The MMO Notebook

Name any massively multiplayer online game and you will find discussion after discussion about the “end game.”  The end game, for those who have never reached it, is that mythical time when your character has reached the maximum level and doing normal adventuring and questing no longer advances you.  To advance, or grow stronger, you and your guild must begin raiding the most difficult encounters in the game.  Many times they include the toughest foes found in the game, which leads to you consuming huge amounts of hours to defeat them.

Many players consider the end game to be the place to aspire to.  Once there, you defeat big and tough monsters and get rewarded very well with very powerful loot.  The accomplishment felt at completing such an endeavor is great and it feels like you have really accomplished something big.  The problem with this is that in many games you must be at or near maximum level to do these things.  You may be required to have special gear or attributes before you are allowed to join others in attempting the raid.  The end game can be extremely exclusionary.

Why can’t there be end game content at lower levels?  In most games, if you reach the end of level 10, all there is to do is continue on the adventuring path.  Instead, I would like to see a dungeon that requires a force of level 10 players to crawl down into the depths and slay a minor dragon.  I’m not talking about single group content, I’m talking about a full-on raid of low-level players.  Do this every 10 levels and you have one heck of an experience as you level up.  It also prepares new players for raiding at higher levels.

Of course, you must make the dungeon encounter interesting, fun, and in the end, very rewarding. Make the loot the best of what they can acquire at that level range.  Make the experience gained worth the effort expended.  Instead of making a player wait until level 50 to experience the thrill of slaying a dragon, show them early on what it really means to raid a dungeon and come out victorious.  All grand battle stories need not come from maximum level zones.

–Wolfen

Here is a picture I snapped while running around Vanguard.  Click the image for actual size.

I decided to head over to Lotus Hold, which is southeast of Nakai Dojo.  Nao Tak said I should go there and find a man named Bautali.  It seems they need some help over there.  On the way over, I found a Pegasus Trainer just west of Lotus Hold who will rent you a flying pegasus at the rate of 25 copper for five minutes.  I also found a Riftway right next to Lotus Hold.

I found Bautali inside the Hold and he had a bunch of quests to give.  Standing next to him is Hai Tang who also has many quests to hand out.  I picked a few from Bautali and got started on them.  I had to go kill a bunch of tigers, ostra’s, varana’s, and others.  The varana and ostra were easy to find, but just like back in the starting areas, the tigers were extremely rare.  I got so tired of running around looking for the tigers that I put that one on hold and worked on some other quests.

Located on the beach which is down the hill from Lotus Hold is a bunch of burned out houses that the orcs have taken over.  The quest Orc Assault: Martok Deadbringer wanted me to go kill a few of the Deadbringers, so down to the beach I went.  The beach is crawling with orcs, so it was easy to quickly find what I needed.  The quest netted me 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

Back at Lotus Hold, I discovered that the stress and fear of constant orc attacks have caused some of the villagers to go crazy.  Some guy named Mung decided to take a group of them away from Lotus Hold to find some other place to live.  It seems that the crazed villagers took Tao’s Idol of Focus with them when they left and they didn’t ask permission to do so.  I was tasked with getting the idol back.

The crazed villagers are found up on a high hill that is a ways south of the Nakai Dojo.  They stand close to each other, so I had to use Nature’s Calm in order to pull a single.  The very first one I pulled had the idol.  Nice luck.  Returning the idol to Tao resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

I then started a quest that tasked me with retrieving some treasure boxes that the orcs had stolen from Lotus Hold.  These boxes are located around the burned out houses down on the beach.  I had to clear the way of orcs in order to get to some of them, but I also found that I could sneak in behind the houses and get to some of the treasure boxes with minimal combat.  There is a wooden wall behind the houses that has gaps in it and I found a couple gaps that I could squeeze through.

I ran back to Lotus Hold and turned in the treasure box quest and the kill animals quests.  They all gave about a silver each and 3220 experience points each.  I dinged level 16 while doing these quests and here is a list of spells that my Druid received:

- Barbwood Talisman III: AC 60, HP 120, 17 damage shield

- Wild Growth I: 935 to 986 damage over 24 seconds

- Solar Flare II: 297 to 319 fire damage & 107 to 118 over 4 seconds

- Restore II: 503 point heal

- Summon Earth Elemental II: Summons a pet for 3 minutes

- Quelling Wind I:  Lowers hate by 3%

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things that can make an MMO truly great is the community that builds up around and in the game.  If game developers can make it so that players want to communicate with each other, and make it very easy to do, then you add an additional draw that keeps people coming back for more.

There is not a single game out there that has it right.  That is not to say that some don’t try, but their attempts have been half ass and weak.  You will see announcements from companies stating that they care about player-run events and that they fully support them, but those good wishes disappear after a couple of weeks and things fall back down to the status quo.

Now Sony has decided to help support player-run events.  This comes about 10 years too late, but what can you do?  I saw this post from Massively, which points to the official announcement, that tells players to run more events and they will come up with more ways to support them.  This probably sounds great to guilds who like to do such things, but I have no doubt that just like in the past, these things will fade away with nothing of substance coming from the game developers.

Speaking of events, some of the neatest moments in my Everquest career was participating in GM run events.  Some of them that followed the lore and made sense game-wise were great and got people talking.  The problem was that the GM events were few and far between, and just like you would expect, eventually stopped altogether.  GM run events are so rare these days that I wonder if they happen at all.  It is a shame because they added flavor to the game and a neat change to the standard day to day MMO grind.

Giving the players some variety gets them enthused about the game.  GM and player-run events create the sense of a living game world where neat things can happen at any moment.  If Joe MaxLevel is running through the newbie yard on auto-run while watching television, and he suddenly gets attacked by a 100 foot tall rooster who shoots laser beams out its eyes, you can be damn sure that word will spread quickly and draw many players into the fun.  It will create buzz that will keep people talking about the event and they will look forward to the next one.  If the developers follow through with a series of them, ane the players keep talking about it, then you have created something special.

Look on any online gaming message board and you will always find at least one thread about how good or bad instancing is.  Some players prefer lots of instancing while others would rather play in a world full of static content.  Each style of game has its merits, but I am here to say that both styles suck.

I started my online gaming career in Ultima Online, but Everquest was the game that really hooked me.  EQ had no instancing at all when it launched.  In fact, I don’t think instancing had been invented yet in any form.  In my opinion, this is what made EQ so great.  If you wanted to go adventure in Lower Guk, you had to go to the same zone as every other player.  You didn’t have the entire zone to yourself.  You had no choice but to interact with other players.  This allowed for the making of friendships (and enemies) that lasted for years.  The social and guild drama brought on by no instancing made the community unique and more aware of itself.

The downside of static content is that zones can get overcrowded.  You may be relegated to camping one small area for hours at a time because the zone is full.  Sometimes people would start lists and you had to wait your turn before getting a group.  Doing that, however, caused even more socialization and communication between players.  It also pissed off a great many players.

The addition of instancing greatly changed the social dynamic of online gaming.  If you want to go crawl a popular dungeon you simply went to the zone and entered your very own instance, where the only people in it are your group or guild.  You have run of the place to do exactly as you wish for as long as you wish with no interference from anyone.  This naturally speeds up progression and ease of advancement.  It also prevents the waiting in line for a spot in the zone.

The downside of instancing is that it removes much of the player socialization that you see in non-instanced games.  Players, for the most part, stay within their guilds and rarely to speak to non-guild members.  I found this to be especially true in World of Warcraft.  Unless I was in a group or a guild, I would have sworn that every player was deaf and mute.  It was also much more difficult to find long lasting friendships in games like these.  Most everyone stayed to him or herself because they could. Reliance on others is at a minimum.  I think this greatly diminishes the social possibilities in a game.

So both have good and bad points to them.  Everquest is the greatest example of a game with static content (although later updates added instancing), while World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and others go the instancing route.  As much as I prefer static content, I know that we will never see a full static content game again.  Humans, as a whole, are incredibly lazy, and games that utilize instancing will always draw more customers.  The games are easier, you don’t have to interact with others as often, and let’s face it, most players think everyone else sucks.

For good or ill, instancing is here to stay.  Any game that uses only static content will fail miserably.  There will not be any going back to the good ol’ days where we walked uphill, both ways, with 1000ms lag, to the zone of our choice.

Did I say that Lieutenant Oda was a prick?  Yeah, well, I absolutely meant it.  After insulting my prowess, he then gives me a new quest that frustrated me to no end.  I don’t think I will ever forgive him.

The quest is called the Short Handed Nakai.  It seems that his army is so busy that they allowed some orcs to steal some supply crates.  He wants me to go recover three of the crates.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, there is one little problem.  The quest text makes no mention at all as to where I must go to find the crates.  None at all.  This is actually the first quest I have found that does this.

I wasted 2 HOURS of my life looking for those damn crates.  I ran down the road all the way to Lotus Hold and found none.  I searched every inch of Thrakos Island (which is full of orcs) and found none.  I searched and searched with no luck.  I even asked in region chat and had no luck.

I finally had to break down and visit the VG Curse website to find the answer.  I searched the database and a commenter gave me the clue I needed.  If you ever need to do the Short Handed Nakai quest, here is what you need to know:  You will find the orcs and crates by traveling south of the Nakai Dojo.  They will be on and near the beach in that area.

I can’t tell if it is bad game design or if I am just a dumbass.  I think it is the former, while I would imagine that most of you readers would think the latter.

Anyway, I had to return the crates to Commander Kato.  My reward was 2788 experience and 1 silver, 30 copper in coin.  Kato then gives me the Kill The Coward quest.  This is a group quest that requires you to go kill the traitor Hanji Kotoawa.

Here is a picture of me after trying out the Wolf Shape spell.

A wedding at the Spires in North Karana.

After completing The Menace Grows, Ju Ming gives me one last task to perform.  This one is called The Head of the Beast.  I am to go find gremlin Augurs and wrest something called a Pulsating Portal Shard from their grubby little claws.  I must obtain enough shards to combine them into an Orb of Calling.  This Orb will summon the Kojuko General who, not surprisingly, needs killed.

As I mentioned in my last post, if you keep going along the coast, you’ll find more and tougher types of gremlins.  So, I ran past the first two camps that I attacked earlier and found the third camp.  This one had the Augurs.  I dispatched some Augurs and found some portal shards, but I didn’t combine them.  This quest is a group quest, so I’ll need to wait until I can find some help before finishing this one.

Speaking of finding a group, in all my time spent in this gremlin area, I only saw one other player the entire time.  Even after SOE merged some servers, the player population is very low.  It may be better at the higher levels, but as a low level player, it is rather disheartening.

Just a few steps away from Ju Ming, there is a fellow named Nao Tak.  He also gives out some quests.  One of them is called Otherwordly Artifacts.  He wants me to kill gremlins and recover 5 inert portal shards and 5 fiendish portal shards.  Gremlin killing seems to be common pasttime around these parts.

I ran around and killed random gremlins until I had enough of the shards.  I returned them to Nao Tak and I received 2431 experience and a measly 60 copper.  Are Ju Ming and Nao Tak related or something? Nao gives one last quest called To Lotus Hold.  I sat that one aside and worked on a few other quests first.

Back at the Nakai Dojo, Lieutenant Oda has some tasks for me.  I get from him the Pride of the Army quest.  I am to patrol the road leading out of the Dojo and look for invading Martok orcs.  I have to visit 4 patrol points and clean out any orcs I find.

The way it worked out is that you simply run down the road and wait for an invisible Martok Ambusher to jump you.  Kill the orc, run down the road some more, and wait to be jumped again.  You do this until you have reached all four patrol points.

I returned to Oda after completing my patrol and I discovered that he didn’t seem to have much confidence in my abilities.

Prick.

–Wolfen

As seen over at The Ancient Gaming Noob, who picked it up at Ars Technica, Games For Windows magazine, formerly Computer Gaming World, is officially closing its doors.

This is a sad announcement for me because I always assumed this magazine would be around forever.  I have very fond memories of this magazine when I read it back before I had a computer to play games on.  As a teenager, I was fascinated by the games you could play, and I anxiously awaited for each issue to arrive.  Once I was finally able to buy a computer, Computer Gaming World became my staple for gaming news and reviews.

One of my favorite sections was written by an author known as Scorpia.  She wrote about role-playing games and sometimes went into great detail about her adventures in those games.  Reading her articles on the Ultima games really sparked my interest in the genre and was one of the catalysts that eventually got me involved in Ultima Online and MMO’s in general.

I think the magazine took a big downward turn when it became Games For Windows Magazine.  The new design and focus didn’t appeal as much to me as the old school CGW version did.  It was decent enough, but some of the quality was lacking.

We can probably blame the internet for putting the magazine out of business.  The same thing is happening in the newspaper industry.  People can now get all the information they need on the subject with just a few clicks on the mouse and without paying a dime.  The digital revolution claims another one.

I salute you, Computer Gaming World, for bringing me all the fantastic gaming news and reviews for so many years.  You helped spark my interest in computers and computer gaming.

The folks at Sony gave Vanguard a big update while I was away from the game.  I had completely forgotten about it until it came time to buy my new spells.  I dinged level 15 while whacking gremlins, so I went over to the Nakai Dojo to see what was available.

I hit up the Druid spell vendor and that is when I remembered the game update.  There were several spells for the levels I had already gone through as well as some nice ones for my current level.  Some of the highlights for me were:

- Lifestream 1: AOE Heal

- Rampant Roots: AOE Root

- Ire II: Arcane Direct Damage

- Wolf Shape: Turns me into a wolf

- Ant Shape: Turns me into an invisible ant for 3 minutes

- Starfall: 1982-2087 Direct Damage

For soloing, the two that really stand out for me are Ant Shape and Starfall.  Ant Shape is really just a fancy way of granting invisibility.  I turn into a small ant that I can see but enemies can’t see.  Three minutes isn’t very long, but it is nice to know when it will wear off.  It also has a five minute refresh before you can use it again.

The other great spell is Starfall.  With the damage is produces, I am able to one-shot kill orcs with ease.  The one limiting factor to Starfall is that it uses Phenomena points.  You have a set number of points and each time you cast Starfall is subtracts from that total.  Once you use up those points, you must wait for them to refresh.  I believe it takes 1 hour for used points to refresh.

They claim that there were some graphical performance tweaks in the update, but everything seems the same for me.  It runs just like it did in January.  Things still hitch and I still have to use the /flush command every now and then to get performance back.  They claim that a fix for the hitching is on the way.  Let’s hope so.  As a reminder, my PC is an AMD X2 6000+, 3gb RAM, and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb video card.