The Gospel of GW2

I was looking for some information on the changing business structures of MMORPGs when I ran across this post by video-game blogger/software developer known as Taugrim. In the post, Taugrim examines the business-side of MMORPGs and proposes a move towards horizontal scaling. Horizontal scaling, according to Taugrim, is a structure "where new characters have a baseline set of necessary tools and progressing your character is about broadening your capabilities instead of centering on gear acquisition". He identifies Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World as games that scale vertically (at least in some respects).

Since I am already playing The Secret World for this research project, I decided to see what Guild Wars 2 was all about.

The first thing I did was watch the "Guild Wars 2 Manifesto", a video mission-statement released by ArenaNet.

It sounded pretty exciting (and the "no subscription fee" aspect of the game made it even more appealing), so I bought it. (And don't worry, dear Mac users: they are currently running the Mac beta! Soon, Guild Wars 2 can be yours!)

Horizontally scaled MMOs are the greatest thing ever.

For the next few posts, I will examine some core components of MMORPGs, comparing and contrasting my past experiences in vertically-scaled games (World of Warcraft and Star Trek: Online) with my current experiences in horizontally scaled games (The Secret World (TSW) and Guild Wars 2 (GW2)).

However, I want to use the rest of this post to discuss my favorite part of GW2: group combat.

In GW2, a variety of traditional end-game content has been spread throughout the game world. In most MMORPGs, for example, end-game content (usually raids) involve completing a specific series of events in a large group in order to eventually fight and vanquish a Big Bad Boss. In GW2, raid-type events exist in each zone of the map. For example, consider this screencap (taken earlier today):

At this moment in the game, I was fighting against the final Big Bad Boss in a chain of events in which the PCs and some NPC soldiers assaulted a Centaur base. In a chain of four or five progressive events, we routed the Centaurs from their base and took control, defended it from invasion forces, defeated the Big Bad Boss's minions (three giant war dog-like things and a massive earth elemental). Afterwards, the Big Bad Boss lost his invulnerability, descended to the pictured area, and all hell broke loose. As the battle progressed, more PCs arrived to lend a hand and, eventually, the Centaurs were routed.

I love GW2's combat system primarily because it promotes cooperation rather than competition. Every area has quests like this one and many of them can only be completed with a large group of players. In many cases, if there are not enough PCs at the battle, someone will call for additional support via Zone Chat (and, more than once, I have answered the call).

Cooperation is necessary in the Big Boss Battles for a few reasons. First, it is always necessary to resurrect (rez) allies during any of the big battles (and everyone has the capability to revive an ally, given enough time). In one group battle against a mean-spirited Giant, for example, over half of the PCs had been taken out by a repeated stomp attack. The rest of us split into two groups: those who would draw the giant away from our fallen comrades and most likely be the next set of corpses, and those who would swoop in after he had moved in an attempt to rez as many as possible.  In fact, it is surprising how often another player has moved away from combat (or has stopped heading towards combat) and taken the time to rez me (or assist in my fight against death).

Second, cooperation is fostered through the combo system embedded within combat. Some class and weapon combinations (such as a Mesmer with a staff, for example) have abilities that create a "combo field", marked by a line or a circle. In the screen-cap above, the purple circle surrounding the Big Bad Boss is a Mesmer combo-field. Once the combo-field is placed, any character (if positioned properly) can use a combo finisher skill to build an attack off of the combo field. This can also be seen in the above screencap (the grey "Confusion" heart indicates that I just completed a combo off of the established field; consequently, my attack applied the "Confusion" condition to the enemy it hit).

In many cases, a well-timed combo-field has made the difference between success and failure. For example, in the Big Battle against Gargantua (a massive spider), the PCs have a set time limit during which they can slay Gargantua and save the Captain. Throughout the battle, Gargantua becomes invulnerable and heals fully, making the battle a true fight against the clock. In the most recent Gargantua battle I participated in, Gargantua had approximately 1/4 of her life left, but we only had about 45 seconds to complete the mission. Another Mesmer dropped a combo field that had the additional side effect of increasing attack speed for all allies and slowing all enemies in the circle. Not only did the field create a ridiculous amount of combos, it also gave us the speed we needed to complete the quest before Gargantua ate the Captain: we only had 2 seconds left on the clock when Gargantua finally died.

And here are a couple more screencaps from group combat!

Character Quandries, Dual Blogging

I've given up on Alanna for a few reasons.

First, while my build was pretty cool, how I allocated ability and skill points made her fairly ineffective at kiting (an essential survival skill for DPS characters). While I am, by no means, an expert at kiting, I have played many DPS characters in (MMO)RPGs, and I can usually do it somewhat effectively; however, for some reason, Alanna spent more time dying and searching for her corpse than she did fighting against the rising darkness.

So I made a new character, picked a different faction, and created a new build. His name is Eoin "Cross-Hatch" Wilcester of the Templars. He is the first male character I have played in an (MMO)RPG in at least six years (although, to be honest, I can't remember the last time I created a male character). He wields an Assault Rifle and Chaos Magic, and his skills are split between AoEs used to fight mobs and high-damage solo attacks. So far, his balance is perfect.

Perhaps the best thing about creating a second character is that I could pay more attention to the beginning sequences (even though the Templars have different cut scenes, characters, and dialogue than the Illuminati). Specifically, I made a point to look at the phone that the Templars gave to my character. While it did not surprise me that it was a smartphone (of what variety is unclear), it had not occurred to me how important this fact was for understanding the construction of the game until I recognized it as such.  For example, quests are recorded and turned in by using the phone to submit reports to the bosses in whichever faction. Presumably, the quest coordinates on the mini-map are located in the smart phone (while the large, full screen map is paper). And, as mentioned before, the player has access to an in-game internet browser in order to assist with the investigation quests. This, also, can happen through a smart phone. In fact, the current investigation quest I am working on directed me to go to this website (homepage here). A previous quest had asked me to use the employee database to figure out the name of one dead man's wife so that I could access the files on his laptop.

This continual blending of the in-game and out-game worlds is unique in The Secret World: because it is part of the modern fantasy/supernatural genre, the game asks the player to use skills that are prominent parts of normative offline behavior: using one's iPhone or Android to search Google; relying on GPS satellites and map programs for directions to unfamiliar places; receiving, sending, and writing e-mails, texts, or other forms of communication.

So, in an effort to explore this intersection, I have decided to add on a second blogging project and begin a third (and final) character: Quinn Pryce, a member of the Dragon. As I play the game (and Quinn progresses through the story line), I am going to keep blogging about gameplay and other more scholarly/autoethnographic thoughts here. However, I am going to pair this blogging with some in-game blogging written from Quinn's perspective (taking advantage of that 'smartphone' technology). I am doing this for a few reasons. First, I have not flexed my creative writing muscles in a while, and this is a good opportunity to begin to do so. Second, I am curious how this project of 'inhabiting' Quinn's skin will affect my own experiences as a gamer. And third, I want to further complicate the in-game, out-game boundaries.

So, look for a link to be added on the sidebar of this blog to Quinn's blog, as soon as I get around to making him a Gmail account.
 
Glossary (For anyone who needs it):

DPS: damage-per-second; generally refers to a character whose build focuses on dealing damage. In the dungeon-crawl system (made popular by World of Warcraft), the meta-game classes include DPS, tank (built towards survivability), and healers (who are fairly obvious). DPS tend to be the most popular, as well as the easiest to play in a raid or dungeon setting, while tanks and healers require precise play.

Kiting: Refers to the general strategy of DPS characters playing in solo (or, sometimes, in group play). Essentially, the DPS character attacks the mob/boss while constantly staying in motion in order to avoid taking damage (hence, the character strings along the mobs/boss like a kite).

Premeditated Creation, Puzzle Solving Wonder

Now that I have started playing The Secret World, I could not be happier with my game choice.

It started with the very beginning of the game: choosing a faction. In The Secret World, the player chooses between three possible factions: the Illuminati ("Sex, Drugs, and Rockefeller"), the Knights Templar ("Deliverance From Evil"), or the Dragon ("The Art of Chaos"). Each faction has a different home location (New York City, London, and Seoul, respectively), a different mission, and a different relationship to the in-game events.

Choosing a faction was an incredibly difficult decision. Unlike other (MMO)RPGs that I have played, I wanted to embrace premeditated character creation this time around. In other words, rather than simply creating a junk character to get used to the mechanics, I wanted to start with a well-thought out character from the beginning.In the past few weeks, I've been exploring The Secret World's skill and ability system, reading through descriptions of both active and passive skills, skimming the artwork and background information on each faction, trying to create a history for my character to make her feel more real.

But all of this preparation did not help me make the choice.

When creating a new character, the first screen shows the icons for each faction, it's tagline, and the opportunity to watch the introductory video for the faction. Naturally, I watched all three faction videos again, hoping that one faction would suddenly take the lead. Unfortunately, no such thing happened. The Illuminati is concerned primarily with power

I ended up rolling a d4 (Table-top RPG lingo for a four-sided die). I rolled a one: the Illuminati.

After that, it was simple to connect the dots for my character: because The Secret World has fairly limited amounts of face and clothing customization, the actual design went fairly quickly. Dark hair, wrapped up in a bun to keep it out of her face while she slings magic, fights with a sword, or blasts the baddies with a shotgun. Tasteful makeup that matched her skintone. Clothing that one could easily fight in: a jacket, dress shirt, jeans, and some Converse. Glasses (because glasses are cool).And then a name.

And thus, Alanna Christiansen, newest member of the Illuminati, dropped out of grad school and decided that the best way to fight the patriarchy  was to become the baddest bitch in town, pairing blood magic with claw weapons. (I'm not going to lie, my skills pairing was inspired by two sources: the film Ginger Snaps (2000), and The Secret World's ability deck for the Thaumaturge).

EDIT: After a few hours of game play, Alanna's look wasn't really working for me. I bought some credits for the item store, and refitted her in black jeans, buckled ball-crushing boots, a grey double-breasted trenchcoat, some welder's goggles, and some red fingerless gloves.

But none of this was even as exciting as the puzzles within the game. For example, I am about to start a long mission/quest during which I will need to trace Illuminati iconography across an entire town to uncover the organization's secret history. I was ready for a long, difficult quest when a Tutorial Hint popped up and informed me that The Secret World has a built in internet browser to assist in doing the necessary research to complete the puzzle quests.

I am now going to take a break and play through some of the quest before I continue on this line of thought.
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The main part of the puzzle quest was riddles: after following the iconography from the Church to the Pier, I had to crack a riddle in order to learn the next location; and, after I found the correct location, I had to break a second riddle. The use of the in-game browser was critical to finishing the quest. While it also allows for players to access walk-throughs in game, thus enabling the circumvention of the actual puzzle, access to Google facilitated the solution of the riddles. For example, the riddle I was particularly proud of cracking was:

"Time is the province of Kings and Gods. The hands of time point to truths written by kings in the words of God. The path is open to the enlightened."

The solution to this riddle required that the player critically examine the environment around her/him to gain the additional clues, and then use Google to solve the riddle. (Specifically, in this case, a clock in the Town Hall was set at 10:10, which referred to the biblical Chapter 10, Verse 10 in 1 Kings, which reads ""And she gave the king 120 talents[b] of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon." Through paying attention to cut scenes, lore, and other sources of information in the game, I knew that the first governor of the location was named Solomon Priest; consequently, his home was the next location. Then, "120" was the keycode to enter the basement of the house.) While this has not been the only investigative/puzzle quest I've undertaken, it has been by far the most thrilling (and the most difficult). But this points to my favorite facet of The Secret World's gameplay: unlike other (MMO)RPGs, The Secret World rarely spells anything out clearly; it is up to the player to think through the quests (rather than just aimlessly slaughter mobs of monsters).

Newest Patch for STO

I started playing again earlier this week and, to my surprise, STO had the biggest patch so far!

While I haven't catalogued or experience all of the changes yet, I will go ahead and list what I have noticed/encountered/experienced, for I feel that these changes point towards two interesting trends. First, from what I have gathered through the grapevine of MMORPG news sources, both STO and World of Warcraft have been preparing for the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic by creating large patches that have added new game elements. Second, STO is also preparing to move to a Free-to-Play (FTP) system in January.

So, without further ado, some of the changes with the new patch:
- The currency system has been simplified, to a certain extent. Cryptic (the game makers) have introduced Dilithium crystals which, as far as I can tell, function as a major currency form in the game world. I do know that the dilithium crystals can be turned into c-points (the game maker's currency that one normally has to purchase with real money) to allow users to purchase upgraded merchandise through the online store without having to throw money at the company.
- There has been a large increase in daily quests; these are primarily run through the in-game calendar system, which charts the progression of various phenomena within the game universe on an hourly basis. Earlier today, I participated in the "Star Fleet Academy" daily quest; for an hour, I ran around the area scanning anomolies in an effort to earn dilithium crystals. There are also times when farming resources yields double the amount, when one can compete in a race around the galaxy to earn in-game currency, and when specific large bad guys attack various settled places.
- The quests have been sorted by type to enable easier access; specifically, the quests relevant to specific "seasons" (like a television show's seasons) have now been sorted clearly into a new interface that allows one to access all five season's quest trees.
- The game play has been simplified (skill trees are less diverse, allowing the player to specialize more broadly) and has been made more complicated (now the player must also deal with assigning on duty crew to specific tasks that can benefit your ship/crew in combat situations).

For the most part, I am pleased with these changes; they have addressed some of my problems with the game and enabled the game play to become faster. I'll have more opinions in the near future, I am sure.

Mods in the Game

Well, looking back on my posts thus far, it seems like I am pretty hard on World of Warcraft (for a variety of reasons which I did my best to explain).

However, I just achieved the rank of Commander in STO (which included a new ship!) as well as upgrades on my weapon systems, my bridge crew's abilities, and my own abilities.

In other words, the already unwieldy amount of skills to keep track of during PvE gameplay has just increased drastically.

In STO, you can assign your skills to specific key combinations (the numbers 0-9, ctrl+0-9, and alt+0-9) and it really just becomes a game of memorization to remember which combinations are which skills or attacks, as well as what skills need to be used before specific attacks. It becomes extremely complicated. For example, in every space battle I fought before I got this new ship, my open gambit was the following key strokes:

ctrl+1: Directed Energy Modulation (which helps energy weapons to penetrate ship shields)
ctrl+4: Rotate Shield Frequencies (which helps reduce the damage taken to ones own ship)
6: Tachyon Beam (which depletes the opponent's shields)
5: High Yield (which increases the damage of the next torpedo attack)
1: Phaser Cannons (which is an attack)
2: Quantum Torpedo (which is an attack)

At various points throughout the battle, I would not only  need to reuse ctrl+1 and ctrl+4 as they came off of cooldown, but also use a variety of other skills (all of which are assigned similar key strokes).

This is, to a certain extent, simply how these games work: you either have to think about the button combinations or you hit them by reflex. However, one of the greatest innovations and benefits of World of Warcraft, in my opinion, is the ability for meta-game modification of the interfaces themselves as well as the construction of skills. In the case of the former, various mods have been programmed by gamers and can be integrated into ones own WoW interface that alter how one interacts with the information. When I played a Death Knight, for example, I downloaded a mod that altered how my HP and Runes (the equivalent to magical power for the class) were displayed so that it was more prominent and allowed me to better plan what skills I was using. I also downloaded one of many different skill bar mods that altered how one could organize skills and items for gameplay. In the case of the latter, it is possible to construct skill macros that will utilize certain skills and attacks in a preconfigured order. If the proper attack sequence, for example, required one to press "5" and then "2", one could simply construct a macro that would cast the spell associated with "5" and then automatically follow it with the skill associated with "2", thus decreasing the keystrokes necessary for the attack sequence.

I wish that STO had either of these functions. (Maybe it does, and I just haven't figured out how to use them yet; I have been trying to keep myself from using meta-game sources in order to preserve my own interactions with the game world)

Crafting!

I just figured out how to craft things (also known as conducting "research and development" in the Star Trek Online universe).

Fortunately, I have been hanging on to my mats for so long that I got to go on a crafting spree.

Additionally, I discovered that one can generally craft better equipment for one's character and starship than one can purchase. Maybe I'll stop wasting all my merits and energy credits at the stores now that I understand how the process works.

The Silence

It's really really quiet in the world of Star Trek Online. Well, if you include the sound effects, the music, and the other in-game noises, there's always a background of space clicks and beeps, some scary drum music that means battle, and the rush of warp engines powering up.

But there really is not a significant amount of chatter.

Coming from World of Warcraft, I was initially glad to get away from the incessant trolling of the chat bars, the neverending use of derogatory language, the constant stream of mispelled words flowing across the lower left corner of my screen.

But now, I actually am starting to miss it.

I'm not sure if the lack of chatter is because of the low population of players (compared to WoW, STO has barely any!), or simply because I am not a high enough level to get missions in the more populated zones. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have yet to joing a Fleet (STO's equivalent of a guild). Either way, it is distressing me, and I am not really sure why.

I am an avid RPG player. I've spent months on end playing various games, many of which are similar in structure to STO and WoW. Maybe the anxiety about silence is coming from the simple distinction between MMORPG and a standard RPG: in the former, you know that there are other people out there, and you can see them; in the latter, there is no one else, so the lack of chat is an inherent part of the game's structure.

The social anxiety is pushing me towards exploring different times at which I should play the game. Perhaps on weekends, or late at night there are more people on the server who might be chatting more. Perhaps it is just a part of STO: people are less likely in this game to chat randomly about things that don't particularly matter.

It's not so much that I want people to talk to me; rather, I miss having that constant hum in the background.