In Second Life, I mostly hang around the Japanese and Korean sims and stores.  They have a very twee sensibility that appeals to me.

While making my rounds for the Poupee Hunt 2011, I visited a store called Pink Ribbon 21.  I noticed some t-shirts called "Girls Generation" with various pretty model types.  It intrigued me, so I did an internet search on them.  At first I thought they were some kind of TV show, but it turns out they are a girl pop band in Korea.

They are pretty good, if a bit over-processed.

I've included a youtube vid of their version of "Run, Devil, Run".  There is a little war on the page concerning who sang it first and who sang it better between Girls Generation fans and Kesha fans.  Whatever

I just love discovering new cultural icons through SL.

Cigarettes

I've only been traipsing around the online game scene since 2007.  Four years.  Four long damn years.  I still can't believe it.  And what ever game I've played, I've seen the same outbreaks.  If it isn't IP rights in SL, it's leechers in WAR or Ninjas in WoW.  And everyone is convinced the sky is falling.  Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.

But then I saw this clip of "One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest" on youtube.  And it reminded me of all those game communities I've been in.  They are all asylums.

Perhaps it is time to break free.

Give me my damn cigarettes.

A visit to WAR

Since I took the free week from Blizzard, I thought I  would return to WAR for a bit and see what changes this game has undergone.  Mythic offers 2 free weeks to returnees in an effort to re-hook interest.

When I had left the game, the patch that was supposed to change everything did.  The change it wrought was a hemorrhage of remaining players.  The new gear led to the creation of god like player characters that could practically fight warbands single handed.  The BO timers, NPC guards and zone points were taken away.  Which meant people wandered around a bit aimlessly then finally coalescing at a keep.  Even then only war machines could take down a door, since they were now resistant to range and melee damage.  That led to people just standing around the keep door.  I left the game.

Since then Mythic has taken considerable power away from the end game PvP armor sets, warpforged and doomflayer.  That has eased up on lower RR players a bit.  However checking my damage against other players, I still see opposing players immune to ALL of my attacks.  This is wrong.  There should never, ever, ever, never, ever be full immunity to attacks in a PVP game.

The campaign is still in a shambles with aimless wandering.  Even more distressingly, the standard of private warbands and private groups is now the only standard.  Open warbands are left out of the loop.  Since the Realm 4 chat channel is only open to guild leaders, no one can send messages out on it to report on activity.  During my heyday in the game the chat channels were filled with chatter and skirmish updates.  Open warbands were always in creation.  Even I was able to lead a few warbands.  Those days it seems, are over.  And for what reason?  Because a few control freaks were pissed off that there were renown leachers sitting at BOs, keeps or at the entrance of the RvR lake.  Was that problem annoying?  Yes.  Did it need addressing?  Maybe, but more likely not.  Because now that there are no clear cut goals, no points to rally, no group synergy, the game is now truly fading.

Warhammer Online has become a private club kind of atmosphere.  Which means you must join a guild, a very big guild and a popular one at that.  Because that is the only way you will see action.  Otherwise, a player will just have to wander, hook up with various wandering groups that will allow tagalongs and expect no heals.  And all of this because a few screechers couldn't stand renown slackers.  You know what, I would rather have the old campaign, warts and all rather than this silent, asocial atmosphere.

The game is now down to 2 American servers.  That should tell the game developers, that yes, you do need fricking renown leechers.  Those leechers are paying for this damn game.  That should tell the game developers to stop listening to the top level players and bloggers.  These people are too close to the fire to give a well rounded view of the actual game.  And considering the last few recent updates, I can only seeing it get worse before it gets better.  The players in the developer talking circle are still screeching about renown leechers.  But are unable to connect the empty RvR lakes, no campaign rally points, and ridiculous immunity advantages to the fact that they are encouraging the developers to make the game as unfriendly to new players as possible.  The fact that the server Badlands went from overpopulated to now needing to be merged to the last server Gorfang, should tell these "elite" players that they don't know how to give good advice to this game's developers.

The latest boogaboo among the elites is the PvE areas.  Which they say are wasted.  And yes I agree they are wasted.  But I doubt any of them have played the PvE areas like I have.  And I say, the PvE quests were wonderful.  The story arcs in the quests were fantastic.  The only thing that needed addressing in these areas were that they needed to be integrated into the campaign more, to have them give a nice amount of renown but not as much as the RvR lakes.  They also needed to be examined for bugs and NPC damage tuning.  That was all.  If the PvE area had been useful, I doubt the game would have bled players so profusely.  Now it looks as if all that hard work for the quests will be thrown out the window.  So that it can all be RvR area.  Will that get back more players? Not a bit.

To the developers of this game, I would say go back in time and objectively look at the previous campaign ideas.  During which iteration encouraged more player activity, which did not and which led to players fleeing.  Seriously consider the advice elite players have given.  Did any of them lead to more player retention?  Honestly?

Time is of the essence now for this game and I hope they can pull it back from the edge.

Don't Trust A Rogue

It is time for another WoW video complete with corny Blood Elves.  The ongoing joke is that no one likes this character class.  But I know everyone in the game probably has a Blood Elf in their alt closet.

The Free Week

Much has been made about the announcement a few months ago that World of Warcraft lost quite a number of subscriptions.  It was surprising to many especially since the last expansion was only just released last holiday season.  The mmorpg fanbase exploded into various chatter that exulted in Blizzard's fall from grace and worry that the game was beginning to fail.  The Blizzard forums were overwhelmed by posts calling the expansion a very real Cataclysm and begging Blizzard to start merging empty servers.  It seems the schadenfreude talking heads won the day because recently Blizzard turned it's introductory areas to unlimited free to play.  A policy that was seen before in the less than popular Warhammer Online a few years ago.  This move caused even more chatter with greedy demands that the whole game be turned free to play.

I'm included in those lost subscriptions that caused this major change.  I left the game last year due to burnout over the dungeon treadmill.  I returned during the weeks leading up to the new expansion and only stayed about two months after it released.  During that time I barely played the game at all.  I did take a look at the new Goblin and Worgen areas.  And in my post a few months back I was alternately impressed and a little dismayed by them.  But I lost the energy to keep playing to see the end game areas on my top level characters.

This past week I received an email from Blizzard offering a free week to celebrate the latest update patch.  I decided to go back to take a look.

This time I concentrated on leveling my high level character.  I took this character through Hyjal and into Deepholm.  The quest design in the end game areas match the polish shown in the new Goblin and Worgen areas.  Everything is streamlined, intuitive and packed with good story tidbits.  There is minimal to no grind at all.  A player will never have to keep returning to the same areas to collect just one more object or kill one more baddie.  I really enjoyed the pace that the quests set and I never felt as if I was stagnating on a treadmill to prolong the leveling usefulness.  However the problems in the Goblin/Worgen areas are also present in the end game areas which include too much phasing, vehicle quests and cut scenes.  All of which took control of my character away from me and again left me feeling I was sitting in a Disney World ride.  I was also a bit dismayed to discover that the whole playstyle of this character (Paladin) was changed.  In WOTLK, the character had good utility and steady damage.  Granted there were areas that could be toned down and some toned up but the class was in a good place.  But this was thrown out and the class now plays like a slot machine.  Every move I make, I cross my fingers and hope to pull triple diamonds in order to do any damage at all.  In every fight I'm not sure if the character will destroy an NPC without blinking, do balanced damage or just keep hitting the NPC with no damage at all.  I don't understand this need developers have to throw out class design every few months or years.  That isn't something I have patience for anymore in any game.

All in all despite the few niggling problems I have with the new areas, I can't say that Blizzard went totally wrong with the new expansion.  In fact many of it's elements are better than WOTLK and BC.  Therefore my explanations for the surprising subscription loss are due to the ongoing economic Depression and an over saturation in the MMORPG market.  There are only so many games for which people can pay regular subscriptions.  That leads to careful picking on which games to play.  It turns out that the people prone to play MMORPGs are already playing and the audience is probably at it's peak.  This group for the most part cut it's baby teeth in World of Warcraft, they are a bit bored with the familiar game and now are spreading out to see other games in the market.  Some would rather pay a subscription to the new Rift now than go back to the same old WoW.  Another major change in the market are the rise of the asian based Free to Plays and western games that follow the same F2P model.  The F2P games are a very real threat to the old subscription model games and as the Depression gets worse their rise will gain more momentum.  Many of the asian F2P games rival the subscription style games in graphics and play style.  Many of the F2P games now are former A listed subscription games.

But does this mean WoW is failing?  I don't think that is case.  It will be chugging along for many years to come.  But it's heyday is most likely past.