MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

I gave the station launcher a look a while ago at the beginning of beta, and there were so many bugs and issues with it that I just couldn’t see myself using it, so I un-installed and barely gave it another look.

On a whim this weekend I decided to reinstall it and see if it was any better the second time around now that some time has passed, and much to my surprise it is.

Keep in mind that I play three of the SOE titles (four in total but Free Realms is not listed on station launcher as of yet) and have friends scattered all over on various servers. That’s where this little application really comes in handy.

Now let me start by saying there is one semi-significant bug still. The bug occurs if the game you’re playing thinks you have not logged off properly. This is most notably the case in Vanguard, I haven’t seen it happening anywhere else yet. There IS a way to solve the issue by logging to character select first before you exit the game. This tells the system that you’re actually NOT in the game. If you do have a ’stuck’ character in some game, you’ll also be able to SEE it, under the ‘by character’ category it will list your characters and say “so and so is currently in game” - if you have a character stuck in game (such as I did) you will be able to send tells to your friends but they will be unable to send tells back because it thinks you’re on as that character. Make sense? Good!

For people who may have been having issues launching their SOE games from the patcher, this also provides a work around. I know people who have been having some enormous issues trying to get the game to start, but can launch perfectly fine from here. I’ve got mine set to close down once I start up a game which comes in handy and the whole program acts as a chat platform for when you’re not actually in game. The friends list is a little easier to understand now. You can have it ignore particular characters you may have to cut down on doubles and reduce the size of the friends list. You can easily block and ignore people, or add new people to the list. The program has yet to crash or freeze on me, and aside from that one ’stuck character’ bug, it seems to be working fairly well. I’ll continue to use it for the next few weeks and if I like it I’ll stick with it after that. It’s nice to see it’s still being worked on, and if you DO have issues with the station launcher be sure to bring it up on the station forums, there’s a fairly active section devoted specifically to the launcher.

I’ve talked about this before on my own site, but wanted to go into a little more depth on the matter. One of my personal pet peeves is games that allow a player to out level the content. I realize that games move in a linear fashion and that it’s not exactly easy to provide content that appeals to the masses - but what you really don’t want is for people to have a reason NOT to visit your content.

Lets take EQ2 as an example. Encounters in game ‘gray’ out, providing no experience or loot (aside from body loot which is typically used in quests). Unless you happen to be a quest-o-holic or you happen to be mentoring there’s really no reason to go back to an older zone. As the leveling process is sped up, more and more content is overlooked and lots of it isn’t even touched. Have you been to the caves in Pillars of Flame beneath the monk camp? Have you done all of the Gobblerock hideout instances in Commonlands and Antonica? Chances are if you’re a fairly new player you have not.

There are a few ways EQ2 has chosen to combat this. One is allowing higher level players to ‘mentor’ lower level players and adjust to their level. This allows you to play with friends and experience lower content. Lower level quests (10+) also offer achievement points for first time completions which inspire higher level characters to quest since those points are difficult to obtain.

This simply is not enough inspiration.

Over the time I have leveled it’s amazing to see how much empty content is out there. EQ2 is a huge vast world but you only ever need to level in a very small portion of it. Players keep asking for choice and content but forget the vast amount of content out there already because they have no reason to re-visit it.

Now take a game like EQ or Vanguard or even WoW. The content in these games does not trivialize. Sure, you may not gain experience from defeating an encounter but you will still find crafting goods, as well as quests and achievements to unlock, and even loot (gear etc) from defeating mobs. This allows players to at least have some sort of purpose. Perhaps they are working up a new crafter, or need gear for an alt, or have some unfinished achievements to unlock.

I know the whole concept of an achievement system has been over played these days. WAR and lotRO have vast systems where killing any mob or discovering any new area unlocks a new title reward. Players LIKE these though, they like having goals to aim for and have a sense of pride over hunting down each and ever little bit they can acomplish.

If there were title achievements for EQ2 like perhaps completing all of the quests in a zone, or discovering all of the POI (points of interest) maybe we’d see people in more areas then just the ‘main’ leveling ones. In EQ the problem is some times even worse because there are ‘hot zones’ which offer a substantial increase to experience then regular areas. Each level tier only has one zone associated with it, so while you may find groups within those specific zones fairly easily, you’ll be hard pressed to convince people to venture out into the world (which is gigantic).

This topic of out leveling content certainly is not new, either. You can take a look around the gaming blogs and see that it’s cropping up this week more often then normal. Why is that? Is there something in specific that we’re all trying to grasp our minds around here or are we just bored with the content we’ve been given and find ‘most’ players in so we’re trying to make a mass appeal to ‘older’ content for a change. Have any thoughts on the matter? Feel free to leave a comment below!

I know the subject has been talked about up one side and down another but let me add some more thoughts and comments to the pile already out there. There seems to be no avoiding RMT (real money transfer) in games this day in age - and honestly players are getting quite used to it. When EverQuest II announced that they would be implementing ‘Station Cash’ and a ‘Station Store’ the outcries on the forums were, well. Everywhere. For the most part the station store caries items like experience bonus potions (which players can obtain through veteran rewards), appearance armor (no stats, just looks), house items, and little pets that follow you around. Nothing has been game breaking per say. 

Some argued that this was the beginning of a slippery slope, that opening the doors for such simple items will lead to bigger RMT transactions in the future. So far, we haven’t really seen it - on EQ2 at least (or EQ) with the station store. Granted, the items are moving towards a more ‘functional’ use instead of just being fluff items.

There are potions that will allow characters to change their names, gender, and appearance (though there are also barbers in game that will allow you to change your appearance). These potions are not game changing per say - but they do affect the community to some degree. There is a lengthy discussion posted on the official forums about these new items. Players have a few concerns, like what about those bad apples you ban from your guild. They can simply pay $15 for a name change and become someone new. On the other hand, if you have friends or family who have left you an account and you’d like the characters to feel more like your own, here is a simple (and fairly cheap) way to accomplish that. 

Vanguard:SOH  announced that they will be dealing with LiveGamer and converting their current four servers to RMT enabled servers. This came as a shock to most of the community who had little warning that all of their servers would soon be allowing the sale of platinum, equipment, and even characters. For those outside of the VG community this announcement made barely a splash. It’s still in the beta stages right now, and is progressing from there - however those within the community wanted to make sure their opinions were heard and there are over 200 pages of comments from players expressing their concern and thoughts on the whole ordeal. 

It’s one thing to have a game start out with RMT enabled or even to implement RMT enabled servers such as the Bazaar in EQ2. It’s quite another to suddenly take your game and decide for all of the player base that their servers are going to be enabled whether they agree with it or not. Again this goes back to the ‘give your players choices’ situation. If you enable one server and allow people who are not interested to transfer off of it, you’ve at least given them an option and they will be far more lenient to your suggestions that way. If you come across as though you are forcing that option onto them they’re going to fight you tooth and nail. Personally speaking while I don’t relish the thought of people being able to buy platinum or equipment or characters for real money in a game that I’ve loved since release (despite the NUMEROUS bugs and issues) it doesn’t bother me so much as the lack of communication does. I think that the whole situation could have been handled in a better manor - on that same note, those who were going to create a ruckus and leave over the incident probably would have no matter how it was handled. Some times it doesn’t matter what you do, there’s no pleasing people and there will always be those out there who find flaws to pick at. 

Does it feel a little like ‘double dipping’ that a game with a $15/m subscription would also have RMT enabled? A lot of F2P (free to play) games have RMT but they don’t have the subscription, or they offer alternative means of payment (via purchasing coins to unlock zones like Wizard 101). Is there a wrong or right way to add RMT to an already existing game? Lets hear some thoughts!