Category Archives: Blaugust

WoW Legion: Content Patches over Expansions any Day! [#Blaugust 8]

In January 2007 millions of World of Warcraft players turned their gaze towards the Blasted Lands: after two years of living in vanilla Azeroth, the Dark Portal was about to open. After too many runs through Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Ahn’quiraj, it was finally time for the Burning Crusade – also known as “back when WoW was cool”.

According to the timeline on WoW wiki, the wait time between a freshly launched installment and the announcement of the next one, consistently lies around 10 months on average (TBC being the freak) due to winter launches and Blizzcon happening in fall every year –

Vanilla WoW, November 2004; October 2005 TBC announcement
TBC launch, January 2007; August 2007 WotLK announcement
WotLK launch, November 2008; August 2009 Cataclysm announcement
Cataclysm launch, December 2010; October 2011 Pandaria announcement
Pandaria launch, September 2012; November 2013 WoD announcement
WoD launch, November 2014; August 2015 Legion announcement

The average lifespan of a WoW expansion is around 20 months. Only vanilla WoW and WotLK made the playerbase wait for longer than that. Looking back, I am shocked how soon into the glorious TBC Blizzard already announced WotLK.

Considering Blizzard have been running like clockwork for 10 years, my launch date speculation for Legion is September 2016. Given that they’re down to 5.6 subscribers as of now, I wonder what else they’ll come up with to span the second half of Draenor. Expansion hype or not, it won’t keep more and more players from unsubscribing until the next expansion is actually here. Poor guilds.

Oh and I still don’t like expansions

In 2011 I wrote a lengthy rant (with very srs charts!) on why I dislike expansions in MMOs. While GW2 or FFXIV have made some progress on that front in the past few years, it seems no AAA-title can withstand them forever. WoW has always been notorious for its extreme play-cycles, with mad content rushes after a patch and profound pre-drop/-expansion malady that has players methodically unsubscribing. This vexed me a great deal as raider and guild organizer in the past, because it became increasingly difficult to keep a schedule going during the second half of an expansion.

“I want to feel part of the world I play in. I want to be included in a continuous and ever growing story. I want change happening all the time, not every 1-2 years in traumatic leaps. I want stable and lasting fun, not a curve that goes from player fatigue and long wait times to over-excitement, before tumbling back down into the valley of tears. I don’t want to regularly un-subscribe from the MMO I am playing because it’s delivering content in situational peaks.” (Syl)

Besides impacting negatively on social stability, WoW expansions have always had more negative side effects. They affected the game’s economy, rendered our gear and trophies obsolete (green is the new purple! even for legendaries) and deprecated a major part of the previous world and content. That last one is a particularly sore point for players like me.

One the other hand, regular and smaller content patches don’t exhaust their audience and don’t reset their status quo in the world over night. They don’t hit guilds with simultaneous player exodus over and over. And there’s also less pressure and therefore less potential disappointment riding on patches. Didn’t like a particular chapter or felt bored with it? Well, the next one isn’t far off!

So really, what can expansions do for MMOs that a patch cannot? Okay – there are a few things, in fact Spinks (who is dearly missed!) has written about the differences between expansions and patches five years ago on her blog. And I agree with her: expansions have a more fundamental power to reset/expand a world or introduce a new one. They’re a marketing tool for bringing players back and maybe recruiting a few new ones. The extra cash from selling copies and CEs might make up for 40% of your subscriber-base leaving several months before each time, I don’t know.

I can’t help but feel these apparent benefits aren’t what they seem at first glance; not if expansions basically act as a “correction” of your own business strategy. If they bring back players you lost along the way due to how you’re handling content in the game, that is not a very good argument pro expansions, even if it does the job in that case. As for continuously introducing new worlds and abandoning old ones, what does that say about the longevity and depth of your work?

The WoW expansion model is its own enemy. Blizzard can’t turn back and change their strategy of so many years and they’ve bred their very own audience since day one, so I understand that they’re stuck with it. However, their example doesn’t do a very good job advocating for expansions in MMOs and thus I remain as ever, respectfully on the other side of that fence. You could say I am not prepared. Again.

FFXIV “High Adventure III” and Fairytales [#Blaugust 7]

Am kinda loving #blaugust this far and at some point I will have to blog about that. If you’re currently in need for more topics, check out the prompts on Anook and the blaugust AMA thread!

It’s handy to have a screenshot series going during events such as blaugust and while these don’t tend to spark discussion, I hope someone is enjoying them. The whole idea behind High Adventure is that I pick my favorite FFXIV screenshots from Heavensward and then tweak them to look like they came out of a picture book or children’s tale. I’ve mentioned on the blog before that I grew up with a lot of stories – fairytales, folklore, mythology, you name it. They were and are an important part of who I am and some defining choices I’ve made along the way.

If you live in my hood of central Europe, the Grimm’s Tales are every child’s standard source and early inspiration as far as the classics go. There are the cautionary adventures of Wilhelm Busch’s Max&Moritz and of course Hans Christian Andersen’s work – melancholic father of the Little Mermaid, the Ugly Duckling or the Snow Queen. When you read the original texts of his more popular tales, you realize how they are way more heart-breaking than their mainstream adaptions and there’s rarely a happy ending. Already as a young child, I was profoundly moved by the difficult emotions therein.

At some point I dove into a collection of greek myths and from age 12, latin and everything about Roman society (who have basically adopted Greek mythology) became part of my school curriculum. I went from Hercules to Thor and Siegfried with some Sindbad in the mix. Mythology is pretty gruesome stuff actually but nothing ever scared me more than this guy, so as far as I was concerned the eagle eating Prometheus’ liver, every day, was okay.

Considering this path and my big audiobook collection of illustrated international children’s tales by grandpa, it made perfect sense that I ended up reading D&D-based fantasy novels and Tolkien as a teenager. I remember my enchantment by Larry Elmore’s cover on the first edition of Dragon’s of Autumn Twilight, which I am keeping on my shelf to this day. I own illustrated versions of most of my favorite books and stories, if such a thing is available and I completely freak out if one of them is missing. There’s a story about a certain nervous breakdown that shall remain untold.

I will continue this topic next time around to talk about some of my favorite book illustrators, new and old. My third screenshot from FFXIV was taken in Aziz’la and this time I went for a more ink&spatter feel –

Riding the skies.

Happy Friday everyone and keep that blaugust spirit up!

MMOs we don’t like but never played [#Blaugust 6]

We’ve all been struck by profound MMO disappointment at some point during our gaming careers. I would be hard pressed to remember every MMO I have tried and disliked after a few days or weeks but more recently, SWTOR, TSW and ESO have let me down for different reasons. Age of Conan too was a game that I actually was subbed to for quite a while but ultimately failed to impress me. For most games that I played and quit, I always tried to elaborate why:

I don’t claim my judgements are always comprehensive or final or a 100% fair, if there’s such a thing. I focus on other aspects in MMOs than the next person. First impressions matter and like most of you out there (not Syp!), I won’t play every MMO for weeks and weeks until that magical moment arrives when it “gets good”. Sometimes your timing ain’t right or your expectations ruined the experience. Sometimes you’re spot on an the game is just garbage.

There’s a pivotal time during the first few days and weeks after launch in which MMOs have to win us over, especially the ones of the subscribing persuasion. It may take very little to put us off or rather, a lot to draw us in. Players are fickle too…..and why aren’t there any cute minipets for me to hug in this game, huh?? Kthxbai!

MMOs on our “bad” side

It gets interesting when we dislike games in lieu of personal experience. You might discount such opinions altogether but we are all influenced by our environment, if not the gaming press then certainly our trusted peers and their tales of horror. There’s MMOs I know I don’t need to try, because I know my friends and I really know myself.

One such MMO that I never actually played but dislike not only for comic relief on Battle Bards, is ArcheAge. Yeah, a lot of people certainly don’t speak favorably about ArcheAge by now but I had this early impression of just another great-looking Korean staple grinder. Then I saw the silly upside-down gliders people were riding and as if that wasn’t enough, pictures like this one –

Can you imagine going through the horror of ordering Starbucks coffee in an MMO? Fun farming feature or not, non-medieval setting or not, I don’t need this in my face either while enjoying my leisure time. And don’t get me started on the cars everywhere.

It is entirely possible that ArcheAge is currently in a different place. In my case though, that ship has sailed. Once I made my mind up about an MMO, that’s final *cough*.

My Favorite MMO that I’m not playing (#Blaugust 5)

This post is the first in a two-part series for Blaugust 2015. Check out tomorrow’s sequel on “MMOs we don’t like but never played”!

The trouble with MMORPGs is that player engagement tends to be mutually exclusive of other titles. Many of us cannot or do not want to invest in more than one MMO longterm nor do we wish to pay for several subscriptions simultaneously. I have found a mixture of one sub-MMO and one b2p/f2p-MMO to be quite enjoyable in the past, especially when two titles really complement each other well but truthfully, I still long to immerse myself as much as possible into that one game.

That also means sooner or later, we have to leave some MMOs behind and they’re not always games we disliked or got bored of. Sometimes our timing just wasn’t right and we were late to the party. Sometimes we miss the community from other MMOs or we just can’t put up with a single but essential aspect, such as the graphics.

Gone but never forgotten.

My absolute favorite MMORPG that I am not playing anymore is LOTRO. In fact, I would go as far as naming LOTRO among my top 5 MMOs of all time. Possibly even top 3. I came late to LOTRO in 2013, joining the inofficial EU RP server Laurelin. I stuck to it for about 6 months, joined a fellowship, did all the content up to Moria and the dreaded mid-40ies EXP grind. The world blew my mind and remains one of my favorite virtual places to this day. For all its flaws and oldschoolness, LOTRO excels in immersion, world building/feeling and travel, one of the most precious and precarious things to capture in MMOs.

I’ve written about the music and sound effects as part of this accomplishment as well as the significance of scale or realistic armor design. It’s the subtle things that create immersion in MMOs. Other than that, Middle-Earth is just one heck of a beautiful place to visit and enjoy the turning of the seasons (between zones) and the fading light at dusk.

In the end I felt lonely; after leaving my longtime WoW community, I was unable to reconnect with people in my subsequent MMO attempts. LOTRO is not the most beginner-friendly game either. Soon I was overwhelmed by different types of grind while also really disliking the slow, stationary combat.

But I will never forget my time playing and listening to music in the Prancing Pony, the claustrophobia of the Old Forest before finding Tom Bombadil or the sound of my horse’s clippity clop over Bree’s merry cobblestrone streets. Some moments in MMOs are forever, no matter if we stick with a game or not.

The third TGEN Tribunal and Why we love companion pets (#Blaugust 4)

This fine July a few TGENerates got together to talk about expansions of the year, mobile games and companion pets in MMOs. The third TGEN Tribunal roundtable was hosted by Braxwolf and if you enjoy merry and casual banter by MMO players for MMO players, you should check out his site for the latest episode. We had a lot of fun doing this show which I think really carries over in the recording.

Why are companion pets so popular?

A topic that was suggested by me and definitely took some interesting turns during our discussion, is the eternal fascination of companion pets in MMOs. Whenever an MMO like Wildstar doesn’t have them, there’s an outcry on message boards until they’re finally implemented. Now FFXIV is great for collecting pets but sadly makes it very hard for players to have their companions along most of the time because you’re either in queue for something, in party with your chocobo or another person (who is also a chocobo….no wait) or inside instanced story content. All of which means that your companion pets remain benched. This is quite the vexation for many players, a thing which made me ponder why some of us (more than others) get so attached to our ingame critters.

Roger and Liore both suggested on the podcast that it’s a question of collector’s drive and that is certainly a big part of why players collect pets. Achievements, bragging rights or straightforward completionism are reason enough to collect anything in MMOs. Still, I believe companion pets have the potential to be a bit more than that – or why would some players really miss not having them around if they were just another number on a checklist? Companion pets, NPCs or not, are company. They are your personal NPCs, they tirelessly follow you around pulling a funny stunt every now and then (the good ones, anyway). In some MMOs pets will even interact with others, they can be stabled, fed or groomed. This introduces a lot of extra tamagotchi-style engagement.

Together on adventure! (screenshot by @SomeDamnPanda)

As someone who solos quite a bit in MMOs these days, I like having my “entourage” with me while I am out grinding in the field and I don’t actually collect pets that I don’t find funny or unique in some way. It may be a small cosmetic thing but having one or two pets/mounts/summons follow me around, makes me feel more immersed in the world somehow. I keep pets in real life too and just having them around the house and being able to watch them going about their business fulfills some deeper, human need for connection inside me. For the most part, they remain a mystery to me but it’s good sharing my environment with animals. It just feels natural. And since we all know that many features and mechanics in MMOs directly appeal to our real life makeup, why not companion pets?

(And I really want that red panda in FFXIV. *sigh*)

Irresistible, futile player housing (#Blaugust 3)

Last night I finally rid myself of a 300k gil in FFXIV to acquire a private chamber in our guild house on Cactuar, mostly out of curiosity to see how SE handled the housing feature. Five hours flew by in which I found myself in a familiar building and decoration frenzy until I was pretty much “done”, browsing web databases and the auction house included. Significantly lighter in the pocket change department, I had to ask myself: what’s it all for? It is the age old question of the MMO player and the future still hasn’t arrived.

Welcome to the cosy SPA!

Maybe we’re asking for too much when we demand meaningful housing from MMORPGs. Building and housing simulations are an entire genre of their own and one need only look at Landmark, Minecraft or the Sims to understand the required freedom and complexity to make this activity, even as an end in itself, appeal to players longterm. The issue with building and decorating your house in an MMO is simply that “it ends” without further use or consequence but MMOs aren’t designed toward the finite. Once that item limit is reached on your plot, and FFXIV sports an underwhelming 50 items maximum, there’s only so much re-decoration you’ll be willing to do (or afford). At most, you’ll be adding the odd achievement trophy further down the line, yet the question about more meaningful and consequential player housing remains. May be that the two genres really aren’t a great fit, may be that nobody’s interested enough to allocate more resources towards figuring it out.

For what its worth, I had immense fun with my room in FFXIV while it lasted and SE’s housing isn’t even that great. Dealing with their fussy and limited tools, I missed my huge Wildstar plot with a sudden, overwhelming acuteness. And yet, as self-serving and ultimately futile as this whole activity was towards my further journey in FFXIV (if we are even allowed to question the futility of any actions in MMOs), it was engaging and made me learn a few more things about the world I hadn’t realized earlier. It was 5 hours well spent because I enjoyed it – I just wish there was a bit more to it than immediate and short-lived solo gratification.

Blaugust Kickoff: Happy Street Gang

So Belghast initiated another round of #Blaugust for this August 2015 and in one last-minute act of madness, which was totally not instigated by other bloggers on twitter, I decided to join the crazy company (you can still do so btw!). I always said blogging on a daily basis is not for me and since I usually end up doing the things I say I won’t do (like never joining twitter or playing Tera), I might as well lose whatever credibility I got left. Twitter is where your resolutions go to die.

I figured this is a good opportunity for me to get back to a more frequent posting schedule and also get over that raging post-vacation malady. Also, I hear there’s a tattoo involved for all those that beat the Blaugust challenge.

Join the Happy Street Gang!

A while ago I was looking for more mobile games to play on tablet. I have since tried out and un-installed a long list of titles, most of which have proven to be disappointing one way or another to no one’s surprise. My search did however yield one unexpected gem I’ve been playing since and that you should look into if you’re up for some solid casual fun on your phone or tablet: Happy Street.

Happy Street was developed by french team Godzilab which is really two guys living in Europe and the United States. It’s been around for a few years and is totally not inspired by a certain popular community simulator by Nintendo. Think 2D-Animal Crossing with different maps, very straightforward town building and some quest-based crafting and you’re almost there, cool outfits and hats included! What sold it for me were mainly the following points:

It is incredibly kawaii. The buildings and sites are a pleasure to behold and the characters are adorable, or as this article said it best: “So what makes Happy Street so awesome? It’s super-cute.”
Level 17 and going, the game is still completely casual without any increased pressure from timesinks or IAP gates. There is a virtual currency that’s very optional and easily acquired through other means, if you really wanted to. There’s no obligation to spend real money and plenty to do otherwise.
The game is addictive in its simplicity; as more and more options unlock, you’ll be hard pressed to choose from a plethora of decoration themes and combo options to make your town and villagers look hot and keep tourists spending cash in your shops. From puke-monster balloons to gameboys and rock guitars, everything is on offer!
Certain mushroom concoctions will launch a “Fiesta” in your village, putting everyone in a mental state of spending frenzy accompanied by this track. Need I say more?

Also optionally, making an account and adding friends in Happy Street will allow you to save progress, earn some free currency daily and help each other out with resources (or send rude mail). By now, there’s a small group of MMO bloggers who have found their way into my Happy Street neighbourhood, so if you’re curious about the game drop me an email or tweet sometime and I’ll provide you with all the info.

Join the Happy Street Gang today – we have mushroom grog!