MMO Gypsy

Zomg Double-Subbed?? [#Blaugust 24]

Last night while working on my Wildstar housing showcase for blaugust, I realized something rather extraordinary:

I am officially double-subbed to two MMOs. This happened in 2015, that slow year for MMO releases!

Unplanned occurrences aside (let’s forget that I may or may not have remained subbed to WoW by mistake), I can’t remember the last time I was subbed simultaneously to two different games. I’ve always been subbed to something since 2002, namely FFXI, WoW, Age of Conan, Rift, LOTRO, Wildstar and now FFXIV. I would often combine this playtime with a free-to-play title like Allods or Tera, or then a buy-to-play game such as GW2. I like variety these days but being double-subbed is rare even for me.

Once more with feeling

I don’t know how long this will last but in terms of my current enjoyment with MMO gaming, I find it quite a remarkable and certainly unexpected state of affairs. In the years following my WoW spree, I was struck by a general MMO-malaise that many ex-WoW players undoubtedly shared. New games had much to live up to, sometimes too much, while I did my best not to qualify every different feature in terms of “better or worse than in WoW” – which is ironic given that I left WoW because it clearly wasn’t so great any longer.

I feel like I have finally overcome this mindset. I approach new titles without all the past baggage. It’s definitely nice to be immersed in that one MMO don’t get me wrong, it is also a very positive sign however that I can still find enough fun and enjoyment in MMOs to subscribe for two games in 2015. Even if I’m not necessarily representative, I feel hopeful for this genre. What I look forward to in the coming years is more stability; fewer new releases, more quality content for existing games. Fingers crossed!

With that in mind, I want to highlight this youtube fan guide on all the more recent changes to Wildstar (not the upcoming f2p changes but what’s been done up to now). I agree with the commenter that the pace and difficulty have been improved by Carbine in many events. As he points out too, it is sad the tweaking comes this late and one can only hope more players will give the game one more chance come F2P, together with those who have never tried it. Coming from FFXIV, I hold a torch for second chances: really, what’s there to lose?

New Wildstar Housing Tour! My Cassian Crib incl. Gameroom [#Blaugust 23]

Now that I am resubbed to Wildstar and have access to my housing plot again, I realized I should really get another housing tour done before free-to-play hits. I did a couple of videos last year when I was still playing, but I never actually got around to frapsing my own crib. This has now been amended.

The following is a tour of my fully furnished 3-floor Cassian home in Wildstar, including a custom made veranda with botanical lab, my plushie collection and of course the gamer room with multiplayer! Carbine have added a lot of interesting construction tiles since I made all this, including round shapes and glass panels but am not gonna mess around with these before F2P since I expect to redo everything completely once we have access to the bigger plots and new housing items. There will be so much to do….anyway, enjoy this quick tour of mi casa, status pre-f2p!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIoZFDqs1UY

FFXIV “High Adventure IV” [#Blaugust 22]

Back in primary school we used a lot of watercolor and Neocolor wax crayons in art class. I remember when our teacher showed us a special (and messy) technique one day, in which you started off covering an entire leaf of strong paper in all the different colors of the rainbow, wildly mixed. This first layer would either be normal crayon or water color.

Once everything was dry and finished, a second layer of thick black Neocolor would go on top and completely cover up the entire page. Such a smeary affair it was that we all looked like chimney sweepers afterwards, with black wax covering our hands and faces and god knows what else. But that’s when the real fun started and we finally got to carve out the actual image with a piece of wire or a spatula-like instrument, by scratching away fine lines out of the wax to reveal a magical world of colors underneath. I absolutely loved this technique for its wondrous effect and that negative contrast.

This fourth pick in my ongoing FFXIV “High Aventure” screenshot series is therefore an homage to those early days of creative experimentation. I think am gonna call it Cloud Watcher.

We Are Explorers, Part 2: And also very annoying! [#Blaugust 21]

Last night I discovered that Tevis Thompson recently published another one of his rockstar insightful wall-of-text essays on the shattered soul of videogaming and I don’t even know where to start – I need to write about this but I also need more time! I find myself overwhelmed by resonance every time I read his analyzis and ye gods, there’s so much to address…so for now, I’d rather just leave you with this link over the weekend. Really, just read it – do it now! (maybe come back here after.)

For this fine blaugust 21st, I do hereby declare that of the four essential MMO playstyles, explorers are by far the hardest to satisfy and therefore a real headache for developers. We’re really quite an annoying bunch that way and since I self-identify as explorer (and all the incomplete gamer surveys I’ve ever taken would agree there), I shall explain why I think so. In a way, am letting developers off with this but not really. Also for the record, I do not actually believe any player to be defined by merely one interest or playstyle – I find Bartle and other gamer categorizations as insufficient as the next person. For the sake of simplicity and my fun with this argument however, let’s roll with clear-cut, straightforward gamer attitudes. Okay? Good!

Already part of Bartle’s character theory chart

It’s always struck me how both socializers and killers/pvpers have the strong social component in common. They come across as very opposed preferences but both playstyles are fundamentally driven and enabled by other people, as in PCs rather than NPCs. If we were gonna oversimply definitions to the point of being a little insulting (I’m doing it!), you could say that what socializers really require in MMOs is a colorful, interactive stage they can hang out on with other equally chatty people. As for killers, they require prey – they need a platform that allows them the freedom to organize themselves in groups and then go after everyone that’s worse than they are, challenging each others various skills. Again, these are gross oversimplifications but the takeaway is that the entire MMO world and setting is secondary to the primary, social experience (which is not to say that these playstyles know zero single-player appeal, they do – and there’s other genres than MMOs that may appeal to them).

Then there’s achievers and well, they’ve already won as far as MMOs are concerned, haven’t they? The great majority of MMORPGs since WoW which have followed the linear themepark approach, have been created with achieverdom in mind, stuff packaged into small itsy bits with clearly cut out paths and little popups of “hooray” and content patches and expansions of blarrggghhh…..(oh sorry, I got lost there for a minute). Anyway, achievers may thrive through experiences with or without other people – what I do understand about their basic mindset is that they enjoy work that’s been cut out for them, checking goals off a list, feeling gratified by achieving predetermined wins, a sense of tangible progression and completion. Therefore, achievers require steady content from the developer monster and that’s basically the world we all live in today – THANKS A LOT YO!

…….

Okay okay, explorers! I started off by saying we’re the annoying bunch (*cough*) and we are, in the sense that our itch is very hard to scratch intentionally. Explorers need space and the freedom to roam, interesting things and randomness and umm…..intrinsic drive created through game design that must not be noticed. Simple, right? We want to be wowed at the exact moment of our choosing or well, at least never of the game’s choosing, and without any notion of the invisible puppetmaster present. The game world just needs to “be”, needs to simulate something real and after that we’re mostly interested in ambling off the beaten path and potentially finding stuff nobody else would nor intended for us to find. NEGATIVE SPACES, come on MMOs!

Freedom in games is a finely crafted illusion. Infinite depth and space can only be achieved by carefully orchestrated mystery. And randomness is mostly unthinkable.

And this is why having explorers for an audience is sort of a nightmare for any slightly ambitious world designer. Really, I feel for you – so much love and respect for those who get it right in MMOs, even just for a little while! I guess that’s also why randomly or procedurally generated maps were all the rage for some time, only the problem with that is….it’s not quite that simple. A haphazardly generated world feels redundant fast and oddly meaningless. There’s only so many times you like to take a trip into the blue in Minecraft until everything starts blending and feels the same. So yes, random but not totally random…..what can I say, we’re complicated!

P.S. Happy Friday everybody – explorerdom foreva!

Some Days, Twitter Wins the Internet (also: Fallout Shelter!) [#Blaugust 20]

I’ve been playing Fallout Shelter this week and 30 dwellers in, I find it an increasingly creepy experience in bad pickup lines and breeding babies. The game is well-designed no doubt but I can see it getting old before long (which means it’s perfectly timed for that Fallout 4 launch later this year if you happen to be an android user).

Of course that was before Liore gave me ideas on twitter and well…turns out Fallout Shelter is ten times the fun when you start breeding the MMO blogosphere! Once my evil plans were set in motion, this happened –

Click to enlarge!

If you’re wondering why I am on twitter, this is it. I don’t know how well the joke transports over in retrospective but I’m still laughing my ass off and I wasn’t the only one. Some days, the madness is boundless. Fallout Shelter just got so much better (and else there’s 10 more messed-up ways to spice things up) – thanks y’all!

We are Explorers [#Blaugust 19]

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” [T.S. Elliot]

One of the very first tags I ever introduced for this here blog was “explorer’s league”. Over the years, the topic of exploration in MMOs and the psychology behind the explorer mindset have been the driving force of many an article. What moves explorers? What lies at the bottom of their heart’s desire? Where do they find ultimate ingame satisfaction? Asking those questions, I came across some of the answers for myself and as a big extra, I’ve come to know kindred souls – bloggers with the same passionate interest in exploration as myself.

What has all of this taught me?

Explorers like you and me, seek out the journey. They seek out the winding path that smells of roses and dust.

Explorers like you and me want neither endings nor completion. Their maps remain unfinished as their wisdom.

Explorers like you and me care for secrets over riches. Their currency is wonder, their virtue is patience.

Explorers like you and me know no achievement beyond their own. They crave mystery.

Explorers like you and me look back and forward. Their worlds rise and fall with diversity.

And whither then?

And what happens after we have come full circle, when we see the old with new eyes? Maybe our world really is limited after all and bound to repeat itself; the experiences we make in life real and virtual follow the same circle. We grow only in perception; it is the lessons and wisdom we take with us that second, third and fourth time that make the difference. And when we pass through the same doors and challenges in games and elsewhere, we may behave differently next time and see different things, new options that were always there but hidden. It took us a journey across the world and back to reach a deeper understanding. How many more MMOs must come and go before we realize there are no new worlds unless we make them?

On wearing Masks, Online Avatars and Truth [#Blaugust 18]

A few days ago Jeromai mused on the uses of social media and people wearing masks for different purposes. He elaborates on why masks are actually a good thing and that every mask represents a different but potentially true aspect of an individual. I agree with him completely although the word “mask” still carries the somewhat negative connotation of “cover-up”. I think what we agree on is that human beings are multi-faceted and can take on many different roles, none of which are necessarily fake. In a sense we are all our roles although some of them we may feel closer to than others.

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” [Oscar Wilde]

The post reminded me of a draft I have sitting in my blog’s backlog since 2012 on online communities and why I love MMOs. I never got to finish it and after returning, I can see why (the ramble monster got me!). There is however one paragraph there that still speaks to me today:

“Those geographical lines that are supposed to divide us and tell us how different we are of nature, of values or faith – how imaginary they are. In MMOs we get a chance to be just people. We can make friends or enemies but we do it only as people. It’s said that the anonymity of online gaming let’s people hide and slip behind a veil but more often, the opposite is true. We get to see behind the mask, the outer appearances, the labels – and all we find there is a bit of ourselves.” (my unfinished post)

I believe most of us who have an internet life go there to unwind and be themselves rather than the other way around. Sure, there’s a whole cyberworld out there of scammers and con-men, of fake identities and dangerous promises. When I think of my time within MMORPG communities however, of the people I’ve met online and stayed close to (and some I even met offline later), the “roles” they got to play through their player characters felt more real, more unrestricted than the person they returned to by day. Avatars can give us courage to be ourselves – they can give us wings. They will take us places we never even imagined we could go. They may lend us a voice we never heard before.

We are the total sum of our masks/roles. But there is also that strong feeling (and need) of when we are truest or when we are genuinely ourselves. Some of the social studies on identity building I came across as a teacher, suggest that the greatest degree of personal unhappiness is inflicted on an individual when their social environment does not reflect the image they have of themselves (disparity between self- and external perception). People who manage to be around others that do not only recognize them, but accept and support them in their true self, will prosper indefinitely. This is naturally also an important field of study for developmental psychology when it comes to the effects of unconditional love on children’s upbringing (and later success in life).

We long to be accepted. We yearn to be recognized. All of that suggests there’s such a thing as a true self (which is not to say that can’t change over time). Applied to online gaming and with Oscar Wilde’s above quote in mind, I conclude this means our online avatars really are the masks we use in order to tell others the truth about ourselves. I’m kinda happy to know that MMOs can serve such a powerful purpose.

Is F2P Saving Wildstar? [#Blaugust 17]

The much awaited Wildstar f2p-build is currently in beta as more and more players are either remembering to resub or acquire a copy before official f2p-launch. There are various veteran rewards and different goodies depending on whether you were continuously subscribed to the game, subscribed right before f2p or well, none of the above. There’s some more tricky fine-print as Bhagpuss points out in his post today and I need to thank him for the reminder. I’m about to resub myself before the whole f2p switch. I miss my housing plot in Wildstar and am very interested to see the additional items and bling yet to come out.

All the while, existing Wildstar players are debating what f2p is going to do to their game. Depending on where you look, player attitudes towards the payment model change seem more or less dire: there’s those who believe that f2p was always in the books since day one (myself included), those who think it necessary to save Wildstar from bankruptcy and then another group who fear f2p will be the game’s downfall.

“I don’t care if f2p people come in. I just want the fucking game to be properly funded. I’m concerned with how much it costs to host the f2p players. I’m concerned that we are going to lose all of the subscribers we gained. Who many current players are going to opt out of the signature service? How many people who join for f2p are going to get the signature service? I think we might actually lose money. Then again they haven’t announced their cash shop. I’m not looking forward to getting nickel and dimed for vanity items I used to farm dungeons and content for.” [source]

I guess no matter how you feel about f2p as an MMO player, in lieu of verified numbers by developers it is impossible to predict what a payment model switch can or must achieve in the mid- and long term. LOTRO is one of the most well-known examples of f2p saving or at least buying an MMO more time. This is thanks to how well Turbine designed their different payment options too. From all I’ve read about Carbine’s approach, they may actually pull off a similar stunt – new players will first jump into f2p and opt in to signature service at some point. There seems to be a higher chance of that than legit, existing subbers from today downgrading to more restricted f2p service.

I guess we’ll see if f2p will “save Wildstar”. Am not exactly convinced how last resort we are speaking, anyway. Does Wildstar need desperate saving at this point or is it not much rather Carbine ditching a dated business model, the way they always intended? Whatever, huh.

Ding halfway! [#Blaugust 16]

Yes folks this is it – we’re halfway into Blaugust already and if you’ve been keeping up until now, congratulations! If you haven’t, there is always a next August. I never really expected to partake in a blogging marathon as my own blog has always been more about walls of text and subjects that I often felt required some longevity before I’d write about them.

Turns out it doesn’t have to be like this at all: I can write shorter posts more regularly and still put out something of substance and food for thought ever so often. Also, not all posts need be about very serious matters or proof-read to death. I agree with Psychochild that planning topics ahead of time is a big help for events like Blaugust but editing remains optional. I’m happy I can write most of my posts in one sitting these days.

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/313706696906268672

I’ve a feeling the second part of Blaugust will be a little tougher on me than the first one, mostly due to being busier IRL, but I have every intention to see this through. Thanks to everyone who has been sharing this journey up until now, shared writing prompts, commented on topics and fueled that writing inspiration with discussion! Blaugust is in many ways a community achievement and I wouldn’t (still) be in this if it wasn’t for my readers new and old, commenters and blogging buddies.

Now on with the show!

What makes me happy in MMOs [#Blaugust 15]

Gracie has a topic up on ingame happiness for this rainy Blaugust Saturday (rainy for me anyway) and I decided to follow her example. On our blogs we often talk about our gripes with games or how MMOs have changed for the worse over time, yet clearly there must be things that still make us very happy or we wouldn’t be playing them.

I still feel that MMORPGs are the greatest genre there is. I didn’t expect too much of 2015 game-wise but in many ways, it was a much better year for MMOs than many of us anticipated. There were the GW2 and FFXIV expansions for one thing, Wildstar is going f2p any time now and introducing some new features and I’m also hearing good things about Project Gorgon from various bloggers. For now, I am rather content. As for the specific things that make me happy in MMOs, these are just the first ten that popped into my head:

Random kindnesses by strangers while soloing out in the field or running dungeons. Meeting players that will help you out when they don’t have to or go the extra mile just for you, without any notion of wasting their own time.
Laughs in guild chat and getting to know new people across the world with whom I can have so much in common.
Spotting the little things; fireflies roaming in dark corners when all other lights have gone out. The first sunrays creeping over the distant horizons. Windmills creaking.
Getting my character to a stage where I feel competent and look crazy good in my gear.
Unexpected NPC interactions that make the world come alive for a moment. Companion pets doing the wrong thing at the exact right moment.
Heavy rain soaking my clothes. My cloak fluttering in the wind.
The sound of snow under my boots as I cross a white snowy field. The way it sounds different from a cobblestone street or a wooden bridge.
My own little space, a room in a guild house or a fully decorated plot that is as unique as the next person’s.
Getting that mob down against all odds. Not giving up when all seems lost and somehow prevailing.
Idling in the city and seeing everyone around me starting to dance because somebody must have started.

There’s so many great things about MMOs: their scale, their simulation, their longevity, their interactivity and social aspects. Most of all however, my magical moments lie in the unexpected. That’s when the game seemingly transcends the boundaries of its script and I feel as if the world was truly unique and live, just for me. MMOs leave room for that sort of thing when most games do not – they leave room for many individual experiences influenced by countless random factors. So I guess you could say I am most happy in MMOs when the game actually stops feeling like a game.