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The Daily Grind: Should games periodically update their tutorials?
As I began playing Star Trek Online for the first time in years, it occurred to me that the tutorial quests were still very familiar. This is not entirely surprising; outside of a handful of extra help windows, they're the same basic tutorial quests that existed in the game back when it launched. On the one hand, this is perfectly reasonable. Updating a bunch of tutorial quests that are there just to ease you into the feel of a new game would just be fixing something that's not broken. At the same time, when the game presents its tutorial as part of a story, it's odd when the tutorial no longer reflects the overall setting of the game. And if you've played the tutorial before, it's a bit disheartening to do so a second (or third or fourth...) time. So what do you think? Should games periodically update their tutorials? Or should a tutorial be upgraded only to be more straightforward rather than changing with the times? 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!
Choose My Adventure: Atys refugee blues
Last week's polls were enough for me to get started in the world of Ryzom over the weekend, so I took my first steps back into the game that I haven't played for quite some time. I still remembered how some of it worked, thankfully, but there were a lot of elements that I'd almost completely forgotten. And while I'm still knee-deep in the starter area, I've played enough to at least get some starter impressions. But let's make this a full narrative, yes? When we left off, the group verdict was that I would be starting out as a Zorai with the Magic starter package based off of a female Shakespearean tragic character. And thus, with only a little extra effort, Corlede was born into the world of Ryzom. The character creator offers a variety of features, allowing you to select your character's build in fine detail but offering a strange lack of certain other options. There are also some odd constraints on character types -- you find yourself always locked within a certain general band of height, for instance, so there are no really tall Trykers.
The Mog Log: Starting fresh in Final Fantasy XIV
You've just started Final Fantasy XIV. You have your introductory storyline quests designed to give you an idea of where the various guilds are and what's going on within the city, and then you're essentially left to twist in the wind. And now you've happened upon the immortal and entirely reasonable question -- what in the world am I supposed to do now? In a way, Final Fantasy XI had an easier time here. It barely pretended it was going to give you a structure, instead opting for "here, go give this coupon to that guy and get out of my sight." You were better prepared to start making up what you would do as you went along. Plus, no matter what, you could step out the front door of the city and start killing bees, or rabbits, or whatever the heck you're supposed to do in Windurst. Still, the games share elements of the same structure (or non-structure, to be more accurate), and so there are some lessons to be taken from starting up in Final Fantasy XI, as I've learned from helping to coach someone just getting started in Final Fantasy XIV of late. Whether you're new to the game or starting fresh on your return, let's look at where you go after the initial quests have worn off.
The Daily Grind: What do you want from a starter area?
When you start a new character, the starter area determines more than whether or not you want to bother playing any longer. It determines what you think about the game, what you come to expect of subsequent areas. Some games give you a brief tutorial and then throw you into the larger pool almost immediately; others deliver a carefully tuned experience that would fit well even in a single-player game. Both approaches have their positives and negatives, but both are going to form your impression of the game from then on. As a result, it's important to ask what players actually want from this experience. Leading your character along a single storyline, however engaging, is going to wear thin if you plan to start another character further down the line. On the other hand, it gives you a chance to get used to the new mechanics of a given character, and it keeps you engaged, a definite asset compared to letting you sink or swim from the word go. So what do you want out of your opening zone? A smooth and cinematic experience, or the chance to head down your own path right away? 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 peek at Gridania and Ul'dah in Final Fantasy XIV
Square-Enix has been as good as their word when it comes to obfuscating the details of Final Fantasy XIV, even through testing. Testers have been confined to the port city of Limsa Lominsa all through the beta phases, but last week Square gave a small hands-on to a handful of sites showing off the other two cities. FFXIVCore happened to be among them, and offers an extensive rundown of the experience in both Ul'dah and Gridania -- both of which are very different from the thoroughly-tested pirate-themed opening. Gridania's opening takes place within the dense forests surrounding the city, with a crashed airship and a rather unexpected encounter with wolves. Ul'dah, on the other hand, features a great deal of pageantry being disrupted by the untimely freedom of a goobue. Both include certain common elements from the Limsa Lominsa opening, most notably the meteor shower and the disembodied voice, but the rundown indicates that players starting in different settings will have a memorable start to their adventures as well. That's good news for Final Fantasy XIV's future players, although perhaps a bitter pill for the testers not yet able to play these cities.
Worgen starting zone preview from Scrolls of Lore
In lieu of providing any new information on Cataclysm in the wake of BlizzCon, Blizzard's been showing the goblin and worgen starting zones at a lot of major gaming conventions, which means a good handful of players have had the chance to try them out. Nostra from popular lorecrafting site Scrolls of Lore is one of those handfuls, and they've written up a fantastic walkthrough of the worgen starting zone, starting from your character's royal connections and subsequent infection and culminating in Deathwing's cataclysm. What's not explained (so far, likely because no one's able to get that far yet) are how the night elves play into the whole worgen "thing" as shown in the Cataclysm trailer, but there's still a lot of new information on phasing, quests, and scenery in Gilneas besides what we've already covered, as well as accompanying photos. It's definitely worth a read. Hopefully Blizzard will continue to fill in more blanks in the worgen storyline as we get closer to the expansion's release, or maybe even update the Cataclysm site more than once every four months. In the meantime we can rely on sites like Scrolls of Lore to give us exhaustive previews of public demos like this one. Thanks, Nostra! World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Starting out in Vana'diel: Character creation & taking your first steps
As we've said on Massively multiple times, Final Fantasy XI is a hard game. The crafting is complex, the gameplay is somewhere between EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and dying can be painful when you lose experience. Some people may tell you that the game just isn't that fun, but the game can be really rewarding and a great experience when you really get into it. It's just getting into it that's the trouble.But we here at Massively have your back. Well, more specifically, I've got your back. I've played Final Fantasy XI since it came out in the states, and more recently I started a brand new character and began taking notes on the entire experience. It isn't easy to start out in FFXI, but I've got some tricks to share with you that will make it much easier and much more fun. I'll be sharing them with you during our new twice a week series, "Starting out in Vana'diel."So are you ready to try a new gameplay experience? Follow me, let's go for a tour and check out the beginning of the game when you have to make some decisions in character creation and grab some early bonuses through the training NPCs.
The Eye of Sauron makes an appearance in Wrath of the Lich King
The ultimate evil in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is represented by a large eye sitting atop a gigantic tower in a desolate and war torn land. It is one of the most iconic images in not only fantasy literature, but also in recent cinematography. Just about anyone who has paid attention to movies in the past eight years would be able to pick the Eye of Sauron out immediately, and I would have to imagine just about everyone playing WoW would be able to as well.The Eye of Sauron makes an appearance in Wrath of the Lich King in the Death Knight starting zone. It goes under the name of the Eye of Acherus. In the image at the top of the article you can see the two side-by-side – the Eye of Sauron on the left, and the Eye of Acherus on the right. Arthas himself directs you to control it and use it to gather data from New Avalon, a nearby Scarlet Crusade fortification. Take a look at the gallery below for images of the quest, what you do during it, and how everything appears.%Gallery-28758%
Sign My Charter, a new community build around charter signing
We've all done it. You're sitting there, grinding away, minding your own business. Or (more likely) you're in a city, leveling up a profession or selling some things at the AH. And then, over the world chat it comes: "Can anyone help me sign my charter?"The guild charter is a game mechanic that's never really been questioned -- to start up a guild, you have to grab a charter from an NPC, and then get nine other people (not characters, people, as alts on the same account can only sign once) to sign it. But in many cases, a guild isn't even planning to have nine other people. And so, they come, the charter signers, asking and sometimes even paying to get nine signatures on their guild charter.The mechanic is a good one -- it keeps people from starting guilds lightly (or exploiting the guild interface too much) without actually being a big barrier to entrance. Some people are happy to sign charters, others not so much. I like St. Andrews Girl's approach over on WoW LJ -- she's actually started up a community of people willing to sign on and sign charters to get guilds started. Do you happily sign charters or would you rather people leave you alone? Sign My Charter is pretty empty right now, but you never know -- maybe there's a whole world of people out there willing to help guilds get off the ground.
Making/Money: Newbs at Auction
... And we're not talking about selling accounts on eBay. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a new player in an established game, to my mind, is the cost of start-up crafting materials. Hit up any public market area, auction house, trade square or similar as a newbie and you will see what I mean. Even low-level items of any use (i.e. not vendor trash) are sold for seemingly absurd amounts given the time that would be required at early levels in order to generate the money. It can make the start of a new character infuriating and the game too taxing (pun fully intended) to continue. Why does this happen? What makes these things so costly? Why can't we all just get along...? (Oh wait, that's another column entirely)
Best starting race
I've been leveling a few Draenei alts off and on and finally figured out just why it is that I keep rolling the damn things in addition to my beloved Tauren; their starting quests rock. You wake from stasis, meet the locals, save a princess, make early ties to the Alliance and find out why there's a good reason the some of 'em won't trust you right off the bat, discover nefarious deeds afoot, fight a dragon, and then save your people and get a cool tabard. "Find your way back to the Outland, Hero of Argus," Exarch Admetius tells you, in a nice preview of things to come, and Velen has a good lore moment with you shortly afterwards.Having leveled a toon out of every starting area to at least 20, it's hard not to notice that some areas make it a lot easier than others. I don't mean the general ease of leveling per se, but just how fast the time seems to fly by. For all that a certain percentage of the playerbase frowns on RP on non-RP servers, most peoples' favorite quests do have an element of RP to them, or at least the RP sense of being fully engaged with the world. And in that respect the Draenei starting zones are, in my opinion, unparalleled. If I had to rank them --
Choosing your first pet
Another new service provided by Mania's Arcania is a series of in-depth articles about how to choose your first pet when you're just starting out leveling your hunter for the first time. She covers the starting zones for each race, and highlights the pros and cons of all the best pet choices in each zone. So far she's covered the orcish, night-elven, and tauren starting areas, and more are sure to come.If anyone is starting out with a hunter character for the first time, her guide is the best I've seen on this topic, especially if you really care about the details. Most beginning hunters just choose what seems nice to them at the moment, of course, (or whatever their friends recommend to them), but it's nice to have a special recourse for those who like to do all the right research and make such choices wisely.
Starting bittorrent downloads remotely from the iPhone
I like Mac OS X Hints a lot, although I will admit that most of the hints they post just aren't for me-- either they're for things that I just don't have a need to do, or they're for things I already figured out a solution for on my own. But lately, I've been trying to figure out if there was a way to start up bittorrent downloads from my iPhone (we've already been able to control clients remotely, but getting the torrent file was the hard part). And so I was ecstatic to see this tip from Whosawhatsis-- with just a little tweaking, you can install a bookmarklet on the iPhone and a script on a PHP server that will send a URL from the iPhone to the server, and then download that URL directly into a folder that a bittorrent client (Transmission is used in the example) will monitor to download the torrent.Pretty slick. Whosa runs this on a separate server, but while I'd have to read up on exactly how to do it (or maybe our commenters could jump in with suggestions), I'm sure that it wouldn't be too hard to enable a Mac to run a PHP script when asked remotely. Get that running, make the necessary modifications in Who's script, and bingo, you should be able to click the bookmark and then the link on your iPhone, and have the torrent file show up in your Mac, ready for a bittorrent client to grab it immediately.
Starting a guild from scratch
I don't think Scott has ever covered this topic in his Officers' Quarters column, but it might be a good one: how exactly do you start a brand new guild from scratch? Actually this is pretty close, but even that column doesn't get to the nitty gritty of bringing a guild from an idea in someone's head, to a group of 25 people raiding successfully every week. It seems such a tough job that it's a wonder guilds have succeeded at all.I have only formed my own guild once, and it wasn't in World of Warcraft-- a group of people I grouped with in another online game thought "Silver Monkeys of Death" would be a good name for a guild, and so, strangers though we were, we paid the fee and grouped up. It lasted about a week. The only way I can see a guild really succeeding is if you have a few people who know each other in real-life to support it-- if you can get a chain of about 10 people who know each other really well (as in friends of friends), then you're on your way to getting a good guild rolling.But other than that, I can't really see it happening. I'm not talking about guilds who move from game to game-- I'm talking about guilds that are supposedly formed by people who've met each other only in game. Is it really possible for a group of people who have only met each other in game to actually form a full-fledged raiding guild?
