Building a Better Battleground System

The battlegrounds are going through a lot of fine tuning in the upcoming patch. It's not surprising since the developers have admitted that PvP in World of Warcraft is a little too focused on arenas right now. I seems like Blizzard might slowly be moving towards another revamp of the honor system in the future. However, before they upset the balance of power between arena and honor points they probably want to look at sprucing up the individual battlegrounds. At the moment a couple of battlegrounds are vulnerable to stalemates and honor farming expeditions and players can often find themselves trapped. Warsong Gulch is the poster child of the never ending death-match and a twenty minute time limit is a welcome addition.

The resource gathering battlegrounds are not quite as broken as Warsong Gulch, but Blizzard still has a couple of good modifications in the works. Both Arathi Baisin and Eye of the Storm are having their victory conditions changed so that only 1600 resources are required to win a game. Also it looks like Blizzard is finally rewarding players who defend flags by giving flags an aura which increase honor gains by 50%. Another corresponding change is that flags now only take eight seconds to capture instead of ten. This should encourage teams to have players on guard duty or else be very vulnerable to ninjas.

Strands of the Ancients is also getting a slight update, which I think is good idea. The Wrath of the Lich King battleground has surprisingly become a favorite for alliance players and their faction does seem to win it more often. I attribute this to the alliance always starting on offense first which seems to give them a slight mental edge when they manage to take the relic chamber. A sizable percentage of players don't like putting any effort into a game which at best can only become a tie. Thus, the horde suffers from more AFKs mid-game then the alliance. Randomizing the starting position should fix the issue though I'm sure it will make earning honor harder for alliance characters.

Beyond the small tweaks to battlegrounds in Patch 3.2, we can probably expect some major changes further down the line. I have a feeling that we'll be looking at something that allows epic weapons and armor to be earned without a high arena rating within the year. That's not to say that Blizzard will just hand out gear upgrades to anyone with a working battleground bot. Instead, I think we might be looking at some sort of battleground rating system. In the past Blizzard experimented with a match making system for battlegrounds that used the ilevel of a player's gear. It was quickly taken out though, since it caused the queue times to dramatically increase.

However, the current matchmaking system for the arenas is very efficient and I think it could be adapted to the battlegrounds. This might just be the perfect solution to the bots and afk players which have consistently plagued battlegrounds. The current system simply rewards players for being in a battleground and the reporting system really only works in the longer Alterac Valley. If a personal battleground rating was used on some higher level PvP gear it could solve a lot of balance problems in PvP. Currently, the smaller arena brackets suffer from better geared "Ringers" who run friends through late at night. This often results in players who attempt to bring their arena rating up fairly getting pounded. Battlegrounds are much more resilient to this type of manipulation since the games are opposing factions only.

Pimp My Gear

I was a little mad when Champions Online and Jumpgate Evolution were delayed, but before I could even fume about it I actually got an invite into the Champions beta. I'm not going to go into any details, but I'm glad to see that Cryptic is keeping true to their history of awesome creation tools. I was always impressed by the character creation process in City of Heroes even if I found the actual gameplay quite boring. In fact a lot of my friends also thought that creating a costumed crime fighter was more fun than playing the game. In college I would often come back from class to find that my roommates had filled all my character slots with cyborg pirates. It's a shame that no other MMO developer has allowed players the same level of customization.

I guess the major reason is because most MMOs work off the diku model, which means that character progression is all about equipment upgrades. If equipment visuals were set at the beginning of the game then most players would probably start off with the most awesome looking weapons and armor they could imagine. Half the reason players like climbing the gear progression ladder is because the higher level stuff tends to look better. Thus, just putting a costume generator from City of Heroes/Champions into a WoW clone is probably a bad idea. Still this doesn't mean that a such a system couldn't be adapted for an equipment based game.

I think one good idea would be to meld the City of Heroes character creation system into crafting. It would require some fine tuning, but such a system would probably create a strong game economy as some players made their own gear. Developers could even use item rarity to limit the "awesomeness" of weapons and armor. A plain looking pattern or design could require crafting materials from low level mobs while the more spectacular ones could require items from dungeon bosses. While not everyone would want to design their own gear, I think a lot of players would appreciate more variation in equipment. This is especially true at the end game of MMOs like World of Warcraft where tier sets tend to make everyone look the same.

It's a very boring system and I don't know any valid reasons why everyone should look the same. I've heard the argument that it's good for PvP so that you can visually recognize weaker and stronger targets. That may have been true in the past, but the user interfaces for these types of games have improved over the years. Most now allow opponents to see hitpoints and mana, which are pretty good indicators of a player's equipment status. I don't think there is any good reason for not opening up a complex crafting system which allows players to customize the visual look of items they make. I realize that a lot of developers are afraid of "the time to penis", but City of Heroes has managed to avoid the issue.

I really hope the MMOs that come out over the next couple years start adopting the same level of customization seen in City of Heroes. I'm getting awfully tired of everyone looking the same when I raid or PvP. It's especially painful when the graphic artists are rushed and you get some of the ugly armor sets seen in Wrath of the Lich King.

Please Play Our Game Less - Go Outside or Something

Most players are aware that the next patch for World of Warcraft will be changing Wintergrasp into a somewhat bastardized mix of open world pvp and battelground instances. I almost used the term "hybrid" to describe this change, but I think that implies beneficial traits being mixed together. Nothing can be further from the truth in this situation since the changes are designed to make Lake Wintergrasp less popular with players. This trend was noted by a lot of different bloggers earlier in the year when Blizzard switched the Wintergrasp quests from a daily format to a weekly one. There's a definite sense of irony in trying to make parts of your game less popular so you can avoid latency issues.

It's not like changing the quests to a weekly format had any real effect in making Lake Wintergrasp less popular either. Both factions still desire loot from the Vault of Archavon and tokens for winning games are still useful for freshly minted level 80 players. That's probably why Blizzard has decided to take the limiting factor of battleground queues and mix it with the reset timer of world PvP objectives. Thus the servers only have to deal with about a hundred players being squeezed into a small area once every three hours. Of course I'm pretty sure more then a hundred people want to participate in Lake Wintergrasp, but hey it's their fault for playing such a popular game in the first place.

I might be overdoing the sarcasm here, but Blizzard seems to have this new attitude of ignoring any problems brought on by limited server resources. They may have broken all sorts of sales records with Wrath of the Lich King, but they sure aren't in a hurry to use that money on additional processing power for servers. I can't entirely blame them for not rushing to upgrade since the number of concurrent users has been dropping over the last few months. No reason to rush and spend money in a tough economy when the demand might not be there in the future. Hell, I can even run instances during the weekdays now without constantly running into the dreaded "Server cannot create additional instances" message.

However, Blizzard is walking a fine line by avoiding architecture upgrades by implementing bad game design. The next patch may reduce the lag problems in Lake Wintergrasp, but it's sure to cause a lot of resentment when people keep missing the queue. Also I wonder about the proposed changes to emblems in the heroic dungeons. I think it's a great idea to let dungeon players catch up with raiders. However, it's sure to have large numbers of players flocking back to heroic dungeons just as the new raid zone goes live. On the weekend it can still take me 10-15 minutes to create an instance for my group and I'm expecting the problem to only get worse after the patch. Hopefully, Blizzard has some sort of solution and it doesn't involve re-working the daily dungeon quests into a weekly format. Otherwise I fear World of Warcraft might be starting to implode from the weight of its own success.

Death and Passing on your Virtual Assets

I don't really have that much experienced with real money transfers except in the form of spam advertisements. I know there's a pretty big market out there for selling gold to players and that this drives the theft and hacking of accounts. It's not all illegal though since I know some players routinely sell off their characters and virtual savings whenever they get tired of a game. While almost every game out there has a EULA that supposedly prevents players from cashing out, it's usually ignored. Theoretically, anyone whose played an online game for a couple months and earned some virtual cash could probably get a couple hundred dollars for their account. Some dedicated individuals who've raided or traded their way into a virtual fortune might be able to squeeze a couple thousand dollars from an auction site.

It's no wonder then that online services that protect virtual assets are also starting to mention game accounts. Usually, services like Asset Lock or Legacy Locker are for people that have a lot of money tied up in online sites like ebay or paypal. If you suddenly die then it can be quite hard for your immediate family to get access to any of your accounts. You could just write your account information down on a piece of paper and put it in a safety deposit box, but most of these services are cheaper. It's almost like a digital will without the lawyers. It's still not the most useful thing in the world and it seems kind of gimmicky at the moment. However, I'll admit that over the last ten years I've gone from maybe one or two online accounts to around twenty. Some of these accounts are just things like email, but a surprising number of them do have monetary value.

Like this CNN article says, we are spending more of our lives online and people are actually starting worry about this kind of stuff. This seems like an obvious sign that society is starting to associate more value to virtual property as they spend more time online. It's not actually that unbelievable. After all, the value of real world currencies have nothing to do with the ink and paper they are printed on. Virtual items tied up in accounts are the same way. They're worth what people will pay for them and in some instances that can be a lot. And since established institutions like banks are mostly absent in this market we are seeing companies pop up in their stead. It may be a little early for these companies to make a lot of money now, but in ten years who knows? I'm just thinking how much fun it will be ten years from now to track down this post and comment on how my bank finally started a similar service.

Blizzard Authenticator: Coming to a Credit Card near you

User accounts for virtual worlds are the preferred target of high tech thieves nowadays. Not only is it relatively easy to liquidate stolen digital property, but there's almost no risk of prosecution. Virtual property isn't really understood by most courts of laws around the world and a majority of legal systems would find it hard to define stealing such items as theft. However, just because it's difficult to establish real world value for virtual property doesn't mean it's worthless. In recent years, digital criminals have devoted more effort into setting up phishing scams and trojan installers for game accounts then credit cards. This shows that there is obvious real world value to these accounts.

As World of Warcraft has grown into the largest subscription based MMO its become the main target of scams and computer viruses seeking out account information. It's safe to say that as the criminal activity targeting the game increased so has the load on it's customer service system. Since each case requires a fair amount of time to investigate and fix, the costs associated with customer service have risen. Also since Blizzard has several high level competitors they can't simply ignore requests to restore hacked accounts. It's because of this situation that Blizzard eventually introduced the authenticator. This relatively simple device can be registered with a player account and then provides a different password every time the player wants to log in.

I'll admit that it's a small increase in effort to log in with an authenticator, but players who have been repeatably hacked feel like it's worth the trouble. The device seems to be working quite well in preventing compromised computers from gaining control of World of Warcraft accounts. In fact it seems to be working so well that Visa is exploring a similar system for it's credit cards. Currently being tested is the Emue card which has a screen on the back which generates an additional pin number for every transaction. This doesn't help much if the card is physically stolen, but more then half of all credit card fraud is committed online nowadays. Thus just like the Blizzard Authenticator, the Emue card protects it's account holders with a layer of protection that can't be broken online.

The relative similarity between the two systems makes me wonder if Visa and Blizzard are using the same security company. Since game accounts and credit card information are two of the top targets for online crime I guess it makes sense that they use the same security measures. Of course just like the Blizzard Authenticator, the Emue card will probably only be adopted by people who've had their information stolen before. Still since Visa is planning on making the system backwards compatible that means stores will be able to handle both types of cards. If the Emue card becomes widely available for free then I expect anyone who shops online will adopt it pretty quickly. And the fact that the Blizzard Authenticator system has been working so well makes me believe this is a pretty secure technology and not a simple gimmick.

Can Blizzard survive being the most bankable game studio?

Blizzard Entertainment was recently announced as the most successful game studio this year as calculated by Develop magazine. I'm not really sure what qualifies them to rank game studios, but their website says their calculations are based on sales data, critical success, and industry standing. Still it seems suspicious since the Develop 100 had Blizzard Entertainment ranked 46 spots lower last year. I know Wrath of the Lich King moved a lot of boxes, but World of Warcraft has been dominating the PC sales charts hand and hand with the Sims for the last four years. So why are trade publications only now starting to notice?

Well its no secret that Blizzard doesn't make bad games. The management for the company seems slightly different from other game studios and allows for long delays in production to fine tune a game. That's not to say they would allow a project to become vaporware or a 100 million dollar disaster like Tabula Rasa. Just look at Starcraft Ghost which Blizzard had no problems axing when it became apparent the quality wasn't there. Blizzard's dedication to quality isn't something that recently appeared and earned it a spot on the list. No the real reason is most likely that it's becoming more widely known just how much money World of Warcraft is earning from subscription fees alone.

I've long suspected that Blizzard has been making close to a 100 million dollars a month on subscriptions and it's recently been confirmed in several earnings report. Additionally, a subscription service whose only real cost is server maintenance and customer support has to have a great profit to revenue ratio. It's been theorized that a AAA MMO takes about 50 million dollars to develop and that number has been thrown around a couple of times for Warhammer Online. That means even if only half of the subscription revenue is profit then Blizzard still recoups its initial investment on World of Warcraft every month of the year.

Those kinds of investment returns just stand out like a sore thumb and it's probably why Blizzard was swallowed up by Activision. I just hope Blizzard can survive the future as the most bankable game studio while still producing high quality products. Last year there were some rumblings about the decision to split Starcraft 2 into three separate games. Some people thought it seemed a little too much like a naked money grab, something a mega studio like EA or Activision would do. While the giants of the game industry are very good about squeezing every last cent from a franchise they also make a lot of lackluster crap in the process.

With a good percentage of the profits earned by Activision this last quarter coming from World of Warcraft you have to wonder if Blizzard will be pushed to maintain this pace. It's fine if they are able to keep their revenue up by making the same high quality games we've come to expect from them. If all three Starcraft 2 games introduce a fair amount of quality content then I'm not one to complain. I think most gamers have come around to the idea simply because it gets the multi-player version into our hands faster. However, the next "innovative" idea might not have the same silver lining. It's makes me wonder if Blizzard can juggle quality, quantity and profits equally in the future or if short-term profits will start to become the priority.

Off the Beaten Path - New MMOs for the Summer

There's a couple of new MMO's coming out over the summer and I'm glad to see that they are quite different from the standard fantasy fare. Last year I tried out Age of Conan and Warhammer Online when I got tired of World of Warcraft. The year before I dabbled in Lord of the Rings and the Rise of Kunark expansion for Everquest 2. While all four games had very different game mechanics, they still used the same type of background setting. It's been awhile since a decent MMO came out that wasn't a fantasy hack and slash adventure. Not that I'm totally repulsed by the genre anymore, I'm just looking for a breath of fresh air.

Luckily, it looks like next month's Jumpgate Evolution will satisify my desire to try something different. It's being advertised as an EVE Online that's actually fun to play. While I don't have the best reaction times in the world, I'm still looking forward to trying out a MMO based around real time spaceship combat. The only previous experience I've had with a twitch based MMO could be considered Tabula Rasa. However, that game's equipment system seemed a little too disposable and FPS-like for me to enjoy. As long as Jumpgate Evolution has a decent equipment and talent system then I'll probably stick with it for a couple months.

Even if Jumpgate Evolution is a free-trial month only game, there's still Champions Online right around the corner in July. I've been following the development of this one for awhile now and I'm very impressed with the graphics. I'm a fan of the "stylistic" graphics approach and the cell shaded look fits my preferences quite well. I'm afraid that some of the same design flaws from City of Heroes might also make it into Champions Online though. I'm hoping that Cryptic Studios stayed away from procedural generated content this time around and that leveling through missions isn't so repetitive. I'm also hoping for a better equipment system, since I always felt like the original enhancement one was too trivial for a MMO.

After the summer there a couple MMO's that are floating around release days in the fall, but haven't set them in stone yet. The major one is probably AION: Tower of Eternity which is being released by NCSoft. NCsoft isn't exactly a favorite on my list of MMO publishers at the moment. They seem a little too eager to abandon low performing MMOs and they've cut back their presence in the West a bit. Still a game where angels and dragons get to fight aerial battles does sound very cool. The reviews from Korea and China also seem favorable for the game though popularity doesn't always translate across the pacific. If the game is actually entertaining and avoids a lot of the pointless grinding associated with the Lineage brand then it might nice to try out.