Richard Garfield on removing busywork in games

An old article, but I just ran across it: Removing Busywork.

Short and worth reading.

Nerd Wars Revisited: WoW Players, Guess What - You're Dorks Too

I was perusing this thread on the WoW forums about the new WoW miniatures game, and a couple comments made me laugh:

That's a pretty expensive game of Dorks and Dragons you have there.

It looks like Geekfest 08. Count me out.

'Cuz, you know, countless hours playing WoW isn't a geek activity or somehow is "cooler" than people who play D&D.

I just love people with attitude "my nerd activity is less dorky than your's".

Arkenstone Music in WoW

Thanks to an MPQ extractor, I knew David Arkenstone had done some music for World of Warcraft, specifically for the "Darkmoon Faire", but I didn't realize he'd done more recently for the Burning Crusade.

Pretty cool (and, I realize, meaningless if you don't know who he is).

No opened-ended game was addictive prior to Warcraft...

A recent blog post [Editor's Note: I wrote this piece and lost the original link unfortunately, but most of what I say here is still relevant] was rather amusing (though more amusing are the rationalizations in the comments there or other places it's being discussed, like Slashdot, from people who obviously have a problem but can't admit it yet). What I found most interesting is that a lot of the complaints about WoW are the same things people complained about with RPGs - well, pretty much just D&D - back in the early 80's. That whole "open-ended" thing really throws people.

That's not to say that addiction isn't a concern. Rather, it's just ridiculous that this is treated as something new. Before WoW you had this with EverQuest, and before that D&D, and parallel to that golf or whatever.

Anyway, this post isn't to discuss the mental state of WoW guild raiders, but rather some thoughts that occurred to me. On tabletop RPG forums it's not uncommon to find discussions debating tabletop gaming versus online gaming, and which one is "better" and what advantages each has. One advantage cited about MMORPGs is that you can play them whenever you want for as long as you want. With a tabletop RPG, you have to find a time for everyone to meet, and physical constraints limit the time you play (when people can arrive from work, or when they need to get to bed, how long it takes to drive to someone's house to play, the amount of prep time involved, etc.).

It occurred to me in reading a comment about the post on Slashdot that that in fact may be an advantage to tabletop games versus online games. Scheduling and travel can be a hassle, but the fact that a tabletop session is something you can't just do at a drop of a hat (generally) should make those sessions more meaningful. The physical constraints encourage a deeper game experience, and thus one could argue that a tabletop game represents "quality" to an MMORPG's "quantity" - i.e.; preventing too much of a "good thing".

Of course, that's complete crap if you have a Gamemaster who doesn't care to put enough effort into the game or if the players are just on a power fantasy trip and don't care if they ruin the experience for the rest of the group. Not to mention that you can have MMORPG sessions that are just as fun as a good tabletop session. Though one would expect a higher proportion that are boring (how many times can you run the same instance before the fun evaporates? And what's fun about farming?). Appropriate analogies could be listening to a band's CDs (MMORPG) versus seeing them in concert (tabletop), or watching a TV show (MMORPG) versus seeing a movie based on the show (tabletop).

Again, you have to have a good group of people. I can recall some AD&D sessions I played in not too long ago that really blew, such that I was thinking how I'd rather have been playing WoW at the time. It didn't help that the DM and half the players were of the "old school" mentality (which is a misnomer since that thinking is still prevelant in new, on-line games) that basically dictated pounds of tediousness for every ounce of fun.

Anyway, this is more of a stream-of-consciousness than anything. More to the point may be the idea that tabletop sessions should stress quality, since the quantity part of the equation is being addressed (and more efficiently than possible for a tabletop game).

Freelancing MMORPG adventure writing?

I would have to disagree with Ryan Dancey about this. Jared's response seems to be more on target.

From other things I've read, Dancey seems to have pretty much closed the book on non-electronic RPGs, assuming they're dead in light of MMORPGs. So his perspective seems to be that the only future for RPGs is on-line. Not that he's entirely off-base, but I think he's giving the on-line games more credit than they deserve.

Now, it might be nice to have better adventure content in MMORPGs, but it's not going to happen. Why? Most players don't care. He states: "Literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of such adventures are needed for the average MMORPG." They'll only be needed if people want them. And who's going to test these adventures and supervise/review their development? It's an interesting idea, but the 6 million plus players of WoW suggest that this isn't something people want. Add to that the fact that in most MMORPGs, regardless of what you do you don't have a permanent effect on the world. Ergo, your actions in the grand scheme of things are useless. The only permanent effect you have is on your character - what their skills are, what their gear is (especially what their gear is), etc.

The players that would want - or appreciate - such content are small enough that I don't believe companies like Blizzard would find it worth their time to do this. Most people who play MMORPGs...or, rather, WoW, which is really the only one that counts at present, are casual players who don't play long enough to cap out, so the existing content is more than enough. New content is primarily added to keep the hardcore raiders paying their monthly fee. And these are people that spend hour upon hour doing the same thing over and over again to get a piece of armor for themselves or a guildmate. They couldn't give two craps about "adventure content".

Where's the Mystery?

I don't get it.

I ran across this thread in the WoW forums concerning the upcoming "Scourge Invasion". Sounds cool, and if I was still playing I think some of it would be fun. But the FAQ pretty much lays out a great deal (if not all?) of the things that will happen and the strategies to deal with them. People seem excited, but where's the mystery? Where's the thrill of discovery? A lot of the stuff sounds like it'll be cool to see, and naturally there'll be new phat l00t for people, but don't the players get any enjoyment out of something new unfolding rather than having it all plotted out for them?

Of course, I don't understand the people who spend hours upon hours in the endgame raid instances just to get their armor sets, either. People looking for different things in an RPG, I guess. Or rather, in a game - "role-playing" doesn't really enter into it at that point (if it ever did).

The End of Warcraft for Me

Yesterday I got my rogue up to level 60 (my second 60th-level character; third character of level 59 or higher). Tonight - once I finally got in - I bought my epic mount. And next Tuesday, my account will be closed. I cancelled it earlier in the week, as the game no longer has any appeal to me. I've talked about this before; basically, PvP doesn't appeal to me nor does spending hours upon hours raiding the high-level instances for my armor sets.

It was fun, but I'm done. The game took over $200 from me but worse, well over an entire month of the last year (in total hours). Only work and sleep rival that.

I happened upon a quote from Ursula Le Guin that fits my approach to WoW (and most any RPG for that matter);

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

Fortunately, my XBox 360 finally shipped yesterday, so Monday or Tuesday I'll finally be able to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I'm anxious to see whether it will unseat Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III) as my favorite computer game...

A Update on the Site

I haven't posted in awhile so I figured it might be a good idea to summarize what's been going on around here lately.

Mythosa Chronicle #11: This was originally supposed to be posted six or seven months ago. Well, I was busy. In any case, the rough draft of this issue is done and once the editting is finished it will finally be posted. I'm hoping to get back to doing one each month, but I'm not sure how likely that is. The Chronicle will continue regardless, but probably at a more irregular pace.

TableSmith: Development on version 5 keeps humming along, albeit slowly. Everything is pretty much ready except for the "Archives" functionality. Once that's in, TS5 will go into beta and eventually will be released. Probably as a commercial product, though; I can't afford to keep doing it as a fully-featured shareware. Not enough return for my time and effort investment.

MMORPGs: I decided that Guild Wars is to World of Warcraft as methodone is to heroin. Or however those drugs work. I still play both but I together I play them less than I previously played WoW, which is a good thing. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing WoW, though. I've decided to focus my efforts on my rogue, even to the point where I've started putting together her blue armor set. But only two of the eight pieces can be gotten without having to make the raids into Scholo and Blackrock and wherever. Part of the end game which, as I've stated before, doesn't appeal to me. So, while WoW is a fun game I think it may have run its course for me unless I want to be a hardcore, 30+ hour/week raider.

Site Redesign: Yes, I'm thinking about re-doing the site again. Not in a major way, but just making things a bit nicer. I'll probably stick with the existing design and layout for the most part.

That's all for now.

Modern Technology: Not So Wondrous!

Back in August I posted about the new router I bought. Well, turns out the Linksys WRT54GC is a piece of crap, at least when it comes to wireless. Awhile back I tried running World of Warcraft on my desktop PC, which is connected to my network wirelessly. I ran into major lag problems but I wasn't sure why, so I just installed it on my laptop - connected physically to the router - and I play it there.

Friday I purchased Guild Wars, which is far more graphically intensive than WoW. It "ran" on my laptop, but not very well, even with all the graphics settings at their minimums. So I decided to try it on the desktop and see how well it worked. Graphically, it was stunning. But I ran into the same lag problems as I did with WoW. Which indicated to me that the problem was not with the software but with the hardware somewhere (or the drivers or network settings or something).

Doing some research (which I wish I'd done originally) I discovered that the router I had really sucks when it comes to wireless. It's not super terrible, but if you are using a computer in another room for something more than web-browsing and downloading your e-mail, it's not worth getting. Today I replaced it with its "bigger brother", the WRT54G (which is the same size as the old router I compared the little one too). After I got that set up I saw signal strength in the desktop connection that I never saw with the WRT54GC. And I was able to play Guild Wars for a couple hours with no noticeable problems.

In other news, I've started playing Guild Wars. I'm not giving up on WoW yet, but there's really only one person I know who I can group with on WoW but there are 5 or 6 on GW (I prefer playing with people I know rather than strangers). So far my opinion is mixed on GW, but I need to evaluate it more to give it a proper review. I've played WoW for about a year now and GW for about 4 hours. There's a lot of differences, but I do like it so far - in part because it's different.

Tabletop vs. MMO - An Important Point to Keep in Mind

From this post on ENWorld:

And there's a big gap between what can be done with tabletop and what is done. [Emphasis mine]

This is a big point that a lot of tabletop defenders tend to forget. While the possibilities are virtually endless for a tabletop game, how many GMs or groups take advantage of them? Some people like to point out that certain things can't be done in a computer game because it hasn't been programmed for it (you can't swim in Neverwinter Nights, rogues can't scale sheer surfaces in WoW, etc.). But many people don't take advantage of the flexibility that a tabletop game offers. Worse, many people (particularly players of "player power-favoring" systems like D&D/d20) assume that games cannot deviate from the existing rules in any way regardless of whether the deviation is on the part of the GM or the players - often assuming that if a rule doesn't exist to cover some action, it cannot be done in the game. Some examples I've read or personally experienced (quotes are not verbatim):

• "You can't have a DR over 15 - that breaks the game."
• "I can't try to hamstring that ogre; I don't have a feat for that."
• "If you want to mess around with the abilities/powers/whatever that lower-planar creatures have, you can only do it with demons. Devils must adhere to how they are written exactly in the Monster Manual since they're Lawful."
• "If a spell in the Player's Handbook can't lift that curse, then there's nothing that can be done about it."

With attitudes like that, going outside the rules (or what the game has pre-programmed for you) isn't even a consideration, so the advantage a tabletop game has is lost. (Note for the over-literal: Yes, the rules exist for a reason but that doesn't mean that you can't do or try to do something that's not covered if you have a good reason).

MMORPGs: The Future of RPGs?

They may not be the future of RPGs, but they'll certainly going to be a big part of it - if not the majority. I think we expected that. Interesting discussion here on Mike Mearls blog.

Do I think WoW is the death of traditional RPGs? No, but it - and the games that follow it - will certainly influence the future of tabletop games. I've got a lot more to say about that in the future when I get some time to write down and organize my thoughts on the subject.

I think the big key is what a particular player wants out of a game. If a game is fun and meets their needs, they'll play it whether it's tabletop or on-line. Otherwise, they'll seek alternatives.

Actually, let me change that - if the game meets their needs, they'll play it. I honestly don't think "fun" necessarily enters into the equation in many cases. Some people tend to have either an addictive or obsessive personality such that they will play a game to achieve some end regardless of whether they're having fun or not. I've seen it in tabletop RPGs, in LARPing, and I feel that's the case with many MMORPG players as well. I know I've put in plenty of time in WoW doing some quest simply because I was in a convenient place in the world, not because I really wanted to. Not to mention the fact that people will often spend hours at a shot in an instance and really regret having wasted the time afterwards.

Of course, that's not to say that WoW is never fun. I'm probably just jaded since I've played it so much (though not nearly as much as some people...). There are a lot of things we can take from the game, however, that can help make our tabletop games better...again, more on that in the future.

It's interesting - wargamers complained about tabletop RPGs, tabletop RPGers complained about CCGs, and tabletop RPGers are again complaining about MMORPGs. And yet we still have wargames...and tabletop RPGs...and CCGs.

World of Wastecraft

Clever, huh? I changed the word "Warcraft" to "Wastecraft" to make a humorous observation! Comedy gold...

Anywho, I recently went through all my WoW characters and tallyed up the amount of time I've played each one. I have six, though two are simply AH mules so they don't contribute much to the total, and one of the others I pretty much gave up on months ago (a 29 Tauren Shaman; kind of cool, but I got bored of it). Now, even though I have three "active" characters, I generally only play one regularly these days, that being my 42 Human Rogue. My Human Paladin is 60 but since I have little interest in spending 30+ hours a week raiding instances I haven't really done much with him. I spend some time on my 58 Undead Warlock, but I find the paladin used to be and the rogue currently to be more fun. The main reason I still play the warlock is to get her to 60 anyway since she's so close.

Well, the total time I've spend on WoW for the past 9 months (I started playing in late January) is in excess of 35 days. That is, more than 840 hours. Broken out that amounts to over 3 hours a day, every day, since I started playing. I don't do anything for that long every day other than sleep (work, too, but usually not Saturday or Sunday).

That's far too much time to be devoting to a single activity that's purely for entertainment. I realize some people reading this may find it amusing that I'm complaining about spending a "mere" 3 hours a day playing since they're logging far more time than I am. Personally, I don't find it amusing - I find it sad. Because, really, at the end of the day all I have to show for my efforts is a bunch of numbers in a database somewhere in Anaheim.

If you're cool with spending copious amounts of time levelling your characters or working on your Tier 1 or Tier 2 sets or whatever it is you do, more power to you. Not that spending 30+ hours a week raiding with your guild isn't necessarily any more "productive" than watching TV, watching movies, playing other computer games, etc. But for me, I've traded off too much time where I'm actually accomplishing something tangible.

Does this mean I'm cancelling my account? It would probably be for the best, but I'm not ready to go cold turkey. The game is still fun, especially when you're grouped with friends (or if no one you know is on, people who aren't total douchebags). But I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep going with it. Especially once Oblivion is released...

The Last Ding!

Got my first level 60 character in WoW: My paladin on Kargath. It'll be a little while before my rogue gets there (12 or 13 right now).

Time to devote a little more attention to my warlock on Aggramar; she's 56 right now...

What's Been Going On...

Given that I haven't posted much to the site recently and haven't put up a new Mythosa Chronicle in awhile, I figured I should post an update as to what I've been up to for the five or six people who visit this site ;)

World of Warcraft: Of course. I'm past the "I can stop any time" stage to "This really is a problem - someone should intervene". It's not as bad as it could be, but it is cutting into other leisure activities. Work? No. Wife? No. Website, painting, world development? Yes... But if it I wasn't playing WoW I'd be spending a lot of time on Jade Empire for my Xbox, so if it wasn't this it would probably be something else...

Mythosa Chronicle: Originally my plan was to publish this monthly, and it still is, though now it's more like "monthly...or so". You know - like KoDT... Anyway, the Chronicle isn't going away, I've just been busy with other things (outside of WoW) lately. It'll continue in the near future...

Hex Maps: I started working on the hex maps I mentioned in an earlier post. Unfortunately, in the process I discovered that the scale of the main Mythosa map was larger than I really cared for; something I didn't see until I "zoomed" in, as it were, to the smaller scale of the hex maps. So, I scaled down the map by about 20%. This, in turn, invalidated the hex maps I'd created, so I need to create them from scratch. They'll be going up once they're done. Or re-done, as it stands.

TableSmith 5.0: Work continues on TS 5, slowly but surely. The remaining work consists of the DataSet functions, a few other functions, and much of the UI. The bulk of the engine is complete, though I need to do some optimizing as the new version is currently slower than version 4.5.

That's about it for now.

World of Lagcraft

Servers have been lagging beyond playability this evening. Earlier tonight I had a latency of almost 7 seconds. And now, in the middle of a battle, I was dropped from the server.

Good thing I'm not too far from the graveyard. There's almost never a recovery from that...

The Alliance Sucks

Well, not entirely, but I have to say that I really prefer the Horde. There is far less competition for quests, and more of an appearance of being a "hero" rather than just another guy out of the 10-15 that are running around the same damned cave looking for gnoll spittle or some such ridiculous thing.

And you can't even compare the AH in Ironforge to Ogrimmar. Though I did read a rumor that they were going to extend the AH to the other major cities, at least on the Alliance side. That would be nice (for both sides).

I'd heard complaints about this sort of thing but since it'd been a couple months since I'd played my Paladin, I had though the complainers were crazy. In general, when I was on a quest with my Warlock (Undead), at most I'd run into one other person on the same quest as me. As often as not, we'd group to make our lives easier.

Now, the NE babes are hotter than anything the Horde has, I'll grant you that...

Sundry Bits Again

Actually "Sundry Bits" could be the name of a weblog. Not found of that, though, so I'll just use it as a post title. Feel free to use it for your own blog if you want.

World of Warcraft: My biggest timesink right now. Little consolation that the same holds true for most of the people I play with right now! The problem isn't the game itself but that I'm spending too much time on it, though I can't really say I'm spending more time playing WoW than I did, say, Morrowind or Knights of the Old Republic. Still, though, it's a fun game. And addictive. The most important thing, though, is that my Undead Warlock is almost level 34.

Deathknell: Looking to be pretty nice (and I'm not talking about the starting town for the Undead in WoW). Lots of people didn't care for the Aberrations series, and I'd have to agree that it wasn't one of the better sets. But what I've seen previewed on the Web so far for Deathknell looks good. And more monks! Up until now, I didn't have many at all...

Mythosa Chronicle: Number 9 is being proofread and should go up in the next few days.

That's about it for tonight. Back to Warcr- Well, maybe something else and then bed...

Voidwalkers Are Awesome

Given that I spent six hours playing WoW last night I've guilted myself into actually getting something done this afternoon that doesn't involve clearing out my quest log or running back to the warlock trainer for new spells (I started another character - an Undead Warlock - on a different server that some of the guys I work with are playing on; BTW, the Undead are really cool). Now, I've only been playing for a tad over a week, so I don't think I'd call it an addiction just yet; I'm really just in the novelty phase (I flew on the Zeppelin from Lordaeron to Kalimdor last night!). In a few weeks we'll see if I can label it an "addiction" or not. Oh, and I did the quest last night to get the spell to summon a Voidwalker - those things rule!

One thing that helped last night was that I had no server problems, which hasn't happened since about a week ago. Could be all the geeks were out on dates and not playing? (Says the guy who spent six hours on a Friday night playing an on-line RPG...but, hey, I'm married so it's not like I have to go out looking for women...)

So aside from that (my Warlock can make dynamite now!), what's on the slate for the site? Well, I'm almost through Complete Adventurer so I'll be updating the House Rules soon with the approved feats and prestige classes from that book. Issue #8 of the Mythosa Chronicle is going through editting and should be out on the first of the month. I've got some plans for TableSmith formulating, though it's too early to pin anything down for that. Not trying to be mysterious or anything (I personally believe that when someone says something like "I'm working on this cool/big/awesome new super-secret project but I can't tell you anything about it yet" they should be slapped in the face with some sort of large fish...perhaps a salmon or a tuna). I just don't like talking about something I'm going to do until it's in its finishing stages.

And holy crap do I really need to get back to painting. I don't think I've touched the miniature painting table in months.

World of Warcraft Update

OK, I was able to create my account today. I started playing about 10 PM, just logged off now (over 4 hours later). Pretty cool. Intuitive UI, cool gameplay, graphics are a little dated and blocky but I'll life with that. I noticed virtually no lag, so if that's the cost, so be it.

If anyone's on the "Kargath" server, feel free to look for Marcellus the Human Paladin. If you're Alliance, of course ;)

Not too impressed so far, Blizzard...

I snagged a copy of World of Warcraft on the way home from work and just finished installing it and having it get the latest patches. I go the Blizzard page to create my account, enter my authentication key on the second page, hit "Continue" and...

...a page from the server listing a bevy Java errors. Thought it might be a Firefox thing (no reason for that, but hey), so I tried in IE. Same thing.

Nice job, Blizzard! I know there's issues with the game servers being laggy for gameplay, but errors in creating an account? C'mon - there should be no connection there whatsoever.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but if you run into a piece of software this early - before you even have a chance to use it - that really leaves a bad taste in the mouths of your customers.

Hopefully it'll be working tomorrow. In the meantime, off to Blizzard with a screenshot...