Fishing On An Acid Trip

January 27th, 2012
We're not in Kansas anymore.

In anthropology there are two terms used to refer to how someone experiences culture: etic and emic. Similar to the concepts of objective and subjective, if you’re talking about your own culture, you’re probably giving an “emic” account. If you’re attempting to describe Final Fantasy XIV, you’re doing so from an “etic” perspective.

Or you’re a nitrous oxide-sniffing space alien. I get the two confused.

Full Disclosure: I have no experience with the first Final Fantasy MMO (FF XI), nor have I played any of the single-player titles (FF’s I – XIV). I’m not sure why I have avoided the franchise for so long. I suspect I may be intimidated by how the games are chronologically ordered: Some sort of Roman numeral, base 23, pentadecimal system?

So yes, I freely admit that I may not be this Japanese MMO’s target audience. But regardless of how etic my perspective may be, a game’s story and characters need to have some universal elements that are easily identifiable to any audience, regardless of their cultural background. Or at least I would expect an MMO of this caliber and budget to try to aspire to that level of appeal? Instead, my first hour with FF XIV was filled with enough incomprehensible psychedelic weirdness to make Hunter S. Thompson think he was Gomer Pyle.

After creating my dark-skinned, but distinctly Asian-featured fisherman (why is it almost always impossible to create a black female character in a fantasy game?) I was immediately subjected to a rather long and involved cut scene. Followed by another cut scene. Which was immediately followed by yet another cut scene. And another one. This long series of cut scenes was only briefly interrupted by a very protracted and awkward fight sequence in which I threw rocks at a pack of wolves for over 10 minutes, (seriously, it took me 10 minutes to kill three wolves!) and the 15 minutes I spent doing a boring and unintuitive fishing sequence.

My entire time in this game felt less like a game and more like an interact-able movie. The art design was gorgeous, but I rarely had time to explore it as I was yanked from one cut scene to the next. At every turn the game seemed to be yelling, “Look at this magnificent story we have created for you!” Never mind the fact that the story they were trying so hard to impress me with was nearly incomprehensible. Treants. Moogles. Woodsin taint. Greenwrath. Dance lessons? After a while I gave up trying to make sense of it, as the game didn’t seem to care whether or not I was actually having any fun.

I often complain about the fact that many MMO’s don’t have children in them. Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online are two notable offenders. This omission is always a bit immersion breaking for me, as I begin to wonder just how the inhabitants of a given world exist if they don’t procreate. But Final Fantasy XIV has the weird distinction of having too many children. And not just regular kids, but also adult humanoids who look like kids. This was further compounded by the fact that it was impossible for me to create a female player character who looked more than a day over the age of 17. As an adult woman I’m not interested in having a teenage avatar, but the game’s rather creepy fixation on young, scantily-clad girls dictated otherwise.

“Yes we’re sexist and ageist, but isn’t that flying, flute-playing marshmallow kitten thing just adorable?”

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Posted in PvE, Social Dynamics | 3 Comments »

You Won’t Find This On Google Maps

January 10th, 2012
Her cape was quite wrinkly.

The first time I played DC Universe Online during its beta period I gave up on it after only a half hour of play. The game’s console-focused interface has a targeting system that resembles a kung fu monk trying to blind fight while wearing roller skates. You don’t so much aim as merely suggest your attack’s direction and target – and hope that you hit something other than yourself. After a half hour of flailing around in a very NON-heroic fashion I gave up, logged out, and uninstalled the game. I wasn’t about to pay $14.99 a month to feel like Die Fledermaus’ near-sighted and even more ineffectual younger brother.

But fast-forward a year later in which DCUO – like so many other MMO’s – has gone free-to-play, and where my tolerance for bad online games has been polished to a high sheen. I decided to give the world of Gotham and Metropolis another try.

This was my tour guide, ADanger. When not rescuing lost super heroes he volunteers at the local retirement home.

My second attempt at DCUO was no less awkward than the first, but this time I decided that I wasn’t going to care. “OK game. You want me to mash buttons like a 3 year old? I can do that!” I button-mashed my way through the starter area and the first couple of missions before realizing that I was actually having fun. Sure, the interface is clunky, confusing and unnecessarily obtuse, and the missions’ storylines are hanging out in the deep end of the cartoon absurdity pool, but there is something genuinely cathartic about pummeling bad guys with wanton abandon and having Wonder Woman tell you just how special you really are. Who needs therapy when you can save the world on a regular basis?

If only your innate super powers came with built-in GPS. Or heck, even a compass.

DCUO’s navigation is not for the directionally challenged. The game’s missions routinely take the player between the two main map areas of Metropolis and Gotham City. These two regions are large but not excessively difficult to traverse, especially since the game provides your hero with a travel superpower from the moment of creation. The problem lies in the fact that they are not directly connected to each other, and the game conveniently forgets to tell you this. I spent at least 20 minutes flying from one end of Metropolis to the other, trying to find the door marked “Gotham City -> This Way”. If it hadn’t been for the oddly misnomic “ADanger” who took pity upon me and gave me a walking (okay – flying) tour of the Escher-esque Watchtower (which connects the two areas) I’d probably still be out there somewhere. Flying in circles like a crop duster.

Despite the consolitis and all of its associated shortcomings, DCUO can be an enjoyable diversion. The art design is colorful and vibrant without the cell-shading and black outline that I found so unappealing in Champions Online. And as goofy as the mission premises can get, their execution never felt as repetitive and monotonous as those in City of Heroes/Villians. Although I understand why SOE made this game dual-platform, I think doing so was an injustice no superhero should endure.

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Posted in Game Mechanics | 1 Comment »

A Day Late & A Dollar Short

May 18th, 2011

Realms Online is a good example of an idiom my grandfather used to say when I was a kid: A day late and a dollar short. Too little. Too late. Too… meh.

Created by Argentinian developer NGD Studios, Regnum Online was originally released in South America in 2007. According to its Wikipedia entry, it was one of the first online games ever published in Argentina. Which makes me wonder what on earth the good people of Buenos Aires ever did to deserve such a boring wreck of a game. American publisher GameSamba released it as a free-to-play MMO here in the US earlier this month, under the name “Realms Online”. Because, you know, the American market needs more out-dated, third-rate F2P MMOs? And also, we can’t read Latin?

While most MMOs make some pretense of lore, Regnumalms Online decided that back story was for wussies and dumps you straight into the game with no context or tutorial. I couldn’t even find any information about the game’s mythology on their website, which is a rather surprising omission. These cut-rate F2P MMO’s always have some ponderous, generic, vaguely complicated back story. Maybe you have to pay Sambas for the privilege.

Realsmgnum Online boasts that it has 3 realms, 9 “fully customizable” player races (I could not put pants on any of my female characters, so I’m not sure how they define “fully” or “customizable”), and 6 classes. This might be impressive if it wasn’t for the fact that Dark Age of Camelot did it better – and six years earlier.

One review of this game stated that its RvR aspects were enjoyable, even if the PVE portion were “lackluster”. I never got that far. I spent the first 20 minutes of the game trying to figure out why my interface disappeared whenever I entered combat. (Answer: The tab key was bound to the ‘hide interface’ function by default.) By the time I got my keys remapped, my avatar had already fallen asleep.

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Posted in Avatars, Localization, PvP | 3 Comments »

Faerie Boots

April 12th, 2011

Now that I’m no longer working for an MMO developer, I once again have time to play MMOs. Currently in my ever-revolving playlist is a new online game called RIFT.

RIFT plays like an updated version of Warhammer Online and looks like a dirtier version of Guild Wars. Its claim to fame are the titular rifts; temporary inter-planar doorways from which routine invasions occur. In terms of game play, these rifts act as spontaneous public quests. If you’re in an area when a rift opens, associated quest objectives instantly appear in your tracker and the system automatically creates a group or raid, which you are prompted to join. Although these rift events are supposed to be spontaneous, my sense was that the system times them at regular intervals, or they are based upon the player population within a given area. The game tries hard to keep you engaged by constantly bombarding you with rifts, enemy invasions and wandering high level mobs, to the point that it can become chaotic and overwhelming to an old geezer like me.

RIFT's fae character

"These boots are made for... dancing?"

Although RIFT has the standard Cleric, Mage, Warrior and Rogue classes, each class has a set of eight different “souls” from which you can choose a combination of three that forms a “role”. These souls act as class specializations, with each having a unique set of abilities that you gain over time as you level. Supposedly you can mix the souls in any way you choose, but I found that if you didn’t follow the game’s recommended combinations you would end up with a rather goofy (and gimped) character concept. My Rogue soul mixture of Bard, Assassin, and Bladedancer resulted in a character that could turn invisible, sneak up behind a monster and scare it to death by playing the mandolin – LOUDLY. Hilarious as it was, it wasn’t a very effective strategy.

The Druid, a soul choice for the Cleric class, has three Fae companion characters from which to choose. I find the art design for one of these fae companions to be a bit unsettling. It is my sincere hope that this creature is not intended to resemble a prepubescent female child. With its exposed cleavage and derriere, it would be wandering disturbingly close to pedobear territory. Barring this extremely unseemly choice leaves the possibility that this character is meant to resemble an adult female dwarf. In fuzzy knee-high boots and polka-dot underwear? Eh, ok.

I would have found it far more interesting if the artists at Trion Worlds had designed a MALE fae creature – with or without polka-dot undies. But in our deeply homophobic American culture, I’m sure a half-naked male faerie would have garnered the game a harsher ESRB rating. Because we all know that in fantasy, only females have breasts, abdomen and behinds that are impervious to arrows and swords.

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Posted in Avatars, Genres & Themes | 7 Comments »

World of Red Dead

June 21st, 2010

When I began this blog last year, I was essentially unemployed. With plenty of spare time on my hands, my MMO addiction could blossom unfettered by pesky time constraints.

Fast-forward two new jobs and eight months later, where I now find myself perpetually sleep-deprived and temporally challenged. I was recently hired by a local game developer to work on an MMO that has something to do with light sabers and Jedi. Or, at least, that’s what they tell me. I’m too busy writing acceptance criteria for hydra events to know for sure – which isn’t nearly as sexy as it sounds.

I’ve quickly discovered that working for an MMO developer is a bit like becoming a prostitute: What was once your hobby is now your job. It’s still enjoyable, but you’re doing it for completely different reasons. Sure, I still play occasionally, but my enthusiasm for playing/mocking (plocking?) the more esoteric games has sadly diminished. I will continue to write to this blog when time allows, but it will be sporadic. My apologies, dear reader.

I know I’ve discussed the topic before, so I’ll try to refrain from abusing a deceased equine. But how can a gal control herself when she gets email invitations to games like this. Oh, look – I’m a big-boobed, half-dressed little girl in some generic approximation of ancient China. Yawn. I suppose I should have known better, since Kingdom Heroes was created by the same people who brought us this mess. But US game developers seem equally unwilling to stray too far from the high-fantasy WoW formula. Former baseball star Curt Schilling is even getting into the MMO business with his project Copernicus, but with a description that includes “…truly evolving fantasy world that is both warmly familiar and intriguingly unique.” I doubt the game will be about alien space marines.

Recently I had the opportunity to play Red Dead Redemption on my friend’s XBox. Despite the fact that my skills with any console controller rivals that of a blind quadriplegic, I had a lot of fun. Which got me to thinking: Why doesn’t anyone develop a Wild West-themed MMO? There is a lot of untapped potential in that particular genre. If it worked for Rockstar Games in a single-player game, why not massive multiplayer? Who wouldn’t want to shoot cows and herd bank robbers? Instigate a saloon fight, or an ambush a wagon train? Think of the possibilities!

I want to be Annie Oakley, dammit. Not another night elf.

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Posted in Genres & Themes | 3 Comments »

Excuse Me, Is That A Poleaxe In Your Back?

May 24th, 2010

I’m often asked by friends to give my thoughts and recommendations on various MMOs. Usually this isn’t too difficult. Having played so many different online games over the years, it’s easy for me to assess a game’s strengths and weaknesses. What I find more difficult to quantify is the game that has all the right elements, but somehow loses its appeal over time. This is often caused by something that should be completely inconsequential. I call this phenomenon the Niggling Pixel Effect.

Are you naturally blond?
Does your eyebrows EXACTLY match your hair?

I originally wrote about Alganon back in December. Although the developers have since revamped the UI and some of the other art assets to make it look less like a WoW clone, the overall game play remains pretty standard MMO fantasy fare. Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. Aside from the usual glitches and bugs that plague every new MMO, it is a solid, palatable game.

Since Alganon is free-to-play after its initial purchase, I’ve spent the past 6 months leveling up a cleric. At first I found the game to be a pleasant, snack-like diversion, similar to that bag of Doritos you grab from the vending machine in the middle of the afternoon. It’s the type of game you play when you can’t (or don’t want) to pay for a subscription to the full course meal of a ‘real’ MMO. But as I progressed through the first ten levels, I found that my desire to play the game was steadily decreasing. It was then that I realized that I was suffering from the Niggling Pixel Effect.

First it was my avatar’s face. Apparently designing attractive human faces in video games is no easy feat, because ugly avatars are everywhere in the land of MMOs. Since you spend the majority of your time looking at the back of your avatar, an ugly face can sometimes be ignored. But over time I found myself groaning every time I logged into the game and saw my avatar’s ugly mug staring back at me.

Nothing says 'medieval fantasy' like brown latex pants and sneakers.

Next came my character’s clothing. I realize that it’s standard procedure in fantasy games for your character to begin her journey in rags and eventually become the MMO equivalent of Liberace. But I found the clothing in Alganon to be not only unattractive, but anachronistically distracting. The setting of the game is supposed to be psuedo-medieval, yet my character is wearing a brown latex wetsuit? Strike two.

Finally, there was the poleaxe. Initially my character’s weapon was Velcro’ed across her back in the usual video game fashion. But after a particular patch was installed, my character suddenly found her poleaxe buried into the middle of her back. If this is a glitch, the developers have not been in a hurry to fix it. She’s looked this way for months. Strike three – you’re out.

These are all relatively minor issues that other players may be able to overlook. But the Niggling Pixel Effect is different for each player, and the ugly faced, wetsuit-wearing, inappropriately-placed poleaxe carrying avatar became unplayable for me.

What is your Niggling Pixel?

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Posted in Avatars | 7 Comments »

Muzak To My Ears

May 10th, 2010

I’m guessing that the majority of MMO players don’t pay much attention to in-game music. You either ignore it, mute it, or have other sounds playing in the background. But sound design can be immensely important to the overall media experience. Imagine the movie Conan the Barbarian with cheesy 1980′s synthesized tunes instead of Basil Poledouris’ majestic score. In my opinion, the music made that movie the cinematic icon that it is.

Music within a game should invoke a certain tone or feeling that coincides with the overall theme of a particular area. If an MMO contains a race of people that are known to be war-like, militaristic and ruthless, the sound design for that area should be complimentary – with heavy drum beats and a steady, marching rhythm. Or at the very least, a piece of music that suggests a sense of foreboding or dread.

So what were the developers of Allods Online thinking when they used this [.mp3 file] as the looping background music for the capital city of their EVIL empire?

Go ahead, listen to the entire thing. I dare you.

Allods, like many MMOs of similar ilk, has two waring factions: the ‘good guys’ of the League, and the ‘bad guys’ that make up the Empire. The races of the League include humans, elves (with fairy wings, no less) and teddy-bear looking creatures called Gibberlings. Although not up to the standards of video game composers like Jeremy Soule, this area of the game contains light, airy music that is appropriate – if not a bit forgettable – with oboes, strings and flutes.

Conversely, the races of the Empire consists of humans, an undead variant called the Arisen, and Orcs. Their capital city, Nezebgrad, belies the developer’s Russian roots: Stalin-esque statues are everywhere, and the overall art design suggests a steampunk Moscow. While I applaud the developer’s attempt to break from the standard fantasy genre, their efforts are completely ruined by their bizarrely chosen background music.

According to the website, Astrum Nival spent over 4 years and $12 million dollars creating Allods Online. For a free-to-play MMO, it does have above-average production values. Which makes this choice of sound design that much more inexplicable. Maybe the lead sound designer was the CEO’s brother-in-law?

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Posted in Genres & Themes | 8 Comments »

Good Grief

May 5th, 2010

Like many fans of World of Warcraft, back in 2006 after the Burning Crusades expansion had been released, I created a Draenei character to experience the new content designed for this race. At the time I had been playing WoW for only a couple of months, so I was still relatively new to the game.

As I adventured my way through the Draenei starter area, I came to a small village called Azure Watch, which was home to several quest-giving NPCs. When playing any MMO I prefer to complete as many quests as possible en masse, as this saves on the tedium of running back and forth; kill the 10 boars, collect the 6 wildflowers, find the murlock with the umbrella, kill 10 more boars, give the pipe wrench to the owlkin, then return to the village for my rewards.

During one of my return trips in which I had at least a half a dozen quests to turn in, I was met by an entire village of dead NPCs – and one Orc Warrior with a lot of blood on his blade. Helplessly I stood there and watched as he killed every NPC in the village, then waited until they respawned just to kill them again. Unaware that killing quest-givers is permissible in the game, I spent several minutes being completely, utterly confused.

And what does a new player do when she is confused and needs help? Contact customer support, of course!

To Blizzard’s credit, my support ticket was answered very quickly. Certain that the orc player was somehow cheating by killing the NPCs, thus preventing me from completing my quests, I was more than a little surprised by the customer service representative’s response:

I’m sorry, but GMs are not allowed to interfere with this type of player behavior.

This type of player behavior? He’s killing every NPC in sight! I can’t complete any of my quests.

It’s Blizzard policy that players have to police each other in these situations.

But I’m level 5! I can’t do anything!

We recommend that you ask for help from your guild, or solicit for help in the general chat channel.

You can’t stop them?

Sorry. It’s against game policy. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Realizing that the situation was hopeless, I thanked the GM and logged out of the game. At the time, I wasn’t a member of a guild, and being so late at night I doubted than anyone would respond to my pleas for help in chat.

This entire episode led me to wonder just why Blizzard allows this type of player griefing. Do they think this encourages community interaction and cooperation? Is this somehow an adjunct to the PvP portion of the game? And are they completely unaware of how off-putting and alienating this is to new players?

I have since asked members of my guild (Pig & Whistle Society) their thoughts on this issue. Although many agreed with me that it’s a form of player griefing that shouldn’t be allowed, one member stated that he approved of the killing. In his words, it would “break immersion” if there were NPCs that were immortal.

I guess having players stand around for 10 minutes waiting for the NPCs to respawn is not immersion-breaking? Why not just have the NPCs kill each other off?

By their twin brothers.

Who wear pink dresses.

(Yes, I know it’s absurd. That’s the point.)

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Posted in PvP | 10 Comments »

Ain’t Misbehavin’

April 23rd, 2010

The other day I was playing Allods Online. I had a quest to kill a mob that required a group. Not wanting to wait in what could have been a very long respawn conga line, I formed a raid to facilitate the process.

The terrain of the area had a small but steep hill where players could stand on top and hit the mob with ranged attacks. Since the mob could not path to them, it would automatically reset. Players quickly recognized this exploit and used it to grief others. Soon the situation devolved into a profanity-laced 3-ring circus, with the griefers taunting the raid members, the raid members yelling epithets at the griefers, and the mob yo-yo-ing between the two. All of this in an effort to get credit for completing an incredibly ill-conceived quest.

Oh, did I mention that I was level 5 and this took place in the beginner area?

But this post isn’t about the game’s questionable design choices. Goodness knows I could rant about that for paragraphs. This is about the behavior of the players.

I felt as if I was wrangling a bunch of 6th graders on a playground as I tried to cajole and placate everyone involved. Based upon the amount of verbal abuse and general lack of emotional maturity exhibited, I wondered afterward if perhaps I was dealing with kids. And it got me to thinking about why bad behavior is so prevalent online.

Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade attempted to explain this phenomenon with his Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Although the online disinhibition effect does account for much of it, I think there is also a generational component.

We have all kinds of social constraints in place to facilitate co-existence. We learn at an early age the consequences of stealing someone’s lunch money or lying about our homework. But our rules of etiquette haven’t caught up to our technology, which has resulted in a technological generation gap. Parents may be concerned about their children being exposed to objectionable material online, but they fail to realize that controlling their child’s own objectionable behavior is equally important. I doubt that many parents have the time or inclination to closely monitor how their children interact with others online. Many probably aren’t even aware of the significance of establishing some form of online etiquette.

It’s unlikely that a child will be traumatized by seeing a pixelated ass cheek. Bullying and name-calling is far more damaging, especially when it’s done anonymously. Until we create consequences for bad online behavior, or remove anonymity completely (which I am in favor of doing), 12 year-olds will be typing “gaywad” and “STFU” without any recognition or concern for the harm they’re causing.

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Posted in Social Dynamics | 8 Comments »

Life Is Just A Fantasy

April 12th, 2010

Let’s face it – the fantasy genre in MMO’s has been done to death. No matter how stunning the graphics or how challenging the combat, inevitably you will find yourself lobbing fireballs at some ugly, and frequently quadrupedal, monster. Sure there are anomalies like Star Trek Online or City of Heroes. But overall, the total number of non-fantasy based MMO’s is pretty small.

For this reason, when Sword of the New World first released in the US back in 2007, I happily ignored my usual rabid skepticism and installed the game.

Based on the Baroque period of Europe during the colonization of the Americas, Sword of the New World: Granado Espada (did the developers expect to make sequels, or were they trying to meet their vowel quota?) promised a new experience for players, with a unique setting and the ability to control multiple characters at one time. The game even won the 2006 Korean awards for Best Graphics and Game of the Year.

From the game’s description I envisioned characters in powdered wigs engaging in fierce sword battles. Mozart-inspired background music. And quests involving the illegal export of rum or cotton. Although I wasn’t expecting absolute historical accuracy, I was hoping that the game would maintain the overall spirit of the time period.

Of course, the game’s developers took my expectations, stomped all over them and threw them out the window with my hoop skirt.

I could forgive the bad localization; I realize that good translators can be expensive. I can also forgive the fact that the “award-winning” graphics are the usual androgynous male avatars in silk stockings and female avatars with impossibly small bodies and large breasts. But what I can’t forgive is the complete lack of imagination in the quest story lines and monster design. A scantily-clad “girl” who lost her backpack in the woods? Giant technicolor chicken things? This is supposed to be an alternative to the standard fantasy genre?

Now, before I start getting hate mail from fanboys…errr…fanpeople in Korea, let me state unequivocally that I bear no MMO prejudice. If the nice folks in Liechtenstein were cranking out sub par MMOs in the same way that Korea does, my critique would be no less harsh.

At the heart of my ire is the fact that game developers, be they Korean or otherwise, are unwilling or unable to conceive of an MMO outside of the fantasy box. Instead, they just keep cranking out the same old tired tropes, over and over again, with different window dressings. There are so many other potential settings for MMO’s: The Wild West, ancient Egypt, feudal Japan, vampire hunters, secret agent spies. The possibilities are endless. Developers need to stretch outside of the accepted paradigm, and players need to be willing to embrace true innovation.

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Posted in Genres & Themes | 4 Comments »

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