Play style

I’ve been thinking about play styles a lot lately.  When my kinship was getting ready to get into the Mines of Moria expansion in LotRO, we had a thread running on our boards about how people were going to tackle the content and make the transition between 50 and 60.  Many argued for the “take it slow” approach.  The slow levelers intended to stop and smell the roses, read all the quest text, take in the sights, etc.

My main, a hobbit burglar, is now finally 59 – one level from the max level of 60.  I’ve been all over the area outside the mines and even sneaked my way through to the content on the other side.  I’ve done a lot of quests and am enjoying my time.  I don’t feel that I’ve rushed through anything.  The person who started the “let’s take it easy” thread has been 60 for a while now on his main and is closing in on 60 on a number of alts.

 

Mines of Moria Instances 2

15.12
This past weekend I got to run a couple more of the instances in the new content.  The first instance I ran on Friday night was the one for book 15.12.  This instance is a huge pain.  One thing I’d like to see is the Epic Book quests available to all players.  I know when I enter a raid instance (Helegrod, The Rift, etc.) that it’s going to be tough going.  I expect the possibility of dying a lot especially if we’re learning an encounter.  The Book quests, imho, shouldn’t be as difficult or as dependent on classes or builds; they are a chance for all players to participate in the storyline and to help out the Fellowship in some way.  So I get irritated when I see Epic Book instances like the one in 15.12.  It’s hard.  Really hard.  The first group I was in wiped four times on the first boss and we had to reset several times along the way as key players died.  For all the good stuff I saw in other instances with regard to class freedom, it all went to hell in 15.12.  You must have a guardian and a minstrel – no other combination for healing or tanking seems to work.  For the remaining classes, players need to balance things out between crowd control and DPS.  Champion tanks in 15.12 are too squishy and are a waste of DPS.  Loremasters should be conserving their power to drain power from mobs or crowd control, not healing or DPSing.  Anything besides an “all-x” conjunction is unreliable due to targeting and the spread of the group.  Groups in my kinship have passed through this awful instance but class balance seems to be the key.

Why do I get so peeved about class balance?  Because players should be able to play the classes they like.  Someone shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to play something besides a minstrel (healer) or guardian (tank).  (And the reverse is true as well: players shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to play a minstrel or guardian.)  I’m tired of games where people take those roles out of a “sense of duty.”  It’s a game.  Play the class you want to play not one you feel you have to play.  I accept the fact that raids require certain classes and certain builds.  Most raiders accept that as well.  I’d prefer that the Book instances were more along the lines of the other instances in game and less like mini-raid instances.  As I saw in WoW, a raid-worthy instance with fewer players puts a greater emphasis on the performance of each player.  A disconnect of a single player in the Rift sucks but chances are the group can still win.  One dead player in 15.12 means a reset or a delay issue as they try to get caught back up to the group and the NPC escort who won’t stop except to fight.

 

Gaming News

WAR
I cancelled my account.  There are a number of reasons why I decided to let WAR go.  Population shift is the big one.  The dispersal of WARs’ population into different tiers is leaving tiers one and two abandoned as most people are in tiers three and four.  I’m an altoholic at times and rolling alts in WAR is impractical.  Open RvR is a hit or miss proposition: when it happens, it’s great; but it doesn’t happen often.  Other than that, the PvE is good (at least I don’t have a problem with it) and open RvR is great when it happens (though it seems to happen far too infrequently).  Scenarios are ok as well – I like them better than most of their WoW counterparts.  Still though, when I’m in WAR, I miss my friends from LotRO and while some aspects of WAR are certainly a lot of fun, not having my group of lunatics to share it with dulls the brightest of gems.

WAR is a good game but, given my interests and play style, it’s not for me at the moment.  With both LotRO and WoW coming up with expansions soon, I can’t justify paying for a game I’ll visit only occasionally while enjoying two others.  I may revisit WAR at a later time and I’ll certainly keep an eye on it as the game progresses.

LotRO
I’ve been goofing off with friends and my kinship mates.  This past weekend we had an exploration run of some ruins in Dun Covad recently.  We found and killed a boss I didn’t know what there previously and also found the old path through the city to Carn Dum.  Lots of fun was had by all.  Some friends and I are restarting our hobbit adventure group and we’re getting set up for the upcoming expansion into the Mines of Moria.

I’ve also been rereading the Lord of the Rings and taking mental notes about where I’d like to go and what I’d like to see.

 

Star Wars Epiphany

Star Wars is not a science fiction movie; it’s a fantasy movie with spaceships.  Star Trek is a science fiction movie: it contains spaceships and every piece of technology has a thin veneer of scientific explanation.  Star Wars, on the other hand, contains technologies with no explanations: they just work.  Ever wonder how a light-saber was able to contain the beam?  An actual sword made of light would need some sort of cap or lens on the end of the beam, otherwise it would continue on forever (or until it dissipated).  Light sabers don’t fit in a science fiction world.  In a fantasy world, however, it’s not important how light sabers work, they just do.  It’s the same way a mage can summon fire from his hands without setting his sleeves on fire.  In fantasy, it just happens.  In science fiction, there has to be a why.

Star Wars is a fantasy movie with sci-fi trappings and that is why some fans got angry when the Force got midi-chlorianed.  The Force didn’t need an explanation, it just was.  The Force had descriptors (it’s everywhere, between this rock and that tree, the land and your ship, etc) but it didn’t require any empirical evidence about how or why it existed.  The explanation, via midi-chlorians, as to how the Force worked betrayed the fantasy aspects of Star Wars and made it science fiction, which, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be.

Incidentally, these are the kinds of things I think about when changing a video card at midnight because my other card died and I really wanted to log in and goof off for a bit before going to bed.

Maybe I should have just gone to bed.

 

Discovery

Among the many great posts over at Killed in a Smiling Accident is a recent gem by Melmoth about the sense of wonder and awe these games can bring out of the players.

This is, I think, what MMOs so often overlook in their quest to be popular and appeal to the masses, they focus so much on the balance, the mechanics, the format and the structure of the game that they forget to add in that quintessential essence of adventure. This is what Blizzard did so well in World of Warcraft, they created so many vistas around the world, so many places and creatures that cause all but the most jaded of players to stop and gawp and marvel at the spectacle of it, to feel proud and content to have discovered and witnessed such a thing, and most importantly to have their desire to experience more fanned until it literally burns within them.

Whether it’s the first time seeing the library in Dire Maul (WoW), stumbling on Tom Bombadil’s house in the Old Forest (LotRO) or staring out over the tundra in Troll Country (WAR), feeling that sense of discovery and wonder is the driving force behind many of my adventures in these games.

I frequently find my own sense of adventure in direct conflict with the min/maxer attitude or the paint-by-numbers style of play.  Min/maxing is all well and good, but ultimately, I choose not to care.  More to the point, I like games where I can choose not to care with impunity.  Games like LotRO, where good gear is useful but not essential to progress fit the bill nicely as does most of WoW and WAR.

As for paint-by-numbers play, where every dungeon crawl gets reduced to the minimum number of twists and turns and the fewest fights and locales possible to get the maximum rewards, it is handy at times to play that way.  I still find myself wanting to go back to those dungeons not to kill the boss at the end but to take the left turn we keep avoiding or to see what’s in the room we didn’t enter the last time.  As part of my events officer position, I have set up runs of instances (called Exploration Runs) where we do exactly that.  We basically just wander around and gawp at things.

It’s a brilliant post and sums up quite well what it means to be an explorer and adventurer in MMOs.

 

State of WAR

Catharsis
I’ve been doing a fair bit of waffling lately about staying in WAR.  It’s a good game in many ways.  I love the world Mythic created out of the Warhammer lore.  Troll Country makes my list of most favorite zones in a game – up there with Mulgore in WoW and Dark Astoria in CoH.  The whole Chaos / Empire area is just beautiful.  Open RvR, when it happens, is very good.  Scenarios are alright.  In spite of many not liking the PvE, I don’t find it that bad (except for a lack of viable dungeons – I miss dungeon-crawling).

On the downside, open RvR doesn’t happen nearly enough.  The Witching event helped, but there was one critical flaw: it didn’t involve the keeps; the whole event was one big zerg across Troll Country.  Anyone trying to deal with the keeps, which are the actual fun part of those maps, got shouted down by players that just wanted to grind other players.  Because nothing says fun, apparently, like doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again until your eyes bleed.

After mulling it over a bit last night, I figured enough was enough.  I’m just a tourist in WAR with no particular feelings for or against the game.  I didn’t get caught up in the hype machine; WAR was just something to do until the Mines of Moria expansion hits in LotRO.  It’s time to go.  No hard feelings.  Nice game, but not for me.  Yeah, time to go.

But then something funny happened on the way to the exit …

 

Guilds and Raiding

Tobolds had an interesting post today about guilds and raiding.  I started a reply comment but it ended up being rather long-winded so I thought I’d stick it here instead.  His argument, in summary, is that guilds should be a group of friends that like to play together and that raiding is another way of playing together:

A guild is a group of online friends who decided they want to play together. A raid is an opportunity for a larger number of guild members to play together, with the purpose of maximum fun, enabling a maximum number of them to advance their characters.

 

Like shifting sands in the hourglass…

… thus passes the dwarves of our lives.

Warhammer: Age of Reconing
I’m still playing around in WAR but not with the enthusiasm with which I had originally started out. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I’ve decided to focus on my Squig Herder on the Destruction side. Environment-wise, I love Order lands, particularly the Empire areas, but class-wise I’m liking the Squig Herder. In every game, I usually end up playing the short, funny race and a goblin SH is both. His “Ow, My Eye!” exclamation when I click on him is hilarious.

One thing Mythic must address is the issue of level differences: as the mean level of the server increases, the lower-level areas are emptying out. This phenomena happens in most games, but it’s a real problem in WAR for Open RvR and Public Quests – both of which rely on teams of people for any significant progression. Most of the PQs for my level are empty. I have to grind the mobs until the second phase where I have to abandon the PQ area until the reset. Open RvR has been rather off-putting in that most of the groups I’ve ended up in are disorganized PUGs with little to no coordination.

MMO Doom
MBP has an interesting discussion about WAR and MMOs in general. Several gamer / bloggers such as Melmoth and Tobolds are also leaving WAR. In spite of the prominence of some that are moving on, I think that WAR’s future is still bright. Its niche of gamers, PvP fans who like fantasy worlds in general or Warhammer in particular, will likely continue to flock to the game. I predict a million or so active subs shortly after the holidays – not close to WoW’s numbers but still a very successful MMO.

MBP’s discussion also touched on new development and whether a new developer creating an EQ- or WoW- like game would make their money back. I have to agree with him: I doubt it. The problem: it’s been done before. Making a plain old copy of the mechanics of EQ or WoW when added to an unknown or uninteresting IP are doomed to failure. An IP like Harry Potter, might stand a chance as a game marketed for much younger gamers but less famous ones will end up with problems.

What the industry needs is a company willing to stand up and take things in a different direction or at least figure out what of the “new” stuff in more recent games is worth having and bring it all together into a newer, more interesting conglomeration. The bad news is: the only company, that I can see anyway, with the talent, drive and resources to create such a game is Blizzard, and they’re too busy resting on their laurels with WoW. A Diablo or Starcraft MMO would be great if they built it differently from the ground up. Until then, I suspect there will be decreasing returns in investments in the MMO genre as a whole.

Lord of the Rings Online
On the LotRO front, I’ve been playing less as a result of my Warhammer escapades though I am still playing. I upgraded my LotRO account in preparation for the Mines of Moria expansion and am looking forward to seeing all the new goodies in store for my wee hobbit adventurer. My WAR adventures do come with a certain guilt about playing another game. I’m an officer in a kinship in LotRO and while I’m enjoying WAR I most definitely do not want to let my kinship mates down. The other officers were understanding about my break from LotRO, and I was happy to be back last night.

Also in regard to Moria, the NDA has lifted for those beta-testing the Moria expansion so expect to hear more news leaking out. Thus far, I have it from some beta testers in my kinship that:

- Classes like hunters and champs will have their damage adjusted upwards to fight the buffed mobs.
- Guardians will have improved defensive capabilities (though there is a problem with their aggro-generating skills in the current state of the beta).
- Rift and other raid gear will remain relevant for two or three levels into the expansion. It will not become immediately useless like WoW’s raid gear with The Burning Crusade expansion. Even then, expect gradual replacement of items – not a sudden realization that everything you’re wearing is useless.
- Early MoM content is very solo-friendly. None of the beta testers I spoke to complained about not being able to make some progress in the Mines even when alone.
- Moria is a gorgeous zone but it is also dark. Tip: Alt+F10 is the key to use your “personal torch.” It’s not really a torch but it increases the ambient lighting around your character so you can see better. There appear to be three light settings: off, dim, bright.

The info above was provided by a couple kinship mates so I don’t have personal experience with it (except for the torch thing which I knew about before *flex*).

For those hungering for official news, check out the LotRO forum’s Dev Diaries page and see the dev diaries. Unfortunately, there isn’t a consolidated page of info but the dev diaries should give clues about the class changes, etc.

 

Officer Observations

I am an officer in the kinship in the Lord of the Rings Online. Unlike some kinships where being an officer is little more than a network of friends that need fifteen other people to drag along on raids, my kinship takes officers and their responsibilities seriously. I have also been an officer in two guilds in the World of Warcraft and a Supergroup in City of Heroes.

Along the way, I’ve picked up a few things which may be helpful to some folks who are contemplating creating their own social organization in the games they play. These are all based on my personal experience so mileage may vary.

1) See conflicts brewing ahead of time and end them before they start.
It is MUCH easier to see someone rolling need when they should roll greed as a lowbie than to correct the behavior when you’re raiding end game instances. The fallout is also likely to be a metric crap-ton less in a lowbie instance as well. Believe me when I tell you – you will remember when that paladin rolled need on the lousy shoulders of hooray-I-have-shoulder-armor when half of the guild is screaming in Vent about the same paladin rolling on the epic shoulders of overpoweredness. “Why didn’t I say something then?”

2) Lose the asshats.
No amount of skill, gear, rare keys to instances or personality can make up for being an asshat to guild mates. If a member appears self-centered and likely to create more drama in the future, try to intervene. If they don’t listen or seem to care, it may be time to show them the door. If someone seems the type to constantly badger others to do what they want while investing little time in helping other people, they’ll probably do little besides drive everyone else crazy no matter how skilled they may be or what other stuff they bring to the table. I’m all for trying to max out one’s assets, but keeping douche bags in the guild will make life miserable for you later on when: a) you have to explain to someone for the thousandth time why you’re actually keeping the schmuck around or b) you watch the people you actually have fun with leaving because they won’t stay in the same guild with idiot-boy.

3) Be sensitive to your fellow gamers.
You are all gamers playing a game. No one likes being put on the spot or called out in front of their peers. If something could reflect badly on someone, take it to tells or a private channel. Putting it in kinchat will 1) make the person with the issue feel bad and 2) lead everyone that’s listening in believe there’s drama lurking beneath the surface and 3) make everyone think you’re an insensitive clod for airing dirty laundry in public.

4) Recruit the kind of people you will like playing with.
This means getting to know them as players. It takes time to get this kind of relationship with a potential recruit but the payoff is worth it. You’ll know that everyone wearing your guild tag belongs there and people will look at your guild tag and know exactly what kind of people you are. In other words: unless you want the worst aspects of PUGs, Barrens chat and general asshattery to have to sort through on a daily basis; do not spam guild invites at anyone ever. (On a related note, unless you want the worst aspects of PUGs, Barrens chat and general asshattery to have to play beside on a daily basis; do not accept spammed guild invites from anyone ever.)

Recruitment is the key to building a successful guild. It’s the doorway that lets all the members in. If it’s wide open with no constraints, you’ll be letting in everyone. If it’s too narrow, you’ll be gaming alone. List out the things that you want in your members and then look for evidence of those things in your applicants. Having a recruit status (not a full member) and an observation period is a good idea too. Have them show you what kind of member they’ll become.

An observation period is their chance to see if they like you as well. If someone decides your kinship / guild is not for them, don’t take it as an insult. Not all guilds appeal to everyone. Be nice and try to steer them towards a guild that will make them happy based on their feedback. If you’re pleasant to deal with they’ll remember you when a friend of theirs is looking for a guild that matches the description of yours. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for steering people your way.

5) Be ready to be the bad guy.
You may have to lock or pull posts off your site, tell people to stop with certain inappropriate topics in kinchat or on vent, or put an end to something that would make the kinship look bad. The offenders will hate you for it. You will probably hate you for it. Your primary goal is the stability of the guild and the ability of the guild to do whatever it’s goal is (PvP, Raiding, etc). Don’t be afraid to pull someone aside and talk to them about what they are doing that’s causing issues. Also, focus on the behavior and not the person. Avoid things like “you’re a sexist asshole”; try “please do not post that kind of content to our forums” instead. (But keep in mind, they may well be a sexist asshole and need more help than you’re willing to give – in which case be prepared for #2 above.)

6) Rely on the other officers.
You can’t do it all in a large kinship. There’s too many people, too much stuff going on and you’ll also be trying to play the game at the same time. What I have found to work well is a division of labor amongst the officers. We currently have officers for Events (me), Raiding, Ambassador (kinship-to-kinship relations), Crafting and PvP in addition to our Recruiting officer and the Kinship Leader. We each do our own thing but also coordinate to solve common issues. An Event which led to a PvE raid would involve myself and the Raiding officer. I just have to focus on the event part, he’ll focus on the raiding part and that way we can get back to playing sooner.

7) Know when to lead and when to get out of the way.
You don’t have to be up front leading all the time. This isn’t the military. If a member shows initiative, let them run with their idea. Heck, make them an officer if their ideas are good or they show promise. I view officership in part as being an enabler: I move obstacles so members can do what they want. For example, we didn’t have a means of collecting class quest items. Our crafting officers set it up so now class quest items are part of the kinship bank (items are stored on alts – there isn’t a kinship bank system in LotRO like there is in WoW). People enjoy light RP events, so I organize them a couple of times a month. Our raid leader organizes raids and works with our allies if we’re short on people. Officers pull things together, get people in touch with others and work to get the most out of limited resources.

It’s not a glamor job. If you want fame and fortune, become a moviestar or invent something useful. If you like helping other people have fun, then you’re a good officer candidate.

And sometimes, the best thing an officer can do is get out of the way of their guildmates and let them shine in their own endeavors.

Be prepared to fail spectacularly, but learn from your failures.
A long time ago, I saw the movie Hidalgo. I’m a sucker for westerns and I like race movies generally so I really enjoyed it. Hidalgo gave me the idea for creating a horse race across Breeland. Riders would navigate across the map to a waypoint where an officer would be waiting to give them their next set of coordinates. After several waypoints they’d head to the finish line in Bree. There was no right or wrong way to get from one point to the next: riders would be encouraged to take the fastest route they could find. For players able to ride a horse, mobs wouldn’t be an issue – it would all be up to the player and their ability to navigate.

After a lot of prep work we were ready. Each officer in my kin had a waypoint assignment. We had the logistics worked out such that mapping somewhere wouldn’t be practical. I posted the event to our kinship forums and to the server forums. We were set! This would rock!

And no one came. Not. One. Person. The only person that came close to the starting area was a lore master who was lost. *facepalm*

At first I was ticked off, but I got over it and went on to create other, more successful events. The Breeland rally failed due to some other events going on at the time (an in-game festival), a lack of prizes and the scope of the event. Live and learn.

Just because one of your ideas tanks doesn’t mean you’re a dumbass. In fact, I’d say that if you don’t have a complete failure once in a while, you’re not trying hard enough. If you are conscientious about being an officer, you’ll likely be disappointed that you’re let people down. It’s not the end of the world – make your mistakes. I think most of your guild mates will see that you’re trying and cut you some slack.

While I can’t claim to be the be-all-end-all of knowledge about being an officer in a guild, the points above have worked well for myself and the guilds that seemed to have the least drama and most fun people.

 

Stand by your game

Tipa over at West Karana has an excellent post about fans in MMOs helping their games out. (And for the record, most of her posts are awesome – I recommend checking her blog out if you get the chance.) She makes a lot of sense. If you really, really like the ideas behind the Age of Conan (or LotRO or whatever game it is that you like) then don’t just bail on it except at dire need. Try to help them out. Fill out those bug reports. Inform the devs, politely and in clear English (or whatever language they speak), about the issues.

On the subject of error reports, there are a number of things you can do to make sure they’re taken seriously. As a software developer, these are the things I take into consideration when prioritizing bug reports / complaints and it may help you help your favorite MMO improve. Granted these are the things that I look for. If the game company has a format they want you to follow besides this one then use theirs.

1) Take a step back. Is it really game breaking that the maroon shield of blocking is actually burgundy? Does the thing you noticed really matter in the grand scheme of making a better game? The devs have finite amounts of time to deal with many issues. Don’t sweat the small stuff. When your game has reached a level of refinement to the point where there’s only small stuff left, then start in on the little things.

2) Setting. Where were you when the event happened and what were you doing? In a town? In a field? Using a mailbox? If it was a mailbox, which one was it? (Orgrimmar in WoW, for example, has at least two mailboxes; Bree in LotRO has four – one by each gate and two in the AH.) If you were out in the middle of nowhere, try to get the location coordinates of where you were. At the very least, provide the time when it happened to you. Most games log everything that goes on and when so you’ll be helping the devs narrow down on the events as they happened.

3) What was the expected outcome of what you were trying to do? Errors are deviations from expected behaviors so what you were trying to do matters a great deal. I expected to open the mailbox and read my mail. I expected to ride across the open field. I thought I would hit the mob for x amount of damage.

4) What actually happened? Do NOT say “it just didn’t work” or “can you look at it” without providing more information. Once I was told there was a problem with a database and “could I just look at it.” I asked for more information and was told again to “just look at it.” So that’s what I did. I confirmed that it was still a database. Given the lack of information in the original request, that was all I could really do without spending months of digging. If the problem really was an error, perhaps someone more articulate than the original requester would notice and I’d be able to fix the bug (if that’s actually what it was). Give the developers ALL the information about the error that occurred. Was there an error message? If so write down the text as best you can. If something happened, describe it in as much detail as you can. “I got an error that reads ‘object not found’.” I expected to keep riding but was suddenly dismounted. I thought I would hit the mob for x damage but instead regened the mob’s health.

5) Reread before you send. Did you speak in plain, clear, descriptive language? Did you put in all the information you have? Edit as needed.

6) Say thank you! Be sure to thank the developers. They don’t get paid nearly enough and they also have lots of stress and crap to deal with on a daily basis. Don’t add to it by being an ass.

Game developers have a mission to provide us consumers with an enjoyable gaming experience. Through our support, not only by voice but by our actions, have it within our ability to help them make our particular favorite games better. In other words: if your game of choice is messed up and you did nothing to try to make it better then you’re part of the reason it’s broken. If you did your best to help out and it’s still messed up, then there may be bigger issues going on which may be out of your control.