Taugrim's MMORPG Blog

I finally got back from a 3-week business trip overseas. I played Aion very sparsely in January, and the sad thing is I didn’t really miss it.

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.

The majority of the subscribers I have on my YouTube channel subscribed because of my Warhammer Online (WAR) videos. People frequently ask if / when I will come back to WAR. The answer is never, because of reasons beyond WAR itself.

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.

The following video has footage from 2 scenarios, Dragon’s Bane and Howling Gorge, with my Swordmaster running a damage / mitigation spec.

I made the video to show tactics for surviving heavy focus-fire as a 2h tank. Played correctly, a 2h tank has very good durability and can bring the pain with a big 2h.

The combination of 700 Strength and 700 Toughness, with 3 offensive tactics slotted (Balanced Accuracy for the crit bonus, and the Damage-over-time tactics Potent Enchantments and Ensorcelled Agony), has been the most effective blend of DPS and survivability that I’ve found. I’ve experimented with many different spec, gear, and RR configurations with 1h and 2h swords, and this 700 / 700 2h build suits my playstyle perfectly.

As I discussed in Part 3 of the Swordmaster Class Mechanics Guide, a tank can stack avoidance, or mitigation, or both.

When using a 2h, I’ve tried stacking parry or disrupt to improve survivability. Parry provides avoidance only against melee attacks in the 180 degree arc in front of you. Disrupt provides avoidance only against spells. I’ve tried stacking avoidance and mitigation together, but that causes my DPS to suffer, because I have fewer tactic slots and RR points to spend on offensive tactics and stats.

For ORVR and scenarios, what I’ve found works best is simply stacking Toughness. The only avoidance stat that makes sense to stack in my opinion is block, because block provides avoidance against most attacks (except morale abilities). And obviously you can’t block with a 2h.

Toughness provides passive mitigation against most attacks (except morale abilities). It doesn’t matter whether you are facing your opponent, and it mitigates damage even if you are stunned or knocked down. Toughness scales with the numbers of attackers; the more you are being attacked, the more damage Toughness mitigates.

A few game mechanic changes have increased the value of Toughness:

1. before Patch 1.2, many damage proc and DoT abilities were not mitigatable. However, in Patch 1.2, proc and DoT abilities were changed to be mitigatable, and this increased the value of Toughness significantly
2. as of Patch 1.3, there is a pocket item that drops in Land of the Dead that can makes attacks undefendable. So that’s another factor in making mitigation more valuable relative to avoidance. This is not to say that a shield isn’t a valuable avoidance tool. Shields in WAR are powerful because they can block any attack. I’ve just found that I’m more effective in RVR with a 2h sword as opposed to a sword-and-board, in terms of applying pressure to healers and bursting down targets

Yesterday Warhammer Online released a Live Event (LE), called The Wild Hunt. Part of that LE is an instance called The Hunter’s Vale (HV). While the HV mini-bosses drop nothing of significance, if you kill the final boss in the instance before the PQ timer runs out, you have access to very good drops.

Last night I joined a group with some folks from the Phoenix Throne guild Clash of the Karak to run HV. We downed the boss in time, I won a gold bag, and inside this was waiting for me:

Ironically, I’ve been trying to get a solid purple 1h sword for a long time. I chose both 2h greatswords for the RVR influence rewards. Up until recently, I’ve been using Blade of the Bloodmoon, which drops from the 1st PQ in the middle wing of Bastion Stair. I haven’t gotten a purple 1h sword to drop in my runs of the right wing of The Lost Vale or from the Tomb of the Sun in Land of the Dead.

But at least now I’ve got a pretty solid 1h weapon

The LE has been fun, there has been a lot of ORVR fighting in the Elf lands. The main issue for me is my game client keeps crashing. It’s a shame Patch 1.3.1 wasn’t a stable follow-up to 1.3b. A lot of the players on my server are quite frustrated with the lack of game stability.

On Thursday night, Order on Phoenix Throne captured the Chaos Wastes. Unfortunately, most of the Order players left the zone instead of attempting to take the Destruction fortress The Maw.

A few of us figured it would be a great opportunity to fight against superior numbers, so we grouped up and rode to The Maw looking for trouble.

Thanks Foxxy, Jostle, and Shineobi for the fun group! That was hilarious