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The Daily Grind: What's the best loot you've ever scored in an MMO?
Everyone's got a a story or two about the time she scored that one really great piece of game-changing loot in an MMORPG. There was the time I won the piece I needed for my World of Warcraft Priest's Benediction/Anathema staff (still have it, too!). There was the time I landed a 120-skill powerscroll for my Disco-Archer in Ultima Online. And there was the time I lucked out on my first Guild Wars birthday and received a bone dragon, a minipet whose sale for a virtual fortune helped me bankroll my characters' gear and my obsessive trading habit for years to come. Even if we wouldn't call ourselves lootmongers, we still love getting a new shiny -- the rarer, the better. What's the best loot you've ever scored in an MMO? Let's hear some juicy tales! 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 Daily Grind: Do you like to tank in MMOs?
The very first serious MMO tank I ever played was my day-one Warrior in World of Warcraft. I'd had dozens of characters in MMOs before that, but I was too chicken to step up and actually tank endgame fights. After all, as Massively commenters pointed out, there's a lot more to tanking than just taunting the boss and knowing when to hit your specials. Tanks need leadership and game knowledge far exceeding what's expected of other party archetypes. They're expected to lead the party, to know how the fights work, and to keep everyone else in line. Tanking is setting yourself up for a world of stress and the judgment of strangers. Depending on your temperament, it can become unfun in a hurry. I still play that Warrior when I resub, Protection-specced for all the days I've played her (minus an hour back in 2006 when I foolishly thought Fury might be nice for a change). But I'm always leery of dungeon-queueing with that character even though I love the actual mechanics of being the meatshield. What about you folks? Do you actually like tanking in MMOs? How do you overcome the stress? 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 Daily Grind: Does your guild stay together between MMOs?
I can't remember the exact moment that my MMO guildies collectively realized, hey, we are pretty good friends and we like each other enough to play other games together so maybe let's do that, but that's more or less what happened. After a few years of trying to figure out our place in the MMO world, we settled down into a pattern: The same core folks migrate to new and old games together and check them out as a cohesive unit. This year has been a bit different, though, as the big releases haven't enticed enough of us or have made it so difficult for our international group to play on the same server that it's not been worth the trouble. What about you folks -- does your guild stick together from MMO to MMO? Or do you join a new guild for a fresh game? 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 Daily Grind: Have you ever volunteered for an MMO?
A few weeks ago in my Working As Intended column, I brought up the role gamemasters and officially appointed player helpers had in fostering communities, directing roleplaying, and aiding newbies and event organizers in early MMOs. We're not talking about just floating a HELPER tag over your head (though most modern MMOs lack even that); old-school games literally ran programs that traded game time (or just a hearty thanks!) to players who would log into special accounts or robed characters and lend a hand, officiate a wedding, or help a clueless nooblet find the bank. While I was focusing primarily on Ultima Online in that article, just a few days later, SOE tweeted a post about the EverQuest franchise's alive-and-kicking volunteer Guide program. Participating player Guides are now expected to run dynamic events and quests rather than interact in chat, but the concept is the same, even in 2014, however strange it must seem to newcomers to the genre. Today I'm wondering how many of our readers have ever volunteered in a semi-official or official capacity within their MMO of choice. How did it treat you, and do you want to see programs like these become more widespread? 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 Daily Grind: Do you share MMO accounts with your friends?
Account sharing. It's a bad idea. No, it's a terrible idea. It violates most MMO terms of service agreements, and it violates the most basic security principles: Never share your game account. Anything shared can easily be stolen or compromised by someone even less security-aware than you. But if you've been playing MMOs long enough, you've probably shared your account, at least with your spouse or your kids or roommate. And then it spreads. Your guild really needs a main tank for a dungeon run, but you want to get some grub, so you let a guildie play you. You want to dual-box a friend's newbie to catch her up while she's at work. You need someone to log in your toon and refresh your house while you're on vacation. I'm not judging you here; I'm guilty myself. Heck, before I was allowed to join my first guild way back forever ago, I was required to hand over my account info to the recruiting officer to prove I wasn't a spy! And my husband and I pretty much share our characters completely, rules be damned. Do you folks share your MMO accounts with friends, guildies, or relatives? Has it ever come back to haunt you? 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 Daily Grind: Should MMOs change fundamental design rules post-launch?
A few weeks ago, ArenaNet added a new buyable perk to the Guild Wars 2 cash shop: a crafting license that allows an account's entire roster of characters to pick up an extra craft skill. In other words, buying this license means your characters can run three production craft skills, not just the original two at a time. My first reaction was wooo, awesome! But after some reflection, I wondered whether the change wasn't more than cosmetic. Having three craft skills on every character affects leveling rates and PvE zone population, inflates the item market, impacts the resource market, and could even alter whether players buy other items from the cash shop (like character and inventory slots). It's definitely more than just a fun cosmetic thing. While this tweak probably won't matter that much in the long-run of a game like Guild Wars 2, fundamental changes made midstream have certainly been known to haunt some games forever. What do you think -- should MMOs change core design rules post-launch? Where do you draw the line between a little quality-of-life tweak and a major shift in design philosophy? 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 Daily Grind: Does founder's syndrome hurt MMOs?
Founder's syndrome -- defined by Wikipedia as "a difficulty faced by many organizations where one or more founders maintain disproportionate power and influence following the effective initial establishment of the project" -- is not limited to just organizations. Sandbox gamers might recognize it as something that can affect their virtual worlds as well. For example, there's a long-standing debate among EVE Online fans as to whether or not it's possible for newcomers to ever truly catch up and compete on the same level as those who've been dominating the game and accruing money and power for over a decade. Sometimes, the people who get to the sandbox first keep control of all the toys. Antique sandbox A Tale in the Desert attempted to dodge this problem by resetting the game in its entirety after each "tale" plays out. Veteran players might keep their network of contacts and their real-world knowledge of the game, but their in-game material wealth and characters must be started from scratch, allowing newcomers a better chance of competing with them. Of course, it might be hard for modern themepark fans to accept such a solution! What do you think -- is founder's syndrome a problem in the MMOs you play? How would you solve the problem? 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 Daily Grind: Has E3 become irrelevant to MMO gamers?
During last year's E3, I asked the Massively readers whether they thought E3 was slowly becoming irrelevant for MMO gamers thanks to 1) competing, gamer-friendly conventions like PAX and 2) E3's focus on tech and blockbuster non-MMO titles, not to mention 3) the expense of showing at a venue like E3 for smaller MMO studios and existing games. Lore Hound's Patrick Mulhern recently voiced similar concerns, suggesting that MMOs in particular show poorly at conventions partly because of the noise-and-visuals-induced sensory overstimulation of the arena but also because few MMOs provide a "hook" that can grab a typical attendee during a 15-minute demo. Consequently, he argues, it's not worth the trouble for studios or MMO journalists to attend. Massively writers are present at this year's E3 to report on MMOs, but we're curious what you think all the same -- has E3 become irrelevant for our genre? 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 Daily Grind: Does an MMO need lore to foster roleplaying?
Commenters in MJ Guthrie's recent Landmark vs. EverQuest Next article brought up an interesting question about lore and roleplay in the two games. EverQuest Next, of course, will be drenched in EverQuestian lore and backstory and high-fantasy building rules, but the player-driven Landmark will have no hardcoded lore at all save what the players create, meaning you're as likely to see a geodesic dome spaceship as an Arabian Nights palace. (In fact, I would like to see both of these, please!) But strict roleplayers going into Landmark might have a harder time immersing themselves in an unpredictable world where literally anything goes, at least in comparison to EQ Next's more formal storyline and concomitant expectations about the way the world works and how the characters got there. What do you think: Does an MMO need dev-guided lore and a common backstory for all characters to make it truly roleplay-friendly? How will you roleplay a serious character in a world like Landmark's? 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 Daily Grind: Do you mask your gender when playing MMOs?
Last month, Polygon published an article about the invisible privileges some gamers enjoy without realizing it. The author, Jonathan McIntosh, included among those privileges the idea that men "probably never think about hiding [their] real-life gender online through [their] gamer-name, [their] avatar choice, or by muting voice-chat, out of fear of harassment resulting from [their] being male." Granted, he was specifically talking about gender; plenty of men online have every reason to hide aspects of their identities to avoid being harassed on the basis of their nationality or ethnicity or religion or handicap or sexual orientation or age, for example. But gender itself is generally pretty safe for straight male gamers compared to female gamers. We've asked before whether you roll characters that match the gender you identify with in the real world, but today, we're expanding that question: Do you go out of your way to hide your gender when you're playing MMOs? Do you avoid voice-chat, lie about your name, or alter your avatar choice, as McIntosh suggests, to avoid the potential for harassment? Or are MMO players just more socially well-adjusted than the typical gamer such that this is less a problem for us? 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 Daily Grind: What does your Steam library say about you?
A weekend or two ago, I was paging listlessly through my Steam account, looking for something to grab me. Like a lot of Steam's members, I've got dozens of games I've purchased cheaply or been gifted but never got around to playing, so you'd think finding something would be easy! As I poked around, I wondered just how much my library reflected my actually gaming interests. I have a lot of MMOs, obviously, but just as many deep RPGs, clicky action-RPGs, sandboxes, and puzzlers. Oddly, I have a bunch of hardcore roguelikes even though I'm terrible at them and rarely play them, but for some reason, I can't stop buying them just to see if maybe this one will satisfy that itch. What about you, Massively folks? What does your Steam library say about you? Bonus question: How many games do you own through Steam and other digital distributors? 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 Daily Grind: Are the days of preordering MMOs fading?
In January 2007, I stood in line at a brick-and-mortar store at midnight to pick up six preorder copies of The Burning Crusade for myself, my husband, and my overseas guildies. By that point, I'd been playing MMOs for a decade already, but somehow, driving through an ice storm to stand in that line was so totally worth it. Flash-forward to 2014 and I rarely bother with preorders anymore, and it's not because "the magic is gone" or anything nostalgia-driven like that. Between shoddy or exploitative preorder bonuses, widespread digital distribution, crowdfunded founder packs, and open betas and headstarts that go on forever and ever, it just seems as if a standard preorder is becoming a relic of the past, something that's relatively easy to pass on. I'd rather just hang onto my money and buy in when there's a product and not just a promise. What about you guys? Do you still preorder MMOs or other games? 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 Daily Grind: How would you balance MMO PvP factions?
Earlier this week, Blizzard announced voluntary free faction changes for a single World of Warcraft server, presumably as a test for fixing the factional imbalances on that server and the many other servers and server-amalgams that currently exist. As a player on a PvP cluster dominated heavily by the side I am not on, I do welcome the studio's attempt to fix the problem, but I can't help wishing there were a less kludgy way. I know a lot of players prefer three-way to two-way faction PvP in the belief that the two weaker sides at any given time will band together to defeat the larger one. I also remember older MMOs either locking overpopulated factions or offering huge bonuses to the losers to boost their abilities and morale. But maybe we can do better. What do you think -- how would you balance MMO factions? Are two-sided factional wars just doomed from the start? And would you use a carrot or a stick to incentivize player-driven balance? 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 Daily Grind: What's the ideal level cap for an MMO?
Massively commenters recently debated whether a game without levels is the same as a game without a leveling cap thanks to Black Desert's proposed character advancement system, an increasingly common lateral advancement system that allows players to build their characters more sideways than up. But outside of such sandboxes, most themepark games stake their mechanics on levels, for good or bad. And that got me thinking about the ideal level cap for an MMO. Even if two games require roughly the same amount of time to cap, a bigger number can seem so much more intimidating. Asheron's Call's 150 levels and Anarchy Online's 205 320 always seemed unreachable to me, and wasn't it cute back when World of Warcraft expected but 60 levels out of you? What do you think -- what's the ideal level cap for an MMO with levels? 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 Daily Grind: What are your four pillars of MMO gaming?
A few weeks ago, Massively's Star Wars: The Old Republic expert Larry Everett proposed that "ownership" or perhaps the broader term "immersion" should be considered one of the real four pillars of MMO gaming instead of the four that BioWare picked (combat, exploration, progression, and story). This sounds like a fun mind-challenge to me too because I don't think combat is actually essential to MMOs, I couldn't care less about stock progression, and I don't think any MMO can run a good story from the top down unless it's run by gamemasters. Surely we can come up with some better pillars. Stickiness would be my first pick; games need to keep people coming back because they want to come back, not because they feel they must. Community would make my list as something developers should develop intentionally rather than hope it happens offscreen. Setting to me is far more important than story since how seriously a studio takes its setting determines how invested players will be in their own stories. Customization would round out my quartet; our ability to take charge of our character's development, appearance, home, and activities is crucial to keeping us around. Taken together, those four echo Larry's column -- they're all about ownership in a game, something BioWare's pillars just don't address. What about you? If you were tasked with coming up with the four pillars of MMO gaming, what would they be? 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 Daily Grind: What MMO would you like to see locked in time?
I logged into classic Guild Wars for the anniversary last month, and all it did was break my heart. I truly think it was one of the more original MMOs to launch in World of Warcraft's wake, and I'm still sad that it's essentially in permanent maintenance mode and eclipsed by Guild Wars 2, even though I understand the reasoning and am grateful that ArenaNet didn't just pull the plug. On the other hand, sometimes locking a game in time might be a good thing. My recent attempts to return to Lord of the Rings Online have been thwarted by several years' worth of expansions, the deflation of my characters' currency, multiple class reworks, and combat and crafting levels that have continued their powercreeping march upward. I don't really recognize much about the game, and it'd take me a lot of time (and money) to get caught up again. At least my Guild Wars characters are exactly the way I left them! LotRO is probably a bad example because it really does need to get to Pelennor Fields and beyond some day, but I'm sure many of you have an MMO you'd love to see locked in time for your own personal reasons. Which one and why? 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 Daily Grind: Should MMOs require minimum guild sizes?
A listener recently wrote in to Massively's podcast to express his frustration with recruiting in MMOs since so many players avoid chat and guild advertisements. The community situation in many games can make it difficult for smaller guilds that refuse to spam to build up enough players to access basic guild functions, like guild banks. I myself have been testing out a game with player-run villages that requires guilds to have 25 active guild members settled there lest it lose its instanced town, which is a lot of people for a tiny, indie game, and a number that almost requires players to artificially inflate their rosters. But the problem is that games impose arbitrary player minimums for guild charters and banks and ranks and so forth to begin with. For every Guild Wars 2 that lets you have a lonely solo guild if you want it, there's a World of Warcraft that requires you to summon 10 warm bodies first -- even if you then immediately boot the other nine, making the requirement a pointless and tedious exercise. What do you think: Should MMOs require minimum guild sizes? 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 Daily Grind: What's the nastiest player behavior you've ever seen in an MMO?
It was early 1998, and I had been playing Ultima Online only a few short months. A male character with an offensive name approached me and began harassing my toon, using a quick succession of emotes to simulate something that I suppose to him looked like pelvic thrusts as he informed everyone at Serpent's Hold bank, including my not-at-all-amused guildies, that he was "raping" me. I think I was too astonished to be upset, and my guildies immediately called a GM, who arrived swiftly, renamed the miscreant "George," and whisked him off to prison. It didn't scar me for life or anything; I was already accustomed to rampant murder and thievery and espionage. But it was a brutal introduction to online behavior (and probably a brutal introduction to online justice for the character suddenly known as George). Curiously, that lame attempt at faux "rape" paled in comparison to the extreme psychological warfare and character defamation that I saw presumably much more mature roleplayers employ in later games. That, I found far more emotionally disturbing. How about you guys -- do you have a memory of a really nasty display of online behavior in an MMO? What's the worst you've ever seen? 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 Daily Grind: Do alternative server rulesets wreck PvP?
A commenter conversation a while back got me thinking about how server rulesets can make or break the PvP in a game, and not in the way you might expect. I've found that when a game offers separate PvE and PvP servers (be those PvP servers factional or open), the middle-ground players are left without a home. My World of Warcraft guild, for example, was opposed to the idea of a PvE-only server where people could flag but rarely would do so, and so we ended up on a PvP server, where smallfry ganking, rather than the Dark Age of Camelot-esque RvR we'd hoped for, is tediously and irritatingly commonplace. Neither choice is ideal because the populations are split along too sharp a line. In Star Wars Galaxies, by contrast, the servers were PvE with factional-flagging consensual PvP, but because there were no full-PvP servers to bleed away the more hardcore PvPers, the population was mixed, and the PvP situation wound up being far more interesting for more players. PvE gamers who wouldn't dream of flagging for PvP in a game like World of Warcraft would see the Galactic Civil War being waged by PvPers all around them in SWG, and even though they could have stayed safely civillian and free from risk, that visible PvP made them much more likely to jump into PvP themselves willingly -- and isn't that exactly what MMOs should strive for? What do you think -- do alternative rulesets divide playerbases and wreck PvP? Are mixed-use servers a viable way to involve more players consensually in side activities like PvP? 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 Daily Grind: Is there an MMO you're too wary to play?
Ever since City of Heroes was abruptly and unjustly sunsetted, I've toyed with the idea of giving Champions Online another spin. It can never be everything City of Heroes was to me, but it has a lot of the same ideas behind it, and it's closer in spirit and gameplay to my beloved CoH than the admittedly few other superhero options on the table. But Champions Online has been so spottily supported by its developers over the last few years that I have a nagging suspicion I'd just be wasting my time, that the game is locked into a cycle of decay that will only frustrate me in the long run if I invest too much time, money, or emotion into it. And that's enough to keep me away. How about you -- is there an MMO you'd like to play but that just makes you too wary to actually jump back in? What specifically is holding you back? 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!
