An EVEning in space

Oh boy. Yesterday i decided to split the evening in two- first, i wanted to take a look at EVE- for more reasons than the simple fact that there’s a war brewing and i have 10 days of subscription time for free. After that, i wanted to log into Elder Scrolls Online and get the anniversary cake for my two characters. But it never came to that; i lost myself in New Eden.

Why EVE?

As strange as it may sound, the main culprit here is Black Desert Online. While i haven’t played much of the game, there are others out there thoroughly enjoying it. For good reasons, i might add. But with the short time i had, there was one thing i couldn’t shake down: with player-to-player interaction being basically limited to pvp, BDO is a game that seems to be very much playing alone together. This isn’t a problem at all, in many aspects. Exploration, for instance, is doing just fine, as is fighting mobs, fishing and other stuff. There is, of course, also the option to band together and go fishing by boat or something like that. BDO is exceptionally beautiful and it is a fantasy world- for me, that is much more interesting to explore and see than empty space.

The thing nagging me a bit? Economy and crafting. Trading is done with NPCs mostly, and while other players influence prices, in the end, you’re doing it alone and everything you trade goes into the void where it came from (which is good, mind you). I don’t know if there’s money to be had in crafting and trading in the market place. I’m not done with BDO by far, i’m very interested in seeing how the game develops and maybe, possibly i’m wrong in my assessment. But that doesn’t change the feelings i was having when playing the game.

In EVE, almost nothing is materialized from thin air- and everything breaks or gets used up, eventually. There’s a vast galaxy with 5000 star systems, if i remember correctly, and everywhere, on each and every station, there’s player trade. With regionally differing prices. And it’s this part that always makes me look at EVE and its players with a lot of envy. It’s this feature i’d like to see in Fantasy MMORPGs.

So with World War Bee going on, CCP did the smart thing and offered 10 days of subscription to lapsed accounts. The offer lasted until 04/03, and that was the day when i “reserved” it for me. To maybe take a look, again. I’ve been there countless of times:

2010: april
2011: may to november
2012: february to april
2015: april

A Jumpgate

Each of these times, especially when i went for a multi-month subscription, it was a waste. But i actually don’t really think it’s the game’s fault- yes, it seems to be quite “boring”, coming from MMOs where you interact more directly with your surroundings- EVE seems a bit like an MMORTS, it’s strategic, involves planning and a learning curve that really is not a joke. If you enjoy learning and mastering games, EVE is the place to go. Really.

What’s the problem?

I need to figure out what i want to do. That’s actually the hardest part- i’ll tell you the story of yesterday a bit later as it shows how things go for me with EVE. There’s a lot i’d like to do, and that’s even with consideration of my interest in mining, crafting and trading mentioned above. Even that is a too wide scope to concentrate on when being a noob, and can be expanded with things like planetary interaction. What i usually don’t like as much is doing quests- it’s not EVE’s strongest side, at least not for me, although there’s not much difference to many themepark MMOs.

Another problem i face is that i’ve never given the game much of a chance, really. I was annoyed that it would have me do tutorials- and many of them that take quite a lot of time and at the same time, i need those tutorials- if you skip them, you’re on your own with learning things in EVE. And also, there’s lots of free stuff from doing tutorials and missions. It felt linear, even if you could just take a break, do what you want and return later. So i’ve never played the game for longer stretches of time which lead to me having to relearn everything the next time i tried the game, putting me back into square one, facing the same problems again, leave, return, rinse&repeat. I even deleted characters!

Then, there’s a hesitation to join a player corp- while i feel they could teach me a lot and would provide the game with hooks, i also feel it might be jumping into the deeper end of the sea. Also, if i were to join someone, i’d need them to be nice people to be around and not space grumpies.

So as with Elder Scrolls Online, i feel like what’s really needed here is some dedication on my part. I’m not sure if i want to take a shot at that this time, but i do feel it might be worth it.

Returning to EVE

Oh look, shooting asteroids in a small fregate!

Mining

Yesterday evening was a prime example how things can go in that game. I logged in, put something in my learning queue and saw that i had the mining skill maxed. Nice, i thought, and went out to look for an asteroid field. They’re not difficult to find, so i was there in no time, shooting mining lasers at an asteroid from my tiny ship. Meanwhile, three lumps away, i saw how it could be done. See, in EVE, even mining can be a group activity. There were three miners and an industrial ship (i think, and maybe a fighter?)- the miners collected ore and when their cargo was filled, they’d transfer it to the industrial ship. My guess is that, at some point, they would return to some station and call their reprocessing guy. That’s mining and reprocessing for 6 players, mind you.

Destination station

Reprocessing

Reprocessing ore can be more profitable than selling it raw, but of course you can’t simply do it because you’ll lose some reprocessed ore. First, depending on your skill and how much the station charges you. Furthermore it’s based on the standing you enjoy with that particular NPC corp owning the station where you’d like to reprocess. So when i returned to the station, i saw that my yield was about 50% of what’s possible – for 1 concentrated Veldspar i could get 2 whatevers (instead of 4 with loss-free processing). The price was roughly at 33% – 1 Veldspar ore went for 18 ISK, 1 Whatever for 7.

My home station

Trade

As reprocessing would leave me with losses, i decided to simply sell the noob ore i mined- so i checked market prices from around the block. Four jumps away, the price was highest- in fact almost as high as it gets in Jita, the trading hub. So i went there. On my way, i did the math- selling everything would yield 50k ISK. That’s a laughably small amount of money. Still, i sold the ore and decided that, probably, i’ll need another ship for mining.

Out-of-game research

That’s the point in time when i published that Travel log yesterday and went into the depths of the internet to research some possibilities and most of all ships i could use for mining. So i found out that, actually, my ship isn’t that bad in terms of mining (i’m flying a Bantam) and that right now, because of skill, or lack thereof, i couldn’t fly anything that was better at doing this. Also, mining guides suggested to get at it in a group/fleet. So i researched solo mining and found the suggestion of trading instead of mining yourself. Nice, i thought, trading’s good, let’s take a look if i have some skills in this direction already. And went back into the game.

Missions

I wanted to assemble and jump into my industrial ship – it’s unbelievable how many ships this game throws at you in this early stage- i have 10 million ISK now but 6 ships already- fighters, mining vessels, industrials- but, again, lacked the skill. Then i looked into buying that skill but in the end i thought that, probably, some players would take advantage of newbies and sell skills for a ridiculous amount of money that can be gained through missions.

So, off to talk to agents. Only, in my current station, i already did everything the industrial and trade agents had for me. I remembered the agent finder then and looked for other agents nearby, went to their stations and completed three missions- one industrial, two trade.

These missions are basically guided versions of what one could do in that game anyway. For the industrial mission, i had to mine some Veldspar- so off i go, finding and shooting at asteroids. Then back, to complete the mission. The trading agent wanted me to deliver an item in the first mission, thereby training me in the art of moving things from item hangar to ship cargo and flying around. The second mission took me to salvage the black box from a ship that was attacked by space pirates. For this, you’ll need another type of “laser”- then, you’ll fly out to find the ship (it took me embarrassingly long to remember that you have to use the warp gate to get to your mission instance), kill a pirate ship (yay, i had a fight!) and then salvage the ruined ship.

Taking back the black box, what did the agent provide me with? Yes, that’s right- with a better mining ship that can take 20 times the ore than my current. Only, i can’t fly it yet.

30 days incoming

Now, that was just one night- a bit more than two hours, of gameplay in fact. I started with an idea and it led me in circles. I researched and learned. I had much fun doing all that (as is evident in the word count here). CCP follows these ten days up with the offer of 30 days for 10€ – and i’m so taking that.

 

 

Are EVE online players bad people?

It’s always the same. Some EVE story breaks and three things happen:

1. reading about EVE is great
2. i think about diving in again
3. commenters call eve players bad people

Case in point: Massively Overpowered’s really great post about the current war in EVE.

The largest PvP war in gaming history has begun in EVE Online

So that was number 1. Number 2- i actually downloaded the client because i have a 10-day-return-card in my mailbox. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but it’s really just a matter of time until i’ll take at least those 10 days. It’s actually the mining/industrial branch that interests me the most and wartimes are good times for that. Whenever i visited EVE, i’ve found it to be hugely relaxing (mainly because i prefer starting on the mining route). And it’s a true sandbox. And there’s something happening in the game right now.

Now onwards to number 3: Are EVE players bad people?

I haven’t met any abuse, pvp action or similar while playing EVE. Questions i had got answered quickly and politely. Now, of course there are bad news we can read about all the time- threats even to real people, scams, people treating other people badly or just griefing other players among many, many other things.

But EVE is also the place of the EVE university– a guild corp dedicated to teaching new players the ins and outs of the game and other really great stuff from a huge blogosphere to dedicated news-sites and so on.

While i hold the impression that different games attract different folks- that much being obvious when looking even at themeparks like Lord of the Rings Online, The Secret World or Final Fantasy XIV having polite and friendly communities in my experience compared to World of Warcraft, Blade&Soul or Archeage (yes, i’m putting that one in the themepark category now), i think that in most cases, there’s a huge range of players- from the friendly to the griefers, from polite to barbarians.

Even in Rocket League’s normal friendly games there were many people cursing and insulting others before the game added a way to report players. I could tell you about my first dungeon finder experience in Wildstar, for instance- that was only the training dungeon but when my friend, being the tank, struggled with the game mechanics, the other people were all over her. In the end, after trying to kick her out of the group (and failing, of course, because i didn’t agree), everybody left.

Looks quite different than the artwork, doesn’t it?

Coming back to EVE, i think here the impolite, griefing players get put more in the spotlight because the game allows them to do more than just insulting other players. The game makes it possible to gank, rob, extort and even hijack property of a whole account. If it were for game mechanics only, i think EVE would have a very normal playerbase. But unfortunately, CCP goes even further with its hands-off policy. They regard everything fair game that is possible to do via game mechanics. They don’t stop players to do actually, really bad stuff even to real players – i count hijacking all properties on an account as an attack on the human.

In my opinion, that last part is the mistake. I know it’s difficult to draw a line sometimes- is something ok because game mechanics allow this type of action or is it an ad-hominem already? But by refusing all responsibility in regards to these player actions, CCP allows rotten apples of the EVE community to go even further- and there will always be people who test the boundaries. If there are none set, well…let’s just say i think if CCP were to take a different stance on this, i guess EVE would have much more subscribers.

So no, i don’t believe EVE players are inherently better or worse people than the average MMO player- but i think both the game and CCP allow the “evil players” to be at their worst- and that is what’s getting noticed from the outside.

Does it have to be a sandbox?

The MMORPG industry is a slow one. When a trend emerges, it takes time for developers and/or publishers to react and release games incorporating said trends. The heavy years of “WoW clones” were 2007-2010 while for the players, at least those vocal enough to put their thoughts into writing, it was clear since 2009, at the latest, that they wanted something different. Back then, we weren’t all too sure about what we wanted- we wanted “different but familiar enough”, a vague statement. Games like Star Wars: the old Republic, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar tried to find a comfortable spot. Since 2012, maybe 2013, with the announcement of ArcheAge and Everquest Next (haha), it seemed clear that players want MMOs to return to sandbox design. Slowly, this new batch of MMORPGs arrives: with ArcheAge last year, now Black Desert Online and soon Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen, Shards Online, Albion, the Repopulation 2.0 and so on. MMORPGs seem to be going back into a niche and are happy for it, while MMOs are going ever more mainstream (The Division).

With Black Desert Online, there’s this odd discussion whether it truly is a sandbox or just a glorified themepark with a lack of content.

What is a “Sandbox”, anyway?

I’ve read that a “true sandbox” has to offer its players more freedom in terms of building structures in the world (although we all know that if they’d do that, we’d live in Dong-land).

The discussion about whether or not an MMORPG is a sandbox is quite old and done, really. Everybody who tackles this topic- and me too, will throw the definition of “sandbox” (Wikipedia even redirects to “open world”) out there: it’s about an open world instead of linear level design. Taking this definition verbatim, there are many MMORPGs that are a sandbox- namely all MMORPGs taking place in worlds without artificial barriers and invisible walls. That would be true for Rift or Wildstar, for example. While we all have different views on that, here’s the part of the definition that gets me:

Their main appeal is they provide a simulated reality and allow players to develop their character and its behavior in the direction of their choosing. In these cases, there is often no concrete goal or end to the game.

No concrete goal or end to the game. Let that sink in and think about the reaction something like this would get from MMO players- we’d be telling each others about missing endgame and a pointlessness of the leveling process and we’d be asking where the content is. On the other hand, having no concrete goal or end to the game is also standard operation for MMORPGs- you can play World of Warcraft for battle pets only, or for good-looking armor, or for achievements the auction house and so on. There are as many motivations to play this game as there are players. You could argue, of course, that you beat the game by beating whatever content is the “most difficult” in the game right now- but this still is not a defined ending.

I need to figure that focus-thing out for future screenshots.

Now, i do know that when MMO players debate about a game being a sandbox/themepark, they’re not talking about that definition shown above- because that definition doesn’t allow for much discussion in MMO space. I know that when we talk about “Themepark”, we talk about developer-created content taking the front seat. When we’re talking about “Sandboxes”, we think about player-created content and “emergent gameplay”, whatever that means. But even if we’d draw the lines there, things get blurry- is Neverwinter a sandbox, then? Because players can create content there- or are these players simply hobbyist-content-developers?

In the end, if you walk away from that Wikipedia definition of open world, no end, no goal, you will never come to an objective observation whether one game is a sandbox or not, with one exception: when a game gives players almost complete control of their environment (while providing some rules instead of content) like EVE does. But we don’t want EVE- at least the majority doesn’t, not even the majority of the vocal minority, while most of them state they do want a (pve-)sandbox. Giving players freedom also seems to include the ability for players to ruin other players’ enjoyment of a game.

I think the key here is in a small part of the definition cited above: simulated reality.

Simulated reality and options

Sandbox or Themepark doesn’t matter, really. What matters is if an MMORPG is trying to build a simulated reality / virtual world and provides players with options in how to spend time in the game: things like pve, housing, crafting, trade, fishing, pet and mount collection, character looks, character builds and yes, even pvp- they need to be central to the design of an MMORPG, because, MMORPGs are good because they provide all that- they’re basically a gaming genre-mix. When you take this into account, you will find that Everquest 2, an MMORPG of the “Themepark” subgenre, in the end offered more ways to play it than Darkfall or Mortal Online, both “Sandboxes” do.

Is Black Desert Online a Sandbox?

Is BDO a sandbox? For me, it’s too early to tell. Right now, i get the feeling that the best course of action would be to continue questing to finally arrive at a few quests that might teach me BDO’s many systems. A real sandbox would have to offer a significant player economy, as well- at least in MMOs. You’ll have trade as an option in Black Desert Online- trade, that is- as in ArcheAge- about transporting special goods from one place to the other and buying/selling to NPCs.

The furniture merchant in Olvia

I’m only level 11 and i’m already able to trade, go fishing, collecting, milk cows (a daily quest), go mob grinding or questing or simply explore the world. However, i do feel that i need to reach Heidel City for the game to truly open up. And i think Black Desert is a game where having Alts makes life a lot easier. So these are my plans in that game for now: reaching Heidel City through questing with Nuria, the Witch and then go and create the Valkyrie. Although i feel “on rails” in this part of the game, i’m convinced that by the time i reach level 50 at the latest- and it seems to only take a double-digit number of hours /played- i’ll be free to play the game in the way i want to.

Shroud of the avatar (very) early impressions

When january the 2nd came, i needed to decide whether to buy two games from my watchlist for their discounted prizes or not. I chose to do so because SotA looks….different and Telltale/Game of thrones seems to be a combination that simply works (first impression from that: it seems great so far).

Really, i haven’t played SotA, i just took a look. Here’s what i found:

• character customization could offer more hairstyles and maybe even clothing
• the combat doesn’t seem so bad
• it’s immersive! Holy cow
• small zones
• SotA is unpolished as of yet
• i heard great stuff about the community but haven’t played long enough to experience it myself

Now, let’s remind ourselves that this is early access. Polish, hairstyles, small zones could all be changed. Also, i’m not a fan of the 2D-travelling you do between zones, although i have to say: if/when those zones are bigger, perhaps resembling MMORPG zones a little more, i prefer 2D-travel over portals.

What impressed me most was just how immersive this game is. Sure, you could point out how strange it feels to really type stuff in conversations with NPCs, at least to end conversations you’ll have to say “Farewell”, the rest is made “convenient” by highlighting conversational pieces in the NPCs sentences, but i found it to be very much…well, immersive. Also, when you enter the first town, there’ll be NPCs called “Villager” or “Guard”. You can ask for their names and they will pop up from then on. Soon you’ll know one villager as being “Jack, the lantern lighter” and so on.

I liked that very much.

Oh, also: what do i care if this is an MMO or not? As with Elite: Dangerous, if others can impact me in a significant (and not deadly) manner, it is more MMO than some themeparks. And, when an NPC changes his name from something indistinctive to a name, then there is more RPG than in…well, all MMORPGs.

Elite: Dangerous or EVE?

Now i know this is a dangerous question to ask. There’ll be proponents of both games and some others might point out that the true question would be “Star Citizen or Elite: Dangerous”. But that’s not the question i was facing yesterday, when a sudden urge to explore space grew and i needed to decide whether firing up E:D or resubscribing to EVE would be better suited for me.

Now, there are articles by others who list the differences between those two games in an objective manner- i can recommend Elite:Dangerous is not EVE by EliteNinja if you’re looking for that kind of thing. I’m taking a more subjective approach to show why i decided to play Elite: Dangerous as my space sim of choice for now.

Elite: Dangerous is not an RTS

See, i like EVEs approach. But i prefer the first-person-actiony-stuff from E:D, because it offers the opportunity to improve my skills over time. When i completed the first training scenario, where you shoot some toxic barrells in space, i was flying like a mad, drunk monkey. Later, when i started the “real thing” i was already somewhat capable of interpreting the radar and moving my ship. Now, i didn’t meet anything when i played (in Solo mode) and it was for the better, to be sure, but still, i felt like i was improving- without skills, levels or stats. It was my ability to play that was improving.

Also, it is new (and shiny)

The second most important reason i chose E:D was that it is new. Most of us like to read about exciting EVE news and think about how great it is that a game is able to deliver experiences like that. EVE is about the only game that does that right now and maybe even in the future. But there is the possibility that E:D also shapes up like that, given time (and money)- and this time, there’s the opportunity to be there when it begins.

The social experience

E:D is not about the PvP; in fact, you can play Solo, but you’re still not playing alone. The market, the political structure of the systems etc., everything is influenced by all players. Sure, technically E:D doesn’t count as an MMORPG in a sense we are used to, but i think if thousands of players influence whether a certain trade is profitable or not, they influence my gameplay in a much deeper way than all the other players in the normal themepark MMORPG. Of course i can see them in WoW et al, but usually, they won’t impact me in any way. In E:D, other players have an impact without necessarily involving pvp.

It’s not only about the players

EVE is great because it’s player-run. There are NPCs, but from my understanding, they don’t change the course of the universe. Today i read the interview with David Braben over at mmorpg.com, and here’s a snippet i found to be very interesting:

There was a rebellion in a city where the Federation has raised taxes, and the rebels are objecting to this. They want to secede, they want to become independent. During the beta, lots of the backers were supporting the rebels. They were running guns and supplies to the rebels and fighting for them—the Federation brought in a big battle cruiser—until the rebel leader made a speech saying “Comrades, excellent, we’re winning the battle against the Capitalist oppressors!” And it was very clear from his language that they were Communists. Now, everyone knew they were Communists, but they hadn’t really realized the connection. After that, all the backers started supporting the Federation.

Somehow, the players influenced things. But the NPCs influenced the players, as well. I didn’t know E:D intermingled these things in such a way, but it does, and i like it very much.

400 billion stars

This is endless. Even if E:D might have 1 million players, the galaxy won’t be mapped out and “won” in a few days. So here’s an opportunity to play, explore, trade, in a vast “world” where travel matters and markets are regional/local. I always wanted to see stuff like that in fantasy mmos, but none have managed to realize this to its full potential. Great to see it in a space sim.

Of course, there are other reasons for choosing E:D over EVE, but these are the most important ones. Can’t wait to explore the galaxy!

Oh Wow

Sorry, not much more to say right now- except that i’m really looking forward to this.

The Repopulation: primer

It’s time to check out the second of the three future MMORPGs i laid my eyes on: the Repopulation. Now, the Repopulation is in Alpha 2 right now, so it may be some time before we get to play it, but the general direction the game is going is set and made available for your reading pleasure with great articles and descriptions by the devs.

The Repopulation is set in the quite-distant future and a time when earth as we know it is no longer there. Fortunately, we aren’t on Earth anymore- scientists had sent out some spaceships to habitable planets 200 years ago and we are going to be inhabitants of a planet called Rhyldan.

The Repopulation calls itself a sandbox and it is quite obvious from their design descriptions where this is coming from. You could summarize it by saying “It’s a lot like SWG pre-CU”, but if you are like me, you don’t know what Star Wars Galaxies was like neither pre- nor after CU.

Factions

There are three factions in the Repopulation: the OWON (One World, One Nation) and the FPR (Free people’s republic)- we can summarize these by saying one is the oppressive empire and one are the rebels. Of course, it’s more complicated than that- and there’s a great backstory on the official homepage.

The third faction is no faction at all- all players start as either OWON or FPR characters and are put in a generic nation (tR’s equivalent to guilds) of their faction. Eventually, players can form their own nations and align them to one of the two factions or become a rogue nation. A rogue nation has no allies by default and therefore has to conduct diplomacy by themselves. Nations can start out as being a part of OWON or FPR and become a rogue nation, but they can not revert to being part of one of these two factions.

Now, while it does seem somewhat generic, i still enjoyed reading the Lore to the Repopulation and think that this is a great way of doing things- Sandboxes usually tend to offer free-for-all PvP, additionally with full loot systems (Darkfall and EVE come to mind), but i think it is served better when there is some kind of alignment- i mean, when you enter the game, at least you know there are people out there who do not want to kill you. In my view that’s a big step forward from my panic attacks while picking iron in Darkfall.

PvP

The interesting twist with factions will influence PvP, as well. Now, nations can own cities, outposts and harvestable areas in this game, they can lay sieges on other cities and so on. So there is a massive amount of possibility in the Open PvP realm.

Other than that, tR seems to be somewhat like ArcheAge’s PvP system, at least under what the devs call the “normal ruleset”- in which there are protected areas, no loot system and no heavy death penalty. Furthermore, there’s a distinction between reserve and active soldiers. You start out in reserve status and are protected in non-contested areas controlled by your faction- you can’t attack anyone there and nobody’s able to attack you. When you venture out of your faction’s area into the contested land, though, there’s open PvP between the factions.

Every faction owns around one third of the game world, the last third being contested by all factions and nations. I think there’s only cross-faction PvP, but the article isn’t clear on that.

PvE

PvE in the Repopulations seems to look like standard fare when looked at for a short amount of time- there are Missions (Quests), Engagements (Public Quests), and a general system of delivering those that is similar to something like Rifts or Dynamic Events.

When you read upon the details, however, there are some very interesting twists. One twist is that you don’t have a linear path through the world- missions are tailor made for your character and reach you through the ingame mail system. They take your skill & gear levels (there are no character levels) and previous actions into account and offer branching dialogues and outcomes. In the article, there’s an example of an NPC who changes its mood to “angry” based on your actions- now he might reference you in a bad way to other players, insult you when you walk by and offer varying missions. Engagements don’t have to be combat related, but could, for instance, involve building up a city. Instead of spawn points the game uses Dens. Dens can spawn various amounts of mobs in number, strength and type, but still fitting to the area the dens are in. Oh, and they can spread if players don’t take action.

Crafting and Items

Now, here comes the core. See, everything mentioned above is interesting and all, but this is it- at least for me. If a Sandbox doesn’t offer a complex crafting and trading system, it might just as well be a first person shooter. Fortunately, crafting in tR is complex and rewarding- i’ll start that off with a video.

Crafting will be interdisciplinary, so chances are high that you have to depend on other crafters to focus your own progress. The only bound items? Cosmetic ones from the cash shop. Items degenerate in quality and become useless with time. So there is opportunity in crafting and market, here.

Items you craft will have a quality range from F (bad) to A (good) and a subquality ranging from 0 to 9- so you can craft items with qualities from F0 to A9. Quality is determined by your skill, the quality of the ingredients and some luck and decisions made during the process of crafting itself. From what i saw, i think the crafting system will be similar to those of EQ2 and Vanguard (and FFXIV), but a bit more complicated.

Impressions

I’ll finish this entry, for now. The systems i mentioned are more complicated than i have made them to be, of course. But let’s have a look how the Repopulation measures up with some of the points i made in previous entries.

Virtual World

The worldbuilding seems fine to me- the Lore doesn’t seem like much, but i enjoyed reading it nonetheless. There don’t seem to be fast travel options like teleports, but one can craft vehicles. The world seems to be as open as possible with some sensible restrictions put into place.

I was surprised, however, that after really reading about this game for this post i found there are many systems at work here that EQN is advertising for, as well. But to me, it seems as if players make a bigger impact in this game.

Player-to-player interaction

There seems to be a lot in this regard. From building houses (in-world as well as instanced individual housing), cities, a crafting system that’s complex and involves other players to PvP, PvE encounters, open grouping, item degeneration, a reduction of bound items there are many options to play with, alongside or against others.

While the auction house seems to be global and i’d prefer locally different prizes, a good crafting system can make up for that. We’ll see how that goes.

Conclusion

I’m really looking forward to the Repopulation. What i read is encouraging, this game is developed as an MMORPG at its core. There are many systems in place that will allow for longevity- actually, even if EQN hadn’t disqualified itself for me, right now i’d place the Repopulation higher in regards to expectations. Also, tR might release before EQN, but since it’s still in Alpha2 it’s too early to estimate a release date- although it is slated for 2013.

The Repopulation will be free-to-play, which, at the moment, is my main concern. They’ll have to earn money and with Sandboxes, i think it’s quite difficult to strike a balance in a free-to-play title that’s both good for the devs and the players. Either they’ll offer convenience/fluff items only, and leave me wondering if many people buy those, or they’ll interfere with gameplay- for instance by selling repair kits that should be crafted and traded by players.

Above & Beyond Technologies are an independent dev studio, so there might be some concerns in regard to polish and gameplay feel, but i don’t think this is critical- if it’s playable, it will be alright. Fallen Earth is a good example of a game developed by an independent studio with not-so-polished gameplay that’s still highly enjoyable.

I can see this game being a huge contender for ArcheAge when it comes to my personal “next MMO” decision.

What’s in a sandbox?

When i felt i couldn’t yet pin down the sandbox in EQ Next, i came to think about this- what constitutes a sandbox? Then i read Azuriels EQ Next impressions and, while he didn’t mention the term “Sandbox”, it became more clear.

World vs. game

In a world, you have options- and these options include more than choosing which mobs to fight and in what way (Rift does an excellent job in offering multiple gameplay options for mob slaughter). We all know housing as “another thing to do”. Add an involved crafting system, trade, exploration and maybe even world-building to that and you have some options for players with different play styles. The thing about MMORPGs is that they can be many games in one- there could be your economics simulation (this doesn’t seem to be the correct english word, sorry), a strategy game as well as a “city simulator” and of course your RPG in it- at least.

This possible combination of singleplayer-genres alongside the possibility to play these games with many other players (being some kind of social network, as well- which in my opinion is what made WoW so successful) is what makes MMORPGs so compelling.

There needs to be a game attached to the world- most players will want to have some kind of progress with their characters and they want to be adventurous, fight difficult enemies, craft unique items and so on.

When someone says the “G” in the MMORPG part is the least important, i really think nowadays this just means “the ‘G’ is fine as is, please focus on the other parts”- when you take a look at the newer games, i think they nailed the gameplay part- GW2’s combat is fun, then there are the slightly more strategic combat systems of WoW, EQ2, Rift, TSW and so on, which are also fun in their own way. And if you like your combat really very much on the strategic side- EVE has that covered. So the combat (and PvE-) gameplay is just fine.

Systems vs. Scripts

Now, here are two words describing the same sandbox vs. themepark / world vs. game – discussion, at least from my perspective. What we need to move the genre forward, is an implementation of systems that slowly start to replace scripts. Actually, when i think about that, there is a possibility that EQ Next has this covered. When we compare GW2 with EQN in regards to the emergent AI of mobs in EQN and dynamic events in GW2, it’s clear that in EQN, there’s this system of likes & dislikes (i’m assuming it gets implemented well), which can lead to all kinds of situations and the scripted, cyclical dynamic events of GW2 on the other hand.

Both implementations could lead, for instance, to a village being attacked by orcs/centaurs. If these orcs from EQN serve as a faction instead of mobs, you, as a player, can make a decision to help the orcs attack the village- this option is not available to you in GW2, since the centaurs are going to attack you anyway.

Now, i wonder: what will EQN do if a part of the players decide to defend the village and another part is helping the attackers? PvP would be one option- it wouldn’t be FFA-PvP, but could be restricted to this area and to this moment until the attack is either completed successfully or not. But there might be no need for that. When you don’t allow players to attack each other, this might come out as some variation of a MOBA- the only targets being the NPCs. Now, i’m really making this up as i go, since we don’t know if it’s going to work this way in EQN or not- but what was revealed at least allows for that speculation.

You can expand that line of thought, of course. Boss behaviour instead of instanced dungeons- you could let raid bosses lay down a camp somewhere in the open world and let them spread their influence outwards. If the world is big enough, there’ll always be places where these mobs could hide for some time. A trade system instead of an auction house, placing resources in a “realistic” way in the world, making rare resources rare and not just attainable at later levels. Making prizes local, allowing for caravans. Implementing a degradation system for items, so you can’t use what you have for eternity.

Player-to-player vs. Player-to-Environment

The systems in a Sandbox MMORPG should focus on interactions between players. Your equipment degrades with time, so you need a crafter to build new armor or weapons or to repair your stuff. Prizes and resources are local, so you need traders to bring the items to your area. Mobs are free to roam, so you might need experienced adventurers in your area to allow you to farm the resources and enable trade. And so on. These interdependencies need to be build into the core of the game, allowing/encouraging/forcing players to interact with each other. The trend in MMORPGs has been self-sufficiency- and this needs to be stopped.

Do we want a Sandbox MMORPG?

Is “Sandbox” the solution to the problems in the genre? Is there even a problem? The term “sandbox” is a vague one, and everybody’s going to have their own opinion about it. But that’s not really what many of us want- what we’d like to see is an MMORPG that we’ll want to play for years, not months- it’s just that i think at least some of the stuff mentioned above would be helpful in being that game.

As Azuriel put it: “All long-term compelling MMO content is player-based”. Again, i agree. Whether the game providing that is called Sandbox, Themepark, Sandpark or Themebox doesn’t really concern me- but there should be (another) one.

Other bits of EQ Next

There’s a lot to digest and read about EQ Next at the moment. I haven’t read it all and i don’t know everything (obviously), but i wanted to get some of the more detailed information and links to other blogs in here.

Crafting

Thanks to Jewel i stumbled across this interview on PC Gamer, where some of the mechanics of EQ Next are explained a little. The most encouraging sentence for me regarding crafting is this one:

[C]opper is the newbie metal, it’s the metal you find right outside the starting city and eventually you don’t need it anymore. Because of the way our game works, copper is always useful, because copper has specific qualities. Iron is always useful, mithril is always useful. All of these things are always useful to you, depending on what you want to make.

This is one of the main reasons crafting isn’t very compelling for me in most MMOs- every ten levels or so you need completely different materials and the old stuff isn’t important anymore. When you take a look at auction houses in some themepark MMOs, the beginner resources are usually quite expensive- which is odd when they should be the most commonly found resources.

SOE seems to wait with a closer look at crafting for a time when they’ll be able to present it better than when everybody’s still talking about all aspects of the game. They reiterate we’ll like it, though.

Combat and Class system

One other topic discussed out there is the apparent lower focus of roles in group play, the revealed classes and races and a summary of impressions after watching the lore panel. There are great opinion pieces by Belghast and Rowan Blaze. My own opinion is a short one, this time: i don’t quite like the style of dedicated healers and tanks. But i also don’t like GW2’s solution- it’s a tad too chaotic. Maybe they had this vision of another kind of trinity (Support, Control, Damage), but i don’t think it worked out very well. It seems SOE is preparing something to show a comparison of the combat to GW2 is not entirely correct.

Other Opinions

In general, EQ Next was well received.

• Jewel has a great collection of information and opinion.
• Rowan is excited, as well.
• Bhagpuss has some mixed feelings, but updated us frequently and with some interesting additions like videos and commentary regarding the lore and class panel.
• Ardwulf is impressed and has a great summary of a EQN Q&A session (Part 1, Part 2) with some interesting bits of information.

Some others have been more critical.

• The ancient gaming Noob has a nice opinion piece and a collection of links to other bloggers (including me- thank you for that, Wilhelm).
• Keen from Keen and Graevs Gaming Blog has some mixed feelings
• Azuriel of In An Age disects an article on Kotaku & part of the PC Gamer interview and does a great job at highlighting some of the vagueness in what was revealed. He also mentions that “All long-term compelling MMO content is player-based.”, to which i holeheartedly agree.
• SynCaine gives a more abstract summary of the reveal panel, predicts failure and attracts some commenters to his posting.

Roundups

Some bloggers offered roundups of EQ Next related posts. I’d like to thank Syp from Biobreak and Wilhelm from The Ancient Gaming Noob for including me- both inclusions made up a more than significant amount of visitors to my (very new) blog. These numbers are exciting to see and very encouraging. Anyways, here are the roundups i found:

• Everquest Next impressions from the blogosphere by Syp
• Monday Morning Talking Points for Everquest Next by Wilhelm Arcturus
• Everquest Next Blogger Round-Up by Jewel

On a personal note

With all that was revealed and all the excitement as well as criticism, i forgot to mention something. I don’t care about the beta personally (others do, but we already know european players will be able to take part in it), but SOE, don’t expect me to go to ProSiebenSat1 Games for your game. If i can only access it with them, i’ll rather not play. To this day i can’t understand this decision- yes, sure, better localization and customer service, that’s right.

And i have to confess, one thing that came with free-to-play and many americans/english speaking players can’t see is that the german translations are horrible- in all the (f2p) games where i switched back to german for some time (namely: LOTRO and Rift- and both of them had good translations prior to f2p). It’s just a mess that clearly comes from Google Translate (not really, it’s not that bad). But, let me be clear on that front: i’d rather play a game in thai, which i can neither read nor understand, or move to north america, than registering an account over at P7S1 Games.

Everquest Next – after watching the full reveal

Today i watched the full reveal presentation of Everquest, so i am able to share some new opinions. Of course, the professional bloggers i linked to yesterday did a very good job of summarizing what’s been shown to their readers. I’d like to take what Dave Georgeson called the four holy grails of EQ Next.

Changing the core game: In this part, Georgeson talked about the EQ Next Multiclass system where every class has different abilities with each weapon (we know that 4 abilities are determined by the weapon you choose) and choice of class skills (the other 4 abilities in your build). It seems they wanted a change from playing Dungeons and Dragons with levelups, skilltrees and so on to a new, broader way of being able to multiclass and finding classes and skills in the world.

There is really not much new to that- we have that, as Bhagpuss wrote on Inventory Full, we have this weapon/multiclass system in TSW, GW2 and Rift to some extent, the skill collection was a part of Guild Wars 1 many players enjoyed. I mean, sure, why not build up on something not-so-new-but-rare and make it work better? Not saying this is a bad thing, i like it actually.

What i don’t like so much is the low counts of usable abilities right now. Four are used by your weapon, another four are free to build. I assume there’ll be passive abilities, as well, and i sure hope they are designed more alike to TSW than to GW2.

Destructibility: The voxel thing. So battles leave their marks on the environment- and the environment “heals” with time. That’s a nice gimmick which makes its way up to a nice feature when combined with the procedurally generated underworld. I like to sway around while playing- just now i only wanted to kill 10 rats, when i pounded one of them through the floor of the basement they dwell in and happened on a underworldy dungeon. That’s a real nice feature for me. Also, the fights feel very much alive.

A life of consequence: Now, that’s cryptic. Here’s talk about the mob AI- that they’re armed with likes and dislikes and might move around under certain circumstances instead of spawning on the same spot every time.

I think that’s a double-edged sword here. First of all, this could be some kind of hyperbole. Like i wrote yesterday, Guild Wars 2 described a quite similar scenario, although they didn’t hide that these movements and changes are part of a scripted experience aka dynamic event. If every mob has these likes & dislikes and moves around, this could lead to some very dynamic events- and this time for real. If SOE is bold enough to make strong mobs move around, we could see the end of level zones (EQ Next doesn’t seem to have levels, but TSW doesn’t have them, either. Try going to Egypt after the tutorial.) and the return of something nice: danger. It would be nice to be surprised by a mob too strong for me and having to run away. The last time that happened to me and caught me by surprise was with Vanguards free-roaming elite mobs.

Permanent Change: What we have here is the public quest/living story thing. So there are these rallying calls where the players have to do something- for example build up a village. There are crafting tasks as well as fighting tasks to be performed. These rallying calls take up to several months of real time to finish by the playerbase and once a rallying call is finished, its results stay in the world.

I like that idea. Yes, it might be only a crossover of public quests and living story, but at least SOE seems to be willing to make the happening event (living story) have something to do with what’s done (public quest) instead of making people grind minigames.

However, i like the look of EQ Next- the stylized graphics look just fine and work better for me than, say, Vanguard’s and EQ2’s style- especially considering their character models.

Now, there’s just one question- where did they hide the sandbox? I’m sure what they presented could be one, but they didn’t make it clear where to find it. The combat looks nice, the world with its day/night cycle as well, and if they incorporate many choices in their permanent change and consequence- parts and really enable players to go where they want and stick to their preferred play-style it could work out well. But they didn’t make it clear, in my opinion. There’s just this one thing…

Everquest Next Landmark. I’ll just go ahead and summarize it as “Minecraft as a MMO” here, as i’m sure you read about it- if you didn’t, there’s a good article over at Massively.

Now, that’s a sandbox. Players are able to build what they want, there’s an added social layer, even guilds and there seems to be some kind of adventuring. But in essence, it seems to be the game for crafters.

All in all, i’m still looking forward to their intentions in regards to crafting and player-driven economy, and i still hold to the assumption that SOE got their hands on something great- but i still feel what we know is a little hollow. If we define “sandbox”- and we could define this term in one thousand ways- with the words “driven by player-to-player interactions”, then we still don’t know much about EQN being the big new shiny sandbox MMO.