On the Road Again: Travel in MMOs

Ysharros at Stylish Corpse has an interesting discussion going about travel in MMOs.  She differentiates between meaningful travel (as in “I am exploring the area so travel is part of the fun”) and meaningless travel (as in “I just need to get to the next bloody town, already”).

Travel options are important in any MMO.  Run speed, fast travel, mapping / hearthstones, etc., all effect how big the world feels and can contribute to either the fun or the tedium players experience in games.  If travel is a pain, players may be less likely to want to go out of their way to explore.  If travel is too easy or too immersion-breaking, the world feels tiny or trivial.

Of any MMO I’ve played, I like LotRO’s travel options the best, that is: I like the range of possibilities the best.  I still have issues with some of the offerings.  Player mounts are too weak and take too little damage before players get knocked off of them.  In some places, stealthed mobs on the roads make mounting up a waste of time.  Durable reputation mounts are an improvement, but not by much.  I like the swift travel and regular travel horses.  They function like eagles and wyvrns in WoW but you can hop off them whenever you choose.  There are also hunter ports and various types of summons available.  Overall, the list is impressive.  The one thing I’d really like is a player sprint ability available at level one so we could get our lowbies around faster.

 

WotLK: Death Knight Impressions

Note: Since WotLK is still early in it’s release, I have divided this post into not-spoilers and spoilers.  In the top part is spoiler-free but clicking more below will reveal a fair amount about the quests and structure of both the Death Knight area in WotLK.

Last night I finally got my copy of WotLK installed having gotten it on lunch.  After a couple minutes of upgrading my account, etc., I got in (I did most of the software patching the other night which took about three hours).  Once in the game I had the option to enter using one of my old toons or create a brand new Death Knight.  I deleted one of my lowbie alts and created a Forsaken Death Knight and away I went.  (More info in the spoilers section.)

Let me just say that Blizz is the market leader in this field for a reason and last night was non-stop fun for me.  You know you’re having fun when you realize that three hours have passed and you still can’t stop exploring and questing.  Logging off was actually painful, it was that much fun.  Many of the things I saw and did were available in other games I’ve played but, true to form, Blizz put their own spin on them and made them shine.  I highly recommend trying the Death Knight even if you roll one just to get through the starting instance.  It’s well worth it.

As Tobold said recently:

I prefer the term quality of execution over the term ‘polish’, but however you call it, Wrath of the Lich King has oodles of it. And if I compare it with the last two major MMORPGs released, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I can only say that Wrath of the Lich King wins easily in the quality department. That isn’t to say that somebody can’t prefer the faster combat of AoC, or the PvP of WAR. WoW remains WoW, and if you prefer a fundamentally different sort of game play, WotLK won’t deliver that. But at no point in Wrath of the Lich King does one have the impression that one is playing an outdated game.

I agree.  I don’t think other game companies start out wanting to create unfun things.  They start off with a fun concept and implement it.  The difference is that Blizzard then refines that basic idea and mechanic until every aspect of it shines.  The siege engines in WAR worked.  The siege engines in WoW worked AND every aspect of them was fun.  Aiming them was fun.  Using them was challenging.  I still think WAR is a good game and I’m still enjoying LotRO, but both Mythic and Turbine could learn a few things from Blizzard in taking a basic idea and implementing it in such a way as to inspire the wonder most people expect from their fantasy games.

Next up, I’ll actually have to get my warrior into the new zones.

Clicking next will open up the spoiler part.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Much Ado About Scenarios

There’s been much ado about the lack of Open RvR participation in WAR around the blargh-o-sphere. Bildo has a post about it as does PotShot (you have to imagine the funny “o”s he uses). The issue, in a nutshell, is that no one is doing Open RvR because they’re all in Scenarios which are currently the best means of progression in the game. A losing scenario at level eighteen can still net upwards of five-thousand XP for five-to-ten minutes work. A winning scenario at level eighteen can grant upwards of ten-thousand XP. I can’t get five-thousand XP for half-an-hour’s worth of work in the PvE content and I’d probably get significantly less for Open RvR. Forget ten-thousand.

The only thing I can liken Open RvR to in my recent experience is the Ettenmoors in LotRO. It’s an open, instanced place where players are free to do what they want. There’s no particular goal, but there are rewards for taking keeps, etc. When both sides have raids put together, the battles are epic and a lot of fun. Sadly, it’s usually a raid on one side hunting around the map for odd players on the other side. To make the area the most fun, you really need players, lots of players, fighting on both sides. With two Freep raids and two Creep raids marauding across the map, the place is alive and exciting. There was no place you could go where there wasn’t troop movement or a battle raging. Without a population engaged in that kind of content, it’s just a boring map.

I hope Mythic can do a better job of getting lots of people in *each* tier to want to participate in open RvR battles – whether it’s making those battles easier to put together or some kind of incentive system to help players progress via open RvR (and enough of a progression scheme to compete with Scenarios). The idea of the armies of Destruction and Order hashing it out in open battle is cool and a lot of players would really enjoy themselves. However, currently, it would interfere with their progression. The Ancient Gaming Noob has a recap of a keep battle on his site today for those interested in seeing what one is like.

A lot of the discussion around the keeps is centered on the argument that the Scenario grinders aren’t having fun. “Why don’t they stop grinding and have fun with some Open RvR?” I suspect that either a) they are having fun as speedy progression is fun to them or b) they aren’t having fun and wouldn’t have fun at anything they do below max level. I disagree with both mindsets. I can’t stand grinding anything, whether mobs or battlegrounds, for any reason; and if the “getting there” part isn’t also fun, I couldn’t care less what happens at end-game – I’m gone. People are hell-bent to get to max level so they can begin complaining about the lack of things to do there.

“Why is there no Open RvR going on?!?”

“Umm … there was: It was the blur on your left when you were rocketing up the ranks in your PvP sport matches. *shrug*”

PotShot’s suggestions will certainly make battles easier to get into for Open RvR and Bildo’s would address some of the concerns of the progression-minded. I hope Mythic does something to inspire the troops on both sides to get some fun world battles going for players in each tier. It would be pretty sad to get to the level cap without having even visited the Open RvR areas because there was nothing going on there.

In the interim, perhaps the large guilds on each server could sponsor Open RvR battle nights? Might make things more exciting on the servers and rather than waiting for Mythic to do something you’d be taking matters into your own hands. Declare, oh from 7 pm EST until whenever people lose interest on, let’s say, Friday as open battle night. Enter the RvR area of your choice and have at. I realize that with the three pairings, each having its own RvR area available, it would still be a crap-shoot as to whether there’s anyone there to fight BUT that could be part of the fun. You head off and take the Greenskin area and notice that the Empire area shows it’s under attack. So rally your troops to stop the attack in the Greenskin area.

Or you could put an end-time on it and then say that whoever controls the most areas of all the tiers when the time-limit hits is the winner. Based on the demographics (Order seems to be on earlier while Destruction on later) I’d make the limit something like 11pm EST – late enough that Destruction should be in full swing but ideally not too late for Order players either.

A big problem with the idea above: no gaming forums. Players would have to coordinate it and cross-faction cooperation in this case would be difficult. Sadly, I think it’s Mythic that’s going to need to solve this problem and there may not be much the players can do.

 

Tanking in WAR Scenarios

I play a Dwarf Ironbreaker, currently Rank Twelve. I’ve been leveling mostly by doing either public quests or scenarios. The public quest part isn’t that interesting for being a tank: the mechanics are already similar in other MMOs – taunt, fight, debuff, snare, taunt again, etc. The interesting part of my WAR experience, however, has been tanking in PvP scenarios. Below are some observations I’ve made along the way.

You can’t dictate what enemy players will fight but you can get them to want to fight you. IBs have a taunt skill which, in PvP, acts more like a debuff: I will do a percentage more damage to that target until the debuff is gone or they hit me three times. If I put this on the enemy healer and start whomping away, they should probably focus on hitting me a bit. If they are hitting me, they’re not healing. My damage against a healer gets amplified if I have a lot of grudge built up as grudge amplifies my DOT hamstring attack (it’s not called a “hamstring” but the actual name escapes me).

An IB makes a great roadblock. With collision-detection in place, I can effectively pick players off my teammates. If the teammate is running towards me, I step between them and their pursuers. If the pursuer doesn’t change course, they’ll stop dead in their tracks when they run into me, thus allowing my teammate to escape. Hint for others if fighting along-side an IB: if someone is after you and an IB steps in the way, take a couple steps back – you’ll be out of range of the target (if they are melee) while they struggle to get around me and a healer can get a break at healing you (or you healing yourself). IBs can also block doorways and create bottlenecks in halls.

IBs also have an ability called Oathfriend. With Oathfriend on a teammate, my plus-to-armor and plus-to-defense skills also proc on them as well. I’m sure there’s a “best” person to put it on, but since I’ve been PUGing the scenarios thus far, I usually save it for the least clueless person I find (ie: the healer that heals or the other IB that actually tries to protect their teammates). Putting Oathfriend on a Warrior-Priest is a huge benefit for them, unfortunately, most of the WPs I’ve met fall into the nub category and I can’t be bothered helping them if they’re not going to throw an occasional heal around. Two IBs with their Oathfriends on each other is a thing of beauty. Myself and another IB defended a node and led the charge against another one. With a healer in the back keeping us up, the result was one of the most epic battles I’ve been in: two surly dwarves hammering away with axe and shield against the orcish horde (small “H”) while their teammates conquered the objective behind the lines. That was some of the most fun I’ve had in any MMO.

PvP tanking is a new concept for many people and it’s fun for those of us, like me, who are really good at getting in the way and making people angry with us. 🙂

 

Gaming Update

A couple things to report on the gaming front this week:

I’m still enjoying my time in LotRO but have pretty much maxed out my interest in the game until the Mines of Moria expansion this Fall. I still log in daily to run groups or go on raids or just to say hello but I’ve also been poking around some other titles both old and new.

I returned to City of Heroes for a little bit. It’s still the same game I remember with the added problem of now all my friends have moved on. Atlas Park, once the social hub of the whole game with anywhere between twenty-five and fifty players at a time chatting, dancing, etc is a graveyard. It was me and three other players last time I was there (and I’m pretty sure two of the others were afk). I’m still goofing off a bit with some villains (CoH and CoV merged into one game recently) but once the shininess wears off there I’ll be closing it down again.

And for the record, I am completely and totally NOT going to try WAR … except for the fact that I totally AM. Yes, thanks to Saylah’s stories and Bildo’s screenies, I felt compelled to try the whole thing out. I am currently playing a rank 11 Ironbreaker and a rank 12 Squig Herder. Thanks to collision detection and a new taunt skill which acts like an interrupt and debuff, PvP tanking is actually a possibility. I may no longer have the reflexes to do the uber, split-second dps casts but I should be able to get in people’s way which I’m pretty good at anyway.

I won’t go so far as to create a review of the whole game as that has been done better elsewhere. Overall, I am enjoying the scenarios and public quests. I find that the PvE is mediocre but I so enjoy exploring the different zones that at the moment, I don’t mind much. I’ve been to the major city for Order all of once and enjoyed the trip (except for the level twenty-something skeleton that kicked my lowbie ass near the docks).