Into Her Wonderworld: DCUO

Assuming we make that far, January 2021 will mark the tenth anniversary of Detective Comics Unlimited Online as literally no-one in the entire world has ever called it. Almost every MMORPG goes by an abbreviated version of its Sunday-go-to-meeting name but only DCUO has no other identity to fall back on beyond a set of initials.

And don't say "What about EVE?" I checked. The full name of the game we refer to as "EVE" is "EVE Online" and the correct, abbreviated version, which no-one really uses, is EO. Supposedly "EVE" is the name of the now-destroyed wormhole gate that linked New Eden with the Sol system, although why it was capitalized and whether or not it was an acronym, and if so what for, seems to be lost in the mists of space and time.

Hmm. I'd never noticed all that Christian religious symbolism in EVE before. There're the Sisters of EVE, too, an NPC faction that believes "the EVE gate is a gateway to heaven" That's a bit weird.

Umm... how did I get here? I was talking about something else, wasn't I? Oh, yes! DCUO.

It seems like a lot longer than a decade since I first stepped onto the streets of Metropolis. I was pretty excited for the game, being a lifelong DC comics fan.

I put in for the beta and got in, enjoyed it well enough to buy the game at launch, both for myself and Mrs. Bhagpuss. It was a subscription title then but it came under SOE's All Access umbrella, so that didn't factor.

Mrs. Bhagpuss completed the tutorial and, as far as I know, never logged in again. I spent several weeks levelling my first character to the cap, which was set at a low bar of thirty. It's still the cap today. The game uses a completely different system called "Combat Rating". I think it's based on some kind of gear score. Probably.

DCUO's progression mechanics have always been somewhat opaque to me. It's a pity. I really liked the leveling part of the game, the way it started out. If SOE had carried on developing and expanding DCUO along the same lines as all their other games I'd have carried on playing regularly, I imagine.

It only strikes me as I write this just how much of an outlier in the All Access portfolio DCUO always was. The launch roughly co-incided with the beginning of SOE's shift to a free-to-play model, but going F2P never stopped EverQuest and EQII from pumping out an expansion a year or more. DCUO has never released an expansion, not one.

Maybe that's down to its secret identity as a once-rare example of a successful console MMORPG. I have a suspicion Planetside and Planetside 2 operate in something like the same fashion. I've never paid enough attention to any of them to be sure.

Whatever the reason, with the leveling game over and the future marked for instanced group play, I bowed out. But I never gave up on DCUO. I keep popping back in every few months for another look. I've made several characters on a couple of accounts and played them up through those original levels. It's still as much fun, doing that, as it ever was.

About the current game, though, I know very little. It's been a very long time since I followed the storyline (I'm guessing there is one) or understood the structure (I know it's episodic but that's about it).

Occasionally Daybreak do something with the game that catches my interest. I got myself a Lair when they added housing and I always make sure to grab any free housing items that come with the periodic release of a fresh episode. I was pretty stoked when Krypto appeared. I even joined a League, once.

While I'm there, I generally have a bit of a run through the uplevelled "Event" version of whatever the new content happens to be. They all follow the same format. It's nothing if not predictable but as far as I can judge from reading the forums, regular players seem to like it that way.

When Dimensional Ink (Still can't take that name seriously) started bigging up the latest release, Wonderverse, the marketing department seemed to be making more of it than usual. I thought it was going to be something different for once. A new approach. Well, that's literally what they were telling us:

And maybe it is all of that, if you're a regular player with the required minimum CR of 300 and access to the full, permanent version of the zone. To me, when I logged in and knocked out a few quests for various Amazons yesterday, it felt pretty similar to all the other episodes I'd played.

But I was only in the Event version. They're always busy. I imagine the problem is that once the Event ends and a new Episode rolls in, no-one goes back to the old one. The usual built-in obsolesence that leaves so many MMORPGs bloated with forgotten content no-one uses any more.

The zone itself was nice enough, attractively designed on a Greco-Roman theme. Wonderful Mediterranean skies. Gorgeous terracotta tiles. All very Greek.

It was sprawling and "open" in the sense described in the Dev Diary, meaning it wasn't instanced. It was certainly chaotic and I did indeed run into other players, some of whom helped me kill stuff and some of whom poached my quest updates. That happens every Event, though.


I was hoping for something a little more like the original Metropolis and Gotham zones the game launched with. Those are true MMORPG open-world zones; huge, complex, unrestricted. Themiscyra is more like a non-instanced outdoor dungeon, lots of alleyways and plazas that interconnect but not too much wide-open space.

I freely admit that I may be missing something. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised to find the zone I was in isn't even the "open world" zone they're talking about at all. I get incredibly confused in DCUO most times I visit. I was just happy to find the spot where the action was without having to spend half an hour flying round and round the Watchtower, searching for the teleporter, like I usually do.

For now, I think I've seen as much of Wonderverse as I care to but I'm keeping it under advisement. If it turns out there's more to it than I've understood, I'll be back. And anyway, I'll most likely tune in to see which Big Bad pops up next time around. They do kind of have that part of the comic book schtick down pat.

Other than that, roll on the tenth anniversary. I'm excpecting something special for that one, guys!

Days Like This

It's been one of those days, hasn't it?

I came home from work this evening, chatted with Mrs Bhagpuss, had my tea, then down at the PC to see what Feedly had for me. The first thing I saw was this:

"EVE Online developer CCP Games bought by Black Desert Online studio Pearl Abyss"

As MassivelyOP so astutely put it "I bet that’s not a headline you expected to wake up to!" No, nor come home to, either.

I have never played EVE but I've read a lot about it, mostly at The Ancient Gaming Noob. Wilhelm has the full details and links to the many people talking about this surprising turn of fortune.

As I said in the comments there, it could be worse. Pearl Abyss don't have a particularly bad reputation, despite the accusations that they favor Pay to Win mechanics, and Black Desert Online has been one of the more popular, successful and accepted transitions from East to West of recent years.

Al the same, I would bet most EVE players would rather CCP had remained independent and I would be surprised if there's much of a shift in that feeling over the next year or two. MMO players don't like change, even when it's objectively in their own best interests.

The EVE buyout was such a huge story it eclipsed another piece of news that would have been a main headline on another day:

"THQ Nordic has bought up the rights to 38 Studios’ Project Copernicus and Kingdoms of Amalur"

I'd all but forgotten Curt Schilling's ill-fated attempt to re-create his EverQuest raiding days by funding his own MMORPG. If you build it they will come, perhaps. Only he never did build it.

Instead the whole thing turned into what MassivelyOP describes as "one of the biggest messes the MMORPG genre – and gaming itself – has ever seen". I don't imagine anyone ever expected to see Project Copernicus return in a playable form after that and maybe we still never will, but THQ Nordic (no, me neither) must have bought the assets for something so who knows?

After all that I needed a bit of a change of pace so I went and watched Eggheads for half an hour. I am old. Don't mock me.

I came back, glanced at Feedly before logging in to EQ2 and stap me if I didn't see this:

"WildStar and Carbine are shutting down"

What are we doing? Playing MMO Industry Bingo? One buyout, one acquisition, one closedown - HOUSE!

WildStar, of course, has been living on borrowed time while drinking at the last chance saloon for years now. Many pundits have pondered over NCSoft's apparent unwillingness to pull the switch on this failed experiment in hardcore gaming.

Was it fear of a backlash after the desperately badly-received decision to close the then-profitable City of Heroes just because it wasn't profitable enough? Or had they simply forgotten WildStar even existed? God knows that would have been easy enough to do - most of us managed it years ago.

I never entirely got on with WildStar. It was too brash and too jarring to be relaxing, something its cuddly anhropomorphic characters seemed to suggest it should be. Still, I had some good times there, on and off. I don't suppose I would ever have played it again but I'm sorry to see it go.

I hope WildStar gets another chance in that grey zone where emulators operate. If Earth Eternal can do it, anyone can. Although I imagine EE's code is a lot less complex than WildStar's.

However you want to paint it, that's a lot of news for one day. I scarcely dare check Feedly again. I've been typing this for half an hour - who knows what MMO might have closed down or changed hands since I last looked?

Wilhelm and I have been corresponding recently on those rumors about Daybreak Games' future plans. As he pointed out, some of them have already happened. Come to think of it, there was some talk once about Daybreak or SOE acquiring CCP, wan't there? I did say it could have been worse!

We're still waiting on any news about this Autumn's EverQuest and EQ2 expansions, beyond the bald assertion that they will happen. I am now braced to hear that they will also be the last.

Whether that means the end of a chapter or the closing of the book remains to be seen. After a day like today I'm not going to make any predictions about anything.

It's The Economy, Stupid!

Once again I find myself feeding off a post at The Ancient Gaming Noob, only this time what prompted me to respond was something Gevlon said in the comments. I might have been tempted to put finger to keyboard anyway, since Wilhelm compares the upcoming addition of instanced content to EVE (in the form of "abyssal deadspace") with EverQuest's 2003 expansion "Lost Dungeons of Norrath" and LDoN has always been one of my favorite EQ expansions.

LDoN came as a complete surprise - even a shock - at the time. It fundamentally altered the way EQ was played, dismantling the cultural barricade between "above ground" and "dungeon" players, converting most of the solo and casual population to the kind of group play that had hitherto been seen as the province of the game's self-appointedly more committed and serious players.

I learned more about group play and especially how to start, build, maintain and lead a group in the six months that LDoN provided the backdrop to the EQ zeitgeist than ever before or since. I also made more friends in the game in the first few weeks of that expansion than I'd made in the previous four years. I can think of several periods where my long EQ career could be said to have peaked but LDoN may have been the zenith.

Wilhelm concluded his post by asking a very direct question about the upcoming addition to EVE : "Will it change the game in a good way?". My experience with LDoN was that it not only changed EQ structurally but culturally. The game was never the same again and I would always contend it became a better MMORPG as a direct result of what we all learned in the Lost Dungeons.

EVE is a very different MMORPG from EverQuest and what's more it's one that I've never played, so I wouldn't presume to speculate on whether or how the introduction of instanced content might change things there, be it for better or for worse. Gevlon has played EVE extensively so it was interesting to see him put his finger on the crucial difference between the two games.

By that, I don't mean  the radically different setting - Spaceships instead of Dragons. Nor do I mean the central role played by PvP, or even that the entire game takes place on a single shard instead of well over a dozen. All of those make any comparison between the two games not so much apples and pears as apples and aardvarks but in this case the supreme point of difference is the economy.

LDoN did, as Wilhelm points out, introduce the concept of Augmentations to EverQuest - plug-ins that fitted sockets in your armor to upgrade it or add fresh functionality. That, in my experience, however, wasn't the primary attraction for the swarms of overland and solo players who suddenly found themselves scanning LFG and learning dungeon etiquette.

LDoN also offered vendors with armor that was better than anything overland players could have imagined themselves wearing. As with the arrival of  Darkness Falls in Dark Age of Camelot, the addition of a currency system that permitted the purchase of superior gear from NPCs rather than having to hope for a lucky drop made people re-assess the entire way they played the game.

They had to because in both cases neither the currency nor the items were tradeable. If you wanted to wear the armor you had to do the content. There was no way round it.

In EVE this will not be the case. In EVE, at least as I understand it from the outside, everything is negotiable. As Gevlon says, "It cannot change the game as a whole, because every reward will be available on the contracts. Ergo, if you want it and have the ISK, you can have it without ever setting foot in it."

This brings us to the heart of the problem. The Economy. All MMORPGs have an economy of some description but they vary wildly in breadth, depth and influence. There are a handful, like EVE and Entropia Universe, which have unrestricted player-to-player trade as a core feature. At the other extreme some, like FFXI and the original Guild Wars, allow players to trade only through a bourse with strict price controls.

Most MMOs settle for a hybrid economy in which many items are freely tradeable but others are not. This allows the designers to retain some control over prestige and desirability, giving them levers they can use to move player activity and interest from one aspect of the game to another. Commonly, for example, the very best gear or the most spectacular mounts or illusions will require players to complete raids, kill bosses or run quests for themselves.

This in itself gives rise to a whole set of behaviors that were probably unintended but which often become more or less part of the culture. When raiding was added to GW2, "carrying" players through a raid for a fee became such a point of controversy that ANet had to rule on whether it was a bannable offence (it isn't, unless it's a scam, when it is). EQ2 has a whole grey economy based on "SLR" - selling loot rights - in which someone kills a mob with an untradeable drop then invites someone else to come group with them and loot it - again for a fee.

Once items become freely tradeable in this way the entire game changes. It's no longer about imagining you're a freebooting space-pirate or a bold adventurer. It becomes about knowing where to go and what to do to earn enough money to buy the things you want. In other words, it becomes all about having a job.

The deeply ironic thing is this: a fully-functioning, unrestricted in-game economy does more than anything to turn an online game into a genuine "virtual world". Players really do begin to live in the imaginary space as though it were "real", making the same kind of decisions and choices as they would have to make were they physically present, not least in EVE where there isn't even the safety-net of a "play nice" policy.

None of that matches my wishes or expectations for virtuality. When I took up this hobby I was all in favor of the virtual world approach over treating MMORPGs as "games". What I didn't have in mind was moving to a complete replica of the society in which I already live, just with everyone dressed in leather and carrying a sword.

Over time I came to first mistrust and later despise the very concept of a "player economy". For several years I used to jump into forum threads to contend that the complete removal of all forms of direct player-to-player trading would be a cure-all for most of what ailed MMOs at the time.

I have since mellowed on that extreme position as I have mellowed on most things. It's quite disturbing, looking back, to see how similar my thinking was in my 40s to the way I saw the world as an adolescent. Perhaps I'm finally growing up. Or just giving up.

These days I favor an in-game economy with some form of fairly strict central control. I strongly admired FFXI's price mechanism in the brief time I played that game. Something like that would be my starting point. I also think it essential for the long-term health of an MMORPG that many desirable items (and probably services, too) should only be obtainable by the direct action of an individual player. They can be assisted by friends or guildmates or even strangers but they should at least have to be there when it happens.

The idea that you can get anything you want just by doing the things you like is all too attractive on the surface. Who could argue against it? Not me. The problem is that, far from allowing players to do what they enjoy, it's a road that always leads to them doing what they think is the most efficient. Whatever brings in the most money for the time spent.

That in turn leads to an MMO in which normative gameplay largely consists of grinding or farming the same content long after it loses any flavor it might have had. We see this happen over and over. Players routinely end up skipping things they'd prefer to do because they don't bring in the same gold-per-hour. Instead they spend session after session on things that bore them so much they have to do them while watching Netflix on another screen. Eventually they either become so bored they leave or so burned out they turn into the kind of haters and trolls who can't help but use every available channel to badmouth the game that betrayed them and ruined their life - even as they go on grinding.

That is not my conception of immersive gameplay. Nor is it the kind of virtual world I could recommend as an imaginative and stimulating alternative to the non-virtual one in which we all already live.

PvP: It's Not Going To Kill You

This week brought several interesting posts about PvP. Wilhelm took Syp to task, in the mildest manner, over the commonly-held belief that EVE is "a gankbox". The biggest takeaway from the lengthy discussion there seemed to be that no-one really knows what a "gankbox" is. Or agrees on what costitutes "ganking" for that matter...

UltrViolet had something to say about PvP in FFXIV. Once I'd got over the shock of finding that FFXIV has PvP (who knew?) some of his observations had me re-assessing my own attitudes and assumptions.

Lastly, Jeromai had plenty to say about the recent, significant changes to GW2's World vs World. This is PvP I actually know, in some depth, from personal experience and yet at times he seemed almost to be describing a game I'd never played at all.

The crux of the problem seems to me to fall squarely where it usually does - on definitions. Like "MMO", the term "PvP" has become so stretched by overuse, so baggy and warped, that it can be fitted over almost anything. Badly.

I see Commander Chris Goes Deep in there so I'm guessing he ran off a cliff and we all followed. We'd follow him anywhere except to Jade Quarry, which is where he went :(

UltrViolet is uncomfortable with what he describes as "a pervasive attitude of what I’ll call … well, cowardice, for lack of a better term" among PvPers in MMORPGs, something he compares unfavorably with pre-MMO days, when "in a fight with someone in Quake, they usually fought back, and a duel ensued (a duel with rocket launchers)". It's apparent that what underpins his understanding of the term "PvP" is a literal stand-off, head to head, toe to toe, between individual players, conducted primarily, probably entirely, for the honor of a clean victory.

In Wilhelm's comment thread, however, Gevlon defines PvP in an utterly unromantic, purely functional fashion. PvP for the Greedy Goblin is "an in-game reason to fight, you seek to complete an in-game objective". When he says "...it’s competition" he means competition for resources.

Gevlon dismisses fighting other players for the sake of fighting them as merely a means of staving off boredom or promoting an out-of-game self-image. For him, and indeed for several other commenters in the thread, PvP is primarily a means to an economic or political end, not any kind of an end in itself.

Jeromai, meanwhile, in a series of lengthy, detailed and thoughtful essays, analyses both his actions and his motivations, which, unsurprisingly for any regular reader of "Why I Game", largely seem to revolve around testing and refining the limits of his own skill and ability.

The new reward system gives me the pip.

These three approaches, which most likely represent only the shallowest foothills of the mountain of nuance that exists to be scaled on the topic, amply demonstrate that, where any discussion of PvP is concerned, what we are most likely to see are people talking past each other. As in all negotiations, without agreed definitions at the outset, little progress can be made towards consensus.

It would help if, when we talk about PvP in MMORPGs, we made it clearer what kind of PvP we were talking about. There are well-established names for some of these subdivisions, after all.

Let's take Dueling, for example. Dueling is the apex of the consensual, one-on-one, "honorable" fight. Most MMOs offer it in some form or other.

I absolutely, utterly loathe dueling. It was the single aspect of EverQuest I most hated from the moment I began playing. In all the time I ever played, from 1999 to now, I only ever dueled once. That was in a Guild event, when I did it with extreme reluctance so as not to seem "difficult". I won, easily, as it happens. No-one was more surprised than me.

My objection to dueling has nothing whatsoever to do with whether I would or would not be any good at it. My issue is with the extreme intimacy. I find it skin-crawlingly creepy. To be locked in a virtual rope-fight to the death with another human being is just beyond anything I ever expected or wanted to discover in a fantasy world. I set all duel acceptances to "automatically decline" where the game allows and never accept or respond to them where it doesn't.

Left a bit..left a bit...right a bit...FIRE!

GW2's complete lack of a duel function is unexpected and also one of the very best things about the game. Unsurprisingly, I don't try to replicate dueling there in the kind of lone-wolf WvW roaming Jeromai describes.

I do, however, travel alone in WvW all the time, scouting, taking objectives, simply moving from place to place. I'm not remotely apprehensive about being alone and vulnerable because, as Hording says in Wilhelm's thread, in "games with no consequences you just shrug and continue from the graveyard or waypoint. Who killed you – who cares?".

If someone attacks me in when I'm alone in WvW I simply wait for them to kill me. Then I waypoint and get on with whatever I was doing. I have no skill as duelist and no interest in acquiring any. My interests and aptitudes lie in matchplay. I want our team to win. I want to do my part. Dueling harms not helps that objective so I feel virtuous for avoiding it.

When I play, even five years in, I care whether we hold all our own keeps. I care whether we win the Skirmish and the match. I care where we place in the table, even though everyone agrees the whole scoring system has been so broken for so long it's effectively meaningless.  

It doesn't much matter to me that it's all pointless, repetitive and silly. It's an MMO. Of course it is! I'm as easily able to suspend my disbelief to become immersed in the fortunes of my server as I am to believe that each battle against Tequatl is the only one needed to defeat him forever, even though I already killed him twice today and the moment he dies I can look up his next scheduled appearance on a website created for that purpose. If you can't believe, why play at all?

Personally, I'd "fix" WvW by removing every single "reward" other than the score. If that means only a hundred people left playing then at least it would be the right hundred.

GW2's mass combat - army against army, battling to take and hold territory - is perfect for me. It removes all of the uncomfortable intimacy while retaining a very strong sense of purpose and identity.

That same approach  - wanting to be an effective part of a team and to see the team prosper - scales well. I prefer the larger stage but I enjoy most types of instanced, group PvP. I liked all the various Battleground options in DAOC, Warhammer, Rift, WoW, and EQ2, but they come with a self-limiting factor that's absent from WvW, which I can and do play, quite literally, for hours at a stretch.

I find battleground matches exciting for a while but they come with diminishing returns - after an hour or so I begin to feel enervated. Still, I always go back, eager for more, once my synapses have had a chance to discharge.

When conflict-phobic players like Syp talk about PvP in terms of dread they generally don't mean the kind of sanitized, organized, structured - ultimately safe - play we see in instances, however large or small. The two things that terrify them, it seems, are the specter of loss and the prospect of becoming a target.

I'd keep the bags - I just wouldn't put anything in them.

I can see their point. No-one likes to lose stuff or have their time wasted. Even dedicated PvPers don't like a bully. Few rational voices will be raised to defend the handful of sociopaths who spend lonely evenings on their max-level characters or level-locked twinks, killing the same newbies at spawn over and over until they force the hapless neophytes to log off and uninstall.

Still, there's a world of difference between that kind of apocryphal abuse and real, open-world PVP as it actually happens, be it consensual or otherwise, with or without item or xp loss, level restricted or FFA.

Yes, in theory it can seem a bit more unsettling, certainly more personal, to be jumped by another player when you're alone in the wilds, especially if you're half-health and locked in a tough fight with a wyvern at the time. In practice, though, is it really very much different to being blindsided by a Sand Giant as you concentrate on killing a mummy, only to be rooted by a ghoul as you try to run away? Or, worse, being trampled by someone's train as they exit the dungeon just as you zone in?

Pre-WoW MMO worlds - even Vanilla WoW, by reputation - were dangerous places. You didn't need your PvP flag on to get ganked - a griffon or a werewolf would take you out without malice or mercy just as quickly as any player. You could lose a level or, worse, your corpse and everything on it.

They also serve, who only stand and scout.

We lived in fear every day of our gaming lives back then. And, yes, having players as predators did make it scarier still. But not orders of magnitude scarier, the way random, unconfined, unexpected, non-consensual PvP appears to so many MMO players today.

I'm not advocating a return to xp and item loss as standard. Nor am I nostalgic for the days of Zone Sweepers and corpse runs. I'm certainly not suggesting all MMOs are better with PvP in the mix. I don't, by and large, choose to play on open PvP servers, given the option, even now. Virtual life can be hard enough with just the A.I. on your case.

All I'm suggesting is that PvP comes in many flavors. A little taste of it, once in a while, can be delicious. A whole meal can be gloriously satisfying, provided you order from the right menu. It's an acquired taste, for sure, but, like most such, it's worth acquiring.

It's been a very, very long time since the letters "PvP" included anywhere in the description of an upcoming MMO caused me make the sign of the cross and back away. Now I take every case on merit. As Dire Necessity says about Syp's oft-repeated concerns over the risk of being ganked " He’s really not talking about EVE as typically played at all, he’s talking about the stories he hears about EVE."

In most MMOs these days the only thing to fear from PvP is the fear of PvP itself. Don't listen to scare stories. Try it out and see for yourself. What's the worst that could happen?

You Wait All Year For An Expansion... : EQ2, WoW

My intimation that I might get the Legion expansion for World of Warcraft for my birthday turned out to be entirely correct. Of course, back in the summer, when I added the box to my Amazon wishlist, after I decided not to buy it for myself, I had no idea that the EQ2 expansion would get scheduled for the same week

Then there's ArenaNet, trying to get a foot in the door as usual. They may not even have given their expansion a name yet, let alone a release date, but that doesn't mean they can't contribute to my bandwidth overload. I'm typing this as Legion installs and not only is Kunark Ascending on its way later this afternoon but that's when GW2 will patch its regular, bi-weekly update too.

It's just as well I'm not planning on buying the EQ expansion, Empires of Kunark, (not this year anyway) because that's due tomorrow. Also not on my agenda: jumping right on the EVE goes F2P bandwagon the moment it starts to roll - also happening today I believe. Seriously, do these people not compare diaries?

When am I meant to find time for all this anyway? As it happens, I do have a couple of free days this week but generally, when you work in retail (and much though we booksellers like to pretend otherwise, bookshops are part of the retail environment) this time of year is when you get the absolute least opportunity to take time off. The predilection gaming companies have for piling all their releases on top of each other come mid-November isn't exactly what I'd call convenient.

Nevertheless, I'm sure time can be found, probably at the expense of GW2, which has lurched, stumbled, slumped into yet another malaise. WvW is in freefall, sPvP is on some kind of time-out (I don't really follow that mode) and the Living World has gone into a coma.

Since the new "Quarterly" schedule for Living Story 3 was announced ANet have successfully managed to release two episodes. The first arrived somewhat later than anticipated at the end of July but the second came a month early in mid-late September. At a generous estimate each episode so far has had about a couple of weeks content at best. Maybe a month if you really like farming and/or have a lot of characters you want to keep updated.

That's not to question the quality, which has been high, but it's clear that one major content drop every three months is going to leave a lot of thumb-twiddling in-between. That is, if it does turn out to be "quarterly". The asynchronous delivery of the first two episodes does muddy the waters somewhat on when the third  might be considered overdue.

Are we counting in three month tranches from the start of the process, in which case we have until the end of January before the next episode is due? Or does the clock reset each time an episode drops, meaning Part Three should be here just before Christmas?

No idea. Nothing's been said. For all we know it could appear this afternoon (it won't) or any time before the end of the month. Based on precedent from LS2 I might speculate that we're unlikely to see a big content release scheduled across a major Holiday - Wintersday is Coming - but the last episode kind of crossed over with Halloween so who knows?

EDIT: And guess what?  Color me surprised. No, make that amazed. I guess there are two months in a quarter now.

Whatever they have planned, including, I very much hope, some more of the Current Event crumbs in today's update, my feeling is there will be plenty of time to fit in some WoW and some EQ2. Probably a lot of the latter and a little of the former, which is why, although I'm (still!) patching Legion as I type, I haven't yet decided whether to pull the gun on a subscription.

Since it's a trivial cost and since I'm not one of those folks that feels obligated to play a game just because I'm paying for it, I'm minded to sub up for the rest of this year even if I don't have much expectation of doing Legion justice. I've been reading several people's accounts of how easy is to make money in Legion, funding a sub by selling herbs, so I might give that a try. Or I might just pay money.

Either way, first the dam' expansion has to install! I wasn't taken aback at Legion's immense footprint since I'd read somewhere that it weighs in at 40GB but why is something that I cannot begin to fathom. My existing installation, which is complete up to and including Warlords of Draenor, which got dumped on me for nothing back in the summer apparently, is only 28GB. How can a single expansion come in at 150% the size of the base game and the previous five put together?

What's more, even though I have the DVD, apparently that only installs about 10-15% of the content. The rest has to be downloaded and even with Blizzard's fast download speeds that's taking a while. I did imagine that writing this post would occupy the time but apparently not. As I write there's still 20GB to go. Then it's on to Kunark.

Enough. I don't think I can string this out any longer. Maybe I'll go and listen to my new Limananas CD or watch some Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated or start reading Diana Spiotta's Lightning Field...

Laters!

Are You Experienced? : EQ2

The centenary game update for EQ2 has arrived and as promised it's enormous. The content drop includes a level 100 overland zone complete with Signature quest line, new Advanced and Heroic dungeons, a new Raid and several "Fabled" dungeons.

It also adds a new stat - Resolve - which is already drawing controversy. There are new collections, some new armor to craft, something for roleplayers by way of the Heartbound system and, of course, a new kind of mount in the cash shop. Owls, in case you were wondering.

It's a lot to take in. I've bought expansions that had fewer features that interested me. And then there are Experience Vials.

The Experience Vial System appears, at first look, to be an extremely neat solution to the ever-receding end-game problem suffered by all aging MMORPGs. As the genre ages and it becomes clearer than ever that some of these games have a grip on their playerbase that would shame a bulldog with rigor mortis, developers have thrashed around trying to come up with a way to allow the trickle of new and returning players to catch up with the firmly established end-game core.

The main method so far seems to have been to sell Boosts that jump a character up to near-maximum level and/or to hand out a free level upgrade, or even a whole max level character, with new expansions. That once-controversial approach has become the industry standard. The only time a developer takes a PR hit these day is if the boost isn't deemed powerful enough or, heaven forfend, they don't provide one at all.

The XP vial system that DBG have come up with for EQ2 is more flexible and more elegant. And more profitable, both for the company and for players. From what I can gather, as someone who's never played EVE, it loosely resembles CCP's recent addition of tradeable skill injectors.

In both games the company makes real-world money by selling the empty container in the cash shop, while the player makes in-game money by selling the filled version in the virtual trading system. In EQ2 that means buying Experience Vials in the DBG Store for DBG Cash, filling them and then selling them on the Broker for platinum.

You can also, naturally, keep it within the family and eschew Mammon by trading the vials directly to friends, guildmates or your own stable of characters. It would, for example, allow a player to give a leg-up to a friend who'd never played before or a guild to bring a returning player quickly up to speed.

It also provides an excellent solution to the perennial max-level-max-AA "what do I do with all this xp that's going to waste?" problem. Turn it into a new income stream or make yourself really popular by handing it out for free. Your choice.

I have a lot of DBG cash saved up. On the account where I used to have All Access I have over 17,000 DBC. On my current All Access account I have more than 13k. Even though I find the EQ2 cash shop the most appealing and useful of any MMO I've played, I still don't spend very much there and I'm always looking for new things to buy.

The price for Experience Vials seemed quite reasonable: 500DBC for a pack of three, 800DBC for five, 1200DBC for eight. I bought a five-pack and started filling it as I began the new Signature Quest with my level 100 Berserker (of which, more another time).

I activated a flask by right-clicking it in Inventory and off we went. The Siphon function seems to be set to "On" by default. Examining the vial told me they will hold 200,000xp and that the conversion rate is 60%. That means I need to earn around 333kxp to fill one.

After an hour or two meandering through the opening few quests of the Signature storyline, taking things at a very gentle pace, the vial was almost full. That is a lot faster than I was expecting but then I was getting a boatload of discovery xp just from flying around the new zone. Still, it's apparent that filling these vials is going to be a trivial effort for a high-level character.

How will that translate for the lower level that's going to consume them? I'll tell you when I fill one. Oh alright, let's look at the numbers.

My Beastlord is Level 94. That level requires just over one million xp. I can say from mildly bitter experience that getting that one million takes a long time. Or, at least, it feels like a long time. A lot longer than it's going to feel to fill five vials derping about on my zerker at level 100, that's for sure.

Looking further down the food chain we come to my Necromancer, becalmed at level 73. One of my necromancers, I should say. I have a level 90 but she's on the Test server. Level 73 requires just over 100k xp. Hmm. So one filled vial will give a couple of levels in the 70s.

Staring down the wrong end of the telescope I see an enchanter waving at me from level 30. That level takes a mere 14k xp. Assuming the vial, when consumed, continues to fill levels until it empties, it very much looks as if one vial will see you through several tiers.

In fact, according to this chart (which hasn't been updated for a while so may not be entirely accurate) it takes a cumulative 11 million xp to get from character creation to the end of Level 95. That's 55 vials, which, at current broker prices, would run you around 440k platinum - although I doubt there are even that many for sale.

Bear in mind that you also need  AAXP. You can use the vials for that as well but I'm not sure it would be a particularly efficient way of going about it. Someone else can crunh the numbers on that!

However you cut it, there are a lot of possibilities, especially once you factor in the Level 90 boost you can buy in the cash shop. As someone who enjoys leveling for its own sake I may be more interested in selling the juices of my labor than swigging them. Then again, if I'm going to level in EQ2 just for the fun of leveling I'm most likely to go do it on the Time Limited Expansion server, where the vials are not available.

All in all, it seems like an interesting and well-designed addition. The EQ2 team may be small but the developers working on it really do seem to have a good grasp of what they can and should be doing for the long-term health of the game.

Not sure I would have been saying that a couple of years ago, even though it's largely the same individuals involved. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Have You Been Here Long?

"‘Epic’ moments in an MMO don’t always end with a dead dragon. Sometimes, ‘nothing’ happening can be just as, if not more, exciting."   Hardcore Casual

That was always my problem with RvR in Dark Age of Camelot, and with raiding in Everquest come to think of it. Nothing happening and a lot of it.

No, that's not entirely true. Nothing happening would be relaxing. Instead, during the protracted acquisition of a Wormhole in EVE that SynCaine describes with such enthusiasm, waiting happens. Just like waiting happened when we stood at the Mile Gate hoping for some Albs or Hibs to appear or when we loitered in Plane of Disease hoping for the raid to form.

Waiting in itself isn't a bad thing but it's hardly entertainment. It barely even counts as occupation. In a leisure context, waiting isn't fun. At best it's the space between the fun you just had and the fun you're going to have. Mostly it's more a fence through which fun can occasionally be glimpsed, far off in the distance where someone else is having it.

Giant Robot! Fun! Kill!

Of course, not everyone is waiting at the same speed. The raid leader isn't. He's trying to herd seventy cats and tearing his hair out in clumps. The skirmish leader isn't. He's receiving tells about enemy movement and seeing the Big Picture. Whereas all I'm usually seeing is some gnome bouncing all over my screen like a sugar-high six-year old on a spacehopper while bored barbarian warriors spam up my chat window with smack talk about sports as they /duel each other and grunt.

At least, that's how I recall the good old days. It's not like that any more. In today's MMO everything happens all the time right now. Anything that gets in the way of Stuff Happening needs to go and most of it already has.

You can complete an entire raid in less than the time it used to take to get people into groups. WoW did away with the boring old "finding people and getting to the dungeon" grind when they came up with their much-copied Dungeon Finder. So much for all that tedious scenery and conversation.

I heard someone on the far shore needed a boar killed

Trion upped the ante. Not content with open groups and raids that autojoin you as soon as there's something to fight, now there's no need to travel to the zone, find a quest hub or click on an NPC even to do basic overland PvE quests. A couple of clicks from your Menu and presto, Instant Adventures. 

Guild Wars 2 goes further still. The entire world is open group by default. Every kill, every quest credit is shared. No need to wait, just all pile on. I've yet to play so I'll reserve judgment on that one. No, no I won't. I'm sure it'll be lovely.

Because it's all about keeping things moving, isn't it? Something needs to happen and it needs to happen now or else we'll all lose interest and wander off, possibly to another game, and where we go our money goes. It's sort of true, too. As I said, I don't like waiting around for something to happen. I never did. Too much of that and I start asking awkward questions like "is this really how I want to spend my evening?" and "don't I have something better to do?" not to mention "are we having fun yet?"

Have Horse, Will Travel

Waiting around for extended periods while someone else organizes something that might be fun when it happens, if it happens, but over which I have no control or influence is one thing I can happily do without. Automating the administrative functions may kill the fun for the handful of people who used to enjoy having their own Conference Co-ordinator Sim (High Fantasy Edition) embedded in an MMO but I would guess that most players are happy to have the game take control of that side of things.

Going through places to get to places where the stuff is that you're going to do, though. That's not "waiting". That's doing. Talking to people about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, that's doing too. And it's fun. Or it can be. The banter, the jokes, the foul-ups, the getting it wrong and working out how you're going to get it right next time.

Take out too many bones and the cat just won't stand up. And who wants a floppy cat?

Blanket of Sky: Wurm Online

Sandbox. Theme Park. Discuss.

I'd never even heard of a "sandbox" until a few years back. Sounds a bit like "litter box". Can't be that, can it? Nope. Turns out it's what we'd call a "sand pit" where I come from. Which doesn't really help much. Even a "sand pit" to me is where you land after a  long jump. I don't believe I've ever seen a pit or a box of sand put down for very small children to play in. We generally go to the seaside for that.

Then there's "theme park". We don't really have those either, although we do know what they are. I'm pretty sure I've never been to one. I've been to amusement parks and fairgrounds, we had those when I was tiny and we still have some left, but if they had a theme other than "spin round in circles, scream then throw up" I must have missed it.

So we're having this discussion based on two analogies that have no emotional resonance for me. The fine distinctions people draw just blur when I try to focus down. And anyway, when I read about  games like EVE or pre-NGE SWG the word that comes to mind isn't "sandbox". It's "simulation". Back in the 80s and 90s there was a whole genre of "sim" games, where you managed some enterprise like a city, a zoo or a football team. When I read stories about being a member of a Corp in EVE or being an Entertainer in SWG it often sounds more like being inside a simulation than playing in a sandbox. As an employee, not the owner.

What's all this leading up to? Well, I've been playing Wurm. Not much, but I have been playing. I thank Stargrace for that. She keeps writing about it and posting such pretty pictures. I tried Wurm before once, many years ago. All I can remember is wandering around in near total darkness for about an hour, occasionally bumping into a wall. The new player experience has improved a lot since then. They even have a tutorial, although for me that could be counted a mixed blessing.

I made that!

This time I've lasted a lot longer than an hour. I haven't built anything but I've traveled along the river valleys gawping at the work of others. Whole villages, even towns built from scratch. I've run away from crocodiles and lived. I made a tiny island just big enough to stand on and dug a small hole. I've built several fires, made and fired some pots from clay I dug myself and cooked some meals in those pots on that fire using herbs and vegetables I foraged. I pretty much have the hobo lifestyle down.

Wurm is very enjoyable. It's relaxing, except when a crocodile chases you or a lion roars very near in the dark. (It still gets dark but nowhere near as dark as I remember).  It's also quite compulsive in that drip drip drip of incremental rewards kind of way. I was getting drawn in enough to start reading Wikis and forums and planning ahead. Then I thought "do I really want to do this?"

To get anything done in Wurm takes ages. You have to construct everything from first principles and each act of construction pops up a timer. It's an on-use skill-based system, so the more you do something the better at it you get and the more efficiently (faster, less chance of failure) you do it. It's also a social environment reliant on trade and co-operation. In order to make progress you have to perform many repeated actions over extended periods of time while establishing social networks.

Erm, but not this...

It's like moving to a town where you know no-one, taking on a job about which you know nothing and sleeping in the park while you build your own house. Only with crocodiles.What's more, once you've put in the hours, weeks, months of real time and have your homestead all fixed up, you have to maintain it or it falls down. If you leave it too long, when you come back it will have reverted to wilderness and your neighbors and passing hobos will have taken all your stuff. Massively's Shawn Schuster wrote a piece that sums this up brilliantly, except he managed to be a lot more positive about it than I would have been in his shoes.

It was his article, in fact, that convinced me to stop reading Wurm Wikis and making grandiose plans and to settle for the hobo lifestyle instead. It also got me to wondering just why sandbox gameplay has to be soooo slooow. It's not like the simulation happens in real-time. I've lived near two people who built their own houses on an empty plot of land. One took over two years and the other about nine months. I've never seen anyone build an entire town but I'm pretty confident it would need more than three dozen people and take longer than a few weeks. Especially if they also dug a mine under a mountain while they were at it.

Hobo TV

Someone decides all this stuff. It's not handed down by the universe or Stephen Hawking. In an indie game like Wurm the pace is presumably set to the taste of the developer and it seems to be the kind of pace that would appeal to the same people who build model railway layouts or make models of the Taj Mahal out of used matchsticks.

Theme Park gameplay used to be like this too, relatively speaking. Travel took hours, fights took minutes, raids lasted all night. Then came WoW and everything sped up. Say what you like about WoW, it at least opened up the market to people who like to get something done in less than forever. And there are still slow theme parks. They survive. As I was commenting not long ago,it still takes a while to get something done in Everquest and you just try rushing through Ryzom and see how far that gets you. We themeparkers have a choice of pace now.

So where's my fast sandbox?