All the Cool Kids Play Guildwars 2 Beta

Posted by FelizB on Apr 27, 2012 in Guildwars 2 | 0 comments

Me too ! If  I am not forced to play on my pre-open-beta server, I’ll be hanging out on the Tarnished Coast server. Name(s) to be determined. I’ll post them in a comment here. I will be playing a thief, after having tried out ranger and warrior already. I liked them both, but don’t want to spoil my fun down the road. Perhaps I can think myself into a Charr thief playing him as diplomat, spy and assassin, although I am a bit troubled by the overall looks of the Charr.

You will not find me anywhere near PvP or WvW, I am just not cut out for it. I did get a glimpse of the tradeskills, though and will see what’s going on there.

The Internet is all Clogged Up

Posted by FelizB on Apr 24, 2012 in Guildwars 2 | 0 comments

Guildwars 2 beta download has begun. Of course nobody can really log into the forum servers to find instructions, since everybody and his neighbor is trying to download. Estimates are at about 1 mio pre-purchased copies. Here’s to hoping that download’s actually a torrent.

Social Media Tilt

Posted by FelizB on Apr 18, 2012 in Guildwars 2 | 3 comments

A couple of minutes ago, this tweet shows up, sent by @Guildwars2:

Participating in the Beta Weekend Event?@Ravious over at @KillTenRats wrote a nice guide, check it out: Post at KillTenRats

Woohoo ! Where’s the announcement? I check Twitter and find nothing, except the usual stream of messages, not even when selecting for @Guildwars2. Facebook doesn’t have much either. The flood of messages on facebook is actually modest, since I have an account just for MMO related things. The Arenanet RSS feed hasn’t been updated since April 10th. And my email inbox has no GW2 related messages. Steam’s coming out of my ears.

After my third visit at Kill Ten Rats I finally notice a link to the original @Guildwars2 tweet ! A tweet 7 hours old. And there it is, a Facebook post as well, 7 hours old, too. But there’s still no RSS update, no blog post. nor is there any email.

And there I was, thinking I was set up well to keep tabs on my MMO environment: My RSS reader is subscribed to the feeds I am interested in, a couple of aggregator and news websites like ZAM or MMORPG, plus a lengthy list of blogs I like. Then there is Twitter and Facebook, both on isolated accounts, keeping the Foursquare Check-Ins and the sharing of cat pictures separate in my personal account. I am also subscribed to the newsletters of various games and gaming companies, which are filtered and labelled on, you guessed it, another separate email account.

This is serious information overload, and in the cases of Twitter, Facebook and the News sites, things get lost, since the news items are published in sequential order without any further options to filter by source. Things get, because often enough, the announcement of a “Game of Thrones” MMO is scrolled off screen by the competing babbling coming from @RandomGame and @UpcomingGame. And if that’s not enough, there’s a Zombie trivia  event by @YetAnotherGame going on as well.

What I am saying is this: News and Information is drowned out by the noise coming from social media. This is not being helped by the availability of multiple channels like Facebook and Twitter. The creators of news end up feeding all channels. Leave it to the recipient to filter out what he needs. But I don’t have a tool that can filter the news in a way I can process it. I know there are some efforts out there trying to make life easier, but those tools want to be found, and worst of all, need to be configured.

Until then, no “Game of Thrones” for me.

Why Are We Playing MMOs?

Posted by FelizB on Mar 1, 2012 in Blog, Guildwars 2, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft | 1 comment

I’ve been reading various blogs this morning and this post by Keen caught my attention and triggered a couple of thoughts on the subject. Why are we playing MMOs? Why do we drop some of them so fast and why do we stick with others way beyond a point where it seems reasonable?

There are three main reasons why we play MMOs: the achievements, the socializing and the storytelling. MMOs and many other games give instant rewards for all kinds of in-game achievements. It’s part of our nature that we grave recognition and rewards even if they are only given by a machine. The socializing aspect of the game is obvious as well. Humans are social animals and tend to do things in groups and tribes, guilds or clubs. And there’s more to it than just storytelling: The immersion, escapism, exploration, role-playing and the fun from customizing your characters looks, in game housing and even whole dungeons. (See this article by Nick Yee )

According to this article, not all players are built the same. Some are in it for the achievements, others spent their evening in the game chatting and yet another group will move around carpets in their virtual homes until it is perfectly matched with the hobbit painting on the wall. Obviously we will play a new game to find out how it will satisfy our tastes and quit as soon as we find out it doesn’t do it at all, or not as well as the old game, or after a while it just won’t be able to satisfy your needs anymore. You’ve reached max level, all achievements, know in your sleep that a 21/2/18 build is inferior to 23/0/18 for leveling purposes. Or the socializer, troll or extrovert is sitting in the games main hub all night talking to himself without any feedback, because the world has grown stale to most people and nobody feels like talking.

As the Gartner graph posted by Keen shows, an MMO  will go through these phases:

1. Trigger: “Game of Thrones MMO announced”
2. Inflated Expectations: “Play GW2, meet hot chicks and win the nobel price”
3. Trough: “SWTOR has no endgame”
4. Enlightenment: “Rift has cool features, is well implemented”
5. Productivity: “WOW, 13 mio subscribers”

As time moves on, competing games will offer new features, like SWTOR’s voice overs, Rift’s and GW2’s dynamic content. If WOW can’t keep up with it, people will move. Should Blizzard come up with feature people don’t like, lets say pandas, people will turn away.

However, and now we are getting more into people issues and toward an answer to the third question, players tend to stick with the things they know. Like old shoes, unfit to walk in the rain with, or an old hoodie with a hole the size of a DVD in the sleeves, people will not leave their game because it is safe.  They know it inside out and know how to get their kicks out of it, even if they have to get higher and higher doses of it to be happy. They fear the new game, don’t know how it will react to their whims. And that’s why Everquest is still around. The game has changed ever so slowly, just enough to not alienate the remaining base of players. And that’s why the frog stays in water that’s slowly heated, but jumps out when thrown into boiling hot water. (so they say, don’t do this at home)

Back to the pandas. I strongly believe that the pandas are scapegoats for the general dissatisfaction with WOW. People have become bored with the game and see the need to justify their decision to leave their partner (game) of seven years. And that’s why they bash pandas, because the real reasons are many fold and much harder to explain.

Attribution: Gartner hype cycle and the panda picture are copied from http://wikipedia.org

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Guildwars 2 Beta Signup Twitter Storm

Posted by FelizB on Feb 24, 2012 in Guildwars 2, News | 1 comment

Only 3 hours left to signup for Guildwars 2 beta. A small twitter storm has broken out with people and @Guildwars2 tweeting and retweeting beta notices in all languages from Latvian to Klingon. It leaves me wondering if this is going to be the biggest beta flood in MMO history. SWTOR and Rift seemed more stretched out over time. And I don’t recall to much about the WOW beta signup phase.

In any case, this game is highly anticipated, lots has been written about it already and hopefully we get to see more of it soon.