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Tamriel Infinium: Immersion matters in Elder Scrolls Online and every other MMO
I'm fully on board with all of the changes ZeniMax listed in its latest state-of-the-game update. My only concern has more to do with personal OCD issues than it does with any long-term effects on Elder Scrolls Online. See, as I mentioned in a previous piece, I love the fact that ZOS allows me to play all of the game's quest content, which is spread across three different factions, on a single character of a single faction. I hate alts, or more accurately, I hate the need for them because they pull me right out of the game world. Oh yes, I'm going to talk about immersion, even at the risk of inviting a bunch of anti-immersion comments. I'll even define the dreaded "I" word, though of course it's pretty subjective.
The Soapbox: This is how reviews actually work
Welcome back to the Soapbox, folks. Actually, let's call this a mini-Soapbox, since it's just a wee thing compared to some of the walls-of-text we've previously published in this space. Anyhow, let's talk about reviews, bias, and subjectivity. Whether it be film criticism, concert recaps, book reviews, or game reviews, there's an illogical expectation out there regarding "unbiased" work and -- to directly quote a recent Massively commenter -- "correct and honest" reviews.
Tamriel Infinium: In which you're told that Elder Scrolls Online kicks ass
Welcome back to Tamriel Infinium, folks. I'll be your new writer, but don't worry about Larry. He's alive, well, and we're lucky to have him back at the helm of Hyperspace Beacon here on Massively. I've done plenty of dedicated game columns in the past, but it has been a while, so you'll have to bear with me while I shoot from the hip for a week or three and figure out what's best for this space. One thing I know already is that I dig Elder Scrolls Online, even though that's a pretty unpopular opinion in some quarters. With that in mind, let's poke fun at anti-ESO hipsters after the break, shall we?
Working As Intended: The forgotten fields of Green Acres
My first trip to Ultima Online's Green Acres was in 1998. The first guild I'd ever joined had just split up into a bunch of... let's call them "philosophically incompatible" groups, and I was still hanging out with some of the shadier types because I was a clueless teenager in my first MMO and wanted desperately to fit in and hadn't yet figured out where I belonged. "Hit this rune," my new guild leader commanded. His favorite murderin' weapon was a poisoned warfork. He was not a nice man. "I'm being evicted from my safehouse in Green Acres. Help me move my crap."
Apple isn't going to abandon the 3.5mm headphone jack
There's been some wild speculation by a certain business journal lately that Apple might abandon the standard 3.5mm headphone jack and replace it with Lightning connector headphones that would allow for 48kHz digital sound for the first time. Before we get started lets make one thing abundantly clear; we'd love to own a pair of 48 kHz digital headphones that would allow for lossless audio quality from the comfort of our phones. That being said, anyone who thinks that Apple would completely abandon the standard headphone jack is completely out of his mind. Here's a list of people who would be furious if Apple took away the ability to use standard headphones from all users: Anyone who already bought $100 to $300 headphones which now don't work with their iPhone, including everyone who already owns a pair of BEATS Anyone who now has to pay for a $29 3.5mm headphone jack adapter to use their existing headphones Anyone who just spent $700 on a phone that requires them to have special headphones they can't easily replace Anyone who listens to their iPhone while jogging and goes through multiple pairs of headphones because they sweat a lot Anyone who uses their iPhone for music in the car, but has one of those tape deck to 3.5mm headphone jack solutions Anyone who has an FM transmitter that uses a 3.5mm headphone jack Anyone who forgot their headphones before going to the airport and now has to buy an expensive set of proprietary Apple headphones for their new phone instead of the already overpriced generic earbuds at the airport store Anyone who wants to let someone listen to music on their iPhone but doesn't want to share earbuds Anyone who connects to their home stereo using an 3.5mm auxiliary plugin who can now no longer listen to Spotify on their stereo without buying an adaptor Apple just spent billions of dollars buying a headphone manufacturer. Their next logical step will be to set fire to that headphone manufacturer's customer base by rendering their already overpriced headphones obsolete, right? Headphones aren't chargers. Chargers have one purpose for existing, so we put up with the fact that they are often annoying and proprietary. Your 3.5mm jack and headphones interface with far more objects. You use the standard headphone jack for listening to music while walking, in the car, and at home, all in slightly different ways. You use headphones with different products. Everyone who travels with a portable gaming system or non-Apple laptop would suddenly have a reason not to buy an iPhone, because it would mean having to carry around an extra set of headphones in addition to the ones for your phone. For the casual user -- say your uncle who shrugs at Thanksgiving dinner and says "who cares what kind of phone you have? -- this would be the sort of thing that would drive them towards Android. The Forbes article that inspired this rant lays out what it calls a "very simple and effective roll out trajectory." Here it is: 1. Announce the technology with Beats and headphone partners 2. Unveil clever third party app integration 3. Make this integration inaccessible in any other way 4. Make Lightning port to 3.5mm headphone jack adaptors expensive and bulky 5. In a few years remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from Apple devices citing legacy, greater design flexibility and extra space for a bigger battery This would be effective with the most diehard Apple fans in the world. Everyone else would say "yeah, I'm not paying $29.99 for a headphone jack adaptor I'm probably going to lose while traveling," and then just buy the newest Android smartphone instead. I fail to see where Apple gains ground by making a move that's sure to turn so many existing customers away from their most popular product. If Apple can make Lightning port headphones that provide users with crystal clear digital sound they should. There's certainly a group of customers out there who would want to buy them and would probably pay a premium to do so. Those customers are an outlier. People buy Apple products because, and pardon the cliché, they just work. To force people to buy new headphones for a feature that isn't that important to the general public is removing one of the basic functionalities of every smartphone in the world. If you aren't already an Apple loyalist, what possible reason would you have for sticking with iOS when cheaper, similarly powered, alternatives already exist that work with the headphones you already have? Building better headphones and letting people discover that they want them is a perfectly smart move for Apple to make, but abandoning the headphone jack completely? No way. Apple is in the business of selling hardware. It's a lot harder to sell a phone when one of the most universal features of every other device on the market has been stripped out in a transparent move to force users into a more expensive product. That would be stupid, and Apple isn't stupid, folks.
Working As Intended: What Guild Wars 2 got wrong
Back in March, I spent an entire Working As Intended column discussing the game mechanics that Guild Wars 2 got right. But that's just one side of the story. In order to be completely fair to the game and to myself, I want to grump about the things it got wrong. Don't take this as utter condemnation for the MMO; we're most critical of the things we love precisely because we love and know them so well and want them to be so much more. And in spite of all the things I love about Guild Wars 2, it's far too often living in the shadow of its older sibling.
Working As Intended: Change for change's sake in World of Warcraft
MMORPGs struggle to meet two contradictory goals: They want to provide stability, permanence, a world you feel you can always come home to, and they want to provide dynamism, change, a world that always has something fresh and new. Lean too hard to one side -- change too much or too little -- and the backlash from fans and former fans and future fans can be overwhelming. That's something Blizzard has never learned. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard is constantly chasing different demographics to maximize its playerbase, and those different demographics typically want different things out of the game, be they veterans or returnees or hardcores or casuals. Most of the game's expansions have retooled combat and classes and specs in some way, but in Cataclysm, and now again in Warlords of Draenor, the class revamps have been so far-reaching that they actually manage to turn off both veterans and returnees. Gamers, it seems, are willing to tolerate only so much dramatic change to their precious characters before rebelling. This is a lesson City of Heroes could have taught World of Warcraft had Blizzard been listening.
Working As Intended: There's nothing wrong with soloing in MMORPGs
A Massively community member recently wrote into the podcast to tell us that he prefers to solo, to craft for himself, to avoid group quests, and to skip guilds. Still, he told us, he loves MMOs and doesn't want to leave them to play single-player RPGs. "What the hell is wrong with me?" he asked. Nothing. Nothing at all. There's nothing wrong with soloing in MMORPGs.
The Nexus Telegraph: Is WildStar a World of Warcraft clone?
No. That was quick, so we can all -- oh, wait, no, I need to write more. Also saying we can all go home is pointless; most of you are reading this from home. All right, we'll start over. This is one of those things that gets trotted out every time a new game comes along, and in WildStar's case it comes out twice as regularly, since it's the first game in history to use colorful and stylized graphics other than World of Warcraft, except that it isn't. It's kind of ridiculous, and it's a bit of a pet peeve. As someone who has played World of Warcraft extensively, I find the list of similarities between the two pretty shallow, and it comes across more as a way of dismissing the game without bothering to learn about it. So let's talk about where WildStar does take its cues from Blizzard's game, where they differ, and why saying it's just a clone is absurd.
The Soapbox: Let me tell you how little I want to raid
Over the past several years, Blizzard has been very attentive when it comes to making it easier for players to raid. Raid sizes have gone down, then they've moved over to a flex structure. The raid finder was added to the game. Mechanics were toned down, while getting drops has been made even easier. With the next expansion, you won't even need to toy around in difficult instances to get ready for raiding; you can just jump in pretty much from the point you hit the level cap. All of this in response to a lot of people saying that they don't want to raid -- all of this so thoroughly missing the point of that statement. This is one of those hurdles a lot of designers can't seem to conceptually get over. World of Warcraft's design team has had years of people saying this, and every response from the team has been missing the point so completely that it's almost absurd. I don't want to raid, at all, ever. End of discussion.
The Soapbox: Does Trion realize what it has in ArcheAge?
Can I share how nervous I am about the fact that ArcheAge is finally heading West? Thanks because I really need someone to talk to about this stuff. I'm going to skip over the F2P hand-wringing, both because I covered it nine months ago and because there's nothing anyone can do about it. And there's plenty of reason to fret about the rest of what's in store for starving western sandbox fans, anyway. Join me after the cut and we'll worry about it together.
Working As Intended: Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs
Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs. I tweeted this last year, and it won't stop rattling around in my head. Every time a developer dodges concerns and leaps to his version of the "elder game," every time a reader claims a reviewer who doesn't get to endgame is irrelevant, and every time someone justifies a weak game mechanic because it doesn't matter at max level anyway, it rattles around some more. Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs. Having an endgame, thinking you need one, and designing your game around it -- this is the core problem of the MMO genre. No matter how hard you spin it, when you create a game with an endgame, you create a game with an end... and not much else.
Stick and Rudder: Star Citizen's backlash effect
Can someone help me understand the Star Citizen backlash effect? I mean, seriously. If Chris Roberts and his Cloud Imperium developers announced that the game's next stretch goal was a cure for cancer, the first comment on the resulting news article would be some variation on "bullsh#@!" Followed closely by "that's not possible" and "feature creep!" My question, though, is why?
CNBC publishes abysmal list of "things Apple needs to do right now"
Apple naysayers are a dime a dozen these days, and you don't have to dig very far on any business or general tech website to find someone who thinks Cupertino is akin to a barn on fire. So when I say I was actually shocked at how ridiculous CNBC's recent "Three things Apple needs to do right now" op-ed is, you know it has to be especially bad. And it is. The article was written by Michael Yoshikami, CEO of Destination Wealth Management. Let's dive in. Apple is trying to tap into the billion-dollar industry of health and well-being monitoring, which is currently dominated by Sony and Fitbit. This is an encouraging sign of innovation at the company, something many question whether Apple possesses or not now that Steve Jobs is no longer at the helm. I think it's well past time to drop the whole "can Tim Cook lead Apple?" schtick. Under Cook we've seen the release of the iPhone 4s, 5, 5c and 5s, the iPad 3, 4, Air, and both minis, and a wealth of new Mac products, not to mention the completely revamped iOS 7. Yes, many of those -- particularly the products released in late 2011 and 2012 -- are evolutions of products that were likely well underway while Jobs was still calling the shots, but we've seen absolutely nothing to suggest Cook is anything but perfectly in tune with what consumers want. Suggesting otherwise is irresponsible, useless hand wringing. Without innovation, tech companies get left behind. That's something Apple knows all too well and something we've seen in a couple of other tech giants recently. Apple ≠ BlackBerry. Apple ≠ Sony. Apple ≠ HTC. Apple can't just come out with a new iPhone that is a minor upgrade to their current iteration; it simply won't fly. Correct, and that's why Apple has never, ever done that in the history of the iPhone. There's no reason to think it's going to start now. Apple needs to do three things to regain their reputation for innovation: 1. Present to the marketplace new products in untapped segments (such as TV, payment mechanisms, and health-tracking devices) First, I'd argue that Apple hasn't lost any of its reputation for leading the way with new and unique technology. Its smartphones and tablets are the most capable, shaming its competitors almost universally, and when Apple introduces a new iPhone feature, you can mark your calendar and expect it to appear on a Samsung phone within six months. Second, these new product categories read like something the author overheard at a Starbucks in the valley last summer. Yes, Apple is building a team of health experts that are almost certainly working on adding new functionality to existing gadgets, creating an entirely new product, or both. Yes, Apple is interested in expanding its capabilities in the living room, as evidenced by emphasis on its Apple TV offerings. And yes, mobile payments are something every company would like a piece of. Telling a company it "needs to do" something it's already doing isn't prophetic. 2. Deliver a next-generation iPhone that isn't just evolutionary but instead contains meaningful technological advances such as the fingerprint scanner included in the iPhone 5s. Let me rephrase this one to make its silliness crystal clear: "Remember how Apple introduced a revolutionary feature with the iPhone 5s just a few months ago? Well they need to do that again... or they're doomed." This is a bit like saying that Paypal needs to keep taking online payments or they're screwed. Yeah, we get it, Apple needs to keep being awesome. 3. Paint a clear vision as to their view on the emergence of new technology and how it will be incorporated into products. Is this the 1980s? Do you want a mission statement? Apple paints a clear picture of their view on new technology every time a new Apple product is introduced. Apple has never been shy about both introducing completely new features and adopting fantastic functionality from its competitors. If you don't know how Apple feels about this, you really haven't been paying attention. I believe Apple will shock skeptics and demonstrate in 2014 that innovation is alive and well at the company. While no one can replace Steve Jobs, there is ample bench strength that will push Apple into new markets with innovative products. Oh lovely, and the entire rant is wrapped up with a prediction that Apple will be just fine. Of course it will. Apple will be fine because the company doesn't read ridiculous lists of things it "needs to do." Nothing to see here, folks.
The Soapbox: My hypersexualization conundrum
Every now and then here at Massively, we receive an email that isn't super nice. I know this may come as a shock to many of you -- the internet is, after all, a place of tolerance and constructive debate -- but sometimes the Massively inbox is no place any sane person would want to be. One reader recently took the opportunity to offer some choice thoughts on Massively staffers. And amidst the jumble of insults and generalizations, the reader levied the ever-powerful "hypocrisy" charge at us for claiming to care about hypersexualized designs of female characters in MMOs while simultaneously playing as those very hypersexualized characters. How could we possibly purport to care about the presentation of women in games if we're all running around in chainmail bikinis? Generally speaking, I prefer to not have my habits and behavior challenged via ad hominem attacks and false comparisons. But I have to admit that this one particular charge piqued my curiosity. Why is it that the majority of my characters are female? Am I, as a person who looks down on hypersexualized designs in games, committing an act of hypocrisy every time I create a female character? Let's sort it out. And before we begin, remember that the Soapbox, like most of our editorials, is just one person's opinion and doesn't represent the thoughts of Massively as a whole.
The Nexus Telegraph: Stuff the endgame needs in WildStar
I'm going to go ahead and totally dispense with any vagueness here because we already know that WildStar will have a raiding endgame and a PvP endgame. That's great, that's valuable, that's absolutely nothing. That's exactly what lots of games launch with. It's what lots of games consider their bread and butter. It's also not going to cut it. If WildStar sells itself on providing the exact same endgame that we've seen in every other game ever, I'm hesitant to say "it will fail," but it sure as heck won't be dazzling anyone three months out from release. You can't make a game with the selling point of "play however you like" and then surreptitiously add "except when you get to endgame, and then you'd better raid, buddy." With that in mind, let's talk about what the game needs in terms of endgames that we don't see on a regular basis.
Some Assembly Required: Is this really the sandbox renaissance?
It's funny, but this whole sandbox renaissance feeling has got me a little worried. I'm of course ecstatic at the number of sandbox MMOs currently in development, and I'm even happier that one triple-A outfit has finally acknowledged that MMOs are supposed to be sandboxes. EverQuest Next and Landmark aren't the only reasons to be amped, either, as games like Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, and The Repopulation are all putting their own spin on emergent virtual worlds and standing on the shoulders of genre giants. It's not all roses, though, and amidst the cautious optimism on display from starving sandbox fans, I feel the need to remind myself of the various personal pitfalls that still need to be addressed.
The Soapbox: Old content should stay relevant
The archetypal themepark MMO model, as popularised by World of Warcraft, is a race to the level cap in order to unlock the best content on offer. New content is tacked onto the endgame regularly, accompanied by improved gear and perhaps a higher level cap. It's a system that's designed to keep people playing by keeping them on a progression climb that's constantly getting steeper. As a consequence, endgame activities render older content obsolete since these outdated activities carry little real benefit for fully leveled characters. Exploring old content for the sake of experiencing it is not enough of a motivator for many players since this content simply cannot present the same challenge as it once did. Although you can technically go back and play through old dungeons, they will never be as fulfilling when tactics become optional and you can solo once-formidable opponents. In this week's Soapbox, I will mourn the loss of fantastic older content that was rendered obsolete through vertical progression, using WoW as a key example. I'll go on to suggest a solution that I think might allow for both old and new content to exist together in relevancy without significantly compromising the themepark MMO's existing progression mechanics.
Stick and Rudder: OK, so Star Citizen might be a PvP game
A few weeks ago I outlined why I think Star Citizen is more a PvE title than a PvP title. I'm sure most of you disagreed, so this week I'd like to examine the other side of the debate. Sorta. See, I still think SC is mostly for PvE types, given Chris Roberts' design sensibilities, but I also went back and studied the Roberts PvP quote highlighted in the previous piece as well as the full wall o' text that surrounded it. Roberts, according to that interview, believes that SC will be both a PvE and a PvP game. Fair enough. We often hear devs speaking grandly in the pre-alpha stages of a project and swearing up and down that it's going to make everyone happy. Can it really, though?
The Soapbox: Novel content trumps novel mechanics
Action combat. Interactive conversations. Public quests. Voxel worlds. There are many game mechanics that developers of massively multiplayer online games crow about when promoting their games because these are the things that make their games stand out from the pack. Even if they're not the first to do it, they'll proclaim that they're doing it bigger and better than their predecessors. I don't have a problem with any of this. It's when the developers and their ardent fans gloss over the importance of the actual content these mechanics are applied to that I get annoyed. Mechanics are just a skeleton, and they can't do anything at all without some meat on the bones. Content matters, and good, fresh content will keep players interested long after the novelty of unusual mechanics has worn off.
