Monthly Archives: May 2006

Eve-Online @ E3 – Expansion details, great movie, voice chat, new engines

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All the latest announces were already in the air. Beside the bad news.

Condensed news:

– Kali is going to be broken in different patches that should start in Q2 06 and will end in 2007.
– Factional Warfare won’t happen this year.
– Voice chat support in-game through “premium service option”. (Vivox)

The E3 video is quite impressing, showing some of the huge ships that were added in the recent patches. Still, most of the scenes are obviously scripted and even the flight of the ships was manipulated and not really reflecting what you see (and play) in the game. I think some of the models are the also the new ones that will be added with the engines upgrade. Overall it’s still a great video. I just wish the game could move steps in the direction of what is shown (I always repeat how the combat is graphically poor and abstracted in Eve).

Beside this I’m really deluded. I had high expecations for Kali (the upcoming patch) and now they announce that the most significant feature of it won’t arrive before the next year:

The upcoming expansion to EVE Online—codenamed Kali—will introduce an innovative Advanced Reactive Content System (ARCS), in which the political landscape and physical borders of nation-states within the game can be altered dynamically through the collective outcome of player actions, thus directly controlling the game universe destiny and resulting storyline.

“Games either provide active content, in which the player reacts to artificial changes in the game universe, or they provide reactive content, in which the entire game universe reacts to the actions that players decide for themselves,” said Magnus Bergsson, CMO of CCP Games. “CCP believes strongly that the players should be the center focus of the storyline and control the evolution of the game universe. The Path to Kali will lead EVE Online to great heights in reactive content and further establish EVE Online as the premium free-form MMOG on the market today.”

The final component of Kali will be factional warfare, in which players will have the option to align themselves with an NPC faction. Also included in the Path to Kali will be the opening of new regions in the game universe, the addition of significant exploration content, next-generation player R&D that includes reverse engineering capabilities, additional ship upgrades and player professions, the introduction of combat boosters, and the addition of new warships.

The Path to Kali will begin in Q2 2006 with the first release, and end in 2007 with the factional warfare implementation.

Knowing CCP and how the patches gets always delayed I guess I cannot expect the “factional warfare” anytime soon. Just for comparison Kali was planned to be released this past December. Then they decided to split it in two, with the first part becoming the “Blood Moon Rising” patch and the second planned for June. And now it gets even more fragmented to go on for at least another full year. Blah.

Following this, there’s the announce of the two new engines in the work, one for DirectX 9 that should be out this year and the other for Windows Vista.

CCP will also release a newer version of the current award-winning graphics engine for EVE Online, which will take advantage of the latest DirectX 9 features to produce superior imagery and detail than the existing client. This Herculean effort requires that the game’s three hundred plus starships—each of which is composed of millions of triangles—be remodeled in ultra-high resolution. Players will then see these ships rendered by the power of per-pixel lighting, HDR, and soft-self shadowing.

Parallel development of an entirely new graphics engine called “EVE Vista” is also underway. The new graphics engine—named “Trinity II”—will take full advantage of the new features and optimizations offered by DirectX 10, which will ship with the new Windows Vista OS. The highly anticipated graphics API will give Trinity II the ability to render far greater detail by leveraging the fully programmable shader pipeline and utilizing the API’s built-in instancing support. The combined technologies will allow CCP to continue building dynamic environments with visual effects that will surpass the already stunning graphical presentation of the game.

I already wrote about the two engines since they were already announced. On the first link above there are screenshots from both version. The DirectX 10 – Vista stuff looks promising but, as Foton would say: “I’m not much interested in what I might be able to buy some day. Tell me what I can buy NOW.”

The last announce is about the voice chat integration that I also anticipated (same link about the graphic engine). CCP partners with Vivox and it looks like this service will require a special subscriptions considering that they talk of “premium service option”.

I’m glad, at least it could reveal to be an utter failure. Surely I won’t pay for it. There are bigger than expected design implications about the integration of voice chat and I still think it severely damage the community. From the press release it looks like CCP has a different opinion:

CCP Games and Vivox today announced that subscribers of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) EVE Online will soon have real-time, in-game voice communication as the result of a technology integration agreement between the two companies. Vivox will provide CCP with game-embedded voice communication services customized for and integrated into EVE.

EVE players will be able to speak with each other in-game, create audio conference channels for their gang, corporation or alliance, and start, leave or rejoin voice conversations during game play without impacting game performance. On-screen indicators will show the gamer which channels are monitoring audio communications and which player within a channel is speaking. Players will also have moderator privileges to kick, mute, ban and un-ban other players, all synchronized with the rights of existing EVE moderator and user roles.

“Players of EVE are attracted by its unique role playing and space simulation features,” said Hilmar V. Petursson, CEO of CCP. “But when players unite to form corporations and alliances, the game’s dynamic, immersive experience really comes alive. Now users will be able to talk, strategize, plot and negotiate naturally with each other. To deliver this functionality to our subscribers, we wanted a partner with expertise in delivering voice communications with a simple, scalable and high quality solution so that we could focus on our core expertise of building game content.”

Unlike other MMOGs, the entire EVE player base shares the same server cluster. With Vivox providing the in-game voice services and managing the required infrastructure, there are no resource implications that could impact game server performance. This new feature will be a premium service option for game subscribers and, because of itts tight integration into the game, ease of use, and massive scalability, presents a tremendous improvement over burdening gamers with maintainings their own voice servers with third party applications, as some EVE player corporations and alliances currently do.

“With its concurrent users numbering in the tens of thousands, and the game’s distinct depth and challenges, EVE is a stellar stage for our voice technology,” said Vivox CEO Rob Seaver. “Adding real-time voice to a game like EVE makes for an MMOG experience that grabs users and immerses them in game play that’s challenging and entertaining, and creates a sense of community and camaraderie. It’s this kind of technology that’s going to keep gamers heavily-invested in EVE and excited about the future of MMOGs.”

It’s the opposite, voice chat selects and segregates, it doesn’t integrate anything.

I have the suspect Mythic will do the same announce for DAoC this summer.

Maybe it’s just me. But this E3 sucks.

Passing the control over to the players

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I steal and archive a forum post with a few interesting thoughts with which I tend to agree. Some parts of it seem close to what I wrote about the “free will”.

Rollory:
As I was reading this, the first thing I thought of was, “This is why DDO is crashing and burning so hard.”

Oddly enough, I think that every time I see news about something interesting in MMOs. But to be specific. Leaving aside the required-grouping issues and the consequent vicious circles that drive players out of the game because they can’t find people to play with, thus making it harder for other people to find people to play with, or find a group willing to do new content, or the level cap that means your average intensive player burns through the entire game in the space of two weeks – DDO’s main selling point was the hand-crafted dungeons. All the content was made specifically by the devs, with absolutely no player input or control at all in what is in them or how they can be used. They exist as an obstacle course, nothing more – you run through them, dealing with the obstacles, and get the XP at the end.

Computer games are about giving up authorial power and putting the player in the role of the protagonist, and giving the player at least a certain amount of control over events – even if just tactical control. The Sims takes this a little farther, giving the player total control over what the “story” is, and giving them the tools to make everything needed happen while also making it interestingly challenging. MMOs are a step beyond, giving up more power and making the players in general the population of the imaginary world. Some MMOs go even farther, in giving the players powers of real significance in affecting the course of their gameworlds – DAOC and Neocron did this haphazardly; Eve Online does it almost wholeheartedly (empire space is still dev-influenced in its course, but that may be a necessary compromise). DDO went backwards, trying to take back power over content and put the players back in the role of objects moving along a course predetermined by an omnipotent Author. Players will put up with that for a time, but not an MMOG timescale.

DDO should have been a single-player game with optional peer-to-peer multiplay. What they actually developed would have been IDEAL for a game like that. It would have knocked the socks off NWN and BG as a game experience. As long-term entertainment though, it is not at all suprising that it doesn’t work.

SOE’s Station Launcher for PS3, huh?

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Someone spotted an odd press release:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Sony Corp. has revealed little about its upcoming PlayStation 3 online service to rival Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live, but an upcoming offering from the Japanese giant’s online game division may hint at its direction.

Sony Online Entertainment in July will debut a service, known by its working title “Station Launcher,” which provides users access to several of its online PC games.

Station Launcher, which ties together several programs already offered by Sony, will also consolidate lists of players’ friends from a variety of the company’s games, support chat and provide downloads of new game content and trinkets. Also, it will offer a single point where players can manage payments and link to other Sony-run sites carrying player rankings and information.

“It’s not going to stop at the PC,” said Nathan Pearce, a creative director at Sony Online Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Digital.

At the debut, Station Launcher will connect users to Sony’s “EverQuest,” “The Matrix Online,” “Star Wars Galaxies,” “PlanetSide” and “EverQuest II.” Unlimited play of all five games through a Sony Station Access subscription plan costs $24.99 a month.

Sony also will add “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes” to the Station Launcher lineup this winter, Pearce said.

Games on Station Launcher will constantly update to computers with live online connections so subscribers can go straight into play rather than waiting for new information to download every time they boot up. The service uses technology from Microsoft that transfers files using leftover bandwidth, ensuring uninterrupted computer use.

Beside what I underlined about Vanguard’s possible release and that noone believes, I just wonder what this whole press release is about.

I mean, what’s new?

Smed already anticipated both of the main points. The new patching technology:

Well, our front end stuff (including a completely new patching system we’re unveiling at E3) will likely be something we’ll work with the Sigil team on integrating.

And SOE’s involvement in the planning of networking functionalities for the PS3:

We’re also working with the PlayStation group to help them with backend implementation for the PS3 network, so you can expect to see titles from us that will take advantage of the online capabilities of the hardware

The patch system reminds closely what Nintendo announced for the Wii, the always on “WiiConnect24” mode used to download on the fly new content as it is available.

Newsflash: I already leave stuff to download on the PC when I go to sleep. Fancy technology, indeed. :)

Smed here talks about a “new patching system” but as far as I know this system is ALREADY present and integrated in the Station Launcher. I can already download in the background optional content for EQ2 while I play, for example. So what’s new? I hope the news isn’t that they are extending the service so that it starts on its own as you boot the PC and that you cannot turn off in any way. Sony has these sorts of bad habits and I definitely don’t want another kind of rootkit.

What the press release says about the PS3 is also odd. The Station Launcher already exists and doesn’t need to “debut”. It’s integration with the PS3 also probably involves just the backend since I don’t believe Sony has plans to port any of its current mmorpgs on the console. So I guess they are just unifying the technology to build a standard, reworking it to make it more like a community tool (but noone really needs another chat program on the PC). It’s also possible that the rumored “free mmorpg” could be a PS3 title, but I think in this case we’ll have to wait for a long time.

Smed, again, already hinted something:

I think it’s going to be game-by-game. Blizzard’s beta was great.. it helped them polish the game and it also helped them on the technical side (remember this was their first MMO). For us 9 months is probably too long.. I think the ideal # is closer to 3 months of closed beta and 3 months of open beta. We would likely go longer on a Playstation 3 MMO (if such a beast was in fact in development)

If it isn’t in development it is surely being seriously considered.

Overall I believe this press release just presents the same stuff under a different cover. A cover that reads “PlayOnline”. Ugh.

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Warcraft – E3 disappointment

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From F13, The Burning Crusade official trailer. Mostly a rehack of previously released CG scenes along with a few gameplay shots. Not so great.

Possible reasons of the letdown? The same speculations I’ve heard for some time:

Yes many members of the cinematics team have left Blizzard (three went to Red 5 Studios including the WoW cinematics director).

This E3 hasn’t been so amazing for Blizzard. Nothing too great to announce beside the Alliance race. Which was also deluding on its own. The model isn’t really good and the race hasn’t an overall interesting personality. Quite deluding.

I’ve quickly given a glance at the lore and it sounds really silly. Nothing even remotely close to the appeal of the original races. It’s like if the whole game is becoming more and more childish.

The Blood Elves racial traits not only seem more fun to play (with two skills interacting) but way too overpowered in PvP, following the trend that wants Alliance overpowered in PvE and Horde in PvP. Really bad design there, even if I have the suspect that to fire the Arcane Torrent you need to have the Mana Tap active (as hinted in the October’s leak), making the practical use a bit more tricky. The Draenei racials instead are pathetic and underline another design limitation.

They could have shown something more interesting like the flying mounts, or at least the standard mounts of the new races, but nothing. I don’t think this expansion will really bring something worthwhile and significant to the game. From the screenshots I’ve seen of the new zones there isn’t anything that tickles the interest. They seem rather bland and too close to what’s already in the game. “More content” doesn’t appeal me if this content doesn’t show anything new. It looks like it’s more of the same like EQ2 is doing. Not even a new feature for the graphic engine or the game in general.

But the real risk is another. This content risks to not be on par even with the WoW we know already.

Cosmik has the NY interview with Tigole. Some passages are really bad:

Q. Why not add any new low-level instances like Deadmines?

A. Stuff like the Deadmines and Wailing Caverns is extremely popular and gets a lot of use. But at the same time people skip over and pass that content extremely fast and they never go back. So there’s not a lot of bang for our buck in those dungeons. And Draenei and Blood Elves will be able to do those dungeons anyway. If we put the time into making another Deadmines, it would mean one less instance at level 60 or something when you need it to level up.

Hello flawed logic:

Q. Overall, what percentage of level 60 players do you think have killed Ragnaros?

A. I don’t have firm statistics, but my gut feeling is around 25 percent.

Q. And what about Nefarian?

A. From the gut, I’d say maybe 15 percent.

Beside the fact that he really has no clue about the overall playerbase (the numbers he gives are way too high to be reasonable), you get the idea.

There are valid reasons to avoid adding too much new content at the lower levels (like the mudflation), but the “convenience” of higher level content isn’t one.

(Tobold commented this too)

It’s insteresting also what he says about the itemization with tokens and factional grinds. Acknowledging what EVERYONE ELSE knew from the very beginning. Of course it’s the whole approach to be fucked up, but understanding that would be too much:

We sure have been learning from our mistakes. I think that itemization is something that’s never perfected. The key is just to learn from your mistakes and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

In Ahn’Qiraj and Zul’Gurub we realized we made a bad mistake with itemization. Token systems can be good and reputation systems can be very useful, but combining token systems with reputation requirements is not necessarily a good design decision, or at least it wasn’t with ZG and AQ. For example, ZG was supposed to be a stepping stone into raiding. So you take a guild that has little experience and they go into ZG and for a new group, it’s going to take them a few tries to down the first boss, Venoxis. And they finally kill Venoxis and what do they get? Probably one blue item and then this token item. But even using that token item might require Honored reputation, and so they feel like they’re not being rewarded.

I had that happen to me on one of my characters and I was like, “This is just broken.” So we realize things like that and we’re moving to fix them.

He had to have it happen to him to realize that his game design was broken.

They would be able to “fix them” only if they understood what is really wrong in the system. But they don’t. And don’t expect anything to change in ZG and AQ. When he says he wants to fix them he means with the new content. What was fucked up before will be left behind.

And they also have NO IDEA about the mudflation. This would be the VERY FIRST big problem you would have to consider when you start to design something new. Instead they don’t even have started testing it:

Q. In terms of how Burning Crusade players will be able to handle older content, how many level 70 characters, for example, do you think it will take to kill Ragnaros?

A. I’m not sure because we’re actually about to start testing on that, but I would guess 10 to 15.

They are just continuing to slam their face against the same wall. Blizzard was able to push forward the genre significantly and remove many bad habits. But now they don’t know how to proceed past the problems they revealed for the first time and the current trend will reveal to be ruinous.

This, of course, opens the way to the competition. There are many significant mistakes that Blizzard is doing and that could become the very strength of the competion. The problem here is that everyone else is even more clueless and no project (between the hundreds announced) has something valid to suggest and the resources to deliver.

So THERE IS a space. But there isn’t anyone that is moving to take it right now.

That’s pretty much what Blizzard’s E3 tells me. It is revealing vulnerabilities and that, past WoW’s huge success, they now seem out of fuel.

EDIT: LOL! Voltron!

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Warhammer Vs Warhammer: a battle of empathy

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Watch it yourself:

– Mythic’s Warhammer Online cinematic video (made by Blur Studio)

– Namco’s Warhammer: Mark of Chaos

I suggest to get the best quality vid of the Mythic’s one and I wish I could find an high-quality vid for the Namco’s one (edit: found, “save as” should work).

Both of these are MASTERPIECES, best stuff at the E3 (the Halo 3 video pales in comparison). Despite they are just CG stuff irrelevant for the actual games, they really deserve to be seen.

Mythic’s one has a better quality, better detail and art and even screenplay. It mocks blatantly WoW’s intro video and really achieves its goal.

But it’s still nothing compared to the mighty potency of the Namco’s video. Here the raw quality is less impressive but the video is more realistic and much, much more powerful and intense. It is overwhelming.

It’s interesting to compare two completely different “views” on the Warhammer world. And I still think that Namco’s approach can offer a lot more as a “disruption” (as Iwata would say) of the current fantasy stereotypes.

I believe these “fantasy worlds” can still deliver a whole lot. I think it’s blatantly obvious that the current mmorpgs, for example, really took the worst out of what the “myth” could deliver (for example: immersion and empathy, which should be OBLIGATORY premises for a RPG).

Both those videos are masterpieces and evidence of the narrative and emotive impact that the fantasy genre has and that noone is even trying to use.

Anyway, what’s the purpose of a CG video for a videogame? To inspire.

And both of these do their work awesomely.

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E3 Frenzy

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While forums and websites are already swarmed with news and discussions, the mmorpg-side of the market looks quiet without anything substantial being revealed or getting announced. But then the E3 isn’t even the best place to hype mmorpgs.

“OH NO PS3 HAS A TARD PACK”

Right now all the attention is on the PS3. The prices are high (q23emote1 and q23emote2), the controller “rolled back” to the standard dualshock but without the shock and the new screenshots of the games aren’t even remotely close to the movies of Killzone and that other motor-thing game that hyped the E3 2005 like crazy.

QT3 masterpiece thread (an awesome read from the first to the last page, realtime comments from the Sony presentation).

Squaresoft released some infos about the upcoming titles like “FFXIII” and “versus FFXIII”. Repeating again the double-title strategy of FFX and FFX-2. With the difference that this time the two will be released at the same time. “FABULA NOVA CRYSTALLIS Project” aka: how to double the sales by cutting down the production costs by a good amount. I would be interested, but I never like when Square moves away from fantasy to do awkward sci-fi. I hate guns in FF. No FFXII till October. Meh.

—
Only mmorpg news from WoW. Some infos were released about the alliance race but I won’t comment before they release something REALLY official and tangible. No hopes about Blizzard announcing something else beside the WoW’s exp.

EDIT: image 1 – image 2 – The images aren’t good but the model looks rather disappointing.

EDIT2: Confirmed, Eredar. Like Dranei, but with an even more generic feel. (murales1 – murales2) It’s possible that the new Alliance starting zone is Mt. Hyjal.

Added: Illidian murales.

EDIT3: We got (blurred) character creation – The model doesn’t look so great.

EDIT4: I’m mirroring The Burning Crusade E3 video. The video isn’t so great. Nothing about the flying mounts and just a quick glance at a couple of zones that look similar to what’s already in the game. I noticed the walking animation of the blood elves is still not perfectly in synch and they slide on the terrain.

—
Blizzard also announced a movie, though. A project like this one was already in the air but I thought they was going to do it in CG, instead it will be done with real actors. I’m not sure how this choice is appropriate to the look & feel of WoW.

There are two interesting comments from Paul Sams:

“We try to make big, epic, immersive games at Blizzard, and we have a track record of making some of the best games in the world,” Paul Sams, Blizzard’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “Similarly, our goal is to make one of the best films in the world. With Legendary, they have a creative and management team that is so attuned with us it was like we were separated at birth. We want to make a movie that will not only appeal to our existing fans, but will also bring in people that have never heard of Warcraft before.”

“But it never really felt right,” Sams said. “We never met anyone that really understood our franchise, that got what we do. With Legendary, we found a company that specializes in building a small number of big movies. It’s very similar to what we do. Blizzard only makes a small number of games; we focus on making big, meaningful games. It’s a very similar mentality.”

This fits perfectly in the recent discussions about the “portfolio strategy”. Blizzard mirrors exactly what I wrote in my “do one thing” and I think they current and past successes testify that the idea isn’t so foolish.

This is how you create mass culture. A swarm of games will never “win” the hearts of the players. Aiming for high churns is like trying to anesthetize the players. It works on the short term, like a temporary infatuation that everyone will forget when something more significant is available and makes you remember the reason why you play. The movie could become a huge marketing tool, but how far in the future?

I wonder how WoW will be in three-four years.

—
Still about Blizzard. An interesting blog post was linked on FoH’s forums showing many screenshots taken from WoW’s alpha and beta to demonstrate that all the content we have seen was already sitting there in a half-finished state. Some places looked even better than how they look now, see for example the Scarlet Monastery, Ironforge (this was really great and much bigger, even if more dispersive and confusing) and Darkshore.

So hopefully you’ve now realized that the game haven’t really changed much contentwise since the early alpha 2003, so what have Blizzard been adding to the game each patch?

They’ve added a few more quests, a few more armors, redone the graphics on some armors, released a few already finished instances, some holiday material and most notoriously, they’ve done class and talents changes each patch, and even redone some completly.

This, and the standard bug fixes, has been all the changes that have been done to the game since 2-3 years ago, and that’s the reason why I say there haven’t really been any new content implemented to the game, just reworked some of the old.

The extremely slow release of the Burning Crusade confirms that Blizzard is having a few difficulties to actually produce new content that isn’t just a copy-paste of old assets.

The article has a lot of insight and is interesting beside these considerations.

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Nintendo ROCKS!

Just watched the presentation and it owned Sony for good. No fact sheets or technical details, full focus on games and the crazy stuff you can do with the controller. 27 games playable right at the E3. No price announcements but the console should be out by the end of the year.

They showed dual-wielding swordfighting and the Red Steel FPS where you control the camera with one hand and the gun with the other.

And great slogans:

“MORE FUN FOR LESS MONEY”

“Expanding total number of people who play games”

“Wii and the DS represent that same thing: risk. Change is good.”

“Playing is believing.”

“It’s not about the look, it’s about the feel.”

Btw, I got a HUGE deja-vu watching the conference. There’s a movie titled “The Age of Success” that is closer to the reality than the reality itself. It’s incredible how the Nintendo conference seems coming right from this movie. The director is Jang Sun-woo, one of the greatest Korean directors ever. All his movies are masterpieces but this one is visionary (it was made in 1988).

EDIT: I slept and dreamt about the presentation. It really had a strong impact on me. Someone knows if the full video is available somewhere?

It was like watching the Willy Wonka of the future. Unbelievable. Those Nintendo guys are GENIUSES. I was intimidated and amazed. I’m in pure joy. They’ll save the world.

—
Not E3 related but still kind of interesting. There’s a test of the Ageia PhysX card that is supposed to become a standard in the next years. Well, not only in the test it just moves generic debris, but it doesn’t even “accelerates” anything. In fact it slows down games:

Certainly those who just spent upwards of $250 on a brand new discrete physics processor will be a bit surprised to see that their maximum, average, and minimum framerates all dropped compared to the results they saw with no PhysX hardware. Granted, the scenes using the BFG PhysX card were full of more debris and detail which further burdened the system. However, given the relative simplicity of that debris, we would be very curious to see how the CPU would perform using the same physics settings.

Vaporware? As if PC weren’t already pricey enough. We don’t need even more specialized stuff for the geeks. We need easier accessibility, both in usability and entry prices.

—
Sigil has an E3 blog. Nothing in particular to report about it for now.

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What NCSoft is cooking

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Small update and some precisations now that I dispelled some doubts that didn’t make sense.

See my previous guesses.

Fact #1 – Dungeon Runners is being developed in Austin and not in Cali. As someone remarked in the comments.

Fact #2 – Remember Blizzard’s devs leaving to join NCSoft? Well, these guys ARE NOT working on Dungeon Runners.

Fact #3 – Dungeon Runners was being developed by another company (Realm Interactive) with another title (“Exarch”, which also came from “Trade Wars: Dark Millennium”). For various reasons it passed to NCSoft who is reworking it substantially (I guess the release isn’t so soon as I thought).

Fact #4 – The Blizzard’s guys have really their own studio in Orange Country (known as “NCOC”), but working on something that is still unannounced.

It seems that Dungeon Runners went through many reiterations. See this three years old interview with the lead designer and notice how those screenshots resemble to those from Dungeon Runners. It looks like Joe Madureira followed the project all along as someone smartly noticed.

In its first incarnation (Trade Wars) the game was planned for a Q1 2002 release (and was a RTS). Wow, that’s four years ago. I originally thought the game had been quickly hacked together in a few months, it seems I couldn’t have been more wrong. It had a twisted, long history.

No idea if we’ll know more about all this at the E3. As Lum wrote in the link above, he isn’t working for any of those projects.

NCSoft – Subscription numbers for Q1 2006 (and more)

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(previous report)

This last report arrived much earlier than expected. We have already the results updated to the end of March 06.

The .zip file with the original pdf document can be downloaded here.

Before going in detail I underline the fact that Tabula Rasa may not be ready for this year and get delayed again. My comment: they say “conservative asssumption”, I say “it’s pretty sure”. Along with Vanguard this is another game that seems to fear the public but sooner or later they’ll have to face it. And then we’ll see how quickly all the hype will melt. You can hide only for so long. Both Garriott and McQuaid are victims of their own success.

Here are the three pages mirrored with the detailed numbers for every game:
– Detailed report for Lineage
– Detailed report for Lineage II
– Detailed report for City of Heroes and Guild Wars

Extrapolated data:

Lineage
1,497,297 subs worldwide
9.759 in the US

These numbers are rather shocking and I even find hard to believe them. In four months L1 lost nearly 800k, all of them in Korea. There must be a logic explanation because the profit didn’t budge (see below) and the highest concurrent user peak doesn’t mirror the loss. The number of subscriptions in NA instead looks constant, with a negligible +700 subs in the last four months. Constant also the performance of the game in the other territories (+40k in China).

Lineage II
1,302,340 subs worldwide
89,337 in US + EU

L2 loses another 200k in these last four months, again the loss is all localized in Korea. And again without a significant change in the highest concurrent user peak. The game lost 50k in China (looks like they moved on L1) and is up 13k in EU+US. Notice the trend: subs down in Korea and up in the western market. Things are really odd. 90k in our market is truly surprising for a game like L2. In particular so long after release. It is also possible that this is due to a major update that drew the attention of some players. It looks like it worked better for the western market than the Korean one. Two scenarios (about Korea’s reaction): the players are pissed off by the changes (or) the competition is becoming so strong that it just wasn’t enough.

City of Heroes
182,858 subs worldwide (which is US + EU only)

This seems to hold rather well (-12k) considering there were zero updates in the last months. Development is slow but the retention seems decent. My idea is that the game has a very high churn but still appeals to new players and many former subscribers often return for some fun. I see it as a game with “loose ties” but where former players gladly return for some familiar fun.

Guild Wars
Roughly 1,5M boxes sold in US + EU, which is the great majority of the market.

Not much to comment here. The game seems to do fairly well and it will be interesting to see the sales of the recently released expansion. I’m relly curious about why the game wasn’t accepted at all in Korea. You would expect products to be more or less popular, but the difference is just too huge to be seen as just “different taste and preference”.

General considerations: recently NCSoft released a pretentious press release stating that Lineage 2 “reached more than 14-million customers”. We already know that these are opened accounts and not active subscribers. Looking at the negative trends I underlined above I think it was used as damage control. I don’t know the situation of the market in Korea but it looks like the competition is getting more rabid and NCSoft doesn’t seem to have an easy life. The loss in both L1 and L2 could be the result of this increasing competition and Blizzard’s counterattack (archived since it risked to vanish from the internet). Interesting because Blizzard is pushing to impose the monthly fee as the standard even in Korea. It’s also interesting to notice that the highest concurrent user peaks for both L1 and L2 aren’t so huge. Right now WoW outperforms both by a wide margin in both NA and EU. At the matter of facts it looks like the Korean market needs to be downsized from the fancy image we got of it along these years. It’s still huge and more varied, but there are different trends going on that must be understood and that make it appear much better than how it actually is.

Some other facts extrapolated from their “Result Explanation”:

For the quarter ending March 31, 2006, consolidated net sales declined to 78 billion Won, down 19% QoQ. Operating profit was 8.7 billion Won, down 57% QoQ and pretax profit was 10.1 billion Won, a decrease of 56% QoQ.

Now I’m not a market analyst so it’s kind of hard to interpret these numbers correctly, but I’ll add some more quotes that I find interesting:

Sales Mix by Geography

By region, Korea stood at 63% of total net sales, North America at 15%, Europe 5%, Japan 10%, and royalties accounted for 7%.

For Q4 2005 it was 51% Korea and 27% NA. It’s interesting how the penetration in Europe is really small, despite WoW demonstrated that there’s a potential market bigger than the one in NA.

Online Game Sales Mix by Games

Breaking out sales by product showed Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/Villains, and Guild Wars at 42%, 40%, 9%, and 9% respectively in online game sales.

Consolidated Lineage sales were 30 billion Won, up 1% QoQ.
Lineage sales in Korea were 28.3 billion Won, up 2% QoQ.
Lineage sales in overseas consolidated subsidiaries (North America and Japan) were 1.8 billion Won, a decrease of 300 million Won.

Consolidated Lineage II sales were 29.1 billion Won, down 4% QoQ.
Lineage II sales in Korea were 20.7 billion Won, with little change QoQ.
Lineage II sales in overseas consolidated subsidiaries were 8.4 billion Won, a decrease of 1.1 billion Won.

Consolidated City of Heroes/Villains franchise sales were 6.5 billion Won, down 58% QoQ due to decreases in box sales for City of Villains in North America and Europe.
In Korea, City of Hero officially launched on March 22.

Guild Wars sales were 6.3 billion Won, down 57% QoQ.
These decreases came primarily from a decline in box sales QoQ in North America and Europe and the disappearance of additional revenue recognized in 4Q ’05 from changes in the revenue recognition method.
Guild Wars officially launched on January 27 in Japan.

Exteel officially launched on January 25 in Korea.

In Korea, operating profit was 10 billion Won, with little change QoQ.

In North America and Europe, operating profit turned to red. The primary reason for this loss was a decline in box sales for City of Villains and Guild Wars.

In Japan, operating profit was 3.3 billion Won, a result from the continued strong Lineage franchise sales and Guild Wars official launch.

And more juicy tidbits, with a (possible) interesting announce:

As we did not have any major product launch in 1Q ’06, our financial results for the quarter have weakened QoQ. However, these results are not materially different from what we originally anticipated.

However, we have reduced our previous earnings guidance to 353 billion Won from 396 billion Won on the top line and to 50 billion Won from 66 billion Won in operating profit.

This reflects the possibility that Auto Assault and City of Heroes/Villains could miss ‘06 sales targets. In addition, we take a conservative assumption that Tabula Rasa will not officially launch in 2006. We also carefully concluded that it would take more time to fully establish our casual games business in Korea.

NCsoft has been working hard to consistently deliver a portfolio of high quality, globally competitive game titles. Blockbuster projects such as Tabula Rasa, Aion and Lineage III along with unannounced titles from the company’s Orange County, California studio, and the recently announced 3rd party studio, Spacetime from Austin, Texas are in full swing with quality game developers. In addition, we are diversifying our portfolio with games in newer genres, such as Soccer Fury, Dungeon Runners as well as a number of titles being developed in Korea that are yet to be announced.

NCsoft has for the past couple of years been focusing on building a network of development and publishing organizations in key markets around the world. Rather than being bound by short term results, NCsoft has been focusing on executing our strategy of creating a network of best-of-breed local development talents around the world that outputs a steady pipeline of contents onto a global publishing infrastructure.

NCsoft is well underway for completing this infrastructure by the end of 2006. As part of this effort, NCsoft plans to integrate all of its services including account management, billing, and authentication by the end of 2006 in Korea. That will be followed with the adoption of a unified integration plan for all NCsoft services across the globe. This platform will create enormous value for not only for NCsoft customers but for the developers around the world as well. Ultimately, NCsoft believes that building this unified global online platform will enhance its leadership position in the global online game space.

NCsoft believes that 2007 will be the year that all these efforts will bear fruit.

By the way, things are rather confusing here about who is doing what. See image and previous speculations.

They have huge ambitions there, with huge risks. I’ve already written my opinion about this portfolio strategy, but it will be interesting to see the impact it will have on copycats like SOE.

They are going to inflate the market in an unprecedented way. I don’t think it’s a wrong assumption to say that what will prevail will be the quality, and not the number of titles. But one thing is sure: the market is going to becoming more and more chaotic and disorienting.

PvP and faulty thinking – How to learn all the wrong lessons

by | 16 Comments

From a comment:

What’s important about it is that it tells us that if you want massive sales of PvP, then you need to be looking at CTF/deathmatch style PvP, not “massively” PvP. Massively PvP goes against what makes real PvP good and great and fun.

There are devs out there who want to make PvP games, and they think they can compete with WoW for marketshare. They’re wrong.

Wow. This scores a new record in superficiality and flawed logic. Sadly, in this industry, it’s the norm. Hey “kfsone”, you could make a career as a mmorpg manager instead of a programmer, you have a talent there.

Let’s start from a comment from Arthur Parker:

WoW Europe has

67 PVE servers 4 showing high population & 6 showing low
107 PVP servers 34 showing high population & 12 showing low

This confirms even more both my points.

The first is that the players are giving there a clear sign. They want the PvP and there’s indeed a demand for it. Even more in Europe than in the USA. This is in fact not surprising and there are deep cultural reasons that I’ll examine another time. Another small proof of this is that, for example, DAoC is currently much more successful in Europe than how it is in the USA.

The distinctive trait between a PvE and a PvP server is the “world PvP” in which the majority of the players are involved before they reach the endgame. More than half the players, in the case of Europe, have chosen a PvP server. And for one single reason: world PvP. This is *undeniable*, no matter how much you spin it.

Those numbers from Europe, if they are true, are really surprising.

Then there’s my second point. I said that there are trends that define the population on PvP and PvE servers. These trends are general and not specific to a single game. On the PvP servers the players tend to converge on fewer servers because they want active communities. Instead in the PvE servers the players diverge and tend to spread much more because the competition becomes a negative issue.

These theories are directly confirmed by what Arthur Parker posted (if it’s true). The PvE servers have only four high population servers and six low. This because they are spread more evenly as the result of the divergence. Instead the PvP servers have 34 high population servers and 12 low. See the sharp highs and lows? This is because of the convergence. High popluation PvP servers continue to attract MORE players. While semi-empty servers tend to move to a chronic status because noone wants to play there.

Now let’s examine the other argument that wants the “counterstrike style PvP” more successful and even more “potentially successful” than “world PvP”.

As I wrote, this is similar to the claim that wants the hardcore PvE raids as popular and successful. They really are? No they are not. This is an imposed situation that it is obvious to anyone that remotely has an idea of what a game is. It’s the GAME DESIGN that defines what is popular and successful. Not the players. The players can only adapt and optimize the game. The players play the game by revealing its true rules. (see reference)

Let’s make a basic example.

There are two groups of mobs. A group of goblins and a group of rats. The group of goblins yelds you zero experience points, the group of rats yelds you 100 experience points each.

The game launches and the players, oh – what a surprise, go fight only rats and ignore the goblins.

OMG! THIS MEANS THAT PLAYERS LIKE MORE FIGHTING RATS INSTEAD OF GOBLINS!!!

What is WoW’s PvP system about? No, it’s not fighting against each other. It’s about *personal power growth*. Or the itemization wouldn’t have such a MAJOR impact on a PvP fight.

In the same way it happens with the hardcore PvE raids, the players do them because there aren’t WORTHWHILE ALTERNATIVES to improve their characters and NOT because they love them:

I am a raider, I’m in a raiding guild, but like many raiders in raiding guilds, I don’t really LIKE raiding. It’s a huge pain in the ass. If there was an alternate means to grow our characters, many of us would take it.

How many raids would be left if epic items were available through? What the players REALLY do prefer?

What is WoW about? What is the WHOLE GAME ABOUT? The answer is: achieving more power. At the beginning there are levels and skills. Then there’s the phat loot. WoW’s endgame is ALL about the phat loot and the access to it.

What is this game about? Optimizing access to the phat loot. Achieve it in the simplest way possible. It’s the game that DICTATES the goals that the players pursue. Such is the nature of a game.

Now let’s look specifically at the PvP. As for the PvE the PvP is just another pattern to achieve more power. In the current game there are two mechanics involved with thr power growth and PvP:
– Grind Honor to reach the high ranks and get rewards
– Grind factions to get rewards

BOTH these systems are UNAVAILABLE in the “world PvP”.

The first is unavailable because thanks to the diminished returns and the way the open zones are unreliable, it’s just not possible to compete in the honor system without grinding the battlegrounds FULL TIME.

The second is unavailable because the PvP factions (and their rewards) DON’T EVEN EXIST outside the battleground instances.

So why there are more players engaged in the BG PvP than those who do “world PvP”? Because this game is about the phat loot. And there are only two fucking ways to get the phat loot:
1- Raids
2- Honor or PvP factions

It’s not a surprise that the players just go to raids and BGs. There is no fucking alternative available. Or you adapt or you are OUT. WoW doesn’t offer anything else. The players who would enjoy the “world PvP” would be required to forget the defined goals of the game to just go PvP without any tangible reward. Just because they want so. Even if the game doesn’t support that kind of gameplay.

Quoting from Raph, again. The players go after the power-up. The players “see past fiction”.

WoW is all about a personal power growth. The PvP is nothing about PvP and ALL about achieving more power. There’s VERY LITTLE SKILL INVOLVED since the power differential gained through items is so HUGE.

The players see “past fiction”. Which means that they see in BOLD, FLUORESCENT LETTERS that even the PvP is all about who has the biggest dick. So they have one choice, which is obviously not a choice: adapt.

Let’s do an experiment and see how this fucking deathmatch style PvP is really more popular than world PvP. Let’s REMOVE all honor points and factions when you fight in a BG. Instead let’s put a fucking flag in the middle of an open zone and let the players gain faction and honor if they fight in the proximity of that flag.

Then we’ll see how many continue to go in the BGs, and how many move to the world PvP.

As I’ve already wrote, you cannot COMPARE anything without putting both options on equal footing. This is like Saddam Hussein winning the elections because there’s just ONE FUCKING NAME to vote. There is no choice that you can make. There’s just the game and the direction it tells you to follow. You can just see what the game is about. You can just try to “win”. And you don’t win through skill, you win through phat loot.

You cannot compare the world PvP to the BattleGrounds because world PvP IS NOT SUPPORTED by Blizzard. While the BGs are.

They don’t give any fucking alternative and what is left is that original, strong demand from the players:
67 PVE servers
107 PVP servers

For a type of PvP that Blizzard has continued to ignore. For the value that is left after Kalgan fucked the whole thing with his brilliant ideas.

Deathmatch style PvP isn’t “what makes real PvP good and great and fun”. It’s just the only “option” that you have to swallow. And this doesn’t say anything about a “preference”. Nor it’s a demonstration of success.

It’s just a demonstration of shortsightedness and manipulation.