One Tamriel! How’bout that?

When people talk about MMO comebacks, they’ll mostly give Final Fantasy XIV as an example. Of course this is true, FFXIV in its current state is immensely better than what they released as V1.0. But this one was essentially rebuilt- it wasn’t evolution that brought FFXIV from 1.0 to 2.0, it was recreation.

Elder Scrolls Online wasn’t too well-received when it released, although i believe this was born more out of disappointment of players who didn’t feel like their interests took the front seat in the game design- as we’ve often read, MMO players felt the game was not MMO enough and Skyrim players felt ESO wasn’t Skyrim enough. Both groups of players felt neglected to some extent. These days, i feel like we are seeing Elder Scrolls Online stepping up to satisfy both player types and the birth of the next great MMORPG- i mean, it has been in the making for quite some time now, but Elder Scrolls Online will be shaping itself up to a set of features and scope that will see it propelled to be one of the best if not the best MMORPG to be released in this decade at least. In my opinion, of course.

Elder Scrolls Online is a great MMORPG with a few things that hinder it at becoming the top MMO for me. To mention a few things:

• at release and until recently, the prospect of having to quest through all three campaigns with each and every character scared me. That’s at least 300 hours of content if you rush and that would mean about a year or two of me playing only one character and only Elder Scrolls Online. After that, i’d be ready for DLC and Cyrodiil.
• group options – for people like me and guilds like ours, level scaling is not optional, it’s very important to enable us to do stuff together. It’s great that the DLC are scaled, but going there and doing stuff would mean to almost skip over entire zones in the base game (i saw about a quarter of Greenshade, if it was that much)
• non-combat content like housing is missing
• trading with other players still requires us to join trading guilds

I might be a bit too optimistic here, but it seems that at the end of 2016, only the issue of trading with other players will remain, as housing is probably coming this year and yesterday, Matt Firor announced “One Tamriel”.

In other words, we’re bringing the same auto-leveling system (called “battle leveling”) that has been so successful in our DLCs to the entire game.

Here are the basics:

• Characters will have their level scaled the same way that we currently scale players to the level of DLC zones (Imperial City, Orsinium, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood).
• You will be able to explore the entire world in any sequence you wish – just walk across the world and you will always find appropriately leveled content.
• You will be able to play and group with anyone in the game at any time (outside of PvP). No longer will you have to create a lower level character to play with a friend who has just joined the game. You will be able to group and adventure together from the moment your friend emerges from the tutorial.
• We are dropping all PvE Alliance restrictions. You will be free to explore of all Tamriel, including other Alliances. It is up to you how you want to role-play your character while doing this. “Silver” and “gold” versions of zones will be replaced by Cadwell quest storylines that you can do in any order you wish.
• Alliance restrictions will still be enforced in all PvP areas, of course. One Tamriel will not affect the PvP systems in Cyrodiil.
• In general, higher level players will be the same “level” as lower level players, but they will have far more tools in their arsenal: better gear, more abilities, and of course more Champion points.
• We will adjust gear rewards to scale appropriately to make sure that there is always a way to get more powerful via crafting, questing, PvP, and dungeon/trial boss loot drops.
• All Trials and Dungeons will continue with standard and Veteran difficulty modes, and you will have to be Veteran level to play veteran dungeon modes.
• The Coldharbour zone will be “roped off” from players who have not yet completed the quests that lead there. However, if you are invited to a group that is already there, or travel to a friend who is there, you can immediately access the zone.

Sooo, level scaling in the whole game. Removal of alliance restrictions in PvE. Imagine what this means for a small guild like ours: finally, we can tackle all the content together. At any one time, we’ll be able to meaningfully form groups to help each other, be in each other’s company, run dungeons. We’ll also be able to recruit players from the other alliances, as we’re PvE-focussed anyway. I don’t know yet what that might mean for our leveling group of DC characters, but i guess it might have an influence, because we don’t need to watch each others’ character levels as closely as before and we’ll also be able to simply join up with whatever character we like.

Now give me a place to call my own, please!

For the solo player- and in my personal opinion questing is still better when doing it alone- this means that outleveling content will not be a problem anymore. This opens up so many possibilities like playing through whole DLCs before getting to 50, changing zones and so on. With this change, the leveling experience from 1 to 50 will be very alt-friendly indeed, because while you still can do everything with every character, the order in which to do that will be up to us, the players. This move alone will make the game feel even larger than it is right now.

I am very excited to see where ESO is going this year and i’m very happy with the current state as well as the prospect of what’s coming.

Two good news in one day

Who would have thought, right? It’s 2015, in some ways a new age of MMORPGs, with smaller titles, less hype and a lot of happiness with what’s already out there. And yet, today there were two big news for the MMORPG player: Blade & Soul is going to get a western version and the Repopulation seems to make it to release– this year!

For me, this means that Project Trinity is almost set for this year- SWTOR should be a side MMO, but is my main pastime at the moment. By the way, i decided to do one run of an Imperial Agent, solely focussing on the class storyline. I can’t see myself stop playing that game right now- it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it fits my schedule, preferences and moods. Final Fantasy XIV should get a bump soon(ish)- after all, it is my “main” game until august, at least. Elder Scrolls Online didn’t see me, this month, and will be swapped with Guild Wars 2 come june. Heart of thorns is going to release soon(ish), if leaked info is to be believed, it will be releasing on june, 30th. I can play- even a new character- to 80, easily, in one month.

Come the end of this year, the Repopulation will release, and that means the second of three games for which this blog was created- as a reminder- back when i started, i looked forward to either ArcheAge, the Repopulation or Everquest Next to be the new home MMO for me. Nowadays, i’m not so positive anymore- and the games are not the whole reason for that. If i were to play only one MMO, that game would have to be very versatile. I don’t think one game can do that.

The Repopulation is interesting to me because, on paper, it offers everything an MMO in my opinion needs- an open world, restricted-but-existing open world pvp, trade opportunities, a player-centric economy, somewhat dynamic pve, crafting that isn’t just an add-on to the game and so on. When it comes, i might even hop onto a hardcore server, for the trade.

The thing is- as much as i’d like to be able and willing to play such an MMO, my time-restraints might become an obstacle. I’m not sensitive in this- if it is possible to enjoy the game with as few gaming hours as i have, i’ll be a happy camper. But it would have to be a “sandbox” like EVE, where there’s not only goals for player groups to achieve, but also for solo/casual players. Then, there’s the “polish” thing- the Repopulation’s tutorial reminded me heavily of Fallen Earth, setting-wise as well as handling-wise. This shouldn’t be much of an obstacle, but it did feel a bit clunky.

Still, i’m very much looking forward to the Repopulations release and might play some of it before it’s happening.

Blade and Soul is a different thing. I don’t really know what it is- action combat, wuxia and, well, outfits. For the last point, there’s mostly the skimpy ones getting attention, but i read that there is more diversity to choose from.

The reason i don’t know anything about it is simple: after the long wait for ArcheAge, i decided i won’t look too deep into new releases over in asia- after all, you can’t be sure if the games make it over here at all. Even if they do, usually there’s a period of over one year between releases- in ArcheAges case 2 years, with Blade and Soul it’s three.

I’m not expecting the game here, but i think NCSoft releases decent MMORPGs, quality-wise, so it’s nice to be able to look forward to a wuxia MMORPG that might actually be good. I always wanted to delve deeper into wuxia novels- they are “chinese fantasy novels”, but it’s quite hard to find wuxia novels who were translated into english- there are fan translations, but somehow those don’t appeal to me. So, if you know about a good wuxia novel that’s available in english or german, let me know.

Blade and Soul might allow me to experience wuxia in a different way. Granted, MMO story is rarely as good as what’s available in book-form, but in this case, i’ll take it happily. If the game is fun and interesting, as well- all the better.

So i’m really looking forward to both of them- it might not be as quiet a year as one would have expected when it began.

4 million accounts and a free weekend

So apparently there are 4 million registered accounts for Final Fantasy XIV- i think you can call this a success, even more so considering the V1.0 disaster. There’s a free weekend coming, although i think there’s a typo in the newspost– it’s stating the dates from 02/27 to 03/09, which would be more than a week. Now, i don’t want to complain, but i always think that these weekends should be free to subscribers, as well. Of course i can understand the desire to get old accounts reactivated, but i also feel that companies should do good on their existent customers, as well.

4 million accounts

This is interesting. Of course we don’t know subscription numbers, but my guess is that FF14 has proven itself as a success, which begs the question why this game seems to be doing just fine with a subscription model. I think there might be a few factors at play here.

Cultural reasons

Well, this is an uninformed opinion, but i read somewhere that FF14 is basically the MMORPG in Japan. I don’t know if this is true, especially since it seems like the most populated servers are in NA/EU. Still, it could be a reason.

Content

The delivery of meaty content additions is always stated as a reason for Final Fantasy XIV’s success, and this is surely true and one of the most important reasons for it doing so good for itself. It seems there’s always something substantial coming in patches- since i’ve been keeping an eye on the game again, there’s been housing, 2 new classes/jobs and of course the Gold Saucer. And that’s not even factoring in new dungeons, the continuation of the main storyline, new dungeon modes, quests and so on, which are mostly taking place in endgame. Endgame is not in sight for me, so i tend to skip those content additions. But as you can see, there’s always something coming even for low-level or inactive players. Next up is the expansion, i think. And if we’re still thinking in roughly 3-month-spans, it seems to be coming in may (which is good for me, maybe i’ll be able to prepare in this time).

Momentum

The “social” momentum, i think, is one of the main reasons for WoW’s success. And it seems FF14 has gained the critical mass of players necessary to benefit from this factor, as well, and it’s a factor not many MMOs have going for them- mostly new launches, but they lose traction fast. FF14 is in its second year, and it’s growing. Just look at how many bloggers are in this game now, having a good time, and to me it looks like there are always bloggers and people coming back/trying it.

It’s slow

Let’s use the phrase “designed downtime” here. Actually, there’s none of that in Final Fantasy XIV, since you don’t have to wait for boats/ferries/airships, but FF14 is a slow game. It is relaxing. It enables the players to form, build and maintain social relationships. There are also systems that encourage asynchronuous social play (like tending the garden in the guild house) or socializing in game, like the newer additions of Triple Triad and Chocobo Racing. Since housing is semi-instanced, you might also get to know your neighbors in the district your house is in.

It “gets” and gets the MMORPG audience

All of this leads to FF14 catering to MMORPG players instead of gamers in general, a mistake some of the newer MMORPGs made. MMORPG players are happy in FF14, and they should be- it offers almost everything the subgenre (Themepark MMO) has to offer- in spades, at that. Now, themeparks may not be your thing and you want an MMORPG with huge, open zones, few instances, a completely player driven economy and stuff like that? I agree, i’d like to see that, as well. But there’s only EVE doing that. And FF14 offers enough “virtual world” stuff that it earns its place, in my opinion, of course, as the best currently available MMORPG- it’s a complete, broad experience, and i’m savoring it right now, taking my time, making use of all the systems and i try to resist the urge to race to 50 in preparation for Heavensward while still keeping an eye on this goal.

I tried to express this a few times already, but i’ll just repeat: i think, with the lack of high profile releases in this year, many MMORPG players are going to “settle” in 2015. There’s no game coming out that “does everything right this time, really”, so we’ll be playing what suits us best instead of looking for the perfect game. It’ll come and if you’re truly unhappy with the genre, i hope one of the more focused titles coming out will be for you.

If you haven’t tried FF14, you really should. I can’t even compare it to another MMORPG- i mean, the WoW comparison was used, but i don’t think they have that much in common- maybe the dungeon/raid-type endgame progression, but there’s more than that in this game. And i’m kind of looking forward to what they’ll be adding content- and more importantly system-wise after Heavensward released, because, really, i can’t think of much that’s still missing in FF14.

Joystiq likely to be shut down- Massively as well?

So yesterday this news broke. AOL may be shutting down Joystiq. Massively, being a partner site, might also suffer this fate. I have to say, if it were to happen, this would mark a sad day for the MMO and blogging community. I think maybe the authors saw it coming with the last round of layoffs and budget cuts, because they prepared themselves and set up more prominent personal blogs.

You can find Justin Olivetti/Syp, of course, over at biobreak.wordpress.com, but others made a move, as well.

Larry Everett opened up Hyperspace Beacon to get his Star Wars related posts out, and he also puts at least snippets of his Massively column on this site.

MJ Guthrie has a few projects- her personal Twitch page being one, then there’s lookingforshinies.com and her Landmark-roleplaying-writing-the-games-history-page i just can’t seem to find right now. I’ll look for it later.

Bree has her own blog, as well, at skycandy.org, and then there’s Eliot Lefebvre on his own site.

Others can be found at other places- Beau Hindman is with mmorpg.com now, as is Shawn Schuster.

I’ll update the list if/when i get the other adresses, as well- if i remember correctly, Mike Foster also has some project going on.

With that out of the way, let me say this straight: Massively can’t be allowed to vanish.

You’ll have mmorpg’s closing shop, that’s just business, but Massively shutting down would be a huge loss for our favourite industry. Granted, i liked the page more when it was more blog and less news, when every author was excited for their game and every column made you wonder why you didn’t see all the wonders of these games- the way it was before the last cut. But even now, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a site like Massively. It’s still mostly designed as a blog, even if news take a front seat now and the game columns are not that great when the author isn’t excited about their game, but sees the same flaws in it as we do.

This site is made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. It also is vital for my interest in the genre in the first place. It is a very important site, in my book. All authors, even the more and more grumpy ones, love the genre and this is what shines through each and every article they put out- and this is what differenciates Massively from other sites who try to write in a neutral tone or something- one might be able to visit other sites for news, but not for the excitement!

Also, one has to wonder- where would the games get appropriate coverage, then? I see no real competitor to Massively, the other sites are even more news-related. I’d hope the Massively writers might be able to stick together somehow and publish something indie, but it really isn’t that easy to earn money in the internet- although i could see ways- maybe offer in-depth game guides, sell them as pdf or something, in addition to the column.

I don’t think these sites where they could get donations would work- maybe, if they really stick together and want to reform Massively, but by themselves, i don’t think they’d be able to do it this way. They would need to offer paid content. But this isn’t the topic for today.

I really hope this are just rumors, or by some magic trick Massively won’t be affected, but to be honest, the pointers seem to indicate otherwise. Most important, perhaps, i hope it works out for all employees, who i feel to almost know in some fashion, so there is somewhat of a relationship there. I know it’s just a second job for most of them, but my guess is that they love it. So they should keep it or land on their feet, continuing to do what they love to do.

Others chimed in, John Smedley, for instance (although he gets picked on by Massively sometimes)- have to say, the thought that maybe someone would buy it didn’t cross my mind. Ah, here’s hoping.

Best wishes and hopefully, this is all wrong.

In a surprising turn of events…

Elder Scrolls Online goes buy-to-play on march, 17th for PC users. It will be selling “optional DLC” as well as “convenience and customization items” in an ingame store while “Regular updates and new gameplay will be offered to all players to enjoy free of additional charges”. There’ll also be an optional subscription that grants ingame-bonuses, cash shop currency and access to all of the games’ DLC.

It sounds reasonable enough and it is a smart move, i think. This is the business model the game should have launched with- but then again, they got a lot of players paying subs for quite some time, so i guess it worked out for them.

Also great, ESO will be back on my radar soon. Read more on the official site.