F2Pocalypse 2013

So let me get this straight. In the news in the last few days:

LotRO added a patch with Hobbit Presents, a new gambling-style lockbox that they spam daily at players. Why bother with giving lockboxes a chance to drop from a monster? Just shovel them at players and try to rake in the cash. And LotRO added a literal in-game store shopping mall in Bree.

SWTOR’s new patch supposedly adds nothing but store items.

And Rift today announced that it’s going Free To Play. But it will be fair with no tricks or traps–they promise. Bill Fisher says the stigma of F2P is going away, but if it is, then why do they have to make that promise in the first place?

This is probably the main reason that Hartsman left Trion. It’s because the man is a god of integrity, like I always said. He’s really cute too. Can I say that without being reverse-sexist? I’m not sure, but I did. This is the way of the kitty.

So. I said I’d never blog about LotRO again, but since I quit the game, I feel like I can make an exception to say that I hope it dies in a fire. I hope they pull the license. I hope it shuts down ASAP so I never have to hear about it again.

My elves have diminished, abandoning the world to the greed of men. And women, in this case.

I made my goodbye post. I updated my LotRO Interface page to say that I will no longer be supporting those 14k downloads. I’m leaving my LotRO boxing guide up on my blog. It’s top post today, I think from some press it got in the forums.

Boxing is kind of a rebellious activity. It’s also a way for players to get as much from F2P as possible without paying. It’s okay with me.

I’ve almost condemned Neverwinter also. I’m still on the fence. I was reading the 1500+ post F2P-complaint thread in the forums until the mods closed it down and ejected it with no explanation. I heard about the Orwellian world chat spam whenever someone wins the lottery. I heard about the high prices for basic things. The double-diamond earning weekends or whatever.

To be fair, I don’t just assume the whiners are right. Neverwinter might be the most smokin’ deal going in an MMO right now. Once you wade through all of the currency exchange rates and calculate out a monthly estimate of what you mind need–it might well be fair. (A degree in accounting or a genius IQ is useful for playing a F2P game.)

F2P is just not a game I want to play. I want immersion, not a meta shopping experience where I buy things for my characters like they are barbie dolls. F2P is a symptom of the sickness that is pervasive in American culture.

So the kitty is now left with WoW, Guild Wars 2, Skyrim, and Dragon Age 2. Guild Wars 2 is double-dipping, but it’s non-obtrusive. I haven’t really needed the store yet. The store will move forward, though. The corruption might be inevitable.

On a positive note, I’m working on a fun new comic strip titled “The Forsaken Inn Of Unplayable Races”. It’s a place where races go when they aren’t wanted in an MMO. It’s cute. I’ll have it posted soon. A new strip is needed in the yonder sidebar to replace the one about SWTOR.

More Reading:

TAGN on Rift F2P

The Weekly Worm

In fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Black had me do this special class project. I’d write a weekly illustrated newsletter for our class. So I did little drawings and wrote jokes and whatever brilliant journalism I could scribe in pencil, and the teacher would photocopy those and hand them out to the entire class.

That was a lot of pressure in fourth grade.

I remember that I had the idea to list the students who got a gold star as one of the “columns”. It turned out that only I and Lisa ever got gold stars, which was embarrassing. So I dropped that column as a dubious self-pleasuring exercise.

After about six weeks The Weekly Worm became more of a thankless task, a chore. I never heard anything like “Nice job, Jackie! Loved your article about Star Wars lunch boxes.” So I appreciate all of my readers and those who comment on Kitty Kitty.

The highlight of this last week for me was Scott Hartsman leaving Trion. I really hold Scott in high esteem, and I think he is a big reason for the esteem I have for Rift in terms of integrity. I’ve read through his Twitter and personal site, and I see no news as to where he is going.

Another tidbit I noticed this week came from Justin at Biobreak, with a quote from SOE President John Smedley suggesting we might see Everquest Next this year. Hartsman has worked most of his career on Everquest 2, so maybe he’ll be involved. Crazy notion.

In any case, I’m intrigued to see where Hartsman goes, and Everquest Next adds a third big MMO pouncing into the spotlight this year along with Neverwinter and Elder Scrolls. Elder Scrolls of course announced beta signups this last week as well, so you might jump on that if you haven’t.

I’m hoping. I’ve been checking my mail every day. It’s a battle of the betas at this point. Neverwinter vs. Elder Scrolls.

The TESO signup questionnaire was impressive. If the game is as good as the signup sheet, Elder Scrolls might rock the world in 2013 like Keen is predicting (#8). Also this week, we heard that Trion will be publishing Archeage in western markets, which is another step towards planting paws on those exotic shores.

I almost forgot that Neverwinter put up a new dev blog about gear. I’d like to quip that the blog post about gear is as forgettable as gear itself, but even as a non-gear oriented player, I have to admit that I’ve had a few special pieces of gear that I do remember.

I remember a lovely Hunter spear that gave me guilty pleasure, although it didn’t last very long. My newer Rune-Keeper, however, has never held a memorable rock. Hunters are just sexier in general.

You know, not blogging about that Tolkien MMO is going to be more difficult than I thought, especially when it’s such an fun target. Maybe I could just stick to pictures.

Girls With Dragon Tattoos

I’ve been snarking about the over-use of dragons in video games lately. Dragon Age. Dragon’s Dogma. Skyrim. Guild Wars 2. WoW players recently finished off Deathwing in their Dragon Soul raid. Even LotRO recently put in another dragon raid with Isengard.

In WoW, you’re a scrub if you aren’t riding around on a dragon, and with the new revamp to Refer-A-Friend, dragon shape-shifting is still more in vogue (it was available before via the Archaeology hobby. Those poor archaelogists–they could have just referred a friend instead of spending hundreds of hours trying to get the Vial of Sands.)

I was recently looking at a video of a coming Asian action offering (the name escapes me) that shoe-horned dragons into their game in a way that made me flat out laugh.

Dragons are beyond the point of trite and overused. Rift is maybe the exception. Their big bosses are of course more dragons, but taken to an extreme of being extra-planar gods. You can’t argue with that being kind of cool.

When I saw the image above, I thought of another exception–an MMO that lets all players play as dragons. Something like that would be a mold-breaker. The point is to give dragons back their dignity. They’ve totally lost it as raid fodder and WoW mounts–whether rampaging or cute and tamed, they are still pimped for dollars. Even the dragons in Rift border on caricatures when you boil the lore and presentation down.

So. An MMO with a playable dragon race on the verge of extinction. A view from the other side with liberal irony and humor. Unfortunately the name World of Dragons is taken. The devs will have to think of something else (sigh).

LotRO has dragons. It just needs tattoos now. I support the suggestion threads on this. Criticisms tend to involve tattoos “not belonging” in LotRO, or “they don’t exist in Middle-Earth.” Both of those arguments are wrong.

The “not belonging” argument comes from a prejudice of tattoos born largely from the spectrum of modern American culture. I’m not a history buff on this, but I know full well that Japanese and some primitive cultures took a sacred stance towards tattoo, taking body modification into a level of ritual and rite of passage.

The primitive cultures of LotRO do have tattoos, including facial tattoos. I can’t remember if there was a quest text about them. So to those who say they don’t exist in Middle-Earth, have you played LotRO lately?

If you’re wondering where these tattoos are, check a few pics here. For more LotRO eye candy, VG247 posted some nice new Rohan pics yesterday.

Riders Of Rohan: Hands On

Massively’s Road To Mordor has a nice article posted tonight about Riders of Rohan mounted combat, featuring a lot of new details including screens of the horse control panels. I call them control panels because that’s what they look like–all the configurations and controls you’ll need to build a well-oiled combat machine.

The most interesting thing is the new legendary item. What could be a legendary item for a horse? That’s a fascinating question. A blanket? A saddle? Horseshoes? (ed-it’s supposedly going to be a bridle.)

One thing I don’t like is full super-speed all the time. It seems a little unrealistic and contrived. I like the suggestion in the Massively comments–a stamina bar for a more realistic horse experience. The five speeds are nice for the style and animations, but why have them if the devs expect the players to rarely ever go slow because there is virtually no point?

As Justin Olivetti says, I’ve never heard of an MMO that successfully featured mounted combat as a serious and central gameplay mechanic (that means a lot more coming from him.) If Turbine can really pull this off, they will be keeping up with the Joneses, since their MMO competitors are bringing it this year–Funcom, Bioware, Arenanet, and Bethesda are pushing next-tech flagship MMOs to bear on the saturated market.

In other words, special game systems and designs with great programming are becoming more and more of a selling point when so many other old standard features like mail, housing, auction houses, and PvP zones are firmly in the ho-hum expected category at this point.

I’m still with Turbine for Rohan. Of the new MMOs, I admit to being interested in a more mature, polished, and feature-enriched SWTOR in the near future. I backed off of a new computer in favor of a new leather sofa (a girl’s gotta have her priorities), so I’m also waiting a bit on Secret World.

When there are a lot less players in six months, the Secret World will feel more secret right? A reduced $30 price tag will also be nice. I’ve got a new case fan to buy. (Or whatever–I’m not really looking forward to breaking out the pliers and soldering iron. Just kidding about the soldering iron.)

I could also mention that I’m currently working on a lot of LotRO skinning. If you like my Elven Adventuress UI, I have a new wood-and-flowers toolbar for that, and I minimalized the vitals for an overall sleeker appearance. I’m also spending a lot of time on developing a completely new LotRO skin named Crystals And Moonlight. It’s a midnight/electric blue interface with motifs of gemstones, crystals, tinkering, gears, and mining. It includes some new art like for the mailbox background (below).

It’s a little-known fact that elves are better mail carriers than hobbits.

More reading:

Join the LotRO forum discussion here.

Is Your Pet A Person Or Just More Damage?

I honestly went a long time without paying any attention to my Captain pet in LotRO. I didn’t even name him. He was just an Oathbreaker archer. He sat back and plinked. I noticed if he didn’t show up. That was about it. I tried naming him. I named him Mathilda.

No. I like Criss more, my skirmish soldier. She’s just a wildwoman.

My Lore-Master pets are different. Each has a special character, and they do special things. My black lynx, Bones, saw me through a lot of levels. She might be my favorite. The bog-lurker is goofy and makes loud crittery noises. He’s big and powerful. You can’t ignore his presence.

I almost feel guilty playing both pet classes in LotRO without caring enough about pets.

Do you care about your pets? Do you have one or two special pets? Do you feed them regularly? Do you take pains to give them a pleasing appearance, even if it means purchasing skins from the LotRO store? Do you give them cute names? Do you imagine your pets have private lives?

In the recent epic quests through Enedwaith with the Rangers, we saw that Oathbreakers are actually sentient, human-like beings who are not devoid of emotion even in death. In the most recent LotRO forum thread suggesting new races/classes in LotRO, I suggested Oathbreakers as a playable race–just like WoW Death Knights.

I felt like I owed it to Mathilda.

Instant Travel, Teleports For Dummies

There’s a Daily Grind on Massively today about instant travel in MMOs. The question is whether it “trivializes” MMO worlds. My answer is a more or less a yes. I remember complaining about this in the Bethesda forums after Oblivion was released. The ability to teleport anywhere turned the entire Oblivion map of Cyrodiil into a little amusement park.

The game actually felt smaller than Morrowind. Bethesda could cite the numerical facts that Oblivion was bigger than Morrowind, but it didn’t play bigger, and that’s all that mattered. I loved exploring Morrowind and running down those dangerous roads, exploring, and admiring the scenery around every bend. I guess players don’t have time for that any more.

LotRO recently removed rep restrictions from Lothlorien, which caused a big debate in the forums. Turbine said it was necessary so players could get to Great River and later zones, while players countered that the game was being EZ-moded and dumbed down because you no longer have to grind any rep to get to a zone. Maybe Turbine had some exit interviews from newbie players that gave up playing because they got shot by elves (rightfully) and didn’t know why. I certainly don’t know.

The frustrating part is this shouldn’t even be an issue if only MMO designers would dare to add immersive, interesting travel modes to their game instead of cheating–because it’s easy to let the player open a panel, click something, and teleport using a few lines of code. I liked the short-travel speeders in what I played of SWTOR. In LotRO they could have done the same thing with Lothlorien by adding a guide NPC.

I first saw the idea of a guide NPC in Neverwinter Nights a long time ago. The idea is simply a teleport that doesn’t break immersion. What a concept! You walk up to a caravan driver outside of town, pay a fee, and he takes you to a place. The same could have occurred in Dimrill Dale outside of LotRO’s Moria east gate. You speak with a scruffy, renegade elf and he ferries you down the river to the next zone. The boat mechanic is already in place in Evendim. One more NPC, done. There was no need for Turbine to toss off the last crumbs of their integrity if they’d used a little creativity.

Dungeons don’t have to be miles away from any town, either. The Stockades in WoW are a beautiful little favorite, while there is simply no reason why Deepstrike Mines in Rift had to be located all the way on the far side of a field full of things that drag along to attack you. There is no reason a legitimate fast travel method can’t take you to a dungeon entrance, either.

If it would truly be impossible based on the layout of the enemy, then a summoning stone or class can be called in. If there were one MMO job that might interest me, it might well be level design. My NWN2 toolset-made levels were highly complemented, but that project never left the planning stages due to the barriers posed by Obsidian’s game design.

Anyway, environmental immersion seems like an endangered species these days in a cash marketplace that values fast entry to lots of killing and action. It’s always nice when great game design shows up, and clicking a button to teleport wherever you want in the game just isn’t great for an RPG that adheres to the traditional values of creating a living, breathing fantasy world.

LotRO Update 6 Patch Note Overview

Update six–Shores of the Great River releases today for LotRO. Here is a concise ‘TLDR’ review of the most important notes, with a collection of other helpful links and a list of relevant dev diaries and additional information at the end. I’ll expand this as a reference when I find more useful information–there are always those practical everyone-needs-to-know things that pop up in these patches.

Content
• New zone–Great River, with seven areas extending from Lothlorien towards Rohan. 200 quests and a lot of new shinies. You need to finish book 5 to get book 6, which will take you to the Great River. Otherwise, just go to Lothlorien and find the path around the vineyards. It says “To Great River” on the region map.
• Epic story continues, going back to Lothlorien.

Mechanics

• Skirmish soldiers can be summoned on landscape, restricted to areas outside of high-population zones. Landscape soldier tokens provide one hour of soldier time. Get tokens from skirmish barterer or the store. The time you buy is stored time that is used only when your soldier is out! Dismiss your soldier when not needed to conserve your usage.
• Commendation and Audacity system added to PvMP. See links below.
• A new lock-on camera mode engaged by default with the ‘x’ key.

Legendary

• Stat Tomes and Relic Removal Scrolls: all tiers of can now drop from the final bosses in scaled instances.
• Melding recipes for the store exclusive relics can now be found in game on the Relic Forging Master.
• Marks, Medallions, Seals, and Relic Currency, and Heritage Runes are all now bind to account.
• Melding recipes for Tier 8 relics, Level 75 relics and Level 75 legendary items have been added.
• New damage type scrolls available from vendors in the new zone. Deconning legendary items leveled up to 60ish or higher will give higher than Tier 4 relics now. Source.

Crafting

• New recipes for Level 75 crafted relics are located on the Crafting Guild vendors. The Compendium of Middle Earth, Volume III, can be acquired via a reward for completing the daily repeatable quest “The Forges of Isengard,” given by Bron in Galtrev.
• Worn Symbols of Celebrimbor are now available via Skirmish barter vendors.

Deeds, Skirmishes, Instances

• Players may now exchange 50 Marks for 1 Medallion at the Currency Exchange NPCs found in the various Skirmish Camps across Eriador. There are also options to exchange for 10 and 50 Medallions.
• Unique class titles have been added as rewards for the level 15, 30, 45, and 58 class quests.
• Virtues have been extended to Rank 14. They are working but displaying improperly–this is a known issue at the release of update 6.
• Fornost is closed for renovations (from the known issues.)
• Other instances had minor updates, most notably Orthanc, where worn symbols of celebrimbor will now drop 100% on T1, and elder king has increased chances in T2, and will always drop in challenge. Cloak clasps have an increased chance to drop from Saruman.
• The Skirmish instance quests are back, and will award gold, reputation, XP and IXP. This quest, unlike the old daily quests, will be awarded every time the Skirmish is completed, and will scale more accurately.

Classes

• Wardens and Rune-Keepers updated greatly. See the dev diary links below.
• Other classes had minor bug fixes and improvements. Highlights: Minstrel self-bubble reduced in power. Lore-masters now have a choice of two items that can go in their ranged slot: the Brooch of Rage and the Brooch of Regrowth. The Brooch of Rage increases the Lore-master pet’s critical rating while the Brooch of Regrowth increases the pet’s in-combat morale regeneration and evade rating. Both of these items are available via multi-output Jeweler recipes. Aside from the Tier 2 recipe which is available from the Novice Jeweler vendor, these recipes can be found via treasure for Tiers 3 through 7.
  New talismans are available for the Lore-master class: Talisman of Nature. These talismans will turn the Lore-master’s Spirit of Nature pet into one of the following: Sprit of the Raven, Spirit of the Bear, Spirit of the Lynx and Spirit of the Saber-cat. These talismans are made via a multi-output, single-shot Jeweler recipe. The recipe requires Friend standing with the Men of Dunland and can be found on the Dunlending Quartermaster in Galtrev. There are also a couple of stand-alone talismans that can be found as drops in the new instance.
• Weavers and Wargs updated. See the dev diary links below.

Other

• Dunlending Quartermaster now has a Travel to Galtrev skill, available to all players with Kindred standing.
• New auction house category is called Task Items.
• Lua plugin coding had many improvements. Check the patch notes.

Further Reading:

Official Notes
Known Issues for Update 6
Skirmish Soldier dev diary
Rune Keeper Dev Diary
Warden Dev Diary
Warg Dev Diary
Weaver Dev Diary
Great River zone dev diary
Improved Instance Finder Dev Diary
Ransroth–T1 3-man should not need a healer.
Commendations dev diary
Audacity dev diary
Questing, Great River Region dev diary
Deeds of the Great River

Using A PS3 Controller For An MMO (Rift, LotRO, etc.)

Editor’s Note 12/18/12: this guide is being converted to a guide that focuses Rift instead of LotRO, so may have some glitches until I have time to test and fix it.

PvP and rift grinding in Rift can feel like C-clamps on the finger joints. A console controller might provide some relief–or so I hypothesized as I ran joyful raids all day in Black Gardens. Unfortunately, there is a lot of poorly presented information on the internet on the topic of using a PS3 controller with a PC. The old Youtube video that everyone seems to link disabled my mouse if I followed the instructions exactly, and if I tried to improvise, the controller wasn’t detected.

Here are the basic simple steps that finally worked for me–with specific notes on the things that tripped me up. This document means I won’t have to unravel this again when I get a new NPC, and it will save me from facepalm damage caused by watching Youtube videos. That said, I don’t claim to be an expert. I just want to record what worked–in detail–because it was a pain. I had zero success when I first tried doing this last year. NEW: I’ve also added a mapping template assistant (see links at end of post) to record your buttons in a more readable format to help get the skills set up.

(Note that if you’re a Microsoft drone using an XBOX controller, you should have no problems at all because that’s how Microsoft rolls, you know. (Teasing. A little bit.) So you can just install your controller via Microsoft’s software and official site help, and then skip to step 6 like a normal human being.)

Step 1 For Installing A PS3 Controller: Go to MotionInJoy and download the latest version of the program for your system. If you’re like me and can’t find any link at all, disable your AdBlock or download the program elsewhere. (edit Oct. 2012- avoid the big button-links that are actually other ‘featured’ programs. The links are now hidden in the version text.) Install. The software may auto-update when you first start it.

Step 2: Here are the instructions for the latest version of MotionInJoy to install it. If you’re on Vista, your install will not happen like this, and if you close the program, it will mysteriously refuse to start again. Headaches will continue until you right click and run as administrator.

Step 3: Plug in your controller to a USB port. The lights should blink. You can’t push the PS3 button, nor should you need to. Start the MotionInJoy program. It will not recognize your controller yet.

Step 4: With MotionInJoy open, click the Driver Manager tab at the top. Click the checkbox for your device (should be only one choice at this point, if not, unplug the controller and see which option disappears.) Click the Load Driver button. After some work, the panel will spit out an output indicating success. You may get a popup warning about publisher verification, but according to the MIJ site, this has been taken care of at the time of this writing.

Step 5: Click back to the Profile tab. On Windows Vista, unlike the official instructions, the program still did not recognize my controller, but I noticed a Windows icon on the taskbar asking me to restart to complete updates. (Windows 7 did not have this issue.) After restarting the computer, I opened MIJ and at that point my controller was finally recognized. The lights on the controller showed it was auto-charging (it will be steady red if already charged), and I praised the goddesses for having mercy on my soul. Select the Playstation 3 radio button and click the enable button at the bottom.

You can also vibrate yourself and do controller calibration through the controller panel button at the bottom. I did not need to do anything with this. The fact that all the PS3 controller buttons are being read should be good enough for your controller-to-key program to remap those buttons into being interpreted by the game program. If your computer is equipped with Bluetooth, try the official instructions for pairing your controller via the MIJ tool.

Step 6: Now you’re ready to download a program that reads the controller, interprets it, and sends the input to the game program that would ordinarily not take this input (i.e. LotRO). The two main choices appear to be Xpadder (shareware no choice) and JoyToKey. I will not link the commercial XPadder site because WordPress doesn’t like me doing that with their generous free hosting.

Step 7: Click “create” at the bottom left corner of the JoyToKey window to create a profile and name it. At this point, the list of Joystick options on the right should be registering your PS3 controller. Press buttons and watch to see what lines highlight. Double click the line with your mouse to open up the config window for that line. Enter the keyboard key to correspond with the controller button.

My initial setup is to use the L2 button for Cntrl modifier and the R2 button for Alt modifier on 8 buttons for a total of 24 possibilities. Moving your character with the left stick on the default setting is awkward. Go to the Options tab and increase the “threshold for input” to like 25-40%. This improves control.

Also in Options, under the “Show/Hide buttons menu, I enabled “Show all axes (8 way + POV +2). You will then see more Axis options in the Joystick 1 configurations, which will let you configure your right stick for mouse look. As an example, now double click Axis6(>0) and select the “mouse” tab option at the top. Click the “right mouse click” box (or left click, depending on your mouse setup) and change the vertical slider to -30. Do the same with Axis6(<0), but set the vertical movement slider to +30.

Now when you move the right stick, it will emulate you right clicking and dragging–i.e. looking up and down. I was personally not able to get key commands for pageup/pagedown type camera control to work. This mouse solution is fine as long as your mouse pointer is not hovering over a skill, which will actually cause a click on it instead of a mouselook drag.

Step 8: Now click the “preferences” at the top of the JoyToKey window and select “Associate Config Files With Applications.” You’ll need to click Add, enter a name for the app (i.e. Rift Client), the name of the config file you just created (i.e. Rift config 1), and the path to your Rift.exe. (Editor’s note: I have actually tested this in both Rift and LotRO, and this preference is not necessary. The controller will simply work on whatever window is in focus without setting an association.)

Step 9: Log in. You should magically be good to go. If you’re not, then I can only assure you that I know how you feel. If you ask in comments, it’s possible that I or someone else can help. Of course, if anyone has any brilliant insights or clarifications to help with this topic, I’d love to hear it.

Disclaimer: I have used this successfully now on two different computers, with no bad effects or viruses, with both systems scanned and monitored by Norton. I am not affiliated at all with this software, and cannot be held responsible for any damage that may occur for any reason. This blog post is just a help doc. As of fall 2012, MotionInJoy makes an internet connection mandatory so it can open ads and even a browser window on you. This is obviously plain bad. I am considering an XBOX controller, but for now I’ve disabled javascript and graphics on default-browser Firefox and have begun to use Chrome as my go-to. I’m then at less risk for applications opening my default browser to something unwanted.

Further reading:

NEW: I have created a printable template for mapping out your PS3 controller to a PC game. Download the template ZIP file and open the BMP (windows bitmap) image in Windows Paint or other graphics program. It should be ready to print on one 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. Here is a sample of using the template to remember where all of your skills are mapped, in this case for a LotRO Warden.

Using MotionInJoy (same link as above)
More guidance on using MotionInJoy.
Revora.net, more on JoyToKey

The Ever-Loved, Ever-Elusive Elves

Yes, I prefer to play elves. They can be over-serious and depressed, but they seem to suffer a lot, so I don’t blame them.

Elves have taken some light-hearted hate recently. The Global Agenda MMO actually launched with a popular anti-elf campaign, and Syp (Justin Olivetti) has made elf-hate posts (here and here) on his BioBreak blog.

We love our fellow pointy-ears here at Kitty Kitty, and like elves themselves, we have long and vengeful memories. Justin’s written and vocal MMO commentary is wonderful, but the hate rhetoric must stop!

(Do I sound like a whiny, crying elf? Probably.)

The World of Warcraft experiment is going well in its third week! My stable of intrepid Night Elves and Draenei have conquered all wings of Scarlet Monastery by dual-boxing roughly on-level (feral tank more like at +8), and my elf warrior led the charge to complete a three-box of the Deadmines on-level last night.

I added a second (free) account and leveled a gnome warlock to do the three-box, and it was really, really fun and challenging, but I probably won’t continue that as a playstyle. WoW is ginormously time-consuming, and it’s well-documented to be soul-sucking as well as abnormally expensive for an MMO. Three accounts is almost two too much.

On the other hand, random Dungeon Finder people sometimes also suck.

Back on topic, today I finally finished all quests in the Teldrassil elf starting zone (after skipping them), and ended impressed. I realized that after only a few weeks, the Night Elves are already more real and deep to me than the Tolkien elves in LotRO or the Kelari elves in Rift. The Blood Elves in WoW are also well-written. I played a pair of those to L18. They definitely come across as an arrogant and power-driven race.

So I found myself asking the question–how did this happen? How did the Blizzard writers accomplish such quest-writing prowess? Magic. No, really. And giving elves their very own starting zones.

A sense of mystery and enchantment is big for elves–maybe even more important than sleek curves and sensuous lips. LotRO hints at elven amazingness, but we don’t see much of it. In all of LotRO’s vast terrains, the only place I can think of that seems magical and mystical is Galadriel’s garden. Pretty much everything elven in WoW seems magical.

The trees carved into big bears are just goofy, but I can look past that. You have the Emerald Dream, the mystical pools, the unique architecture, the moon priestesses, and of course Elune, the moon goddess herself.

The racial starting areas are huge in WoW, just like in Dragon Age: Origins, and this is an overwhelming playability asset that WoW will always hold over Rift. These are just so critical to get immersed in your character through learning about your people and where you came from. Elves don’t have anything like this in Rift, and LotRO is minimal with the dwarves featuring more in the mini-story.

In LotRO, you can spend a lot of time in higher-level elven regions, but Rivendell frankly doesn’t have much story going on–we focus more on Bilbo and Frodo while we are visiting there, probably, as much as anything else. And by the time you reach Mirkwood and Lothlorien, your experience of interacting with those elves feels distant and informal.

You are asked to do several quests to prepare for a big feast in Lothlorien, for example, but in the end do you get to join in with the elven culture? No–your final quest is to watch over the partying elves as a detached observer and scold them if they get too crazy. The best parts of Lothlorien for me are the ones made fun of sometimes–yes, singing to trees and delivering flowers. It’s what elves do.

The LotRO writers are geniuses–steeped up to their stubby human ears in Tolkien lore–and their writing in Isengard is particularly powerful–but the subject matter and ambiance are very serious and somber in LotRO. Curiously enough, the Shire isn’t, and based on unofficial LotRO forum polls over the years, the Shire seems to be the statistical favorite starting area for LotRO players because it breathes with the spirit of its people.

Dragon Age brought a really interesting and intimate twist to elves by portraying them as former slaves of a conquered civilization who are now either downtrodden slum-dwellers or wild, distrusting hill-folk. Unfortunately, Bioware decided to forsake race altogether in Dragon Age 2 and force you to play as a human. This was for the purpose of focusing on story (and economical, of course), but it was also a little unfortunate.

Like DA, Rift brings a similar story of an elven people whose home was destroyed, and in the most recent Ember Isles patch, players get to visit and attempt to retake the old home of the Kelari. This is a redemption for elf-lovers in Rift, and one I hope to experience in the the not-too-distant future. Will I see a spiritual and magical depth for the elves, or will I mainly see dynamic action and holding control points?

I don’t know, and right now I’m hoping to see SWTOR next Thanksgiving weekend with my beta key, unless there is some unexpected glitch. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Please send me my email and keep the turkey away from the server room, Bioware.

WoW seems to be widely hated today for shaping the industry in certain ways–such as the gear-tier grinding format. I will probably hit the road in WoW if and when I hit that painful rut, just like I did in Rift. In some cases, however, WoW gets things right–and right is concise writing that conveys culture and emotion, and a design that speaks to your character’s sense of identity, ethics, and spirituality.

Further reading:

Elves in Dragon Age
Tolkien Elves

Fake It Until You Make It

I’ve never really cared much for faking it, but it works for people in real life. Why not also in MMO’s? Keen touched on some interesting points in his last blog post about the appreciation of space and usable scope in games. He enjoys big scope. Most players do. The realities of game development however, (I’m not a developer, just a writer and admirer) largely dictate the actual usable space.

What Bioware’s RPG’s get right and some don’t, in my opinion, is implied scope, just like the castle in RIFT’s starter zone, and some of the vistas over Tortage in Age of Conan, but with a mental backdrop as well as a visual one. A backdrop of either persuasion is cake to create compared to a grand palace of usable modeled space.

I’ve suggested this concept a few times in the LotRO forums. There isn’t enough implied scope in LotRO. Does anyone know the politics of the day in LotRO? Or what Dwalin, Galadriel, and the elves of Rivendell are doing with their spare time, aside from sitting around and serving as quest nodes? Would it be bad to hear some news from Rohan or disturbing reports from distant future war fronts? How do people in Middle-Earth get their news? Are they ever afraid for their children? Where are the children, anyway?

A few NPC’s do mention things happening in existing zones, even in the Shire, where one would expect blissful ignorance. This is a good thing, but Turbine could do much more to create a sense of a larger world than physically exists in the game. They’re spamming lots of text anyway. (I actually enjoy it, and LotRO’s text is so well-written that only a few players have predictably complained.)

I feel sure that this is a tenet of Bioware’s design philosophy. In Neverwinter Nights, we heard grim recounting of the terror in the streets of Neverwinter before we stepped out and heard the shouts and cries of a city in turmoil. In Mass Effect 2, we saw video of the collectors before we met them–security video footage that created mysteries, stoked our fears, and expanded the player experience of space and time, while not creating any extra “usable space” beyond what was already in the game, just not reached yet. A better example is Dragon Age, where the NPC’s regale us with detailed stories of their distant homelands–a device that expands the perceived game world as well as characterizes.

It’s good to see RIFT doing something like this. I can’t play the beta with my download limitations, but I hope that the backdrop of the RIFT lore is also expansive in scope, even if it’s “faked” as Keen puts it. What is the most powerful tool of the game developer? Surely the player’s imagination. Like MMOGamerChick, I’ve been slowly boosting my lore circuitry leading up to SWTOR to head off a serious imagination overload.

This isn’t the type of post I’d like to write regularly on my blog, but immersion is something I really believe in, so thanks for sticking with me.