RIFT: Not Quite the Return to Telara

Out of curiousity, I logged on to my RIFT account to check if it had been compramised. Luckily, all is good and I was also prompted to change the password to be more secure. Interestingly, I found that I had 3 days of play time left on my account even if there hadn't been any subscription info on there nor was there any email notice of that fact.  

Of course, I had to make sure it was legitimate so a quick search brought up info that Trion gave 3 days for former subscribers. Certainly a good way to get people back in the game and I applaud Trion for the initiative, though I did wish I had some info about it sooner. Just as well since I had been wondering about the changes since I last played. I was not there for the 1.5 and 1.6 patches. Come to think of it, I think I missed the 1.4 patch as well. I was always impressed by the game's graphics and soul system. I was less impressed with how obvious the grind was presented. Some gripes aside, it is a great game and at times, I forgot why I even quit.

Over the weekend, I remembered. It still is the great game from a few months back, but that's also the biggest problem. There simply was nothing for me to do. I tried out the Chronicles and got my behind handed to me on a platter in Greenscale's Blight. Hammerknell, on the other hand, was a very easy and quick Chronicle. I queued for a T2 dungeon and I got Abyssal Precipice and that has not changed either. I tried an Instant Adventure and got...well...something. The AA system was interesting, but also looked overwhelming considering I had only 3 days to play around with the game.

There simply was no incentive for me to advance any further. Perhaps if I had only lower levels or a new 50, I may have wanted to see more of the game. Granted, I haven't tried Ember Isle yet, but that's my point - I had no reason to do so.

MMORPGs rely completely on the carrot on the stick method of keeping their gamers' attention. But perception plays a key role here too and that carrot may not look quite as appealing to some than it does others.

In my case with RIFT, I do not raid. I don't have any intention to raid, and neither do I have any intention to PvP a lot. This leaves me with no reason to gear up or improve my character in any way. For most of the couple of hours I was online, I checked my bags and mail, as well as checked the auction house - which had fewer things in it than months ago.

RIFT is still a great looking game, but without friends, or a guild, or a good idea of what I want to do in the world of Telara, there is simply no reason to stay logged on. Perhaps one day I may return, but this free gameday weekend was just not it.

Highlights of the weekend:

• T2 dungeon queue popped for me as a DPS role - at 8am on a Saturday morning. Surprising but the run itself was pretty by-the-numbers.
• Instant Adventures brought me to Shimmersand with a chain of quests, but did not send me back when I left it. Leaving an instant adventure apparently just means leave raid and abandon quest.
• Accessibility of raid gear has improved. Still slow unless you run dungeons a lot. And like I said, there was no incentive to do so anyway.
• I realized I haven't tried the game since my graphics card upgrade. Everything looked GREAT!
• Mashing up to 3 macro buttons was not fun then, it certainly isn't fun now. But hey, it worked and the results were good.

Burning Out - The Gamer's Worst Enemy

So it finally happened. After 7 years of gaming, mostly in World of Warcraft, I've lost my desire to log on. I guess it was something I had seen coming, but never thought much on it. In the past few months, I've logged on mostly just for raids, I didn't do my dailies even if the rewards are great, and I just felt there was nothing for me to do outside of the weekly raids.

Burnout was definitely something I had experienced before and I have taken a week or 2 off and then I'm back and raring to go. But this time, it is much different. I could probably take this and rant on games and gaming of this generation, like the Raid Finder ruining raiding or SWTOR having too many problems at the end game. But really, thats not the case and the problem is found between the chair and keyboard.

One thing that drove me to raiding and gaming as I have been is the desire to be one of the best. I have tried to be "the best" at some point and realized I cannot do that. So I settled to being "one of the best". This did work out for me but it still led to what ultimately causes gaming burnout - the need to keep up with or be ahead of everyone else.

This constant need to be the best you can be is basically what keeps MMORPGs afloat. There always has to be an achievable goal and it is not inherently a problem. It when the goal is to be the best you can be as fast as everyone else, that can cause issues.

For many people, it is this drive that gives them the most fun. They would not be happy until they are the best they can be ahead of as many others as possible. I was definitely one of those people. I had forgotten what made World of Warcraft fun for me initially and joined the grind to the top. This meant maximizing rewards, changing professions, and basically just doing all it took to reach that goal and and do it quick.

This became glaringly clear to me when I was playing SWTOR. While I was leveling, I signed up for the warzones and had a lot of fun. More than I expected since I was not really a PvP person. Sure, I got my ass handed to me most of the time, but I had a lot of fun, and I did get better. Then when I hit 50, things changed somehow. Warzones was more frustrating for some reason and I would not have as much fun as I used to.

As it turned out, my frustration was not with PvP or warzones themselves, but to get my 3 wins for the daily quest. The fact that I had limited time, and warzones take ~15 minutes to play out, every loss felt like that time was wasted. Every misstep by myself and others in my team just stood out more and made me even more angry than I should be. This is the same thing with Ilum. It all stopped being fun.

By the time I realized this, I just felt burned out with both games. I hardly even log on to WoW and I mostly play SWTOR mostly to help tank stuff for friends. I PvP for the fun of PvP and if I can't get the daily done, its not a problem. The personal story really paid off though so now I want to see how the other classes' stories play out, but in a much slower pace.

No, I have not unsubbed from either game. The time may come soon where I will get back the drive to play like I used to, but I doubt it will be the same. What becomes fun for me has changed and will change further.

SWTOR: One Month of Learning

The one month mark has passed for Star Wars: The Old Republic and while there are a lot of reasons to praise the game, but there have also been a lot of problems and controversies. I'd like to start by saying that I think the game is great, but there are way too many annoyances that prevented it from being the best game out there. Yes, hindsight is always with perfect eyesight, but the mistakes of the past will prevent a lot of it happening again in the future.

ILUM: Too Much, and yet, Too Little

Ilum is probably the worst disaster that SWTOR has encountered to date. It's initial incarnation saw little to no PvP for a PvP zone and it's current state is too bland for most time of the day. The promise of world PvP falls flat when there simply is no one there to fight. Picking off stragglers isn't really fun.

Ilum is also way too large to host the current level 50 populace. When we did get organized for some PvP, we ended up chasing the enemy group through half the map before they realized there might be a fight to be had and ran up to meet us.

In my opinion, the zone was a missed opportunity for Bioware. If they had held out and not released Ilum with the game, they would have been able to build anticipation and momentum for the zone. Releasing it when there are a lot of level 50s would have opened the floodgates to some really fun PvP moments. They also would not have released it in it's original incarnation because it would have been tested on the test server. Speaking of which.....

Test Servers Need High Level Testers

The spectre of Ilum raises it's head once again and the post patch version had some glaring problems. Testers were able to find one that resulted in a 1-day delay of the patch, but a few others made it through that simply caused havoc in the zone. The fact that this problem appeared not even an hour into the patch going live means that it would have been easily caught on the test server if there were just more people on it.

At this time, there are no ways to get a level 50 character on the test server other than leveling all over again. Unfortunately, this limits what your average player can really test. Sure, they don't plan to delete characters with every patch, but to level once again? On a server that may or may not delete the character? For the power levelers, this won't be too much of a problem, but for your average player who wants to test the higher end changes, this is just not possible.

This also means high end changes will go live with glaring bugs/problems like Ilum. The more people there are to test the changes being made, the easier it will be to find the problems in the patch. Until character transfers are enabled, future patches will not be as polished as they want it to be before it hits the live servers.

Design Decisions: Who? What?

After a month of playing the game, some design elements of the game still boggles my mind. The auction house is atrocious, as are the lack of real use of most crew skills at 50 (both problems go hand-in-hand though). A dual-spec system, while coming soon, is something that new MMORPGs already have on launch and the current system can be prohibitive for some due to cost.

Granted, SWTOR is a huge game, larger than any MMORPG ever lauched as far as I can remember. Even World of Warcraft did not launch with as many features as SWTOR did. But does that really excuse having the command to split stacked items be the same that links it in chat?

Still, many of the problems encountered in the first month are those that a good number of people would not have even seen yet. If general chat on the fleet is any indication, the average player-base is still at the level 35-40 range so a lot of the end-game issues are a non-factor. Bioware has been very quick so far with bug fixes and patches so it gives me confidence that they will have ironed things out by the time more people get to max level.

Return of the Blogger

So the holiday season was terrible for blogging although the biggest culprit was Bioware's evil, EVIL, game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Although there is something to say about how good and engaging the game is when I finally got up to get a snack and realized 3 hours have passed.

I won't be doing a full on review though I will be putting down a lot of thoughts about the game. I have also collected a few videos although I am running into the same problem with disk space. Streaming is also back to being in the works.

Still, it is hard to resist making a few comments about the game here.

• PvP - damn I love pvp in SWTOR. I normally play a tank with tank spec and gear, so I don't top the damage charts or anything. But I have been hard to kill so objective games are just great.
• Level 50 - Still much to do. I have yet to run higher level flashpoints and more hard mode ones. Hard Mode Black Talon was fun and has some challange...and bugs.
• Ilum - I heard some things about the place and it is more or less correct. It was actually fun getting jumped on by 3-4 others. At least something happens more than the quests there.
• Story - I LOVE the story. Just finished the Sith Inquisitor story and I am amazed by it. Certainly suprising to some degree.