Online vs Offline

While typing my response paper about character identity and creation, I noticed something. Today's multiplayer experience (nowadays through the medium of the internet) has significantly changed the roles of game characters. When playing MMORPGs, you choose one class which has benefits and drawbacks in comparison to other classes. The game then usually has a balance where a single class cannot successfully level or complete quests alone, but only in a party of multiple classes. This is completely different from games a decade ago. I remember that every RPG that I played (in particular Final Fantasy 7), where I always tried to make the main character into an "ultimate" character where they were all rounded in melee, magic, and all other skills. I would have that character try to play all possible roles in the game. Even multiplayer games during that time, all the characters were essentially the same except maybe a slight variation in their animation. 

Character balancing must be a nightmare for game developers. I remember that back when I was playing Ragnarok Online, there would be no incentive to be a melee type character (Knight, Assassin). Their damage was based solely on their weapon equip and cards (that added bonuses), and even then they were not good at maximizing DPS (damage per second) like mage classes were. They were also not the best tanks, as a Priest with high health and equips could also heal itself which a Knight or Assassin could not. Pretty much the game was dominated by any Wizard and Priest combo. This led to many complaints, which resulted in several updates on balancing class types and skills to make it more even. Even with the changes though, players are not always happy until they get what they want.

It seems that now with the internet, online games have really been trying to emphasize the important of playing with other players. I personally think it is more enjoyable to play with friends anyways, but just an interesting observation I made that I believe shows the major differences of the offline and online "era."

WoW

After 10GBs worth of downloads, patches, and installations, and also countless hours of waiting, I was finally able to start my World of Warcraft trial account. It was well worth the wait. I then had first-hand experience to the addiction that has captured the souls of millions. I remember playing the day right before my CSE midterm, which Wanda warned us about happening. My actual time in the game is definitely not what I would normally consider "hardcore," as I only have a level 8 Priest, but I thought I was still able to get a good experience. A lot of my time also went into researching stats, skills, and guides before actually starting the game. One significant thing I noticed that was different among most of the MMORPGs I have played is that the consequences for dying is not very severe. I lost no experience, and floating as a wisp to find and resurrect my body was actually quite enojoyable. I think this minimal penalty for death feature is what entices many new MMORPG players to keep playing WoW. I am unsure if I personally like it or not, but I'm sure that the other 12 million or so players find no problem to it. I think there should be at least some sort of penalty (I guess traveling back to your body is not fun), but having too harsh of a penalty can really kill a game. This comes frmo my horrid experience in FFXI, where it was possible to level down if you died. It was already hard enough to gain your level, as by level 10 you were unable to earn any decent experience without finding a party of 6 to take down a single monster. I would probably earn about 10% of experience per hour, and dying (which I did often as I was the tank for the party) would result in losing 25%! This was defintely the big turn off which led me to discontinue my account after two months. Although 

Although I am sad to know that my trial account ends this Saturday, I am glad that I didn't regret the choice I made in high school when I sold my brand new copy of WoW because I didn't want to get sucked into another MMORPG (and I know it would have sucked me in!).

Week 3

Last Wednesday was definitely a surprise to me, as our guest speaker Doug Pearson came into the classroom. Before that day I knew Doug only as a fellow badminton player, and that later changed into the CTO of Flowplay. The topic he presented to us in class about casual games was interesting. He said that more and more games were being created towards a new audience, the casual gamer. I have always consider myself as a "gamer," but lately I have been a lot more interested in games that are quick to play and require less of my time. It would make sense that as a full time college student, I just wouldn't have the time to put into a normal 60 hour RPG, but at the same time I feel that the interest level for me is not there anymore. I also had another discussion with a friend that is currently working on ideas for the next Microsoft console. He said that they may be looking at more towards casual gamers for the next generation, something that Microsoft is usually bad at. It will be interesting to see what will come up in the next few years from the console platforms.

I did get around to check out ourWorld, the game created by Flowplay. My first impression was that it was all about social interaction between players with little or no "game" aspect to it. Though this would probably be more appealing to teenage girls, but as a guy gamer I need to have a sense of achievement through playing some sort of game. I later did find the game appeal as I progressed through by receiving game badges and "flow" by attaining a certain score on a number of the games offered in ourWorld. I was disappointed that a lot of the things I wanted for the customization of my character appearance (I wanted a tatoo) could only be purchased with gems, their premium currency. I guess they have to make money somehow, and purchasing gems seems the best way to do it. The UI was definitely the most appealing to me, and would be an interesting topic for my research paper.

Week 2

This week I played a lot of Killzone 2 (I guess I just had a lot of time...) on the PS3, and finally made General class! The sniping didn't go very well (I'm more of a run up and shoot kind of FPS player), but it did pay off when I got the new ability "Spot and Mark" which basically puts a reticle on the screen of where an enemy is. No wonder I was always shot out of the blue by snipers all the time! Now its payback :)

 I noticed that many people don't use the voice chat in game, in contrast to when I played Call of Duty 4. I don't hear a lot of the smack talk or taunting that you usually hear from angry gamers. I'm definitely more a passive gamer in that sense, but I do miss watching people throwing their best insults at each other back and forth. The angriest people I have ever experienced online have all come from playing on Battlenet (Diablo II, Warcraft 3, Starcraft). I can't even start a game without having someone cuss me out or call me a "noob." I figure it is these people that games are trying to censor out a little bit, in order to have a more positive environment. I know from first hand experience in an MMO (Ragnarok Online), that many people leave because of a negative experience from social interaction online. Anyways enough rambling, time to make my character in WoW this weekend!

Week 1

This first week has been a trial gaming phase for me. I registered for EVE Online and pretty much hated it. The learning curve was exactly like the graph Wanda showed in class, terrible. Also the UI was horrendously atrocius. It was hard to navigate anywhere, and it was a completely different MMORPG experience than the past fantasy MMORPGs I usually played. Even trying to initiate the tutorial was not intuitive. When starting the game, I accidentally skipped the option of choosing whether to take the tutorial or not. I ended up having to delete my character (which apparently takes 10 hours?!?) and creating a new one in order to be able to go through the tutorial. I did manage to play a little over an hour and then logged off, hopefully for the first and last time. What I thought that with the Sci-Fi genre there would be cool space ship shooting and supernova explosions, turned out to be a clicking through a bottomless hole of unappealing drop down menus. Despite my own experience though, the conversation with Ryan Dancy (which was probably about every little detail possible) was fascinating. 

I was really anticipating starting WoW with the class this week as well, but sadly we won't be starting for another month (I guess that's good since I know I'll be addicted). I'm sure I'll live, as I was a person who actually bought WoW when it was first released, hand it in my hands, and then sold it to my friend in order to stop my MMORPG addictions. I will just have to be a good little boy and wait =)