I Have Never Seen Anything Like This…

I have been witness, first hand, to many MMO communities falling apart.  DAoC after the release of Trials of Atlantis.  WAR after its initial release, ditto for Age of Conan.  I have also heard of them falling apart second hand.  Star Wars Galaxies after the release of the New Game Experience and Ultima Online after Trammel.

MMO communities falling on each other and consuming themselves and the game is nothing new.  It has been happening for years and will continue to happen.  What is new is the speed in which it happened to Allods Online.  DAoC took a few months after Trials of Atlantis.  It built slowly and got worse and worse.  WAR also took a couple of months before the reality of the situation revealed itself.

Allods has taken three days.  Three. From Friday of last week until today the forums have been a cess-pool of whines, gripes, indignation and accusation.  Now most of the indignation is completely warranted.  Witness what the players and community has went through over the last three days:

• The reveal of the Cash Shop, which was horribly overpriced for everything except keys to locked chests.
• The news of the newest Russian patch, which made that cash shop nearly mandatory for the enjoyment of the game.  Lengthened Fear of Death effects, a mount that is slow unless you buy something from the Cash Shop and the nerfing of all speed enhancing class effects so that you will need to purchase a mount.
• Finally, the revelation that the current team working on the game may not even be the same team that built the game we are now enjoying and may have no idea what they are doing.

All of these hit us at once, in the space of three days.  The current state of the forums is a witness to that.  A community that was once fairly civil, even in disagreement, is now consuming itself, the game, the GMs and the unpaid forum Mods.

Let me reiterate that I am all for demonstrating to gPotato and Astrum Nival that we are NOT happy with the news over the last three days.  If the Cash Shop continues at these prices and the patch from Russia makes it to North America, I will not be playing.  I will not support a company or a product that does that to its community.  I have gone out of my way to show my disdain to Cryptic and their price gouging with Champions and Star Trek and all of that disdain will transfer in whole to gPotato and Astrum Nival if this continues.

That being said, it is time to dial it back a notch on the Allods Onine forums.  It has become counter-productive.  There is no need for 15 threads to be created for the exact same topic.  There is no need for the name calling, the cursing and immaturity that has been displayed over there.

Ashkiir, an Astral Scholar and unpaid, volunteer mod, has been subjected to ridicule, disdain and threats for his attempted moderation of the forums.  Miss_Sadie, a paid GM, has also been the brunt of attacks by the community.  This is not needed and, indeed, those who have done so should be ashamed of themselves.

We need to show gPotato and Astrum Nival that we are not happy with the current state of affairs and we will not put up with it.  But, we need to show them in a civil and mature manner.

Hopefully, the game and the community can come through this and be stronger for it.  If not, I will probably be in the market for another MMO.

What I wouldn’t give….

With the recent Cash Shop pricing furor, my support of a subscription model went up drastically.  I love Allods Online.  Matter of fact, it may be the most thoroughly enjoyable MMO I have played in a long, long time.  However, I have been leery of the Cash Shop aspect of it from the first and this debacle shows that I was right.

Why does every MMO game released recently have a big but attached to it?  I would love Allods Online but for the Cash Shop.  I would love Aion but for the spammers, grind and bad customer support.  I would love Warhammer Online but for the broken endgame.  Why does it have to be that way?

I am not a “WoW-tourist” by any stretch of the imagination.  I played Asheron’s Call for nearly two years.  I played DAoC for four years.  I played World War II Online for two years and I played WoW for four and a half.  I do not, as a rule, jump from game to game but every MMO released recently has that “but” caveat attached to it.  Every single one.  I just want to find a good MMO, why can no one oblige?

So, back to the headline of the post; what I would not give to make Allods Online a subscription game?  I would pay twenty bucks a month easy.  I would probably go as high as thirty if they continued polishing the game and adding content.  I would pay that just to be rid of the Cash Shop and its potential problems.  I would pay that just to know that every one on the server is on a level playing field.  I would pay that just for the security it provides.

Why can’t gPotato see this?  Allods Online is NOT your typical Free to Play MMO.  It is a great game.  A fantastic game.  People are loving it and people would pay a subscription for it.  I have no doubt about that.

Why can’t gPotato open up one “Premium” sub based server?  Just to try it out and see how it works for them?  Why must they make this fantastic game and then cripple it with the Cash Shop?

Why can I not, for once, find a MMO without the buts?

gPotato Drops the Ball. Badly. Adventures in the Allods Cash Shop

Last night the Allods Online servers went down for maintenance.  When they finally came back up,

gPotato...Blinded by the money?

we were greeted with a surprise.  The Cash Shop was patched in.  The surprise was not only that the cash shop was put in but that the prices were so totally outrageous. Things that were very reasonably priced in the Russian version suddenly jumped up astronomically in the North American client.  Indeed, it seems that every thing in the Cash Shop simply had an extra 0 put on the end.  For a game that has such a communistic art style, it is obvious that gPotato really supports capitalism.  In this case, capitalism at its worst.

Now, this could be a mistake but I am unwilling to believe that.  If it was a mistake then you would think someone from gPotato would jump onto one of the protest threads on the main forum and let people know.  Instead, they are not saying a word.

The prices are so ridiculous that I will not be using the Cash Shop in its current form.  At all.  Period. Most of you who read this blog with any regularity know that I have been a supporter of Perfume and spending money in the Cash Shop.  I want to support gPotato and the entire Allods team.

That went totally out the window with the current Cash Shop.

I will not spend $20 bucks for a bigger bag.  One that only gives six extra slots.  That’s right.  Twenty bucks for SIX extra slots. I will not spend $11 bucks for fifteen hours of perfume.    That is ludicrous.  It was going for around fifteen bucks for fifty hours on the Russian client, yet they expect us to pay that?  What the hell??

I support gPotato.  I love Allods Online.  However, this reeks of a company overestimating the worth of its product and getting greedy.  I will not support this.  I can not support this.  I will continue to play Allods Online because it is a good, nay it is a great game, but I will not contribute one of my dollars to the cash shop.  Not one single red cent.  Not now, not in its current form.

Hopefully, this was a mistake or, if it was not, hopefully gPotato comes to its senses.  The backlash has been huge.  Keen has already written his post on the debacle and I expect even more backlash as other players log on to see the outrageous prices.

The next few days will be very meaningful to the success of Allods Online in North America.  Do the right thing and gPotato will have a hit on their hands.  Do the wrong thing and Allods Online will flounder in North America and a great game will die.

The ball is your court now, gPotato.  Don’t let us down, eh?

Is There Anything Better Than Character Customization?

One of my favorite aspects of MMOs is the ability to customize your character.  I am not talking about your character’s looks, I am referring to the ability to spec your character and make him your own.  I can spend hours on forums reading about possible character specs and gear choices.  A game with great customization options is, as far as I am concerned, ahead of the game when it comes to grabbing my attention.

WoW, to this day, still has one of the best customization systems in the MMO world.  Most games will allow the tank class to do a bit more DPS, or the healer class to do a bit more DPS.  WoW takes this a step further and allows you to completely change your character depending on how you spec and gear him.

Look at the druid for instance, he can be mêlée DPS, ranged DPS, a healer or a tank.  All in one character.  That is pretty extreme, especially since he can do all of those things pretty effectively.  Very few games offer options as drastic all in one class.

Of course, most players will read the forums and grab the most popular “cookie-cutter” build for what they want to do and go with that.  I am not one of those players.  I like to experiment and sometimes my spec is completely off the wall.

Beast Master FTW

I played a hunter through all of Vanilla WoW and most of Burning Crusades.  Throughout vanilla WoW I was a “raider” and was in a raiding guild that had everything up to Naxxramas on “farm”.  Every other hunter in the guild, indeed every hunter I knew, went with a spec of either 5/31/15 (Beastmastery/Marksman/Survival) or 0/21/30.  Those were the “cookie-cutter” builds that raiding hunters tended to go with.  Not me.  I was 31/20/0 (BM/MM/SV).

In those days, Beastmastery was not only frowned upon by raiding hunters but even laughed at.  The pet died too often, he caused wipes.  Or so said the experts.  I made it work.  Through Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40 and Naxx, I proudly raided as a BM hunter.  Not only did I raid, I raided well.  I was always near the top of the DPS charts.  I kept a close eye on my pet.  I pulled him back when the boss AoE’d.  I treated him like my own little “mini-rogue”.  And it worked.  Despite all the naysayers, it worked.

My off-the-wall specs continued in Burning Crusades.  By this time, I had evolved from a raiding hunter to a PvP hunter but my love for beastmastery continued.  Beastmastery had become a “sexy” spec in the Burning Crusades and though I continued to be a BM hunter, I still had a strange spec.

My main spec in TBC was 41/5/15 (BM/MM/SV).  This gave me the higher stamina, intimidation and Beast Within from the BM tree, the crit skill from the MM tree and the increased stamina and better traps from the SV tree.  As a result, I had a ton of health and access to a lot of CC with my traps.  I never met another hunter (nor saw one on the Armory) that used this spec but it was fantastic for small group PvP.  I could tear through people one versus one and, coupled with my nephew’s Holy Paladin, could destroy the Horde in small group PvP.

Allods Online has, perhaps, an even higher amount of character customization than WoW.  A skill tree that you pick up at level four, combined with three more ruby trees at level 10, insure a high amount of customization.

My obsession with customization options continues in Allods and I am in hog heaven with the available options.  Right now, I am running two characters; my Psionicist and a healer.  The psionicist is going to be a bit different than what I am seeing most Psion players going with.  Most are going with a DPS-centric build because, you know, DPS is sexy.  I, however, am going with a pure control build.

I will be that guy that stands in the back of a group during PvP battles and annoys the holy hell out of the opposing group.  Hypnotizing the healer, hypnotizing the summoner and shockwaving the mage over and over.  To hell with DPS, that is what I call fun!

My second character is a healer.  The healer class in Allods reminds me of the WoW druid.  No, they do not shapeshift but they have a high degree of customization options.  They can spec to be a healer, of course, but they also can spec for ranged DPS.  Even more, they can spec to be a mêlée healer (which has some of the highest burst DPS in the game) or, because they can wear plate at level cap, can spec to be an effective off-tank.

My healer is going to be a melee healer.  After a lot of research, I came across this great post by Taugrim explaining his mêlée healer spec.  That sounds like a whole lot of fun to me and after reading it, I was sold.  I can not wait to see what this class can do with this spec.

So, how about you?  Do you prefer games with a lot of spec options?  Do you tend to go “cookie-cutter”?  Or do you go with a strange spec that is all your own?  Even more, are you one of those people who think healers should be healers and tanks should be tanks?

Interview with Kate Olmstead and Miss Sadie from gPotato

Recently, I was given the chance to interview a couple of the fine folks from gPotato.  My first set of interview questions concerned the future of the game, server types, mounts and the like, unfortunately many of them could not be answered.  Kate (InaraKatt from the official forums) found that she was unable to provide complete answers to some of them or, if she did answer, would have to tread around the question with “marketing-speak”, which she did not want to do.

This was understandable and I appreciate the honesty.  I submitted another list of questions and she got back to me today with the answers.  Take a look and I hope you enjoy!  I added my thoughts in bold.

1. How do you plan to address faction balances on release?  What plans do you have to prevent Empire or League from completely outnumbering the opposing side?

This was a concern we had at the start of the Closed Beta process, however, as the CBs progressed we notice that there was a freakishly even split between the two factions, without any input from us.  As with most MMORPGs I think the game will naturally work itself out to have an even balance, without the need for us to step in and mediate.  If we see that it becomes a problem, we will address it then.

(Thoughts: I have noticed the same actually.)

2. Any chance we see an “Armory” like website that allows us to view our characters and stats out of game?

Currently we are focused on getting the game as polished as possible and making sure that everything is running smoothly.  Perhaps in the future this is something that we can consider developing, as it is definitely a handy tool that I myself have utilized many a time when play WoW.

(Thoughts: An Armory function would be fantastic, but I suppose they have bigger fish to fry at the moment!)

3.  Do you see raiding (multiple groups instanced) as a big end game activity?  How big are the largest raid instances in terms of number of people needed to complete them.  I miss the old 40 man raids in WoW.
We have one end-game raid in the game already and we encourage teams to use the full 24-man raid group.  Our team tried it once with just us and our 40’s and we got rocked. Hard.

(Thoughts:  I may be in the minority here but I enjoy the occasional raid.  I hope to see more of them.)

4. Some of the rumors about Perfume effect say that it is possible to get a buff that reduces DoT effects to 20 seconds between “ticks”.  Is this correct?  It seems that that would vastly reduce the effectivness of Summoners.  Is the 20 seconds rumor true or is it a mistranslation?

It’s more of a misunderstanding than a mistranslation.  As of right now, the Perfumes are only affecting two spells: Icy Grave and Hypnosis. Perfumes will have no effect on a Summoner’s DoTs.

(Thoughts:  Best news so far!  Another mark against the Gloom and Doomers)

5. Allods Online has been steadily growing in popularity, largely due to positive word of mouth on blogs and the like, any chance we see a bigger advertising push as release draws near?

Definitely!  Right now we have been focusing our attention on grassroots efforts, but now that the game is in Open Beta you will definitely see a bigger advertising push in the near future!

(Thoughts:  The word of mouth is great but an actual advertising campaign would do wonders.  But add more servers first….please?)

6.  The in-game sound, both music and combat, seems underwhelming at times.  However, some of the videos I have seen from the Russian client seem much more robust.  Is this because of incomplete translations?  Will we see (hear!) those sound effects in the NA Allods Online soon?

The missing sounds in the Closed Beta tests were mainly caused by bugs and, yes, incomplete translations.  Keep your eyes (or ears) peeled for new sounds coming in Open Beta!

(Thoughts:  The new client has added a lot of the sound back in but there is still some missing.  Hopefully this will be soon rectified.)

7.  Will Allods Online have 24 hour in-game GMs, to deal with gold spammers, bugs and exploiters?  Will there be an in-game report function?

This is something that we will address on an as needed basis. Currently we do not have the manpower to support 24 hour GM support, however if we find we need this, it may be something that we consider getting.  In the meantime we have our devoted group of volunteer moderators, known as Astral Scholars, who act as the eyes and ears of the community and let us know when anything is going a bit crazy!

(Thoughts: The Astral Scholars are great and are doing a fine job but, eventually, the game is going to need GMs.  Hopefully this does not become a problem.)

8.  Are the Gpotato team gamers themselves?  What games do they find themselves playing a lot?  Any other MMOs?

Of course!  Everyone on the team is an avid gamer and we play everything from MMOs to RTSs, rhythm games to first-person shooters, and fighting games to platformers.  We’ve pretty much got all our bases covered.  The current favorites in the office are Street Fighter 4, Smash Brothers, and Rock Band.

(Thoughts:  What?  No MMOs?  Come on!!)

9.  Any chance we get the Orc “toothbrush” mustache back?  It was in Beta 3 but removed for Beta 4 and I miss it!

As of right now, there is no plan to bring it back, as players abused that particular look, however you never know in the future!

(Thoughts:  I am a sad Panda….)

10.  What is your favorite Allods class?  Race?  Faction?
It varies for each team member.  Some of us enjoy the Gibberlings and the League while others prefer playing the Xadaganians on the Empire.  But the team class favorites probably come down to the Psionicists and Scouts.

(Thoughts:  Gotta love the Psionicist love!  Any chance they could remove Mental Overload?)

11. Has there been any thought at all to a possible “Premium” subscription based server?
Honestly, no, we have not given thought to this as it is our goal and our business model to offer subscriptionless games, for life.  A player will never have to pay money to enjoy all that the game has to offer and we would like to keep it this way.

(Thoughts:  I assumed this but I sure would like to see a Premium Sub server.  Disappointing but expected.)

12.  So, while browsing Wikipedia, I noticed that there is absolutely NO article on Allods Online!  This is a travesty!  Any chance one of you folks fix that?
It’s usually looked down upon for developers and publishers to edit and create their own articles, but we’d be happy to provide information to users that wish to help! For Wikipedia and any other wikis out there!

(Thoughts:  Anyone know how to edit Wikipedia?)

Allods Online: Open Beta Day One!

After my post from yesterday, you would assume that the remainder of the day was frustrating as so many Day One MMOs are.  You would, thankfully, be incorrect.

gPotato got the servers up and running about 10 minutes after my post from yesterday.  And they stayed up the remainder of the day.  Not only that, but they stayed stable the entire day as well.  This was quite a feat, as I have not seen a server so jam-packed since the original WoW release.  Tons of people in the starting areas and all the fighting for mobs that go with that.  It reminded me of waiting in line to kill Hogger in WoW.  It was insane.

I was very surprised and impressed with the stability and performance of the client.  Despite the gobs of people on my screen at all times, the game ran very smoothly and well.  This bodes well for massive PvP in later levels.

I did throw myself a big curve-ball yesterday.  I have been planning to go Empire my entire time in Allods but yesterday came and a lot of the people who were going to be playing with me did not, for whatever reason.  This left me with the option to either level by myself or find another group of friends.  After much thought, I decided to join Keen and his Happy Fun Guys Guild on the Legion side.

Of course, this meant that I had to play a Gibberling if I wanted to be a Psionicist.  So, Gibberling it is.  Introducing the Amazing Kreskin:

The Amazing Kreskin

Legion side is extremely well-done.  I find it amusing that the tutorial for Empire is much better but the starting zone Legion-side is notably better than the Empire side.  It has a lot more color and feels more wide-open than the massive Capitol-City/Starter-zone that is Nezebgrad.  The zone flows very well and has many interesting features.  The waterfalls and lakes are particularly beautiful and is something that the Empire side sorely lacks.

So far I am really enjoying my time in Open Beta and I expect that to continue, especially when the population gets spread out a bit.  Questing was pretty tough with so many people in one area.

Another Release, Another Case of Massive Server Crashing.

It is currently 1:26PM CST. I am sitting in front of my PC trying desperately to get into Allods Online.

gPotatos Servers @ 1:30PM CST.

It went up for a minute, showed huge queues and then crashed. Now the website is down.

Typical.

One of these days a MMO is going to get release right. Not too few servers. Not too many. But just right.

One of these days. But Allods will not be it!

Part II of my Psionicist Guide is up on Novograd Times

Just finished the second part of my Psion guide over at Novograd Times.  Take a look at it and let me know what you think!  It can be found right here!!!!

Ask Cryptic! (Excuse me while sit in the corner and laugh!)

Bad Games, Horrid Company

A post on Bio-Break turned my attention to the latest Ask Cryptic feature for Champions Online. I am glad I saw that, I needed a few good laughs today, it has been a tough day at work.

So, that you do not have to go to all the trouble to click on the link yourself, I just copy/pasted it here…with a little bit of my input mixed in. Bet you can’t tell which is which!!

Halorin: Where does Champions Online fit into Cryptic’s plans a year from now? Two years? Three? And what resources are Cryptic willing to invest in the game see those plans to fruition?

Jackalope: We’ve just started working on the next step of widening the Champions Universe and we’ve nailed down our ongoing content plans and how much we can get away with charging for it. In short, you can expect to see new adventures and additional charges every other month (roughly). The content will be far more story based and focused on the background of the game on charging you players more. Meanwhile, we’ve got some other things afoot (and some of you might be able to deduce what that is)[edit--ooh, ooh!!  Me!  I can guess!!] and we’ll talk about it more soon.

So, the first question was pretty good and the answer was what we have come to expect from Cryptic.  (Snicker…)  Next question is another tough one, let’s see what they have to say!

Darth-Log: How confident are you that Champions Online can succeed considering its current lackluster performance and in lieu of upcoming competition? What have you learned, what are your short term considerations and long term goals?

Chronomancer: We remain dedicated to the Champions Universe as long as we can sucker players into spending more money, and we have plans to continue to grow it. While our numbers of players is less than we would like (cause we realllly want more money!), it is also more than several other MMOs that continue to service their communities. The upcoming expansion is an excellent example of our plan  to make the game bigger and better while also addressing the desires of our players.   to milk the players of as much money as possible.

We learned a great many lessons from Champions on how to milk the players of their hard earned cash, and I think you can see some of that knowledge expressed in how we ran our beta testing and approached content creation in Star Trek Online. Game development is continued learning, iteration, and alteration to fit the needs of an ever-changing market. A game that was a huge hit five or ten years ago probably wouldn’t do anywhere near as well today. The interests and demands of gamers have changed. So we have to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes and move forward.

In that regard, we’re going to be focusing more on creating content  to provide multiple paths of advancement within ways to charge players for stuff in Champions Online. The plan is to create more of what you want in makes more money in smaller bites so we can do them on shorter timelines. We also want to provide more ways and reasons for players to group, which is what much of the Flashback and Difficulty Slider work has been focused on.

In the long term, we’re working on creating new stories, game play mechanics, and locales for the Champions universe and, of course, charging for them. We’re increasing our presence in the community and being more open and communicative with you so you know what we’re thinking and working on think we actually give a damn. And perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to look for ways that we can make Champions a better game.   more money.

Aaah, more honest answers from Cryptic!  They are really taking on the tough questions!  Good for them!  Next question please!

FongSolo: What is Cryptic doing, or even planning behind the scenes to rebuild good faith in the company and this product that many of us paid the lifetime subs for?

Arkayne: Aside from a ton of things that we just can’t talk about right now (because we have not figured out how to charge for it yet), but will be very soon, we’re actively making a couple of changes around here: We’re stepping up the communication, again, to make you feel like we give a damn. We’re going to do more Ask Cryptics (I think we may charge for the next one), more Dev Chats (First one is free, .99 cents a pop after!), we’re going to be in-game, playing with you more (looking for a good time, honey? $2.00 for a real good time!), Our GMs are going to start letting you know the status on the current bugs, and the entire development team is going to start being more active on the forums. On top of that, we also moved Stormshade back to Champions. We know you don’t know him well yet, but believe us when we say, he gets really loud when you guys aren’t happy we start charging too little! Oh, and that “soon” we’re talking about up there, that’s not a “soon(tm)” that’s a soon, as in as soon as humanly possible soon.

I loved the part where he talks about Cryptic giving a damn….so insightful!

Derangement: Are there any plans to eventually include more non-seasonal content as part of a free update, or will you be focusing the revenues from monthly subscriptions on bug fixes and otherwise upgrading the game’s core, while relying on microtransactions for added content?

Stormshade: We have plans to add more free content to the game very soon, not seasonal stuff, and we’ll be talking about that shortly. Are you f@$king kidding me? (Sorry gang, you’re not getting a Valentine’s Day Event, that sh@t costs too much but we do still love you.)

Hrm, well that was straight to the point.  Gotta love Cryptic, such a straight forward company!  Next Question please!

Heathenish: I’d like to know what the relationship between STO code and CO code is. Because this past patch seems like you guys just dropped the “improved” STO engine right back into CO. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but for instance the direction-reversing and crazy camera bugs seem to have come straight from STO beta. Also, are both games sharing the same server? It doesn’t seem fair to have login problems because some other game is flooded.

Poz: Champs and STO share Cryptic’s global services: the chat and mail server, the account server, and proxy servers. The games themselves do not share any servers. As you noted, the account server is what we’ve had some problems with due to Star Trek. Unfortunately, we couldn’t safely change how our system works and split the two games apart there. Many of the load issues are fixed already, and we have programmers whose highest priority is keeping the account server working smoothly.  Meh, both games use the identical engines.  We did it that way so we could be cheap and get around to the important part…your wallet!

Another great answer!  Fabulous job, Cryptic!  Well, the rest of the AskCryptic segment is some mumbo-jumbo about balance and lack thereof and was, frankly, pretty boring.  So, I won’t post the rest here.

I have to say though, it was refreshing to see a company lay it all on the line like Cryptic did in this segment.  Such a great company, that Cryptic!!!

(Disclaimer:  This was a parody.  Cryptic did not really say these things (though I am willing to bet they thought ‘em!), so don’t get your feelings hurt!)

Now writing for the Novograd Times

Just a heads up for any Allods Online fans that read Corpse Run.  I am now writing for Novograd Times, one of the best Allods fansites out there!

At the moment, I am mainly writing on the Psionicist, though I might expand that as time goes on.  Take a look at part one of my Psion guide.  I plan to have part two ready soon.

This is my first attempt at writing an actual class guide and hopefully it was a decent first stab.  Take a look and tell me what ya think!