Official MMO News And Information Thread of Etoilet Jacking Off Over Shitty GW2

[etiolate]

Really long but interesting interview with Colin Johannson.

http://gamingbolt.com/guild-wars-2-interview-we-talk-to-areanet-about-how-the-mmorpg-has-been-doing-post-launch

There’s really just a lot of expectations that come with that MMO genre. And trying to get people to accept that you can make a game that doesn’t have one of those things is a really different thing to do. We wanted this big, open, living world experience, and I remember the very first time that we beta tested the game, or rather alpha tested it internally, we brought it a bunch of testers and we popped their characters out in the open world,  and we said ‘Alright! Go play the game.’ And they turned around and said ‘Where do I go? I don’t have a quest blog that tells me that I should go here, then go here, then go here.’ So I said, ‘You can just roam around the world.’ And he said, ‘I don’t understand. I can just run around and find stuff?’ I’m like ‘Yeah! Go play the game, it’s okay!’ It really took years of building on messaging. Just because people have had so many years of this extremely linear, streamlined experience where they don’t have this open world and they don’t have this sense of exploration.

It was something that we knew from the start we wanted to build on. But getting people to accept it and understand it was a really hard thing to do.

I think one of the hardest things about an MMO, to make an MMO really successful, is that you need to be approachable enough that the casual gamer can get into it, but you need to be deep and rich enough that the advanced player can play for years and still find new things and still discover things in the game and continue to grow. That’s a really, really careful balance to walk. I think that you’re always on the risk of upsetting the casual players by making the game too hardcore, and you’re at risk of upsetting your day-to-day hardcore players by making the game too casual.

It’s definitely something that’s really challenging. You see a lot of the MMOs falling into one of the two categories. They’re either really casual games or they’re very niche games, and a really hardcore group of players play it for a really, really long time, but they can’t attract the casual audience, because the game isn’t approachable enough or casual enough. And I think we’ve done a really good job with Guild Wars 2 so far, we’re kind of bridging the gap between those two, providing a game that allows the casual gamer to really get into it and go and have fun and just enjoy themselves and provide depth for the player who’s looking for more. And I think that, in particular for both of those groups, we’re gonna continue to build the game and make sure there’s enough for both of them as we go forward.

Considering you worked on Guild Wars 1 as well, I’m just curious about how you found working within the MMO genre with the shadow of World of Warcraft. I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it, but obviously, working in that genre the popularity of World of Warcraft must have been something you guys were considering. Were you trying to compete with WoW directly, or…?

Well, it’s obviously an elephant in the room when you’re making an MMO. With Guild Wars 1, we decided to not compete with World of Warcraft and we made a game that was very different, that was distinctly different and free-to-play and it was really a completely different game type. We called it a cooperative RPG, not MMORPG. People ended up playing it like an MMO and it kind of adopted that name overtime but we always thought of it as a co-op RPG. And we never intended for it to directly compete with World of Warcraft.

We’re definitely going after a different audience and some people from World of Warcraft would also be interested in this game. But we didn’t just want to make Guild Wars 1 again. So we decided with Guild Wars 2, let’s make a pure MMO, let’s make a giant open world game and let’s try to accomplish the things that people really want to see in an open world MMO, which is a truly living, breathing world that changes and you can just explore to have a great time. That’s really what we set out to do and sure, we wanted to compete with World of Warcraft. We wanted to compete with every game in the genre when we were putting that game out and make a game that basically defines where the genre of MMOs is going. I think the MMO genre had stagnated a lot, and over the course of 7-10 years before Guild Wars 2 came out, there wasn’t a lot of innovation. It was all just ‘Let’s make a game, and World of Warcraft is working, so we should make exactly what they’re making’, and as MMO players, first and foremost, most of us working here were kind of tired with that, because if we wanted to play that game, we could just go play that game. And we didn’t see any reason to make that game again, because there’s plenty of them we can already go and play.

So we wanted to do something different, but we wanted to definitely appeal to that core MMO audience, and that also extends to the RPG audience out there that was looking for an MMO that was more than just an open world quest that you just marauded through. We wanted to make something that was really more like a true RPG, like a Skyrim, where there’s this big open world for all these experiences for you to have. And it just so happens that you can do them with all your friends. I think that appeals to MMO players, it appeals to WoW players, and it appeals to people who play any MMOs out there. Or RPGs.

The risk that comes with it is incredible. And I think seeing more and more companies that are stepping away, thinking ‘We don’t want to take a risk by making a big this big, it’s too expensive, it’s too risky and our whole could fall if we don’t succeed’. You don’t have to worry with the indie game model, you know. You can make two or three or four or five games that aren’t crazy successful, and they’re not very expensive to make, and they don’t take a lot of people, but the second you make Angry Birds, when you make that one that really explodes, you’re crazy profitable and you have enough to hold your company for ages. And I think that’s the biggest thing, in why we’re seeing more and more of that. It’s very easy to form those companies, it’s very easy to make a small indie gaming company, and you’re not risking your entire company on one game when you build stuff. You really have the capacity to make a lot of games and stay in business even if your game isn’t hugely popular. You can sell a small number of copies and keep everyone employed to keep your company going. And I think that’s part of why we’re seeing more and more of that going forward.

It’s that the risk of making these big companies, and in particular, MMOs is just crazy. I really don’t think we’re gonna see that many more MMO companies in the future. I think too many companies have attempted to be WoW and folded and failed. And you’re gonna start seeing very few companies taking risks making games as big as Guild Wars 2.

I think he undersells the risk of going indie. If you're working on a project by yourself or with a small team then it's not the company you're risking but years of your life. There's no salary pay for what you're doing. Your game has to be good enough to succeed or you could be screwed. There's no severance check to be had.

I do agree that we will see less MMOs. I think too many companies got burned.

[Freyj]

SWTOR is legit fun, the story is waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond anything offered by GW2. It also doesn't feel cheap being F2P since you can access everything story related without paying. I did 8 euro though for some small stuffs, and because I already put in 10 hours so it's no waste of money def.

I'd really recommend this to anyone.

How's it holding up for you?

I hit a brick wall of unenjoyment around 35-40 on my BH. A combination of quests becoming extremely same-y, dungeons being challenging but boring with terrible groups that rolled on everything and argued about everything and playing the same 10 people over and over in pvp did me in. Huttball was pretty fun as a concept though, no idea if any other MMOs adapted it because I haven't really played a lot of MMO this year.

[etiolate]

I don't even understand. If this is put out to excite people, how bad was the quest and combat system before?

[Cerveza mas fina]

SWTOR is legit fun, the story is waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond anything offered by GW2. It also doesn't feel cheap being F2P since you can access everything story related without paying. I did 8 euro though for some small stuffs, and because I already put in 10 hours so it's no waste of money def.

I'd really recommend this to anyone.

How's it holding up for you?

I hit a brick wall of unenjoyment around 35-40 on my BH. A combination of quests becoming extremely same-y, dungeons being challenging but boring with terrible groups that rolled on everything and argued about everything and playing the same 10 people over and over in pvp did me in. Huttball was pretty fun as a concept though, no idea if any other MMOs adapted it because I haven't really played a lot of MMO this year.

Havent played in a week cause I got a new phone and am playing on it now. Im level 20 or so on the swamp planet, still enjoying it but the combat is getting samey 24 hours in.

Since its free ill just pick it up later again, i think its already been worthwhile for me, its a very polished mmo.

I played some hutball but i think at low levels its not very refined, bit like capture the flag in wow.

[Freyj]

I don't even understand. If this is put out to excite people, how bad was the quest and combat system before?

It's an enormous improvement if it looks this playable. I only ever played the Closed Beta of 1.0, but it was awful. They're trying to reign XIV back in to a hybrid of FFXI HD and WoW / every other modern MMO. Those two quests aren't anything impressive, but they're also a dime a dozen in Guild Wars 2. It doesn't help that whoever is playing doesn't appear to have a keyboard plugged in.

I'm honestly okay with FFXI HD and hope that ARR sticks closer to that.

[etiolate]

I just don't see the point. I know its alpha footage, but that stuff looked old. I don't see how you relaunch with any fervor when you're only getting up to standards that even WoW is past. Contrary to your statement, that shit does not exist in the dozens in GW2. Tera had that sort of questing by the dozens and that's what helped do the game in.

[Freyj]

Bonk 6 things on the head / pick up shit? Yeah, it does exist in droves in GW2. Having a choice between the two doesn't make it any less true.

They're trying to modernize a somewhat non-existent quest system. If XI and 1.0 XIV are anything to go by, questing really won't be the focus of the game. ARR isn't going to "revolutionize" (whatever that means) the MMO genre, and it will be lucky to stand up to accusations of FFXI HD at this point. Expecting anything more is foolish.

What I do expect to be above par is the scenery and music. XI's music shits on everything else.

[etiolate]

It just looks like impending pointless failure for FF


ANYWAYS

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/the-secret-world-f2p-announced/

I can't tell if that's a real F2P announcement or some weird marketing nonsense.

[etiolate]

I just don't see a new sub mmo succeeding. Like I've said, its very hard to justify the sub fee at this point.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'd love to hear you explain why p2p is still viable outside of WoW, Ruzbeh. Go ahead, we're waiting.

[Phoenix Dark]

rant time

Blizz really should address faction imbalance on servers. My server is basically a ghost town on alliance side, at like 30% of population. Why not offer people incentives to create characters on the lower factions to start getting populations to a better place. I'd even be fine with a 60-40 situation tbh, to a degree. Servers don't need to be 50-50 but come on

[etiolate]

Ravenholdt?

[Phoenix Dark]

Ravenholdt?

Yea. Perhaps graveyard isn't a fair term but clearly alliance isn't what it was just a couple years ago; and even back then we were what, 40%?

[Cerveza mas fina]

There was more Alliance then Horde in Vanilla. Whats the beef with imbalance, isnt world pvp and stuff dead anyway?

[Phoenix Dark]

Actually even vanilla had different server pops obviously. Maybe initially people selected alliance but I remember multiple servers being mixed back then, and some being heavy alliance or heavy horde.

I don't play pvp so I can't really comment on it. But I do know that during WOTLK it was very rare for alliance to win Wintersgrasp lol. But when we did manage to win - maybe a handful of times a week at best - it was such a great feeling. I've never been a pvp guy but I loved those battles, even when we lost.

[etiolate]

I always felt they should have population balance control. But they make money off the transfers, so they probably won't do it. Belfenholdt started getting imbalanced with Burning Crusade's release and progressively got worse. The 'hardcore' raiding guilds of WoW have been transferring to Horde for the advantage of certain racials as they min-max.

[Dickie Dee]

World PvP is back pretty strong with cross-realm zones.

Also, I think the new patch is mostly World PvP centered (haven't played it much though)

[etiolate]

Funcom's new payment model for TSW is buy-to-play with three membership tiers: free, member, and grand master. After purchasing the game itself, folks can play indefinitely without any additional fees, or they can opt to purchase monthly memberships that provide special bonuses. Players who already have or purchase the grandmaster package maintain their lifetime membership and receive additional bonuses.

Gamers will be glad to know that the conversion will not introduce any restrictions to the game's current content; free players will have full access to every aspect of issues #1 - 4, including weapons, dungeons, and missions. But what of future content? TSW will continue to receive regular patches of free content, just not at the volume of previous issues. More content will be also available periodically through downloadable content packs (DLCs) in the in-game store. Issue #5 DLC, coming in January, will be free to all accounts registered as of the end of December.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/12/the-secret-world-officially-abolishes-subscriptions/

B2P with some sort of sub for future content or buying future content individually?

[ManaByte]

BioWare eviscerated:

http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/183525/the_burning_of_star_wars_the_old_.php

SWTOR's "end-game" was anemic at best, especially compared to the well-received storyline content. Surprise, surprise; most of the people who paid for the game didn't continue subscribing after playing through the story once or twice. Between the annoying grind and the recycled content -- another one of those annoying MMORPG tropes -- the game's single player content ended up being even less fun than a normal single player game, never mind the subscription fee to keep replaying it.

Fifty-Six Dollars per Month

That's what it costs to play Star Wars: The Old Republic as a free player.

And that's assuming you're going to plunk down $180 to unlock everything (including hotbars to put your abilities on so you can actually use those abilities) on only two characters. You can't actually get more than two characters (as far as I can tell), and there's plenty else you can't unlock, like getting quest rewards from completing quests or carrying more than a handful of credits.

SWTOR's F2P isn't meant to be a free-to-play MMORPG; it's meant to be an excessively contrived demo to get people to sign up for subscriptions.

Instead, BioWare seems to have tried to find a way to get the most money in the immediate present. I don't know how well it will work. I certainly don't expect it to work well in the long term. There's an expression out there: don't burn your bridges. I guess BioWare wants to invent a new one: If you're going to burn your bridges down, you may as well sell tickets to the show.

[etiolate]

Bioware's F2P model is pretty bad. I'm curious to see what its lasting effects will be for the game's population and the game's financial status.

[ManaByte]

EA will shut dow the game by the end of 2013.

[Trent Dole]

Kind of funny to see Sega of all people get an online multiplayer pay model right and EA completely blow it. BIZARRO WORLD

[Phoenix Dark]

I wonder if a $5/mo sub would have worked

Many of my WoW buddies flocked to Star Ware when it went f2p and had fun initially, but came back to WoW after the paywall became more annoying. At this point they should just make the game free and focus on vanity items, weapons, droids, etc that you can purchase; I'm sure Star Wars fans would pay for lots of crazy shit

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm definitely enjoying WoW again. But at the same time I'm sooo bummed a lot of my old buddies didn't come back for MoP. They showed up much the early stages of Cata for the most part, but this time only a couple folks did. I got to lv90 finally and while I haven't done the Challenge modes yet, I can just tell they would have been the greatest thing ever with a couple of my old guild buddies. Damn

Haven't done all the heroics yet but so far they're...not hard. I'd imagine part of it is that I got to lv90 so late that I didn't go through the initial thrill of doing them with people who are barely geared. I will say that the last boss of the SM kind of embarrassed me. I kept getting caught in his whirlwind attack and dying, and the group actually disbanded after I caused a couple times. Gotta say, I don't even remember the last time I fucked up like that lol. It was annoying but exciting at the same time, because now I can't wait to do it again and not fuck up.

[etiolate]

I've done the Tixx workshop dungeon the past few days, plus the Wintersday stuff in GW2. The Tixx Workshop is an instance/dungeon that where the environment stays the same, but the encounter changes each day (so far). It works like this: Tixx has a giant golem airship that looks like some monsterous macy's day parade blimp. He visits each main city one by one. First day he's at The Grove and you go to his workshop and he's building Centaur toys. The Centaur toys go haywire and Skritts are trying to steal stuff, and voila there's your dungeon encounters. At the end you fight his golem assistant. Second day he goes to Divinity's Reach, you go there and find his dungeon entrance and now he's building princess dolls. The Centaur toys are still there, too. Dolls go haywire, you got to paint htem, but then they attack the other toys and there's your second dungeon. Third day it's soldier figures he's building and they start coming in at waves, but you still have the Centaurs building turrets and the dolls wandering around attacking the Centaurs, and so on. I assume it escalates into something they're calling "Toypacalypse" on the fifth day.

I have yet to finish the jumping puzzle. I've pretty much mastered the musical bell choir game though. It's a rhythm music minigame where you play notes according to colors on your section of a color wheel. I did the snowball fight as well. Well, there's the snowball fight arena and then there's just snowballs around the world that you can throw at others.

I took some of the gold I made and assembled a second set of gear with higher HP and defense. I then added the pirate rune set for magic find to make it my soloing, tanky, magic find set. I also went with a different look.

GO GO CHRISTMAS MAGIKNIGHT 2

[ManaByte]

First TOR expansion:
http://www.swtor.com/rothc

$20 for a new planet and five levels.

[Phoenix Dark]

Size wise how do TOR "planets" compare to a typical mmo continent?

[Cerveza mas fina]

Planet is more like a big zone.

[etiolate]

Though they could just make it a planet that you actually explore the in its entirety. You only see a small portion of the earlier planets in SWTOR. Never played past 20 though.

[etiolate]

$18 on the SWTOR cartel coin store.

[Phoenix Dark]

someone bought that

[etiolate]

It was probably Kosma. Looks like Polish space engineering to me.

[etiolate]

Still doesn't feel like its defined itself yet in these previews. People who tested the game seemed to really like it, so maybe some tradeshow trials will say more about the game.

edit: wait was this already posted?

[Phoenix Dark]

 

[Dickie Dee]

[etiolate]

dat uguuuuu

I need to wash that out of my brain now.

[ManaByte]

I just found out the GW2 CE items can only be claimed by one character, EVER.

Wish I knew that before deleting my Elementalist. All other MMOs let the CE reward items be claimed on every character. That's just distinguished mentally-challenged.

If I knew that I would've not bought the digital CE.

[etiolate]

The digital deluxe edition is not worth it anyways. The CE items have limited use. I'm pretty sure all characters can use the elite it unlocks though. If you prepurchased before launch then all your character should get the Hero Ring. The DD version just isn't worth it. Glad I only got the regular version.

[ManaByte]

ArenaNet rips off people and Etoilet defends it. Wow.

[etiolate]

From Gamebreaker and Massively:

The latest report from Korean securities firm KDB Daewoo has mostly good things to say about NCSoft, particularly regarding the launch of Guild Wars 2 and its first few months of operation. Specifically, Q4 2012 is cited as setting a record in operating profit for the company, with GW2 leading the way to the tune of 118 billion Korean won ($110 million USD). Combined with a 3Q OP of W46 billion ($43 million), that makes for a grand total of over $150 million.

Lineage II also gets some of the credit for NCSoft’s strong fourth quarter, with Blade & Soul and Aion expected to “remain flat.”

As for the future, the report considers the overseas — i.e., North America and Europe — market to be the most lucrative in 2013, including this exciting tidbit:

In China, the company is planning to launch Blade & Soul (via a publishing agreement with Tencent) in 3Q13 and Guild Wars 2 in 4Q13 (via a publishing agreement with Kong Zhong). Furthermore, we expect NCsoft to release an expansion pack for Guild Wars 2 in Europe and the US in 2H13.

I think we might hear an expansion announced, but I don't think we'll see it by the end of 2013. ANet can let the userbase grow for a year and then drop the expansion.  Wonder if Blade & Soul will come stateside.

[Phoenix Dark]

GW2 could be big in China

[etiolate]

Tera joins the F2P world.

http://tera.enmasse.com/free

The questing experience is shite, but the combat is sort of Monster Hunter ish. As someone on gaf put it. "if you like Monster Hunter and 2004-era WoW quests then you should try it".

It also looks to have the smart F2P model and not EA/Bioware's tard model.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Ea/bioware model works really well for the consumer dunno what your beef is.

I put 24 hours in and spent 8 euro.

[etiolate]

The EA Bioware model feels like they try to force folks into paying a sub. You get lessened XP, limited features, and limited options. There's far better F2P models out there.

Basically, the good models give you the game pretty much in its sub-based form and then you pay for extra special stuff and get rewarded for spending money. The good models are based around offering paying players more rather than giving F2P players less. Secret World went B2P, but their sub paying model gives increased XP and a credit to their game store. People who don't sub don't get lessened XP. They get the base amount. The SWTOR model reduces XP for F2P and then charges for XP boosts.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Have you tried it? The lesser xp i have been told is much more in line with the game content for one. I didnt really feel like i had to buy anything when i played nor sub.

[etiolate]

I haven't tried it as F2P because the class I like to play has the one shitty story. =/

I would give it more credit if it didn't have stupid things like limited action bars. It really is bad in a way that doesn't take playing it to see. Choices they've made make little sense. They've improved some of it because of backlash. I did LOTRO after F2P, but Turbine gave me tons of credit and benefits for having paid before. It took a lot of whining to get that stuff in SWTOR. They just don't seem to be fully on board with F2P and are doing it ever so reluctantly.

[parallax]

Are there any current good f2p MMOs out there? The only one I seem to stick with is maplestory.

[Don Flamenco]

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/01/14/star-wars-game-segregates-gay-characters-on-gay-planet/#ixzz2I3HpLZ6f

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-01-15-ea-bioware-fire-fighting-reactions-to-swtors-gay-ghetto-planet

   

[hampster]

I really want to try Tera but I need to set aside a weekend where no one in my house can watch Netflix so I can download the whole thing. Stupid DSL :'(

[Joe Molotov]

I bought Tera during the Christmas sale and finally got around to installing it. Are you on the PvP server, SJ?

[hampster]

I really want to try Tera but I need to set aside a weekend where no one in my house can watch Netflix so I can download the whole thing. Stupid DSL :'(

The download system is TERRIBLE. Not only is it P2P but it constantly corrupts and you get manifest (tracker) issues.

I'm tempted to just go out and buy the game at my local gamestop for $20 so I get founder status and can avoid most of the download. I'm sure I would need a big patch or two

[Cerveza mas fina]

Hahaha GW2 sold 3 million copies only. Wow killer my ass!

[etiolate]

Over 3 mill is a lot of copies bro.

It's possibly outsold MoP despite WoW's userbase advantage and the fact GW2 was released in fewer territories.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Over 3 mill is a lot of copies bro.

It's possibly outsold MoP despite WoW's userbase advantage and the fact GW2 was released in fewer territories.

It possibly outsold (but it didn't) MoP (which came out 4 months after GW2 and is the 4th expansion to a game from 2004).

You also say it has the userbase advantage? Are you kidding me? MoP potential userbase is WoW players, not everyone in the world like GW2.

Prob worst spin I've seen on this board including Andrex stuff. You're a good man but this is pathetic.

[etiolate]

I'm kind of tired of the joke posts dudes

[Cerveza mas fina]

Man youre just messing?

[etiolate]

huh?

[Cerveza mas fina]

I thought you were saying youre tired of your joke posts about GW2

[etiolate]

I don't make joke posts. I was talking about the junk I get in reply.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Oh so your post about how GW2 being outsold by the 4th expansion of a 9 year old game being pretty good was serious?

Sorry If I thought you were joking and admitting to it later on.

Cause only in the realm of jokes would MOP have some kind of userbase advantage considering GW2 is a standalone game from 2012 and MOP is an expansion you have to own 4 previous games for to even play.