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World of Warcraft outlines February's events
There are a lot of holiday events in World of Warcraft this month. February contains the Lunar Festival, Love is in the Air, the Darkmoon Faire... heck, it's also going to be the month that the next major raid opens up. Luckily for avid World of Warcraft players, the official site has put together a comprehensive schedule of the month's festivities, starting with the Valentine's Day event and the new raid opening tomorrow. Astute readers will note that Blizzard suggests players prepare for patch 6.1 with no hints about when it's coming out. Whether this means it's going to be later in the month or won't be dropping until March remains to be seen. Then again, the raiding crowd will have plenty to do through the month with Blackrock Foundry, and if you like holiday events, you've got several of those coming around as well.
The Soapbox: Better models for MMO endgame progression, part three
Today marks the last entry in my better models for MMO endgame progression series, the follow-up to my series on why MMO studios should abandon raiding. And that means providing two more possible models along with something of a thesis statement. But it also means that at this point I'm far more willing to wander off into the woods with these ideas. The first part had slight twists on standard formulas, the second had ideas that was a bit further afield, and this one features two ideas that are still almost entirely unrefined. More specifically, today's concepts are more about tackling the very principle that progress has to be tied past a certain point to things that you get. You earn a thing and then you're better. But there's no reason that progress can't be oriented the other way, with the gear (etc.) just being a gating mechanism for your actual forward motion. The funny part is that a lot of these systems aren't really at odds with one another; they can coexist without too much trouble. But then, that's the nature of the beast.
The Soapbox: Better models for MMO endgame progression, part two
If you read yesterday's Soapbox, the first in my Better models for MMO endgame progression series, with a fair bit of awareness, you probably noticed that the models I presented were, well... safe. Normal. Not too far outside of the realm of what we already have in some games, in other words. Oh, sure, they were functional and expanded compared to what you normally see in games, and they weren't reliant on high-end raiding, but they were still derived from the same space, which is part of the point. But that's not nearly as far as the rabbit hole goes. So let's start moving further beyond what's already common. Let's start heading into stranger territory. As before, the models presented here are not super-refined balanced labyrinths of systems; they're the outline, the skeletons, the fundamentals of how these concepts could work. And even at this stage, they're able to go in directions you don't find in numerous MMO endgames. So let's jump right into it, shall we?
The Soapbox: Better models for MMO endgame progression, part one
Last month, my three-part Soapbox series on reasons studios should abandon raiding as the core mechanic of their MMOs produced no shortage of comments. One of the persistent refrains from the pro-raid side was, as expected, "if you're so smart, why aren't you proposing alternatives?!" The obvious answer would be that it wasn't the point of the articles. The series was about reasons to drop raiding, after all. But it's also not as simple as "here's what games should be doing" because there are countless alternatives. Tons of alternatives. I can think of at least six off the top of my head. So for this new series, let's consider models that don't rely upon raiding as an endgame progression model. Some of these are close cousins to endgame models found in games currently on the market, some of them are not, and none of them has been designed with fine details or lore or what-not in mind. They're drag-and-drop, as it were. The point here is explaining the multitude of options available for an MMO's endgame that don't rely upon raiding for their focus. Today's article will cover the first two of six I have in mind.
The Soapbox: Six reasons MMOs should abandon raiding, part 2
In yesterday's Soapbox, I had some things to say about why it's time to dump raiding. I'm writing this before I've seen the comment responses, but I'm willing to bet that a fair amount of angry shouting was involved in the comments because that's what I usually expect. But I wasn't done, as suggested by the whole "part 1" thing in the title header. For those don't feel like reading the whole thing, the short version is that raiding is too expensive to develop for too small a portion of the players. This is a solid argument, but it's standard: You hear it every time this debate comes up. In some ways, it's the foundation of the argument against raiding beyond the reality that most people say they just don't like raiding. There's more to be said, though, and there are more serious issues up for discussion. Raiding isn't just expensive in terms of development. It's expensive in lots of ways.
Destiny unlocks its first raid and goes on sale
Destiny hasn't been out for every long now, but if you've been power-leveling along, you might very well be level 26 or above. And that's a good thing if you want to take on the game's first raid, which has just been unlocked for players. The Vault of Glass can now be entered, with hardcore enthusiasts already rushing to be the first one to clear its challenges. As with all of Destiny's raid content, a fire team must be assembled out of members of your friend list, as there is no matchmaking option for Vault of Glass. Haven't yet picked up the game? Well, you can do so now at a discount; despite the short amount of time Destiny has been out, retailer BrandsMart is reportedly offering the game for $30, which larger retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart may or may not price match. (Reports are conflicting.) While you likely won't be ready for the Vault of Glass if you take the offer, you will be able to get in on the ground floor a fair bit cheaper, so it's still a win. Kotaku argues that as of this morning, Destiny has "resoundingly mediocre review scores" with "76.29% on GameRankings and a 77 on Metacritic." Our sister site Joystiq reviewed the game this morning, giving it four out of five stars.
Gamescom 2014: WildStar reveals new dungeons and raid tweaks
WildStar is on the ground at Gamescom 2014, and it's got something new for players to explore. Specifically, it's got the game's newest dungeons. The Protostar Academy and the Ultimate Protogames are intended for level 10 and level 50, respectively; the former is meant to help introduce players to mechanics found throughout group content, whilst the latter will provide a new top-level experience with heretofore unseen mechanics and content. And, of course, plenty of bosses that tested very well in marketing, because this is Protostar we're talking about. You can see the dungeon in action on this archived Twitch stream, starting at 4:45:00. But what about players looking into getting into the raiding scene? Will this help bridge the gap? According to the latest dispatch from the developers via the Nexus Report, while there are no content nerfs incoming, attunement processes are being eased. Silver medal requirements are being lowered to bronze, rune slots are being added as definite additions to both crafted and dungeon gear, and attunement item requirements are being tuned down as well to make life just a little bit easier. [Thanks to Syphaed for the tip!]
Chaos Theory: Every game needs a Gatekeeper like The Secret World
It finally happened. I've been playing The Secret World since launch, wading through lots of lore, wracking my brains on investigations missions, collecting clothes, and soaking up the amazing atmosphere, among other things. But there is one activity that I have successfully dodged participating in that entire time until the moment came when I could no longer justify evading it. I'm talking about the Gatekeeper. For those who aren't familiar with TSW's Gatekeeper, here' the scoop: He's the giant golden golem that stands between you and the PvE endgame. He's the feature that all players who want to participate in the hardest mode of dungeons and acquire the best purple PvE gear must prove themselves against before being allowed to move their play to that next level. Consequently, he prevents those who are completely unprepared for that level of challenge from getting in over their heads and dragging down their groups in the process. Golden boy is a powerful (and merciless) teacher who can humble those not ready for the fight as well as those who are by really testing their knowledge about the game's combat system and forcing all to face up to their inadequacies. So I finally faced this Agarthan nemesis, and he was all I expected him to be. And yes, I was initially schooled. But I did end up laying the smack down on him, learning a few important things in the process. And one of the top lessons? I think every single game should have a Gatekeeper!
A firsthand tour of a WildStar adventure
WildStar's beta test is ramping up further and further. It's ramping up enough that pretty much everyone who isn't in the beta already is looking for a way to get in on it. Now's your chance! Hit this link for a giveaway that will grant you a chance to win a beta key for Wildstar. And one of the things you'd be able to see within the beta, if you were in, are the Adventures that have been all the talk of press releases lately. So what is an Adventure? Well, the DevSpeak video past the break will give you a nice top-level overview of that, so you could just go with that. Or you could ask me, because I got to make my way through one with the development team at Carbine Studios, getting a firsthand look at how the content is supposed to work and what's cool about it. That's also past the break.
What is World of Warcraft?
On December 23, 2004, I rolled my first character in World of Warcraft. It seems almost impossible to imagine that this was a little over nine years ago, but I still remember the day clear as a bell. A friend told me where to make a character and what faction to use, and offered me a guild invite the moment I logged in -- an Alliance guild that, to my knowledge, no longer exists. That began a journey that was a long, impossible at times, climb to level 60. Along the way, I made a ton of friends both in the guild and out, and when I hit level 60 it seemed like an incredible accomplishment. But as I shook off the haze of congratulations and cheers, I realized I had little to no idea what came after you hit level 60 -- and frankly, neither did anyone else. Ironforge was the place to be. If you were Alliance it was the only place with an Auction House. Players spent hours upon hours outside the front gates dueling each other. There was no PvP as we know it today -- Battlegrounds didn't exist, so PvP was relegated to long, drawn out battles between Tarren Mill and Southshore. The options seemed to be as follows: Run Stratholme, Scholomance, and UBRS to collect your blue dungeon set. Go raid either Molten Core or Onyxia's Lair. And ... that was it. Needless to say, my next option was to roll an alt and find a raid guild. What other choice did I have, at the time? As the game has progressed over the last nine years, those choices have expanded into a flurry of content that dwarfs everything that has come before it. And that makes me wonder -- just what is World of Warcraft, now?
Final Fantasy XIV sums up its Tokyo Game Show letters
Final Fantasy XIV has been playable for just about a month. Gamers being what we are, a lot of us are already asking about what comes next for the game, because there's slightly less unexplored content than there was before. But fear not; the official live letters from producer and director Naoki Yoshida have been translated and the highlights recapped on the official site, giving everyone a closer look at what's coming from housing, PvP, and the new Crystal Tower. Yoshida explains that Crystal Tower is meant to be easier than the Binding Coil of Bahamut currently accessible, although it is still inteded to be high-end content (he mentions the possibility of requiring relic weapons). Housing will be launched for Free Companies first, with the team closely examining the strain caused by these before putting in individual houses. Players can also expect every craft to be involved in providing decorations for housing rather than just a few, helping to make everyone's contributions relevant. Take a look at the full roundup for all the details, although the team remains mum on the price of houses.
The Daily Grind: What dungeons do you hate in games you love?
Not every game has dungeons. It would be kind of silly to imagine a group of EVE Online starships traveling through moldy corridors and slaughtering orcs (but also kind of awesome). But the idea of having an area with paced enemy encounters and big bosses certainly isn't novel. World of Warcraft calls them dungeons, Star Wars: The Old Republic calls them flashpoints, Dungeons & Dragons Online calls them lots of different things, and they're all a chance for players to group up and enjoy some content. Sometimes it's not really enjoyable, though. The mechanics don't work or aren't fun. The fights require a lot more luck than skill. You don't have visual cues that are pretty much necessary to understand what's happening. If a game has dungeon, it always has some that aren't as good as the others. So what dungeons do you hate in a game that you otherwise love? Are they agreed by the community to be horrible, or are they usually beloved dungeons that you just can't stand personally? 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!
A look at the current endgame for Blade & Soul
If you're looking forward to playing Blade & Soul when it finally comes to this side of the pond, you probably want to know what to expect from the endgame mechanics. Fortunately for you, the game has just released its newest endgame dungeon, and a preview is available of the final boss fight within that dungeon as well as the process for gaining and powering up loot from bosses. Which is... ornate, for lack of a better term. The short version is that everyone present for the kill gets a loot box containing a weapon. You can either pay money to ensure that the weapon is right for your class, or you can buy an ordinary key and take your chances. Once you've gotten the right weapon (with the right stats) after however many trips, you can start leveling it up... but in order to really advance it, you'll need to get two more weapons and level those up. Take a look at the full preview for details on boss mechanics and the weapon upgrade process. [Thanks to Steparu for the tip!]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: DC Universe Online's crisis of origins
DC comics has always had a history of patch jobs. It's inevitable, really, since DC is both older than Marvel and replete with characters inherited from other publishers or characters originally designed to work in a vacuum. The fact that we've had multiple multiverse-spanning events that completely rewrite the fabric of the universe within the comics makes it clear that this is not a franchise afraid to retroactively remake an entire character only to change said character back in another remake four months later. It sometimes makes DC rather painful to read even without the mess that the New 52 became, but that's a different article on a different site. Right now we're talking about DC Universe Online getting in on the whole parallel reality game. Why the preamble? Because this was always pretty much inevitable given the franchise. That having been said, there's some interesting stuff within the upcoming Origin Crisis DLC that bears discussion, so let's talk about the upcoming DLC and how it ties into the game as a whole both thematically and mechanically.
"Crash Bandicoot" creator comments on Cataclysm's problems and the evolution of WoW
I didn't see this until recently, but I'm really glad I did. Andy Gavin, the co-creator of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter, ran a series between the end of November and mid-January examining WoW, its four expansions, and how each of them succeeded or failed through both personal and professional eyes. His particular focus is the endgame in each and how it worked to attract and retain players -- or, in some cases, didn't. While there's certainly been no shortage of player commentary on how WoW's developed, Gavin's experience as a game developer who's not involved with Blizzard is a pretty unique perspective. I found his article on Cataclysm to be particularly adept at putting into words a lot of things I felt but had difficulty articulating. Most of the expansion's developmental time had to go into a revamped leveling process that few people saw unless they wanted to level a new alt. The content at 85 that greeted more casual players got bottlenecked in a series of difficult heroics that frustrated players dropped constantly. Personally, I still consider Cataclysm to have been a necessary expansion -- it did a lot of stuff that Blizzard had to do for the game even if it wasn't as eye-catching as what BC and Wrath did -- but I think Gavin's assessment is accurate and measured. (And many of Blizzard's own observations aren't all that different.) Funnily enough, with lots of people leveling new monks in Mists of Pandaria, more people might be seeing Cataclysm content now than they did during the expansion that was actually dedicated to it. I've linked Gavin's full series here. While it's long, it's an incredibly interesting and detailed read: WoW's endgame: Vanilla WoW's endgame: The Burning Crusade WoW's endgame: Wrath of the Lich King WoW's endgame: Cataclysm WoW at present: Mists of Pandaria
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Champions Online, Lemurian events, and you
Every so often, I'm told that I don't understand an issue under discussion, and it's entirely true. There are a lot of issues out there, and the best I can do is get some of the information, form an opinion, and then change that opinion based upon new information. So I do my best, but I'm going to be wrong sometimes. Other times I'm told I don't understand an issue when I actually do, and the problem is that the issue under discussion is not the most relevant issue. So let's talk a little bit more about Champions Online and the Lemurian Invasion. If you haven't been paying attention, this spawned a little bit of controversy among the playerbase and more when I said that the people raising a stink were wrong. They still are, even if they're also right about an unconnected issue I only brushed against before.
Star Wars: The Old Republic opens up test servers for patch 2.0
We've known for a while that the first digital expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be releasing in the spring. Those waiting eagerly for Rise of the Hutt Cartel won't have too much longer to wait, it seems, as the expansion has been put up for testing on the game's public test server. This build includes gear, operations, and flashpoints for characters at the new level cap of 55, as well as the extra abilities and skills you'd expect from an extra five levels. Notably not included is all of the content from Makeb that would allow players to actually reach level 55, which necessitates the addition of a special NPC to boost player levels and allow corresponding equipment unlocks. Still, if you're looking to take your main characters for a test drive in the post-expansion world, head over to the public test server and start seeing what changes with five more levels under your belt. And even if you'd rather wait for the release, this round of testing means the expansion can't be too far off.
The Smart Kids -- or, why Cataclysm failed to impress
I was a smart kid. You remember those kids from school who were always the first to turn a test in and the ones to get the best grades? The ones who never seemed to put any effort into studying but always managed to get an A? That was me. You'd think that being a smart kid would make life incredibly easy, but it did exactly the opposite. Of course you had the endless students who hated you or made fun of you because you were smart, but there was something much harder to deal with than that. See, in public schools (in America, at least), teachers generally teach at the speed of the slowest kid in class. This is absolutely appropriate, because you don't want anyone to fall behind. For the slowest kid, this meant that subjects were presented in a way that they could understand, and they'd learn the lessons even if it took a little extra time. But for the smartest kid in the class, it meant that classrooms were places of exquisite torture where information flowed at a snail's pace, and most of the information presented were things the smart kid already knew. It made school an excruciatingly boring place to be.
Blizzard admits Diablo III lacks 'long-term sustainable end-game'
Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to rectifying it. And for Diablo III fans, Blizzard's recent admission that the game is lacking a sustainable endgame gives hope that the problem is on the road to recovery. In a recent post on the official forums, Community Manager Bashiok stated the company believed that the item hunt would would work for a sustainable endgame but now recognizes that isn't the case and admits that players are eventually "going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already)." Bashiok goes on to state that while there isn't currently anything to really keep players engaged, upcoming patches will offer more things for players to do.
Epic in scope: SWTOR's James Ohlen explains plans for the future
As the Star Wars: The Old Republic guild leaders lined up to get a taste of the Lost Island flashpoint, I was at BioWare studios getting my hands dirty with deeper PvE and PvP content as well as speaking with developers like Combat Designer Georg Zoeller, Lead Writer Daniel Erickson, Art Director Jeff Dobson, and Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi. However, the best part was at the end of the day when I was able to speak one-on-one with Creative Director James Ohlen. Ohlen touches nearly every aspect of the game's development. It was important to me to find out why this game is as popular as it is and what BioWare was going to do to retain its current playerbase. The first stop was the latest game update, which should hit test servers really soon.
