Neverwinter Pit Fight

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Astral Diamonds come into the system through Daily Quests and events.  Since the AD are used to buy everything on the AH and do a wide majority of character customization, you need lots of em.  Heck, the best pet in the game costs 980K AD and at level 38 I’m sitting on 50K.

The skirmish event was on, meaning that completing one gave me a chest with 1,000 AD.  When this event is NOT active, even as a Cleric, I can wait 20 minutes to get into a queue.  When the event is active, it’s under 5 minutes.  My tank, level 18, seems to insta-queue no matter the time.  The daily quest for skirmishes gives you 2,000AD but past level 30 you need to complete 2 of them.  This is hard to do when there isn’t an event. Plus, if you’re on a quests and get into a queue, you lose all non-overworld progress.  Overworld meaning the 15 or so locations you see on the big map, which is only about 10% of the content.  Last night my queue came up when I was on the last boss on a hard quest.  Hard to restart :/

Anyways, here’s a quick video of the current skirmish someone else took since I didn’t get FRAPS installed until after I was done.

The entire event is in a room that my AE spell covers 25% of the space.  As usual, the last boss has what seems to be infinite timed add spawns – in this case 1 caster and 2 wolves.  The run I had last had such poor coordination that there were always 2 casters up aiming directly for me and 2-3 wolves chasing me around.  And no tank on either run, in fact one had 2 wizards and the second had 3.  Fun times!

Since I hit level 35, I’ve gained a new AE heal spell and my gameplay has changed dramatically because of it.  Group content is harder, I have more powerful skills that dramatically affect the gameplay and it’s like a new game is opening up.  What a massive difference from every other MMO out there.

The downside is that nearly every group I’ve run with has had at least one person just quit the group and due to the in-game mechanic change and they are listed as disconnected and the spot stays blank.  I could use that extra body.  Neverwinter seriously needs a vote kick option or some way to manage this.  Grouping tools should be a priority.

I should mention that gear drops in the game are a strange affair.  I think WoW has brainwashed people to think that Green << Blue <<<< Purple.  Here are comparative items, at my level.  I mean there’s a difference, sure but it isn’t massive.

Neverwinter - Blue Item

Neverwinter - Green Item

The fun part here is that since people don’t understand that gear is replaced in a day and that there is a massive price difference (800 vs 50K), you can make a pretty penny if you play the cards right.  The downside is that people roll /need on gear that they can’t use.  Greedy buggers.

The Trinity’s Crutch

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Last night I ran a dungeon in Neverwinter as a Cleric.  Throne of Idris.  We had 1 Wizard, 2 Great Weapon Fighters and 1 Rogue.  That’s right, no tank.  I died a fair bit and the last boss was a 10 minute+ fight (well, on the 3rd attempt) of running around after the Wizard left and the GWF died, leaving us with 3 to kill a 5 man boss.  I danced and jived and sucked back healing potions and screamed when the boss finally dropped dead.  It was a ton of fun.  It was also a level 40 dungeon that took over 90 minutes.

I’ve been gaming for quite a long time and 99% of it deals with combat.  Sometimes this is a war of words but often with someone taking a blunt instrument to the head.  In both cases, combat is a combination of taking an attack, recovering from the attack and giving your own attack.  Hence the Holy Trinity concept of Tank, Healer and DPS.  Other than Guild Wars 2, I can’t think of any class-based game that didn’t explicitly focus on this trinity.  Sandboxes (EvE, UO, DF, etc…) are not included since most players will build a character with all 3 facets.

In older versions of D&D (pre v4), you had the concept of trinity but a lack of good tools.  You needed a great GM and a decent ruleset to make it work.  Or really good players.  A bad GM would send everyone after the Cleric or Wizard, then slowly choke down the rest of the group.  MMOs brought the concept of Threat as a mechanic to the table, where players were ranked, based on actions, and the monsters attacked the player at the top of the list.  At lower skill levels, this works rather well since DPS and Tanks and Healers are somewhat even in terms of output, since the scale is small.  At higher levels, as is evident in WoW, DPS will outpace a tank’s threat by exponential factors.  Inversely, as tanks get better, healers have less threat since they have less to heal.  Until that point, Healers are wearing “kick me” signs.

Developers try to address these issues with 3 tools.  The first is a threat modifier, where you do more/less threat per action based on your skills or class.  Tanks typically want more, healers a whole lot less and DPS can be used as the middle ground.  Using WoW again as an example, Vengeance provides a DPS boost to a tank based on the damage they take.  This gives tanks the ability to hold threat against tons of enemies while DPS is going wild.

The second is with a taunt.  A taunt does one of two things.  Either it gives you a massive boost of threat or it puts you at the top of the threat list.  The former only seems like the latter when you’re close to the top.  I’m still trying to figure out if Neverwinter uses the 2nd type or not.

The third method is called a threat wipe, and it’s usually seen as dirty pool by players.  This is where a boss is going smooth and all of a sudden he forgets everything that’s happened and you need to restart the whole threat dance.

I play a Cleric and a Tank in Nevewinter.  Again, Open Beta disclaimer.  Threat in the game is currently broken and it’s enough to reduce my enjoyment of the multiplayer aspect of the game.  As a Cleric, one bug fix is that I need to remove all my gear then re-equip it to have a chance to survive any group encounter.  The way the Cleric works is through mostly Heal over Time spells.  Given that there are continual spawns on a boss, any boss encounter I’m going to get swamped with enemies, so I tend to gather them up and run to the middle pile, hoping the tank can get them.  Which isn’t often.  As a Tank, I have a 15 second taunt that seems to make the enemies turn to me, then turn away after 1 hit.  My threat building skills work in a small cone in front of me and for them to really work, I need to block all attacks (due to the mechanics of the Mark skill).  Since blocking means not moving, I can’t really pick up the adds and keep the boss on me.  I’ve worked a few things out so far but jeebus is it ever hard to keep threat active.

As much as I enjoyed the dungeon run last night, there were 3 or 4 times where I just wanted to quit the run from sheer frustration.  The thing that kept me going were the other players and the attitude of “damn this game, we’re going to beat it”.  I ended the run with no drops, next to no experience gain, 90 minutes out of pocket but 3 new names added to the friends list.  Something to cheer about after all.

Also, I need to get FRAPS re-installed…

Neverwinter – Story and Lore

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I know I said I’d get to the Foundry but Tipa’s impression post got me thinking more about the odd feeling I get in Neverwinter.

If you’ve played any recent game, then you’re familiar with the typical storyline.  Batman needs to stop the Joker, Jim needs to stop the Zerg, players need to defeat Crucia.  From start to end, there’s a cohesive story that you’re a part of, either as the main protagonist or as a side-kick.  Games where you’re a side-kick are usually stinkers, since you’re lacking the power to change the game.

MMOs are really similar to this in that they need to provide a Hero’s Journey – from small beginnings come great things.  You start off as a plucky hero (willing or not), fight your way through hordes of minions and eventually lay waste to some big bad wolf at the end.  Expansion comes out, new story, new path.  Somehow my badge of honor that shows I killed Deathwing doesn’t impress the monkeys who are 1 level higher for some reason.  I digress.

The thing about this main story is that there are plenty of smaller stories along the path.  Each “zone” has a particular flavor and point.  Save the trees, keep the boars away and whatnot.  Individually they are fine but the stories combined create lore.  This is used not only to drive you forward in a game but to frame the world ahead of you.  If in one zone I need to skins bears and the next I’m hunting zombies, there’s a distinct lack of cohesiveness and the lore becomes hard to follow.  WoW has amazing success because the lore is so consistent.  EvE has success since the lore is player created.  At any point, you can look back and see “this is what’s happened so far”.

Back to Neverwinter.  The game has no lore, it only has a setting.  I’m in Faerun, got it.  Why am I attacking these skeletons again?  Who are they working for?  Each zone has an underlying story but with 20+ zones, none of them seem to link to each other at all.  This is where I think the D&D license wasn’t truly understood.  When I sit down at a tabletop, I am playing my character across multiple sessions and multiple adventures.  Sure I might be in the North killing Giants one day and on a boat in the South chasing pirates the next but the cohesion between the settings is player based.  I explicitly know this because I chose to go on that boat (or lost a bet).  Neverwinter has no such choice.  I am going through multiple campaigns with the same player but zero other linkages between them.  It also doesn’t help that the writing is atrocious.

neverwinter demon

Cool. Who are you?

It’s too late now to ret-con the story from start to finish but I am hoping that the first module released addresses this issue.  Right now, my best bet for a consistent and coherent story is the Foundry.  A few of them are series with promise.  If you’re playing Neverwinter, give Old Jerry’s Saga a shot to see how the absurd can be a valid critique of the common.

How Big is 1.3 Million

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According to MMOData, World of Warcraft lost the following:

  • 0.6 Aion
  • 1.2 Runescape
  • 2 Second Life
  • 2.5 EvE
  • 5 Rift
  • 5 LOTRO

And however many are in Star Wars, Star Trek and all the other F2P games.  Also, WoW could lose 1.3 million players for the next 4 years and still have more players than nearly every single MMO on the planet.

WoW, as much as people might hate on it, has been the poster child for making MMOs cool to society.  Gone (mostly) are the days that you were a super geek who lived in your mom’s basement to play online games.  The stereotypical WoW player is seen as your average person on the street.  Somehow that’s a bad thing.  The stereotypical EvE player, you’d likely want to lock up behind bars.

There’s simply too many games out there, with too many payment models for a non-niche game to find the massive success that WoW has achieved.  I don’t see any other game ever hitting 5 million players, let alone 12 million.  It’s still there, still stronger than all its competition and still commands players attention.  What other game do people talk about that haven’t played it in 5 years?

Neverwinter – Character Progression

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Just to re-iterate on all previous Neverwinter posts, the game is in Open Beta/soft launch. While the details might change, the systems are pretty much set in stone.

The basic game gives you two character slots.  I have a Devoted Cleric (healer) and a Guardian Fighter (tank).  The former is level 30, the latter level 11.  I am thinking about buying more, to give the Rogue a shot but time will tell how that works out.  Leveling (after the Foundry nerf) is done primarily through single player core quests.  Skirmishes give next to no experience and I only run them during the events to get the extra 1000 Astral Diamonds at the end.  Dungeons give decent experience but take 45 minutes and the loot system is pretty broken right now (as per my last post).  Some Foundry missions give some decent experience and loot, plus are easily repeatable.  It’s entirely possible to level solely in the Foundry but I am playing a themepark and want to enjoy the ride.

To character progression now.  After the tutorial you’re level 4 with a power in each slot.  Each level gained from that point gives you a Power Point to spend in a given skill.  Additional powers are unlocked after you’ve spent enough points (5, 10, 15, 20, etc…)  Every 10 levels you get extra stat points (STR, INT, etc..) for your character, though they have a somewhat negligible impact on the game.  Level 10 gives you access to professions and the start of the Feat system.  Similar to Power Points, you get 1 every level  and can spend them on passive boosts in a tiered structure.  At 30 you get access to a specialization (currently only 1 exists per class) and you get to spend your Feat Points on Paragon abilities.  These unlock more passive skills, in a tiered format but only along a single path (of 3).  At level 16, you get a companion that either heals, tanks or damages.  Tank is a really good bet for everyone, though if you are a tank, get the healer.  Max level for a character is currently 60.

Each class has a particular Paragon path focus to choose.   My cleric can either go for DPS, healing or buffs.  Powers have 3 ranks each, and you can only equip a small subset at any given time.  So my Cleric has 2 passives, 2 dailies, 3 encounters and 2 at-will powers selected for solo play and a different set for group play – so a minimum of 14 points and a maximum of 28 to get everything you might need for both roles.  You can reset these choices for a Zen fee (the F2P currency).  You have enough points to spent in the Powers without really worrying about “mistakes” but the Feat/Paragon portion is lot less forgiving since they are all passive abilities and can have a dramatic impact on gameplay.  The forums are a great place to read up on the choices.

Abilities are broken down into quite a few categories.  Stats, the core numbers D&D uses for Strength, Dexterity and so on, are rather fixed along your path.  It’s unlikely you’ll exceed 26 points in your core stat by level 60.  The other abilities are a different matter and they work with a “ratings” system, where you don’t gain 1% crit, you gain 50 critical rating, which depending on your level, gives you specific % increase.

  • Power – Increases damage and healing
  • Critical – Increases the odds of dealing a critical strike
  • Armor Penetration – A % increase in damage to enemies with armor
  • Recovery – Increases the speed of Encounter power recovery
  • Movement – Increases movement speed
  • Defense – Decreases the damage you take
  • Deflect – Increase odds of blocking damage entirely
  • Regeneration – Increased life regeneration
  • Life Steal – A % of damage you deal is converted to healing
  • Maximum Health – Increases health

Gear can come with 3 of these abilities on it and up to two enchantment slots.  The slots use gems with the same stats but come in three flavors – offense, defense and utility.  For example, my Cleric would aim for gear with Power, Critical and Recovery and slot Power/Recovery for Offense, Defense for Defensive and Movement for Utility.  My Tank is likely to go for Defense, Recovery and Life Steal.

I personally think that the gear point spread is too high right now and that makes gear way more valuable than it should be when it comes to upgrades.  From one item to the next might have a 10% increase in power.  The game also “recommends” gear upgrades but this is based on adding all the stats together to give you a GearScore (yes, that’s the name).

In the end, the question remains “does my character progress?”.  The answer is a yes and even though it uses an old “talent” system, the fact that you get something at level up is a great carrot on the stick for progress.  I’ll get a new skill and try it out.  I’ll get a new piece of gear pretty frequently too.  There’s always a feeling of there being more and that keeps people playing.  I know I’m still having a blast.

Today is a Bad Day at Blizzard

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First the news that WoW is down 1.3 million subs and only counts 8.3 million.  We never really know how many are playing, given that the Chinese playerbase is so liquid.  That being said, many servers are turning into ghost towns (not Stormrage, that’s for sure) where it seems that open world PvP is the main cause.  Guess that there’s real competition out now for those who want their kicks.

To contrast a bit, no other western game even has 1.3 million subscribers.  At 15$ a month, that’s about $20 million lost on a monthly basis.  Still, 8.3 million players after 9 years is something!

The second bit of news is that Diablo 3’s recent patch has destroyed the economy in a fell swoop.  A bug on the RMAH (for real money) caused massive gold duping, to where some people have amassed more money individually than the game had as a whole previously.  That link shows gold that is worth about $10 million real cash.  Given that the normal AH, that uses gold, had a cap of 2 billion per item, a lot of that money has been spread around to users selling item and caused hyper-inflation.  An item that might sell for a few million a week ago was going for the full 2 billion yesterday.  Not sure how this type of bug got through QA, considering it’s the main cash cow for the game.

And Blizzard isn’t considering a roll-back.

Quite a series of events.

 

Open Beta is Still Beta

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A few more hours into Neverwinter and I’m still having fun.  The soft launch/beta issue is still quite evident, what with daily downtimes, sometimes more than once a day.  And there are bugs/exploits abound.  Bannings have even started for some people exploiting the Foundry.  I think bans are heavy handed, especially in a agreed-upon BETA status, though perhaps they are only banning people that haven’t spent money yet.  That exploits are being found though, that’s a good thing.  Means players are playing!

I have this thing with crafting in MMOs.  In Ultima Online I had 2 characters who only crafted, one of which was a GM tinker.  That might resonate with some.  EQ2, EvE and a couple others have complex systems but by and large, crafting in MMOs today is more or less a joke.  SWTOR embraced that thought and had crafting done by NPCs.  Neverwinter uses the same concept, crafting as a something you can do in combat, and puts in a web-service to manage it.  I am certain that I have more hours in the crafting queue than I have  played as a character in-game.  Right now, I have two 18 hour queues running.  And I still can’t make gear that’s high enough level for my character to wear.  /sigh.  I’m going to stick with it though, just to see what comes of it.  A good thing is the “rare” crafting items you can make, that appear on timers.  That’s cool.

Neverwinter Cleric

Chest piece at level 29

The game also comes with an LFG tool, one for skirmishes and one for dungeons.  The first one is simple enough, lasts about 10 minutes.  You’re likely to be in the queue longer than in the fight.  The dungeon queue is a tad bit longer but the dungeons themselves are quite long.  They are basically corridors of trash followed by a mini-boss.  Usually 3 minis then the big one.  They tend to all follow the same pattern.  At a given health percentage/time delay, they summon allies.  The problem here is that tanks are not able to pick them up quickly enough as threat management isn’t yet balanced.  On some end boss fights, I’ll spend the last 30% or more running around trying to not get hit by the spawns.  And that’s with every -threat skill I can get.  The health pools/damage abilities of the bosses aren’t yet balanced either.  One skirmish boss took about 5 minutes to kill.  Another dungeon boss could 2 shot some players.  Beta is Beta.

Another quirk for group play is the loot system.  Every magical item (green, blue, purple) is un-identified, meaning you have no idea if it’s an upgrade or not.  Every group I’ve been in, there’s been 1 guy(gal) who rolls a /need on every drop.  I can’t tell if it’s an upgrade or not and there’s plenty of restricted gear – i.e. a mage can’t wear rogue gear.  Why a mage can roll need on gear that they cannot use is crazy.  And boss drops, for me at least, have been static.  Meaning I’ve killed the guy 4-5 times and seen the same item drop every time.  Finally, there are chests in these runs.  Some can be only opened once, others multiple times.  It would be nice for some consistency.

Neverwinter Auction House

Gear can be expensive

I talked a bit about the F2P aspect, and the cash stop.  From what I’ve seen so far, there’s next to no need to spend actual money yet.  Sure, you need to spend real cash to get a 100%+ speed mount (default is 50%) or to upgrade your companion past level 15, but they aren’t really requirements as you can easily get by without it.  Even inventory management isn’t too bad.  The Astral Diamonds used for the Auction House are a bit different though.  If you complete 3 dailies (Foundry, Skirmish and Dungeon) you get 1000 diamonds a piece.  Run 3-4 skirmishes during the event, and you get 1000 per as well.  If everything lines up perfectly, you can finish the day with 5000-6000 diamonds.  I don’t see how you can reach the 24,000 daily cap yet but maybe that’s in the higher levels.  The best gear on the AH is about 200K per piece and by my math, you’re going to need to buy diamonds with cash or get lucky with drops.  The “cheap” stuff is 50K per piece and seems well enough.  We’ll see how that ends up in the end.  One thing I think will sell the most is Enchanted Keys, which open Nightmare chests.  You get these chest randomly (I have 20 or so) and the items are usable anytime once you have a key.  And the key only comes from the cash store.  Cryptic has been smart enough to send a system message whenever a player unlocks the “rare” mount from these, which appears to be every other minute.  A whole lot of “he won it, I should be able to as well”.  Still, for the average player, I don’t think there’s a huge motivation to spend money.  Maybe with more classes or races?

The next post on the game will discuss the Foundry system and player development.

In the meantime, here are my suggestions to the devs:

  • If crafting starts at level 10, let me make level 10 gear then.
  • Add a default option for loot rolls that you can only need equipment your class can use
  • Add some randomization to boss drops
  • Make all chests mutli-use or single-use.  If single-use, have a /roll option on the appropriate items

May’s Fool

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EA acquires the sole game publishing rights to the Star Wars license for multiple years.

Please, someone tell me they EA is pulling a joke a month late.  I refuse to believe that a single person on this planet with any understanding of EA or Star Wars thinks this is a good idea.

Has the browser dark war and monopoly of IE not taught people that this type of agreement is bad for everyone?  Competition is good.  Madden’s been phoned in for 4 years.

Neverwinter Quick Run

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Cryptic and I have a strange relationship.  I’ve played all of their games and wrote guides for most of them.  The last one out the door, Star Trek Online, was a massive rush-job which essentially destroyed the company’s viability without outside help.  Perfect World came about, and now the F2P model is all they care about.  Many have mentioned this in the past but a F2P game that isn’t designed from the start to be F2P is usually horrible.  This is the main reason I wanted to give Neverwinter a shake, to see what a “start-to-finish” F2P game plays.  And to be honest, I like what I see.

Neverwinter Cleric

First and most important, Neverwinter is in open beta/soft launch.  I mention this here so that people aren’t surprised when the server goes down for 4 hours for no reason one evening.  It would seem there’s significant downtime every other day, though it’s getting better.  If you want the full experience, don’t worry about waiting a bit.

Classes are a simple affair.  Tank, Healer, Range, Quick Melee, Strong Melee.  Each can play solo, though some fights will require solid use of game mechanics to get through.  I went the Healer  route (Devoted Cleric).  From my experience in the game so far, classes seem rather spread out.  Creating a character is a matter of selecting your race (for minor bonuses), rolling your stats (from a pre-generated list of about 10 choices) and customizing your character.  The customization is fun, if simple.  I mean, a Tiefling can only ever look red with horns, so you’re going to be limited.  I do wish the sliders for size had a larger effect though, it’s hard to see the difference between no waist and full waist.  Next up, is a quick tutorial.

Which I love by the way.  Fully voiced, good pacing.  Easy to zoom through on the 2nd+ character.  No matter what you do, by the end you’re level 4 and have 1 of every skill unlocked.

Neverwinter Boss

First Boss

The skill portion is where 4th edition D&D is supposed to come through and I guess it sort of does.  The concept of always available, sometimes available and rarely available is here, true, but the speed at which these becomes available is odd – especially when you put in the skill toggle.  At-will maps to the 2 mouse buttons and you spam the crud out of it.  Encounter skills have a 15s recharge (or close enough) and do more – AE heal, piercing attack, AE attack, etc…  Daily skills need power, which is generated from using the previous 2 types of skills.  Once you have enough, you can use a super-power of sorts.  One of mine had an angle fall from the sky, or a giant fire pillar.  It’s cool effects but you want to use them for tough enemies.  All of these skills can get unlocked or upgraded manually as you level.  It gives you some choice to specialize.  You can only ever have a maximum 2 At-Will, 3 Encounter and 2 Daily powers available for combat though, so choose wisely.  The final item is a skill toggle.  At level 15 you get this unlock that fills a bar on the middle-left of the screen.  Toggle with Tab and your At-Wills change to something deadlier and you other powers get upgraded while you have charge to use.  It’s like a super meter from fighting games, and makes combat that much more fun.

Combat is targeted with mouse-look, which is a welcome change from most games.  It uses an intelligent healing mechanic, which is good.  In a mass of enemies though, it can be hard to target a single one consistently.  It does make line of sight that much more important for PvP though, which is great.  There’s also a system of “tells” where a red spot appears on the ground and within a second or two, a spike of damage occurs.  You can move out of it but you have to wait for your combat animation to end.  Takes getting used to but you can avoid most damage that way.  You eventually get a companion to travel with you, which is great.  Same basic classes – tank, healer, range and melee.  The tank does an amazing job.  They level with you too, so that’s good.

Next up is the “what is there do to?” question.  Well, there’s a core quest line that can run you through the levels.  The Foundry provides player-generated quests that are a lot of fun to run through – but some bugs with how the game (not the quests themselves) runs can make some of them difficult to finish.  The rest is supplemented with skirmishes (5 of you fighting waves of enemies for ~10 minutes), dungeons (5 of you running a dungeon for ~30-45 minutes), PvP combat (arena-like), crafting (1 for experience, 4 for the armor type your class uses) and the auction house.  A cool feature is that every hour, for an hour, a random event occurs with extra bonuses for players.  So if Skirmishes are on deck, then the queue for running them seems to drop to a fraction of other times.  Skirmishes are quick-paced shooting galleries.  Dungeons are pretty cool and do require more than just aiming for the big guy.  This isn’t WoW’s AE fest.  All bosses seem to summon more enemies during the fight and as a healer, I spend the last 2 minutes running around healing myself, hoping for help.

There are currently 3 servers, soon to be merged into one.  The game is heavily instanced, so it really doesn’t make a difference in the end.  It does make it harder to find another player a 2nd time, compared to “sharded” game, but it does make everyone play in the same pot.  I kind of like it.

Neverwinter Gateway

Another cool part of the game is the Gateway online service.  Think WoW Armory + more. You can view your character, full access to the auction house, full access to crafting, guild panel and access to mail.  Up and down more than I’d like, but again, BETA.  It makes you wonder how any game can launch today without an off-line component.  I tend to queue items for a couple hours, then check back a few times a day to restart.  It’s great.

The F2P portion is where people might find issue.  There are 3 currencies – gold, astral diamonds and zen.  The first is in-game and used to buy most items.  By level 20 I had 1 gold.  I like that it’s hard to come by.  Astral diamonds are acquired from specific in-game tasks/rewards or can be refined from rough diamonds acquired from similar means.  You can only refine 24,000 diamonds a day.  That seems a lot, I’m sure, but some items are worth 2,000,000 diamonds – a hefty sum.  Diamonds are used primarily for the Auction House but also to speed up certain activities.  Zen is the Perfect World currency bought with real-world dollars.  You can buy diamonds with it (or vice-versa with free trade) or buy a slew of character customization options with it – respecs, mounts, extra characters, etc…  After 22 levels, I’ve had no need for either Diamonds or Zen.  I’m guessing that will change in a few levels.  I really don’t mind dropping a few bucks here and there if I’m having fun.

Neverwinter scratches an itch for simple gameplay in short bursts.  It doesn’t have depth but doesn’t pretend to either and you’re not paying for it.  I think there real beauty here is going to be the Foundry, once it’s fully up and running.  Maybe we’ll get to see group content in there too.  It’s well worth the shot and gives some needed competition in an admittedly clone-friendly market.

HardCORE

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Exodus (some might know them as vodka), a large 25 man raiding guild in WoW, is calling it quits.  They were an ultra competitive group and the post summing up their exit is very interesting.  I’ll summarize the quote (bold for emphasis):

In the last few years this game (despite many people quitting and guilds dying) isn’t to blame for vodka/Exodus’ demise it’s the raiding community. You see… we’ve basically been killing ourselves off slowly since day 1. … the time commitment and the level of shear dedication and determination it takes and costs to be at the very top. Raiding for many many hours on end is fun, CAN be exciting, and at the end of it all can really prove who really wants that world first/us first/realm first the most.  Unfortunately we (hardcore raiders) pushed too hard. The competition is slim because the competition is literally eating each other (well not that literally). Good luck to everyone left in the race for this expac, but I don’t know how much longer this sort of thing can last.

I think it’s important to read the original quote but the TLDR; version is simply that hardcore raiding has a smaller and smaller pool of eligible players.  Those that do make the cut get burned out on the crazy race for world firsts. Many guilds run 16-18 hour days until that world first run is over.  No human being with children can run those hours or any with a typical full-time job, so you’re looking at getting people just out of school (or in post-secondary) to fill the slots.  There’s just too much competition for their attention at that age that it’s difficult to motivate them.  Especially if they haven’t been part of the MMO scene from the start.

This isn’t to through the genre under the bus.  I was a big raider in EQ and early WoW.  I knew quite a few in the real world before I met their in-game counterparts.  I made a choice for a family life and put the raiding away.  Some didn’t and they are quite happy where they are today.

That being said, it’s rather clear that today’s trend of a more social/casual attitude towards gaming is not a fad but a reality.  Games that want to attract a hardcore base will have to be niche from design as there simply aren’t enough people left in the general public with the time or energy to consume it.

Slightly related, Camelot Unchained hit its kickstarter goal (and passed by 10%).  I am glad it was able to make the mark and look forward to what is put out.  I hope that the game launches and gets some success, if only to break the MMO-themepark mold.