EQ2 – Would You Free-To-Play It?

Post soundtrack: “Gonna Make You An Offer You Can’t Refuse” by Jimmy Helms

Well, I have to admit this news caught me off-guard.  Everquest 2 will be offering free-to-play servers, going live (in an open-beta with no character wipes kind of way) next month.  Welcome to the brave new world of Everquest II Extended.

It looks like they’re following the Turbine model, with the basic game free to play (subject lots of restrictions for the base account), but instead of limiting quest access they’ve appear to be making almost everything else available for purchase.  The chart of the different plans and what they have available for each tier is an interesting look: link

So subscribers get pretty much the existing game (players who buy a full year sub in advance get bonus station cash each month, but standard monthly subs don’t), but non-subscribers have limits on character races, classes, character slots, spell tiers and equipment grades, bag slots (this one surprised me), coins (a maximum gold-per-level cap), active quests, and broker (auction house) access.

It would appear that having purchased EQ2 will have no effect on what EQ2E content you have access to, unlike the upcoming LotRO changeover.  With LotRO, you keep access to the content you already have access to – if you’ve bought all the expansions, you will still be able to play everything you can now, only you don’t have that annoying subscription to pay.  With EQ2E, the existing EQ2 players will remain on their servers and if they create a new EQ2E character it will, regardless of the status of their accounts, start off with your basic free account limitations like new players.  (Sony have said that EQ2 characters can be copied to the EQ2E servers, but they arrive with no coins and only with ATTUNED and NO-TRADE items, and are then restricted to what your EQ2E account membership tier allows you access to.)

It’s going to be interesting to see what comes from this courageous, yet potentially divisive, move on Sony’s part – will existing subscribers feel they have to copy their characters (at US$35 each) across to the new servers?  Will the free-to-play servers breath some life into the game?  And what toll will this take on the existing subscription-only servers?

And more importantly, will this influence WoW’s future directions, if it proves successful for Sony?

/wave

EQ2: Belated First Impressions

Post soundtrack: “Pretty Girl” by Hogsnort Rupert

I was going to do this post first, but after starting to write about my experiences with my ratonga’s betrayal questing I decided to postpone this until…  well, now.   Enjoy!  (Or for those who refuse to enjoy it on principle, “Be bored quietly please, so as not to annoy everyone else in the room!”)

My original idea was to give this a try after I finished off with my underwhelming dalliance with SWG, before moving onto something else (probably Fallen Earth).  That plan, after a week spent thoroughly enjoying the experience of levelling a froglok past 20, turned into me buying it online, and I’m now getting my teeth into levelling a ratonga on a new server (with the plan further down the track of levelling another froglok – I’ve rolled the monk in the image above in preparation).

Anyway, here’s some of what I’ve noticed so far (no doubt biased by four years of WoW):

The initial character selection screen is a little intimidating (especially as someone new to the game, who is used to the min-maxing expected for raiding).  19 races to choose from?  And then one of two starting zones?  (Or four zones, if you’re a neutral race, which is how you decide your alignment)  And then you have to decide between 16 of the total of 24 classes?  Consider me lost.

Aesthetically, the beast races come somewhere between awesome (Frogloks and the Ratonga), kind of appealing (the feline Kerra) and not bad (the reptilian Iksar and the Sarnak, whatever they are).  The monstrous Ogres look like big, chunky humanoid bullies, and the Trolls look suitably Troll-ish – both appropriate for their purpose.  The other humanoid races, however are…  generally meh – think of them as beginner Poser models from a decade ago.  Except for the dwarven females, who have sideburns and beards.  wt…heck?  Seriously, if I’d not been so distracted by amphibians and rodents that I’d noticed that when I rolled my starting characters, it might have put me off the game completely.  (Yes, I take my dwarven female aesthetics that seriously)

Still – frogs, rats, cats, lizards…  No playable dog-people?  (Ah well, I guess WoW has that covered)

It’s really nice the way player and npc models’ heads move (including looking up and down) in reaction to their surroundings.  You walk up to someone and they look towards your character, meeting their eyes.  That is very immersive, let me tell you.

There’s quite a difference between New Halaa and older zones.  Admittedly, the high(er)-polygon terrain (while better than the older terrain) still doesn’t look that great up close, but it’s an improvement.  The questing flow, however, (from the two zones I’ve done so far) is a lot better in the new zone – Halaa has better defined questing hubs, but the Timorous Deep isn’t quite as centralised and has a lot more back-and-forth missions.

And on the subject of noticeable, compare New Halaa’s 3-dimensional terrain to the height-map terrain in WoW.  This is one area where WoW clearly looks inferior by comparison.

It’s amazing how steep a slope you can walk up – sometimes.

Griffons look funny.  Seriously.  They’re mount equivalent of the humanoid player models.

Maybe EQ did it first, but Aion does player character wings sooooo much better.

The stealth animation and effects are nice.  The initial ‘blue’ effect before your character becomes transparent did take some getting used to, however, but now it’s grown on me.  And there’s nothing quite like an (almost) invisible rat!

And speaking of stealth:  You can activate it while moving, and it isn’t broken by out-of-combat periodic damage!  Speaking as a long-time WoW rogue, this as all kinds of awesome.  (Exactly why this is so awesome would probably escape non-rogues, and non-cat-form-druids)

And look – non-human skeletons!

Revenge of Command-Line.  Seriously, I’ve not seen the command line referred to so much in a game.  Even claiming special pre-order items requires /claim.  (Edit: I later discovered that you can actually access them from the menu bar, but I had to find it myself)

Being able to change your home city is a nice touch.  Being able to change your faction is an awesome one.  (WTB dwarves for Horde, btw)

Crafting is curiously interactive, but not that intuitive.  I need to work on it, I think.  And if you want to level your Transmuting, it would appear you need to do so in the starting zone – unfortunately no-one tells you this.  (Hopefully I can get Ringle back there to do some starter quests for the item rewards – there is absolutely zero items in the auction house that are, a) low enough level that she can transmute them, and b) cheap enough that she can afford them.)

Bag space is also taking some getting used to – especially the way each bag window can be moved independently and remembers it’s location on screen, but you have to open them independently as well.  I need to see if there’s an open-all command I can keybind.  Cloth bags up to 8 slots in size can be bought pretty cheap from a vendor.  After that it appears they come from questing (I’ve managed to get a 10-slot bag from a tourism quest of Antonica, the level 10-20 zone outside Qeynos) or crafting.

Tailors make cloth bags, which have no weight but limited size.  Woodworkers make boxes, which weight 10 units but have a larger capacity – I bought a crafted 24-slot box for Ringle, which cost a third of her funds at the time but oooooh, the space.

Storage in general is kind of odd, actually.  You have your character’s bags.  Then bank space, and you can fill it with bags that you then fill with items, or just fill with items.  Plus the bank has an additional 8 or so slots that are shared between all your characters on that server.  Then there is player housing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can add some more storage there (although I haven’t explored that part as much just yet).

Collections!  A nice way to give players another time sink, looking for random items around the game-world.  These look like an effective way to keep players busy – if not to complete them for themselves, then at least to sell the items at the broker.  (Spotted butterflies seem particularly profitable so far – I think Ringle has made about 4g from them)

Monster masteries – you can learn their language, and eventually (after grinding on them for long enough) earn a bonus attack against their race.  (Fortunately each race gets the same attack on the same button, so you don’t have to worry about your action bar filling up)

The game looks pretty good on a modern pc, and it’s actually possible to run it on the absolute highest of settings without too much slowdown – admittedly I did have problems with areas of high ground foliage, which I reduced in density, and reflections in water (and water in general) can be problematic.  But aside from those, the game runs remarkably well – just don’t look too hard at the humanoid player models.

All in all, EQ is turning out to be a fun experience.  Not only is it remarkably open-ended so far, I’m enjoying my characters more than any other MMO I’ve tried since WoW.  Even LotRO, which is probably more technically and artistically appealing than EQ, hasn’t gotten me emotionally invested in my characters this much.

Will it last?  I’ve no idea.  But for now, it’s good, clean, anthropomorphic fun.  Also, cosmetic armour – trés awesome, or what?

/wave

EQ2: The Ratonga Who Changed Her Spots

Post soundtrack: “7 Days to Change Your Life” by Jamie Cullum

Just an aside: I was going to write a “my first impressions” post about EQ2, but after finally finishing the series of betrayal quests I wanted to put something down in pixels about the experience while it’s still fresh in my mind.  So if you feel this post is skipping over stuff, well, it kind of is.  (I’ll try get the ‘prequel’ finished soon though, to try give this one some more context)

After getting a feel for the game, leveling a cute little Froglok to 20 on another server, I decided to give another species a try.  In keeping with my “trend of falling in love with anthropomorphic animals,” I decided to give a Ratonga a try.  (The fact I had a pet rat as a kid may have something to do with their appeal)

In keeping with my other trend, namely “How hard can I make things for myself?” I decided that not only was I going to play a rat, I was going to switch her to the side of all that is good and wholesome and pure and the like.  And having finished the grind, I think I’m in a good position to say “Ouch.”

First of all, let’s be quite honest about my motives: I’m never comfortable playing an “evil” character in an RPG.  In Fallout 3, I was the epitomy of heroism and all related virtues.  Ditto with Morrowind and Dragon Age.  In WoW I’m almost exclusively Alliance (although my dislike of the the aesthetic of the horde races, especially those awful anorexic blood elves, has some influence).

I was surprisingly comfortable being evil (or at least, evil-lite) as assassin Ringle played through the starting zone of Timorous Deep and reached the Sarnak city of Gorowyn.  The quests, while pretty straight-forward MMO fodder, had some interesting storylines that explored the very turbulent relationship between the Sarnak and the Spirocs, a race of bird-like humanoids who share the island. 

Eventually the plot within which the starter quests are framed has you contemplating whether the Sarnak will commit genocide in order to secure themselves from their opponents, giving you quests where you’re undermining the framework of Spiroc society – killing their food gatherers, and poisoning their un-hatched eggs.

Fortunately (for my peace of mind) you don’t take the final steps, and are summoned to Gorowyn where you speak with high-ranking NPCs who express concern that they do not wish to take such action, and thank you for all you have done on the part of the Sarnak.  (Indeed, you are given quests to meet with Spiroc ambassadors to try broker some manner of peace, but unfortunately they have been so badly brutalised by the conflict that initial efforts turn out to be unsuccessful.  Whether you’re able to do so later I don’t know.)

I was level 21 at this stage; my plan had been to reach 20 and start the betrayal questline to become a nice, friendly rat – the chain is initially available at level 10, but I wanted to spend a little more time being evil.  Anyway, I found I had to change my home city, as Gorowyn doesn’t have a betrayal chain.  So off to Freeport I went.

I’ll just take a moment here to comment on my experiences over the last couple of days, regarding travel between continents:  “Argh! Just Shoot Me Now!” sums it up fairly accurately, I believe.  I think the only thing I didn’t do wrong, was travel somewhere without first picking up the quest that I’d need to turn in when I got there.

I’ve been to the wrong city.  I’ve been to the wrong continent.  I spent so much time running back and forth (sometimes in the right direction, sometimes not) that Ringle’s boots have started earning frequent-flier miles.  And then I discovered that I could use druid circles and wizard towers to fast-travel between continents.  (I was aware of fast-travel via boat by now, but often had trouble finding the in-world item to use to access it)

So, my initial opinion of world travel in the game, especially in regards to new players?  /facepalm

Anyway, back to the betrayal of all my kind stand for.

I switched my citizenship from Gorowyn to Freeport, and I encountered a little piece of flavour/lore that set the scene for the location quite effectively.  Namely, I’d walk past city guards, and they would kick me and knock me off my feet.  Apparently it’s something justified by lore, but it’s really put me off the city in a major way, and made the decision to go through with the betrayal an easy one.  (Seriously, I’m normally a very even-tempered person, but that was really starting to get under my skin)

It was doing this chain where I really encountered the first problem with the online resources for EQ2 – often they weren’t timestamped, and the older resources were sometimes slightly (or in some cases, completely) out of date.  One example was this brief guide: A Ratonga’s guide for Freeport to Kelethin Betrayal

The basic details (such as they were) are accurate, and this was where I learnt about both Druid Circles and Wizard Spires as transport methods.  But the circles and spires are now usable without any need to discover them before you access them from other sites – reach one, and you have access to the entire network (yay!).  Other instances were when I was trying to find quest info for my initial character, doing the New Halas starting zone, and having my searches keep giving me results for quests of the same name that are no longer in the game.

Similar results have come from searching for guides (such as for tradeskills and classes), where mostly unusable information tops the search results.  Unfortunately it’s a case of search-and-verify, when looking for information.

And back, yet again, to Ringle’s blackheartedness.

The initial stage, becoming exiled from Freeport, was fairly straightforward.  After speaking with Ambassador Brutus, I worked through a 5-quest chain in Freeport that left me exiled, and a resident of Haven.

The second stage was the most time-consuming.  Eventually I managed to make my way from Haven, via Thundering Steppes, to Gil McMartin in The Commonlands (which was, amusingly enough) just outside Freeport.  There Ringle started the quests in the Qeynos Faction Timeline.

I decided to work through the bounty hunting quests first, as it was easier to find a single target in a zone than spend an hour looking for multiple unknown locations with a zone the was some of the sabotage quests appeared.  Once I worked out where I was going and how to get there, it was simply a matter of ‘Pick up the quest, run to the wizard spire, port to Antonica, set up waypoint, hit Stealth, and start running.’

The mobs you have to kill are scaled to your level, so they’re (mostly) not too hard – at least, not until #14, but I’ll get to him.  The first five are all in Antonica, although they’re all over the map.  Numbers six through eight are in Nektulos Forest, fortunately not too far from a wizard spire.  Nine and ten are in the Thundering Steppes.  Eleven and twelve were interesting – West and North Freeport respectively.  (I’m soooo glad Ringle has stealth)

Number thirteen was more difficult, as the zone the target is located in (Zek) is level 30-40, and the wizard spire is some distance from his location.  Needless to say, death occurred – Ringle’s.  Fortunately the target is a lot easier to reach when you travel by boat, which I tried next.  Then came number fourteen.  And he wiped the floor with me, and repeatedly.

After the last death, I decided to go back to ‘grinding’ the last few faction that I needed – luckily there’s a very easy, high-faction, quest that’s not too difficult.  After maybe half an hour running Extracting the Defector, Ringle reached ‘amiable’ and then it was off to Qeynos to do the final stages of the chain.

Now, I don’t know whose decision it was to have you start to prove yourself by picking up garbage off the main highway out of Qeynos, but it…  Well, it makes for an interesting start to the process.  The quest-giver describes it as an act of humility, which I guess is accurate.  Then you donate a gold to charity (it’s ok, they give you back a receipt that you can sell for about 85 silver), and it’s on to one last combat mission and ding! citizenship.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can catch up on Ringle’s crafting – and see if I can pick up some dangling quest starters so she can get into the swing of things as one of these new-fangled hero people.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to work out how to get there.

/wave

A Tourist In Tatooine

Post soundtrack: “A Fool Like Me” by Jmdee Beat feat. Tassel & Naturel

I was going to do a long post about Star Wars Galaxies, having spent a week playing the trial and mostly enjoying myself quite a bit.  But now I’m more interesting in a post about Everquest II, after spending a week playing the trial, and enjoying it so much I felt comfortable buying a copy.  Oh, and I (briefly) tried playing WoW in anaglyphic 3D.

Anyway, at the top of my list of things to talk about is SWG.  While the population of the game is a shadow of what it was at it’s pre-NGE peak, as someone who’s something of a fan of the Star Wars universe (and who usually levels sans company), it was kind of a fun game to finally visit – sadly I was unable to play the game at the time due to a resistance to the idea of paying a subscription to play a game (an objection to which it would appear I’ve overcome) and the lack of a credit card at the time.

I left before the 14-day trial ended because, sadly it just didn’t quite live up to my expectations in many, often rather subtle, ways.  A fun game, just not quite as much fun as I wish it could have been (and I doubt there will ever be another MMO set around the classic trilogy time period, with the focus now on the Old Republic).  Some of the issues were simply because of the age of the title – the UI is pretty dire in many ways, and some design choices just aren’t fun or don’t make sense.  (The in-game auction house was pretty awful – and not just because of the lack of things being sold)

The much-vaunted character customisation was indeed pretty impressive – sadly it was a little underwhelming when I didn’t really see any other players, to see what they did to make their characters different.  (It would actually have been great if they’d done something similar to droids, and allowed some degree of freedom in customising your companions – especially the ones you assembled yourself…  Ah, well, what might have been…)

Anyway, much of the game was fun, of course.  Space combat was a blast (quite literally) and, although grossly simplified from the days of X-Wing and Tie Fighter, was a lot of fun with a gamepad.  That is, apart from some bizarre respawn issues that left a couple of missions impossible to complete single-handed.  However that might simply be leftover from the high-population days where there were enough players to nullify that particular issue, or a bug, or maybe I was playing it wrong – I don’t really know.

Ground combat was pretty straight-forward, but it never really left me feeling I was in danger (unless I accidentally pulled an elite at the same time as my intended target).  It actually reminded me of Star Trek Online, only without the ‘assistance’ of your NPC crewmates.  (Admittedly that comparison could be due to the very small number of third-person sci-fi shooters I’ve ever played, giving me a very small pool of titles to compare it with)

Questing…  Well, that felt kind of tacked-on.  And considering that SWG was originally very much a sand-box game, perhaps ‘tacked-on’ is accurate.  (Incidentally, the ‘chronicles’ system, which lets you create – and sell – player-created quests using items dropped by npcs might have been interesting, if there were enough players to keep the system running.)

Unfortunately I didn’t get past Tatooine, so my screenshot folder is very salmon-hued.  And just as the landscape was all one colour, the droids were ridiculously lacking in variety as well.  Actually, I think the way droids were implemented (and the lack of variety among them, in-game) were one of the things I was least happy with.  (And not just because there were new-trilogy battle droids everywhere – ‘expanded universe’ only gets you so far, in my book) 

I think what killed the trial for me, was the number of times my planned sessions ran head-first into server downtimes and maintenance.  In the seven days I played, the server was already down for maintenance on two nights I tried to log on, and went down while I was playing on a third.  (It’s kind of an un-written rule, as far as oceanic players of US-based MMOs go, that any server downtime is timed to minimise the effect on US players by shifting it to NZ/Aus prime-time)  While it might just be bad timing on my part, the fact that I ran into it 3 days in the week I was trying to trial the game was really frustrating, and constituted this camel’s final straw.

Ah well, SWG was then uninstalled, and I decided to give EQ2 a try.  About 36 hours of downloading later, it was installed.  (Have I mentioned lately how much I really dislike streaming software installers?)

EQ can wait until next post, though – I should know better than to start writing at 2AM…  So, enjoy this little teaser of an upcoming post subject while I go throw myself at my bed.

/wave

Being Stubborn Isn’t A Virtue

Post soundtrack: “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head” by ELO

Thought I’d take a break from my SW:G dalliance, and comment on the latest rant-worthy news from Blizz.

They have finally posted some updated RealID information on the forums, and three items from it caught my attention.

Q: Will the new StarCraft II forum posting name format (character name + character code) carry over into the forum communities of other Blizzard games?
A: Following our recent decision to no longer use real first and last names on Blizzard forums, we’re still evaluating how we’ll move forward with our other forums. Our ultimate goal is still to promote constructive conversations and improve the overall forum experience for our players, and we think increasing accountability is an important part of achieving that. StarCraft II already uses a character name and character code combo in-game, which serves as a unique player identifier and fits well with our goal for the forums. World of Warcraft handles player identification differently, so we still need to determine whether adding a character code system like in StarCraft II is the best solution. Ultimately, we want to come up with a system that makes sense for each community and fits our long-term vision for the forums.

This is promising, but I’m wary of getting my hopes up at this stage.  An account-specific alias is pretty much what I wanted before I’d post on the forums under the new system, but we’ll have to wait and see if they can allow us to create an alias that we’re happy to use to identify ourselves on the forums or if they’ll insist on making us use a non-player-created ID – I can see them trying to sneak in a last-name-plus-character-code system, to be quite honest.

Needless to say, after the privacy train-wreck that was the initial plan for their RID implementation, I have no confidence that they can come up with something that players will actually want to use, as opposed to something that insists on trying to re-shape player habits (and wishes regarding privacy) in keeping with their grand “social gaming network” vision.

Seriously, this just doesn’t feel like it’s coming from the same developers who brought WoW to us – it feels like a design specification thrown together by the clueless brother-in-law of a marketing executive’s family member (“Everyone’s on Facebook – let’s copy them!”).  Blizzard is known for taking an idea someone else came up with, sanding off the rough edges and polishing it until it shines.  While that philosophy can work apparent miracles, in this case it feels like they are trying to build a feature out of a visionary mission statement written by another corporation’s public relations department.

Q: Do you have any plans to allow players to not show their real name to friends of friends while using the Real ID system?
A: As with any new feature we add to our games, we've been evaluating how Real ID has been used since its release to identify new functionality that would help improve our players’ experience. The in-game Real ID “friends of friends” list is designed to give players a convenient way to populate their Real ID friends list with other players they know and trust in real life, allowing them to quickly and easily send Real ID friend requests to these people without having to enter their Battle.net® account names. However, we recognize that some players would prefer not to be displayed on friends lists in this fashion, so we plan to include an option that will allow players to opt out of appearing on their Real ID friends’ “friends of friends” lists. We're anticipating this feature to be available for StarCraft II shortly after release of the game, and World of Warcraft at around the same time -- we’ll have more information for you in the coming weeks.

Jolly good, nice to see they’ve picked up on that little flaw in their vision.  Sadly it’s rendered irrelevant by the next gem.  (Also, opt-in is better than opt-out, but at least they’re including it as an option…)

Q: Are there any plans to change the in-game Real ID system so that players will have the option to display an assigned user name instead of their real names?
A: The Real ID system is designed to help real-life friends and family who decide to use it keep in touch with each other across Blizzard games, and our goal in using real names is to ensure that players will be able to maintain long-term, meaningful relationships on the service for years to come. One way it helps make that happen is by eliminating the need to remember who, for example, "Thrall123"​ really is when you see him or her pop up on your friends list again after months -- or years -- of being offline. Ultimately, we think this is the best way to ensure players who use Real ID are able stay connected with the people they enjoy playing with most in the long-term, and we don’t currently have any plans to change the system so it can be used with character names or alternate handles instead. That said, Battle.net is a living, breathing service that we will continue to evolve over time as we evaluate how players are using it and identify new ways to improve the experience.

Well, for a company who have had so much experience with MMO gamers, they seem to be remarkably…  let’s just say, “Bull-headed.”  The problem with one-size-fits-all solutions (“Real names make everything better!”) is that they rarely fit anyone very well.  Especially not gamers who may have been using a single alias since discovering the world of online gaming.

But let’s see what they’re really saying:  “The Real ID system is designed to help real-life friends and family who decide to use it keep in touch with each other across Blizzard games, and our goal in using real names is to ensure that players will be able to maintain long-term, meaningful relationships on the service for years to come.”  Fine and dandy.  Except RL friends and family are already in touch with each other.  Seriously, they use instant messengers, email, facebook – any number of out-of-game systems.  (Also, “real-life friends and family”? – just how large is this section of the player base around whose social interactions they’re shaping the features that are applying to everyone else who plays the game?)

And “maintain long-term, meaningful relationships”?  That might have some validity if the service was available to players who aren’t currently subscribers.  Once they stop paying to play, they have to fall back on, oh, instant messengers, email, facebook.  Their definition of “long-term” would appear to consist of “while you are a paying customer”.

“One way it helps make that happen is by eliminating the need to remember who, for example, "Thrall123"​ really is when you see him or her pop up on your friends list again after months -- or years -- of being offline.”  Of my online friends, the names I know them by, and by extension, the names I recognise them by in-game, are not their real names.  I know the real names of a couple of ex-guild-mates, but they’re very much the exception.  That’s the greatest failure of RealID with it’s focus on “real names for real players”: real players use real aliases.*  (Plus “months – or years – of being offline” kind of requires that they’ve already signed up for RID.  Players who aren’t currently playing need not apply.)

Well, colour me unimpressed.  Needless to say, I (still) won’t be using RID in-game, with the real-name requirement.  But it’d be nice to have the choice of posting on the forums under my identity of choice – if I’m still a subscriber, at least.

/wave

* – All broad sweeping statements are false.  Including this one.

Catching My Breath

Post soundtrack: “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House

I’m not going to say anything about RealID other than it’s reassuring that they’ve withdrawn the real name requirement – at least, for the time being.  Considering it’s still being implemented (sans the contentious bit), I’m calling it a draw.  Personally, I’m taking the opportunity to have a break from WoW – I haven’t logged in since just after the fireworks started, due to some rapid-onset disinterest in the game, and with the complete lack of new non-raiding content I have no reason to re-sub.

Anyway, my (over?-)reaction to the RID debacle suggests that this is actually a pretty good time to give some of those other MMOs still around a try.  I’m working on Star Wars Galaxies currently, with Fallen Earth and Ever Quest 2 at some later stage.  And I’m going to re-sub to LotRO for 3-months, so I’ve got a good selection of games to play – and that’s not including my purchases from the last Steam sale (including Guild Wars, which I haven’t given much time so far).

I think I’m going to keep a low profile for a while – I wouldn’t want my tin-foil hat to come off, after all.  Maybe some thoughts on SW:G and the others, we’ll see.

/wave

RealID Is A Done Deal

Post soundtrack: “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad” by Moby

Well, it would appear that the negative response is unlikely to derail this particular trainwreck.  “After a rather hostile reaction from the community of players, the studio revealed that it would be continuing to talk to players about the system but that it would nonetheless go ahead with its implementation.” (source)

Considering that the first stage of the forum implementation will go live before the Starcraft 2 launch, July 27th, it isn’t long until we will get to see just how well their utopian ideal will be realised.  Considering the more adversarial nature of SC (once you get through the single player campaign, it’s a PvP game), the SC forums might be a little more wild and woolly than the WoW forums – we’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.

I stand by my belief the only effective response to this is to cancel your account – any other form of protest can and will be ignored by those driving this agenda within either Blizzard or Activision, regardless of our concerns.

Gnomageddon said it better than I ever could, here:

Cancel tomorrow, wasted. Cancel today, worthwhile. As I said to Pie: Why wait? Do it now. Let’s examine this. Don’t cancel now. You can play until 20/8 until resubscribing. The change goes live In an after the fact act of disgust you let your account expire without Blizzard and Activision knowing how you feel. You cancel now. You can play until 20/8 before reactivating your account if you so desire. The change goes live – whatever, you have already made your statement to blizzard and it’s shareholders. The change doesn’t go live – blizzard and the shareholders know you were serious and won’t accept this in the future AND you reinforce their positive behavior by resubbing. Your opinion is heard now in the accounts/finance department, in the management reports, in the shareholder reports, or you accept the change by not acting. If it takes them until cataclysm to change their mind and your account has been inactive, what have you lost? Nothing! You are $15 per month better off – go to the movies, play another game, whatever. Your characters, achievements etc are all there, just waiting for the day that Blizzard wakes up from this nightmare.

I’m not going to post any more links to other bloggers who are covering this.  I’m just getting burnt out but it all, and I’m in a pretty black mood over the thought that I’m probably going to have to say goodbye to the characters I’ve put so much time into into over the last 4 1/2 years.

RealID – Tired Of The Complaining Yet?

Post soundtrack: “Mean to Me” by Doris Day

The official forum thread has passed 1500 pages, so the public outcry by players hasn’t died away, at least not quite yet…  (Colour me cynical, this morning – three hours of sleep does not make a happy blogger)  My money’s on the majority of complaints fading by Monday – at least until we get whatever is the next step in the Real ID implementation.  (Seriously, did you think this was the end?  Wow, I love my shiny new tin-foil hat!)

Anyway.  More blogs have chimed in on RealID.

What You Did There; I See It. – RealID Changes; The Very Real Ease of Stalking In The Internet Age (This is a must-read)

Druid Main – Blizzard + Real ID + Forums = WTF?

Restokin – Privacy matters for constructive posters, not trolls

Dreambound – Security Shot in the Back

Slow Wolf – Blizzard = Mark Zuckerberg?

QQ Pwn More. – Real ID – A Blessing and a Curse

OutDPS.com – RealID Coming to Forums!

Falling Leaves and Wings – What If I Don’t Want To Be First?

Planet of the Hats – My perspective on RealID

Totemz – Battle Net Changes to Hit Forums

Letters From Birdfall – Real ID Forums, or “Safe to Say 99% of Players Are Against It?”

Achtung Panzercow – RealIDiocy

Mysterious Buttons – Obligatory Real ID post

Kiss My Alas – Tugging Threads

Pink Pigtail Inn – And now what?

Deuwowlity – Real ID Fiasco

Through the Eyes of a Tree – Loooooong Time!

A High Latency Life – Papers Please!

Kurn’s Corner – Real ID and the Official WoW Forums

Lume the Mad – Are you serious? (and Let’s Send Them a Message About Real ID)

Murloc Parliament – Altered Deals: Yet another RealID Essay

Light’s Fury – Real ID – Really?

The Wayward Initiative – Opinion Bandwagon: Real ID + Forums

Troll Racials are Overpowered – Trolling in the other direction

backseatdev – Thumbs down for Real ID

quaunaut.com – RealID, Anonymity, and the Internet

The Stoppable Force – Weighing in on the forum Real ID issue

Dechion’s Place – WTF are they smoking?

Hello Tauren! – Rabble. Rabble. Rabble.

Diabolical Minds – Blizzard, Real ID Plans, and Battle.net

Leader of the Pack – A thought on RealID

Pugnacious Priest – I can Facilitate My Own Meaningful Relationships

Random Ravings of Warcraft – Blizzard forums – RealID (with some extra informative links at the end of the post)

Some mainstream news sites have also started noticing that WoW players aren’t completely happy. 

Santa Fe Examiner, World of Warcraft Players WoWed by Blizzard’s REALID announcement. 

The BBC, World of Warcraft maker to end anonymous forum logins. 

AP News Service, Bye-bye trolls? Blizzard forums to use real names. 

And there have been some opinion pieces: 

Filefront on Why Blizzard’s ‘Real ID’ is a Really Bad Idea. 

Crunchgear seems to be in favour of it, Don’t like Blizzard’s new anti-anonymous commenting policy? Tough luck. 

Massively with Real ID – Do we finally have our WoW killer? 

Mary’s Antivirus Software Blog on About.com, WoW Real ID: A Really Bad Idea

Rock, Paper Shotgun with Broken Armour: Blizzard’s Forum Folly

Unfortunately I don’t think there will be much momentum behind this – people who are going to quit over this will quit, and those who are upset but aren’t willing to take that step, won’t.  But the large number of players who either don’t see the problem or feel that they won’t be affected by the changes will shrug and log on to another alt.  But it’s okay, we have the bread-and-circuses of the Cataclysm beta to distract our attention.  (Look!  Shiny!)

So things will most likely return to normal - at least until something else comes to light, such as a further expansion of Real ID.  The Starcraft 2 forums will be going live before the launch of the game on the 27th, so I guess we’ll have a chance to see how the new system runs before the WoW version goes live.  I for one will be sure to have some popcorn on hand, just in case it proves as… entertaining as I suspect it will.

And people who’re staying might want to bear in mind the metaphor of the boiling frog.

/wave

RealID: Other Perspectives

Post soundtrack: “I Think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage

I’ve been following the official RealID thread on the forums, and there seems to be a fairly widely expressed opinion that it’s not ok.  (It’s also up to 1029 pages in almost 9 hours* – I think people are making their opinion known)

A good number of other (much more capable) bloggers have been writing down their thoughts, and they make very interesting reading.

Righteous Orbs – Seriously Not Okay

Fail PUG! – A bad idea just got worse

Stories of WoW – My take on the RealID Blizzard fail

Mana Obscure – RealID – What the forums?

Armageddon’s Coming! – RealID = Account Cancelled

I can do alts, me – RealID – the one about choice

Spinksville – RealID debate brings all the posters back to the official forums  (also In which Blizzard drinks the realID coolaid)

Moar alts! – I’ll be who ‘I’ want to be, thanks

Eleven-Four – The end is coming – at least for the WoW forums.

The Noisy Rogue – I warned you

Blessing of Kings - RealID and Forums

World of Matticus – Real ID on Blizzard forums, the good and the bad

Shy at WoW – Real ID on the forums

Destructive Reach – Real ID: A Forum Compilation

Eye of the Storm – Public Forums using Real IDs

Troll Racials are Overpowered – Anonymity, Intelligent Posting, and Trolls

the WoW Noob – Real ID: Putting my Feminist Thinking Cap on

The Suicidal Zebra – My Take on RealID

ixobelle.com – Changing My Name (also Real ID + WoW Forums Integration?!?1!!??)

Broken Toys – RealID For Your FakeOrc

WTT: [RP] – Obligatory Pissed Off About Real ID Post.

Dwism.com – So I’ll never post on the Blizzard Forums again.

Escapist Scrawl – Is Real ID The WoW Killer?

Tobold’s MMORPG Blog – Blizzard is heading right towards their first privacy PR disaster

Church of Pangoria – A Small Voice

Need More Rage – Me Real Name is “Ratshag”

Yggdrasil – The Real Story

Miss Medicina – And I Didn’t Even Catch Her Name…

Azeroth Apple – RealID Forums

Big Bear Butt – Planning for a Cataclysm (also Raid ID in forums with a different spin)

Jaded Alt – Getting Out of Hand

Empowered Fire – RealID and Forums: Your Name, Please

Escape Hatch – Real names on the WoW forums.

Tish Tosh Tesh – Blizzard’s F2P Plans: RealID

Pink Pigtail Inn – Did Blizzard just miss to do a reality check?

Murloc Parliament – Privacy “creep”: Real ID on the Forums. (also Young Lady, you will not use that Newfangled “Real Eye Dee”)

Priest With A Cause – Trying to be positive

Stylish Corpse – Fail of the Century

Geek Feminism Blog – Another round of “real names will solve everything”, Blizzard edition

Ravven’s Glass – Pass the Popcorn

The ‘mental Shaman – RealID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices

Shakesville – WoW Fail

Border House – Blizzard Wants The World To Know Your Name

Screaming Monkeys – Post with your name, destroy your life!

Too Many Annas – Real ID – Epic Fail

Game By Night – RealID on Forums is an Identity Threat and Blizzard’s Partnership with Facebook

Tree of Life – The only good thing about the Real ID changes

Killing ‘em Slowly – My Suggestions For RealID

Ciderhelm@Tankspot – RealID – Unethical and Dangerous

Also, Kotaku chimes in.  On Reddit people are commenting on the thread Blizzard Has lost.  And enjoy the insights of BlizzardPR on twitter.  And Ctrl+Alt+Del has a comic about it.

I wonder if Blizz was expecting people to object like this?  Actually…  they were, kind of.

We have been planning this change for a very long time. During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction. (source)

Jolly good, at least this isn’t unexpected.  I just wonder if they expected the proportion of signal to noise would somehow magically improve after they alienate a large number of players who have no desire to lose their relative anonymity when they post?

Gah.

/wave

* Updated with a few more blogs, added a new post from Big Bear Butt, and the CAD Comic.  Also, the official forum thread is now sitting on 1116 pages, 11 1/2 hours after it started.

Hello RealID, Goodbye WoW

Post soundtrack: “I’ll Say Goodbye (Even Though I’m Blue)” by The Exponents

Well, just I thought things were getting boring (more boring? boring-er? supremely snooze-worthy?) in WoW, Blizzard comes along and starts stoking that whole RealID fire again.

Their responses (all three of them to date) have been reported here, and what little they reveal is rather disappointing.  The insistence that they’re going ahead with this (and my concern that it will be expanded even further in-game, in some foolish manner we’ve yet to see) is something of a concern, especially considering how unresponsive they’ve been on the matter.

What it means for me is that I’m going to express my extreme displeasure at the new direction that Blizz is heading, in the only way I can.  I’m cancelling my subscription.  (Well, I’m not actually subscribed – I buy game time cards, because it’s nice to have the collection of boxes to look at as a non-virtual display of the amount of money I’ve spent on WoW over the years.  But I’m not buying a new card when my account expires on the 26th.)

My email to Blizzard, which explains my position, and why I’m letting my account lapse, follows:

I was trying to cancel my WoW account, and it ate my long, well written (or at least, fairly explanatory) screed on why I was leaving.  (It might be because I've been paying via game time cards, not sure) But I wanted to pass on my dissatisfaction with, a) current game content, especially for non-raiders at the level cap, and b) RealID.  And the reasons why I'm letting my subscription lapse (as it appears I can't use the account management website to actively cancel it and pass on my reasons). My guild disbanded not longer after ICC went live, and I found myself in something of a wasteland of level-relevant non-raiding content.  Seriously, aside from the three 5-man dungeons (which have long since been run into the ground) there hasn't been anything new since the Argent Coliseum, which was around 11 months ago.  Aside from a brief period raiding with a new guild (which didn't work that well), I've pretty much just logged on to put up a few auctions each day and that was enough that I could justify to myself that I was still making enough gold to justify paying my subscription (or game time card, as the case may be). This justification was shaken with the implementation of RealID with patch 3.3.5, and the awful implementation of what was originally quite an appealing feature.  As it was originally announced, it would allow me to chat with friends on other servers or on the other faction, and who were playing other Blizzard games.  Unfortunately the actual feature set renders it useless for this for me, and is indeed actively unwelcome. I choose to keep my WoW identity and real-life identity separate, and indeed I don't use my real name anywhere online in connection with WoW.  The fact that RealID is unable to use an alias or nickname, and will only display my real name, makes it useless for my purposes.  That the 'friends of friends' feature isn't something you opt into (or at least can be opted out of) is equally unwelcome; if I wanted anyone else to see my name, online status, or anything else via RealID, *they would already be on my friend list*.  Facebook implementation is equally unwelcome (although I'd hope that would be irrelevant, as I don't have a Facebook account). If the ability to use an alias or nickname instead of my real name was offered, RealID could be personally useful.  As it stands, it's quite a remarkably poorly thought-out idea from an otherwise talented developer and is not suitable for my needs. It's the news that RealID was to be incorporated into the forums that has been the tipping point from me.  While it's (currently) possible to not use RealID in-game, in future it means if you have technical issues that require interaction with Blizz you have no alternative but to post on the tech support sub-forum and put your identity out there.  The fact that this is the 'long-term vision' for the service (according to a blue comment on the forums, link here: linky) is quite unwelcome, and it's reached the stage where I'm not willing to pay to play a game with no respect for personal privacy, which is trying to redefine itself as a 'social-gaming service' - a combination that I find, quite frankly, repellent. While I'm still likely to buy Cataclysm and put in a month or two trying out the new variations on a theme, if RealID continues to expand without any respect for the way real gamers interact, my return to the game will be a brief one.  I'm also no longer purchasing Starcraft II as a result of this. The seachange that Blizzard is trying to implement with RealID goes against both common sense (yes, gamers *do* want privacy, and on *our terms*) and the basic idea behind computer gaming: escapism.  We play to get away from the real world, and I think the reaction to this growing insistance that we bring more of the real world (and accompanying baggage) with us will be a negative one.  It's certainly inspired a negative response from me, and I'm taking my entertainment budget elsewhere.

So for the time being at least, this won’t be a WoW blog.  (Admittedly it’s been some time since I’ve posted much that’s WoW-centric, but I blame the lack of ‘new’ that’s relevant to me as a non-raider – and as a non-raider, you can’t get much more irrelevant that the Ruby Sanctum).

(Actually, apart from the three 5-man dungeons in ICC, did you realise there’s not been any new non-raiding content (aside from holidays, which I’m no longer even pretending to express a facade of interest in) since the Argent Tournament, which launched in August of last year?)

Personally I’m trying to avoid a lot of the Cata spoilers (such as Cynical Brit’s probably awesomely informative and entertaining Worgen and Goblin starting zone videos), as I want to be able to enjoy myself going in with some small degree of ignorance when it goes live.  Sure there’s little things like the news that dwarves (and trolls) will also be able to roll Warlocks, on top of getting Mages and Shamans.  But once you’ve reported that they will be able to, you can’t really do anything with the news until Cata enables it.  Oh, and troll druid cat and bear forms should come with their own UV lights to get the most out of their DayGlo colour schemes.

So.  Back to LotRO and DDO, I guess.  Oh, and all the games I bought on the big Steam sale that’s just finished.  Cata shouldn’t be long, and then everything in Azeroth becomes new and shiny again.  Or at least, recycled.

/wave