Who wants to watch MMO soaps

It’s a busy year for Trion – not only did they release one of the hottest cookies currently in the MMO market this February, they’re also working on an RTS-MMO and recently announced a third MMO project in collaboration with Syfy: Defiance. What is known (or confirmed) about latter title so far is that it’s going to be a massively multiplayer online action role-playing game, featuring action-shooter combat and guns. I guess this is where hearts of utterly disappointed Tabula Rasa players start beating a little faster.

Now, I’m not the biggest shooter fan; I love classic 2D shooters on console, but 3D FPS and similar never managed to catch my fancy. The ‘”war / military” or “space” theme is usually prevalent in most of them, especially online games. However, there was this video on Defiance featured on Trion’s official page that caught my attention, speaking of joining their next MMO title with a TV show. Already in the intro of the film, the speaker announces Trion and Syfy’s rather bold intention: “to revolutionize how people watch TV shows and play video games”.

Quite a daring statement! For those of you who can’t watch the video for some reason or are too lazy to bother (an entirely legit reason), this is what it essentially is about: Defiance is being developed in tandem with a TV show. Both game and associated show are part of the same universe and story, happening during the same time at the same place. One of the developers states that TV shows are a lot more dynamic and evolving than classic video games which are basically static, so this is a new approach to things the genre has never seen before. He makes it very clear that the game and show do not only promote each other, but are co-dependent and co-evolve. While it’s not exactly indicated how they will go about this, it’s rather clear that they want Defiance players to watch the ongoing show in order to experience the game fully. The devs are convinced that there is an audience for this kind of joint venture and said audience wants to “live and breathe that world…which is very immersive….24-7“.

Uhhh…live and breathe MMO land all around the clock – Really?

The future is 24-7?

For fairness’ sake, it should probably be said that the featured video does nowhere near elaborate on how the TV show is gonna work and look like; it is a mere glimpse of what’s to come. The whole idea seems rather original (unlike with BSG online both game and show are being developed side by side) and I salute any developer who dares to think about new ways to enrich the MMO genre. However, ever since watching that film I couldn’t help but wonder whether I really want future online games to go cross-media in such fashion and how this might affect me as a gamer. Trion/Syfy haven’t really let their audience into much information but they’ve given us enough to speculate and let our minds wander which is what I’ll do in the following paragraphs.

Personally, the whole idea leaves me very skeptical. For one thing, I am doubtful whether the assumption is correct that a large part of the MMO audience wants to “live” in the same computer-universe 24-7; not only spending an average of 20hours/week playing the online game, but then also dedicating more time watching the show in front of a screen. Do you see yourself doing this, assuming it would be well-made and captivating? Would you really like to spend even more time on the same thing?

I might imagine this totally wrong, but I cringe at the idea – and that’s not only because I suffer from severe back pains ever since delving into WoW raiding (entirely my own fault too) and should rather be exercising than watching TV on top of gaming. But if anything, I’d like to spend less time “not playing” the games I’m playing, and more time playing them. Meaning, I’d like quality time while being online, no silly downtimes and no extra “duties”. If the whole concept of Defiance revolves around watching the TV show as well, to a point where you are almost forced to partake in both (again, this is speculation), then I am simply not a part of the same target audience.

I would wager that I’m not the only one having doubts over this. I can easily think of more reasons why the average MMO player might not find such a junction appealing – to summarize a few more thoughts:

  • You want to play / do other things besides spending so much time on the same game.
  • You don’t care for game lore and heroes at all.
  • You lack time to watch the show and therefore feel like missing out on big parts of the game.
  • You don’t feel that watching a TV show does anything for your personal immersion.

Each point raises a big question mark. I’m not exactly the greatest lore geek for example, and as far as I know the average MMO gamer is too lazy to read quest texts and will even click nifty cut-scenes away. How would a regular show appeal to this person? Also: does it really increase your personal gaming immersion watching a TV show (about other characters doing things in your gaming universe)? Isn’t the whole point of MMOs that a big part of their content is player-generated and interactive?

I try to think of TV shows I enjoyed watching in the past: there were a few that actually captivated me for a while, resulting in a weekend or two of fulltime season marathons. I’m not a big fan of watching series on TV though, waiting for new episodes week after week. I rather buy the DVD box later, so I can watch them when I have the time. Starring Patrick Dempsey in scrubs is a big plus as well (…).
Besides that, I struggle with the idea that I am supposed to feel “immersed” here: I can identify with my gaming avatar surely, even with the protagonist of a book at times; but TV shows usually “show too much” to really feel immersive, or that’s how it is for me at least. You can empathize with the characters but immersion surely asks for more than that.

To find some better examples, I should probably be looking around the MMO world. The closest thing that comes to mind are ingame movies or machinima. Obviously there’s a huge fanbase enjoying game movies and I’m certainly one of them. But it’s always been about the impressive work of fans like Baron Soosdon for me and the insane amount of effort gone into their works, rather than wishing for an entire show of the same kind on a weekly base. Furthermore, many longer fanmade films get tedious to watch after a while.
CGI needs to look great to make a whole movie or series, as much as it needs great scripting too (not even Pixar get it right every time). I think there’s a reason why even Blizzard’s official movies are always rather short – cunningly keeping us longing for more.

That’s not to say that Trion/Syfy couldn’t get this part right. Considering how the MMO market works and how competitive it is, I do think they risk to lose quite a few customers though, if they really hold true to their co-dependent concept. But then, the only way to set yourself apart is to take risks.

Do MMO gamers want to watch daily soaps?

“Heroes of Azeroth – Tonight’s episode #22: Why Jaina lost her mind in Cataclysm.”

Yeah, that’s pushing it, I know I know! I’m being deliberately provocative here. I can’t help but wonder how you would create a TV show around an MMO that is co-evolving, immersive and fun to watch, without becoming another prime-time daily soap. And do we really want to know that much about the universe we’re playing in and its protagonists? Where does that leave fantasy and interaction?

No doubt some gamers will enjoy this, I’m not saying there won’t be. For myself I see the time factor as a big issue, among many others. Trion/Syfy are of course very welcome to prove my doubts wrong. Or maybe it’s just a way of getting our attention, when the final TV show won’t be nearly as essential to gameplay as they’re claiming right now, basically being a nice addon for all the die-hard fans.

It’s too early to know, that’s not really the question. But I’m curious: would the average MMO gamer really like to (be forced to?) watch a TV show on top of playing his favorite online game? And: can a TV show really add to a more immersive gameplay experience?

After all, that’s what Trion/Syfy claim in the clip. Certainly as intriguing an approach as a bold one – and a good reason to keep an eye on Defiance launching later this year.

The invincible mage

Ever since my article of last week, I had this idea for a comic in my mind and last night I finally found the time to have a go. I’m not a versed comic maker like Liala (check out her awesome Orc detective story), but it seems like a great way to close some of this and last week’s hottest blog discussions (and was loads of fun to create). I don’t think much explanation is needed. 😉

op_mage

A very happy weekend to you – and all you tanks, healers and damage dealers out there!

Trion introducing coin locks

It appears that ever since Rift launched, there’s been a real pandemic of hacked accounts around – to a degree that is baffling considering this is a new MMO which only just launched a few weeks ago. I’ve not ever had anyone hack accounts of mine in the past, but then I take all sorts of security measures on my PC (as far as that’s possible) and I’ve used a WoW authenticator for years, being paranoid that the same thing might happen to me like to several mates. If you’ve invested a lot of time into an MMO account, it’s a horrible idea that someone else might break into it and tear it apart. I even had a good friend quit the game for good over this.

Many bloggers have complained about Trion’s lack of security measures for Rift, some blaming them for the 16 characters password limitation. Personally, I don’t think this is the real issue, but then I’m not an expert in password security. I’ve commented a few times on other pages though, that I can’t understand why Trion would launch a new MMO without any security measures or authenticators being in place from the start. Surely, Blizzard’s past troubles in this area have shown everyone else how important this is?

Anyway, Trion did finally react; the following Email has been sent to Rift subscribers in the past 24 hours, introducing a Coin Lock system for their accounts:

Users will be coin locked if they log in from a new or different location or computer. When their account is coin locked, they will be sent an email to the address that they have on their account (their login email) with a code to enter into the game.

Users will see the Coin Locked icon in the spot where their tutorial button shows up. Deactivating the tutorial tips will not turn off the Coin Locked button.

While in a Coin Locked status, users will have the following limitations:

  • No access to the auction house
  • No ability to SEND mail. Users can still receive and view mail as well as remove items from mail
  • No ability to SELL to vendors. Users can still purchase items from vendors
  • No ability to salvage, runebreak or destroy items
  • No ability to trade
  • Users can continue to play and gain coin and items, but cannot get rid of them.

If you are Coin Locked, simply click on the Coin Locked icon and enter the code found in your email from Trion. You will only have to enter the code once for each computer at a given location. If you play from multiple locations, or on multiple computers, you will have to enter your code the first time you log in from each new location or computer. If you log in and your account is coin locked, check your email! Someone may have logged in from another location with your account.

It sounds simple enough – although I’ve no way of judging how secure this really is (am happy to be educated). It appears to be a good way to manage account security to me, without the need of some sort of “hardware” or extra tool involved. That said, they’ve also announced in the Email, that they’re currently looking at options for additional two-factor authentification, in form of a smarthphone app or other. I reckon that will be for free.

Ever since I subscribed for Rift, I have been spammed “Preorder Registration Information” Emails, coming from a no-reply account at direct2drive; I must have received 50 of them by now and haven’t really found any way to stop this (although I did contact them directly, but received no reply). I don’t assume these are phishing attempts, in all likelihood it’s just a mistake or auto-notification of theirs gone bonkers. Still, I’m really glad to hear Trion finally introduced a coin lock system, for what its worth.

Monday Trinity round-up

Happy Monday everybody! It’s been a Garfield one for myself. Last week I wrote a rather long article on issues I perceive with the holy trinity in MMOs and ever since I’ve come across other bloggers contributing views related to the matter and taking the whole topic a step further. It’s been very interesting reads for myself, realizing that there was even more to it all than I initially focused on. That’s why this blogging week starts with a short round-up on more trinity-based articles, for all those interested to see alternative game concepts in their future fantasy MMO.

Nils wrote a very enthusiastic article on overcoming the (un)holy trinity, asking us to bear with him one more time in a follow-up post. I elaborated quite a lot myself in some of the comment sections, getting reminded of just how passionately I actually feel about the classic fantasy genre.

Tesh left his uptake on the role of healing in online games and let us into his very own tactical RPG character advancement system. He’s also listed a way more complete link collection on further reading, so I won’t repeat any of that and simply recommend you visit his article!

Rather unexpected at first, was a great article I read by Gazimoff where he muses over the rift that theorycrafting, or rather elitism has created in today’s WoW community, separating the ‘pros’ from the ‘slackers’. He finds himself caught in the middle of a dilemma which I couldn’t help but connect to the holy trinity issue as well. It’s one aspect I had not considered in such degree but does certainly display another side-effect of very strong role separations and definitions. If a role is all about one thing, your target above all else is to perfect that thing and make it even more efficient. Min-maxing is more king than ever. Or maybe I’m just seeing white Volvos everywhere now, because I drive one myself – you decide. 

Edit: Tobold has written on this since too, or more specifically about the dynamic of the tanking role and how one might overcome that in a classic MMO setup.

…I think I’m at a very bad place now; I’ve successfully thought myself into being really excited about Guild Wars 2 which isn’t good, especially with the launch being another year away….oh well. It appears plenty of you out there share my enthusiasm.

In an attempt to make this article more rambly (ramblier? firefox does not approve of this word), I did actually get one gratification after a very long, tiresome day which is a small parcel waiting on my desk this evening. Funny that I should win a shiny Rift mousepad now that I’ve moved on to a new MMO – seems that old Steelseries lich king pad is meant to go. If that’s not a sign from above, I don’t know what is.

And being tipsy is the only way of healing, true story.

Tired of the Holy Trinity – Guild Wars 2

I admit that I’ve never been much into Guild Wars. When the game launched in spring 2005, I browsed some previews and while it looked visually impressive, things like play style, non-persistent world and the initially very low level cap put me off. Also, there was another very promising MMO title just about to launch: World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. The rest is history.

6 years later, I’m looking back on my time in Azeroth with a very fed-up feeling of “been there done that” which is a natural thing, I would think, after playing the same game for such a long period. I had a great time with WoW for as long as it lasted, it’s been a formidable ride – and an eye opener, in more ways than one.

But I’m a gamer; I’ve played games before WoW and will be playing them after WoW, I’m not looking to stick to a company. I want good games. Several times during my ride, I’ve ventured into other realms, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for months. On the way I’ve fallen in love with aspects of other online games, like the vast and beautiful maps in Age of Conan or the wicked race that are the Arisen in Allods. But MMOs need to be more than a great race or nice world – they need to be a polished package.

So now that WoW is the past, what do I want from the next AAA-MMO? The other day, Tesh asked what themes outside the classic fantasy genre might attract the crowd. I’d certainly be intrigued to see promising Steampunk concepts realised someday, but I’m not all that fussed about a change of setting: I love fantasy RPGs and MMOs. I would play Eve Online in a heartbeat if it wasn’t set in space; I want magic and swords and dragons. I want fairy woods and dark caves.

I’m not even sure I want all that many big changes in this genre; I think I want small changes and innovations. I probably know a lot better what I do not want from my next MMO than what I do want. When I draw my conclusions on World of Warcraft, the most pressing matter that comes to mind is that I want future fantasy MMOs to outgrow some of the genre’s most stale mechanics: I want them to outgrow the holy trinity.

Tired of the Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity – tanks, healers, damage dealers. The bane of guild recruitment, the disturber of peace in raidguilds, the headache of group setup, the killer of spontaneous cooperative fun. But “players want class identity”, they say…….and playstyle versatility, and group flexibility, and be able to solo, and do well in PVP.
WoW solves the obvious dilemma with hybrids and dualspec, by abandoning key abilities or handing out an even share of everything to everybody – their famed “bring the player, not the class” credo. Yet with that, class identity is down the drain, 10 classes or not.

The saddest part is, that for all their good intentions, the “bring the player not the class” concept couldn’t be further from reality in WoW: raid guilds are still struggling to recruit particular classes for a balanced roster, a DPS still sits in the LFG queue for 20 minutes easily on an average weekday and if your mates want to run a 5man heroic and happen to be a rogue, mage and 3 warriors, they’re out of luck and better have alts. Bring the player? I don’t think so.

The existence of hybrids or dualspecs does not automatically make for versatile gameplay or flexibility. Never has an MMO been more about cookie cutters and min-maxing than World of Warcraft. Never have classes been more about just one thing: healers staring at healthbars, DPS tied to fixed rotations to squeeze out every last bit of damage, tanks playing aggro whack-a-mole. Never have raid guilds been more pressed to make the constant, unhappy choice between good raider vs. friend.

A breath of fresh air

During my 6-months visit to Hyboria, the thing that I enjoyed most about playing a priest, was that healing in Age of Conan is so limited: you have three direct healing spells only: 1 direct heal, 1 AoE, 1 HoT. Some heals come with a CD, most of them are local rather than having you target a specific health bar. None of the heals is strong enough to make healing an essential part of an encounter. That’s why priests in AoC are also main CCers, fulfilling a lot more functions in order to prevent and absorb potential damage. And they add needed extra auto-healing via damage dealing.

Quite a lot of jobs for one class only – quite a refreshing versatility for a healer. Now, you could say that a hybrid in WoW can perform 3-4 roles as well, but that’s the question really: when do they? How many times does a hybrid actually get to play like a hybrid during a 5man run or raid, inside the same encounter (let’s forget for a minute, that you can’t switch specs in combat anyway)? I’ve healed WoW raid bosses for almost 6 years; I know healers get to stare at healthbars, with the odd cleansing on the side and very rare, insignificant CC job. A good old resto druid could be in a raid for 4 hours and never switch out of treeform once.

If you want players to make use of their versatility, you need to design gameplay to require it in a meaningful way. WoW does not require players to play that way: healers are healers, DPS optimize output, tanks tank. And they better all excel at the one thing and be efficient. If you respec from healer to tank, you do this outside an encounter, like relogging to an alt.

Summing up

“Bring the player, not the class” is an illusion in WoW. Despite featuring 10 classes, it doesn’t provide you with class identity so much as with role identity. This role identity is so strong that it’s limiting players more than ever, despite Blizzard trying to balance the game to bring players, rather than classes. Potential flexibility and versatility both suffer in the process and players and guilds are constantly forced to make decisions between whom they can play with and whom they’d like to play with. How is this what MMO players want?

Not that other MMOs haven’t failed at either or both before; WoW has done a lot more than most here. But what it’s really shown us is that identity is not synonymous with different classes available and having talents and specs is not synonymous with versatile or flexible gameplay. The only thing we know is that players want many things. Maybe the future lies in a different approach.

Why can’t we have fun like the FPS players?

Somewhere down the line it was established that MMORPGS need to be about archetypes in order to allow for class identity and character development. So far, so good. Classes aren’t the same as roles though – where does it say that you need the holy trinity in order to guarantee for identity? And how is it fun to wait on a healer or tank for 30 minutes when you could be playing with friends?

Half of the challenge to raid in World of Warcraft or beat the average encounter, is not actually about mastering the fight itself but about setting up for it. It starts with recruitment and roster headaches and goes right down to raid night preparations and balance checks. Did you bring the right setup? Are there enough tanks/DPS/healers for this or should somebody respec? Are the right classes doing the right thing at the right position? Can’t that hunter squeeze out a little more damage?

What about the boss? Do you remember his name and how he looks like?

Which finally brings me back to Guild Wars, or more precisely to Guild Wars 2 and a fascinating and insightful article on what they intend to do about healing (and death) in their upcoming MMO sequel. Some of it has struck such a chord with me that I want to highlight a few quotes in more detail in the next paragraph.

Spinks recently asked why MMO players cannot have the same cooperative fun like FPS clans do. I’ll ask the same: why can’t we? Fantasy MMOs and online shooters might be different in player character approach, but there’s no reason why MMO gamers cannot develop and be fond of their avatars and have what other gamers enjoy.

Guild Wars 2: The answer to the dilemma?

NC Soft announced the launch of Guild Wars 2 for 2012, planning to dedicate all of this year to intense testing and modifications. Like its first installment, the game art is visually stunning and things like animations and spell effects already look out of this world. The overall concept and races are not everyone’s cup of coffee though – neither is the active combat system which frightens many a classic RPG gamer. Still, if you have any interest in the MMO market and game development as a whole, you will want to risk a second glance and see what the devs there are up to. Here’s what they have to say about the holy trinity and why there won’t be a dedicated healer in Guild Wars 2:

[…]Simple systems like this, along with cross-profession combos, and the dedicated healing skill slot, help free players from the MMORPG shackles, and let us break the mold even more. We’re making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.
Everyone take a deep breath. It’s going to be OK.

(If you’re already worried, I suggest you follow that advice now. Breathe.)

Support players want to be able to say, “Remember that one time when I saved you from certain death?” They want to stand in the line of fire and block attacks. They want to surround their allies with a swirling dome of air that keeps enemy projectiles from passing through it. It’s not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it’s about being there for your friends when they need you. 

Finally somebody said it: Healing is only one aspect of support – the last and most reactive part of it. What about all that time that passes beforehand? Why are healers just standing there, waiting for the inevitable to happen? Why is there an ‘”inevitable”? What about debuffs, interrupts, CC, absorbtion – why are these things not the main focus of support, making a job much more diverse and fun in the process? Why would a supporter only stare at his ally?

Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations. […]

We keep hearing other MMO developers espousing the “holy trinity” of DPS/ heal/tank with such reverence, as if this is the most entertaining combat they have ever played. Frankly, we don’t like sitting around spamming “looking for healer” to global chat. That feels an awful lot like preparing to have fun instead of having fun. 

A thing that never seizes to baffle me personally, is the strict separation of abilities between roles, in WoW and most other MMOs: You have this powerful caster standing next to you in a 5man party, that magic spellweaver – and all he really does for the group is deal damage, besides few more mob-centric abilities. While his allies fall left and right, while his healer is about to die horribly, he stands there hurling firebolts at the enemy, unable to do anything about much more pressing matters.

As a child of fairytales, sword & sorcery books, tabletops and classic RPGs, I need to ask: in which fantasy setting is this “realistic”? If I hear “mage”, I see Raistlin from the Dragonlance series; I see a magic wielder capable to do many things for his group, from grilling or sleeping foes, to casting shields on his allies and calling them back from the dead. I’m also pretty sure Gandalf didn’t wiggle his finger at the fellowship, saying “sorry guys, arcane spec only”.

Fantasy classes can be defined and still be a lot more dynamic in their roles than what I’ve seen these past few years. MMOs should be about players vs. the encounter, not players battling the boundaries of their individual class or role.

Ultimately, DPS/heal/tank just didn’t cut it in our book…er, game. Our players demand more from Guild Wars 2 and we intend to deliver on that demand instead of delivering more of the same. Not only is the trinity very formulaic, but it leaves out a lot of gameplay elements that make many other games so much fun. 

Fun. It seems to me that NC Soft got this one right: games should be about fun. And more than anything, MMOs are about cooperative fun – fantastic settings, classes and personal investment yes, but these things should not restrict one another. You should never have to choose between setup and playing with whom you’d like to play. You should not have to sit around waiting for the game to actually start. You should have to fight bosses, not yourself or each other (PVP aside).

Remember how much fun it was to play a coop game in good old Mario Bros? Or to clear stages together in Metal Slug or Contra? Why should this kind of pick-up play be exclusive to genre or platform?

You can be a mage, a warrior, a hunter, a bard, with clear distinctive mechanisms and abilities and still be flexible enough to party with any combination of other players. You can be self-sufficient and have a variety of skills available that do not only enable you to fulfill a role but react in a smart way to whatever the encounter demands, rather than blindly following one rotation or script. You can be a complete player, rather than a fifth of a whole – and this will force developers to create interesting encounter dynamics that actually challenge the players, not their group setup. It will force them to think about proper cooperative challenges.

You can have all these things if game design does not only allow but require you to. You can have all these things without a holier-than-thou trinity.

The future is change

It’s way too early to judge where Guild Wars 2 will be a year from now; but I am excited and dare say this is good news – possibly the best news I’ve heard in a long time. If you take some time to go through the entire article on their official site, you will see that the developers do not only have plans to change how healing works, but make adjustments to the tanking role too and the significance of death in the game. I’m suprised to hear myself say it, but I’m open to that concept too.

I hope we get to see more developers thinking out of the box, especially in the fantasy MMO genre – looking to keep core values while adopting and improving what makes online and cooperative gaming so much fun for millions of players worldwide. Learning from others is just as important as learning from the past. I welcome the changes ahead and salute those who dare to move forward.

Rift souls for WoW brains

I had this long wall of text ready to publish yesterday, on how much I look forward to play future MMOs without the holy trinity – and then blogger ate my post and I couldn’t find any way to recover it – of course. *sigh* That convinced me I should rather be playing Rift than write silly posts, y’know basically a sign from above, and now I’m not even sure whether I have the heart to rewrite it all. I hate it when that happens, where’s the time machine when you really need it?

Anyway, there I was trying to break down Rift’s class system in a comprehensible way  to one of my mates the other night, feeling ready to jump off the next cliff after approximately 10 minutes. Yeah I get it, the class system is a little more complex than in World of Warcraft – that’s why it’s fun. But it’s really not all that hard to understand, a trained monkey could grasp the concept pretty soon. To which my mate then replied: “what about Warcraft players?”.

Ummmm..

Before you reach the inevitable conclusion that said comment was actually offensive, it was made by somebody who’s played WoW himself for a long time – and arguing with such deprecating self-irony is kinda hard. I have also been told that I am made of pure evil for successfully luring people into giving Rift a go, making one of them buy an new shiny PC just to be able to run it properly, so apparently I don’t get to argue. Riiight, don’t blame me now, MMO players are all the same desperate bunch, muah muah!

I get where this is coming from though: when you jump into Rift, there’s all that talk of callings, souls, roles, subclasses, planar charges and ye olde Warcraft player that you are, you’ve simply forgotten all about how it feels to start a brand new game and that initial confusion is part of the experience (and fun).

That’s okay! /pat

There are currently a few Rift resources in the making, but nobody likes to go and search half-baked databases when starting off with a new game. Also: Wiki articles are often cryptic and have the potential to scare you off rather than to help – now that would be a real shame. So, what is it with this class-soul-role mumbo-jumbo in Rift? Here’s my breakdown in 3 easy steps.

Rift – Callings, Souls and Roles

  • 1. Callings (Azerothian: classes)

There are 4 main callings or class archetypes in Rift: Warriors, Rogues, Mages and Clerics. This is the initial choice you will make when creating your character and cannot be reversed at any point in the game. Each of these archetypes offers 8 sub-classes or talent trees which are called souls in Rift.

  • 2. Souls (Azerothian: talent trees)

Your very first quest at level 1 will let you gather your first out of 8 souls. Don’t worry about that choice too much because already at level 13 you will be able to get them all and switch around.

Your character can equip 3 souls at any given time. That means your talent chart looks very similar to WoW where each class has 3 trees to fill points in. The main difference is that you have 8 trees available in Rift and it’s your choice which ones to play with and when. The game wants classes to have access to a lot of variety in playstyles and encourages you to experiment and respec often.

So, if you roll cleric in Rift for example, you can play any combination of 8 souls: you can be Druid/Cabalist/Warden or an Inquisitor/Justicar/Sentinel – just to name two options. It’s up to you what “trinity” to set for. That makes for a stunning 56 unique build combinations available (more including PVP souls) per class. And then it’s still up to you how you spread your talent points within those combinations. Ideally, you still want to focus on one main tree at least, in order to get access to the powerful endtalents.

  • 3. Roles (Azerothian: specs)

At some point you will tire of respeccing in order to switch or re-build your specs; you will want to have different talent and soul combinations ready to play, depending on whether you play solo, in a 5man or PVP. Every Rift class has variety of functions available, from tanking, to dps, support and healing. This is where roles come into play: a role is Rift’s equivalent to WoW’s dualspec, it let’s you save more than one talent spec at a time and switch between them easily, anytime and anywhere. Your first extra role will cost you 30 gold which roughly equals 30 WoW silver – so it’s very cheap.

You can both respec and purchase extra roles at your class trainer. Note that while you’re leveling up, you must buy your new skill ranks individually for each spec and can only do this while the role is active (so it’s a good idea to switch while you’re at the trainer).
Furthermore, you do not only have two roles available in Rift, but can get up to a total of 4 saved talent builds which you can re-name individually to keep track. This is another testimony to Rift’s class versatility and flexibility. Knock yourself out!

Useful resources (Azerothian: wowhead & co.)

That’s pretty much it! Not so hard now, is it? If you’re still looking for more info on something, have a look at the following, more and less useful Rift resources and Wikis. Keep in mind that the game has only just launched while browsing.

You might want to visit:

If anyone is using different pages or has other tips in general, I’m happy to hear about them. I have not actually had the time yet to look into any Rift forums and I don’t even know whether there are official realm and class forums or not. Exciting times! ^^

Frivolous Friday Roundup

It’s Frivolous Friday time and I dare say the blogosphere needs it, what a gloomy week it’s been in places. Or maybe you took time off from it all and had fun exploring the world of Telara, like I did – but that doesn’t really solve the issue of the major apathy and disillusionment WoW players are currently facing over Cataclysm. Is this really all that’s left of World of Warcraft? 25man raiding dying, guilds struggling to recruit, Blizzard recycling old content while a few more vanity items and achievements are being installed on the side?

“Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?” [The Lord of the Rings, King Theoden]

How did it come to this? What has happened to Azeroth, that colorful, perfect second world for so many players worldwide, once so filled with wonder, camaraderie and adventure? Is the time of WoW coming to an end, as so many of us have felt on a personal level lately – or have we as a generation of longtimers simply outgrown the game? Every MMO, even one as popular as World of Warcraft, can only attract a playerbase for so long. No doubt this is not the end for Blizzard, but maybe it’s simply the end for many a veteran who feels let down by Cataclysm.

Frivolous Friday Roundup

Well, some bloggers are still enjoying themselves out there in Azeroth. They choose to focus on what’s there rather than on what there is not – on little things, mysterious and cheerful as can still be found by those who look for them. Among all the gloominess their posts have stood out to me this week, so entirely untouched by what almost sounds like the end of days. It’s not all bad raids and lackluster patches. And since my own Frivolous Friday contribution would only convince you to buy Rift and go dye all your gear in various colors, I shall let these three speak for me this time. (I will tell you about those wonderful dyes soon enough!)

  • While the future of WoW might be uncertain, one thing you can always count on is Issy putting a smile on your face. Sunny and cheerful, she lets her readers in on what makes WoW real to her and still worth playing, so check out her most recent articles of this week.
  • Strange things are afoot and Zinn has a special gift to spot them. While countless players are rushing through the game, never taking a moment to ponder the world around them, Zinn keeps her own mystery files on what’s being quirky and odd in Azeroth – from floating catheads to strange glowing men, uh oh!
  • Angelya is saving baby murlocs in Blasted Lands, a quest I must admit I never heard of myself. As the murlocs embark on their journey across the sea, she wonders about what might lie across, distant places yet to be discovered on the landmap of WoW. To think that we might not have seen and explored all of that world is a strangely encouraging thought, a space to dream in this otherwise so exhausted fantasy.

A good weekend to you all – be it on Azeroth, Telara or planet earth. Wherever you are, don’t forget to take a look around sometime for the little things that make your world good and special, no matter how tiny or silly they may be.

Your blog on the world map

What started as a creative brainstorming between myself and Larísa a few days ago in a topic on second language blogging, is beginning to take shape in the hands of enthusiastic Rebecca at the MMO Melting Pot. The crew over there has been very busy the past weeks, giving the page layout a basic overhaul and adjusting their blogroll – and that’s why clearly, they needed more work on top of it!

It’s great to see at what speed this idea was taken up, but what’s needed for this to happen now is your input and support. Do you want to add your MMO blog to a united blogosphere world map? Did you ever wonder who your blogging neighbours might be? Then it’s time to head over to the Melting Pot and leave your feedback and suggestions for Rebecca and the rest of the team!

Personally I’d love to see this in action and I hear there are cookies involved.
Leave your vote today folks (no vote makes Squirrel sad)!

Tumbling down the RIFT

It’s all over blogger town, the new MMO on the block: RIFT by Trion. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, it’s probably had the best timing than any of its brethren over the past 5 years, being released few months into Blizzard’s quickly aging Cataclysm. The MMO market isn’t endless: it’s rather a pie where every contender is greedily trying to lure customers over to his small piece – or at least that’s how it usually is, unless your name is Blizzard and you have such a long history and reputation that you can recruit whole masses of genre-noobs for yourself. This has no doubt always been one of WoW’s greatest achievements. Time to steal some of those people.

Within the first pre-launch week, RIFT has registered over 1 million player accounts and we’re not even talking official launch yet. You can call that a success or not, it catapults RIFT up there among the other top MMOs which are WoW, Aion and Eve Online. It’s certainly a very promising start and one can only hope that with growing subscriptions the game will continue to get better, which is the endless story and dilemma of online games.

For those of you that expect their next MMO after WoW to be groundbreakingly different, you’re probably looking for the wrong game though: RIFT is classic. It stays true to the concept and looks that make MMORPGs. Personally, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing considered what Trion is up against and what people want and are used to.

After playing the open beta and registering for the early launch week, I am still duly impressed: this game is coming with a polish. It looks beautiful and I have yet to see a bug, disconnect or lagspike despite all my settings being maxed (a thing I was never able to do in WoW). This has gotta be the smoothest MMO launch I have ever witnessed from install to ingame, a few crowded servers aside. Gameplay is intuitive and engaging, the class system offers flexibility and variety. The rift events make the world around you feel alive – there’s something happening out there for a change.

Most of all however, RIFT is that: something new. Not so different maybe, but new and so needed and overdue for the tired and fed up in WoW’s playerbase. A new world to explore, new races, factions, skills, quests. A new take on an old concept. A new surprise around the corner, sometimes familar, sometimes strange. And enough eye candy to go with it, even if I miss proper soundtrack (again) on the side.

I don’t care if it isn’t mind-blowing, I don’t care it comes in a classic wrap. New is all I want right now.

Breaking with old habits

Breaking up and reaching for pastures new has been all over WoW guilds and the blogosphere these past few weeks. It certainly has been all around me and I’ve added my share by kissing my raiding career in WoW goodbye since. The right choice has never been more apparent to me. I need to get away, I need new – so much in fact that my RIFT character turns out to be as diametrically opposed to my old self, as possible: for over 6 years I have played and alliance healer in World of Warcraft. A pale human priestess with dark hair, a healing coordinator, a diplomat, a founder and leader.

No more. Defiant all the way. I love the drowess I created, tall and dark-skinned with the obligatory white hair and red eyes, the way R. A. Salvatore imagined them and made the race what it is for today’s fantasy genre. I play a potent Pyromancer with some Elementalist and Dominator thrown in the mix. A pure DPS, an offensive mage spec. She looks every bit the way a mage should look: dark, evil and unsettling (and if you prefer your chars to be ugly, you’ve plenty of chances to do that too). The only qualm I have is that I’m still a cloth-wearer or the transformation would be complete.

I’m enjoying running solo, exploring new maps and joining random groups for rift campaigns. No guild chat, no agenda, no progress list. I haven’t seen much yet by any stretch of the imagination and I’m very curious about the whole PVP side of the game which seems a lot more than just an afterthought. What I have seen so far has pleased me well and I am not in a rush.

More importantly: there’s not a thing that has managed to annoy or frustrate me yet in RIFT and that counts for something. I don’t care what happens in one month, for now I’m entertained and turn my foes into squirrels (yes you heard that right, squirrels!). I also die quite a lot and am loving every minute of it – well met death, what’s been taking you?

Pushing all the right buttons

There are rare artefacts hidden all over the world of Telara which you can pick up and store in your private collection. It’s a tiny thing, a silly trifle and I love it. It screams classic RPG too, the ones I used to play when I was younger – a sparkling bauble randomly found under a rock or stone, a treasure chest buried deep under the sea, a dusty old map lying in a dark corner. No silly tools to go with though, no map markers, no skill-up grind. Just a thing to chance upon.

And then I ambled into Meridian last night, the main city of the Defiant – turns out there’s an Artefact Master there who will award special currency for your completed artefact sets. The thing you can buy in return: companion pets.

Damn you, Trion! I dare say I shall play this a little longer. Some habits are hard to break.

Guild application forms – A thing of the past?

A while ago we had a rather interesting debate among the officers in our guild, regarding our current application form for 25man raid applicants. As you can see we’re pretty standard in that respect – our form covers all obligatory bases such as age, location, spec and raid times, and also a few more things that we believe should provide us with some useful information on potential tralists. As simple and similar as these forms usually look, we’ve actually talked about ours time and again the past years and alterations were made over time, or rather a lot of cuts. (Personally I still think we’re missing the really essential questions, but that’s another matter!)

What stuck out in the last dicussion however, was the suggestion to consider abandoning our guild application form altogether. No more written forms to fill out, rather grab potential members on ventrilo for a personal chat and invite them to a trial 5man heroic or other run to see how they do there and then. Quite a drastic change of procedure and one I have thought about ever since.

Sense and non-sense of application forms

I can see why a more personal approach to the whole application process is beneficial for more serious raidguilds. Written forms only tell you so much and more often than not, an applicant will leave blank spaces or important questions unanswered or ambiguous, so that the time investment to get back to him and all the subsequent emailing take up lots of extra time. This makes the efficiency of the whole procedure debatable.

I’ve also raised an eyebrow before at forms on other guild pages: I’m all for a bit of jolly good fun, but a questionnaire with half the questions revolving around what my favourite color is or whether I prefer Robocop or Batman, makes me wonder whose time is being wasted more here – mine or the guild’s.
It’s obviously very depending on your guild style and purpose but if you ask people to go through a written procedure, you shouldn’t stretch things for no good reason in my opinion.

A questionnaire should be as long needed and no longer than necessary; open questions provide more in-depth information than multiple choice or yes/no and personal questions should serve some guild-related purpose. I guess here too, specific questions on sex or age for example are debatable: what exactly do you expect to get from this answer? Does it influence a decision in any way at all?

A good application form certainly takes some time to work out and ponder over – and yet it will never achieve to satisfy all a guild wants to know. Nothing beats personal contact and experience. And yet in this case, I am for keeping written forms for the following reasons:

  1. Show of effort. Over the years I have seen huge, baffling disparities between the effort and attention applicants were willing to put into our questionnaire. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you take 15 minutes to think about why you want to join your future raid guild. We don’t ask you to come up with stuff of your own, the questions are already there – so how hard is it really? The written application is the very first impression a member can make and it’s an important one. I’m not saying it speaks a 100% for all else to come, but if a person leaves half the form empty or includes leetspeak in every second line, I’ve seen enough. On the other hand, I remember several WoT-applications from the past which were some of the most dedicated texts I’ve ever read; all of them became valued, longterm members of our guild.
  2. Dubious participation. I’m a big spokesperson of this: guildmembers are required to read a forum regularly and also participate actively in ongoing, important discussions. What are the chances really that somebody already too lazy to fill out an application form is going to regularly participate in a guild forum? Filling out an app is only the start, pal! 
  3. Rough pre-selection. If nothing else, a short questionnaire helps you to sift  the painfully obvious non-candidates. If somebody can already not attend your raid nights, is unwilling to use voicecomm or turns out to be a major asshat for some reason, there’s no need to continue the exchange. Save yourself and him time. Also: minimize the risks to yourself (and your guildbank).
  4. Member feedback. In our guildforum all applications get re-published for member feedback. Sometimes members do actually know applicants from past experience or have some other valuable information to share. Their voice is always considered in our application process. Without any written form it’s unikely that you get a larger part of the guild to review your applicants.

Nothing’s to say that you cannot have a more personal chat with a potential trialist besides this – if your team is willing and able to regularly dedicate extra time to the process, that’s great. Realistically speaking, I still think you want to hold on to some way of written information and pre-selection.

A look ahead

All things considered, I’m all for thinking out of the box when it comes to the future of guild applications. In a more hypothetical past article, I’ve mused on raidguilds using entry fees in order to pre-select potential members. Certainly the whole process between opening a guild recruitment topic and making first contact with new members, can be refined and simplifyed a great deal more.

So far, I’ve not actually heard of any guild who’s managed a groundbreaking progress in this department though, at least not without a substantial increase of officer time involved. Maybe the good old application letter has survived this long for a reason?