Posts Tagged ‘Aion’

Tourists or searching for something different?

It has been one month since Aion Online has hit the shelves and about the same for Champions Online.   This is right about the time where a gamers mind turns to “virtual tourism”  – the end of the first free month. The following was in the recent release of the “October Community Address” from Aion Community Team:

“You’ve told us that it’s difficult to advance within certain level ranges. To address this issue, we’re planning to raise quest experience, in addition to reevaluating the experience rewards characters gain for individual kills. We understand how frustrating it can be to repetitively kill enemies. Our goal is to limit the need to mindlessly ‘grind.’” – The Aion Community Team (full address is here)

Both gamers and those who make the games expect potential customers to come and take a tour of the new game world. And it is certainly expected that not all those who arrive in that first free month of a games life cycle will make the virtual world one of their new homes.  The question still arises, however, what happens when a game fails to turn a “virtual tourist” into a new “virtual resident”.

This was one of the questions that My Co-host Fran, and I will be discussing with Tipa from West Karana and JMO from MMO Voices on an upcoming No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show.

When Paul Barnett discussed the matter with us, he likened the process to someone who leaves a girlfriend, hoping to find someone better, but always ends up yearning for the “love of their life” – whatever that first game or mmo happened to be.  There certainly must be something to that; for the “first love” of many players is World of Warcraft (WoW) and that is the game against which all others seem measured. Yet while investors and “triple AAA” developers alike hesitate to do anything other than what is expected, that can be one root causes of virtual  tourism.

What exactly do games “expect”?

Take 1 million gamers and ask them what they are looking for in a game and you are likely to get one million different answers. In the end analysis, no doubt the gamers themselves aren’t sure what they are looking for but will merely know it when they find it.  If the product you create is “approachable” as Scott Hartsman told us on an earlier there will be any one of a number of players who view themselves as the “core” of your customers and say “its too easy” (as happened in WoW after the Northrend expansion).  If it takes too long to level, for whatever reason (see Aion Online comments above) there will be yet another sector of gamers that will react as if you shot their dog. To paraphrase the great U.S. President Lincoln…

You can’t please all of the people some of the time so you had best please a few of the people most of the time.

As you will hear TIPA point out on a future show, many players take a tour of a new game world hoping to find something different and end up finding the same game they just left.  After all, who needs another WoW when you still have the WoW icon on your desktop? Mythic Entertainment started with a tabletop game named Warhammer where a great battle will often find three armies pitted against another, the survor always ready to pounce on the weakened victor. What they gave us (all considerations of art style aside) was  a game with one side pitted against the other…more of the same game mechanics used in just about every game that hits the shelves.

Aion Online, on the other hand, can’t seem to decide what it is. Yes, they have called it a PvPvE game.  An interesting approach but it is still a two sided game because the third side is controlled by the AI (the “E” in PvPvE).  If a gamer, such as myself, joins looking forward to new and innovative pvp I end up dieing on the vine as I try and wade through 25 levels until I get to pvp (Yes, I know about rifts but that isn’t pvp, that’s a slaughter).

This is why I will always applaud the independent game developer who dares to do something different.  There may be those in the gaming community who, in their ignorance, will sneer and call such games  a “niche of a niche”. What such games present to the mmo community are something that is desperately needed – someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer.  When a developer finally breaks out of the mold of game mechanics that are tried and true, we can finally go out looking for something different and find it.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather*

*Brought to  you from a bed in a convent, somewhere in Illinois.

Because I said so thats why...

Because I said so…

There is no more presumptuous a pundit than a blogger who perceives themselves to be profound. That’s my story and I ‘m sticking to it…

Why?

After a brief trek around the “blogosphere” lately I have been left feeling as if I had a rubdown with coarse grade sandpaper – in other words just irritated beyond words. (well almost beyond words or I wouldn’t be writing this would I?)  Now I appreciate that a blog and even a column is a given person’s opinion. That after all is what, generally speaking, brings you to a web site.   What is not acceptable, in any way, shape or form, is when an individual – and often it is someone with all the perception of a box of hammers – presumes to speak for all gamers.  Just think of it.  World of Warcraft has more subscribers than Switzerland has residents. Farmville, the flash based browser game has five times more than that.

To my knowledge (and I may indeed have it wrong), neither NCSoft, nor Cryptic Studios has announced how many subscribers they currently have for their respective games, Aion Online and Champions Online.  If I were to hazard a guess, it would no doubt be safe to say that neither game has one million subscribers or their marketing departments would be screaming it from the rooftops.  Even when Funcom just shipped  1 million Age of Conan boxes (not sold) they started shouting it. To which my response was, of course, shipped? Shipped where? Down the hall? Across the street? To the other side of town? Still, both games are likely to have at least several hundred thousand subscribers in their first month.

So here we are, a scant few weeks out for both Champions Online and Aion Online, and already we have seen bloggers pronounce edicts directed at both games along the lines of “The Honeymoon is over”. 

Quite frankly I haven’t seen such a load of crap since I was the caretaker for 1,000 rabbits (and that’s A LOT of rabbit crap).

It doesn’t matter if I don’t like a game. In the long run, it doesn’t even matter if columnists for places like PCGamer like a game. No one, no matter who they are, has the ability to speak for everyone. Consider movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.   Time and again reviewers plagued us all with their considered and self described “expert opinion.”  Yet when first weekend sales were counted up, the educated opinion of those reviewers who hated the movie may as well have been blown out their rectum as set in print. The movie, as well all know, was a financial success.

It's your game after all...

So if you enjoy playing a game, or are considering purchasing the game, don’t put it off just because some nebulous voice cries out in the streets of the global village that is the internet that a game “stinks” or that people no longer enjoy it any more. Or that players are quitting the game.  Tell the reviewer, columnist or blogger to blow it out their posterior and try it out for yourself.

After all, when it comes to the games that you, the reader, play, there is only one opinion that counts…

Yours.

 See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

The Easy Road or the Hard Road

There is a moment, at the end of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the version with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka) where Willy Wonka turns to Charlie and says, “Do you know what happened to the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?” In response to Charlie’s quizzical look, the famous chocolate maker replies with a smile and says…

“He lived happily ever after.”

That’s the question we ask ourselves today – would we be happy if we had it all handed to us on a silver platter?  Players across the myriad mmo gaming worlds strive to have the best armor or the fastest spaceship.  But does the attaining of the object of a desire matter more than the struggle to achieve it? Some of the unhappiest people I have known are living in four story mansions and driving BMW’s. 

But what if you could have literally anything in a gaming world you wanted? What would you do? Would it make it you happy?

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Kiss me first...

With a “Salute” to Tipa at West Karana from whom I borrowed the idea (and I am proud to announce she has agreed to be a guest on an upcoming show) call this the “Kiss me first” edition…

Usually I get kissed before I get….

As we must all know by now, the Activision/Blizzard gorilla is now making it mandatory for all players to merge their accounts with a battle net account.  To me that’s a bit like having to have a hunk of meat hung around its virtual kneck so the neighborhood dogs will play with it. Saying I MUST do it is part of what makes me feel like I usually get kissed first…making me use my email address as my user name is the rest of it.  This little podcaster will be using a fake email address (or at least one set up for the purpose) to set up the battle net account.  And if there is no way around this patently stupid breach of player account security? All I can say, other than usually I get kissed first, is that my financial security is worth more than a game.  Message to Bobby Kotick : That is the sound of the other shoe you hear dropping.

The big kiss off…

From the department of “kiss off” is the fact that (and hear we should all roll our collective eyes at the foolishness of it all) we can all sleep soundly at night – the boycott of Left 4 Dead 2 (as announced on Gamasutra) is finally over.  Yah baby…you know I wasn’t going to buy the game until I got some nebulous, unknown, ticked-off gamer’s approval right? Sure. And if you believe that I have a quit-claim deed to the Brooklyn Bridge I would like to sell you.  Valve is all smiles I am sure. But not because the “boycott” is over, but I am  sure they are happy with the free publicity.

Here’s another Kiss me first…

A big kick in the pants to the makers of my favorite new game, Aion online for successfully creating a reason for world pvp.  Why am I a bit upset about it? Because of the reason behind it and Keen from Keen and Graevs has one hell of a good article about it. (Available here)  Basically, without a connection between the two facets of NCSoft’s new game “Aion Online” (think of the two facets as the good guys and the misunderstood guys) which they call a “rift” it would be impossible for players from one side to reach the other. Now, for the first time, NCSoft has created a reward for the imbeciles who rush to the level cap first.  They can launch themselves, and their ganking parties through the rifts and hop right into the lower level zones of the opposite side.  Yes friends, this creates just one more reason to encourage players to rush to the level cap at a pace that would set a land speed record.   Not only are you encouraged not to stop and smell the virtual flowers,  you are encouraged to struggle to level 25 (and when it comes to levels 15 through 19 I DO MEAN struggle) to get the first point where you can pvp without (presumably) having your ass handed to you by a player 30 levels above your own. This, of course, only after he and his friends have worn it around as a hat for awhile.  This is, of course, a presumption about the pvp action in what is called the “Abyss” because levels 15 through 19 (and here I haven’t got the faintest idea why) where so painful to get through that it was like the first year at MIT – my only guess is that they were purposefully trying to discourage anyone who isn’t seriously interested in pvp. Either that, or shoot themselves in the foot so they can get a medical discharge from some Army unit somewhere.

So, thats it for right now.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Coming to a game near you!

What do Medieval Europe and Aion Online have in common?

They are both beset by a plague spread by rats – only in the case of Aion Online the rats are called Gold Sellers. As we discussed earlier in our virtual pub (“Methinks thou dost protest too much”)  gaming forums are full to the brim with players complaining about gold sellers. Bring up the subject at any gathering of gamers and you will soon have a room full of gamers screaming about the evils of RMT (Real Money Trading).  And as we all know they wouldn’t exist if no one ever used their services.

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Ass Hat

Not long ago I listened to an interview with Dr. Richard Bartle as the guest. He spoke of when he and Roy Trubshaw created MUD, the multiuser text based game that was to serve as one of the bases of all that would come later in the world of MMOs.  Dr. Bartle spoke of how he “saw the power” in what they had created. What stood out to me the most where the following words:

 “We had a way to make places where people could go and become themselves. For me it was always a thing about freedom. I always wanted people to be able to be free to be themselves.” – Dr.Richard Bartle on the creation of MUD

The monkey wrench that we have all, as gamers, thrown into this particular utopia is a little thing called a global village.  It is a concept engendered by author Marshal McLuhan describing how the world has become small village, brought about by electronic media, facilitated by the instantaneous movement of  information about the globe. Now consider that he made the concept popular back in 1962, long before the internet, and you have a man who was a bit of a prophet.  Yet, as with any case where you bring people in to close proximity to one another for any length of time, even if it is virtually, you will end up with a classic case of “familiarity breeds contempt.”  Add in the perceived anonymity of the internet (and here I say perceived because much of our lives is on the internet) and you have a situation where that contempt will come much sooner than it normally would have. We have stepped out of the mud and simply “stepped in it”.

Enter the “asshats.”

If Diogenes’ “Hermit” was looking for an American retailer that enforced the ESRB rating instead of an honest man, he would still be looking. In an era when the internet has replaced the television as an “electronic babysitter” the age restriction of who should be allowed to play a game has little to do with reality.

Unfortunately the ESRB rating for Aion Online is only “teen” – barely a week into the game and I would pay real money for NCSoft to have thrown enough violence into the game to have it merit a higher rating. The unfortunate side effect of the aging of generation that was around at the birth of the mmo (mine) is that a younger generation has moved in behind us. Now I am not saying that it is unfortunate in all cases; far from it in fact.  But put together enough virtual citizens of enough virtual countries and you will have a great big barrel that will hold more than just a few bad apples. 

I may be free to be myself – free of judgments based on race (other than ones in game faction of course), nationality, religion and what have you.  However, at the same time, others are free to be themselves. This means they are free to have guilds named “We crap on children” and fulfill juvenile fantasies by naming their characters “yourwhore” and “Grabmyrod” (all too common during these, Aion Online’s opening weeks). It’s a bit hard to enjoy a game developer’s well crafted lore, when someone’s 14 year old is crafting names for their character that belong on the stall of a men’s room and not flashed across my computer screen.

Still, any utopian society, virtual or no, is likely to have its problems.  As much as I enjoy Aion Online (especially the visceral, as NCSoft describes it, combat animations) I can only hope the second month of the game holds true to the course of that of most other mmos.  Once the first free month is up my great hope is that the virtual tourists will have moved on to whatever the next “it” game out there will be.  And that, my friends, really will be freedom. 

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

“The lady doest protest too much, methinks” – Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene 2

Me thinks thou doest protest too much...

When Scott Hartsman was on the No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show (and shame on you if you have to Google the name to find out who he is) one of the aspects of gaming that we discussed was gold selling.  Having experienced the opening day jitters of Aion Online all I can say is this: I’m glad China outlawed gold selling – it has had such a tremendous effect on gaming.

I am sure there are myriad reasons the Government of China had for banning the sale of virtual goods for real money, but it is a law that will be incredibly difficult to enforce in the first place.  And to throw yet another wrench into the works, China is far from being the only country that has gold sellers.

Now I am sure those who where there on opening day, right along with me, will point to the long ques to get on to the popular servers.  In fact, at one point I heard a voice from the other side of the room cry “TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!”

But it is not the ques that filled me with angst. Oh no. As we have spoken about before, my friends, any time a company releases a new game, the number of servers available at start is just a crap shoot. Add to that the number of people who purchase the game just for the thirty free days that is pro-forma in the industry and you have one perplexing problem.

But it is not the number of servers that has me perplexed.

Nope.

As Mr. Hartsman pointed out to us on the NPNM show, time and again his forums were filled with players who were not just aggravated with gold sellers, but despised them.   Yet for all that, gold selling continued to be a problem in Everquest.  Such is the way it is with all games.  As gamers we  have all come to expect that. Still, it must certainly be a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing – for while one hand is typing out a message of protest on a video-game forum the other is reaching for a credit card to buy gold.

While some players have been busy complaining about waiting ques (and long ques are not always a bad thing as we discussed earlier) others where finding that there accounts have already been banned…or so it seems.   Over at a game site I happened upon this morning called Gamer Limit there is an interesting article by one Colin Robinson, entitled “joking about selling gold earns a ban“.  Here is an excerpt from the article by a perplexed player who emailed Gamer Limit after finding himself banned “allegedly” (as they say in legal circles) for “joking about selling gold”:

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