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I have sad news for the Massively staff and community today, news most of you already knew was coming. This week, we learned our AOL overlords have decided that they no longer wish to be in the enthusiast blog business and are shutting all of them down. This mass-sunset includes decade-old gaming journalism icon Joystiq, and therefore, it includes us. February 3rd, 2015, will be the final day of operation for Massively-that-was.
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how Vanguard's early stumbles foreshadowed the changing MMORPG industry. In January 2007, when Vanguard lurched its way to launch, the genre was barely a decade old; it was booming, and it had never suffered hardship on a massive scale. In the west, we'd seen only three "major" MMOs sunset (Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, and Asheron's Call 2), and only one MMO, Anarchy Online, had "gone F2P," though we hadn't yet thought to call it yet because it was such a rare and new thing. In fact, it wasn't until 2008's first big wave of AAA, post-World of Warcraft MMOs launched and mostly flopped that MMORPG players gave much thought to the future of the genre and how WoW had reshaped (and possibly broken) it. Maybe not even then. Here in 2015, sunsets are commonplace, and the vast majority of modern MMOs have adopted some sort of subscriptionless model. Last year, we lost more than a dozen MMOs, including Vanguard itself, all of them wiped from the face of the earth (at least until someone decides to resurrect them), and several more under development were canceled, leading to concern among industry watchers like those of us who pen for Massively. Let's try to get some perspective and revisit the MMOs we lost in 2014.
Working As Intended: Niche MMOs vs. the everything box
The MMO industry has lately focused on niche titles, niche communities, niche gameplay. It's not one particular niche, mind you. It's lots of different niches, all being catered to in different titles: PvPers, sadistic gankers, raiders, dungeoners, roleplayers, crafters, explorers, achievers, soloers, storygoers, casuals, hardcores, builders, destroyers, the I'm-skipping-class-for-a-week-to-play-games kids, the I've-got-five-minutes-what-can-I-play parents. There's an MMO or two out there for pretty much every one of us -- and for almost no one else. So we dutifully buy the one that beckons directly to us, one of these small-minded "MMOs" that offer rewards for a certain playstyle or two but wilfully disregard every other imaginable playstyle. We applaud these games for having the guts to embrace being "niche" because we are convinced that having lots of little niche games is diversity. And then we wonder where all the players are.
Working As Intended: But I already have that game
Back in 2001, I desperately wanted out of EverQuest. I hated the gameplay. I hated the community. I loved my guildies, but I hated what our guild was becoming, consumed by a grindy rat race so different from our roots in Ultima Online. When Dark Age of Camelot offered a way out, I took it, dragging as many guildies as I could along with me to a game where PvP and territory control, not camp checks and plane raids, ruled the day. Some of them didn't come with us, and I couldn't understand why they wouldn't jump at the chance to start fresh, to be rid of a self-destructive community and gear grind. What was wrong with them, I wondered, that they'd stay in some old thing rather than play the new shiny? Dozens upon dozens of MMOs later, I finally understand: They already had that game.
Working As Intended: Lessons from the history of MMO housing
Once upon a time, a subscription MMORPG sandbox had open-world housing, only there wasn't quite enough for everyone. Well, there was, but there wasn't enough of it in safe lands, so a lot of the people who wanted a place to live had to live in dangerous places they didn't like, places where they could be killed on their doorstep by other players. Even most of the plots in the safe lands were so remote or allowed for such small homes that they were undesirable. In fact, there were only a few housing plots on every server that afforded a strategic advantage in PvP or trade or storage, and if you didn't own one of those, you were at a distinct disadvantage. And when new lands opened up, scripters and gold farmers were first in line to grab the best plots and sell them on Ebay for hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of dollars. And legit players were pissed. I speak, of course, not of ArcheAge but of Ultima Online.
Working As Intended: The unfortunate conflation of sandboxes and PvP
A certain perplexing belief about sandboxes pervades the blog comments, forums, and general chats of MMOs: All MMO sandboxes are free-for-all PvP games. If it doesn't have free-for-all PvP, it's by definition not a sandbox because sandboxes let the players make all the rules and decisions. Free-for-all PvP adds the necessary spice to keep you on your toes and keep a game fresh. Without it, you may as well be playing The Sims. All of these statements are wrong.
Working As Intended: It's not the journey or the destination
If you play MMORPGs, you've no doubt been told, hundreds of times, "Slow down! Don't rush! Stop to smell the flowers! It's the journey, not the destination!" Typically, you're being told to slow down in an MMO whose focus is the destination: the endgame. All the good stuff is at the end. The best dungeons are there. The best gear is there. The best PvP content and titles and achievements are there. The players the devs cater to are there. Patches and expansions provide new content there. In fact, the only reason to play the rest of the game is to level up to get there. The midgame is a hindrance, a barrier to the "real" game, and it's usually neglected by developers once most players are through it. So if games themselves reward you only for arriving at the destination, why on earth should you feel bad for not savoring the journey?
Working As Intended: The forgotten fields of Green Acres
My first trip to Ultima Online's Green Acres was in 1998. The first guild I'd ever joined had just split up into a bunch of... let's call them "philosophically incompatible" groups, and I was still hanging out with some of the shadier types because I was a clueless teenager in my first MMO and wanted desperately to fit in and hadn't yet figured out where I belonged. "Hit this rune," my new guild leader commanded. His favorite murderin' weapon was a poisoned warfork. He was not a nice man. "I'm being evicted from my safehouse in Green Acres. Help me move my crap."
Working As Intended: Dabbling in indie sandbox Villagers and Heroes
Villagers and Heroes is not the sort of sandbox that gets a lot of coverage in the gaming press. You can't gank in the game. No one will murder you for your ore or your logs. There are no petty internet crime lords generating scandals or developers being ousted for cheating. Clichéd zombies are not waiting to slaughter you come nightfall. You cannot fall off a cliff or treetop pathway to your death. You never have to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow both ways to get to your house. You don't have to wait in line for an instance. You don't really have to fight at all. In fact, the worst thing that might happen to you is that you'll run out of energy.
Working As Intended: What Guild Wars 2 got wrong
Back in March, I spent an entire Working As Intended column discussing the game mechanics that Guild Wars 2 got right. But that's just one side of the story. In order to be completely fair to the game and to myself, I want to grump about the things it got wrong. Don't take this as utter condemnation for the MMO; we're most critical of the things we love precisely because we love and know them so well and want them to be so much more. And in spite of all the things I love about Guild Wars 2, it's far too often living in the shadow of its older sibling.
Working As Intended: Change for change's sake in World of Warcraft
MMORPGs struggle to meet two contradictory goals: They want to provide stability, permanence, a world you feel you can always come home to, and they want to provide dynamism, change, a world that always has something fresh and new. Lean too hard to one side -- change too much or too little -- and the backlash from fans and former fans and future fans can be overwhelming. That's something Blizzard has never learned. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard is constantly chasing different demographics to maximize its playerbase, and those different demographics typically want different things out of the game, be they veterans or returnees or hardcores or casuals. Most of the game's expansions have retooled combat and classes and specs in some way, but in Cataclysm, and now again in Warlords of Draenor, the class revamps have been so far-reaching that they actually manage to turn off both veterans and returnees. Gamers, it seems, are willing to tolerate only so much dramatic change to their precious characters before rebelling. This is a lesson City of Heroes could have taught World of Warcraft had Blizzard been listening.
Working As Intended: There's nothing wrong with soloing in MMORPGs
A Massively community member recently wrote into the podcast to tell us that he prefers to solo, to craft for himself, to avoid group quests, and to skip guilds. Still, he told us, he loves MMOs and doesn't want to leave them to play single-player RPGs. "What the hell is wrong with me?" he asked. Nothing. Nothing at all. There's nothing wrong with soloing in MMORPGs.
Working As Intended: What Guild Wars 2 got right
I returned to Guild Wars 2 recently after months away and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. No, there was nothing earth-shatteringly new, and no, I'm not going to praise the latest installment of the plot, but I realized that I'd forgotten just how much Guild Wars 2 managed to get right. I have many complaints about the game ranging from the way group combat in dungeons flopped to how the economy tanked to the fact that the living story bores me to tears. But Guild Wars 2 has some true nuggets of brilliance all the same, even if it doesn't have (I'm gonna say it) Cantha. Let's talk about them.
Working As Intended: Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs
Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs. I tweeted this last year, and it won't stop rattling around in my head. Every time a developer dodges concerns and leaps to his version of the "elder game," every time a reader claims a reviewer who doesn't get to endgame is irrelevant, and every time someone justifies a weak game mechanic because it doesn't matter at max level anyway, it rattles around some more. Endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs. Having an endgame, thinking you need one, and designing your game around it -- this is the core problem of the MMO genre. No matter how hard you spin it, when you create a game with an endgame, you create a game with an end... and not much else.
Dawntide development officially on hiatus
Last December we told you about Dawntide's impending beta server closure and temporary hiatus. Working as Intended was getting ready to go to work on a large-scale world revamp for the fantasy sandbox, and the firm said the open beta server would be down for a couple of months. According to an update on Dawntide's official website, that hiatus is now going to last quite a bit longer because the dev team has run out of funding. "We're still working on finding new investors, but this will take time. In the meanwhile, we have officially stopped all development," the announcement says. "We hope to be able to resume it in the not too distant future, but as of right now we cannot say when that will be or whether it indeed happen at all." [Thanks to Mersault for the tip!]
Hyperspace Beacon: Cheating vs. poor design
Recently, Ilum took center stage in an argument about exploits, and I honestly cannot say which side of the fence I'm on. When do the intentions of the designers take precedent over the players taking advantage of poor design? Well before Star Wars: The Old Republic even crossed the mind of BioWare's creative brain-trust, exploiters have been taking advantage of unintentional game design. Even more interesting about the situation with Ilum was that the design was not exactly flawed; instead, players did not respond to the designs the way the developers intended. The game was "working as intended," but the players weren't. At what point do we blame the designers? In a game as large as SWTOR, we know that if someone is allowed to do something, he will. At the same time, players are lazy efficient when playing the game: They will find the fastest and easiest way to level or gear up despite the intended path. Designers should know this. I remember in Ultima Online when players would raise skills by poking each other with low-level swords for hours on end. I am sure the designers intended that players would earn skills by actually battling each other, but the simplest solution was to prod one another with a dull stick. I honestly don't know if that was ever fixed, but I certainly don't remember a GM tossing out a ban hammer for it.
Dawntide temporarily closes beta server
Dawntide's beta server is officially closed for business. As we told you earlier this month, indie studio Working as Intended has decided to suspend the fantasy sandbox's open beta phase in order to focus on a large-scale gameworld revamp. WAI says that the servers will be offline "for a period of one to two months," and the company intends to keep players posted via weekly news updates and screenshots of the work in progress. Dawntide is a non-linear open-world title featuring skill-based advancement and a deep crafting system. You can check out our first impressions of the beta client via Some Assembly Required.
Dawntide closing beta server for massive world revamp
The curious saga of Dawntide continues, and the next chapter includes a wipe, a world revamp, and two weeks of sheer unadulterated mayhem. The fantasy sandbox has had a rough go of it in 2011, first with funding issues and then with all of the trials and gameplay tribulations that come with bringing an indie MMO project to fruition. Due to the large-scale world re-design, the title will be going dark for a couple of months beginning on December 19th. The game's open beta server will be wiped, and the devs at Working as Intended will be constructing and populating "a new, more interesting, detailed and visually appealing world." Prior to the wipe, players will enjoy skill gains at five times the normal rate as well as no-holds barred PvP in every corner of the game world save for the starting towns. WAI is also allowing players to keep their equipment upon death until wipe day, but the official website notes that these changes are only temporary and will not be returning when the server reopens in January or February.
Some Assembly Required: An early look at Dawntide
Hey folks, and welcome back to Some Assembly Required. The column's been around for a little bit now, and we've done everything from developer interviews to opinionated rants to sandbox and player-generated content feature spotlights. One thing we haven't done is an impressions piece on new sandbox titles, and I aim to fill that void today with an early look at Dawntide. The title is an open-world fantasy sandbox under development by Working as Intended, an indie outfit that calls Copenhagen, Denmark home. Dawntide has been under construction for quite a while now (we first spoke with the devs way back in the summer of 2009), and after a series of funding and development challenges, the end of the long beta journey is in sight.
New Dawntide patch due October 17th, release date announcement to follow
Hey kids, it's a Dawntide update! Yes, really. The fantasy sandbox from Working As Intended has been quiet since delaying its planned October 1st release date, but today the devs have issued a brief blurb on the game's official website that suggests a bit of hope for the future. As it turns out, the delayed release was the result of a funding shortage, but now WAI has secured a new source and the team has "reassembled to resume development." A new patch is due October 17th, and a new release date announcement should roll in before the end of the month. WAI also takes a moment to tip its collective cap to Dawntide's hearty faithful. "Thanks for sticking with us through the rough times, and we still intend to release the best sandbox MMO out there," the site says. [Thanks to Halldorr for the tip!]
