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The Perfect Ten: Absolutely ridiculous cash shop selections
This past week, the Money Gnomes at Turbine tested the waters with the idea of selling a $50 horse in Lord of the Rings Online. Oh, not just any horse, mind you: It's a toy hobby horse. For $50. The representative who asked for feedback on the item and price-point probably caused herself internal hemorrhaging by stating, "This is not a joke." The fans responded, "Of course, and the sky is made out of blue cheese." At the very least, it allowed the more creative players to come up with humorous expressions of incredulity. The fun finally came to an end when the studio announced that the "experimental" price point was a failure. Of course, this is by far not the first time a game studio's attempted to sell a ridiculous item, an item with a ridiculous price point, or both combined. If you sell it, after all, the rubes will come. So in the spirit of a $50 hobby horse that costs something like $20 in real life to acquire, here are 10 completely ridiculous items that we've seen in MMO cash shops.
The Daily Grind: Which MMO do you use as a substitution for a dead one?
The second that City of Heroes shut down last week, that domineering voice in my mind piped up, "I want to play City of Heroes!" I tried to say that it wasn't a possibility any more, but the voice wasn't having it. It also wanted Froot Loops with chocolate milk. Now I have a sugar high. So I began hunting around for a substitution to fill the gap in my now hurting soul. DC Universe Online was first up, but I couldn't quite get into the setting or the actiony playstyle. So I swallowed my distaste for Champions Online's free-to-play restrictions and reloaded that title onto my machine. There's enough of that old Cryptic magic to soothe the loss of CoH, I think. Have you ever done this? Have you ever used an MMO as a substitution for a title that's shut down? If so, share with us and let us know if it was a soothing balm or a weak facsimile. 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!
Korea Times quotes Mercedes Lackey calling City of Heroes closure 'unethical'
NCsoft's recent closure of City of Heroes didn't win the company any fans in the US market, but it looks like the effects are being felt even over in the company's home of Korea. A new article in the Korea Times quotes fantasy author Mercedes Lackey regarding the game's shutdown. Her words on the matter were unambiguous: "I think canceling a game that is making a profit, along with destroying jobs and an online community, is entirely unethical." The article covers several of the pieces of confusion regarding NCsoft's management of the shutdown and the perceived ambiguity about the financial side of the decision. Lackey also emphasizes in her quotes that she and other City of Heroes fans will not stop until they have exhausted every option to resurrect the game. NCsoft is clearly feeling the pinch considering the news of recent layoffs, but it looks as if the company is losing the image war on several fronts as well.
One Shots: Dearly departed
Today's One Shots will be a more somber one, as we strive to honor two MMOs that are passing into history. First up is the dearly departed City of Heroes, which Reader Michelle apparently loved quite a bit. She sent us in several screenshots, including one of her supergroup, Part Time Heroes. "Here's a group of my friends during the Mortimer Kal Strike Force," Michelle writes. "My character is Astral Black, a Warshade who should be my last level 50. She's the one in the purple and black crop top." Head onward for more personal dedications, but be warned: You may be misty-eyed by the end.
Join Massively tonight as we stream City of Heroes' final hour [Updated]
November 30th is a dark day for City of Heroes fans. Three months ago, NCsoft announced that it would be pulling the plug on the popular superhero MMO and shuttering Paragon Studios, the team behind the magic. The game's date of execution has now arrived; the MMO will draw its final breath tonight -- or tomorrow, depending on your time zone. The servers will shut down at 3:00 a.m. EST Saturday morning (midnight tonight on the West Coast). Never the type to go quietly, the Titan Network crew has organized a final Unity Rally; it will begin at 2:00 a.m. EST tomorrow morning (11:00 p.m. PST tonight) and take place at Atlas Park's City Hall on every server. Join Massively tonight as we livestream a final farewell to the game and record the event for posterity (or just people who fell asleep). And while you wait, you can go join the latest #SaveCoH campaign, this one a Hail Mary pitch to Disney. Farewell, Paragon City. Your innovation and creativity will be missed. [Update: It's gone, heroes. We've uploaded the stream after the cut for those who couldn't be there in person.]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The end of the city of heroes
"Name?" "Mr. Swift." The small man on the other end of the table sighed as if he'd heard the punchline too many times already. "Sir, I understand that you're unhappy about recent events, but this is a necessity. I don't want to keep you here longer than necessary, but I can throw you in jail for a night for obstructing this audit. I'm not asking for your moniker; I'm asking for your name, and it's only out of politeness." He tapped the side of his laptop for emphasis. "Now before I have to look it up -- your name." It was a little thing, really. But it felt huge. "Orson Herschel Siegal," Swift replied, purposely looking away from the auditor and searching for something in the stark white room to pull his attention away.
Jukebox Heroes: City of Heroes' soundtrack
Really, how could it be anything else this week? By the first of December, a major MMO influence on my life will be gone for good. We will talk about it in the past tense with wistful tones, remembering the superheroic escapades and villainous schemes. It will be given a place of honor in many of our memories, and I truly believe that City of Heroes will echo throughout the industry and community for years to come. One of those echoes is the game's score, which will endure, as does every MMO's soundtrack. When I first started playing City of Heroes in 2004, the music made a big impression on me. It painted a picture of the game's locale and atmosphere perhaps better than anything else. Heck, you could play the game with your eyes closed and know which zone you were in by the music cues. That's how integral the score was to the game. So this is my final send-off to City of Heroes: a look at the highlight from its soundtrack from the launch through Freedom. Goodbye, City of Heroes... I'm going to really miss you. I won't miss the whine from the force field bubble, but I'll miss almost everything else.
One Shots: This is the end, my friend
What do you imagine the end of the world looking like? I'm willing to bet it's nothing like the following technicolor nightmare ripped straight from the finale of the first version of Final Fantasy XIV. Reader Focant delivers this haunting image with a description of the videopocalypse: "The Garlean forces held nothing back in their battle against us, and attacked with their most destructive weaponry. The most powerful enemy we saw on the battlefield that night was the level 100 (the player cap is 50) Imperial Juggernaut, an enemy that is only seen one other time in game. I made sure to include a player character in the shot as well for size comparison. These things are massive!" And with that we're off to another wild and wooly edition of One Shots! Please put your tray tables in their full upright and locked position.
The Daily Grind: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds?
When Tiny Speck announced last week that Glitch would be shutting down come December 9th, the studio simultaneously did something that few closed MMOs do: It offered complete refunds for past subs. Sure, some companies have offered free game time or bonus cash-shop currency for their other games, but that's usually small consolation. NCsoft grudgingly provided refunds for unused timecards and long-term recurring subs when it set City of Heroes' closure date, but virtually no one provides a complete refund of all the subscription money you ever paid for the game. On Black Friday, it seems as if half the world is out shopping, looking for a good deal and with money on the brain, so today's an appropriate day to ask: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds? And if you were offered one, would you take 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 Perfect Ten: Holiday shopping for the MMO gamer
With Thanksgiving almost under wraps in the states (Canada got an earlier patch of Thanksgiving because the devs love that country), the starter pistol is about to go off for the busiest shopping season of the year. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and oh-crap-it's-Christmas-Eve-and-only-a-gas-station-is-open are all shopping experiences ahead on the calendar, but perhaps the most challenging experience is that of buying the perfect gift for an MMO gamer. Sure, you could just phone it in and buy a time card, some cash shop points, a subscription or two, or even a Prima strategy guide if you really hated the person, but a proper MMO gift goes beyond that. For a great gift, you need to put in some effort and actually research the field... or just be lazy and use my following guide. We both know which option you're going to choose. So while you slowly digest that turkey and moan about having to waddle your butt down to Best Buy at 3:00 a.m., why not allow me to help you with a few shopping suggestions? For this list, I wanted to focus on game-specific merchandise that isn't t-shirts, game cards, or CafePress coffee mugs. I mean, this shirt is the bomb and all, but we can do better!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The cost of closing City of Heroes
Shuttering a game carries a heavy cost. This seems counterproductive from a math standpoint; after all, you aren't spending money on a game's servers any longer, so how can it be costing you more? But gamers have long if inaccurate memories, and there are a lot of ripple effects that spread slowly outward after the game has gone dark. Some of these costs aren't even obvious when the game closes, and the full effect won't be felt for months. With only a little while left until the end of City of Heroes, I think it's only fair to look at these costs. Obviously, I've discussed some of the unseen costs already, but all of those have been looking at the cost of losing City of Heroes for the players and the developers. Today, I want to see what it actually offers NCsoft because there's a long list of things that are getting burned away by this closure, and I'm having trouble pointing to any given element as actually being a benefit for the company in the long run.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The passion for City of Heroes
Chronicling the last months of City of Heroes has been a strange ride. A sad one, certainly, and that's part of it, but it's also just been strange in certain ways, such as how every single column on the subject -- and I do mean every single one -- has garnered at least one person acting shocked that this column would continue to cover the game on the way to its shutdown instead of just throwing in the towel back in October or something. I really don't get that, considering that this column has been running for nearly three years without interruption, even when I had to send the text off to someone else because I was out of power due to a hurricane. There's no way I'm not going the last few feet. But I think some of it comes down to not understanding what about the game makes some of the players so passionate about the city. Passion is a lot of things, none of them logical. It's not possible to just point to items on a list and say, "I'm passionate because of that." But I can try to outline what's made the game so special beyond just its length of operation, and I'll do the best I can with today's column.
MMO Blender: Larry's anti-power-creep MMO
On Tuesday, I suggested ways to get rid of power creep in MMOs. You know power creep: the constant treadmill of stats that keep getting better and strong but ultimately start to feel like more of a grind? It's very annoying to long-term players, and I'd imagine that it's frustrating to game designers because it's time and talent wasted when game content is no longer useful to anyone. In my quest to find the ultimate MMO, I have searched for game elements that reduce the amount of power creep but still come together to support a themepark game. Let's be honest: Sandbox games might suffer power creep, but because most sandboxes are skill-based, that power creep is not as prevalent or can easily be mitigated by tweaking classes. But themeparks are linear by design, and to remain fun, they have to retain part of that linear quality. Progression and continually racking up numbers and achievements is enjoyable to a large number of MMO players, otherwise it would be games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies dominating the market, not World of Warcraft. Believe it or not, there are online games that have done a tremendous job of trying to defeat power creep, but unfortunately, they do not exist as one game... until now in my Anti-Power-Creep MMO!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The story of City of Heroes that wasn't
I started playing City of Heroes for one reason and one reason alone: I love superheroes. Yes, the game entranced me afterward, and there were a lot of things to like aside from the superhero aspect, but I came first and foremost expecting a game of superheroes. And while I've occasionally taken issue with the way the game tries to model superheroes, that doesn't extend to the game's lore in the slightest. Lore is an important part of what makes superheroes work, after all. That sense of a bigger world, that sequence of big events that rewrite the world as a whole every so often, the cadence of enemies rising and falling. There's a certain feel to superhero universes, one that City of Heroes had to replicate without shamelessly copying another world -- and the team at Paragon Studios succeeded in doing just that. Unfortunately, we're never going to see all of the revelations in the game that could have stretched on for many more years, but the recent lore AMA answered a lot of lingering questions about the game's universe and backstory. So as we enter our final month, yeah, I'd like to look at that.
The Daily Grind: Which underground area do you like the most?
I'm far too prone to claustrophobia in real life to attempt any sort of spelunking (plus I saw The Descent, which solidified that feeling), but I'm the opposite in MMOs. I love exploring underground regions in games, whether they be little hidey-holes for Hobbits or grand cities that never see the sunlight. As of late, I've come to greatly appreciate the wide variety of caves and caverns in Guild Wars 2, all of which manage to be interesting without feeling restrictive or overly rock-themed. It feels like we've come a long way from some MMOs' ideas of underground usage (I'm looking at you, City of Heroes, and your oh-so-bland caves). Obviously, the topic du jour is MMO underground areas and which ones you like the most. Lay it on us where the sun doesn't shine, OK? 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 Soapbox: The problem with power creep and progression
We've all seen it. You might not have put a name to it, but it's there. As MMOs get older, certain dungeons become obsolete. Or maybe that fantastic top-level gear you once had to have is completely worthless now and isn't even in normal gear progression anymore. That is power creep, the phenomenon by which content becomes completely worthless as a game ages. I can't imagine being on the developer's side when power creep starts rearing its ugly head. All that time a developer spent sculpting the content to be the perfect match of mechanics and story becomes wasted. Power creep can't be avoided, right? Developers have to make new content to keep people interested in the game. And themepark games have to have a linear progression, right? We also don't want the disparity between the new players and the old players to be too great because it will discourage population growth. Then how in the world do we stop this never-ending cycle? How do we keep MMO progression fun and interesting without content falling off the end of the treadmill?
The Game Archaeologist: A City of Heroes memorial, part 2
Following the last column's memorial for players' City of Heroes characters, I received an email from Cryptic's Al Rivera. He wanted to share his own memories from the game, here are a few choice quotes from that email: "I was there from the beginning when Cryptic was just 23 people working in a busted office and I was the only system designer. I made the player powers, archetypes and critters while the game was at Cryptic. The game has evolved tremendously since it left Cryptic... I was very sad to see CoH sold off, and now I am again saddened to see this wonderful piece of game history come to an end. "What was most rewarding was to see all those players log into Atlas Park. To see so many people just so happy with what we made was something impossible to put into words. Thank you, City of Heroes, for all the fond memories. And a special thank you to all the heroes that made me laugh and made me proud. You will be missed." Let's wrap up this memorial series by visiting the remainder of player-submitted superheroes and their stories.
MMO Blender: Eliot's rock odyssey
I'm upset with bards in MMOs. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that they exist. But every single game that features bards uses them wrong. The bard is always a back-line character, someone who sits in the back and heals people through gently strumming on a lute. And that depresses me, because I want to see some bards that actually rock. I want to see some music used offensively. I want to have the option of making my bard kill things through careful use of sweet riffs. You can say it sounds ridiculous, but tell me that it's somehow more ridiculous than having a bard heal you via magical singing and I will call you a liar. So let's go for it. Let's dedicate an entire MMO to bards who aren't about muzak and nurturing new age songs, but bards that are going to defeat things through the unmitigated power of rock. My only regret is that this is a week too late for Rocktober.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: A tale of two shutdowns starring City of Heroes
It's been about a year since Star Wars Galaxies was shut down, and for a lot of people that wound is still fresh. For a sadly vocal minority, that wound is so fresh as to provoke a lot of groundless vitriol toward any available target -- but that's not the point. The point is that what happened to that game is happening again, to City of Heroes, and the players are just as powerless to stop it. Except that it's not the same thing, not really. There are different reasons behind the closure of City of Heroes, different protests, and different player organizing taking place. The result is a scenario that's both a clear parallel to an earlier tragedy and its own unique blend of awful circumstances at the same time. When we first heard the announcement, fellow City of Heroes player and former Star Wars Galaxies player Brianna Royce asked me if I felt the same way about CoH as I had about SWG. As we talked about it, though, it became clear that there were certain parallels being drawn that just didn't work. So I'm going to talk about what happened to both games, starting with the very significant difference between the two games shutting down.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Potential new homes after City of Heroes
Despite what many of us might feel, the world is not ending when City of Heroes shuts down. Just our world. But the sun will continue shining, other games will continue running, and most likely your interest in video games will not evaporate. So after an appropriate period of mourning, it's going to be time to think about getting together with another game. The problem, of course, is that nothing else can ever be City of Heroes. Like Benjamin Franklin, nothing can serve as its replacement, merely as its successor. But it's worth examining some of the more reasonable and likely destinations for the community. I'm sure there are more, but the four I've listed seem to be the games that either are or will be hoovering up a large number of the game's former players, games that are close enough to what CoH represents to serve as a reasonable successor. So let's look at our potential new homes and see what they have to offer, both good and bad.
