EQ2:X: avoiding a train wreck

[Originally a note on Facebook.]

I think the EQ2:X idea's going to be a train wreck for one reason: the need for Platinum membership to get T9 combined with the one-way wall that allows movement from regular to F2P servers but not the other way. New players aren't going to level up to 80 and then decide to start over on the regular servers, not when they can't move their 80 over. And existing players are likely to migrate to F2P as new people they introduce and want to play with start there.

How to fix things? Remove the wall and apply EQ2:X to the regular servers with just a few tweaks:

1. Remove all stat gear equal to or better than Mastercrafted gear from the SC Marketplace on the regular servers. Appearance items, fluff items, mounts, XP/AA potions, those can all stay, but gear and equipment that affects gameplay can only be bought for money on the EQ2:X servers. Race and gear-quality unlocks, extra character and bank slots also remain available.
2. An active retail or digital-download key and standard or Station Access subscription net you Gold access with all races unlocked and all levels and content unlocked that your keys would unlock and all the character slots you'd normally be entitled to available. This would apply to both regular and EQ2:X servers. So for existing players nothing would change, except you can pony up cash for more character and bank slots if you want them.
3. Transfers are possible between EQ2:X and regular servers. This would be in addition to the proposed one-way character-copy service, which would remain unchanged. Moving characters to an EQ2:X server would move your entire inventory including coin and items, but wouldn't move anything in the shared bank. Moving from EQ2:X to a regular server, any items bought from the SC Marketplace that aren't available at the destination would be removed from your character and destroyed.

In addition, I'd reduce the cost of character transfers from the current $35 to something like $10.

The failure of Ponzi

Everybody knows Facebook has games. One of them I've been playing is Ponzi. It's a fairly fun, fairly addictive game. The gameplay itself is simple: you set the employees of your company to doing jobs to earn money. You use the money to buy bigger offices and furnish rooms in them, and to hire more employees. You compete against your friends to see who can earn more money faster. It's fire-and-forget: once you set the jobs running you can go away and not come back until the jobs are done and you need to collect your money. Early on jobs take minutes to run, but fairly quickly you graduate to jobs that take an hour or two and then into the 5/10/15-hour jobs later in the game. So, while it's fun it's not going to eat up a lot of your time. And the competition is addictive. You start playing it, and pretty soon you're hooked and having fun. And after playing it for a few days, you'd find yourself thinking (as I did) that this is worth $10-15 easy.

And that's why it's closing down: because I'd only spend $15 on it. It's not big enough to justify my spending even $5 every month on it. And the addictive part comes from the competition with others. This game works only because it's networked. If I couldn't see how I was doing relative to my friends and interact with them in various ways (eg. send them a parade to brighten their day, or leave Mr. Dino snoozing on their lawn), it'd be dull as dirt. That networked aspect means central servers with their ongoing costs, but players aren't going to be willing to set up Yet Another Subscription and pay enough every month to be worth it.

So, R.I.P. Ponzi.

Brasse's new home

Huzzah. Brasse is now working for SOE. I so need to introduce her to Arrogant Bastard at the block party.

FreeRealms

Oh boy, this should be fun. FreeRealms was supposed to launch this afternoon. The web site (that you need to use to log in and launch the game client, it's not a stand-alone installation) says it's still down for maintenance. I know a couple of friends who were into the really nasty withdrawal symptoms after only 12 hours without the game. At 36 and counting I'm expecting things to be seriously ugly. :)

FreeRealms

Well, SOE's FreeRealms goes live Tuesday. Having been in the beta, I can say it's definitely not geared for the hard-core gamer. If you live for 24-man raids that require absolutely perfect gearing, exact raid composition and wipe upon wipe upon wipe to perfect your strats, this is not the game for you. But for everybody else, it'll be a fun game to drop in on, spend an hour or two and head off to other things. If you're a kid, you'll love it. One big draw is the jobs system. No more picking a class for a character. Any character can have any number of jobs, each with their own set of equipment and skills, and can level each up independently. Combat is all instanced, so there'll be no competition for mobs. And there's no more waiting for everyone to assemble, you can teleport to any of your friends just by clicking on their marker on the map. A basic account is free, a membership runs only $5/month and gives access to higher-end content.

It does have a few problems, though. One is the lack of a true world-wide chat channel. You can speak locally, and you can send messages to your friends, but there's no generic chat channels as in other games where everyone in the world can speak and be heard. That'll make it a bit harder to get like-minded people together if they aren't already friends. Of course it also limits the amount of asshattery in chat, so the lack isn't all bad. The other major thing you'll notice is that a significant portion of the content, particularly at the higher levels, is either members-only or purchaseable only with Station Cash. Certain jobs are also members-only. The membership is cheap so that's not IMO a major problem, but more stuff requires Station Cash than you might expect from the advertising. And like all SOE games the game and the Station Wallet are tied together through the Station account. If you have kids and want to give them accounts, DO NOT do the obvious and give them their own independent account. Set up your own account first, even if you don't intend to play. Then create their accounts as "child" accounts linked to your parent account, and use the parental controls to lock them down. That way you can use your credit card to pay their membership without giving them an unlimited ability to tap that credit card for Station Cash.

The game hasn't really caught my interest so far. It's fun, though, and a good change of pace. It's perfect for casual futzing around with a few of your friends, and it'll probably be much more interesting for the younger crowd than an old fogey like me.

Karnor's Castle

This thing was the hardest dungone in the EQ2 RoK expansion. When it was released, it would eat level-80 raid-geared players alive and spit their remains back out. The first time we went in, we died literally in seconds. We haven't gone back since.

Until last night. We went in with 5 people, including a level 72 paladin. We burned our way through to the very back to get the drolvarg L&L book with no problems. Even on bad pulls with 3 mobs, we didn't have any deaths. And we got a nice set of legs for the paladin off the boss near the book. Then we went downstairs and almost got to Xalgoz. The last mob was a nasty pull, it's a 3-group that flies around high up, hard to spot and hard to keep track of when it comes in. Our healer got caught right in the middle and AOEd to death, and that was that. We're going to have to go back in and clear that place.

It did demonstrate why we need new computers, though. Major chunkage and 3-4FPS frame rates the whole way make it hard to pull cleanly. Our computers are just old and need upgraded to the current generation. My plan is to buy motherboards with the most current AMD socket on them, then buy CPUs with fewer cores but higher clock speeds (EQ2 doesn't take great advantage of multiple cores, it needs clock cycles) with the plan being to upgrade to CPUs with more cores as clock speeds on them climb.

MMO developers

Too many MMO developers don't actually play the games they develop. If I were running an MMO company, one mandate would come down: one day a week every developer's assigned job is to play the game. Not with other developers. Not on a dev or GM account. Not exclusively with close friends or a high-end raiding guild. Play as an ordinary player with people who aren't tightly involved with the game, without the high-powered gear that comes from years of top-tier raiding that most players won't ever see.

I figure if any dev doesn't actively enjoy playing the game, I need to think long and hard about whether I really want him responsible for creating the game.

Chelsith

We did a Chelsith run last night. They've really nerfed that zone. 83^^^ and they fold like white-con solo mobs. We only had two problems. The first was a spot where mobs spawn overhead periodically. You have to time it to clear the mobs on the path and then retreat out of range of the overheads, then pull and kill one of the mobs guarding the path exit and retreat again before killing the final one. If you don't time your retreats, you get swarmed with half-a-dozen adds and die. The second was the final mob. We just need to get positioning right and keep him stunned and interrupted so he can't call his adds in and he'll go down. We want to kill him, because he drops class pieces several of us need.

Veksar - Squallic Destroyer

Went into Veksar for the first time last night. The first named is a nasty one. We think the trick's to fight him up on the dry platform, don't let him get into the water. He's an electrical-based mob, and we all know what happens when you drop a live wire into water. But we still can't keep him from killing us towards the end. Time for research and log analysis.

SOE Fan Faire

Had a good time. Didn't get to meet Danya (she was there but I never crossed paths with her), did get to meet most of the rest of the people I was looking to meet. Was going to meet Tora and Jeremy for lunch or dinner, but Tora had a mess of a day and by the time we got in contact I was in the middle of the attendees-only dinner and presentations. By the time I was out of that it was 11pm and we had to head back home. Life's annoying like that.

Got a good look at DC Universe Online, the new superhero MMO Sony's doing. Looks good. The game itself looks a lot like CoH/CoV, but with more flexibility and fewer pointless restrictions. You don't have tightly-defined archetypes, for instance. Leveling up doesn't involve gaining new powers or replacing old abilities with newer ones. You get your powers, travel ability and such right off at the beginning, and as you level up your powers get more powerful and you refine your control over them letting you do more with them. So, for instance, if you made a Cyclops clone, at the beginning your eye-beams could only hit one target at a time. By the time you hit 20, they do more damage when they hit, your aim's better and you're starting to be able to for instance split the beam to hit more than one target at a time. But you don't have to shell out money (in whatever form) to get those improvements, they happen as your character gets more experienced. What you can do is use rewards you've gotten from defeating villains to buy additional equipment and boosts that you can equip, for instance extra armor for your costume (making you tougher) or a new visor to boost the power of your eye-beams even more by focusing them. And you can change those out, so while you may not have enough room to equip both the armor and the new visor at the same time you can swap between them at will depending on what's needed at the moment. And no, you can't play the major DC heroes like Superman and Batman. That's not because of any arbitrary trademark rule, but because those characters are already in the game. You interact with them, generally at first and then more and more personally as your character levels up and builds their reputation, until eventually you're no longer the new kid on the block but the established hero they call on when they need help. The evil side works similarly, and there's varying degrees of PvP so heroes can always fight villains. The exact rules are going to vary by server and area within the game, so you won't be forced to deal with constant PvP if you don't want to but the possibility's always going to be there if you do want to.