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The Daily Grind: What else do you do while you play MMOs?
I like gathering in Final Fantasy XIV, but I have plenty of time to do other things while slowly accumulating piles of ore, lumber, and future cloth. One of those things is play Pokémon Y. There's nothing like readying the axe and then slowly wandering around with cute critters whilst I harvest in the background. You might argue that if I'm playing a second game during part of the first game, I'm not really enjoying myself, but it's something I like to do. I made my way through many books playing Final Fantasy XI, I've watched movies while farming in World of Warcraft, and playing City of Heroes gave me plenty of reason to read through old comics. There's nothing wrong with splitting your attention a little. I suspect most of us do it to some degree. Do you listen to Pandora while the game is on? Chat with people on Steam? Browse the web? What else do you do while you play? 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: Can we reward fun over persistence?
MMOs are games of repetition. Advancing past a certain point is always a matter of doing the same thing over and over, whether it's repeating raids in World of Warcraft, playing the market in EVE Online, or taking part in the same event to clear daily achievements in Guild Wars 2. Whether or not you enjoy these repeat performances can make the difference between the grind from hell and a pleasant upward climb, but it's still a game of repetition. It's not exactly the ideal state of being. Nearly every new game seems to recognize this and advertise itself as free from grinding, which at best is true in a very narrow sense. You won't be grinding daily quests, but you'll be grinding events or PvP maps or dungeons. So why don't we have a game out there that rewards fun instead of persistence? Is it possible to create a game that's free of repetition and focused on enjoyable experiences?
TERA play diary talks world size, combat timing, and more
The Isle of Dawn may be the proverbial newbie area when it comes to TERA, but if En Masse Entertainment's recent Community Play Diaries are any indication, the locale is anything but a smallish tutorial zone. En Masse's Jason "BrotherMagneto" Mical and Evan "Scapes" Berman are back with another diary entry that aims to give readers a glimpse into everyday play sessions involving the upcoming fantasy MMO. The fact that the dynamic duo are still on the Isle of Dawn after several weeks worth of diaries speaks to the sheer size of the place. "The Island of Dawn feels big, and when you look at the game map, it's really just a tiny blip. One of these days, I'm going to have to do a run-across-the-world adventure and time myself," Mical writes, while also hinting at the vastness of Arborea proper. This week's diary sees Mical and Berman carving a path through the Isle's numerous mobs toward Leander's Outpost. Along the way, they find time to discuss the finer points of TERA's action combat, and more specifically, the way that timing, motor skills, and repetition will determine your success -- as opposed to RNG and better equipment. "Since this is my alt character and I haven't played AnungUnRama since last week, fighting the terrons and noruks feels a little sluggish, and it's not hard to see why -- my timing's all off," Mical explains.
The Mog Log: The trial of Chains of Promathia, part 2
It's just as well that there haven't been any huge revelations of late regarding Final Fantasy XIV (aside from the lovely new character creation video), because we're knee-deep in the trial of the second Final Fantasy XI expansion and we've got no room for anything else. After last week's examination, which included excellent discussion and some really interesting viewpoints from the community (seriously, guys, pat yourselves on the back), we're going to dive back into the meat of the trial and try to determine the worth of Chains of Promathia via examining everything there is to examine. And that's a lot, I tell you. Last time, we examined the use of level caps and the lack of new jobs in the expansion. The former looked awful at a glance, but upon closer examination had some notable positives. The latter was... well, it was just plain a keenly-felt omission. This week we're going to dive into what's considered by many to be the biggest part of the expansion -- something so overwhelming that its repercussions are felt to this day. No serious discussion of the expansion would be complete without this most celebrated element.
The purest form of the MMO and the destruction of society
There is the design for a game out there that would truly be the end of all other games. It would be perfectly balanced, with content enough for lovers of PvP and PvE to enjoy the game equally. There would be no questions of developer ploys to trick us out of more money, of unequal loot distribution, or of whether it rewarded time or skill more evenly. There would be no option but to play it... which is why we should be happy that it currently only exists as the centerpiece of an SMBC Theater short. Whether you're a veteran since Ultima Online or still new to MMOs as a whole, you're likely to recognize the behavior on display in this short -- and even if you can guess the joke, the execution is still spot-on. So if you could use a chuckle or two (possibly at your own expense), take a gander past the cut. After all, we can take heart that such an insidious game doesn't actually exist... or does it? (Editor's Note: I'm level 250. Someone send help. ~Sera)
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Death to the warehouse map!
If you've played City of Heroes from levels 1 to anything, you already know the map I'm talking about. The more levels you've been through, the more you've seen it. Heck, you probably knew exactly what map I was talking about just from the subject line, because... well, it's the warehouse map. As I was thinking about this week's column, I was trying to figure out why it is that City of Heroes gets criticized as often as it does for being "repetitive." I'd gladly concede the point, but the follow-up question becomes, well, what's so inherently different between the gameplay here as opposed to World of Warcraft, or EverQuest II, or Lord of the Rings Online, or even Dungeons and Dragons Online? How is killing X of critter Y for questgiver Z in any way less repetitive than punching the Fifth Column around for the hundredth time? But with the recent addition of Melissa "War Witch" Bianco as lead designer, with her promises of "more content," I formed at least part of an idea of why that pointless accusation will not go away. And I believe the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of that stupid warehouse map.
The Daily Grind: How much grind is too much?
We aren't always gung-ho about it, but somewhere deep down we realize that MMOs kind of need a certain amount of grind. After all, that's part of what keeps us in the game and playing, and there are some areas where avoiding the grind arguably injures your overall experience. But there are still degrees of grind. Guild Wars, for instance, is notable as being largely free of grinding with a few small exceptions. On the flip side, Aion is almost universally agreed to be a nonstop extravaganza of grinding in one form or another, which has been one of the elements that turns many players off from the game. Both are good games, but they're targeted to people who enjoy differing levels of the age-old pastime of grinding. Today, we ask our fine readers how much of a tolerance they have for grinding. Are you able to sit at the computer for hours on end, whistling away as you relentlessly kill things without a twinge of regret? Or does the mere thought of repeating something for rewards send you screaming to the hills? What games have struck you as too focused on grind, and which ones seemed too eager to hand out rewards?
Oblivion's vocal and line repetition
With the six month anniversary of Bethesda's epic single-player RPG Oblivion on store shelves, we've all gotten a pretty good handle on its highlights and flaws. Highlights being that for $60 you get a world so big that its mass exudes a gravitational force. However, the flaw is that like Amistad Maupin's Tales of the City, which seemed to only have six people living in all of San Francisco, Oblivion has six voice actors spouting the same few lines all over Tamriel.Over at the Game Chair they explore this redundantly repetitive flaw in Oblivion and blame it on the industry's lack of emphasis on writing. The writer of the piece makes some interesting points, and then throws all credibility out the window when he pimps his writing out and offers up his body to Bethesda.
