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The Daily Grind: Do you follow MMOs because of their designers?
An interesting Kill Ten Rats article a few weeks ago pondered the idea that gamers purchase games because those games are "by the makers of" some other game -- to their doom. Much ado, for example, was made over WildStar's dev team because of its members' work on World of Warcraft, and names like Jake Song, Brad McQuaid, and Mark Jacobs carry a lot of weight when attached to a new MMO title. Yet star power doesn't necessarily make for a good or successful game, especially if that famous designer wasn't directly responsible for whatever it was that made an old game great. Akaneiro is still a mess with or without American McGee's tag. What about you? Do you buy MMOs based on the past work of individual developers? 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!
MMO Mechanics: Kill 10 rats can be fun!
Quests are increasingly an MMO enthusiast's bread and butter, often becoming the staple component of a game's typical serving of progressive content. Over the years, developers have tried to serve up this familiar progression mechanic in many different ways: The modern themepark MMO makes us fetch, carry, explore, and investigate our way to the endgame through countless quest types and story arcs. Among the varieties of quest on offer, kill quests seem to cause the most tears and tantrums amongst picky players. No matter what developers do, there just isn't much love for missions that send characters off with a shopping list of mundane creatures to crush. Kill quests have become so common that plenty of MMOs have cheekily referenced the "10 rats" trope by literally making us smash in some rodent skulls, but killing cute, twitchy-nosed creatures is not the real problem. It's the uninspired kill list mechanic that often incites complaints of developer laziness, an argument that I don't think is justified. Kill quests exist to hone your skills through repetition, but they don't have to feel like an arduous grinding task and are actually a very useful mechanic for game designers. In this week's MMO Mechanics, I stand up for the unloved stepchild of questing; I'll show you that killing a list of creatures can be both contextually engaging and mechanistically interesting, depending on how it's presented.
The Soapbox: What's my motivation?
If you play MMOs, odds are good that you're familiar with the classic "kill ten rats" quest trope. Kill quests are one of the most fundamental elements of traditional MMORPG design, and a great deal of modern and classic MMOs would have little to no content without them. Whether it's ten rats, ten wolves, ten bandits, or ten dragons, the basic gist of the quest is always the same: You, the seasoned adventurer, must eliminate animals or enemies for an NPC who for one reason or another cannot handle the task himself. MMOs are built on combat. It's difficult to design a full-featured MMO that engages players for years on end without some sort of PvE killing content; only a handful of MMOs have even attempted it. And while some would say the days of the kill quest are coming to an end, modern MMOs certainly aren't cutting back on killing in general. As a primary mechanic for advancing a character, slaying seems to be the most popular design choice. I don't have a problem with the bulk of my progression coming from throwing fireballs or bashing shields. I don't mind obliterating monsters in multiples of five. What I do mind, however, is being asked to kill without a good reason.
The Perfect Ten: Literal kill 10 rats quests
Webster's Dictionary describes "kill 10 rats" as "something nerds do, now shut up and read a few intelligent words." I think the editors are getting a little lazy there at Webster's, but that's nothing compared to the OED crowd that routinely slips in paragraphs of cut-and-pasted Hunger Games fan fiction just to pad the volumes. Anyway, we all know that "kill 10 rats" is a derogatory term for those quests that make you slaughter a certain number of things to make life happier for the quest giver. Why that quest giver has a very specific number in mind has always fascinated me, but never mind. It stems from a long-standing RPG tradition by which lowbie characters typically start their career by doing a little rodent culling in the basement of a tavern. That's how all great people got their start, Abraham Lincoln included. With "kill 10 rats" already being a trope, developers have this habit of trying to be coy and meta by actually putting quests in their MMOs where you, yup, kill 10 rats. I get the feeling that they think they're doing something clever and cheeky, even though practically all of their competitors have done the same. So here we go: ten literal "kill 10 rats" quests that you can find in your games today.
The Daily Grind: Do you skip quest text in MMOs?
I heard an odd complaint in the Massively offices this week: One of our writers was annoyed with Guild Wars 2 because it isn't delivering enough backstory through regular gameplay and normal questing. He couldn't figure out what was happening in the plot and didn't want to have to hunt down an out-of-game wiki page or NPC with a prepared info-dumping spiel; he just wanted the basic lore presented during the quest itself from normal quest NPCs. Crazy, right? Why would a designer put lore in quest text? No one reads quest text -- everyone says! Might be it's time to challenge that assumption, especially with games like WildStar with tweetquest philosophies on the horizon. Do you, in fact, skip quest text in MMOs? If you do, would you read it if you knew the text actually mattered to the plot of the game and wasn't just a 500-word essay on why you should kill 10 rats? 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: A new mode of interaction
Video games are, by definition, an interactive medium. The entire point of playing a video game is that you get to explore the world, talk to the characters, slay the monsters, and reap the rewards. And you do all this with a keyboard and mouse or controller or futuristic headset or whatever. Players are in charge; players create their own experience. Every video game ever released hinges on player interaction to tell its story. Without the player, a game's inhabitants are meaningless pixels guarding empty checkpoints, staggering through the woods with a groan, or walking in endless circles selling bread. In order for a game to function, players must be able to interact with it. The only question is how.
Guild Wars 2's data and design in detail
MMO player and writer Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats knows how to ask the hard questions. Questions that other journalists are afraid to ask. Questions like, "If you were omniscient with regard to all corollary Guild Wars 2 data (including player emotion, all chat including voice chat, current snacks eaten, etc.), what crazy thing would you most like to know?" Happily for the Guild Wars 2 fanbase, he also asks much more practical questions, and he directed some of those questions at ArenaNet's Izzy Cartwright. He even got some answers! Cartwright talked about how ArenaNet's ability to track players led to the implementation of certain dynamic events, meant to split up the player population in a map, which would trigger when there were too many players in an area. Another benefit of the team's data gathering is the ability to see where players are dying most often in order to adjust content difficulty as necessary. The economy is especially dependent on player activity, and Cartwright says that the team keeps a very close eye on item fluctuations to be sure that a relatively healthy stat is maintained. Read the full interview over at KTR. If data, design, and programming really get your gears turning, consider checking out ArenaNet programmer Cameron Dunn's GDC talk on that subject.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Waiting for Guild Wars 2
There are two weeks left until the official launch of Guild Wars 2. That's a little nutso because a significant portion of my (and a great deal many other folks') energy in last few years has been dedicated to anticipating the game. Seeing it live will be something of an adjustment. I keep wanting to talk about memories of development and standing in lines at PAX and meeting devs and other fans as a way of describing my involvement with this game up 'til this point. I sometimes feel that that's odd, saying that the most exciting part of following Guild Wars 2's development has been the people I've met rather than the game that we're all congregating around. ArenaNet seems to agree with my take on things, though, if global brand manager Chris Lye can be trusted. He says of ArenaNet, "We're not a video game company; we're a community building company. We just happen to have one of the coolest ways to build a community, which is through a video game." Be it trite or not, I find that that kind of statement aligns nicely with the reason I, someone who plays MMOs largely for the sense of shared experience, have enjoyed Guild Wars 2 and its community so much.
The Daily Grind: Do you favor random quests?
One of Star Wars Galaxies' content quirks, borrowed heavily from Anarchy Online, is the random quest. If you tire of themepark questlines, you can trek over to a mission terminal and ask it to generate a random kill-10-rats quest for you. In SWG's prime, these quests were terribly annoying; no one really wants to spend all of his time leveling up by taking missions to destroy a gubbur lair over and over and over. Thank goodness for this new era of individual, scripted quests brought on by World of Warcraft, right? Well, not necessarily. More than once, I (and some our our forum-goers) have been irked at hand-written quests in WoW-esque games. They're usually trite and transparent, and the quest-givers rarely have good reason to entrust me with their tasks. We're still getting kill-10-rats quests -- we just have to click through a bunch of lame dialogue first. What do you think? Do you prefer pre-scripted, one-off, linear quests, or do you long for the simplicity and honesty of random quest generation? 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!
PAX 2011: Guild Wars 2 to allow more open guild membership
For the average MMO player, this isn't really news, but for Guild Wars fans, this is huge. As announced during PAX Prime this weekend, Guild Wars 2 will allow multiple guild affiliations on your game account. Each character on that account will still need to belong to the same guild (as in Guild Wars 1), but unlimited guilds per account allow you to join various groups of friends with the same characters. As it is over any unconventional game feature, the community is split. On one hand, it will be liberating to have the opportunity to join large, small, hardcore, casual, and roleplaying guilds with the same character. But on the other hand, some players believe it will fragment dedication and dissolve the attention needed for a specific guild -- like a family. Like we do with every newly announced feature for a high-profile MMO, we want to know how you feel about this. Let us know in the comments! Massively's on the ground in Seattle during the weekend of August 26-28, bringing you all the best news from PAX Prime 2011. Whether you're dying to know more about SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, City of Heroes, or any MMO in between, you can bet we'll have it covered!
Hyperspace Beacon: Bucket list
Once we start Star Wars: The Old Republic, we will not be able to stop. After only playing the game twice, I have a hard time going back to other games because -- among other things -- voice-over dialogue is far superior to walls of text any day. Then, of course, we can't forget character choices. We will be able to tell the quest-giver what we think of fetching that item for him at the shop when he could just as easily get it himself if he decided to walk 10 feet to the building next to him. That leads me to the point of this article. Despite all the incredible things we will be able to do in SWTOR, certain others will be missed once the game launches. Particular staples of MMO games, in general, will never be seen again. As someone who is placing his MMO future in TOR, I suggest creating a bucket list. Let's face it: When The Old Republic releases, we cannot look back to other MMOs. They will be dead to us. After the cut, I have complied a list of 10 items that we will never see again once we start playing TOR. Count them down with me.
Enter at Your Own Rift: The no-quest challenge
OK, I know you all probably want to talk about the news that addons are coming to RIFT, but the truth is that it's not that big of an issue for me. My feelings on addons are that I'm for them if they enhance the game and encourage player creativity, but I'm against them if they reduce players to mere statistics in the eyes of others (GearScore) or are absolutely necessary to tackle the game's content. So if you feel passionate about this topic, I give you leave to vent more about it in the comments below, but as for me and mine, we're going to look at quests today. More specifically, not doing them. Now, I generally like quests. They give me a feeling of accomplishment (as I am fond of checking off items from my to-do lists in real life), the stories are occasionally interesting, and they give nice boosts to leveling. But I've come to realize something interesting about RIFT that might run under the radar of most: Quests are superfluous to the game. Well, at the very least, they're optional and not the mandatory tasks that most modern MMOs make them out to be. So I had a thought. What about playing RIFT without questing at all -- taking on a "no-quest challenge" of sorts? Is it not only possible but fun too? Hit the jump and we'll examine this from all the angles.
The Game Archaeologist and the NeverEnding Quest: My expedition
Today I feel a little like Jake from The Blues Brothers, the Jake who, while on the defensive when confronted with his failings, comes up with a laundry list of excuses including earthquakes, flat tires, a lost tuxedo, a stolen car, floods and locusts: "It wasn't my fault, I swear to God!" Yup, Jake, I empathize. After going through an excellent month of EverQuest on The Game Archaeologist here, I had every intention to marinate in old-fashioned EQ goodness for the very first time in my life. I set several evenings aside, put on my chainmail bikini and Viking hat, and told the computer to, I quote, "Bring it on." Then the floods and locusts happened, in the form of a number of personal crises compounded by an unexpectedly difficult time just getting into the EverQuest Escape to Norrath unlimited trial. I don't know what's going on over at SOE, but the signup for this trial simply doesn't work. I followed the directions and downloaded the client, but the next screen (which contained the activation key) never appeared. It appears that I'm not alone dealing with this frustrating experience, but long story short, I eventually created a second account to just get the 14-day trial (instead of the unlimited one) to get in the game. By then I was down to just a mere two evenings of EverQuest trompings, which I knew would not be enough to satisfy the fans looking for an in-depth impressions of their favorite game. So I have to throw myself on your mercy and tell you that I played it, but not nearly as much as I should've. That said, it definitely was an intriguing expedition from which I took away quite a few notes and during which I at least had the opportunity to get my feet wet. What is EverQuest like to an experienced MMO player who's coming to the game for the first time over a decade after it released? Hit the jump and let's see how far down this rabbit hole goes!
The Game Archaeologist and the Forbidden RuneScape: The R-Team
The Game Archaeologist is a lazy adventurer-slash-professor who dons his trademark cap for a weekly expedition through some of the most famous MMOs of the past few decades. Each month he chooses a different title to examine its highlights, talk with its developers, and invite its fans to share their experiences. They come from all over the world just for one shot to be the elite of the elite. After a rigorous selection process, the survivors undergo months of hardcore training. Fingers aching from the strain and eyes itchy with sleep deprivation, these ripped warriors emerge to battle evil wherever it rears its ugly head. Budapest, probably. Or Easter Island. They loot with wild abandon, they craft with purpose, and they aren't afraid to jam on the caps lock button to make their voices heard. So if you need their help -- and if you can afford them -- maybe you can hire the R-Team. As we continue our month-long RuneScape safari, it's high past time that we hear from the R-Team members themselves. Four past and present RuneScape players graciously laid out the case as to why this MMO rocks socks off. To make a good thing even better, Jagex sent in five new screenshots for your enjoyment. So what are you waiting for? Hit that jump like you mean it!
ArenaNet team discusses elite skills and PvP in Guild Wars 2
Yesterday's interview with ArenaNet at Kill Ten Rats ended on a promising note: "to be continued." That promise was fulfilled today when Ravious posted part two of the interview. While much of yesterday's discussion revolved around energy usage and potions, today's focused more on skill usage -- particularly elite skills. Elites in Guild Wars 2 will be quite a bit different from what we're used to in Guild Wars. Ravious described them as "ace-up-your-sleeve" skills used to turn the tide of battle when they're most needed. Martin, Regina, Jon, and especially Isaiah had plenty to say about elites and how they work, including a few specific examples. The team also addressed weapon skills and PvP, two subjects of great interest to the community. Head over to Kill Ten Rats to check out the full interview!
ArenaNet talks energy and group dynamics in Guild Wars 2
After the recent Guild Wars 2 news drought, new information is certainly welcome. Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats provides just that today with a new interview with several members of the ArenaNet team. Ravious chatted with community managers Martin Kerstein and Regina Buenaobra as well as developers Jon Peters and Isaiah Cartwright for some fascinating discussion on part of the development process. The group discussed energy use in Guild Wars 2, and gave us some interesting news on how your gameplay style will affect it. They also covered some ground on group dynamics and how you can best work with your teammates in Guild Wars 2. The best part of this interview is that it ends with "to be continued." Head on over to Kill Ten Rats to see the interview for yourself, then join us in anxiously awaiting the next installment! If you are looking forward to GW2 but aren't a current Guild Wars player, you might want to check out the great deal on the Guild Wars Trilogy at Best Buy. What better way to pass the time while you wait for more GW2 news?
The Perfect Ten: Weird staples of every fantasy MMO
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted norm. So much so, in fact, that you'd cease to even think about it. I mean, do we ever question those magic boxes known as "microwaves" that mysteriously heat up our foods? Does anyone blink twice anymore when small computers tell us how to drive instead of nagging spouses? What about Carrot Top? Likewise, fantasy MMORPGs have erected trope after trope that we no longer question -- or even notice. Actually, the only time we'd notice one of these is if a game failed to include it. No matter how illogical and sometimes silly these MMO staples are when you think about them, we've been around them so long that we would no more notice them as we would the individual keyboard buttons that we type on daily. Still... you're thinking about them right now, aren't you? Those keys, cruelly dominated by your pecking fingers, pushing them back into place. What a techno-bully you are! In any case, come with us as we count down 10 weird staples that every fantasy MMO seems to include.
The Daily Grind: What's your preferred weapon type?
Until the day that we can conquer our virtual enemies with hugging and snuggling, it will always be necessary to arm ourselves for battle with the gruesome tools of the trade. MMOs typically start you out on your career with rusty butter knives and wiffle bats, but before long you have the choice of thousands of types and varieties of weapons. So what's your preferred weapon to kill those 10 rats? Do you like doing your damage up close with dual daggers? Perhaps it's a hefty sword that commands respect as you lop off heads. Or do you spend your time turning living objects into pincushions with your lightning-fast bow and arrow? Maybe your tastes run to the more exotic? Myself, I'm partial to either quarterstaffs (level softly and carry a big stick, is what I say) and any fully automatic assault rifle that I can get my hands on. I know some players who just can't stand to play any class that can't use a big honking two-handed sword. What about you?
The Daily Grind: What's the longest break you've ever taken from MMOs?
Even the most die-hard among us need a break now and then from killing ten rats. I mean, those rats, they deserve it -- don't get me wrong. They killed our families, stole Christmas, tried to blot out the sun and sold us Amway. But heroic rat-slayers need vacations from MMOs, and sometimes we have to get away for a while to recharge our batteries and check out other entertainment pleasures out there. So what's the longest break you've ever taken from playing MMOs? Was it because you burnt out, crashed hard, and vowed not to go back (at least, not for a very long time)? Were you forced to leave MMOs behind due to a vacation or tour of duty overseas? Did you find a single-player title that sucked you in for a marathon gaming session? We'd love to hear about your breaks -- what took you away from MMOs, and what you learned while you were away. Did it refresh your perspective and attitude?
The Road to Mordor: The highs and lows of Middle-earth
Every Friday, The Road to Mordor brings you the latest in Lord of the Rings Online news, guides and analysis. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was also the most trite way to open an article, especially if you were to be submitting it to your English teacher. Still, I've never encountered a week in LotRO that's given me such a bipolar experience, and I'm going to need your help to work it out. You with me? Good, then grab a cup of red tea and let us spin such a yarn that cats all over the world will be attracted to it. The week began with a switch back to my Captain -- I like to juggle characters, but my cappy (Captain Crunch, thank you very much) is the flagship character of my account, the one in which I've poured the most time and interest. Crunch had just hit level 45, which meant she was eligible to start Volume II, Book I. This is generally recommended at level 45, because the book nets you your first legendary item (and your second, by the end of it). I figured, might as well get cracking on that infamous LI grind I hear so much about, so away I went!
