Evan Sims

So, who hit the WTF switch today?

EA announced that they would be restructuring Mythic (Warhammer Online, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot) and BioWare (Star Warks: The Old Republic, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, …) into a single RPG/MMO development power house. The implications here are pretty huge, though the move isn’t all that surprising given BioWare’s entrance into the MMO arena with SWTOR. EA is also announced they are canning Mark Jacobs, which comes as no surprise given the flack he’s gotten for WAR’s problems. My buddy Ryan pointed out that this means Garriot (UO), McQuiad (EQ) and Jacobs (DAoC) are now all gone. “The MMO gaming Gods are all gone,” as he so eloquently put it. That said, I’m very excited for what this move could mean for Warhammer Online and The Old Republic. BioWare could use the experience on SWTOR, and Mythic could use a fresh perspective on WAR.

Mythic has got to stop the subscription churn they’re seeing right now, and in my opinion the only way to accomplish this is major rebalancing of classes, a complete revamp of the ORVR system and a retail box expansion sooner rather than later. It’s been a few years, but the MMO genre is finally starting to heat up again with some exciting titles on the horizon. It’s going to be survival of the fittest come next year.

Likewise, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media revealed that it has acquired legendary development studio id Software (Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, …) I can’t say I’m surprised here; id Software hasn’t been a big player in the industry for awhile now. For a long time their franchises took second stage creatively to their engine technology, and Epic took that crown away from them many moons ago.

I am so happy right now. My all time favorite MMO is getting a true sequel with a modern game engine. I… I… talk amongst yourselves, I gotta lay down for a bit. Oh God YES.

PS3 console exclusive, also coming to Windows PCs. Target release of 2010.

The most exciting news to come out of the E3 hype bubble so far? Telltale tweeted just minutes ago that they’ll be bringing the classic adventure game Monkey Island back in episodic format, much like they’ve done with Sam & MAX recently.

GROG! GROG! GROG!

Monkey Island sort of embodies a lot of my childhood. It was the first game that made me ask, “how do you make stuff like this?” It was the first game that inspired me to get into game development, so to say I’m excited over this news would be an huge understatement. Of course, given the feedback I’ve been seeing on Twitter and across the web, I’m not at all alone in this.

Ron Gilbert, one of the great minds behind the original Monkey Island (and my digital Lord and savior), blogged about the news as well.

You can already preorder the first episode of the first season, and there’s a lot of awesome bonus perks if you do. I’ll take 3, please!

Developed by Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander) and published by Stardock (The Political Machine, Galactic Civilizations), Demigod is a unique RPG and RTS hybrid that puts you in control of a powerful, God-like being bent on the destruction of the opposing Demigods. By capturing flag points which give buffs, portals that spawn automated minions and upgrading your base and Demigod, your goal is to work your way past the enemy force’s defenses and destroy their base.

You can pick one of 8 Demigods to play as. 4 of these choices are Generals, and the others are Assassins. The Generals are primarily support-type Demigods and buff up their allies, and rely primarily on their minions and allied Demigods to do the damage for them. The assassins are all about direct damage and getting out on the front lines. In either case, as you capture objectives and kill enemies you earn XP and level, and can then spend points in a talent tree to beef your Demigod up with boosted health, increased hitpoints and powerful abilities.

For example; Oak, my Demigod of choice, is a General that isn’t all that impressive when you start a match. However, after leveling and spending your talent points appropriately, he has the ability to capture the souls of nearby defeated enemies and turn them into ghostly, flying units at your command. He can heal all the allies around him when he kills an enemy. He can even become an invincible killing machine for a short time if he’s defeated, giving you a few extra seconds to beat the shit our of that player you were just chasing down.

The maps are straightforward, but beautifully designed and offer ample room for strategy. You always have at least a few routes into the enemy’s base so if a choke point starts to form you can reroute and try to sneak in from a different angle while the enemy is busy. There are also two portals equally spaced between the opposing factions, which frequently become a point of heated conflict as the sides fight over those spawn points for their minions.

Hell hath no fury like a Demigod scorned

The single player and multiplayer experiences are virtually identical, with the exception that the Demigod-based achievements and trinkets you buy don’t carry over between the two. Although there was negative press about the multiplayer experience at launch, I glad to say that I haven’t encountered any issues and am in fact very pleased with the performance in both the networking and engine. Likewise, I’m very impressed with the visual quality and polish to the mechanics of the game.

The only thing I can honestly nitpick about is the limited selection of maps. Will Gas Powered be offering us more for free, or with an expansion? It seems logical that they would, perhaps along with the rumored 2 additional Demigods in development. I’d love to see them release a map editor so the community could develop new offerings, too.

If you’re looking for a fun departure from the everyday RTS and enjoy RPGs, you’ll love Demigod. It’s a brilliantly designed game with a lot of replay value. The digital download is $39.95, so you can’t beat the price either.

Rating:

Following my buddy Ryan’s example, I’m following suit and joining in on the MMO Firsts meme Syp of Bio Break started. I’d love to see more of these going around, cause you really don’t get an opportunity to learn about people’s MMO pasts all that frequently.

"Ultima Online" by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt

First MMO Played?
WorldsAway technically, but Ultima Online was the first true blooded MMO I was involved with.

First Character Class/Role Played?
Mage

First MMO Subscribed For More Than A Consecutive Year?
EverQuest 2

First MMO You Fell In Love With?
Ultima Online

First Guild You Really Felt Attached To?
The Aureus Knights

First Character/Game You Leveled To End Cap?
EverQuest 2

First “Wow” Moment In A MMO?
Ultima Online, upon first logging in. =) After exploring for 15 minutes I really had a moment where I just had to sit back… the world was so detailed, so expansive and so active with other players.

First MMO You Burned Out On?
Asheron’s Call

First MMO You Followed Avidly Prior To Launch?
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

First Time You Felt Truly Noobish In A MMO?
Ultima Online; I wasn’t prepared for the sandbox experience. I had no idea where to start or what to do. I finally managed to fell things out myself and began my life as a lute-toating Mage.

First MMO You Went Alt-Crazy In?
I don’t do alts. Never have, probably never will. I suppose the closest I’d come here would be in City of Heroes, but that’s sort of the point of the game.

Day 3 of Beyond the Sands has arrived, and with it the final set of objectives necessary to complete the Warhammer Online live event. Given the unique, RVR-centered nature of the new Land of the Dead zones, Mythic decided to use this live event to drop players square in the middle of an intense conflict in Thunder Mountain. Pitting both Destruction and Order against each other to complete the objectives of the event, and focusing those efforts in the same region, has created a tremendous battlefield experience that we haven’t encountered in Warhammer before.

Like all Live Events, Mythic essentially charges players with a series of tasks, which are dropped into and listed in player’s Tomes of Knowledge. Quests, kills, exploration points and other objectives make up this task list, and as players progress through them they earn influence, just like in normal Chapters in the game. Each time you reach one of the 3 influence milestones, you unlock a progressively better reward. In Beyond the Sands, you have the opportunity to unlock several new titles, a pocket item (with a rather nice buff) and purple goggles, which when warn allow the player to see randomly spawning treasures in the RVR lakes, and I would suspect in the dungeon when it launches.

All in all, the event took me about 4 hours to complete over the last 3 days. There’s 12 tasks to complete, but a handful of them overlap with one another. The toughest quest involved 10 player kills in the PQ zone, as it requires you to get first-hit on the enemy player before they’re killed. That isn’t easy with the hundreds of players on both sides out there fighting. Still, it doesn’t take long, and I had a lot of fun. Definitely my favorite Live Event so far, and Mythic’s mechanics and general design with these are maturing by leaps and bounds with each release.

So get out there, help your faction secure their Airship to the new zones, and get your snazzy collectibles. It’s worth the time.

When Warhammer Online first launched, Keeps were little more than just another objective on the battlefield. There was little incentive to holding onto them, as they were worth more renown to players to just abandon them, let them flip and then recapture them. As you may recall, it was this situation that caused me to leave the game late last year in what might be described as a rage quit. =)

Luckily, Mythic wasn’t blind to the issue. They introduced improved renown for capturing and defending objectives, and the domination system to push players into defending their captures. The changes they introduced changed the fundamentals of realm vs realm conflict in the game, and for the better. I was pleasantly surprised to see how far Mythic had come when I rejoined the game a month and a half ago.

Still, there is always room for improvement. One thing that has always bothered me about Warhammer is the lack of player ownership in the game. If you’re familiar with me at all, you’ll know that I teethed on the earliest MMOs, on titles like WorldsAway and Ultima Online. The lead designer of UO, Raph Koster, has built a set of “laws” (guidelines based on experience) of MMO design, my favorite of which is:

You have to give players a sense of ownership in the game. This is what will make them stay–it is a “barrier to departure.” Social bonds are not enough, because good social bonds extend outside the game. Instead, it is context. If they can build their own buildings, build a character, own possessions, hold down a job, feel a sense of responsibility to something that cannot be removed from the game–then you have ownership.

This is one aspect that Warhammer severely lacks, and something that kind of shocked me considering the game was developed by the studio currently in charge of the game that inspired that principal, UO itself. There’s no player housing or guild halls (the tavern is not instanced or customizable in anyway) so the extent of ownership in the game is keep claiming.

So, what are the advantages of keep claiming? Your guild banner is prominently displayed, your guild is mentioned in the tooltip on the battlefield map, the defending NPCs have your guild tag and your guild gets a stream of XP towards leveling up. Nice? Sure. But where’s the customization- that basis for that sense of ownership in any game?

Enter Keep Upgrades, the headlining feature in 1.2.1. In this update, every keep will have a Upgrade Merchant NPC at the top level (along with the other NPCs you normally have, i.e. renown trainers.) Guild Leaders and Guild Officers will be able to purchase upgrades to existing keep aspects or add entirely new elements. These purchasables range from boosting the hit points on doors (20% per rank, up to 5 ranks) and enhancing the number and levels of NPC guards to adding Healer NPCs, access to your guild vault and more. Other planned upgrades include “Guild Bind”, which allows players from the claiming guild to respawn inside the keep (this will be a huge game changer) and magical barriers to help absorb damage to the keep doors.

Mythic is also introducing a bonus for max-level guilds, Altars. At Rank 40, guilds can add Divine Favor altars to their claimed keeps. These altars can have up to 5 charges on them at any time, but each charge requires 500 dropped skulls from the enemy faction to be donated to it. Once a charge is ready, a Leader or Officer from the controlling guild can activate these charges, doing a tremendous amount of damage to an invading force.

Needless to say, these changes are going to once again dramatically change the course of the struggle in Warhammer. Keep struggles have always been tough, but they are going to become dramatically more difficult the longer guilds manage to hold on to their claims after 1.2.1. There will also be a renewed interest in getting guilds leveled. Overall, I’m excited to see what kinds of conflicts this new system will breed. I am a little bewildered about the altar system- in particular requiring guild rank 40. I’m not aware of any rank 40 guilds on my server. Heck, there are only a small handful of rank 30s that I know of. Clearly this Altar system is meant as incentive for guilds to level up, but I have to question if this won’t be more harmful than it is positive.

Assuming the system affects ORVR the way I’m imagining it will and keep defense will begin to take days instead of hours, I could see players who have reached the end game leaving their guilds in favor of the highest level ones on their server. A single rank 40 guild on a server could potentially have a monopoly on Tier 4 players. This could do tremendous damage to guild recruitment, and potentially eliminate the formation of new guilds- which is essentially killing the very heart of what Warhammer is.

Why not introduce tiers of Altars, beginning with the same level as the first guild mounts? In my eyes, any guild that’s made it that far deserves more than just more color choices for their mounts. This would ensure that players remain flavorful of their current guilds, and a guild rank that is within reach for those interested in building a new guild in the game.

In any event, I’m excited to see what 1.2.1 holds in store for the future of Warhammer. I’m hopeful it will be a change for the better, and if Mythic makes just a few small tweaks like the ones I’ve suggested here, I have no doubt that it will. I’ll continue to hold out hope for instanced/customizable guild halls and player homes, but this will hold me over until that day arrives. =)

Fellow WCPI member Alufei of The Blue Scribes recently came across a trick on the Alliance forums for enabling a “bloom” effect to the game. Those of you who play Warcraft or EverQuest 2 (or the hordes of other games now supporting this technique) will know just how dramatic an effect this can have on the visual quality of a game.

The trick is to copy a modified DirectX rendering DLL into the same directory as WAR.EXE. Games instinctively look for DirectX DLL’s in their installation directory before falling back to the latest version in your system folders, primarily so that older games can ensure a compatible version is installed with the game and will continue to work years after release. This gives talented developers a means of doing interesting things like this.

I loaded it up this afternoon and I have to say, I love it! It makes the lightmaps really pop and noticeably reduces the jaggies around models. I haven’t noticed any drop in performance for using the effect, either. I’m really curious why Mythic didn’t include this effect in the client itself.

Read more about enabling this bloom effect over at The Blue Scribes, and the original forum thread over on Warhammer Alliance.

The blogosphere is buzzing today about Mythic’s decision to close down a major chunk of the Warhammer servers; merging the players into larger, more active servers. It’s interesting to see the varied ways people are spinning this. The anti-Warhammer and major MMO blogs (most of whom know little about the game, even as they form loosely educated opinions and share them with the world) folks are doom and gloom, declaring this a sign of the end times for WAR. The fanboys are in damage control mode, trying to declare that this is a good move, that the player base is happy about it, and that it will mean good things for WAR in the future.

I’m a WAR player. I love the game. I don’t consider myself a fanboy, but I am an optimist and I try to find the brighter side of things. Therefor, in this case, I lean towards the view of the loyalist bloggers who see this move as a very good thing for the community. More players spread across fewer servers means more RVR action, and dropping the server count down to 17 is going to make for some epically fun struggles.

That said, this is awful press for a game that has already had it’s fair share of it lately. The firings, the frequent downtime, the dramatically lower subscriber numbers than Mythic was (foolishly publicly) hoping for, and now this. People who don’t have a first hand account of the game are going to see this latest move as another nail in the coffin. That, of course, isn’t the case; but it makes sense for the world to see it as such. WAR is doing fine on subscribers, even if those numbers are far lesser than they had wished for. Mythic grossly overestimated the amount of servers they needed, and this is the result we’re seeing for it today: the servers simply aren’t necessary, so it’s time to downsize. The writing for this has been on the wall for a long time, with one voluntary server move after another being announced. It was only a matter of time for them to start shutting down these “legacy” servers with so few players.

So, don’t panic. WAR isn’t going anywhere- they’re just scaling back to a more realistic server count. Take what you’re reading out there with a grain of salt.

Another tip for you folks of the WAAAGH persuasion: do you hate having to re-enter your account password into the patcher each time you start? There’s a simple XML hack to bypass that.

Open up C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsWarhammer Online – Age of Reckoningpatch_user.xml in your favorite text editor. There’s only a couple lines of code.

All we need to do is add a password attribute there, like so:

Obviously replacing “account username” and “account password” with your appropriate credentials. Save the file and launch the patcher. Your password will be all filed out for you, and all you need to do is press OK. Simple, eh?