“Hmm, I’ve heard of Quick Love, Rough Love, Hand Love, and Lip Love. But what is MMO Love?”
“£15.99 a month darling; for that you can grind away as much as you like, but just as you think you’re as purple as you can get and about to reach a climax, I shift position and offer up a whole new area to explore, and you have to start all over again.”
I was amused to find this paragraph wedged in the midst of an article on the BBC website.
Local media suggest the “orcs” were a reference to the goblins in the literature of JRR Tolkien, while the “turantons” may refer to a figure out of World of Warcraft.
As m’colleague rightly pointed out, the local media might want to consider that the “orcs” were a reference to the… orcs, in the literature of Tolkien.
For me, I had to wonder if ‘turantons’ lost something in translation, because I can’t think of anything relevant in World of Warcraft with that name. They may, of course, have meant Tauntaun, but clearly that’s an affront to all nerdkind to mix up such mythical beasts and their origins.
I think the lesson here is that media outlets need to employ a Nerd Correspondent, although I have to say that the media’s current method of taking a guess and then blaming it on World of Warcraft doesn’t seem so terribly far off from the MMO blogging norm; maybe MMO bloggers are journalists after all.
Dunegons & Dragons: Daggerdale looks most interesting. I wonder if this is the way for online adventure games to go: a new sub-genre of what are essentially traditional single player RPGs, but with online co-op play. It seems a much more sensible way to involve story in an online RPG, rather than trying to cram a fourth pillar into a ‘massively online’ model for RPGs that doesn’t need the extra support, as games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic are trying to do.
Having played in fixed static groups in several MMOs and found it to be one of the best ways to enjoy the game at a sensible pace, and at the same time having played co-operatively as part of a small group in various online console games, I really feel that the Small Party Online RPG genre is one that is worthy of consideration; persistent worlds, an engaging story that revolves around all of the players, and huge cinematic events – these things are not only possible but easier and considerably cheaper to produce in a game where the number of players is dramatically reduced and the balance of classes is more strictly controlled.
I believe there’s huge potential to tap in this market, and it will be interesting to see if games such as D&D:Daggerdale and LotR: War in the North will prove successful. It will only take one game with high production values and a staff that really understands the power they hold in the way their game differs from traditional MMOs, and we’ll see a whole new sub-genre, maybe even an entirely new genre, spring up; I don’t think that time is too far away, so get those pun-based blog names reserved, the next exciting movement in online RPGs may well be just around the corner.
I wonder how many times an MMO adventurer has walked out of an inn, looked wildly up and down the street and cried out ‘Oh great. That’s just great. Some bugger has stolen my horse!’ before remembering the animal is tucked away in their back pocket as usual.
In several MMOs mounts disappear the moment they hit water. Where do they go? Are they water soluble? Do they disappear to the same place as odd socks in a wash? Yet, when you leave the water, there the mount is in your back pocket again, ready to pop out as soon as you call it. But that doesn’t work for socks. Or does it? Next time you find you’re missing a sock, give a little whistle or pretend you’re calling to it, for about five seconds, and then have a look in your back pocket. As if by magic, you may just find your missing sock there! Or a warhorse. Best be prepared for either.
Worgen Druids: the snooty over-achievers of werewolf school.
“Simpkins! Pay attention at the back, you think you have time to sit around and daydream? You can’t even turn into half a wolf and Jennings here can already turn into a bear, a cat, a hawk, an owlbear, a cheetah, and some sort of hideous monstrosity with flippers that I never want to see again in my life ever… understood Jennings? Jennings!”
<Neigh!>
I’ve just finished reading The Hobbit to mini-Melmoth. If there’s one thing in the book that I would like to see in a future Lord of the Rings Online expansion, it would have to be Beorn. Not the beardy man-bear himself, but the race of Beorn, as is mentioned towards the end of the book.
I’m a sucker for shape-shifters, and the lore is all right there, ripe for inclusion. Come on Turbine, playable Beorns in your next major expansion.
You know you want to.
Or you know I want you to, at least.
Everything that’s coming out of ArenaNet at the moment says to me that they ‘get it’.
The only reservation I have is to whether they can deliver it.
Warhammer Online’s release showed that developers can ‘get it’ and yet not get it right.
Will ArenaNet release the game they claim?
Allow players to make hero classes in World of Warcraft by combining any two level-capped classes they have into a new character which shares core features from each. I was quite intrigued by the idea of the Palalock; the Shamage (pronounced similar to Michael Jackson’s cha’mone) might be fun; I imagine the Hunterogue would be king of PvP; and Death Druids and Warrior Priests would probably be quite popular too.
Curiously enough this came from my Lord of the Rings Online play, where I’ve been avidly levelling a Hunter, and dreamed of merging my Hunter with my Warden to create a hero class with the ranged bow damage, traps and tricks of the Hunter, and the self-healing avoidance tanking of the Warden. I don’t want much, eh? Just a character class so overpowered that it forces bits across the network hard enough to bring down the server hardware.
Still, this MMO fanatic can but dream fanciful dreams.
Puzzles exhaust the mind. Exercises exhaust the body. MMOs exhaust the spirit.
I paused to think after a brief discussion with Spinks in the comments of her post, prompted by the fact that she is currently levelling one of her bank alts.
Spinks wrote:
“I feel as though the bank alt had been sadly watching the comings and going of the rich, famous adventurers from it’s humble little desk job in ((city of your choice)). And then one day it sneaked out to seek its fortune ….”
Which lead me to remember how terribly proud I was when of one of my ‘little’ bank alts made it to Outland, and yet they were no less powerful a character than any of my other alts. It must be the RPer in us, or some such thing.
I do wonder, however, what proportion of players treat their characters as a stable of well cherished pets as I tend to do; what proportion treat them as tools; and what proportion live a virtual life as their very character. Perhaps there are other categories too which I have not considered?
For me, characters are a stable of pets, with each character having a unique personality. This is why I try to clothe my characters in a way that asserts their personality, and is why I often find myself frustrated by the limitations of MMOs when it comes to character customisation. Zoso and I were discussing APB last night, and m’colleague pondered on the curiosity of creating such a detailed character customisation model when, in a fast-paced frantic shooter MMO, the strongest impression most players will get is what colour you dyed your hair, and whether you’ve found out how to ‘hilariously’ take all your clothes off. Do your players customise for themselves because they’re creating a character, or do they customise for others because their character is a tool through which they want to send a message? And how much will the pace of your MMO allow for those customisation options to be observed? It seems to me that armour and weapons are fine and obvious places where developers could let players have a lot of freedom in expressing themselves; earlobe length and orientation… not so much. Warhammer Online added costume customisation recently but it only applies to what the player and their realm mates see, the opposition will still see your Orc in a Choppa’s set of armour and not the cloth bathrobe that you find it amusing for him to wear. This has, perhaps unsurprisingly for MMO players, caused some consternation amongst said population. The developers clearly want each side to be able to easily identify the opposing classes and their respective power level, which they achieve through the distinctive armour sets that each class gets as they level. Whereas the players want freedom of choice and the extra potential to confuse the enemy by changing the appearance of their characters from the uniform norm. I think, at a fundamental level, players like to be different. They also like to wear the best, however, and this often takes precedence when it comes to choosing between stats and appearance, and means that most players end-up looking like everyone else, especially when it comes to the end game. LotRO (and EQ2 and others) has always supported this need for individuality with a wide range of cosmetic items available and custom cosmetic outfit panels alongside the standard character panel, and LotRO is going further still with the next content patch by allowing characters on the same account to share cosmetic items, such that low level alts will be able to have access to high level cosmetic items (with certain restrictions) as long as you have at least one character of a high enough level to obtain them.
Treating my characters as pets is also why I can, as a male, happily play female characters without any concern. When I play a character I am merely directing their adventure in the world, I am participating in their life, but I do not think that I am them. I invent a character for a story, and then I play out that story in the medium of an MMO; much as I when read a book, I picture what the protagonist sees, try to imagine how they feel, sense what they sense, but I don’t try to pretend that I am them. MMOs, for me, straddle a curious divide between reading a book and directing a movie: I am following a story, there is definitive structure and a narrative to it, and an eventual conclusion, but I am not an entirely passive entity, however, because at the very least I get to direct the action sequences.