DAoC to launch soon nostalgic servers

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While some players would have loved a truly “nostalgic server” without the new frontier zones, new classes and spellcrafting, the plan Mythic decided to follow is to launch two new server with an “alternate” ruleset around the middle of July.

The three relevant differences are:
– Removal of the /level 20 command (which was allowing the elder players with already a maxed out character to start another one bypassing the first twenty levels)
– Removal of the “Trial of Atlantis” expansions with the exception of the new races (which was the “catass” and less accessible part of the game that everyone finished to hate)
– Removal of the possibility to take advantage of buffs outside a group (buffs will be group and ranged based, removing directly the possibility to use external buffbots)

These changes are enough to trigger discussion threads on all the main forums I follow (and that I have to systematically troll, it seems) and in general the feedback from current and former players has been positive. The problem is that some aspects are different than how they appear and what is happening is interesting to consider from different perspectives instead of a superficial glance. This is one of the comments I wrote:

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…try something new? Where?

These new servers add nothing at all. They remove:

– They remove a whole expansion
– They remove the possibility tu use buffs outside a group
– They remove the possibility to use the /evel 20 command that directly destroys the community at the lower levels.

Believe me, there is NO DIRECTION from Mythic here. There is NO WILL to experiment and NO deliberate choice. What happened is that they are simply trying to give the players what they asked for so long. It’s two years that they blame “Trials of Atlantis” and unfair mechanics like the buffbots and the /level 20, now Mythic decided to feed them with what they asked and see how it goes.

What they offer here is simply a bandaid (in fact none of those points is a “solution” but it is actualy a withdrawal from addressing those problems). A workaround to glaring problems in the game at a radical level that they are too scared to address properly.

Now the point is that a large part of the players is drooling over those workarounds because it’s better than nothing. Better than ignoring those broken mechanics altogether.

What will happen isn’t that positive. The two servers will be SWAMPED by players and I really do not expect them to be playable as they launch. I’m not sure how Mythic doesn’t see these issues coming. At the same time this will damage even more the population on the “standard” servers, making them even less playable and accessible (both already consistent problems).

All this means something different than offering a service that the players are asking. It means that the design of those parts failed big time and Mythic was unable/too scared to fix. They are removing a whole expansion. Imho, this definitely isn’t normal and would require some serious thought.

What happens here should question the stance Mythic maintained in these years, and not simply second the desires of the players as the most natural thing in the world.

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The first problem is directly in the words of Walt Yarbourgh:

Yes, this is aimed at many of our former customers, not our current ones. Our satisfaction is high in the polls that we take of our current customers.

This already shows how wrong is the perception he has of the game and the playerbase. I’m rather sure that it’s nowhere useful to read the results of the polls in that way. I rather believe that the current subscribers like what they play, but that they are also enduring the problems. Those problems exist and are not a subjective perception. The fact that there are satisfied customers doesn’t mean that they approve directly everything Mythic is doing in the game. This is why I consider that comment completely off-track. It’s a huge mistake to consider these new servers appealing just for former players. They are appealing for everyone simply because they finally do something about some of the radical problems that the game has and that Mythic never cared to solve.

As I wrote above the new ruleset isn’t going to solve anything. It simply attests a design failure that Mythic is still refusing to acknowledge completely. The removal of consistent parts of the game (instead of fixing them and make them fun) is a denial of those problems even if still a way to second the playerbase. The position isn’t moved, they aren’t admitting that some parts of the design are flawed and would need an aggressive rework, so they feed us an “alternate ruleset” that is supposed to alleviate some gripes. If you read some of the defenses that the players write about the buffbots and the other broken features you’ll see how all their reasons are coming from consequences of radical problems. For examples the buffbots “cannot” be removed because the game has been balanced with them in mind. Absolutely true but this doesn’t justifies the existence of the buffbots, it just shift the attention to the REAL problem. Which should be addressed instead of being seconded or ignored. Again another example is that buffbots are required to not make the PvE in solo too slow and boring. But it’s another justification of a consequence of a real problem: the fact that the game needs a reconsideration of the downtimes (health and mana regeneration while not in combat). In a similar way the /level 20 command is absolutely required (along with the “free levels” idotic mechanic) in order to ease an awful treadmill. But again the problem is not that the treadmill is slow per se. But that it is DULL. It’s dull for an hour as it can be dull for a week. The problem isn’t again in its length, but in its direct gameplay.

What I’m saying is that DAoC is surely a game with its own merits as well as serious problems in the gameplay. Mythic has always refused to address those problems aggressively and the game has kept lagging and persisting in those mistakes. The point is that seconding the playerbase or heaping workarounds is again exactly what Big Bartle described. Instead of letting the game grow and improve you cut its legs. In the short term all those solutions will offer a sensible benefit but in the long distance the game will pay the price of this dodging approach and will sink more and more till it will be time to hide the skeleton and replace it with “new shiney” under a new name and a new flagship (DAoC 2: Warhammer). Bandaids always work temporarily but they do not heal anything and are typical of a superficial approach. Again it’s all about “choices”. What works in the short term isn’t always good even in the long term.

Each of those design points would deserve a deep analysis. The problems of the buffbots cannot get solved by making them group/range based simply because the true origin of the problem is deeper:

HRose:
The problem with buffbots isn’t the mechanic of the buffs, it’s about the design of the classes.

World of Warcraft has demonstrated that you can design fun classes all around, without specific roles that just suck like a character that is specialized on buffs and does exclusively that. What sucks in DAoC and other games with a similar approach is that your character does just *one thing*. And the gameplay of some specific classes like buffbots and healers just sucks.

In WoW you cannot build a buffbot because there isn’t a class that can buff you with everything available in the game. There is no class with such an horrible role. To get buffed completely you’d need at least a priest, a druid, a paladin and a warlock.

The “buffs” aren’t anymore the specific role of a character that is supposed to just sit on its ass and, maybe, throw a weak heal (due to specialization issues) every few minutes. Instead they become a mechanic shared between all the classes.

That’s the real point. In DAoC there are basic design holes like the role of healers and the enforced specialization (in order to brag the number of different classes you can play) that Mythic never cared to address.

The ranged/group buffs are a workaround to a problem they do not plan to solve.

Darniaq:
I’ve always agreed with you about DAoC’s overall design. The fact it attained and retained so many players is, to me, one part timing and one part good company relations. The game itself is some of the worse parts of EQ except for those players that know the game so well they know what to avoid.

The reason I said it’s in “maintenance mode” is exactly as you wrote. There is no concerted effort to solve the core problems with the game. Maybe there never was. Maybe they think everything’s fine.

I’ve been arguing a similar point for some time. I think Blizzard made a brilliant move by limiting the number of classes. EQ2 and SWG like DAoC and EQlive before them got into some sort of wierd overdesign mode where the developers thought more classes were better.

Not so. More classes just means more balance headaches at best, or marginalized classes at worst. They inevitably become super-specialized, and in ways that become boring for most players. Darwinized playstyles emerge. If a class/template is boring to play but deemed a requirement, it will be bot’ed. The developers can get pissed and ban players and cajole them and pay them off and invent new servers all they want, but they’re fighting a losing battle.

Don’t make boring classes. Anyone with a conscious can identify boring classes. Your players will. Better to do so before launch though.

Having a few classes that can do many things is better than having a zillion classes that can only do one.

The last point is that aside all these considerations there is also the problem about how the game will be maintained from now on. The two ruleset are divergent. It isn’t possible to balance the PvP of both with generic patches and I really don’t think that Mythic is going to double their work to let these two rulesets continue on opposite paths. Mythic designers know what they are doing? It seems that the whole idea of the poll just cornered them and now they are going to screw it no matter what they choose.

The idea to use alternate rulesets to fix important gameplay problems simply cannot be justified. While this reaction is better than nothing I believe that it will bring along many other problems, making the game progressively harder to manage. Exactly because this isn’t a good path to pursue.

By the way, in the case I have time to play I’ll resubscribe for the occasion (I canceled again recently after the announce of Warhammer). The brand new servers along with the removal of the “/level 20” command and the new work on the guild system could help to let a community develop. Aside the gameplay problems this is the most serious issue of the game. The only players left are in closed guilds and it’s basically impossible to enjoy the game casually and find people to group with. The game is silent, very silent. As always the most important part of a game is the community and this is the real reason why I’m interested on the new servers. Before the gameplay changes.

No buffbots, no twink characters, no powerlevelling and an economy not completely inaccessible and inflated. For some time it could be fun.

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In the meantime Lum poked the fun on me, disproving what I wrote some time ago. It seems that the new player models added with the “Catacombs” expansions are, in fact, available to everyone for free through an optional patch and already bundled (along with the new tutorials and town art) in the free trial client. So it’s true that this time they are going to show to the former customers that could come back to check the new servers the best profile of the game. Instead of an obsolete and limited client as it happened till not long ago. Good choice.

He’s “sorry” to be that blunt but I’m sure he enjoyed that quite a bit :)

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World of Warcraft causes 3rd World War

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There’s a fancy Press Release.

So the game reaches two million of paying subscribers. The rumor was already floating around and even SirBruce updated his charts accordingly before the press release.

You know what? Blizzard is done. Done. They can leave completely the game as it is, without a patch for years and they’ll still cash a fuckload of money. They triggered an out-of-scale process that can be exploited without any commitment. They are in a position that will prevent them to pay for their mistakes and it’s exactly the point where something breaks. Now they can fuck the game just for fun and watch the reaction amusedly. Development-wise they are done.

You say that some parts of the game are broken? HA! Two million subscribers. Rimshot.

This game is going to break China. Phenomena like the “Leroy video” demonstated how this game is becoming more than a game and nearer to a cultural symbol outside the boundaries of the game itself. I really don’t know how China will react to this but I’m starting to believe that the third World War will be triggered by a videogame.

Fun times.

Eve-Online plans big

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This game never fails to amaze me. I just wish it was more accessible and I had more time to squeeze something good out of it.

In the last weeks the devs have released a series of “sneak peaks” about a massive content patch that is coming somewhere in the future:
Sneak peaks part I
Sneak peaks part II – COSMOS
Sneak Peaks Part III – Needful things?
Sneak Peaks Part IV – Outposts

Between one of those things I was planning to write there was a follow-up to my ramblings about the “mudlfation” as a process of development that is going to kill these games by making them sink progressively till it’s too late to save them. Eve-Online is the example of how it’s possible to invert that process. This game is flourishing now and is going to become better and better as the time passes. This because they are developing it in the “right way”.

My point is that the mudflated design brings the designers to get tired, to finish the ideas and to struggle to think something new to add. It’s a straining process that DETERIORATES with the time (both the game and the developers). When, instead, you design a game to add depth and a “vertical” direction instead of making it just “fatter”, the game itself will flourish. You will reach a point where you have SO MANY IDEAS that you don’t know anymore how to order and prioritize them. The game will design itself and will tell you exactly what it needs. Because what you build here is the base of what will be built next. You do not need anymore to plan an infinite list of “optional” features that can be bundled in an “optional” expansion. This because the game is kept cohesive (healthy in an holistic way) and the idea of detached extensions simply doesn’t work. Guess what? Eve-Online hasn’t expansions if not in the form of integrated evolutions that are part of the monthly fee and nowhere “optional”.

Now go read those sneak peaks one by one, till the last, impressive one. I’m absolutely sure that they will tickle the interest even if you do not play the game or have considered it nothing more than a pretty (boring) screensaver. What they are doing is moving toward that direction that I preached on this site more than once: give back the game-world to the players.

Eve-Online is constantly sperimenting in a way completely precluded to the ambitious but derivative commercial projects. It is FAR from being an optimal game but they are slowly moving toward a positive direction that isn’t progressively killing the game but, instead, progressively realizing and expanding its potential.

Remember, when we enable players to build infrastructure which they make money on from other players, this won’t only benefit the Alliances, this benefits the whole universe. Ultimately, you will be able to work for the new empires or work against them. Heck, you can build your own! It should be up to you, not us.

They will, indeed, taxi to victory.

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We were not prepared

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Old stuff.

There’s around an interview with Paul Sams not so different from another released some months ago.

we have in excess of a million and a half paying subscribers – it’s been going really, really well.

Each of the other markets have been going really well for us. We’re number one in North America, we’re number one in Europe, and in Korea we kind of move back and forth between number two and three. We expect for that to continue to go up – that’s probably the most competitive market in the world for these types of games. In China, from a concurrency perspective in open beta, we’ve broken all records in Chinese history for these types of games, so we’re quite excited.

We were able to respond and provide additional hardware very quickly, because we had another full datacentre ready to light, so we were able to do that and to get the capacity up.

[…]

In doing the whole planning process, we had to look at historical data from other companies. We looked at what their typical concurrency was as a percentage of their overall subscribership, we used all those things – we kind of padded those a bit, and we also looked at historical sales trends… We did all the different things that intelligent businesspeople would do to effectively plan for such a launch. The challenge is that the demand was so much greater than any other company had experienced, not to mention beyond the padding that we put on top of that.

We said, okay, let’s for the sake of planning just assume that from a numbers perspective, it’s equal to the biggest thing out there. Then let’s add to it, and say let’s be ready for more. Well, when you do that, and you still have demand that outpaces that… [laughs] That’s challenging! And so we’ve had to work very hard to deal with that.

As I wrote on QT3 I don’t believe those excuses about the problems at launch. This because those problems are still alive and well right now, just showing in a different form (same as when I write about “symptoms” and “causes”). The game, as many other in the genre, has problems of population and accessibility. The Battlegrounds launched recently and brought a long list of problems both on the design and the implementation. Some of the most serious are rooted in a structure that wasn’t properly planned and that brought to the initial problems with the queues after the release and now with the queues on the Battleground.

These Battlegrounds are a novelty now and many players are checking them. Still, on most servers there aren’t enough players to keep the instances up without long to infinite queues that become even worst thanks to the faction unbalance. What will happen six months down the road when the players will be bored to tears by repetitive gameplay that doesn’t go anywhere and that is available without a monthly fee in other games? How this form of PvP will be accessible in a low populated server or during the off-peak?

These problems cannot be ignored or justified in any way. That’s “design” and it should have been solved YEARS ago, when the project started. Not seven month after release. Not as a “surprise”. There is no fucking surprise if we deal with something that everyone else with some experience in the genre already saw coming.

Give a look to this thread. We were already anticipating and discussing these problems. We also suggested possible solutions:

Mark Asher:
One of the things they might be able to do with instanced battlegrounds is draw upon all the servers to fill them. Instead of requiring enough level 25-30 Alliance players on one server, that instanced battleground will be filled with Alliance players from all the servers.

If they do something like that they shouldn’t have any problems with low population instances.

But what was going to happen is what I anticipated. It’s my skepticism:

Well, really, it’s a great idea that opens even more possibilities. I don’t think Blizzard will experiment and innovate this much.

Now what I say is that I do not tolerate justifications. The management of a game doesn’t belong here. This is a duty of the designer. This is a crucial aspect of how the game is built and it’s not tolerable that it gets systematically ignored. As I wrote this is a deliberate choice. They chose to ignore an important fundament of the game and they are going to suffer that choice as everyone else doing the same mistake. Not for two months after release because the servers have queues or are crashing, but for the whole course of the game because the gameplay and the accessibility is hindered by a plan that doesn’t work and that noone cared to focus on.

There is NOTHING more important than this. There isn’t a single aspect of the game design in general (in this genre) that is more important. I do not tolerate that this argument is easily dismissed.

At least now I have Guild Wars. That’s a game that isn’t run by idiots and that planned correctly the structure of the game before everything else.

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As I said, Battlegrounds are broken

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It’s impossible even to list down all the issues between broken queues, exploits and bugged calculation of points and reputation. This is a message taken from the boards that demonstrates how the Contribution Points are broken in Warsong:

Unfortunately this is likely going to get lost as the problems seems isolated to Hellscream, but here goes.

Hellscream is not receiving CPs for Warsong wins. I have talked to 10 different people now all of whom have CP totals that are less than half what they are supposed to be. I myself noticed a problem on Wed and held on to my tokens from Thursday. I had 8 total and ended up with 8000 CPs on the day. Something is amiss. The problem is on both Alliance and Horde.

Perhaps people can bump this if they get a chance.

If he has eight tokens it means he won eight times. This alone is equal to 1660 x 8 = 13280 Contribution Points. Without counting the Honor Kills. Instead he collected 8000.

This confirms my test. One day I won two sessions, all three flags returned and I ended up with 3k of points. The following day I did the same but leaving the BG after two flag returned, without waiting for the third. And I ended up with nearly 6k of points.

It’s also kind of interesting how all the radical design holes are starting to show. The servers have huge population unbalances, same for the factions. This brings to endless queues making the game unplayable for most of the players and also shows other design shortcomings. Try to play PvP in a low populated server during the off peak, it’s not possible. Even if you manage to get in after insane long queues you’ll be stuck to kill the same players over and over and over. Without getting points thanks to the “diminishing returns”. And this right now that these battlegrounds are a novelty and everyone is checking them. Think to what will happen a few months down the road.

Blizzard has stated various times that they are currently researching ways to ease the faction and population unbalances. Idiots. This is not something you do seven months after release. This is something you plan right at the start of the project. You’ve been noobs, now it’s too late and you suffer another huge design shortcoming.

Enjoy. The PvP in WoW is broken beyond repair. There’s nothing good aside the deatmatch mode they stole from different genres and that required no talent at all to copy. The rest of the design is an insane clusterfuck where you really cannot find anything to save. Anything.

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Idle Times

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I don’t like the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft, in particular I don’t like the direction where the game is going. This time I don’t want to comment the bugs or the mechanics I don’t like or consider broken, I just want to say that I don’t expect much from the overall approach. The first day after the patch I heard a guild mate say: “this isn’t anymore a mmorpg”. And that is also my point.

It’s not important to define and categorize what is a mmorpg and decide if WoW betrayed an ideal or not. The point is that this implementation of the PvP is arid and leading nowhere. I believe the latest Penny Arcade comic describes this approach. Blizzard didn’t even try to suggest an interesting PvP model, they didn’t even pick up the challenge. They simply took a consolidated mechanic like the CTF and adapted it into the game. The risk is zero here because there isn’t anything to design aside the conversion itself. By adding a CTF you cannot go wrong because it is a mechanic that has been tested for years between many different titles.

But where is the “world”? From this perspective the battleground are a failure. A failure because if the genre isn’t able to gain its own definition and personality, it will just inherit what worked from other games. The same dynamics, the same structures. Guild Wars is a “landingplace”. If so many parts of these games have failed, the new trend is to question even their existence. Why we need to walk from point A to point B? So we get insta-ports. This example is becoming a consolidated dynamic. These games are losing their personality, they are losing their own specific design, their are being emptied of relevance and purpose till there isn’t anything left. When this process will be over a “mmorpg” will become just an empty box that you can fill with whatever you like, even consolidated deathmatches.

Right now the implementation of the CTF in WoW is revealing. Why I need to fly from Ironforge to Menethil, take a boat, move to the other continent, fly again to Ashenvale and then ride till the entrance of the BG? And why I need to backtrack all that in order to go back to Ironforge in the case I want to do some PvE? Yes, I want insta-ports. All these dynamics are: idle times. I’m being idle for most of the time I pass logged in. I’m idle to move between points and I’m idle while waiting on queues, I’m idel while LFG. There is no gameplay and these idle times have zero use since I alt-tab out of the game. They are unexcused.

Now what I want to reveal is that all these consequences aren’t natural. It’s not natural that you can join the local channels form everywhere in the game-world. It’s not natural that the concept of “space” becomes so devoid of relevance that I feel seriously the need of insta-ports. What happened is that there was a deliberate choice in the design to empty the game from purpose and relevance. These aspects have no depth and no meaning anymore but because the design, again as an action and a choice, has decided that they have no role. This is a systematic attack that this genre is constantly suffering. This is what will kill these games.

What this approach to the design is achieving is the negation of the principles. The negation of the origin of the genre itself. Those roots are being killed and when all the ties with the past will be gone, the genre will be ready to be conquered by the consolidated archetypes already existing. Consoles, sport games, FPS, RTS and so on. This is what brought to my comments on Dave’s blog. For sure this genre is going to last for long, but what it will become isn’t even remotely near what we expect and will be completely estranged from its own origin.

WoW’s battlegrounds are the manifestation of this process. The game needs insta-ports because the principles on which the game was being built have been eroded to a point that they became completely unexcused. I need to fly from Ironforge to Ashenvale but …why? At the end I’m going into a portal and join a specific instance completely cut-out from the game-world. I do not care what happens in other instances, what I do in mine doesn’t affect the world outside, I do not care who is going to win. The key here is “I do not care”. Everything is contingent, the space is negated, the purpose doesn’t exist. The player isn’t anymore put in a context, he is outside that context, he makes the context and uses it. He makes it up, he hallucinates himself. And, outside, nothing exists, nothing has consequences and nothing “breathes”.

What is left of a mmorpg? The time I spend flying from Ironforge to Ashenvale and vice-versa. What is left of a mmorpg is an unexcused burden that will be ultimately removed. Even in WoW (you’ll see).

Aside all these considerations the battlegrounds are a fun diversion. They are fun because they copy directly consolidated mechanics that cannot go wrong if not in the implementation. But after some time they will grow old. Very old. The gameplay is limited, repetitive and unexcused. The rewards become plainful grinds that bore you to tears. They add nothing in the long term because they are estranged from the fabric of the world. They are time-bonuses for a live team that isn’t able to match the expectations of the players on the content.

And again that gap between the expectations of the players and the concrete possibilities of the dev team isn’t an unavoidable fact but just the direct result of a broken approach.

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DAoC adds new patch-fragment

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Yesterday Mythic released a new chunk of notes about the most interesting features among those planned for this patch: an UI for guild management, carryable banners on the battlefield and a “social panel” directly ripped off WoW.

I don’t feel the need into the details because I already commented everything. It’s just the exact same pattern reapplied and all my considerations are valid for all the new additions. Even for this reiteration we have more and more stacking bonuses, more stolen ideas from WoW and more insane moneysinks. I do not like this approach to the design but at least this time there slightly more gameplay involved in the form of the carryable banners… even if based again on bonuses.

The other positive note is that this time the presentation of these new features isn’t awful as in the past, so everything should be accessible and usable without the player being forced to learn and read the patch notes (take it as a rule: if a player need to read the patch notes to know about a feature or its precise use -> the feature is broken and must be redone).

I don’t comment in detail the guild mission system because, while the principles are good, the implementation sucks badly. The grind in PvP is slightly more acceptable than PvE but this doesn’t hide the fact that Mythic’s designers are unable to offer interesting forms of gameplay. Grinding missions to gain more pointless bonuses isn’t involving nor helps to achieve the purposes listed:

The purpose of the Guild RvR Missions system is to build a sense of unity within the guild by encouraging guild members to work together with each other to achieve common goals. Accomplishing Guild RvR Missions provides meaningful rewards to the guild as a whole.

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