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.

Musings on time and travel

Time is an interesting thing. Such fixed a measure, the same amount of time can pass in a heartbeat or seem like an ordeal that will never end. When there’s a busy day of work ahead, the same time that usually has you listening to the monotonous clicking of the clock for hours will fly by like a sudden breeze. On the other hand, a week full on activities and new impressions will feel much longer a span; when you do absolutely nothing for days on end, the blessed holidays will be over in one dull series of waking up and closing your eyes. Time is paradoxical like that.

When I journeyed to southern Ireland a good two weeks ago, I was reminded of that interesting quality of time – the way our individual perception of it can change and its (at least) dual nature. My partner and I don’t fly, as in we don’t use airplanes. I have flown a few times before as a teenager, but never again after college. As for him, he wouldn’t get close a “flying prison” if his life depended on it. As a consequence, we travel by car, train, bus, bike and on foot which suits me fine really because I never particularly enjoyed 10’000 meters above ground and as a child my parents never took us anywhere by airplane either. So, while there are personal and environmental reasons for both of us, I simply like traveling the long road. I like to know where I’m going – I like to experience it, feel it, smell it. The journey is at least half of why I even bother going anywhere and I find an almost meditative repose for myself in being on the road. It’s when I’m usually at my most creative too.

The whole journey took us around 26 hours (one way) including several breaks and two ferries. We were appointed to meet two friends there who live close to us and made the journey by plane, therefore embarking a day later. What was a very long drive for us, multiple coffee breaks and an eventually rather stiff neck, was one people’s magazine and two rounds of soda for them in an air-conditioned seat. And yet, when we finally arrived at the B&B with them waving in the drive-way, I thought how weird it must have felt to wait for us and miss out on things we had gone through to arrive at exactly the same place. Maybe (most probably) it was just me who noticed it though; we just had so much more to tell and show for. Like some of the most brilliant coastways we had passed through on the way. Like riding one of the fastest Catamaran ferries of Europe (feeling seasick and then overjoyed to feel solid ground under your feet once more). Meeting that lovely old couple who would tell us about their long life of travels together. Driving through a tunnel far below the ocean. Smelling the increasingly salty sea breeze as you approach the first coast line. Feeling the spray on your face with anticipation. I would not trade that for the world.

We saw so many things on the way, the journey felt fast although it wasn’t. All the while our friends “saved time” by skipping the road; yet they ended up at exactly the same point as us and they hadn’t really benefited on the extra time either. If anything, they spent more time waiting before the go, staring at a suitcase and then checking out the area a bit while they waited for us. They certainly had nothing to tell when we met up. Which ultimately brought me to the following conclusion: we gain no time by saving time. Subjectively speaking, we stretch time by filling it and thus feeling fulfilled or at least active. Cutting things short has the opposite effect: eventually we feel like we did nothing at all, simply because we experienced less and our perception of time feels shorter. The more time you “save”, the less time you feel you’ve had. Mostly because you cannot treat time like some currency: just because you save time now, doesn’t mean you’ll make good/better use of it later or beforehand, it doesn’t quite work that way. At best, it’s a trade-off between definite opportunities and potential ones. Meanwhile, time keeps flowing without pause. Really, we might as well enjoy our travels, inside and outside our virtual homes.

Anyway, I am back now.

Back in a bit

Another busy week of blogging is coming to an end, although I started off thinking that this would be my week of slack. But then the damn rain never stopped, hasn’t stopped for 3 weeks now, while I keep hearing friends in England and the US complaining about the heat wave of the century. It’s friggin’ July – and it rains down here and roasts up there…the world is going to the dogs, mark my words.

Anyway, today’s gonna be a short post (*cough*). A note really to let you know that I’m off, off to green shores, rocky beaches and ivy-clad castles, wahey! During that time Raging Monkey’s will remain silent while the squirells give things here a good cleaning and dusting. Business will continue as usual by the third week of August.

Timing probably couldn’t be better; I’ve been wondering a little about the blogosphere lately, how quiet and melancholic it’s been in places, until somebody actually reminded me that it’s SUMMER and that’s what happens usually during this time of the year y’know, the activity curve plunges inside and outside our virtual homes. That made me laugh – shows just how much I’m not in the loop right now, out of guild and server life, raid and progress agendas. And a good thing, too.

I also really blame the pitiful weather of course. Which is why I am off now, friends, off to pack my bags and get away – Ireland here I come!

…You can stop laughing now.
Yes, I have packed that rain coat and umbrella. (Wish me luck)
A fantastic summer break to everyone, those staying at home or hitting the road! Be seeing you! =)

The napkin analogy

I believe in balance. Not to mistake with total equilibrium, an absence of all emotion and not in the sense of mellow or mediocre – but in the sense that the world needs variety and different forces pulling into different directions at all time, so the bowl won’t topple over. The older I get, I believe in such balance and freedom for myself and my personal life, too. It’s difficult to accept and yet a relief at times, as paradoxical as that sounds. Darkness and light.

I believe in strong opinions, not to mistake for extreme opinions. I don’t believe in extremes, although when it comes to some political questions I don’t believe in the middle, either. But then, the middle means something else there altogether.

Strong opinions, different opinions are a good thing. They don’t make life easier or decisions necessarily swifter, but they make things a great deal better. For one thing, they make for interesting discussions where an open ear is assumed. More informed and thoughtful decisions. Most importantly, they maintain balance. What a scary thing would it be if we were all the same, always and in every aspect; if too large a group of people in a society were in complete and utter agreement on all the important concerns. What would ever save us from radical extremism, if we never disagreed?

So this is the end,” Tanis said. “Good has triumphed.”
“Good? Triumph?” Fizban repeated, turning to stare at the half-elf shrewdly. “Not so, Half-Elven. The balance is restored. The evil dragons will not be banished. They remain here, as do the good dragons. Once again the pendulum swings freely.”
“All this suffering, just for that?” Laurana asked, coming to stand beside Tanis. “Why shouldn’t good win, drive the darkness away forever?”
“Haven’t you learned anything, young lady?” Fizban scolded, shaking a bony finger at her. “There was a time when good held sway. Do you know when that was? Right before the Cataclysm!” [Dragons of Spring Dawning; M. Weis & T. Hickman]

The napkin analogy – A fond memory

When I was still teaching teenage 10th-graders whom today’s society calls the “under-privileged”, I tried to include analogies and graphic or figurative examples as often as I could when attempting to illustrate a more complex matter. I’m a very visual person myself and I believe in the lasting effect of using several channels at once for education (as many senses as possible). It’s frankly also a lot more fun. So, on the subject of political extremism, when discussing contemporary politics in class together one day, I returned with a stack of red napkins after morning break. The idea had occurred to me while listening to my students discussing extremist riots (which had occurred at the time), the legitimacy of such acts on behalf of values and political viewpoints, the whole “left versus right” debate and who’s worse and why. Uh-oh.

I could just have talked about how extremism is always cruel, no matter coming from what direction. That it’s destructive and wrong and comes in fact down to the exact same thing, left or right, because it leaves no room for anything or anyone else. That it is tyranny and tolerates none other, the opposite of balance and freedom of choice. Oh, I believe in social(ist) values a great deal more than I believe in free markets and lower taxes (*cough*); but I do not believe in burning containers and smashed windows, no matter who’s throwing the stones. I don’t want that – I don’t want extremism. 

To simplify just that, how opposite extremes boil down to the same and become a totalitarian system – that’s right, the napkins! I had cut them a little in order to make for the shape I wanted, basically an arrow shape pointing in two directions. I gave one to each student with the explicit request to wait for further instructions (skip this and the time to penis is on you faster than you could ever dream). It was a collective exercise in the following easy steps, accompanied a few simple questions for my audience.

 /enter wise voice….

Me: “So, hold the napkin horizontally between both hands. What do we have here? Basically a pole at each end of the napkin, completely and utterly opposed, out there at the very edge of each side. Right? Great!”

“Now, fold the napkin right through the middle. Where lie the opposite ends now?”

Them: “At exactly the same spot.”
Me: “What happened to the middle?”
Them: “It’s been folded / It’s gone.”

Me: “Now, if you look at that new shape holding it up in one hand, where is its one end?”

Them: “It’s at the top.”
Me: “Where is everything else?”
Them: “Below it.”
-pause-
Them: “Ahhh..”

That’s when some eyes grew larger as insight grew within them. That’s where I got to nod with a satisfactory smile, that province of the insufferable and teaching. Sometimes a nutshell is all you need to make it stick. And if not, well then it was good manual exercise.

This article is dedicated to yesterday’s topic. And also, to recent blog discussions, to strong opinions demanding to be heard and to those who are able to listen.

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.

Wiping expansions off the table

There is one thing I am still waiting for in the world of MMOs. Okay – that is not quite true, there are a good few things I am expecting to see developers change in the future. One particular aspect however, has been gaining ground and speed there lately: namely the removal of the classic expansion model.

If I consider some of the biggest negatives MMO developers and players currently suffer from, it’s the ever-increasing pressure to deliver content fast vs. beating it, the extreme between players with not enough time to experience new content  and waves of un-subscribers towards the second half of an expansion-cycle. We all know at least some of these feelings: the race right after an expansion or major content patch hits. Then, the inevitable monotony and burnout hitting raid guilds and players at later stages, the “been there done it all”, driving some into creating yet another alt and others into canceling their sub altogether, waiting on the next installment.

And when you think about that, you realize that it’s quite an unnatural flow of things: a disturbance to the consistent and long-term enjoyment of a game. The “content peaks” delivered by traditional expansions create highly negative side effects, not just for the player base but the developers. So, why keep clinging to this model?

How extremes destroy stability

My main grief with expansions is their very situational concentration of a truckload of new content on one arbitrary and artificial moment in time – funny enough called the “release”. Players will wait 1-2 years for that monumental chunk of new content to arrive, all its ground-breaking changes and additions to the game delivered in one, fatal strike. The wait time drags on and gets tedious, the expectations are high. Some players cope by rolling alts or going on preparation sprees, others fall deep into “player depression” and “identity crisis”, leaving their guilds, canceling their subs.

The change of emotion that finally follows on arrival is extreme: players go from utter boredom to an almost hysterical rush to take in as much of the long-desired content as possible. Between those two points in time, we have a gradually plunging curve, only ever lifted by a major content patch or two (if such exist). Make no mistake though: the first quarter into a new expansion is peak time. Things go steadily downhill from there, on an individual level as much as overall sub numbers. Every time, every year, the same story like a groundhog day –

Now let’s assume developers decided to get rid of these opposite poles entirely: let’s assume that instead of featuring virtual coitus, erm release, every 1-2 years (few content patches included), they would rather aim to create a more natural and continuous flow of events and change by releasing regular patches on a 2-weeks base. Every other week, something in your world would change, get added or removed. It might be small things like a flood destroying parts of a map. It might be big events like a new quest hub being installed or a new dungeon. The frequent patching would allow developers to create an atmosphere of a living, breathing story where things happen constantly and where the environment (both NPC and PC) reacts accordingly, more like to our real world. There is never the one, big traumatic change but a dynamic world that is being re-shaped all the time, like a book with endless chapters.

How exciting would that be! To log in every other Wednesday, knowing that something has happened somewhere in your world! Maybe even uncommented in patchnotes at times. Sometimes big, sometimes small. Sometimes an isolated event, sometimes an ongoing number of chapters. The world would feel more alive and relaxed because change happens gradually. The game won’t rush ahead of you, leaving you behind. And it won’t just stop at some point, leaving you longing for more –

Not enough, along with this change in game flow, a long list of negative effects would shrink considerably or fall away entirely. Things that used to unsettle and spoil your fun in the game:

  • Begone player burnout during the second half of expansions
  • Begone (raid) guilds struggling to keep going because players despair or leave
  • Begone un-subscribing and re-subscribing once things are looking up
  • Begone social break-ups because friends frequently leave and return
  • Begone “content rush” right after the big fat expansion hits
  • Begone time pressure for raid guilds fearing the next major patch striking
  • Begone missing out on big loads of content
  • Begone long wait times to experience something new
  • Begone radical changes to economy and gear/item values
  • Begone big jumps and breaks in lore and world

I remember how underwhelming player reception was in places for WoW’s Shattering in 4.0.3.; pretty much the entire world as we knew it got revamped in a swift strike, and yet there was little orchestration or preparation beforehand. Few earthquakes aside, it was certainly no thrill. Then, we did not get to be present when it happened, either. We got to log back later, presented with a grand Fait accompli that didn’t make us feel like a part of the world. Expansions often feature drastic and overwhelming changes and additions like that which simply feel un-immersive. Getting to read huge walls of lore later on is not the same as experiencing a process.

I want to feel part of the world I play in. I want to be included in a continuous and ever growing story. I want change happening all the time, not every 1-2 years in traumatic leaps. I want stable and lasting fun, not a curve that goes from player fatigue and long wait times to over-excitement, before tumbling back down into the valley of tears. I don’t want to regularly un-subscribe from the MMO I am playing because it’s delivering content in situational peaks. Surely, developers would wish for that too?

Why don’t they do it already?

If you consider Blizzard’s ongoing (failing *cough*) effort to create a game that keeps a tight, exciting leash on its player base through an unebbing flow of fast rewards and achievements, you could think breaking the “peak-time” expansion model would follow the same strategy; after all, what better way of keeping things fresh and interesting than releasing new bits of content every other week?

Is it a marketing thing? Are expansion modules so crucial a selling-point for recruiting new customers? Surely, it can’t be the retail factor – it would have the smallest part in overall profits generated via subs, virtual goods and merchandise. So, attracting potential new customers with announcing your next big hit, I can see that as a factor. As far as I know, Blizzard added a substantial amount of new subscribers with each of their expansion releases, heavily marketing for “The Burning Crusade” or “Wrath of the Lich King”. I wonder though: how many effective customers have they lost since Cataclysm’s launch – does the strategy really work forever? And how much sub time do they lose every year because players unsubscribe regularly? It would be interesting to compare the potential losses and gains here.

It would be interesting too, to hear a developers point of view concerning the planning, administrative and actual design efforts (and deadline pressure) that go before a full-scale expansion. Have them compare the effectiveness of such an undertaking to a large number of mini-patches allowing them to break down change and innovation, focusing on one chapter at a time. Somehow I feel that from a pure design’s point of view, it would be more controlled and rewarding to go with the second option. Safer in terms of devastating bugs and far-reaching miscalculations, too. I am of course entirely speculative here and as usual happy to be educated otherwise!

I am no design or marketing and investment specialist; I would still claim however, that a content delivery model creating the more lasting effect, the stable fun and entertainment and the more dynamic and immersive flow of content for a player base, bests a system full of highs, lows and break-ups. That is from my humble point of view – from me, the paying customer. Somehow I have the feeling I am not alone.

So, who will step forward and show us how it’s done already? I am waiting!

P.S. I love charts, don’t you? I have actually used them in the one, proper way in this article – serving and exemplifying my personal message and meaning, rather than basing on existing numbers. It’s called journalistic freedom!

Tunes of Magic – I

For months and months I’ve wanted to publish an article on MMO soundtrack, pretty much ever since opening this blog. Somehow, this has proven to be a most difficult endeavor: whenever chancing on another blogger dedicating time to this beloved subject, I was reminded of that painfully pending topic in my inbox that I just couldn’t seem to finish. The truth is, I am such a huge sucker for themes and game OSTs that making a final choice of the countless songs I have cherished in my life just proves too great a challenge. I fail.

So, I’ve given up trying. I will never be able to link all the goodies or even my “ultimate cream of the crop” to you – things would get out of hand and the heavy wall of links would ultimately wear you down, undermining my entire intention (you know, candy overkill). Instead, I will consider this the first post of more to come, allowing me to return to the topic whenever that particular mood strikes. Wahey.

How I came to love game soundtrack

A while ago, I explained how I consider video games works of art. Where some just see playable content and entertainment, I see fantastic, inspiring settings and compositions for the finer senses; the design and aesthetic, the artwork and music that breathe life into our virtual worlds. Almost 2 years before WoW launched, I was among those obsessing over every little snippet of new concept art and sneak peek, things just looked that fantastic. And had they not – had Blizzard not always been so outstanding when it came to design, trailers and the full package, I might never have played WoW in the first place. Art is not everything to an MMO’s success; but I’m not the kind of player that can overlook plain ugly. If it’s offending to the eye or if the soundtrack is a careless, loveless excuse for music (or worse: missing) a game is off to a very rocky start with me. I want everything that way.

I’ve collected concept and artbooks, along with game (and some movie) OSTs for many years. I think my first tracks were SNES midis from this place and if Chrono Trigger or Castlevania mean anything to you, you know the kind of music I was particularly interested in. Long ago, Squaresoft was on console what Blizzard in many ways became on PC for me: a benchmark. An incredible smithy of musical and visual goodness (besides delivering awesome stories and near spotless technical realisation). My private RPG sound library ranges up to around 1998. After that, I gradually left the scene and got hooked to PC RPGs and online games.

Taking a pick

In order to acquire new MMO soundtrack, I usually keep my eyes open for collector’s editions. Youtube has also become a great source for me to discover music I might otherwise never come to know, because I clearly can’t play or even try out every MMO in existence. I am still also collecting tunes from the odd console RPG (there ain’t that many these days) or classic PC game which is why I have included one in my list of picks for you, too.

I have thought about breaking things down into typological sub-sections, like “battle themes”, “ambiance”, “sad themes” and so forth, but then I decided to pick 6 random favorites for a start that I currently listen to and that might not been so well-known as others. Were you to ask me about my personal preferences in general, I’d have to say that my tastes are quite diverse, but there’s definitely a red thread for what delights me the most:

  • When I’m in the right mood, I enjoy very epic, bombastic tunes of grandeur and a bit of pathos. Not too much pathos mind, and certainly not all the time. If it sounds like another Hans Zimmer spin-off, it’s not for me.
  • I love pretty much any spooky, creepy or fairy tale-esque tune you can think of. Needles to say Danny Elfman is my hero here.
  • I love sad, melancholic and quiet tunes that usually blend into the background. The sort of song that fits your mood perfectly some days, but is too painful to listen to on others.
  • I love merry, bouncy tunes that make me want to grab a walking stick in Bilbo Baggins fashion. It’s a rare kind of music that makes you feel like sailing out to distant adventure.

For any type of music, I appreciate tracks that change often and are more like the arrangements you find in classic music or opera, rather than repetitive “verse and chorus”-patterns. I like songs to tell an evolving story (which is also why Bohemian Rhapsody will always remain the greatest “pop song” ever written!). Basil Poledouris was hands down the greatest (fantasy) film composer of all times for this reason.

If you ever come across a great tune fitting any of these descriptions, think of me and send me a note! I would LOVE to hear about it! And now finally, I will shut up and hope you enjoy my picks! =)

Allods Online – Main Theme
My first choice is brought to you by Allods Online which I still consider the most underrated MMO presently out there. So much potential, such bad timing. This track will greet you right at the menu screen and is what I consider a grand, yet interesting and evolving piece. After 0:50 secs latest, you will know what I mean. God, I love this song!

Age of Conan – Memories of Cimmeria
The reason why I spent most of my time in AoC in Cimmeria, that rough and snowy landscape of the north. Riding down Conall’s Valley for the very first time as the sun was just about to set over the mountains, this song crept up on me like a clear, fine rain. The Norwegian singer could not have been cast better with her voice of crystal bells.

World of Warcraft – the Shaping of the World
I could easily dedicate an entire article on the music of WoW, so taking just the one pick is hard. Yet, people always seem to know about “A Call to Arms” or “Legends of Azeroth” for the classic era, not necessarily about this track here which is my personal favorite of the first album. This is goosebump material and encompasses everything WoW ever was for me.

Granado Espada – Main Theme
Also known as “Sword of the New World”, GE is a remarkably unique MMO in many ways, with its Baroque European setting and unorthodox battle system. In terms of music, there is a very unhappy, grotesque mix of beautiful classic piano and horrid techno trance going on. Yet there are several gems to be found here for those who still look for them.

Final Fantasy XI – The Rebublic of Bastok
Tunes like this one are so much what Square games have been about for decades – merry, playful, adventurous and exotic. The uplifting theme of Bastok holds a special place in my heart, having finally arrived in that city with my companions after a long and tedious travel by foot, after countless corpseruns and great laughs on the way. Long live our noob days!

Fable II – Oakvale
As promised, my non-MMO pick. There is nothing I can possibly say about this song that would make it any better. Danny Elfman is not from this world.
I can see Winona Ryder dancing in the snow while listening to this – can you hear it too?

I did it! I chose 6 tracks only!!! *exhale*

And with this, a very happy, bombastic, spooky, ponderous and merry weekend to you all!

But…I wanna be a hero in MMOs!

Wolfshead published an interesting article yesterday in which he questions heroism in current, popular MMOs and criticizes the player base’s need to feel like heroes all the time. And I do see an issue with spoiling your gaming audience very much myself; the overkill of things ultimately undermining all their value.

However, if you were to go as far as to say that the player’s wish for heroism in WoW & Co. was wrong or somehow the wrong thing asked of the wrong genre, a detrimental thing even, I would very much have to disagree with that premise. The wish that drives us to certain books or movies, drives us into playing online games too and it’s neither wrong nor sad wanting to feel like a hero in MMOs. In fact I wouldn’t be playing them if that wasn’t part of the deal.

I want to be a hero if nothing else

In one passage, Wolfshead questions the “by proxy”-effect that attracts “normal people” to the more heroic: those iconic, shiny beings that lead seemingly exciting and perfect lives under a public eye, celebrities of all flavors but also countless fictional characters, protagonists of movies, books, comics or video games. Virtual or not, they represent virtues and qualities we wish we had and for a short moment they lend us a little piece of that imaginary glamour which can be addictive enough to turn a fan into a die-hard groupie, following his idol around the globe for 5 minutes of VIP-pass glory.

People cult has always been big for this reason; if you can’t lead a so-called glamorous life yourself, at least you can watch those that do with envy or admiration. Nevermind that other, less presentable side of the coin – the pressure such people bend under, the non-existent social life, the fake friends, the complete sell-out of privacy, the uppers and downers to keep them steady on their feet. If we can’t be shiny, someone has to be. And it better be so.

I’d like to think that I have a good life, a better life in fact than most, no matter how easily forgotten. The fact that I’m writing this article on my internet-blog, in my free time on my warm bed, is testimony to such blessed privilege. I’m also no person for people cult which I find silly regarding celebrities and disgusting in politics, to name two more popular, public phenomena. Maybe it’s because looks rarely impress me and I never feel particularly inferior to or in awe of anyone on grounds of mere social status, looks or titles. While we’re at it: Royalty is a joke. Thanks for listening!

I’ve always had a soft side for fictional heroes though; those had the power to inspire me beyond all limits, be they from classic novels, hero or fairy tales, sometimes even an RPG. I have confessed before how I carry quotes around in my head and how that adds meaning to life for me at times. Yep, I am that normal a person. And if you liked to measure me, then yes I probably have a boring and “uneventful” life. I sit behind a desk everyday, like millions do, I (struggle to) pay taxes, I feed my (lazy) cats. The weekend is the highlight of my average week and if it includes a BBQ with old friends and a good glass of red, I am happy. If my partner still brings me flowers out of the blue after so many years (or remembers anniversaries *gasp*), I am fucking euphoric.

I don’t slay dragons and I don’t save the princess like the heroes in my stories do. I still do the dishes by hand instead of wiggling a finger. And God knows, I’d make for a lousy adventurer – I wouldn’t get through the first wood without hopelessly getting lost (been there, done that) and I’d be halfway through my provisions by noon. So just sometimes, I wish I was a bit more like my heroes; a little bit more than myself. Sometimes I long for the epic and magical in my everyday life. And you know what: that’s okay. It’s neither sad nor “desperate” – it’s just life. Unpretentious and real, Mr. Thoreau. That doesn’t make it any less of a life, maybe it just makes me honest a person.

…That’s why we love stories and lose ourselves in them, that’s why we get absorbed watching the Lord of the Rings for the 10th time (extended), that’s why we play mighty warriors and dark mages in games: it’s called escapism. Mankind has done it for thousands of years, in furs, on smokey incense, with bone and dice. So yes, I want to be a hero in my MMOs; I don’t want to play accountant and write reports with my pen on planet reality. I want epic skills, I want to be powerful and kick some magic ass with a flaming sword!

If I can’t be a hero in a game I play so utterly, what’s the goddamn point???

The dragon – hero equation

There’s an article I wrote some time ago, early into this blog, that I keep coming back to like a broken record (I apologize at this point). It’s the never ending story of game difficulty level vs. meaning in MMOs, cost vs. reward and how they are opposites that rely strongly on each other to survive in perpetual balance. Hard-won victories last forever – easy rewards mean little no matter how purple they are. There is no adventure, nor real heroism where there are no struggles and challenges to face; your book’s protagonist is hardly a hero if he has no fears and demons to overcome, no dragons to slay.

And this is where me and Wolfshead agree completely: the doom of easy and numerous rewards in this genre we love so much, the loss of depth, adventures and stories because we get fed so much candy we lose all tolerance for downtimes , for exclusive content with high requirements and earning our passage. Along with that, a sort of baffling player self-entitlement, no doubt bred in MMOs like WoW that have overdone it on access, balance and fast rewards.

I don’t think that wanting to be a hero in games has any part in these issues though, I really don’t. In fact, I’d turn the table and say that it’s exactly because of this excess that there can’t be any heroes in today’s WoW (as opposed to there being superheroes everywhere) and that’s what’s leaving so many players feeling slightly unfulfilled – how could they not be in the absence of hard requirements and obstacles to make for such a title? It’s really hard to be a pioneer under such circumstances. And that’s what actually makes me sad and desperate. 

In the end I’d rather be me

We all long to be a hero at times. Maybe we even wonder: if life ever gave us the chance to a moment of lasting pathos, would we be brave enough? In video games and MMOs especially, that are so much about escaping, adventuring and immersion, we get to re-invent ourselves a little and unlike to just reading a story, we get to be interactive. Our real lives might be “average”, but in Azeroth we hurl firebolts at our foes. On our way to work, we cringe at our reflection in the morning mirror, but at night that elvish cloak and sparkling armor sit just tight.

And I know, I might never write that novel that keeps robbing me of my sleep. I might never be able to afford that fairy hut or spooky castle I would call a home. And I might just have to accept one day that neither love nor friendship are as perfect nor epic in this life as they always are in the best of stories, the ones which spoil us so utterly with hopeless ideals early on in our lives. And just maybe that’s a good thing too; because the epic and tragic lie close together and usually come at great cost. Just like heroism comes with high risk and hardship. We are not always ready for what we wish for.

Just maybe, a normal, “uneventful” life is not so bad after all. And being that hobby hero at night – in virtual worlds where death isn’t permanent and dragon’s breath is made of pixels. I like things that way.

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!