Last Friday after work I wandered over to a local computer shop and picked myself up a new video card. Back in my university day I used to keep my machine on the cutting edge of gaming technology, but since getting married and buying a house and a car it has been financially impossible to drop the kind of money needed to keep even relatively up to date.

Of course, as a WoW addict it didn't really matter - the game runs on a toaster after all - but now that I'm between MMOs and back into single player games, I was starting to feel the age of my machine. Before making the trip to the computer store I did my homework and determined that a new video card would give me the best improvement for my money, and that the ASUS GTX 260 was the best price point at this time.

I got home, cracked open my case, ripped out the old video card, opened up the nice shiny ASUS box...... and then my jaw hit the floor. While I had heard that video cards had increased in size, I was completely unprepared for the monstrosity that is the GTX 260; while the card is normal height, it weighs in at a staggering 10.5 inches long and two inches wide. Feebly I positioned the card above the freshly vacated slot and my joy turned to dust as the card clanked against the frame of my case - there was no way this beast of a video card was fitting into the computer.

So, today I trundled back to the computer shop, this time carrying my entire system and the oversized video card. By the sly gleam in the service technician's eye when plunked the machine down on the counter I could tell that he knew exactly what the problem was - I'm sure it is a common ailment. After discussing the sizing issue with the tech it was clear that my only option was to upgrade my case, and while I was at it I sprung for a new power supply to make sure the GTX 260 wouldn't starve.

The new box will be ready by the end of the day...... hopefully she'll be worth it!

Those of you who are interested in comparing the subscriber numbers of the various MMOs out there may want to check out MMO Data, a relatively new site that picks up where MMOGChart left off a year ago.

According to the site operator, Cyberwiz, MMO Data uses a variety of sources to compile their charts including "press releases, earnings statements, interviews, extrapolations, inside sources, etc.". Since not all sources are equally reliable, a handy Accuracy Rating is included on the site which breaks down the numbers into four distinct levels of confidence.


Unfortunately at this point MMO Data has no good way to incorporate information from games that do not follow the traditional subscription model. Games like Free Realms, Wizard101, and Runes of Magic are not represented on the charts (yet), in part because they offer multiple ways to play the game, many of which do not include a monthly subscription.

Still, despite this shortcoming MMO Data is off to a good start, and I look forward to seeing how the site unfolds as Cyberwiz gets this thing up off the ground.

Starvault, the publisher of the soon-to-be-released Mortal Online, has allowed a pair of beta testers to post "Combat Beta Reviews" on their forums. You can read them here: Lachrymose's Review, Shinzon's Review. Both write-ups provide a glimpse into the mechanics of the game which appear to be a sharp departure from the more "accessible" games that currently dominate the marketplace.

Crafting
Crafting in Mortal Online aims to be far more realistic that simply gathering a few materials and clicking a button to mindlessly slap them together:

Weapon creation at the moment is impressive. Crafting itself hasn’t been unlocked to players, but NPC crafters allow us to choose which type of material to use for each piece of a weapon (handle, core, blade, etc). In addition, when creating armor, not only do you choose which type of material to construct the armor out of, but you also choose how much material to use when creating the armor. Using less material obviously makes the armor lighter and less cumbersome, but it also provides less protection.

Needless to say, there is a seemingly endless amount of combinations to choose from, but the trick is to determine which combinations are most effective, as some combinations just aren’t very practical. For instance, attaching a great blade to a dagger handle will result in a strange looking and ineffective weapon, and although creating a sword made out of pure gold certainly looks fashionable, it will do little damage and require the majority of your stamina to swing it (if you’re able to swing it at all, that is). The amount of options given to the player is incredible and really adds to the involvement of player skill, as players will have to determine the best gear compositions for their particular playstyle.

Exploration
Nearly every MMO has built in maps and radars that are easily accessible to players. While this is great for getting from point A to point B efficiently when entering an area for the first time, it makes for a lousy sense of immersion. What if there were no free maps?

Some of the other beta testers and myself had a lot of fun exploring the [test] island and finding a few hidden ruins. Traversing the island is no easy task, so although the island is relatively small, it certainly seems large. Not only are there mountains and other land formations obstructing any straight paths across the island, but navigating the island is very difficult until you’ve walked around it enough to really familiarize yourself with it. At one point, I broke off from the group to do a little solo exploring, and I quickly realized that I had no idea where I was. For me it was a really unique experience in an MMO because there was no radar in the upper corner showing me where I was on the map. There was no arrow pointing the way to go. I was actually lost, which made for a truly immersive experience, and this was only on the tiny test island we were placed on. I can only imagine what the immersion of being lost in a much larger and inhabited world would be like.

The Waiting Game
Despite my care bear roots, Mortal Online is an MMO that has me anxious to try it out. Lately I've wanted an experience that is more than yet another guided tour, and Starvault certainly implies that their Q4 2009 offering will be exactly that.

If the impressions of the closed beta testers are anything to go by then the game is coming along well, and while there are definite wrinkles left to iron out, the game's concepts seems solid.

Back in 1994 two main things dominated my outlook on life: I hated high school, and I loved Magic: The Gathering. Back then the game was only just breaking into the market, and had not yet reached the level of hype that it would soon enjoy. As an angsty teenager I was obsessed with the game - whatever disposable income that didn't go towards picking up my weekly comic books and weekend game rentals was plowed into booster pack after booster pack of Magic cards.

All of these memories have come flooding back due to the recent release - and subsequent podcast discussions - of Magic: Then Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalker. It is unbelievable how much the release of this DLC game makes me want to purchase an XBox 360... a console that I've had no desire to touch before now. Of course, I tried Magic Online a few years ago, spent altogether too much money in short order, and then forcibly removed myself from the game and sold all of my digital cards on eBay for good measure. I'm a junkie.

(And yes, I know that the XBox game doesn't support features like full deck building - but the potential is there to grow it, and the implementation is apparently excellent.)

Going back to my teen years, my fondest memories of playing Magic: The Gathering come from a road trip to participate in fairly large tournament along with two if my best friends. I won the consolation pool after losing an early game, while another of us took first prize overall - it was a sweet day.

All these years later I can still remember my (Revised Edition) deck:

Land
8 Mountains
8 Islands
4 Volcanic Islands

Blue
4 Counter Spell
2 Drain Magic
2 Spell Blast
4 Control Magic
4 Phantom Monster
4 Mahamoti Djinn

Red
4 Mana Flare
2 Fireball
2 Disintegrate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shivan Dragon
4 Roc of Kher Ridge

The purpose of the deck was to get a mana flare out as soon as possible (double mana for both players), which would enable me to crank out huge monsters and damage spells at a ridiculous pace. To combat the fact that the other player would also have a lot of mana there was a fair bit of ability denial from the blue part of my deck, and the Control Monsters were there to steal any critters that did manage to make it into play. It didn't hurt that all of my monsters had flying, which was relatively uncommon. Games often ended in an unstoppable fireball or a massive blast from a Shivan Dragon. Good times!

Two weeks ago, in response to my bitter grumblings about the continued nerfs to World of Warcraft's Ulduar raid instance, a commenter asked me a relatively simple question: "I am a bit curious: what kind of fight [made] TBC raid[s] harder in your opinion?"

While a basic answer is relatively easy to come up with - "less margin for error" - it is probably worth examining the various components and game mechanics that are used when crafting raid encounters.

(Note: WoW encounters will be used as examples where possible.)

The Basics
The vast majority of MMOs are dominated by the so-called "holy trinity" model of encounter design. In this model players can be divided into three categories:

DPS - The player's primary goal is to inflict damage using whatever means possible.

Tank - The player is responsible for absorbing the damage from one or more enemies and ensuring that the boss does not attack other players.

Healer - The player is focused on keeping all players participating in the encounter alive by healing damage as it is inflicted.

The holy trinity encounter model is a relic from the days when MUDs dominated the online gaming landscape and you had to connect to the Internet with a dial up 2400 baud modem. Despite its age the system has held up well, mostly due to the fact that it allows for a wide array of encounters to be developed (and that no one has successfully implemented anything better..... but that's another blog post entirely).

Mechanics
There are a wide range of game mechanics that are employed by designers when crafting epic boss encounters. Each incarnation of these mechanics must be understood and mastered by members of a raid if the baddie is going to fall and give up its loot.

Direct Damage - The simplest component of any encounter is direct damage from the boss onto a single player. Nearly all fights utilize this mechanic, and it is extremely dull on its own.

Examples: Any boss encounter that you can imagine.

Avoidable Damage - The encounter features damaging terrain, ground effects, or boss abilities that can be completely avoided by the players if they react appropriately to the threat.

Examples: That fire you're standing in. Get out! (Gruul, Illidari Council, Razorscale, Archimode's flames, etc.)

Unavoidable Raid Damage - Some encounters contain damaging effects that cannot be avoided by the players, and instead must be healed through or mitigated in some other manner. More often then not these encounters are designed to test a raid's healing corp.

Examples: Sapphiron's chill, Mimiron's rapid burst, XT-002 Deconstructor

Imposed Movement - Players have an easier time doing their jobs if they can focus on using their abilities. Forcing players to move around while tanking/dpsing/healing is an excellent way to ratchet up the difficulty of an encounter.

Examples: Shade of Aran (move in, move out, run from the blizzard!), Grobbulous (prolonged kite), Hodir (stand still and receive a stacking debuff)

Orchestrated Movement - A logical progression from imposed movement is coordinated movement. Now all players must direct their characters to be at a specific place in relation to the rest of the raid as the encounter progresses.

Examples: Malygos phase 3, Illidan, Heigan the Unclean, Kalecgos, Hydross on a phase switch

Prescribed Positioning - Players must position themselves in a manner that is not natural in order to avoid damage or gain a positive benefit. When combined with imposed movement, this mechanic can create quite a challenging fight.

Examples: Gruul the Dragonslayer's ground slam, Kel'Thuzad's chains

Personal Competence Checks - Periodically throughout the encounter one or more players are forced to react to an event in a timely manner in order to avoid killing themselves and others. This is a treacherous game mechanic that can break entire guilds if a subset of players cannot learn and adapt.

Examples: Teron Gorefiend, High Astromancer Solarian's bomb, Grobbulous' disease, polarity shifts on Thaddius, Mother Shahraz

Specific Jobs - A subset of the players in a raid must be assigned certain non-standard roles in order to conquer the boss. These assignments often involve not fulfilling their main role 100% of the time.

Examples: Kiting the striders for Lady Vashj, shattering adds for Ignis, removing webs on Maexxna

Add Control - Extra enemies appear throughout the battle and must be either tanked, crowd controlled, or killed while still handling the main boss.

Examples: Morogrim Tidewalker's murlocs, Lady Vashj, Al'ar, Ignis, etc.

Save or die! - One (or more) members of the raid are targeted by an effect that will kill them if action is not immediately taken. Failure to save players leads to a slow death by attrition.

Examples: Terestrian Illhoof, Kel'Thuzad, Ignis

Cued Actions - Through the fight players must/may perform an action in order for the fight to progress and/or survive. This may consist of a single player initiating a key action, or the entire raid acting in unison to achieve a goal.

Examples: High Warlord Naj'entus, Lady Vashj's shield generators, bringing down Mimiron in phase 3, Kael'thas' shock barrier.

Varied Phases - Complexity of an encounter can be ramped up by including multiple phases that force the raiders to play differently during each stage. The greater the differences between the phases, the harder the encounter ends up since the raid is never allowed to settle into a groove.

Examples: Kael'thas, Mimiron, Razorscale, Sapphiron, etc.

Gimmicks - The encounter contains elements that force the players to perform actions that have nothing to do with the normal operation of their class. Often this involves removing all of the player's normal abilities and replacing them with a few encounter-specific abilities.

Examples: Flame Leviathan, Teron Gorefiend, Malygos

Modifiers
The entire encounter, as well as each individual mechanic that it is comprised of, can be tuned according to a handful of indicators.

Duration - The length of an encounter can be used to directly affect the level of challenge that it presents. If an encounter is artificially shortened by applying an enrage timer to the boss then the players will have to meet or exceed a certain level of performance in order to conquer it. On the other hand, if an encounter is made to last a long time then it becomes a test of the raid's endurance.

Likewise, individual mechanics within an encounter may be lengthened or shortened in order to achieve the desired level of difficulty. For example, a long period of unavoidable raid-wide damage is more difficult to survive than a short bursts of damage (assuming equal incoming DPS). A second example is that warnings of incoming events can be shortened in order to ratchet up the challenge level, emphasizing situational awareness and reflexes.

Intensity - The amount of damage/healing/mitigation required to master a fight or one of its mechanics can also be tuned. Perhaps an add needs to be burst down quickly, or a tank needs to be over-healed/buffed through particularly evil barrages of damage.

Increasing intensity usually requires players to coordinate quickly and play at their best for a relatively short period of time.

Randomness - One extremely common way to increase the difficulty of an encounter is to add a degree of randomness to one or more of the battle mechanics. Things as simple as avoidable effects being placed under a random player (instead of appearing at a random location on the playing field) can be enough to up the skill required to beat the encounter.

Of course, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Some of the most challenging fights in World of Warcraft are difficult precisely because the players cannot anticipate everything that occurs, and continually conquering these fights sets the skilled apart from the lucky.

Randomness can be overused and misapplied - if an encounter is too random, or if the randomness frequently creates truly unwinnable situations (as opposed to very difficult circumstances) then checks and balances should be developed to ensure that resourceful players can still overcome the odds.

So what makes a hard encounter?
With an encounter toolbox in hand, the first step of designing a difficult encounter is possible: select the mechanics that the fight should use, and decide how strongly each will be affected by the above three modifiers.

Of course, this sounds much easier than it actually is. Mechanic selection should fit the theme of the actual encounter and make some sort of logical sense. (If your enemy is a sword wielding berserker, it will be more difficult to work in wide unavoidable damage - that works better with a magic using enemy.) In addition, the synergies between the various mechanics can be used to layer on an additional layer of challenge; forcing the players to prioritize how they react to conflicting priorities is pure gold. (Avoidable Damage + Prescribed Positioning is a fun combination, for example).

Case Studies
Here are a couple of World of Warcraft raid bosses and the mechanics that they use:

Terestrian Illhoof (Karazhan) - Add control (two types), Save or Die!, moderate fight duration (10m enrage)

Lady Vashj (Serpentshrine Caverns) - Varied Phases (3), Unavoidable Damage, Avoidable Damage, Add Control, Specific Jobs, Cued Actions, high degree of randomness for nearly all aspects of the fight

Illidan (Black Temple) - Varied Phases (5), Unavoidable Damage, Avoidable Damage, Add Control, Specific Jobs, Orchestrated Movement, Prescribed Positioning, Personal Competence Checks, high intensity with a low tolerance for personal failures.

The Four Horsemen (Naxxramas) - Avoidable Damage, Orchestrated Movement, Prescribed Positioning

Sartharion (3 drakes up) - Avoidable Damage, Add Control, Imposed Movement, Varied phases (tied to the adds/portals), Orchestrated Movement (portals), high intensity with a low tolerance for personal failures.

XT-002 Deconstructor (Ulduar) - Unavoidable Damage, Personal Competence Checks, Prescribed Positioning, Add Control, Varied Phases (2).

As gaming bloggers we are, more often than not, caught up in our subject matter and focused on the relatively narrow subsection of our lives that is relevant to the web sites that we maintain. While gaming blogs certainly dominate my RSS feed reader and bookmark list, there are plenty of other sites that I frequent and enjoy.

Here is a glance behind the mask, so to speak:

1. China Droll - The personal site of a Norwegian ex-pat who now lives in Hong Kong and works as a Cantonese teacher and author. I originally stumbled across Cecilie's site when trying to figure out if the RTHK Naked Cantonese podcast had disappeared for good (thankfully it was just on hiatus), but have since subscribed to her feed because I adore her irreverent commentary on all things Chinese. Cantonese is a language that I will becoming fluent with one of these days.... otherwise my wife will continue to be able to talk circles around me using words I only partially understand.

2. Black Aces - A blog about my beloved Ottawa Senators. Despite stinking up the NHL for much of this past year, I am hopeful that they will have the team fixed up in time for the coming season and I won't need to suffer through the agony of loss after loss of mediocre opponents. Either way, Jeremy Milks' blog will be my main source of information - he's so much saner than the local hockey media.

3. Nobel Intent - I am an unabashed science geek, and love reading about new discoveries, advances, and theories. This site - part of Ars Technica - provides timely news on a wide range of science stories and presents them in a very approachable manner.

4. The Big Picture - A photo blog, published under the Boston Globe, that updates a few times a week and vividly brings current events to life. Each entry contains 20-30 high quality images that never cease to impress. Heart-wrenching, disturbing, glorious, amazing.... the pictures run the gamut of human emotion.

5. Bluebird Banter - Another sports blog, but this time focused on baseball, and specifically the Toronto Blue Jays. When I was a kid my father used to take me to a few Jays games a year, and I simply devoured everything there was about the sport. I can distinctly remember staying up super-late to listen to west coast games, going so far as to hide my radio under the blankets to elude detection. The baseball strike of 1994 annihilated my desire to follow MLB - no longer were the players infallible heroes, but instead in my mind they transformed into over-paid greedy self-important children. A decade and a half later my interest in the sport was rekindled when I decided to treat my father to a ball game for his birthday; we watched the Jays beat the White Sox on May 16th. Now I can't let go, and Bluebird Banter helps guide me through the weeds and understand the game that I left behind so long ago.

So there's a bit about my interests..... what sites do you visit that don't relate to gaming?

Up until Saturday I hadn't played a true MMO in a couple of weeks; in fact the first Aion closed beta had been my last trip into a virtual world. This weekend I broke out of my funk and installed the Saga of Ryzom, urged on by a nagging feeling that I simply had to give it a fair shake after hearing the game mentioned a few times in a positive light.

Ryzom, released in 2004, is a game that I have long been aware of, but never really investigated even in the most cursory manner. Long satisfied with World of Warcraft, I felt no particular urge to branch out into another fantasy setting. When I finally started falling out of love with WoW, I immediately gravitated towards similarly-structured games - but unfortunately traditional MMOs feel very old and dried up to me at the moment.

Enter the Saga of Ryzom. The game has my attention for three reasons:

1. Ryzom boasts a "living world" with meaningful seasons, weather, and ecology. Animals are not simply dumb robots walking in set patterns - there are predators and prey, they migrate, they protect their territory, and they interact with each other.
2. Ryzom's skill system allows players to build and customize their abilities in a unique and interesting manner. Briefly: in the game you learn abilities and modifiers which you can then combine into actions that you place on your toolbar. Modifiers can increase or reduce the base cost of the action. This opens up a wide range of customization and personalization to the game.
3. Ryzom is a "open world". While the game has starter quests that serve as tutorials, after not too long it is up to individual players to decide what they want to accomplish. While daunting for someone who is used to the guided quest grind from 1-80, right now this is exactly the type of game play that I am interested in exploring.

After a few hours I have to admit that I'm having a lot of fun with Ryzom. I chose "Harvester" as the profession that I would address first (the game is skill-based, not level based) and am thrilled the intricate system that is laid out. This isn't simply the click-and-forget gathering that WoW or EVE bores players with; in Ryzom the planet has the ability to strike back at a harvester, and you must intelligently craft your gathering abilities to maximize your yield, protect the integrity of the local resource network, and not incur the wrath of the planet.

I will write a more in depth review of the game after I have played for a couple of weeks - but I just wanted to get my initial impressions out here.

Having not quite shaken my case of MMO ennui, I spent a half hour today checking out the Overlord II demo that was featured on Steam. The experience turned out to be well worth my time, and I had a hilariously evil time clubbing baby seals, stalking a yeti, and beating down PETA-themed elves.

The original Overlord was released a couple of year ago, and received generally positive reviews; unfortunately I was firmly entrenched in World of Warcraft at that point, so never felt the urge to try it (or any other game) out.


The flavor of the romp presented to the played in the Overlord II demo really reminded me of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2, 2003) or Dungeon Keeper (PC, 1997), with the emphasis being on pure comedic evil fun. There's something extremely cathartic in commanding a legion of little gobliny beasts to attack your foes, smash up the scenery, or just cause wanton destruction for no reason at all!

With the game set to release in a few days I'm going to have to decide if I'm going to slap down some money to pick it up. While I'm tempted to grab it right away, I may actually wait for a Steam weekend sale.... I'm cheap that way.

Other platforms
I also may need to consider the DS version - Overlord Minions - which is a puzzler that has some striking similarities to The Lost Vikings (SNES, 1994). Minions allows you to control a team of four different goblin critters to solve "fiendish puzzles".... which hopefully means "twisted and difficult" as opposed to "mindnumbingly obvious". I haven't played a good puzzler in a while, and this setting really appeals to me.

And just in case two different games for the same release weren't enough, there is also Overlord: Dark Legend, an exclusive for the Wii. The trailers suggest that this version will be more of an action/adventure game set in a twisted fairy tale world. Frankly, this seems like the sort of game that my wife and I would would get a kick out of playing together. (And besides, this sounds crazy-fun: "For example, individual Minions can be plucked from the horde, held by the neck and then, by vigorously shaking the Wii Remote, throttled to imbue him with some Overlordly power and turn him into a manic minion missile. With a now-explosive body, the insane little critter can be guided into enemies with hilarious, if rather fatal, consequences.")

There may be a lot of evil in my future!

Last week I noticed an odd little game go up on Steam: Erik Svedäng's Blueberry Garden. Intrigued by the screenshot, I clicked the link to find out more, and quickly learned that the game was the winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for 'Best Independent Game' at the 2009 Independent Games Festival.

High praise indeed! Five minutes - and five dollars - later, I had a copy of the indie game purchased and downloaded.

Blueberry Garden is a journey of discovery. As an odd little bird-man you are plunked down into a world with no back story, no obvious or immediate threat, and no stated direction. Your first tentative steps in the world quickly reveal a spartan set of in-game instructions: you are taught how to walk, jump, pick up items, drop items, eat fruit, and enter doorways.

And here is where this game becomes tricky to discuss. I went into Blueberry Garden completely blind. I had read nothing aside from the description of the game on Steam and a brief tantalizing mention on The Brainy Gamer - I hadn't even seen the trailer. In my opinion this complete lack of prior knowledge is an essential part of the experience; if you already know the game mechanics that underpin Blueberry Garden when you first set foot in the world, then much of the wonderment and discovery will be lost on you.


With no clear idea of why you exist in the world, you are left to your own devices. A quick exploration of your immediate surroundings suggests some of the core game mechanics and threats that make up the world - but only experimentation, contemplation, and tenacity will allow you to truly understand.

Although simply drawn, the graphics in Blueberry Garden fit perfectly. The world feels rich, vibrant and - most of all - alive. Trees and flowers sway in the wind, wildlife scampers around oblivious to your presence, and the clouds float lazily overhead. A gorgeous musical score accompanies game play and augments the scenery perfectly. Expect the rich piano melodies to stick with you long after you've turned the game off.

All is not idyllic and peaceful though. Before long some time pressure is introduced into the mix, and unless you are extremely intuitive or lucky your game will end tragically. The frantic dash that can accompany this sense of impending doom adds an extra dimension to the entire experience.


It took me four attempts to complete Blueberry Garden; my play sessions spanned four days, each time spending thirty minutes to an hour. While it is certainly possible to beat the game in less than an hour, you would have to either come to the game knowing what to do, or possess excellent intuition and puzzle solving abilities.

On my fourth and final attempt at Blueberry Garden I knew from early on that I was on the right track. My wife was amused by my exciting babbling as I got closer and closer to the end, and she nearly fell over laughing when I let out an elated whoop as the "You Win" screen appeared. Quite honestly the jubilation that I felt in conquering Blueberry Garden was on par with any of my World of Warcraft raiding accomplishments, including the ever-memorable Vashj victory. Completing Blueberry Garden was all that much more sweeter because I hadn't resorted to any guides or FAQs - I puzzled the thing out on my own.


If you have no patience for a game that does not tell you specifically what to do then Blueberry Garden will be a frustrating experience that you ought to avoid. However, if you are intrinsically curious, enjoy a good puzzle, and revel in the unknown then Erik Svedäng's game is a masterpiece that will bring you a few hours of joyous, beautiful game play. It is rare that I come away from a gaming session so relaxed and pleased with what I have just experienced..... Blueberry Garden is something magical.

Tobold really nails it with this gem:

In theory a system could be designed in which everybody's level reflected their actual skill at playing that particular MMO. Why is nobody designing such a system? Probably because players don't really want an accurate measurement of their skills.

Almost everyone likes to feel that they are proficient at their game of choice, and very few people like to be honestly ranked against their peers.

Syp had the misfortune of being in a bad Dungeons & Dragons Online pick-up group last night, with frustrating results. The breaking point for him was when the group leader decided to drag out the old "blame the healer" routine, chastising him as being the sole reason for the wipe.

Personally I loathe players who consistently blame the healer or tank for wipes. It's simple-minded to assume that since people started dying or the tank fell over that one of those players is to blame for the entire debacle. DPS players are often as guilty, or more guilty, than the players that they choose the heap blame on.

The core issue is that it is often very difficult to directly correlate a wipe to poor play by a DPS character. Slow DPS, inefficient DPS, failure to perform vital support roles (crowd control, kiting, etc.), failure to avoid taking unnecessary damage, and sloppy positioning are all just as liable to cause a wipe as a healer who is truly not on top of his game, or a tank who was slow to click a panic button.

Good players know this and will recognize and admit their mistakes to their group after a pull goes sour; bad players will point their finger squarely at the healer or tank and pretend that they are infallible.

I tinkered around with the site a bit more last night, and added an excellent new feature: recent comments. In addition, I repositioned the side menu widgets so that they are (hopefully) more logically grouped. Sadly, with the addition of the recent comments widget, something had to give - I have removed the "Featured Reading" section that I used to highlight interesting articles I'd read on other sites. To compensate for this loss I'll try to churn out more "Quick Hits" style posts, like this one, to pass along those article.

With the bookkeeping out of the way, here we go:

• I've never been a fan of The Sims franchise, but I must admit that I'm fascinated by the thought experiments that people have been using the game for. Syp pointed out an insane asylum Sim, but I am even more captivated by the story that is unfolding with the homeless Sims Alice and Kev. It's hard not to feel a pang of sorrow for Alice.
  
• Dana Massey recently wrote an excellent piece on how blending character advancement into innately fun activities often ends up ruining the fun activity (since players will treat it as part of the grind). WAR is the case study.
• Different games use a variety of mechanisms to teach players how to interact with their worlds. The Brainy Gamer dissects them all.
• Are you a Retirement Gamer, or a Challenge Gamer? Or does it vary from game to game?
• Tipa has published an excellent set of initial thoughts on the upcoming Aion release that closely mirror my own.
• While engrossed in an MMORPG we make friends online who we end up interacting with on a daily basis, confiding in, and overcoming challenges with. But how valuable are these virtual relationships? How do they compare to real life friendships? Are there qualitative differences? My (online?) friend Nelson struggled with this tough topic in a thoughtful blog post a couple days ago.
• Player Versus Developer nails a huge MMO-specific problem: the constant progression quandary.
  

Gordon, of We Fly Spitfires, has written a thoughtful post examining why he plays MMOs.

I just play because I enjoy playing and I enjoy playing because of the fun I have with other people - real life friends, guildies or random strangers. For me, it’s the social interactions that define the experience.

However, I’m starting to understand more about other people’s drive in MMORPGs. I always thought it was a pretty black and white thing but now I’m learning it’s actually a whole lot more complex than that. Some people are driven by pure socializing, some by exploration and wonderment, some by achievement, some by competition and some by the challenge of overcoming the odds. There’s an infinite amount of motivation out there, all backed by equally strong and worthy arguments.

Having playing MMORPGs every day for 10 years may make me knowledgeable about them but I’m learning that it doesn’t make me qualified about them. I can’t actually make any qualified statements about the ‘right’ way to play or the ‘wrong’ way to play or how a MMO should be conducted in order to make it ‘right’.

Since Gordon is soliciting input on the motivations of other players, I thought I'd chime in as well. After some thought it turns out that I have a different motivation for playing different games..... and there is very little cross-over. Here are the MMOs that I have played long enough to have a defined reason for playing:

• I play Wizard101 as a way to have family time with my Godson who lives four hours away.
• I play Free Realms to explore and relax without pressure.
• I played World of Warcraft for the challenge, and the opportunity to work with others to conquer tough content and epic bosses.
• I played Everquest and Ultima Online because they were cool, (geek) trendy, and new (but ultimately they could not displace MUDs in my world..... that took time and player base erosion).
• I originally played MUDs the way I played WoW, but then as I matured in those games they became a creative outlet where I could build worlds and tell stories for my fellow players.
  

I'm currently on the prowl for a game to replace the niche that World of Warcraft filled, and I'm eyeing Metaplace as an outlet for my world-building tendencies, although the graphical nature of that game is imposing to me and this blog fulfils some of my creative urges.

While listening to last week's installment of Rebel FM, I was struck by the similarities between the trend towards more casual-friendly MMOs and the incoming wave of non-traditional controllers that are invading the console industry. While on the surface these two segments of the gaming industry could not be more different, in reality they are both following similar patterns: MMOs and consoles seem to be moving away from the "hardcore" and towards the "casual".

The MMO side of things has been well documented here: Blizzard has been steadily making World of Warcraft more "accessible", which is a boon to the casual player but an major turn-off to many hardcore players. Given the success of WoW, many gaming companies have followed suit - existing games have been simplified while many new releases feature higher and higher levels of accessible game play out of the box. (After all, Blizzard prints money, right? Who wouldn't want a piece of that pie?!?)

Over in console land, the latest generation of platforms features two systems designed with "core gamers" in mind (Ps3, Xbox 360), and one that caters to a more casual player base^* (Wii). For the past few years this balance has held, and people have generally been happy; core gamers have sneered derisively at owners of the "gimmicky" Wii while playing the latest installments of their favorite hardcore games.

Two announcements made at this year's E3 are set to shift the focus of the console market yet again. Both the introduction of Sony's PS3 dual wand controllers and Microsoft's Project Natal are aimed squarely at the casual gaming market. While Sony hasn't fessed up to its casual player envy, Microsoft is happy to set the stage:

As for who Microsoft hopes to catch with the Natal net, Kim said, "We're not focused on this generation's casual gamers or even PS2 people who haven't upgraded. This is about the 60% of households were a video game console doesn't exist… the problem is that the controller is a barrier for some people and now with Project Natal we completely eliminate that."

Until now self-described core gamers have felt safe and sound in the knowledge that their console of choice - be it a PS3 or a 360 - would cater to their needs and desires, however these upcoming new technologies have them worried; the Rebel FM crew certainly voiced their concerns.

Nintendo proved that there is a huge and (still mostly) untapped potential for games that the casual market will eat up out there - the Wii console, peripherals, and games continue to sell insanely well. But for a core gamer with a Wii, there just isn't much selection. Personally, most of the games that I own for the Wii are titles that I bought specifically to play with my wife, or else in social situations with friends. "Hardcore" and "Wii" are rarely heard together in the same sentence.

Given the success of the Wii, it only makes sense that Sony and Microsoft want in..... and it will be interesting to see what happens to their library of games if Natal and the Sony glow sticks sell reasonably well. Will core gamers receive less attention from all three big console game producers, and if so, where will they go? If the next big budget hardcore game doesn't sell as well as Microsoft Yoga Plus! (tm) will there be as much incentive for the company to invest heavily in future non-casual games? Only time will tell, I guess.... but if I were a console gamer I'd certainly be at least a little bit worried.


^* - Ironically, despite my propensity to rail against the constant accessibility tweaks to World of Warcraft, the console I own is a Wii. Go figure.

I took some time this weekend to overhaul the site design here. The template is one that I handcrafted for my old political blog, which has been defunct since late 2007. If you run into any issues with the look and feel or functionality of the site, I would appreciate it if you dropped me a quick note in the comments (or by email).

I have more changes coming soon, but I was interested in rolling out the main design as quickly as possible. Man, it feels like home here now.

I'm not regretting my decision to leave World of Warcraft.

Not one bit.

The hardcore progression raider inside of me seethes at the relentless waves of surprise-nerfs.

I'm finally getting into the swing of summer, and am outside most evenings for at least an hour now days - it's nice. I've always had a hard time committing to an MMO during the warmer months.... so perhaps my break from WoW and my inability to get seriously into another game is in part related to that. Maybe.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I've been falling behind on my reading.... in fact here are some interesting articles I've stumbled across lately.

• As The Brainy Gamer points out, most video game enthusiasts take great pride in their collections, but rarely play most of the titles that they purchase more than once. With that in mind, perhaps it is time that we changed our habits a little bit, and started sharing our treasures around. (Hey Bill - when will you remember that copy of KotOR for me?)


• Is World of Warcraft in decline? Wolfshead presents some intriguing traffic numbers that suggest that interest in the huge MMO is waning, and has been for a while. (Tobold, meanwhile, points out some pitfalls in the data.)


• My brother beat Super Mario Land for the original Game Boy when he was a mere five years old. The game was tough, and yet the little bastard bore down and kicked its ass before any of the four older siblings could boast as much. But have kids these days lost their taste for a good hard challenge? Julian, of Gamers with Jobs fame, laments his own children's aversion to difficult games.

As a final note, I helped the guys at The Combobulater hook up a blog to their web site and we launched it today: give it a read if you get a chance.

Ixobelle ran into a pretty nasty racist recently - you can see a chat transcript of the encounter here. She muses:

Blizzard won't take any action against this account, though, because that's a lost subscription. The most they'll do is put a 3 hour ban on it (probably while he sleeps), and Moxxi will be right back in Trade after a healthy, balanced breakfast, and ready to take on the Jews or the Chinese. Yes, mother Blizzard doesn't wish to lose Moxxi's 15 dollars a month, but is there just NO precedent for someone that just gets tired of their inaction and quits the game because they're sick of seeing it?

Although Blizzard claims to take racism seriously, a three hour ban is no where near adequate, especially if the racism is flagrant and/or player is a repeat offender. While it is important to keep in mind that there can be a lot of very gray areas when it comes to racism... but in this particular case it is blunt and ugly.

If a company is serious about their game being a safe haven from some of the nastier aspects of the real world then they ought to have a zero tolerance for blatant racism. Back when I was an admin for a MUD we would warn offenders once, and then permanently ban them if they didn't stop spouting their racist drivel. IP bans for particularly persistent bigots were not unheard of. Our reasoning for reacting so decisively was that we would lose more players by allowing the hateful behavior to continue than we would by enforcing a policy that could be considered anti free speech.

Of course, as Ixobelle points out, in modern MMOs there is the additional complication of financial incentives. Permanently banning a player for racism is guaranteed to diminish your revenue stream, whereas simply tolerating the behavior and encouraging the rest of the players to place the offender on ignore may allow a company to come out ahead. It's a gamble either way.

Perhaps this is why games like Free Realms and Wizard101 do not have a global chat channel..... when everything is local it's a lot tougher to peddle your hate to a large (and juvenile) audience.

[hat tip to Broken Toys]

Quality assurance forms an integral part of the development cycle for any software application; without solid testing, video games would be released as buggy atrocities that would be nearly unplayable. Traditionally games testing has taken place mostly in house, with external full betas being relatively rare. For MMOs, however, which are amongst the most complex games ever created, this is not sufficient.

Massive games call for quality assurance on a massive scale, and more often than not gaming enthusiasts are being asked to pony up some of their spare time in order to help test a game that they are excited about. Truthfully, it is a win-win situation: gamer geeks get an early taste of the delicious MMO that they have been salivating over, and the game developers receive thousands of valuable hours of free labour.

Souring the deal
Unfortunately for players, some MMO developers continue to dabble with a pay-for-beta format. Most recently, the developers of both Aion and Mortal Online have allowed players to plunk down cash (in the form of a pre-order of the full game) in exchange for guaranteed access to the beta test phases of their respective games.

In essence, players who purchase guaranteed beta keys are paying for the right to perform valuable labor for a game studio. This seems backwards and wrongheaded; shouldn't it be the other way around? If anything players who invest hours (days?) or their time helping a company ensure that their product is released as glitch-free as possible ought to be compensated for their efforts. Bad releases can kill games - beta testers help prevent buggy launches.

In fact, the pay-to-test model borders on outright extortion; fanboys who simply cannot wait for a game's release will fork over money in their haste to be amongst the first to set foot in the unfinished world, and in the process they will commit to buying a product that hasn't even been completed (and that may be utter crap).

The entire trend leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'll happily lend my services and beta test for free, but I won't be caught dead paying a company to do their work for them.

---

Update: As pointed out by a couple of readers, this has been going on for a while; this article was slightly edited to compensate for this.

Although I ended up having an extremely busy weekend (thanks to some unexpected work deadlines), I was able to get in a couple of quality hours on the Aion beta. While I won't go into details now - others have done an excellent job summarizing my impressions - I will say that what struck me as most impressive was the quality of the environments presented in the starter area; everything felt alive and vibrant.

As Spinks has pointed out, the more realistic-feeling a virtual world is, the easier it becomes to lose yourself in the game:

So even riding around empty low level zones looking for herbs [in World of Warcraft] is fun for me. It’s peaceful and I’m able to brush up my world lore by knowing where things grow without needing to look it up. In other words, it helps to bring the game world alive for me. The ecology feels immersive – it’s like I’m there.

[...]

I would love it if more virtual worlds had proper ecologies that weren’t based purely on what level pigs you can find in each zone. You could imagine becoming a virtual plant expert or virtual bird watcher. To be honest, I would much rather study virtual creatures in their natural habitat than kill them. Especially if they have interesting behavior to watch.

One way to craft a more realistic virtual world would be to set up a series of cause-and-effect localized ecologies that act as small-scale finite state machines to govern the population of given segments of a zone. Steve Williams explains:

But, imagine a more dynamic, programmatic, dare I say "clockwork" world in which the spawned NPCs have (very) basic needs, and can affect one another quite definitively.

The forest adjacent to the meadow has a bear living in it. Bears like meat, so it moves to the meadow and eats the bunnies. This goes on for quite some time, until the bunnies are gone. Now we are at "State 1."

What happens next? Well, the orcs in a nearby village require bear hides as part of their "basic needs" and happen upon the bear. Exit bear, and now orcs are in this meadow (State 2).

Who hates orcs? How about the elves of the forest? Orcs in the meadow mean elven defenders attacking the meadow. Now we have elves here. (State 3).

The elves of course have no need for the meadow and move away. (State 4).

Bunnies, being the opportunistic jerks they are, move in. We're back to... State 0.

The circle of life, my friends, in a spawn cycle. We start a simple cycle, and let it run, with players entering the scene at any given point in the cycle. This illusion of ecologic succession matches player expectations of a living world, and can have real consequences.

While simple mob-based feedback loops would go a long way towards lending an aura of life to a MMO zone, the concept can be taken much further. Anders Tychsen's MMO Believability Project proposes borrowing elements of Alife to generate truly vibrant virtual worlds:

The design, construction and management of virtual world systems in MMOGs can be approached from a variety of angles. When it comes to the design and management of the virtual environment itself, the traditional approach has been to hand-craft the environment top-down to accommodate already defined gameplay and game design. An alternative path is to design the virtual world first, defining any causal relationships, and utilize this as a basis for designing the gameplay.

This latter approach is utilized in virtual world simulations and games that place weight on simulated, realistic environments or functions, such as A-life games. The advantages of the simulation approach are for example that the consistency and logical realism of the thereby created game worlds is much stronger than in the hand-crafted versions, providing a much richer and immersive experience to the player, which possibly boosts retention. Furthermore, complex systems tend to generate emergent gameplay which has to be pre-planned for in hand crafted systems. Proponents of the hand-crafting approach argue however, that simulations are not necessarily fun – the real world being a primary case argument – and therefore not supportive to games design. Furthermore, that the realistic feel provided by simulations often can be achieved by using stagecraft.

It is not the purpose of the MMOG believability project to advocate either approach, but rather the approach that aims at creating believable worlds. This approach attempts to merge the complexity of the simulation approach with without compromising the core game design.

In practice, most MMOGs lean heavily towards the hand-crafted side with elements of a believability or simulation approach mixed in. Game comes first, the game world follows. This is causing massive problems with consistency and logic in many games, which however is not a cause for low subscription numbers, as is the case with e.g. World of Warcraft, GuildWars and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Despite the success of World of Warcraft, this is far from the only MMOG running successfully, and the game does not appeal to all types of players. For example Saga of Ryzom is based on a more believable environment with a simple ecosystem dynamic integrated therein.

Although Anders offers up only the broadest concept (he is looking for a suitor to expand on his ideas with), it is a tantalizing morsel. In fact, there is already a freely available game that serves as a powerful example of an emergent world: Dwarf Fortress.

In its current state Dwarf Fortress will not appeal to many MMO gamers - after all, it is an ASCII-based world with a complexity that is only matched by the richness of the world it explores. Still, the game models a fully functioning and completely dynamic virtual world, complete with: active geology, weather patterns, plant and animal life, interacting NPC colonies, trade, and much more.

Starry-eyed fantasy time
Imagine a massive game in which every server evolved slightly differently based on the interactions between the players and their virtual environment. Certain species would either survive or die out based on how heavily they were hunted or protected. Towns would spring up or fade away depending on the volume of trade between players. NPCs would not be stuck in a permanent state of stasis, but instead would have motivations, fears, and desires that players could play off of. Plant life could be clear cut or nurtured.

A game like this, if big enough to support many different servers of players, would be an electronic version of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, with absolutely fascinating results. Truly dynamic worlds could be explored outside of the kill 10 foozles model that dominates MMO gaming today.

Writing over at We Fly Spitfires, Gordon asserts that there is no real skill involved in raiding and as long as you invest enough time in the activity, loot will eventually fall like rain:

MMORPGs are not hard to play. They aren’t Street Fighter or Unreal Tournament. The most challenging aspect is probably interacting with other players and organizing a large number of them to tackle raids. That being said, any player, given enough time, can achieve anything because all they need to do is tag along for the ride. I’ve seen this a lot in raiding with DPS classes especially. Most guilds don’t hand out rewards based on skill (because it’s almost impossible to measure and, no, I don’t believe topping a DPS chart is a huge sign of talent), they hand them out based on attendance. Again, time wins over skill.

Needless to say I disagree with the notion that skill is an unnecessary commodity in MMORPGs, and that the time a player invests in the game trumps all other considerations.

Using World of Warcraft as an example, end game progression raiding requires that players possess the following skills and traits at a minimum: knowledge of how to play chosen class effectively, excellent situational awareness, great reaction time, ability to react to unforeseen circumstances, ability to step up while under pressure, adaptivity/creativity, and a good grasp of overall strategy. Some of these are learned skills, while others are innate - but all are important if you expect to engage in World of Warcraft progression raiding and succeed.

Reductio ad absurdum FTW
If Gordon's assertion that time is the only important factor in a player's MMORPG success is true, then it must also be true that on a server filled with completely unskilled players, all of the raid content available will be conquered (within the context of the expansion that it is released) given enough time.

Unfortunately this is exactly where the wheels fall off his argument, because Gordon assumes that guilds that have already reduced the raid content to farm status will always exist so that unskilled players will be able to "tag along for the ride". Without a core of skilled players, however, raid content will never get conquered and thus there will never be room in raids for people just tagging along and failing to contribute in a meaningful or optimal fashion.

Thus a server devoid of skill will never conquer all of the raid content available, and as such the amount of time the unskilled player base of this hypothetical server invests into the game becomes completely meaningless in terms of concrete progress through the end game. To put it another way, when considering end game raiding skill trumps time one hundred percent of the time.

The simple truth is that skill is important in MMORPG raiding. Players who can push the envelope must exist before lesser skilled players can be boosted for easy loot.

My EVE Online experiment has failed. I have not been able to force myself to log into the game for more than a week and a half; the thought of spending any more time "playing" EVE is utterly unpalatable.

How far did I get?
I finished all of the newbie tutorials as well as the three 10-mission career arcs. This gave me a chance to sample all of the major game mechanics: combat, travel, mining, trade, and manufacturing.

After completing the majority of the newbie content, I cooked up a plan on how to move forward: I would become a small time trader of light weight goods (skill books, implants, etc.), run combat missions, and perhaps knock out the 50-mission epic quest chain that multiple people had recommended.

In fact, going into my last weekend of play I was quite excited about the prospect of enacting my plans and getting deeper into the game. I understood the mechanics, had a handle on the complex UI, and could travel and fight proficiently enough to feel comfortable, and had a dozen website bookmarked to aid me in my travels. As a sign of my enthusiasm I even borrowed a couple of E:On magazines that Bill offered me so that I could get even more involved in the EVE universe.

What went wrong?
That weekend I played quite a bit of EVE Online - perhaps four or five hours. I ran some missions, flew around a fair bit, manufactured a few items, played the local economy in order to obtain cheaper materials, and chatted quite a bit with the people in the Rookie Channel.

As the hours slipped by I noticed that I was having less and less fun. It's not that I wasn't doing intellectually interesting things - in fact I was pursuing content that I wanted to complete. No - I began to notice more and more that the actual act of accomplishing any of my goals was very "hands off".

Travel in EVE Online exemplifies this problem more than anything else. If you want to get from System A to System B, here are the steps you take:

1. Set your destination via a menu so that the game will calculate the path to get there for you.
2. Select the first jump gate provided by the system, and choose the drop down option "Warp to within 0m".
3. Wait a variable amount of time for your ship to fly to the gate (30s-2m)
4. Wait for you thrusters to power down, right click the gate, and select "Jump" from a drop down menu.
5. If you have arrived at your final destination, warp to within 0m of the particular part of the system you wanted to access. Otherwise go to step 2 and repeat for the next system along your path.

Unless you are in hostile space, you are perfectly safe while you travel and so there is no need to be on the lookout for enemies. Simply keep selecting the menu option supplied by the game and then waiting for a few minutes for your ship to arrive at the next gate and you will make it to your destination safe and sound. (While the game includes an autopilot feature, it take ~5m per system to travel.)

The game play mechanics used to travel from system to system are very similar to every other part of EVE Online. If you want to fight an enemy you target it, pick a distance to engage at, acquire a lock, enable your weapons/defenses, and then let the your ship fight the battle itself. If you want to mine you orbit an asteroid, lock on, enable your mining lasers, and then wait until your hull is full (3-10 minutes, it seems). If you want to manufacture goods you acquire the materials, select an assembly line, specify the quantity, and then wait a variable amount of time for the process to finish (anything from seconds to days).

EVE Online tries at every turn to eliminate the need for a player to focus on the game, and seems to encourage players to detach, tab out, read email, watch T.V., or otherwise do something that is NOT playing EVE Online.

While there is nothing wrong with this style of game play, it is decidedly not for me. When I sit down to play a game I want to immerse myself in the virtual world that unfolds before me, and really PLAY the game. I'm not saying that I need to be frenetically slamming keys the entire play session, but neither do I want to be twiddling my thumbs for 80% of my in-game time waiting for the game to finish playing itself.

Such a promising vision
My time in EVE Online has given me a new appreciation for the game and all of the innovations that it has made over the years. The player driven content that the game has to offer is compelling, deep, and subtly brutal. Simply put, it is a truly unique gaming experience in an industry that all-to-often looks for success by iterating over the same template again and again.

As much as I wanted to experience more of EVE Online and participate in the wars and intrigue that enthrall so much of the player base, I just cannot find peace with the game's lethargic and detached mechanics.

When Metaplace launched their open beta on May 17th many people had high hopes that it would herald a new era of MMO-style gaming. Far more than just a game, Metaplace is a web-based platform designed to allow players to construct virtual worlds for the entire community to explore, conquer, socialize, experience, and interact with.

Although not a completely unique idea - after all, Second Life has allowed players to sculpt their world for years - nevertheless Metaplace seemed like a solid concept that could hardly fail. It helps that there has been a fair bit of buzz around the concept of player generated content lately, especially since City of Heroes released their mission architect.

Where are all the players?
If the first three weeks is any indication, Metaplace has failed to gain any traction. The game is sparsely populated during prime time, and almost completely deserted during off hours.

Below is an example of Metaplace's population, sorted by zone, around 9pm EST on June 2, 2009. The number of players in each area is listed in the upper-left of each thumbnail.

Although I don't want to sound alarmist, these numbers seem extremely low for a brand new game in beta test - especially one that received attention from most of the major gaming news sites when they launched a few weeks ago.

Newborn worlds
Despite the low population numbers, there have been quite a number of interesting worlds created by the fledgling community, and more are coming online every day. Zones range from small artistically designed rooms with moody music to larger areas containing activities that visitors can partake in.





While I admit that I am not much of a builder (and have no desire to be), I have wasted away a few hours hopping through the various worlds and sampling what has been created so far. There is so much potential in Metaplace, if only it can capture more people's imagination, and start to build a community. Unfortunately, as it stands right now you will be lucky to run across many other players.

Challenges
The fact that Metaplace has so few users at the moment cannot simply be attributed to fluke or bad luck, and indeed there are some obvious issues that plague the game.

First and foremost, the core type of user that will drive Metaplace to success is a player with a builder mentality. Without dedicated builders there will be very few quality zones for explorers and achievers to play in. Unfortunately for Metaplace, many players with strong builder tendencies already play Second Life, and that game has been around long enough that many are heavily invested in it.

Players of Second Life are used to extremely good graphics - far superior to the web-based fare served up by Meta Place.



Players used to building high quality three-dimensional virtual spaces may find it difficult to downgrade to graphics that are reminiscent of the SNES era.

Technologically-speaking, Metaplace's ability to run in a normal browser without launching any external software or installing any massive plug-ins is a great achievement. Unfortunately, browser-based games are tied down by their underlying architecture, are still difficult to take seriously. The day is coming when high quality games will be played directly from a browser - but as the screenshots of Metaplace show, that day is not yet here.

Finally there is the learning curve. I am not a natural builder, however I tried my hand at a bit of crafting and found the interface to be overwhelming. There is a rich toolset available to the user, and the potential is certainly immense, but it is not for the faint of heart.....

Summary
Metaplace has a boatload of potential and may well yet develop a healthy following. Unfortunately the fact remains that the game has significant technical limitations, a tough entrenched competitor, and very little out-of-the box material to suck in players. I hope that Metaplace not only survives but flourishes..... however only time will tell if that happens.

Update
Raph Koster, president of Metaplace, dropped by in the comments of this article to discuss the open beta launch along with a few other details. Please do read what he has to say, as it helps to build context.

To be clear, Metaplace is a project that I am very keen to see succeed and fully intend to keep dabbling with. I believe that user generated content, as I've alluded to before, is key to the evolution of MMOs over the next few years - games that make good use of it will flourish, while those that stick to very rigid quest treadmills will become less prominent.

We all play and enjoy video games, but have you ever wondered what it is like to actually work in the gaming industry? The was the question that I recently posed to Emeny and Burnsy, the hosts of The Combobulator podcast and employees of Rockstar Games (specifically Rockstar Lincoln). The guys took up the challenge in their May 30 2009 episode, and provided some insight into the following queries that I had made on their forums:

• Was working in the gaming industry something you wanted to do when you were considering a career, or did you just sort of stumble into the jobs?

• Are the rumors of crazy working hours true, or are those exaggerations?
  

• Has working in the industry affected how you look at games? How you play them?

• Do you tend to play the games that you work on after they have been released?

A large part of the discussion revolved around Emeny and Burnsy's roles as quality assurance experts on the Grand Theft Auto IV project, which was a huge market success. Hearing an insider's view on the process provides some much-needed perspective, and really allows you appreciate the hard work and dedication that go into crafting a modern video game.

You can download this episode here: The Combobulator, May 30 2009
The main site is found here: The Combobulator
And the forums are here if you wish to ask the guys further questions: Combob Forums

The Combobulator may be touching on another gaming industry-related topic next episode: advancement within a game design studio. Should be an excellent listen, and I can't wait for it to be released.

In response to my article, "The journey is what you make it", prominent World of Warcraft druid theorycrafter Tossk left the following comment:

Very interesting article.. and amusingly-enough, it relates pretty closely to my own thoughts on game design and learning. The topic of what 80 levels of grinding does for a player in terms of learning is something that I plan on writing a lot about, and to that end, I've just released a survey on WoW and learning.

If you're interested, I'll be posting the data from the survey over on the druid wiki soon, and the survey itself can be taken over on Survey Monkey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ZEGZG0aVq8lK_2fqKGtF7hPg_3d_3d

Emphasis mine. The subject of learning in game is an intriguing one, and Toskk's research should be an interesting read when he finishes with it. If you'd like to contribute, why not click on over to the survey and fill it out.

MMORPG.com is currently giving away keys for the Aion closed beta: 5000 North American keys and 5000 European keys will be issued.

The wait is almost over! MMORPG.com is giving away 5,000 Aion closed beta keys. The first Aion closed beta event is this weekend. It starts Friday, June 5, 2009 at noon PT and ends at midnight Sunday night, June 7, 2009.

Be one of the first to experience the incredible world of Aion! Space in the closed beta is extremely limited, so grab an access key quickly from MMORPG.com.

Click here if you want to snag a key: North American - Europe

Update: The keys are all gone for now.

I've been slowly expanding my reading (and listening) lists over the past week or two, and am really digging all of the insightful commentary on MMOs (and gaming in general) that enthusiasts churn out almost as fast as I can consume it. There is a vast array of different ideas, opinions, and controversies out there, each one fascinating in its own way. World of Warcraft, it turns out, is not the center of the universe.

Some recent highlights:

• A few months ago Randy Smith penned a series of articles (one, two, three) dissecting the notion of "fun" in video games. Specifically, Smith explored the notion of whether or not it was possible to create a game that was based upon Not Fun subject matter and make the player think long and hard about it, immerse themselves in the world, and take it seriously. He starts off like this:
  
  

  I have a rant about the dogma of "fun" which goes like this: Brokeback Mountain (or Schindler’s List, or your favorite depressing movie) is a powerful and valuable film, and I’m glad it exists, but I wouldn’t consider it "fun".
  
  Why are games so fixated on being fun, and how much is this hurting us? Fun, they say, exists only for diversion and irrelevance, whereas heavy emotion permeates the most crucial moments of our lives.
  
  That’s obviously an oversimplification, but if we want our medium to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t hurt to demonstrate that both Fun and Not Fun games are equally within our capabilities.

  
  The entire series is extremely thought provoking, and well worth the read.


• Spinks, following up on a great article by Girl Unplugged, poses the following question in response to the rampant over-sexed depictions of women that dominate gaming media:
  
  

  "Surely a decent artist can draw a hot woman who isn’t showing masses of skin, just … look at real life for examples."

  
  With that in mind, here's my game-girl crush - Jade, from Beyond Good & Evil:
  
  
  Rawr!
  
  
  
  Fear the camera.
  
  
  Jade is neither scantly clad nor over-sexed. Who needs bimbos like Lara Croft anyways?


• Developers of FusionFall - a children's MMO based on the Cartoon Network universe - have had the unique experience of watching how kids play online games and test the boundaries set up for them. Specifically it has been intriguing to watch the young gamers find ways around the virtual walls and slip into "the Wastelands" - a developer test bed.
  
  

  What do kids who manage to find their way into the Wastelands find? Odds and ends in some cases, says Weil. Perhaps a few buildings to be put into a town, bits of machinery. In some cases there are entire areas of the game that are replicated and remain there for testing purposes. "Remember that kids want to show off?" Weil asks. "They have been infiltrating the Wastelands and taking screenshots, then posting it on the forums and bragging about what they've found." The very existence of the Wastelands provides a challenge for these little explorers, who are playing the game in ways that the developers didn't intend.

  
  This all reminds me of a recent episode of 'Gamers with Jobs' in which one of the hosts described how his daughter played Free Realms. Instead of following quest chains or levelling up professions, she decided that she needed to explore every corner of the virtual world. To her father it seemed that she was trying to understand the boundaries of her play space in order to better interact like it..... not a far cry from the youngsters in FusionFall.

The remainder of 2009 is shaping up to be a fairly slow as far as new MMOs are concerned. Massively's event calender only shows a pair of closed betas scheduled to begin before September, and only two games launch once back-to-school season kicks in: Aion and Champions Online. Smaller releases are also in the works, but this year is very quiet compared to 2008.

As a player who is between MMOs who is not particularly tempted by anything currently on the market, the pickings are slim indeed. Still, despite the less-than-rosy upcoming release schedule there are a fair number of games that I am watching with an eye towards trying them out when they finally do go live.

Aion (Q4 2009, official site)
Fresh off an amazing start in Korea, NCSoft will be releasing Aion to European and North American audiences later this year. This game sits firmly atop my MMO radar, and I will be extremely tempted to pick it up on release day unless something goes seriously awry.

Highlights:
Aion is an RvR affair with an additional neutral NPC faction that decides how to get involved based on the balance of power at any given time. Two realms of winged angelic creatures wage war on each other and compete for territory and PvE goals - Warhammer Online should come to mind. Judging by the screenshots and movies released so far, Aion has a very distinct art style, and a hell of a lot of polish. Personally I'm a fan of any fallen angel lore, and admit to being excited by the mere idea that I could play a winged demigod. What can I say - we all have our weaknesses.

Risks:
While Aion was received extremely well in Korea, that country is know for long grindy MMOs that are the mental equivalent of smashing your face off your keyboard for hours at a time. The game is apparently being "westernized" right now, and Aion fanboys assure anyone who will listen that this effort includes removing some of the hated grind from the game. Only time will tell how it is received by western players, I guess.

Mortal Online (Summer 2009, official site)
While Mortal Online has drawn some early comparisons to Darkfall, that seems to be fairly far from the truth - in fact, many people point to the venerable Ultima Online as the game's closest match. Personally, my interest was piqued when I read the game developer's explanation of what Mortal online is not:

There are no levels, no experience points, no starting classes, no quests, no 3rd person view, no NPCs with big exclamation marks over their heads, no global chat channels, no flashing numbers when you hit something, no respawning bosses, no instances, no pocketable mounts, no virtual restrictions for where you can go or not, no auto-loot, no predestined player path where it turns out you're The Chosen One, no automated auction house, no auto-respawn, no NPCs you "can't attack", no bears that drop gold coins or dragons that drop swords, and no loot bags impossible for other players to open.

Highlights:
I am convinced that open world games are the way of the future so long as game designers can work out a satisfying way to weave a story into their games without being too smothering. Mortal Online claims to offer this, and more. In fact, a lot of the juicy tidbits littered through their FAQ suggests that we will be treated to a very different type of MMO than what we have become accustomed to. This is a good thing, by the way.

Risks:
There are two main risks that players hoping for a home run out of Mortal Online must be aware of. Firstly, the company developing the game is small and unknown - while they have big ideas and talk a good game, until players are able to try their world out themselves everything is just wishful thinking. Secondly, some of the players that flocked to Darkfall and were let down by it have picked up this game as their next messiah; many elements displayed by that hardcore, nerd-raging, carebear-hating crew are distasteful to the majority of gamers that watched their pathetic antics once already. With community being such an enormous factor in the success of an MMO, the ex-Darkfallers could be a problem.

Gathryn (closed beta soon, official site)
Mindfuse Games - founded in 2006 - recently announced that they are accepting beta tester applications for their new MMO, Gathryn.



Highlights:
Like Aion, Gathryn's initial appeal for me is based on the choice of setting: in this case, a steampunk world. Although details are frustratingly hard to come by, mmolecule did have some good teasers to share after seeing a private demo:

Meant for the casual player, Gatheryn is full of quests, mini-games, vivid characters, and a beautifully designed world. It will definitely appeal to players tired of the usual fair of kill xyz NPC n times. [...] From what we saw, character customization is very detailed in Gatheryn, allowing players to create new technology, crafts, fashion, and even own and customize a house. The customization options seemed pretty limitless and that’s a big plus from our view.

Risks:
The 'C' word. Gathryn makes no bones about having some major "casual" elements, and the company's literature is laced with it. The developers also boast that the game will release with both traditional quests and "over 30 minigames", which brings up frightening comparisons to Free Realms. Minigames, if overused, end up making the game world feel completely unnecessary and turn it into a large disconnected lobby instead of an immersive experience.

Otherland (unknown, no site)
The Otherland is a brilliant series sci-fi novels by Tad Williams set in a future world where citizens can hop online and enter into life-like VR simulations. I read this series a few years ago, and loved it to bits..... when Eurogamer dropped the announcement that a game based on this brilliant work of fiction was in the works I nearly wet myself. Eurogamer explains:

Otherland - from the books by Tad Williams - is a mind-bending concept. For want of a better soundbite, let's call it the first cyberpunk MMO: a virtual world about virtual worlds, in which your avatar is an avatar, the NPCs play NPCs, and you explore a multiverse in which you might be in realistic historical surroundings one minute, and cartoon fantasy ones the next. Everything changes, even your own appearance, and nothing is even pretending to be real.

Highlights:
If done correctly, the sky is the limit for any game based on the ideas presented in Otherland. This could be the next generation MMO that blows the doors off of the genre, and introduces a far broader vision. It's all completely idle speculation, but if the game plays like the VR worlds in Williams' books, then expect to see concepts like mailable player characters that evolve based on player experiences, user created content on a grand scale, and a multitude of different ever-changing settings woven into a consistent whole.

Risks:
On the other hand, with almost no details released (Eurogamer, Worthplaying, MMORPG), a rookie MMO developer, no web site, and nothing even resembling a target date, Tad Williams' game may never materialize. Very few people would be surprised if the Otherland MMO failed to crawl past the concept phase - certainly many other MMOs have done just that. I desperately hope that this doesn't happen, but with a game that is probably years away, prudence is required.