In 2008, we witnessed the failure of 2 hugely-hyped titles: Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. Mythic cut 4 of the 6 capital cities and 4 of the 24 classes just before WAR’s launch, the class balance was poor, and the game client and server were unstable and couldn’t handle RVR. From what I heard about AoC, the Tortage experience from 1-20 was awesome, then the quality of content dropped off. Simply put, neither game was ready to launch.

In 2009, there was excitement for 2 polished games, Aion and Allods Online, coming from Asian and Eastern Europe. NCSoft didn’t localize Aion sufficiently for the western audience – the leveling experience was tediously grindy. AO was supposed to be F2P but just before launch a stacking death penalty mechanic was added to the game that essentially required players to buy a Cash Shop item to remove the debuff.

By the start of 2010, I became increasingly concerned that social gaming might kill investment in MMORPGs. If you’re an investor, why would you risk tens of millions of dollars to build an MMORPG when it’s possible to build a profitable social game for a fraction of the cost and in a matter of months instead of years? Moreover, many believed that WoW had set the bar too high for new entrants.

However, Trion demonstrated with RIFT in early 2011 that it’s possible to launch a AAA-quality game. As Exec Producer Scott Hartsman told me, Trion was willing to wait until the game “wouldn’t fall down” and “had enough for players to do” at launch. I was a huge fan of RIFT, as it brought some innovations to class customization (you could spec with any 3 of 9 talent trees for each of the 4 classes), elegant warfront (battleground) design, and a stunning world. What we learned from RIFT is that a strong launch with a good product is not sufficient to maintain a subscriber base. There were multiple issues with the game, including buggy raid content, gear that scaled too much across tiers (leading to power creep and making it difficult for guilds to replace members who quit), and starting with Patch 1.5, increasingly poor decisions in terms of class balance for PVP. According to Xfire, RIFT isn’t even in the top 50 for online games, just 15 months after launch.

However, there was still hope for 2011, as SWTOR was going live before end of year.

SWTOR launched with neither the polish nor feature-parity of RIFT. E.g. the UI in SWTOR was clunky and could not be customized meaningfully, the auction house was difficult to use, and the game client had performance issues. Justin Lowe from darthhater.com was and is still getting ~15 FPS with a high-end PC. Despite these issues, I enjoyed SWTOR immensely. The game provided a fun combat experience – the animations and sounds made combat feel epic. I loved several aspects of its PVP, including the brilliant design of Huttball (a PVP battleground where you can pass the flag) and the fact that meaningful effects in PVP required the use of an ability with a cooldown, whereas in RIFT many of the most important effects simply proc from button spamming. That said, I believe SWTOR launched before it was sufficiently ready.

From a financial perspective, the launch of SWTOR was the most successful ever. Millions of copies were sold. However, there has been a significant drop in subscribers over the first 6 months. While BioWare has been working hard to deliver new content and game improvements, it’s not happening sufficiently fast to stem to flow of players unsubbing.

Based on what we’ve seen over the past 4 years, here is what I now believe:

1. It is possible to launch a AAA-quality MMORPG. RIFT proved that
2. It is possible to acquire a significant number (1MM+) at launch for a new game that requires an upfront purchase and monthly subscription. SWTOR proved that
3. However, if a game requires both an upfront purchase price and a monthly subscription, the players are going to be incredibly demanding and unforgiving

Regarding that last point, there’s a factor that significantly impacts a developer’s ability to keep players happy: most of them have been implementing games with a vertical scaling model, which involves delivering:

1. A huge world, with a lot of leveling content. E.g. zones with quests, instances, etc
2. Increasing tiers of content (heroics, raids) and gear at endgame

This model requires a huge investment for the developer, which in turn creates tremendous financial pressure to launch prematurely to recoup the sunk costs. Moreover at launch, some players will speed-level, tear through the endgame content, then complain there’s nothing to do. Even in a game such as SWTOR where BioWare invested heavily in rich story arcs and voiceovers. And the playerbase in general will expect more new content from the developer to justify the subscription. My gut feeling is that it’s nearly impossible for a developer to continue providing fresh content for a game built on vertical scaling while retaining a sufficient number of subscribers to make it financially worthwhile. The only company to have been able to do this so far has been Blizzard with WoW. Yes, some games such as EVE have gradually grown their playerbase, but they’re still south of 1MM players.

As I discussed elsewhere, horizontal scaling systems enable content to remain relevant over time and therefore provide much better ROI for the developer, which still providing entertainment value for the gamer. I would argue that horizontal scaling systems will actually provide a better experience for the customer, even though many players have been indoctrinated into believing that vertical scaling and tiers of gear create a positive experience.

So here is what I propose as the business model of MMORPGs:

1. Build games that scale horizontally instead of vertically. GW2 and TSW are doing that
2. Create a business model that doesn’t discourage customer acquisition and/or retention. Charging both an upfront purchase fee and a monthly subscription doesn’t make sense long-term, because it creates too many opportunities for customers to opt out. Any of the following are much better models for the long-term:
   • Having no upfront purchase fee and no monthly subscription, but provide microtransactions for virtual goods. This is the proven F2P model (a la League of Legends)
   • Having no upfront purchase fee but a monthly subscription. Many F2P games support this by providing a subscription that provides a bundle of virtual goods at a discount
   • Having an upfront purchase fee but no monthly subscription (a la GW2)

The main point about #1 is creating a compelling experience. Make the combat engaging. Make it social. Make if fun. If you do these things, you’ll grow your customer base. The #1 online game League of Legends has been growing swiftly despite lacking massive content. Riot Games releases new content such as hero classes, but doing so is far less costly and complicated than trying to release new PVE zones, group, and raid content.

Some people might rebutt point #2 by saying that a developer needs to recoup their costs. They do, but part of the reason they are under pressure to launch prematurely and charge upfront is because they are simply building too much content, and the reality is that content will soon be outdated.

My prediction is that Guild Wars 2 going to fundamentally change the way gamers experience and relate to content ArenaNet implemented GW2 with a horizontal scaling system and doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. ArenaNet has smartly invested in content that you build once and the players re-play forever: Structured PVP and WvW. AN has removed the leveling divide between players via their PVE sidekicking system, full Bolster to max level / gear in Structured PVP, and from what I understand scaling PVE such that a player never truly outlevels it.

If I’m right, GW2 will model a viable approach for other companies, and we’ll continue to have the benefit of choice as gamers.

Today’s video contains my solution for re-designing Rogue classes in MMORPGs so that they are viable in sustained PVP combat.

Rogues across games tend to do well in 1v1 and small-scale combat, but where Rogues fall down from a mechanics perspective is in sustained or large-scale combat.

Why?

Rogues typically have many of their key damage and CC mechanics coupled with being in stealth, but their ability to sustainably re-enter stealth in combat is limited.

Watch the video for my simple solution for addressing these issues and creating a dynamic playstyle that scales from 1v1 combat up to raid-vs-raid.

It is amusing that I concepted the same solution that ArenaNet came up with for their Rogue “Thief” implementation in GW2. They grasp the issues common to the Rogue archetype in PVP and are addressing them with elegant game design.

To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary – and to the extent possible interaction with the Chat Room.

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtaugrim
Facebook: http://facebook.com/taugrim
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

• Warhammer Online (WAR)
• Age of Conan (AoC)

The developers for those games make the mistake of over-promising and under-delivering, a cardinal sin for any business.

EA Mythic set the expectation that WAR would launch with 24 classes and 6 capital cities, but shortly before launch they cut 4 classes and 4 cities. The game client was unstable (multiple CTDs a night for me even a year after launch) and the servers simply couldn’t handle mass RVR without crashing or lagging severely. The “lakes” RVR while leveling was one of the most enjoyable PVP experience I’ve ever had, but the game fell down at endgame in T4. A game that hyped RVR couldn’t handle it.

I didn’t play AoC, but I kept tabs on the community. Funcom set the expectation that AoC would ship with DirectX 10 support – it was written on the box – but DX 10 wasn’t there until 6 months post launch. The game in Beta had serious performance issues and bugs, and Funcom unwisely drew attention to a “miracle” patch right before launch. It’s like saying “we’ve done a crappy job but finally got our act together, really!” Gamers loved the leveling experience from 1-20, but unfortunately the content team did not maintain that standard of quality from 21 to endgame. Rumor was that the writers across leveling zones had little or no interaction.

After WAR, in 2009 and 2010 I played several other “new” games to the Western market: Aion and Allods Online (AO). Aion’s grindfest killed my interest before I even reached level cap. AO had a terrific Beta experience go into the toilet when the game developer implemented a Death Penalty mechanic that basically made the F2P game a P2P game. I stuck with AO as paying to play wasn’t an issue for me, but I eventually quit due to the lack of appealing endgame content.

The failures of these MMORPGs unfortunately coincided with the incredible surge in growth and popularity of Facebook and Social Gaming. Money was being funneled into Social Games for obvious reasons, as I wrote in that Jan 2010 article. I grew increasingly concerned that developers would lose the financial backing to publish new MMORPGs, which typically cost tens of millions of dollars to launch. All any executive or VC had to do was point at the high cost and high failure rate to say it wasn’t be worth the risk. The MMORPG market was facing a vicious cycle, whereas Social Gaming was in a virtuous cycle of wildfire growth.

I went back to the safe haven of WoW in May 2010 after hearing that much of the tedious grinding in WoW had been removed. I enjoyed the latter parts of WotLK and then Cataclysm, which finally brought back meaningful challenge in PVE. Although as Josh “Lore” Allen recently pointed out to me, I am in the 1% who wanted things to not be faceroll, and the other 99% of the population had gotten used to the faceroll joke that was WotLK Heroic content.

While Cataclysm was my favorite WoW expansion, by mid February I was restless / bored with it. A fellow gamer, Castorcato, sent me a link to the talent calculator for a game I hadn’t heard of. RIFT. Looking at the talent calculator for an hour sold me on trying the game. Castorcato said that RIFT in Beta felt like the good things from WAR again, and I got very excited.

RIFT’s launch was the smoothest that I’d ever seen for an MMORPG. It blew me away. The game had bugs of course, but the level of polish was phenomenal, so it was able to meet the “is this as polished as WoW” standard question from the gamer community.

At WonderCon 2011, I asked a panel with Scott Hartsman (Exec Producer, RIFT), Dirk Metzger (VP Publishing, Zentia), and Nick Huggett (Customer Experience Manager, Runes of Magic) about the viability of the MMORPG market given the past couple years and their responses were highly encouraging. I also spoke with Scott after the panel about how Trion was able to launch a AAA-quality MMORPG.

As you may know, I’ve been critical of RIFT’s 1.5 and 1.6 patches – IMO they’ve derailed the great progress being made for PVP from 1.0 -> 1.4. But there is no denying that Trion has shown that AAA-quality launches of new games are doable, with the right mindset and execution. Trion has also brought a healthy amount of innovation to the MMORPG market – in particular with RIFT’s superb spec system and the game’s integration with social media.

So we started 2011 with a bang with RIFT, but that isn’t the end of the story.

EA BioWare is launching SWTOR later this month. I started researching SWTOR once I saw what was coming in RIFT 1.5 to determine whether it was a viable option for me. Long story short, SWTOR has greatly exceeded my expectations in Beta and I am pumped to play it at launch.

My guess is that RIFT has been a significant financial success for Trion Worlds, and I expect that SWTOR will be the same for EA BioWare.

This is great news for fans of the MMORPG, regardless what game(s) you play. The more success stories in the industry, the greater the degree of financial investment into game developers, which means more new games for us.

Thank you Trion Worlds and BioWare for delivering!

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtaugrim
Facebook: http://facebook.com/taugrim
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Sanctum” RIFT show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-sanctum/
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

• One writer described SWTOR’s approach for making tanks relevant in PVP as novel
• Another writer recognized that SWTOR’s PVP design for tanks is a copy of what Warhammer Online implemented

The second guy got it right base on what I read.

I am glad that SWTOR is borrowing the tanking mechanics from WAR – these mechanics made tanks in WAR valuable in PVP and mad fun to play.

I often read complaints from players, bloggers, and media folks that games don’t innovate enough, but in my opinion, what game developers don’t do enough is copy the great features from other games while delivering true innovation.

RIFT is a good example of blending innovation with parity. In my opinion, RIFT clearly innovated in several areas…

1. Flexible class spec customization: each of RIFT’s 4 classes has 9 talent trees, and for a given spec you can mix-and-match 3 trees however you like. By comparison, WoW’s 10-class system with 3 fixed trees per class feels incredibly rigid and limiting. In RIFT, you can spec your Mage, Cleric, or Rogue to be a MDPS, RDPS, or healer. And Clerics, Rogues, and Warriors can all tank in PVE
2. Rich, elegant warfront map design: RIFT’s maps have similar mechanics to maps from other games. E.g. Codex = WoW’s Arathi Basin, Whitefall Steppes = WoW’s Warsong Gulch, etc. However, the maps in RIFT have terrain features that encourage and create opportunities for tactical play, as exhibited in my most recent RIFT Cleric PVP video
3. Integration with social media: you can record game footage in RIFT with the press of a button and then upload to YouTube, and RIFT integrates with Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr

…while copying other practical, sensible features from other games, such as:

1. Distinct PVE gear vs PVP gear systems (e.g. Valor is WoW’s Resilience, etc)
2. Achievements, which originated in WAR and were copied by WoW

It will be interesting to see how/where SWTOR and GW2 innovate and where they choose to copy from other games.

I have been a huge advocate and supporter for RIFT – it was the first AAA-quality launch of an MMORPG in the past several years, which in itself was a big deal. I am concerned with some of the proposed changes in Patch 1.5, such as how key talents work (for Clerics) and how the stats work. I also believe that now is not the right time to be introducing disruptive changes to the playerbase, given the impending launch of SWTOR and GW2. By changing stat mechanics, RIFT players may have to re-gear, which usually means re-grinding, and some players may simply write a game off and jump ship for perceived greener pastures.

RIFT can’t create meaningful differentiation in terms of lore-based IP – the buzz around known properties such as Warhammer Online (3 years ago) and Star Wars (now) has already proven that – but RIFT can differentiate itself from much of the MMORPG market by iterating thoughtfully and carefully with each Patch.

If any of you have tried SWTOR, let us know what you think of the game. I have heard that it feels more like a single-player game than most MMORPGs and that the PVP was not so good. But I have not tried it myself.

• Re-work (balance) Pyro Mage’s Ground of Strength. It its current incarnation GoS provides total CC immunity indefinitely for the Mage plus the ability for their spells to stun, and this is rather imbalanced in PVP
• Increase Rogue melee and Marksman damage

The timing of the balance update makes sense – there has been sufficient time since 1.1 went live for the community to get its arms around the changes and to identify problem areas.

To date, players have often framed their feedback quite negatively. E.g. some players have been equating Trion to “Failcom” (aka Funcom, the maker of Age of Conan) and to Electronic Arts / Mythic Entertainment (the maker of Warhammer Online).

Both are unfair comparisons, but players have been badly burned since 2008 by games that were over-hyped but under-delivered, and Trion is experiencing the backlash from players who are now understandably wary of game developers.

While I am not going to predict what degree of commercial success Trion will have or whether Rift is the fabled “WoW Killer” (and as I wrote elsewhere that’s the wrong question to ask), Trion’s actions with and after launch show me that they get it. I have high confidence based on what I’ve seen and heard that Rift will continue to improve and that Trion is listening to the community.

Hopefully over time the majority of Rift’s players will perceive that as well.

As I have stated previously, Rift has been by far and away the best MMORPG launch I’ve seen in over 2.5 years, including Warhammer Online, Aion, and Allods Online. What has made Trion’s launch of Rift successful? Multiple, synergistic actions:

1. Trion didn’t launch until the game was ready. As Exec Producer Scott Hartsman said to me at WonderCon 2011, they were not going to launch until the game was sufficiently stable and had sufficient content
2. Trion has been unusually communicative about upcoming changes with the community. Examples: the Dev Tracker forum functionality to track all posts by Trion employees, Trion’s participation in 3rd-party fan podcasts, and their honesty in answering my questions in person
3. Trion is willing to make the tough calls to bring classes and specs into balance, even if the decisions are unpopular in the short term. I’m not going to tell you the balance in 1.11 is perfect. It’s not. Balance is an iterative process, and considering that we are ~7 weeks from launch, balance is reasonably good, even better than what I experienced as a 2k Arena Protection Paladin in World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion Patch 4.0.6

Class / spec changes for the sake of balance can be hard on the community, but they are absolutely essential for the long-term health of a game.

UPDATE (2011/04/22): OK, maybe I spoke too soon. On the Alpha 1.2, the CC immunity and 30% stun proc for Ground of Strength have not been touched. /sigh

UPDATE (2011/04/29): before I forget, the stun proc was removed from GoS in the first update to 1.2 notes published on 4/26. I think the indefinite full CC immunity is still an issue.

• Warhammer Online
• Aion
• Allods Online
• Rift

Rift’s game developer, Trion, has been remarkably savvy in how they have handled the game thus far, in particular by:

1. Not over-hyping their game then under-delivering. My impression is that Rift has mostly spread by word-of-mouth; my gaming friend Nathan and real life friend Gaardarun both raved about Rift from Beta
2. Delivering a stable, polished game at launch, with a clear path for implementing frequent updates/fixes with minimal downtime. The game servers have been taken down for maintenance at times, but the longest I’ve seen so far is 30 minutes, and Trion has managed expectations on downtimes pretty well. I.e. there hasn’t been that 12-hour unplanned downtime that we all dislike
3. Borrowing innovations from other games. Rift has taken some of the best mechanics and design features from games such as Warhammer, including the PVP mechanics for “tanks” such as Guard, Taunt, Hold the Line, etc and Detaunt. And other game features such as Achievements, Guild Achievements, Guild Ranks, etc that originated in Warhammer (and which Blizzard also copied)
4. Designing the most flexible spec system ever, which is both fun-to-play and IMO shields Trion from the class/spec griping from the playerbase

That last point has huge implications. Consider the following example with WoW. You roll a Paladin to heal at endgame as Holy, but you are unhappy with nerfs or issues for your spec. What are your options?

• Continue to play the spec and hope for future buffs, or
• Re-spec to Protection or Retribution and re-gear, or
• Roll a different Healing class, re-level to endgame, and then re-gear

Those are all crappy options to me, given that I value my time and what I enjoy most is endgame not grinding to get back to endgame. I know some people have been conditioned to accept the current market standards and would say “suck it up and re-level, it’s what I did” but I think that is a lousy customer experience.

With Rift, you can simply change which 3 of the 9 talent trees you are playing as a Healer (Cleric). Rift’s flexible spec system protects players from making a steep time investment in a class that they are later unsatisfied with for whatever reason.

The other implication of the spec system is that there are fewer opportunities for (real or perceived) imbalance between specs for the same class. Everyone knows a spec change has a low switching cost. No need to re-roll, re-level, and re-gear from scratch.

Is Rift the next “WoW Killer”? I don’t know and frankly don’t care. It’s the wrong question to ask – the right question is whether a game supports a virtuous cycle:

Trion made the right decision as to when the game was ready to launch, thereby avoiding the irreparable damage that was done by launching too early, as we saw with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

Will Trion continue to re-invest in the game over time? It’s too early to tell, but my impression is that they have a sharp management team, a perception further reinforced by an interview with Trion’s Marketing head back in December that I read today, while trying to find paying subscriber numbers. I haven’t been able to find those numbers yet – if you see any good articles please link them.

From a bigger picture perspective, Trion gives me hope for the “traditional MMORPG” market. Just over a year ago, I expressed concern that game developers were moving away from traditional MMORPGs and instead investing in social gaming. Trion shows how to do traditional MMORPGs right.

Please keep in mind that this is my honest, objective opinion. Like many of you, I’ve been burned by bloggers who hype up new games which only end up disappointing.

We’re hoping that Rated BGs give Prot specs a useful role similar to tanking in defending towers, carrying flags, etc. A tank in an Arena needs to have a lot of control and damage just like everyone else to be competitive, which coupled with their inherent survivability and resistance to being controlled got us into trouble.

GC’s comments back then made sense – they wanted Prot specs to have a “useful role” in PVP, but they were concerned about balance. I can totally appreciate and respect that.

Last night, Daxxarri posted that Blizzard is not concerned with keeping Protection Paladin viable in PVP. Here are the sections related to PVP (bold emphasis mine) for Prot and Ret:

We’re not too concerned with keeping Protection viable in PvP. We know some players enjoy it, but the majority of Prot paladins are more concerned with their ability to tank, and that’s where we spend most of our Protection design effort. It’s a great goal to make all of a class’s specs viable in PvP, but it’s not always possible to do so and paladins have other options.

We think the 4.06 changes overall gave Retribution too great a buff for PvP. We realize that there are those that disagree, but we’re pretty firm on that point and we needed to make some adjustments. Given that Ret is primarily a dps spec, we thought it made more sense to reduce their off-healing capacity, which had become quite strong, rather than their damage.

That’s not to say that we mind a hybrid dps spec occasionally helping out with healing – that feels cool, and it’s appropriate. On the other hand, we want damage focused specs to be primarily focused on dps. It’s true that there were other ways we could have reduced Retribution healing. We could have changed Selfless Healer or even Word of Glory itself. As I mentioned earlier, after looking things over, we arrived at the conclusion that having a powerful heal you can use infrequently is more compelling than having a weak heal that you can use more often.

The things said by GC and Daxxarri are not aligned – Prots are either viable or not viable. If they are not viable, they are not useful.

Let me make a few points here:

1. Blizzard has not yet implemented “tanks” effectively in PVP in WoW compared to other games
2. The WoW community, which consists of a lot of players who have only played WoW, doesn’t have a lot of experience or perspective on what well-implemented tanks in PVP look like
3. Retribution in 4.1 is still screwed

Blizzard has not yet implemented “tanks” effectively in PVP in WoW compared to other games

WoW back in Vanilla was largely a PVE game, with limited PVP content. In TBC, Arenas were introduced. In WotLK, it got even easier to grind out PVP gear with Honor. In Cata, most of the Rating requirements were removed from PVP gear. So WoW has gradually been increasing its PVP content and accessibility. These are all good changes.

That being said, WoW is lacking mechanics for tanks in PVP, relative to rest of the market.

For example back in 2008 Warhammer implemented tanks with the following features:

• Against players, Taunt acted as an interrupt and buffed the tank’s damage on that target
• Tanks had a Guard mechanic, which was a buff they could put on a single player, to re-direct some of the incoming damage on the Guarded player to the tank. This was an awesome mechanic. A tank could put Guard on squishier DPS or Healer to help keep them alive under focus fire
• Tanks had Hold the Line, which was an avoidance buff that the tank could channel (while moving) that would affect players behind them. So you could do mass charges or defend against assaults

Mechanics like these made tanks highly relevant and fun in Warhammer PVP. Other modern games such as Rift are borrowing these mechanics.

The issue with WoW is that a lot of abilities either have only a PVE application (e.g. Taunt) or are imbalanced in PVP (e.g. CC effects). This will continue to be an issue until Blizzard sorts out how to balance PVE and PVP for a given spec – which is totally doable but needs to be supported by intention and good design.

It’s noteworthy that WoW has copied good non-PVP ideas from other games, such as Achievements and Guild Achievements/Rank, which were ideas innovated by Warhammer.

The WoW community doesn’t have a lot of experience or perspective on what well-implemented tanks in PVP look like

Most WoW players when you ask them about a tank spec only say that it’s relevant for PVE. This is a notion enforced by both the game mechanics and the fact that for many players, WoW is the only MMORPG they’ve played.

Therefore, you see a lot of backlash from players about tanks in PVP.

Retribution in 4.1 is still screwed

The reason why Ret is viable for BGs and competitive PVP (Arena, Rateds) is because it has good offhealing capability. This is necessary IMO because Ret does not have the amount of CC that most DPS classes possess.

To quote myself from a post on the WoW forum:

IMO Prot and Ret will be steeply nerfed PVP if the WoG nerf goes in with even a 5-sec cooldown let alone 20-sec, without some other strong compensating mechanics, e.g. increased CC.

Back-to-back WoG heals (via Eternal Glory for either spec, or Divine Purpose for Ret) or WoG heals cast within 2 GCDs of each other (e.g. WoG, Divine Plea, WoG) are a huge part of what make Prot and Ret viable in PVP.

Anyone who debates that point IMO is either ignorant about the mechanics of those specs in PVP or biased against Paladins.

I’m very perplexed by the reasoning for the nerf mentioned by Blizzard. Granted, Blue posters often get skewered / nitpicked by players for anything they say, but this is one case where I think the concerns of the playerbase are entirely warranted.

I have read some inane arguments that Prot and Ret shouldn’t be able to have offhealing capability in PVP, but what the people saying those things fail to take into account is that relative to other DPS classes, we lack CC. As such, we heal because that’s what is needed in some situations to help friendly players, because we can’t peel to the extent other classes do.

Anyway, it is what it is. I’m glad I’ve moved on to Rift, because based on what I’m reading, I don’t believe Blizzard understands how to design mechanics for non-Holy Paladins in PVP.

TLDR: I’ve desubbed from WoW to play Rift in the Head Start, which started today. I know this news will disappoint Paladins who have been following my PVP Guide and videos For me it’s time to move on. Keep in touch!

It’s still very early in the Cataclysm expansion – barely 2.5 months since it launched. In my opinion Cataclysm is WoW’s best expansion so far:

• Class re-designs have been largely well done
• PVE is challenging again (not that I really care but at least it made leveling not completely tedious)
• The PVP system is accessible and is about as skill-based as it has ever been.

Despite all this, recently I have felt restless / bored with WoW PVP. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I will simply say I haven’t taken to Retribution as much as I had hoped, and I simply miss meaningful World PVP.

Earlier this week a gaming friend from the UK, Nathan, sent me a couple messages about Rift, a game which is launching in Head Start today.

Up until now I’ve largely ignored the Rift chatter / hype. I’ve had no reason to check it out, and I’ve been burned by hyped MMORPGs before, e.g. in 2008 with Warhammer (WAR), in 2009 with Aion, and in 2010 with Allods Online.

However, what Nathan wrote was very compelling to me, especially the following excerpts:

It is the perfect amalgam of WAR and Aion, honestly. What I like about it: customization…finding classes and roles that match something you would enjoy playing.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html

I cried wolf when Blizzard ‘simplified’ talent trees, and this REALLY gets me pumped! Graphics are lovely, sound is great.

Battles are VERY Warhammer-esque (same engine I think too). I’ve played beta since the second phase, spent a couple of weeks getting feedback and to this day (beta just finished), I still have no idea what to play!

I played around with a Rift Spec Calculator. Each class can invest talent points in 3 of 9 different talent trees. The degree of customization is nuts, and this will generate a ton of fun discussion in the community. It’s clear that Rift has borrowed good mechanics from other games, such as the Guard and Hold the Line mechanics from WAR. The Guard mechanic enabled a tank to put a Guard buff on a friendly player that split damage on that player between them – so in essence tanks could protect targets when needed. HtL was a buff that tanks provided to players behind them, e.g. for mass charges or defenses. These were awesome mechanics that made tanks very relevant in WAR PVP.

The only thing that I noticed of concern is that Rift has only 2 factions – and in every game I’ve played that had concentrated server-based PVP (e.g. LOTRO, WAR), population imbalances tended to affect mass PVP outcomes. That is, the more populated side would tend to win, and this sometimes created a vicious cycle: the losing side tended to shrink as people got frustrated with losing and re-rolled, while the winning side got bored due to facerolling. I am still waiting for another game to copy Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) which had a 3-faction system – from what I’ve heard this was very healthy for PVP and created ebbs and flows in terms of faction strength that the playerbase enjoyed.

Yesterday my best friend from high school told me the reason he hasn’t been on WoW is because he’s been playing Rift Beta with a co-worker, and they bought the Rift pre-order because they were very impressed with the Beta. Net-net, the game mechanics in Rift sounded attractive enough and I heard good things from people whose opinions I respect, so I bought the Rift pre-order and cancelled my WoW subscription – I don’t have the time to play multiple games and I plan on chronicling my experience with Rift just as I did with WAR.

I will be playing Taugrim the Warrior, Defiant faction, on the Sunrest Harrow server (RP-PVP).

P.S. my reason for making the decision to switch from WoW to Rift has nothing to do with the 4.1 Patch nerfs that were announced on Feb 24. I made the decision before that:

Of course, I hope the 4.1 WoG nerf gets revisited, I just won’t be around to see it.

P.P.S. if you are playing Warrior in Rift let me know what specs you’ve tried so far and your take on them.

So after only 4.5 months of playing Aion, I’ve de-subbed.

The reasons are pretty simple:

1. the leveling was boring and very time-consuming. Fundamentally Aion felt like work to play based on its design
2. the main PVP zone, the Abyss, was largely empty. This was nothing like WAR, WoW, or LOTRO, where it was easy to find opponents to fight

The funny thing is my Chanter is only just over a level away from 42, which was my original target level for making PVP videos – Chanters get a ranged stun at 42. But the main thing is I simply don’t believe in Aion. I would not recommend Aion to a new player who is used to “Western” MMOs (e.g. WoW/LOTRO/WAR). So I figured it didn’t make sense for me to invest the time to level up and make videos.

I think some of the good qualities of WAR really set me up for disappointment with Aion. WAR was fun from level 1 all the way to 40, aside from the game instability issues. Aion was incredibly stable but consistently boring.

A YouTube subscriber sent me a PM back in September 2009 about Aion, and he was right about the game:

Not a big fan of aion, knowing the principle is Korean mentality based, it’s going to get old fast.

I myself been hooked in so many same type mentality game design and they all ending up a disappointment.

I work in the gaming industry, and I know how Aion is build as. [Aion] makes it more efficient for people who has time to waste, then instead of people who actually has the skills to show off. Quite imbalance approach, but then again, that’s their mentality of designing video games. (The american version is based off the asian version, same set of rules will apply.)

Hope you won’t spend too much time on Aion, you might setup yourself for a disappointment in the long run.

I’ve been following Keen’s posts about Allod’s Online so I might check that out.

EA is shifting its focus in online gaming to the social gaming sector with its acquisition of Playfish in late 2009. Around the time of the acquisition, EA laid off 40% of the staff at Mythic Entertainment, the studio that created WAR. Those layoffs have obvious implications in terms of what Mythic can do with WAR moving forward. Fewer resources = less new game content and game improvements.

It’s a shame, because WAR has gradually improved as a game, and some players think that if it had launched in its current state, WAR would have been a success instead of a colossal failure. I shared that viewpoint when I played WAR’s excellent Patch 1.3b over the summer.

That being said, I don’t think that the EA/Mythic/Playfish case is an isolated incident that had its roots strictly in the failure of WAR as a game. Rather, it’s an indicator of the shift in the online gaming industry towards social gaming. Social gaming has been experiencing wildfire growth because of potent, synergistic drivers:

• the cost to launch, maintain, and evolve social games is (relatively) low
• social game developers leverage analytics to customize games very quickly based on what users are actually doing. It’s a very “Agile” approach to game development – instead of massive investment up-front, you start with something and evolve it based on user behavior and feedback
• social gaming has a huge and growing potential player base (thanks to Facebook), and the corresponding strong viral network effects
• social games have user-friendly (i.e. simple) game mechanics. Social games in the online gaming market is analogous to the Wii in the console market – anyone can play them, and that’s how they suck you in

Contrast that with MMORPGs, which have traditionally cost a lot of money (e.g. tens of  millions of US dollars) to develop and launch and have a (relatively) steep learning curve for players.

A guy I know, who was the CEO of the company that launched a best-selling console game, told me he thinks the console gaming sector is in jeopardy. Social gaming is where it’s at, from a business perspective. And I think that the MMORPG sector, as we currently think of it (WoW, Aion, Eve Online, etc), may be in trouble for the same reason, over the medium- to long-term.

I’m a fan of traditional MMORPGs, because they provide the kind of rich and complex environment that I find challenging – especially in terms of PVP. So I hope that the market for traditional MMORPGs continues to grow, to sustain the economic drivers which enable game development and evolution. If MMORPGs become a niche market over time, there will be fewer options for us to choose from.