Phasing - Why I love it, why it is amazing, and why it is shittyI

I love Phasing, it's great. My character feels like they are progressing through some form of time, it also feels like I'm having some form of affect on the world as a whole. It completely lends itself to narrating a story that the Developers want to, and have to tell, especially within an IP such as WoW. It allows for me, as a player, to do that "Burn a Barn" quest, and not see it switch between painted on flames to completely OK in mere moments. No, when implemented with certain quests, you will after a certain point, always see that barn burning, or better yet, burnt down from said fire.

Why I think it is amazing is in the same vein of thought. Not many, if any, MMORPG's have or had a system similar to this, where the actual game world changed through the player and his or her groups actions. It is really believeable and many times puts me in the story, right there in the action. It captures that storytelling feel of Warcraft 3 and my immersion into the game lore as a whole. Instead of in theory of doing these quests, the alliance is pushing ahead, I now in fact do see the forces of the scourge being whittled away in weakening defenses, and watch as the lines incrementally get pushed back through my efforts. This gives me a great feeling of accomplishment, that I did infact achieve something with that quest instead of an arbitrary number floating accross my screen telling my how much closer I am to my Exp or Gold goals.

Why I hate it, many times it is used to very small effect, and in not so noticeable ways up until you hit the Icecrown and Storm Peak areas. up until that point there is only a few minor changes here and there. The Dragonblight quest for Wrathgate being the very very prominent exception to this. Another large problem is, if a guildy or friend is before this pivotal point, as far as I know, I cannot interact with that person in the specific area s/he needs help with, since in my world, the alliance has already pushed back the scourge and defeated Elite Mob XXYZZ thanks to my help. This is very promlematic and a work around to circumvent the phasing to allow higher ups to help their friends, who many be completely boned in completing their quest due to lack of people.

Now in Blizzards defense, none of the quests that trigger a phasing event, to my knowledge, require a group, whilst they do pit you against terrible elites, many times they also supply a horn of some sort to allow you to call for a similarly leveled, compared to the enemy elite, ally character. Though I still feel that a -just in case- clause should be created and an ability to go back in time to help an ally would be extremely useful.

In other news, I hit level 80 on my Death Knight, and spent only a couple days working on my Epic Flyer training which I was able to achieve in short order. I didn't farm and work the Auction House at all with this character, though I did get a loaner of 1,000gold from my other character as seed money for bags and such. Though even without that seed money it would have only taken me 2 or 3 more days to get the gold required. As accoridng to my stastics on the armory I was making somewhere in the area of 400-450 gold a day.

Anyways, happy questing/pvping/pveing.

~Xi

The importance of a responsive UI

Now that I've gone back to WoW I can really say what bugged me about WAR's UI. It wasn't responsive enough for me. In WAR there was an innate set up time between my hitting a button (or trying to activate a skill) and the animation occuring or the game even registering the press at all. This got annoying, extremely so. I never felt the even minor connection of me pressing a button and getting an immediate effect visible with my avatar.

Even if it is simply me starting a cast sequence, I immediately see this happen in WoW on a mage, or feel the THUNK of my weapon when I hit that skill. Even though both games share the same innate Global Cooldown timer of 1.5 seconds, WoW just FEELS more responsive all the time. Sluggishness just doesn't sit well with me.

~Xi

Do I have (a) Class? (also levels!)

I like class/job systems in games, in fact I love them. But I hate being locked into one class for my character forever. Why should I be limited in such a way? Why can't I dabble in some Priest skills on my warrior, and lose some subsequent (skill?) levels in warrior to do so.

I think FFXI sort of got things right with their Job/Subjob system. While having a terrible problem of people Min/Maxing and pigeon holing certain job combination's as "The Best", the idea behind it is some terribly appealing. In fact this is probably the only reason I have any love for the game, because aside from the fun job system, the leveling, horrible grind, and need for a group to be effective is a huge turn off. Though, they have alleviated some of the problem by implementing a mentor system.

Which leads me to my other topic...

Why oh WHY don't more games with in a leveled environment implement the Sidekick and exemplar type system that City of Heroes/Villains have had since release?!

One of the BIGGEST turn offs for myself and many friends is when one person slowly, or quickly, pulls ahead or falls behind the pack. The people in front get tired of having to wait for everyone to catch up and either end up choosing to roll an alt to play with their friends, or completely leave them in the dust for end game. The opposite is true for those with very little time to play, they get bored of not being able to group and tend to quickly lose interest in the game, at least this is what I've experienced and witnessed.

It would cause a much more widespread appeal in WoW and WAR if I'd be able to use my main character, for example, and roll with my lowbie buddy gettnig started and just have fun with them questing and doing whatever they felt like. Instead, right now I have to roll an alt which I may not like to do, or cannot do so due to lack of space on the server/my account. What is even more strange is that we are not even seeing a trend to lessen the impact of this effect, we're in fact making this much more of an effect by effectively raising the cap in WoW 10 levels every expansion (so far), Or creating a huge amount of levels from the get go (AoC), and even worse, not having a truely amazing impact on the character growth per level.

That's it for today, although, I'll probably revisit this topic later, just to further my thought process on a possible fix or just to rant.

~Xi

MMORPG Design Idea

One thing that I have always enjoyed about MMORPG's is housing. We started these games with housing in UO, SWG, and various other ones, and then summarily lost this come launch of WoW, and the clones thereafter. With WoW it was only acceptable at release, because they said they planned on potentially releasing an expansion with housing. There was also the catch that the game was extremely sculpted and the potential for playerhousing urban crawl would destroy the feel of the world.

With later MMORPG launches the issue of player housing has been a major topic of debate for potential buyers of the game. Many games before release tout that they may or may not have housing at release, or will launch it at a later date. This is, personally, a problem. One of the best ways you can keep a player coming back is not the quest, level, or exploration aspects, but rather the social parts, such as crafting, housing, and the like. Without this cornerstone of the original MMORPG idea the games are a shadow of what they were before.

This isn't a hit on the many mechanics games like WoW have. On the contrary, I find WoW and the others to be extremely fun, but they always have that X factor, the catalyst that keeps many people hooked for a year or longer missing. I guess, in closing I'm trying to say that for me the X factor is is the Socialbility in the games.

What, dear reader(s) is your X factor in games?

~Xi

Social Systems

What are social systems? To me they are the various tools used to create a thriving community. This could range from the chatbox itself to the crafting system and economy set up of the game. Though there is another part of this system that I feel most newer MMORPGs have ignored these social systems to instead further the leveling and combat systems.

The problem with this, is simply put, that all new MMORPGs have proven that they can make a great combat engine. So why not take a simple design for combat that has been either done before or reworked, such as in Age of Conan, and then create a new bar for the various social systems.

This is generally my focus in MMORPGs since they recieve the least amount of attention in order to draw the lowest common denomenator to recieve the highest subscription numbers. The problem with this mentality is that a "small" subscription base of say 200,000 people at $15/month is still an extremely large amount of income every month for any company. Sure, a company would love to be the blockbuster hit World of Warcraft is with their 10 million subscriber base, but that doesn't mean they got it all right. It just means they got their game in as simple terms as the general populace could understand.

Whatever the end result, I'll always give a game a chance to show its true colors before shelving it.

~Xi

Caught up in WoW

Wrath of the Lich King content and the Death Knight class are both amazing. The new content and zones in WotLK are polished to a freaking HDR bloom. That is all.

~Xi