the-soapbox
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The Soapbox: Time is money, friend
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. MMOs are plagued by nasty -isms. Racism. Sexism. Nationalism. Ageism. Orientalism. Homophobia. Misogyny. OK, so those last two aren't really -isms, but you get my point. No matter how much we want our fantasy games to be zones of escapism, these prejudices chase us there. Sometimes we bring them with us as unwanted baggage that spills out in chat channels and character choices. And sometimes they're inherent in the game design itself. Classism is one such problem you'd think the internet would reduce or conceal, but the divide between the haves and have-nots is stronger in MMOs than ever. To illustrate that point and how it affects us as gamers, I'd like to talk about another set of games ruled not by skill or talent but by money.
The Soapbox: A sense of humor is your number one weapon
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. It's one of my ongoing theories that MMOs severely tempt (if not outright encourage) us to engage in the less savory aspects of our character. I'm sometimes worried that these games do shape our personalities, at least while we're playing, to bring out the worst in us. I'm not talking about addiction or anything like that, but rather about things as simple as fostering greediness, selfishness, envy and bullying. From games that are supposed to be massively social, I often get the impression that the message they're preaching is to look out for yourself and get ahead of the (kill ten) rat race any way possible. At least in my own game sessions, I've seen signs of this happening. I've kept silent when guildies ask for help, because I want to get this quest done for myself. I've fallen into the stressful grind of endgame gear to the point of becoming completely fixated on it to the exclusion of all else. Once or twice I've written an angry diatribe on forums, attempting to use the sheer weight of my words to club the opposition into submission. And, yes, I've lost my cool with party members whom I judged as not pulling their weight, and I've chewed them out. It's usually at times like these when someone or something kicks in to remind me that I have gotten a little too serious and need to lighten up. It's not that MMOs are "just" games but that these are games, and as such, shouldn't we be having more fun and laughing more often than we do now? This is why, over the years, I've developed a personal philosophy of gaming that revolves around three simple concepts: if it's not fun, don't do it; help others when the opportunity arises; and always bring a sense of humor to the playing field. Today I'd like to explore that last one.
The Soapbox: Defining the word "grind"
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. Ravious has a post about grind and content over on the blog Kill Ten Rats, which started a great discussion that immediately attracted me like a rare earth magnet. Ravious presented a fake quest example and asked readers whether it equated to grind. Like he says, grind isn't a new concept, but revisiting it has the word-nerd in me hashing it over. Can we all agree on the term? On some level I think we can, but when it comes into use as a way to describe specific details about the grind itself or other aspects of MMOs that are affected by grind, confusion can easily set in. What I wanted to do was congeal my thoughts about this term, what its purpose is or should be, what I think it should mean, and why I dislike Wikipedia's entry on grinding. Maybe in the end we can all come to terms with it.
The Soapbox: The raid can wait; your kids can't
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. No, seriously. When I'm on voice chat and I hear a child in the background asking for his mommy's or daddy's help with something, it breaks my heart when the parent responds with frustration. "Not now, honey, Mommy's busy." "Go ask your Mommy -- Daddy's very busy right now." "Can it wait?!" Sure, it can wait, but if you've ever found yourself saying something like that, look into that child's eyes next time. All a child wants is your guidance, attention and love. When you take any of those away from him for the sake of a potential loot drop, you might want to re-evaluate your priorities.
The Soapbox: Game "journalism" is not journalism (yet)
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. Hey folks, welcome back to the Soapbox. Before I get started, let me add a personal disclaimer onto the Massively disclaimer you just read: I don't hate game devs. On the contrary, I hold a couple of them in pretty high esteem. What does annoy me is the way that most of them get a free pass when it comes to tough questions. Another thing that sticks in my craw is the way readers sometimes confuse journalism with game journalism. The two aren't often the same thing, and in fact the latter term is a complete misnomer. So, when you throw together my disdain for PR-soaked reporting and my facepalming at any mention of the phrase "game journalism," you end up with this week's Soapbox. In it, I'd like to take a crack at educating the folks who erroneously refer to both me and other game bloggers as "journalists." To do so, I'll spend some time examining "game journalism," and I'll start by defining journalism itself. Then we can look at how applicable the term is to the current landscape of MMO-centric media (and really, game media in general). Merriam-Webster defines journalism as "the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media." So far, so good, right? Well, look deeper. A more thoughtful, thorough, and instructional definition is provided by the folks at Journalism.org. Rather than quote the entire nine-point synopsis here on my front page, I'll highlight what I consider to be the second most important principle of journalism (the first obviously being truth). Not coincidentally, this principle is one that game "journalism" utterly fails to uphold on a daily basis: "[Journalism's] practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover."
The Soapbox: Sandboxes and the cop-out of FFA PvP
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. Last week, our own Jef Reahard mounted the Massively Soapbox with an article titled Sandboxes and the fear of FFA PvP. In it, he argued that open PvP was a natural and necessary part of any solid sandbox MMO. He also made waves by suggesting that FFA PvP is crucial to the roleplaying experience and that roleplayers should really face their "fears" and give it a try. I'm a sandbox gamer and a PvPer at heart. I played the early years of Ultima Online and lived the adrenaline rush of full and brutal PvP and thievery. Dark Age of Camelot's RvR sucked up another year of my life. Star Wars Galaxies remains my sandbox of choice, and I've braved a World of Warcraft PvP server since launch. I know this territory very well. I'll knock it, because I have more than tried it -- in several tasty flavors. And even though I'm an unabashed Jef-fangirl, I think there are a few debatable issues with his article. Hit the jump for some good old-fashioned counterpoints!
The Soapbox: Sandboxes and the fear of FFA PvP
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. Guess what! Sandbox games are for roleplayers. I don't mean that in an off-putting or elitist way, but rather I mean to say that people who enjoy and seek out sandbox MMORPGs are roleplayers whether their testosterone levels allow them to self-identify that way or not. The corporate thieves, spies, and meta-gamers in EVE Online? They're roleplaying. The gankers and hyper-competitive PvPers in Darkfall? Yep, they're roleplaying too, even when their names are variations on Loves2spooge. The other day I was talking to one of my closest friends about MMORPGs, roleplaying, and PvP. The discussion rolled around to Darkfall, as most of my discussions these days do, and his ears perked up when I waxed on about the freedom, the skill system, and the huge world that invites you to go your own way and is remarkably unlike traditional themepark games in terms of immersive potential. Eventually I had to break the news that yes, Darkfall does feature FFA PvP, and if that wasn't bad enough, corpse looting. The horror!
The Soapbox: You don't know what you're hungry for
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. If there's one thing that binds almost every player together, regardless of game or anything else, it's the fact that we're a bunch of demanding little snots. Seriously, we want pretty much everything in place at the moment a game launches, to the point that we begin hollering bloody murder if even a scrap of a game is considered missing. And it doesn't matter what sort of player we are, either. Whether you're a hardcore endgame enthusiast or an altoholic in love with low-level PvP, you want the game tuned, and you want everything in its right place. The funny thing is that in our demands for what we want, sometimes we never stop to ask why we want something in the first place. And it cuts both ways. Sometimes we think that something is an absolute necessity when it isn't really needed... and sometimes something that never even pops into our heads is an important element to what makes a game fun.
The Soapbox: Accessibility and customer service
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. I was originally pulled into World of Warcraft by two real-life friends of mine. They liked the game, played for a year or so, and then quit playing. They never got sucked into the world of MMOs like I did. I don't think they ever will either. It's not that they aren't gamers or that they don't fit into the culture. Maybe for their own reasons, they'd never play an MMO again... life and all that. But one interesting thing they told me makes me think they really will never play an MMO again: imperfect games. Now, besides the fact that no game -- online or off -- is perfect, there appears to me to be a great disparity in the functionality between MMOs and single-player games. It's easy to see how someone similar to me can work his way past a few speed bumps to get an MMO up and running, but what about a computer-illiterate person? Before there's even talk of bugs in the game or of the game being fun or not, there's an issue of accessibility and customer service. I want to talk about accessibility and customer service in this round of the Soapbox.
The Soapbox: Actually, it IS a land of rainbows and unicorns
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. My neighborhood is a perfect representation of the general MMORPG community. I walk my dogs around the block twice a day, so I have seen probably much more than any other community member would ever guess. You'd be surprised how much you miss if you don't get out and walk around the block. The cast of characters is always there: there are the old men who rise at precisely Retired o'Clock only to stand on their front lawns with hands in pockets, griping about the price of milk. I walk by and I can tell they want me to participate. Sure, they'll mention how pretty my dog is and might even ask how I'm doing -- but I know what they really want to talk about. Misery might love company, but frankly I think drinking milk is disgusting. There is one nimble old man, however, who jogs around the entire block at least twice a week. He's tall and lanky, but that doesn't stop him from flapping around the area in his too-old-for-those shorts. Let me be honest: Every time I see him, I fantasize that he is holding up his middle finger at those gripey old men as he passes them by. Meanwhile, most people are in their houses, laughing at the television and eating dinner. They are happy with life but busy living it. They don't say much and rarely leave the house.
Captain's Log: Supplemental on STO's treatment of canon
Welcome to another edition of Captain's Log, everyone's (well, mostly my) favorite column about Star Trek Online. Guess what? It's Thursday, which means Thanksgiving is upon us -- assuming you're in the U.S., in which case I hope you already knew that. At any rate, in the spirit of the holiday, we're going buffet-style this week, talking about a little of this and a little of that. But don't worry; most of you are probably slipping into a food coma already, so I'll keep things light, mostly. For an appetizer, we'll nibble on Cryptic Studios' little preview of Season 3. For a nice second course, I'll revisit my opinion on STO's treatment of Star Trek canon. And for dessert, I'll suggest some Black Friday shopping on the C-Store!
The Soapbox: Spoiled solo
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. Back when I got started with MMOs, I was playing Final Fantasy XI and complaining quite loudly about the nature of the gameplay. I think it was after yet another night of sitting in Jeuno looking unsuccessfully for a party that I went on a real tear, complaining at length about how ridiculous it was that the game didn't let most classes just do things solo. Grouping up for everything was a gimmick, a cheap way to throw roadblocks at players. If you wanted to experience the game solo, you should be given that option by the game. Final Fantasy XI never really changed to support that playstyle, but it wasn't long before we saw a flood of games with a much more solo-friendly attitude launch. World of Warcraft launched with solo leveling as a core feature, and over time we've moved on to games, such as Star Trek Online, which can be played solo almost the entire way through. You would think I'd be happy -- and I am, really. But I look back at games that required me to party up before I could even go out and earn some experience, and I can't help but think about what we've lost in the interim.
The Soapbox: Respect the IP (or, why MMOs can't)
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. Luke: What a piece of junk! Han: She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself. But we're a little rushed, so if you'll just get on board, we'll get out of here. Luke: Lawlz. You can't pilot that thing. It's a YT-1300 and you're a Rebel-aligned Smuggler! Han: %&*$ ... Ah yes, continuity. It might as well be a four-letter word, at least when it comes to MMORPGs based on existing intellectual properties. Sure, producers pay a lot of lip service to faithfully recreating beloved works in an online space, but the reality inevitably ends up looking like the love child of Frankenstein's monster and a duck-billed platypus. Why then do we keep seeing MMOs riffing on Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien, and even Battlestar Galactica? Easy money, of course. A better question, and one I hope to answer at the conclusion of today's Soapbox, is why "MMORPG" automatically equals butchered continuity. In a nutshell, why is it so hard to respect the IP?
The Soapbox: You have an hour to grab my attention
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. We're at an interesting time in the progression of the MMO genre. Development studios and publishers are beginning to realize that there's much more to the "MMO" buzzword than meets the eye. You can't simply tack "Online" to the end of a successful single-player IP and get a multi-million-player hit. A few years ago, this wasn't the case. Even as late as 2009, this formula was still thought to work. MMO gamers were still excited by the runaway success of World of Warcraft, with fresh memories of the "good ole" EverQuest and Ultima Online days fueling their optimism. When you have some of the best times of your gaming life in something as unique as those early MMOs, you hold on to that, wishing for an improved version to come along any day now. But with recent game closings, developer layoffs, and a general burn-out on the same features in mostly every game, that optimism is decaying. We can only take so many faction grinds and escort quests before we just start throwing our hands up and turning to other hobbies.
The Soapbox: Playing alone together
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. It's sitting there in my quest log, frustrating me with its presence and quite possibly calling me names when I'm not around. "It" is a fellowship (group) quest for Lord of the Rings Online that I need to complete to continue Volume 2 of the epic storyline. This particular quest has been moldering in my log for over two weeks now, and I'm starting to think I'll never get it done. I hate it. Oh, sure, I know that there's plenty of other things to do, I know that if I'm diligent I'll find a group sooner or later, and I know that eventually enough of my kinship will need to do it and we'll throw together a "help each other out" posse. But I absolutely, completely hate being dependent on others for my gaming, and it always grates when I hit a wall that cannot be passed unless I gather a few friends -- or, more likely, a motley crew of puggers -- to get around it all. Yup, that's right, I'm a solo MMO player. I'm the very oxymoron of what some consider to be the quintessential MMO experience, which is to play an online game together with thousands of others. I like to do my own thing, go my own way, and 95% of the time, chew through content as a one-man act. I don't mind being with other people for fun and adventures, but I don't want to need them to progress. And I'm part of a growing majority of MMO gamers.
The Soapbox: Episode II - A New Hype
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Well golly, I think it's time for a bit of contrarian opinion regarding The Old Republic. I know, I know, I don't write about TOR aside from the occasional news post, but here is one of the many joys of Massively (and more specifically, the Soapbox). We all play a lot of games and have pretty strong opinions about them regardless of whether or not they're our bread and butter. So, while my day job consists of covering sword and sorcery titles for our fine website, it's hard to get away from the oncoming repulsorlift hype train that is The Old Republic. Several months back, I wrote a Daily Grind in which I basically said that all the hoopla surrounding the game was getting tiresome. Predictably, crucifixion by comments ensued, all for daring to question the supremacy of both BioWare and Star Wars. The fact that a minority opinion generated so much rancor (yeah, I went there) got me to thinking about TOR, BioWare, and the unrestrained optimism that often characterizes MMO fandom in general. On a purely personal level, my fire has gone out of the Star Wars universe, the fandom is all but extinct, a couple of posters and a model X-Wing are all that's left of my former religion. Can BioWare rekindle that fire? Do I even want it to? Make point five past the lightspeed jump for more.
Introducing: The Soapbox!
We hear you loud and clear. While many of the Massively readers enjoy us for our news, many others come here for our opinions on hot issues. As a general rule, these opinions are restricted to individual columns that cover either specific games or specific topics by a specific writer. But what if you want to know a staff member's opinion on something outside of his or her game-of-choice? We have a solution. Starting next Tuesday, a new weekly column will emerge. The Soapbox is our chance to speak our minds on what we love or hate about the industry, certain games, current events in the genre, etc. This is our chance to get out what we essentially discuss all day with each other anyway, outside of the site. What bothers or annoys us? What are we excited about? While those opinions aren't appropriate for an informational news post, it's no-holds-barred in The Soapbox. Follow along after the jump for more info on what to expect.
