Conspiratory flu

October 22, 2005 by Abalieno | 6 Comments

This is nothing too serious but it also doesn’t seem all that normal to me. I’m speaking of the whole WoW’s expansion leak, the coverage I gave it on this site and the bland support I received.

Despite I think I did a very good work, from my point of view, I also didn’t create anything myself. I just spent a lot of time to hunt and gather the news, making a clear distinction between what is fake and what isn’t. At least that was my purpose. I believe that who visits this site expects from me (in this specific situation) that type of dedication that you hardly find somewhere else. So I just did a good work trying to investigate and gather the news to repropose them in a more concise, clear and complete form. What I offered was simply a centralized presentation of all that was going on around this topic. Along the hours I gave the “event” a full and consistent coverage that is unmatched if compared to the other sites. You just cannot find another one, big or small, where the news were presented in the same precise and complete way.

In particular, the most important news (the first list of features, the screenshots from the press kit and the translation of the leaked preview on the italian magazine) had their origin HERE and in all the other forums (Q23, Corpnews, F13, FoH and the italian one) where I was restlessly tracking the whole thing in real time, trying to keep everyone updated with the latest happenings and fighting against all the false rumors that were making everything confused and uncertain.

What I find odd is that, despite something interesting was happening, noone cared to underline it. Noone noticed anything beyond the first leak of the cover of the magazine. Despite what came next was thousands times more juicy and interesting than a single quote claiming the level cap raised to 70. The coverage of this whole thing has been bland at best and completely missing if we exclude the fansites of the game. Even when all the major sites write down news about WoW for every stupid little thing they hear. In this case there was a complete silence or, worst, an active pursue of disinformation.

This is also nothing really new. My site surely hasn’t a good reputation and Slashdot deliberately avoided to link me a couple of times (for example about the infamous warrior protest) even when I was writing down more complete reports than what Zonk decided it was worth linking. If there was a news and 5-6 forums and blogs gave it some coverage you can be sure that the one missing was mine. Now I don’t find this surprising, nor it’s something I’d rant about. I wouldn’t link myself and I can absolutely understand why Zonk prefers to wait for other sources and avoid this little corner, down in the filth, half hidden. But this time it was different. The news weren’t covered or commented here. They STARTED here. There are a bunch of sites out there that cut and pasted my own words without remotely referencing me and everything I was presenting here has been systematically erased from the source and represented.

And again there is nothing to rant about. I don’t care for trackbacks, I don’t care if my words are cut, decontestualized and reproposed by someone else. I don’t care because that’s the essence of what I do. I don’t care if Slashdot links me and I don’t care if this site is more or less popular. This is just my “laboratory” and I use it strictly for personal reasons that I hope can be useful for someone else. In this case what I cared about was about sharing and spread the news. This is why I was out on the forums, this is why I worked franctically to put an evident line between a few fake jokes and what was, instead, REAL. And interesting. I tried to remove the confusion and gather all I could about that topic. I just was trying something simple: to inform.

So why I rant? Because more than one day later I saw this entry on Joystiq spreading news like I was trying to do. But the WRONG news. This is why I mailed them to explain what was real, what wasn’t and what they should report. Well, hours later this is the result. See, that page that Joystiq linked had the same list of screenshots that firstly appeared on this site and it was posted hours after I sent them the mail explaining what was going on, that I had a lot more details on the whole issue unavailable everywhere else (till that moment) and, in particular, explaining that their previous news was just about a FAKE. What did they do? They posted a news linking the same screenshots I had and linking back to themselves and the FAKE NEWS to create even more confusion. Wonderful work.

But it’s not over because even Slashdot and VodooExtreme finally join the bandwagon. These big sites arrive DAYS after the news. Still they carefully avoid to link this place where the news were more complete and attendible as it always happened in the past over similar issues. And they decide to hand out very partial and imprecise news. VoodooExtreme has a poor recap of the main features that vaguely resembles mine and a link to a translation that arrived two days later the whole thing while Slashdot links that Joystiq with the FAKE news. What a wonderful coverage.

“I was waiting for more news on it before posting” No. He was waiting another source to avoid to link me.

See, it’s not that I believe I’m the center of the internet and that noone is allowed ignore me. But I mailed Joystiq with the news and explanations. And Zonk (the writer on Slashdot who gave that awful coverage) definitely reads those forums where I wrote down the news in real time, contemporary to what I was writing on my site. The writer of Kotaku reads Q23. And so on. I’m sorry but I don’t believe that they were unaware of what was going on and, instead, I believe that this is the result of a deliberate choice.

Which brings to the last point. The other fake notes that started to circulate were linked just EVERYWHERE and they spread *way faster* than the legitimate news. They appeared only many hours after I started to post the real leaks and hand out a precise feature list, also explaining the sources and the reason why they were confirmed. These notes in fact arrived a few hours after Vivendi called me at home to ask to remove the screenshots. My suspect is that those notes started to circulate *because* of Blizzard. They may have been pushed out to create confusion once they saw that all their precious announces and exclusives sold to the magazines were being leaked a week ahead of time. And the echo that those fake notes received everywhere and in particular on the bigger sites may confirm this suspect and the will from Blizzard to create a total chaos so that noone could understand what was real and what wasn’t in order to still retain some expectance for the BlizzCon scheduled for the next week.

The real point, in fact, is that everyone with half a brain could have noticed at a first glance how those notes were absolutely RIDICULOUS. Once again, I did all I could to spread the truth against all the false news. Despite this, all the bigger news sites preferred to ignore what was actually going on to make everything even more confused.

Now, I definitely *do not regret* that noone linked me (but I find odd that this thing went completely ignored even in our circle of blogs). In one day this site burned 34 GIGABYTES OF BANDWIDTH (and thanks again to Dreamhost who kept the site running smooth as silk). It scared me more than the phone call from Vivendi. In three days I’m above 55 Gb and only thanks to the screeshots that were up only for a few hours. This site was risking a closure in less than five days and if even Slashdot tried to link here you would have seen a black page, right now, instead of these words. So “thank you” again to have avoided to link this corner of the internet that still managed to do a WAY better work than EVERYONE ELSE out there and also confirming as true and attendible the rumors on which I bet five months ago. Only in a very few cases I’ve been wrong and I think I can be satisfied of the little service I’ve offered. Despite I’m the only one to congratulate with myself and the only one to note I’ve done a good work.

On the other side I have the consciousness of the horrible work that the “bigger players” have offered. Still today there’s a whole lot of confusion and what is sure is that VodooExtreme, Joystiq and Slashdot actively contributed to this disinformation and offered an overall poor and unprofessional service.

(link)

This is a concern faced by all the “major”, “respectable” sites. Stratics, for one, has shown some editorial spine in the past lambasting Origin for among other things abandoning any pretense of a plot line in UO. Most gaming “news” sites, however, MMORPG related or otherwise, do exhibit an unsurprising lack of willingness to bite the hand that feeds them.

The bottom line is that this is an opinion/gossip/unprofessional rantings site, not a news site. And if you disagree with my choice of news stories, the Internet has about 9 trillion other pages more worthy of your attention.

“MMO sequels are dumb”

October 20, 2005 by Abalieno | 3 Comments

Enough of WoW. I go back to my own logorrheic and foolish commentary noone is interested about. Shoo.

While my site slowly returns to normality, I noticed on my RSS page an entry on Darniaq’s blog with an amusing title: “EQ1 Expansion outsells EQ2s”.

We build sequels because we stupidly think that these *worlds* (because we are creating worlds, not games) have life cycles and need to be replaced as it happens with every other “goods”. This news is another stab to one of those popular commonplaces.

Years of development and an insane amount of money invested into a new project that is now even less successful than the product that it was supposed to *replace*. Money and resources that were CUT from EQ to move them on EQ2. The same HUGE mistake that every other company is stupidly making sooner or later.

Of course it’s too early speak. EQ2 devs are slowly but steadily doing a rather good work and all these efforts could probably bring to a surpass once EQ is more and more left behind and developed in a “flat” direction that isn’t aimed to keep the game fresh and accessible. But this “overtake” is not something that SOE anticipated by looking forward and planning ahead. This is something that they decided and obtained. Something they chose (but I would be so interested to hear their expectations and marketing projections).

I just wonder what could have happened if SOE put all the resources that went into EQ2 to consolidate EQ and make it the best product (and world) out there. Building on top of what was being worked till that moment and reinvesting on the strengths to reinvigorate them even more. Probably even the community could have benefited of a focus instead of being shattered and directly encouraged to move toward brand new worlds (WoW).

Either way, we’ll never know. But I surely have my own opinion.

EDIT: Scott Hartsman commented elsewhere:

It’s an interesting topic, for sure. One other random thing to throw in the mix.

EQ2 has a proportionally larger number of overseas customers who wouldn’t show up in the US NPD numbers. (At least, I don’t believe they would. Fortunately, that’s not my thing. I just make games.)

So many that we adjusted our main US patch schedule to better accomodate the play times of one group (For Asia/AUS/NZ), and more in the other direction to where they really needed to be given their own patchers and downtime schedule. (UK/DE/FR).

Personally, I’d like to see the total numbers for all of those titles that included all locales and downloadable purchases, then watch the discussion.

Until then, good luck, and may the best conjecture win!

– Scott

Come and see a leak of epic proportions (and my website go boom)

October 19, 2005 by Abalieno | 5 Comments

Part 4 of 4 (1 – 2 – 3)

BLEEDING EDGE EDIT OF THE VERY LAST SECOND:

1- The feature list I anticipated here is 100% confirmed. All the other fancy leaks you see elsewhere are, instead, FAKE (believe me or not. In a week you’ll see I was right as always).

2- I’m going to edit that post in the next minutes to add lots of more insight infos I got (thanks interweb).

At least if the stress or the cops don’t get me.

—
It’s all here.

I’m franctically backupping things but I’ll hardly host that here or I’ll go overboard with the bandwidth in two days.

Anyway, if the links go down I’ll find mirrors. The interweb is big.

In the meantime I received my Vanguard beta application invite.

Have a funny leaky day.

EDIT: As explained the screenshots have been removed from this server. The original description was:
“includes more Blood Elves/SunstriderIsle screenshots, Karazhan and Black Morass Dark Portal”

EDIT2: Noone remembers but these new leaks confirm some five months old leaks. Anticipating news is fun and exciting.

EDIT3: First mirror went boom. I’m trying to host the file locally. Expect this own site to explode as well soon (or my bandwidth to go through the roof).

Last minute edit: The expansion feature list I translated here is almost certainly confirmed. The reader who wrote the summary posted on the forum a real photo showing the cover of the magazine. The informations were also confirmed by different sources.

CENSORSHIP HERE WE COME! I just received a fancy phone call from Vivendi asking me to remove the screenshots. The guy who contacted me was actually rather confused and I had to explain that I just collected and organized what I found. Anyway, Blizzard is RAGING and willingly to persecute everyone. The screenshots go down here.

But you are silly if you think you can stop the internet. Even if you have Blizzard’s money and believe you rule this world.

In the Q23 thread the images were thumbnailed and saved on imageshack. The original source seems also still active.

I wish I could still host everything here but I cannot afford the risk to go overboard just because I love mmorpgs and share informations.

Threaten for the win. Blizzard, you won a badge today.

EDIT4: Blizzcon is a thing of the past, so I restore the screenshots I was ‘asked’ to remove:

More fancy rumors from the leaky expansion

October 19, 2005 by Abalieno | 16 Comments

Part 3 of 4 (1 – 2 – 4)

Here’s your rumors.

To begin with, Jeff Green’s post confirming the two new races in the expansion has been deleted. For reference I’ll mirror it here:

Yay! I can almost start talking about it. Yeah, sorry, that was a bit of a tease, wasn’t it? Well, the issue is due out in about two weeks. Blizzard would probably rip me a new one, and, even worse, disable my WoW account, if I started leaking information here. The only other person who knows anything is my daughter, who also plays WoW and can’t keep a secret. So, if you can figure out which of the millions of players she is online and hit her up, I’m sure she’s spill. :)

I got to see pretty much everything—except for whatever the new race for the Alliance will be. That one they’re either keeping a secret or, more quite possibly, haven’t figured out themselves yet. But everything else I know. And while, like I said, I can’t spill details yet, I can tell you it is *huge*–tons of new content for all levels. It definitely got me motivated to get Eggbert, my gnome warlock, up to 60 ASAP. So I have many nights of serious “work” ahead of me. Yay!

So, as soon as Blizzard gives me the okay, I will replace my desktop picture with our December cover, which pictures an awesome painting from one of the Blizzard artist’s of the new Horde race. I hate being a tease (well, okay, it’s a little fun), but I just can’t tell ya yet. But soon!

Here is, instead, the translation of the *official* explanation about the “leaked” cover of the magazine announcing the level cap to 70:

“During Monday, 17 October we have closed various topics about World of Warcraft. The cover of the upcoming “The Games Machine” in the preview section of this site was also modified. This happened to comply our agreement with Blizzard Entertainment. The omission isn’t representing the desire to censor or disinform, but just the respect of the set date to disclose informations. What happened won’t compromise the content of the next issue of “The Game Machine” that will be regularly out next week.”

Therefore we ask “The Game Machine” readers and the community of this forum to patently wait a few more days.

Thanks.”

Which basically means (my english is broken but my italian is not) that the cover of the magazine with the title of the expansion (The Burning Crusade) and the catchphrase hinting the cap to 70 were, indeed, reliable.

Again on the forum of the magazine some readers are claiming to own a copy of the preview and wrote down some of the features (and here we have an high probability of fake, but, still, they could make sense):

—
New region:
Outlands

New Instances:
Kharazan – Inside Medivh’s tower in the Deadwing Pass zone (5-man instance evolving into raid)

Caverns of Time in Tanaris (unusual place where the players will be able to move back and forth in time to reenact the main events of the history of Warcraft)

Level cap raised to lvl 70 – There will be repetable quests to gain access to a flying epic mount usable only in the Outlands.

New profession: Jewelcrafting, it will be possible to create gems to apply to weapons and armors and add effects. Other professions will be able to craft objects with embedded slots for these gems.

New races:
Horde – Blood Elves with a new starting zone north of Eastern Plaguelands and a new dungeon.
Alliance – Undisclosed

Battlegrounds shared between servers.

Atmospherical effects.

Release: Not before May 2006.

—
The new region isn’t Northrend but the Outlands, with the remains of the planet Dreanor, the world of the first orcs. The remains of this planet float in the air, this is why it will be formed like separated “isles”.

Same for Tanaris. There will be a brand new instance working like a temporal breach that will allow the players to time travel (hence the name: Caverns of Time) and reenact past events. The war at mount Hyal is one.

The level 70 is real, but no hero classes.

The new race for the horde is the blood elf. The racial traits will be a “Mana Tap” to slowly leech the mana of the target (it will be applicable more than once like the Sunder Armor) and that will then directly load the second trait: “Arcane Torment (or Torrent)” which will work like an area silence. The starting zone will probably be near Quel’thalas.

The Alliance race is still not available but it seems it will be Pandarens.

The new profession will be Jewelcrafting that works in a similar way to how the gems worked in Diablo 2.

And btw, the main boss will be Illidian.

—
Finally, yet another creation screen appeared on the internet (LOL!).

Some of what is written here is true. Some isn’t. It’s like a game. Enjoy.

—
As anticipated in the other article, here more juicy details:

Excerpt:

Now, instead, what will be a surprise: the maximum level for the characters will be upped to 70. As he heard about this, ToSo (an editor) started immediately to weep that he wanted back the all exp he wasted doing quests when already 60 (“and of course! I’m not going to clean cat ass forever!” -ToSo), so if you had the same reaction you are going to take it in the booty. Although the Hero classes haven’t been announced (Rob Pardo, Vice President of Game Design, said: “if we screw the hero classes we risk to fuck up the whole game”) Blizzard didn’t deny they’ll be in the expansion but also didn’t promise it. So we cannot really say much more.

– The new Alliance race WON’T be revealed at BlizzCon and there are more than just rumors confirming it will be the Pandarens.

– Kharazan should be playable at BlizzCon but it’s still undefined how it will be shaped out (could probably start as a 5-man with a second part for a raid of 20 or 40 players).

– The Blood Elves will be Mages, Warlocks and Warriors but it’s undecided if either hunters or rogues.

– Their starting zone will be Quel’Thalas (what is left of it), north of the Eastern Plaguelands and with a three-zones valley inbetween (Eversong Woods with the capital Silvermoon, Ghostland and a troll themed zone called Zul’Aman).

– About the live content, the opening of Silithus will be introduced by a live event that will require the collaboration of everyone and that will only happen once for each server. Behind the gates there will be a open zone tailored for 20 players (defined by Blizzard “casual hardcore”) with a temple at the center with an instance that will be the biggest to date (two-three times Molten Core). The players will also get access to special mounts (insects) that will be only usable in the dungeon.

– The Outlands will be divided into differently themed regions (like the rock valleys of the Hellfire Peninsula and the luxuriant forests of Zanga Marsh, part of what is left of Dreanor). While within Shadowmoon Valley there will be the Black Temple with the Illidian guy.

– The flying mount will be for level 70 players and after an epic quest chain. But only usable in the Outlands (floating isles).

– No new engine changes or features. The Blood Elves models seem to use 20% more polygons. Blizzard is also sperimenting with Specular Environmental Mapping.

– The atmospherical effects should arrive soon(TM) as a live patch.

– Also, by the time the expansion is out, the BGs should be finally linked between the servers to kill the queues.

—

Hopefully last edit ever:
I refused to make public my translation of the expansion preview, this is why I gathered only this sort of feature list. But if you want to read a more fluent translation of the article you can look here. Besides a few minor imprecisations and omissions it’s a decent translation of the whole thing (I could read only 80% of it, myself, so there are parts missing here).

—
Last update as explained here (I also slightly edited some details above to avoid contradictions):

– The whole expansion will be centered around the Outlands, Medivh and the Dark Portal to make the main storyline progress.

– Background: Sargeras, the Titan representing the “evil” in the game, still wants to destroy the universe. His last plan is to ignore Azeroth, where he ecountered an unexpected resistence, to focus on the Outland. The realm with the remains of the planet of Dreanor, homeland of the orcs. What is left of this place grants access to the Twisting Nether, a portal that can be used to access every other plane of the existence. Here is where the battle between the forces of Azeroth and the demonic forces of Sargeras and his two lieutenants, Archimonde and Kil’Jaeden, will take place.

– The orcs were brought on Azeroth by Medivh through the Dark Portal. Still through the same portal the humans invaded Dreanor and damaged the portal, producing devastations on both sides. Destroying Dreanor from one and creating the Blasted Lands from the other.

– Through the Caverns of Time (located in Tanaris) the players will be able to see the zone surrounding the portal before the disaster and, in particular reenact the invasion of the orcs through the portal. The Caverns of Time are the place where the bronze dragons lead by Nordozmu “supervise” the flow of time.

– The Caverns of Time will allow the players to reenact three events. The invasion of the orcs as written above, the release of Thrall from enslavement and the battle of Mount Hyal, where the humans, orc and elves defeated Arthas and his army.

– The Deadwind Pass zone should get a restyle with the new year to be ready for the release of the expansion and the Kharazan instance.

– At least these two big instances are confirmed. Kharazan and the Caverns of Time.

Bloody Hellves

October 18, 2005 by Abalieno | 28 Comments

Part 2 of 4 (1 – 3 – 4)

Taken from Corpnews. Both screenshots and commentary that I see fit:

Freakazoid:
I fully expect this expansion to take an easy route. By that, I mean they will re-use as much texture and models as they can and still call it new content. I also don’t expect anymore plot integrity. The recent good-dragons-gone-bad thing tells me Blizzard has given up on immersion to support the catassers who are happy to have a new dragon to raid.

CrashCat:
I was going to say, I’m sure glad those millions of subscriptions gave them enough money to afford sophisticated development techniques such as pallette shifting. Woo!

It seems that the Horde got its “pretty” race. A bit too familiar. but pretty.

(and we’ll finally discover that the alliance/horde unbalance problem is not as trivial as everyone expected it to be…)

I remove from the homepage the creation screen that was revealed (in the comments here) as fake.

Now can I have my quiet website back? Those are just a couple of screenshots posted everywhere.

WoW level cap to 70

October 17, 2005 by Abalieno | 1 Comment

Part 1 of 4 (2 – 3 – 4)

I get italian news from the interweb.

THE BURNING CRUSADE.

The correct translation of the diciture is: “Blizzard surprises everyone by bringing us to level 70!”

Or something like that. Now it’s 22.30 here, but you can be sure I’ll go out early tomorrow and find out what I can. If there’s something juicy I could try to scan it. I’m not sure whether the magazine is out or not, though.

Anyway, that’s the most important PC game magazine we have here and it is surely reliable.

It’s also sad that Blizzard couldn’t think anything else than just to rise the level cap. How innovative.

EDIT: It seem the scan was posted on the official site and is now removed. It’s not sure whether a fake or deleted on Blizzard request. The moderators on the forum of the magazine are closing all the threads about the episode and asking everyone to understand that the situation isn’t simple and they cannot comment further.

Official comment from the editor of the magazine: at this point it’s advisable a general “no comment”. Do it for me, please! (and thanks)

They have always previewed the cover and summary long before the magazine is out. I believe they just didn’t anticipate what was going to happen in this special case and now they are in trouble.

And, since we are talking about rumors, there’s a screenshot hinting that the new horde race will be the “blood elves”. That the expansion will have two new races, one for each faction, was somewhat confirmed here.

Worldofwar also commented this “leak” and added more details about the title:

A little more on the Burning Crusade name. This trademark was registered by Blizzard back on 3 May of this year under ‘computer software’. At the time speculation tied it to a WoW expansion after discovering mention of the name on Blizzard’s page about Sargeras, champion of the Titans, specifically this bit:

“Once Sargeras saw that his armies were amassed and ready to follow his every command, he launched his raging forces into the vastness of the Great Dark. He referred to his growing army as the Burning Legion. To this date, it is still unclear how many worlds they consumed and burned on their unholy Burning Crusade across the universe.”

And finally a screenshot with what seems a Blood Elves town:

“Please take care of me”

October 17, 2005 by Abalieno | Leave a comment

There’s an article at TerraNova written by the newly acquired Mia Consalvo and describing the different way to play FFXI between american and japanese players.

I like how she writes, the article is free of all the usual weight and unpractical references and reasonings typical at TerraNova. It’s an easy and interesting read and I really do not miss the lack of academic attitude in this case.

I also like the polite and cutesy behaviours of the japanese players :) Maybe those are just conventions but I think they ultimately help to have respect and consideration for the other. I wish there was more cultural interchange even on other mmorpgs. Nothing is more enriching than that and we would also have an occasion to teach some positive lessons instead of the usual selfish interest and personal greed.

Keeping PvP viable

October 17, 2005 by Abalieno | 1 Comment

This is another answer to a comment that Heartless wrote here. And an occasion for me to underline a few concepts that are dear to me.

He says that my system could be interesting but it cannot really be judged since it’s not fully developed and explained. Well, as I wrote in my reply, that’s not something that I can do. Simply because I miss the data I need and designing a system in all the minimal details just based on pure assumptions is actually silly and goes far beyond the purpose of my “design” ravings.

But even if I cannot snap my fingers and make appear a complete design document in all its parts, I can still take an existing game and apply my ideas to it to imagine (and share) what could be the possible result. Of course it cannot be perfect because my ideas were supposed to make sense together, but I think it’s still possible to make my goals more understandable if I take a current game and explain how it would change with some of my rules applied. Instead of having to force people to follow and tune to my ideas for a long and not trivial journey, using a concrete example everyone knows can be useful to make clear at least some of the concepts.

Of course to do this I’ll take the most fucked up PvP system out there: World of Warcraft.

We know that it works with equal mechanics for both factions (Horde, Alliance) with 14 different ranks that offer access to superior PvP loot. So we have a rather simple and straightforward system, different ranks and a reward: the shiny loot. Of course this structure is already broken on a number of points but again my purpose is to explan a few ideas and what they bring to the plate and not magically heal all of WoW’s flaws. So we take this basic system with all its issues and see which effect some of my rules can have on it.

As you can see by reading the brochure, one of the main goals is to have a system that is equally accessible for everyone. So the first thing to go is how the honor points will be achieved. There won’t be anymore an inner competition in the same realm, nor a functional competition over the greed for points against the other realm. Instead we can still have a variable threshold of points to move between the ranks from server to server, but once the amount is set, it won’t change anymore dynamically. We can also retain a mild decay rate considering that the progress isn’t freeform as in DAoC (the points to spend) and so the progression is bound to a cap (rank 14) that could be even too easy to reach if you don’t lose anymore the points from week to week.

So you kill enemy players and achieve goals in the BGs and you gain regularly honor points. These honor points don’t need anymore to be compared to the points of every other character. So they are added clearly and immediately like it happens to the normal experience. The UI will clearly show in real time your constant progression. What will change from week to week, instead (and since we retain some rules from the current game), is the amount of points you need to reach a precise rank. This doesn’t mean that these numbers are supposed to skyrocket. They just oscillate around a constant value to mimic the different activity on the different servers, but you’ll need more or less the same points to reach rank 10 today as you’d need five years later.

This means that, thanks to the constant progression, everyone will be able to reach the last rank with some dedication. The catasses will do that in three months while the casual players will need more time. But everyone will be able to get there eventually and at their own pace. Without a forced competition over time that is just inaccessible for most of the players.

At this point the system is similar to DAoC’s Realm Points and Ranks. You gain honor points and progressively move up the ranks to acquire the proper reward (loot in this case).

Now lets move to the heart of my system. Lets say that 20 players enter Arathi Basin. To make things simple I’ll say that 15 of them are still rank 1, while five of them are rank 14. If you read how my system is designed you know that your possible rank is set on the amount of players active at that moment and directly organized in squads. This means that if twenty rank 14 players join a BG, they CANNOT go around and use their rank 14 equipment. The rule would be that in a BG like Arathi Basin with 20 players for each factions, only ONE of them would be able to fill the last rank.

Ungrouped the ranks do not exist. In my original system you couldn’t use any of your advanced skills and, in this example about WoW, you just cannot access the PvP loot you achieved from the ranks, if you are alone. So there’s a definite difference between a rank you unblocked because you have the right amount of honor points and a rank you currently hold and use. To do this you must be organized in groups and be designated as leader. When this happens the leader will finally have access to the powers granted by its rank (just loot in this case).

In this example only one every twenty players can be set at rank 14. As decided above we have 15 players at rank 1 that just cannot move from there since they don’t have enough honor points, while there are five of them with rank 14 unblocked. So all five of them could cover that rank but only ONE will be able to. How does the system decide who between them will be choosed? Well.. it’s based on democracy. There will be a specific window showing the organization of the squads and ranks, not dissimilar to the current raid UI. The -position- on the diagram will define the current rank of the player, while next to the name of the player it will display the “possible” rank.

The five rank 14-enabled characters in our example can now propose themeselves to be designated to use their max rank. Lets say that three of them porpose themselves, while two of them just don’t bother and accept to remain rank 1 for the length of this BG. At this point all the players in the BG can make their choice and vote for one of them. Who will have the 51% of the preferences will be choosed, set leader and will be able to finally use his uber rank 14 loot. The same for the opposite faction.

It’s not rare to hear that “Level-based PvP doesn’t work unless everyone on the same level” but we often forget the problem of the loot, which is just another type of treadmill, equally disruptive for the PvP. In fact in WoW the level 60 BGs happen just between same-level players and, still, they are horribly unbalanced (as Heartless writes in the last paragraphs of this comment). If twenty rank 14 players in uber purple loot enter a BG, the other faction would have no chance and the gameplay would just suck. The variance in possibilities is what defines a good fight from one that just doesn’t hold any fun. Till the variance is within manageable margins the fight is fun, but when the difference in level or loot has too much of an impact, the purpose of the PvP goes to hell and the game just becomes a paractice of confrontation to decide who has grown the biggest e-peen. Which I don’t really feel all that interesting.

This is why the system I just described would help to retain the balance. Only one player every twenty can be rank 14. In order to fill a rank you’ll have to be organize in squads so it won’t be possible to just randomly zerg in without even forming a group. This system would encourage the players to organize themselves, set their leaders, build up good or bad reputation among the players and so on. I consider all these “side-effects” as good and positive. They make the community and help to structure the PvP so that it makes sense and is enjoyable for everyone instead of a chaotic mess where everyone competes against everyone else. It’s a system that brings players together instead of making them fight agaist each other. That encourages them to fight together for a shared goal instead of a selfish interest.

The example here is just to explain one part of the system. Specifically how the ranks are unblocked and designated. How the system is kept accessible and how the balance is retained. But there are then other goals that complete it and that would differ from WoW. For example the ranks are not supposed to be linear, nor one as a more powerful version of the other. Each rank should define a *role*, similarly to what happens with the classes. A role isn’t directly more powerful than another. It just gives you different tools to use in the proper way and contribute to the battle through that specific role.

And, finally, the reward and purpose of the ranks isn’t about better loot. But about advanced skills that have an impact on the large scale of the battle and that add dynamism, tactics and coherence to it. All elements that are missing and have been completely dismissed in the current design of these games.

Darkness Rising – Pitch black

October 16, 2005 by Abalieno | Leave a comment

Third batch of screenshots (previous two are here and here), this time coming from the big dungeon concluding the second chapter of the expansion.

I wrote “pitch black” in the title because that’s what I saw in the game. I had to play the whole session with my monitor brightness turned up because I couldn’t see shit (add Levar Burton and Doom 3 jokes here). The player’s torch is also completely broken as it happens with 95% of the content in this expansion and following an awful trend that Mythic brings on till the release of its first expansion.

This is also part of a huge problem of the whole game that was never addressed. The night is too dark and if you want to play you HAVE TO push up the brightness on your monitor. At a “normal” setting the game would be unplayable and the result is that all the colors are washed out. So, the players bring up the brightness more and more and Mythic makes environment more and more dark, breaking completely the player’s torch so you don’t have even a workaround.

This pisses me off beyond what you can imagine. If I’m given a tool like a button to switch the light on around the character because the game is too dark, I WANT IT TO WORK. And instead it is broken in most of the places you go. Some places are too bright, some places are too dark, some places the torch works, some places the torch works only a little, some places it doesn’t work at all, some places it works only on half of the polygons… MAKE UP YOUR MIND! I want a fucking consistent behaviour. Trying to code the game in a constant way and not with all these different quirks and glitches. If you give the player a way to see when it’s too dark, you have to make it ALWAYS work. Not work in some cases and not in some other in a completely arbitrary way. If you want to set yourself what the player can see, just remove the torch altogether and tweak the values as you see fit, like it happens in WoW where the designer can set which place is dark and which is more bright without COMPLETELY FORBIDDING THE PLAYER TO SEE.

Anyway, the dungeon would be pretty if you could see it. In these screenshots I had to push up the brightness by 30% and I hope I reached a good compromise. If you still cannot see shit just imagine how it could be in the game.

Then we arrive at the comments about the actual content. We have all these great places, and despite they are ridden with glitches (that I try to not show in these screenshots), they show a lot of work and dedication from the artists. Well, all this wonderful art (that in this case maybe resebles a bit too much to Quake 2, it’s true..) is simply wasted. We have this rather big dungeon that would make WoW and EQ2 pale. But it’s just there as a background scenery. It glides by. It has more impact and relevance if shown on a website through screenshots than playing inside it in the game.

Why? Because there is very, very little gameplay in this dungeon. And in particular it is exactly the same gameplay that the game offered four years ago. Most of the dungeon is empty and there are only three four types of mobs casually placed just to make you waste some time moving from point A to point B. The most advanced new thing that vaguely resembled to a scripted encounter is about a group of three mobs that rushes in (buggedly) while you are sitting and medding after a previous big encounter. Nothing else. You have to go south to kill Mob A, go north to kill Mob B and go middle to kill Mob C. With some critters in the way. Dungeon done.

We have new places, the art in DAoC has greatly advanced and I really think that it tops whatever this genre has to offer. Actually I think it’s superior to every other game *by far* (despite the glitches and general lack of polish). But the gameplay hasn’t changed in the slightest. EVERY mob moves and fight exactly in the same way. What changes is the variables attached always to the same dull patters (health, damage, if aggro or not, resists and so on). The pathing is still exactly the same of four years ago, completely broken, jerky and unrealistic. The mobs keep aggroing through walls and are completely unaware of the environment. There is zero gameplay involving the perception of the space. You still fight in a flat field from the gameplay perspective. And also all the encounters are just set in the exact same way. There’s a room, a few mobs randomly placed and all aggroing if you go close enough, moving to you and hitting politely.

Every single mob in the game behaves in the same (buggy) way. You can fight inside a small tower, inside a mansion, in a keep, in a tunnel and so on. You can fight mobs with different shapes and colors but STILL, nothing changes AT ALL. They all behave the same and completely ignore every kind of environment, situation or specific nature.

Now I hate to keep bringing up WoW but come on. This is PvE and PvE needs some sort of identity to be fun. If in WoW you go fight in Gnomeragan it’s not the same if you go fight in Zul Farrak. All the mobs behave and must be dealt with in a psecific way. The places are different and you need to learn the environments. You play in and *with* the spaces. The layout matters in the gameplay and your journey through a dungeon makes sense both from the story perspective and the impact on the gameplay. I’m the first to say that WoW PvE isn’t that deep but at least it offers different types of encounters and situations. Maybe the difference is mild but at least it exists.

In DAoC all these new, fancy environments just sort of sit there. They don’t build a *world* they just decorate the margins. They lack an use.

Look at the second screenshot here. See that tower and the big house? I like them but they are *empty*. No really. The artists put a lot of work on those and the interiors are fully decorated. There are a few screenshots showing the inside of the tower. But, still, it is empty. Nothing goes on in there. You would expect to have fun and involving fights in that complex environment. But there’s simply nothing (probably also because the pathing would crap the whole place if they tried to put something to fight in there).

This is why every player trying DAoC thinks that its PvE sucks. Because there’s zero gameplay. Zero. Or the places are just there to decorate the environment, completely empty and missing *any purpose*, or they have a few critters randomly placed that follow one single, four years old pattern that you grinded for weeks, months and years. OF COURSE we are bored. Mythic is keeping reskinning the same stuff to feed it us again. Some can endure this, some others not. Should I bring up Raph again? We (players) can see past the pretty screenshots. We can see that there’s nothing new past them.

So, I’ve shown what a great art DAoC can deliver but, honestly, there isn’t much more to see in the game than what I’m putting here. I’ve shown some of the new models and still the gameplay is completely dull and forgivable. Those models, despite they look great on a static screenshot, still have applied the same ugly animations that the game had at release and, in many cases, they did not even care to update the equipment they use. And then there’s the craptacular pathing, aggro system and general gameplay that hasn’t even minimally moved a tiny step forward.

Pretty DAoC needs a soul (and new pathing code and animations). But then I’m pretty sure that all the programmers have been moved to the greener pastures (Warhammer). And what DAoC gets is the pretty reskin.

Quick note: the broken pieces of stone you see on the ceilings oscillate in the air with a nifty effect. While the red light coming from the cracks is, instead, fixed. Which is sad because it’s since SI that DAoC has the technology to show animated lights, and still it never uses it beside a few exceptions.

(screenshots here)