SWTOR in Australia

At the beginning of this month, BioWare announced that they would be turning off the Asia Pacific servers for Star Wars The Old Republic, and giving all those who play on those servers a free transfer to a North American server of their choice. It's been a long time coming, and seems to indicate that BioWare is trying to cut the costs of running servers for a game that has been slowly losing interest among the MMO community. So for all of us Australian gamers, what went wrong?

To start with TOR was delayed for release in Australia by BioWare. The rest of the world got the game on December 20 2011, over 3 months before Australians got the chance to purchase the game (1 March 2012). As we have seen with Microsoft's recent 180 with the XB1 (you can now game offline and it is region free), fans of a certain thing hate to get it released later than anyone else. Add to this the idea that gamers often have friends overseas who they play with and you have a recipe for disgruntled gamers who can't join mates on launch day, leaving them to play catch up. Throw in the fact that TOR was one of the most hyped releases of 2011 and you have downright rage from some fans.

Then there was the end game content. I don't think BioWare truly understood just how fast some people reach end game in MMOs. I personally have always been one of the type to take the time to see the sights in a game, levelling slowly, but I have a certain friend (you know who you are) who usually hits max level in games a heck of a lot faster than I ever could. His reports of the early end game? Bland, boredom and lack of any real content. As BioWare had chosen to completely voice act everything in the MMO, they also needed time to add more end game content, something that they struggled to do at first.

A report in April 2012 revealed that the MMO had likely dropped from 1.7 million subs to 1.25 million, as people were hitting the end game and finding a distinct lack of things to do. A few days later, and BioWare deployed the Rakghoul Plague event in an attempt to keep players logging in as peak concurrent user numbers dropped.

Finally there was the announcement of TOR going free to play in late July 2012. Usually a move that sets alarm bells off in my head, going free to play signaled that BioWare wasn't happy with how many people had remained subscribed and wanted to entice more people to play the game. Interestingly they didn't restrict the most highly rated part of the game, the fully voice acted story line of the character you play, opting to rely on cosmetic item sales and an optional subscription.

It has been an extremely rocky path for SWTOR, going from one of the most hyped games of 2011 to one of the fastest to lose subscriber numbers, culminating in going to free to play. Let's hope that other MMO developers learn from the mistakes of SWTOR, especially in the Australian market.

As always,
GAME ON!

Star Wars: Battlefront

So at E3 this video was shown:

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to dance around like a fanboy.

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #2

That's right folks, its time for another Random Ramblings! To start off today, we have something to do with Eve.

Eve's New Gatejump Animation

Eve Online's latest expansion Odyssey was released this week and one of the changes included was a very slick new gatejump animation. It completely removed the black screen and loading bar that we have had for the last ten years, replacing it with something that looks like the animation used in Stargate. Well as with any changes to Eve, some people got mad about it and a forum thread was made. Actually several forum threads, with complaints ranging from the obvious motion sickness, to the ridiculous lagging when multiboxing complaint. I can only feel for the devs at CCP for this one, as I was one of the people cheering in my room watching the fanfest stream when they announced it. Actually it reminds me of this:

xkcd Comic. Written and illustrated Randall Monroe

Yep no matter the change, there is always going to be someone demanding that you turn back on a redundant option.

Receiver

I had seen a couple of videos about this little game by Wolfire Games, so I picked it up on Steam. As someone who has always liked firearms in real life and constantly had arguments with less informed people who think games teach you how to operate them, I might have to eat my words after this game has come out. There are 3 guns at this point: the Glock 17, Colt M1911, and a revolver of some sort, all well designed and pretty close to their real life counterparts. 

As far as gameplay goes, the actual operation of the guns is almost perfect. Simple things like manipulating the slide to see how many bullets are inside, or to empty the clip without firing, feel just like the real thing. If you have any interest in firearms, I'd recommend picking it up to see what operating a handgun is really like. If you play Call of Duty or Battlefield, definitely give it a go to see what you would actually have to do to get those pistol kills in game. Plus for $5, you can experience some storytelling that I found very unique.

X-Box One

So I am going to break my normal focus on PC games to talk a little about the X-Box One. As I have mentioned in the past, I do play games from time to time on my 360, usually just single player games that I don't need to really focus on. Part of this means that I don't have it hooked up to the internet. Microsoft recently released this article to highlight the online features of the XB1. In particular something that we kind of already knew was highlighted.

With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies. 

So there it is... We now need to "phone home" every 24 hours to keep gaming, otherwise the console becomes a very expensive Blue-Ray player or TV decoder. Now I realise that this is all part of Microsofts new online media hub vision for the One, but is this really necessary? Why couldn't it be once a week, or even once a month?

Part of the reason that I don't want to be always online with this device is the way they handle the Skype integration. If I am at the PC then I am more than willing to be social, but when I am playing on my console, I don't want to be interrupted by friends or family. I want to play a game on my own, or with the friend who is sitting next to me.

Another worrying thing is an article where Microsoft clearly state they won't be focusing on "traditional desktop PC games." So does this mean that we might not be seeing anything actually new from the Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, Halo (for PC) and Gears of Wars (also for PC) franchises anytime soon? At this point things aren't looking good, but only time will tell.

And that concludes the second Random Ramblings. As always:

GAME ON!

Entitlement in Gaming

Eve was down over the weekend. Not CCP's fault; they were the victims of a DDOS attack by a currently unknown group. CCP also found a vulnerability that that allowed the person access to some back end functions of the server, which they confirmed had no connection to any of the personal information of players.

Many of us had an Odyssey outside on the weekend.

Soon after the website services were restored, the forums were ablaze with people doing one of two things: demanding something from CCP to compensate for the downtime, or encouraging CCP to not give the players anything (the logic being that maybe people will try to DDOS the server more often so as to get free stuff). I personally didn't care, and the additional 50,000 skill points we were eventually given were used immediately to save some time on Marketing V. But during the time I spent of the forums, I saw the word "entitlement" being thrown around a lot.

Entitlement gets thrown around an awful lot in the gaming industry, by players, developers and publishers. Unfortunately it seems to have become somewhat of a meme response when someone is complaining about anything at all in a game. But the truth is, the meaning of the word has been lost because of this usage as a derogatory term. The dictionary definition of entitlement is a guarantee that you will get benefits based on a contract or law. There is also a sense of entitlement that involves believing that you deserve a benefit without a law or principle to back your stand up.

Gamer entitlement is something that developers like to throw around a lot to describe any discontent or complaints about their game. The Mass Effect 3 ending rage showed that certain people within the industry are very disconnected from what gamers expect from developers regarding promises. When BioWare touted that their game would feature a storyline where choices the player made would influence the ending, but actually involved an A, B or C choice, they showed just how much they didn't care about what people thought. Then when players complained, they threw the "Oh you're just entitled" argument back at them.

It's not entitlement to ask for a certain level of quality from a developer in a game. If a car company released a car that was faulty from factory, it's certainly wouldn't be called entitlement to demand that it is repaired at no cost. So why is it that developers and publishers seem to think that it's fine to do this? Perhaps they are trying to lessen the backlash they get for day 1 DLC. Or maybe they simply don't like criticism of their games.

Then you come to the more prevalent type of entitlement among gamers, particularly MMO players. The entitlement where they say, "I am paying for this game, so my character or class should be buffed, the content should be easier, rewards better, etc." In my opinion, this is the type of entitlement that has slowly crept into Eve, where you will see two different players arguing completely opposite points because they play in different areas. Miners demanding that they be able to mine without fear of ganks, and gankers demanding that they be able to gank. In these cases developers have to walk a fine line. I can only imagine how hard it is to find that balance between easy and hard, with the right rewards for each.

In conclusion, if you feel that you deserve something in a game, run it through a filter first. Ask yourself exactly why you want this, and how it would affect the rest of the game. If it passes all the checks, then post/petition/email and see what others think. But posting a rage post is a good way for people like me to come and shut you down. I will always listen to a well reasoned and constructed argument and usually accept whatever they have to say, and then post constructively. Whine and rage, and most people like me will tell you where to go with your idea.

As always,

GAME ON!