Happily, playing with other classes feels very different. I ran a dungeon with a sorceress during gamescom – a ranged magic-based damage dealer. This class very much showcases the player skill needed to do well. Many of the ranged spells take a few seconds to reach your moving target so you don’t just point, shoot and run – you need to pay close attention to what your enemy is doing.

The boss we fought would occasionally barrel across the map, after a couple of seconds standing frozen in position to charge up the attack. Once you learn to recognise the difference between a standing skill-charge and simple lack of movement, you can exploit this accordingly. The sorcerer class is extremely versatile. You could choose to lead the target and hit him with an intercepting shot as he flies across the map instead. Equally, you could hit his landing point with an AoE attack that takes time to cast or just run up behind and belt him with as many fast attacks as possible while he travels in a straight line.

I found that some of my own skills also had long casting times, forcing me to stand in a vulnerable position, while others could be cast instantly on the run. You really do need to be much more aware of your surroundings and choose your skills carefully in this game. Every attack option has a defensive trade-off, which will make multiplayer battles very interesting. For those who have the time to invest in getting good at a class, I think TERA could be extremely rewarding.

Early in September, the Frogster team posted this video of the dungeon run that we did during Gamescom, talking through each of the classes on show. Take a look.

The character creation is flexible, but does not take hours. I’m still curious as to why red elfs, but at least it’s different! There are only a few races, 3 per side. After designing my character, I headed on into the game. For a change I’ve decided to try out the Rogue tree, on a PvE server. There are plenty of classes, all based around “The Ascended” system. This is similar to talent points in WoW, but it directly influences your end class choice. What’s nice as well is that by the end game, you can have up to three classes defined. Currently you will be limited to adding souls from within your specific calling (warrior, cleric, rogue, or mage).

Once into the game, it’s fair to say that if you’ve ever played an MMO you will know what’s going on. The game draws you in, slowly introducing you to the controls and interface. These are very polished for a beta, and drew positive comments from my colleague. So far, I’ve yet to find a need for any of the multitude of addons I use in WoW. Quests are (so far) your usual, go kill x of y and come back. That’s not to say this is bad; they are tied into the main story line and make for logical progression.

Overall my initial impression is very positive. The beta is very stable, with no apparent issues (so far). Will it defeat the almighty WoW? No, but it may steal some players who are already bored of the new content.

Gaming business models are an interesting topic; how do these so called “free” games actually make money? Surely they can’t, the games are supposed to be free. Guild Wars was one of the first MMOs to break this mentality. ArenaNet announced before launch that the game would be free of subscription fees. To date, all the money has been made from purchasing the campaigns and the expansion “Eye of the North”.

Eve Online added another twist to the subscription business model, the PLEX item method. The “30 Days Concord Pilot License Extension” (PLEX) is an item which allows players to add 30 days play time to their account. The twist is that you can trade them in the game market place. This allows a player to use their InterStellar Kredits (ISK) to indirectly buy actual game time. A skilled player with a bit of time can fund their game time from actually playing the game.

Guild Wars and Eve appeared to be an anomaly rather than the rule, however recently a new phenomenon has appeared… the freemium model. The idea is simple; give away a free basic game and then charge for extra services. It’s a very standard business model for a lot of services these days, but now it’s extending to video gaming.

Back in 2009, Turbine re-launched Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) on a freemium business model. This proved to be a very smart move. DDO was suffering a loss in player base, and hence subscriptions. Almost a year later, Turbine announced a major increase in profits almost solely due to DDO. Clearly the model worked. Turbine then announced Lord of the Rings Online would be going freemium as well.

Lord of the Rings Online going freemium was a very big step. LOTRO is clearly very high profile, and there was concern on the outcome. The change was not without issues; to this day Europe is still waiting for a launch date. There was the question, what about those who have already a subscription, or even worse, a lifetime subscription? Turbine neatly dealt with this by offering monthly stipends of 500 Turbine points which can be spent in the LOTRO store. Lifetime subscribers got the same deal, however they never have to pay for the points per month.

It’s clear that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was watching this situation evolve, and sure enough they soon announced the freemium version of Everquest 2, EQ2 Extended (EQ2X). A massive outcry was heard on the EQ2Flames community boards. There were already issues with the pay servers having a lack of people, and now SOE decided to give the game away or so it seemed. Once SOE actually published their plans, it was clear they had taken Turbines model and milked it for all they could.

The SOE model is very complex, and needless to say almost everything requires you to pay money. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, as the EQ2X servers are very busy. The model change has clearly brought in a large new player base. This is where SOE differs majorly from the Turbine approach. SOE decided to roll out new servers exclusively for the EQ2X platform. This means the older servers did not benefit from the influx of new players, in fact it has worsened the situation. Many people who play casually have now transferred their characters over to EQ2X. It’s clearly a wise move, no subscription fees and newer server hardware. Will SOE be able to pull off what Turbine clearly has? Only time will tell.

What does this mean for gameplay?

Do the cash shops alter the game dynamics? Does the person with the deepest pockets have an “unfair” advantage over the rest? It could be argued no. Cash rich, time poor or time rich, cash poor. Both of these states should balance – one has the money to buy the boost; the other has the time they can put into the game to get to the same place. This has been occurring in MMO’s since the gold sellers started. All that has changed is the publishers are now getting a slice of the action.

Almost all freemium games use selling items/gold/potions in game to make money, but it’s not always a smooth affair. gPotato caused a huge storm on the internet when they announced their pricing model for Allods Online. It appeared that the game was designed to require the use of store bought items to play normally. This made the player community object, saying the game was “free-to-run” but not “free-to-play”.

An in-game affliction called Fear of Death was the main issue. FoD is an affliction that means when you resurrect after dying, you get -25% all stats. This stacks up to 4 times, so you could end up with -100% on your stats! Even worse, it lasted for 2 hours and persisted even when logged out. To combat this, Perfumes were store items that made you immune to FoD, gave +50% hit points and lasted for 30 minutes or until you logged out.

The launched price was about US$15 for 20 Perfumes. This was as expensive as your average monthly subscription, but lasted for no where near the same amount of playtime. After player complaints, gPotato backpedaled, lowered the prices substantially and announced there would be further changes to come. Sure enough, in June 2010, Fear of Death was totally removed and replaced with a new game mechanic called “Cursed Items”. A similar concept, but with a random trigger and the curse only affects an item that is rare, epic or legendary.

What most players want to know is, is freemium better than subscription? It really depends on the player. If you play just one game, and play it a lot, then generally a subscription works out cheaper. World of Warcraft is a bargain at £8.99 a month, which you could easily spend in a weekend on a freemium game. Where it excels is for all those MMOs you wanted to play now and again, but could never justify a monthly fee for.
It’s clear that the future of MMOs, their payment methods and game dynamics is going to be an interesting one.

Should cash-rich time-poor players should be allowed to buy boosts?
Does it make a mockery of the people who bust their asses to reach those high levels?

Yup, they’ve created their own Met Police uniforms, cars and a police station. I had no idea you could go to such levels of customisation in the game. (Yes, I have not been paying attention to any of the pre-launch marketing. Traumatised from Aion, remember?) Sadly, this clan does not yet have a website but here’s the APB Metropolitan Police Service clan recruitment thread. I feel obliged to point out that they probably have no affiliation with, and are unlikely to be endorsed by, the actual London Metropolitan Police Service.

Edit: Now with added female officer!

Mass Effect 2 is due for release on the 29th Jan 2010 on Xbox 360 and PC.

Watch (in HD), enjoy, slightly drool:

There’s no release date or pricing available at this time, but you can check out all the game related content on the website at www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com.

So, I’m looking for a new MMO. Any recommendations? I already know LOTRO, WoW and Guild Wars reasonably well. I played the beta of Empire of Sports and tbh, having my character work out in a gym just reminds me that I should be working out in the gym. I’ve just tried Archlord and omg, the serif-font menu design looks like arse so I can’t bring myself to give it a proper go.

What else is out there that:

1. Lets me play a female character in all classes, not just sexpot mage clichés (Archlord = FAIL!)
2. Has good casual clan/social support
3. Works well, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel

Any ideas?

(Yes, Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa is a big reason why I haven’t been posting for the past few months)

Here’s the message from yesterday:

“Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we’ve achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn’t performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Before we end the service, we’ll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.

NCSoft have been nice enough to give active players a few months of their other games – 3 months of Lineage II, 3 months of City of Heroes, Aion beta access, Aion preorder access (whatever “access” means in the context of preorders) and a month of Aion gameplay. Some players aren’t happy but I think that’s incredibly generous of them.

Still, the closure of the only sci-fi themed MMORPG is very sad :( OTOH, also fully understandable. I’ve been playing for a good few months now. The game itself is great fun. The music is brilliant and does a wonderful job of setting the war-time atmosphere. The in-game events that preceded major updates were just plain awesome; previously-secure fortresses coming under heavy attack front of you and ultimately being taken by the Bane. Compared to WoW or LOTRO, TR has (had) no grind at all – when you get a collection quest to, e.g., get 10 hard drives, there’s no stingy 5% drop rate. In general, you go out, kill 10 reconstructor bots and retrieve their hard drives. Job done, hooray!

Of course, that sort thing has ultimately proven to be their downfall. See Rob Fahey’s Tabula Rasa analysis on Eurogamer back in April:

“…at its launch (and ever since, in fact) there has been essentially nothing to do in Tabula Rasa once you hit level 50. You could, of course, create a clone and play with the other class options available to you…

…All there is to do at the end of the ladder in Tabula Rasa is fairly limited player-versus-player combat, the uninspired nature of which is all the more disappointing given how well the active combat system should scale to PVP play.”

What were the design team expecting? There is little grind, so your players progress quickly. They reach the end, find there’s nothing there and… continue subscribing? Play the same game over and over with slightly different weapons? No. We unsubscribe, of course. All the more unfortunate is that end-game content like Omega Labs just came out in September, 6 weeks before NCSoft pulled the plug. I guess it wasn’t enough to draw players back in.

The other thing that normally keeps players hooked to online games is the social scene. The PvE campaign stretches across multiple worlds, with multiple areas in each and multiple instances for each area, presumably to keep the population controlled across the servers. In other words, a social scene simply does not exist. WoW’s crafting, postal and auction system creates natural gathering places like Undercity or Orgriammar. Tabula Rasa has no incentive to drive you to any particular locations, so meeting other players is a rarity. Strong clans could have helped, but the official website’s clan listing is painfully out of date and in-game clan-finding is limited to asking nicely on the general chat channel in the hopes that a clan at your level is recruiting. Chances? Slim-to-none.

Anyway, enough of that. It’s all going to disappear in February :( I guess I’ll have more time to blog.