Syp’s suggestion, inspired by a similar (yet non-WAR related) post from a couple of days ago over at NecroRogIcon, is this:

Here’s a question: how many of you would bite for the ability to freeze your character’s XP progress at the end of a tier and keep them there, perhaps indefinitely?

To me, when I think of level-locking, it reminds me immediately of pre-built/sealed decks in collectible card games or online TCGs. It also brings to mind the “PvP-only” types of characters in Guild Wars, which were quite effective and enjoyable if they suited your playstyle (i.e. you didn’t want to experience any of Guild Wars’ PvE content.) Either way, it’s an idea I would really love to see instituted in WAR, as long as it’s done right.

To be honest, Mythic has a precedent of their own that they can look to in this case: they did institute a /level command in Dark Age of Camelot, allowing players to create a brand new character that they could then jump to level 20 or 30, ostensibly to help under-populated realms gain more high-level characters. However, most players used this to create a metric ton of alts in order to play in the lower-level battlegrounds. I don’t think that was Mythic’s intention, but as many have said before me, players will play the game the way they want to play it, not the way the designer wants them to play it. While this method didn’t exactly qualify as ”locking in”, it was definitely a way to skip though low-level PvE content and play strictly in a PvP setting. What we should keep in mind here is that /level was instituted was well after the game’s peak and well into its decline.

My suggestion: maybe Mythic could implement a separate arena-style system for T1 characters, outside of the game’s normal progression? I think it’d be more fair to separate “level-locked” players from people who just want to advance and play through Tier 1 normally, because the minute you remove a level-based progression for a select few players, you’re going to see a major shift towards twinking, which puts honest newcomers to the game at a disadvantage.

I don’t think Mythic wants to alienate new players who are just experiencing scenarios for the first time by having a bunch of twinked-out rank 11s who are just there to PvP when they’re not on their rank 40 mains, so separating them into their own scenario instances (which shouldn’t be all that hard, since your character would need to be flagged as “locked-in”, in any case) seems like a better route.

I know I’d be more than happy to create a couple of characters solely to dick around in Tier 1 forever. Wouldn’t you?

My assumption is that many of you playing Warhammer Online are coming from other games, like World of Warcraft or elsewhere, and haven’t had any experience with Mythic before this game. Fortunately, there are many (many!) of us who played DAOC for years before WoW (or later, WAR) was released, and we’re pretty familiar with Mythic as an organization. From our perspective, WAR is a massive step ahead of where we were in the past.

In DAOC’s second expansion, Trials of Atlantis (ToA), Mythic introduced something the MMO world was unfamiliar with: artifacts. They also brought in Master Levels, which I didn’t have so much of a problem with. Now, keep in mind that I quit playing DAOC when World of Warcraft went into beta — sometime in early 2004, I think it was. At the time, there were no “classic” servers in DAOC and people were still dealing with the fallout from ToA.

Artifacts were curious beasts. Here’s a little blurb from Wikipedia that clarifies what artifacts were much better than I ever could (I can’t believe this is actually in Wikipedia…):

Artifacts, obtained by hidden encounters only become useful when the player finds the three scrolls hoarded by Atlantean monsters. Furthermore, artifacts must gain experience in order to reach their full potential.

First off, you had to have three scrolls (specific to that artifact), that were drops from various areas of the world, in order to unlock an artifact. Then it got interesting.

The key bit in the quote above is that artifacts must gain experience in order to be of any use. A level 1 artifact was pretty worthless. It had no special abilities, and granted you very little above whatever piece of armor you were replacing. To gain any sort of benefit from the artifact (aside from often unimpressive base stats), you needed to level it up. Yes, that meant more grinding. Amazing amounts of grinding, in fact. Of a specific class of mobs, too, and sometimes restricted to a certain region. It could take days upon days of grinding a selected type of monster to get a single artifact up to level 10. And of course, each artifact had a number of levels, and at each level, it would gain some interesting ability or stat bonus.

For instance, a pretty commonly sought-after artifact was the Winged Helm. It wasn’t overly difficult to get your hands on (I think, if I recall, that it was doable with less than a full group of max-level players), and it had a number of stat bonuses — and eventually, abilities — that unlocked progressively as you leveled it up, and the final bonus you got at level 10 (which took a LONG time to reach) was a speed boost that could be used every 15 minutes.

Winged Helm

BASE: Hits +40, Fatigue + 5
L1: Bonus to armor factor 10
L2: Dexterity +15
L3: Spirit 5%
L4: —
L5: Speed Enhancement
L6: Strength +15
L7: —
L8: Matter 5%
L9: —
L10: Aura of Magnanimity

Not all that impressive, now is it? Surprisingly, many of the abilities from level 10 artifacts were game-breakers. Tying those in to the master abilities I mentioned earlier, we had a good selection of options that could keep a player grinding for ages upon ages, and once they had invested inordinate amounts of time in their (soon to be worthless) artifacts, they could pwn in RvR. Until the artifact’s durability ran out, at least (and then it was garbage, and you’d have to repeat the whole proces…) And often times, an artifact or master ability was enough to turn the tide of a fight; maybe not a zerg-on-zerg battle, but definitely in the case of a 1v1 and regularly in group vs. group fights.

Sadly, most of the players at the time had multiple artifacts. Getting the artifact itself wasn’t usually that much of a problem. Sometimes it took a group, and often multiple members of your group were after the same artifact. Thankfully, if you prepared properly, the odds were good that your groupmates could all get the artifact you were after during the same run. The odd artifact actually required a raid to obtain; this was pretty rare, but it happened.

The problem was that not only were many artifacts totally imbalanced in PvP/RvR, they took massive amounts of time to level up to a reasonable level. I may have had 15 artifacts or more when I quit DAOC, but I don’t think I had more than a handful (2 or 3) to their maximum level. And even that took forever. That’s time I’ll never get back. What’s worse, players with the ToA expansion and the related Master Levels and artifacts could still fight against players who didn’t own the expansion. I guess that didn’t really affect realm-wide balance all that much, but it was definitely demoralizing for players who didn’t own the expansion.

The inevitable backlash amongst players was so harsh that Mythic actually had to institute a new “classic” server type in DAOC to appease the dissatisfied: this server didn’t include the Trials of Atlantis expansion, effectively a rollback prior to the expansion’s release for anyone who didn’t like it.

So, to my original point: as much of a bitch as it is to pick up your Sentinel or Conqueror gear right now, it could be much, much worse. I’m not telling you to settle for the flaws of the existing system, as buggered as it might be right now, but at least Mythic is learning from prior experience. The situation could be exponentially worse.

But if Mark Jacobs ever happens to post something on the Herald or in the forums about “a new artifact system” for WAR, I’d advise you to run as fast as your legs will take you in the opposite direction. :)

I read Tobold’s latest post earlier, entitled “Gearing up oneself or one’s guild.” As much as I’m generally a fan of Tobold’s posts, I actually felt some level of despair for the state of MMOs as I read this one. The futility of the whole process made me clearly recall why I quit playing World of Warcraft in the first place.

The subject matter is definitely a hot topic amongst raiding guilds in WoW, and even translates somewhat over to WAR (although not quite as much.) The issue I had with the article was that as much as I appreciate Tobold’s view on PvE raiding and his opinions on the various procedures that could be followed for handing out loot from a raid, the whole post depressed me. And it did so much beyond the specific matter it covered; the post reminded me that MMOs are completely broken as a genre. I don’t really know how they can be redeemed with the loot-oriented mentality the way it is.

I’m starting to see what Keen meant in his recent post discussing Darkfall Online and his excitement with respect to a level-less, class-less system where loot and gear are meaningless.

I’ll admit, I’m just as loot-whorish as the next guy; I want good gear for my characters because I can’t compete properly without it. But is running endless raids of the same dungeon or raid instance fun? Is it a mental challenge? Are you actually gaining something beyond the loot you end up with, or are you just killing time (and paying Blizzard, Mythic, etc. on a monthly basis for that luxury) until the next dungeon comes out, where you can just repeat the cycle again, and discuss the procedures for beating said raid boss ad infinitum? Are you honestly being entertained for the amount you’re spending every month? Not to mention that the previous boss or dungeon has been made totally worthless by the next one, and all of your time spent has pretty much gone out the window. Wash, rinse, repeat.

No matter how hard you try, you’ll never get out of that vicious cycle unless something changes with the way MMOs are being designed and developed.

Maybe I’m getting cynical with age, but this isn’t what I signed up for. Or maybe that’s just it: it is. MMOs are a special breed; players have become so used to grinding and killing time without actually enjoying themselves that it’s become a completely ingrained habit. Well-respected bloggers like Tobold argue that for the price you’re paying, $15 a month or thereabouts, you’re getting great value for your dollar. On the time-invested versus capital cost front, I can totally agree with this. But I can also spend nothing a month and go run my head into a wall repeatedly, which is effectively another form of grinding. At the end of it, I may not get any virtual loot, but if I can convince myself that it was time spent in a worthwhile fashion, I’ll have achieved the same goal.

I’m sorry, but sitting in a WAR public quest area (or the equivalent in any other game) and grinding mobs endlessly to gain meager amounts of XP is simply not fun. Running the same WoW raid instance or WAR dungeon over and over until I get that last piece of gear I’m missing so that I can complete the set required to participate in the next raid instance is not fun. Circling keeps in WAR without ever actually engaging the enemy, just to farm renown from undefended battle objectives is not fun. It’s just passing the time (while I watch television, listen to music, cook dinner, or discuss my upcoming nuptials with my fiancée simultaneously) until I get the “reward” that I’m after. That’s tedium. It’s not fun. And that $15 a month is supposed to be spent on entertainment. If I wanted tedium, I’d fish. Even sitting in a boat for hours, I can still read a book or get some work done at the same time. And hell, I don’t even fish!

My point here is this: we’re paying game publishers significant monthly fees (which are growing every year) and they’re not delivering on their end of the bargain. I can name any number of single-player RPGs in which I’ve had an amazing time playing from end-to-end. Oblivion. Fallout 3. Prince of Persia. Assassin’s Creed. Left 4 Dead. Hell, even Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero World Tour. I have console games like Gears of War or the EA Sports franchise games that I still play regularly and enjoy myself in throughout the entire experience. There are even some MMOs in the past that I’ve had more fun in than what I’m having now. Without the tedium and boredom of grinding out X number of levels in order to grind out yet another Y sets of gear thereafter, in order to farm boss Z until I get amazingly bored and cancel my subscription. MMOs don’t face the same level of critique as single-player or traditional multiplayer games, and I think this practice needs to stop.

Age of Conan’s level 1-20 range in Tortage, as scripted as it was, was some of the most fun I’ve had in an MMO in years, but the game fell off badly after that, losing much of its charm as it felt completely unfinished past level 30. Guild Wars is at its heart a single-player game, and I played my first character through many of the missions in the Nightfall campaign, from level 1 to 20 and beyond in the storyline, and I barely felt like I’d scratched the surface. However, once I jumped my character into PvP, I felt like a fish out of water, requiring yet another gear grind that booted me out of the storyline and into repetitive farming to even get into a competitive state. Even the starter areas for Anarchy Online, Asheron’s Call, Lineage 2, or even WoW were more atmospheric than what we’re seeing in the so-called end-game of today’s most popular MMOs.

Even Dark Age of Camelot immersed me more in the experience because as much as a I had to work for my realm points and levels, there was that much more of a sense of community amongst the players, and every keep and every relic was hard-earned and the players really felt that they had accomplished something in having fought for them, whether attacking or defending. If it had been a little more polished, or had been re-released as a new version, I’d still be playing it. I still look for signs that WAR will become DAOC’s spiritual successor, and as slowly as that’s happening, it’s also moving in the direction of contemporary MMOs in order to please the current generation of online gamers.

Have I simply grown jaded, or has the MMO publishing community grown complacent? Is this is a symptom of the “I want it now” generation, where accumulating epic and legendary loot is more important than actually enjoying the game? Or is it a sign that a new (or old) publisher needs to take a hard look at how these games are being designed, and increase their production values or spend more time actually immersing the players in the experience?

What it boils down to is this: I want immersion. I want the joy of playing a single-player RPG, as applied to a massively multiplayer environment. I don’t want some cheap sandbox game where farming gear for the next raid boss that’ll be on “farm mode” a month down the line is the be-all and end-all. I want a game where PvP is both challenging, rewarding, and requires a modicum of skill. I want a game where the goal is not to attack undefended keeps because they give better renown than an actual fight, or to regularly throw battleground fights because we gain more honor if we lose. I want a game where every action I take is not only recorded — we’ve got that covered, as MMO developers have been spending inordinate amounts of time on achievement systems of late — but is meaningful.

I’m starting to think that a game with all of what I’m looking for is just too bloody expensive to make. Until that game turns up, I’ll keep playing the latest and greatest MMOs, hoping that at some point they’ll forego the endless loot/gear/dungeon progressions and focus on actually entertaining their players, instead of just stringing them along until the next level, the next dungeon, or the next expansion. I’m a sucker that way, or maybe I’m just idealistic.

But if that game ever turns up, I’ll rejoice. And I’ll be the first one singing its praises; that I guarantee.