We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Petter over at Don’t Fear the Mutant had an interesting post about his reaction to some players exploiting others (in particular to some bank heists in Darkfall). It got me thinking about ganking and stealing and all of the less savoury activities which occur in MMOs and how we perceive them. Are they bullying tactics that some players exploit to ruin the fun of others? Or are they legitimate strategies as allowed by the confines of the game?

The Loco-Motion in action

Right back when I first started playing Everquest, I soon heard the words “ganking” and “griefing”. These were terms coined to describe activities that were outside of the considered norms of acceptable behaviour. For instance, in EQ it was possible to purposefully ‘train’ NPC enemies onto unsuspecting players and wipe them out completely. It was a side effect from the game design as enemies were incredibly tenacious and would literally chase you until you were either dead or reached another zone. They were also incredibly fickle and aggressive and had no qualms about focusing their attention on anyone else that got in their path. Fansy the Bard became infamous for this and it was an activity that was bound to not only irritate players but also attract the attention of the GMs.

A little later when I started playing Dark Age of Camelot on a FFA PvP server I had my first ganking experience. I distinctly recall my level 8 character being killed repeatedly at my spawn point by a level 50 Lurikeen Eldritch. Eventually I had to pull the plug and walk away because he just wouldn’t stop and, suffice to say, it put me off PvP for a while. However, unlike trains in Everquest, this was not considered a player offense and the GMs would do nothing about it as they deemed it to be a perfectly legitimate PvP activity.

Of course now we have games like EVE Online in which infiltrating corporations, betraying comrades and robbing banks are not only legitimate parts of the game but actually part of it’s appeal. It’s all very confusing. If I betrayed my guild in EVE I could be a hero but if I did it in World of Warcraft, I’d be the scum of the Earth. Where exactly are the boundaries and who defines them?

It seems to me that the more freedom the developers bestow on the player, the less they will interfere with the activities that go on within the games walls. So long as this made clear, players don’t seem to have a problem with it either. The other end of the extreme are games like WoW which heavily shackle players (not necessarily a bad thing) and protect them from ‘anti-social’ behavior. This of course stems into the whole risk vs reward discussion and even into the hardcore vs carebear debate.

Conflict seem to occur however when a players conceptions of a game don’t meet the rules of the gameworld. If you play Darkfall and don’t expect, at some point, to be slaughtered without mercy, you aren’t going to have a good time. Same goes if you play WoW and expect the freedom to kill someone who looks at you the wrong way but don’t have it.

The thing I don’t understand though is how available activities within a game can be branded as “good” or “bad”. This isn’t the real world and the developers have the power to influence and restrict or control any activity we can do. Should the player really be reprimanded for doing something that’s entirely possible within the game world? If it’s not desirable, it just shouldn’t be allowable within the game.

For instance, if Everquest allows trains then isn’t that a perfectly viable strategy for clearing out unwanted players from a camp spot? Why wouldn’t it be? And if WoW allows me to infiltrate a guild and pillage their bank then isn’t that just another part of the game? Why would it be acceptable in one game but not in another? When does an activity go from being a viable strategy into a bully-boy tactic?

The iPad. Giving us juvenile jokes since January 2010

As it seems like most people were, I was rather underwhelmed by the recent release of the iPad. I don’t have anything against Apple and I adore my iPhone but I’m not going to praise every product they release just for the sake of it like one of those Mac Evangelists (you know who you are!). Still, a few delusional souls pondered whether the iPad could run World of Warcraft and suddenly, my interest was piqued.

Of course, I use the term delusional because there is no way the iPad could run WoW and thus, even if the bodies were willing, it could never be a reality. The iPad just doesn’t have the power, speed or capacity to run the game so it’s sadly never going to be an option. But still, let’s just imagine for one moment that it could. What if the iPad could run WoW at a reasonable framerate and, better yet, a reasonable latency over 3G? Wouldn’t that just be awesome?

So assuming this fantasy was a reality and WoW was just another app in the Apple Store, would it convince you to get an iPad? Let’s vote.

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Blizzard recently revealed the World of Warcraft Arena Season 8 armour sets and given my current interest in Project Runway, I figured I’d write up my reactions. I don’t know where my recent infatuation with fashion comes from but I do have a sneaking suspicion that my wife is secretly slipping estrogen supplements into my morning coffee. Although I have no proof to back that claim up, it does provide a convenient excuse for my budding man-breasts, or “moobs” as they’re sometimes referred to. But alas you’re not here to read about my imminent ability to lactate so let’s crack on with a section I like to call “Passion For Fashion”.

Paladin's Receive The Fashion Passion

First off, I gotta commend Bizzard on doing a fine job of creating interesting and grandiose armour that really captures not only the essence of each class but also the feeling of power and achievement behind them. I know some people hate WoW’s over-the-top cartoony appearance and, yes, although a lot of characters do end up looking like Power Rangers with fluorescent over-sized ’80s shoulder pads, I find the artist style of the game quite appealing. Ironically, when WoW first came out I really wasn’t a fan of the art direction but over the years it’s grown on me and it’s certainly allowed the game to age gracefully. EQ2 in comparison looks and runs like a dog’s dinner now and I’m glad for anything which offers armour in colours other than grey, grey and greyer.

Whenever Blizzard release new armour sets, I immediately rush to check out the Warrior set as it’s my favourite class. After the stunning Tier 10 Warrior threads, I was hoping for something equally awesome but instead found myself a little disappointed with the Arena Season 8 design. It’s OK, I suppose, and certainly not as ugly as the ridiculous looking Hunter armour but I just don’t understand Blizzard fascination with half-cut helmets/face-plates. I quite dig the fact that it’s red and spikey but, honestly, do you want to run around with your Warrior worrying that if you nod too quickly you’ll impale yourself through the face?

The Death Knight, Rogue and Warlock armour are certainly rising to the top of the class though and get a solid grade B for coolness, inspiration and quirkiness. Although not as funky as the Tier 10 Scarecrow version, the Arena Season 8 Rogue armour has an odd charm to it that I find appealing. I’m pretty sure the designers have given up trying to make Rogues look as if they are wearing leather to enhance their sneaking ability and have just opted for crazy spikes and weird shoulder pads. Works for me.

The real winner here though is Blizzard’s Favoured Son, the Paladin. Being Scottish I loved their skirt armour from Tier 10 and being a teenager at heart, I love this new look with it’s crazily exaggerated shoulder pads and plumed helm. The style suits their class down to a T and it captures the spirit of the Holy Crusader perfectly. Well played, Blizzard, well played.

So there you have it. Tim Gunn eat your heart out.

I love reading blogs, especially MMORPG ones, and I’m subscribed to several dozen RSS feeds (just over 60) in my reader. I don’t want to overwhelm myself with everyone’s fascinating rants and opinions but it did occur to me that I haven’t subscribed to many new feeds recently. So, in order to prevent my blog-readingness from stagnating, I figured I should be proactive and increase my available pool of reading material.

Of course, being the lazy sort, I figured I could just get you guys to do the hard work for me! Thus my post today. Can anyone suggest any good blogs for me to read? It can be your own (feel free to be as self promoting as you want, God knows I am), someone else’s, your ultimate nemesis’, anything is OK. MMORPG related would be nice but I honestly don’t mind. Leave me a comment or drop me a tweet or email and I’ll go check it out.

But I’m not all take and no give. Here’s a blog that I stumbled upon via Twitter and it’s sickeningly hypnotic: http://www.tazaandhusband.com. For some reason I’m just compelled to read it. Maybe it’s my fascination with life in New York or maybe it’s my love of dogs and cute chicks or maybe I’m just turning into a 16 year old girl. I don’t care, I just can’t hide my shame any longer.

On another note, does anyone have any recommendations for structuring feeds in their reader? I currently have them listed in order of my personal preference but it doesn’t seem like a very elegant way of organising everything. I suppose I could break them down by category and create folders for WoW/EVE/General etc but most bloggers tend to cover quite a few subjects so it’s not always obvious what they’re mainly focusing on.

P.S. I’m also keeping a Twitter list of all MMORPG bloggers that I encounter. It’s really just for my own organisational purposes and to stop me from losing my sanity trying to track down and backtrack other people’s tweets all the time. It’s currently following 45 people and I’m enjoying being able to view full threads of conversations between blogites. Let me know if you want on it (you may well already be) and feel free to follow it if you want. I don’t benefit from it but I’ll aim to keep the list up to date.

Spinks posted an interesting article about what times of the day most people play MMOs at and it got me thinking about my own gaming habits.  At the turn of the century (I just love saying that) I was deeply engrossed in Everquest and my preferred playtime was late night and early morning, usually around 9pm – 2am. I couldn’t possible game like that now but what is interesting to me is not so much when I played, but where I played.

The Internet: Making Internationalization A Nightmare

I’m pretty sure I’m right in saying that when Everquest was first released it didn’t have any official European servers. In fact, I had no idea about server location or anything like that, I just picked one from a list and started my adventures. Although SOE added Europe based servers later on, I never switched to them and only ever played on American servers. And it suited me perfectly.

Apart from thrilling Yanks with the fact that I’m Scottish, the East Coast prime-time fitted in perfectly with my nocturnal schedule. Midnight for me was 7pm for them and the groups were rife. Of course, if I fancied a little bit of soloing (this being EQ meant that was a very rare occurrence) I could just hop on during my afternoon hours and get the whole server to myself. It was a win-win situation. And then Dark Age of Camelot had to come along and ruin it.

I think a large contributing reason to the fact that I only played DAOC for a couple of months (as opposed to years in the case of EQ) was because the developers enforced localization – and by that I mean they restricted the servers you could play on depending on the region where you bought the game. Yep, I had to chose between one of two heavily underpopulated UK severs, both brimming with annoying Limeys. I swear I heard the term “m8″ (mate) about 8 billion times every day. Had I wanted to play on American servers, I would’ve had to import a boxed copy of the game at great expense.

A few years later, Blizzard pulled the same stunt with World of Warcraft and, again, it really bothered me at the time (although it doesn’t any more). I just couldn’t understand the decision to restrict what server you can play on depending on where you bought your copy of the game. In the Internet Age, when the world should be getting smaller, it seems like such a silly thing to force people into only playing with those nearby them.

Fortunately Everquest 2, a game I played for three years, didn’t (and still doesn’t) enforce localization and is, in my opinion, a great example of how the multicultural aspects of MMOs can really be explored when you aren’t restricted to playing in your own region. I ended up in a fantastic European guild on a US PvP server able to use the timezone difference to our advantage. Prime-time US playtime may have been the realms of the Americano but we ruled the afternoons and all Hell broke loose whilst our brethren from across the Pond were busy beavering away in their offices at work. We even had one American guild member who used to raid with us during his afternoon hours and then again with a US guild during his evening.

Although it affects me less as I play “normal” hours now, I still don’t understand the reasoning behind enforcing localization and restricting what server we can play on. Of course, there may be technical things to consider but if SOE can do it, I’m sure anyone can and honestly it seems like such a petty thing to restrict. I can’t play with many of my old American friends on newer games due to this reason and it’s a darn shame. Do I really need to import another copy of a game just to play it on some other servers?

The other week I purchased the paid faction change service from Blizzard for one of my World of Warcraft characters. As a few friends of mine started playing the game on the Alliance side, I decided to move my level 30 Warrior from Horde over to Alliance, going from my second favourite race, Undead, to my all time favourite race, Draenei, in the process. The entire thing cost me £20/€23/$32 and allowed me to choose a new Alliance race, gender and name.

After (This image would've worked so much better if I'd had a 'Before' shot)

The ability to change faction is only one of the paid services that Blizzard offers now and, along with purchasable pets, must give them a nice little source of microtransaction revenue. I’m assuming “microtransaction” is the right term here cause RMT is often associated with the illegal purchase of gold but, honest to God, I really have no idea. Whoever coined these phrases should be forced to continually write letters into the Oxford English Dictionary until they eventually relent and publish a concrete definition for us all to refer to. If nothing else, it would avoid awkward moments like this. Anyway, I digress.

I’ve gotta say that I’m very happy with the faction change service. The whole process was incredibly slick and painless and totally worth the money. Why? Simple maths. I earn 20 bucks in less than two hours work at my job yet my level 30 Warrior had a total play time of over 24 hours. Thus buying the transfer was basically the most economical thing for me to do.

Of course, some would argue that this sort of service should be free and, heck, well it would be nice but it’s not exactly on our list of “required” MMORPG features is it? Players can’t change side in game and thus Blizzard has established this service as being an additional “extra” for the game, something that’s outside of their pre-established remit. SOE, on the other hand, allows characters to change faction in Everquest 2 via quests so if they started charging for it, all hell would undoubtedly break loose. Of course they also provide free character recustomization whereas Blizzard charge for it so that it’s either a missed opportunity for the former or a rip-off from the latter.

But to the come to the point of my title, this is exactly the sort of the microtransaction that I don’t mind. In fact, I downright quite like it. It’s totally outside of the gameworld (and by that I mean it doesn’t affect other players or at least is very low impact) and completely optional. Players don’t expect to be able to shift faction in WoW and thus it doesn’t influence them much on a daily basis.

It also does what all good sort of microtransaction should and that is provide flexibility and choice. Of course, it’s still freedom within the walls of Blizzard but it’s better than nothing and I don’t mind paying for it.

P.S. Want an example of the wrong sort of microtransaction? Well, I was going to point out pretty much everything about Free Realms but that blasted Pandaren Monk keeps forcing its way to the front of my mind. £9/€10/$15 for a chubby little furball that occasional bows and makes odd noises? And I paid for it? I’m such a twat.

P.P.S. My wife doesn’t know about this and I’m not going to tell her. Everytime she catches me with my wallet out in front of the keyboard, my life flashes before my eyes. She thinks “virtual” goods of any sort are a complete waste of money and I think she’d probably be less mad if she caught me buying porn instead. And no, I’m not dumb enough to test that theory.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about online security and privacy, particularly directed at Blizzard. Although these issues affect every MMORPG, World of Warcraft is the most popular and thus most susceptible to the issues of account hacking and our rights of privacy.

Body Scanners - The new WoW Authenicator

Although WoW account hacking seems to be on the rise, it’s a minor concern to me and one I’m not actually that bothered about it. At the end of the day, the principle of hacking relies on security flaws in a system or how educated the user is in avoiding scams and attempts to get them to willingly reveal their password. Both of these things can be dealt with and don’t seem to lead to any deep moral quandaries. My real concern, however, is our privacy.

As you probably know, Blizzard recently made their WoW Armory feeds public. This means that anyone and everyone can view a list of your in-game achievements and accomplishments. Big whoop, right? Not quite. This apparently innocent feature has caused quite a storm and lead many to deride Blizzard for invading our personal privacy.

The scariest thing to me though is how the act itself is indicative of a lack of responsibility by those we should be trusting. We are entering a world in which everything we do is monitored and logged and we have to trust companies to be responsible with our information.

Let me explain. As a web programmer, I know a fair bit about the workings on the Internet and here a few tidbits of information that may shock you (although they’re probably/should be common knowledge).

• Everything you do online is logged by your ISP. They keep logs of all of your incoming and outgoing traffic as well as a history of every website you visit.
• Your ISP can monitor and read the emails you send.
• Your email hosting company logs emails received and can read them.
• Depending on the country you live in, websites you visit are first matched against a blacklist of sites before providing you access. The number of attempts to access the site are logged along with possibly even your IP address.

Pretty freaky, right?

Now, it may seen innocent enough when Blizzard are revealing your WoW activities to the general public but what if your ISP decided to create a publicly viewable RSS feed of every website you visit? How would you feel about that? Or what if they just decided to start checking your emails and posting them online? It doesn’t seem that unlikely consider Google already scan the content of your GMail emails in order to generate specifically targeted ads and British ISPs have come under fire for trying to implement behavioral targeting services based on your Internet activies.

This is the classic argument of “don’t reveal my private information” vs “if you don’t have anything to hide, why do you care”. Fact is, I know that my activities and information are tracked online and it doesn’t bother me. That’s not my issue. My issue is that it should my choice as to whether or not it’s revealed.

This issue with the WoW Armory reminds me a lot of the Facebook scandal last year when they decided to make everyone’s profiles publicly searchable. These matters boil down to trust between the user and the facilitator and, frankly, companies need to behave in a responsible manner if they’re going to hold on to personal and private information about us all.

P.S. Even your cell phone text messages are logged and stored for several weeks by your provider. Creepy stuff.