The Morgue

A collection of thoughts that are probably better off being left in a cold dark room...

Author: Morgaren

We are getting close now, Cataclysm has gone into Beta, a release date has been announced for FF14, SWTOR won't be too much longer now. We got WAR 40K on the horizon. I think the drought might be over, but what I'm worried about is what happens when you get too much rain after a drought. You get mudslides.

What I'm talking about here is I really can't justify playing more than one game a month. sometimes I buy a game card when i got extra cash, but mostly its just one. So what am I going to do when there is the new WoW Xpac, SWTOR, WAR 40K, LEGO Universe (I hope that games cool), and so many other games that will catch my eye as time moves on.

I think what I might have to force myself to do is not buy any of the new games at launch, and wait and see how they do, and stick with wow for now, cause at least I know I like it. and i wonder how many other people are going to have to make the same decision, hopefully not enough to really hurt box sales. Cause I know these developers deserve to get some money for the work they have done.

I just think (hope) that this batch of games coming out won't be like the previous years, tons of box sales with a mass exodus. I hope these new games coming out keep a good deal of players, and help move the genre forward.

Ok I've been talking about the no jumping feature in the upcoming FFXIV game for a while now and it has caused some debate. And while I stand by my reasons for not wanting to play the game due to it not jumping. I have some reasons for being this way. The main reason is, I like being able to jump, and its my money and my entertainment, so if I want to not play it because of something so petty, then thats my choice. However i have some better reasons also. So here we go, I'm going to hate on Square Enix.

First things first. If were going to talk about decisions on game that is numbered 14 in a series, we need to acknowledge the games before it. The Final Fantasy games, in my opinion have been going downhill for quite some time. ever since they turned into movies with combat kill tubes in between, they lost their charm with me. 10 was bearable, but didn't feel like a final fantasy to to me.

11 was the first of the online games, I personally didn't like it, I really tried, just didn't like it, not calling it a failure of a game, but i will say that it didn't deserve to be Final fantasy 11. It's like they made a online game, using alot of Final fantasy creatures as a base, cause hey, thats less time spent in the art development area, and when they got done, whats the best way to sell it? label the next in the FF series. They had tactics already, and have come out with chocobo dungeon, and crystal chronicles. What would have been the harm in calling this FF online. nameing FF 12 as 11, and 13 as 12?

i think the answer is right away they knew they would sale more copies of the game if it was the next game in the series. I know tactics didn't tank, but it didn't do nearly as well at release as FF7 released earlier that year, or FF8 did two years later. So that was just a way to move boxes.

All the FF series games, save 11, have this, your the underdog, and some great evil is going to destroy/rule the world, and just you and your handful of friends can stop it. Thats not in 11, it can't be, its an MMO, and we all know that there are no messiahs among the PC's in an MMO.

so anyways, Final fantasy 12, well I hated that game, i think alot of people did as well, the story was all right i guess, but man the gameplay.  I like MMO's but that game just had.....lets just say I hated it. played on it for quite a while cause I wanted to see the story but finally the gameplay just made me say, enough, screw this, I hope the world burns. But I still loved the series.

Which brings me to Final fantasy 13. When I first started playing the game, it was good, there were promises of the game opening up, which I guess technically it does, but the first ten or so chapters, are in a kill tube with movie segments scattered every few battles. While I do think the story is good, there is not much content to see outside of what they want you to see. its more like a movie, and not the game that Final Fantasy was living up to be. After a while, i asked myself, are there no towns in this game? Now while I admit there are times where you are in city areas, you never are strolling around around town, going to stores, checking in at the inn, finding other people who have insights into things to go explore and try to find. none of that. So I did some searching, and I found this as the reason.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3177829

That article pretty gives the reason that FF13 has no towns is with the Hi def graphics in the game:"It is a result of considering HD graphics will be the mainstream. Considering the amount of work to make graphics that deserve HD, it is hard to make towns in the conventional style," Toriyama (FF13 producer) said.

so basically its too hard. Plenty of other games with high def graphics have towns, I call bull****. I think it was a cost of development issue. too much time and effort being put into something that will just be overlooked, it's not shiny enough, or whatever. Just too hard. It makes you think, if they are not doing it just because its too hard, is this why the quality of the gold standard in RPG's, Final Fantasy, is slipping? They are starting to sound like a legendary band that has tons of platinum records, they know they can make total crap and it will go platinum cause they have so many fans. We all say, this is suppose to be the one thats like they use to be, they went back to their roots with this one.

What does this have to do with jumping, well its this, jumping introduces an element of physics that are not in most rpgs. its something that is rather complex to change in the formula, you go from a 2D world. to a 3D world. and its something that they are not used to doing, so in order to do it, they would have to try harder with something they are unfamiliar with, or hire talent that is already experienced with that, both of which cost money, and its money I think they don't care to invest.

Because they don't care to invest it, I don't care to play it.

I've noticed Square-Enix has come out with a ton of games, Like The Last Remenant, Infinate Undiscovery, a Few Final Fantasy games, and at gamestop i see something that I never used to, tons of RPG's in the used section, and the cost of the new games dropped after a few months, RPG's used to hold their value, now it seems that they drop just like the latest MADDEN after about 8 months. So Square-Enix ranks up there with me as bad as SOE does with many other people. They set the standard for what is done in RPG's the way that Blizzard sets the standard for MMO's but they are getting to where they are wanting to keep cost down, but make a shiny product.

You can paint a turd gold, and throw glitter on it, but its still a turd.

That being said, the game might be good for some people, I'm sure some people will find the game they had been searching for in it, good for them, I personally want to jump in my MMO's so I'll not be playing it, and that means to Square Enix, my opinion is worth $50, plus a sub, that they won't be getting.

Immersion is something you see thrown around on the board from time to time. Most of the time I see it, people are talking about how this ruins immersion, or that ruins immersion. That got me thinking what actually does make immersion? What is it, and why is it important to us.

To me immersion is simply a way to determine how much I am getting into a game. When I can play for a few hours and not really notice how much time has flown by, I consider the game immersive. there are a few things that I think doesn't ruin this, that many people do.

Loading screens: game worlds that aren't seamless don't bother me, at no point in my game playing career have I ever been so into a game that I snapped out of it and said "Oh my God, i forgot this was a video game. The presence of a loading screen is just a technological medium to change zones, and it doesn't bother me. Now for purposes of immersion, I just want to be able to notice where I am on the globe, games like EQ2 allow you to know that easily, especially after the Halas reborn update. A game like AoC, at least back when I played it, didn't really do a good job of letting you know where you were on the globe, you just found people with carts who were going to diffeerent zones.

Graphics: Once again, never seen graphics so good it made me forget I was playing a video game, and within reason, they are not important. I do however have some requirments since I am paying for a monthly service with MMO's, for instance, Asherons Call, which is probably a spectacular game in terms of gameplay, I just don't enjoy looking at it enough to fork over 13 bucks a month. 5...maybe, something else that gets me on that subject is I thought AC was owned by turbine, and if so why have they not made that game F2P yet? I would play it for free, but anyways, thats another subject.

Character creation: My ability to be unique is not that important to me for one reason, you can't make completely unique hair, maybe a shade no one else has but there are always preset hair styles, and since all I ever really see is the back of my avatars head, I'm not too concerned about the face, as long as it just isn't butt ugly, (except for orcs in WAR)

Anyways, thats that, agree or disagree, I'd like to hear your opinions on what is/isn't important.

Stradden recently posted about how the customer is not always right. This is very true, but the customer always remains the customer. and publishers and developers, are selling something to them. Here is the problem I see with people assuming that everything they say the the devs need to take seriously. The problem is actually really simple.

The devs know alot more about video game design than the customer does.

Does that make sense? If your mind doesn't wrap around that fact you might want to go ahead and find something else to read.  If you live upstairs in an apartment with bad insulation, and the heat index in 110, and your air conditioner is making the room 78 degrees at five in the afternoon, you can call the A/C mechanic an idiot all you like, you can say that the unit is freezing up, or the duct work is caved in all you want, it doesn't change the fact that nothing can be done to fix the problem, save reinsulating the building, sometimes even if you don't like it, things are working as best they can.

anyways, point is,

how many times does someone make the comment "All they have to do is make x work like this, and y work like that, and boom problem solved." ? I'm probably guilty of it myself, cause we all do it. but it might not be that simple, interactions in code might cause such a change to cause the whole game to crash. It might cause people who use 64 bit computers to see all avatars as Ronald McDonald and Hamburglers, or it might be as simple as

The people making the game think that your idea is crap.

not the worst thing that could happen, and if a large group of people think the same thing, that can be taken with a grain of salt too. cause it boils down to the fact that business people make money by calculating and managing risk. if you and the 18 people on the forum think the same thing about a game, and want to see this change, or your leaving. well in a small mmo, with a subscriber base of say 50,000 you and those 18 are about 0.036% of their population, and therefore less than one half of a percent of their revenue.  Your probably going to be rolled into a statistic concerning monthly flow of customers gained over customers lost.

that being said, the thing I think we all need to remember is there are MILLIONS of us, and no company really cares to read our opinions because we really don't know what we are talking about,  At your job how seriously do you take customers? You probably care about them, and want them to be happy....until they start telling you how to do your job.

I think devs feel the same way, they want us to enjoy their product, and try to improve it over time, but the instant we start telling them how we would have done it, they think to themselves, "your more than happy to try" and they stop caring about our opinions.  We as customers do it to ourselves, cause we are too proud, and think we know everything, cause we think were always right,

Go to McDonalds and order a Ribeye, baked potato, and corn, when they say they don't have it, tell them that your the customer and that makes you right, if they are smart, they'll tell you with those demands, your not their customer.

I've been jumping from game to game lately, I've been teetering on that edge of mmo burnout for quite a while now. I got a refreshing jump when my wife started playing mmo's with me, but the first one we played is wow,  and aafter we got to level cap and got all our badge gear and raided for a bit, we got bored. mostly cause i had been bored for a long long time.

tried Aion, anyone who was with me when that game came out, you know the story there.

LOTRO, not going to say its a bad, not for me though, just can't get into it.

Runes of magic, good game, best F2P I've seen, Allods, it has a big drop off in interest level after lvl 5,

so I came back around to EQ2, MMO I was playing when me and my wife first started dating. I remember the time I spent trying to get her to play....she never would. but anyways, to get to the point, we realized its just unfair to compare games to WoW. say whatever you want about the game, it has loads of content, but it doesn't have so much that you can play for two years and not see all of it. So eq2 has been a good thing for us. Its alot different when your exploring around an area, and you both run into a group of heroic mobs that neither one of you knew was there. (she thought I was going to hold them off while she got away.... but she didn't know I had feign death, almost slept on the couch)

so for me the cure for my burnout has been to experience this new stuff with someone I care about. and that makes me wonder, is boredom of the mechanics what really makes us burnt out? How many people who are going from game to game in that state of burn out play solo? solo play is on the rise, it seems to be the popular way of doing things, but so is the amount of burn out post you see on forums. Well, I'm cured for now at least, anyone else find a cure?

I've given Darkfall a try and I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the game thus far. Its not the overwhelming gankfest that some people have made it out to be, at least not for me. It does require you to play smart, and avoid people when your vulnerable. For instance, if your in next to no armor, and out collecting materials for craft, when you see someone coming for you, Run, Run like a little girl, run till your muscles are on fire and your heart pumps battery acid, then run some more.

Joining a clan is also crucial, cause the game is pretty brutal, and people will kill you, so its good to have freinds. But to the good stuff,

I like to explore in a game, if the land isn't stale, which the land isn't, mobs aren't everywhere, and they tend to gather near certain land mark areas. The AI for mobs is impressive, and you rarely have the exact same fight. although some people will be turned off by the idea, when you have a sword equipped the only thing you can really do is swing it....

However, go pick up a sword, and let me know how many spectacular feats you do, that doesn't invlove swinging it.

I like the skill system, skills for everything, running, sprinting, jumping swimming, swords, spells, crafts, the list goes on, and I like having to do said skill to improve, I was unfortunate to miss out on UO, and I find this concept great.

Plus its nice to play an unforgiving game every now and then. Let me say something to the people that get turned off by the idea of the whole full loot thing. When you die, yes, you drop everything, but at the same time, I have about 15-20 sets of low grade armor, with tons, TONS, of weapons, they aren't too great, but I just started, so its not like you work for 10 hours to get this epic sword, then you loose it right away, not to say all gear is bad, and that some of it doesn't take time to get, but your not going to be using stuff like that unless you are on purposly bringing your A game.

Somethings i don't like, I don't see any non aggresive mobs, like wildlife, ect. that would be nice for emersion, and easier chat system, but UI things are something that can wait, its a small company doing this after all. Animations get clunky, but most of this is surface stuff.

What the game needs really is a free trial, I think people will be happy with the cahracter progression, and pvp, is really fun when your at someone your own level, and when you get ganked, it records it, so you can remember that name....

Tables turn eventually, its all cyclical.

Okay, my WoW account got hacked last friday, talked with blizzard, and they said that my account would be restored no problem. Thats cool, except that it's five days later, and still nothing, now its not that I'm impatient, I realize it was a holiday, its just as long as my toons have no armor and bags, and such, I'm not going to play. I know I could go grind the stuff I can kill at my level naked, and work my way back into some gear, but nah, I'm lazy I already did that stuff once.

So it gave me reason to update and participate in the Open Beta for Aion. Which has turned out to be a spectacular game. It has alot of the elements from wow that i liked, Which is good cause its the same elements I liked in EQ2.

It really isn't the next innovation in MMO's, but in a way too, it is. The game is being released in excellent condition, you know from the beginning its not half done. I Think NCSoft new they needed to release it and let it run for a while overseas, cause that audience probably has more leanience for bugs and such than the western audience does.

That would be a really nice trend, for MMO's to come out with the games fully ready to go, busting with content.  I can, and we should, be fairly patient with lag and latency issues for up to about when our free month for buying the game has run out. After that, if I experience too much lag, I simply won't pay for another month. as should most people. Luckily I haven't experienced any lag thus far, with the exception of the last 30 minutes before the maintenence on monday.

I guess the only thing left to say about it is this, If you went to Age of Conan, cause you wanted some PvP, and then decided your not paying for a half finished game. Then you went to Warhammer online, cause you wanted some PvP, but decided your not going to play a game that is run by people who's answer to server balance is to make the lower populated factions classes OP.  So you went back to WoW, cause at least it runs good, Give Aion a shot, worst thing that happens, you go back to your previous MMO to wait out till the next thing comes along. But if you play it, and like it, and stay, you will make the game much more enjoyable, cause for games like this to live, you need people, to play with and against.

So I found a new home at least for a while, and to think, I never would have tried if Blizzard would have done like they said they would do over the phone, and resore my account after talking to a GM in game. (which I did, Saturday morning, as soon as my account was unfroze after the Hack)

Sometimes, things happen cause it's fate.

Othertimes its just a coincidence, cause I really doubt the wheels of fate actually turned at this particualr time to point me into the game that will define the destiny of my next few months. but then again, who knows what comes from this, If, IF I become a millionaire, I'll make sure to let you guys know.

Being hacked recently in World of Warcraft, It made me realize the little amount that is really done in terms of punishing the gold farmers. They were able to look onto my character logs and see what was taken, and gave me back those items. but surely they can go a little further, and punish the wicked right?

If they can look onto my logs and see how much gold was mailed away, surely they can see the account it was mailed to right? then they can see if that character just mailed the gold again, or put it in a guild bank.

I say ban the account that recieved the gold, and disband the guild, and ban all members of the guild. Even investigate other characters guilds if they are in different ones, spread it out like fire, and see if you can find where all the gold is going. I doubt very seriously that guilds full of hackers and gold farmers allow straight members into their guild, and even more so I don't think you could be in one for any length of time and not realize it. Maybe thats a little harsh, cause some people may get banned when they are innocent, they can go through the process of just proving they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Of course I could just be angry and not thinking clearly, but part of me thinks that the real problem is th companies that just ban the one account know that that one account will be bought again, and thats more revenue for them. Like so many other matters of justice, I think that the almighty dollar interferes too much with doing whats right. If you took away multiple accounts and the stockpile of gold they have hoarded for selling, that would hit them where they hurt, and make it a risky venture. one not really worth investing the time needed to start making money.  Also some of the cost associated with that much investigating would be fairly high, so I know its not gonna happen.

But I can dream can't I?