The Winds of Change: WTF!

This is my first post in awhile I have been pretty busy with RL things like building a house and working and stuff. But I find this very interesting.

Original is here

Winds of Change

In our efforts to improve server stability and performance in Open Realm vs. Realm combat, the players of Dark Crag will have the opportunity to participate in a live test of a new system called “Winds of Change.”

The goal of this system is to ensure the best Open Realm vs. Realm  experience for as many people as possible and to prevent server crashes. Overall, this system will only take effect in the most extreme server load situations, and will only happen as a last measure before the zone would actually crash.

In order to accomplish this goal “The Winds of Change” will now teleport a small number of players in Realm vs. Realm lakes to the closest “safe point” when crowds are large enough to threaten the stability of the server. This will generally be the nearest Warcamp, however, it may also be a Chapter Hub within the zone depending on where performance is being impacted the most.

The system will first warn players that the Winds of Change are coming. If performance in the impacted area does not improve the system will select first those who are currently dead on the ground to be moved followed by those who are severely wounded. Those selected will receive a message explaining that they have been moved. We realize this change is inconveniencing to those impacted, and anticipate that this system is temporary while we continue to improve overall stability.

Please note that if you are ported but eligible for contribution rewards such as loot bags or medallions, you will still have an opportunity to win and retrieve them if you were ported during the assault on a Keep or Fortress.

We look forward to your feedback during this test and encourage those on Dark Crag to post here once they’ve had an opportunity to experience the new system.

Thank you for your continued support.

WTF! Who thinks this is a good idea? Teleport people out of a zone because it might crash! Why not fix the servers? Come on how hard can it be?  How can you have massive battles if you are only allowed a few people.  The main point of this game is to RVR but now random people will be teleported out. Battles are limited in their massiveness.  I don’t care what kind of cool name they give this it is total and complete crap. FIX THE GAME! Don’t tell paying customers you cant play here right now, but you can go enjoy some of our great PVE.

Most of the servers are not even full and they need to implement this.  DAoC could support larger battles than WAR. They really need to get this under control. It will only take about once of me getting teleported before I quit.

WAR keep upgrading

A new preview has been posted here.

Almost all of these features were in Dark Age of Camelot.  Why were they not released with WAR?  Dark Age of Camelot did so many things so well and then they screwed them up in WAR.  Keep upgrades, Darkness Falls,  no zones,  Small group RVR, there are more why did they drop so many of the great things about DAoC? I hope that they continue to add the wonderful ideas of DAoC.

Three things that are wrong with current MMOs

1.  Quest Based Advancement

All current major MMOs advancement is based on completing quest. This started with WoW and that trend has continued. In the beginning of MMOs this was not the case. UO did not have any real quests and while Everquest had that in its name questing was not the main way to earn experience. Everquest relied on the camping mechanic, stay in one spot and kill lots of things for hours. The quests were a way to get loot not advance your character. Every game after that point used this mechanic in some way. They all tried to stop the camping problem but none of them were very successful.

Then the “Next Generation” of MMOs were released, these were World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 both of these games brought quest based advancement as the main way to level. There was still some camping involved but most experience was gained through completing quests. Now every game that comes out tries to take this to the next level and does it wrong. The problem with quest based advancement is that you spend to much time getting to and from the quest objectives. They are really just running exercises. They are all the same, go here and kill this, go here and talk to him. Camping has pretty much disappeared entirely.

A middle ground should be reached where camping is still an option. Camping was a good way to build community because you get to talk to your group mates instead of running around trying to find the last sick bear. I think they should mix up camping and make more instanced dungeons for groups. Maybe make them random with a token system so that you can pick what you want. This way they could make some generic story lines and make some really cool instances. DDO does this very well. You could also combine the questing and grinding by giving out xp rewards for killing 1000 spotted owls. They would need to bring back static spawn points to make this work. Players need a wide variety of play options and each one needs to be about equal to keep a play type from dominating the other.

2.  WoW

The Juggernaut World of Warcraft is going to destroy MMOs. Every game since WoW has followed them. Just like EQ before, it sets the bar and is the game that every new game is judged against. The problem with this is it is not a very good game. It is not revolutionary. It looks like crap. The classes are all generic. It is really a casual EQ. But it has become so big that any game that does not manage to get 1 million subscribers is considered a failure. Before WoW EQ was king with 400,000ish players. This is what every one strives to be and if you got half of what eq had you were considered a success. No one can ever dream of getting half of what WoW has. They would need 4 million players to reach half the numbers that WoW has, and I am not sure that it would even be considered a success then. WoW was a fluke and will not be duplicated for some time to come.

The industry is striving to reach an unreachable goal. They are coping WoW to try to reach that goal. Any new game that comes out should hope to get over 100k and budget every thing for that many people. Expecting to much really hurt WAR and forced it to do server merges not even 6 months after release. It did the same for Age of Conan.  A subscriber base of 100k will bring in $1.5 million a month. If you can’t claim success with that kind of revenue you are aiming too high. When publishers start aiming lower they will start to see more chances being taken and with those chances we will get the real innovations that are needed to take this genre to the next level.

3.  Casual Players

I happen to be a casual player I play maybe 10 hours a week. Casual players are what made WoW so successful. But what makes WoW push the boundaries of game design are the hardcore players. They are the ones that eat through the content and demand more. They are the ones that find the bugs and exploit them. They make the guides, websites, and plugins that really make the game. Because of them we get interesting instances and new content. They are the ones that complain on the message boards and test the new changes. They are the raid, guild, and group leaders that make a lot of instances and raids possible for most players.

They play to be the most uber player on the server. With out them the game would go stale and die. I do not think that you should have to be a hardcore player to get the items that you want. But the games MUST be made for these people. The raids must exist the new content must be put into the game to keep it fresh and growing.

Horizontal Progression

Source From the guy that inspired me to blog.

Note that adding raid dungeons and gear progression afterwards to a PvP game doesn’t work, and it was Mythic themselves with the Dark Age of Camelot expansion Trials of Atlantis who proved it doesn’t work. Mark Jacobs has been very explicit in expressing that he wouldn’t do that again. I get the impression that Mythic plans to expand the game horizontally, by adding more classes, and ultimately new race combos. I doubt we will see an expansion raising the level cap. But Mythic’s marketing has been sending out hints that soon the slayer and choppa classes would be added to Warhammer Online. It will be interesting to see how in the long term a game with horizontal expansions fares against the vertical expansion model of World of Warcraft. And personally I think that WoW could use a bit more horizontal expansion instead of just adding new raid dungeons and 10 more levels at the top.

The biggest problem with vertical progression is it makes your current content obsolete and useless. By expanding out you do not kill your high end raids. This makes it so they do not have to recreate a bunch of new raids for the new level cap. They can just change current raids a little to keep them fresh.  I do not know another company that has been able to successfully do this I wish WAR luck.

DAOC Origins: 6 Months of Silence

MMORPG.com Blogs – DAOC Origins: 6 Months of Silence

DAOC used to be my game of choice. I spent many hours in DOAC it was and still is one of the finest games on the market. I quit playing out of boredom and general tiredness of it. But that does not mean it was a bad game.

Some believe that TOA was the death of the game. When they released TOA it made you do a long series of quest/task to compete in RVR. People did not want to do more grinding to compete in RVR so people started to leave.

Will going back to the “Good Ol Days” really help? Was it really that much better then? Will it bring people back to the game? Does Mythic really want people playing that game with WAR out? I may try it again if they do bring out a new orgins server. But I suspect it will the same as before. The game is old and based on old ideas. There is not much that you can do to change that. There is a reason that WoW and the new games are doing better.

I hope that it brings people back. I hate to see games die and it looks like this one could be on the chopping block with the EA cost cutting plans.