In my humble opinion

One players opinion on why everyone is doing it wrong.

Author: Daelus

Note: All of these opinions were formed based on the beta program and, while it is basically released, these things are subject to change and, over time, will likely be remedied to a degree. None of what is written here is considered hard fact, it is just my opinion. If you've already bought WAR, the full apparel line, and tattooed your face to look like a greenskin, this is unlikely to tell you anything you don't already know in some form or another.
 

What does WAR bring to the table?

I know I've said in previous posts that I don't currently play any MMO's, but like many others I've been drowned beneath the tidal wave of hype following the game Warhammer Online. So, upon surfacing for air, I located an open beta key and decided to see what it has to offer. I guess you could call it a review of sorts, although I'm not big on grades, numbers or stars. Read on and make your own conclusion.

First of all, upon entering the game, the first thing that struck me is the reason for all the comparisons to WoW. I know all of you just cringed at that, but the truth is that upon first sight, it could be mistaken for an upcoming graphical patch for WoW. It does indeed look better than WoW, but the art style, interface, and combat style are clearly cut from the same cloth. This is neither good, nor bad. Just an observation that basically is bludgeoned over your skull when you start.

That out of the way, the game play is pretty much what you have come to expect of MMOs on the whole. Click an enemy, click an ability, and poke him with a variety of objects until he falls over. There is absolutely no innovation or change as far as basic combat is concerned. Once again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you like or are comfortable with the combat from pretty much any MMO out there, you won't find this obtuse or find a learning curve that represents Everest.

The next thing I came across was the main focus of WAR; RvR. This is basically their way of saying, "When you stab that guy, you're not just stabbing him, you're stabbing him for the good of the country!" While the PvP was indeed plentiful and varied, there was nothing really original here. The scenarios were things I've been playing for nearly 10 years in Quake, and the RvR "lakes" seemed to be basic control points. As I find myself repeating, this is not a bad thing. One thing WAR has going for it is the fact that it, even before it is released, has more ways to kill your fellow opponent than any other game on the market. If you fantasize about killing a person while sipping tea at the bottom of the Pacific, it would not surprise me to find something that sates that in WAR. While I never got to experience sieges properly (there were never enough people in T2), they don't seem to offer anything world shattering.

Moving on to the next selling point; Public Quests. Now, to say I was extremely disappointed would be an understatement. However, this may be because they simply weren't built to handle the amount of players running them. They scaled extremely poorly and the way they calculated contribution was so far off reality it was laughable. One time I spent 3 cycles of a PQ writing a paper, and guess what? I placed first, second and first without killing a single thing or casting a single spell, and came away with two pieces of loot for all that hard work.

Also, to the claim that PQs are new, innovative, and just generally the next big thing for MMOs. Well, all I have to say is that this thing is hardly new. All Mythic have done is taken static events, put a name on it, and drawn up an interface for loot. I have not played a single game that does not do "Public Quests" to a degree. I've found these types of events in many games, both new and old. This is not a new invention; it's just a very polished version of something most dev. teams never really focused on.

With the specific portions out of the way, I'll talk about the actual game. Talking about individual parts of a game is really rather pointless because it just isolates specific things about the game and takes them out of context. If I tell you, "In this game you're a scientist and you basically run from point A to point B, with an unclear goal of trying to save the world," you would think the game sounds relatively pointless and boring, however if I told you the game I was talking about is Half Life, and you're shooting exotic weapons at aliens, zombies and you're wearing a kick as environment suit while doing that, it sounds a little better.

Anyway, the game has a very strong flow to it. There was never a moment where I had nothing to do. When I complete a set of quests, generally they direct me to where I get my next set. Eventually, they will lead to an area sitting next to the RvR zone or a Public Quest and they will direct me in there. It all flows easily, without having to ever look at a guide, scour my map, or grind through monsters.

The PvP combat felt very polished and seemed to be balanced as well as I've seen any game. Most scenarios were relatively even on who won it, and, with the level buff, even level 1's could compete. As a level 1 warrior priest I was generally one of the top two healers in the scenario, so it is somewhat refreshing to be able to enjoy PvP, which is usually end game content, immediately from the word go. The only problem I had was that if you wanted to queue for another pairings scenario (dwarf/greenskin, high elf/dark elf, order/chaos), you actually had to find the flight master and fly there. This made it rather troublesome if you got bored of a specific scenario and wanted something different. It also meant than some were more unbalanced than others because some sides of pairings just lack damage.

Every single class felt unique, which I felt was a nice achievement considering everyone basically has basically a carbon clone on the opposing side. They look different, but their spells are pretty much exactly the same save for one or two spells. Even given this they felt very different, and they were all easily recognizable. You would never mistake a Chosen for a Marauder, or a Sorcerer for an Archmage.
 

In fact, there was only one class I really thought was completely useless, and that was the White Lion. As a pet class, having a pet that just doesn't work is frustrating. The Lion mirrors the Marauder, but, unlike the marauder, relies on the pet to do any sort of crowd control, as well as a large proportion of his dps. There were two major problems I found for pets. One, when you directly order a pet to use an ability, it will always trigger the cooldown, even if the pet doesn't use the ability or is out of range, and two, the pet simply doesn't respond to orders. If you order it to attack a person, the only way you're getting your pet to attack another person is to recall it or kill the target.

In summation, WAR brings basically nothing that is new. However, what it brings is polished, refined, and plentiful. It has taken what has already been done and improved upon it. Whether it was your basic deathmatch, or the dreaded "Kill 10 rats" quests, they are all, at the very least, as good as anything I've seen in any other MMO. This seems to be a very polished, but very run-of-the-mill MMO.If you like MMOs and like PvP, try it. If you are into crafting, hate PvP, or just want to hang out and chat, you might want to give it a miss.

Tom "Daelus" Pettus
 

MMORPGs: Genocide is an amusing pastime...

  MMOs are, by and large, combat centered games. They are usually a game containing X amount of levels, and you kill monsters and complete tasks (which are usually built on killing monsters) to increase your level and attain equipment. And... well, that's about it. That's generally the core of any MMO. After this, you throw in the ability to attack other players, add some simplistic crafting, create a compelling story to run behind the core mechanics and you've got the general MMO.

  Why all the combat? Why do we need to slaughter hundreds of woodland critters and murder the firstborn of a nearby village to advance? Last time I checked, there are hundreds of ways you can advance yourself in this fantastic place called reality. While not all of them could be considered entertaining, with a little skew on it, and enough ties into other mechanics, it doesn't seem that it would be very difficult to pull off.

  I understand that combat is a simple and exciting way to create conflict and competition between players or between the player and the environment around them, and I am not suggesting creating an MMO with zero combat. What I'm suggesting is that you shift the focus away from combat somewhat and make a game that intertwines several aspects and creates multiple ways to play the game effectively.

  There are all sorts of things that you could use to augment a game without resorting to simple, meaningless genocide. I've yet to see any MMO with a political system, where the players could be elected or hold a government-styled position. Also, I've seen very few games with a compelling crafting system; most of them follow the one click craft system WoW uses. Even if they are deep, even fewer games make the crafting world linked to the adventuring world. Usually the player will buy something generic from the crafter, later throwing it in the trash for something looted and never even speak to or see the crafter himself.

  Another thing, if GTA has taught us anything, is that crime can be entertaining. It would be an incredibly easy thing to tie into a combat centered MMO. I remember a long time ago, playing a game called Baldur's Gate. When you were too evil, killed innocents and the like, whenever you turned up in a town you were chased off by the guards. You had to be careful and do any business you had to away from town if you could. Few games really have a system in place that lets people be evil to their twisted hearts content.

  I'll sum this up and finish it off with an example (keep in mind this is just a rough example). Imagine a game world composed of two cities. These two cities are balanced by conflict, trade, and politics. Players can be elected as the leaders of various aspects of the cities and do as they please to a degree, whether it is to declare war, change taxes, or maybe change the laws themselves.

  Everything these elected officials do would affect trade. If you declare war, suddenly the traders don't like you because they can't ship goods there (or perhaps they will make a killing smuggling in goods?). If you raise taxes it's more expensive to sell something or buy something. If suddenly it becomes too expensive to sell in one town, perhaps they might find themselves suddenly short on high quality weaponry and leave themselves open to war?

  Everything the politicians can also create conflict. If they make trade too difficult, or outright declare war, corruption will reign, and soldiers will be battering down your walls. However, if you support free trade too much, you will likely create a population of bandits seeking to steal from the travelling traders, blossoming crime and conflict.

  Likewise, the interests of the traders, the soldiers, the criminals, or even the politicians themselves will effect who gets elected, and in turn the outcome. As I hope you can see, by creating alternate ways to advance oneself and linking it all together, the results and intrigue are exponential, rather than a static, "Add 10 more quests" sort of progression. It’s time we asked for something more than putting the pointy end of a sword into our enemies until they fall over.

Tom "Daelus" Pettus 

MMORPGs: What makes a memorable moment?

  When we talk about MMOs that we previously played, or still are playing, there are always a few moments that come to mind. Be it when you finally sacked that uppity, elitist guilds town, or when you only just scraped a victory against that dragon when all thought it was impossible, I'm sure every player has a list of events that they loved. But what is it that seperates these things from the more mundane, every day events?

  To make something memorable, first of all, the player has to care about the outcome. If you're in a duel to the death, if losing means next to nothing, then no one really stands to lose. When no one can really lose, who can call themselves a winner? If a player truely cares about the outcome, it creates an instant intensity to the event, and it focuses the persons attention more than all the pretty graphics and particles in the world can hope to.

  To be clear, I'm not an advocate of something like permadeath, or corpse looting. There are other ways to make some care about the outcome of something, be it PvP, PvE, or a crafting scenerio. But, even so, I'm sure if you talk to someone who played a game that used permadeath, corpse runs, and full corpse looting, I'm sure they'd have plenty of entertaining stories about all of the above.

  There are other ways to create a meaningful outcome in a game, and not all of them have to be negative. You could, for example, give the option for the first group to defeat that dragon to take a screenshot and upload it to that game's website to display their achievement for all to see, with a comment and the date when it happened.  Or perhaps you could create personal player flags in a players profile based on how the perform in PvP combat that were publicly viewable. If losing or running from a fight labeled me as a weakling or a coward, I might try just that little bit harder.

  These are of course merely examples, there are multitudes of ways to do this, and many games have been using them for quite a while, and many of them can be quite simple. Most first person shooters have a respawn timer in them, or force you to wait until the next round to play again. This makes a player less likely to throw themselves into a hopeless situation, and should they die, it gives them time to stew over their defeat.

  The real problem, however, is how can you do this without making gameplay frustrating and inaccessable. If a person only gets one 'life', they're going to spend it trying to avoid death constantly. This goes back to what I said earlier; these meaningful outcomes don't have to be negative. Lets say, for example, every time you killed a person, you got just slightly stronger, but when you died, you lost all that benefit. Over time, if you got a real killing spree going, you could reach the point where few people could match you, but one day a group of people are going to hunt you down. Whatever the outcome of that, you're going to remember it, and they will too.

  Now, in reality, if you lost that encounter and died, you're likely to be very annoyed, but you've lost nothing really. You're back to where you started, not behind where you started. For PvP at least, why must the penalty and the benefit be two seperate things?

  Beyond this, you can create meaningful encounters without having any real loss or gain, by tweaking the perception of the players. A duel between two players with no stakes doesn't mean much, but a duel in front of five hundred other players quite definately does, even if there is nothing to gain or lose. Bragging rights, whether it is having your achievement noted publically or by defeating a player under the watchful eyes of your server, matter quite a great deal to many people.

  However it is done, making something meaningful serves to turn something that otherwise would be quite mundane into something a player can truely care about. If there is nothing to lose, why try to avoid losing? Likewise, if there's nothing to gain, why try win?

Tom "Daelus" Pettus

MMORPGs: Cutting edge games built on outdated concepts?

  MMORPGs are undoubtedly here to stay.  They have shown themselves as a wave of the future and many other games are taking up some of the many aspects of them, in an attempt to mimic their extended lifecycle and to attract a crowd that are drawn to RPG-like advancement and stat tracking. But while MMOs are influencing many other games, why do MMOs remain relatively uninfluenced by these other games?