Then the moment came, and I am proud to say I was one of the founding members of the player run town of Elen’Mar.  I raced to the spot by the side of the road leading out past the Hedge Maze to Destard.  There was no more joyous moment in all of gaming when I was able to grab my land and put  up my oriental style house by the side of road, plant my garden and watch the world go by as I crafted. When a recent article appeared over at Massively, announcing a lottery for lots of Maginicia it prompted me to do a bit of digging into my virtual past – the first thing I found was an introduction as a resident of Elen’Mar, Hunt Coordinator.

Name: Tomoe Gozen
Gender: Female
Age: I will not admit to a day over 200
Height: 5’10′
Weight: you will never pry this out of me
Hair Color: white
Eye Color: brown
Skin Color: ebony
Homeland: Menzoberranzan
Current Residence: Elen’Mar, Origin Shard
Guild/Faction Affiliation:ElF
Guild/Faction Rank & Title: Rank: Emissary Title: Hunt Coordinator

You can say what you want about Richard Garriott, and Ultima Online. You can call him eccentric and his brainchild long in the tooth.   The fact of the matter, in many cases when some developer announces a new mechanic to be introduced it is more a case of Everything old is new again. In many cases Richard Garriott  and Origin Systems did it first. Even more remarkable, in a market when even triple A mmos come and go so fast players barely have time to hit the level cap, FOURTEEN YEARS LATER Ultima Online is still around.

So what happened?

Was it Wow? Well perhaps that was part of it, and if so a small part.  What changed for us, the founders of Elen’Mar, was the same thing that changed for UO – what changed was the people. When Richard Garriott departed  Origin Systems back in 2000 he took part of the heart of the mmo with him.  As with any intellectual property (IP) it can reach the point where it grows beyond  what the founders envisioned.   While that may be the case, as anyone who has ever bought an established business has found, there may be a line called “good will” in the bill of sale, but that doesn’t mean you actually get the customers.  After all, an IP is only as good as the people who created it.

Can’t we all just get along?

Short answer? Apparently not. No matter how good the mmo really is, what sets it apart is the middle “M” – multiplayer.  What makes an mmo a success is the community; the people who inhabit that virtual world. In doing the research I found an excerpt by one of the founders of Elen’Mar I pulled off a Japanese site about UO (see below). The words below, who’s author is not identified in the source, sound remarkably like those of a player known as Talishara. 

That I think it might be time for me to step down as Mayor of Elen’Mar.. I’ve done quite alot of thinking the past couple days, and perhaps it’s the best thing for me to do. What is a Mayor? Someone to do weddings? Someone to make decisions? I have forgotten what my job is, and I feel “others” may have forgotten as well. After Pirotess’s to be quite frank, very mean and nasty message, I realized… is this what has become of my beloved town? It’s one thing to rp in game, but to bring it to other people out of game, is not very cool. It’s just not fun anymore. To tell someone they ” maybe should not set foot in the town of Elen’Mar anymore” is wrong, I’m sorry. I didn’t agree w/the stuff he did. It even made me mad, but Korin is a good guy. Personal attacks only make it worse. Think of how that probably hurt him. I don’t know. We built this town to be friends, role-play, and have fun. Lately.. it seems that the beloved town I helped build has definitely changed. I mean really… we decided on an alliance together, all of the guilds.. yet.. I honestly don’t think half of them even trust my guild. Which is understandable, but let me tell you what.. they are the best bunch of people I have ever met and they will always be my friends, I will always trust them 100%. So… what is a Mayor? Is there need for one anymore? I don’t know anymore.

 Via: UO Stratics

In the end, even though the isometric view for which UO is so famous is dated, it is not that which drove me into the waiting arms of WoW.  It was not the siren call of Azeroth pulled me away so much that conflicting personality drove me away, and eventually turned what had been the burgeoning player run town of Elen’Mar, with its regularly role playing meetings in a tavern, into a ghost town.  All these years later, among the many dreams I have when I lay down to sleep at night, are the occasional forays back into the land that Lord British built.   In fact once a long time ago, back when the level cap in WoW was still 60, I did try and go back; only to find a scant few of the original players I knew still inhabiting the land.

Despite having tried, I found I couldn’t go home again.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

First confession…

My name is Molly.  Inside my dog house I have 5, 284 slippers – none of them matching. I am a slipper thief.  I just happen to like slippers and hey, the people I own already have alot of slippers. In fact they also have 5,284 slippers, and incredibly none of them are matching either.

Back when I was studying television directing they always told us that two things really sells a commercial – baby animals and children.  Now not everyone likes children but nearly everyone likes four legged babies.  And so we start out today’s article with the confession of a slipper thief.

Second confession…

Broken Toys calls the move by EA pictured above as “Exploit that IP my lord…discreetly” (read it here)  If I may be so presumptious as to defend EA for the Briefest of moments by assuming their role..

We confess – we are just trying to make a living here.

As much as I love Broken Toys and everything that Scott Jennings writes, and as humorous as the observation is I found myself saying, “Come on Scott,  the people at EA are just trying to make a living you know?”  Now I might sound suspiciously like a Ferengi when I say “What’s wrong with a little profit?”  However, too often people forget that before anything else a video game be it console or mmo, is about making a profit.   J. Paul Getty once said “Money is only dirty when it is someone else’s”.  It used to be that if you had told the average game designer or gamer that Free to Play would be not just accepted but welcome, that you would be looked at suspiciously in the least and more probably taken behind the barn and shot.  Now Free to play seems to be the wave of the future, at least for the immediate future.   The first mmo I ever played was Ultima Online back when you could say “What is World of Warcraft” and have people reply “I don’t know” without laughing afterwards.   I think the concept of  a strategy game set in Britannia could be a lot of fun…and if it keeps some game designers and publishers in business I am all for it.  After all, the more games that are out there to choose from the better off gamers are.

Third Confession…

First Bill Roper is a nice guy and anyone who doesn’t like that I say so can kiss my posterior.  Cryptic, in the form of Chronomancer issues a State of the Game on February 9, 2010 (you can read it here) Champions Online, ask Cryptic. Cryptic says, “O.K. we confess. We’re not perfect we made a mistake. We are listening to the community. You asked for the next Champions Online expansion free and we are giving it to you.” The “Community” (those not actually playing the game and who have likely never played it because “it’s Cryptic”)  basically say “We don’t care you are still a jerk.” (those still playing the game) say “Thank you for listening.”  The simple fact of the matter is that when Cryptic had problems with their “kitchen sink patch” they explained it.  Players wanted the Revelations expansion fee, and Cryptic said here it is…free.  Like it or not Cryptic is listening to the gaming community.

Fourth Confession…

When Tobold is right, he’s right.  Here is an excerpt from his recent article entitled “Working in Eve for $2 per hour” (you can read the whole article here).

“I would say that EVE has two major gameplay parts, one being a PvP game, and the other being an economic game. With me not being interested in the PvP part, I’m looking mostly at the economic part. And I would say that legal RMT makes the economic part look a lot less attractive. At the start of the game, when your character is still very weak and has no capital to work with, you will earn a lot less than $2 equivalent per hour. Thus the temptation will be great to jump-start yourself with the 300 million ISK or so you get in exchange for one PLEX. Thus if you think of your power in EVE depending on your skill points and your virtual wealth, you end up having bought both for real money. Skills don’t go up from gameplay, but go up with the length of your subscription, thus there is a direct skill points to dollars correlation too.” – Tobold

As much as it may irk Tobold, I couldn’t agree more – he has that part of the game “sussed”.   Hard Core Casual (whom the No Prisoners No Mercy team has admittedly run afoul of on a  previous occasion) had this to say:“The major problem about Tobold writing about EVE is the same one I get accused of when writing about WoW; not playing the game.”  He called this, as you will see “How awfully Keen of you Tobold” and followed that up with, “It’s the Keen kind of entertaining if you know what I mean.”

Oh yes we know exactly what you mean when you say “keen” entertaining as in “Keen” from “Keen and Graevs gaming blog.”

The sort of entertaining that’s interesting, witty, well thought out and all around entertaining.  If I may be so bold, the major problem that Hard Core Casual has about Tobold writing about Eve is the same thing he has about anyone writing about anything…they aren’t him.  In the mean time, dear readers, feel free to jump into the Tobold vs. Hardcore Casual fray – if nothing else it is always entertaining. And to quote someone we once read, when ever we read Hardcore Casual we just have to shake our collective No Prisoners, No Mercy team heads.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

That's my story...

Well it appears that I have finally missed a day of writing – time to get out the whips and chains.

I have written for places like “The Older Gamers”, “Online Gaming Radio”, “World of Warcraft Chronicles, and currently Virgin Worlds with occasional stints on Lorewriter.com.  However this is the first time I have had complete control over what goes up on the page and when.  The schedule I set for myself was 6 out of every seven days and I finally missed a day.

In the mean time my co-host and I were busily setting up and working on an interview with none other than Mr. Colin Dwan, Project Manager for Fallen Earth.

And so I was just too busy to write – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Now, however, let’s get on with the main part of today’s article (that has absolutely nothing to do with Fallen Earth) I call:

“Don’t nail the coffin shut just yet”

Don't nail it shut yet

Just recently one of my favorite web sites, Gamasutra, featured an interview with Mr. Tim Cotten, lead designer for Ultima Online (UO). This is a game that has been around for a long time where online games are concerned; as we all know it was one of the first. In that time the hand at the tiller has changed more than once. The first was, of course, Richard Garriott.  Here is a quote from the article on which some of the “illustrious” members of the mmo community seem to have focused:

 “And so our main focus of course has been is to retain our current loyal subscribers and hopefully, through them, reactivate friends and family who used to play. And see, UO, like you said, it’s got a very core player base, and not a small one. Many of the new MMOs that come out never reach our current levels. We have 27-odd servers — it’s still a very healthy MMO.” – Tim Cotten, Lead Designer, Ultima Online

There is a tendency for some gamers to forget the old adage, “it is best to remain silent and thought ignorant than speak and remove all doubt” by tossing out phrases like “27 servers – one for every subscriber” Keep in mind, dear readers, as the ever vivacious and sometimes maligned (and I am, guilty of this as well) Paul Barnet spoke about on our show, people in big companies like EA don’t get to where they are at by being stupid. Dr. Ray Muzyka (co-founder of Bioware and head of EA’s RPG/MMO gaming group that currently produces UO) doesn’t wake up in the morning and say “Hey, I know, let’s flush a little more money down the toilet”.  There’s a “Doctor” in front of his name because he’s one smart cookie.

 What the online gaming community SHOULD have focused  on (and I know all you incredibly intelligent No Prisoners, No Mercy listeners and readers did notice) was part of the dialogue between Gamastura correspondent Oli Welsh and Mr. Cotten a bit later in the interview:

 Gamasutra: I think a lot of people reach the conclusion at some point that advancements in art and stuff in games is the way to make games feel more alive and more real, but in the end it’s more about your creative intent.

Tim Cotten: I agree. It’s about the creative intent. You can improve the art to be photorealistic, that doesn’t mean you have a great game. It will certainly be visually impressive, the fireballs will look amazing, but it doesn’t mean that I want to have fun in that game or that I can have fun in that game.

There’s a lot of truth there folks, as you will hear us discuss with Keen from “Keen and Graevs” in the next podcast (Show number 47 due out for early release soon and public release a bit later). So let me restate the words of Mr. Cotton with a bit more emphasis: An old whore with a pound of makeup and $50,000 of plastic surgery is still an old whore.  At this point I have a particular game in mind and you will have to draw your own conclusions as to which one. The game in question is stunning to look at – it’s like you stepped into a painting. The animated effects are just drop dead astounding. The combat is fast and furious, so much so that the rogue class looks like Bruce Lee on speed when they fight. But take away the special effects, take away the combat style and what are you left with? A game that is so boring to play that it is somewhat reminiscent of what I call “the three hour business meeting from hell.” Now you may ask yourself at this point, why do you still play the game then? Truth is I don’t. As Paul Barnett said, my account is merely a place holder at this point.

My friends, there is a reason that Ultima Online has been around for so long, and it isn’t simply because Electronic Arts (one of the biggest video game producing companies in the United States) enjoys throwing good money after bad. The reason is the game has depth. When Dr. Bartle was on the show he spoke about the difference between game worlds and virtual worlds. What Ultima Online has is that it is a game that has more virtual world in its game world.  It isn’t just a place where you level up and then sit in front of the bank showing off your armor and the horse from the headless horseman quest, hoping you will be the envy of the person who, in real life is someone you wouldn’t noticed if they passed you on the street. No, Ultima Online is a game with virtual life, not just where you shoot monsters.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather