Yawn

Its Diablo III. I feel sorry for anyone that believed different. After the Starcraft 2 announcement in Korea, I gave up all faith that Blizzard was out to shock anyone with their future games. Blizzard will stick to their IPs and make really good games with them.

Diablo III is hack and slash. Really good looking hack and slash. The classes look fun and insanely overpowered, which goes a long way towards making hack and slash something players can enjoy for more than a couple hours.

I'm really on the fence with Diablo III. I know it will be a good game and fun, but is it worth my time? I've tried enough mediocre hack and slash games over the years, avoided Diablo II due to Diablo I burnout, and with little time to play, I don't know what to think of Diablo III.

The one thing that I am curious about is what everyone else thinks. How long can Blizzard live off of these franchises if all we're going to get is well done updates? The last big move, going from RTS to MMO with World of Warcraft, by Blizzard came at the hands of the old-school designers which have long ago left the company.

Don't get me wrong. Blizzard makes great games and I enjoy most of them, but I just wish they could take that great development process and put into something new and a bit more exciting than another Diablo.

Bartle Is Right

The Internet at large is going blah, blah, blah as of late due to a wonderful quote from a man that a lot of MMO veterans have long argued is our "intellectual elite". That man is none other than Dr. Bartle, and here is the bomb he tossed:

Massively: "Are you planning on playing games like Age of Conan and Warhammer when they come out?"
Bartle: "I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft."

I've railed against the WoW vs WAR comparisons before and completely blistered idiots trying to compare the two based on visuals, but Bartle's comment is not comparing the two. I think Dr. Bartle is 100% correct in what he said. He HAS played WAR already and it WAS called World of Warcraft.

Now, why would I go and say this after arguing until blue in the face that WAR is not WoW? Because of something I've said a hundred times before: players looking for the WoW experience will find it in WAR. All that is WoW can be found in WAR. The defining difference is that there will be a hell of a lot more to WAR than there is currently or will ever be to WoW.

That is not a slight against WoW, it is a statement of fact that Blizzard is the kind of developer that sticks strictly to what they can do right. PvE and all this dabbling in e-sports is right up Blizzard's ally and that is what WoW will always be. The question for WoW has been whether e-sport and PvE can coexist in the same game.

So, Bartle is right. He has played WAR already, because he is an Achiever by his own test. He has three level 70 characters in WoW. I have no doubt he could do the same when WAR launches, but I do not see Bartle ever hitting Realm Rank 80 (the true "end" level in WAR). Just as I doubt Bartle would ever achieve a 2000+ personal Arena rating on his level 70 WoW characters.

Even if Bartle talks better with a backspace key, I doubt he would remove his quote. For him, the experience to be gained in WAR for HIM is the exact same experience he got out of WoW.

To me that is more evidence that WAR is going to be a great game. The complete WoW experience is there, and everyone looking for it will find it. Funny thing is, a lot of these same people will also find out that WAR is fleshed out, full-featured, and actually encourages players to socialize at every turn.

And Cuppy, Bartle's statement was foolish, because as the industry veteran he is, he knew damn well how it would be taken and I think to a certain degree he wanted it to be taken that way. Foolish, his statement was, but wrong it was not. He has already stated he would shut down WoW, so it is of no surprise that a game that will deliver the same quality experience of WoW would be on his hit list as well. Smart people do say stupid things.

Epic Fail 2: Second Age of Conan Siege

Openedge was kind enough to point out that a second siege occurred in Age of Conan. According to him it went "much better", but I'm not quite sure our idea of "better" are exactly the same. For example: to me filet mignon is a much better cut of beef than sirloin. To Openedge, cube steak is better than ground beef, because its not ground as much. See what I did there?

From all reports on the second siege, the only aspect to improve, was that it was semi-playable this time around with top-end gaming rigs reaching an astonishing 15 FPS. Everything else STILL did not work. Walls were still exploited, and when the legitimate way to get through a wall, by smashing it to bits occurred, the attackers could not get past the now demolished structure. Siege weapons sat idle.

Really, I could go on and on with the list of problems that AoC's siege warfare has currently, but it isn't worth the typing. The fact is: AoC's end-game siege warfare was not ready at launch. This is fine for the hardcore guilds currently battling each other. They expected as much, are used to such failures, and will battle on into the future.

Problem is, the hardcore guilds are going to quit, regardless of whether sieges get fixed or not. I've played with every single hardcore guild listed, both against and alongside them, and none of them has stuck in any MMO for any length of time. Sure, their name lives on, but rarely do the mainstay players and leaders of the guild last long. There is always a greener pasture to look forward to.

What happens when these early adopter guilds decline? Does Funcom have the system fixed by then or will the majority of AoC players walk into a disaster? I'm not going to sit around and say Funcom can't get it fixed, but I will chastise them for leaving it in-game in such disrepair. It definitely nailed the coffin shut in my mind. I will never play Age of Conan.

I spent a lot of energy arguing that AoC was a direct WoW knock-off and that the only defining features of AoC were not complete, would not work, and are exactly in the state that beta testers predicted them to be.

AoC has proven beyond a doubt that it is a WoW clone, a barely-capable WoW-clone at that. The PvE game is almost an exact copy, which is fine, but the features meant to define AoC as a non-WoW-clone, just are not ready. Will Funcom fix them and develop AoC into a long-standing MMO for their core audience? Probably, but don't expect any more massive interest in the title. Launch was as good as it will get for AoC.

Epic Fail: World First Age of Conan Siege

The news couldn't get worse for Age of Conan (AoC). World first siege, between PFB and LOTD, turns out to be unplayable.

"PFB did the server's first siege (world first?) this morning at 6am EST on LOTD, a few Sinister who were online decided to take the opportunity to see how "polished" siege warfare was. The naysayers were pretty much deadon. It took little time to break down the main gate (max of 4-5 mins), buildings in general go down really fast with the full raid on them. Siege weapons don't work yet, and the mercenary system isn't in (we had to drop our guild for the siege in order to not kill each other even in the same raid). Keeps still have vunerable areas where you can just run past the walls (on the LOTD keep it was on the right side of the outer wall). After breaching the outer wall we ran into the major problem (I guess?) of sieging. LAG. I run a quad core 2.4ghz 2 gig ram and a 8800GT, and I had a solid 2-3fps once we engaged (btw i spent 500 dollars upgrading my pc for this game). Trying to actually fire combos and kill anyone was virtually impossible unless they were rooted."

This wasn't even that many players and AoC is planning to somehow have 150 vs 150 battles? World of Warcraft (WoW) managed 40 vs 40. Most good FPS games max out around 32 vs 32. There was a lot of prior history for Funcom to learn from and set attainable goals. They seem to have disregarded all of it in favor of putting big numbers in their press releases.

I am sick of posting these followups to AoC, highlighting the same problems beta testers were talking about in beta. I'm sick of people telling me I was wrong about AoC. I am sick of people telling me how "fun" AoC is. Games that are not complete, are not fun.

The fact is: Funcom tested NONE of AoC's features outside of leveling, and tested leveling only to the point that it was possible to reach level 80, not whether it was fluid or consistent.

Guild cities? No testing.
PvP sieges? No testing.

I quote a beta tester that participated in the siege:

I'm pretty sick of beta testing the game honestly. I pushed for the last 2 months of beta to get level 80 pvp implemented. I asked for the final month of the beta to have a /80 command so that we could test their endgame/pvp content. Nothing...they didnt do ****. It was a smooth release, but they knew from beta that people would be at endgame content within the first couple of weeks due to their fast leveling curve....yet they continue to push level 30-50 content. ****ing stupid.

A few days of stress testing would have easily shown that neither worked! Something that doesn't work should not be launched for the public to suffer through. That is the old MMO market, not the post-WoW market.

I understand the need for games to launch early. I don't agree with it and I think there is a lot of evidence to show that delaying until finished is very financially viable. However, I must admit that is not how some development houses are run and the need to launch happens. It is just mind-boggling to me that developers don't at least hold major features back that just don't work. Stick with what works, make it really good, and worry about the other stuff later. Most importantly, don't list features on the box that will not make it into the final game or that are unlikely to actually work.

I will compare this situation directly to Pirates of Burning Seas (PotBS). PotBS took a huge delay to put in Avatar Combat. Avatar Combat failed miserably and painfully took away development time from polishing what did work: ship combat and the economy. PotBS could easily be enjoying life as a niche success, but instead the developers are patching in the polish that could of easily been added had Avatar Combat just been ignored until later.

PotBS had huge player numbers at launch, but a few server merges and months later, and it is evident no one stuck around. That is EXACTLY what will happen to AoC. Anyone that doesn't believe me, doesn't understand the power of history to teach the human race.

AoC players better prepare for a long wait, because the siege system is going to require an entire rewrite to become playable. Maybe the rest of the game will hold up and entertain those looking for sieges and epic guild conflict. Maybe, just maybe, Funcom will pull another "Miracle Patch" out of their ass. I doubt it, but I'm going to leave the possibility door open.

We sit here, again, with the long-standing MMO tradition of forcing the player base to test in-game systems after launch. The laundry list of mistakes that AoC has made, is making, and will continue to make is immense. I firmly stand by my position to not play AoC.

Update: 25 June 08 - More commentary here.

Mass Effect DRM Problems

Here we are, discussing Mass Effect's DRM, but this time, the predictions about the DRM fucking over legitimate customers have actually come true.

Fuck anyone that believed the announced DRM for Mass Effect and Spore would not cause problems.

Whats truly sad is that once again the CRACKED version of the game has NO PROBLEMS, but the LEGITIMATE copies, bought and paid for, have a plethora of issues locking gamers out of their games.

I am seriously backed into a corner now regarding Spore. I absolutely want to play the game, but I do not want to "vote" for the DRM that will be attached by buying the game.

I'm tech savvy, deal with software licensing issues for a living as an IT guy, and probably could solve or avoid most of the problems. That isn't my concern. My concern is the majority of gamers that are not educated on this sort of DRM and who may get pushed out of the market by stupid, unfounded anti-piracy efforts.