GotMMOG?

It seems there are people with so much time on their hands they can grind away until they reached the level 50 cap in Aion. An interview was posted on the Aion site by Amboss (German community manager, Martin Rabl).

You’ve gotta think the devs are a bit disappointed by the interview. They talk about chugging through and following the campaign quests but skipping other content. Not my style (even though I really have little patience for cut scenes and reading quest material completely) but I know Sanister would probably love it. Mr. Achiever Player.

I guess now, it’s all about who can do it the fastest and who manages to pull something off like completing all the quests or killing all the raid bosses or something. Meh.

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Hi-Rez Studios released a note about their pricing model for Global Agenda. Looks like they’re doing a hybrid FPS/MMO model (fitting, I guess) where you can either buy the game as a one-time purchase and enjoy FPS matches as much as you want (for about $50) or you can go the MMO model and pay the usual $12 per month (or $33/quarter or $120/year) and get the FPS plus the MMO with the dynamic world (where your side’s victories translate into territory control).

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and if it turns out to be successful.

I’m still curious, though, as to whether or not the dynamic territory control thing is going to work. I beta tested a BattleTech multiplayer game (I wouldn’t call it a “real” MMO but it was close) where the number of match victories in a region would determine the control of that region for a house. It was a really cool system because you could look at the sector map and see how your house was losing ground in this one area so you could jump over there and queue up for a match in that area (the matches were 4v4 unless everyone agreed to enter then you could have power-play matches of 2v3 or even 1v4).

The problem? You could go to bed and check in the next day to find your house has been wiped off the map. All it took was a concerted effort by a particular house when everyone else was either offline or disorganized and your house would basically not exist any more. And it literally took a few hours so it could happen overnight.

Obviously, with proper controls, you could keep this under control. Maybe certain “base” regions could never be taken, some sort of automated/AI-based “special events” logic could knock certain regions into neutrality or maybe there would just be a timer ticking down so you had to maintain a region (chalk it up to loyalties and rebellion) or lose it after a time.

Blizzard showed off Cataclysm‘s trailer and some game play at PAX 2009 as well as Blizzcon. Now, PC Gamer’s latest issue covers it some more with more details on the reasoning behind the changes.

The gist is that Blizzard focused on the end game and expanding that level cap to give advanced players more places to go. Meanwhile, the starting and lower level areas have remained the same. More recently, they’d been improving things on the “back field” so that you can pass through those levels faster to get to the end game sooner.

Now, with Cataclysm, they’re talking about shaking things up to “fix” a lot of the things they didn’t like but had no time to fix. The gaps in game play, the excessive fetch quests, and the disparity between level flow in some areas (like the need to sail out of Auberdeen or make your way through Stonetalon to find content for 30-39), all of this stuff plus the need to just shake things up leads to Cataclysm.

The world will get shaken up to remove some issues and to change the flow of quests and leveling. For instance, splitting up the Barrens and putting more questing hubs in places like Darkshore and Stonetalon so you aren’t running back and forth all the time.

From what we heard at PAX, the “cataclysmic” content will be available to ALL players, expansion or not. The expansion is needed for the new content and professions.

It’s an interesting and very necessary step to take for the five year old (yup, FIVE friggin years, my friends) MMO that took the grind and made it more palatable with quests/goals. And, honestly, it’s actually getting me excited thinking about, as someone was quoted in the PC Gamer article, “rediscovering WoW” again.

Oh, and did I mention the ability to use those flying mounts anywhere? Maybe that’ll kick NCSoft into allowing people to fly anywhere in Aion…

Now if only they’d make the release date January 1, 2010 so we can get our hands on it as soon as possible…

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It’s been a bit of a topic in places that Blizzard might lose it’s 6 million plus subscribers in China over what were originally considered violations of cultural norms and acceptable content and seem to be more about politics and bureaucracy in China.

Now, it seems a bit more obvious what seems to be going on. The Wall Street Journal had a brief article about the struggle between the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). It sounds like the GAPP’s a bit unhappy about losing it’s control over a lucrative market (remember, bribes are the norm in places like China so for those officials in that department, they’re probably losing a lot of money).

Still, it’s not just bad for Blizzard but for any non-Chinese MMO publisher. It seems they’re making life hard for everyone in the end.

But, of course, everyone needs their MMOs and like the article mentions, I’m sure the “bigger” agency will win out in the end. It just goes to show you how much of a pain it is to publish an MMO with a global reach.

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Lookie here…another downsizing hits SOE’s SWG server list:

Due to the overwhelming success of the recent Free Character Transfer Service, we want to inform you that on October 15, 2009, at 5:00 PM PDT, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will close the following 12 Star Wars Galaxies servers:

• Corbantis
• Europe-Infinity
• Intrepid
• Kauri
• Kettemoor
• Lowca
• Naritus
• Scylla
• Tarquinas
• Tempest
• Valcyn
• Wanderhome

Or you can go here.

Of course they downplay it as a Character Transfer Service success and they specifically say they’re not closing down SWG but still. Things aren’t looking good for this sucker.

On the plus side, of course, it might mean more people showing up in my digs (more customers!).

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So, more than any other MMO I’ve used, Aion is getting slammed with chat spam from gold farmers. I’m not sure why it seems to be so easy for them to get through so easily (they whisper, spam the Find Group channel despite a stupid–YES STUPID–30 second limit on chat in that channel, try to phish by making it look like they’re a system message). Maybe it’s because the game engine’s already been out for a year in Asia so these gold farmers have had plenty of time to hack together tools to make the spam as simple as a single click.

Aion’s NA Community Manager says NCSoft is deploying GMs to monitor chat channels to ban accounts spamming chat channels with gold farming ads. The funny thing? I was playing last night and there were plenty of people spamming. Sure, you can block the four or five different accounts spamming the Find Group channel but then the whispers keep coming. You block one and 15 minutes later another one’s whispering.

It really takes away from the game (all those people complaining in the Find Group channel about the spam keeping them from seeing everything else in the channel falls on deaf ears).

Worse yet, some of the tactics used by NCSoft are more stupid and annoying than helpful. For instance, you can’t post a message to the Find Group channel more than once per 30 seconds. I don’t know about you but given the amount of traffic on the channel, 30 seconds is a LONG time…it’s enough time for your message to disappear (in 5-10 seconds) and require you to just sit there waiting for a chance to resend your LFM message…more waits…just like the queues.

On a related note, what the fuck is up with the 3 MINUTE waits on channel switching after “magical” transport? I returned to Altgard to clear some inventory and prep to join a group I just got invited to and I’ve got to wait for three fucking minutes to switch to the right channel so I can actually SEE my fucking group. Where the hell did this stupid limiter come from? Worried about server load? Who cares? Stop me from changing channels more than a minute at a time but don’t fucking spit on me because I just Returned and need to switch channels. It’s not like I elected to switch channels when I returned.

The many stupid limitations in this game are really hurting the experience. Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall seeing this sort of bullshit in any recent MMO. Your job as a game developer is to create an engaging and immersive enough environment to keep the gamer in the game and having fun.

Just like loading screens in any genre, as soon as you put artificial limits on normal activities that make no real sense, you start to lose the gamer and run the risk of having them bail on you. Gamers are fickle and, in this day and age, we only have so much time in the day to have fun with games (unless you’re the 10% of people who seem to have no job or school to worry about). You start making that a difficult prospect, I’ll head over to another game that doesn’t and stay there.

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Okay, calm down…the title has an exclamation mark but it’s not because I’m all excited. Brian Knox, producer for Aion in NA/EU, talked to Gamasutra about how Aion was set up from the get-go to be launched globally despite it’s initial Korean/Asian focus and launch a year ago. If you’ve got a short-attention span, read the highlights here.  If not, check out the full interview here.

On a separate note, I’m hearing some people complain that quests seem to run out at places so that you’re left to grind mobs to level up, especially in the teens. Can’t say that I’ve experienced this (my cleric is Asmod and is rampaging around Altgard without any rest for the weary). Anyone?

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