Well, Well, Well!!!

Lets not beat about the bush here, the announcement of icecrown citadel being released in stages to favour the casual is indeed bulls%^t!

Blizzard yet again have proved they will go to any length to stretch out the most meagre content.

Whilst Im a WoW and in some respects a blizzard fan I do wonder if anyone actually eats up these announcement like candy.

Im in a rush so Nuff said! For now…..

EDIT: Lonomonkey has a good post up here about it

Introducing my ‘Worgen’ Death Knight!

Whats that? He looks too small? Where is his hair and teeth?

Don’t be silly! He is of course a lowly gnome Death Knight at the moment, however, once Cataclysm releases and they allow race changes to Worgen he will indeed grow an extra 6ft and gain hair and canines.

Yup Lykan is my latest venture into WoW and will be classed as my ‘main’ toon along with the odd alt if I can be bothered.

The idea is to level up my trade skills (I took mining and engineering for a change), including cooking and fishing on my Death Knight whilst my friends catch up. I’ll probably hit some of the low level dungeons to see if I can help them out gear wise and where possible give the odd ‘boost’.

I guess my return to WoW was always on the cards and it has been something I’ve been considering for sometime. Having tried a few other MMOs recently I always seem to come back to what I know and what I feel comfortable with…. In this case WoW.

I don’t really have any goals this time, except to have fun with a couple of my mates who are still playing it so I’ll see where that takes me.

Why do games ‘fail’?

The past few years have thrown up various questions in my mind concerning the supposed ‘failure’ of many of the recent MMO titles to hit our pc screens including WAR, AoC, Champions Online and judging by x-fire numbers and disappearing blogs now Aion.

It got me thinking about various factors which in the long run seem damaging to the MMOs in question. I’ve outlined a few of points below but please feel free to air your thoughts as I’m genuinely interested in seeing if you share the same outlook or perhaps you just disagree.

The Hype – Yup everyone seems to fall for it, check out my first few posts on Champions Online and Aion which shows I certainly ain’t immune to jumping on the bandwagon. The developers rightly promote their games and we as a gaming community it seems lap it up without question. Of course the game is never going to be as good as the devs would have you think and you end up disappointed and usually unsubscribe. In many cases even a few positive blog posts can persuade a gamer to part with their cash and try out the latest shiny.

Same Old – Many of the games released these days are far too similar to each other therefore it cuts down the size of your potential market, unless your game trumps those other ‘similar’ games then you aren’t going to retain many subscribers in the long run.

First Month – The first month is probably the most important in an MMOs life which is why I’m so surprised at the state of which some games are released. The first month should be all about good news stories about how stable the game is, how little bugs are present and how good the game play is. Now bar Aion which had a bit of an advantage (being a second release and all) can you name any MMO which has wowed you, pardon the pun, from the get go and sustained those impressions over a distance? With the number of titles available now developers cant rely on players to stick about, if its not fun then players will simply up camp and move to the next game usually with a bad impression and reluctant to return.

Content – WoW and Blizzard are probably the worst offenders in this due to the staged content release and time it takes for expansions, however, due to an unusually large and loyal fan base as well as a high turnover of new and old players returning they seem relatively unaffected. Take Aion for example, it is all very nice and pretty however at certain levels you are left with no option other than to grind mobs or repeatable quests, some players may favour this and stick in but in my opinion your standard casual MMO player will become restless and after a while will move on. Age of Conan is another example of poor content with dungeons not complete for release and countless amounts of bugs and game breakers like the infamous memory leaks.

Or perhaps the word ‘failure’ in relation to MMOs should be kept in context, remember WoW is an enigma and a one off in terms of number of subscribers so it’s difficult to compare other games to it. Perhaps an MMO is a success if they break even or can keep their servers running for years, perhaps devs are now developing MMOs for a short life and looking only for profits from box sales…. Just a thought

I’ll leave it at that and gauge what others thoughts on this are.

Aion : Tower of the Terminated Subscription

Hi I’m Pitrelli and I’m an MMO tourist gamer

In all seriousness I realised I had dropped Aion like a hot potato after giving it some positive airing on my blog so thought I’d better clear up why I decided not to continue my MMO gaming with our pals over at NC Soft.

Firstly let me make clear I do think that Aion is a good game and I think many people will enjoy it for a few years to come, I’m not trying to troll on Aion rather put down my own thoughts and reasoning behind why I decided to pack up my wings and call it quits.

The Grind – I went into the game knowing there would be a certain element of grind, being a casual player however I underestimated how much that would impact on my enjoyment. I’m very much an achievement/goal orientated gamer and like to feel I have achieved something with my limited game time, with this in mind grinding mushrooms for 2 hours just doesn’t float my boat.

Gathering Mechanic – Like I said in previous posts I HATED Aether gathering, add to that the proposition of having a ‘CAPTCHA’ styled program to stop farmers and it pushed me over the edge.

Gold Sellers – NC Soft it seems are busy doing other things as Gold Selling in Aion is booming, if they aint whispering you or assaulting your eyes in trade chat then they are using public stores as a get around. This shouldn’t be too hard for them to sort out and after a good initial reaction I think NC Soft have been far too quiet on the matter.

Bots – Much like gold sellers, NC Soft just don’t seem to care that they are impacting on us the customer.

Lag – Usually I don’t mind a bit of lag in games and can work around it however I always seemed to get the odd spike when fighting a mob and after it had caught up I would be dead…. Frustrating? Yes. The fact it costs you money is what irked me, sure if I got beat because I made a mistake, took on too many mobs, but having to pay for a death which wasn’t directly my fault didn’t sit well with me.

Too linear, No replay-ability – One story, same areas, same quests. Nuff said

The call of ‘Another game’ – namely WoW, I haven’t returned just yet but I am getting the urge, sure I’m a carebear etc etc but I just think my casual play style is more suited to Blizzards favourite 800 pound gorilla than NC Softs Winged wonder.

In summary I wish Aion a long and happy MMO life and I leave with a lot of positive thoughts (not that you could tell from the above), it’s a case of so close yet so far.

I wont rule out a return to Aion at a later date, but for now I’m happy to sit it on the shelf and see how it develops over time.

I dont wanna! yes I do!

Syp over at biobreak has an amusing post here over the effect MMOs seem to have with ex players.

Its almost a subconscious battle inside of you on if you return or not.

It made me laugh because it happening to me right now with WoW, dont get me wrong I’m loving Dragons Age but I miss the interaction of other players and knowing that the person at my side is an actual player.

Its strange!!!