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Is BlizzCon bad for World of Warcraft?
Okay, I'm sure with a headline like "Is BlizzCon bad for World of Warcraft?" you're already thinking this is it. Rossi has finally snapped. But hear me out for a second. We've had BlizzCons since 2005, before The Burning Crusade was even released. While they haven't happened every year (there was no BlizzCon 2006 and no BlizzCon 2012) it's been fairly regular since its introduction. Last year, Warlords of Draenor was previewed at BlizzCon 2013 - for many of us it's the source of pretty much every opinion we have on the expansion. That, in fact, is exactly what got me thinking that it's possible that BlizzCon itself is bad for the game, for the game community at large, and for the future of the franchise. BlizzCon, by its very nature, is a hype machine. It's where we learn details about the expansion - its name, its features, its setting and goals - before they are even close to being ready for players. People play demos. Developers give talks about the games. In many ways it's very exciting. I've never been myself, but most of my coworkers and a lot of my in-game friends have. So my argument isn't that BlizzCon itself is bad. But looking over the past year or so, in terms of Warlords of Draenor and player interaction with it, I start to wonder if having the big reveal at the convention does more harm than good, overall. Expectations are set at the convention - looking at the recent player reaction to the news that Karabor and Bladespire wouldn't be capital cities in Draenor, the issue can in part be traced back to the fact that we were told they would be at BlizzCon. Players (like myself) had months to get excited about the idea of Karabor as a capital city. Then, suddenly, we were told (almost as an afterthought) that no, the capitals were moved to Ashran.
Tamriel Infinium: An open letter to the creators of Elder Scrolls Online
Dear ZeniMax, I understand that you are a new studio, but you stem from a studio with a long history of making good games. I understand that no game has ever been 100% bug free. I also understand that you are extraordinarily excited about bringing your game to the public. And I wanted to see Elder Scrolls Online as much as anyone. You're also a young studio, and I understand the feeling wanting to do things your own way. You want to make your individual mark on the world, but doing that at the expense of wisdom... well, I hope you can see where I'm going with this. On Thursday, I spoke to many people about the console delay. I mentioned to most of them that my last Tamriel Infinium about the PC gamers actually being console beta testers was meant to be hyperbole. Although it was based on truth, I extended my logic beyond what I thought a studio would actually do. I didn't think that you were actually using the PC version that people are playing and paying for as a beta test. Clearly, that's the case since you will not release ESO in its current state to consoles. I don't think all is lost. I believe you might be able to turn some things around. So here's my armchair developer's advice.
Perfect Ten: MMO features that were hyped but never delivered
Developers like to talk a big game. It's expected, it's encouraged by all parties, and it's part of the fun. When a game or big expansion is coming up, the spokespeople for studios like to hop on stage, grab that mic, and start proselytizing for all they're worth. And while some promises come to fruition, others are various shades of white lies, and still others never come to be at all. These are the features that studios would much rather you forget were mentioned in the first place, although this is the internet and the internet never forgets. Well, players who latch on to everything devs say as absolute truth never forget. Sometimes things happen along the way in development. Studios run out of time to get in all of the features and have to prioritize which make the cut and which do not. Features end up not testing as well as hoped and the studio quietly drops them because the PR hit for the features not going in is much less than the disaster that they might cause. And some developers like to flap their gums and spout brainstorm ideas that send the actual programmers and designers back at the company into spasms of agony when they try to figure out how to make them work. Today let's go through 10 features that were talked up but never delivered in MMOs!
Camelot Unchained makes 11 promises to consumers
City State Entertainment President Mark Jacobs has a few promises to make to players -- 11 of them, to be exact. He's put together an updated list of subscriber promises that he and his team will follow when developing and running Camelot Unchained. The promises include being responsive to players, fighting gold sellers, having the team play the game regularly, eliminating the need for copy protection, protecting player privacy, rewarding players for finding bugs, and never lying to consumers. Most interestingly, Jacobs vows that if Camelot Unchained is ever shut down, then the studio will release the compiled server code to the gamers.
MMObility: The community portal of Grepolis might just be a model for the industry
Innogames' hit browser-based game Grepolis has been receiving some pretty exciting updates lately. It's one of my favorite MMORTS titles because it's simple to learn and can be played on practically any schedule, so I've really been enjoying the updates that have added music and sound effects, holiday mechanics, and more animations. There's a lot more to come, however, according to Grepolis' developer crew. What sort of things? Well, besides the usual updates and additions to gameplay, the team is promising that how players interact with the community will change as well. Sure, plenty of developers have promised better communication and more interaction, but what Grepolis is promising might just be some of the coolest community tools yet. If they work, of course.
Ask Massively: Developers, players, and respect
Welcome back to Ask Massively We're pleased you could join us on the deck of the Massively yacht for today's edition. You should really try a mojito. It's the best. In between drinks today, we're talking about respect -- the earned kind, not the given kind. Don't worry; I'm not talking about respect you have for us or even for each other. (We all know that's non-existent.) I'm talking about the respect game studios have (and don't have) for MMO gamers in general.
Wings Over Atreia: Promises, promises
There was a time a while back when I chided NCsoft for being so closed-lipped about news. Although F2P was the biggest change ever to hit Aion, there was scant information about the North American conversion to free-to-play that accompanied 3.0 until it was practically upon us! Now fast forward just one little numeral to 4.0, and we seem to be getting regular doses of information. Awesome, right? Or is it? At first, I was overjoyed to learn new bits about the upcoming expansion. It even spawned some entertaining speculation. But the fact remained that since we still didn't know when Aion 4.0 might arrive, each added bit of news was a tease. Then it dawned on me: The studio combined my request for more news with my pleas for more frequent, if smaller, content updates. But instead of actual content in-game to excite players and keep them playing, we are getting the intangible promises of content to come! Ingenious. But is it working?
The Soapbox: Credible currency
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. With all of the other crises hitting the gaming world, it's easy to have missed the fact that Lord of the Rings Online has started selling statted gear in the cash shop. It's not endgame gear, of course, and it's mostly there for low-level players to get a minor boost. Really, as has been said by others, it's not something all that unusual, nor is it game-breaking in the slightest. It's just a convenience thing. It's also something that Turbine promised would never be done. I don't have an issue with the sale of low-level armor with stats on it, in Lord of the Rings Online or in other games. What I do have an issue with is the matter of credibility, the one currency that every company starts with and loses over time. Credibility is something you have to spend carefully, and every so often, a company spends it wrong. And the results, in the long term, are never pretty.
Augen planning its next generation of tablets, not giving up without a fight
Everyone deserves a second chance, right? In the world of cheapo tablets, sure! Or at least that's our attitude when it comes to a company like Augen. Sure, it was just about a month ago that it released its $150 GenTouch78 at Kmart, but it's planning some future tablet products and hoping to right all those previous wrongs. According to the statement put out by the company, this new set of "Espresso" tablets will be unveiled at CES 2011 and will span from 7 to 10 inches diagonally. They'll still be aggressively priced and range from $200 to $400, but at least this time around it's planning for some with capacitive touchscreens. Other specs are of the fairly cookie cutter mold: WiFi, an accelerometer and more storage space. No word on what version of Android they'll run, but there's mention of a new "human friendly input." That all sounds much better than the previous GenTouch products we've seen, but by the time January rolls around there's no telling what the tablet landscape could look like. We'll be following this one to see if Augen can keep the caffeine in its system, but hit the break for the full statement and one more render.
Samsung Behold II fails to fulfill Android 2.0 promise, jilted users contemplating lawsuit (video)
When Samsung launched its Behold II with Android 1.5 on board, it made something of a big deal about the fact the handset will be upgradeable to version 2.0 when that software became available. Such a big deal that it even put the promise of an OTA update into a promo video -- a video that subsequently got yanked as the company realized it wasn't going to be able to stick to its word. Well, that evidence has now been tracked down (see it after the break), and all those buyers who were left with a Cupcake in lieu of a promised Eclair have hardly forgotten about it either. Samsung's position varies between the boilerplate "we don't have a future release date," to a stone cold "the SGH-T939 will never qualify for the Android 2X update," depending on which rep you speak to. The disappointed users have therefore resorted to putting a petition together, which asks that either a refund, replacement Android 2.x handset, or a real update be provided to them, and concludes that "legal action will be taken" if Samsung fails them. That's not exactly unreasonable , given the unfulfilled expectation -- Samsung, what say you? [Thanks, Yitzhak]
Missing help for World Explorers
This post by homestar over on WoW Ladies LJ reminds me of an issue we'd let drop by the wayside: where exactly is that help that World Explorers were supposed to get? Right now, as you move around the world trying to pick up the World Explorer achievement (and title), there's no real way to tell exactly what places you've explored and which you haven't. Obviously, the map colors in as you wander around, but it's not so granular that you can tell exactly where you need to go, so if there's only one small location you have to visit, as with homestar, you end up wandering around desperately trying to find that one little place you haven't hit yet.The good news is that Blizzard already mentioned we would get help for this. The bad news is that it was over a year ago. Bornakk said that we'd have a way to tell on the map just where locations had been discovered and where they hadn't been seen yet, but since then we haven't really heard anything more about it. Obviously, a few things have been added to the maps, including quest icons, and instance maps have been added as well, but where's the Explorer help?At this point. you have to think that Blizzard has moved on -- maybe whatever update Bornakk was hinting at did make it into the game and we just didn't notice it. But more likely, they couldn't figure out a good way to do this, didn't have a lot of call for it, and decided to spend the time on something else. Especially with the upcoming revamp of old maps, maybe we'll see maps that are a little more helpful in terms of getting the full Explorer achievement.
EA officially backs off of Mac releases
Shame on you, EA! Shame! Back at WWDC, you promised to release four of your franchise games simultaneously on PC and Mac in July. But July came and went, and we saw (and played) nothing.And now EA has told Apple Insider that Mac faithful shouldn't have held their breath on those promises-- Madden 08 was the big release on Tuesday, but while it did appear on PC, the Mac version has been officially delayed until "September or October" (which means late December, in videogame-release-speak). Additionally, even EA doesn't know what's going on with its own games-- they claim that Battlefield 2142, Command and Conquer 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Need for Speed Carbon are all in stores, but when asked which stores they were actually in, EA didn't have an answer.I can't say I'm surprised-- for all the talk at WWDC, the Mac isn't quite the platform of choice for most game makers, and who knows who would have actually bought any of those games on Mac if they had been released (I wouldn't have). But the fact is that EA stood on stage at WWDC, and got lauded for it. Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk, Electronic Arts.
Kiwi IMAP email client goes closed source
Developer (and sometime TUAW commenter) Matt Ronge has announced he's closing the source of the upcoming IMAP email client Kiwi he's been working on. It's a decision that's been a long time coming, he says, and most of the feedback he's gotten has been positive towards closing the source, so he's going ahead with it. MailCore and libetpan, the two code frameworks Kiwi is built on top of, will both remain open source, so the possibility of someone else building an open source client off of MailCore is still there.The question is, will Kiwi be worth paying for? The answer, as usual, is "depends." Ronge has some great ideas for how a well built IMAP client could work, but the proof is in the pudding, and right now, all we've got are some screenshots. Kiwi promises Address Book and Spotlight support, LUA customization, and good performance and scalability. If Ronge can make his app do all that, most users will be happy to pay for his hard work.[ via Brent Simmons ]
