Server Merges, PvP Clusters and the Destruction of a Community

Back in February 2005, I was playing DAoC-- better known as Dark Age of Camelot. It was somewhere around this time that Mythic, the developers for DAoC, began clustering the first set of servers to cope with the dwindling population.

To those who are unfamiliar with DAoC, I will expound: It is a heavily PvP-centric MMO where the end-game content is mostly roaming around the open fields of the three playable realms, Midgard, Hibernia or Albion, and killing any enemy players you could find within.

So as you can imagine the PvP community was a giant part of what made DAoC great. To this day I still long for the days of those great moments when I met with a memorable or feared opponent on the field and had a chance to test my skill against them. Nothing was more satisfying than winning that fight and seeing the kill-spam broadcast across the entire zone.

Nowadays when I talk to DAoC veterans, we all still remember those moments and that sense of community. In fact, I think the reason DAoC is so memorable is because of that community that was built on the battlefield. So if so many veterans are discontent with current MMOs, what keeps us from going back?

When the servers were clustered, the recognition of opponents and familiar faces disappeared. Several severs shared the same zones now. Sure, it was still possible that you would see kill spam chat scroll by that had the names of some of your favorite server-native opponents, but it just wasn't as common anymore.

The strongest piece in what made DAoC great had been broken. Some will argue that this was temporary, but for me it dissolved the guild I had been a part of for years and dispersed the players I had grown to love and fear, thereby removing most of the enjoyment in the game.

Fast forward five years and you'll still find clustering/merging and the dissolving of a server community a pressing issue. However, this doesn't just occur in MMOs that are scrambling to clump several servers together to re-create a robust population. Even in new release MMOs, I see the argument about cross-server queues for instances and PvP zones-- a practice seemingly popularized by WoW. While it has the benefit of providing a lesser wait time, it destroys the foundation that memorable MMOs should be made of: community.

Unfortunately, server clusters seem to be a necessary evil in many instances: What is an MMO without a population to play with? However, the practice of cross-server pollination, per se, destroys a vital aspect of a memorable MMO. So back I go, into the warm nostalgia that greets me when I think of Dark Age of Camelot. And what days do I think of? The good ones-- when I knew who to expect when I went to Bledmeer Faste (Team Wizzy, I'm talking to you) and laughing on Vent with my guild over Lurikeen Grove Protectors.

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PS. For all the veterans of Dark Age of Camelot, here is a little gem from YouTube. :)

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The Simple Joy of Games

We've all been there: We have productive, relevant plans for a weekend, like doing laundry, cooking a meal opposed to eating that pizza your ordered last Monday and maybe even cleaning your cat. Then your friend links you a flash game. 

It starts off innocently enough. You're wrestling with the controls for the first few games, using expletives and getting a feel for what you're suppose to do. Then it becomes an addiction. Soon you're jamming to Erasure, beating high scores and sending the URL to everyone you know so they may also join your army of Helpless Flash Game Addicts Anonymous. 

At least that's what happened to me a couple weeks ago when my good friend linked me to Robot Unicorn Attack. 

It was bad. Within hours I had beaten his highest score and downloaded the music. I caught myself speeding down the freeway, [unabashedly] singing with the lyrics in the privacy of my car. 

So what is it that makes these simple games so addictive and relevant? Well, they are an escape from the monotony that is work or school (of course, I'm not condoning checking your crops on Farmville while in your Physics class) but more importantly there is joy in the simple and rewarding. 

MMOs have become prone to this disease, and it isn't all bad. Blizzard is the most famous for doing this. WoW mainstreamed the MMO, making it appeal to the masses by simplifying the things that made earlier games more difficult for the more casual gamer to pick up, such as the need for complex math and hours of your time to be rewarding and competitive. In fact, this was a trend that only came about recently.

Up until then, games were simple. Think Pac-Man, Pong and Dig Dug. These were games that anyone could enjoy and sink minimal time into to find the experience both rewarding and valuable. In fact, many gamers I talk to that call themselves "hardcore" reminisce over these little pieces of awesome.

However, in the modern MMO climate, many gamers have deemed this as an undesirable quality. Many argue that when you simplify the games, you are ruining competitiveness and alienating a large player base. However, MMOs were never meant to be static entities, appealing to only one small group. They are giant, diverse worlds that are ever-changing and evolving.

But just as the games we play are evolving, so do the gamers. In the past ten years, I have gone from high school student to college student. My priorities have evolved, therefore causing my expectations of what makes a game appealing and fun evolve. No longer do I want to invest six months into leveling a character and an additional six months into gearing them, as I did with Dark Age of Camelot. When I log into an MMO, I want the experience to be rewarding for the little time I have available to invest. Not to say I want bosses to shower me like virtual loot piñatas, but I do appreciate the delicate balance that is being identified in more modern MMOs. 

So while many argue that this is a horrible thing, games are simply picking up the gamers they left behind when they became more complicated, as well as evolving to retain the ones who have had to reorganize their priorities as their lives have changed.  

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Auction Houses, Player Shops and Traders! Oh, my!

I am very prone to ranting and typing out giant walls of text. Anyone who knows me knows this. My most recent plethora of pixels came when I was browsing a set of forums for a new MMO and came across a thread about MMO economies, particularly ones controlled by auction houses or personal shops.

Four pages of browsing later, I had learned that players were split on this issue. Some favored the auction house for sheer simplicity, while others said that auction houses destroyed the immersion and ruined a crucial aspect of any MMO: community. Examples of many MMOs came up, from EQ to FFXI to the ever-present WoW. However, I did not once see a post regarding the current Trader-Player system within GW.

For those who are unfamiliar, GW (Guild Wars) relies heavily upon player interaction for trading. Go into any of the major cities-- particularly Kamadan AD1-- and you'll see a robust trade channel, flooded with people selling their wares. Walk around a bit more and you'll see NPC traders-- Dye, Runes, Materials and Rare Materials to name a few. So how exactly does this economy work?

In previous MMOs, things are a bit simpler. It is either an auction house set-up where people can post their goods for a fee, log off and collect any profits in the morning; or they can set up shops advertising their goods, avoiding the auctioneer fee entirely (this method is incredibly common in Korean MMOs). Some MMOs are a bit more diverse and offer a blend of these two methods. Again, Aion comes to mind.

In Guild Wars you have neither an auction system or a personal shop system. For some, this cements the idea of a community that has seemed to disappear with newer MMOs. For others, it is aggravating and tedious-- sometimes you will spam for hours to sell your "Adept Tormented Protection Staff of Enchanting, 100k 20e OBO." Some also argue that the NPC traders monopolize markets on certain goods. However, I think there are unseen benefits to having this NPC Trader system in place.

In previous MMOs-- Aion comes to mind again-- people gouge prices on specific goods, particularly crafting materials. This makes certain crafting trades unprofitable and nearly unobtainable. Without many hours of personal experience, I have also heard that this is an extremely popular (or should I say unpopular) trend in WoW. This is where the NPC trader system steps in and balances things out.

In Guild Wars, there is no real "crafting" system. However, you do need materials and goods to craft your armor from armor merchants. For the sake of demonstration, I'm going to discuss Obsidian armor, which is considered one of the most expensive armor sets in the game.

For this set, you require 105 Globs of Ectoplasm. If you visit the NPC Trader, he will offer to sell it to you for 8 platinum pieces per glob and purchase it from you for 7 platinum pieces per glob. Players will therefore sell Globs of Ectoplasm at 7.5 platinum each, which makes a 500 gold profit per glob for the seller and is 500 gold cheaper for the buyer. This is where players will argue that this system monopolizes the market, but where I disagree.

Without the Trader system in place, player-controlled markets become dangerous. As with Aion, some goods were ridiculously overpriced, making crafting a worthless system. This makes pure player-controlled systems dangerous. However, it is also incredibly unintelligent to control everything with NPCs, which ultimately ruins the give-take of an economy.

The blend of systems in Guild Wars, while it isn't perfect, controls this flow of the economy, keeping goods valuable and players competitive, regardless of NPC involvement in interaction.

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