Pumping Irony

Mightydar wrote a nice background story on his first guild last week, and I thought that was a great idea so at the risk of turning this into a meme, here’s mine. This has actually been several days in the making, between my work schedule and having to contact other people to refresh my memory a bit.

My first subscription to an MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies. Being a Star Wars fan, I was immediately entranced with the ability to create my own character and live a life in the virtual vistas of various worlds from the Star Wars lore. The cities were so alive with various characters, both player and non-player. It was a magical experience; one of those moments in life you feel you’ve arrived at something of greatness.

My friend Daniel and I started SWG together. I’d never played any MMORPG and SWG was recommended over the others at that time by a co-worker who’d done them all — EQ, AO, E&B, and pretty much everything else since at least 2001 — and said SWG would fit my gaming preferences. Daniel was a “recovering EQ addict” as I (not so) jokingly called him then, and approached the idea of getting involved with an MMO again with both excitement and trepidation. Shortly after we started, my brother-in-law Mark also joined us on the Bria galaxy (server).

None of us can remember exactly how we met the fine folks of our very first Player Association (SWG’s term for guild) but needless to say, we became very active and social members of Alderaan’s Revenge within a short time of starting the game.  Eventually player cities were added to SWG and AR combined our resources to create our first town, also called Alderaan’s Revenge, on the dangerous fringe planet of Lok. Lok is a dry, barren planet with plenty of dangerous wildlife, and the planet is a bit off the beaten path of the normal travel routes, so traveling to the various planets was a bit on the expensive side. However, Lok had the awesome background music, so that’s where we went!

As AR grew, so did our town. Eventually we were able to add our own shuttle port (not sure, but I think we were among the first few guilds on Lok to do so) to catch a quick ride to the Star Port at Nym’s Stronghold. We regularly had guild meetings, electing new officers and a mayor for our city, and other social functions. We had several master craftsmen as well as master entertainers and doctors, and soon our little out of the way guild town started getting popular with other players as a place to get high quality items and buffs.

Eventually I gained enough confidence, and my character’s skills high enough, to go along with the guild to the high-end planets like Dathomir, hunting Rancor (Jabba’s pet monster in Return of the Jedi) and Nightsisters, Dark Side force-sensitive women who tamed Rancor and enslaved men. Despite having some lore from a Star Wars novel, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if one of Raph’s guys hadn’t watched Amazon Women on the Moon one time too many back in the day and created the Nightsisters.

At the time of the “Rancor runs” my character was gradually lowering her skill as a Creature Handler in favor of becoming a Bio-Engineer so she was always seeking those runs to Dathomir in hopes of acquiring the highest quality DNA samples from the Rancor, which were very difficult to get but which some of the best engineered pets.

AR also ran SWG’s first instanced dungeon, the Corellian Corvette, though I only managed to make it in there a few times due to schedule conflicts. At the time, CC was very frustrating because despite being high or maxed at combat skills it seemed we were rarely able to touch the enemies, so often the pre-dungeon excitement turned into post-dungeon bitching after getting repeatedly spanked. Hard.

To this day, one of the most memorable things we did as a guild was to offer our support defending a Jedi padawan friend — who was not even a guild-mate — and defense from three maxed-out bad-ass Bounty Hunters. One of our guild leaders gave the Jedi access to her house so the Jedi could enter and hide, while the rest of us sent out the call throughout the galaxy. Everyone in the entire guild dropped what they were doing immediately and paid the travel costs back to Lok to defend this poor new Jedi from imminent permadeath at the hands of the Bounty Hunters. We took to the streets where the Bounty Hunters first attempted to negotiate with us to let them have their prey, which we promptly refused, then the BH’s began threatening us as well. AR didn’t back down, the BH’s called in several guild-mates of their own and the situation escalated into a full-on battle in the streets. AR took a beating, certainly, but we eventually won the day and the eternal gratitude of our new padawan Jedi friend as well as her entire guild.

Eventually Daniel and I left SWG, though Mark stayed for quite some time. I’m told some major drama and in-fighting broke out and Alderaan’s Revenge imploded upon itself. Most of them wound up in another guild called Alderaan’s Exiles, though the key members split yet again when the drama followed them to AE. A Google search leads me to believe a guild exists again on the Bria server with the name Alderaan’s Revenge but as far as I can tell, it’s an entirely new guild with no relation to my former family.

In the end, I look back fondly on those days, and I will credit AR with providing me a key element I seek in each new guild in each new MMO: a sense of family. Every guild I stick with in every game, I put that friendly, helpful, family feeling as a top priority over content progression. Content is static, it will be conquered in time; developing new relationships, making new friends you remember over a lifetime is a much more dynamic and rewarding process, and I’m pleased to say that the guilds I’m in now provide exactly that.

Thankfully, I’m a Founder on LOTRO with a Lifetime membership, so that’s working out great. My super-awesome kinship has been very understanding that I didn’t want to get sucked into the “must.play.all.day.and.night” rut that I found myself in with WoW. I want to do the dungeons and raids with them badly, but I want to make sure I can keep things casual so I’ve been on break from LOTRO.

Turbine recently announced a special $9.99 per month plan for DDO which I jumped on. I’m also in a super-cool casual family-style guild in DDO and, while I love the adventures in the game, the problem with a totally group-focused game is that if I can’t find a group, I can’t play the game. I do look forward to playing the high-end content, and it sounds like some amazing and awesome content is coming this year. In the meantime, if I can save $5 per month to keep the subscription active and pop into Stormreach anytime I want, sounds great to me.

My final subscription was the SOE Station Access, where I have Everquest II, Vanguard, Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside active.

However…

I haven’t bothered to play Planetside in months because I never saw more than 10 players on a server and it has an atrocious UI along with horribly flaky mouse movement in the menus. I understand it was great in its day, but apparently that day has come and gone so even as a curiosity, Planetside was a failed venture for me.

SWG. Whoah. Not that I necessarily mind adding quests and all but SOE did such a poor job of it in their misguided NGE overhaul. I could even adapt to that but, much like Planetside, the game has serious population issues. To date, I’ve encountered a grand total of six players and have seen not a single line of chat from anyone. The graphics are badly dated and I truly resent being hard-locked at 30 fps when I could be having a much smoother experience. SWG was my first MMO and I have fond memories that nothing else will ever replace, but I guess it’s true: sometimes you just can’t go home again.

EQ2. I have created several characters of different races and classes and the farthest I’ve managed to advance any is level 9. Other than the random bit of music, I have struggled to find even a single enjoyable element to the game. EQ2 is quite popular and arguably has more content than any other MMORPG on the market. Originally, I decided I would put up the fight and work my way towards whatever quality content surely must be out there, but I finally had to be honest with myself. With other games out there willing to “show me the money” with quality content from Moment One, why should I have to punish myself wading through this muck? It’s a shame, and I wanted to like EQ2 but it just wasn’t in the cards.

Vanguard, surprisingly, I’m having a blast with and I’m in a friendly, fun and helpful guild. Even though Karen has abandoned us like red-headed step-children to go adventure in Norrath. Grouping has been incredibly fun as well as challenging, and I’m thoroughly enjoying being the “Rock Star Tank” again. Actually, I may be enjoying tanking more in Vanguard than I did in WoW, because the Dread Knight class simply oozes coolness and I enjoy the challenges it presents. I also have a real-life friend playing Vanguard now (also a new guild-mate, yay!) so that’s an additional compelling reason to play. Well-known population problems aside, I can honestly say I’ve seen quite an influx of brand-new players over the past few weeks since GU3 was released, and it’s been wonderful. I’m seeing players in nearly every town I visit, the chats are active, friendly, and Chuck Norris-free (well, mostly).

I wasn’t having any financial issues, but I finally had to come to terms that I was paying an extra $15 per month to play Vanguard, because as wistfully nostalgic as I may have been, I’m not going to return to SWG, nor can I tolerate being logged into EQ2 for more than a few minutes, so it’s wasted money.

So, as of a few minutes ago logging out of the Java chat with an SOE customer service rep (thanks for the help, by the way, Eric) I am now left with only a normal monthly subscription to Vanguard and the new 33% discounted subscription to DDO. Should another game roll down the pike, I can add it without batting an eyelash as the total cost would be close to what I’ve been paying anyway with the Station Access and full-price DDO, but right now there are no titles current or in the immediate future that are piquing my interest whatsoever.

Cameron wrote two fantastic articles recently on the problems of telling a story in a MMORPG. I’m right there with him: as a reader, writer, and former pen-and-paper role player, I sigh with resignation at the nearly complete lack of stories in MMO’s.

Oh, sure, the story is there somewhere, but buried away in random quest dialogue at best, which the player may not get to read all in one sitting.

Take World of Warcraft, for example. There were enough Defias quests in Westfall that I more or less gradually got a basic idea of what that bandit gang were up to, culminating in traversing the depths of the Deadmines to defeat their leader, Edwin VanCleef, and saving Stormwind from his invasion. The problem was the even though I had enough available time to burn through the quests relatively quickly, the story was not told well. The quest dialogue was very dry and uninteresting, and for someone with my attention span, I’m just going to give up and click the ‘Accept’ button and going about my merry way murdering the AI in Westfall.

Next up: the Scarlet Monastery. It’s under the control of the Scarlet Crusade. Who the hell are these guys? The boring quest dialogue tells me their goal is to rid Azeroth of the undead. Great! So why are they attacking me? I never had any idea really who exactly these Scarlet Crusade guys were, why are they so insane and zealous, why is this Scarlet Monastery here, why should my character be motivated to enter this place to murder all its inhabitants? Only by reading other web sites which took the time to collect various bits of information and present them for reading in a sane manner did I later come to understand the story behind it, and that is unacceptable.

Cameron points out how viewers are intrigued by the plot points, and more importantly, character development in television shows, novels or movies, and we get caught up in those stories. The problem comparing those mediums to MMORPG’s is that they are passive storytelling where we, the voyeuristic viewers and readers, are merely along for the ride, having no impact on the direction of the story or the characters.

In an MMORPG, the hope is that we, the players, are guiding our characters along and become directly involved in story lines as opposed to simply watching them from a safe distance.

An oft-overlooked problem in MMO’s — actually, any video game RPG — is that there is a difference between a character, a fictional persona played by an actor or author or guided by a video game player, and character, a person’s moral qualities.

In media we gradually learn the inner workings of the key characters; we learn their character, and we watch as they learn from experiences and see how wisely, they can apply the wisdom gained from those experiences, and how true they hold to their own character, their own beliefs and motivations.

In an MMORPG, players are not presented with a medium for telling their own story or developing that character’s beliefs. By and large, our only “motivation” is to acquire wealth and raise our attributes, which we (perhaps mistakenly?) refer to as “character development.” A key difference between traditional RPG’s and video game RPG’s is that in the latter, the RPG acronym has come to mean only “attribute management” with nothing whatsoever to do with who that character is. The only “role” we get to play is one of the Trinity: tank, healer, or damage. The only real choice or impact we have is which of those we choose to play.

Richard Garriott hyped up Tabula Rasa’s “moral dilemmas” in some of its quest lines but again, we’re left with the fact that MMO’s are completely static environments. His example of ethic parables such as:

One of these early missions involves the delivery of pharmaceuticals to soldiers on the front lines. While the supply commander, a rather straight-laced and stand-up kind of individual, would rather these pharmaceuticals be distributed to the soldiers in a formal, organized system, there’s a man who stole a whole bunch and has been selling them to the soldiers for a nice profit. Your decision to either turn in the thief, or help him distribute the stolen goods, not only affects the mission outcome but determines how the NPC soldiers will interact with you from then on.

On the one hand, it’s great we are presented with a choice of two possible outcomes but in the end, it doesn’t have a lasting impact on the world or on our characters other than a slight change in faction with one side or the other, and either way we’re still limited to murdering our way through the mission.

In many ways, we’re more akin to Rambo where, regardless of our class or any personal predilections for how we may choose to “role play” (if at all) our characters, we gleefully murder every fluffy bunny, giant bat or slimy Murloc NPC in our path. There is no other choice, there are no ethical or moral consequences, there is no personal conflict or inner dialogue. There are myriad better examples but, compare that with Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones when Anakin loses control, succumbs to his anger and massacres an entire camp of Tusken Raiders, including women and children, in retaliation for his mother’s death. His angst, his inner conflict with the reality of what he has done versus his beliefs in the usually peaceful Jedi teachings gives him some dimension, some realism (despite the wooden acting — ouch! ) and allows us to relate to him as a protagonist.

I often see the sandbox advocates proclaiming they want to tell their own story. Yet, how exactly is this even possible? There is finite content in our MMO’s and every player gets to participate in most of it. In the end, that content boils down to murdering AI (or perhaps other player characters) so does it matter if you just decide to murder AI on your own or if Joe NPC told you to? Either way — much like a Harlequin Romance or a soap opera — everyone has the same story, the only differences are the names and locations.

Taking that a step further, how many heroic tales are there where the hero says “I’m a born hero, I will travel the world and murder all evil beings and save you noobs!” Not many? Didn’t think so. No, more often the hero only becomes the hero because he is thrust into a situation not of his making. This is more like the type of story telling we have in some MMO’s like Guild Wars or Lord of the Rings Online where we are presented with a story then proceed to murder all the “bad guys” until the story’s completion. Guild Wars uses in-game cinematics starring all the character’s in the group, where LOTRO uses extensive dialogue scripting and environmental and graphical effects to propel the story and a sense of drama and urgency. Future games will surely push the envelope and have even more grandiose scenarios like this to play through, but that will likely be as far as we ever get. As Cameron noted, we can’t force players to be interesting, nor can we force them to play their characters in interesting or compelling ways. There is no “character development” in games, there is only “attribute development” as I mentioned earlier. There is no story of our own to be told. Seriously, try it. Tell your adventures to a non-gamer. “I went to this forest and murdered all the wildlife I could find and sold their body parts to a vendor for cash. Then I went into an open area with lots of farms. All the farmers’ cattle were aggro so I murdered them all too. I’m sure the farmers would be mad, but the cattle will respawn in five minutes anyway. I went to town and repaired my gear and this noob hunter challenged me to a duel so I murdered him too. Too bad I couldn’t loot all his gear. Ha! That would teach him a lesson. Noobs…” Tell that story and see the look on the listener’s face. Then wonder why Jack Thompson gets on his crazed, fanatical soapbox…

Ah, but wait! So often the story is in the telling. The previous example was extremely literal, only describing the limited base actions we have in games. Yet read a character journal written as fiction rather than from the player’s perspective, and it becomes a whole new ballgame.

First, I am very much an advocate of User Generated Content (UGC). Yes, ask any developer and they’ll say the majority of UGC is complete and utter garbage. Hell, Second Life is proof of that. But there’s also a large subset of players out there who are extremely creative and are willing to put the time and effort into presenting their creativity for the enjoyment of others. Writing RPG character journals or designing maps or full-blown mods for games are prime examples of that. Give the players a toolkit to design their own instanced content and some means of offering it to the players for download. Extremely popular content could even be polished up and made official later on. Let the players craft stories and adventures, and let the players decide what they like.

I’m also an advocate of providing more data of character’s actions. Yes, as one user noted in the Listener Mail of SUWT #19, some could use that data in very elitist ways to judge a player’s ability and whether to group with him or not, or whether to allow him into a guild or not, but my vision is more along the lines of having a “character API” where any number of tools or widgets could be built to display certain data. Specifically, I’d like to be able to set a personality profile for my characters and as I play, the API could automatically blog what I do. Look how 360Voice.com took the Xbox Live API and has your 360 blog about you, complete with a bit of smack-talk. If data were provided to blog my character’s action, in the context of the personality profile I selected, that would be a fun tool to play with and a fun way of sharing your adventures with others, and allow every player to tell his own story regardless of their level of creativity or writing skill. Just a thought…

Apologies if I was scatter-brained through this post, I’m not even certain I managed to convey what I intended. Still a bit groggy and fuzzy, this trip is exhausting…

Ok, as if the prior mention that I was working yet again over the Canthan New Year in Guild Wars wasn’t an example of the kind of luck I have (too) often, this one sure as hell is — I was just accepted into a technical PvP stress test for Age of Conan!

The catch: it’s only a 3-hour test, and it’s only on Sunday — smack in the middle of my trip! Arrrgh!

In retrospect, January ends as a slow month for me in MMO’s. I spent time each day home (granted, my January schedule was rough so I wasn’t home as much as I like) attempting to complete the final Hunter’s League quest in Vanguard, but I am not willing to sit on my thumbs for hours on end looking for a group. I’ll give it 15-20 minutes and I’m out. I did finally notice people forming a group the other night just before I logged out but as luck would have it, I did not have the time for it.

I did a little bit of Guild Wars here and there, also. Benjeth has still been incredibly unsuccessful at winning more than a round or two in the Norn Fighting tournament in Gunnar’s Hold, and so is still lacking the ever-elusive dervish, Kahmu, to complete his list of acquired Heroes.

I did login to LOTRO briefly to check my inbox for kinship mail and I decided to go ahead and get the Bree Horse for Arwellyn, my Lore-master. I was sorely tempted to go ahead and pick up where I’d left off questing and such, but I still want to take a little more time away. Book 12 will be out soon, perhaps after that? I’m perfectly fine with LOTRO’s low-fantasy take on things, provided I have a high-fantasy alternative game (GW and VG) to balance things out. My kinship is just awesome, and wanting to do more and more with them is actually the reason for my break. When I agreed to allow myself to return to MMO’s after my WoW burnout from a couple years of fairly hardcore play, I vowed to not get sucked back into that mentality and I felt it very strongly in LOTRO so I had to take a step back. I’m still playing other games but only casually. This laptop is a piece of junk and while it did perfectly fine with WoW, it has difficulty even running GW on low settings so I’m basically game-less at work, which was not the case in the WoW days.

I also see DDO’s Module 6 will be out by the time I get home, so perhaps I’ll try picking up some DDO in February?

Otherwise, I spent a little time re-discovering the FPS genre this month. I bought Team Fortress 2 on launch day and I love the fun little skirmishes but it’s not something I can do for very long stretches of time. I also bought Call of Duty 4 on Steam and, while I’m enjoying the single player campaign here and there, the online game hasn’t been very compelling to me. A good friend has become completely addicted to the Insurgency beta 2 Half-Life 2 mod but it seems just like a “hardcore” (ie. no hand-holding, no frills) version of COD4. Small-ish urban combat skirmishes. That can be fun in small doses for me, but I’ve been there, done that years ago. I like the sensation of being in a war not a skirmish, so the Battlefield series fits the bill for me. I fell pretty hard for Battlefield 1942 back in the day. Vietnam did not run well on my system at the time so I didn’t bother with it. On my current system, 1942 crashes with dual-core CPU’s and I’m not willing to hassle myself with manually setting the game to only use a single core each time I run the game. So I’ve been back in Battlefield 2142 and loving every minute of it. I’ve even been playing the demo version so I could introduce the game to a few friends, one of whom used to team with me back in 1942 and was instantly addicted to 2142 and purchased the new Deluxe Edition (fully updated 1.4 game plus the Northern Strike booster pack) from the EA Store so we’ll get to play the full version when I get home next week. I’m hoping to get the Insurgency addict hooked on 2142 as well!

As for the blog, I’ve played around with a few extensions and I think I nearly have things where I want them on that end. I did end up installing the Sabre plugin to combat spam registrations. Overall the spam commenting wasn’t bad and Akismet caught all of them anyway, but I kept noticing one or two bot registrations every day, all of the form ab123456@yahoo.com (random letters and numbers but always yahoo.com) and I quickly tired of manually deleting them each day. So I apologize if capcha tests are aggravating for new users to register but at least it has put an end to the daily stream of bot users. Tom added the ‘random header images’ I’d asked for in the new Mandigo theme so I need to get busy and upload some next month. Ironic that I’m the one who got the ball rolling on this option, but will be one of the last Mandigo users to actually utilize it — I’ve noticed all the other MMO bloggers jumped on it as soon as Tom released it. Such is life… I did pick up some traffic and some new registered users this month, largely thanks to Brent at Virgin Worlds linking my STO post, and a few other blogs referring here as well. Discussions are still very quiet, usually just SmakenDahead and I, but I’m hoping to regain some of the activity I lost last year with the server crash.

Oh, just curious… I know Heartless Gamer has his own little TF2 Steam Community, which I’m member of (it’s tiny and I don’t think the gang has ever actually done anything as a group yet) but I don’t suppose there’s a blogger group or clan for BF2142 is there? That would rule… I know PvtHudson over at Wife Aggro mentioned last week he’d like to get back into BF2142 but in the very next post he said he was back into EQ2 for the long haul. Meh.

I still haven’t managed to find anything about EVE Online that personally interests me enough to even download the trial but CCP is innovating yet again! Not only did they release Linux and Mac clients awhile back, but today EVE Online: Trinity is available through Valve’s Steam! I’m a huge fan of Steam and I prefer to buy games digitally through Steam rather than buy a box. It’s the 21st century and I’m old enough to realize no one is actually impressed by a collection of video game boxes on a shelf, and I’m only willing to cram so many boxes in the storage closet.

But an MMO on Steam! How great is that? Now if Valve can get some of the Big Boys  to come out and play too… Extremely unlikely but it would be just too awesome to have WoW or EQ2, etc. available on Steam with a unified friend list, in-game overlay chat, auto-updates through Steam rather than the game launcher…

Darren woke up this morning and wrote an article (apparently before coffee, his typos and misspellings are increasingly glaring ) discussing a rumor that Cryptic Studios, of City of Heroes & Villains fame, is the unnamed mystery studio who has picked up the rights to Star Trek Online.

Darren and his commenters immediately implied Cryptic might make STO the same as CoX — a shallow and repetitive grind fest — which I think is unfair to assume any studio would simply rehash their exact same formula with every new IP under their belt. Yet, despite being a Star Trek fan (I wouldn’t go so far as to refer to myself as a Trekker, however) I cannot help but wonder if Star Trek is, in fact, a very poor IP for an MMO? If anything, I think that, much like WoW, Trek is too huge of an IP to take many risks with. With all due respects to the inevitable Worlds of Starcraft, I can’t help but imagine Star Trek Online will essentially be a “WoW in Space.” In other words, a very “safe” MMO with all the comfortable trappings we’re accustomed to, not taking risks within the MMO genre and certainly not taking risks with the Trek canon. Which leaves us with a sci-fi game that, despite the setting and premise of its original IP, leaves us able only to meekly go where everyone has gone before.

Gene Roddenberry presented us with a utopian universe where the protagonists, the Federation of Planets and its military wing Starfleet, are largely altruistic. In any good story, there must be conflict, so what we often saw in Trek was that while humanity has made great strides in overcoming our primitive, selfish and violent urges, true utopia is still out of our reach and we are constantly in a state of conflict, if not outright war, with various other societies such as Klingons, Romulans, the Borg, the Dominion, and so forth. This part can easily be shifted over to an MMO where 90% or more of the entire game play is conflict of the physical combat variety. A true, peaceful utopia would never work, would never succeed as a video game considering the video game industry — including its consumers — is still 99.9999999% violence-centric. I would therefore anticipate the introduction of the “Kill Ten Tribbles” quests and other activities promoting the slaughter of everything that moves on every new world we visit. In fact, that would fit in greatly with The Original Series where, when he wasn’t working his mojo on hot alien babes, Kirk’s mission largely appeared to be to seek out and destroy new life and new civilizations.

However I cannot fathom a successful mainstream game promoting altruism in any form. Whether we’re soloing or grouped in an MMO, we’re doing it to accomplish our own goals. After all, it is our individual time and money we’re investing, for own individual entertainment and each individual has his or her own preferences for what constitutes entertainment.

Players in MMO’s often seek some form of virtual individuality. Perhaps we try for a unique appearance. Yet in Trek all Federation crew members wear the same uniform. Color may indicate one’s job or station, but by and large the only variety in appearance is social clothing, and excuse me if I don’t have faith in modern developers to promote social or role-playing activities on a mass scale. Of course no one would want to be the dreaded Red Shirt but because we are not special, we would certainly and inevitably begin our STO journeys as exactly that.

Along with our appearance, we just love to progress our character’s weapons. How many various swords will one warrior wield throughout his career? How many wands or staves for the wizards or clerics? All with varying looks, statistics and abilities. Yet in Trek, the Federation has phaser pistols and phaser rifles, as do the Klingons. Romulans have their disruptor pistols, and Klingons have their bladed Bat’leth melee weapons. A phaser pistol is a phaser pistol is a phaser pistol. Tinkering with multiple levels or types of phasers and all sorts of bizarre weaponry (newly introduced alien races notwithstanding) is also tinkering with Trek canon and oh, will the purists rage.

MMO players are also inevitably driven to, if not obsessed by, the acquisition of virtual wealth. Yet in First Contact, Picard tells Lily that “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We wish to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” There’s that altruism rearing it’s ugly head, and I don’t foresee players accepting an MMORPG with no financial gains for their characters. Would there even be an economy to speak of in a Trek game? There would have to be, yet here again we’d possibly be tinkering with Trek canon, at least if we’re playing as the Federation. Could you imagine a studio releasing a Trek game where we were unable to play Federation characters? No? Me either. No, we would very likely see resource gathering similar to asteroid mining in EVE Online, and the trade of those resources and other goods. We’ll still need consumables for those weekly Jefferies Tube crawls with the guild, right?

Another difficulty Cryptic, or whomever is actually developing STO, will have is building content for the various factions. We will obviously expect to be able to travel to other places, and will be fuming if fan favorites such as Vulcan, Romulus and Qo’noS are unavailable, as well as places like Deep Space Nine. For variety as well as PvP, STO will need more than one player factions just like WoW has Alliance and Horde. But look at all the various Trek factions over the years, that’s a ton of leveling content to create for characters of each faction. Players will want to be Human, Vulcan, or any number of the Starfleet/Federation races, which could be contained and introduced in a single “just joined Starfleet” starter area. But Klingons, Romulans, the Maquis, Dominion, and countless other popular “evil” (or at least, non-Starfleet) factions are individual and independent. Combining them into a single “evil” starter area would likely be tinkering with canon once again. Trek’s ultimate bad guys, the Borg, could not be a playable race as they are a collective and thus largely incapable of independent thought which in turn makes them an impossibility for players. This mirrors Turbine’s original reasoning why players could only play the Free Peoples in their Lord of the Rings Online because the evil races were all controlled by Sauron and not acting of their own free will. Later, however, in an IRC dev chat, it was admitted that the real issue was essentially that of creating two separate games — one for the Freeps and one for the Creeps — and Turbine did not have the time or at the very least was unwilling to delay launch to create an entire Creep game of the same size and scope as the Freep game. Blizzard had the time, and more importantly the money to hire enough people to create two separate leveling games for their two factions. I seriously doubt Cryptic, or anyone else, has the money and time to have compelling adventuring content for three, four, or more factions at launch that players would want and expect.

However, since I do believe Star Trek Online is an inevitability, what am I expecting? I don’t think technology is to the point of allowing a seamless space game-to-ground game transition, so I’d expect them to be separate games ala Star Wars Galaxies. Star Trek’s space combat is not the high-flying aerobatics we see in more action-oriented IP’s such as Star Wars (which was envisioned after watching footage of WWII dogfights) so I picture a more slow-paced capital ship combat like EVE. Smaller ships such as the Defiant class would certainly be available, but again slower-paced and somewhat easier to manage flight and combat mechanisms rather than the fast, repetitive “circle jerk” combat of Freelancer or Jumpgate.

The ground game would likely be a combination of persistent public “true MMO” zones on planets and stations as well as scripted instanced “away missions” ala Tabula Rasa, only at a slower pace, complete with the aforementioned “Kill Ten Tribbles” styled quests.

I recall Brent blowing off some steam a few months ago and chastising Perpetual over their use of capital ships as quest hubs rather than allowing players to control their own ships. On the one hand, having played Air Warrior back on GEnie which did have aircraft with multiple stations such as the B17 where one player was the pilot while others manned the turrets and bomb bay, I can see the appeal of such mechanics in a space setting. On the other hand, given the amount of players and our expectations and play styles now versus then, it could not only be a logistics nightmare for the developers but also a constant source of player drama. Now, one thing I can envision is that the capital ships could be the equivalent of guild halls. A full-fledged 3D environment for role-playing, training and trading. The guild’s leader, the captain, could set a course for travel and the ship could actually move around the various quadrants and the guild members could make their own away teams for adventure. Shuttle craft and other smaller personal ships (the equivalent of mounts) would be available for players to adventure in other places. This also enables guilds to form alliances for PvP by transporting their entire guild hall and arsenal to various locations to help allied guilds or to conquer new territories for their faction.

Just to be snarky, I would imagine the so-called “hardcore” players who revel in difficulties and miseries would avoid STO like the plague since, due to the proliferation of transporters and faster-than-light spaceships, travel has been dumbed down to an unprecedented level and now imbues no meaning whatsoever.

Ultimately, Star Trek was about the story. The characters, the settings and the technology were but tools to tell the story of Roddenberry’s utopian hope for humanity. Quite often, Trek was allegorical to real-world issues of warfare, authoritarianism, prejudices between race, gender or socio-economic class. MMO’s are about whacking and looting foozles and other players with nary a mention of story or relevance to be found. I cannot but fear that all the intriguing and inspiring aspects of Trek we find appealing in cinematic entertainment or novels may also be the same aspects that would render it impotent and uninspiring as an MMORPG…

Update: Ok something’s wrong here… Darren was able to leave a comment but now wp-comments-post.php is failing when anyone else, including myself, tries to leave a comment. Comments work fine for every other post but this one, so I have no idea what’s going on. I’m asking for help in #wordpress but given my history there and the lack of help I typically get for any minor or major issue, I’m not holding my breath… My apologies. Hey, does mean I get to blame Darren for breaking my site?

Update 2: I did notice someone submitted this post as a news link on Virgin Worlds (it doesn’t say who submitted it) so maybe the traffic killed the ability to post comments? Nah, that makes no sense whatsoever, the PHP should execute regardless but it’s only failing on this single article. And, as popular as Virgin Worlds is becoming, it isn’t Slashdot yet! I did have an idea of copying this into a new post then deleting the original and resetting the post slug to match, but… meh. Blogging is too fast-paced, and that window of opportunity has passed for discussion, unfortunately.  Whomever submitted the article, thanks, it was great to pick up a few new readers in any event!

This post has been days, if not weeks, in the making but Real Life has reared its head with my somewhat limited time off lately. I was planning on writing this yesterday too but a good friend just started Guild Wars so I spent a good chunk of my online time teaching him the ropes. I’ll be writing this in spurts today whenever I have a break between flights.

I’ll leave suffixes such as “RPG” or “FPS” out of the discussion, because they’re irrelevant. What I’m asking is, what does the acronym “MMO” mean to you, the reader? How do you personally define what that acronym means, and does your definition have an impact on how you view the game? (The latter question applies both prior to your first trial, purchase, play session, whatever, and later during normal play.)

Ok, we know the “O” stands for online, so we’ll just drop that too.

When the genre first came into being here in the US, with EQ and UO leading the charge, the “MM” meant Massively Multiplayer, which meant a massive amount of players online playing at once. What defines “massive?” I don’t recall any official terms stating how many players quantifies as “massive.” For me, my first true graphical multiplayer online game was probably Air Warrior on the old GEnie service. I forget how many players it could handle but it certainly seemed like hundreds. That came and went, then Quake (actually Quakeworld since id only coded Quake for multiplayer LAN games at the time) opened the floodgates for online multiplayer gaming in the FPS genre. I played through a slew of them and the server capabilities of most FPS have pretty much capped around the 16 to 32-player mark. The Battlefield series is technically capable of hosting 64 players but I haven’t managed to be fortunate enough to find a 64-player game that was actually playable in BF2142. So in very simplistic terms, to me if the game can very easily host more players than any FPS dedicated server, it’s “massively multiplayer.”

Anyway, “Massively Multiplayer” was the genre-defining catch phrase at the time but since we like to shorten everything possible, we refer to them as “massive” games now. The side effect of this is that for many people “MM” stands for “Massive Multiplayer” meaning a very large game with multiple players which is significantly different than what “massively multiplayer” means.

I came across a forum thread recently where one of the posters listed out his definition of the MMORPG acronym. Several others agreed whole-heartedly and I’ve seen this same list many times over the past few years, so I’ll paraphrase:

Massive: large world, lots of content
Multiplayer: multiple = more than one, duh
Online: duh…

I made a single entry to the thread saying the genre is “massively multiplayer” which is a measure of simultaneous players not a measure of content. I was promptly instructed to go procreate with myself, that the number of players was irrelevant. Really? Within the logic of that list I could get a two-player (two is multiple, after all) game of Netris going, which has endless “levels” (there’s “lots of content” for you) and by gods we have an MMO game! Of course this thread was over at MMORPG.com and I was actually shocked no one bothered to look up at their browser window and quote the site’s TITLE tag back at me which reads “Your Headquarters for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games!”

Over at AcronymFinder.com the first result for MMO is “Massively Multiplayer Online (gaming) while the first result for MMORPG is “Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.”

It’s entirely possible I was sleeping in some dark cave under a rock and missed the whole changeover from massively to massive, but it’s equally possible that this newer definition that many, many people have could play a large role in the debates where MMO vets from the EQ or UO paradigm absolutely do not consider Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Dungeons & Dragons Online and others to be “true” MMO’s whereas plenty of other people who weren’t around for EQ, etc. aren’t nearly so narrow-minded about the whole thing.

So? What does MMO mean to you? Are you of the massive crowd, or the massively multiplayer crowd?

By now we’ve all heard the joint press release from BioWare and LucasArts saying they’re collaborating on an “interactive entertainment product.” Which we all presume will be another Star Wars MMORPG, most likely set in the Knights of the Old Republic era since that’s been BioWare’s area of expertise.

This second bit of info may be bogus since it’s allegedly a copy from an email but here goes anyway:

Important news re: Star Wars Galaxies: The Complete Online Adventures

From: LucasArtsStore.com

Sent: Thu 10/25/07 10:22 AM
Dear Customer,

We regret to announce that Lucasarts will no longer be producing Star Wars Galaxies: The Complete Online Adventures as a physical retail package on CD or DVD. We will therefore cancel your pending order for this item. As direct downloading of this game eliminates the need for shipping costs and shipping lead times, we hope this is a satisfactory alternative for you. We again apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.

Sincerely,
LucasArtsStore (StarWarsShop)
Customer Service

Ouch! This might be reading into things, but could LucasArts possibly be in the initial stages of severing their ties to Star Wars Galaxies altogether? SWG is still a Star Wars product and just because KOTOR Online (KOTORO?) (come to think of it, I’m sick of tacking “Online” to end end of MMO titles already) will be the “new shiny” doesn’t mean SWG will just suddenly die and go offline. Hell, the Matrix Online proves that Station Access alone can keep comatose titles on life support. On the other hand, it’s a rare day to see SWG boxes on store shelves these days because it just isn’t selling so this could just be a prudent marketing decision; after all, the digital download is still offered. I see this as a much more probable explanation. I just don’t see LucasArts giving up control of SWG unless they outright order SOE to put it out to pasture. Boy, oh boy, would the SWG Emu ever get some major attention if that happened!

One thing I have noticed on forums (MMORPG.com mostly, I don’t dare venture into the SOE forums) is that the SWG vets (aside from being entirely too adamant in their SOE hatred and just need to let it go already) miss the Pre-CU/NGE days not because it was Star Wars but because it had depth; it had complexity; it was the closest thing to a workable “sandbox” game we’ve seen. Let’s face it, once you got past the graphics and the John Williams soundtrack, SWG wasn’t very Star Warsy at all. Nearly four and a half years after launch, it still has aspects that were never finished that even the NGE didn’t touch, and there’s quite a bit of clunkiness to the whole experience. Let’s say BioWare manages to nail the Star Wars “feel.” Does that imply KOTORO (ok, that’s twice and I’m annoyed at the Zorro-sounding acronym already) will bring back those customers that SOE lost? I doubt it. BioWare will probably take a page from Justin Timberlake’s book and “bring the RPG back” to the MMORPG genre since that is, above all else, what they do best. But they’re partnered with EA, and regardless of all the “kinder, gentler EA” stuff their public relations department spits out, EA is all about the bottom line and that means going for the mass market. That, in turn, means a lot of hand-holding and linear game-play, just like we’re accustomed to already. The whole “sandbox” thing is very much unproven territory. The hardcore might like it, but catering to them alone is dangerous grounds with this IP’s last hurrah in the MMO space. No, I see quest icons over NPC’s heads, level numbers over our character’s heads, crafting and profession instructors, being directed to new areas, etc. Everything we’re used to seeing now with one exception: a great story line to the quests and over-arching stories in the background to participate in. LOTRO taken to the next level or beyond, in that regards.

On a side note, Lucas has done well timing extracurricular products such as video games to coincide with the release of his own projects. Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps BioWare is making their 2009 release of a Star Wars MMO set in the “Expanded Universe” time line (set in the years between Episodes III and IV) that would coincide with Lucas’ 2009 debut of his Star Wars live-action television series? Just curious…

Ok, the good news: Game Update #3 Phase 1 is being implemented as I write this!

UPDATE 3 – PHASE 1

· Ksaravi Gulch
· Guild Hall Trophies
· Player Housing / Guild Housing
· Optimizations/Bug Fixes
· Spam Filter

1. Ksaravi Gulch
The low to high teens adventuring area of Ksaravi Gulch in Qalia has been revamped. It now features new group and solo content, with many quest lines for either type of player as well as an enhanced storyline, additional items and the chance to fly into battle on an elite black wyvern mount.

* 3 all new solo quest lines offering 20 new quests
* 12 group quests in an exciting new group quest line
* Fly into battle on an elite black wyvern
* All-new rewards, like Coronarian Gloves and Ice Ember poison

2. Guild Hall Trophies
The Guild Hall Trophy item can now be placed in a house or any Guild Headquarters. The buff from the trophy will be shared by all guild members that are online. There will be three trophies to choose from (one for each of Vanguard’s icon characters).

The Guild Hall Trophy can only be picked up by the person who placed it.

3. Player Housing / Guild Housing
All player housing areas should have a crafting center within one chunk’s distance. You will find crafting trainers, vendors, taskmasters, and stations. In addition, a few select areas (including all of the islands) have had flying mount renters added.

In addition to that, Guildhall adventuring drops should now be much easier to obtain. Mnalus Fungus will now rarely drop off most mobs in Lair of the Mnalus. Mummy Dust will now rarely drop off most mobs in Nusibe. Fiend Blood will now rarely drop off most mobs in Rhaz Inkur.

4. Optimizations / Bug Fixes
Fixing bugs and optimizing the game have been a big priority for us. We’ve put in fixes for over a dozen high-profile client crash fixes as well as hundreds of bugs. We’ve fixed a major memory leak and even made some sound optimizations. On the whole, a lot of players’ performance should improve with this patch.

With this patch, we’re also laying the groundwork to start implementing optimized NPC models. You should see them start showing up in the near future (likely in Qalia first).

5. Spam Filter
Ask, and you shall receive! It’s been in the works for quite some time, but Game Update 3 unleashes the code that should help eliminate a lot of the spam you may receive in-game. The code works similarly to those featured in other SOE games, in that it automatically filters messages flagged as spam, and reports them to Customer Service.

Source: VGPlayers.com

When I first saw the bit about the black wyvern, I got all excited, hoping they’d completed the first true flying mount quest ahead of schedule, but as it turns out, the black wyvern is a temporary mount in the Ksaravi Gulch zone which they had mentioned in a post I’d skipped over a few days earlier.

Now for the bad news:

Vanguard Development Moves to the San Diego Studio

The Vanguard development team is relocating its offices to SOE’s San Diego campus effective Monday, October 15, 2007. As part of the integration into the SOE family, the developers will benefit from having access to shared resources and the combined experience of SOE’s other game development teams. As a result, not every Carlsbad employee has been invited to stay with the development team.

Under the new leadership of Thom Terrazas, an eight-year SOE veteran, SOE will continue its commitment to Vanguard and its players. The remaining Vanguard team members are going to continue to deliver on an exceptional product. They are a creative force in the online games space and we look forward to continuing the vision for Vanguard and to continue to deliver groundbreaking game play. SOE remains committed to seeing Vanguard grow and prosper.

Source: VGPlayers.com

That’s right, SOE is integrating the Vanguard team yet again and letting go more developers. This time the axe has fallen on Director of Development David “Hasium” Gilbertson and Steve “Aruspex” Williams, who was interviewed in Episode 17 of the Voyages of Vanguard podcast.

Forum links courtesy of Jaye:

Hasium’s goodbye post
PhAtHoM’s hello post