If you happen to roam around the MMO blogosphere and news sites, you might have seen some hints and whispers about the possibility of Everquest 3 being a reality.  Some say that has been in production for years while others think it will never be made. People seem to be split on the idea of Everquest 3 seeing the light of day. Personally, I would welcome another Everquest title into the marketplace, but only if it was created in a certain way.

I have mentioned before that the original Everquest is and always will be my best gaming experience of my life. Be that as it may, I can’t see myself ever returning to Everquest, even though I have friends who would like to see me return. The reason is game mechanics. Back in 1999, Everquest was the best game you could play. During those early years, the game played mostly as you thought it should. Due to the lack of other MMO games on the market, we gamers did not have a large frame of reference as to how things could be done.

Other games did eventually come on the market, with Everquest 2 being one of them.  It met with lackluster success at best. It did improve many things over the original version, but it also left many things to be desired in gameplay and UI experience. It took World of Warcraft to show all of us how an MMO can be done right.

If Everquest 3 is indeed on the horizon, I would like to see it play like a cross between WoW and Lord of the Rings Online. Give us a UI that blows our socks off. One that is super simple to start using yet easy to delve into the deeper parts of what is possible. I would also like to see the game go in a much different art direction than current Everquest games. The environment does not need to always look super-realistic. I want the designers to use their imagination and surprise me. Show me something that has not been done before and let me see it without needing to buy a new computer to experience it.

Everquest 3 should take me back to its roots. Don’t take me to a future reality or magically transport me to a moon. Show me the “old west” of Norrath, one that I envisioned in my mind as the game taught me about the Combine Empire. A world more barbaric and yet more civilized at the same time. In other words, show me the lore I have only read about and never seen.

Is there room on the market for another Everquest game? It is difficult to envision three Everquest games operating at the same time. Original Everquest turned 10 years old this year. It obviously is still making a profit or Sony would not keep it running as long as it has. EQ 2 has more subscribers, which one would think brings in more money than EQ 1. Should Sony shut down EQ 1 to make room for EQ 3? It is a tough call, but as they say, it all comes down to money. Just how profitable are these older games? Would a new version generate more revenue?

I hope that Everquest 3 will be released. I also hope that they do it right. Only time will tell.

Yeah, I am still waiting for my new computer to arrive. Not being able to play any game for more than a month is making my fingers itch.  I have, however, had plenty of time to think about what games I want to play going forward.  I am a litle torn on the subject.

My World of Warcraft subscription is still active, even though it is not being used right now.  The easy road says to go back to playing it, but I am getting urges to play other games.  I have a lifetime subscription to Lord of the Rings Online, a game I have not logged into for a long time.  The urge to play LOTRO has been heightened lately by the fact that I have been listening to the LOTR audiobooks again.  I do this every couple of years because I love the books so much.  My only complaint with LOTRO is that I grew weary with all the quests, but if you are not questing, you are wasting your time.  The experience gained from grinding mobs is a pittance compared to what you receive from a quest.

Another option is the Sony Station Pass.  As you probably know, the $30 a month Station Pass allows you to play any of Sony’s MMO’s that you own the software to.  Everquest will ever be my first MMO love.  I played Everquest 2 for awhile, but none of my friends followed me there, so I gave it up.  I also played Pirates of the Burning Sea for a short while.  It grew stale fast.  Star Wars Galaxies is another that I played from launch, but the game destroying NGE update had me running for the exits.  I tried Vanguard again, but as I mentioned on this blog earlier, it still is way too buggy for me.

It could be because I am older now, but nothing in the MMO space gets me very excited these days.  After playing so many of them, it all seems like I’ve been there, done that.  I don’t see much innovation anymore.  Are all the great ideas used up?  I don’t think so, but you can’t tell that from the latest crop of games to be released.  Conan, Warhammer, and Darkfall are more of the same tired ideas that have been used over and over again. The only thing that sets Darkfall apart is the fact that it is so hardcore that most people will never want to play it.

So what is a veteran noob supposed to do?  I think I will start from scratch in LOTRO and see how it goes.  I still need to decide if I stay with WoW or go with the Station Pass.  My computer isn’t due for another couple of weeks, so I have plenty of time to decide.

What could have been…

This was made back around the 2001/2002 timeframe.  I don’t know who put the video together, but they did an incredible job.  It also looks like they were doing some great things with motion capture.

I have returned to working more soul-crushing hours at work, so I haven’t had much time for playing games lately. The fact that Vanguard keeps screwing me over hasn’t exactly drawn me to the computer. That doesn’t, however, keep me from thinking about the games that I play.

Gaming companies keep trying to find the right formula that will allow a game to become as popular as World of Warcraft. They have tried emulating WoW, being completely different from WoW, and trying to be something in between. None of them has worked as well as they had hoped. Well, I have the secret sauce that will make a game even more popular that World of Warcraft. The game companies have shied away from it, but if they want to make the huge dollars, someone will need to do it. What is it, you ask? Why, an MMO based on sex, of course.

Everyone knows that sex sells. Heck, it sells everything from Barbie dolls to fried chicken. Since this is a fact, I am suprised that a company hasn’t jumped on this for a game. I mean, just imagine a high-budget MMO with stellar graphics geared towards the perv in all of us. The social gaming potential is staggering, and in my opinion, the reason why a great many people play and stay a long time.

Imagine, if you will, a 350 pound behemoth, sitting at his computer in a basement somewhere. He will never get laid in the real life. But, what if he could create a customized avatar that made him look like a 20 year old stud muffin? Or reverse the idea, and a female 300 pound goliath could make her avatar look like a young Pamela Anderson. They could meet in a bar, have a few digitized drinks, flirt in text or voice chat, then go back to his/her apartment and do the dirty deed. The stellar graphical engine would allow for some amazing visuals as they live out their wildest fantasies. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t draw a ton (no pun intended) of paying customers.

Oh, but don’t stop there. Design amazing virtual strip clubs, malls, and sex toy shops to titillate their every desire. Allow them to wear whatever they want, whenever they want, so that they can live out an online life they would never be able (unwilling) to do in real life.

The biggest draw, of course, would be the sex. Allow players to have consensual sex in any way they see fit in high graphical detail. It would draw paying customers by the millions.

If you want to be king of the mountain and topple World of Warcraft, a porn MMO is the only thing that has any chance of doing so for quite some time. Will a company be bold enough to do this? I doubt it, but if they did, I would love to be on the design team!

From Kokatu, this picture shows where the left over game boxes of Tabula Rasa go to die.  Myself and most others who tried the game didn’t like it very much.  Still, I always hate to see an MMO fail.  I wouldn’t mind having one of those boxes to keep for old times sake.

I am a Star Trek fan, but I have not followed the development of Star Trek Online.  I seem to automatically assume that any new MMO that comes along is drek warmed over.  Lately, I have not been proven wrong.  Just see Conan and Warhammer for proof.

Cryptic, the company making Star Trek Online, recently released information on the first of many ships to be found in the game.  The NX91001 is a nice looking starship and it has peaked my interest in this game.  The gameplay trailer also looks fantastic.

Will Star Trek Online suck like so many MMO’s these days?  Only time will tell, but I am now very interested where I once was indifferent.

I saw over at Tobold’s, which links to the official site, that Pirates of the Burning Sea will be merging servers so that the total available will drop from eleven to four.  That is sad news indeed, but I can’t say it wasn’t expected.

I hate to see any MMO struggle, but Pirates of the Burning Sea just doesn’t offer enough to keep players interested in the long term.  For one thing, avatar combat is absolutely horrible and woefully inadequate.  The end-game is also lacking in that you basically have only two options: port contention or PVP.

I played Pirates for only a very short time.  While I loved the graphics, the gameplay did not pull me into the game in any way.  I know of several other players who ended up in the same boat (pun intended).

So now Sony has several MMO’s that are struggling.  Pirates, Vanguard, Planetside, and The Matrix are all hurting for subscribers.  It makes me wonder just how many subscribers it takes to make these games worth the expense of keeping them running.  Maybe it is much lower than we all think.

On the upside, Vanguard seems to be getting a second wind.  More and more people are trying it out again.  I will chronicle in upcoming posts about some things I have experienced with it lately, including a move to a different server.  More to come on that later.

–Wolfen

Name any massively multiplayer online game and you will find discussion after discussion about the “end game.”  The end game, for those who have never reached it, is that mythical time when your character has reached the maximum level and doing normal adventuring and questing no longer advances you.  To advance, or grow stronger, you and your guild must begin raiding the most difficult encounters in the game.  Many times they include the toughest foes found in the game, which leads to you consuming huge amounts of hours to defeat them.

Many players consider the end game to be the place to aspire to.  Once there, you defeat big and tough monsters and get rewarded very well with very powerful loot.  The accomplishment felt at completing such an endeavor is great and it feels like you have really accomplished something big.  The problem with this is that in many games you must be at or near maximum level to do these things.  You may be required to have special gear or attributes before you are allowed to join others in attempting the raid.  The end game can be extremely exclusionary.

Why can’t there be end game content at lower levels?  In most games, if you reach the end of level 10, all there is to do is continue on the adventuring path.  Instead, I would like to see a dungeon that requires a force of level 10 players to crawl down into the depths and slay a minor dragon.  I’m not talking about single group content, I’m talking about a full-on raid of low-level players.  Do this every 10 levels and you have one heck of an experience as you level up.  It also prepares new players for raiding at higher levels.

Of course, you must make the dungeon encounter interesting, fun, and in the end, very rewarding. Make the loot the best of what they can acquire at that level range.  Make the experience gained worth the effort expended.  Instead of making a player wait until level 50 to experience the thrill of slaying a dragon, show them early on what it really means to raid a dungeon and come out victorious.  All grand battle stories need not come from maximum level zones.

–Wolfen

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things that can make an MMO truly great is the community that builds up around and in the game.  If game developers can make it so that players want to communicate with each other, and make it very easy to do, then you add an additional draw that keeps people coming back for more.

There is not a single game out there that has it right.  That is not to say that some don’t try, but their attempts have been half ass and weak.  You will see announcements from companies stating that they care about player-run events and that they fully support them, but those good wishes disappear after a couple of weeks and things fall back down to the status quo.

Now Sony has decided to help support player-run events.  This comes about 10 years too late, but what can you do?  I saw this post from Massively, which points to the official announcement, that tells players to run more events and they will come up with more ways to support them.  This probably sounds great to guilds who like to do such things, but I have no doubt that just like in the past, these things will fade away with nothing of substance coming from the game developers.

Speaking of events, some of the neatest moments in my Everquest career was participating in GM run events.  Some of them that followed the lore and made sense game-wise were great and got people talking.  The problem was that the GM events were few and far between, and just like you would expect, eventually stopped altogether.  GM run events are so rare these days that I wonder if they happen at all.  It is a shame because they added flavor to the game and a neat change to the standard day to day MMO grind.

Giving the players some variety gets them enthused about the game.  GM and player-run events create the sense of a living game world where neat things can happen at any moment.  If Joe MaxLevel is running through the newbie yard on auto-run while watching television, and he suddenly gets attacked by a 100 foot tall rooster who shoots laser beams out its eyes, you can be damn sure that word will spread quickly and draw many players into the fun.  It will create buzz that will keep people talking about the event and they will look forward to the next one.  If the developers follow through with a series of them, ane the players keep talking about it, then you have created something special.

Look on any online gaming message board and you will always find at least one thread about how good or bad instancing is.  Some players prefer lots of instancing while others would rather play in a world full of static content.  Each style of game has its merits, but I am here to say that both styles suck.

I started my online gaming career in Ultima Online, but Everquest was the game that really hooked me.  EQ had no instancing at all when it launched.  In fact, I don’t think instancing had been invented yet in any form.  In my opinion, this is what made EQ so great.  If you wanted to go adventure in Lower Guk, you had to go to the same zone as every other player.  You didn’t have the entire zone to yourself.  You had no choice but to interact with other players.  This allowed for the making of friendships (and enemies) that lasted for years.  The social and guild drama brought on by no instancing made the community unique and more aware of itself.

The downside of static content is that zones can get overcrowded.  You may be relegated to camping one small area for hours at a time because the zone is full.  Sometimes people would start lists and you had to wait your turn before getting a group.  Doing that, however, caused even more socialization and communication between players.  It also pissed off a great many players.

The addition of instancing greatly changed the social dynamic of online gaming.  If you want to go crawl a popular dungeon you simply went to the zone and entered your very own instance, where the only people in it are your group or guild.  You have run of the place to do exactly as you wish for as long as you wish with no interference from anyone.  This naturally speeds up progression and ease of advancement.  It also prevents the waiting in line for a spot in the zone.

The downside of instancing is that it removes much of the player socialization that you see in non-instanced games.  Players, for the most part, stay within their guilds and rarely to speak to non-guild members.  I found this to be especially true in World of Warcraft.  Unless I was in a group or a guild, I would have sworn that every player was deaf and mute.  It was also much more difficult to find long lasting friendships in games like these.  Most everyone stayed to him or herself because they could. Reliance on others is at a minimum.  I think this greatly diminishes the social possibilities in a game.

So both have good and bad points to them.  Everquest is the greatest example of a game with static content (although later updates added instancing), while World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and others go the instancing route.  As much as I prefer static content, I know that we will never see a full static content game again.  Humans, as a whole, are incredibly lazy, and games that utilize instancing will always draw more customers.  The games are easier, you don’t have to interact with others as often, and let’s face it, most players think everyone else sucks.

For good or ill, instancing is here to stay.  Any game that uses only static content will fail miserably.  There will not be any going back to the good ol’ days where we walked uphill, both ways, with 1000ms lag, to the zone of our choice.