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Meghan Ralph is an Intuitive Healer and Alchemist and runs Soular Radiant in Denver; giving readings, guidance, and remedies to many. Meghan loves gaming as a form of meditation and relaxation, and even recommends it for healing.

What is it about fall that makes me want to RPG?

I’m serious! I won’t touch my system for MONTHS, but as soon as the leaves start falling, I crave it like a crackhead. Long Saturdays snuggled under the blankets with a controller in my hand.

I’ll watch leaves falling outside the window, and be reminded of that town in Fable where the leaves are falling, and I can almost hear the music. Or I’ll see the snow and remember I last left off on that frickin ice planet in Mass Effect and I want to kick it’s ass!

And yet I deprive myself!

Fall, for me, and many I’ve spoken to, comes with a great burst of energy. We know that the change is coming! Cold weather, short days, how will we get anything done?! So there is a rush to do, to gather, and to fix before you won’t be able to. Suddenly, everything around you looks wrong, feels wrong, and needs to change.

I had the impulse to paint my furniture and redecorate my bathroom.

This is why falling into gaming is so healthy. Generally, these impulses come because they have been ground into us through the centuries, but also with stories and fables as a kid. I remember one cartoon about the grasshopper that partied during the harvest and so had nothing left during the winter months and nearly died until some overachieving ants let him bunk with them. This is not the case these days. We don’t need to rush to stock up and store; most grocery stores are open 24 hours. We don’t need to tackle massive projects; there will be time for that.

I’m not saying ignore responsibility. Pay your bills and clean your room, people! But save the major projects for the months where you are pretty much stuck inside and about to go stir crazy.

There is a slowing down that occurs naturally after the holiday season. It gets dark earlier, it’s colder out, being up and active isn’t as easy as it was in the warmer months. These changes function as a built in excuse against productivity. Is this why more games tend to be released in the colder months? Smart move, Game Companies!

Til then, grab a controller and take a load off. Stock up on herbs, practice potions, and level up those combat skills! But don’t bust your chops to conquer too much in the “real world”. Otherwise you’ll wake up in a month and wonder why everything in your bathroom is purple…

tl-dr

When the leaves and snow are falling, fall into some game time. Relax and level up a few skills before the boss level of Holiday time rears it’s ugly head.

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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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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.

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Last week we had James Portnow from the Extra Credits team (also CEO of Rainmaker Games) answer some questions for us, but, because he actually answered them thoughtfully and constructively (who knew right?!), we split the Q&A into two parts, and today we present the second half!  Here’s a link to the first half if you missed it, with topics such as gamified education and thoughts on the games industry.  So without further ado, sit back, take a breather from fanboying (or fangirling) over the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend, and enjoy a little more Extra Credity goodness!

Q:  How about gamifying government? Voting, in terms of game design, is a pretty poor incentive, as demonstrated by the poor U.S. voter turnout. Do you think game concepts could be applied to even the most central parts of our society, such as the workings of democracy?

A:  Eh, I really shouldn’t comment here. I feel as though the incentive structure and the engagement curve on modern politics has been purposely manipulated to make certain groups of people feel disenfranchised. I know it’s a little bit of my conspiranoia but I really do feel as though I can see how modern politics (especially through some of the modern news casting) has taken the engaging sections of politics and intentionally flipped the engagement curve for specific subsets of people through messaging.

If you live in the US your thought should be “I get to help make decisions for the most powerful, most influential country in the world”, that’s awesome and exciting – and it’s what you’re actually doing – but for many people it’s come to be “my vote doesn’t matter”, even though that’s scientifically, demonstrably, not true.

Q:  Here’s a challenge question: what is your favorite and most beloved game narrative? Why did that one win out?

A:  If you have a favorite game narrative you haven’t played enough games ; )

Q:  On a related note, writing the narrative to a game is very different from writing a regular script or story, but can be equally touching or provoking. How long do you think it will be before games will be critically acclaimed for their depth and meaning on the same level as great literature or film?

A:  I think we’ll be a little behind graphic novels. Pop culture is starting to accept the validity of sequential art as a medium I’m not sure we’ll be that far off (if I had to take a safe wager I’d say within the decade).

Q:  On the story train of thought: do you think we’ll ever see a big return of deep central characters and character development in the industry from Japanese RPG developers? Or is the role of creating powerful characters and central story at risk compared to Western RPG popularity? Could we see a new genre of story driven games delivered in more modern ways than most current JRPGs offer?

A:  Alright, here I’m going to sound like a git, but there is simply no way that you’re going to argue to me that the RPG with a strong centralized story is a thing of the past: the real problem is simply that of late (with some notable exceptions) Japanese developers have just been missing the mark. Or, I’ll be more blunt: they’ve been being terrible at the narrative part of a narrative driven genre. This in no way means that the genre has a failing, only that people haven’t been executing on it well.

In some ways it is akin to the Japanese anime industry. When the anime industry finally got to the point where they had the budgets the training and the technology to tell the stories they wanted to tell they were able to deliver some remarkable works, and those works were even considered mainstream; unfortunately after those works became hugely successful they were then seen as templates rather than freestanding works and so the superficial elements were copied over and over without any real understanding of the soul of the work.

That coupled with a move away from investing in narrative to an investment in high end graphics has kept the JRPG industry (in general, again with clear exceptions) from delivering the level of narrative the genre demands.

Q:  What are your thoughts on what distinguishes “casual gamers” from “hardcore gamers”? What about “casual games” v.s. “hardcore games”?

Opinion.

Q: Finally, is there any significance to your goatee? It’s a pretty awesome one.

A:  Bwahahaha…When I bite my lower lip I can make it look like a porcupine…which my nieces love.

There you have it!  Again, big thanks from all of us at tl-dr to James for giving us his time.  Although I will note he didn’t really answer the last question, which can only mean there’s a huge conspiracy surrounding Mr. Portnow’s facial hair.   Also, Jacob is gonna kill me for not getting an elaboration on the hardcore question, though thankfully, Diane and I are forming an Anti-abuse tl-dr union for just such dangers.  Say no to blogger abuse!

Now go watch some Extra Credits!

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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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I’m going to hop on the bandwagon because I feel like I have something important to add to the conversation.

I haven’t enjoyed a single player RPG game on a regular basis since I was…14? So, about ::mumblecough:: years ago.

But I love playing MMOs as a single player experience. Summed up by Azuriel:

But there is nothing worse than getting stranded 2/3rds of the way through an otherwise good story with gameplay that has ran out of steam. MMO combat systems, even the ones that feel “off,” convey a depth far beyond the average RPG. They have to.

I think I played WoW almost exclusively as a single player experience, with the odd group here and there (mainly through Vanilla). But that wasn’t why I did it. Sure, I played the game as a single player game, but I did it because of what I could be in the community. High level. Powerful. A hero. Great at pvp. The first [something] to do [something]. Most of the times I got frustrated with MMOs because I wanted to have the multiplayer RPG experience, but I didn’t want to deal with the other people, because their goals/objectives/desires did not mesh with mine. This is almost a negative “Show & Tell” loop, as Azuriel points out.

Show & Tell can be (and has been) implemented in bad ways. I am not a huge fan of arbitrary Achievements, for example, and I think focusing on the latest gear rewards is a bit crass. Transmog and costume options, on the other hand, are much better. Being able to invite you in to see my living room skull pit in Skyrim?

166 Human skulls. All legitimately obtained, I might add.

Would have been epic. The mere possibility of being able to eventually post the above screenshot, and having someone able to appreciate it on some level somewhere, generated dozens of hours of additional gameplay. In a single-player game. MMOs generate gameplay in this fashion all the time, of course, and I am here to confirm that it works for single-player games too. And, by extension, MMOs that are played as single-player games.

Now, it’s different. All of that remains, but I finally realized the joy I got from playing MMOs (or the joy I WANTED from playing MMOs) was not in achieving the end goal, or even playing the game, it was being able to play the game in the way that I wanted with other people who wanted to play the same way.

Like creating one of the most powerful characters I can. I play MMOs instead of FPSs because of the depth and complexity that can be added to the game. It’s not just a canned environment of playing round after round. It’s growth and evolution.

Syp has my back:

It’s this complexity and depth that makes sticking with a character for a long journey fun and rewarding.  It’s why these characters often feel more alive to us than those of long-dead games that existed for a brief flash.  It’s why any time a new game is announced, the first thing I want to know is just how much I can customize and tweak when it comes to my character.

I would also add to this the lore and non-game character developments that go into creating a character. The character becomes a piece of the player, and vice versa. Hence why I can get very attached to names, as many others can.

So I have this wonderful character that I have created. It is dear to me. But, what does that matter if I cannot actually use this character for what I would like?

That’s where I leave a game. I create a wonderful character within a confined space of a game, and then stop playing never to see the character again because there is no longer anything for me to do once that character is as powerful as it can be.

I think MMOs have figured this out. They took the single player RPG, let people create their hugely powerful character, and at the end of that story arc they added “end-game content.” PvP, Raiding, gear grinds, vanity pets, mounts etc. Players now had something to do with their hugely powerful characters. Their characters could be paraded around with other powerful characters, and they could kill more powerful characters (human or NPC) to establish their dominance.

But now I’m bored again.

The current trend of what to do with the “end game” in MMOs is a hot topic right now, and I don’t think anyone has any definite answers.

I can tell you what the wrong answer is:

Ze Grind! I Goez nowhere!

The grind. The skinner box. Giving me something shiny for pushing a button.

I don’t want that anymore. I can easily get the social aspect, and the concept of leveling a powerful character, without grinding, can’t I?

Give me the choice of grinding if I want. Don’t make it a necessary time sink. I want to play the game (with my friends), and be powerful. I don’t want to kill ten rats after I just spent 20 minutes killing rats.

Competition and Community

Those are the key aspects, and that is what motivates me to play any game I pick up.

To quote Keen:

What makes MMO’s any good at all are the multiplayer elements.  Take those away and what are you left with? A game worse than the one you could have made if you actually made a single-player  RPG.

I wish to play a single player RPG to become powerful. I want to do it along side others. As friends and competitors.

I wish to build a team and have that team be a close knit community. Have it be truly multiplayer.

I wish to take that team and compete against other teams. Or join up with other teams to create a giant team and compete against the other teams.

Truly make the MMO a world that is there to explore and participate in. Multiple times. Over and over. I think WoW did this, but it has moved away from the world aspect to a focus on collection and grinding of pets and gear (LFR, cross realm dungeons, cross realm bgs…but that’s a whole different discussion)

Basically it boils down to:

Grinding bad.

So give me everything MMOs have been trying to give, but stop treating the players like they don’t understand the mechanics of what’s going on.

That’s the dream of an MMO for me. Give me a platform, a wide open space of challenges to be overcome with my friends. Let the challenge be to build an impenetrable base. Then have some people from another server come around and try and take it down. Then they do, and we have failed, and then we build it again, and better. Or we go and take down their base this time.

tl-dr

Stop making me grind. And give me a single player RPG experience that I can play with my friends, against my friends, and against different communities.

The Frankenstein of MMOs!

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Todd has worked in the games industry for quite a long time, starting as a Beta Tester waaay back in the olden days of 1996. He then moved on to Silicon Knights where he was a Designer and a Lead Designer working on projects such as Eternal Darkness, Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, and early production of Too Human, and has also been a Senior Producer on various projects for the Nintendo Wii and DS platforms. Currently he is playing Black Sabbath songs backwards to see if any of them make him go “light side” in Star Wars: The Old Republic and so far … no, none of them have.

I can’t count the number of times someone, in a social situation, has made that comment to me when I would tell them make I make games for a living. Yes, making video games can be fun, but it is also a business … BIG business. It’s not all fun and games when you are working in an industry that generates $1.7 Billion in Canada and $25 billion in the U.S. . That’s a lot of money, so you can imagine why game companies can be fun to work at, but also take things very seriously.

Other than playing the game you are working on, there are many other tasks that are required to get the game from concept to completion … and I don’t mean fragging your co-workers (Although that can be fun at times). One important task that is required is research. Regardless of whether you are doing a small mobile game or a major AAA console game, you still have to do some degree of research.

TARGET AUDIENCE

One of the initial things that need to be researched is to determine who your target audience is. Often you are creating a client’s vision of the game instead of what you want to make, so your idea of beheading zombies might not be appropriate if the client’s target audience is 6-12 year olds.

Research into your target audience is as simple as looking at competitive products such as reviews, trailers, and gameplay footage. The best way is to actually play through some of the competitive products on the market that are in the same age group. Bet you never thought all that time becoming a champion Halo player would have you end up playing Barbie’s next adventure and Mickey’s clubhouse, did you?  Playing games from competing developers is the best form of research for your current project.

REALISM

Now you are ready to research the realism of your project. Whether you plan a cartoonish or ultra realistic look, you still need to research the overall art direction of the game and create a series of concepts that define the look that best fits the feel and time period you want to achieve. A cartoony game such as “Castle Crashers” still shows time period accuracy where the knights have cylindrical helmets and accurate weapons (e.g. claymore, lance). Yes, the game has weapons that are more humourous such as an ‘apple peeler’ weapon, but this still fits into the whimsical overall feel of the game. A game like this doesn’t get into minute details, so research for this is as simple as going to the library to look through historical books or looking up information on the internet.

When ultra realistic games are researched, there is much more attention to detail. Games like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed had an enormous amount of research done to ensure the accuracy in the time period. The “Assassin’s Creed” series has been researched in the areas of fashion, architecture, technology, and social/political/religious contexts. When Ubisoft was making the game they actually sent people to Rome to do more intricate research into the layout of the city, and they also had an Historian working with them to go over historical accuracy. What you see in the game is what Rome was like in that time period. Of course, the developers take some liberties in order to generate interest in the game and to accommodate gameplay elements.

These are examples of the architectural research that was done for “Assassin’s Creed II”.

Left: in-game image … Right: actual building

Games in the “Call of Duty” series required research into World War 2 technology, military uniforms, weapons, geography, politics, and tactics to ensure its accuracy in depicting events from WWII, such as the D-Day invasion. In their most recent games, the developer met and worked with U.S. Marines to get pictures of current equipment that they use, witnessing equipment (like tanks) in use to see how they operate and react, and going through breaching operations.

In games like these, if players take the time to look around a bit and absorb all this information, they can learn a lot about the Crusades and Renaissance periods and about the happenings during World War events.

GAMEPLAY

No I am not going to forget about gameplay. I believe the best research that can be done for gameplay is to look at the existing research done for each scenario. Often, gameplay ideas come from looking at your environment as well as art assets that have been created. I was working on Eternal Darkness when the design team was brainstorming how to incorporate a chapter page for the player to find. I noticed we had a stained glass window in the level and suggested we incorporate into the stained glass. It would take too much work (at the time) to do that, so we decided to just make the glass breakable and have it hiding behind the window. So simply researching through your own project can produce gameplay ideas. Research other games to get ideas, and don’t stick to the same genre that you are working on. Good designers play various genres because you never know when an idea from one genre can translate into another.

TAKE TIME TO LOOK AROUND

So next time you decide to jump into a game because you have the itch to frag and gib a few newbies, take a few moments to do your own research and have a look around at the environment and in your inventory. All the research that was done to create many of the games we play is accurate to the smallest detail and can really teach a lot about what society was like in that particular time period. Some may be saying, “I want to kill some online players! I don’t want to waste time looking around!” But if you think about the fact that Game Designers can be very devious (I know I was), and they like to hide things around the game that blend in with the environment which are actually useable items you can take advantage of. Think of the look in your opponent’s eyes when you beat them using something they didn’t expect. All because you did a little research.

 tl;dr

Explore, have a look around … you never know what you will discover.

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

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Three years ago, if someone had told me that I would be a World of Warcraft roleplay leader down the road, I would have laughed.  I would have laughed because, back then, I held the same standard view most outsiders to video games and roleplay have: that roleplay is a strange activity that strange people do to fulfill their strange fantasy needs.  And I’d never tried it, nor did I ever intend to!  It’s just way too “out there.”

This, my friends, is what I call “Roleplay Phobia”, and I was guilty of it.  Many, many people are; gamers and non-gamers alike.

For anyone completely unaware of what Roleplaying is, in its most broad defining sense, it is the act of pretending to be one’s character.  Roleplaying (RP for short) has a lot of forms, everything from LARPing (Live Action Role Play), to tabletop RP such as in Dungeons & Dragons, to video game RP, all of which have social stigma surrounding them, a stigma that is completely and utterly wrong.

Nonetheless, I had a bad case of unwarranted Roleplay Phobia; I would see people LARPing at an anime convention and automatically assume something about them, and I didn’t think much better of people doing it in games, though I had never even really seen it.  My “social rules” simply dictated that it’s not what people are “supposed” to do, because it was “weird”, regardless of the fact that they were having fun, and not affecting me in any way, and regardless of the fact I myself was not a terribly conventional kid in many ways.

So what happened?

Well, first I started playing World of Warcraft.  Mind you, this was before I met my current guild Vanguard Gaming, I was simply roaming the world of Azeroth without the slightest inclination to RP.  My character, an elven rogue, was passing through a small town to gather quests, and as I walked into a small inn I unwittingly found ten or so other characters discussing their plan to poison a nearby dwarven water source.  They were all speaking 100% in character (IC), some drunkenly, some with a bit of a “ye olde english” lilt, and all contributing to a complex and interesting story they were making up on the spot.

As I had walked into the small building, I had hit my stealth spell to go invisible, which is the proper reaction for a rogue caught off guard by something disturbing.  Yet, from my hidden position, I continued to watch the conversation with piqued interest, simply because for all my judging, I had never really watched RP.  Then, perhaps out of raw, un-pressured curiosity, I did the unthinkable; I un-stealthed.  I had my character greet the others warily, and started asking a few questions as I idly walked over to the tavern bar for a drink.  The up-to-no-good group went on the defensive suspecting me a spy, but I convinced them I could be trusted, and I later left the inn belonging to an RP guild that now intended to use me as a pawn for their evil deeds.

It felt epic!  We, a small group of characters, had just created the beginning of a completely awesome story.  Better than a story; a narrative.  A fictional event only possible because of all the different aspects of our characters coming together at that time and place.  My character’s emotional depth and subsequent actions would affect not only my story, but the story of others, and vise versa for their characters as well!  And it suddenly hit me that this epic feeling was roleplaying, which I had previously stuck my nose up at, and rudely dismissed.

Since then, I joined my current guild, and hesitantly volunteered to take on some of the story-crafting responsibility for the guild’s RP events.  I ended up a RP administrator paving the narrative flow of those stories!  I could (and will in the future!) talk about this aspect of RP alone, the part that involves crafting roleplay; the characters, the story, and all the elements that go into this improvisational imaginative story telling medium.   But right now I just want to address the stigma around roleplay, and why it is so so so so so dumb.

Fantasy roleplay lets the player express their self beyond the limiting parameters of the game.  Sure, WoW is an MMORPG (*cough* Role Playing Game *cough*), but it’s only called that because it lets players express themselves by choosing what they look like, what skills they use, and what quests they do.  The game provides no emotional depth to the player’s character whatsoever, as is the case with most western RPGs simply because they often trade a sense of “immersion”; the feeling that the player is existing in an alternate world, for the ability to tell the player’s own unique story. Some games have moved towards giving the player some more thoughtful, self-defining power, but the only way to really expand fully on who a character is, without the game telling you who you are (see: JRPGs) is through roleplay.

In player-created roleplay, the player gains an active role in who their character really is, who they are fighting for, what they love and hate, who they betray and save.  It is a compelling, exciting, and captivating story.  And, it’s spontaneous and unscripted because each character is played by a real person.  It’s your favorite improv TV show like “Whose line is it anyway” but filled with every aspect of creative force; comedy and drama alike, and you, the player, are the one on stage!  This is why roleplay should be celebrated!  Not stereotyped, ridiculed, or even disdained.  Roleplay is an artistic expression; it can be complex or completely gooftastic, but it is always imaginative and freeing as people shape their experience together.  You create something totally new every time you participate, something that can never again be experienced in exactly the same way.

tl-dr

Roleplay isn’t weird, it’s misunderstood.  It’s often judged as a social oddity, when in reality it’s both incredibly socially engaging, and a fantastically compelling way to bring a fictional world to life.

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

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