You Tell Me: Is Elder Scrolls Online Must-Play, Should-Play, or Pass?

Posted on 2014 April 5 by Ed Park

I lasted all of one hour, if that, in the Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) Beta.

Simply put, I disliked the UI, I didn’t like the feel of the combat, and the experience seemed disconnected from other players. It was the worst first impression of an MMORPG that I had since Age of Wushu, and that’s really saying something. It turns out that a lot of others players had the same initial reaction to ESO.

For context, I didn’t play Skyrim or any of the Elder Scrolls games, so I have neither an attachment nor an opinion on the IP.

Posted in Elder Scrolls Online, Game Design, Guild Wars 2, PVP, WildStar, World of Tanks

What is the One Thing You’d Change in Your Favorite MMO?

Posted on 2014 February 2 by Ed Park

What is the one thing you’d change in your favorite MMO?

Here’s my take for 2 excellent games I played over the past year: World of Tanks (WoT) and Guild Wars 2 (GW2).

What I’d change in World of Tanks

I’d remove “premium ammo” from the game.

WoT has game mechanics which collectively create a high skill cap – player skill truly matters. One of the most important game mechanics is penetration, i.e. piercing the armor of a target to deal HP damage. Unfortunately, the use of premium ammo trivializes penetration.

Posted in Game Design, Guild Wars 2, PVP, WildStar, World of Tanks

Stranger Than Fiction: The Ouster and Possible Return of the CEO of Red 5 Studios

Posted on 2014 January 27 by Ed Park

Back in October, a reader suggested I check out Firefall, an open world MMO shooter. At the time my curiosity with shooters had picked up after playing the pseudo-shooter World of Tanks. I spent a few hours playing Firefall but lost interest as there didn’t seem to be much to do. These days, if a game isn’t compelling to me from the get-go, I don’t invest more time in it. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

What I didn’t know was the history of the game and the nutty things going on inside Firefall’s developer, Red 5 Studios. Last month, a Red 5 employee took to Reddit to post a richly detailed post on why the CEO was removed by Red 5.

Posted in Business Analysis, Firefall, Game Design

Belated Happy 2014 to Y’all

Posted on 2014 January 26 by Ed Park

Prior to today, I hadn’t posted an article in months, and I’ve been mulling over a change in blogging philosophy.

My tendency with writing is to wait until I have specific insights and detailed thoughts that I want to share, e.g. my articles on game mechanics such as Why PVE Content Shouldn’t be a Coral Reef and class-specific guides such as my M*A*S*H melee healing cleric for RIFT. This is reflection of my personality – I tend towards perfectionism and I strive to “add value” to the community.

That said, that style of blogging doesn’t mesh particularly well when I’m busy in real life and my free time is limited but there are gaming topics that I want to dialogue with y’all about. Therefore, I’m going to change my approach in 2014 and post shorter-length pieces. As I’ve always said, I get as much value and enjoyment out of hearing your opinions as I do in providing mine, so I look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,
Taugrim

P.S. I realize the irony of this post, given the long-ass article on WildStar and Action Combat that preceded this one. :)

Posted in Blog Musings

WildStar Advances the Action Combat Paradigm for MMORPGs

Posted on 2014 January 26 by Ed Park

Disclaimer: I have not yet played WildStar in Beta, and as the NDA is still in place, even if I do start participating in Beta I’ll honor the NDA. So I won’t respond to questions about what I actually think based on playing the game.

There has been a significant shift in the combat experience of MMORPGs with the introduction and evolution of “Action Combat” – and Carbine Studios is adding meaningful improvements to this paradigm in the upcoming game WildStar.

To fully appreciate the extent of change and what Carbine Studios is doing, let’s contrast the two dominant paradigms for combat in MMORPGs:

UI-Based Combat: as popularized by World of Warcraft (WoW) and implemented in pretty much every major MMORPG prior to 2012
Action Combat: as popularized by TERA and especially Guild Wars 2 (GW2) in 2012, and further advanced by WildStar