Twin Sector is a physics-based action/puzzler developed by DnS Development. The game is currently available for players in Europe to download through Steam, however those of us in North America are restricted to the demo version until the worldwide release at the end of November this year.

Although the developer loudly proclaims that Twin Sector is an "innovative action adventure" game, the honest truth is that the title is a Portal clone. The innovation, such as it is, lies in the fact that you are equipped with a pair of telekinetic gloves instead of guns that can create rips in the fabric of the universe. While this means that the types of puzzles that you encounter are certainly different than those found in Portal, the game play - at least if the demo is any indication - is excruciatingly similar.

Your telekinetic gloves allow you to attract or repulse objects in the environment. To activate them you use the mouse button corresponding to the glove you wish the activate; a simple click lets out a burst of attraction/repulsion, while holding down the button charges the glove up. For example, to knock a crate around you would click the repulsion glove, however if you wanted to throw the crate much harder (say, to break a window) then you would charge the glove up first. The attraction glove is used for two main purposes: to draw distant objects to you, and to draw yourself closer to a fixed object (like a wall). These two sets of powers can be combined in a multitude of ways to make some incredibly challenging puzzles, and the demo does a good job of giving the player a sample of the type of thing to expect.


One gripe that I have with the game is that your character, Ashley, feels far too fragile, and cannot fall nearly as far as a player of FPS games might expect. I found myself dead multiple times because drops that I considered mediocre were fatal, and multiple small drops stack up quickly to kill you. The repulsion glove can be used to soften your landing when you fall, which means that you can effectively survive any drop imaginable with good timing, however it is still bothersome that FPS falling damage standards have been tampered with so drastically.

While I'm being negative, if there is one thing that drives me crazy about Twin Sector it is the way that Ashley walks. It is a standard FPS convention to display a character's weapon in their field of vision so that the player always knows what they are wielding. Unfortunately, in this game you are always "wielding" a pair of telekinetic gloves, and so the developers made the decision that you would always see both of your hands flouncing out in front of you as you traverse the environment: Ashley always walks like a spaced-out bimbo. This is unrealistic, extremely dorky, and really detracts from the feel of the game.


Graphically, Twin Sector is a step up from Portal in terms of the quality of the textures and fluidity of the environment, however it fails to exhibit even half of its character and charm. The game is set in an underground bunker, and it shows - everything looks sparse, functional, and in the end, lifeless. While I sympathize with the fact that it is difficult to make a game world vibrant and alive when your plot dictates that you are alone in an enclosed facility, finding a way to add personality to the environment would have made play sessions much more interesting.

Speaking of plot, like Portal you wake up without knowing who you are or what you are meant to be doing and are immediately greeted by a computer intelligence that guides you through your missions. Whereas Portal's computer voice was humorous and interesting, Twin Sector's "Oscar" speaks in bland sometimes-broken English that grates on the nerves. Ashley speaks coherent English, so I'm not sure if Oscar is meant to speak poorly, or if the writers just did a poor job on him. I will avoid spoiling any plot points (the demo and trailer do a good job at that), but suffice to say that the game appears to be a journey to discover who you are and why you find yourself alone. Standard stuff, really.

In closing, Twin Sector is a decently made Portal clone that has a few blemishes, but will make you think and test your reflexes at the same time. If you loved Portal and are looking for a similar experience, this may well be worth your time to check out.

Steam download: link
Demo parameters: Two levels
Release date: Now (Europe), or November 30th (everywhere else)
Cost: $29.99

I'm weak, I admit it. It took only three days for my willpower to crumble, and so last night I logged into Dungeons & Dragons Online again, my first visit since the f2p beta a few months ago. Never mind the fact that I'm enjoying exploring the world of Spellborn, Bioshock is still not complete, I'm working through two separate games with my wife, and I reserve an hour for Fire Emblem every night.... oh no, I simply had to start another game.

Anyways....

After reading as much as I could on all of the permadeath guilds in DDO I decided to make Sarlona server my home; eventually I'll apply to The Sublime, the server's resident PD guild. (Edit: Crap, they're on Thelanis server, my mistake.) In the short term I need to get my head wrapped around DDO's game play and mechanics far more solidly than I do now, as well as earn enough favor to unlock the 32-point builds (which is a terrible game design decision, by the way).

I spent about thirty minutes deciding what I wanted to play as my first character, before finally settling on a human paladin. Paladins are durable, deal good damage, and can eventually heal themselves; the DDO newbie forum lists them as one of the easier classes to play, and that sounds perfect to me.

I spent some time making my avatar look suitably Asian (my wife is Chinese... it's a weakness of mine), named him Tsuun Choi (Cantonese: "dumb vegetable"), and then stepped into the world. Korthos Island was exactly as I remembered it; I flew through the introductory quest without and problems and then dug into the main town dungeons. Since I was waiting for my wife to call and request a pick up from work, I spent my time soloing every dungeon available to me, first on Normal difficulty, and then again on Hard.

The paladin played easily enough, and although I had relatively few skills available outside of my auto attack I still managed to get by. When I entered the dungeons on Hard difficulty I found myself having to actually use the healing potions that I picked up, which was a pleasant change from the mostly danger-free WoW leveling up process. I completed my final quest with 9 health left (out of 56), which was dangerously close to failure (and in fact, I was convinced that the Sahuagin boss was going to murder me).

By the time I had to log out for the night I had amassed enough experience to gain level two, and completed all of the quests within the starter town. When next I set foot in Eberron I will be heading into the first open area, which I experienced during my beta testing. Hopefully in a week or two I will be feeling comfortable enough with the game to create my first disposable character - permadeath awaits.

Bonus material: A DDO Guide for WoW Players

I don't want to get in the habit of posting every awesome MMO comic that Tim cranks out, but this was another one that deserves exposure.

WoW feral druid players will also want to check out his "Sillies" series entitled "Fail Druid": 1, 2, 3, 4.

In the end, you really all ought to subscribe to the Ctrl+Alt+Del feed - it's awesome fun.

Despite knowing damned well that I don't have the time for the grouping required by Dungeons & Dragons Online, I am inches away from logging into the game again. I've re-downloaded the client and installed the whole thing. The DDO icon on my desktop is crooning my name.

I was at peace with my decision to avoid Turbine's relaunched title until yesterday when Syp, curse his eternal soul, brought the concept of permadeath game play in DDO to my attention. It turns out that there is an entire sub-community within the game that delete their characters after a single death, with extremely few exceptions.

I am unbelievably excited by the prospect of this style of MMO game play - it would be like playing my beloved Ancient Domains of Mystery, except co-op and with gorgeous graphics. I've had an on-again off-again love affair with Roguelike games (like ADOM) since I discovered them nearly a decade ago - there's something exhilarating about playing a game where you know that mistakes do not go unpunished, and any second may be your last.

To get more of a taste of the permadeath experience, here are some choice quotes from a recent interview with Lessa, a member of the Sublime permadeath guild on DDO's Sarlona server:

Perma-Death is more about the journey than the destination. When I first began experimenting with Perma-Death play, I was not in a PD guild. I can tell you that the average leet player has no time or patience to wait for you while you experiment with slower-paced play and careful strategy. I was being dragged through quests with no clue as to what the goals were and many times I felt a competitive air about who killed what and how fast. In some cases, things were dead by the time the party reached a common room. I did not enjoy this. I wanted to play in a way that involved the party solving dilemmas as well-formed team.

After a few weeks of frustration, I found the Sublime Perma-Death Guild, on the Thelanis Server. It was perfect for me. Here was an entire guild full of players who thought as I did. Not only that, they taught me to play the game in entirely different way, to approach situations from several angles and to get the most out of resources. Here were people who were not concerned with the kill count at the end of a quest, only that everyone walked out alive and with a sense of accomplishment!

[...]

I remember when the Sublime faced the Dragon in the Vault of Night Series for the first time. I remember the chills as they ran down my spine while I ran up the platform. I had done it before of course, but not like this. This was a Perma-Death party. Entering the quest we all knew full well that we were in an all or nothing situation. This meant we were either going to succeed and make our mark in DDO History or fail and write the biggest epitaph our guild had ever seen. Would you go into a raid knowing that the character you spent months building might never come back? I did just that, and it was the most exciting thing I have done in this game to date.

I've been visiting the forums of both Mortal Voyage and Sublime far too often over the past forty-eight hours.... I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (ARDFG), the latest offering from Dejobaan Games, was recently released on Steam along with a free demo containing eight levels. I first heard of the title a few months ago on the Idle Thumbs podcast when the guys were raving over a pre-release copy of the game.

More than any game that I've played in recent memory, ARDFG oozes fun. It is readily apparent from the first time that you fire up the title that the game's developers had an absolute riot putting it together. The entire affair is the antithesis of everything that Activision's Bobby Kotick stands for - and that's a good thing.

ARDFG is a sci-fi game that was inspired by BASE jumping and the death defying antics of the fanatics that are addicted to it. You throw yourself from ridiculous heights into the center of an abstract cityscape, and try to make it to the bottom alive while racking up as many points as possible by executing various stunts. When you complete a run your score determines how many stars you earn, with the highest possible being five. You also earn "teeth" for completing runs, which are used to unlock new levels. The entire game is peppered with humorous voice overs, notes, and features - including the best sales pitch that I've ever heard for any game.


I have read reviews panning ARDFG based on the quality of its graphics, however I feel that they are missing the point entirely. The game is rendered in an intentionally abstract manner, with the buildings and targets being more about style than realism. As you hurtle towards the unforgiving ground the surreal cityscape whips by you; the effect becomes both hypnotic and exhilarating. The perfect graphics are complemented by an excellent sound track that features a mix of high energy electric tracks and more relaxing ambient tunes. Interestingly, I find that my own style of play is directly affected by the type of music playing; the faster the beats, the more likely I am to attempt trickier and trickier stunts.

Game play is extremely simple to pick up: after you leap from a building you steer yourself through your descent, and when you want to deploy your parachute you press the space bar. While falling you need to balance an often-conflicting list of priorities in order to maximize your score. Getting near a building will score you a "kiss", while staying close to a building for an extended period of time will start earning you "hugs". This sets up the basic trade-off: you always want to be near a building, but you want to touch as many buildings as possible.

As you progress in the game more scoring mechanisms are introduced. Smashing through coloured plates will net you a bonus. Hitting birds is vital. Giving thumbs up you your fans as you whip by is great, but be sure to flip off any protesters that are trying to rain on your parade. On top of that, look for interesting nooks and crannies to fall through, because they will often announce hidden score bonuses like "Threading the Needle". More scoring options are unlocked in the full game.



AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is pure unrefined fun. The game will have you on the edge of your seat as you try to rack up as many points as possible, and when you crash into something that prematurely ends a jump, you will feel it. More than once I caught myself laughing hysterically after slamming into a girder as I attempted a particularly ill-advised maneuver.... but that never stopped me from getting right back out there and going for it again. Highly recommended.

Steam download: link
Demo parameters: Eight levels
Cost: $14.99

After a month or two without being able to stomach any MMO I tried, I've finally settled into a bit of a groove with a game: The Chronicles of Spellborn. While I don't sit down and play for hours, I do feel the urge to log in nearly every day, and last night I even played the game for far longer than intended because everything was just flowing nicely.

For those of you living under a rock, Spellborn was released with a great deal of fanfare, but was a complete market bust. Despite releasing the game in late 2008, the game's development studio went bankrupt in June 2009. Since then Acclaim has picked up the title and is working to convert the game to a microtransaction model, much like DDO. Until the f2p version is released - tentatively sometime next year - Spellborn remains open and completely free.

One of the major flaws of Spellborn is that, despite boasting a tutorial infrastructure on par with any AAA MMO, the game utterly fails to explain itself to the new player. This might be forgivable if the game played like WoW, WAR, or any other big name title, but it simply does not. On one hand, Spellborn's tutorial goes into painstaking detail on how to move, jump, and fight. Unfortunately, after that the player is left to figure out how all of the other game mechanics work, how abilities are gained, what stats mean, and pretty much everything else. It's not an easy curve, and could deter the casual player in a hurry.


Despite the initial frustrations of having to teach myself the game, Spellborn has really reached out and drawn me into its world. First and foremost, the art style is spectacular. Everything from the character models, to the enemies, to the environments that you fight in are gorgeously rendered. In fact, I can't think of a game that is as pretty as Spellborn - even Aion's slick graphics do not have the impressive style and coherency that this game offers (and I adore Aion's artwork).

I've been extremely down on quest-grinding lately, and I'll admit that Spellborn follows the WoW model of quest design. While the activities that you are forced to do are standard fare, the quest dialogs are something else altogether. Instead of terse skippable quest text, Spellborn tells a compelling story through its NPCs; quest introductions often span a few dialogs and feature some fantastic writing. The net result is that I am pulled further into the world and actually care about what I'm doing. Spellborn's questing experience feels like night and day from accepting and completing a task in World of Warcraft.

Finally there is the combat system which similar to the targeting/hotbar hybrid model found in games like Fallen Earth, but with a unique twist. Spellborn features a skill spinner that you can slot different skills on. Every time you use a skill, the entire spinner rotates, changing the abilities that are available to you. While I am only just starting out and have yet to unlock all of the available slots on the spinner (5 slots, 6 levels deep - see below) there is already more thought required to prepare for combat than is found in the average MMO. I look forward to experimenting with the spinner as I level up, and balancing various cooldowns, debuffs, and abilities on the bars.


In summary, I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of The Chronicles of Spellborn, and look forward to seeing what Acclaim can do to breath new life into the game. I'm certainly enjoying myself so far, and am by no means done playing it quite yet. While I'm not sure that it will become a long time addiction, it certainly is a pleasant way to kill a few hours. The low, low cost of free certainly helps seal the deal.

More of my thoughts on Spellborn can be found on The Combobulator podcast and forum.

Adam Mersky, Turbine's director of communications, spoke to Gamasutra recently about MMO payment models, and specifically Dungeons and Dragons Online.

[He] described what he calls "free-to-play myths" that had much more force in 2006 when the business model was still perceived as being confined to games developed for the Asian marketplace. "The biggest one is that free-to-play games are terrible," he said. "What drove our decision in 2006 has begun to reverse itself in 2009. We sat down, put our gamer hats on, and really looked at the shifting perception of both free-to play-games and the alterations in the MMO market as the player base expands, ages and play patterns begin to shift."

Mersky himself goes so far as to believe that conventional wisdom on the merits of free-to-play versus the subscription model has reversed itself. "Nowadays it's actually the subscription model itself that acts as a barrier to entry. It's the classic 'gym membership' problem. Paying a monthly fee starts a clock in people's heads where they feel like they're locked into playing a certain amount of time every month or they're throwing their money away."

Expanding on that thought, Mersky pointed out that players on a monthly subscription find it hard to sample other games -- especially ones that themselves have subscriptions -- lest they lose momentum in their primary game. It also locks them into one particular gameplay paradigm, creating the perception that the monthly fee is going to the development of content that only of the hardest of the hardcore will ever see (the classic high-end raid).

"Unless you're a college student with a lot of free time, you simply don't have 30 hours a week to devote to an MMO," Mersky said. "The free-to-play model allows developers to build in different ways for players to consume the content the way they want to consume it and spend money the way they want to spend it."

Emphasis mine.

DDO's subscription/microtransaction hybrid model is an excellent compromise - I hope many more games adopt similar systems.

Inktomi is considering taking CCP up on its offer to pay for a second EVE Online subscription at a reduced rate:

I received an email from CCP, who are holding a “Power of Two” sale running until October 13th offering players with an existing EVE Online account the opportunity to have the second alternate (alt) account or “twink” as some would call it. I would pay $50 for 6 months of EVE for that second account, making that $8.33 for an EVE subscription that usually costs me $35 for two plexes. A Pilot License Extension enables 30 days of EVE playtime, bought sold on the in game market for Isk or $35 for a pair, meatspace money.

[...]

The second account is something that is accepted widely in game, and sometimes people are surprised when I say I don’t have one. The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t know if my rig can handle two EVE client’s running and was working on a second unit or laptop to make this possible.

In EVE Online you can only have a single character training skills at a single time. To circumvent this restriction - and not gimp your main - you can pay for another account (or two, or four) with CCP's blessing. (And why not - CCP gets to boost their revenue stream and fluff their subscription numbers by forcing people to take out multiple subscription to play alts.) While it is true that skill-less alts can still serve a purpose, the richness of EVE cannot truly be experienced without constantly training the skills of every character that you want to play.

It has always blown my mind that the majority of EVE Online players are more than happy to pick up multiple subscriptions in order to create effective alts. As Inktomi points out, players with only a single $15/month subscription are the exception, not the rule. In any traditional MMO there would be riots if a company were to create game mechanics that artificially neutered your characters if you tried to play more than one on the same account at the same time.

Now, far be it from me to tell people how they should or should not spend their money, but does anyone else feel that CCP's alt-unfriendliness is more than a little scummy? Why doesn't CCP see more hate over this policy?

I have been avoiding writing a review of the Nation Red demo since the middle of last week when I had the misfortune to sit down and play the game. I downloaded a copy from Steam, fired it up, played for about an hour, and then scrubbed it off my hard drive as quickly as I could.

Let me get this out of the way now: Nation Red is a complete rip off of every flash-based arena shooter game that has ever surfaced on the Internet; for example, Boxhead. Arena shooters, in case you haven't played one, generally consist of the player being assaulted from all sides by wave after wave of enemies until a timer expires or there are no more NPCs left standing. It's a simple concept that is hard to screw up, but there is really no depth of game play.

Combat in the game - like every other arena shooter that I've ever played - consists of constantly backpedaling away from the largest horde of enemies on the screen while shooting like a mad man. Nation Red does boast a diving escape move that you are supposed to use when cornered, but you still take damage as you're trying to pull this off, and often die mid-roll if you've been beat up. Shooting - which obviously forms the heart and soul of the game experience - feels unpredictable and flaky. Despite having my crosshairs directly over top a charging zombie, I would frequently miss (much to my constant frustration); when you're being boxed in it feels cheap to miss shots that appear to be perfectly lined up.


Just like every other game in the genre, Nation Red boasts an large number of power-ups that drop randomly from the corpses of defeated foes. Weapon power-ups supersede each other, so if you're running around with a shotgun and pick up a flamethrower you will not get your first gun back until a new one drops. Other enemy drops include health replenishers and a decent variety of time-limited enhancements (increased damage, invisibility, slow time, etc.).

Oddly, the game developers decided to tack on a concept of leveling up to the game. As you kill zombies you earn experience which can then be used to purchase a variety of permanent upgrades, plus one-time bonuses (like a shot of health). Maddeningly, the selection of upgrades available at each level appears to be selected randomly from a list. This crazy design choice means that not only is there no definable way to plan out the development of your character, but you are also essentially on a big roulette wheel every game.

The final nail in Nation Red's coffin, at least for me, is the graphical anomalies that plagued my experience. The basic graphics are serviceable enough (zombies die in a pleasing shower of blood, what more could you ask for?) however once you kill enough zombies the game starts to have a rough time, and graphical tears and other anomalies become prevalent. Clearly the developers were aware of this problem because over time the zombie corpses magically disappear into the ether, however not before your screen has flickered for five or ten seconds.

For a clone of an entire genre of Flash-based games, Nation Red comes up far short of what it needs to be to justify its $9.99 price tag. If you are curious about arena shooters then I encourage you to play a few freebies on Kongregate - most are far superior to this game.

Steam download: link
Demo parameters: Limited levels, survival mode
Cost: $9.99

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours last night recording the latest episode of The Combobulater podcast with Emeny and Burnsy. It was a blast getting to chat with the guys after many months of listening to their show, even if they were extremely tired after putting in a bunch of long days at their day job.

The podcast progresses from "What we're playing" (in my case primarily Bioshock, The Secret of Monkey Island, and The Chronicles of Spellborn), to a side discussion on raiding in World of Warcraft, and finally on to the feature topic: an exploration of the various payment models in MMOs.

I'm sure that long time readers have an idea of where I went in the payment model discussion, however there were a lot of very interesting points brought up on all sides of the debate.

Hope you'll give the 'cast a listen!

Links
Show Notes
iTunes
RSS

People get bent out of shape for all sorts of things.

For example, Courtney Love is currently in mid-freak out over the fact that she signed a contract with Activision without realizing what the words written on the papers meant. It turns out that she didn't actually didn't want Kurt Cobain's avatar singing Bon Jovi tunes in Guitar Hero 5. Whoops. Strangely a lot of people are on her side - or at least agree that the presentation is tasteless (while conceding that Love is more than a little loopy).

So I have to ask... how will it take until some hardcore religious group sees this video of God on a skateboard battling Cthulhu with a shotgun (and dying!) before some sort of "boycott Scribblenauts" movement is whipped up?

Just wondering....

Fellow formal feral, Flyv, has just released an excellent visualization tool for fans of Warhammer Online's RvR game: Warhammer RvR History. In his words:

Warhammer is a lot of fun in part because you have hours-long fights over control over territory. But there's been no place I know of to see the history of the fight, just how things currently stand. So I built a site to collect the history and graph it.

Here is an example chart with some explanations (which I shamelessly lifted from Flyv's site):


The man is a wizard with data-mining; I envy his skills in the area. Anyhow - go check out Warhammer RvR History.

Gordon, of We Fly Spitfires, is all riled up about twinking and thinks that it's a vile form of cheating. Personally I couldn't disagree more, and instead of responding in his comments I felt that such an wrong-headed notion deserved to be repudiated with a full blog article. Before reading on, I recommend familiarizing yourself with Gordon's point of view: Twinking is just another form of cheating.

I have nothing at stake in this issue - I dislike playing alts, and so if anything I will be on the wrong end of a twink's blade in PvP combat. Even still, claiming that twinking is cheating is ludicrous.

Here are my largest points of contention with Gordon's rationale:

The concept of supplying another character (even your own) with cash and equipment is certainly not within the spirit of MMORPGs and gives you an unfair advantage over other players.

Not within the spirit of MMOs?!? MMOs are not solo challenges where the best geared toon wins. If anything, twinking embodies the very spirit of MMOs - the virtual exchange of goods between two characters seems perfectly natural in a virtual world.

Twinks have an unfair advantage?!? Baloney - other players are just as capable of twinking as you are. Twinking gives a player no advantage greater that than bestowed by extra levels, (except perhaps against someone who is making a conscious decision not to twink their character). By this twisted "fairness" logic, killing a character of lesser level would also have to be branded as "cheating".

Twinking was a concept born in the early days of MMOs and particularly relevant to games like Everquest in which there was no such thing as level restrictions on items.

Actually no; twinking has been around since the days of MUDs and MUSHes. It's an old practice that has been enjoyed by many players over the past few decades. I was being slaughtered in PvP by twinks long before Everquest was any lenghtier than a high school 'Hello World' program.

Level restrictions on items (which I believe were introduced with Dark Age of Camelot) where a clever and reasonable solution to the problem of twinking although it’s never solved it completely.

Wrong again. Many MUDs had level-capped items. But even with level caps in a game, twinking is still possible - the parameters of the metagame are simply more tightly constrained.

Ultimately though, twinking a character still offers huge and undeniable benefits, especially in anything PvP related.

In gear-based games a twinked out character will have an advantage over a similarly-leveled non-twink character. But again - since anyone can twink, this advantage is not concrete, and can be circumvented with ease. If I choose to enter PvP and not to maximize my stats, that's my own fault, and has nothing to do with the guy who just crit me in the face with a doombolt.

Twinking is cheating, just like buying gold is.

And here is the most wrong statement of all. Most of the gold sellers - in World of Warcraft at least - get their currency by deplorable means (account hacking, botting, etc). Buying gold is not only against the EULA of most games, but it also supports these hackers and fraudsters.

So no, twinking is not even remotely comparable to gold buying.... not by a long shot.

So what is twinking?
Twinking is a metagame that a lot of players enjoy. This metagame presents players with the challenge of crafting as powerful a character as possible within the confines of the game's established ruleset while maintaining a low level. Twinking is the art of finding the best pieces of gear for a character of a certain level, combining them with the most advantageous augmentations, and complimenting the entire package with the most potent skills. In fact, twinking is not at all unlike the art of molding a level-capped character to perfection, and often involves the same forms of constraint management.

Twinking is not cheating.

Toskk, who readers from my WoW days should remember as an excellent feral Druid theorycrafter, approached me a few days ago about an intriguing project. Like myself, he feels that the current crop of MMOs (with few exceptions) fit a certain mold and there has yet to be a game announced that truly feels like a 'next generation MMO'. But that begs a few questions: What would a next generation MMO look like? What features might/should it have? Are there any logical progressions from where we are to the next generation?

Starting very soon you will see articles appearing on this site that explore some of the facets of next generation of MMOs. Some will be authored by myself, but others will be written by Toskk (and perhaps a few other people as well). The posts will be clearly identified as belonging to the project, and will be categorized for easy access.

I will still continue blogging about all manner of other gaming-related topics, but I just wanted to give a heads up that you will occasionally see a post on the site by an author aside from myself.

Via Broken Toys, I found out tonight that Dungeon Runners has been given its termination papers by NCSoft and will go dark this coming New Years Eve. Although I never managed to play Dungeon Runners, it wasn't for lack of trying - I tried to sign up for a free trial of the game but was unable to. NCSoft has a braindead policy of only allowing one active demo per account; at the time that I wanted to monkey around in Dungeon Runners I was in the middle of my Guild Wars demo; when I finished with that demo, I moved on to something else.

Maddeningly, this game is being shut down despite having completed a significant number of changes designed to make the game more financially viable. Here is a snippet from a May 31, 2009 post in the Dungeon Runners official forums:

We have a plan that we're trying to implement... and we need to convince the deciders in Korea that this plan will work.

What's that plan?

1. Make Dungeon Runners a streaming download that can be played directly from a website. This is complete already.

2. Change the game from a monthly subscription to a microtransaction model. This is complete as well.

3. Make the game playable from within Facebook. This is on the way.

If we can get management to give us their blessing on our plans then we will be able to move forward.

These changes - which were completed many months ago - cannot go live because NCSoft disposed of the QA team assigned to the game.

I have to assume that the wizards in charge at NCSoft just don't get it. Very few games can thrive on the subscription model, however player enthusiasm for microtransaction-based games is burgeoning. A twenty second scan of the daily MMO headlines should be enough to show NCSoft decision-makers that RMT has injected new life into DDO, Runes of Magic continues to hum along at a brisk pace, Wizard101 is doing extremely well for itself, and Free Realms continues to post colossal sign-up numbers.

NCSoft could have devoted a few QA resources and a bit of marketing hype to the already-coded new Dungeon Runners business model and reinvigorated the game. Instead they are simply going to shut it down. Pathetic.

Now it all makes sense:


Tim Buckley's Ctrl+Alt+Delete web comic is always worth a read, but this one was particularly amusing.

I don't have a lot to contribute today - work was particular brand of hellish evil that I'd rather not repeat, and unfortunately the rest of the week will probably bring more of the same. I did, however, thwomp Bill in a set of tennis before coming home, so I suppose the day wasn't a total wash.

After shelling a few dozen shrimp for dinner (Vietnamese spring rolls) I sat down for a good hour and a half session of Bioshock, which is turning out to be an excellent purchase. Atmospheric, gritty, and challenging. Of course, since I bought the game last week it immediately went on sale - Bioshock is now $5 in the massive Direct2Drive 5th year anniversary blowout - go figure.

Speaking of the festivities that are currently going on over at Direct2Drive, MMO enthusiasts will want to watch the site closely - next week they'll be discounting RPGs and MMOs.

QuantZ is an "action puzzle" game created by indie developer Gamerizon. Every since I was given my first copy of Tetris for the first generation Gameboy I've always been a fan of puzzle games - usually the more challenging the better. So, when I saw the demo for this game go up on Steam I couldn't resist the free download.


The game mechanics that underpin QuantZ are relatively simple: you need to clear a plethora of multi-coloured marbles off the surface of a cube-like object. Marbles disappear when clusters of three or more of them are impacted by a marble of the same color. If any marbles are in contact with three or more disappearing marbles, then they are launched into the air as a fireball, which will destroy any similarly coloured grouping of marbles on impact (and perhaps launch another fireball - which sets up the game's chaining mechanic).

The QuantZ demo gives access to three game play modes: Puzzle, Strategy, and Action. There is no tutorial, although every time you load up a level you are bombarded by the game's instructions. This might be alright if the instructions actually covered ALL of the game play fundamentals, however they leave a crucial element out, and this led to me almost quitting the game less than five minutes in. The instructions tell you how to rotate the cube and shoot marbles, but that's really about it, however, it turns out that if you "flick" the cube rapidly then you launch any marbles that are not "frozen" into the air, which allows you to group them on different facings of the cube when they land. The very first level is impossible to complete without this unexplained bit of knowledge.


Puzzle mode consists of ten batches of ten levels that must be completed in sequence. The point of each level is the same: clear all of the marbles, however the initial configuration of the cube and the resources (extra marbles) that you are given vary in each. As you progress through the levels in Puzzle mode you have to plan your fireball chains extremely carefully, and I can easily see this mode getting very engrossing and challenging.

Strategy mode consists of a series of "waves", each of which requires you to clear the cube of marbles by shooting a large number of marbles onto the playing field. This game mode is much less restrictive than puzzle mode, and feels more like a standard falling block puzzler, but in three dimensions.

Finally, Action mode is a lot like Strategy mode, with the added twist that the marbles fall on a preset timer, and so you have far less time to think and plan ahead.


Overall I was not very impressed with the time that I spent playing QuantZ - I don't mind a puzzler like this on a free service like Kongregate, but I expect a little more when a company is asking for my money.

QuantZ looks and sounds good enough, however game play is simply too dry. At the heart of the game, all that you are ever really doing is matching four coloured marbles in a way that creates a fireball which you can then chain to create more fireballs, and so on. This might not be so bad if the "flicking" mechanic wasn't so bloody annoying to control and crucial to success - I'd often fling marbles into the air by mistake, and the follow it up by failing to flick a marble in the correct manner. The entire system felt twitchy and largely unnecessary.

If you're a hardcore puzzle fanatic or else are in between games then QuantZ is certainly worth the free download to dabble with, however if you're happy with your current stock of games then give this one a pass.

Steam download: link
Demo parameters: Limited levels across three modes
Cost: $9.99

Over at Bio Break, Syp is in love with September's MMO releases.

I’d say that all in all, we can mark this month up to a “win-win-win-win” scenario — there’s almost something for everybody who wants a bit of newness in their MMO diet.

This month sees the release of Aion, Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron Unlimited, Fallen Earth, and Champions Online. While I've tried all but the latter offering, I have absolutely no inclination to pony up and pay for any of them (payment models aside).

I wasn't going to write about my reasons for giving the cold shoulder to these games - after all, I have at most fifteen hours invested in the entire batch of them - however Syp's last paragraph just egged me on:

Yet here is a great example of what blogs can offer — a journalist should spend a significant amount of time with a game before making a thoughtful, informed review of a game. A blogger is not honor-bound by any set of time — if they are repelled by the game right off the bat, if a MMO fails to appeal to them, then they aren’t going to play it, and they are going to be vocal about why. Which is more valuable for a MMO company trying to evaluate why their player retention is so low? Am I, as a player, going to trust someone more that is forced to play a game (perhaps) past the point of caring about it, or am I going to put more stock in someone who calls a spade a spade?

So here you go....

Dungeons & Dragons Online
I like this title, I really do - I enjoyed my beta time immensely, I love the bold new direction that Turbine has taken with their payment model, and honestly I wouldn't mind dabbling further with it.

But..... despite being easy to solo in the early going, DDO quickly requires a group to progress very far into the game. This simply does not fit my current lifestyle; right now I need a game that I can pick up and play solo, or else play on a set schedule with a static group of like-minded people (akin to a WoW raid). So until life changes, DDO is out.

Aion
I participated in a single beta weekend and that was enough to show me that Aion is nothing new. The game is a hotbar-driven quest-grind in the style of World of Warcraft, and frankly I'm sick to death of that style of game. Aion's graphics may be heartbreakingly gorgeous, the environments may feel alive, the character models may be superb.... but the game play is dry and old - a withered husk that needs to be put out of its misery.

In my opinion MMOs need to move past boring quest-grinding model of 2004 and the stale hotbar combat that preceded it. I just cannot get excited about doing the same old thing in a slightly different environment any more - I don't have it in me.

Fallen Earth
This is a game that I want to love based on the strength of its newbie tutorial and the fact that it is not set in a fantasy world, but simply cannot. While the combat system deserves some kudos for being innovative - a blend of hotbar and aim-and-shoot - the game is extremely dry after that.

My beta experiences leads me to believe that game play consists primarily of quest-grinding for experience, and material-grinding for the extensive crafting system. If I cared at all about crafting in MMOs then perhaps I'd be satisfied with the supremely deep system that Fallen Earth presents.... but, well.... I don't.

Champions Online
I haven't tried Champions Online, and I won't (despite people I respect having a good time with it). The reason is straightforward: I find superhero MMOs to be absurd.

Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Superheros are exciting and cool because they are special, relatively rare, and interesting in a meaningful way. An MMO where everyone can be a superhero completely destroys each of those points: superheros become plentiful, mundane, and end up performing repetitive tasks. No thanks!

Final thoughts
So there you have it - my flippant dismissals of September's MMO line-up based on less than twenty hours of combined play time!

Thankfully there are plenty of excellent other games coming out. This week alone sees Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC), NHL 2K10 (Wii), Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS), and Scribblenauts (DS) hit the shelves - all of which interest me.

One of the games that I've been waiting for a sale to buy is 66% off on Steam this weekend: Braid. Numerous people have told me that I'll love the game, and so when Nelson emailed me that the sale was on, I wasted no time in snapping up a copy.


Like Portal (which I recently had a blast beating), Braid is a game built around solving puzzles in an environment. The gimmick in this game is time manipulation, which sounds like it could be wonderfully mind-bending.

If you've been on the fence about buying Braid, it's hard to beat the price this weekend - $5 is a steal! I'll be sure to write about my experiences when I play it.

Continuing the trend of "Andrew is too lazy to blog for himself", allow me once again to hand the floor over to Derrick who sent me an email that he has graciously allowed me to put up as a guest post.

---

It doesn't seem to have been widely discussed yet, but Champion's Online has an interesting naming convention. Your characters are all named charactername@accountname, with your account being tied to your games' product key - also, incidentally, your forum name.

This creates an interesting system where people cannot simply roll up a new toon and be a whole new person. In order to "start fresh" and evade reputation issues, you'd have to buy the game again and start a new account entirely.

As the game exists in a single-shard world like EVE Online, this may well go a long way to curbing the rampant asshatishness that's so prevalent in MMO's these days.

Do you think it will help? I'm not sure if you're overly interested in this sort of thing, but I honestly think it's a major step towards improving MMO's overall. I've long maintained that the biggest single problem MMO developers face is creating a game where players have the opportunity to accomplish noteworthy things in the game, but without giving them the ability to ruin other players game play experience, as these two things are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Anyhow, thoughts?

In a genre that is all to often defined by copycat games and a converging of features, it is nice to see that some development shops are unafraid of striking out in an entirely different direction:

It's very difficult to describe Mortal Online in a few sentences as it is very different from most of the MMOG's out there. Now please understand I don't use that cliché for marketing purposes, it simply is a niche game that some will like because of its unique approach and some won't because it's too different from their style of play or what they are used to. The game does not necessarily build on or "learn" from the errors or the steps taken by big-name MMO's; it's designed from scratch simply because we want to evaluate each design-choice from the questions:

• How does it affect player skill and player interaction?
• Is it believable and immersive?
• While staying true to the above, what's our take on it and how do we make it fun?

It's very easy to see that many of the systems in modern MMO's are there to actually take away from the amount of player skill and player-to-player (PtP) interaction needed, whether it is minimaps, auto-maps, levels, quests, auto-loot, auto-loot-distribution, auction-houses, global chat etc. It makes them fun and gives them a flow, but it also makes them casual as anyone can play without much thought (and that's also where the big money is). Now obviously we want Mortal Online to be fun to play and successful, but we're not ready to make compromises on our design principles: Player Skill, Player Interaction and PvP, Immersion and Believability. Therefore a lot of the features one would expect to see in a modern MMO are different, or we have simply removed them.

It's also a pleasant change to listen to a development shop who clearly understands the limited size of the audience that they are trying to appeal to, and are not trying to wedge in features that will please a myriad of different player types for the sake of trying to cater to a broader audience. Mortal Online will probably never be a mainstream game, but that doesn't make it any less worthy of keeping an eye on.

You can find the rest of MMORPG's interview with Mats Perrson (Creative Director and Game Designer for Mortal Online) here: Mortal Online: Introductory Interview

In response to the discussions on my tirade about the monthly subscription fee model that most AAA MMOs continue to swear by, frequent commenter Derrick wrote up a gem of a reply that is worthy of far more attention that it would garner buried at the bottom of a week-old thread:

I find it odd that nobody seems to feel it's a problem that when you play World of Warcraft, you don't play any other games.

I really think there's a real problem here that people are very oblivious too. The games design is one culprit, but the subscription model is definitely another.

Put it this way: Assume, for a moment, that you could play any MMO, any time, for free. Would you still play only WoW? Or do you only play Warcraft - consciously or not - because of subscription prices? Maybe not because of WoW's pricing, but other games? I know I don't play Pirates anymore mostly because I don't play it enough to warrant a $15/month sub, but I would still love to play it from time to time, and don't object to paying for the time I do use.

What about other, new MMO's? I bet you'd try more, and give them a fairer shake, if they offered other payment models.

See, this is where every other MMO goes wrong. MOST gamers have a set amount of time available to play games. Be it a lot or a little, adding new games does not increase your time available. On a sub model then, they are in direct competition with Blizzard - it's their game or World of Warcraft. With other options though, they can split up the revenue stream.

$15/month is good value when you play (random example) 10 hours a week. Add two new games, though, and still play 10 hours a week in total? Suddenly it's 45$/month for that same play time. Not nearly so good a deal.

Ironically, it would be better for everyone - even Blizzard - if players spread out over more games but kept active accounts on each. They'd keep contributing to the game worlds population and economy, but spread out server strain lessening infrastructure costs.

I assert that MMOs would bring in more money - not less - if they added a variety of payment options in addition to the typical $15/month subscription plan. (Pay per use, microtransaction shops, etc.) They would continue to receive their monthly fee from dedicated single game players - probably the majority of their player base - but in addition would open themselves up to players who want to play only a few hours every month.

Dungeons & Dragons Online is positioned to be a good test of this theory, and early indications are that the hybrid subscription/RMT model is a hit with players. Turbine's director of communications Adam Mersky had this to say:

[Actively subscribed players] all got a ton of points for being loyal subscribers, for being in the beta. We weren't really expecting a ton of sales...they had no incentive to. They already had access to all of the content as VIP subscribers, and we just gave them a buttload of points."

"They've gone through their points, and we've already sold millions more Turbine points, and we've not even opened up the world to the public yet.

Back of the napkin math suggests that every one million Turbine points sold brings in somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000 USD, which isn't too shabby. (Assumption: most players will buy their points in lumps of 900, which goes for $11.99 USD.)

Players deserve choice in their payment plans - and MMO companies only serve to benefit by giving us more options.

I'm having a tough time readjusting to artificial light and enclosed spaces after camping for four days - Algonquin Park was amazing (as it always is) and the weather couldn't have been more spectacular. The only blemishes on an otherwise fabulous weekend was when both Wong Tse (my yellow lab) and myself got stung by a hornet (or sweat bee?) within seconds of each other. Those little bastards sure pack a punch for being so small!

Anyhow, I'm caught up on my reading list and there are two things that stood out from the rest.

First, a quote from Wolfshead Online that rings very true:

Part of me is worried about the lack of originality and experimentation given this apparent grand consolidation of gaming features. This is probably because of WoW’s success and the simple fact that most people in the industry creating video games have either played WoW or are playing WoW and are understandably enamored of its success. I suppose in some ways it’s good to see features becoming standard much like a rear view mirror and seat-belts became much like standard features in the automobile industry. Still, it is a bit unsettling that all games seem to be converging into one game.

And second is a particularly lucid post from Syncaine, summarized below:

The MMO genre is a funny place. On the one hand, it promises to let you play with thousands of other players and share adventures together, while on the other it sets you up to be a hero doing some rather amazing things. [...] The very obvious problem is that you are not all that special if what you just did has been done by thousands of others.

[...] The truly funny part comes when any MMO does allow its players to really be special, to have an actual impact on the game, as most players get all up in arms and rage. [...] Most MMO players have an odd sense of entitlement, that just because you pay your $15 a month, you are entitled to ALL the content, regardless of how that might cripple anyone else.

[...] For all our requests to live in a massive virtual world, we cry foul as soon as anything happens when we are not around, yet at the same time some of the most memorable moments in MMO history are just that, moments. [...] Impact events, especially player-controlled impact event, scare a lot of MMO players. Everyone wants to be the big hero, yet in a world that actually allows a character to rise to such status, they do so because they are greater compared to everyone else.

That's just a taste - I encourage you to read the rest.

It's been a few years since we've been there, but my wife and I are heading back to Algonquin Park for a four day camping trip starting tomorrow morning. I love camping on Labour Day - there are no bugs, the nights are cool and comfortable, and the days are warm and beautiful. It really is the perfect time of year in this part of the world to spend a few days in a tent away from everything.

Here are a pair of links to chew on in the meantime:

1. Play Tetris, Get a More Efficient & Thicker Brain
2. The Influence of Metacritic on Game Sales

So, don't wreck the place while I'm gone.... and have a great long weekend.

A couple of days ago I fired up Portal (a 2007 release) for the first time and, four hours of play time later, the game is finished.



While four hours may not seem like good value for money, I absolutely loved every second that the game had to offer. (And to be fair, it contains unlockable bonus content, which I have not yet attempted.)

For those of you who - like myself - were living in a cave when Portal was released, the game is a physics puzzler that grants you the ability to create a pair of rips in the fabric of the universe that you can step through. For example, to ascend a high ledge you would shoot your portal gun to create one entry on the ground level, and another entry on the ledge; you would then walk through the ground level portal and step out onto the ledge. This simple concept sets up one of the most engrossing gaming experiences that I have had in a long time.

What makes Portal so perfect is the wonderful pacing that Valve's developers gave the game. You start out knowing absolutely nothing about yourself or the game mechanics, and are slowly fed story and game play elements as you progress. Puzzles are simple at first, but get tougher as you go due to both the increased number of ways in which you learn to interact with your environment, and the ingenuity required to solve them. Likewise, the story slowly comes together with time as you learn who you are, where you are, and who your adversary is.


The entire package is wrapped together in a delicious atmosphere that is both silly and twisted in equal parts. The turrets serve as wonderful exemplars of the cute/deadly dichotomy that Portal pulls off so brilliantly; deadly in the extreme, a turret will kill you in short order if you get caught in its line of fire, however if you manage to disable it the turret will scream out in comedic girlish horror as it realizes its fate. Also noteworthy is the voice that guides you through the game: it is delightfully schizophrenic, and you can never quite be sure if it is trustworthy.

I could go on, but I'll stop here before I ruin anything for people who have not yet completed the game. Suffice it to say, Portal is a masterpiece. If you haven't played this game yet, stop cheating yourself: go pick up a copy of ASAP, and play through it.

Bonus: Play the unofficial flash-based version of Portal!

I'm done with subscription MMOs. Finished. No more will I pay a company a flat rate per month to play their game.

I'm more than happy to use microtransaction-based item shops, pay by the minute (like an Asian MMO consumer), or purchase flat rate one-time plans (e.g. Guild Wars). I'm happy to buy a game and all of its expansions, but I am sick to death of AAA MMOs insisting that I lock into their game for one-month periods due to their inflexible payment schemes.

I want choice in my gaming. I want to be able to choose what I play, when I play it, and how I pay for it. Subscription-based games are insidious. The essentially eliminate my ability to choose what I play by forcing me to pay for - at minimum - an entire month of time. If, during that month, I am not playing a game that I subscribed to then I am wasting money.

If the Next Big Thing (tm) comes along but forces users to pay for a monthly subscription, then you can count me out.