What Drives Gamers Nuts

Follow, if you will, the sequence of events here, especially those highlighted in RED:

SilverElf4,You have been added as part of the last wave of Alganon beta testers before its launch on October 31, 2009. Your MyAlganon account “SilverElf4″ has been upgraded to have immediate beta access. You don’t even need a beta key! Simply login to your MyAlganon.com account and click the “Beta” button to get instructions on how to download the client. Once you are finished downloading, installing and patching the beta client use your MyAlganon login account name and password to login and play the Alganon beta.

******************************* 

Greetings,

 

I received my invitation to the last round of Beta testing before launch and was very excited.  I have downloaded the client from http://www.myalganon.com but when I run the client and put in my account name and password, it tells me that the information is invalid and will not download the installer.

 

I’m not sure what to do.  I used the same account name and password as I used to access the page with the beta client as supplied in the email.

******************************

Hi, 
 
In regards to your issue of not being able to download the client, we’d like for you do try and manually re-enter your beta key again on MyAlganon. To do this go to you profile page, scroll over My Account and select Enter Key. Right now, this will take you to a purchase page, so you need to click the “Already Purchased Alganon? Click Here to enter your game key” link found just about the Billing Information section. Enter you key and try downloading the installer again. Let us know if this works for you, and if not let us know and we’ll go from there. 
 
Regards, 
 
[censored]
CSGM 
Alganon 

 

Yeah…so I forwarded that original email.  That was about 30 hours ago…still no response.   Contrast this with Fallen Earth, who hit me up with multiple emails back and forth within 24 hours.  My issue is now resolved and I played the game last night (more on that in a later post).   Meanwhile, Alganon, who issued me this invite on Saturday, has emailed me once in 4 days, and has not resolved my issue, and indeed seems to have revealed a deeper issue. 

My only real question is – how does this happen?  Is this a case of game developer specific “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” syndrome?  Different departments not talking to each other, etc?  Does that also explain the poor response time as well?

Fallen Earth: What kind of game is this exactly?

One of these things is not like the others.

 

Snagged one of the free 15 day trial keys for Fallen Earth today.  My brother bought the game at the beginning of the week and has been loving it and gave me a head’s up.  As its been patching today I had a few minutes to skim the patch notes.  And I begin to wonder exactly what kind of game this is…

How exactly would one equip….nevermind, just…nevermind…

The Ghost of a Game

One of the great oddities of MMO’s that we are perhaps only just now experiencing is this – what happens when an MMO dies?

SOE created a Matrix Online scrapbook of sorts in memoriarium.

The Shadowbane site is gone it seems, but the Wiki lives on, preserving the lore and information of the world.  (What a grand PnP RPG setting that would make!)

But one game I’ve come across several times now, and only just realized this week that it was dead.  Kaput.  Belly Up, Servers Down.

Dark and Light.

I don’t know much about the game other than what I have been able to glean from Wikipedia and some random news archives, but basically the game suffered from poor developer communication and in house business partner fighting, and was thus dead before it was really ever unveiled.

Of course, other games have suffered like this and yet still continue to stumble onwards.

Hello? Oh God, where is everyone? Everyone's lost but me...

But what is amazing about Dark and Light’s site is that there is no announcement, news release, or indication that the game is completely and totally dead.  You could navigate the site, read all about it, even download the client, only to find that it would repeatedly fail to connect.  And then you might check the forums and poke around a bit and then notice that its actually…you know, dead.

Apparently you can still play around solo in the demo world, but the game is so buggy even that might not happen.  I’m tempted to do it anyway though.  God knows why.  I mean, I like exploring, but that would be sick and twisted right.  To download a dead game’s client just to ride around in the dead world solo.  Alone.   Nobody in their right mind would do that right?  Right?

…I need some kind of an intervention don’t I?

A Real Life MMO

We were on vacation this weekend (kids on a two week fall break) and we took them to the revamped Stone Mountain Park  in Atlanta, GA.    This is probably going to be a long post so the tl;dr version is  this:  I spent time in a kid’s play area that was designed like an MMO, and it blew my mind.

A few years ago, Stone Mountain was taken over by the same company that runs Knott’s Berry Farm over in CA.  As a result, it took on less of a camping/refuge atmosphere and became more of a theme/amusement park area.  One of the things installed was the Great Barn.  Its a giant indoor funhouse, four stories up in the middle, with numerous different activities inside.  And as I sat and watched my kids and my neighbors kids (who had joined us on the mini-vacation) play, I began to see things with my trained gamer’s eye.   The whole blasted thing was one giant MMO.

Okay, we have four people but do we have all four gamer archetypes present?

When kids came in, they were stopped in an initial area where they could create their “farmer,” and get a special wristband that would track their progress in the different activities.  Can we say Achiever anyone?  In the center great room on the bottom floor, visible from just about everywhere, was an electronic sign proclaiming the top ten scoring farmers from each age group.  In that same great room, the “starter area” for the game, there are hundreds of balls (“fruit”) lying around in several different colors.  Farmers can spend time here gathering fruit for the activities, and the wise ones will grab a bag to extend their capacity (I didn’t get a chance to count the number of slots).  Farmers might also explore side rooms for additional fruit and bags, take them from other players, or perhaps speak with those leaving the game area to gather additional capacity.  Thus we complete the first echoes of Bartle underpinnings.

This fruit Economy as it were, is more complex than it might seem.  There are a finite number of fruits in the game, they are required for all the activities, save some of the explorer ones (ahem, slides, climbing nets, and side rooms).  Expended fruit, through a complex system of tubes, vacuums, and nets, are channeled back down to the bottom floor room out in the open and also in less visible caches around the side rooms.  Some of those side rooms are netted and hallwayed off from the main room, providing quiet areas for Socializing via benches and even through exchange of said caches to interested players.  Some Mini Games exist here in the form of small slides and riders for younger players or those who prefer to play alone for a while.  Killers can peg one another endlessly, as well as trying to defend themselves from the veteran players on the second Tier above.

But Dad, its hard to be an Achiever with all these Killers around!

Once one has completed the games and activities on the first floor, and gathered enough fruit for their liking, they may proceed to the second Tier of challenges and activities, either through Challenges such as climbing cargo nets, or via the Rapid Transport System..er stairs, at the back of the room, conecting to the Quest Hub (lobby) of each Tier (floor).  On the second floor, one engage Killer instincts by Bombing players on the first floor, completing Challenges involving expending various color combinations of fruit to gain Achievement points, or engage in the running gun battle with air guns that use the fruit as ammunition on two opposing sides above the open air great room below.  This second floor also allows for Socilization and Trading as farmers find that they need different fruit colors or different skills or even additional players (one challenge involves a crank system that requires cooperation) to play.  Some of the less assertive farmers simply go between the floors carrying loads of fruit for other players, especially those locked in battle (Crafting and Player Driven Economy at its best).  After completing a challenge, if you desire, just scan your bracelet, receiving the points and perhaps a prestigious place on the big board instantly.  Some of these challenges are again hidden in side rooms, requiring Explorers to hunt them down and use them or share their location with others.

On the third level, players are treated to a more hard core version of the PVP battles below, as it is harder to obtain ammunition, and there are less available guns for the players to utilize.  Moreover, slides dropping one down to the starter areas below are clogged not only with PvPers looking for more ammo, but also less hardcore players just looking to enjoy the ride!   Many community service managers are in attendence, regulating the flow on the slides to prevent jams and aiding players who are lost or have a problem.   There are also a few challenge type games here that can be played solo for the biggest point scores, but require more fruit and more complex expenditures of that fruit or more demanding hand-eye coordination to complete them.

A final, smaller area seemed to be available for those who wanted to complete their tour of the entire facility, but carrying my weighty bag of fruit and my one year old, I found that even since their was no Rapid Transport System to that level, I was not able to go there.   Thus it was completed – those with family obligations or too tied to their material goods would find themselves unable to participate in the true end game and…whatever it was that it had to offer.

My kids played for probably two hours in the area, finally giving up only when it closed down and we headed for the famous laser show.  Caretakers/Devs emerged to arrange the balls and bags in strategic positions, helping to reset the economy to accomodate the new batch of players that would arrive in the morning. 

Are we trapped?

As we left, and I continued to marvel at what I saw with a gamer’s eye, I had one  final terrifying thought…what if I had it all backwards.  What if, instead of building a play area for kids, designed like an MMO, instead the MMO’s that you and I played were designed like kids play areas.  Perhaps in the final say, we are not only being treated like children, but we love it so much, we keep coming back to the same Barns, day after day, not really expecting or hoping for improvement, content in the channeled reality with which we are presented.

$22 A Month Subscriptions?

My wife called in last night to fight over a $20 service fee we had been charged for our account dropping too low (it hadn’t – our account minimum is calculated using savings and checking, not just checking…morons) and also noticed next to my $14.95 monthly gaming fee to EVE that there was a $2 or so “International Service Charge” attached  to it.  Round two on the phone started, and ended with Wachovia refusing to take that one off, claiming that they were withing their rights to charge us extra for having to exchange currencies, and that they were surprised it was so low - the lady claimed the charge should have been more like $7 a month, and would be so in the future.

Now, we’ve already established that Wachovia is capable of deploying morons – and actually, I’ve known that for some time because of other issues I’ve had.  So I’m not entirely sure I have been told the gospel truth here, so I did some digging.

*Real* ISK.

First of all, I found out that ISK doesn’t stand for Interstellar Space Kredit.  It stands for “Iceland Krona” in the international banking scene.  And that Wachovia charges a 3% international service fee for converting currency.  So I did some quick math:

$14.95 x 1.03 = $15.40 -$14.95 = $.45 in service fees.

Nowhere near $2 or $7 either one.

Add to this my confusion over CCP itself.  While they are originated in Iceland, they also have offices here in America, and so I’m not sure what kind of exchanging needs to go on at all.  And in their FAQ page, while they list all sorts of additional charges that one might get hit with, one for converting currency is not on the list.  And costs are listed not only in Euros, but also in USD, along with this sentence:

Prices are listed in Euros and US dollars. You can use the services of Yahoo Finance to convert the US dollar/Euros to your local currency.

Bold is mine.  This would seem to indicate that CCP accepts two kinds of currency – Euros and US Dollars.  So what is going on here?  Well…I have two weeks until my sub is up.  And I have at least one unpleasent conversation with Wachovia that will be taking place.  I do have some options though. 

At the very least I will be switching banks.  I cannot tolerate incompetence and/or swindling.  The economy is too bad to reward companies that fail in the most basic avenues of knowing their own policies and customer service.  I may also switch my sub over to Discover, though I don’t  know yet what their policies are either.  Hopefully this will not mean EVE costing me $22 a month to play.  I enjoy the game, but…

Anyone else out there ever have this problem?

Anyway, expect an extra post this week so I can regale you with the insanely underhanded way in which I won my first ever Twilight Imperium game.  And no, I didn’t cheat…

Limiting Factors

I’ve been facing this thought alot, not just in the game, but in life as well.  Whenever one sets a goal and reaches out to achieve it – whether that be in life, in career, as an individual, as a corporation, in a game like EVE, or EQ2, or in real life, there are always Avenues for Advancement.

These Avenues for Advancement are the ways and means by which one achieves the goal, right?  Focusing on games (duh, its a blog about games…), you will have several Avenues of Advancement – you will have to move forward along the paths of: level, equipment, guild.  You’ll need level to be able to access and effectively engage those dungeons, bosses, or quests.  This also applies to EVE, though those avenues would be renamed: skills, isk, corporation – you need these to access various corners of the sandbox.

Now for some people, some of those avenues are harder to advance than others.  For the casual player, perhaps all of them are hard to advance – unless one has a regular group of friends IRL, or otherwise.  For the hardcore player in EQ2, leveling might be a snap, and by extension as they level, it becomes easier to acquire better equipment.  In EVE, the skill advancement is mostley an even playing surface, but even there isk can influence skill – by use of implants and remapping.

By now you are seeing that these things are by their very nature intertwined.  And so when one sets specific goals along avenues of advancement, the connections between these things can be a help – or a hindrence.  Where those things are a hindrence, they slow advancement along the avenue – and this is what I call, as the title of this post alludes to – Limiting Factors.

When I was playing Everquest II not too long ago, I ran into a wall – I had hit the mid 30’s with my Necromancer, and was enjoying time with him, sometimes solo, sometimes with two other people.  But slowly those two other people drifted away.  I never found a new guild to be a part of, and as a result, I started playing my almost exclusively solo.  This is fine for awhile, but after awhile, even playing a pet class, to really get into the meat of a game like EQ2, you need to be playing with other people.  I tried a few pickup groups and even a new guild, but never found a home.  So when AoC showed up at Target on clearence for a few bucks – and my brother asked me to try it with him…I went.  My Limiting Factor was social networking.  It was the lowest stave in the barrel.  The barrel will only hold as much as the shortest piece of wood bound within it, no matter how tall the rest of the barrel is.

In EVE, I run across this all the time – but the interesting thing is that the Limiting Factor changes from goal to goal and project to project.  When I wanted to fly an interceptor – money was the barrier – being able to afford to lose a 15-20m isk ship.  When I later wanted to set a goal for Black Ops, skill became the Limiting Factor – as a new player, I would have to cripple my basic skill training and wait six months or more to be able to fly one.  Currently in our corp, the limiting factor is again social in nature – we have three dedicated, regular players, who can come up with plenty of isk, at least for our current empire operations – but we can’t seem to get recruits on board with the corp.

While on the topic – I do not include amont limiting factors those that occur within oneself, outside the game.  Being on vacation, or emotionally unavailable for a week are not really Limiting Factors.  Neither is play time – since really it acts as a meta factor that complicates all the Avenues of Advancement.

The goal of course, is to find ways to expand the Limiting Factor, releasing the choke point in the process, and moving one forward a little easier into their chosen Avenue of Advancement.  Each problem has its own way of doing this.  And sometimes the game itself offers up a way to loosen that constriction – this was the original purpose of “rest xp” in MMO’s.  In the same way, though on a commercial side, they exist purely for profit potential, the reality of RMT transactions is that they provide a way to do the same.  In EVE Online, one of the veteran pilots in my former corp encouraged us to sell a 60day GTC – the initial influx of money would cover and fittings we needed and alleviate any fears we had about ship loss in fleet ops – it removed a limiting factor in PvP and ensured less Limiting Factors in other endeavors we would seek to undertake.

Whatever your Limiting Factors may be at the moment, its a good idea to share those with guild or corp mates, and even post it out in the open (such as I sometimes do on this blog!) to see who might be willing to weigh in on the topic or offer advice on how to handle it.  It behooves them to do this of course (mmmoooooo, go CoW’s!) because in doing so they relieve your tension and frustration and help you to remain in the game and contributing to your experience as a gamer.

In other words, whatever you may have heard from other sources, for long term viability in MMO’s – it pays to be nice.

Take a Chance On Me

Okay, so its hard to write game blog posts about games the people who are reading your blog may not be playing.  But, just like the great band that has to convince their audience to try out some of their new music, part of game blogs inventory should be introducing you to new stuff.  Right?  So follow me today on a journey through just one random battle in The Reincarnation – aka Archmage.

My guild there, the White Raven, as part of its acceptence of new members, requires a training course.  Part of that course is to complete attacks of a good leve of success against three opponents of varying styles within the course of a week.  Its a great exercise, and one that I did not complete in my last stint in the game (got 2 of 3!).  The server resets on Saturday, so I’m trying to cram them in this week so that I can “graduate” to full membership with the reset.  To that end, I’ve been very aggressively pounding other mages.  Today I got my first of the three successes needed, which require that you conquer a minimum of 80 acres of land in a seige attempt.  I could show you the battle report from that, but it would look like gibberish to you without having read the game rules. 

So let me narrate the battle for you.  I do this because a) its a great RP/immersion exercise and 2) because its one of the sweetest things about this game – the battles and the way they play out.

Stuff you need to know:  battles in TR consist of “Stacks” of troops of the same type – units of mundane or magical troops that fight together.  Based on their weapon range, initiative, and movement, they target opposing stacks.  Each mage has up to 10 stacks of troops active and could receive up to 2 more from allies.  In addition for each battle, a mage is allowed to cast a battle spell, and use a magic item.  For stacks, you need a balance.  If you have only a few powerful units (like my Titans you’ll see below) you will probably inflict alot of damage, but not be able to take and hold much land in the attack.  On the other hand, if you have lots of weak units, you will probably lose too many casualties to win the battle.  Plus you have to take into account stacking strategies involving trying to get your stacks to fight stacks favorable to their battle style – (Werebears won’t do much to the Iron Golems with their thick armor, but Iron Golems should rightly fear magic shooting Liches.  On the other hand, you don’t want to let Werebears anywhere near your Liches).  So here’s how the battle unfolded:

I marshall my forces and lay seign to the enemy mage.  By sieging it will be more difficult to win, but if successful, I will take more land and one of his fortresses, a mage’s “HP” in the game.  I have summoned Titans, Archangels, and Treants to my cause, and used magical Peaches to summon my “fodder” – thousands of Gorillas.  The enemy, a nature type mage, ends up having alot of what one would expect: Earth Elementals, Mandrakes, Phoenix, Treants, Nymphs, and Fire Elementals.  I’m not using my full stacks, and so I cast Resurrection, to cut down on my losses.  I also use a Javelin of Lightning Bolt to help inflict losses, since nature types are usually week to fire.  Both are successful, and hundreds of Treants, Mandrakes, and Nymphs fall before the battle even starts, despite his casting Wooden Soul, a protective spell for his troops.

The unit with the most initiative is his Phoenix, and they move to counter my flying stack of Archangels, loosing fire, beak, and talon, killing 30 of them.  Not good, but then, I have a 1000 or so of these.

Strength attracts strength in TR, my Titans and his Earth Elementals engage in an epic clash. My hero, a Dwarven Berserker, leads the Titans.  The enemy’s Fire Elementals, not having a stack to pair against, join this battle as well, but to no avail.  There’s apparently too few to slay even one Titan.  6 Elementals and 5 Titans fall prey to one another as they pound away.  So far, I have the upper hand, as these units are almost equal in power, and he has lost more.

My Archangels, ignoring the weaker and smaller stack of Phoenix (Phoenii?) attack the killer plant Mandrakes.  They destroy 450 with their holy swords, losing only 2 of their own in the process.  His Mandrakes, unable to carry the battle to the air, instead attack the Treants with poisonous thorns.  I lose 64 to his 31.  Ouch!  My Treants on the other hand, are busy slaughtering his own - 42 of his die along with another 1 of mine, making up the loss and then some.

Meanwhile, his Treants are trying to whittle down my Gorillas. 500 of them actually.  Gorillas are fodder, but I have over 15000 of them, enough to kill 5 of the big trees.  Unfortunately, my Javelin completely stack wiped his Nymphs, and so my Gorillas join in the struggle against the Earth Elementals.  This is actually bad for me, as fodder can’t do much against such powerful units.  No elementals are harmed, but another 56 Gorillas fall.

Resurrection kicks in, and I get back half my slain Titans and Treants, along with 2/3 of my Archangels, and a handful of Gorillas.  Yeah, its a powerful spell and cost me alot of mana, but it was worth it.  That cuts my own losses significantly, and the result is victory.  I lost about 3% of my troops totaling 7.5% of my army’s power.  But he has lost much more than that.  And I can taste the victory!

Your attack was successful and you gained 93 acres, while destroying 184 acres of land.

And this was a small battle really.  Think about what it would have looked like if we had both had the full 12 stacks engaging one another!  If you are in any way enticed by this, join up.  Act now and I’ll even give you a special magic item called The Total Newbie Handbook, which includes tips on playing the game, and when used, summons several thousand squirrels for your Newb Army.   I’m not making this up.

Queasy Tom Snot

King Arthur: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
French Soldier: Well, I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he will be very keen. Uh, he’s already got one, you see.
King Arthur: What?
Sir Galahad: He said they’ve already got one!
King Arthur: Are you sure he’s got one?
French Soldier: Oh yes, it’s very nice!

~ If you don’t know where this comes from, you should go boil your bottoms, you sons of silly persons.

I was playing some Pirates of the Burning Sea with my brother recently, and we were gutting the available quests in New Orleans.  We’ve gotten to the point where, with the double xp shot from agreeing to have these ridiculous accents…err, be French, that we don’t do any of the “group quests” (too hard, same xp), or any quest that can’t be done the that town’s longboat or instances (more time, same xp).  Even then, we have quest logs that hold 25 quests (half of which at any given time are our solo or bounty quests), and we frequently have to make several trips into town to clear space for the next group of quests.

Basically, we run into the town, collect as many quests as we can, do them, turn them in, and repeat the process until the town is dry.  Then we move on to the next town.  Laugh at PotBS if you want, but this is no different than most other MMO’s.  We now have quest hubs, which direct us to hunting grounds and provide bonuses and fast tracks for advancement.   We lamented that this avalanche of “quests” made for some ridiculous storylines, bizarre encounters, and mostly unread fluff.  PotBS is tricky too in that probably 5% of the quests involve a pathing choice.  Occasionally we’ll play solo, get back together, and realize that in just grabbing the floating “!” without reading, we’ve accepted opposing quest lines.

Eventually we discussed how little “good loot” was available from quests in all the games we play.  Most of the time, quests offer nothing other than cash and xp.  Many times in many of the games we’ve played (WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, Conan, WAR, DAoC, LotRO, PotBS, Wizard 101, SW:G, and even EVE), we get items from quests that are useless to our characters or so low power that we just sell them.

And for those who enjoy, if not RPing, then simple immersion in the game (there’s more than you think), this completely destroys their experience in the game world.

So long story short, we got all nostalgic for EQOA.  And why?  Well, let me list for you all the quests available to my Elf Magician in the game for the first 20 levels:

• 4 Tutorial Quests (1 each, levels 1-4)
• 1 Tutorial Grouping Quest (level 5)
• 5 Class Quests (7, 10, 13,15, 20)
• ~ 22 Side Quests (mostly level 6 or 17, ~ 1/3 unavailable because of alignment preqs.)

That’s it.  The side quests usually gave 10-25% of a level of xp, some money, and a faction boost with whatever literal “side” they were for.  The class quests gave a unique spell or item (or both), and usually a full level’s worth of xp, or close to it.  We complained about this of course, but only because the questing levels were so much more fun and involved, and because the the phat rewards at the end of each.

The result:  more emphasis on grouping, on helping guild mates.  More immersion and rp possibilities.  A requirement for smaller server populations.  Quest rewards and quests themselves were meaningful milestones.   I *miss* that.

I miss that this also meant that the lore of the world was encoded into conversations with NPC’s.  That locations had to have personality and design of their own to attract players and groups.  That having a night where you could call out “ding” in chat gave you a gaming high.  That when you arrived at a new zone or location, your first impulse was not to make all the exclamation points disappear, but to chat with players to find a group or connect with someone you recognized or knew by reputation.

But that’s enough nostalgia.  I know those days are gone.  And I’m sure there are drawbacks that I’m not seeing with my rose colored glasses.  Its just that its been a long time since I’ve worked with a full group in an MMO and felt the rush of coordinated combat and the skill of working as a team.  It been a long time since I’ve had a place or a niche in a game or a group, and I’m really starting to miss that.  ::sigh::

Khhaaannnn!

Oh hell no.

I’m trying to make that toughest of decisions about what character to play on Lucan D’Lere, in hopes of  having, you know, people to play with.  But not Ysharros, because, you know, she isn’t into that. (Just kidding!  Heh…no seriously, don’t hurt me! ::runs::)

So anyway, I decide to do a Shadowknight, and when getting myself familiar with the ability list again, I start to twitch.  They didn’t.  Tell me they didn’t make the same mistake again.  They did.  They took away the Shadowknight’s pet.

See, when EQOA came out, many of us were surprised at some of the changes to the classes, given that this was just supposed to be EQ on the PS2.  But the EQOA Shadowknight had no undead pet.  The outcry was strong.  That was a trademark of the class, something that made it unique and made it stand out from the other tanks, and especially stand out from the Paladin.  They both got something from outside their archetype right?  Pally’s eventually get a raise, SK’s eventually get a pet.  It was part of what defined them.

The outcry was strong enough that when they launched the first EQOA expansion six months later, they added a pet back in for the Shadowknight.  Sure it was a buffing pet, and you had to wait to epic to get it, but dangit, at least it was an option!  Here in EQ2, it was a “limited pet” but at least, again, it was something!  But we don’t learn from our mistakes! Oh no…that would be smart!

Listen up: the pet was the only reason I play a Shadowknight.  Because without that, there is no reason for me to do it instead of one of the other tanks.  Does the Shadowknight get a Rez or Heals? No.  Dual wield? No.  So what do they get?  What’s their cool bonus ability?  Why are we determined to make them less unique and more like every other tank out there?

So thanks SOE, thanks alot.  You’ve managed to piss me off royally.  And I was *this* close to resubbing.  *This* close.

::grumbles::

SWG Has Something Your MMO Doesn’t…

…I’m not kidding.  An old, decrepit, half-dead MMO has something that seems so basic, so simple, so – necessary – and none of the big boys has even thought to implement it.

The chance to build a customer base.  To earn repeat buyers.  To actually have a business.

EVE doesn’t have it.  They are a step ahead with buy orders and contracts.  And that’s a start.  When I’m looking at BPC’s, once I find someone who has deals I like, I jot down their name and look for when their newest stuff comes up.  But I can’t go to their store.  I’m not even sure I can search by their name.  And even if I could, how can they communicate with me?  Give me a discount for continuing to buy from them?  Give me incentive to continue to go back to them?

And the other MMO’s?  They don’t even make it that far.  Some are just patently ridiculous.  I enjoy crafting, but I gave it up in Vanguard.  If it have to make a few hundred cloaks to advance a level, I’m not interested.  And I can’t sell them to anyone except to the vendor, for a scratch or maybe even a loss.  That’s not fun.  If you are going to invite players in your game to craft, to take part in the economy, then you need to do it in a way makes it fun for them to do so!

And now we come to the part of the post where I eat my own words.  Because I can’t stand Free Realms.  But at least there, when I go to cook something, its fun to do.  Yes, its a mini game, and I’m not big on mini games.  Did I mention yet that I was eating my own words?

The businesses in SWG impressed me more than anything.  I drove out in the wilderness in my crappy starter speeder and started a few harvesting stations, all so that one day I might own my own business.  I loved wandering through the player owned city.  Checking out the shops and such.  I could search them on the index I’m sure, but it was fun to immerse myself in it. 

Its probably a pipe dream, because even SWG didn’t implement it all that great.  And we’re talking about a genre where some major titles can’t even be bothered to offer player housing of any sort (::cough cough:: WAR, WoW), or make housing available to every level of play from beginner on up (::cough cough:: LotRO, Vanguard). 

But I think it would be worth the investment and the experimentation for a game to be able to gives us that something that we haven’t had before.