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The Daily Grind: What's the ideal MMO raid length?
I thought it was interesting earlier this month when Bungie explained Destiny's raids: They're smaller than what MMO players would expect from a raid (six players), but they come with some rather old-school MMO lengths, lockouts, and death penalties. One test group, the devs said, took 45 minutes just to get to the front door! Bungie doesn't expect MMO-savvy players to take nearly that long once they've soaked up some internet guides, of course, but the article did make me wonder what gamers are willing to tolerate raid-length-wise nowadays. I remember giant raids that went on for days in EverQuest all the way up to quickie group-finder raids in World of Warcraft. Making them shorter (and cutting out the trash) didn't really make them easier or less fun, but it sure did enable more people to play them, which seems like a better way to justify the dev time spent on them. What do you think: What's the ideal MMO raid length? 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 Daily Grind: Are day-one reviews of MMOs fair?
We've discussed the issues associated with previewing and reviewing MMOs on Massively before (we don't do "reviews" at all, you'll recall), but Bungie has brought the topic to the surface of MMO discussion once again. Ahead of Destiny's launch this week, Bungie wrote a blog post echoing what most MMO developers have long known: Experience with a launch MMO, with its systems not fully formed and its players not swarming the zones, can't really produce a review that fully captures the feel of a game with millions of people fluttering around in it. And even in a game with only 20 levels, a day-one reviewer can't possibly have completed enough content to deliver more than a snapshot of the gameplay. Bungie didn't even mention the likelihood of the day-one MMO launch disasters that we're all so unfortunately familiar with, disasters that often make MMOs unplayable, never mind unreviewable. Still, if a game sucks at launch, isn't it fair to say so? A snapshot is useful for what it is, and there's no reason a developer should get a free pass on criticism at launch just because MMOs usually improve with age and warm bodies. What do you think -- are early MMO reviews fair? How do you weigh them when deciding whether to purchase a game? 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 Daily Grind: Would you pay a sub for an alpha?
The MMO community is fast becoming inured to the idea that we're now expected to pay a lump sum for alpha and beta access rather than exchange our testing time for early access. But what about paying a subscription for that access? Pathfinder Online is banking on it. At last weekend's PAX Prime, we learned that the Goblinworks dev team will be charging players $15 a month to play the alpha (they're calling it "early enrollment" to their "minimum viable product," but it amounts to what most of us would call an alpha). The upside is that character data won't be wiped, so that makes it more like a very incomplete soft launch, but it's still a novelty in the industry. Would you pay a sub for an alpha? 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 Daily Grind: What's the most bizarre thing you've ever seen in an MMO?
I loved Zentia before it was shuttered in the West, but it has to be one of the most bizarre games I've ever played. Not only did it mix cartoony graphics and Daoist mythology and conga lines in the streets, but you could play a baby. No, really. An actual baby. I rolled my Vajra Guardian (a tanky character) as a baby in a diaper because why not? You don't get opportunities like that every day. What's the most bizarre thing you've ever seen in an MMO? 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 Daily Grind: What do you hope to hear at this year's PAX Prime?
PAX Prime is the last major Western multi-game tradeshow of the year relevant for MMO enthusiasts, making it the last big wave of mass studio announcements until PAX South's debut in January. Massively's Justin Olivetti will be on the PAX Prime show floor for us this year, checking out Warlords of Draenor, Landmark, ArcheAge, H1Z1, WildStar, The Repopulation, Pathfinder Online, Hearthstone, Trove, Shroud of the Avatar, and other MMOs and not-so-MMOs both big and small. But sometimes game announcements come out of nowhere during conventions, and we discover something we weren't expecting at all. What do you hope to see from this year's PAX Prime? 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 Daily Grind: Are kids poor MMO consumers?
Earlier this year after announcing sunsets for the apparently popular Free Realms and three other titles, SOE's John Smedley declared that his studio was done with MMOs aimed at children. "No more kid's games," he said on Reddit. "Kids don't spend well and it's very difficult to run a kids game. Turns out kids do mean stuff to each other a lot." The last comment is no doubt true and manifests primarily in unfettered chat, as former Massively writer Karen Bryan explored a few years ago. But is it likewise true that "kids don't spend well"? Kid-friendly games like Wizard101 and Super Hero Squad Online seem to be doing just fine. Funcom sure thought the market was ripe for another go at a LEGO MMO. And I suspect that tweens are heavily responsible for some of the crazy IAP spending going on in the mobile space. If I were a kid now instead of in the '90s, I would have blown my allowance on Guild Wars 2 microtrans instead of comic books and trading cards. What do you think? Are kids truly as terrible an MMO audience as SOE believes? 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 Daily Grind: Are MMO mods and emulators on their way out?
We don't talk about emulators on Massively often because we're forbidden to encourage illegal activities or link or name specific emulators save those rare few publicly sanctioned by studios (so please don't). In fact, we've written before that emulators are a frustrating topic for many of our writers since gamers pour boatloads of creativity and technical skill into both legal and illegal emulators for games dead and alive, creativity that we can't write about even when we'd like to. I can't be the only one who's wondered whether legit modders and underworld emulator coders are abandoning their craft in favor of more legal ventures, however. There might be more sunsetted MMOs, moddable UIs, and calls for "classic" game versions than ever, but the rise of low-risk crowdfunding, easy Steam greenlighting, and modular multiplayer titles that encourage customization makes me suspect that people who once modded shady MMO emulators or built interfaces for the masses are being lured away to work on something more legitimate or profitable or resume-worthy. What do you think? Are emulators and modding going out of fashion? (Please don't link to anything illegal!) 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 Daily Grind: Do you make use of mule characters?
If you go to any bank in World of Warcraft, you're going to see two different kinds of characters: actual players bedecked in fine combat gear... and level 1 bank mules with cute names and even cuter guild tags. These characters are often seen as worse than alts; they're not merely alternatives to someone's main character but characters who exist solely to hold extra gear or sell items on an auction hall, usually circumventing the intended inventory limits system. In short, they're real characters' pack mules. In some games, especially early sandboxes, such mules were loaded down with tradeskills to allow a single player to craft items for his real character, allowing him to circumvent intended character interdependency too and seriously impacting player-driven economies. Do you make use of mules or bank alts in your MMO of choice? Or has your MMO found a clever way to make muling unnecessary? 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 Daily Grind: What makes an MMO a 'WoW clone'?
Eminent MMO designer Raph Koster inspired today's Daily Grind with his recent article titled When is a Clone, in which he discusses the difference between clones, reskins, variants, families, genres, and other words that gamers often use interchangeably when debating the merits of their favorite games. Specifically, he lays out a "recipe" for inventing a new game as opposed to just cloning one; for example, he suggests that developers might model a new scenario mathematically or alter the physical dimensions or major goals of an existing ruleset. But the truth is that gamers, especially MMO players, will probably never stop using the word clone when we mean iteration. We wield the word as a curse, knowing that a game isn't a literal clone but choosing to employ hyperbole to make a point about the sameyness of so many MMOs that slap a fresh coat of paint on World of Warcraft and expect praise. Today, we're asking you: What, exactly, makes an MMO a WoW clone? 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 Daily Grind: What tabletop RPG mechanics should MMOs adopt?
Massively reader Couillon recently wrote in to the Massively Speaking podcast to ask us about tabletop games and their influence on the MMO genre. He proposed that MMORPGs could benefit from a tabletop-inspired "roleplay bonus" for actually -- gasp -- roleplaying a character. "I realize this might require more thought during character creation than most players are willing to spend," Couillon wrote dryly, but I think it's a topic worth considering as MMOs are looking for ways to redefine themselves in a post-WoW era. Justin and I discussed several P&P RPG systems that we'd love to see more widely implemented in our favorite MMOs, like advantage/disadvantage mechanics and non-combat skills like persuasion and knowledge. What do you folks think? What classic or creative features from tabletop games should MMOs adopt? 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 Daily Grind: What's the best MMO housing system of all time?
WildStar's floating palaces, Star Wars: The Old Republic's strongholds, World of Warcraft's garrisons, and Landmark's... well, everything... are getting a lot of press lately, maybe because the MMO industry has been starved for such content for so long. Few games implement housing after launch, and fewer still launch with housing ready to go; those that do seldom aspire to the heights reached by RIFT's dimensions, let alone the amazing customizable homes of older games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. So let's resurrect a Daily Grind topic we haven't tackled since 2010. Which MMO features or featured the best housing of all time? 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 Daily Grind: Do you hate minigames in MMOs?
A reader in my last Working As Intended column made an off-hand comment about minigames that struck me as interesting. "I loathe how [minigames] have invaded MMOs in the last few years," Zuji wrote. And he's right: Minigames have become a huge part of MMOs. Upon reflection, I find I half agree with Zuji in that I could do without approximately half of them. Farming? Check. I always like farming. Hacking? OK. Tag? Sure. Card games? Those too. Vehicle combat? Ug, yeah. Pokemon? I guess so, but if I never heard the word Polymock ever again, I'd be delighted. Chicken hockey? Wait. Chicken hockey? So here's the question of the day: Do you hate minigames in MMOs? Are they a plague on the industry or a clever way of adding creative non-combat content to a genre that desperately needs it? 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 Daily Grind: Does world PvP have to be spontaneous to be fun?
I love big battleground PvP. I admit it. I may have cut my teeth in the FFA ganker land of classic Ultima Online, but I didn't enjoy it nearly so much as I enjoy two (or three!) huge swarms of people crashing into each other Pelennor Fields style. That's why World of Warcraft's attempt to recreate world PvP in upcoming expansion zone Ashran intrigues me. Yet Massively commenters have criticized Blizzard, suggesting that it's impossible to bottle up the fun of old Southshore and pour it back out into Ashran because Southshore's magic was in its spontaneity. At least that was the fun if you weren't on a server where your faction just got rolled repeatedly. Or if you weren't a newbie trying to quest in Southshore while the level 60s farmed each other for points. It didn't feel all that spontaneous on my server, come to think of it, since both sides would line up outside the village automatically every day; the vast majority of spontaneous PvP I see on my PvP server is just ganking lowbies or soloers, not the epic GvG sort you tell stories about later. And I'm pretty sure I'd trade the cheap thrill of spontaneity for a fair fight with some real objectives, the bigger the better. How about you? Must world PvP be spontaneous to be fun? 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 Daily Grind: What constitutes a grind in an MMO?
I can't remember when I first heard the term grind, but I imagine it might have been Ultima Online, when you could grind your way to Glorious Lady status killing a mongbat a minute (or was it five?). Then there was grinding mobs for levels in EverQuest, grinding missions for skill and money in Star Wars Galaxies, and then, finally, deliverance in the form of World of Warcraft, in which we'd level by completing quests! No more grinding! Right? Well, not really. After a while, quests became grinds. Daily quest grinds. Achievement grinds. Faction grinds. Crafting grinds. Guild grinds. Pretty much everything can be made into a grind if studios infuse enough repetition into a game. We don't know what grind is, but we know it when we see it! Let's try to define it once and for all. What constitutes a grind in an MMO? 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 Daily Grind: Do you suck at MMOs?
That's a serious question. Back in February, our sister site WoW Insider published an editorial called You're bad at WoW, and so am I. Author Olivia Grace argued that no one is perfect at any game, that everyone makes mistakes, and that the worst mistake is not admitting those weaknesses because then you'll just keep on sucking. Reading our comments sometimes, you'd think that everyone reading here is a world-class player who's better at ALL OF THE GAMES than professionals and certainly than the developers, when the reality is most of our readers are probably above-average gamers slacking off at work. Ahem. Personally, I'm pretty good at the psychological warfare of economic PvP and general PvE dungeon-running, but man, jumping puzzles and platforming -- I'm horrible at these things. What about you? Do you suck at MMOs? I promise I won't laugh at you if you won't laugh at me. 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 Daily Grind: Do you play MOBAs?
We joke a lot on Massively about how there's a new MOBA released every day, but let's be fair: It's more like every other day. The first MOBA I ever played was Demigod, and that was back before the term had really become popular, before League of Legends had launched, and long before the deluge of MOBA clones had hit us. I had fun, but I pretty much knew the genre wasn't for me. I like a bit more persistence to my PvP, and I really prefer larger-scale battles and worlds. This is why I play MMOs. But the MOBA genre is young and evolving. Some MOBAs even seem to be trying to attract MMORPG players with cosmetic gear and first-person perspectives and even something that still looks a bit like personal housing. So here's the question for today: Do you, as an MMORPG gamer, play MOBAs? What would it take to get you to play them? 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 Daily Grind: What's the ideal death penalty for an MMO?
If your first MMO was a modern themepark MMO, you might not realize that a corpse run and a small repair bill are fairly light penalties for death. In Ultima Online, if you couldn't make it back to your body in time, a devious player (or mob) might come along and relieve your corpse of its loot. If you were a murderer, you'd even lose stats! Your gear was safer in EverQuest, but you'd lose experience, and you'd still have to run from your bind spot back to your body, assuming it wasn't in such a dangerous place that you needed a Necromancer to summon it. And games like Asheron's Call and City of Heroes once had experience penalties so harsh that it was possible to cripple a character so much that you might as well just reroll. MMOs are torn between wanting to make death feel meaningful enough that people are careful but not so punitive that players would rather log out than recover. What do you think is the ideal death penalty for an MMO? 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 Daily Grind: Do you tell people you're a gamer?
I'm not ashamed that video games are my hobby or my job, but reconciling games with the real world isn't easy. I don't volunteer details about what I do to anyone I suspect just wouldn't understand. But sometimes people ask you directly. Earlier this summer, I was in the hospital (having a baby!), and my nurses kept asking what I did for a living -- you know, just polite small talk. "I'm a journalist," I said. Few people inquire further. But one did, and I sheepishly admitted that I write about video games. "Sweet," she said, "we play consoles in my house too!" She wasn't into MMOs, but we still talked about video games for half an hour, and I felt dumb for trying to hide what I do. More than half the country plays video games, so why do we hide it? Maybe you don't, which is what I'm asking you today. Do you tell people you're a gamer? How do you reconcile your hobby with people who still think video games are for kids or weirdos? 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 Daily Grind: Is the term free-to-play intentionally misleading?
Earlier this month, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority barred EA from advertising its mobile game Dungeon Keeper as "free-to-play." Why? Because Dungeon Keeper has a countdown timer that blocks progress in the game, a timer that can be bypassed with money. "From the information available in the ad, players would expect the gameplay progression and their ability to advance to be unhindered by unexpected and excessively onerous delays," wrote ASA, "and we therefore considered that the length and frequency of these countdown events was beyond that which would be reasonably expected by players. [...] While we understood that the average consumer would appreciate that free-to-play games were likely to contain monetization functions, we considered that they would also expect the play experience of a game described as 'free' to not be excessively restricted." Welcome, ASA, to the MMO community's endless debate over what constitutes free-to-play! This "free-to-wait" game mechanic is nothing new to us; it pervades mobile titles as well as many MMORTS titles and indie MMOs (Glitch and Villagers and Heroes come to mind). As a gamer, I find the mechanic not so much exploitative as obnoxious, and I'd rather not see it spread. But I spy a slippery slope here. Do you think the ASA is right? Are MMOs with this mechanic (or similar mechanics) misleading consumers? Which F2P games could be legitimately F2P under the ASA's understanding of the term? 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 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!
