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League of Legends

So, do you play LoL? According to this infographic, it’s a pretty good chance that you do.

Personally, I play a decent amount of LoL, less than I did before GW2 came out, but I still play a couple times of week at least. I probably will keep playing it for quite a long time, and I’ll keep playing MOBAs even after that I bet, since I’ve been playing DOTA since it was out for Warcraft III (pre-frozen throne).

But why? Why is LoL so popular? Why are MOBAs starting to take off?

I think it’s because of the competition that’s involved in it. Compared to RL sports, there are remarkable similarities.

1) The games are canned (i.e. you play one and it ends and resets), just like a tennis match, football game, or basketball game.

2) There is a large scale tracking system to determine how you fit globally (ELO ranked matches). Compare this to the many rec leagues and ladders that exist for most sports around the world.

3) There is a definite skill curve, and a very distinct path to getting better and improving.

Don’t discount #3, I think that one is the most important. Sure, playing and winning (for both sports and LoL) are important and fun, but what keeps people coming back is the competition with others, the desire to get better, and beat them in the future. The ability for growth and improvement, and a community/meta that allows for a distinct path for skills to learn is very desirable.

Brandon Beck, the CEO of Riot, in a statement for the Penny Arcade Report, even mentioned:

 There are a lot of skills to master and there’s a ton of depth to the experience. It’s also fun to watch for the same reason that any traditional sport might be, which is you can be in awe of the super human feats at the highest level of play.

Compare LoL to an MMORPG, and there’s a distinct difference in competition. Sure, the skill may be needed in an MMORPG, but it’s surrounded by dozens of skills, the need to level, and optimize gear before a match. There such a huge time investment required (usually PvE) that it dissuades many people who want to just compete. LoL breaks down many of those barriers.

I would make the same arguments for Star Craft 2, but I view LoL as more user friendly and “casual” friendly, which makes it easier for it to gain the large user base that it has.

What do you think? Is LoL here for the long haul, or is it just MOBAs in general?

Also, Teemo hasn’t died nearly enough. Keep it up.

tl-dr

I think LoL is the new king of the gaming world, especially for its competitive elements and eSport viability.

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Maine is not a state I typically associate with controversy, but there is a current controversy in Maine politics that has made international news. Are you ready for it? Wait for it… Wait for it…

A Democratic candidate for Maine’s state Senate, Colleen Lachowicz, plays World of Warcraft.

Maine Republicans are arguing that because of this abominable pastime, she is in no way fit to be a politican, and they have set up this ridiculous website, called Colleen’s World, meant to prove her status as a horrible person. Their argument goes: a woman who plays an orc rogue – and, therefore, spends her free time stabbing everyone in the back – shouldn’t hold office.

This exemplifies so many things that make me really angry. I hate the negative political campaigns that Americans have grown accustomed to. In a way, maybe her mad virtual backstabbing skillz help her campaign because that’s all so many candidates do irl. American politics have become like a train wreck of a reality show that we can’t seem to look away from, such as Honey Boo Boo, or a bad song we can’t stop listening to, like “Call Me Maybe.” But I digress.

The negativity in the Maine Republicans’ attack plan is rooted in that famous media myth so many gamers love to hate: people who play video games are violent. They think they can prove Colleen is unfit for the Senate by highlighting things she’s posted on discussion forums – “crude, vicious and violent comments” as they call them on the website. They clearly have no understanding of gamer culture (nor do they want to); they highlight comments she makes about WoW play and jump to the conclusion that these comments can be somehow correlated to rl? What??? If people took seriously everything I’ve ever posted on gaming forums, I’d never land a full-time faculty position at a highly respected research university… oh wait… I already have one.

We’ve covered the “video games are violent” thing in previous posts on this blog, such as “Taking Aim at the Issue: Real World Guns and Games”, “Violence vs. Conflict in Video Games”, and “Violence and Video Games: Looking beyond the obvious”, so I’m not going to get into that discussion in too much detail in this post. But one part I’m alternatively annoyed with – and I want to explore this some more – is the idea that we have to hide our identities as gamers to be taken seriously in the world. Here is a quote from the BBC article I cited at the beginning in which a games researcher named Ladan Cockshut discusses gamers’ place in the world (I’ve never heard of this woman, and I couldn’t find her on Google Scholar, but whatever):

“In my work, I’ve spoken with many people who in their regular lives have roles of significant responsibility (as doctors, managers, or educators) but who choose carefully with whom they disclose their gaming activity,” she told the BBC. “And disclosing their gaming activity is often accompanied by a degree of apology or embarrassment.”

But, she added, having a gamer run for office was a “heartening” development.

“This would seem to run contrary to the other stereotypes that we love to assign to gamers: that they are lazy, antisocial people who don’t have a ‘real life’,” she said. “Maybe this will trigger some dialogue about our perceptions of gamers and the role that games can and should play in modern society.”

If us gamers do have to hide the fact that we’re gamers, then it’s no wonder why we want to hide from the real world! Seriously though, why is it that our society thinks some free time activities are acceptable and others are not? Have you ever heard of a person who hides the fact that they like watching football or baseball so others will respect them? Hell no – and, guess what people, football and baseball are games too!!!! And as for gamers wasting away all our free time on games… we’ve all known people who spend hours memorizing the RBIs or the ERAs or whatever of their favorite baseball players, and nobody thinks twice about it. But, obviously, if WoW players like Colleen are focused on improving their rogue’s Agility, they’re violent, lazy time-wasters.

I went to high school in Texas, in an area known for political and religious conservatism. (hint: America’s most recent past president lives there now). At our football games, they always said a (Christian) prayer before the game, right alongside the national anthem. I questioned how they could do that given potential separation of church and state issues. I also remember other people pointing out that it was odd how they could say a prayer before they went out on the field to kick the other team’s ass. It was ***real life game violence*** somehow made softer with pre-game prayer and the school’s participation in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I remember so many players getting hit so hard they couldn’t get off the field. There were even rituals in place for it: for example, the cheerleaders would get down on one knee until the player either stood up or was carried off the field. But would any of these football players, or the coaches and parents who directed them, ever have to answer questions about their participation in football before they could do something visible or important? No, and at least in Texas, this involvement would be a highlight of their qualifications.

So… why the split? Why does the media, and the people who are brainwashed by it, differentiate between “this kind of game is great” and “this kind of game is bad”? Virtual violence is more dangerous, and more telling about our characters, than rl violence? I’ve played video games since 1981, and I’ve blown up a lot of aliens and monsters and even a few rogues, but I’ve never hit a person in reality. Honestly, the most I’ve ever done wrong is park in the wrong space on campus – but I paid for the ticket. I might have said a few bad words when I found the ticket on my car, and it might have relieved my stress to run some bgs with my frost mage… but in reality, the ice stayed in my freezer. Throwing ice at campus police won’t get me tenure, but Frostbolting a freakin’ orc in Arathi Basin certainly makes me feel better. And I’ll proudly tell everyone that I did it.

tl-dr

Gamers are everywhere, and we do everything. Just like you muggles.

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Guilds within games are a very funny thing, and running them is even stranger. They are a weird conglomeration of people, and come in so many shapes and sizes no one has time to describe any of that. Karen over at Massively does a regular column that attempts to bring order to the guild chaos (and does well), but I think there is always more to add to the pot.

I help run a multi-game guild that spans WoW, League of Legends, and Guild Wars 2 (and a few others, but those are the main ones right now).  I find leading a guild to be a very fickle thing, but mainly, it’s all about the morale of the guild.

The game doesn’t matter.

The people can change.

Keeping the morale of the guild up is the most important aspect of being a guild leader. Even if people are hating the game they’re playing, if they are happy with the people they are playing with and having a good time in the community, people will keep playing the game.

To quote Felandis, who also helps lead the guild, (from another statement he made, not that post)

When it comes to running a guild, it is my belief the most important thing is to truly understand the morale of the guild, from the ground up, and to understand what has to be tweaked to keep that morale high (often easier said than done).

So what keeps the morale of your guild high? Raid clears? PvP wins? Community forums?

tl-dr

Make sure to keep the morale of your guild high, it will keep all of the people together and having a good time.

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I don’t think most advertisements for games are actually directed at gamers. Hardcore gamers already know about the game, and usually know if they want to play it or not.

So, then, are advertisements directed at non-gamers? The casual gamer? The friends of the gamer? Are they designed to excite the gamer so that they show the advertisement to friends to get them excited?

I was thinking of this because of a conversation my guildies were having about the recent GW2 cinematic.

Personally, I didn’t like it very much because I don’t think it actually showed what the game was about, and it gave me a “wtf?” kind of moment. I think many others had the same reaction, but those “many others” were the population of people who 1) had already bought the game, 2) were already playing, 3) had already tried it, or 4) already decided they weren’t going to try it.

Many of the comments I heard about it related directly to the game itself: “they didn’t show enough of the game!” “they need to talk about the lore more!” “What about gameplay?” (ok, so maybe a couple of those were my own…) Which is both true, but also interesting, if you take a step back. These are the people who know about these aspects of the game already. Are they hoping Arena Net emphasizes the thing they like most about the game? Maybe this is just a tease to make people look up more about the game, because there’s no way to emphasize all of those things at once. (It’s like advertising! Le Gasp!)

Sadly, the biggest comment most had after viewing the cinematic (n=too small), was that they thought the cinematic was for a different game, even though all the people knew it was for GW2.

So what audience was it for? What audience is most game advertising for? The non-gamers? The non-hardcore audiences?

I think the cinematic was designed for prime time TV to bring in the non-gamers, or to get people who have no idea what Guild Wars 2 is to try it out, or at least look it up.

Is this the same for most game advertisements? Or only for those that advertise on television?

The best comment about the cinematic:

Are­naNet made a big dis­ser­vice to their fans, to their hard-working cin­e­mat­ics team, and I’m not sure if this trailer is good enough to con­nect to the new audi­ence they prob­a­bly aimed it to, since it doesn’t say any­thing about the game itself, which is only shown for 30 sec­onds of the 2.25 minute-long movie.

tl-dr

Game advertisements aren’t always designed for the hardcore gamers out there, they’re designed to bring in the people who haven’t necessarily heard about the game yet.

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This week, all the gamers who aren’t talking about good things like GW2 – or bad things like the latest Zynga “game” that invades my Facebook news feed until I hide it – are talking about the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. I knew several days ago that I would have the first post-MoP post (that’s redundant, but it makes sense) on this blog, but I’m not playing it. Why not?

I could easily get on my late-night rant soapbox and talk about the silliness of a freaking panda and proclaim I’ll never sell out to Blizzard’s stupid idea. I’m not playing it because… well… I’m just not playing it right now. I’m flying out to present at the #influence12 conference today, and I knew that if I bought it now, I wouldn’t get all my work done before I left. So I will get it next week. Sorry for the lack of a highly principled soapbox.

I must sheepishly admit, however, that I logged into my boring Cataclysmic WoW tonight so I could at least say hello to my friends. The ones who were starting to level from 85 to 90 told me this unanimously: the scenery in the new areas is amazing, but it’s going to take them a while to level. I don’t remember the exact number, but I think just to level from 85 to 86 is something like 13 million XP, and if you’re doing a quest that’s only worth 120,000 XP, you’re gonna do a lot of quests. Try switching to dungeons or bgs, perhaps? On second thought, why do we bother leveling at all?

We level in WoW because Blizzard keeps making us. They need a way to work in new content to keep us short attention span gamer types interested, so they throw in a new continent, new classes, new races on occasion. According to Scott Nicholson’s book Everyone Plays at the Library, one characteristic of a “game” is that it has goals. Video game creators set goals for us by deciding how many levels we need to go through, how many XP we need at each level, how many things we need to kill before we can get the XP for the quest… game creators give us goals, and we work to achieve them, regardless of whether we get frustrated or bored along the way. When you think about it, the goals are somewhat arbitrary, but we live and die by them in game. (Typically, I die more than I live in game, but I don’t want to lose my gamer street cred, so I won’t talk about that little issue).

But what motivates us to achieve those goals? Reaching level 90 in 12 hours (which some players did, according to the battle.net forums, if you want to believe them) won’t change your life in any real way. You won’t have more money, or more love in your life, or a cleaner apartment… but you will feel like you’ve accomplished something you’re proud of. And, despite the frustration of getting killed by the thing, or the fact that you got in trouble at home because you neglected to clean the bathroom like you promised your spouse you would because you were trying to kill 10 of the things so you could at least get to 86 on your main before the end of the evening… you will have enjoyed the process.

That is what gaming is about. Goals and fun. While not everyone claims to be a gamer, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like reaching goals or having fun, and that fact could take me on an entirely different tangent. But, back on the leveling issue, I must admit I’m a little frustrated with the MoP level increase. I’ve still got Cataclysm endgame content to play, and I would have been happy with only new endgame content for MoP, and maybe a new battleground and new dungeons, but I guess I’ll be leveling for a while again until I can see what the new endgame content is like. I can’t reach 90 in 12 hours of play, but I don’t want to… the fun would be over too fast!

A closing thought: somebody found this blog the day after MoP’s release by Googling “Wow, pandas suck.” I’m slightly proud of that.

tl-dr

A gamer’s relationship with leveling, and other goal-related gaming activities, is complicated – perhaps even codependent? What do you think?

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I swear to you, today’s post is of utmost importance and seriousness.

Part of that seriousness may or may not relate to one’s ability to run about a battlefield, completely and properly covered mind you, but choosing to do so with a refreshing underbreeze whilst sporting a fine robe.. and only a robe.  Pants, after all, are so much more stifling.

Granted, most games won’t let me play my mage totally commando, for the sake of ratings and ERP discouragement.  Which IS definitely for the best.  All the same, my choice as a player is limited, the character I might want to portray is limited, and thus my experience, like the freedom of my virtual nether regions, is bound and limited.

Except not gloves, underwear. Yes, you are reading a post that opens on the merit of forced underpants in video games.

If you’re still with me, congratulations!  You gained +1 internetz tolerance.. or troublesome curiosity… hard to say, but let’s continue unabashed.

Really though, this is serious business.  Because underneath it all (LOL underwear joke), I want to uncover a few unpleasant realities that are found in the story telling design of Guild Wars 2.

I know, let that sink in. It was pretty hard to type.  There are flaws in this beautiful, wonderful, designed-so-brilliantly-it-can-cause-physical-pain-to-stop-playing game.

As addressed above, player choice is a difficult thing to balance.  On the one hand, games emulate parts of real life, which is a very complicated thing to copy.  Games also allow us to do things that we aren’t able to do in real life; games are freeing.  And yet, the reality is, the more freedom you put into a game, the more complicated it becomes in every freaking way.  Be it from a technical standpoint of actually coding the the ideas game designers imagine relentlessly regarding player choice, or from a responsibility standpoint of, well, not letting players crusade across the land stark butt naked.  Add deadline and budget on top, and it’s easy to understand why game developers often cut features that expand player freedom.  Because, well, they have to.

But sometimes that’s no excuse.  Because sometimes, they didn’t have to.  But they did anyway.

Guild Wars 2.   My dearest beloved.  To paraphrase a quote a young Nabooian Queen once said, “You’re going down a path I cannot follow.. but I have to anyway as you force choke the words right out of my character’s mouth!!!”

If you haven’t yet played the game, let me quickly say, the issue is not in the worldbuilding story side of the game, the NPC’s around any given city or town are both hilarious and interesting.  You may see children playing hide and seek in the streets, or some shadier looking folk talking about the politics of their leaders in a dark ally.   It’s fantastic stuff.

No, the issue is in the “personal story”, the “individualized” tale your own character embarks on from the very moment you create him or her.  ArenaNet toted this as a huge selling point for the game’s progressive attitude, and to be fair, there are moments where your character makes some pretty significant choices.  But they only affect your own story, they only happen occasionally, and most importantly of all, they don’t really change the overarching story of your character.  At any major story point, a cut scene will take place, in which you lose all control over your character’s …well, character.  They become ArenaNet’s character, and you are unable to control their actions or words or anything.  You are THE HERO, no matter what.  NO MATTER WHAT.  You could have just gleefully murdered a town of Skritt and stolen everything they owned, gone for a run through the city of Divinity’s Reach in your underpants (though, alas, not totaly naked), and punched a friendly dolphin in the face all in one day, and you would still be THE HERO.

I really, really hate to say it, but in some ways Star Wars: The Old Republic’s individual story telling was better.  SOME WAYS.  In SWTOR, even though your choices were ultimately of little consequence to the world around you (same as GW2′s personal story I’m afraid, which is at least in part remedied by Dynamic Events), you always got to say what you wanted to say, or something close to it.  You DIDN’T have to be THE HERO, because that would be (and is) boring for every player to basically be the same person at the end of the day.  Good, evil, or in between, it’s for you to decide.

Here’s the really really aggravating part.  Guild Wars 2 came this close to actually giving the player some meaningful freedom, as A-Net writer Ree Soesbee says:

In the first stages of production of Guild Wars 2, we discussed what we wanted from the character’s choices. Would we allow “evil” actions? Villainous characters? What about anti-heroes? In the end, we decided that we wanted to follow in the footsteps of the original Guild Wars game. Much like Jeff said: the player character is a hero.

It’s one thing when you can criticize a game for falling short, because, well, it just fell short.  It’s another to see the developers deliberately choose, within their ability, to limit the player.  Especially in something like story which, by nature, goes to the very core of who your character IS.  I love Ree, I love her work in building the world of GW2, I love a number of the other characters I’ve come across, I just don’t love me.  I’m too perfect, too good.  To all-star hot-shot knows-it-all.  Sure everyone wants to be that, but here’s the exciting part; we’re not!!  And it’s in trying to be better where our stories become interesting, not in being super-duper off the bat.  In RP, we call such characters ”Mary Sues”.  And indeed, they are common among the gaming industry as well; perfect heroes ever resolute, charming, and with great bods.  Even WoW, a universe I consider one of the best built fantasy anythings ever has Thrall, a huge Mary Sue that has not stopped Mary Sueing since his first steps in Warcraft lore; games and books alike.  These are not interesting characters!  Yes, they can serve a purpose, they can even inspire to a degree, but they rarely achieve anything really emotionally meaningful in their story.  It is misjudgment and/or hubris to say all players should be THE HERO.

Bitching aside, the overall track record for what ArenaNet has done with narrative in GW2 so far is good.  Overall, I’d even say it’s better than what any other mmorpg before it has done in terms of immersion of lore, and presenting a wholly original fantasy world.  But there are shortcomings, big ones, in my humble blogger opinion, compared to what could have been done within A-Nets power.

Of course, the wonders of Roleplay also help remedy some of this, but only if you separate your RP character from what is presented as “your character” in every cut scene along the way.  But, that is the advantage of an MMORPG, we have some space to make a largely theme park game more of a sandbox game.  We have the freedom to pursue freedom where the game does not deliberately or intentionally offer it.

tl-dr

In the story of Guild Wars 2, the player is forced into a role that they have little defining power over.  While giving any freedom to the player means complication, expanding the player’s freedom is what great companies like ArenaNet do best… when they don’t miss the opportunity and fall annoyingly short.

p.s. Ask Jacob about the commando robes thing sometimes, it’s a fun story.  Mostly fun for me

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Before we dive in, I think a lot of you might assume where this might go; i.e. along the lines of BLIZZARD RUINED EVERYTHING QQQ MY DEAR SWEET AZEROTH CAUGHT THE PANDA BUG AND IT’S A TERMINAL ONE WAY SELL OUT TRIP TO CHINA WHY YOU NO LOVE ME BLIZZARD WHY.

Gosh, that felt probably a little too much like the actual emotion I have on this subject than it should have.. but then, that’s also sorta the point!  We care!  Like, a lot!  (you are a member of “we” if you, too, care)  And, frankly, Pandas aren’t really the reason we’re upset with Blizzard. Pandas are awesome animals and the Pandaren race, before this whole “let’s take them seriously” Blizzard shenanigans kicked off, were an alright concept.  Maybe from a distance.  To be handled with care.  Unlike what happened.

Now, this topic has already been beaten to death months ago around the internet, but while there has been plenty of ”Pandas suck!” or “Leave Pandas Alone!” talk, there wasn’t a lot saying why we freaking care!

Mists Of Pandaria is the fourth expansion to the World of Warcraft MMORPG, and Blizzard’s first experience in what could be real financial humility.. if we’re calling 9.1 million subscribers down from 13 million “humility” these days (hint: we are).   They’ve had to tuck their tail a bit about some other stuff before, but that’s all behind us, and nothing Big Brother Blizz ever did really hurt them much.  Until now.

And OK, to be fair, the meme above isn’t totally on mark because WoW is an old game, Guild Wars 2 is better anyway, mmos are finally progressing, blah blah blah, but look at the likes and dislikes for the announcement World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Preview Trailer.

Something definitely caused some serious ire in the hands of WoW fans to click “dislike” so very very much.  That’s not a “I don’t care about WoW anymore” attitude you’re seeing reflected in 30,000 dislikes, that’s a public denouncement.

To understand what we’re seeing here, let’s back up.

The actual World of Warcraft, the fictional universe the game takes place in, is truly one of the largest fictional creations in history.  Blizzard has been building on this universe for decades, and building on it intensely.  Believe me, I spent a good part of my wow experience in charge of my guild’s Roleplay (directing the story of the guild), a single event could take a few hours to map together, because WoW is SO FREAKING HUGE (second biggest wiki for it in the world, just after wikipedia).  And it’s wonderful.

If there is one thing Blizzard did right with WoW, above all else perhaps, I would give it to the lore and worldbuilding put into the game.  There are countless characters that show up and disappear with unexpected plot twists, powerful emotional stories and relationships spanning different planets, mysteries only hinted at like the orgin of the Old Gods and the Titans, and tragic plotlines unfolded such as that of Arthas, the Lich King.  And every single one of them ties into the others in some way, ever carrying the epic tale of Azeroth forward.  Pardon my language here, but all together, it’s a mindfuck of lore.  Really really good lore (something I’ve written about before!).  And it’s that connectivity that makes it amazing.  It’s that sense of “too much to comprehend”, it’s having multiple perspectives from different factions, its feeling pride and pain for other characters (player and non-player alike), it’s all of that together and more that creates a sense of fictional realism.   

After all that, I guess it really goes without saying, we the players become emotionally attached.  So what the hell happened?

Specifically, something called “Worldbreaking” (it would seem Deathwing had his way after all!) <–that’s a lore joke folks.  You see, before MoP (Mists of Pandaria) was announced, there was tons of speculation about what the next chapter of Azeroth would be.  Would we chase after the Burning Legion again?  After all, we only banished their ruler in the Burning Crusade expansion.  Would we uncover the real mystery of the Titans?  After all, we only glimpsed their power in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.  Would we see the Horde and Alliance succumb to infighting?  After all, the Undead, Dwarves, Trolls, and others come to think of it.. all of them crossed boundaries and dabbled in backstabbery in this last expansion, and we saw many the leader’s stories developed to show their “human sides” consequently.  Or maybe we would explore the Emerald Dream, an alternate universe we’ve known about that’s been central to WoW since the beginning, but a place we’ve never been able to set foot in!  After all, we just stopped Deathwing from breaking the whole world, now would be a perfect time to check on the Dream since it’s supposed to be our back up!  OR-

Wait.

Wait, what?

There’s… a continent on this planet.. we’ve never heard of… at all for the past hundred thousand years..  full of drunk panda monks?  Wasn’t that the race Blizzard used for an April fool’s joke once?  And.. part of said continent is a giant floating turtle.. and wait wait, this peaceful race of pandas.. can join the Horde OR Alliance.. and will thus kill their own kind.. because they need to unite with the other races to.. heal the world.  Even though the other races have turned to all out war.

MoP is literally the great awkward turtle of WoW lore.  And THAT’S why we’re upset.

This universe we’ve become emotionally invested into, whether it was simply “FOR THE [insert chosen faction here]” loyalty most WoW players feel, or a much deeper connection to the grand story of Azeroth, has been rudely pushed aside, and gone south.. to Pandaria (it’s South on the map..)<– More lore jokes!

Note, while we’re here, Guild Wars 2 has it’s own Polar Bear race, and the Devs have even written about the race in depth, because ArenaNet is proving it rocks at worldbuilding (more on this in future posts).  And you know what? The Kodan race is totally badass, no one has a problem with them, and I fully anticipate the Kodan to be a playable race down the road (along wih the Tengu). For a game like WoW, a race of Drunken Panda Monks could totally fly high and proud (we have space goats after all) if they had simply been introduced and implemented differently (not as an April Fool’s joke for one!), as an integrated part of the overarching story that is World of Warcraft.

tl-dr

Powerful worldbuilding is about creating complex connections and relationships in a fictional world.  The player becomes part of those connections, becomes emotionally invested in them, and when those  connections are, well, ignored.. we get upset.  ”Upset” is also an understatement.

p.s.  Watch This

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… fill in the blank for me. But first, I’m going to do it for you.

One of my favorite things about video games (other than playing them) is the industry. Way back in my undergraduate years, I minored in business, with a special concentration in marketing. In my marketing classes, we learned about things like how what shelf a food item is placed on in the grocery store can impact purchasing decisions. (Pro tip: the cheapest items are frequently on the lowest shelf.) So if what makes people buy mayonnaise and potato chips and ice cream interesting, the factors that impact decisions about how people decide what MMOs to play can be endlessly fascinating. Well, at least for a gamer.

I think the argument could be made that for hardcore gamers like myself, a $15/month subscription to play an MMO is not that much of a barrier. Frequently, we spend so much time in our MMO of choice that it really is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment – certainly cheaper than going out to a bar, and even cheaper than your average cable/satellite TV bill. So Bioware’s decision to make Star Wars: The Old Republic free to play is somewhat puzzling to me. The perspective from our friends at Contains Moderate Peril on this issue is useful to consider.

Several bloggers and commenters have noted that F2P is really no more than a free trial, since so many features are limited or unavailable. Perhaps a free trial is useful to find out whether you like a game, but in the long run, if you like the game, you’ll want all the features enabled. If you’re a truly casual gamer who doesn’t care about gear or full access to the Galactic Trade Network, then, seriously… what are you doing in an MMO? You’d be better off playing Angry Birds.

We all know that SWTOR has been a fail in many ways. Many people view it as a single player RPG with a good story line that gives us no reason to stay around at end game. The number of subscribers has dropped consistently since its launch; this decline will certainly continue as annual subscriptions run out. And MMOs revolve so much around community; if your friends aren’t there, why would you stay?

So that’s SWTOR… what else is going on in the market? We have the much-anticipated Guild Wars 2 release on August 28. It will have no subscription fee, but it will use microtransactions. I want to play GW2 because the demo videos I’ve seen look so fun, but I’m less than enthusiastic about microtransactions. The subscription model allows me to play as much as I want, and I don’t have to make decisions about spending money whenever I’m in game. I have to make stressful financial decisions too often in RL, so I don’t want to think about it during my precious gaming time. But I remain hopeful that tl-dr will someday make me rich, at which point I won’t have to think about microtransactions, and then I might even consider paying for some cows to eat in Farmville… just kidding!!

In September, World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion will be released. Some people are hyped about the expansion, thinking it will breathe new life into an MMO that is still widely played, but also aging. I currently play WoW more than any other game, but I also want something new and shiny to be excited about. I’m not sure that pandas will really change my worldview that much. I won’t even roll a panda, just on principle.

SWTOR, GW2, and WoW’s MoP are not the only MMOs in town. You still have your EVE Online, your Secret World, and so on. But what continues to distract me about all these MMOs is that you need to have a lot of people playing one for it to be, as their category states, “massively multiplayer.” With so many MMOs on the market, and with the social features present in FPS games, Playstation games, continuing potential for Elder Scrolls-related games, and so on… is the MMO market big enough for any one of them to be “massive”?

The factors that really influence the direction of this market, in my opinion, center around the reasons why we play MMOs. End-game content, socialization, in-game economy, combat fun… we all play for our own reasons, and I’d conjecture that the combination of reasons is unique to every player. But unless there is a significant community present in your MMO of choice, I don’t think any player will find reasons to stay. You need people to group with, enemies to gank (just kidding… sort of), and chat to troll. It doesn’t matter how good the story line is or how realistic the combat feels. This might be different for single player fans (I know many gamers who don’t always want the interaction; they just want to zone out and blow things up). But an MMO without players is not massive, it’s not multiplayer, and it might as well not be online.

I might even take my position a step further and say that the presence of too many MMOs on the market hurts them all. If we all go to different games, and guilds or friends become fragmented due to whatever gaming preferences, we’ll all become isolated and playing our very own MMO after too long. I’ve heard over and over again in my own research that people continue to go back to WoW not for the game, but for the friends. There was perhaps a time when more people went to WoW because it was unquestionably the best thing around, but as us restless gamers look for games with (hopefully) better interface design, new PvP and PvE challenges, and more realistic interactivity; we’re torn between finding our friends and getting our gaming thrills on.

But this is only my take. What’s your opinion about the short-term future of MMOs? I expect that many of you will have different views on this issue for the same reason that we all make our own choices about our gaming time.

tl-dr

Please, gaming industry: don’t break up the MMO community with too many choices and/or “massive” fails! I’d miss all my friends too much!

Ding! You’ve leveled up! Please see your local librarian for training.

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Today we’re gonna take another trip on the fanboy interstate, and like before, GuildMag will be driving with their fourth Blog Carnival!  ”Five years of waiting for Guild Wars 2” is the topic at hand… five years is a little over one fourth of my existence.

So…

yeaaaaaaahhh.

Naturally I jumped on this opportunity to talk about the greatest game to ever saunter towards existence (you know, cuz it’s not actually released yet and all), but five years ago I was a 7th grader battling my way through the great awkward hell known as middle school.  I wasn’t one of the people who saw the press release from ArenaNet announcing GW2 minutes after it happened singing hallelujah, I wasn’t one of the people that caught sight of it in the corner of their eye on some video game news site.  I wasn’t even a semi-logical functioning adult yet!

Two words: Middle School.  The hair was for a  school play I swear.

(note: the above pic is also why I’m NOT doing the tl-dr artistic redesign (pst pst we still need someone! Email us! Help us!))

I had no clue Guild Wars 2 existed five years back.  Or the original Guild Wars.  Or World of Warcraft.  I think I played Game Cube stuff mostly…

Point is, we’re gonna have to fast forward here a bit if we actually want to talk about Guild Wars 2.  Except that’s exactly what they expect me to do!  (“They” is Jacob, resident slaver around here) So let’s talk about why nearly five years of Guild Wars 2 ignorance makes GW2 even more beautiful.

So where exactly was I five years ago?  My friend MDSRocker (his gamer name) who went to school with me way back when (btw go read his blog, it’s pretty great), reminded me that I was, um, trying to create a “holiday” at the time.  Specifically an “Innocent Victims of War Memorial Day” or “IVM Day” for short. Evidently, I wasn’t exactly a cut and paste kinda kid.  I gave speeches, pinned up flyers, and sent the whole package off to the United Nations with some 300 signatures gathered by my little team and I (here’s the online petition I created from way back when).  Annnnnnnd the UN sent back a thank you note.  It was more than a little discouraging, and when the school year ended momentum for the whole thing kinda fell apart.

Well, subsequently, I got pretty darn depressed.  I know I know, blogging about emotions is so 2011!  But really, the simple fact was I tried really hard to do something I believed in, and I fell short.  13 year old me learned a hard truth; the world isn’t on anyone’s side, and sometimes we still fail no matter how good our intentions.  Two long years later, however, it was World of Warcraft that got me back on my feet.  Two years of banging my head against a wall trying to convince myself to keep trying, but not actually feeling like trying to do anything at all; two years of feeling stuck.  It was WoW that made me resilient, made me finally feel like trying again, and if you don’t believe me go watch this recent TEDTalk by Jane McGonigal.  This is also where I give another big sappy love-you-thank-you to my guild since it was them as much as anything that helped me

That brings us up to about a year and a half ago when everything took another exciting turn; I began to honestly question if I was gay.  I also started to get excited about Guild Wars 2.  Course, they had nothing to do with each other, but they will!  …sorta.. just keep reading.

At this point I was working in the U.S. Congress as a page and had said farewell to WoW, and I believed my future was probably directed down the political path (read this post to see how that plan has changed).  But, frankly, I was desperately trying to convince myself I didn’t have feelings for guys that I was “supposed” to have for girls, how could I aspire to anything great as a gay man (ridiculous I know now), and it just wasn’t at all who I wanted to be, or even who my family wanted me to be.  To derail a bit here, my parents have done an incredible job overcoming that hurtle with me, it was a bit messy at times, yet ultimately, it was another lesson in resilience for all of us.

Allowing myself to accept my sexuality was a matter of understanding that I don’t have to be like anyone else.  Period.  All my life I’ve watched movies and played games where male protagonists and heroes were off trying to save some girl, or fighting alongside some girl, or girls girls girls girls.  Ridiculous as it may seem, Kurt Hummel, the gay kid played by Chris Colffer in Glee (A show that is now truly a foray into painful screenwriting fallen from it’s glory days) was one of the first anythings to make me feel ok for how I felt, because of how widely beloved the character became, how accepted.

I’ve talked before about the importance of sexual diversity in games, but here it is again: if gay is ever going to be normal, not better, not worse, but truly normal, we need it to exist in media as normal.  Media inspires and propagates ideas for better or worse.  When I heard that the GW2 race of Sylvari have no judgement on sexuality, that they simply love whomever they love, and that ArenaNet deliberately didn’t try to prop up the issue and kept it normal, I fell in love with the game and the company making it.  An entire society that puts less emphasis on sexuality than they do hair color, to be explored in a world filled with millions of real people; that’s some powerful stuff.

It hasn’t even been a full year since I really came out, so it feels kinda strange reflecting on it, along with all the other stuff I talked about.  But here I am, all “grown up”-ish, right next to Guild Wars 2.  My life is really incredible at this point, and I’m wildly thankful for all parts of it, and everything yet to come.  I haven’t really talked a whole lot about all the parts that make GW2 great here, but I don’t think that’s the point.  More and more about GW2 has been revealed over the last few years, and really I feel kinda similar about myself. Sure it’s kinda silly, but that’s what “Five Years of Waiting For Guild Wars 2″ has been for me; learning more about who “me” is too.

tl-dr

I know first hand the power of video games, MMOs in particular for me, and we’re about to witness the next great step in MMO history to be released later this month.  I’m ready to set foot in an epic world full of epic people again, and grow even more as a person with it.

Ding! You’ve Leveled Up! Please see your local librarian for training.

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Henry Feng is a PhD student from the Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Sydney. He is currently investigating the impact of video game play on adolescent social well-being and its relationship with resilience. Being an avid gamer himself, he has a deep interest in all things game-related. The article below is strictly the author’s opinion.

Since release, Diablo 3 has had its share of acclaim and criticisms. With the game generating many hot topics, ranging from class balance to account security, the most persistent one is that of the ingame economy. At its core, Diablo 3 is a game that centres on the acquisition of items to improve ones’ game character(s). With this in mind, Blizzard (the game developer) has incorporated a Gold Auction House (GAH), and very recently, the Real Money Auction House (RMAH) system to facilitate trading of said items.

This all sounds great until the market is compromised by problems such as trading bugs, item duplication, gold farmers etc… and the list goes on. Throw real money into the mix and everything gets out of hand quite quickly. The purpose of this article is to highlight and explain some of these issues, as well as how they have/will impact Diablo 3’s success in the long run. Since this is such an immense topic, I will only cover some of the main points. The easiest way to grasp the relevance of each point is to apply each one to the adage of ‘99% of wealth owned by the top 1%’, whereas in this case it is 99% (of normal players) vs. the 1% (exploiters).

Let us begin with the self-evident problem of item duplication (AKA duping), which was first reported on the Asian servers. Unfortunately, the duping bug was also replicable with gold. Since its discovery, prices on the market have inflated to mindboggling numbers. Simply put, the average player could not afford anything. To paint a rough picture of the scope of the problem, an average player with a max level character in an endgame setting is able to legitimately and comfortably obtain approximately 50,000 gold/hour; 200,000 gold/hour if they applied themselves (this does not factor in the sale of items found along the way). The advent of duping saw prices soar into the hundreds of millions overnight – I will let you do the math with that one!

Similar to duping, the farming of unintended areas of the game (briefly touched upon in one of my comments here) also contributed to hyperinflation of items as well as gold; both were easily obtained at an unintended rate. Essentially, the market prices reflected the impact of the exploiters rather than the capabilities of the average player. The markets were no longer relevant to anyone who was not exploiting the game in some form. This is a precarious situation because some players who felt ‘cheated’ will in turn become cheaters themselves to level the playing field. The existence of sites focused around exploiting the game also exacerbates the problem. The age-old ‘gold farmer’ villains also make a return in Diablo 3. The potential impact is best understood from this interview with a real gold farmer.

At this point, it is worth noting that Diablo 1 and 2 allowed players the option to play offline as a pure single-player experience. Diablo 3 took a step away from its predecessors; you could still play by yourself, you just needed to be online at the same time. Blizzard’s justification for this necessity was that of improving game security, minimising hacks, exploits etc… Much to Blizzard’s chagrin, this promise quickly became a double whammy; ticking off the single player community and failing players at large with the continued existence of exploits.

To be fair, Blizzard has taken steps in addressing these game-breaking issues, ranging from impromptu/unannounced server shutdowns to huge waves of bans to curb the impact of exploiters. Despite these measures, some exploiters have escaped unscathed (for the meantime) and are reaping the rewards with their unfairly obtained wealth. This is not surprising, considering that Blizzard has a policy of banning in waves rather than case-by-case incidences as they appear.

What is perplexing is why Blizzard chose to roll out the RMAH this quickly after the game’s release despite the instability witnessed on the GAH market (and game in general). One would think it wise to rectify the situation and actually ensure everything is secure, stable, and working as intended before implementing any system involving real money. But then again, maybe it is not that surprising, but I digress …

It is ironic that Diablo 3 is a game about acquiring items, which inevitably requires some form of farming/grinding, yet everything that is farmable has been nerfed (e.g. Siegebreaker runs, Azmodan runs, Zoltan Kulle runs, Maghda runs etc). The fact of the matter is that a path of least resistance is always going to exist. People are going to pursue this out of human nature, yet Blizzard appears to be indiscriminantly nerfing every such path that pops up, as if there is an endpoint to it all. In the wake of dealing with exploiters, it is as if Blizzard has gotten carried away in their zeal and forgotten about the impact on the 99% of honest players (whether it be altering loot-tables, lowering item drop-rates, etc.).

Lastly, the latest topic adding to the Diablo 3 bonfire of complaints is that of retroactively nerfing items. Specifically, this issue relates to the item attribute of ‘increased attack speed’ (IAS). Prior to patch 1.03, players had realised that IAS was the single most important stat in improving a character’s damage output (a very important stat considering the whole point of the game is to kill monsters!). Blizzard has acknowledged the issue and is looking into possible solutions:

… we’ve also decided we need to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed overall. Many players have commented that Increased Attack Speed is such a dominant stat they feel it’s required. While we don’t have an issue with there being important stats … We want there to be options and considerations for how you gear up, and one uber trump-everything stat can really work against choice and options.

While I do agree that stats need to be adjusted in order to balance the game and ensure it is fun, a huge obstacle standing in the way of any solution is that of the RMAH (not to mention why it was not better tested during beta). What will become of players who had invested time/gold/real money into obtaining items with IAS? Needless to say, this is dangerous ground that Blizzard is treading on. As of now (19/6/12 ed note: June 16, 2012) the official forums are flooded with threads complaining about the incoming nerf. Unsurprisingly, the announced IAS nerf has seen many players desperately selling all IAS items they currently own (kind of like the stock market!). It feels like an exercise in futility on Blizzard’s part as players are already speculating on the next most valuable item stat. Will this next best stat be nerfed, too? It is difficult to see where Blizzard draws the line.

The following examples further highlight the incomplete nature of Diablo 3, the instability of its economy and the effects of its poor implementation: France is threatening Blizzard with legal action, while Korea is  creating legislation, in light of Diablo 3, that criminalises ‘farming’ altogether. There is even some word on the official forums of class action lawsuits in the works. Indeed, the effects of a poorly implemented game are far-reaching, especially when it involves real money.

As of now, Diablo 3 leaves a lot to be desired for many players, especially when you consider it was in the making for 11 years. Are quality Blizzard games a thing of the past?

tl-dr

The Diablo 3 economy is far from stable, the player-base is beyond irate, and there does not appear to be an end to the mayhem in sight. Real money can make things messy; let’s hope Blizzard can clean it up.

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