Tim Dale
Articles by Tim Dale
A Vision of Victory...
I won! It doesn't happen often to me, and considering how much time I have put in to MMO gaming, I generally have very little to show for it in terms of max level characters. A Pre-Burning Crusade Level 60 Warrior gathering dust in World of Warcraft on a server some place, a handful of Level 20s in Guild Wars, a game which many regard as only beginning at that level, and a Battle Rank 23 grunt in PlanetSide, more a testament to persistence than skill, back before they progressively increased the cap to its present BR 40.But this week, during a particularly out of control scrap during the Mender Silos Task Force in City of Heroes, I dinged for the last time; Level 50. In a game of the standard MMO type, where overall persistent progress is measured by the accumulation of experience points, there are now no more to be had. Is this the end for me, or just the beginning?
A Memory of Monsters...
Being something of a monster hunter, at least in the virtual sense, I've certainly come across my fair share of monsters. In many ways, the monster defines the MMO genre, providing the adversity by which adventure can happen. We head out and conquer, freeing the world of peril and are heroes as a result, but none of this can happen without the monsters putting the world in jeopardy in the first place!The great majority of the enemies in our MMOs are often quite unremarkable, existing as little more than wandering piñatas stuffed with loot and advancement. Plundered from commonplace mythology and incarnated again and again, we've all beaten plenty of skeletons, orcs, wolves and bandits, often in alarming numbers during the typical quiet week-day evening. This kind of riff-raff is very much the bread and butter of our online adventuring, but every now and then, something a bit different comes charging at us. Follow me into the Billiard Room, where I shall show you the stuffed heads of some of my own personal favourite monsters!
A Sense of Space...
For entirely unrelated reasons, I've been giving the Vanguard 14-day trial a go. It is a game that has many things, and lacks many things also, but one thing it certainly doesn't lack, is room. Its initial Isle of Dawn starter map is an immense place, and judging by the map tabs for the three different mainland continents, this theme of great open spaces and expansive countryside appears to continue throughout the game. Early quests send you off on lengthy runs to distant places and the minimap barely flinches, suggesting a very large land indeed.I found myself quite surprised at the distances and travel times involved, and in turn, surprised that I was surprised. Clearly, I have become used to a much smaller kind of vast wilderness in my online gaming, and for a self-diagnosed Bartle Explorer type I wonder if I haven't gotten a bit soft when it comes to all things distance related. Was this a trend that had crept up on me, or does size simply not matter any more, in our MMO gaming?
A Decade of Divination...
My first writings here at Massively were a look back at the last ten years of MMO gaming, much of which I'd taken some small part in, and a comparison of how early MMOs had been then, against how they seem to have shaped up today. I expect if I was going to grow out of these things it would have already happened by now, so am fully expecting to be playing an MMO of some description in 2019.Much of the year 2019 is already known to us, and detailed extensively in the documentaries 'Bladerunner', 'The Running Man' and 'Akira', but what will MMOs be like, a decade from now? Join me as I charge up the flux capacitors, spin the big brass and crystal whirley thing with no obvious purpose and hop in my little blue box in a bid to divine...the future!
A Question of Quality...
I do indeed have a Three Month Rule. It isn't a staggeringly complex philosophy, and very literally means that I just wait for at least three months after the launch of an MMO, before even contemplating taking the plunge myself. It wasn't always this way mind you, and once I was a very keen early adopter, filling in beta applications with the rest and generally working myself up into a right old frenzy at the merest mention of something new and something shiny.Part of my current caution is definitely personal cynicism and a certain jaded worlds-weariness, but by no means all of it, and in many ways the Three Month Rule is very much a product of the MMOs themselves, a reaction to a regrettably lengthy succession of rushed and incomplete titles, often lurching out the door in a state of startled undress. Does the oft-repeated phrase 'It's an MMO, they're always like this' hold any water, or is there something fundamentally amiss with testing as we know it, when applied to the MMO?
A Pondering of Purpose...
"Why aren't there any co-op RPGs?", the podcast cohost asked me during the week. I thought about it a bit and realised I was struggling to name even one. He's something of a console gamer, and was obviously coming at the question from the FPS side of things; Gears of War, Halo and similar, where cooperative campaign play seems to be a common thing. I ran through the list of big recent Role Playing Games through my head; Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Knights of the Old Republic, Bioshock, etc and quickly realised his point; RPGs tend not to confuse their earnest storytelling with the messy inclusion of multiple protagonists."That's what MMOs are for," I replied, and surprised myself by actually meaning it. While a well-told interactive novel, played through at a leisurely pace, is a welcome thing for me, it isn't something I'd feel the need to be online for, and not really something I'd want to share; not while I'm actually playing it at least. But for a more social shared experience, a campaign that a group of friends can work at together over many weeks, the MMO is the obvious choice. Or is it?
A Frequency of Failure...
Our Guild Wars guild likes to try a bit of everything in that game, and each alternate week, we focus on team PvP. This is typically a good-natured affair and primarily conducted in the privacy of our guild hall, strictly among friends. This week we decided to try some of the more open competitive public PvP on offer, in the form of the Team Arenas, short matches of pre-organised teams of four players in a variety of settings. As is often the case, it turned out that I'd severely underestimated the prowess of the pool of competing teams and we lost a fair few matches before I stepped back from the team and suggested someone else have a go in my place. They went on to qualify for the Heroes' Ascent outpost, winning five matches that night, while I muttered and grumbled more than is seemly, and it was then I realised that I am a very bad loser indeed. An unpleasant realisation, I began to wonder; was it simply a disorder of my own personality, or was this something my MMO gaming had trained me to be?
A Fortnight of Freedom...
I sometimes get restless in my MMO gaming and even in amiable circumstances, where a currently played title still retains my interest and has done nothing wrong itself, I still like to explore, to play the field and keep tabs on how much greener the grass is elsewhere. The list of currently available and active MMOs is a surprisingly large one, so there are always alternatives I've yet to try.So every now and then, I hit the free trial circuit, picking my way through a list of increasingly commonplace 14-day MMO Free Trials. These fortnight trial periods are generally intended as tasters, samples of what might be in store for the gamer if they decide to proceed with the commitment of a long-term service contract with the MMO publisher in question. But do these two week try-outs serve the purpose, or is it impossible to preview a multi-month gaming experience in just fourteen days?
A Cycle of Change...
Logging into Guild Wars for the weekly guild night this Tuesday saw a bit of an unwelcome surprise; the personal fallout of the latest in a very long line of skill balancing patches. As a Mesmer, I'd generally done quite well out of these in recent months; a somewhat less popular class than most, they had seen quite a bit of improvement over a number of months, but this latest patch saw 'Visions of Regret' and 'Cry of Pain', two very potent skills I use almost all the time, significantly reined in.Of course the initial reaction was one of personal indignation, coupled with envy at the perceived winners of this round of adjustments. It isn't fair! A moment of reflection however and I began to consider more than just my own side of the thing, and perhaps for the improvement of the wider game, the changes to these specific skills might indeed have been warranted, and in any event, those imposing the changes were sure to have far more data at their disposal, and a view of a much larger picture than me.Balance is something all MMOs seek for themselves and their players, and yet very few achieve a state of equilibrium, in which all players share equal potential, equal possibility and equal enjoyment. Can the cycle of buffs and nerfs ever please everyone, or is an continual procession of patches a sign of life and vibrancy that the single player off-line game lacks?
A Scale of Skill...
A recent moment of personal panic at the announced closure of Matrix Online set me worrying again; not so much for MXO itself, a game I'd never really looked at, but for the Sony Online Entertainment stable in general, and in particular, PlanetSide, a title I do have fond personal memories of. Based on an analysis of Xfire statistics at Ardwulf's Lair, it now seems as if PlanetSide is now nearest the door in a list of games all of which I'd thought SOE would never let go. So I found myself signing up for a month, partly out of nostalgia and partly because I genuinely appreciate the entirely different kind of gameplay it offers, compared to the more normal MMO. I'd always thought it was a fun idea, a kind of persistent 400 player combined arms deathmatch, but despite remaining in operation for over six years, it has never seen huge appeal, or approached the popularity of EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft or similar, and I always wondered why.PlanetSide's main distinguishing feature was that it attempted to create an entirely new genre, the 'MMOFPS', and as such, asked of its players unprecedented things. In particular, First Person Shooter skills that until its arrival, had no place in the average MMO experience, a far remove from the more familiar hot-keys, auto-attack and cool-down timers of the mainstream MMO world. Since then, various attempts have been made by the MMO genre to flirt with this faster paced action, often with little success. Is there ever a place for aiming in the MMO, or are these variations on the normal theme merely unwanted distractions?
Meet the Team: Tim Dale
Once a week our writers will give you a glimpse into their lives, to let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more Meet the Team.What do you do for Massively.com?I'm a Columnist which is a fancy way of saying that I tend to go on at great length on a much more infrequent basis than real news writers. I'm quite new here so am still working out the rest of this answer as I go!What's your favorite MMO?I think I'm still looking for my favourite MMO, which might be one reason I tend not to settle in any one title for years at a time. With any luck, I'll know it when I do see it! Past MMO lifetimes I have enjoyed a great deal include Star Wars: Galaxies, back when it was new, and not a very Star-Warsey game at all, a long spell in Anarchy Online living a very Bladerunnerish life in an imaginary distant future and my first and only run from 1 to 60 in pre Burning Crusade World of Warcraft, a game which is as popular as it is for good reason.%Gallery-33889%
An Identity of Imagination...
Being anonymous is par for the course when it comes to the Internet. When approaching any kind of online community for the first time, the very first given task is usually to pick a whole new name, and even without thoughts of deliberate anonymity, it can be very difficult to actually be yourself. Common real names, such as James or Mary or John or Linda, are likely to have already been chosen as login names a long time ago and the nature of the database means duplicates are rarely allowed. A more unique name is needed when signing up, and so almost everyone begins to create for themselves an online persona.In the world of MMOs, the idea of not being oneself becomes even more integral. The player is more than merely a user name attached to forum posts or comments, and is a mighty adventurer too! This presents even more choices; physical attributes, choice of class and profession, even an invented racial background, and with each choice, the opportunity to precisely recreate the real world self diminishes. A game might only provide two different 'light brown' hair styles for male humans, none of which resemble the player's real hair in the slightest. The player has to pick something however, in order to get on and play, and with each choice a made-up version of ourselves is increasingly realised.This other self, comfortably detached from the consequences of a real life existence, can be a liberating thing, but can also be a source of troubles and difficulties all of its own. Just how much anonymity is good for us, and what makes us hide ourselves online?
A Land of Loneliness...
So there I was, bouncing along on my way from one bit of crime-fighting to the next through the skyscrapers of Talos Island in City of Heroes and I noticed a small red dot on the corner of the zone map. I'd seen it before of course; a transfer point from one zone to the next, many times in fact, but had never actually taken the time to investigate further. I was always on my way to somewhere else, usually to stop some madman or another from destroying the world, but today I was determined to confront my ignorance, and bounced on through.The other side was an entire zone I'd never seen before, despite more than nine months of play; Dark Astoria. Almost immediately I could see why I'd never heard of the place, in game or out. It is a Hazard Zone, designed and balanced to be appropriate content for groups of three to five Level 21 to 29 players, which is quite specific. No monorail travel links, no facilities apart from an obligatory Hospital, no contacts and no task forces. Practically no reason to be there at all, compared to anywhere else of that level and just to drive the point home, the entire zone labours under a very thick grey fog which reduces visibility down to about 80 yards; not helpful in a game with such extravagant travel powers. Atmospheric, but also extremely oppressive.The backstory is that the place is a ghost town, which turns out to be true in more ways than one, and throughout my entire time there I was the only player in the zone. Here was one of those fascinating quirks of virtual geography that crop up in nearly every MMO; the abandoned places.
A Repletion of Rats...
In all but the most staunch sandbox-style MMOs, the Quest has become the cornerstone of directed player content. Gone are the days when they'd just give us a graveyard full of skeletons, and experience bar and tell us get on with it, and the modern MMO, such as World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, is very much a task-driven experience. Very little occurs without an accompanying quest journal entry these days, and thanks to generous cash, experience and item rewards, working through the quest chains can often be the most efficient way to make progress and headway in the average MMO.The quest can also provide a little narrative to the otherwise formless adventuring of the typical MMO character; a set task and sometimes even a reason for the ensuing mayhem. That many of us simply skip the text is hardly the games fault. In any case, even without caring what the specifics or backstory to the job actually are, the mechanics of gameplay can be greatly improved by taking an endless and unbroken monster killing spree starting at level one and ending at level fifty, and breaking it into a large number of smaller distinct tasks, suitable for planning a gaming session around.There is very little not to like about the currently widespread quest system; while individual implementations may vary and have their own quirks and peculiarities, the general principle of having something specific to be doing in a gaming session is a good one, and if it isn't, well, they are generally optional anyway and the graveyard of skeletons is always out there. But ask anyone with more than thirty completed journal entries to their name about questing in general, and two specific gripes are likely to come to light very quickly, the 'Kill Ten Rats' quest, and the 'Fed Ex' quest, two types of task that seem to resurface over and over, from back to EverQuest and beyond, in almost any MMO where there are quests at all.What else can we be given to do, or are these two templates doomed to underlie everything we do in all our MMOs?
A Lapse of Loyalty
As they say, you never forget your first time, and to the brand new MMO player, it isn't immediately apparent that there is a substantial genre behind the acronym, spanning into the hundreds of titles. Indeed, the acronyms themselves are probably things that make little sense. For the true newbie, there is only The One Game, an unexpectedly deep and broad game, which swiftly becomes as much a place to be as a way to pass a few hours of an evening. Mine happened to be EverQuest, but it could be any of the increasingly broad list of MMOs available today.Content with their choice, they might continue to be a steadfast participant to the exclusion of all other gaming, for many months or even years. Their depth of involvement brings the game to life for them, and in turn, that life becomes a significant part of their own. Such a player may not even be aware that there are other games out there; other worlds and other communities; what could any of that offer that they don't already have?Others might have a different view. Driven by months and years of similar repeated experiences, the grass does indeed seem greener in these other games. Perhaps an urge for similar kind of gameplay but in a new and unexpected setting, or a craving for something entirely different, some game with completely different rules, skills and objectives. For these gamers, variety is the spice of life, and the more the merrier!What makes one player a loyal mono-gamer happy with the game of choice, and another a flighty poly-gamer, playing many titles in quick succession or all at the same time?
A shortcut of sidesteps
While there are some exceptions, the majority of MMOs present the player with a clear and defined long-game task; the advancement of levels through the acquisition of experience points. It is a time-honoured tradition stretching right the way back to EverQuest and beyond. The journey from brand new character at level one through to seasoned veteran at level fifty was presented as the main thread which bound separate play sessions together, and for most, was the game.Over its decade long lifetime, and particularly prior to World of Warcraft's emergence, EverQuest had always stood as something of a bastion of the substantial time commitment in MMO gaming. Slaying a path to ultimate glory was always a somewhat serious proposition in those times, and tales of a two thousand hour trek to the top were not uncommon. Ten years, twenty-five extra levels and fifteen expansions later, it seems surprising that as a result of a recent player poll, the grand dame of the grind itself will soon be offering a new type of server on which players start life not at the beginning but in the middle, at Level 51. Is this a lamentable admission that the early levels and original content are now no longer relevant, or a pragmatic shift in attitude acknowledging that more and more, the real game only starts when the levels end?
A Quota of Quests
The big Guild Wars 4th Anniversary patch arrived a few days ago and brought all sorts of presents for the currently playing pseudo-subscribership, including a special island for Rangers to keep their pets on, new equipment packs for weapon and armour storage, extra unlockable bank box tabs, character makeover services and more, along with the reactivation of various festival mini-games during the anniversary festivities.Perhaps the most significant of the new features added this patch was the introduction of the new Zaishen Challenge Quests at the Great Temple of Balthazar. Three new banners now offer tasks which change every day; a particular highlighted mission, a bounty on a specific named boss, and a specified type of PvP challenge. In exchange for completing these tasks, new Zaishen Coins are offered, which can be exchanged for item rewards of varying quality. Daily Quests have arrived in Guild Wars.
A Calendar of Celebration
Life returns to normal in Lord of the Rings Online, after a brief and somewhat surreal few weeks of picking flowers and chasing chickens through a large, sudden and inexplicable hedge maze, all of which was presumably meant to celebrate Easter, after a fashion. Only of course, it being Middle-earth, you can't really get away with actually calling it "Easter", so instead it is the "Spring Festival", a curious mirrored event which parallels, but never quite touches, a popular celebration and holiday in our own lives. It is a strange thing, and by no means the only example; Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, Chinese New Year, and many more, all of which find themselves disguised with varying levels of subtlety and applied to any number of MMO worlds, regardless of existing genre or back story. In most cases the inclusion of these holidays runs at odds with any kind of established setting or lore, so why are such great lengths gone to in the express purpose of breaking the fourth wall in the name of contemporary festivities?
A Mountain of Missions
A four day weekend spent largely in the new City of Heroes Mission Architect suite has been something of a startling eye opener for me. Like a great many people, I was always of the opinion that when it comes to User Generated Content, there was basically nothing an MMO could do wrong; the more options the better! Liberate the means of production! We can ALL be game designers, if only we have the tools! I certainly thought it would be well-received, but less than a week since launch there are at time of writing, a staggering 18,000 new story arcs in the game, and Sente at A Ding World has some fascinating breakdown of the figures so far. I have no idea how many missions were actually in the game prior to Issue 14 but it is a fair bet that the players have created more content in five days than NCSoft have in the last five years. And yet far from feeling liberated by the new system, I'm increasingly finding it confusing and not a bit daunting.
A Decade of Dungeons
The recent tenth birthday of EverQuest made me sit back and take pause from my otherwise uninterrupted online gaming life. While not joining that title at launch, I did wander up to it several months afterwards, in late 1999, and fall for it hook line and sinker, starting a love affair that has varied between obsession, distant coolness and all stages in between ever since. Seeing a milestone such as EverQuest's anniversary can't help but make me stop for reflection and perhaps it isn't until you take a step back that you can see the larger journey that has led from there to here.Ten years ago, MMO gaming as we know it today, was in its infancy. It was a brave new world, and full of unknowns, experimentation and blank canvases. While many text-based online games had come before, the age of the graphical MUD had only just begun, with a much smaller choice of titles than today; Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call and EverQuest being the most widely known.A smaller world, and a significantly different one too, in a number of substantial ways. How do contemporary MMOs compare against their decade-old forebears?