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The Daily Grind: Are MMO class consumables due for a revival?
While most MMO players are probably familiar with consumables in MMOs like food and drinks or even enchantments and gems, class consumables like spell reagents and ammo are now fairly rare but used to be a lot more common. Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Asheron's Call, for example, all included a reagent mechanic. For many years, Ultima Online's mages carried sacks of such reagents required and consumed by each spell they hoped to cast. High-end raid-related spells in EQ ate expensive gems, and AC1's reagents had a chance to go up in a puff of smoke each time your cast fizzled. Themeparks like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft have veered away from this design path. In fact, WoW itself started life requiring reagents for special spells and ammunition for bow- and gun-wielding classes, but Blizzard removed them several years ago in the pursuit of both simplicity and class balance. After all, it wasn't very fair to require only some classes to spend extra gold and take up weight or inventory space on consumables. Still, such mechanics added a level of immersion as well as annoyance. What do you think -- do class consumables deserve to make a comeback in MMORPGs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Ask Massively: What happened to open-world MMOs?
A reader named Gabe emailed Massively last year with two questions (I'm getting through all the emails -- I am!). I'll address the second one eventually, but let's do the first one today because it's something I love to talk about: open-world MMOs. What happened to "open world" MMOs? I grew up with giant world MMOs where you would almost never see a load screen. I remember spending countless hours running from end to end of continents exploring and trying to see what I could find. You would run into a city instead of loading a city. I don't feel I am a part of a "world" anymore. After World of Warcraft, I played The Secret World, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and a few other closed-world MMOs, and it just pisses me off because I feel as if I am playing a single-player game with multiplayer options instead of a world I am a part of. I think we've got two separate issues here: One's about the literal meaning of open world, and the other's about the feel.
The Daily Grind: Are MMO sequels doomed to fail?
Massively's Justin Olivetti has been covering the late great Asheron's Call 2 in this month's Game Archaeologist series. In it, he and his interview subjects suggest that the early closure of the game was due in part to the fact that AC2 was a sequel -- and worse, it was a sequel to a game that was still running alongside of it. It isn't as though all sequels are failures; EverQuest and EverQuest II are both still around, after all, though EQII has never quite risen to the relative prominence of its predecessor. And Guild Wars 2 is right around the corner ("when it's ready"). But we can certainly point to other sequels that never even made it to launch, like Ultima Online 2 and Ultima X: Odyssey, which were canned specifically because the developer believed they would hurt their big brother, classic Ultima Online. What do you think? Are sequels generally a bad idea, too risky, doomed to fail? Are GW2 and EQII among the few exceptions that prove the rule? Or should we embrace a modern, graphically enhanced "re-envisioning" (as PlanetSide 2 is putting it) of old and beloved games? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Game Archaeologist answers Asheron's Call 2: The highlights
MMO sequels are funny animals. Sequels (along with prequels and "reimaginings") are ingrained into the entertainment industry so deep that it makes sense that MMO studios would follow suit. And yet these types of games -- with their ever-growing nature and heavy involvement with loyal playerbases -- are not always conducive to such projects. More often than not, a sequel to an online game becomes its ancestor's main competition, which is not a desirable outcome for the studio. Perhaps back in the early 2000s, studios simply didn't know better. There's good evidence that the typical "hit video games need a sequel" mindset ran rampant across the industry, from the multiple attempts at Ultima Online 2 to the release of the don't-call-it-a-sequel sequel of EverQuest II. Perhaps developers didn't realize that MMO players didn't necessarily want to be uprooted and moved to a new game every few years. While sequels, spin-offs and remakes are still present, the genre learned a hard lesson with Asheron's Call 2 in the first half of the decade. Asheron's Call was a success on Microsoft and Turbine's behalf, and a sequel -- with vastly improved graphics and deeper gameplay -- seemed like a logical next step. Unfortunately, it was a Greek tragedy in the making, destined for a short but memorable life in our world. This month we're going to look at the brief shining star of Asheron's Call 2 and get all sorts of misty-eyed romantic over it!
Rise and Shiny recap: Asheron's Call
This is going to sound like I'm whining, but here goes: Sometimes I get tired of playing games. Yes, yes, I know -- this is a wonderful job, and anyone who enjoys playing games and talking to developers would love it. But once in a while, when I am feeling particulary tired, have a headache, or am just plain not feeling it, the last thing I want to do is log into a game that is either too challenging or too grindy. Normally I just skip it for a few hours and come back to it later. This last week was busy for me, though, so when I had time to play, I really needed to play. So I would load up Turbine's Asheron's Call, sigh, and log in. Even though I was having a great time from the start of my trial, I was having a blah week. Almost as soon as I saw the famous teleportation tunnel graphic, though, I just felt better. There was, in fact, not a moment of drudgery during my time with the game. It helped that I was hanging out with some of the top players in the game, but the easy-to-learn hard-to-master systems worked like modelling clay: Almost anyone can make something out of it, but if you take your time, you can make something truly unique. Click past the cut and I'll let you in on some of my experiences. They weren't perfect, but they were fun. %Gallery-115338%
