GW2 shop: Panic much?

So there’s been information or rather a few sneak-peeks of GW2 in-game shop items swarming the internet lately and not surprisingly this has stirred some controversy on webforums and blogs antsy for the game. Which is interesting to remark at this point: just how fast players sometimes go from oh yay to oh nay! Considering the fifty or so features that excite me about this MMO, it would hardly be good perspective (or proportion) to get all doomsday about the cash shop revelations. GW2 is free-to-play and everyone knew there was going to be RMT of some sort. Turns out ArenaNet are actually trying to put their own twist on this, too.

But first things first. Which items can we actually see on those screenshots? How do they potentially affect gameplay?

I) Cosmetic items:
To no surprise you’ll be able to purchase special outfits, hats, dyes and more in the shop.
So far, so good. 

II) Convenience / commodity items:
Things like instant repair tools, portals, resurrection stones, bigger bags or EXP boosts.
They exist in pretty much every FTP MMO I have ever played, from Allods to Age of Conan. I’ve tried very hard to find indication of any seriously significant and game-changing items here and failed.

Convenience items are usually that: convenience items, not exclusive items. You can usually get the same deal by grinding or professions. Or then, if you are actually a very good or frequent player, you won’t need them. Look at experience or reputation boosts for example, these are hardly news in any MMO – when I re-subbed to Rift I got my fair share and so do WoW players these days. Blizzard does almost everything to make leveling up faster (or instant…ahem). Also: how significant are experience boosts in an MMO that features side-kicking, anyway?

So if anything, all these items offer choice: to level the usual way or a tad faster, to visit an NPC or not, to travel or take a short-cut (which are there in abundance, anyway). They cater to different play-styles. They are nowhere near pay-to-win.

III) Lottery items
Loot bags and special keys to chests that can be dropped by mobs or found elsewhere on the world.

The first is the type of random chance “carneval ticket” that only a group of players usually fall for. It’s a way to burn real coin for sure, but the randomness of it guarantees that you’ll likely end up with many duplicates or silly, trade items (in my case with nothing). We don’t know that anything of significance can drop here (I find it unlikely) or if the items will be soul-bound. I could imagine it to be similar to archeology rewards in WoW maybe.

The keys might present a bigger attraction, depending again on how rare the boxes are and what they potentially contain (anything exclusive?). There’s again the randomness factor. It reminds me of lockboxes in WoW that only the rogues could open; to tell you the truth, I vendored mine most of the time without even checking. I put them up on the AH a few times for little gold, but nobody wanted them. Whether the mystic boxes in GW2 will be the same type of gimmick or more serious business is complete speculation at this point. However, the mark of all lottery systems is actually that REALLY good and useful items are also REALLY rare! A lottery doesn’t look for winners.

“Bad and good items”; The cooperative lookout

A while ago I wrote a lengthy article on why I don’t consider RMT systems in FTP MMOs any more or less fair than traditional subscriptions and I hold to that opinion. As long as in-game shops deal in items of no greater consequence, I do not consider them a deal-breaker.

A “bad” cash-shop item needs to severely impact on the balance of gameplay; it needs to affect the outcome or success of end-game, be it in PVE or PvP, in a way that makes purchase an almost mandatory feature in order for groups and players to stay competitive. Items are however not bad just because they prevent l33t players from feeling special, as is often an underlying issue in such debates (not all, but often enough). Besides, I imagine a “true dungeon drop” would still be told apart from a cash-shop item and offer a degree of satisfaction or “fame” to a player who might desire it.

So yes, just to pursue hypothetical thought, I wouldn’t even mind if the GW2 cash-shop offered equal (not better) or almost equal weapons / gear to a dungeon drop! Too extreme for you? As GW veterans know and are happy to point out, gear progression is not the same deal in Guild Wars as it is in WoW for example. Once you’ve obtained your dungeon tier items, there won’t be an endless curve of upgrades but only similar gear with different stat weighting. In PvP, gear even gets leveled to focus on performance and not gear differences between teams.

I love this focus on performance and how the overall theme of GW2 seems to be cooperation, rather than segments and segments of “players with better stats” at endgame. There are numerous ways in which ArenaNet push player cooperation rather than disparity or “distance” –

  • The side-kicking feature and dynamic leveling / quests, events
  • The missing role restrictions / enforced holy trinity
  • The connected home cities / starting areas

If a player bought his gear with real money for whatever reason, time or other, how would it harm cooperation or competitive outcome in GW2? I can’t think of any good reason to be worried. Even less so for stuff like convenience items or lottery boxes – and these are what we’re talking about for the moment! Not only are they not mandatory, but they really do not affect me as someone uninterested in most. Besides, items are not accomplishments in themselves, even if they usually go with reward (but they’re not in fact what makes a reward).

Seems to me the entire concept behind GW2 makes pay-to-win a very unlikely scenario. As long as there is no more and different information on the RMT items, it’s a little early to tell the color of the cash-shop’s underpants.

On (Im-)perfection

When discussing the effects and burden of self-imposed perfectionism recently with a fellow blogger, that crippling mindset many of us writers are no stranger to, I remembered two beautiful pieces of wisdom I had come across some time ago and that are very much worth sharing.

So today, this post is dedicated to all you fellow creative minds: afflicted by nagging self-doubts, ever battling in front of their PC, staring at articles way too long before daring to publish, worrying over details of no consequence. And yet doing it again and again, overcoming their misgivings, taking heart putting their thoughts out there each week.

A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced. All those on the right would be graded solely on their works’ quality.

His procedure was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group; 50 pound of pots rated an A, 40 pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an A.

At grading time, the works with the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of clay.

Think about this in your own life, even if you’re not using clay. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. But you can’t practice if you think only of perfection. Practice is about making mistakes; perfection comes from imperfection.” [source]

——————————————————————————————–

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
 
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
 
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
 
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” [source]

 

A wonderful weekend to all of you out there – the imperfect and those still learning to be.

Calling on the Old Crowd; Musings on MMO friendships

One of the saddest things about being a long-term MMO player, is the falling apart of communities and guilds when the game is “ending”. And end it does for anybody, at some point. Friendships of many years fade into oblivion, close comrades and brothers in arms disappear as time is taking its toll like it does on all things. Nevermind the promises, the good intentions – the truth is most of us lose their mates and social bonds after leaving the game. The daily guild and ventrilo chats are simply missing. The common purpose is gone. Suddenly, you realize that maybe your lives are different after all or geographical distance prevents finding new channels of interaction. There are emails of course and Skype, but soon you feel oddly out of topics. As the silence grows longer, you are starting to lose heart. Maybe the others have already moved on. Maybe they really don’t look to keep in touch.

This is the story that happens to a majority of MMO players. It’s the story of countless WoW veterans. I’ve always wondered at the strange schizophrenia that is part of online interaction. How it can be different to chat with somebody for years and then actually meeting them in person (not always but often). How fast heart-warming, dramatic proclamations of friendship and fellowship are forgotten once that credit card is no longer on duty. Are MMO players really such an unfaithful lot?

I’ve always been bothered by this systematic. I’ve always wondered about how most people can leave and never look back; especially those that I thought I knew better. I’ve always been a bit vexed that it would be me taking initiatives to counter this development – me reaching out, me writing emails, me letting old mates know what MMOs I am currently playing and on what server I might be found. I’ve done it several times since I quit WoW. A part of this lies in my nature and I have accepted it; it’s why I end up in leading teams, it’s why I am good at organization and communication. I’m not a shy person in real life either and I’m often the maker there too, the one that has to take the first step. Yet – it can be tiring sometimes. Very tiring. Discouraging even. It would be nice to be at the more receiving end every now and then, letting others drive the ship.

…Alas, fuck that. I know for a fact how countless people spend their lives inside their homes, alone by themselves, just sitting there waiting for something good to happen and never reaching out to anybody. It’s particular to our western society methinks, people living side by side rather than together. People being stupid and full of imagined fears  (“I might be rejected, better not try at all!”), choosing isolation when all it takes is a knock on someone else’s door (hell, use SMS if you have to). More often than not, the person on the other side was just as lonely as you. I don’t have time for this – my life is too short to be spent waiting! So, I’ll do this if I have to. I’d do it for you too.

A while back Liore wrote about her progress on gaining leadership zen and how her WoW guild is still keeping in touch on forums while people are occupied with different games. By the looks, they managed to survive the post-WoW era untarnished and chances are high they will meet again here and there in new worlds, taking up arms together once more. I can only express my complete and utter envy for this situation! There is no forum anymore that gets frequented by the people I used to call guildmate, co-healer or fellow officer. In fact, there’s not even a webpage where ours used to be. And before you raise your eye-brow at my strange sentimentality: I know not all online bonds are meant to last. I know many players are maybe more carefree and frivolous about their MMO relationships. But I have spent most of my 6 years of WoW among the exact same few people, maybe eight in total. Until the very end I raided side by side with friends I knew since vanilla WoW or early TBC, some of which had followed me around. If that’s no basis for lasting contact through an MMO, what is?

Calling on the old crowd – Today

The funny thing is, that same day I read Liore’s article feeling rather gloomy, an email popped into my mailbox. A cheer-up note from my good old friend and guild-mate Grumpy (who used to co-author on this blog), my trusted WoW tank of many years. He is one of maybe three people I still keep regular contact with of my old guild. One of a precious few who actually cared not to let everything die; I am very happy to know he is out there. We send each other wonderful WoTs every few weeks and keep up-to-date on what’s happening in our lives, real and virtual. We haven’t played the same MMOs for a while, we both played Skyrim on Steam though and now that Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon, I am very excited we’ll be joining the same server, possibly with a few more folk. Moreover, another ex-guildie has contacted me since, asking about what the general plans are for GW2 and where to head to (what do we actually know about the servers at this point – anyone?).

And I wonder, like so many currently do, if Guild Wars 2 might be that game; that raising star, that upcoming MMO title that will sweep us off our feet once more. That MMO big enough to unite friends and guildmates of old – to reforge fragile bonds and create new memories. To finally put an end to the homesickness. It is a big opportunity none can deny, a big promise thanks to such wide appeal. An opportunity we should make use of to call on the old crowd! And so, I ask you –

Today, take heart and reach out to some old online friend or guildmate. Today, choose to be the one who takes initiative, never mind how long it’s been quiet. If there’s anybody at all that you haven’t heard from in ages and think back to fondly every now and then, nostalgic for good times shared, grab your keyboard (or phone, or pen) and contact them! To say hello, to ask “how do you do?”, to maybe arrange meeting up in another game or upcoming MMO.

If you want your online friendships to mean something, put in as much effort as you wish others put in – and maybe sometimes a little more. If you want close bonds to last, reach out and break the silence!

Break the silence.

GW2 – Waypoint woes and the repair system

Every week the guys from GetBonkd release a short Guild Wars 2 feature on youtube. I generally really enjoy their clips, they’re informative sneak-peeks with nice footage and the quality and editing of the videos is very high for youtube standards. While watching, it gets very obvious how hyped Scylol & Co. are for this upcoming MMO, but then it’s not as if what they’re presenting was untrue and I can appreciate the excitement for something new. If you’re looking for some good quality GW2 introductions to various topics, be it class overviews, combat, pvp, questing or other nifty features such as mini-games (did you know there will be bar fights in GW2?) or the home instances, I recommend you browse their channel sometime (by now 23 episodes).

However, just last week’s episode 23 was one that brought up two topics I personally feel very reluctant about: the waypoints and repair system in GW2. I think the episode would have benefited from a more critical eye there, but maybe I am just drawing pre-mature conclusions. Three weeks ago I asked where might be the “orcs” in GW2 – aspects that players currently eye with worry. One that stood out to me when reading closed beta reviews at the time, was the mention of waypoints all over the zones in GW2. Frequent teleports that are not only easily accessible but cheap. Or as one reviewer came to praise them –

“Each map is littered with teleport stones which you can use for a paltry sum of copper, allowing you to jump between areas of interest with lightning speed and minimal drudgery. No waiting around for thirty minutes for your hearthstone to cool down for no reason: just pull up the map and click on the teleport stone nearest to where you want to go.”

That information really took me by surprise. Had ArenaNet not announced early into development that they wanted travel to be an essential part of GW2? Didn’t they praise their large scale maps and point out that there wouldn’t be flying mounts in the game, so players wouldn’t skip content and get easy short-cuts?

Well then, why so many teleports? As much as I appreciate the effort of making gameplay and questing more fluent and grouping up easier in GW2, I don’t quite understand why they needed to give players so many waypoints per zone. Not just that, I wonder how motivated players will really be to re-conquer those controlled by an opposing faction, if there are so many to begin with? And should you really be able to use them while dead?

The only thing I could imagine influencing this decision, is the dynamic leveling and side-kicking feature of GW2; for one thing, there won’t be the traditional low-level and high-level zones, but zone mobs and quests actually scale with the player’s level. What’s more, your own level will be downgraded when grouping with lowbies (and upgraded in WvW). The benefits of that are quite clear: not only can you keep experiencing the content of any zone as a challenge (even large events scale dynamically), you can group up with anybody no matter the level differences between players (see side-kicking @ 03:20). So just maybe ArenaNet decided it would be too bothersome for players having to constantly fight their way through to anywhere, on any map, always being attacked and dismounted by every mob.

Still, I am sad; even if you chose to ignore waypoints and play the game entirely on foot, I can imagine just how “voluntary” using them will be if you’re grouped up with other players in an awful hurry to get somewhere. The explorer in me is eying this with a clear “MEH” for now.

The repair system

No less surprising was the information on GW2 featuring gear repairs as an attrition mechanic, when initially there was talk of death penalties and similar being a boring, out-dated concept. To clarify, I’m not exactly a fan of not having death penalties in MMOs; in fact, I’m a sucker for punishment where it serves a purpose. But….repairs? Really?

What probably cracks me up the most about this, is how the repair system in GW2 is supposed to be so fresh and different, when it’s mostly just a washed up, more complicated version of WoW’s durability system (or other MMOs for that matter). Judge for yourself –

“When a player is defeated, and not just downed, a random piece of their armor will be damaged. When a piece of armor is damaged, it imparts no penalty but serves as a warning. If a player is defeated while all of their armor is damaged, then a random piece of armor will break. When armor breaks, it ceases to provide any benefit to the player and must be repaired by visiting an armor-repair NPC in town. This NPC will charge a small sum of coins to repair any broken pieces of armor, and will repair any damaged armor as well. Having thus transferred the coin cost to the armor-repair NPC, we removed the multiplier on the cost of traveling to a waypoint when defeated.

We like this system for several reasons. Unlike most other armor durability systems, it doesn’t start becoming a factor just through normal play but only kicks in when a player is defeated. This means that it’s not a tax on playing and can be avoided through skillful or careful play. With every piece of armor needing to be damaged before any of them are broken, it also provides ample warning for the player before any real penalty is incurred.”

I fail to see how this is essentially different or more meaningful? It sounds rather ineffective to me – something you will hardly have to care about much. And if you do, well then it’s just the usual trade money for repairs-deal we already know so well. What does it matter if you only need repairs after X deaths and due to X items damaged, or due to a more constant stream of overall damage? I can also in fact not recall having to repair much in WoW unless I died; and then I could still easily die some more before requiring that repair service (the joy of not being a tank).

There’s also a much more important, general question to be asked here: if repairs are easy to come by and cheap enough in an MMO, then what’s the point anyway?

Who cares how the system works?

Winter wonderland and weekend links

Ever since my move end of January, it’s been a record cold winter here in Switzerland (yes, that is where I live – no, I don’t ski and I don’t yodel, there are goats across the street though), with returning temperatures between -15 to -20 Celsius. This means that when the sun breaks through the mists on a crisp morning, the world is bathed in dazzling brilliance. Winter person or not, I love the sound of cracking snow under my boots and feeling my cold cheeks tingle.

And then of course – the mountains! I had forgotten how much I missed them. I’m not a big hiker, yet all my childhood and teenage years I have lived in viewing distance of the mighty alps; later I moved away to city lights and traffic jams, to shopping rush, expensive streets and shallow people. A few years in that environment have almost wrecked me, but I’m finally out and back among the sane and solid. A couple of hundred people applied for the old apartment, of course. Good luck in the rat race.
Now, I’m looking at one of the most famous and majestic views this country has to offer. I live close to blue lakes and mountains that are ever-white, even during summer time as people go swimming and BBQing at their feet. The city I grew up in and love is only twenty minutes away. I’m home.

Since we keep enjoying such beautiful winter vistas from the new veranda and the weekend has almost arrived, I decided to share a few glimpses with you (and because Tesh shouldn’t be the only one with cool winter photographs!). An exclusive view from the living room (from east to west, all images expandable), as the sun is setting here in the heart of Europe –

Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau; possibly the most well-known mountain range of the country.
Thousands of international tourists visit every year.
My personal favorite: the majestic Niesen.
A massive pyramid mountain that inspired a great many local artists.
The Stockhorn with its peak beacon completes the panorama to our west.

 

Weekend link love

As has become a regular thing on MMO Gypsy, it’s time again to share a few new links of fellow bloggers / sites I have come across lately and found interesting, or who have contacted me to say hello. I usually collect these until I have at least 3-4 recommendations and since Hugh from the Melting Pot has published a similar round-up just recently, I decided to include them as well. As always, if you’re on the lookout for newcomers in the neighborhood, pay them a visit sometime!

  • Avatars of Steel – long-term reader of the blogosphere, the author has finally taken up her own pen and is blogging from the perspective of a “raid guild leader and game tourist”, who successfully manages to combine her gaming passion with family life.
  • MMO Attack – a general MMO news portal that has launched but recently. An ambitious project, attempting to join the league of other general resource sites – Kirk & Co. can certainly use some support and feedback!
  • Hypercriticism, where Milady is joining our ranks of general MMO critics and has managed her debut with quite a buzz already.

 

A warm welcome to all of you and of course best of luck and fun publishing!
To everyone in general, I wish a wonderful weekend – be it out in the snow or elsewhere!

Which MMOs are you holding on to?

A comment by Telwyn on Syp’s most recent topic got me thinking of all the MMORPGs I currently got installed on my PC. I used to be such an exclusive WoW-player for some time, but gradually when things changed in that department, I returned to older games or started to pay new titles more serious attention. There used to be a time when religious “MMO fatalism” forbade such unfaithful practices, but these days a great part of any MMO player base will actually leave and come back, re-sub or sneak around several online worlds simultaneously. The big, dramatic quitting gesture is more and more becoming a thing of the past. And a good thing too.

There are currently five MMOs linked on my desktop, vying for my attention. And I realize that there’s no common pattern (or in places no sound logic) in why I choose to keep them installed on my PC (which is rather desperate for space) for that long. The reasons why we hold on to some MMOs can vary greatly (apart from actually playing them actively); sometimes we genuinely believe we’ll be back, sometimes we’re just too lazy to uninstall…but in other cases?

 MMOs I keep installed on my PC

  • Allods Online; Allods is my secret MMO crush. I’ve long decided that I cannot play Allods due to its forceful RMT concept and I do not intend to go back and retry in fact ever again. Still, I cannot bring myself to uninstall this MMO, I just love the Arisen so, so much! Call me a weirdo, I will hold up my Allods torch for some while to come, damnit!
  • Age of Conan; I re-subbed to AoC a few months ago when I was still deluding myself that it might fill the dark days of November and December and take my mind off the GW2 wait. Going back once more and testing the new PvP server was fun for a while, but it didn’t last as long as I hoped it would. Too much of the old concerns are still very much alive in Hyboria and they don’t get less vexing the second time around. I’ve no idea why I haven’t uninstalled the game yet – I think I should do that now.
  • Rift; I’m actually playing Rift again at the moment, after having been un-subbed for a very long time. I always meant to re-visit the bard class and lo and behold ended up enjoying the rogue path! The moment I re-subbed, I was instantly reminded of all the things I liked about Rift initially; this time around I am actually more relaxed about it, exploring and leveling up in peace together with my partner. We both know that Rift is just a temporary distraction, but I am very glad I decided to give it another chance. I guess that shows that not every MMO needs to fulfill that big, all-encompassing purpose.
  • Minecraft; Okay, not strictly speaking an MMO, but the way it can be played on private servers comes close. MC is one of those online worlds I will hold on to for a long time – if only to see how things progress in the future, what features will get added, new biomes or creatures to find and explore. I still feel very new to MC and its initial fascination has not diminished, while it’s also the perfect game to have as your “casual backup plan” whenever you want to go unwind. I’m an on-and-off guest there and the place I’ve built for myself is magical and special to me. Not uninstalling this one in any foreseeable future.
  • WoW; Yep…I have not uninstalled World of Warcraft up to this day. I can’t say why I’m holding on to it, certainly not because I harbour any secret wish to re-sub. I don’t. I’ve long learned that lesson. And yet, somehow it was too painful to get rid of the game entirely. I’ve gotten so used to the icon on my windows task-bar over the years…it’s almost as if WoW has become “desktop furniture”. I’ve cleaned out most folders to free up disc space long ago, but a part of me dreads the finality. It’s complete utter silliness, but there you have it. Maybe it will have to wait until I feel I’ve found an adequate replacement. A game that will put an end to the homesickness, maybe. Oh, to be young again and foolish!

Time for truth (lots of questions): 
How do you decide it’s time to dump an MMO?
Are you among those who hold on to MMO installs for purely sentimental reasons? 
Can you imagine not uninstalling a game despite no intention of returning?
…
Maybe you’re a frequent re-installer? Or still of the rare, MMO-monogamist persuasion?
Is there any symbolism in the “mighty uninstall” or is it generally overrated (and silly)?
Any MMOs currently “rotting” on your PC (fess up!)?

It would actually be very interesting to know how long WoW players (veterans?) take on average, before ever choosing to uninstall, if at all. I’d wager that in this particular case, my own hesitation is not so unheard of.

"Journey" – When online players have no words

As video gamers we are living in wonderful times. I guess few decades from now some child of the future will smirk at this as he waves away a hovering NPC hologram with a sweep of his hand. Still, we are privileged in this time, too – to witness the speed of progress, the giant leaps technology has taken since our first 8bit steps until today. Video games are beautiful and there are more and more special and weird gems surfacing as developers get bolder and the audiences grow.

Nonetheless, games or rather experiences such as Shadow of the Colossus, Limbo or Bastion are preciously rare. You really need to be on the lookout and it appears that we are actually in for another treat.

“Journey”, out this March 2012 on PS3 network, promises to be everything that can be expected of a true video game delicacy. Set in a strange desert world of soft pastels, its unique graphics and smooth effects are a sight for sore eyes. Like for Limbo, there is no music in Journey and the player is cast into a strange setting without preamble, without map, unaware of what the actual “goal” of his adventure might be. And so he starts traveling, ever forward, exploring and solving curious riddles on the way by aid of visual hints alone.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Journey however, is that it’s actually played online – and there’s a real chance to meet other players in the middle of the desert. Strangers you will never know, strangers you cannot speak to and yet –

While traveling the player can encounter other players, one at a time, if they are playing online. Players cannot speak to each other, but can help each other in their journey or not as they wish. Players met online will not be identified with a username and voice or text communication will not be possible with the other player. According to designer Jenova Chen, “it’s about two strangers who meet online. They don’t know who they are or how old they are. All they know is, that is another human being. “The only way players can communicate audibly with each other is with a wordless shout. Players will have symbols on the front of their robes for identification, so that the player can tell whether they have met that traveler before or not”[..]

[…]The game is intended to make the player feel “small” and to give them a sense of awe about their surroundings. The co-op aspect of the game is intended to allow the players to feel a connection to other people through exploring with them, rather than talking to them or fighting them. [source]

With that bit of information, Journey has reached maximum appeal with me. It appears that for a while the folk at IGN struggled for words too trying to define what this game actually is, y’know definitions (the final IGN review is actually much better). No matter what you like to call it, an “acid trip” as suggested, a poetic experience, a mad ride – maybe the point about Journey is that there’s no “point”, other than that:

The journey is the point.

A title worthy of some attention, methinks. Now all I need is to borrow a PS3!

Enjoy your Vorfreude while you can

In late 2004 when I was running my very first blog on the interwebz, which was not at all about games but all the “dear diary” type of trivial things happening in my life at the time (everyone had one of those even if people won’t admit it), I published the following entry:

This is going to rule so so much!!!

A screenshot of beta Syl and me all hyped out about World of Warcraft, a game I highly anticipated for over a year. I had no idea if WoW was really going to be all that – but gawd, did it look friggin’ fabulous and now I even had an idea of how it played! Which led to me being even more hyped and making sure everyone on my message board knew, notorious killjoys included. Looking forward to WoW was almost as good as WoW. And everything that followed after its actual launch was well, more than worthy.

That’s not the point though. Sometimes games we really look forward to and get excited about will deliver, in very rare cases more than in our wildest dreams. More often they will not though and it doesn’t matter one bit. I’ve talked about the term “Vorfreude” before and I’ll repeat myself on what a great feeling it is. Sure, hypey people are annoyingly pink-glassed at times; they just want/need something to be great, so they choose to focus on (or talk about) the good aspects more than bad ones. Sounds pretty okay to me. Maybe they also have a gut feeling, the way I had 8 years ago about an upcoming MMO by Blizzard Entertainment.

Either way, anyone should be able to appreciate (or at least tolerate) a little hype by his fellow geek. Take it with a pinch of salt maybe. And if you can’t, well…..you’re a cynical grump that needs to remember how to feel excited and euphoric about something well in advance, no matter the risks – you know, it’s called hope. If things go pear-shaped, you’ll be disappointed either way and you know it. Let yourself catch some euphoria sometime – it’s healthy.

Where I’m going with this is that nobody should have to justify himself for hyping a game he is looking forward to, just like nobody needs to excuse himself for being too critical on his blog. God knows, we’ve been through a drought in the MMORPG corner  – and if you’re waiting on GW2 there’s still some way to go. In the meantime, what else are people supposed to do and write about, if not about all the good (they hope for) or all the bad (they dread)? We might as well all close our blogs during times such as these (ignoring you happy SWTOR people), if we’re not allowed to theorize and occasionally nag, panic or hype about upcoming titles.

We don’t know how GW2 is going to turn out. Admittedly, things are looking damn fine at the moment, but still – we simply don’t know! So, our Vorfreude might be the best thing about GW2; we are safe and well here in the land of assumption where everything is still possible. Our Vorfreude might be all we get.

…And we might as well enjoy that.

P.S. “Hyping / hypey” is used synonymously to “being excited or euphoric about something” in this post for the term has no negative meaning to me personally.

P.S.2: Expect a lot more GW2 hyping (and a little griping too) on this blog here over the coming weeks – “there is one (more) hyper yet in the blogosphere who still draws breath!”

P.S.3: To all the apathetic and grumpy: */cookie* 

P.S.4: Happy weekend – all ye past, present and future hypers!

On GW2 character creation, supermodels and boob sliders

It’s no secret that I enjoy customizing my toons in MMOs, despite the fact that I’m the kind of player who always sticks to the same character. Truth be told, many players spend large amounts of time adjusting their future online avatars, depending on the options and their personal approach to the game. And the rules are really simple there: the more options, the more details available, the better. Being able to make choices is king – and yet, CC (character creation) is still a neglected area in many MMOs which always struck me as somewhat bizarre considering the genre. Which other games rely so heavily on long-term play, character progression, immersion?

With the exception of Aion maybe (which I haven’t played), I’ve never seen particularly satisfying CC in any of the MMOs I’ve played. If I had to choose though, I would roll with Age of Conan which did offer a lot of sliders not just for facial features but body proportions and height. I really believe the latter is one of the gravest oversights in most MMORPGs, the option to make taller and shorter folk. Instantly, there is so much more variety standing in a busy town square where not everyone is of same height or body size.

From what ArenaNet has presented of GW2’s CC this far, I think it’s safe to say that we can expect an unparalleled amount of customization options, not just for hairstyles, faces and skintones but even things like deciding on your type of starting armor or preferred head gear. Dyes are a particularly big deal in GW2 and come with their own interface (if the guys from Yogscast can be believed, there are several hundred dyes available ingame).

So far, so good. Only when a friend asked me what race I was going to play in GW2 the other night, I realized that I apparently hadn’t checked out the CC options well enough before. I was actually rather enamored with the Norns from the very beginning; I often play human characters in MMOs, but that in itself isn’t such an interesting choice. With the Norns, we get a second human faction of barbarians next to the classic humans – a tall, muscular and rough-looking, fur-wearing tribal people, obviously inspired by northern European stereotypes (there be vikings). This is how ArenaNet introduced them, anyway –

“The norn are a race of valiant, shape-changing barbarians. Boisterous, strong-willed, and passionate, the norn are an independent people that swear fealty to no single being. They thrive in their mountain stronghold by the sharpness of their senses, the quickness of their wits, and the strength of their massive forearms. They are guided in this world by their Spirits of the Wild, who embody the virtues of the mightiest beasts. As a people, they are quick to anger, even quicker to smile, and treat each new day as a personal challenge“

Wahey, sounds alright with me! There’s even a female character on display for the Norns, instead of Conan the Barbarian and she doesn’t look like a ballerina. But back to my friend now –

– “A Norn, seriously? Did you check youtube? The humans all look like barbie dolls”, he said. But surely, he was wrong. Maybe the humans looked like that, but I was talking NORNS and also GW2 has awesome character creation so we can fix that, right?

Right??

The whole cast of the Bold and the Beautiful

So, I started youtubing. Norns, humans, female CC, beta state. Almost instantly, that selection will take you to Yogscast where I picked this video first, and was immediately met with the male commenters swooing about how “dazzlingly hot and beautiful” all the human female characters were and how “90% of them look like Megan Foxx which isn’t a bad thing”. I had half a mind of stopping the video right there, but there’s not an awful lot of other beta videos currently up in such quality and detail.

Unfortunately, they were right in that all the faces they chose to switch through in the video, were the same type of bland, supermodel pretty with mascara and lipstick. The presets basically go from one doll face to the next and while I’m not opposed to attractive characters myself, I found them extremely boring. Where’s the variety? Where’s the normal options without make-up? How much “uglier” can people go from there if they like to?

I don’t get alarmed that easily, so I kept checking more videos, bravely ignoring the usual mass of beyond stupid youtube troll commenters asking the “replygirls” to shut up (is there any place worse than YT?). Even if the human models should look like painted dolls mostly, the Norn would have to look much different!

How wrong can you be? Perfect skin and faces, make-up, pouty lips. Pretty much the same look as the humans. Seriously? Last time I checked the male Norns, they actually looked like the battle-hardened, muscular race from the North they’re supposed to be and less like their human brothers. Granted, the Norn body types look more muscular for both sexes (overdone too for the males), at least. Anyway, I kept watching the female Norn video and…..whoa, boobs!

@07:30

Now, I had just assumed the Yogscast guy chose to go with the massive boobs for his Mesmer which is his choice, the outfit included. But then, enter the first female NPC whose even bigger rack would make the curviest bartenders of the Oktoberfest pale in comparison! Another warrior from the cold North – so battle-hardened and muscular, her boobs grew instead of getting smaller! /sarcasm off
The bare midriff almost gets lost among that much bullshit. For the record: huge breasts with no sense for gravity would bother me less if they weren’t also presented like this and so completely out of the initially built-up racial context.

At this point, I went a little desperate. You see, I can try ignore other players wearing silly armor ingame or even creating anatomically laughable characters for themselves somewhat (if not completely), but I am really not looking forward to get it in my face from NPCs too, let alone on my own character model. Especially not if this is supposed to be the race of athletic fighters. Is this really it for the Norns?

Weighing the good and the bad

Well, from all I was able to gather yet, not quite. The make-up apparently is fixed to the faces at this point, but might become a slider of its own in the final CC versions of GW2. Oddly enough, for all their other options ArenaNet have also not introduced eye color this far (right now eye color is linked to the face). The facial similarities between Norn and human females are however a fact, sad but true. On the bright side, the face options aren’t as one-sided as most videos show: as can be seen in this longer video, if you manage to make it through all the “princess territory”, “damsel in distress” and “Disney” comments (/puke), there are in fact ways to mess with the facial presets (see 05:20 onwards) and make them more unique or less nauseatingly attractive, if preferred. On second thought, you might really want to turn the sound off completely on this clip…

As for body types, it appears that players will get to choose between several set models. There are definitely a few leaner and more muscular ones for Norn females too, but if you’re looking to deviate much in terms of skinny or fat, you won’t find that in GW2. As far as breasts go, even the “smaller” Norn breasts are fairly big and a perfect, round shape. I don’t necessarily expect MMOs to feature “boob sliders”, as this forum discussion goes to debate, but considering the vastness of GW2’s CC I was expecting them to at least give the same proportion choices as we’ve seen in AoC or Rift. Flat chests do not seem to exist or else they’re very well hidden (?)

Addendum

I guess this all sounds a little sobering for anyone looking to create more normal looking, badass human females in GW2, but I’d like to point out that I’ve deliberately focused on the negatives for a change, not the positives. It goes without saying that the polish of GW2’s CC is brilliant – never have there been so many great choices in hairstyles, colors or skins, so many unique features nor that many extra details to configure for the player. The graphics style and textures are beautiful and a lot more realistic than for most MMOs. For the most part, I am extremely pleased.

There are also of course, the non-human races. I’ve left out Sylvari (yeah I know, Syl needs to play Sylvari…not), Asura or Charr. In the latter’s case, I actually applaud ArenaNet’s choices for the female models very much: instead of going for round breasts in a bikini, making the beastly race a goofy parody of itself and giving females additional human traits like long eye-lashes or god forbid make-up (hello Worgen!), they stuck to a much more realistic approach, giving female Charr six mammal glands subtly hidden behind a piece of cloth. Their faces look ferocious just like their male counterparts, so cheers to ArenaNet on this one.

As for the “what about the menz”-question; I don’t like the male humans in GW2 either. They’re perfect Ken analogies to Barbie, although there too you can amend a few things via individual sliders. The Norn on the other hand come with slightly more physical variety and clearly set themselves apart from the humans, with much more savage, mean looking faces and scrubby hair to reflect their culture and origins.

Overall, I don’t expect much change in GW2’s character customization until launch. This late into development and with more betas incoming, the focus will lie on other aspects of gameplay that are ultimately more important. I will reserve my final judgement of GW2’s “bare midriffs quota” until I’ve seen more and firsthand. I guess it’s fair to say though that in terms of gender clichés, its otherwise illustrious customization sadly falls behind games such as Skyrim or Age of Conan and does not quite manage to offer as much variety as it offers choices at a first glance. I expect to meet a lot of awfully beautiful, bodacious people online this year.

Where are the Orcs in Guild Wars 2?

Just in time with my private life going back to normal (adjusting took a little longer than expected but hey, new apartment is shiny!), the NDA of the GW2 closed beta was lifted and so I’ve spent the past few days catching up on all the juicy details on what’s no doubt the most anticipated MMO of 2012. I was somewhat disappointed at the material on youtube, but some of the written reviews were able to bring back the proverbial ants in my pants! Facing such a flood of informational tidbits, it’s hard to decide on what news were the most exciting – to me it is probably the confirmation of many anticipated features that bloggers have already been discussing or hoping for for months now.

Let me say once more that I love love love the cross-profession combos, they sound every bit as cool as I hoped they would! Then, there is confirmation that using terrain will indeed affect the outcome of combat (for example you can use a boulder nearby to your advantage). Questing is supposedly a lot less grindy and yes, less kill-ten-rats than ever. I just want to believe that for now. There’s the intriguing “downed” combat state that appears to be a lot more fun in practice than it sounded on paper. There’s the way equipped weapons affect your key abilities which will greatly add to tactical gameplay.

Most of all though, there are finally firsthand experiences on the cooperative aspect of Guild Wars 2; I was very happy to find reviewers confirm that every class could self-heal easily enough and that grouping up is a non-issue for any group setup. Some people still doubt that GW2 will manage without any holy trinity, but I actually do – and if there’s ever going to be more “dedicated” healing or tanking going on in a specific encounter, it will probably be a situation in which everyone must take turns or decides on a random player. It won’t be that classes are associated with fixed roles though.

All in all, awesome news on the combat front for someone like me. I believe that longterm Guild Wars 2 will rise and fall over its battle for me personally, on mid- and end-level / PvP. This is really where I need to see big changes, the way classes and groups can play together dynamically, cooperate and find different solutions to the same challenge. ArenaNet has promised us a lot in this department, they really need to improve, innovate and hit the ball home. I can’t help but think back to their instructional pages on combat from long ago, where they first lit the spark and also took a not-so-subtle yet brilliant dig at the most popular MMORPG to date, namely World of Warcraft –

(click to enlarge)

Now, we all know that there are no Orcs in Guild Wars 2; we also know which popular concerns of WoW are being presented in each comic frame – the lack of role flexibility and heavy gear focus, the holy trinity, the lack of “world” and impact therein. ArenaNet intends to do better on all accounts and make the Orcs a symbol of days past – something not to be found in their upcoming MMORPG.

And yet, it all sounds a little too good to be true. I can’t help but worry, the closer we get to open betas and the long overdue launch; so much waiting has gone before GW2, so many genre lovers’ eyes worldwide are fixed on this blockbuster title. All the high expectations – it’s filling me with dread. Who can possibly fulfill that many big wishes? As more and more information will be released over the coming, unbearable weeks and months, the ultimate question will grow: where will GW2 fall short? Where will it disappoint and fail to deliver on its promises?

Where will be the “Orcs” in Guild Wars 2?

I’m curious about the prime concerns currently out there among all the antsy veterans. I admit that the beta reviews did not dispel all my doubts and that there were a couple of things I found concerning among the clips and summaries I’ve come across. But more on that in a follow-up post on my current GW2 concerns. If you’re already down with your own, now’s the time to share them!