be the measure of removing the auction house and instead letting players set up shops and vendor NPCs on their property, as was done in UO (and long is the list of players who worship it). Player shops create traffic and interaction, greatly increase the significance of professions and generate income for the owner. While we’re at it – remove banks too and make player houses the only place for safe storage!

Homes should be hubs for trade, gathering and crafting in general. Spending time on building and tending to the environment could each go with specific rewards and buffs. There are some great new ideas in Wildstar’s recent housing dev talk. Furthermore, player houses in the same area should be able to form mini-towns and unlock more features such as townhalls with special quests, market places with unique wares and the option to build custom event stages. Mini-towns could set up donation boxes in order to receive public funding for bigger buildings. Pecuniary administration is of course handled by the town-members elected major.

…Naturally, not all of these ideas are novel and some are obviously already live in LOTRO; however imagining all of them come together and taking it further, one can only muse how deep the rabbit hole of player housing may reach. There’s an untapped goldmine there if a developer is willing to take some bold steps and abandon a few popular and convenient features that MMO players take for granted nowadays – being able to do and access anything from anywhere among them. It is impossible to restore meaning without limiting certain services in the game in favor of players frequenting their own and each others homes. Too long have city-dwelling NPCs taken over our virtual interactions. Just imagine: riding down your home street in LOTRO to do business at the market square, passing smoking chimneys (representing occupation) and busy neighbours laboring in their front yard. A micro-cosmos of its own. Where do I sign up?

A word on scale

While the recently published Wildstar update is very exciting, there is one thing that irritated me in the video documentary. What I’m talking about is scale which sadly seems to be off in Wildstar’s housing structures and related items, just the way scale is completely off in Guild Wars 2 – something I have lamented since day one. As great as monumental gates and streets made for giants seem at first, and Divinity’s Reach certainly is impressive, an off-balance environment scale in MMOs creates detachment. It feels unnatural and unauthentic in greater quantity. I do not want to sit in chairs that are three times too big for me or open doors that dwarf elephants. It’s hard to immerse myself while going through a Goldilocks experience. It’s not what I personally associate with a cosy home and it doesn’t create the atmosphere I feel when entering my small hut in LOTRO which is exactly the size it should be in relation to who’s supposed to inhabit it. Therefore, dear devs please take note: bigger isn’t always better!

That aside, I look forward to see Wildstar’s flying islands go live. They’ve yet to prove that having homes up in the sky is a good idea, but Carbine are making the biggest buzz about their housing right now and it’s nice to see developers taking this aspect so seriously. I am also super antsy for LOTRO’s update and hope to see a great many changes! To my fellow Middle-Earth travelers: what housing improvements would you like to see most? And what are people’s top must-haves for future player housing? May Wildstar herald much more goodness yet to come!

The Deathbed Fallacy. Or: Spare me your Gamer’s Remorse, Thank You!

(This post is dedicated to all the happy gamers out there. And the unhappy ones.)

I have one more month to go at the current job, much to my great delight. Imagine my surprise then when today, somewhat late, I discovered a distant co-worker talking about his WoW raiding spree some years ago, when he was still a progression raider on his horde shaman. Unfortunately however, WoW had “gone wrong” sometime after WotLK (which is true of course) and so he stopped his raiding career of many years and approximately 172 days of total playtime. What a familiar story.

However, my initial fuzzy surge of ex-raider fellowship was short-lived; three minutes into the conversation, the topic shifted to what an utter waste of time it had been to play as much WoW as he had. How could anyone in his right mind spend that much time on games? And with nothing to show for after such a long time? Never ever would he do anything like it again.

Of course! I can never be that lucky….after all this workplace just sucks in all respects!

From there this guy went to explain how he’s rather playing online poker these days and earn some money – because that activity at least has some financial upside (and hence must be utterly worthwhile compared to playing silly fantasy games). Of course my mind was reeling from all the familiar, hollow argumentation at that point, but what struck me the most about this person was the way his enthusiastic flashback of past WoW days turned into such a fundamental condemnation of the once cherished pastime. His eyes had been shining brightly thinking back on his raiding career. There was grim pride in his words when he clarified he’d been one of the “real raiders” on a popular German progression server. Not to mistake with one of the casual crowd! He had killed Arthas on 25man and more. He had “had everything”.

And quite obvious to me, he had enjoyed that greatly. To such a point, a distant shadow of that past glory was still surfacing on his now frowning face. And yet, somewhere along the line that same mind convinced itself that it had all been worthless. An odd ambiguity bespeaking a battle between feelings and reason.
I was just waiting for him to say it: how none of us wish we had played more videogames on our deathbed. At least he spared me that particular cringe.

What none of us wish

Besides the obvious thing, that there’s an awful lot of things we won’t be wishing for when facing death one day, no matter how much we have done them, the truth is most of us will never ever find ourselves on that proverbial death bed. You know, that peaceful and solemn end-of-days contemplation as we feel the last flicker of life leaving our body. That perfectly timed moment of retrospective. And even if by some chance we did, we wouldn’t be thinking of having played too many videogames; in fact I have this wild hunch we wouldn’t think about games at all. This entire analogy isn’t even a thing, it’s nonsensical and construed. Anyway.

Sometimes I still wonder, in a brief moment of desperate frustration, how long is it gonna take? How much more established do videogames need to become in contemporary, western culture to be regarded just as any other hobby out there that isn’t necessarily making “financial profit”(?) That isn’t productive on a first-glance or physically tangible level (tangible on many other levels though). Heck, some hobbies are actually downright detrimental to your health and wellbeing and even those are more accepted than gaming. It’s nuts.

Not to mention of course all the upsides and benefits of videogaming as a hobby / passion. So often documented by gamers out there. Again and again. I’ve talked about it myself, At least twice. I don’t feel the need to revisit this topic. By now there’s a multitude of studies and hard facts out there on all the things that gamers are better at, from hand-eye coordination to abstract thinking, from organizational to certain social skills. And then, in case you missed it in 2012, there’s pieces like this one that actually deal, literally, with the deathbed fallacy in context of videogaming. Yeah, it’s McGonigal again – she’s an enthusiast. And she has a point.

So, in case you still detect yourself in that thought process sometimes, privately maybe as you ponder how much “greater you could’ve been without videogames”, how games stifled your growth and progress in other areas when they’ve really just been an excuse from yourself, saving you from self-doubt and the realization that maybe you’re not going to be a big world changer, internationally acclaimed author, scientist or designer after all – here’s a short transcription from McGonigal’s 2012 TED talk:

“Hospice workers, the people who take care of us at the end of our
lives, recently issued a report on the most frequently expressed regrets
that people say when they are literally on their deathbeds. And that’s
what I wanna share with you today, the top five regrets of the dying:

Number 1: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
Number 2: I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.
Number 3: I wish I had let myself be happier.
Number 4: I wish I had the courage to express my true self.
Number 5: I wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams instead of what others expected of me.” [source]

Now, I don’t think I need to further comment this list. I only wish you do yourself a favor: take it to heart. And while we’re at it: do me a favor and spare me from your goddamn gamer’s remorse.
If you feel the gaming blues sometime (I have), take some time off! If you aren’t enjoying games anymore, don’t play them! If you feel you’re spending too much time on games, play less games! If you feel you’re using games as an unhealthy outlet, ask for help.

….but spare me and the rest of the happily ever after gaming crowd. Spare me the underachiever complex and lamentation of failed grandeur which you so graciously bestow on everyone around you in one sweeping, condescending blow of rotten hindsight wisdom. I think videogames are fucking great – they have been for the past 28 years of my life! That’s for how long I’ve been playing them, so I think I too know a thing or two about the subject.

Just….SPARE ME. Thanks!

A Cautious look at MMOs in 2013

The beginning of a new year is a good opportunity to look back at a year full of games, posts and arguments – or alternatively, to look forward and muse on things to come. I feel like doing both, but today my avantgarde self has won the upper hand. What is it I am looking forward to about the future of MMOs in 2013?

PC Gamer have published a rather great and lengthy 2013 videogame preview, going by the bold title of “The best PC games of 2013“. Every genre has its dedicated section, so it’s not just an interesting sneakpeek overall but a recommendable read for anybody (of course it’s page 5, 9 and 3 where it’s really at!).

Sooo…newbie MMOs. Dare I even pick three of you from the crowd?

My horses in the 2013 races

1. The Elder Scrolls Online

While I dislike the idea of a “Skyrim MMO” with classes, restricted skill paths and formulaic MMO style combat as much as the next person, the truth is I am going to play ES Online no matter what. I cannot not look into this franchise taking an online dip! If they get the world right, the feeling of scale, atmosphere and adventure, then it will still hold enough interest for this explorer here (and then I haven’t experienced outdoor dungeons in a long, long time). To claim that some of the already confirmed disappointments are enough to keep me from wandering a polished Tamriel is to kid myself. And then there’s of course always the unquenchable hope that things might even turn out that bit better than expected. We never learn.

2. Wildstar

I have as many strong reasons not to want to try Wildstar as the other way around. That makes it a balanced pick, I guess. The comic style of the game screams WoW, there’s the holy trinity I am not too keen on (hah) and the self-proclaimed “friends & family” label. I don’t expect Wildstar to be daring in any way or attract my kind of community (or age range). Still, of all MMOs announced for 2013, Wildstar is the one title promising package and polish more than any other. Things have looked great in that department for a long time now and Carbine is ever eager on getting player feedback on twitter. Then, there’s the unquestionably brilliant housing system, the Bartle inspired questing mode and a quirky attempt at spicing up an otherwise classic combat. Hmm.

3. EQ Next versus Neverwinter

I’ve considerable misgivings concerning both these games which is why they share third spot for 2013. As much as I want to go more oldschool or niche, both EQ Next and Neverwinter have me tap my fingers nervously on the keyboard. As if expectations towards EQ’s “true successor” weren’t big enough, with obscure rumors circling back and forth for years, SOE’s president had nothing better to do than proclaim this title “the largest sandbox MMO ever designed” – when all we’ve basically seen so far is that one same green image. Yeah, that one…So for now, all I know is that SOE aren’t short for words and we’ll see about the sand. If it even comes out!
Neverwinter on the other hand, great as diving back into the Forgotten Realms may be, manages to both intrigue and scare with smaller but no less bold words: content creation tool and player created questlines. A lot of potential. A great many potential outcomes!

Unless something most unexpected comes along this year, that’s probably it for me in terms of new MMO dabbles. I can’t say that I am super excited about any of my picks but that’s what I’d roll with to satisfy the curiosity. I am obviously a somewhat restrictive player when it comes to non-fantasy settings or panties – truth be told though, I feel so content playing LOTRO at the moment while also far from done with GW2, that between playing older MMOs and a full Steam library I’m completely okay with 2013 making no grand attempts at the genre. I feel a little tired with the speed of MMO releases every year; I’d like to play less games but play them longer. And from that point of view I place my trust in Middle-Earth and Tyria, while a return to Telara is certainly not unthinkable.

Yep, I think I’ll be just fine.

P.S. I would of course love to hear what other people’s picks are from the PC Gamer overview!

[FFXIV] The Developer that just wouldn’t give up

In August 2010 I commented briefly on the personal disappointment Square Enix’ (SE) long awaited FFXI successor FFXIV (or FF14) was quickly becoming. As it turned out not just for myself. Scores of franchise fans and die-hard FF online gamers turned away in horror over the sluggish and boring combat system, the bad pacing and endless walks, slow controls and overall slow responsiveness, badly designed UI, hindered social interaction and controversial design such as a lack of auction house or diminishing returns on XP. FFXIV didn’t just have a bad launch as some MMOs do – it had a completely premature launch paired with the highest player expectations. A recipe for disaster.

The rest of the story is well-known: as the bad reviews (the linked one being a personal favorite) were piling up, FFXIV flatlined shortly after and went temporarily free-to-play. SE announced the dismissal of a substantial part of their management and development team. Considering the game had only been out for three months that reaction was both quick and meant as a statement.

After the initial shock had ebbed down in the media, things went quiet around FFXIV. The game that was meant to appeal to a wider, more casual mainstream audience than its predecessor (still going strong and releasing expansions after 8 years) was shelved in the collective memory of the MMO market, the way Age of Conan was after a similar launch mishap in 2008. It’s hard to judge whether MMOs can ever truly recover from launch failures like that but in FFXIV’s case too this is not how the story ended.

A Realm Reborn in more than just name

As reported by Gamespot in August 2012, the severe damage to SE’s flagship has been done but they are far from accepting defeat for FFXIV. Not only has the game undergone a drastic revamp and overhaul in many necessary areas, SE mean to re-launch the title completely – as in there be no more trace of past failures! FFXIV has not just been fixed or patched these past months, it has been turned into what the developer considers a new game. Retail partners of SE have been asked to discontinue all FFXIV sales until A Realm Reborn launches and to “destroy all remaining inventory” of the old title. How is that for faith in your own product?

“For many companies, that would be the end of it. Call it quits, burn it down, and cut its losses. But not Square Enix.[…]

And so Final Fantasy XIV lives on, but the game is almost unrecognizable. The visuals have been greatly improved, powered as they are by a new graphics engine, which Yoshida says needed to be as impressive as possible, thanks to the long life span of the MMO. The animation engine has been overhauled too, with the niggling lag that made the game feel so sluggish now eliminated. The maps have been redesigned, all-new assets have been created, and there are “hundreds” of new quests to complete, and dungeons to explore–a content quest finder will make them easier to find. More importantly, that sprawling, confusing interface has been streamlined, and seeing the game in action, it immediately looks a lot more user-friendly. Menus have been simplified, icons have been made clearer, and the whole thing can be customized to your own preferences. And that’s just the PC version.” (Gamespot)

During my research for this article, I came across many negative forum comments along the lines of “why aren’t SE not giving up already?” and I seriously cringed inside. Yeah, why don’t they? Why not just give up on so many years of hard team labor, development, vision (financial expenditure aside)? Why not just toss a 20+ year old legacy to the wind after a mere three months of a bombed 1.0?

Is that even a serious question? ….

Obviously this is how MMOs are treated by cynical gaming audiences these days. Not only is launch time pivotal, it is not enough anymore to safely steer your ship through the calmer seas of a few 100k subscribers, the way FFXI always has done while staying profitable. But when major titles like SWTOR or even TSW face ruin so early into their life cycles, it is a horribly sad thing for everyone involved. The wonder box that could have been FFXIV was barely glimpsed.

Call me biased. As a gamer raised on classic JRPGs and used to the brilliance of FF titles, my heart goes out to this new MMO. Forever Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series (along with other titles such as the Secret of Mana or Chrono games) have been the epitome of polish, beautiful graphics and music, unforgettable characters, interesting team combat and narrative depth. For a very long time did the RPG powerhouse not only dominate the genre on console but constantly set new standards for quality gaming experiences – not unlike Blizzard in its own niches. The only other, similarly consistent contestant during that era was Nintendo’s Zelda franchise (and we are still debating if Zelda is not an adventure game!).

So yes, I would like to see FFXIV get another chance. If SE have the resources, which seems to be the case, I fully support this developer in its unfaltering faith and endeavor to give things one more go before tossing them in the gutter for good. The shaken development team deserves as much.

A first beta for A Realm Reborn has been moved to February 2013 and an official launch ETA has yet to be revealed by SE. Late 2013 is probably the fairest estimate at this point. For my part, I want to keep an open mind. I’m very interested in the final conclusion and having moved FFXIV to my MMO to-do list anyway, I am excited to see 2.0 go live. I keep my fingers crossed for SE delivering on their promises – and convincing the rest of the MMO world out there that such a thing as second chances exist in the world of online games. In the end it’s you who decides.

It’s a new day with so much to play!

Steam sales. Yes, we have all done it over these past few days – I know you have and so have I. Steam has been rather awesome for a while but the direction the platform has taken of late is fabulous from my humble end-user perspective; easy browsing (too easy!), purchasing and gifting games to folk on your friendlist, automatic updates, trailers and demos all in one spot, public wishlists and screenshot galleries….and now with the new big picture portal I have even re-plugged a gamepad to my PC. I used to think that XBOX live showed the rest of the console world how online is done properly – the same can be said for Steam and PC gaming. As somebody who has always looked forward to multiplatform, digital gaming instead of dusty boxes piling up on my attic, I am very pleased with this new era. That doesn’t even touch on the fact that with Steam I feel more like I’m paying my money to the right people, aka developers.

What this platform does so well is what amazon, youtube and similar sharing, networking and self-publishing sites have done for a while: check out what others are playing, read your buddies’ recommendations, browse similar titles, genres and special bundles. Before you know it, you own so many games you don’t know where to start! Which brings me to the inevitable topic of excess. I guess it fits our overall lifestyle in the western world that we now increasingly “nibble” at our games, try more of them but finish less. I don’t know if this is good or bad; I remember how I saved up my allowance as a child to afford a new SNES RPG, playing it to death for weeks. Games were more expensive then, too.

Today, I might finish one game out of three. Does that mean I enjoy myself less? I am not so sure. With more choice and variety, I actually get to keep my enjoyment level fairly high. I have the flexibility to switch to something else when the same level or riddle frustrate or bore me. At the same time, avoiding frustration all the time is to avoid that feeling of epic win; of being victorious over tedious obstacles. That is an old discussion we know so well from MMO design too. Still, do we all need to play games in the same way? Do we take pleasure from the same type of “win”?

A Trip back to Middle-Earth

After thoroughly enjoying the new Hobbit movie in cinema, hands down the biggest fun I’ve had over the Christmas holidays (during which I was ill with a nasty flu, yay) was with Lego Lord of the Rings. Yeah, that surprised me too! Being my first Lego title due to popular bias, the huge care, love for detail and humor that has gone into bringing the movie trilogy to life with Lego characters is simply stunning. Lego LOTR is straightforward gameplay fun, sticking very closely to the beautiful settings and script of Peter Jackson’s films, while surprising you with creative ideas and funny details around every corner. I finished the whole storyline in about 15 hours, after which I had discovered only 30% of the entire world and open world mode got unlocked. The fully explorable map of Middle-Earth is packed with more secrets, puzzles and playable characters to recruit (75 in total!). That last one was a neat flashback of the fun I’ve had with an old RPG called Genso Suikoden. What else can I say, if you’re at all into Tolkien’s world and the LOTR movies, forget your lego bias and give this game a try!

As if that wasn’t enough Tolkien for a week, I finally decided to put my money where my mouth is and give Lord of the Rings Online a try. It’s one of maybe three MMOs I’ve been meaning to play forever (together with Vanguard and FF14) but different issues kept me from it. One of them was probably timing; when LOTRO came out I was still deeply into WoW. Way too much about this new title looked similar to WoW’s approach at first sight, for example the questing system. I am also not actually a die-hard Tolkien fan. Anyways, by now I can say that no MMO I’ve ever tried was actually “just like WoW” (the way some people claim): Allods is not like WoW, Rift is not WoW and LOTRO too is not WoW. They just share basic features like all MMOs have to.

After a few hours of gameplay (and rerolling on Laurelin EU RP server), I decided to upgrade my account to VIP status for three months and give this game a fair chance. I am still taking in newbie impressions, so suffice to say that LOTRO already managed to surprise me. I am loving the oldschool feel of this MMO both in setting and gameplay approach. I struggle with the combat quite a bit and have a feeling this isn’t the game’s strong suit. Questing is very linear and a rather uneventful fetch&delivery routine so far. The world on the other hand is absolutely massive (travel gets a new meaning) and lives from its community – which is really what I’m interested in with LOTRO. There is something very soothing about playing my Loremaster, dabbling at crafts and hobbies, stopping at inns and listening to music being played by real players. At this point I should also apologize for having called this game ugly in the past: I don’t know what Turbine have done since launch but on my current PC with max settings LOTRO, dated as it may be, is still a beautiful game with lots of nice details for today’s standards (click image to expand!) –

As you can tell from above screenshot, I am currently parked in Bree and undecided where to go next. So far all general chat on my server is very quiet. I don’t know if Kinships are a must in LOTRO from the get-go (tips welcome) or whether I am missing something. Hopefully I will find more chances to interact soon. I look forward to explore more of this world. LOTRO is not exactly the most self-explanatory or beginner friendly of MMOs in many respects (which does not have to be a bad thing).

Musings on 2013

Looking at my full Steam library and having recently resigned from a job that has drained all my energy, creativity and joy in life for the past few months, my wishes for 2013 are very humble: to do more of what I enjoy, to be more me again. Odd how that always seems to be such a difficult task.
I hope to find a more fulfilling (or at least less soul-destroying) work place soon and I look forward to having more time for writing again, gaming and other new projects – one of which may very well be a collaborative gaming&geek culture blog in the German speaking hemisphere (something that is still very under-represented compared to English sites and communities).

I have always wished to turn my different passions into a living, at least a part time gig, and I feel geek culture deserves more serious voices here in the heart of Europe. You may think mainstream media are conservative over in the UK or US still but when it comes to gaming, art and entertainment, both younger and older audiences around here don’t have many places to turn to and platforms to share in, unless they speak English. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while anyway and tackling blogging in my mother tongue would assist me in professionalizing it where I’m living. I’ve had people tell me about monetizing and different options before, but so far I never felt this was the way to go for this little blog here.

This turned out to be a very editorial post, which I guess is warranted after a quiet December and in presence of the new year that is 2013. These artificial boundaries we create for time have their upside in symbolism. I like a blank page before me, I always have. And with that I wish all of you a belated, very happy new year, filled with time and opportunity to be yourself and do the things that matter to you most. Now I have some catching up to do on my blogroll!

P.S. If nothing else, you should absolutely check out the current, amazing indie bundle up on Steam! It doesn’t get much better than this!

[GW2] Managing expectations. And see you there!

While speakers don’t realize it anymore in everyday language, the German word for “disappointed” has a rather intriguing, literal meaning: it’s to be “un-deceived”. If we feel disappointment, it is generally because we were let down on our expectations – our hopes, dreams, illusions maybe. In any case, there was a deception of some kind involved and quite often it’s a self-created one as much as the other way around.

With GW2 finally at our doorstep and me still shocked that official launch time is set more in favor of EU folks than US (amagad I get to log on to GW2 for breakfast!) for a change, it’s sensible to take a moment and consider personal expectations. I spend a lot of time dissecting and criticizing single features and aspects of MMOs on this blog, so it’s probably hard to believe that I’m also quite the big picture person. I know exactly what I want from GW2 and my personal hopes for this game have already been half fulfilled in the betas. Lucky for me, GW2 offers a lot to explorers and lovers of the shiny!

Powerful expectations

For a while now I’ve had the feeling that player expectation towards upcoming titles has increased in significance compared to the olden days. Expectations have a tremendous power over individual perception and reception; more than that, they also have the potential to spread side-effects, for better or worse.

When The Secret World launched its free 1-month anniversary weekend two weeks ago, I ended up having a look at Funcom’s latest progeny quite unintentionally. I suspected that TSW would not appeal to me personally, for reasons of theme already, but I like a first-hand look at any game especially when there’s nothing to lose. Alas, rather quickly TSW confirmed my misgivings; I would never get even close to a well-rounded and fair overall judgement after such short a playtime, suffice to say though that I can only marvel at Funcom for their chosen business model, considering TSW serves a niche inside a niche and all past AoC baggage. I also didn’t like combat one bit and then there’s the looks of the game….and while you can disagree with me on style, no MMO launched in 2012 and coming with a key, sub and item shop is allowed to look like a Sims game! Complete and utter no-go in my world (I got a new rig for a reason!). If SWTOR got a beating for looking dated, it’s only fair that TSW should get one too!

That wasn’t the big insight I took from TSW though. Much rather, there was something very interesting going on in terms of player reception in this particular case – a case of a more niche and quite low profile MMO launch. Just to give one example of many similar echoes I’ve come across during the free TSW weekend, here’s an excerpt of a recent twitter conversation with two of my fellow bloggers, Belghast and Heather:

Tip: read from bottom to top 😉

What I’m not implying with this is that either of them isn’t genuinely enjoying TSW, by now probably for many reasons. Assuming they are still playing, they most certainly have found enough reasons to retain them. However, these are two examples of what I suspect is quite a substantial group of players who ended up taking to a new MMO they had not followed much at all pre-launch, and who did not only find enjoyment despite that but maybe even because of it? Naturally, expectations (or the lack thereof) will not decide over the longterm choice to stay or leave a game, yet it’s intriguing they would have the power to influence initial impression so heavily. We all know how pivotal a time launch and also individual “entry stage” are for new MMOs.

Now, “pleasantly surprised” or “better than expected” aren’t exactly labels new MMOs usually thrive for but I still need to ask myself what is the conclusion of all this? And what does this potentially mean for game developers and publishers? That maybe it’s beneficial to hold back on too much exposure and heavy marketing pre-launch? That a low profile is preferable in some cases? Should developers start and spread their own false or obscure rumors about their game just so it reaches intangible cult status, luring a potentially bigger audience out of sheer curiosity? No really, I’m quite serious!

If we consider the last few weeks of the GW2 waiting rush, it’s probably safe to say that there is such a thing as too much exposure and for some players I am told, there’s such a thing as detrimental hype – to a point where omni-present talk of the same game becomes so overbearing it may even turn somebody off from buying the game at all. I don’t know how frequently that occurs, and personally I wouldn’t want to attribute a vocal minority of forum trolls that much power over my own game choices, but if a potential customer refrains from buying GW2 because of overbearing hype that can’t be in ANet’s interest. That’s not to say that they have any direct responsibility or means to change anything. It does shed some light on the power of expectations though.

I will also officially bet on this here blog that GW2 is never going to get the soft and benign player treatment for its no-doubt yet undiscovered flaws and failures, the way more low profile MMOs like TSW usually do. GW2 will be hacked into pieces mercilessly and with every conceivable double standard, simply for having been praised and expected so long and publicly beforehand. No doubt there are already some people lying in wait for that moment of grand punishment…like the resented, vengeful twin waiting for his one-minute monologue. I won’t comment on that but yeah, it does show us another shade of potential effects of expectations…

Finding one’s own enjoyment

I mentioned feeling lucky before because GW2 could be an entirely different game, not catering to any of my very personal selling points. There is a beautiful world to explore in the fashion I endorse, there are undeniably wonderful graphics and music, quest and combat mechanics I consider fresh at the very least, plenty of cosmetic items….safe bets all of them. I look forward to enjoy this at my own pace and hopefully with the freedom to group up with any of my friends. Most of the aspects that are currently criticized or eyed with worry don’t interest me that much: I don’t worry about the guild system, dungeon loot, “endgame” or even PvP should it turn out to be lacking. I’m also not one to fret over bugs or imbalances so early – there’s time. Furthermore I consider the current bashing of the community very over the top; WoW was never a good place to go for forums nor general chat. That didn’t mean there weren’t cool people to be found on servers. Community is always also what you are contributing.

I’m going to play GW2 for my own reasons that may seem trivial to somebody else. Much of that enjoyment will be up to myself too which is what managing expectations is all about. I look forward to meet up with some of my old WoW mates so much it’s silly and for that already I thank GW2, for that long awaited opportunity!

How long will it all last us? I don’t know and frankly don’t care. GW2 doesn’t have to fascinate me for 5 years straight, I am no longer that gamer. Neither did I ever consider this the big, all-changing MMO revolution but as The Cynical Brit rightfully points out towards the end of his final beta conclusion, “a next evolutionary step”. A very important step at that – one that may impact on much to come. I care for this genre, I care for GW2 to be a solid success which I’m confident it will be. Mid-or longterm? I will probably get bored for lack of things to do and fluctuate more again between several games. So what? Even if I only got the famous 3 months of amagad-shiny-awesome-noob-time out of all this (which I doubt), it will be a hell lot more fun than I’ve had in a long time!

…With that I am off to the long awaited weekend and my Saturday morning launch. I wish you all the grandest GW2 head-start weekend and that you can enjoy this new MMO simply for what it is, unaffected and untouched by the backlash of other people’s expectations. I’ll see you and all your Asura Engineers on the other side! ^^

All the ways that WoW changed me

In a recent conversation on what types of reward GW2 may offer players at max level and whether it will be enough to satisfy more reward-driven players, it dawned on me how much I’ve changed my outlook or rather my expectations towards certain aspects of MMOs – since WoW. Now, overall I certainly haven’t changed my mind, I still love the genre for the same reasons: a vast world, beautiful fantasy settings, secrets to explore, character development and real people to meet on the way. Yet there are aspects I’ve fundamentally changed my opinion on or rather my wishes in; maybe I should say that they’ve been satisfied to a point where I no longer appreciate them. And WoW has certainly much to do with it.

I’ve never been a particularly reward-driven player, or rather I would say I’ve never cared so much for items. Items and reward are not the same thing although they usually coincide, especially in MMOs as item-centric as WoW. I play for challenge, for that feeling of accomplishment first and I play for the team; shinies are nice in addition but they lose all value if there are no requirements and restrictions. That’s when I feel “rewarded”, when I overcame an obstacle with others – these are the things we take with us. I would argue that there are actually a lot more players playing for the reward of challenge than realize it – but then, I guess it’s a valid point that if GW2 offered nothing for all the collectors and achievers, that would hurt its popularity. Item drops are of course not the only way to satisfy in this department: I expect them to come up with special dyes, lots of cosmetic items and things like titles or rare pets. If that creates enough opportunities to “show off” in the game I can’t tell, but whoever expects to collect tier/pvp sets and weapons in abundance will get disappointed in GW2.

Personally I couldn’t care less. Whatever value I might ever have put in rare gear or upgrades has been completely and utterly smashed by WoW. To say that I got tired and sick of loot wouldn’t do matters justice. Mind, I still like cosmetics and GW2 offers plenty of that plus the great dye system; but whether I own anything special, expensive or best-in-slot is the least concern in my mind. I loved how my bags hardly ever filled up last beta (and yes…I know about that ‘deposit collectible’ feature….now), give me less loot ArenaNet!

So, that’s my number one for the list of “things that WoW changed for me”. Of course there’s more –

1) Item / gear rewards;
See reasons explained above.

2) Raids and endgame;
Raiding was a big motivator for me to play WoW. I did little else in vanilla and never stopped raiding until Cataclysm. WoW was obviously very focused on its raiding endgame by design, but I simply loved the big scale raids, coordinating so many people, the teamwork, the whole guild effort involved.

The present: These days I loathe the idea of raiding – the whole organisation, the downtimes due to numbers, the headache that is recruitment. I want a close-knit team of a few good men ready to roll in a few minutes. I want content to be accessible for a small group of quality rather than a big ass raid.

3) Roles and healing;
There’s never been a more passionate priest or healing coordinator than myself in WoW. That is the one thing I can say with confidence. I’ve played my holy priest through 6 years of WoW and countless raids that I coordinated. I loved being a healer, being needed support, having that sort of responsibility.

The present: I haven’t played a healer, not even a support class ever since WoW – not in Rift or any other game I dabbled at since. I love my aggressive pyromancer in GW2 and if anyone’s ever going to ask me to join their group just for healing rains, they can drop dead! Oh sweet, sweet mob-centric gameplay, oh sweet not carrying anybody! As for the holy trinity in general, I doubt I need to repeat here how great I think it’s missing in GW2. I prefer to be recruited for playing well rather than for being a role. So far I’ve seen zero indication that GW2 enforces any type of stricter group or spec setup. People have been asking a lot of things in general chat this beta but they haven’t asked for tanks and healers. Healing, control and ressing is everybody’s job or nobody’s.

4) Specs;
I’ve spent unimaginable amounts of time writing guides on raid specs, reading up on stats and talent builds during my time as a raider and coordinator. There wasn’t much freedom there for me; the WoW endgame raid scene was big on things like cookie cutters, optimization and meters.

The present in frank: I don’t give a shit what spec is best and I choose my traits as I go. In fact, I love experimenting and I’ll play whatever is the most FUN and efficient to ME. I won’t ever respec again for anyone but myself.

5) Mounts;
I always liked the idea of a mount, that loyal companion carrying me through the world. I’m fairly traditional in that I prefer horses plain and simple (alternatively a ferocious tiger is okay too), stuff like giant turtles, spiders and erm….green polar bears with shades just seems weird. When WoW introduced flying mounts I was in heaven……at first.

The present: I don’t miss a ground mount in GW2 and I certainly never want to play a classic MMO again with flying mounts. I’ve missed being on foot in WoW, that sense of distance and all the chance encounters. And yes, I could’ve walked through Azeroth and yes occasionally I used a waypoint in GW2 – still, grouping and raiding as much as I did in WoW, getting everyone to wait for me wasn’t an option. It’s also simply a different feeling if the game leaves you no option but to be on foot. As for flying mounts, they were so fast and so convenient, one must wonder what the whole zone design and all the mobs below were designed for. To be rushed through once while leveling and never return?

These are mainly the things I came up with when thinking about all the ways WoW changed my preferences. One can certainly argue that some of the change is due to the effect of time; I’ve been there done that for a very long time, I moved on to wanting different. And while that may play a part, I still don’t think it’s the main factor but rather the way how these aspects were designed and realized in WoW: I might not feel so sick of loot today if WoW hadn’t pledged itself to putting every candy-store out there out of business. I might be less tired of big raids if….literally everything in terms of grouping, recruitment and social control hadn’t gone down the drain ever since WotLK and LFG. I might still enjoy healing had there not been such a rigid focus on roles that left healers with nothing much to do but staring at healthbars and getting most of the blame by lolkids. I might still be interested in what an ideal spec is if I wasn’t so full of spite for anything resembling a cookie-cutter. And I might still find joy in mounts had not every player in WoW run around with one million gazillion mounts to choose from that would all run, fly, crawl, hover and whatever else at five-hundred percent LUDICROUS SPEED (or however much it is by now).

Yes…..I actually might!

Time for some questions!

It would be most intriguing to hear how other longterm ex-WoW players think about the effects WoW had on them (or alternatively another MMO you’ve played a lot), how it might have changed their outlook or wishes for MMOs to come. So, what about you?

Do you think WoW has changed you as a player? In what ways?
Do you think extreme experiences (burnout) have to do with it or is it just boreout / want for new?
How much of the ‘blame’ would you attribute to game design, how much to your personal playstyle choices?
Have your expectations towards a new game changed due to WoW or another MMO you’ve played?
Do you wish for different things in GW2 than you used to wish for?

I realize in retrospective that this could be an excellent meta-topic to share and debate among a wider circle of bloggers, to examine all the dis-/similarities and get a more universal look at the impact WoW has had on the current MMO player base. Ever since the WoW era, many have moved on to blogging about different games but WoW is still a common denominator among us. Well, maybe someone else will take up these questions sometime.

[UPDATE: Since there’s already been few reactions by other bloggers asking to write their own take on this topic (which is awesome), I will definitely make a follow-up post with a list of all responses in a couple of days. Let me know in the comments / on twitter if you’re writing your own post (if you haven’t already), I’d loathe to miss somebody. Thanks – I look forward to some great posts and/or comments!]

Could we please NOT have targeting highlights!

I hated them in every MMO I’ve ever played. Still hate them bigtime whenever I’m playing Rift.
I mean, just look at this!

Can you see me NAO?

What is it with the white frame all around my target? I have eyes and a target window popping up – I can already see what I got targeted! It doesn’t matter if they are white, green or any other shade; full-body target highlights are obtrusive, ugly and unnecessary!

I am extremely bugged by this type of visual aid in MMOs. I already have a UI with floating symbols, bars and buttons overlaying my illusion; do I really need the immersion destroyed further by bright highlights all over targets, myself included? Am I dealing with people, NPCs and mobs or RTS style units?

There are a few games that handle this more delicately, with a faint shadow or ring on the ground, maybe a brighter name-tag. It’s obviously a big deal for PvP especially, although one could argue that players should just learn to tell opponents or aggressive mobs apart themselves without a visual crutch. Brave adventurers that we all are, we can’t seem to go anywhere without our GPS, quest markers and target highlights…..

Why am I bringing this up now? Because I really do hope Guild Wars 2 will let you switch it off! There’s not just a target ring on the ground and a floating arrow above, but apparently also full scale highlights in different colors for targeting/mouse-hover:

Yikes! A target window is all I need. Add a shadow if you have to – but enough with the highlight disco already! I guess this is the perfect time to name my top 5 UI gripes in MMOs:

Bright and colorful target highlights
Sparkling quest objects or areas
Quest/event markers and paths on the map
White/yellow/green/red NPC state indicators
Chat bubbles (eugh)

…and pretty much every flavor of not so subtle hints and themepark rails. I know, this ain’t the real thing, I know I’m not really a fire mage but please – please let me delude myself as far as choosing my own path and knowing my own targets will go, thanks!

Deep down the mineshaft I saw the light

The cardboard boxes are starting to pile up left and right in my apartment which is also why I’ve been a little quieter. There are only five more days to go at my current workplace. Only two and a half more weeks in this canton I’ve been living in for five years now and desperately long to leave. Waiting and preparing are such an ordeal sometimes.

Between that and not playing much of anything right now (because in this too I am waiting, waiting for GW2), I didn’t plan for much distraction until the big move end of January. I certainly didn’t expect to find myself deep, deep down the cubic rabbit hole that is Minecraft – had you told me only three weeks ago, I would’ve laughed at your face. But then Minecraft happened, brought to me by the sneaky, little voice of an old friend. I’ve mocked him for the first hour, until gradually I shut up. Then, I started obsessing.

This is only the beginning.

Who would’ve thought that oldschool pixel graphics could be that much fun? I’m a little late to the party, I know, but then the game has only just launched “officially” two months ago with v1.0. I had never really paid it an awful lot of attention before. Well…consider me pixelated!

Minecraft is a goldmine of creativity, simple complexity and many of the basic concepts me and other MMO veterans have been missing for a very long time. I find myself utterly fascinated by the game’s simplicity which creates such powerful, emergent gameplay. Then it struck me; after my Skyrim high of several weeks ago, this was only a next logical step. This vast, open world sandbox game, so diametrically opposed to Skyrim’s graphical splendor, succeeds in areas many current MMOs are failing me, stilling a deep hunger (and it has multi-player!). Obviously, Minecraft has one significant advantage there: it doesn’t need to look good (which means the world can be vast and generate random maps). And yeah, I use a texture pack too, mostly to display my own paintings, but this stands: if any game proves how graphics become secondary to otherwise fun and engaging gameplay (I’m saying that as someone deeply in luv with the eye candy), then it’s Notch’s little gem. Within a refreshing loading time of 10 seconds, Minecraft (in survival mode) gave me (back) all the following things:

Monumental scale; a vast scary world forever dwarfing me in size.
No sense of direction; there is no world map, there are crafted, lackluster zone maps (that you must uncover and better not lose). Prepare to get lost often and worry continuously about wandering off too far. Landmarks, the sun and moon become your friends!
Impact; solid proof that I am leaving a mark on the world I inhabit (and its co-inhabitants).
Scary adventures; annoying, sneaky, backstabbing, sometimes frustrating mobs killing me on a regular base.
Punishment; dying comes with potential loss of all EXP levels you might have accumulated, as well as all your carried inventory (unless you are able to retrieve it in good time).
No shortcuts, no rides, no teleports or portals (other than into the underworld). No “hearthstone” besides death…
Complex, comprehensive crafting, resource gathering and an almost endless list of combinations when it comes to creating and inventing your own space.
Cooperative multi-player.
Player hosted servers.
Different levels of difficulty and play-style/server modes. Console commands if you so desire.
Randomness, bugs, imbalances….lots of running and screaming in terror.

How do they do it? By doing very little. By setting the stage only, with few parameters and limitations. By not creating content (much) and instead letting you do it. By controlling as much as necessary, as little as possible. There are no consumers in Minecraft, only creators.

I can’t say how long I will play this game, but right now I am deeply satisfied. The huge castle above the sea I am working on, with the magic library, the round table and Minas Tirith style balcony (including a white tree…GEEK!), will take lots of time to complete. I am still discovering new crafting combinations, under what conditions different crops will grow or how to tame and breed certain creatures. Then, there are all the areas of the game I’ve hardly yet brushed: mine carts and the automation system, the enchantments and spells, the random dungeons you can only find by traveling the world, the Nether world through the dark portal, the Ender dragon, PvP….and I still need to find a zone that features snow!

The best of it all though: coming online and finding the environment changed, again, because your friends have been busy while you were offline. Screaming for help as you are starving down that deep mineshaft. Getting lost, crying for an escort, sharing resources and setting up trade channels. Leaving a little surprise at your neighbor’s doorstep. The world feels alive.

Closing circles in a square world

Funny how often we need to go back, to move forward. In this, even game design seems to follow a basic truth of life; how we need to set out on long journeys into the wild, only to return to our own doorstep. Only then to behold it truly, for the very first time. They say man’s culture has always run in waves of ups and downs and individuals too, run circle after circle in their lifetime, or so it seems.

Yet, something is different when we arrive that second time: we’ve gone the distance and hopefully gained some wisdom, we’ve seen other things – maybe things we originally believed we needed, but mostly just wanted. Things that made us see and appreciate what we used to have. Experiences that made us want to go back. Maybe we can only ever truly perceive truth from a distance, when we’ve moved further away. That’s why it’s so hard to judge yourself (fairly) or a status quo, before you’ve lost some of it. Looking back is always easier.

In many ways, the features I’ve listed as Minecraft’s virtues would’ve been considered weaknesses and difficulties 10 years ago. Back then, all we ever shouted for was to remove the “frustrating aspects”: the long walks, the randomness, the imbalance, the punishment. The devs heard our plea, they polished away. Then came WoW and showed us how different it could be; how much smoother, more convenient, optimal. Later, it showed us how the polish and optimization could be overdone, ruining all sense of world.

Now, all we want is to get back. Not quite back to pre-WoW maybe, but to return to old values with new eyes. Maybe we even need to thank Blizzard for accelerating the insight. Concepts and features we used to complain about, have become what we crave the most. Does this not strike you as a little ironic?

There are still other players of course, those who will disagree with me here. Maybe they are still in the middle of walking their own circle – maybe the disagreement is genuine and will last. I’m not claiming in any way that Minecraft can replace a classic MMO or that it doesn’t have its shortcomings (java eugh), it sure does have room for much improvement (and I’m not talking graphics) which I trust will happen to some extent in the future. However, these things are not the focus of this article.

We’re talking about a game that is about to hit the 20 million mark for registered players, of which 4 million have already paid for an account. And they’re not nearly all of them of the “Sims”-persuasion; there is something to be learned and had in Minecraft that reaches far beyond building furniture or harvesting crops. Something we’ve lost in other corners of the online, multi-player world. A ingenuity and responsiveness that has magically managed to close a circle for me in an otherwise square world.

I can only recommend the journey.

26 Ways to spice up MMO combat

When I started writing this article some while ago, it was called “10 ways to spice up MMO combat”. As these things go sometimes, it’s grown considerably in size ever since, with more and more ideas accumulating in my draft that I wouldn’t want to abandon. Well that’s that – I guess we call it proof of how badly MMOs need to improve one of their most centric features: battle.

Now, I don’t claim that any of the here suggested features or effects are new; nothing’s new under the sun, everything has been done somewhere, sometime, in an online or classic video game. Some of it we’ve sadly not seen enough of, some has never been done properly or very poorly. Not all of it is applicable to every type of MMO or necessarily in combination – but these are all features with some great potential to make future MMO combat more tactical, cooperative and dynamic in my eyes. And yes, more action based.

“Actual fast-paced combat opens (or really, re-opens) the doors of possibility when it comes to MMORPGs. If you don’t have to spend an hour theorycrafting, respeccing, buffing, and finally, dice-rolling your opponent to death — and instead could catch him unawares and simply send him packing with a blade to the throat — you’d have free time to do things other than combat.” [massively]

Many of us probably agree with the Massively article in that it’s time to move away from lengthy battle preparations, clicking ability bars and waiting on cool-downs, as you stand beside a few more people. Or as Epic Ben (whose page has sadly disappeared since?) put it a while back: “raiding is like synchronized swimming”, MMO combat is often static, repetitive and not exactly interactive. While it will never be quite the real thing (and certainly shouldn’t in every way), there are ways to make virtual combat feel more realistic, alive and exciting. And there are genres that can still teach MMORPGs a lesson or two.

So, here goes – I’ve tried to create some rough sections and to keep detailed descriptions short. I am also feeling lucky today and will just assume you know exactly what I mean by my weakly attempts to name and simplify complex mechanics (y’know, be creative!). In hindsight, I also realize I utterly failed to create any logical order. Good luck!

26 Ways to spice up MMO combat

A) Player-/Class & Group-centric features:

No roles; no holy trinity, no dedicated tank & healer slots. Instead, every class is defined by specific DPS, CC and mitigation abilities. Ideally, we will see this in GW2.
Low health bars, weak healing; similar to most FPS, players can only take so many hits before they die from a level-appropriate target. One-shots are possible. Healing is relatively weak (Darkfall) and most healing abilities target self-sustenance.
More deaths occur as a consequence of the above points; to balance more deaths, death penalties shouldn’t be harsh and combat res becomes a more common ability.
Friendly fire exists; AoE, cone attacks or similar can hurt allies and must be used with caution.
Exhaust effects; players on low health suffer from slower reaction, blurred vision or similar impairing effects. Likewise, status ailments (with individual cures) will affect certain abilities.
Class combos; players can set up combo- and sequence attacks for more powerful DPS. Difficult encounters enforce group interaction/timing and making use of class synergies.
No auto-targeting; spells and abilities must be “aimed”, directed, positioned (AoE zones). Special attacks are responsive to player movement (for ex. influence the flight path of a boomerang by running along). There are several targeting “areas” per body (head, torax, limbs) with individual weaknesses.
Players can actively block, dodge or parry melee attacks if timed correctly.
Classes come with individual elemental affinities and magic resistances (as mobs do).

B) Opponent-centric features:

Enemy “states” such as aggressive or passive are not indicated by tool tips. There exist different aggro ranges for all kinds of mobs (also within the same family, call it a bad mood!).
Enemies are frequently linked; more multi-mob pulls enforce smart use of CC.
Enemy “AI”; enemies will fight differently depending on group size or spec composition (for ex. switch resistances). Enemies can block, dodge or evade attacks.
Enemies will pursue attackers more relentlessly (FFXI).
Enemies can attempt to flee battle – the chase is yours to decide on.
Content difficulty is dynamic; enemies/dungeons will adapt to group size and player levels.
Outdoor boss fights or public quests are pick-up and FFA.
Dungeons are randomly generated for each reset and may offer a random boss order and pick.

C) Environmental features:

Enhanced sounds and need for sound awareness; enemies can be heard from a distance, stealthed enemies can be tracked via noise. Players can discern “10 yards away” and “two levels above at six o’clock” (FPS).
Impact of positioning; player damage responds to range, favoring tactical spots (hills, cavities), shooting from behind walls etc., thus encouraging smart use of terrain and map conditions.
Drawing on the environment; special abilities or spells can be triggered by suitable surroundings – standing in pools is used to create tidal waves, woods proximity triggers archery bonuses etc.
Night/day and weather conditions affect combat and individual abilities.

D) Eye & Ear candy (never to be taken lightly):

Nice combat visuals; high quality animations for trademark attacks, spells and special abilities. Characteristic palettes for each class, no animation copy&paste.
Finisher and executioner animations (AoC or Skyrim).
Combat music; engaging combat will trigger dedicated up-tempo tunes, with different tracks for ordinary, dungeon endboss or big epic baddie scenarios. (FF)
Dramatic boss scenarios; cinematics/cutscenes before end battles, zone intros, dramatic phase switches.
Allow players to switch dynamically between 1st and 3rd person view.

Well, have I missed anything you think should be up there? Where do you see the biggest difficulties?

I know that quite a few of my favorites will be featured in GW2; I don’t wanna go into another hype-stage at this point, but I am greatly looking forward to class & profession combos (which I loved in FFXI), terrain and movement dependent spells, small health pools and health deficit effects – and yes, losing the trinity of course (even if that last bit is still awaiting full confirmation).

In general, I think we need MMO combat to return to a more dynamic, cooperative focus rather than a group-setup or spec-focused one. Let the actual teamplay, group tactics and performance matter; allow more randomness (for more situative reactions), create more need for control and pro-active play (as opposed to reactive/passive with heavy healing) and more need for situational awareness. Let our worlds come alive; let our opponents act smartly or erratically, let us find different answers to the same problem. Let us care less for stats, procs and cooldowns and more for general timing, synergies and spontaneous action.

Most of all: challenge us, so we may rejoice in our victories! I think we are ready for the next chapter.