Back when Azeroth was young – when Arthas still loved Jaina, Molten Core was at its zenith, and Wilford Brimley had yet to be used as a model for the Kalu’ak …

Back then my troll hunter was venturing through Gadgetstan on to Ungoro Crater for the first time.   I stopped at the inn for fresh supplies before making the required trek across Tanaris Desert.  I paid for my food and was on my way out when a curious thing happened-a gnome began dancing around me yelling “Me love U ruff”.  If the intent was entice me toward pvp it was wasted effort.  On the other hand, as some bizarre attempt at being alluring it was a very effective means of getting me to drive the drive the porcelain bus. In fact it was the sight of a nearly naked gnome dancing on top of the mail box in front of the Ironforge bank that was the final action that precipitated my decision to go horde entirely.

Until recently it was not possible to have both an Alliance and Horde character on the same server – and with good reason.  It was, among other things, to prevent cross faction taunts like me love u ruff  from becoming tells that rapidly became  %$@! You.  %$@!  YOU AND THE HORSE YOU ROAD IN ON YOU $#@!  

Give me a chance

Being told to know myself, and in the biblical sense at that, is something I have been treated to on more than one occasion by low level horde alts of level 80 Alliance players that regularly take up residence in Outland World PvP on the Proudmore Server.  This, and many other unpleasant facets of behavior like it, is what make world pvp about as attractive to me as attempting my own dental work with dynamite.  I have never entirely understood the reason for gangs of level 80 players constantly determined to wrest control of Nagrand from level 73 players.  My guess is that it is these same level players who seem wont to prey on level 63 characters in Hellfire Peninsula.  Like the person my co-host and I encountered “five boxing” in the Blue Sky Logging Grounds recently, there seems little reason beyond displaced hostility.  There is, of course, the aspect of world pvp that is so prevalent in WoW’s Strangethorn Veil – Like James Cagney’s Matt Nolan character in the 1932 film Taxi, players seem to wonder the jungle forever in search of the dirty rat who killed their brother.

Give me a reason

Ask the makers of All Points Bulletin what happens when the outcome of PvP is assured before the encounter even begins.  Something similar occurred when Turbine created Lord of the Rings Online (Lotro) and threw in PvP as an afterthought.  In the opening months of Lotro Monster Play (Turbines version of PvP) was so unbalanced that I could run through the battlegrounds in my underwear and not suffer any damage.  Fortunately for both Turbine and Blizzard, both Lotro and Wow had other redeeming qualities to attract players – otherwise both mmos would have been a dismal failure.  

Beyond at least a reasonable chance of success, there also has to be a reason for participation in world pvp in the first place.  Battlegrounds work in WoW because they play to the system of inventory management that has become WoW’s end game.  Scenario’s worked in Warhammer Online because they were the best way to gain experience.  Given no other reason to participate than a buff, such as in Eastern Plaguelands, World PvP still remains a deserted wasteland bereft of anything but transient interest.  And as  Mythic Entertainment found with Warhammer Online, even if the developer thinks that World PvP/RvR combat is a great idea,  if the players don’t it won’t matter how much you force the horse’s head into the water trough, it still won’t drink.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Balancing Act

The simple fact of the matter is that no one (short of sadomasochists I suppose) likes to lose at player versus player (pvp) all the time.  This is, no doubt, one reason why game balance has been tough ever since Dr. Richard Bartle  and Roy Trubshaw  said to each other “hey have I got a great idea” and created the first Multi-User Dungeon.  There is always the age old debate at how bad someone loses or not – such was the case when Brent from Virginworlds.com debated pvp death penalties in what I call “the article heard around the virtual world” making the mistake of insulting then fair haired child Warhammer Online (oh how fickle is our community!).

Hammer Time

Certainly harsh pvp death penalties can create nail biting, nerve racking tension when it comes to pvp. Such is the world of CCP’s Eve Online.  If I were to venture into the wrong part of New Eden with my Rokh Class Battleship I could easily lose it all; this is one case where there is always a bigger fish.  Even if it can create some of the tensest pvp in any virtual universe, it also serves to keep people out of pvp as well. CCP did try and alleviate such concerns by making a half hearted attempt at faction warfare, but they let it fall flat on its face.  However death penalty is only part of the equation, and as a pvp fan I have come to see it as only a small part.  The factor that seems to tip the scale one way or the other is still the hardest …game balance. If you ask Tobold, who recently wrote an article entitled Ganking Killed APB he will no doubt point to the sentence that reads: “It is extremely hard to get somebody to pay for the privilege of constantly losing in a PvP game.”

 At first glance one might consider it a matter of beleaguering the obvious, but that never seems to be the case.  As we discussed with Icarus Studio’s Senior Designer Marie Croall on No Prisoners, No Mercy Show 70  people who pvp don’t really want balanced pvp. What they really want is the balanced tipped in their favor. This is no doubt why I have already seen forum threads claiming Cataclysm will be the “end of the Rogue class” because Blizzard is finally mitigating stun lock. It’s easy for someone to utter trite phrases like “life isn’t fair” when we here at NPNM talk about fair, balanced pvp.  The fact of the matter  this: unless you have one massive virtual carrot to dangle in front of players, poorly balanced pvp can turn battlegrounds into a ghost town.

The saddest cut of all

 The saddest cut of all is that in order to enjoy pvp again I have to level up a new character.  Pvp in WoW has become so unbalanced that there is little or no point to even taking a hunter, priest or warlock on to the battleground.  It shouldn’t be like that.  All of us here at NPNM understand how hard it is to balance classes in pvp. It is especially difficult when you do it the way Blizzard does; by micromanaging abilities. No one here is asking for overbalanced pvp. What we expect is for everyone to have a chance at enjoying what to us used to be a fun part of the game.

You have been warned

Now I will continue for those of you who aren’t on the floor.

Say what?

What I mean is this is the point at which most of the forum trolls extol the virtues of “fine whine” (and I don’t mean daddy I want to go to Disney Land).  Ask the typical person who plays on the Klingon side (think horde for all you World of Warcraft players out there) about Federation players who pvp and you will begin to hear how we are all stupid, foolish, unexperienced, and every other denigrating adjective in the book.  The fact of the matter is that I have two graduate degrees and a 126 IQ and I am far from being stupid.  I am also not inexperienced at pvp, having been engaging in pvp in mmos since there were mmos in which to participate in pvp (some time I will tell you of the player who killed me in pvp and upon finding out I was a nun yelled “oh no I killed a nun I’m going to hell”)

At this point I should clarify for those who might not be regular listeners of the No Prisoners No Mercy show that everyone on staff here are fans of Star Trek, Star Trek Online, and Cryptic Studios. We also like the game…alot. In fact I purchased a lifetime subscription and still don’t consider it a waste of money.   In fact because  I care about STO and Cryptic Studios is why I point this all out….

When it comes to “in space” pvp Cryptic Studios not only dropped the ball, it went down into the gutter and dropped into the sewer.

Lets start by taking a look at a typical score for the evening. Note this is Tier 3.  First you will see all the damage done for the blue team on the left.  While the zeros in this case are, no doubt, from players who check “hide” when their turn comes up, this is usually not the only case. There are many times when you will see two or three players doing damage and zeros by the rest of the names.  This is the result of players who have come to embody the famous words “abandon all  hope ye who enter.”  They know, as do most of those interested in pvp on the Federation side, that pvp is no longer a place you go to enjoy yourself.  It is a place where you go for fast leveling and fast medals to get the best gear for your ship.  True there are a few valiant souls who are still stupid enough to put up a fight (my character is one of those with actual damage).

But why the utter hopelessness you might ask yourself?

Lets look at the ebra…I mean epeen…I mean damage chart again.  How nice for us, by the way, that Cryptic has furnished those interested in PvP with the bane of our existence – the damage meter.  Look at the damage done by those still trying on the Federation side (on the left). Now compare that to the damage being done on the Klingon side on the right.  A rough comparison of the ability of Klingons to do enough damage to get through Federation shields would be like someone cutting through a paper bag with a flame thrower.

Even those on the Federation side who care about pvp and care deeply have begun to give up any hope that this aspect of the game will be balanced any time sooner then the turn of the next century.  The executive producer, Craig Zinkievich, told us all he wanted pvp in Star Trek Online to be about tactics and not about a dog fight. 

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but since everyone probably knows it anyway, the fight in pvp (at least in space) in Star Trek Online is, for the most part, already decided before the game has begun. But there is another factor at work there other than merely bad pvp for the Federation side – after all, on the Federation side we still have the pve, and belive me, the pve in Star Trek Online is nothing short of Fantastic.

I pity the Klingons

Even though the Klingons can grind my Federation character in to the dirt I pity them.  Why? Because pvp is all they have. Oh sure, you can go out to the “Kahless Expanse” and complete the one pve quest (one, count it, one).  If the pvp in Star Trek Online remains as unbalanced as it is, the Klingon side, and pvp can easily become deserted.   Don’t think so? Ask anyone who has ever played in the PvP arenas in Everquest 2.  Sure they were a novelty at first.  Now the pvp arena’s in EQ2 are completely deserted.

In short, as it sits right now, pvp in space in Star Trek Online is worthless.

And more is the pity is that this is where one of the Strengths of the game should have been. The saddest cut of all, is that it doesn’t need to be this way.  The game mechanics are all there for this to be some of the best space combat pvp on the internet. Eve Online? Yes, I still subscribe. Yes I have done pvp in Eve Online. But just like a frequent guest and I discussed off microphone, when it comes to one on one pvp in Eve Online the outcome  is already decided before the first shot is fired, and as Mr. Zinkievich pointed out, no one wants to lose their ship after taking 80 hours to earn it.

Mind you we aren’t naive enough to say something stupid like “Gee the game needed more work before it was published.”   First, that is asking Cryptic to repeat the most expensive month of development to begin with.  That, and more than likely that request would have gone over with their publisher, Atari, as well as a request, “Pardon me Mr. Publisher? Would you mind if I shoved a porcupine up your ass? I can only hope that there will be time to fix pvp before it becomes a ghost town. Think that can’t happen? Ask Mythic.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Are you on a power trip?

There is nothing like a little good pvp – and ganking is nothing like good pvp.

That said, for those uninitiated among our readers out there (read those who are new to mmo gaming) Player versus player (pvp) is a far cry from a process called “ganking” (a term which I can only assume owes its etymology to the words “gang” and “killing” ) This, Sean Cooper over at mmorpg.com would have you believe is different than “griefing” (The article can be found here):

“The difference between ganking and griefing is subtle enough that most players have difficulty separating the two…” – Sean Cooper

Actually, I think a sentence from an earlier paragraph in the same article is an indicator the author of the article might be the one who has a hard time telling the difference, “When you’re bored at max level, sometimes it’s funny to see how persistent the lowbie will be to see if he’ll keep trying to quest here before you get bored and take off.”  And that, my friends, is the perfect introduction to another term of which we are all aware…

Power Trip

Yes it is that time of year again. No, not a particular time of year when some nebulous person’s thoughts “turn to fancy” (whatever that means in the first place). It is that time in the life cycle of any pvp orientated mmo when players thoughts turn to the virtual battlefields in which they will soon participate (at level 25 in Aion Online). But it is not the eternal war of words between the gankers/griefers and those who enjoy pvp that we will join here. No, rather it is game balance.

As we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy will discuss on the soon to be released show 46, the sad case about Aion Online is that one has to wait until level 25 to experience any sort of pvp. So we can only surmise what attempts at game balance may or may not have been made. In any case, let’s hope NCSoft has spent more time on game balance than getting rid of gold sellers.

Lately I have seen different approaches to game balance.  The worst, of course, are those games who merely tack on pvp as an afterthought in an attempt to widen their player base.  This is what we saw in the opening months of Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine’s “player versus monster” play was little more than asking players to portray monsters so Turbine would have fodder to shove down the proverbial cannon.  But not every game approaches it as an afterthought. Some games, like the “developers formerly known as Mythic Entertainment” developed their game with pvp in mind. Yet still it appears to have fallen flat (or at least stumbled quite a bit).

We could spend the rest of the day discussing what happened with Mythic (in fact my co-host and I have done just that on the No Prisoners, No Mercy show in the past).  What should be mentioned is that if you are going to promise “massive realm versus realm battle” you had best assure that your servers can handle it in the first place.  For a great example of the right way to do this we have no further to look than CCP’s Eve Online.

Even more interesting is the difference between the approach to game/pvp balance that Warhammer takes, as opposed to the way the fine folks at Blizzard take in World of Warcraft (Yes…I know its “Activision/Blizzard”).   Warhammer takes the approach that each class has another that it is strong against, and one that it is week against.  This, I think, is a far better, and more viable approach than the one that Blizzard seems to have taken over the years.   The approach that is taken in Warhammer is by far the more preferable – like life, there will always be those who are lesser and greater than yourself. When you venture onto the field of battle in Warhammer (that’s WHEN you are ALLOWED to venture onto the battlefield) there will be some players who you will be able to prey on. Yet there are still others who will be able to hand you your ass, but that’s not until wearing it around as a hat for awhile.

The devs who work on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, on the other hand, have spent countless hours, weeks, and years, trying to micro-manage their pvp.   It has got to be a task that it would take a team of climbers and their Sherpa guides a lifetime to summit.  Each class must be analyzed to make sure that it is not able to overpower the other classes. Countless miniscule adjustments have to be made one way or the other as players (or those willing to do so) spend hours trying to find ways to squeeze the last fraction of a damage point out of their classes abilities.

Credit: Gahan Wilson

In the end, there seems to be few players who really want balanced pvp.  Instead they want the balance tipped in their favor. These are the griefs/gankers on a power trip (you can judge for yourself what this may or may not mean about their psychological makeup). These are also the players who, like our friend in the Gahan Wilson cartoon, could easily find themselves alone on a virtual battlefield, with no one willing to waste their time fighting them. The simple fact of the matter is that NO ONE likes to lose at pvp all the time.  If you think this is wrong, you are just kidding yourself.  This is also the point at which Mythic’s approach to game/pvp balance fits the bill.  Those who stride out onto the virtual battlefield looking for an outlet for their power trip will always find it, even if it is only momentarily.

No matter what the game, if there is a dev behind the game that has (at least where game development is concerned) the wisdom of  Solomon and brings balanced pvp to their product it is a beautiful thing. And I will see you online, in whatever game that happens to be.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather