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The Daily Grind: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds?
When Tiny Speck announced last week that Glitch would be shutting down come December 9th, the studio simultaneously did something that few closed MMOs do: It offered complete refunds for past subs. Sure, some companies have offered free game time or bonus cash-shop currency for their other games, but that's usually small consolation. NCsoft grudgingly provided refunds for unused timecards and long-term recurring subs when it set City of Heroes' closure date, but virtually no one provides a complete refund of all the subscription money you ever paid for the game. On Black Friday, it seems as if half the world is out shopping, looking for a good deal and with money on the brain, so today's an appropriate day to ask: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds? And if you were offered one, would you take it? 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 Perfect Ten: Holiday shopping for the MMO gamer
With Thanksgiving almost under wraps in the states (Canada got an earlier patch of Thanksgiving because the devs love that country), the starter pistol is about to go off for the busiest shopping season of the year. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and oh-crap-it's-Christmas-Eve-and-only-a-gas-station-is-open are all shopping experiences ahead on the calendar, but perhaps the most challenging experience is that of buying the perfect gift for an MMO gamer. Sure, you could just phone it in and buy a time card, some cash shop points, a subscription or two, or even a Prima strategy guide if you really hated the person, but a proper MMO gift goes beyond that. For a great gift, you need to put in some effort and actually research the field... or just be lazy and use my following guide. We both know which option you're going to choose. So while you slowly digest that turkey and moan about having to waddle your butt down to Best Buy at 3:00 a.m., why not allow me to help you with a few shopping suggestions? For this list, I wanted to focus on game-specific merchandise that isn't t-shirts, game cards, or CafePress coffee mugs. I mean, this shirt is the bomb and all, but we can do better!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The cost of closing City of Heroes
Shuttering a game carries a heavy cost. This seems counterproductive from a math standpoint; after all, you aren't spending money on a game's servers any longer, so how can it be costing you more? But gamers have long if inaccurate memories, and there are a lot of ripple effects that spread slowly outward after the game has gone dark. Some of these costs aren't even obvious when the game closes, and the full effect won't be felt for months. With only a little while left until the end of City of Heroes, I think it's only fair to look at these costs. Obviously, I've discussed some of the unseen costs already, but all of those have been looking at the cost of losing City of Heroes for the players and the developers. Today, I want to see what it actually offers NCsoft because there's a long list of things that are getting burned away by this closure, and I'm having trouble pointing to any given element as actually being a benefit for the company in the long run.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The passion for City of Heroes
Chronicling the last months of City of Heroes has been a strange ride. A sad one, certainly, and that's part of it, but it's also just been strange in certain ways, such as how every single column on the subject -- and I do mean every single one -- has garnered at least one person acting shocked that this column would continue to cover the game on the way to its shutdown instead of just throwing in the towel back in October or something. I really don't get that, considering that this column has been running for nearly three years without interruption, even when I had to send the text off to someone else because I was out of power due to a hurricane. There's no way I'm not going the last few feet. But I think some of it comes down to not understanding what about the game makes some of the players so passionate about the city. Passion is a lot of things, none of them logical. It's not possible to just point to items on a list and say, "I'm passionate because of that." But I can try to outline what's made the game so special beyond just its length of operation, and I'll do the best I can with today's column.
MMO Blender: Larry's anti-power-creep MMO
On Tuesday, I suggested ways to get rid of power creep in MMOs. You know power creep: the constant treadmill of stats that keep getting better and strong but ultimately start to feel like more of a grind? It's very annoying to long-term players, and I'd imagine that it's frustrating to game designers because it's time and talent wasted when game content is no longer useful to anyone. In my quest to find the ultimate MMO, I have searched for game elements that reduce the amount of power creep but still come together to support a themepark game. Let's be honest: Sandbox games might suffer power creep, but because most sandboxes are skill-based, that power creep is not as prevalent or can easily be mitigated by tweaking classes. But themeparks are linear by design, and to remain fun, they have to retain part of that linear quality. Progression and continually racking up numbers and achievements is enjoyable to a large number of MMO players, otherwise it would be games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies dominating the market, not World of Warcraft. Believe it or not, there are online games that have done a tremendous job of trying to defeat power creep, but unfortunately, they do not exist as one game... until now in my Anti-Power-Creep MMO!
GuildOx interviews new World First guild Arctica
While the rest of the world were banging their heads against the overtuned first boss in the Heart of Fear raid, one relatively unknown Finnish guild decided to go about their initial look into the new raid a slightly different way. Arctica, of Chromaggus-EU, is a Finnish guild just like Paragon, and just like Paragon they only take players who understand Finnish. You don't have to speak it, only understand it. And that's no mean feat. Finnish is one of the least spoken languages in Europe, with only five million native speakers, and having tried it myself, one of the most baffling to learn. But despite their relatively small pool of eligible applicants, Arctica look to be taking after their better-known fellow Finns, and progressing into World Firsts, taking two of the five available in this 10-man heroic progress race, having defeated both Ta'yak and Garalon before any other guild. They, unlike the others, skipped straight past the infamous Vizier Zor'lok, facing Ta'yak first in Heroic. GuildOx was joined by Kapsu and Sponde of Arctica to discuss their progress into 10-man Heroic Heart of Fear. Check out the interview over at GuildOx, and find out what's in the water in Finland that makes such good raiders! Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Heart of Fear World First race hit by Heroic Nerf
The first boss of the heroic version of Heart of Fear is causing some problems. The irony of the mantid raid having some bug issues has not escaped us here at WoW Insider, but there are some more serious issues at hand than light hearted jokes can describe. After nearly 17 hours of raiding in the US, and 8 in the UK, Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera took to the forums to say the following: Nethaera The Heroic Zor'lok encounter is currently more difficult than intended. While we prefer to avoid changes to encounters in the midst of progression, we would like to fix a few quality of life issues and make some targeted balance changes that do not invalidate the efforts that guilds have put into learning the encounter so far. Later today a hotfix will make the following adjustments: Zor'lok's Echoes will pause briefly before beginning to cast Song of the Empress. Zor'lok's berserk timer has been increased slightly. Zor'lok will no longer summon Echoes of Force and Verve during the final phase of the encounter. source Nethaera later returned to the forums to add that the hotfix was implemented shortly after the original post, and yet there still hasn't been a kill of Imperial Vizier Zor'lok on heroic, in 25-man or 10man. A couple of guilds have bypassed Zor'lok altogether, with Finnish guild Arctica taking world first 10-man heroic Blade Lord Ta'yak, and DarkStorm taking the 25-man world first. Arctica have continued through the raid and taken down Garalon, too! It's great to see a small guild taking on the big names, and the 10-man race for World First seems to be between one Finnish guild, Paragon, challenged by another Finnish guild, Arctica! What is it about Finland? Two further guilds have defeated 10-man Ta'yak, but still no kills on Zor'lok. There's already been a twitter account set up in Zor'lok's honor, where he mainly talks about his occasional moves to the left. UPDATED: EU Guild Method just took World First 25-Heroic Grand Vizier Zor'lok! No 10-man kills so far. Paragon took World First 10-Heroic Grand Vizier Zor'lok! Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The story of City of Heroes that wasn't
I started playing City of Heroes for one reason and one reason alone: I love superheroes. Yes, the game entranced me afterward, and there were a lot of things to like aside from the superhero aspect, but I came first and foremost expecting a game of superheroes. And while I've occasionally taken issue with the way the game tries to model superheroes, that doesn't extend to the game's lore in the slightest. Lore is an important part of what makes superheroes work, after all. That sense of a bigger world, that sequence of big events that rewrite the world as a whole every so often, the cadence of enemies rising and falling. There's a certain feel to superhero universes, one that City of Heroes had to replicate without shamelessly copying another world -- and the team at Paragon Studios succeeded in doing just that. Unfortunately, we're never going to see all of the revelations in the game that could have stretched on for many more years, but the recent lore AMA answered a lot of lingering questions about the game's universe and backstory. So as we enter our final month, yeah, I'd like to look at that.
The Daily Grind: Which underground area do you like the most?
I'm far too prone to claustrophobia in real life to attempt any sort of spelunking (plus I saw The Descent, which solidified that feeling), but I'm the opposite in MMOs. I love exploring underground regions in games, whether they be little hidey-holes for Hobbits or grand cities that never see the sunlight. As of late, I've come to greatly appreciate the wide variety of caves and caverns in Guild Wars 2, all of which manage to be interesting without feeling restrictive or overly rock-themed. It feels like we've come a long way from some MMOs' ideas of underground usage (I'm looking at you, City of Heroes, and your oh-so-bland caves). Obviously, the topic du jour is MMO underground areas and which ones you like the most. Lay it on us where the sun doesn't shine, OK? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: The problem with power creep and progression
We've all seen it. You might not have put a name to it, but it's there. As MMOs get older, certain dungeons become obsolete. Or maybe that fantastic top-level gear you once had to have is completely worthless now and isn't even in normal gear progression anymore. That is power creep, the phenomenon by which content becomes completely worthless as a game ages. I can't imagine being on the developer's side when power creep starts rearing its ugly head. All that time a developer spent sculpting the content to be the perfect match of mechanics and story becomes wasted. Power creep can't be avoided, right? Developers have to make new content to keep people interested in the game. And themepark games have to have a linear progression, right? We also don't want the disparity between the new players and the old players to be too great because it will discourage population growth. Then how in the world do we stop this never-ending cycle? How do we keep MMO progression fun and interesting without content falling off the end of the treadmill?
The Game Archaeologist: A City of Heroes memorial, part 2
Following the last column's memorial for players' City of Heroes characters, I received an email from Cryptic's Al Rivera. He wanted to share his own memories from the game, here are a few choice quotes from that email: "I was there from the beginning when Cryptic was just 23 people working in a busted office and I was the only system designer. I made the player powers, archetypes and critters while the game was at Cryptic. The game has evolved tremendously since it left Cryptic... I was very sad to see CoH sold off, and now I am again saddened to see this wonderful piece of game history come to an end. "What was most rewarding was to see all those players log into Atlas Park. To see so many people just so happy with what we made was something impossible to put into words. Thank you, City of Heroes, for all the fond memories. And a special thank you to all the heroes that made me laugh and made me proud. You will be missed." Let's wrap up this memorial series by visiting the remainder of player-submitted superheroes and their stories.
MMO Blender: Eliot's rock odyssey
I'm upset with bards in MMOs. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that they exist. But every single game that features bards uses them wrong. The bard is always a back-line character, someone who sits in the back and heals people through gently strumming on a lute. And that depresses me, because I want to see some bards that actually rock. I want to see some music used offensively. I want to have the option of making my bard kill things through careful use of sweet riffs. You can say it sounds ridiculous, but tell me that it's somehow more ridiculous than having a bard heal you via magical singing and I will call you a liar. So let's go for it. Let's dedicate an entire MMO to bards who aren't about muzak and nurturing new age songs, but bards that are going to defeat things through the unmitigated power of rock. My only regret is that this is a week too late for Rocktober.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: A tale of two shutdowns starring City of Heroes
It's been about a year since Star Wars Galaxies was shut down, and for a lot of people that wound is still fresh. For a sadly vocal minority, that wound is so fresh as to provoke a lot of groundless vitriol toward any available target -- but that's not the point. The point is that what happened to that game is happening again, to City of Heroes, and the players are just as powerless to stop it. Except that it's not the same thing, not really. There are different reasons behind the closure of City of Heroes, different protests, and different player organizing taking place. The result is a scenario that's both a clear parallel to an earlier tragedy and its own unique blend of awful circumstances at the same time. When we first heard the announcement, fellow City of Heroes player and former Star Wars Galaxies player Brianna Royce asked me if I felt the same way about CoH as I had about SWG. As we talked about it, though, it became clear that there were certain parallels being drawn that just didn't work. So I'm going to talk about what happened to both games, starting with the very significant difference between the two games shutting down.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Potential new homes after City of Heroes
Despite what many of us might feel, the world is not ending when City of Heroes shuts down. Just our world. But the sun will continue shining, other games will continue running, and most likely your interest in video games will not evaporate. So after an appropriate period of mourning, it's going to be time to think about getting together with another game. The problem, of course, is that nothing else can ever be City of Heroes. Like Benjamin Franklin, nothing can serve as its replacement, merely as its successor. But it's worth examining some of the more reasonable and likely destinations for the community. I'm sure there are more, but the four I've listed seem to be the games that either are or will be hoovering up a large number of the game's former players, games that are close enough to what CoH represents to serve as a reasonable successor. So let's look at our potential new homes and see what they have to offer, both good and bad.
A video to mourn City of Heroes and celebrate the new Paragon Studios project
It's not over until it's over for City of Heroes, but that time is fast approaching. Longtime fan and noted machinima artist Samuraiko decided that the city deserved to go out with an appropriate tribute and has put together a last video memorializing the game's environments and players. If you're a veteran player, you owe it to yourself to sit through the whole video just past the break, although you may get misty-eyed toward the end. But all is not doom and gloom for the fine folks from Paragon Studios, as they've taken it upon themselves to begin a new project, one that will undoubtedly be just as influential in their chosen field. Or possibly not. It's still worth watching after the previous video, at the least to get a smile back on your face. Jump on past the break for both videos, and keep your eyes peeled for more coverage as we approach the City of Heroes shutdown. [Thanks to the folks that sent these in!]
The Game Archaeologist: A City of Heroes memorial, part 1
When I first heard that City of Heroes would be given a hero's farewell, I felt for the players who call that game home. I also was depressed because I spent a fair amount of time in Paragon City myself and have a particular affection for the game. But beyond empathy and misery, I knew that the Game Archeologist had a duty to perform: to preserve the memories of what would soon fade into history. Thus, I put out a call for your City of Heroes characters along with their stories so that I could share them with the world at large. Dozens of readers responded, and for the next couple of weeks, we're going to be looking at the digital face of tragedy and memories. These are the avatars who genuinely meant something to someone, and while they are about to be deleted from the servers forever, I hope that by archiving them here, they'll live on for future generations (read: December 2012 readers) to discover. Let's go meet some of them, shall we?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The unseen cost of closing City of Heroes
City of Heroes is leaving a lot of victims with its closure: the employees of an excellent and underrated development team, a group of players with a lot of passion and energy, and an entire world that deserves to keep going. But there are a lot of other costs along with all of those, things what we're losing out on that you might not have even considered at the time. At least, not until some writer on the internet decided to call attention to all of those things. Guilty as charged. Those of us who are adamant fans of the game have been lamenting the loss of the game that is. But one of the reasons I tied every single anniversary post with another post looking forward is that City of Heroes has always been a game that moves in both directions. It's a game where a lot of the fun is tied into what it will be. And while there are some directions I've been critical of, there's a lot about what's coming up that's never going to be realized.
The Soapbox: No game lives forever
The lifespan of a video game is a funny thing. There are some games that have a definite end, yet you'd wish they'd last forever. These games measure life in replayability, run-through length, or multiplayer matches, but they lack permanence and persistence. Still, you can usually dust them off years from now and still have fun with them. MMOs are a different breed, aren't they? They promise the inverse of the solo game, with a world that goes on, content that keeps flooding in, and the illusion that it will last forever. Yet when the switch is turned off, there's no going back. You can't pick it up 10 years from now and give it another go. It's why the news that an MMO is closing up shop comes as such a devastating blow to many of us. As MMOs attempt to emulate the persistence of life, so too do they illustrate the finality of death.
Mogu'shan Vaults world firsts
Following the release of the Heroic version of Mogushan Vaults on October 9 in the US and October 10 in the EU, the very, very early morning of October 13 -- 00:43 UK time to be precise -- European guild Method took down Heroic Will of the Emperor 25-man. Despite the delay, where the raids were released in the US several hours earlier, Method came from way behind in the starting grid to snatch the World First from Vodka and Blood Legion. World second went to another European guild, Envy, with Vodka third and Blood Legion fourth. Blood Legion and Vodka set up a healthy lead, alternating first and second between them for Stone Guard, Feng, Gara'Jal and the Spirit Kings, but Method crept into second place for Elegon, the penultimate boss, pushing Vodka into third but still behind Blood Legion. According to Method's website, the world second took place a full 12 hours after their world first. But, the race for 6/6 Mogu'shan Vaults had already been won over 30 hours earlier, when Finnish guild DREAM Paragon swept to the end of the heroic 10-man version of the raid, downing Will of the Emperor on the afternoon of October 11. Paragon came in world 4th for the second 10-man boss, Feng the Accursed, and world 1st for every boss thereafter in the 10-man raids. But it seems that people still count the 25-man race as the "proper" race, despite Paragon's remarkable achievement. What do you think? Can 10-man world firsts be considered the same as 25-man world firsts? Should Paragon try to go back to 25-man? Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
The Perfect Ten: Worst expansion names of all time
When SOE announced that EverQuest's 19th expansion would be titled Rain of Fear, I instantly found myself tripping over the name. I shouldn't have -- it's a few simple words that are first round picks for spelling contests -- but it defied the traditional naming conventions for MMO expansions. Many people I talked to kept wanting to write "reign" instead because "rain" seemed like a deliberate misspelling by some intern in Smedley's empire. Homophones aside, Rain of Fear is hardly the worst expansion title I've ever seen. The industry has had its share of bad names, from the confusing to the downright unpronounceable. Sure, we get used to these titles, and perhaps it's nit-picky to lug them out at such a late point in many of their lifespans, but petty is my middle name. My first name is Tom. And these are 10 poorly named expansions. Deal with it.
