Once upon a time, there was a guild on Rift's Faeblight server that, for our purposes, we will call Our Gang. In all seriousness, this is just a pseudonym, because this post is going to be airing out a lot of dirty guild laundry, and I'm changing everything to protect the derps involved in the RL events I'm about to describe.
Now that the disclaimer's out of the way...
Once upon a time, there was a guild on Rift's Faeblight server called Our Gang. A lot of good people were in Our Gang, since it had cannibalized the top-end raiders from several smaller launch guilds. We all came together through a difficult-to-describe series of public raid rifts, expert dungeon crawls, and tradeskill contracting. At the time, we were more or less the best on the server, and we were tired of being held back by our launch guilds. It just seemed natural to join up under the same tag.
Our Gang was, initially, a family guild led by a husband/wife duo. We'll call them Optimus and Banshee, respectively. A lot of the guild was made up of people that had played other games with them, but by virtue of having the then best-in-class rogue and cleric for our server, they got a whole bunch of hardcore raid nerds. They were used to not being challenged by their raiders. Their word was law, and for years their guildies had simply trusted that they were right in whatever they said. Perhaps most importantly, they had been to this point casuals, and were being more or less pushed into a more aggressive playstyle by the rest of us.
The guild was, in short, a powder keg not entirely unlike the Balkans pre-WWI. A lot of strong personalities fell into the guild: myself, my friend Herpes (an aspiring main tank, and probably at the time one of the best tanks on the server), my long-time guildmates from EQ2, Bob, and Mark. (Bob and Mark were a brother/brother duo, and the cleric/rogue that the raid team crystallized around.) And we all had very strong ideas of how a guild should be run for progression. Our leaders, sadly, didn't have the same ideas.
I promise, I'm getting to a point. Just stay with me.
Optimus was nominally our guild leader, and he was on board for what we suggested- trials, set raid times, who should lead raids, how to handle loot... At least, he was on board until Banshee opened her mouth. As far as she was concerned, the guild only existed to serve her needs, and we were to obey her every order regardless of how on-point those orders actually were. Worst of all, Banshee played a rogue- like me and Bob- and thought she was hot shit.
Holy mother of fuck. She was terrible. Her dps was abysmal, so she played a bard. Cool. Support's not hard. Just keep your motifs up.
Only no. She had to say she was the alpha bard and knew all. Saw all.
I was a bard too. Kinda got railroaded into it because I had (a) skill and (b) a third core set up just for bard offhealing. (This was back when the heal greaters would proc off everything, and so would the heal trinkets.) Generally, I was number three on the heal parse, my motifs never dropped, I kept my debuffs cycled...
And yet I was doing it wrong, because I wasn't playing her way. Never mind that her group was consistently over-performed by mine, even when we switched so that she had the star players and I had the B team. Anyone who pointed that out was harshly reprimanded, and usually saw their loot privileges negatively impacted. Compounding the problem was that Optimus wanted to be the big dick tank, and couldn't handle the job. Herpes challenged him on it, and was kicked from the guild. (There was also loot drama involved, because he thought as the best tank in the guild he should get all the plate, but that's another rant for another day.)
The house of cards just collapsed from there. Our hardcores, myself included, bailed on the guild when we couldn't down anything past the second boss of Greenscale a month and a half later. What could have been a great guild was fuckbliterated, and all because one over-controlling, cocky bitch couldn't get her head out of her ass long enough to see reason, or understand what her guild's actual needs were.
The moral of the story? Don't let your significant other be an officer in your guild unless you know for a FACT that you can stand up to them and stick to your guns with guild policy. And don't raid with your significant other, unless you know for a fact that they can separate the game from your relationship. I know every gamer dreams of finding another game to spend his or her life with but honestly? Unless you have complementary playstyles, butts will get hurt and your relationship will suffer. And your guild. And everything else.
Another case in point: I used to play MMOs with my ex. We always duoed, and viewed ourselves as a package deal. I tanked, he was support, and life was good. After a few months' raiding with a casual family guild, he gets approached by one of the top guilds NA to be their new dirge. (EQ2. Sorry. Should have said that. Aaaanyway.) He was great at it. It was an awesome opportunity. They even agreed to give me a trial as an offtank, in case someone in their core raid couldn't make it.
I was bad. I'm not even gonna lie. This was early in my MMO career, the class I was playing was badly handicapped at the time, and even if I'd been an amazing player my gear was horrid. I didn't have the sense to see that at the time, though, and just fucking RAGED when they told me how bad I was. We had some serious fights irl about getting us kicked from the guild, I slept on the couch for a few weeks, and in the end... we both ended up getting kicked. Our relationship never really recovered from that, and every time something happened in game from there on out, it led to screaming matches and shit getting thrown. It's extreme-sounding, I know, but when you've got two people who want to be the best and are passionate about learning and working to advance their characters...
Yeah. You butt heads. And if you can't keep ingame STRICTLY ingame, you're in for a bad time.
All this works around to why I don't want to be in a guild that's run by a couple, especially one that's half hardcore and half casual. I've been down the "I'm the guildleader's gf/wife, so you have to keep me happy" road. I've seen what it does to guilds, and how it leeches the respectability from GMs. The drama that spawns from behind-the-scenes relationships just turns into a cancer in most cases.
Look at it this way, right? Happy wife, happy life. Most folks don't want to antagonize their other half. They want them to be happy, so things stay copacetic. And like it or not, the other half's going to want first dibs on everything, because that's just how it goes. Humans are needy.
So basically... friends don't let friends lead guilds with their girlfriends. It's a good way to destroy friendships, and a GREAT way to make sure your guild's dead before you even get off the ground.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
Pizza, Servers, and You
Earlier today I compared the queue crisis to a pizza party on the ArcheAge forums. It seemed to go over well, and I think it's pretty much a spot on analogy
Duh. Because I wrote it. I'm not going to write a blog post and link some bullshit thing in the very first sentence.
Seriously, though, the ArcheAge release has been like a pizza party that had two hundred people show up instead of twenty. The two new servers that went live today (Ezi and Lucius) are a good start. They're like an extra dozen pizzas to take the edge off. It's not the end of the problem, but it's a start. Disabling character creation on Aranzeb, Kyrios, Ollo, and Salphira helps in a big way, too. I know people are butthurt because they're established on those servers and now their friends can't get in on the action, but it's what needs to happen until the population stabilizes and finds its equilibrium point.
I know last night I was raging. It was a bad night to write a post, especially about ArcheAges queues, because I'd pretty much gotten to play for like five minutes and sat in three queues. Router resets, disconnects, and flat-out just spazzing pretty much killed the day for me. Today, fortunately, went a lot better, and I'm glad folks on the stream have been more or less patient with me through all of this.
When Scapes dropped us a hint about the new servers, he stated that they would be on clusters 5 and 6 for the AH. When Ezi and Lucius came up, we only had cluster 5. This makes me think that after tomorrow morning's server maint. there's a good chance we'll see more NA server. No more details have been released about the upcoming EU servers since we found out that they were going through customs on their way to the Amsterdam hosting site.
Things still aren't quite coming up roses for ArcheAge, but the server woes are on their way to being solved.
Don't forget to tune in tomorrow at 5(ish, assuming I don't get held up at the pharmacy) for another episode of the ArcheAge Queuecast.
Duh. Because I wrote it. I'm not going to write a blog post and link some bullshit thing in the very first sentence.
Seriously, though, the ArcheAge release has been like a pizza party that had two hundred people show up instead of twenty. The two new servers that went live today (Ezi and Lucius) are a good start. They're like an extra dozen pizzas to take the edge off. It's not the end of the problem, but it's a start. Disabling character creation on Aranzeb, Kyrios, Ollo, and Salphira helps in a big way, too. I know people are butthurt because they're established on those servers and now their friends can't get in on the action, but it's what needs to happen until the population stabilizes and finds its equilibrium point.
I know last night I was raging. It was a bad night to write a post, especially about ArcheAges queues, because I'd pretty much gotten to play for like five minutes and sat in three queues. Router resets, disconnects, and flat-out just spazzing pretty much killed the day for me. Today, fortunately, went a lot better, and I'm glad folks on the stream have been more or less patient with me through all of this.
When Scapes dropped us a hint about the new servers, he stated that they would be on clusters 5 and 6 for the AH. When Ezi and Lucius came up, we only had cluster 5. This makes me think that after tomorrow morning's server maint. there's a good chance we'll see more NA server. No more details have been released about the upcoming EU servers since we found out that they were going through customs on their way to the Amsterdam hosting site.
Things still aren't quite coming up roses for ArcheAge, but the server woes are on their way to being solved.
Don't forget to tune in tomorrow at 5(ish, assuming I don't get held up at the pharmacy) for another episode of the ArcheAge Queuecast.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
QueueAge QueueCasting
Surprise surprise, ArcheAge's queues have only gotten worse since the game opened its doors to the unwashed masses of my fellow froobie players. I understand Trion's hesitation to introduce too many servers at launch, given how much server downsizing even freshly-released games have had to do in the wake of hyped launches that failed to retain players. Really I do.
But right now, we are sitting at something like four to five thousand players in the queue for each server, if not more. Even patrons are reporting five to eight hour queue times. Tonight's stream window was literally ALL filled with waiting on the queue, which left me casting to an empty room about the forums drama, buildcraft, and my desperate need for a parser so I can start digging into the game's combat mechanics.
I should really look and see if there's an ACT plugin for the game yet.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, fortunately. Trion's CEO appeared on the forums today, more or less apologizing for the giant clusterfuck and assuring us that they were in the process of establishing more servers. It's...better than nothing. And certainly better than the three or four tweets @ArcheAge sent out about how they were going to be aggressively kicking people going AFK with their mounts ingame.
>.> Sorry guys, but between the labor system only giving free players points while they're logged in and the mounts only leveling while they're actually out and being used... That should have been expected. And probably was expected. I'm just kind of curious why Trion and XL didn't hook up BEFORE launch to integrate Trion's shnifty anti-botting/anti-spam software.
Ah well. Barn door after the cows are loose, or whatever.
Skillset hype! In spite of the fact that Auramancy and Shadowplay are currently the two most used sets according to Arche-Base's builder, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth at the overpoweredness of Archery. Because OMGNOES we can kill from range. That...you know... being the point of archery. Never mind that archery builds tend to be squishy, especially when CCd- even Stonearrows. Or that you can change your build and level the other schools to counter whatever it is you're having issues with.
It's cool. This is QueueAge, after all. It's brought to you by the letter Q and the number 420 if you believe the forums. A little QQing is to be expected.
Hopefully tonight I'll be able to get in and do some more grinding so I can theoretically start streaming PvP early next week. I'm still playing Trickster, and liking it a LOT. I wish I had some self-healing or something, but so far it's working well. And I've only gotten my elk killed a half dozen times. (For a good time, summon your mount while it's dead. It falls out of the sky and tips over at your feet, and it's HILARIOUS.)
If a new server opens tomorrow or over the weekend, there is a good chance I will be rerolling. We'll see. I'm trying to be patient with QueueAge, but a girl can only sit and pointedly livestream her queue for so long before it wears on her. And it's hard as shit to come up with content for a game that I can't actually log into. Q.Q (#QueueQueue?)
But right now, we are sitting at something like four to five thousand players in the queue for each server, if not more. Even patrons are reporting five to eight hour queue times. Tonight's stream window was literally ALL filled with waiting on the queue, which left me casting to an empty room about the forums drama, buildcraft, and my desperate need for a parser so I can start digging into the game's combat mechanics.
I should really look and see if there's an ACT plugin for the game yet.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, fortunately. Trion's CEO appeared on the forums today, more or less apologizing for the giant clusterfuck and assuring us that they were in the process of establishing more servers. It's...better than nothing. And certainly better than the three or four tweets @ArcheAge sent out about how they were going to be aggressively kicking people going AFK with their mounts ingame.
>.> Sorry guys, but between the labor system only giving free players points while they're logged in and the mounts only leveling while they're actually out and being used... That should have been expected. And probably was expected. I'm just kind of curious why Trion and XL didn't hook up BEFORE launch to integrate Trion's shnifty anti-botting/anti-spam software.
Ah well. Barn door after the cows are loose, or whatever.
Skillset hype! In spite of the fact that Auramancy and Shadowplay are currently the two most used sets according to Arche-Base's builder, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth at the overpoweredness of Archery. Because OMGNOES we can kill from range. That...you know... being the point of archery. Never mind that archery builds tend to be squishy, especially when CCd- even Stonearrows. Or that you can change your build and level the other schools to counter whatever it is you're having issues with.
It's cool. This is QueueAge, after all. It's brought to you by the letter Q and the number 420 if you believe the forums. A little QQing is to be expected.
Hopefully tonight I'll be able to get in and do some more grinding so I can theoretically start streaming PvP early next week. I'm still playing Trickster, and liking it a LOT. I wish I had some self-healing or something, but so far it's working well. And I've only gotten my elk killed a half dozen times. (For a good time, summon your mount while it's dead. It falls out of the sky and tips over at your feet, and it's HILARIOUS.)
If a new server opens tomorrow or over the weekend, there is a good chance I will be rerolling. We'll see. I'm trying to be patient with QueueAge, but a girl can only sit and pointedly livestream her queue for so long before it wears on her. And it's hard as shit to come up with content for a game that I can't actually log into. Q.Q (#QueueQueue?)
ArcheAge Hype!
So... today was the big day. Trion's ArcheAge went live to everyone, not just the people who bought founder packs to get into the headstart period. Not that those people really got much mileage out of their head start, since fucking Trion's been getting cornholed with DDOS attacks and authentication server mishaps since h.s. started. The rage on the forums is real, and there seem to be a lot of fanboys with their fingers on the game's carotid, just waiting to pronounce the game dead on arrival.
First off: this game has been way successful in Korea, and Trion is run by a bunch of fucking venture capitalists that won't let the game lose money. So calm your tits. I'm not saying it's not legit to get upset when you're dropped from heinous server queues, or get stuck in video loops, or whatever. I'm just saying to calm your tits and get a little perspective. World of Warcraft launched with day-long queues, serious server instability, and with so much client and server lag that it was pretty much unplayable for most people until two months after release. SWTOR had queues, Rift had queues, Wildstar had queues...
It's not a new thing. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at it this way: if the publisher opens more servers, yes. It solves the problem immediately. There is more room for the playerbase to settle down, everyone gets a shot at land who wants it, and the launch-day flood is able to distribute evenly. Fast forward to a year or two down the line. The new car smell has given way to b.o. and stale beer, and a lot of those servers are starting to feel empty. Your newbie zones are ghost towns, because everyone's higher level, half the buildings are abandoned because the people that were so gung-ho at launch burned out or moved on. The forums are awash with cries of doom and death... And what are the devs to do? They can close servers and merge the populations, but then you have to worry about handling the housing issue, and the economics of the whole thing. Not to mention that server mergers are ALWAYS met with negative press. Like, since E'ci and Tunare were merged back in the day and all the Zeks became one server, people start screaming death and dismay when the M word comes into play.
Yeah. It's this whole mess. So, rather than create tomorrow's problems today, the devs decide to keep the number of servers low, gambling that a little bit of inconvenience now will offset the disappointment and inability to grow and nurture a long-term community down the road. That said...
I would expect Trion to open at least another two servers by midweek next week. They've already upped the server caps by 20% (in the US, 10% in the EU). They're acknowledging the issues and keeping the playerbase posted as they try to resolve them.
That's all you can bloody well ask for. Now shut your pie holes, goddammit.
*cough* Okay.
So I'm a naked newbie, playing on Enla, which is one of the newer servers. I'm playing 100% free at the moment, so there's a lot of shit I can't do (like own property and use the auction house). The combat so far is NOT restricted though, which is nice. I've been playing Trickster (Archery/Shadowblade/Witchcraft) and love it to pieces. It's a good mix of mobility, damage, and control. Holy shit. The bubble mez? Is awesome. And hilarious. The biggest perk of the whole build so far, and keep in mind that I'm only level 13, is the instant cast root/dot after I use my reverse lunge. I can basically root rot, if I want, by stacking my dots up and then rooting stuff. It's not very time-efficient, but it keeps me from dying every five feet.
I cannot say that about my fellow froobs. Jesus fuck, some of these people must need flashing lights on their desks to remind them to inhale and exhale.
I should write more, I really should, but I'm down to three minutes on my queue and I don't want to miss the pop. I'll be playing ArcheAge on stream for the forseeable future, so come on over and check the game out. ^.^ I plan to hit PvP hard, once I'm high enough level for it, which I think starts around 30. And apologies for the hiatus. Some RL shit happened, which you'll be able to read about over at On the Rox later tonight or mid-day tomorrow.
Stay excellent!
First off: this game has been way successful in Korea, and Trion is run by a bunch of fucking venture capitalists that won't let the game lose money. So calm your tits. I'm not saying it's not legit to get upset when you're dropped from heinous server queues, or get stuck in video loops, or whatever. I'm just saying to calm your tits and get a little perspective. World of Warcraft launched with day-long queues, serious server instability, and with so much client and server lag that it was pretty much unplayable for most people until two months after release. SWTOR had queues, Rift had queues, Wildstar had queues...
It's not a new thing. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at it this way: if the publisher opens more servers, yes. It solves the problem immediately. There is more room for the playerbase to settle down, everyone gets a shot at land who wants it, and the launch-day flood is able to distribute evenly. Fast forward to a year or two down the line. The new car smell has given way to b.o. and stale beer, and a lot of those servers are starting to feel empty. Your newbie zones are ghost towns, because everyone's higher level, half the buildings are abandoned because the people that were so gung-ho at launch burned out or moved on. The forums are awash with cries of doom and death... And what are the devs to do? They can close servers and merge the populations, but then you have to worry about handling the housing issue, and the economics of the whole thing. Not to mention that server mergers are ALWAYS met with negative press. Like, since E'ci and Tunare were merged back in the day and all the Zeks became one server, people start screaming death and dismay when the M word comes into play.
Yeah. It's this whole mess. So, rather than create tomorrow's problems today, the devs decide to keep the number of servers low, gambling that a little bit of inconvenience now will offset the disappointment and inability to grow and nurture a long-term community down the road. That said...
I would expect Trion to open at least another two servers by midweek next week. They've already upped the server caps by 20% (in the US, 10% in the EU). They're acknowledging the issues and keeping the playerbase posted as they try to resolve them.
That's all you can bloody well ask for. Now shut your pie holes, goddammit.
*cough* Okay.
So I'm a naked newbie, playing on Enla, which is one of the newer servers. I'm playing 100% free at the moment, so there's a lot of shit I can't do (like own property and use the auction house). The combat so far is NOT restricted though, which is nice. I've been playing Trickster (Archery/Shadowblade/Witchcraft) and love it to pieces. It's a good mix of mobility, damage, and control. Holy shit. The bubble mez? Is awesome. And hilarious. The biggest perk of the whole build so far, and keep in mind that I'm only level 13, is the instant cast root/dot after I use my reverse lunge. I can basically root rot, if I want, by stacking my dots up and then rooting stuff. It's not very time-efficient, but it keeps me from dying every five feet.
I cannot say that about my fellow froobs. Jesus fuck, some of these people must need flashing lights on their desks to remind them to inhale and exhale.
I should write more, I really should, but I'm down to three minutes on my queue and I don't want to miss the pop. I'll be playing ArcheAge on stream for the forseeable future, so come on over and check the game out. ^.^ I plan to hit PvP hard, once I'm high enough level for it, which I think starts around 30. And apologies for the hiatus. Some RL shit happened, which you'll be able to read about over at On the Rox later tonight or mid-day tomorrow.
Stay excellent!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
On deciding what game to stream
This has been a point of constant contemplation for me since I first got the inclination to stream on Twitch. How do I decide what (and when) to broadcast? There are a lot of games out there, and there are thousands of people with Twitch channels, all clamoring for the same hundred odd thousand people to come watch their shows. Twitch already has its allstar lineup of big-name streamers, and a good-sized roster of less well-known broadcasters as well. Starting from the ground level, the whole thing can seem fucking impossible to break into.
So how to go about doing it?
Everything I've heard from other streamers when they're asked boils down to "just start your stream and be patient." I don't buy that, because that's not how fucking marketing works. You don't just hang a sign on your door that says "open for business" and get customers. Oh, you might get a couple curious people, but by and large? You're not going to become WalMart by sitting on the side of the road with a couple of cheap fucking radios that fell off the back of a truck. You're just not.
From what I've seen, the two major factors in whether or not your viewer count goes up (and you get those all-important follwers) seem to be what you're streaming and when. While streaming a game like World of Warcraft or League of Legends might seem super cool and fit most with how you want to be spending you time, odds are that there are a hundred people on the list ahead of you with more viewers and subs, and since that's how Twitch sorts streams...
Good luck catching clicks, when people have to scroll down through a bajillion other channels to get to you.
Picking a less widely-broadcast game is an option, a good one from what I've seen. When I stream Diablo III, I'll go all night without collecting more than just myself and maybe a friend from Facebook. When I was streaming ArcheAge, though, I would fluctuate from three to twenty viewers at a time, and actually collected a few follows. I saw better progress as a broadcaster in two days of ArcheAge than I saw in two weeks of Diablo. The key to that is that sitting in ArcheAge with three viewers put me well over halfway up the list, and as I got more clicks, I rose even higher. Broadcasting Diablo with the same amount of viewers puts me in the fucking sewer with the motherfucking Ninja Turtles.
I've also noticed that WHEN I stream has a lot to do with how many views I can collect. If I stream Diablo while say... Morikopa or Datmodz are live, I'm pretty much not going to pick up strays. If I go live while there aren't a lot of high-profile streamers around, though... Boom. Clicks. The market doesn't go away when the big names aren't streaming. That's when it opens up the most. Think of it this way: it's 2AM and you're fucking hungry as fuck, but you don't want to cook. Fucking everything's closed, right? Except Taco Bell. They're fuckin' open like... ALL THE DAMN TIME. Ordinarily, you wouldn't eat at the Bell because you don't like horsemeat or whatever, but you're fuckin' hungry, and anything you get at WalMart is gonna require getting out of your car, walking around the damn store...and you'll probably just walk out with some fucking junkfood and a case of NOS, so why the fuck bother? Just go to the Bell, drive through, and get yourself a goddamn box of tacos.
It's like that with Twitch, too. If I make myself available when other options are limited, people have no choice but to come check me out. That's when having that snappy title and awesome channel graphics come into play. If you can pique interests during offpeak times and get those follows, you'll be in a better position to climb up the watchlist come peak times. If some dude gets shitfaced and follows you at three in the morning, when he rolls out of bed hungover and is looking for something to watch and sees you online again/still... he might just check you out instead of whoever else he's subbed to.
Or...you can show boobies. Apparently boobies trump marketing strategy.
Anyway, I don't know if my observations mean that I should change what I'm doing
So how to go about doing it?
Everything I've heard from other streamers when they're asked boils down to "just start your stream and be patient." I don't buy that, because that's not how fucking marketing works. You don't just hang a sign on your door that says "open for business" and get customers. Oh, you might get a couple curious people, but by and large? You're not going to become WalMart by sitting on the side of the road with a couple of cheap fucking radios that fell off the back of a truck. You're just not.
From what I've seen, the two major factors in whether or not your viewer count goes up (and you get those all-important follwers) seem to be what you're streaming and when. While streaming a game like World of Warcraft or League of Legends might seem super cool and fit most with how you want to be spending you time, odds are that there are a hundred people on the list ahead of you with more viewers and subs, and since that's how Twitch sorts streams...
Good luck catching clicks, when people have to scroll down through a bajillion other channels to get to you.
Picking a less widely-broadcast game is an option, a good one from what I've seen. When I stream Diablo III, I'll go all night without collecting more than just myself and maybe a friend from Facebook. When I was streaming ArcheAge, though, I would fluctuate from three to twenty viewers at a time, and actually collected a few follows. I saw better progress as a broadcaster in two days of ArcheAge than I saw in two weeks of Diablo. The key to that is that sitting in ArcheAge with three viewers put me well over halfway up the list, and as I got more clicks, I rose even higher. Broadcasting Diablo with the same amount of viewers puts me in the fucking sewer with the motherfucking Ninja Turtles.
I've also noticed that WHEN I stream has a lot to do with how many views I can collect. If I stream Diablo while say... Morikopa or Datmodz are live, I'm pretty much not going to pick up strays. If I go live while there aren't a lot of high-profile streamers around, though... Boom. Clicks. The market doesn't go away when the big names aren't streaming. That's when it opens up the most. Think of it this way: it's 2AM and you're fucking hungry as fuck, but you don't want to cook. Fucking everything's closed, right? Except Taco Bell. They're fuckin' open like... ALL THE DAMN TIME. Ordinarily, you wouldn't eat at the Bell because you don't like horsemeat or whatever, but you're fuckin' hungry, and anything you get at WalMart is gonna require getting out of your car, walking around the damn store...and you'll probably just walk out with some fucking junkfood and a case of NOS, so why the fuck bother? Just go to the Bell, drive through, and get yourself a goddamn box of tacos.
It's like that with Twitch, too. If I make myself available when other options are limited, people have no choice but to come check me out. That's when having that snappy title and awesome channel graphics come into play. If you can pique interests during offpeak times and get those follows, you'll be in a better position to climb up the watchlist come peak times. If some dude gets shitfaced and follows you at three in the morning, when he rolls out of bed hungover and is looking for something to watch and sees you online again/still... he might just check you out instead of whoever else he's subbed to.
Or...you can show boobies. Apparently boobies trump marketing strategy.
Anyway, I don't know if my observations mean that I should change what I'm doing
Monday, September 8, 2014
I am not a goddamn unicorn! (Geek feminism rant)
Something has been bothering me since I started streaming more seriously. How in the flying fuck after ten plus years of video game culture being mainstream are girls with controllers and headsets still considered unicorns? Why are so many girls and women in this community made to feel like they're completely alien and out of place, or mythical creatures who need to be put in a zoo or museum? (Or driven out and eradicated, as some of the more reactionary fringe groups believe.) Why are female critics, writers, and streamers held to such different standards, and expected to both have a more intense "gamer cred" and show their tits to get ahead?
I used to rant a lot about how misrepresented women in gaming are. The only high-profile players or streamers I've been seeing are young, attractive, and act like genki Japanese schoolgirls. It made me angry, because I felt like all of us frumpy, ragey, middle-aged women were unwelcome in the community. I even started to talk about the stereotypical gamer girls as somehow less skilled, less qualified, or less REAL than I am. Which is totally the wrong thing to take away from a realization like that. It's more important to ask why those women are portrayed that way, or feel the need to market themselves that way. If that's how they actually are, and behaving that way or prettying themselves up before picking up a controller makes them feel happy, then I am in no position to criticize. But my experience just in the last week makes me think that simple self-enjoyment isn't the whole story.
In the last week I've gotten two major types of feedback about my show, and they've both been enlightening. The first group, the haters, are the most standout douchebags. They insult my appearance, demand I show my tits, make intensely sexual comments, and do their best to detract from my commentary and broadcasting. The second group, after lurking in the stream for a little while, remark about how refreshing it is to see a woman on cam with her stream without any pretensions to "sexing herself up," and focusing more on the game than flirtation and fluff. While I enjoy fucking with the former group and appreciate the affirmation that I'm doing something right from the latter group...they're both rooted in the same overall mentality.
A woman on stream is not just a streamer. She is automatically a woman streamer, and subject to an entirely different set of rules and expectations than her male colleagues. If a male streamer makes a dick joke, people laugh. If a female streamer makes a dick joke, chat blows up with wondering what kind of dick she likes and whether or not she'd be able to handle the in-your-dreams proportions of the commenters' wobbly bits. This honestly came as a shock to me, because I expected that I would not be expected to show up in date attire for my stream. Jeans and a Kingdom Hearts tshirt, hair pulled back so I don't overheat or get it caught on my headset... I figured that would be enough. The camera, in my mind, is just there because sometimes the facial expressions and non-verbal reactions to things ingame are just too good to miss, and can add a lot of extra entertainment to the commentary and gameplay. I I didn't have tits or a higher-pitched voice, I think I'd be correct in assuming that.
I really don't know how to combat this problem. My gut reaction was to institute a safe space policy on my stream, and highlight the fact that I am a streamer first and a woman second. After the eight pm troll rush yesterday, I banned the worst offenders and made a point to mention every so often that the way I play and the things I enjoy are no different than male players and streamers. But why do have to constantly justify my existence, or push so hard to make people see me as more than just some less-than-impressive tits with a headset? Or Jabba the Hutt in black glasses, as one of my troll called me. (Got some great laughs for telling him that I wished I was as cool as Jabba, because who the fuck else in Star Wars got Leia into a slave girl outfit and on a leash?)
Prominent male streamers do not have to take PSA breaks to assure viewers that they are watching a streamer and not a Guy Gamer. When they acknowledge their followers, subs, and donations they don't feel the need to do little dances or blow kisses or whatever. And they're never, that I've seen, asked what it's like to be a man who plays video games or a man who streams.
It's rare that I listen to or watch female streamers, because the amount of unicorn and yay I'm a girl that goes on bothers me a lot, but the other night Cookie was listening to Dizzykittens in bed while she was doing her end-of-stream QA, and it seemed like all of the questions she got focused on her gender, sexuality, and gamer cred. The answers to the questions, and how the hostess tried to steer the conversation back to the games, or the process of becoming a paid streamer and building a following really made me wonder how much of the giggle show on her stream is genuine and how much of it is marketing.
I will not change the way I dress or act while playing in the name of marketing. It's probably a terrible decision, since I am trying to turn this into a professional gig, but my integrity isn't worth giving up for some extra clicks. I want my audience to tune in because they enjoy my company and company, not because they like the way I look or pander to them. My influences and inspirations in streaming are probably JohnBams, Morikopa, and Ducksauce just because those are the ones Cookie watches the most and I spend a lot of time listening to them. I strive to strike a balance between game-related commentary, comedy, and unrelated pop-culture discussions. My favorite game while I was broadcasting ArcheAge was celebrity lookalike NPCs.
I thought about taking the camera off my stream, so that the haters don't have any reason to hijack my chat to fulfill their need to victimize someone, but I don't want to be that woman who's afraid to speak up because she's a woman and a man might react badly. I support retaking the night. I support teaching people not to hate, not segregation. Challenging the status quo is the only way to change it, and I like to think I'm strong enough to do that.
Maybe I'm taking too much of a crusader mentality about this, but I don't really care. I'm sure I'm going to make mistakes along the way, but I'm going to try my damnedest to break away from the unicorn mentality and the generally misogynistic metagame within the community. The heart of Tactical Dysfunction is in carving your own path to victory, and being accepting and open to other ideas and methodologies. It was a good choice of brand, I think, and hope I can live up to it as I try to change not only others' perceptions and expectations of women in gaming but my own as well.
I promise I'll get back to actual content with the next update. Stay dysfunctional, friends.
I used to rant a lot about how misrepresented women in gaming are. The only high-profile players or streamers I've been seeing are young, attractive, and act like genki Japanese schoolgirls. It made me angry, because I felt like all of us frumpy, ragey, middle-aged women were unwelcome in the community. I even started to talk about the stereotypical gamer girls as somehow less skilled, less qualified, or less REAL than I am. Which is totally the wrong thing to take away from a realization like that. It's more important to ask why those women are portrayed that way, or feel the need to market themselves that way. If that's how they actually are, and behaving that way or prettying themselves up before picking up a controller makes them feel happy, then I am in no position to criticize. But my experience just in the last week makes me think that simple self-enjoyment isn't the whole story.
In the last week I've gotten two major types of feedback about my show, and they've both been enlightening. The first group, the haters, are the most standout douchebags. They insult my appearance, demand I show my tits, make intensely sexual comments, and do their best to detract from my commentary and broadcasting. The second group, after lurking in the stream for a little while, remark about how refreshing it is to see a woman on cam with her stream without any pretensions to "sexing herself up," and focusing more on the game than flirtation and fluff. While I enjoy fucking with the former group and appreciate the affirmation that I'm doing something right from the latter group...they're both rooted in the same overall mentality.
A woman on stream is not just a streamer. She is automatically a woman streamer, and subject to an entirely different set of rules and expectations than her male colleagues. If a male streamer makes a dick joke, people laugh. If a female streamer makes a dick joke, chat blows up with wondering what kind of dick she likes and whether or not she'd be able to handle the in-your-dreams proportions of the commenters' wobbly bits. This honestly came as a shock to me, because I expected that I would not be expected to show up in date attire for my stream. Jeans and a Kingdom Hearts tshirt, hair pulled back so I don't overheat or get it caught on my headset... I figured that would be enough. The camera, in my mind, is just there because sometimes the facial expressions and non-verbal reactions to things ingame are just too good to miss, and can add a lot of extra entertainment to the commentary and gameplay. I I didn't have tits or a higher-pitched voice, I think I'd be correct in assuming that.
I really don't know how to combat this problem. My gut reaction was to institute a safe space policy on my stream, and highlight the fact that I am a streamer first and a woman second. After the eight pm troll rush yesterday, I banned the worst offenders and made a point to mention every so often that the way I play and the things I enjoy are no different than male players and streamers. But why do have to constantly justify my existence, or push so hard to make people see me as more than just some less-than-impressive tits with a headset? Or Jabba the Hutt in black glasses, as one of my troll called me. (Got some great laughs for telling him that I wished I was as cool as Jabba, because who the fuck else in Star Wars got Leia into a slave girl outfit and on a leash?)
Prominent male streamers do not have to take PSA breaks to assure viewers that they are watching a streamer and not a Guy Gamer. When they acknowledge their followers, subs, and donations they don't feel the need to do little dances or blow kisses or whatever. And they're never, that I've seen, asked what it's like to be a man who plays video games or a man who streams.
It's rare that I listen to or watch female streamers, because the amount of unicorn and yay I'm a girl that goes on bothers me a lot, but the other night Cookie was listening to Dizzykittens in bed while she was doing her end-of-stream QA, and it seemed like all of the questions she got focused on her gender, sexuality, and gamer cred. The answers to the questions, and how the hostess tried to steer the conversation back to the games, or the process of becoming a paid streamer and building a following really made me wonder how much of the giggle show on her stream is genuine and how much of it is marketing.
I will not change the way I dress or act while playing in the name of marketing. It's probably a terrible decision, since I am trying to turn this into a professional gig, but my integrity isn't worth giving up for some extra clicks. I want my audience to tune in because they enjoy my company and company, not because they like the way I look or pander to them. My influences and inspirations in streaming are probably JohnBams, Morikopa, and Ducksauce just because those are the ones Cookie watches the most and I spend a lot of time listening to them. I strive to strike a balance between game-related commentary, comedy, and unrelated pop-culture discussions. My favorite game while I was broadcasting ArcheAge was celebrity lookalike NPCs.
I thought about taking the camera off my stream, so that the haters don't have any reason to hijack my chat to fulfill their need to victimize someone, but I don't want to be that woman who's afraid to speak up because she's a woman and a man might react badly. I support retaking the night. I support teaching people not to hate, not segregation. Challenging the status quo is the only way to change it, and I like to think I'm strong enough to do that.
Maybe I'm taking too much of a crusader mentality about this, but I don't really care. I'm sure I'm going to make mistakes along the way, but I'm going to try my damnedest to break away from the unicorn mentality and the generally misogynistic metagame within the community. The heart of Tactical Dysfunction is in carving your own path to victory, and being accepting and open to other ideas and methodologies. It was a good choice of brand, I think, and hope I can live up to it as I try to change not only others' perceptions and expectations of women in gaming but my own as well.
I promise I'll get back to actual content with the next update. Stay dysfunctional, friends.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
ArcheAge - First Impressions
So, unless you've been under a rock for the last few weeks, you already know that TrionWorlds, the publisher that brought us Rift, is set to release a brand new game on Monday. Technically. Since that's when head start happens. Trion's been hyping ArcheAge as a plush sandbox MMO, where you can play your way without any penalties or having to sacrifice form for function. They boast over 100 classes, each one a different three-part combination of their skillsets. It offers an intense housing system, large-scale realm and guild-based PvP content, aerial travel, and even naval warfare. As in you can become a motherfucking pirate king.
Okay, that's how it's being sold. So far, in my HIGHLY EXPERIENCED level thirteen opinion, they're doing a decent job of delivering on their promises. And considering the game lost a lot of potential hype to its neighboring releases (Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, and the World of Warcraft and Rift expansions), it's actually gathered a pretty healthy community. There seem to be sizable clusters, even in beta, of players from every major sphere of gameplay. Hell, there are even Lineage2 style criminal guilds that focus on ganking and stealing, and anti-red police guilds that hunt them.
My nostalgia is probably getting the better of me here, but I am really excited to see the community taking a turn-of-the-century shape. I'm one of those oldschoolers that waxes poetic about the lost days of the East Commons Tunnel, and bot-hunters, and guilds putting reputation before epeen. I get giddy when I see a chat that's almost like vanilla Barrens chat, but with a healthy dose of pre-Dragons of Norrath Plane of Knowledge.
Ultimately, a lot of evaluation is going to have to wait until I get to spend more than five hours ingame, but so far it's looking good. My biggest pet peeves so far are Firrans, the labor system, and only having one skill until like...level ten. (Only a slight exaggeration.)
Firrans are the requisite cat people, and they comprise one half of their faction. (The other half is an ambiguously Asian race of humans.) My biggest complaint? The males all either look like Morpheus or like they got stung by a bunch of those bees from the Hunger Games, and the females all look like twelve year old prostitutes on speed. And holy shit. The run. THE RUN. Remember the Worgen "racial mount", where they run on all fours? Firrans do that. Only when the females run, their tails are held half-up like they're presenting to be mounted. Yeeeeeah.... It's gross. And when they swim- which, why the FUCK do so many of the cat starter zones throw you into water when, like, cats hate water- they look like goddamn dolphins. Their hats look ridiculous, their mounts are totally cute when they're babies but look like derpy battlecats...
You get the picture. Firrans bug me. But wtf is the labor system?
I'm glad you asked! Please. Have a seat. This is going to be a bit of a rant.
You know how almost every Facebook and app store game has a limited "stamina" resource that determines how many missions you can run? Labor in ArcheAge is like that, only it dictates how many dropped bags you can open, harvesting nodes you can use, and crafting combines you can do. You generate labor at a rate of one per minute, in five minute ticks. Being the farming whore that I am, I was harvesting every single resource node I passed, never thinking that I was burning up a limited resource.
Yeah...
So I got to the obligatory crafting introduction quest, and I had no labor. At all. And the combine requires a whopping fifty labor. Fifty minutes' worth of standing around and doing nothing (or running in circles looking for quest updates that are right in front of my face, and bitching about camp stealing) to do ONE. COMBINE.
wtf.
I know I shouldn't be that surprised. The game is free-to-play. It has to have restrictions to bait people into the cash shop and get them to spend money on the game. And honestly, the price tag on labor potions isn't that high. Maybe a dollar? Two? And it gives you a thousand labor. Pretty decent exchange rate, compared to other games. I wouldn't expect any less from Trion though. They've done better than most other western publishers with their development of a micro/macrotransaction-based f2p system. (Probably because the company was founded by venture capitalists, and not programmers, writers, and engineers.) Still. The fact that just about everything short of questing and grinding xp eats up labor bothers me. Maybe if you generated labor while offline at a reduced rate, it would go over better, but you don' get ANY while you're logged out. The only way to get labor points is to be logged in.
Time to get my quarter-stuck-in-keyboard and auto-run into walls in the middle of nowhere mojo on. >.> I haven't had to keep a character logged in with timeout cheats in like six years.
My issues with the skill system are really just a reflection of an issue I have with MMORPGs in general. At level one, or even level ten, you have like...NO BUTTONS. And the ones you have are very basic attacks. In ArcheAge, this becomes sand-in-the-snatch-esque because every ability but your basic ranged and melee strikes has a cooldown. It's like being a Crusader when Reaper of Souls first launched. ARROW SHOT! And...now it's time to lean on my attack button until it comes back up. And while archery takes a 20% damage penalty for being in melee, they get no ability early-on to snare, root, reverse lunge, or otherwise gtfo melee. Just once, I want to have access to my core abilities from level one, and develop them with complementary abilities, buffs, an debuffs over the course of my character's development. It doesn't have to be the FINAL class toolkit, but it does have to be a complete kit. If I'm ranged DPS, give me a snare or root, a strong ranged blast attack, a decent ranged aoe (cone or taoe, I don't care), and some kind of self-heal or mitigation cooldown. That's all it takes. If I'm a healer, the kit is almost the same, only you give me enough damage to be able to solo, give me a solid single target heal, and either a group heal, damage absorb, or mitigation buff. Tanks need taunts. Rogues need stealth or stuns. That kind of stuff.
Maybe I'm asking for too much. I don't know. I would feedback all of this to Trion, but their version of ingame feedback is their knowledge base on an ingame browser. Less-than-ideal.
Anyway. In spite of my rambling list of peeves, I highly recommend ArcheAge. Official live date is sometime next week, with head start beginning on Monday. If you're curious or on the fence, drop by my stream tonight at 5pm EST. I'll either be playing my Firran trickster, or I'll have rerolled an elf something or other because I can't take the yiffing any more. And apologies for the missed days here on the blog. It's been a busy week.
Okay, that's how it's being sold. So far, in my HIGHLY EXPERIENCED level thirteen opinion, they're doing a decent job of delivering on their promises. And considering the game lost a lot of potential hype to its neighboring releases (Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, and the World of Warcraft and Rift expansions), it's actually gathered a pretty healthy community. There seem to be sizable clusters, even in beta, of players from every major sphere of gameplay. Hell, there are even Lineage2 style criminal guilds that focus on ganking and stealing, and anti-red police guilds that hunt them.
My nostalgia is probably getting the better of me here, but I am really excited to see the community taking a turn-of-the-century shape. I'm one of those oldschoolers that waxes poetic about the lost days of the East Commons Tunnel, and bot-hunters, and guilds putting reputation before epeen. I get giddy when I see a chat that's almost like vanilla Barrens chat, but with a healthy dose of pre-Dragons of Norrath Plane of Knowledge.
Ultimately, a lot of evaluation is going to have to wait until I get to spend more than five hours ingame, but so far it's looking good. My biggest pet peeves so far are Firrans, the labor system, and only having one skill until like...level ten. (Only a slight exaggeration.)
Firrans are the requisite cat people, and they comprise one half of their faction. (The other half is an ambiguously Asian race of humans.) My biggest complaint? The males all either look like Morpheus or like they got stung by a bunch of those bees from the Hunger Games, and the females all look like twelve year old prostitutes on speed. And holy shit. The run. THE RUN. Remember the Worgen "racial mount", where they run on all fours? Firrans do that. Only when the females run, their tails are held half-up like they're presenting to be mounted. Yeeeeeah.... It's gross. And when they swim- which, why the FUCK do so many of the cat starter zones throw you into water when, like, cats hate water- they look like goddamn dolphins. Their hats look ridiculous, their mounts are totally cute when they're babies but look like derpy battlecats...
You get the picture. Firrans bug me. But wtf is the labor system?
I'm glad you asked! Please. Have a seat. This is going to be a bit of a rant.
You know how almost every Facebook and app store game has a limited "stamina" resource that determines how many missions you can run? Labor in ArcheAge is like that, only it dictates how many dropped bags you can open, harvesting nodes you can use, and crafting combines you can do. You generate labor at a rate of one per minute, in five minute ticks. Being the farming whore that I am, I was harvesting every single resource node I passed, never thinking that I was burning up a limited resource.
Yeah...
So I got to the obligatory crafting introduction quest, and I had no labor. At all. And the combine requires a whopping fifty labor. Fifty minutes' worth of standing around and doing nothing (or running in circles looking for quest updates that are right in front of my face, and bitching about camp stealing) to do ONE. COMBINE.
wtf.
I know I shouldn't be that surprised. The game is free-to-play. It has to have restrictions to bait people into the cash shop and get them to spend money on the game. And honestly, the price tag on labor potions isn't that high. Maybe a dollar? Two? And it gives you a thousand labor. Pretty decent exchange rate, compared to other games. I wouldn't expect any less from Trion though. They've done better than most other western publishers with their development of a micro/macrotransaction-based f2p system. (Probably because the company was founded by venture capitalists, and not programmers, writers, and engineers.) Still. The fact that just about everything short of questing and grinding xp eats up labor bothers me. Maybe if you generated labor while offline at a reduced rate, it would go over better, but you don' get ANY while you're logged out. The only way to get labor points is to be logged in.
Time to get my quarter-stuck-in-keyboard and auto-run into walls in the middle of nowhere mojo on. >.> I haven't had to keep a character logged in with timeout cheats in like six years.
My issues with the skill system are really just a reflection of an issue I have with MMORPGs in general. At level one, or even level ten, you have like...NO BUTTONS. And the ones you have are very basic attacks. In ArcheAge, this becomes sand-in-the-snatch-esque because every ability but your basic ranged and melee strikes has a cooldown. It's like being a Crusader when Reaper of Souls first launched. ARROW SHOT! And...now it's time to lean on my attack button until it comes back up. And while archery takes a 20% damage penalty for being in melee, they get no ability early-on to snare, root, reverse lunge, or otherwise gtfo melee. Just once, I want to have access to my core abilities from level one, and develop them with complementary abilities, buffs, an debuffs over the course of my character's development. It doesn't have to be the FINAL class toolkit, but it does have to be a complete kit. If I'm ranged DPS, give me a snare or root, a strong ranged blast attack, a decent ranged aoe (cone or taoe, I don't care), and some kind of self-heal or mitigation cooldown. That's all it takes. If I'm a healer, the kit is almost the same, only you give me enough damage to be able to solo, give me a solid single target heal, and either a group heal, damage absorb, or mitigation buff. Tanks need taunts. Rogues need stealth or stuns. That kind of stuff.
Maybe I'm asking for too much. I don't know. I would feedback all of this to Trion, but their version of ingame feedback is their knowledge base on an ingame browser. Less-than-ideal.
Anyway. In spite of my rambling list of peeves, I highly recommend ArcheAge. Official live date is sometime next week, with head start beginning on Monday. If you're curious or on the fence, drop by my stream tonight at 5pm EST. I'll either be playing my Firran trickster, or I'll have rerolled an elf something or other because I can't take the yiffing any more. And apologies for the missed days here on the blog. It's been a busy week.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
The WORLD (of Warcraft) IS (not) ENDING!
/09My Facebook feed has been absolutely filled with people sharing and re-sharing articles from Joystiq, LazyGamer, and a few other MMO newsy-type sites about how WoW is going free to play and the apocalypse is upon us. Given that pretty much everyone is running (or was running, since a lot of the articles have disappeared into the ether since Blizz posted this on the WoW forums) the same story, I'm going out on a limb and assuming some overzealous retweeting happened, and then some judicious paraphrasing of articles happened. So here's the real skinny:
World of Warcraft is not going free to play. They are not giving new Battle.net accounts thirty days of unlimited access to pre-Pandaria Warcraft. And they are not, that we know of right now, going to pull the rug out from under us after Draenor launches and move to a freemium model. (That is, free to play with one or more subscription/subscription-like premium options.) So all of you subscription or bust dinosaurs can calm your tits and get out of the way.
That's right. I called hardcore proponents of subscription-based MMORPGs dinosaurs. Because it's not 2010 any more, and we don't have to be afraid of the words "free," "to," and "play" any more. I'm not going to go so far as to say that there is no future for subscription-based games, because there are still more than enough of us that prefer to just fork over a given amount of money each month to get unlimited access to a game and all of its features. But it's hard to ignore that there is a LARGE portion of the MMO-playing community that favors an a la carte approach. They don't want to pay for services or content until they need them. By offering a game up as free to play (or even buy to play, depending on your price tag) a publisher immediately makes their game accessible to pretty much anyone with an internet connection and a computer.
Even Blizzard has been able to push hubris to the side enough to offer a free trial, and while that opens up a little bit of leeway for "walk-up" players. That is, players who don't have any kind of direct initial attachment to the game or franchise, but who are looking for something new or different to try. And it's a lot easier to drag your friends from game to game if they don't have to immediately plunk down fifty dollars or better before they even know if they're going to stay around or not. All that said, let's face it. Twenty levels is barely enough gameplay to figure out basic mechanics, let alone form a connection with the game. Trials typically lock new players out of open communication, the ingame economy...
The restrictions are well-intentioned. They keep spam to a minimum, discourage the use of trial accounts for illicit RMT, and are supposed to encourage people to purchase the game or subscribe. Only here's what generally happens:
Please, for the love of Freya, someone make an MMO called FreeStabbingShootyMans Online.
All jokes aside, the MMORPG market has been diluted in recent years by mass-produced free-to-play games on mobile and traditional platforms which offer everything from 100% free gameplay with paid "flavor" content to one-time "unlock" purchases that flag the user's account for unlimited access for all time. A lot of old-timers scoff and demand to know how the games plan to stay afloat when they're giving everything away for free, but here's the point:
They are. They're wildly successful. The companies that have them make a LOT of money. No, they don't have subscriber figures in the tens of millions, but they don't need them. I guess what I'm getting at is that a game does not need to be subscription-based to flourish, and in today's MMO industry, a sub-only model is probably a hindrance.
Look at Everquest 2. The game was floundering, rife with retention problems and losing devs left right and center. Then they go f2p. There's still a sub option, and get this: players actively encourage others to subscribe, and it works. They offer enough of the game to catch interest, and offer characters enough freedom to form the connections that will keep them in the game for a longer time.
EQ2's not a perfect example, but it's one that's near and dear to my heart. When the players are complaining about cities feeling like ghost towns and only ever seeing the same old faces... Opening the floodgates to the unwashed froobie masses is the best option, even if the players don't initially realize it. The game that everyone pronounced dead two years into its lifespan, which everyone thought had been crushed under the titanic weight of World of Warcraft... is still going strong, is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and has an expansion on the way. Maybe more importantly, it has another franchise game coming down the pipeline and a fanbase eager to play it.
World of Warcraft...has nothing but people drawing attention to its rapidly dwindling population, server mergers, and speculating that its next expansion is just going to be a waste of time and money. WoW should have made the free-to-play leap when Cata released and hit the reset button on half the content in the game. Blizzard should have kept the standard subscription; offered a premium subscription with perks like accelerated xp, special heirloom items, and some kind of raid lockout override; and introduced one or two tiers of free play with varying degrees of freedom. Yes, it would have required modifications to the raid difficulty settings, and PvP queues... But it would have been worth it. The press and publicity could have floated the game another couple of years without some schmuck pulling out his stethoscope and trying to pronounce the game dead.
So yes. I wish the rumors about WoW going free to play were true. Not just because I really want to play right now but don't have the cash to sub, but because I genuinely want to see the game last.
World of Warcraft is not going free-to-play. That was a targeted promotion. And World of Warcraft is not dying. It's just finally hitting an equilibrium point with the other franchises in the industry. The game is, however, at a very important point in its lifespan, and whether or not it lasts another five or ten years is going to depend heavily on how Blizzard handles the next twelve months.
World of Warcraft is not going free to play. They are not giving new Battle.net accounts thirty days of unlimited access to pre-Pandaria Warcraft. And they are not, that we know of right now, going to pull the rug out from under us after Draenor launches and move to a freemium model. (That is, free to play with one or more subscription/subscription-like premium options.) So all of you subscription or bust dinosaurs can calm your tits and get out of the way.
That's right. I called hardcore proponents of subscription-based MMORPGs dinosaurs. Because it's not 2010 any more, and we don't have to be afraid of the words "free," "to," and "play" any more. I'm not going to go so far as to say that there is no future for subscription-based games, because there are still more than enough of us that prefer to just fork over a given amount of money each month to get unlimited access to a game and all of its features. But it's hard to ignore that there is a LARGE portion of the MMO-playing community that favors an a la carte approach. They don't want to pay for services or content until they need them. By offering a game up as free to play (or even buy to play, depending on your price tag) a publisher immediately makes their game accessible to pretty much anyone with an internet connection and a computer.
Even Blizzard has been able to push hubris to the side enough to offer a free trial, and while that opens up a little bit of leeway for "walk-up" players. That is, players who don't have any kind of direct initial attachment to the game or franchise, but who are looking for something new or different to try. And it's a lot easier to drag your friends from game to game if they don't have to immediately plunk down fifty dollars or better before they even know if they're going to stay around or not. All that said, let's face it. Twenty levels is barely enough gameplay to figure out basic mechanics, let alone form a connection with the game. Trials typically lock new players out of open communication, the ingame economy...
The restrictions are well-intentioned. They keep spam to a minimum, discourage the use of trial accounts for illicit RMT, and are supposed to encourage people to purchase the game or subscribe. Only here's what generally happens:
Fr00bie: omg this game is so awesome I can shoot and stab and RAWR! Look! A knife! How do I use?
Local: Fr00bie: how i use nife?
System Message: Error; Trial accounts cannot use local
Fr00bie: omg this game sucks I'm gonna go play FreeStabbingShootyMans Online instead.
Please, for the love of Freya, someone make an MMO called FreeStabbingShootyMans Online.
All jokes aside, the MMORPG market has been diluted in recent years by mass-produced free-to-play games on mobile and traditional platforms which offer everything from 100% free gameplay with paid "flavor" content to one-time "unlock" purchases that flag the user's account for unlimited access for all time. A lot of old-timers scoff and demand to know how the games plan to stay afloat when they're giving everything away for free, but here's the point:
They are. They're wildly successful. The companies that have them make a LOT of money. No, they don't have subscriber figures in the tens of millions, but they don't need them. I guess what I'm getting at is that a game does not need to be subscription-based to flourish, and in today's MMO industry, a sub-only model is probably a hindrance.
Look at Everquest 2. The game was floundering, rife with retention problems and losing devs left right and center. Then they go f2p. There's still a sub option, and get this: players actively encourage others to subscribe, and it works. They offer enough of the game to catch interest, and offer characters enough freedom to form the connections that will keep them in the game for a longer time.
EQ2's not a perfect example, but it's one that's near and dear to my heart. When the players are complaining about cities feeling like ghost towns and only ever seeing the same old faces... Opening the floodgates to the unwashed froobie masses is the best option, even if the players don't initially realize it. The game that everyone pronounced dead two years into its lifespan, which everyone thought had been crushed under the titanic weight of World of Warcraft... is still going strong, is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and has an expansion on the way. Maybe more importantly, it has another franchise game coming down the pipeline and a fanbase eager to play it.
World of Warcraft...has nothing but people drawing attention to its rapidly dwindling population, server mergers, and speculating that its next expansion is just going to be a waste of time and money. WoW should have made the free-to-play leap when Cata released and hit the reset button on half the content in the game. Blizzard should have kept the standard subscription; offered a premium subscription with perks like accelerated xp, special heirloom items, and some kind of raid lockout override; and introduced one or two tiers of free play with varying degrees of freedom. Yes, it would have required modifications to the raid difficulty settings, and PvP queues... But it would have been worth it. The press and publicity could have floated the game another couple of years without some schmuck pulling out his stethoscope and trying to pronounce the game dead.
So yes. I wish the rumors about WoW going free to play were true. Not just because I really want to play right now but don't have the cash to sub, but because I genuinely want to see the game last.
World of Warcraft is not going free-to-play. That was a targeted promotion. And World of Warcraft is not dying. It's just finally hitting an equilibrium point with the other franchises in the industry. The game is, however, at a very important point in its lifespan, and whether or not it lasts another five or ten years is going to depend heavily on how Blizzard handles the next twelve months.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
A Song of Ice and Fire (lol, sorry GRRM)
Two wizards, both alike in xp,
In third Diablo where we grind our loot...
Sorry, Shakespeare.
Okay. Enough coat-tailing and click-pandering.
Diablo 3 season 1 is a whopping three days old, and pretty much all the good stuff has already happened. The world firsts have come and gone (I was online and like...level 17 when the first NA T6 Malthael kill happened. I believe I said something like "holy monkeyfuck, Cookie, we're doing it wrong"), the leaderboards are topped, and Twitter is full of screenshots of the phat lewtz people are getting from greater rifts and Greed. It pretty much seems like in three days, I've gone from "Oh this is going to be soooooo cool" to "Welp. Everyone else has already been there and done that... Better than me."
Being a casual makes me sad.
But on to the titular purpose of this post: Wizard builds.
My girlfriend and I both run Wizards, and we usually duo on Torment 3 or so, because speed is good and not having to pay attention is important when you are constantly under siege by kittens. On our non-season mains, we both run disintegrate builds, but since she's a cheating whore and has four pieces of Tal'rasha's, she runs with a four-element setup while I run pretty much exclusively arcane. Both builds put out a LOT of damage, but my build especially lacks for survivability. Since we just run on T3, it doesn't really matter too much, but it's the biggest thing keeping us out of higher torment levels and higher rank greater rifts. So, being the experimentally-inclined bitch that I am...
I went all mad scientist on my seasonal wizard. And I've had some if not surprising, at least entertaining results.
See, when I started playing Diablo, Cookie was already 70. I pretty much modeled everything I did after how she'd built her wizard, so I only looked at one playstyle: cone-based, melee, glass cannon builds. I basically grew up thinking of sets like frost and lightning as subpar to arcane and fire. What little experimentation I did only narrowed my build rules even more: everything I put together had to have Energy Armor/Pinpoint Barrier, Magic Weapon/Force Weapon, and Familiar/Sparkflint. Because crit, damage, and more damage. That didn't leave much room in my build for mobility, debuffing, or cooldowns. Over the last few months, Cookie and I converged on the One True Build: Three buffs, Arcane Orb/Arcane Orbit, Spectral Blade/Thrown Blades, and Disintegrate/Entropy. Passives: Glass Cannon, Blur, Dominance, and the 15yd damage bonus.
Then the update happened, and we rerolled, and suddenly I was stuck with Magic Missile and Ray of Frost for twenty-odd levels. I had no choice but to experiment, because let's face it- I am used to driving a Mazerati and someone dumped me in a Vibe. Cookie's done the same thing, and we've ended up with a really fun, surprisingly beefy duo.
I'm ice. She's fire. Hence the title.
Everything I do is PBAOE. I've got Ray of Frost, Ice Armor, Frost Nova, Magic Weapon, Familiar, and Spectral Blade. She's got Blizzard/Apocalypse, Hydra/Mammoth, Energy Armor/Pinpoint, Magic Weapon, Familiar/Sparkflint, and Spectral Blade. It's very I hold, she punches.
What I really like about the frost setup I've got right now is that everything serves to up my damage in some way. Frost Nova debuffs mob damage taken by 30%, the ice armor aoe debuffs everything MORE with Cold Blooded, and the ray of frost storm makes everything pretty much melt. Adding the squishier damage from Cookie's fire build, and it's taken us from having a hard time on Master to probably bumping up to Torment. And we're level 53 right now.
Doesn't sound like a big deal, but I'm pleased with it, dammit.
I'm really excited to see what we're able to do with these characters once we hit 70. It's funny, how two characters of the same exact class can play so differently, but my seasonal wizard is a completely different experience from my main.
I'm going to be spending my time between D3 and Champions for the foreseeable future, and you can catch me as @ScarletShrike or Roxina#1469. Catch you ingame!
In third Diablo where we grind our loot...
Sorry, Shakespeare.
Okay. Enough coat-tailing and click-pandering.
Diablo 3 season 1 is a whopping three days old, and pretty much all the good stuff has already happened. The world firsts have come and gone (I was online and like...level 17 when the first NA T6 Malthael kill happened. I believe I said something like "holy monkeyfuck, Cookie, we're doing it wrong"), the leaderboards are topped, and Twitter is full of screenshots of the phat lewtz people are getting from greater rifts and Greed. It pretty much seems like in three days, I've gone from "Oh this is going to be soooooo cool" to "Welp. Everyone else has already been there and done that... Better than me."
Being a casual makes me sad.
But on to the titular purpose of this post: Wizard builds.
My girlfriend and I both run Wizards, and we usually duo on Torment 3 or so, because speed is good and not having to pay attention is important when you are constantly under siege by kittens. On our non-season mains, we both run disintegrate builds, but since she's a cheating whore and has four pieces of Tal'rasha's, she runs with a four-element setup while I run pretty much exclusively arcane. Both builds put out a LOT of damage, but my build especially lacks for survivability. Since we just run on T3, it doesn't really matter too much, but it's the biggest thing keeping us out of higher torment levels and higher rank greater rifts. So, being the experimentally-inclined bitch that I am...
I went all mad scientist on my seasonal wizard. And I've had some if not surprising, at least entertaining results.
See, when I started playing Diablo, Cookie was already 70. I pretty much modeled everything I did after how she'd built her wizard, so I only looked at one playstyle: cone-based, melee, glass cannon builds. I basically grew up thinking of sets like frost and lightning as subpar to arcane and fire. What little experimentation I did only narrowed my build rules even more: everything I put together had to have Energy Armor/Pinpoint Barrier, Magic Weapon/Force Weapon, and Familiar/Sparkflint. Because crit, damage, and more damage. That didn't leave much room in my build for mobility, debuffing, or cooldowns. Over the last few months, Cookie and I converged on the One True Build: Three buffs, Arcane Orb/Arcane Orbit, Spectral Blade/Thrown Blades, and Disintegrate/Entropy. Passives: Glass Cannon, Blur, Dominance, and the 15yd damage bonus.
Then the update happened, and we rerolled, and suddenly I was stuck with Magic Missile and Ray of Frost for twenty-odd levels. I had no choice but to experiment, because let's face it- I am used to driving a Mazerati and someone dumped me in a Vibe. Cookie's done the same thing, and we've ended up with a really fun, surprisingly beefy duo.
I'm ice. She's fire. Hence the title.
Everything I do is PBAOE. I've got Ray of Frost, Ice Armor, Frost Nova, Magic Weapon, Familiar, and Spectral Blade. She's got Blizzard/Apocalypse, Hydra/Mammoth, Energy Armor/Pinpoint, Magic Weapon, Familiar/Sparkflint, and Spectral Blade. It's very I hold, she punches.
What I really like about the frost setup I've got right now is that everything serves to up my damage in some way. Frost Nova debuffs mob damage taken by 30%, the ice armor aoe debuffs everything MORE with Cold Blooded, and the ray of frost storm makes everything pretty much melt. Adding the squishier damage from Cookie's fire build, and it's taken us from having a hard time on Master to probably bumping up to Torment. And we're level 53 right now.
Doesn't sound like a big deal, but I'm pleased with it, dammit.
I'm really excited to see what we're able to do with these characters once we hit 70. It's funny, how two characters of the same exact class can play so differently, but my seasonal wizard is a completely different experience from my main.
I'm going to be spending my time between D3 and Champions for the foreseeable future, and you can catch me as @ScarletShrike or Roxina#1469. Catch you ingame!
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