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The Daily Grind: Are you ashamed of being a gamer?
This past week, blogger Tobold dusted off the issue of gamer pride -- and more specifically, gamer shame. While we have strong affection for our beloved hobby, gaming has a stigma that's yet to completely wear off, even though our ranks swell every month. It's a frustrating double standard when friends openly chat about sports, movies and TV, and yet give you an odd look when you gush about your favorite game. While I'm not shy about being a gamer, I don't exactly go about broadcasting it, either. For one thing, a lot of people still associate video games with either mindless violence or childish play. For another, it's simply hard to explain the attraction of games to those who have limited or zero experience with them. As a result of this stigma, there's a temptation to keep your gaming persona on the down-low, or "DL" as kids a decade ago put it. Do you hide your identity as a gamer from friends, loved ones and co-workers? Are you cautious about bringing it up in conversation until you know you're among like minds?
MMOs and tribal thinking
Tobold of Tobold's MMORPG blog wrote an interesting post this morning on a phenomenon that pretty much everyone in the gaming community is familiar with: MMOs and tribal thinking. You know the deal: "x" game sucks, therefore anyone who plays it clearly sucks as well and must be informed at great length of the error of their ways. (As Tobold pointed out as well, if you write about that game in the bargain, you are obviously receiving kickbacks from the developers. No amount of boring old facts can stand in the face of those accusations.) Your favorite MMO is a bit more of a commitment than choosing to eat an apple or banana. An MMO is a heavy time and cash investment, and as a result people get more attached to their favorite and more worked up when they feel someone is slighting it. The reverse is true as well: if you choose not to invest your time and money in a game, you can just...not invest your time and money in it and move on. The end. We all know, however, that a huge percentage of gamers are unwilling or unable to do so. A comment from We Fly Spitfires put it very simply: "People love to belong to one camp or another and irrationally abuse anyone who doesn't agree with them." It's that sort of tribal thinking -- you're either with us or against us! -- that Tobold explores in his blog entry. It's an interesting read, and worth the time to take a look at.
Anti-Aliased: The Quest of Vindication
Happy Holidays everybody! Hope you're all having an exciting time that's full of epic loot drops from purple gift packages sent by the jolly NPC in the red suit. This week's column is a holiday-tacular rant fest as I feel like tackling one of the major sticking points of an MMO player's behavior: the need to pursue vindication. This isn't something unique to MMO culture or even video game culture at large. We all feel this rather odd need to defend our decisions or opinions to others, even if they will never ever agree with us.However, when it comes to MMOs, vindication can be a bad thing. When communities become polarized in thought and begin to shut out others it can hurt the game's growth and the game's sense of community.
"Why do we play MMOs" series concludes
When we last checked in with Tobold, he was just starting up a new blog series looking into why we play MMO games to a greater degree than single-player games. That isn't to say that the MMO genre is bigger than the single-player genre, just that MMO gamers tend to focus on massively multi-player games more than single-player games. His first two articles examined Storytelling and Gameplay elements in MMOs and since then he has done pieces on Challenge, Character Development, Rewards, Social Interactions, and Learning.The series just wrapped up and Tobold wrote a nice summary of why he thinks we mostly choose MMOs over single-player games. He feels that while we may play single-player games that have strong elements of story, gameplay, or challenge, the social aspects of MMOs seem to be the trump card. MMOs can have many weaker core elements but social interaction (direct) or simply participating in a persistent game world (indirect) appears to make up for those deficiencies. It's a long series to get through but well worth the read if you're into these kinds of high-thinking philosophical discussions.
Inquisitive blogging series delves into why we play MMOs
Why do we play MMOs? What is it about them that inspires us to pay a monthly subscription fee or whip out the credit card for a few microtransactions? This is an extremely valid and important question because the answers are key drivers of success for the genre. Without these answers, developers are simply throwing darts in a dark and empty pub.Popular MMO blogger Tobold is back from a short hiatus and asking this very question in order to disover the basic elements and motivations that make us choose to play these types of games. His introduction piece talks about some of the components he may cover, including: storytelling, character development, social interaction, polish, challenge, and achevements.Since the introduction piece, he has written two articles in the series: Storytelling and Gameplay. Based on the quality of stories found in MMOs, tools and design iterations that all but allow players to skip over quest text, and the fact that pure MMO environments don't facilitate epic storytelling very well, he doesn't feel as though storytelling is a major reason for why we play MMOs. With a little effort (read: a lot), it could be. As for gameplay, he believes that unless new quality titles start releasing with gameplay that diverges from basic hotbar button-mashing combat and simple crafting, MMOs will be forever stuck in a rut and compared to World of Warcraft.
The Digital Continuum: SWTOR turns up the heat
E3 2009 has come and gone, with it came new information on Star Wars: The Old Republic -- and fresh concerns. To call BioWare ambitious would be an understatement of vast proportions. Every NPC receiving full voice acting ratcheted up my curiosity as much as it did my eyebrows. We may need a new word to describe the depths of this game's ambition.As if the voice acting news wasn't enough, BioWare revealed a cinematic trailer that reminded me how powerful this property can truly be, in the right hands. The excitement was so immediately potent that it caused some people to cry "over-hyped!" in the few short minutes between the trailer's beginning and ending.I think it's time to asses the current situation, and maybe ponder a few things about Star Wars and BioWare.
Is SWTOR hype peaking too early?
We were bound to get juicy new details about Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 2009 and we surely haven't been disappointed thus far. In this week alone we have learned about the new Smuggler class, fan art ownership policy, full in-game voiceovers, and an amazing cinematic trailer. Hype is definitely in full swing, but is it peaking too early?MMO blogger, Tobold, believes it is. He suggests players have seen very little of SWTOR's in-game substance at this point and BioWare is raising expectations to unrealistic heights by hyping the game so early. He cites Mythic and Funcom as examples of companies that built early hype based on fancy words, design concepts, and trailers and then experienced a fan backlash when players perceived that they did not meet those targets.Darren of the Common Sense Gamer disagrees and believes that the Star Wars lore is being over-hyped, not the game itself. He also argues that anything Star Wars-related traditionally hypes itself and that a great trailer about the game's history and story should be appreciated for what it is and set apart from the game itself.
Richard Bartle encourages MMO writers to make people think
Richard Bartle wrote an interesting QBlog post on the art of quest design using WoW's Stranglethorn Vale zone as a model. This elicited a number of responses from various MMO bloggers. Scott Jennings had very few positive things to say about STV, while Tobold mused about STV's relevance in today's MMO landscape given its age and Syp and Raegn pointed out a perceived condescension.It's always time to grab a hot cup of coffee when someone vocally disagrees with Dr. Bartle because he will always engage in a discussion and defend his views. He took special offense to Syp and Raegn when called out as being condescending in his original article and urged more people to write things about MMOs that make others re-think and take the genre more seriously.In response to Syp, Bartle wrote: "If you haven't done this kind of analysis, OK, I'm calling you out: write one. Go on, choose any quest from WoW and explain what it's saying. You say you can see behind the curtain: show us. I want the art, not the craft. I don't intend to seem arrogant or mean here, although I'm sure that won't make any difference to how what I just asked is interpreted. I'm pushing because I want to encourage people to think of MMOs as art, not as low culture."In response to Raegn, Bartle wrote: "I urge you, if you see something you like, that takes MMOs in a new direction, that says something that makes you think (you don't have to agree with it – so long as it makes you think), then please give it publicity. Then, you'll have people who genuinely deserve your praise, not someone who is merely where they are through an accident of history."
The Daily Grind: What is your MMO time worth?
Tobold wrote an interesting blog post the other day about the value of time and gaming. In an earlier post, he mentioned that he had spent over 4,579 hours playing World of Warcraft since release. In another, he proclaimed his intentions to spend $100 on Free Realms in its first week. For some reason, his readers reacted more strongly to the FR post than the WoW one.The reaction seems a bit strange when you consider what Tobold must have spent on his WoW subscription over the years. It's even stranger still when you consider what he could have earned or accomplished if even half those hours were spent on some kind of side job or other "productive" activity. On a purely entertainment level, he's probably getting a pretty good deal in both WoW and FR based on the money he pay to play and you can't work all the time if you want a healthy lifestyle.We're curious; when it comes to gaming, what is your time worth? Do you take too much, too little, or a balanced amount of downtime for gaming and why?
Tokens matter
Recently there's been some talk about avatars in virtual environments and MMOGs as playing pieces or tokens. Tobold says that "Ultimately your avatar is just a playing piece", while Raph Koster takes the position that "Avatars aren't tokens". We hold a marginally more complex opinion. Avatars are tokens (or playing-pieces, if you will), but tokens matter. Avatars don't, as Tobold points out, intrinsically represent cultural, social or political viewpoints. What they do represent, we aver, is us: The users/players. If tokens didn't have that some sort of deep significance for us, there'd never be any arguing over who gets to be the race-car in Monopoly, or who gets a particular color playing piece. If how we were represented didn't matter very much, then arguing over the choice of Monopoly tokens wouldn't have reached anywhere near the sort of cultural entrenchment that it has.
The Daily Grind: Is it luck?
If you've been paying attention to the MMO blogosphere at all recently, you'll notice there's been some banter back and forth between Syncaine and Tobold in regards to what Syncaine calls "WoW Tourism". If you're not familiar with the concept, the idea is that someone who has only played WoW, and thus has that shiny "first mmo love" with it (as anyone who has played MMOs over the years can attest - the first one that really gets you always has a part of your heart long after you leave) but then proceeds to judge everything else by World of Warcraft. The further away it is, the more it sucks, the more it will fail, etc. This is really telling when they are talking about a game with completely different mechanics like say, EVE Online, which you can't even begin to put into the same general neighborhood if you've ever actually played the two games. But we digress...In all the bantering back and forth, one thing was stated that's been ringing around in our heads ever since. In his most recent posting, Syncaine ends off with "Perhaps then we can finally stop using 11 million as the size of the MMO genre, and realize WoW (along with being a good game) was a product of market timing and luck." Regardless of your feelings on the recent banter, this is an interesting observation, and one we wanted to ask you about this morning. Do you think that World of Warcraft's 11 million players was just a fluke that no other MMO will ever see again - including Blizzard with their next MMO? Was WoW just a product of right-place, right-time? Or do you think that there really is some type of 'magic formula' as it were; more properly will Blizzard - or anyone else - ever be able to repeat that 11 million players number?
Addon devs respond to Blizzard UI policy changes
Blizzard dropped a bombshell on the addon community last Friday with their new addon policies (among a few other clarifications, addon developers can no longer charge for their addons or even ask for donations in-game), and developers are reeling. Already, the creator of the popular QuestHelper has responded on his changelog, saying that the addon is "dead." He says that he has tried to get donations without having an ingame link, it doesn't work, and that without any money coming in, he doesn't see any reason to keep the addon in development. Likewise, the developer of Outfitter has pulled his addon from the usual outlets, saying that he "will no longer add value to the World of Warcraft" and that Blizzard is trying to "continue a system of treating addon developers as if their time and products are worthless."Blizzard may not be too worried about Outfitter -- they're planning to add an official Equipment Manager into the game soon (and Tobold makes a point that Blizzard may want addons to be worthless). As far as we've heard, there's no word from the folks behind Carbonite yet -- there's lots of speculation on their forum, but we've contacted them to try and get an official statement. They are the addon that's believed to have kicked this all off -- they were actually charging (and holding up full time jobs) for their addon, and word is going around that Blizzard released these new policies to put the kibosh on them.We'll have to wait and see on the long term policies of these changes -- a few developers have already called for a strike, though who knows how successful an idea like that would be. We'll definitely see a few devs hold back from working on their addons, but it's unlikely changes like these will shut down the community completely.
Naxxramas gear by type
Tobold has a post up with an interesting analysis of all the epic loot that drops in the ten-man version of Naxxramas, broken down by armor type and by broad stat type (tank, melee, caster). At the top of this post is a chart I made from his armor type breakdown ("Other" is anything that's not cloth, leather, mail, or plate, i.e. weapons, off-hands, shields, jewelry, and cloaks). As Tobold mentions, this confirms that there is significantly more plate than anything else, about 50% more, even though there are the same number of plate classes as cloth classes. My guess is that this is because they expected an influx of DKs bumping up the plate numbers. As far as stat types, leather and mail are both split half-and-half for caster vs melee. This is a little iffy. In both cases, there are two caster specs (Balance and Resto Druid, Elemental and Resto Shaman) out of six total specs (Druids and Rogues, Shamans and Hunters), so it seems a 33/66 split would make more sense, but maybe they just wanted to keep it simple. The case that really bothers me is plate, which is split evenly between caster, tank, and DPS (see right). The only plate spec that wants caster gear is the Holy Paladin. That's one of three specs from one of three plate-wearing classes, and yet it gets a third of the plate gear. I'm sorry, my plate-clad healing brethren, but that's just not an equitable proportion. Mostly it just means that our prot pallies have full healing sets and we're still disenchanting a good chunk of the plate every week. Here's hoping we see less caster leather, mail, and especially plate in Ulduar.
So, you think you're a hardcore PvPer, eh?
The Darkfall hype has shot through the roof these past few days. Since the NDA was lifted, many reviews have surfaced and they all say pretty much the same thing; Darkfall is technically sound but lacks content polish, and due to its core game design and griefing potential, will only really appeal to the hardcore PvPer. And by "hardcore PvPer," they mean pre-Trammel UO slash AC Darktide fans. Haaardcore.A few interesting blog posts popped up yesterday that bring something a bit new to the table. Tobold shared his Darkfall beta experience and suggested that while the game may find it's niche, it will be a very small one because most gamers prefer to play it safe. He points out that even in other PvP-centric games like EVE and UO, people tend to congregate in the safe havens if given the option. Scott Jennings also weighed in on hardcore PvPers. He believes people may appreciate the idea of hardcore PvP in the abstract, but tend to wuss out when push comes to shove. He cites past experience with the quick to rise and fall of PvP servers in DAOC. Finally, Keen lets us know that he finally got his pre-order after refreshing the order page for many hours. He shares a quote from lead Darkfall dev, Tasos, who says they are receiving 20 times the amount of web traffic to their order page than originally estimated.
Is Blizzard cutting costs?
So with all the hubbub about 3.0.8's problems, a lot of people are wondering who to blame. Activision seems to be a popular target, with people blaming them for nerfing Blizzard's famed "it's-ready-when-it's-ready" game design cycle and rushing things out the door while they're still buggy and imbalanced. Popular MMORPG blogger Tobold is in that camp himself. In one of his latest blog posts, he theorizes that Blizzard has been cutting spending for some time now, be it because of falling stock prices or the need to move WoW team members to Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 or simply because of the economic downturn in general.
Gear yourself or gear your guild?
It doesn't sound like it should be a hard question, but once you get into the trenches of raiding you begin to understand exactly how hard of a question it is. Do you continue raiding with your guild, doing the same bosses over and over again when you know you aren't going to get anything for it while your guild-mates get the gear, or do you just worry about yourself, dropping out of the raids once your appropriately geared up?Tobold is tackling this issue over at his blog, balancing two posts from two very different gamers. On one hand you have Matticus, a guild leader who just lost a paladin because he was overgeared and wished to take a break from the game until a harder dungeon came along, and on the other you have Gevlon, the owner of "The Greedy Goblin" who defends the position of said paladin. It's an interesting and thought provoking discussion worthy of checking out, especially if you have any character in a guild officer position or are deep in raiding with your favorite MMO.
15 Minutes of Fame: Tobold blogs from the hip
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.The internet is abloom with emoticons – fragrant flowers peppering the soil around posts filled with fertile viewpoints, hoping to soften and breathe context into black and white text. Posters struggle to assume an innocuous mantle. Not Tobold. MMORPG blogger Tobold has built a reputation as a straight-shooter. He unabashedly gulps down macro and micro topics alike, spitting out analyses minus the ubiquitous apologies and humble posturing that characterize so many blogs. Opinion as opinion, fact as fact – and an audience of readers who appreciate the opportunity to volley between fact and opinion, hardcore and softcore topics.The man behind the blog is really a pretty humorous and easy-going guy, and our e-mail interview with Tobold actually did start out with an emoticon. Find out what made Tobold smilie, after the break.
Do queues make you more hardcore?
After a recent blog post by Tobold entitled "Do Queues Make Destruction More Hardcore", we thought we'd take this concept a step further and ask the question of any queue on any server in any game. Throwing the whole notion out the window that Warhammer Online's Destruction players are more hardcore, we'd rather focus on the issue of queues, dedication and how it all relates to hardcore vs. casual in general.In Tobold's argument, when a player faces a queue, they have three options: Give up and play something else, switch to a lower-population server or wait it out. This applies to the servers themselves and any RvR situation where you need to wait for 'balance'. His prognosis is that since Destruction has seemingly more players, they face a queue more often. This leads to an evolution of players who can't cope with these queues (i.e. casual players without the time to sit and wait for 2 hours to play a game) to re-roll an Order character, or perhaps switch servers entirely. However, this begs the question: Are players on high-pop servers simply more hardcore because they have that time and dedication to wait it out? Or are the hardcore players the ones who can't waste their time sitting in-wait, because they want to spend more time actually playing the game?
Preparing yourself for Lich King
If you're looking to get a head start on the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, you might be a bit overwhelmed on where to start. Should you hoard mats, and if so, which ones? Since everyone and their grandmother will be making a Death Knight, should you be making some twink gear to sell and make mega gold before that bubble bursts?In Tobold's most recent blog post, he gives us some insight into his own pre-launch plans. Stocking up on mid-level herbs and Runecloth for the Death Knight, who will start their First Aid at 270 automatically, might be a good plan. This is certainly an exciting time for you MMO economic strategists out there, so we're wondering what your plans are for the WotLK preparation. Let us know! One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Tobold's interview with Paul Barnett
It's not often that an unpaid MMO blogger gets the chance to interview an MMO developer, but if anyone deserves the chance, it's Tobold. In a recent interview with EA's creative director Paul Barnett, Tobold fires away with five questions about the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.Although Barnett is much more entertaining to hear (or watch) in an interview, he does a great job of vividly answering Tobold's questions. Of particular interest here is Barnett's addressing of the PvE issue in Warhammer Online. The general misconception is that WAR will be a PvP game, whereas Barnett explains that there is so much there for players who don't ever want to fight another player, and wish to simply build their history and enjoy themselves in the environment. He says, "You can do those two extremes. And there is a third way, where you play as much or as little of each type as you want."
