We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Ah, Easter Sunday, the perfect excuse for lazing around with la familia and stuffing yourself silly with chocolate eggs. Or, if you’re me, trying to explain the connection between giant bunnies and Jesus Christ to my Buddhist wife.

This week also saw April Fools’ Day rear its Pinocchio’s nosed head. It’s a great day and a lot of fun so long as you don’t want to trust anything you read on the Internet. I, for one, just assumed everything within that 24 hour period was untrue as every blogger, including myself, took it upon themselves to lie their arses off. Jolly good fun, in my opinion.

• Andrew, previously know for this excellent World of Warcraft blog Of Teeth and Claws, has moved shop and set up a new blog called Systemic Babble which looks at everything from his personal topics to society and politics and video games. Well worth checking out.
• The Nomadic Gamer looks at goals in EVE Online, a subject close to my heart as I had a lot of trouble figuring out what I wanted to achieve when I first started playing it.
• Werit casts an eye over the careers of WAR. MMORPGs, of course, not real armed forces careers.
• Ever wondered about the logistics of raiding on religious holidays? Rhii asks the practical questions.
• The World’s Strongest Librarian and personal hero of mine, Josh Hanagarne, releases his first novel, The Knot! I’ve already ordered a copy.
• Joshua says no to Ubisoft’s DRM. Go for the hilarious image, stay for the article.
• Need advice starting up an EVE Online blog? CrazyKinux has all of the answers.
• The Ancient Gaming Noob announces the winners of his April Fools contest.
• Chris from Game by Night has a look at gold farming.
• And finally Kirai looks at a Japanese April Fools of women vending machines. Excellent satire of Otaku chauvinism and Japan’s obsession with vending machines. Be warned: contains mild nudity.

So many excellent articles this week to pick from I feel like I’m barely doing the MMO blogosphere justice with this small list. Have I missed something? Why not let me know.

Happy Easter all!

-Gordon

I’m not a hardcore PvPer in the way that I play games like Darkfall and lament the loss of old school FFA PvP such as that found on certain Everquest servers where high level players could just, and did, repeatedly grief and gank everyone and anyone without care. No, I’m the type of guy who prefers sanitized, sanctioned PvP in which every player is on a (more or less) equal footing.

Zerging: The best way to win PvP

This is not just because I hate losing to players only because they’re 40 levels higher than me and I never, in anyone’s wildest dreams, ever stood a chance against them but also because I take no satisfaction in defeating an opponent in an unfair fight. Now, this doesn’t mean I follow some strict code of the Samurai or an ancient chivalry philosophy, it just means I want to know that I beat my opponent because I was better than them and not because I had a huge advantage in levels or class imbalance which they could do nothing about.

Balancing inter-player combat is tough in any situation but unfortunately in games like World of Warcraft it’s made even tougher by the fact that the developers need to make sure everything works and fits into PvE as well. Unfortunately, however, it’s been my experience (from a variety a MMOs) that this feat is practically impossible to accomplish. Even with the best will in the world, PvP and PvE are essentially two separate games existing within the same universe and trying to mix them together so they can exist in harmony is very, very difficult thing to achieve.

Some solutions do exist though and probably the best one I’ve seen was in Everquest 2. The developers came up with a very simple, yet very effective, method of dealing with the divide between PvP and PvE: they gave every PvE ability a special PvP version. For instance your normal Kick might deal 200 damage when used in PvE but only 100 damage in PvP (as mob hit points scale higher than player’s and thus this offset the difference). Likewise a Scout’s stun ability might last 6 seconds in PvE but only 3 seconds in PvP and so forth. Simple, elegant, perfect.

Although the system wasn’t perfect and the devs spent a lot of time tweaking things, the fundamentals were sound. And if an ability was prone to exploit (such as Scout’s Evac) it could be altered in PvP with no impact whatever in PvE. Not only did this make the devs lives a lot easier and PvPers a lot happier but it also created a nice separation between these two forms of gameplay. PvE could remain challenging and balanced without affecting PvP and vice versa.

Last month I wrote about how Everquest 2 is a better game than World of Warcraft and this is one of the many reasons why. I played on Darathar and Nagafen (the EQ2 European and US PvP servers respectivily) for 3 years in total and never felt the frustration or annoyance that I sometimes feel when I PvP in WoW. It’s not that hate WoW PvP or want to rage quit or anything like that, I just felt like writing a commentary about the situation and giving SOE the credit they deserve. If I was a MMORPG developer, separating PvP abilities from PvE is definitely a fundamental I’d observe.

Anyone else know of any good examples of mixing and balancing PvP with PvE?

-Gordon

Blizzard just announced that they’ll be offering paid class changes for World of Warcraft within the next 3 months. The pricing structure has yet to be confirmed but they speculate that it will be around $60 to change class within your current faction and $80 to change class and switch faction. Class changes includes free character re-customization, gender swap and name change if desired. There are a few restrictions in place as well and it’s worth noting that you cannot access the service until you have at least one level 80 character on your account and you cannot change from a Death Knight to another class (presumably to stop people from churning out pre-made level 55 characters of any class).

The pricing is a little steep for my taste but it’s understandable considering what the option grants the player. This is the ultimate step towards freedom and flexibility but, as some might say, at the price of sacrificing our connections to our characters. Has Blizzard gone too far?

-Gordon