We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

A little off topic (well, a lot off topic actually) but I couldn’t resist. Below is the trailer for Dai Nipponjin aka Big Man Japan, a film by Hitoshi Matsumoto, a very famous Japanese comedian. It came out a couple of years ago in Japan but was just recently released in the West. Haven’t seen it myself yet but it looks pretty… insane.

I saw this movie and absolutely had to post about it. I really admire people that make machinima as it obviously takes a huge investment of time and a good deal of creativity. Gnomebusters is definitely one of the better World of Warcraft machinimas I’ve seen plus if you love Ghostbusters (who doesn’t?!) then you can’t go wrong. A little slow to start so forward it to about 1:10 if you’re impatient

Also, WoW Patch 3.1.2 just went live on all servers. Patch notes here. Nothing massively exciting but it does introduce the new Equipment Manager. And I just finally got used to using Outfitter. Sigh.

P.S. Interesting fact: there’s a JavaScript debugger called ‘Venkman’, named after the Ghostbusters character. That alone makes me want to use it. Hell, if you’re going to geek out, may as well geek out properly right?

I was reading Funcom’s Q1 2009 Financial Report and found it pretty fascinating stuff (I really need to get a real life don’t I?). The point that it really drove home to me though was how business orientated MMORPGs are. Yeah, I know, that sounds like the most obvious statement since language began in the simple form of grunting but it’s something plenty of all players, including myself, constantly forget. MMOs may be labours of love for a lot of designers and developers but the bottom line is always going to be about cash, profit and sustainability. At the end of the day, if a game isn’t making a profit, it dies the gruesome death of the /shutdown command.

So, if we assume that all MMO companies are filled to the brim with greedy fat cats (undoubtedly too busy lighting their cigars with $100 bills to care about us plebs), how exactly are they getting the cash in? Well, making money in MMOs seems to be an evolving design. For many years the monthly subscription model ruled all in the Western World but recently we’ve been seeing some departures from it along with some rather interesting side lines.

In terms of alternate subscription models, Free Realms seems to be the biggest hit with 1 million subscribers (I know cause they sent me a big, obnoxious email to advertise the fact) to their ‘free’ to play game. Their strategy of offering a free ‘hook’ with the option of upgrading to a $4.99 monthly fee seems like quite a cunning ploy. What’s even more cunning is then trying to tempt people into spending real money on Station Cash to buy in-game items and rewards. Seems to work as even Tobold forked out $100 on it. Combine this with a Free Realms Trading Card Game and SOE certainly seem to be milking the franchise for all it’s worth.

SOE have used their Station Cash and TCG models on some of their other games too including Everquest, Everquest 2 and Star Wars: Galaxies (this one only has a card game at the moment, I believe). All of this is stuff aimed at getting players to part with their cold hard cash and increase the revenue of the games company.

Is it a bad thing though? Honestly, I don’t know but there’s certainly plenty of opinions about it either way. On the positive side, anything which provides pleasure, whether it be card game or an in-game vanity hat, must be a good thing but equally so I still want to enjoy my MMO for what it is – a game, a hobby and a real life distraction. I don’t want to be constantly reminded that I should spend money on something.

Let’s not forget about Blizzard either. They aren’t exactly divine in their altruism – they charge you $15/£12 to change your character’s face for crying out loud.

So that concludes my monologue about making money with MMORPGs. Let me know your thoughts.

Oh and if you’re looking for a spot of bedtime reading, I suggest checking out NCSoft’s Q1 2009 Financial Report. I particularly like page 15 which just says ‘Thank You’. As if we care.

I recently resubscribed to Everquest 2 and decided to start a new character, an Ogre called Scarscream (that’s ‘Scar-scream’ not ‘Scars-cream‘… although either way works). He’s a Shadowknight although I intend to betray him to a Paladin but stay over at Freeport (any class can play on any faction on Nagafen) thus meaning I can bum around with old friends whilst feeling slightly ’special’. However, I was looking through my character selection screen when I noticed something…odd…

Vanilla Gorilla

My first Ogre, the Vanilla Gorilla, Shadowknight of Darathar, now residing on Venekor until the upcoming server merge.

Clubosaurus

Clubosaurus. How he’d get his name? Hint: he likes to club people. Member of the Fat Asian Four guild on Nagafen.

Blane

Blane. Battle Cleric. Holy as hell and popular with the ladies.

Mantooth

Mantooth, the Legendary Berserker/Guardian of Nagafen, soon to come out of retirement. I’ve betrayed him between about 6 times already so by my reckoning I should get a in-game reward for doing it a 7th time.

Scarscream

My new Shadowknight/Paladin, Scarscream.

Yes, that’s right. My name is Gordon and I have an Ogre fetish. And you know what the really creepy thing is? They all look identical…

So what exactly is it that I love about these majestic creatures? Honestly, I’m not quite sure but maybe it has something to do with towering over my enemies and smashing into the ground and then grinding them under my feet or looming over my comrades and blocking their entire view of the battleground when we fight in compact dungeons. Either way, it’s bloody good fun.

Anyone a psychiatrist?

I haven’t really been focusing on leveling up my Priest in WoW much, instead I’ve been doing a heck of a lot of PvP. I was never much of a big PvP fan until I started on Darathar (the Euro PvP server) in Everquest 2 a few years ago. Since then I’ve gotten a taste for it and understood how it can provide a nice distraction to the usual PvE grind MMORPGs tend to offer.

The type of PvP I like however is definitely the restrained variety. I loathe complete and unrestricted FFA PvP – the idea of being ganked by someone 40 levels higher than me really gets my goat. I like fair and even PvP, preferably in restricted zones or between factions, so I find that battleground PvP in WoW is right up my ally.

I never bothered PvPing with my Warrior much but I’ve been eating up BGs with my Priest like a fat boy locked in a bakery. He’s currently level 52 and I’m trying to earn enough honor points to get a few pieces of the epic Field Marshal’s Raiment set because, apart form anything else, it looks the shiznit and I’m a vain SOB.

Priest's Field Marshal's Raiment set

My Priest is Discipline spec for PvP and I’m really happy with how it’s working mainly because it offers decent survivability and is flexible enough to suit my needs. When I was in the high 40’s I could be more agressive and focus on nuking ,however, now that I’m level 52 mixing with 59’s and 60’s, I have to be an utter coward in order to survive. Still, this works fine cause usually I just finding the biggest, meanest Paladin or DK and hang around them, throwing on the heals to rack up honor. Being a coward pays

It’s not all fun and games though as last night, towards the end of my session, I experienced something technically known as the ‘Rogue Gangbang Effect’. My team mates decided to constantly run off without me after battles (their thanks for all of the healing I was doing – you bastards, you know who I’m talking about!) and leave me straggling behind on my slow ass elephant to face the wrath of two twinked out, steroid Rogues. The repeated result could only be described as a bloody mess.

Rogue Gangbang IV Now Available On DVD

Guess it’s time to put my Priest PvP on hold and gain some levels. I’m looking forward to coming back in seven or eight levels, yessir I am.

Strange how the interweb works sometimes. I was reading West Karana and then followed a link to MMOQuests were I found some info about the arrival of Kurn’s Tower to Everquest 2 in GU #52. Naturally, being a huge fan of the zone in Everquest, I was pumped right away. You can find the offical info page from SOE here.

I resubscribed to EQ2 a few days ago but haven’t really gotten back into the game yet. It’s been ages since I’ve played it seriously and it’s always strange returning to an old game after a long period away. Also, all of my buddies (the ones who are still playing) have betrayed the light side and switched over to Freeport. Being on a PvP server (Nagafen) this means I either have two choices: betray over and join them, getting all my combat arts reset to Apprentice I in the process OR let them relentlessly destroy me every time I log on. Yeah, they really are that classy.

I was considering just getting Mantooth to level 80 (he’s about 40% exp away) and then starting a new character on the FP side. However, my discovery of Kurn’s Tower coming along changes all of that ’cause now I really want to do the zone as the preview of it looks pretty sweet. My only disappointment is that it’s not an open zone but an instance (there’s also a x2 raid instance). Guess I’ll have to save up my pennies, bite the bullet and betray anyway.

Anyway, I found some screenshots of the original Kurn’s Tower through Google. Enjoy the nostalgia fest.

Kurn's Tower Enterance

Kurn's Tower Outside

So, I finally succumbed and decided to get into The Twitter thing. It’s actually pretty cool and I’m enjoying the vacuous nature of it. The most exciting thing was checking out the suggested users bit and seeing people like Arnie, John McCain (yeah, it must be a Republican thing), Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton (maybe it’s a Star Trek thing too… and yes, Geordie is still alive) et al. It’s a cool concept to be able to see what they’re up to in their day-to-day lives and feel some sort of strange, interwebbed connection to them. The reality is that they don’t give a shit about that and their lives are just as boring as everyone elses most of the time. But don’t let that put you off following me on Twitter! Plug inc.

http://twitter.com/WeFlySpitfires

. . .

I think I broke The Twitter.

Twitter Is Down!

… and now the entire site has come down.

… and now it’s back up.

Must be a fun day to be a developer at Twitter.

Tweet me!