Hate for The Old Republic

There is a new world event launching in the Old Republic sometime soon, something to do with the Chevin. As I missed the Rakghoul event during my boycott, I'm quite looking forward to seeing this one. So I popped over to Massively to check out their information, and the comments quite honestly shocked me. You'd think that people would be encouraging more companies to follow Bioware's lead in having regular world events.

Like Shintar, I don't really understand the sheer vitriol directed at this game. Personally, I rather like The Old Republic. It does have its flaws, and I can understand people who chose to drop their subscription, but I don't really see anything in the game that deserves this continuing hate.

It's like the level of hate reserved for a really nasty divorce, or a cheating spouse. To me, the venom reeks of "betrayal", and that seems excessive for a video game. I wonder if a lot of the haters were really invested in the game before it came out, maybe to the point of burning their bridges in their previous game. Then when The Old Republic turned out to be human after all, they turned on it.

Another possibility is that the haters think that the MMO audience is zero-sum. That every subscriber for one game must be stolen from another game. Thus by attacking an MMO that has both a significant number of players, and yet seems weak, they can bleed off players to boost their game of choice. In particular, the Guild Wars 2 boosters seem to exhibit a lot of this behavior.

Ironically, the people now in love with Guild Wars 2 seem to falling into the same trap. If Guild Wars 2 proves mortal, unable to stay atop the pedestal, will history repeat itself?

Holy Paladin Changes in Mists

Mists of Pandaria is fast approaching. Let's take a look at how the Holy Paladin is shaping up in the expansion. There are a lot of changes to WoW, but in a way the Holy Paladin really isn't changing. It will play very similarly to the Cataclysm Holy Paladin.

Here are some changes to keep in mind:

1. Judgment - You no longer need to judge. It does not return mana or give haste anymore. You can pretty much drop this button.


2. No More Auras - The auras have been removed. Aura Mastery has been renamed Devotion Aura, but works as a damage reduction cooldown. Crusader Aura has become a paladin-only passive. The Seals now occupy the same UI space.


3. Store Up to 5 Holy Power - You can store up to five Holy Power, though you can still only spend a maximum of three. So you can effectively bank two Holy Power for emergencies.


4. Intellect Does Not Give Mana - Intellect no longer increases your mana pool. Your mana pool will be fixed in size at max level for the full expansion. This makes Intellect slightly less valuable (though still very valuable because it gives you spell power), and Spirit more valuable.


5. Holy Radiance - Holy Radiance works slightly differently. There is no HoT, and the target gets twice as much healing as the other people. You still want to cast it on different targets in succession, but it won't be wasted if you cast it on the same target twice in a row.


6. Light of Dawn - Light of Dawn is not a targeted cone anymore. Instead it's an AoE all around the paladin.


7. Denounce - Apparently we get a spammable nuke in Denounce. Probably is our primary damage spell for soloing.


8. Talent Trees - The old talent trees are gone. Pretty much all the important abilities have been rolled into the base Holy Paladin, and we have new abilities in the new Talent structure. I'll look at the talent tree in a future post.


9. Glyphs - Prime glyphs are gone, only major and minor glyphs remain. Vital Prime glyphs (such as Seal of Insight) have been rolled into the base spell.

I think that's about it. Not needing to Judge is the biggest change in playstyle, but the new Talents will give new abilities to replace Judgement. Otherwise it's pretty much the same as in Cataclysm.

Spacing Out Content

Blizzard announced that in Pandaria they would delay the start of raiding by a whole week. The first raid instance will open one week after Pandaria launches. Two more instances will open a month later.

While I think this is a good move, I don't see why Blizzard doesn't take this further. I must admit that I don't really understand Blizzard's aversion to spacing out content.

Why have this giant glut of content right at the very start of the expansion? It seems to me that when all the content is front-loaded, we just end up with larger and larger gaps at the end of the expansion.  Take the tail end of Cataclysm. It's been eight months since there's been any new content.

Why not release Pandaria without any raids? Let everyone go through all the leveling content and the heroics. Two months later, release the first raid.  Two months after that, release the second raid. Then two months after that, release the third raid. That gives lots of time for Blizzard to add new content into the game, while still giving everyone something new to look forward to every couple of months.

It seems to me that a steady stream of content would be more interesting that everyone gorging themselves at the beginning of an expansion, and then dying off at the end.

The Old Republic Goes Free-To-Play

So EA/Bioware has announced that the old Republic will go Free-to-Play later this year. As a current subscriber, I'm somewhat disappointed. I don't really like F2P games, and I don't think they end up in a good spot. Maybe I'll write a longer post on F2P later.

The structure of the F2P option is interesting. Levels 1 through 50 are free, and you get a limited number of flashpoints and warzones per week. Operations are reserved for subscribers. There's a pretty clear division where they're hoping that transient players are attracted by F2P, and the extended players stay on subscription.

What I expect--though it's not explicitly stated--is that the free player will only get 1 character slot, and will have to pay to unlock more slots. This way TOR gets money from the people who want to see multiple class stories, which are the major selling point of the game.

It's possible that TOR will end up putting more emphasis on raids, because those players are the dependable revenue stream. The people who pay the bills call the shots. This might end up being a good thing for raiders.

Though, maybe all the raiders will end up dropping their subscriptions. The thing is that the raiding in TOR is decent, but the class stories are the major attraction. Right now, you have to sub to get both aspects. When it goes F2P, it might better for an extended player to switch to another game for raiding, while maintaining TOR in a F2P mode to finish the class stories at leisure.

Basically, I don't think the marginal value of TOR raiding is worth a subscription.  Class story plus raiding, definitely worth it. But not raiding alone.

I am rather leaning to that plan at the moment. I was having an internal debate about what to do when Mists of Pandaria comes out, but now my plan is pretty set. Drop the TOR subscription, and maybe leave it installed and play the class stories. But if I want to raid, I'll raid in Pandaria.

Operations in The Old Republic

I've been trying out some of the raids--or operations, as they're called--in The Old Republic.  TOR now has three raids: Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace, and Explosive Conflict. So far, I've tackled the first and last instances on Story Mode difficulty.

(As an aside, it's interesting how good a word "raid" is. It's short and sweet. You can use "raider" and "raiding" easily. Compare to "operation".)

TOR raids follow roughly the same formula. There are 5 bosses per raid. One boss will be a "puzzle" boss. The first bosses are reasonably simple in terms of mechanics, while the final fight will be a complex multi-stage fight. There are two or three difficulties: Story, Hard, and Nightmare. Only the first two instances have Nightmare mode, the latest one does not have it.  I've only seen Story Mode mode, and I would say that it is definitely harder than LFR, maybe a bit easier than T11 or T12 normal mode.

The step up in difficulty of the last boss is pretty funny if you aren't expecting it. In Eternity Vault, it was a bit like going from a Molten Core boss to Kael'thas in T5. Exaggerating a bit, but it's definitely a large jump in complexity.

Loot-wise, I think TOR's system is much more sensible than WoW's. Hard Mode drops a specific tier of gear. Hard Mode flashpoints drop Tionese, Eternity Vault drops Columni, Karagga's Palace drops Rakata, and Explosive Conflict drops Black Hole. Then Story Mode has gear from the previous tier, except the last Story Mode boss drops current tier gear.  Then there's all sorts of commendations flying around, and bits and pieces from each tier can be gotten from specific commendations.

As far as I can tell, Nightmare Mode drops come from a future tier or include mounts, etc. It seems more for challenge or bragging rights.

It is a little complicated with the tokens/commendations, but I find it much simpler than having three levels of gear per tier, and having LFR gear obsolete the previous tier in WoW. It does feel like there's more of a sense of progression, where you move through the tiers as you gear up.

One of the interesting things about TOR is that each player has five companions that they can gear up. So loot that isn't taken by a player is often taken for a companion or stripped for the individual mods that make up the item. This is a lot less waste, and makes gearing up new players easier.

The "puzzle" bosses are a neat twist. This is a boss or event where part of the raid has to solve a simple puzzle. In Eternity Vault it's a very simple pattern matching puzzle, a bit like a Rubik's Cube. In Karagga's Palace it's a Towers of Hanoi puzzle which debuffs the boss. One of the interesting things about these fights is that poor performance on the puzzles is not necessarily a wipe. It makes the fight longer and maybe harder, but still beatable.

 TOR does have a raid finder for the first two story modes, but it isn't exactly fully transient the way LFR is. You still get locked out, and then you can only join a group which has bosses that you haven't killed. But you can specify to only join fresh groups which haven't killed anything. The downside of this is that if your raid does break up, it becomes very hard to replace people and finish the instance.

As well, TOR doesn't have mods, so you just have to work with the built-in UI and emotes. For the most part, this isn't any issue. However, TOR does suffer from the standard problem with tracking the vital buffs and debuffs. I wonder if an MMO will ever handle vital debuffs well. The Secret World makes an interesting attempt with only having four possible debuff states that matter, and then keying off those four.

All in all, raiding in The Old Republic is a lot of fun. Five solid bosses with some decent trash makes for a nice two to three hour night. There's a good mix of mechanics and difficulty. The bosses are varied and interesting. The multi-stage final boss fights are a good capstone fight for the instance or the night.

Now, if you don't like raids at all, you probably won't like operations in TOR. But if you do like raiding, TOR's operations are worth checking out.

Cosmetic Gear Systems

It seems like cosmetic gear has won the battle. Almost all games include the ability to change a character's appearance without affecting a character's stats. The days where you could look at a character and visually identify what they had achieved or their power level are gone. However, it's interesting that there are at least four separate cosmetic gear systems in use in modern MMOs. Let's compare each one.

1. Transmogrification

Used by Blizzard, TERA.

In this solution, an individual item's appearance is changed to look like something else. The changed appearance is tied to the item. Advantages are that this makes a sort of sense within the fiction of the game world. As well, it is easy to tie different appearances to your different gear sets. You can have one look for dps gear, and one look for healing gear, and when you swap gear, your outfit automatically swaps.

The disadvantage is that because it is tied to your gear, every time you get a new item, you have to transmogrify it to get your look back. You also have to keep the old items around, and the process is a bit complicated compared to some of the other solutions. As well, each work set corresponds to one and only one cosmetic set. You can't switch between two different looks while wearing your healing gear, without re-transmogrifying everything.

2. Mods

Used by The Old Republic.

In this solution, the visual armor is a shell, and the stats come from mods which are inserted into the armor. Again, an advantage is that it make sense within the game world. It can tie into the crafting system, as there are now mods as well as armor to create. As well, it's fairly easy to upgrade pieces. Just rip out the mods from a new item and put them in the old item. A final advantage is that this doubles as a "reforging" system, because you can adjust stats simply by switching up the mods.

For disadvantages, again, it is a little complicated. Like transmog, each work set matches to one and only one cosmetic appearance. It's also pretty hard to compare gear in this system, as you have to compare each individual mod as well as the whole item. A last disadvantage is that set bonuses are a bit weird, because the set bonus is usually tied to the armor shell, and the mods are more generic.

3. Non-Visible Power Items

Used by The Secret World, Champions Online.

In this system, character power usually comes from non-visual items like trinkets or jewelry. The character's clothes are completely cosmetic. Advantage here is that it makes sense in the game world. As well, cosmetic outfits are completely decoupled from power outfits. What you are wearing has nothing to do with your power.

The disadvantage is that trinkets and jewelry are often unexciting. Very visual pieces like weapons and armor are often desired. They pack a 1-2 punch of good visuals combined with good stats. Also, an older piece of armor can carry memories, and reusing those older pieces can be a nod back to a previous time. For example, T2 Judgement is not just a great looking set, it's a reminder of the good times in Blackwing Lair. As well, while in the other systems you can choose to forego the cosmetic gear, and display your true set, in this system you can't. You have to pick a cosmetic outfit to wear.

4. Cosmetic Slots

Used by Rift, TERA, and LotRO.

In this solution, the character sheet simply has a second (or more) set of item slots. Items in the cosmetic slots are displayed, while items in the regular slots contribute stats. The big advantage is that this system is simple, easy to understand, and easy to use. The cosmetic set is decoupled from the work set. You can switch your cosmetic set without affecting your work set, and upgrade your work set without changing your look. Item comparison still functions correctly.

The major disadvantage is that this system makes no sense in the context of the world. Are you wearing two helms or two pants? It's a very gamist solution to the problem, and you just ignore the oddity of wearing multiple helms. The other options at least attempt to nod to the simulation.

Conclusions

Those are the cosmetic gear systems that I know about. In general, if you have to have cosmetic gear, I think straight cosmetic slots is the best solution. It's easy to understand and very simple to use in practice. Cosmetic armor slots parallel the regular armor slots. You can keep your power set while switching between multiple cosmetic sets. You can keep your cosmetic set while switching between multiple power sets.

The wearing of multiple helms is a bit weird, but it can be handwaved, and more or less ignored. Personally, it does not affect my suspension of disbelief. Your mileage may vary, however.

The Hidden Sting of a Personal Spaceship

Sometimes I wonder if The Old Republic managed to incur an ancient voodoo curse during its development. It feels like almost every design decision they made carried a hidden sting, an aspect that would later come back to bite them.

Take your personal spaceship, for example. Fairly early in the class storyline, at about level 20 or so, each class gets a spaceship. They use this spaceship to travel around the galaxy. As well, all your companions are located on the ship, and it's where you talk to them and continue their individual storyline. The ship exists in game, and is usually found in a hangar in the planetary spaceport. It's very Millennium Falcon, and very much a part of Star Wars.

However, the downside of the personal ship is that it makes travel very tedious. To travel from one planet to another, you have to go to the hangar, board your ship, travel to destination, leave the ship, leave the hangar.

As well, sometimes the planet doesn't have a true spaceport with multiple hangars. To get around this, TOR puts the hangars on a space station in orbit. So the worst case scenario becomes something like:

1. Take shuttle from planet to station.
2. Go to hangar and board ship.
3. Fly to destination.
4. Leave ship for station.
5. Take shuttle from station to planet.

It actually takes a fair bit of time, and involves multiple loading screens. I think that TOR recently patched an option on some planets to compress steps 1 and 2.

This process is fine while you're levelling, because you don't actually travel from planet to planet that often. But then at 50, you might actually travel a fair bit, to do the dailies on different planets, or to go to the Fleet to use the markets or buy gear.

Now, imagine if TOR didn't have a spaceship at all. What would travel have looked like?

I think it probably would have been something like clicking on a shuttle at a spaceport brings up the interstellar map, and then you travel to the destination spaceport directly. One step and only one loading screen. It would make your day-to-day life at endgame so much easier.

Having a personal ship is pretty cool, but it comes at a cost, and makes the endgame far more annoying than it should be.

Shocking Paladin News from Beta!

Blizzard has changed the spelling of Judgement to "Judgment"!

Confirmation from Ghostcrawler himself can be found here.

Damn Yankees and their laziness. Dropping perfectly good letters from words. Rush, rush, rush, but are you really getting anywhere?

In seriousness, paladins with macros might have to watch out when Pandaria or 5.0 hits. It's likely that any macros invoking "Judgement" will stop working.

Running Flashpoints in The Old Republic

I've been playing The Old Republic for most of the past week. I've been gearing up my Imperial Agent with the small group flashpoints, using the new Looking For Group tool, as well as dailies.  I've really enjoyed the process so far. TOR is a great small group game, and a lot of this pre-raid game emphasizes that.

TOR also has benefited incredibly from the server mergers and larger-pop servers. It is a game that really needs that mass of people on the same server. There are lots of small group quests, and being able to quickly get a group in local chat makes a huge difference. As well, being able to fill out your group with companions makes grouping, especially for the [HEROIC 2+] quests, a lot easier.

Making the LFG server-only was an interesting move. I'm not totally sure that it's a big difference maker, but even after just running LFG for a week as DPS, I'm beginning to see familiar faces.  Groups are mostly good and nice, which matches my experience with WoW as well.

I even ran an instance today, Lost Island, which came out in 1.2, with a group of people who had never run it before. We wiped on all the bosses, but generally figured out everything and eventually completed the instance successfully. It was a great experience, and one that I haven't had in a great while.

Funniest moment in that run: we're fighting a boss with a knockback that drops us into the lava. There's a force field bridge that goes to the boss's platform. The healer theorizes that maybe we're supposed to get knocked up the bridge, so he stands on it. Fight starts, bridge disappears, and the healer falls into the lava.

There have been a couple bad groups. Last time I discussed the Group Finder in WoW, I facetiously remarked that maybe it was the healers who caused problems in groups, and since I always healed, I never saw the drama queens and always had good groups.

After running instances as DPS, I'm inclined to think that maybe there's a grain of truth in that. I had one group where the healer got upset at our strategy, and ran away from a boss fight as it was started, causing a wipe. The healer then left the group. After waiting a few minutes in LFG, we pulled out a companion healer and beat the fight.

(You can't do that often, this time it was because both DPS could CC the two main adds, greatly reducing the damage flying around.)

That's really the only negative experience I've had with the Group Finder in TOR. For the most part, the Hard Mode flashpoints are fairly easy, comparable to Wrath or post-nerf Cataclysm heroics.

That's not to say that the Group Finder has made everything perfect though. There's still a fairly long wait for DPS, on the order of 20 to 30 minutes. As well, the Group Finder dumps you outside the instance entrance when you're finished, usually leaving you a fair distance away from where you were before starting. Travel in TOR is a bit of pain, with multiple load screens, so this can get annoying.

The other unfortunate interaction is between TOR's daily group quests and the Group Finder. Each area with dailies also has one or more repeatable daily group quests. It's usually fairly easy to get a group for these quests. But the problem is that you have to leave the Group Finder queue in order to group up for the dailies, starting the queue all over again when you finish the group daily.

The reason behind this behaviour is fairly straightforward. You don't want people leaving a group in the middle of something because they got an instance group.

What would be nice is if the Group Finder "paused" if you joined a group, and then re-inserted you at the same position when you left that group. Like if you start at position 300, eventually get to position 100 after 20 minutes, then join a group for a daily. Group Finder removes you from the queue. After finishing the daily and leaving the group, Group Finder re-inserts you at position 100, and the queue continues, rather than having to start over at position 300.

But still, these problems are relatively minor. The Group Finder works, and has made TOR a much better game.

Why Do I Like Attunements?

I've been reading a lot of posts about attunements, and I got to thinking about why exactly I like attunements.

The major reason is that I don't really like the gear game. I don't like making Best-In-Slot lists, or debating exactly what gear I need off what bosses. I just run stuff, and if something drops, I take it if it is better than what I have. My gear tends to evolve organically.

A good attunement chain or questline gives me a reason to run dungeons. It's something that I'm working towards, rather than my average gear ilevel hitting some minimum threshold.  I do like beating every boss once, but after that you're just doing dungeons to prep for the next boss, or for social reasons.

I like having that extra goal to work towards.

Another element that was kind of similar were the old 8-piece class sets. I like collecting class sets, and don't mind running dungeons multiple times to get the set. I'm not really sure why this is different from running dungeons to get a pre-defined Best-In-Slot set, but it just is. Perhaps its the difference between making your character more powerful versus just collecting sets.

Perhaps it's just that Lightforge was so awesome. (Still in my bank!)

It just seems like in Wrath and Cataclysm, you ran 5-mans in order to make your character more powerful, so you could tackle raids. While in Vanilla and TBC, making your character more powerful was a secondary goal. You ran 5-mans to work on your attunements, or to collect your class set, or work on your class mount quest. And almost as a side-effect, your character got more powerful.

Attunements, Years Later

WoW Insider and Klepsacovic are arguing about attunements. I started writing a response, but realized that I had already written it five years ago, all the way back in 2007.

A lot of the trouble with the discussion about attunements is that there are actually four or so separate types of attunements, and each has different pros and cons. But everyone conflates all the types, and mixes them up, so it seems like they are talking past each other.  A pro from one type gets countered by a con from a completely separate type.

Here are the types of attunements, as I see them:

Class A: Only one person needs a key for the instance.

Examples are Keys for UBRS, Eye of Eternity, Nightbane in Karazhan

The main advantage of this class is that you can take people who aren't attuned in the group, while still gating access on the whole.

The disadvantages are that if the attunement is too long or difficult, then no one does the attunement, instead relying on someone else to do it. Vanilla WoW players will remember "LF1 UBRS, must have key". If the attunement is too easy and a large portion of the population has it, then it might as well not be there, until you hit the unexpected situation where no keyed person happens to be in the raid. It also makes the raid very dependent on the presence of the keyholder. No keyholder, no raid.

Finally, a group may "purchase" an unlock from someone else, effectively bypassing the gating. Not to mention that I don't think this method can work with an automatic group finder. How could you sign up for a raid if your access depends on someone else in your group?

Class B: Non-raid quest line is required to unlock the instance.

Examples are Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Karazhan attunements.

The advantages are that you can work on your attunement on your own time. It also ensures that the player does a minimum amount of previous content before they can raid. It's a really good answer the question, "Am I ready for this raid?" A new max level player can also be powered through the questline.

The main disadvantage is that an absolute fresh 80 cannot be brought into the raid at all. Each character must be attuned. As well, if the attunement chain is long, then redoing it on alts becomes rather frustrating.

Class C: Defeating previous raid bosses is required to unlock future raid bosses.

Examples are needing Kael and Vashj to unlock T6 in TBC.

The advantage is that you can't skip hard bosses to progress. Raid progression is "hardcoded" for individual raiders.

The disadvantages are that it causes a lot of problems with raid composition, even before we look at recruiting. The thing is that you want to attune your entire raiding force, including your people on the bench, not just the 25 people in the instance at the time of your first kill. Otherwise, you can't actually progress to the next instance, because odds are you'll have to replace at least one person on your next night of raiding.

As well, it causes large problems with recruiting. Basically, it's very hard to work on attunement on your own, you have to rely on the group to attune you. So already attuned players become very valuable, and guilds have to keep running old content in their limited raid time to attune new players or alts.

Class D: Running old content multiple times eventually unlocks new content.

An example is gating by reputation, like the TBC heroics, where you needed Revered reputation to buy the keys.

The advantage is that you can almost certainly guarantee that people will be properly geared and prepared for the next level of content.

The disadvantage is that it can seem repetitive and grindy (Lower City rep, anyone?). An artifical roadblock to make you waste time. Also this scheme usually has the longest time between hitting max level and actually being able to enter the instance, and people might get bored and drop out early. Personally, I don't think I ever got all my TBC keys.

Conclusions

I actually like Class B attunements. I enjoyed the MC, BWL, and Karazhan questlines, and rather miss them. They provided direction for a new max-level character, instead of having to figure out if your gear was "good enough". Sure, they had some issues (Rexxar, where are you?), and occasionally not being able to take someone to a raid because they where not attuned hurt. Of course, if that happened, the player was always attuned by next week, often with the help of some of other raiders.

By and large, I thought Class B attunements worked. They made the game between leveling and raiding more interesting, gave it more purpose rather than simply gearing up. I would not mind seeing them brought back in a future expansion.

But for Class A,C, and D attunements, I think their problems outweigh their advantages. I think the game is better for having gotten rid of them.

A Return To The Old Republic

With Mass Effect behind us, I've resubscribed to The Old Republic. I've also took the opportunity to uninstall Mass Effect 2 and 3, and especially Origin. Getting rid of Origin brought a smile to my face.

I was thinking about The Secret World, but I feel that I left The Old Republic "unfinished." Plus, this will give some time for The Secret World to work out all the bugs, before I give it a real whirl.

(Though, there is something about being in a game at launch, discussing and writing about it early. Before the game becomes solved.)

I ended up deleting all my alternate characters, and only transferred my 50 Imperial Agent to the new high-pop server. Sadly, my name was taken, so I had to use an different name. I decided to start a new Jedi Knight to ease back into the game.

I think that TOR has improved by leaps and bounds. In particular, their performance optimization team has done a spectacular job. Basic engine performance is miles better than it was at release. As well, there are lots of people on the new server, making the game seem vibrant and alive. Lots of chat too, even with TOR's flood of system messages.

The Legacy system has been fleshed out, and has all sorts of options. I haven't really explored much here.

I haven't really gotten a chance to try the group finder yet. My 50 is DPS, so the queues are very long. Plus I don't really remember how to play her, so I'll have to re-learn everything. I'm also not too sure what the path in endgame is like.

Still, I like the improved TOR so far. We'll have to see if I can get into its endgame, though.

A Critique of the Mass Effect 3 Ending

(Yeah, this post is like one giant spoiler. Spoilers for Mass Effect, Macbeth, Knights of the Old Republic, Lord of the Rings and A Tale of Two Cities below the cut!)

Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut

The ending to Mass Effect 3 is fundamentally, fatally, flawed. Barring a complete rewrite, it cannot be fixed, and will never rise to the standard of a good ending, let alone a great one.

That being said, the Extended Cut is a vast improvement over the previous ending. This ending is significantly stronger, and significantly more cohesive. The Extended Cut is still a poor ending, and is not the ending the Mass Effect series deserves. But it is better than the absolute travesty that preceded it.

(Spoilers below the cut!)

D3 RMT, ME3, and TSW

Real Money Auction House and Third-Party Real Money Trade

In the comments on the last post, Redbeard asks,

Whaddya think that the RMAH is attracting the credit card thieves?

Honestly, I would wager that all the RMAH traffic is legitimate.

The thing is that when you are engaging in something illegal, you don't want someone who opposes you to have control of the money. If the credit card thieves used the RMAH, Blizzard would have more opportunities to detect and stop it. And, most importantly, Blizzard would have an opportunity to prevent the thieves from cashing out.

It's like if you do something illegal in the real world, you pay in cash. Cash is not traceable, and a cash transaction cannot be stopped by the bank.

Similarly, I would think that most RMT operations will use their own credit card operations to cash out, rather than relying on their enemy, Blizzard.

Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut

The Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut comes out tomorrow. Hopefully the Bioware which made the first 99% of ME3 will show up.

The unfortunate part is that I have to leave town on Thursday and won't be back until next week sometime. Here's hoping I have enough time to finish all the content on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.  Given my flight leaves at 7am, I'm even considering pulling an all-nighter Wednesday, to finish the game and make sure I don't miss my flight.

I do hope that the EC is good and rectifies the mistakes of the ending instead of doubling down. I would like to stop boycotting Bioware and play The Old Republic for a bit.

The Secret World

There's an old superstition that a bad dress rehearsal foretells a good opening night. Hopefully this holds true for Funcom. The last beta weekend seemed a lot buggier than the previous one. Not to mention that they disabled the Investigative quests, which are a main selling point of the game, in my view. I really wonder why they did that.

I am rather on the fence about TSW. It is very interesting, but at the same time it is a bit unpolished, and the early adopters will struggle through it.

The other thing I am not thrilled with is that Funcom is offering a Lifetime subscription. In my experience, Lifetime subscriptions just mean that the game will go F2P. Probably sooner rather than later, once the game company realizes that its most enthusiastic players are no longer paying for the game.

I think ME3 will be the deciding factor for me. If the EC is good, I'll play The Old Republic. If the EC is bad, I'll play The Secret World instead.

Diablo and Rift Expansion Purchase News

A couple of items that caught my interest today.

Diablo Digital Purchase Restriction

Now when you purchase a digital copy of Diablo III, you are restricted to a Starter Version for 72 hours.

Blizzard must be having serious problems with stolen credit cards to take such a drastic step. I would wager that hackers/gold farmers are using stolen credit cards to purchase digital editions, make a throwaway account, use it to launder or convey gold in some fashion, and then repeat when Blizzard bans the account.

Credit card charge-backs are a serious issue for merchants, as Visa and Mastercard heavily punish merchants who have a high volume of fraudulent transactions.

My guess is that Blizzard is implementing this delay to make purchasing "temporary" digital copies an unattractive option for hackers while they work on a technical solution. I would imagine that the next patch will probably lock out trading or using the Auction House until you are level 13, or maybe until the Skeleton King is beaten.

RIFT Expansion Including Base Game For Free

I have to say that Trion's Marketing people are impressive. From Massively:

Storm Legion will apparently include the full version of RIFT along with it, allowing new players to pick up the expansion and experience both the core game and the additions without restriction. 

Of course, this sounds like less of a deal if you already own RIFT, but you're covered there as well, as existing players can expect a price discount on purchasing the expansion.

Let's see (all numbers made up for demonstrative purposes). Let's say Trion prices Storm Legion at $40, but says that if you already own RIFT, you can get a $10 discount:

Storm Legion + RIFT = $40
Storm Legion = $40 - $10 = $30

Subtracting both sides,

RIFT = $10

This is a very interesting definition of the word "free". It is mathematically identical to Trion saying that RIFT costs $10 and Storm Legion costs $30, and the combination costs $40. Only Trion's way of phrasing it will net them slightly more money because a percentage of current RIFT owners will not use the discount or coupon.

Yet the internet appears to be amazed at Trion's generosity. Well done, Trion Marketing!

That's not to say that it's a bad idea. I've always thought that expansion packs should just contain the full game. It means there's only one SKU running around. There's no chance of buying the wrong version. New players get access to the entire game right from the start. It's clean and easy, and really the only problem is dealing with the old unsold physical boxed sets.

Black Market Auction House

In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard is opening a Black Market Auction House. This auction house is bid-only (no buyout) and will feature rare items like mounts and pets. Stuff that is traditionally hard to get, like Rivendare's mount, or Ashes of Al'ar, and requires a lot of farming.

(There's also a possibility that the current tier Heroic raid and PvP gear will show up on the Black Market. As Theck points out, this specifically is a horrific idea. It will cause a lot of issues with Loot as Investment, and I think also devalues those items as Loot as Reward.)

The purpose of the Black Market is to serve as a gold sink for whales. A way for goblins to spend hundreds of thousands of gold without greatly impacting the rest of us. I'm sure that the Black Market will fulfill this goal.

I don't think I have any items that would actually be sold on the Black Market. Maybe an Ulduar or Firelands drake. I certainly do not have enough gold to buy anything off it. So maybe my point of view is skewed.

However, I don't think the Black Market is a good idea. The type of items that would be sold are the type of items that generate stories.

Stories about how it dropped for your guild and you won the roll, or how guild all passed the item to you. Or stories about how you farmed for days, and it finally dropped for you. Or how you worked with a small group of people to get everyone their mount. Or even how you're a lucky punk and you accidentally found and killed the rare spawn while questing without even knowing it dropped a mount.

These are the type of items that bloggers would make blog posts about, and other people would jump in comment about their experiences. Everyone who gets one of these items has some sort of interesting story to tell.

In some respects, the story of how you got the item is more important than the item.

And to all these stories Blizzard is proposing to add, "Actually, I bought it from an NPC on the Black Market."

How exciting.

Ah well, it could worse. It could be a Real Money Auction House.

Edit: I've thought of a parallel situation: the warlock and paladin class mounts. Back in Vanilla, every paladin and warlock had a story about their class mount. There was lots of farming, and you had to rely on friends and guildies. Then Blizzard just gave out the class mount from the trainer, and all those stories dried up. Maybe it was necessary because of the level cap increase, maybe it wasn't. But I think that the Black Market will end up doing for all those rare mounts/pets/items what the trainer mounts did for the paladin and warlock class. And I think the game will be worse off for it.

Reasons for the Backsliding in Portrayals of Women

I've noticed that several game bloggers have seemed despondent due to the notion that the game industry is backsliding on its portrayal of women. I don't think they're wrong that this backsliding is happening, but I don't think they understand why it is happening. Because they are supremely confident in the righteousness of their cause, a lot of these bloggers seem have written off the other side as unrepentant misogynists, and have not taken the time to understand why the game companies are acting as they are.

In my view, people are basically rational. They have underlying reasons that drive the way they act. Sometimes the reasons are illogical or not the best reasons, but they are reasons none the less. So what is the reasoning of many current game companies?

Let me illustrate what I think the underlying reason behind much of the backsliding through an example. Here is Trion's poster child, Crucia, for their upcoming RIFT expansion, Storm Legion:

Crucia is front and center on all the expansion materials. Her depiction is obviously going to upset or annoy most feminist gamers. Trion has to know this. So why did they go this route?

Here's a question for you. If a game company publicly says that they are looking to expand into the female market, to attract more female players, which of the following is more likely:

1. The game will become easier.
2. The game will become harder.

Or

1. Pet-collecting will be added to the game.
2. Player vs. Player combat will be added to the game.

If we are honest, we know that the Option 1 is more likely in both cases. Those ideas may or may not attract female gamers in reality, but we know which direction a game company is going to go in when they say they want more women.

Because this causal relationship is real, the reverse signal works as well. A signal that the company is slightly female-unfriendly is also a signal that the game will emphasize difficulty and more hardcore elements like PvP.

Back to Trion, who is their biggest competitor who is also launching an expansion this year? That's right, World of Warcraft, with Mist of Pandaria.  So Trion is setting up a very stark contrast: fluffy pandas vs Crucia.

It's all about signalling. In the past few years a lot of game companies have chased the casual and female markets, very often by watering down difficulty and other game elements that the dedicated gamer playerbase enjoys. The change in the portrayal of women for many game companies, including Trion and a lot of the companies at E3, is a signal that the game companies are refocusing on their base, and are implementing mechanics that the base enjoys. It is also a signal that the company is focusing on an older audience, rather than trying to attract kids.

It is a clumsy signal, in my view. It risks alienating players who would otherwise try the game. But I think it is an effective signal--not to mention that it does attract the male eye--and that is why a lot of game companies are employing it today.

More Thoughts on The Secret World Beta

Here are some more assorted thoughts from this weekend's beta of The Secret World

Voice

The Secret World is heavily voiced. However, unlike SWTOR, there are no conversations. Your character stays silent. Rather it's mostly NPCs monologuing at you. It's not bad, but it's not amazing either, and it does add some ambience to the area. You can skip a lot of the talk if you prefer.

Graphics

I don't really know about graphics. They look fine to me, but pretty much every game in the last two or three years has looked fine to me. I saw a couple of complaints in chat about the graphics, but really I thought they were good. I was also playing with a high resolution, but lowest quality graphics.

Content

The Secret World is clearly aimed at adults (at least compared to most games). There's a fair bit of swearing and some sexuality. Nothing really explicit, that I saw. I'd say it would be rated somewhere between PG-13 and R. A full R seems a touch excessive.

System Requirements

TSW does not meet my standard for MMOs, which is that it should be playable on the second computer in a household. But it comes really close. Frankly, the performance is much better than I expected from Funcom.

Crafting

Crafting is rather complicated, and I did not understand it in the least. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences.

As far as I can tell, you need to break down existing item into material components. Then arrange components in a specific shape which determines what type of item you get.

Polish

The game is pretty polished. The UI is clean and very usable. Of course, I love having separate defensive and offensive targets.

One thing I particularly like is that the outline of enemy AoEs and specials are drawn on the ground in a sort of chalk-like effect. Then a second outline expands from the enemy out to the edges of the first outline and when the two meet the effect goes off. Basically, you have to outrun the second line and get outside the first line to avoid damage. I thought it was a very neat way of displaying that information in the game world, without requiring you to watch for cast bars.

Responsiveness

It's pretty decent, but not the best. I didn't notice any major issues, but characters don't handle quite perfectly. In particular, it feels a little too "slippery" if that makes any sense. There's not enough "weight" to moving models.

Quest Journal

Edit: I completely forgot this system, but it's worth commenting on.

The quest journal system is rather weird. You can only have 1 main storyline quest, 1 major quest, and 3 minor quests at any given time. If you pick up another major quest, your old quest is paused and you have to go back to the original questgiver to pick it up again. Thankfully, most of your progress is saved. This is an interesting system because it really forces you to concentrate on one quest at a time. Like a lot of elements in The Secret World, I expect this to be a very polarizing design.

Final Thoughts

I think The Secret World will not be for everyone. The setting, content, and character mechanics are rather different than the norm.

I would recommend giving it a try, with the expectation that you probably won't subscribe. (Maybe wait for a sale if you're on the fence.) If you go into it with the expectation that it is the best game ever, I think you'll be disappointed. But I think that the people who do like it will be very enthusiastic.

I also think that you might be surprised by your reaction to the game, both positive and negative. Some people who think they will like the game will hate it, and others who think they will hate it will end up loving it.

Character Progression in The Secret World

The character conceit of The Secret World is that you are a normal person who suddenly gains "powers" and is then recruited and trained by one of three secret societies: the Illuminati, the Templars, and the Dragon.

Character creation is reasonably good, you have a fair amount of options when it comes to your face and starting outfit. I created a female, Coriel, and joined the Templar faction. The Illuminati are far and away the most popular society, and I don't know anything about the Dragon other than there is a bit of oral sex in the Dragon introduction.

The Secret World does not have classes or explicit levels. However, it does have roles and implicit levels. It is a fair bit different from most MMOs, and does take a little getting used to.

What abilities you get depends on your weapon, and your training with the weapon. Weapons are central to characters. The idea is that you channel your powers through your weapon. There are 3 weapon categories: guns, magic, and melee weapons. There are 3 weapons in each category: pistols, shotguns, rifles, chaos magic, blood magic, elemental magic, swords, hammers, and claws.

The basic idea is that you must have a rifle equipped to use a rifle ability. As you earn experience points you gain Ability Points that you can spend to unlock passive and active abilities in each weapon. Costs tend to follow a pattern where the first few abilities are very cheap, and then the cost steadily rises. However, the most expensive abilities appear to be more specialized, rather than strictly better damage.

The key element here is that you are only allowed 7 active abilities and 7 passive abilities at any one time. But you can wield two weapons. So you spend Ability Points to gain abilities with the two weapons you have chosen, and mix and match abilities to create a useful set of 7.

Actual combat is very similar to other MMOs. You target creatures and use abilities. The general pattern is combo point generators and finishers. However, there are some subtleties. Guns generate combo points on the target. Magic generates combo points on the character. Melee also generates points on the character, but I think the points are automatically gained with time (when in combat), without necessarily needing to use generators.

Certain weapons adhere to certain roles. Healing can be found in rifles, blood magic, and claws. Tanking is swords, hammers, and chaos magic. Most other trees have support abilities in addition to damage. As well, different weapons prefer or create different conditions, so it's up to you to use two weapons which synergize.[1]

The thing is that Ability Points do not increase character power directly, they only give you more abilities. Character progression is governed by gear. Gear has "Quality Levels", and you are more powerful with better gear. But you can't just wear any gear.

In addition to Ability Points, there are Skill Points. Skill Points are earned 1 every 3 Ability Points. You invest Skill Points into each weapon and gear type. Each level of skill costs increasing points, but also gives you a bonus with that weapon. You can't equip weapons or gear which are more than one level higher than your skill. So this is the aspect which creates the implicit levels.

Monsters and missions essentially take your current gear into account when determining if something is easy or hard. You'll see people asking for groups by QL. For example, people like QL3 for the first dungeon (which I didn't get to).

So basically, there is a short steep vertical progression, but also a fairly broad horizontal progression. There are twelve or so default builds given in the game, so you can just follow those builds if you are at a loss. I think you even get some cosmetic outfits if you complete a default build.

Gear is essentially amulets and trinkets, in addition to your weapons. Clothing is separate and cosmetic, and I guess must be bought or given as mission rewards.

The thing about The Secret World is that missions are repeatable if you want, they have a cooldown of a day or so after you finish them. So you are never stuck without a way to earn XP. There's no such thing as "respeccing" because you just earn more AP and SP. In theory, one could eventually unlock every single weapon ability and every single skill level.

For example, I figured Coriel would play as a healer, so I chose my first weapon as a rifle. After a while I put a couple of points into pistols for my second weapon. But I didn't like pistols, so I went to elemental magic instead. I have one elemental attack, and one elemental passive that puts a small DoT on the mob when I crit, even with a rifle attack.

Gear is role dependent. Tank gear has more health and less attack power. Healing gear has +heal instead of +attack, which does not boost your damage abilities. This may cause some people to shy away from healing and tanking roles. But it's not a permanent choice.

However, The Secret World also has my favorite UI element: a defensive and offensive target, as in Warhammer Online. Thus a lot of the healing abilities, especially with rifles, are really "leeches" which convert damage to healing.

I think that's a reasonable overview of character progression. The key points are weapons being the focus through which everything flows and determining playstyle, Ability Points to unlock usable abilities, a restricted set of passive and active abilities that can be used at any given time, and Skill Points to govern the quality of gear that your character can use.

1. I was looking on the forums, and some of the theorycrafters were talking about a concept called "bridge passives" which are passive abilities from a third weapon tree that could be used to get two non-synergistic weapons to play nicely with each other.