We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Admit it, you like being scared. The rush of adrenaline, the pumping of your heart, that exhilarating feeling; it’s why we watch horror films, go on roller coasters, partake in extreme sports, read Stephen King and watch the news on television at night. Horror is everywhere but as a genre for gaming though, it’s been pretty limited.

When face lifts go bad

That’s not to say that there haven’t been a few great horror games though. A couple of my personal favourite have been Doom 3 (I played it on the hardest difficulty and could only stomach 30 minutes at a time) and more recently Dead Space (my wife used to giggle when I screamed whilst playing it). Horror games, and I’m not talking about the gratuitous mega violence ones here, can be exceptional when done right because they invoke strong emotions from the player.

So where on Earth are the horror MMORPGs? We’ve got enough fantasy ones to last a lifetime, a few sci-fi ones to wet our appetite with but absolutely nothing scary to speak off. And it’s a genre ripe for the taking with so much untapped potential.

I suppose I can understand the reluctance of developers wanting to take a risk with horror due to it’s adult nature and the resulting smaller target audience it will reach. Why make a Lovecraft-esque MMORPG when a happy, smiling, hugs all round Elves based fantasty one will appeal to so many more people? Like many things in life, it boils down to money.

Fortunately though, it seems like some developers are starting to recognise the potential of horror MMOs and with any luck we won’t have to too long until they appear. Funcom is working on The Secret World which is looks quite titillating and CCP have signed a deal to use the World of Darkness license in a MMO. Bloody great stuff (pun intended).

Still not convinced by the potential of a horror MMORPG? Well imagine that if running a dungeon in your usual fantasy MMORPG is fun, imagine how much funner it would be if you were scared witless doing it.

I’ve been a bit of a late starter with Mass Effect 2 as it’s been out for a few weeks already yet I only started playing it just over a week ago. I’ve been busier than a Japanese beaver so I haven’t completed it yet but I’m slowly working through it, soaking up every moment of it and loving it more than a fat boy loves cake.

Here’s a few things MMORPGs could learn from ME2:

Hansel Shepard, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively, have to kill every single mothertrucker in the room, accept no substitute.

I’m A Good Guy/I’m A Bad Man
I adored the Paragon/Renegade morality system in the original Mass Effect and ME2 continues it’s implementation and adds the ability to intervene during certain cut scenes. Regular readers know I have a thing for being the “bad guy” in RPG games (probably because I’m secretly frustrated with being so nice in real life) and being able to actually roleplay a character and make immoral decisions that affect the game and the outcome helps build my immersion and connection.

Fast & Fun Combat
ME2 is a lot more action based than the original and streamlines much of the game to keep it more combat focused. Although I lament the loss of the the inventory system from the original, ME2 gives great combat pleasure. There’s no real reason why we need to stick with the traditional 1-2-3 combat system that most MMORPGs offer these days. This doesn’t mean going full hog twitched based but something a tad more heart-pumping would be nice.

Comrade Care
I care about the characters in ME2. I feel like they have their own personalities and characteristics and it draws me further into the game and makes deciding who’s going to be on my squad even harder. All of this is a refreshing change from not giving a flying toss about NPCs in MMOs. In ME2 they are my comrades, in MMORPGs they’re just pixel meat.

Tell Me a Story And Take Me Away
I feel immersed when I played ME2. I can’t quite explain exactly why but it’s a combination of atmosphere, background lore, setting and story. The universe in ME2 feels real and vibrant and when I play the game I forget all of my real life stresses and strains and for a brief few moments I am Hansel Shepard, Renegade Spectre out to save the galaxy. When I played World of Wacraft, I’m just a geek with a mic. Let’s learn from ME2, find the key to immersion and pile it on to MMORPGs in spades.

We’ve all had bad group experiences with players who don’t have a clue what their doing. Healers who don’t heal, tanks who haven’t even placed taunt on their action bar and DPS classes who ninja AFK and loot everything in sight (not that I’m pointing fingers or anything). In fact, bad players are so common and that they’ve become, at best, a running joke in MMORPGs and, at worst, a story used to scare your kids away from ever joining random pick-up groups and thus scarring them for life about the horrors that lurk on the Internet. But have we ever thought about why these bad players actually exist?

As you may know, my brother recently started playing World of Warcraft and whilst he’s been busy learning the ropes of the game, I’ve been busy exercising my patience and anthropological skills. I’m grouping with him on a regular basis in order to impart my Yoda like MMORPG wisdom and mock his lack of knowledge at the same time. The whole process is like toilet training a puppy. Yesterday’s lesson? What a tank is.

He’s a Warrior so I figured it best to explain to him, sooner rather than later, the whole concept of tanking/healer/DPSing (y’know, the Holy Trinity of MMOs) and why it’s important. I lectured him on the general MMO concepts of being a meatshield, duties and responsibilities and the like, and more specific stuff relating to WoW like Defensive Stance, using a shield and taunting. He’s a bright kid, I think he got it, but it made me wonder: if I hadn’t been there to explain this, what would’ve happened?

Chances are my bro would’ve continued to climb his way up the Warcraft leveling tree all by himself like a happy little chimpanzee only to discover that when he tries to group with the other monkeys at the top, life is suddenly a whole different ball game. The bottom line is that pretty much every MMORPG I’ve ever had played has neglected to actually teach players how to be whatever role they’ve undertaken. In the past this duty has fallen on our gaming brethren to school us as we level but in more modern MMOs, were soloing is so convenient, grouping is almost a rare occurrence. And even then people just storm off with a “you suck” comment under their breath if you expose your own noobiness.

We can’t, and shouldn’t, blame noobs for being, well, noobs. It’s not their fault. Most MMORPGs assume that players are either already familiar with the genre and know what they’re doing or will pick it up as they go along. The latter is not very structured or sensible and doesn’t really work at all with games like WoW that have a learning curve which goes from Solo King to Group Joker in one instance. Players are slowly introduced to the world of questing and soloing but when it comes to grouping, we’re all just thrown into the deep end.

So next time you end up with a bad tank in your group, instead of muttering obscenities about their mother towards them, why not take a moment to chat with them, explain to them what they’re doing wrong, and try to teach them how to play. I’d bet you no one else has ever tried.

Yes, World of Warcraft has a built-in voice chat feature. Surprised? I was. I’ve been playing for over a year but only found out about it a few weeks ago and only then because someone mentioned it offhandedly on Twitter. Apparently it was introduced in patch 2.2 way back in 2007. Really? How the heck did we miss that one. I had no idea about it and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one, everyone else I asked usually just opting to use Ventrillo or Teamspeak instead.

Save yourself the stress of getting WoW's voice chat to work, make a long distance phone call instead

Being of bold adventurer stock (I once travelled abroad and didn’t pack enough socks), I decided to give it a shot. In case your wondering, which you aren’t, the option to activate said voice chattification ability is under the “Voice” tab in the “Sound & Voice” menu. The theory is that you just click it on, select your mic input device and sound output device along with any custom settings you want and away you go. In practice though, it doesn’t quite work out that way.

Firstly, this feature isn’t available to players on a trial account (as my brother discovered), presumably to stop gold farmers from shouting Chinese obscenities or marketing slogans down your ear. Fair enough. However, after using it for a good couple of weeks now, I can safely say that it’s one buggy piece of work. It took several regroups and relogs to get the initial thing set up and now it consistently doesn’t work for a player if they change character (the remedy being that you have to log out completely and return). It also doesn’t seem to want to work at all in groups formed using the dungeon finder (oddly enough it works fine in battlegrounds).

The voice system isn’t all bad though and does offer some nice features though like the ability to quieten the game’s music or sound effects when someone is talking along with seeing the name of the player in your WoW UI. It also has the obligatory push-to-talk setup and the overall sound quality is pretty decent considering you’re not talking through a dedicated server. Plus it’s very convenient and very free. Which is nice.

I guess I’m a little torn over the whole thing. It works, well, some of the time (unless you want to change character, run a cross-server dungeon or have a conversation with more than 5 people or anyone outside for your group) and it saves me the hassle of installing a 3rd party piece of software or paying for some VoIP server. Still, my biggest gripe is just how shoddy the implementation is and that the whole thing, even after 2+ years of it being around, is still bug ridden. I’m genuinely surprised to see this from Blizzard and I can only assume it’s a low priority to them due to it’s lack of use from the player base.

Convenience is winning out at the moment but I can see that the issues with WoW’s voice chat are going to eventually force me and my buddies to switch to something else. The real killer is how it doesn’t work with groups from the dungeon finder and we’re already discussing switching to Skype as a result.

Anyone able to recommend any other free voice chat systems that are compatible with both PC (Windows 7) and Mac?

Dearest wife,

My love for you is like an eternal well that spouts sparkly pink champagne love drops. I pondered many ways in which to show my deepest affection for you and pondered even further the ways we could celebrate our loving relationship together. A romantic candlelit dinner for two, mayhaps? Nay, too cliché. 24 red roses delivered to your bedside by a naked me? Non, too contrived. Some shiny silver jewellery perhaps? Niet, I know how you just deplore material things like diamonds and platinum.

But alas, fret not my dear, for I have foundest the perfect way for me to convey my feelings towards yonself! I shall spend all evening in front of my computer questing by myself in World of Warcraft in order to complete a series of trivial tasks and earn special “Love is in the Air” achievements. I shall then take some screenshots of myself receiving the rewards for you to peruse on your laptop alone at a time of your suiting. And thus through this bound our love shall grow ever stronger.

I can only hope that one day you shall find it within your heart to return this favour and shower me with the cyber affection that I so wholly give to you.

You humble and ever obedient husband,

Gordon

Although I’ve dabbled with PvP in many MMORPGS, the only game that I truly gripped me with it was Everquest 2. I played for several years on first Darathar and then Nagafen and I stand by my opinion that SOE managed to create one of the best PvP experiences available. Aside from creating a fair yet competitive environment that offered me the sort of mildly sanitised and strategic PvP I was looking for, SOE did something exceptionally clever – they made proper tanking part of PvP gameplay.

You can run but you can't hide

Being a tank is about being the meat shield of the group and soaking up damage like a dirty sponge so your comrades can do their jobs. It’s a role I adore and one that’s always frustrated me in many PvP games as it often just doesn’t exist. In PvP in most MMORPGs you don’t play a tank, you play DPS. You may have more hit points, more armor, and more defensive abilities but at the end of the day you’re just another damage dealer because actual tanking doesn’t do anything. And why would it? If you run up and engage your opponent, they will just run around you and target the feeble finger-wigglers in your party instead (poor fellows). SOE had the perfect solution.

They made taunt work in PvP.

In PvP in EQ2, taunt will force your opponent(s) to attack you for a good 3 seconds. That’s 3 seconds they can’t attack your healer, your scout, your mage or your pet Chiwawa. Start being clever with your taunts and suddenly you’ve got the thing that’s the most important aspect of any PvP fight: control.

The ability to taunt in PvP in EQ2 made combat a whole lot more interesting. Fights lasted longer and required more strategy and thought. It wasn’t about who did the most DPS or who was the highest level, it was about working as a team and having faith in your friends. Trust me, there’s nothing quite as exhilarating as taunting an entire force of enemy players onto your backside and hoping that your group shows their mettle, keeps their cool and does their job.

Since playing Everquest 2, I’ve been quite surprised at how little affect the taunt ability, and often tanking as a whole, has in PvP in other MMORPGs. Games seem determined to offer a very singular focused form of PvP and relies on damage and independence rather than grouping and strategy. It also seems very odd to me to suddenly re-write the rules of the game. We all know that PvE groups require a tank, a healer and good DPS so why should PvP be any different? Why should my tank have to play a DPS role just to be competitive in PvP?

Tanking in PvP is an interesting thing to ponder and I think it’s lack of purpose has a lot to do with the haphazard development of PvP as a gameplay form. It’s certainly something I’d like to see explored more and given more attention by the developers. PvP shouldn’t just be about rushing and overwhelming your opponent with damage, it should offer the same strategy and group dynamics that PvE does. Kudos to SOE for doing it well.

Whilst waiting for the World of Warcraft patch 3.3 to download a few days ago, I decided to try out the Armory Facebook app seeing as Blizzard were pushing it through the game loader. The installation was, as you would expect, quick and painless and within a couple of minutes I had hooked up Facebook account with my Battle.net account WoW Armory feed. My WoW account is now ubiquitous. Awwwsommmeeeee (!).

Yep, that was sarcasm.

Behold, my glory! (As if you care.)

As the title of this post probably gives away, I’m kinda baffled by this Facebook application. I mean, I can see Blizzard’s reasons for developing it; they have a shiny new feed of every player’s activity ready to be abused and the more they can get people to chat, spam and spread the word of Warcraft (clever pun there), the more free marketing they can receive. “What’s that, Billy? You equipped a tabard in an online computer game? I must subscribe to this and find out what all of the fuss is about!”

I’m not dissing Blizzard’s ability to make funky little web do-das and pieces of jiggery-pokery (I actually really like their 3D character viewer), I’m just questioning the actual need of something like a Facebook application. Do we honestly need to share every single micro-accomplishment in our hobbies with everyone we’ve ever met in every web service we’ve ever used?

Trust me, when I take down the Lich King, you’ll all hear about it (whether you like it or not) and I’ll do it the good old fashioned way – by tell telling people. Until then, I don’t need to integrate my WoW account with my Twitter account with my Facebook account with my OpenID account with my Flickr Account all just so I can broadcast to the cyber world every time I gain a level in a video game. It’s social networking gone mad.

P.S. If you want to follow me on Facebook, feel free. Occasionally I say something amusing but most of the time I’ll just ignore you.