Massive Online Gamer’s Jason Winter interview part 2

the new defunct Massive Online Gamer Magazine

As promised, today I bring you Part 2 of my interview with former Massive Online Gamer Editor in Chief Jason Winter. Enjoy!

KTG:  MOBAS like League of Legends have really come up this year. I noticed MOG was covering them more and more, even in this last issue you had an article detailing the Dominion map. Are you surprised at all, by the rise in popularity in these types of games? Do you think that they can coincide along the bigger titles like SWTOR and GW2??

JW: A: I think MOBAs are a natural evolutionary path of MMORPGs. And, in fact, we’ve probably all been playing something just like them for years but didn’t realize it. My classic “Rift is a pretty game to sit around waiting for dungeon queues to pop” line from a previous TWIMMO is a part of this
observation, but it applies to many MMORPGs. In my case, I’ve been playing The Lord of the Rings Online since April 2007. That’s 57 months. My main character has been at the level cap for 46 of those months. That’s about 80% of the time he’s existed. And what do you do at level cap? Mostly you form up groups for instances, raids, maybe PvP, etc. You don’t really run around the world doing quests like you did when you were leveling. Yes, you can do some socializing, and a little crafting and miscellaneous activities, but if you want to advance your character, the best way to do it, in most cases, is to form up a group and hit a dungeon.

What do you do in a MOBA? Queue up for “PvP instances,” basically. MOBAs are just PvP MMOs without the questing and (in some form) leveling. Take a look at Guild Wars, where you could make a max-level character just to do PvP right out of the gate. How’s that different from a MOBA? So many people rush to level cap these days to do endgame anyway, and there’s really no difference between doing that and just starting out in a MOBA. And that 46/57 months thing takes into account that I’m a notoriously slow leveler

Now, I’m hopeful that games like GW2 will, as ArenaNet claims, make the endgame the whole game, and that you’ll still be incentivised to run around the world and not just sit around cities queueing up for dungeons. As much as people say GW1 wasn’t a true MMORPG, it might be that most non-GW2 are more MOBA than MMORPG, which is kinda ironic.

KTG: What are you going to miss most, would you say, about working with the staff of Beckett’s Online Massive Gamer magazine??
JW: Ping pong. That is all.

KTG:  I was somewhat surprised to see that your editorial staff chose GW2 as the top mmo of 2012 and beyond, what gives GW2 an edge over other games in your opinion, considering that was a list which includes so many great games like “The Secret World” and “Everquest Next” just to name a few?

JW: We actually had a formula that took a few factors into consideration and GW2 had the best “numbers.” That’s the short answer. The somewhat-longer answer is like what I referred to earlier, that I think ArenaNet and GW2 “get” that people are looking for something different, and they’re not just going to deliver something different for the sake of being different – they’re doing it because it’s actually better, at least in theory. Funcom’s sort-of got that with The Secret World, too, doing away with leveling (which, as referred to above, is something you won’t be doing with your character 80% or more of the time anyway). Honestly, we just don’t know enough about EQNext to give it super-high marks, but the brand name itself was worth a few points.

KTG:  Since this blog (killthegoblinsavetheworld) is mostly about retro-mmo games, what mmo do you think fans would benefit from being resurrected or redone for a modern audience in your opinion and why?

JW: A: Retro games? You mean like Star Wars: Galaxies?
It’s only sorta retro, being just a few years old, but I thought Auto Assault was a great premise. As an old Car Wars fan, I loved the idea, but the problem was that NCSoft made it “too MMO-like.” Meaning that instead of making it a game about cars with guns, they made it an MMO, with DPS, healers, support, tanks, etc., but instead of people, you had cars. In other words, it was the same as anything else out there.

I’d like an MMO of vehicular combat that you could tweak and min/max to your heart’s content. Want more speed? You’ll have to shed some armor or weapons. Want bigger guns? OK, but you won’t be as fast. And so on. Come on, Steve Jackson, you know you want to do this!

KTG: Yea that would be great! I was a fan of the Car Wars pen and paper game too. OK so the big question on a lot of people’s minds, Wow: the king of them all, at least for now. What are your thought’s on Blizzard’s behemoth and its future and its impact in the mmo game industry? Do you think SWTOR can have lasting power to topple it from the mmo throne, or do you think it will fizzle out like many shiny new mmos before it?

JW: Something a lot of people have said, and that I agree with, is that “The only thing that will kill WoW is WoW.” A new game, whether it’s SWTOR or GW2 or TSW or EQN isn’t going to “kill” WoW, not directly at least. Like I said, gamers are looking for something more in their MMOs than… uh, well, “kill the goblins and save the world.” If newer games rewrite this paradigm and steal some players from WoW, that won’t be the real impact of their success. Rather, players will look at what those games are doing and think, “I like WoW, but why can’t it be more like this game?” If Blizzard can’t adjust its game to be more in line with these newer offerings, then who really “killed” WoW? Some other game for “stealing” WoW’s players or Blizzard for not changing WoW to meet the needs and wants of its players?

That’s it guys! I want to than Jason once again for taking the time out of his busy schedule to speak to me and hope to bring you more interviews from some of the big guns in the industry in the future. Pick up a copy of the Mar/April edition of Massive Online Magazine, it will be the last but it should still be out on stands now.

The end of Star Wars Galaxies: A new Hope in SWTOR

Well Dec. 20 came around and it was a significantly important date for the gaming masses who pre-ordered SWTOR and jumped on that new mmo. However, almost lost in all the hoopla bout the launch and the beta testing last month was the demise of the last great Star Wars game. I got wrapped up in work and the Xmas holiday and I almost forgot about Dec.15, which was the date in which SWG went off the mmo grid.

To me, this is a sad event. The loss of any mmorpg game saddens me greatly, especially since a game which lasted as long as SWG had a definite loyal fan base and that just means one less option in the gaming universe. Honestly, no one expected it to last long after the announcement of SWTOR came, but I do recall logging on trying it out and seeing the potential the game had, or to experience the allure it still possessed, despite a diminished population.

The thing is, unlike DAoC, an older game than SWG, this game had nothing unique left to offer the player. People still log on DAoC, and although there are many who feel its past its prime, its unique take on pvp and b.g.s which are still fun to run, make it impossible for me to abandon. I guess what kept many players sticking around basically a doomed game like Galaxies was the community for SWG, the sense of connection we all feel when we’ve invested in a game and have made friends playing it.

I for one, gave up on it after trying the free trial, essentially because the Cantina and a lot of the zones felt practically abandoned. The opposite of  game game like wow or even WAR or DAoC. So R.I.P. SWG, you will be missed.

Failed mmorpgs: It started with a game by EA

I was looking at the mmo timeline found in Bio Break again to see which classic mmorpgs I would like to try next, and also to learn more about the history of the genre of gaming that I love.  It occurred to me that with the new wave of mmorpgs that are coming our way, (Tera, SWTOR, GW2 etc) there is going to be more variety than we have ever had.

Yet, why do games fail? What is it about a specific concept that makes a game a success or a total failure? With something like SWG, it’s pretty obvious that there were factors that led to its demise, one prominent factor being the expiration of the gaming license and SOE’s failure to listen to the gaming community and rolling out the infamous NGE, angering a significant chunk of the player-base.

So in part one of this series of posts examining the failures of some significant mmorpgs, I started with the first “red” on Bio Break’s mmo time line: 2003′s Motor City Online.

MCO can be considered one of the first major failed mmos of the modern era, maybe even the first! (AOL’s Neverwinter Nights does not really count as a failure in my mind and neither did the games before it, as they were pioneering games and their closures had less to do with financial success or other factors and more with the changing landscape of the emerging world wide web)

Would I have played this game? A massively multiplayer online racing game? Probably not. I am more into sci-fi and fantasy based games and even though I tried games like Twisted Metal on the old Ps2, I was never really a huge fan of racing games, with the notable exception of Atari’s ancient Pole Position, but even that game I was not too heavily into.

Let me say that others have had this idea, and it’s amusing to read some of this author’s conclusions regarding the factors leading up to MCO’s demise. I had to chuckle at this: One of the main reasons given by the author for MCO’s failure was its pay to play format. Specifically EA’s $10 a month subscription coupled with a paid box game. Hindsight  proves that the author’s premise may be flawed because countless MMORPGS since have employed the boxed game coupled with a subscription fee, including Blizzard’s beastly “World of Warcraft.”

As we all know, this strategy continues to be employed with success by game developers, so it is highly plausible that the author’s other reasons for MCO’s failure were more on target, namely a lack of advertising and exposure by EA following launch.

What do you all think? Now it’s back to DAoC for me!

Warhammer Online summer project

photo courtesy of funnyjunk.com

I must have had a lot of fun playing Mythic’s Warhammer Online last night because me and my pet thingy were running around messing stuff up for close to three hours. For some reason, I didn’t like this retro-mmo at first, but it has really grown on me. For the purposes of definition, since Bio Break’s mmo timeline considers Mud1 the first classic mmo, and since there are a slew of new mmos in the horizon starting off with the release of RIFT earlier this year leading into releases of SWTOR and GW2, I will refer to retro-mmos  as games between 1980 and about 2008.

But I digress, I always read that No.1: The real strength of WAR was in its pvp, so I figured that if I had that much fun killing stuff while doing what amounted to PVE public quests, then I would most probably enjoy the game’s pvp and RvR, provided I get to that point. In the meantime I think I will be perfectly happy questing and interacting with other players.

No.2: A lot of players consider WAR a huge failure because of its dwindling player base (debuted with more than 60 servers and is down to fewer than 10 now) and its failure to add a third faction to balance the classes. I have no doubt to some these are valid claims, but I have found that few games nowadays are perfect anyway, so I will not nitpick. Just going to enjoy the ride for now.

I was really pleasantly surprised that I warmed up to WAR, considering it has a much different and darker mood than its spiritual predecessor DAoC. When I was looking for a new (old) mmorpg to play this summer I considered both DAoC and going back to wow, but WAR’s new never ending trial insures that I can level up in rank without having to dole out a lot of cash to try out the game, and I really like that. I spoke to some of the players in my guild and they were quick to point out some tips and tricks that I found most useful, the community seems to be as good as the DAoC community and not as bad as wow’s. I’ve decided that as my summer side project I am going to document my progress in this game here, until I get tired of it or until I start playing something else with more regularity.

I will also use this blog for our guild to communicate or share tips with newbie players such as myself, or whatever other need arises.

This does not mean I will stop playing DDO and other games I enjoy. In fact, I was seriously considering venturing back into Stormreach tonight to play with my warforged. Despite some of the shortcomings in Turbine’s game, DDO is still the game I enjoy most for the purposes of grouping.

The Guild season 5 ep 2

For the final part of today’s post, as promised, I bring you a mini-review of Felicia Day’s “The Guild.” I am still a bit miffed that I have to wait two extra days to get my nerd fix of the show, but whateves, I have to deal. Yesterday’s show “Crash Pad” was a little light on the subtext. I mean, the dialogue was still there, (“Macrame is the devil’s handicraft!”) but it seemed this could be because it is still very early into the new season and subplots take awhile to develop. “When did this guild go from playing a game together to talking about feelings and holding each other’s vaginas?” This question was posed by Tink in last season’s second episode, and if you recall back then Clara was telling Zaboo that he had no shot with Codex and should just give up on the idea. My how things have drastically changed, the bulk of this season so far has been dedicated to Codex’s new found feelings fro Zaboo. They should bring back Fox, at least he brought a different element to the more soap operaish-relationship parts of the show. See you guys in game!