Due to conflicting schedules, I had to cancel both the respective podcast recording sessions this week. However, Brian and I managed to get something sorted today by the skin of our teeth. The two main subjects we talk about this time are Brian’s return to LOTRO, courtesy of a Black Friday sale of ROI and of course the final SWTOR beta test. We talk about both these subjects at some length, one being a established game reaching a major crossroad in 2012 and the other being a new title that many gamers are pinning their hopes on. We also discuss a special offer that came my way and that has turned out to be most advantageous.
Weekly round up. Brian plays the final SWTOR Beta and returns to an old favourite, as a result of a seasonal bargain. I also indulge in the testing of a well known franchise MMO, explore the Spec Ops options for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and get an interesting deal care of my ISP [00:39]
Admit it, this is a cool advertisement. Yes you can argue that may be Blizzard were late to jump on the entire Chuck Norris internet meme bandwagon, but this promotional video still gets people attention. Considering the slow but steady exodus of WoW customers over the past year, such overt marketing is not only amusing but essential. Gaming has never been as big a pastime in the western world, as it is now. The growth in casual gaming, the attraction of mobile platforms and the availability of new products via social networks, means that the MMO genre has to work hard to secure and retain its player base. Developers need to get their message across and convince the public to try their material.
I regularly receive promotional emails from Trion, Funcom, Bioware and Turbine. It’s an easy option for these companies and has relatively low operating costs. But it is a pretty blunt tool to use. Plus as I am an existing customer, am I really the best person they should be pitching to? There is also a great proliferation of web based promotion these days, with websites and forums plastered with banner adverts for whatever is the latest hot title. But again it is still effectively aimed at an internet savvy demographic and therefore not reaching as wider an audience as possible. The simple fact remains that TV advertising gets results. In the UK I can anecdotally attest to a increase in use of this medium. Digital terrestrial channels such a Dave, ITV 3 & 4, Quest, Yesterday and More 4 carry a lot of gaming related marketing, though usually based around the major consoles. The subscription channels likewise follow suite.
If you keep up with the gaming news then you’ve more than likely come across the story of M2, the free to play Japanese MMO that deleted all its user accounts. To be fair a more accurate description would be that the tech support staff were unable to restore a current database backup, when addressing a server side fault. So a decision was made to close the game. Naturally such a story has become quite a hot topic and it certainly got me thinking. A comment left on the Massively website, described this incident as “every gamer’s worst nightmare”. I wouldn’t go that far and would consider the loss of both thumbs or an eye to be a greater cause of concern, but I certainly do concede the point of losing one’s character or characters in an MMO is a major setback. Exactly how much of one I would like to explore.
So let’s consider a hypothetical scenario. How would you deal with losing your account from your favourite MMO. In my case, as LOTRO is my MMO of choice, I shall use that as my benchmark. But any similar product would be equally applicable. Also for the sake of this argument, the game itself has not closed and it is only the account data that has gone. All current customers still have access to the game itself. Those are the parameters of this theoretical discussion, so let’s press on.
Some rather disturbing news has come out today saying that only 10 percent of gamers are actually finishing the games that they purchase. The new report from CNN discusses the problems that gaming developers are facing in attracting players to the world of the single player experience.
“What I’ve been told as a blanket expectation is that 90 percent of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube,” said Activision production contractor Keith Fuller.
Less than two weeks after the previous backdoor incident (Ooh er missus), CMP (yes I’m sticking with this acronym, so deal with it) got hit again. Yes we experienced a “malicious iframe injection” this time although we felt no pain. But the damage was such that we couldn’t leave the site up. Curiously enough, I received an email from the blogs theme developers, informing me (and other customers) that they had recently become aware of security vulnerabilities in the TimThumb scripting (you couldn’t make this up, even if you wanted to). Anyway a fix has been applied and hopefully the ramparts will now remain sufficiently robust against the forces of darkness (the feckers).
I was recently involved in Alpha testing for a popular FPS and for a limited period of time I had access to some of the multi player levels. It was a very different experience to that which I had in the Beta testing of Rift. Although the testing of any game is an essential aspect, I would advise gamers to consider their participation carefully before participating. For me testing a product such as a game prior to its launch, can potentially kill my interest in it. It certainly did in the case of the Rift, which by my own admission is a very polished game. This can be a real issue if your friends continue to play the game in question after its launch.
I have frequently been an early adopter of new technology in the past. This stemmed directly from my career in the IT industry. I was always quick to try a new OS or adopt a new format. My eagerness to have something first and to explore its merits would often blind me to the practicalities of the situation. Bug ridden software, the lack of drivers and software support. As I have got older and allegedly wiser, my intolerance for these deficiencies has increased to the point where I simply won’t be the first on board the bandwagon. I want a product to work and work well. If you buy a product 18 months after its release then you may well get that. If not, then its may be not such a good product?
I was recently involved in Alpha testing for a popular FPS and for a limited period of time I had access to some of the multi player levels. It was a very different experience to that which I had in the Beta testing of Rift. Although the testing of any game is an essential aspect, I would advise gamers to consider their participation carefully before participating. For me testing a product such as a game prior to its launch, can potentially kill my interest in it. It certainly did in the case of the Rift, which by my own admission is a very polished game. This can be a real issue if your friends continue to play the game in question after its launch.
I have frequently been an early adopter of new technology in the past. This stemmed directly from my career in the IT industry. I was always quick to try a new OS or adopt a new format. My eagerness to have something first and to explore its merits would often blind me to the practicalities of the situation. Bug ridden software, the lack of drivers and software support. As I have got older and allegedly wiser, my tolerance for these deficiencies has increased to the point where I simply won’t be the first on board the bandwagon. I want a product to work and work well. If you buy a product 18 months after its release then you may well get that. If not, then its may be not such a good product?
This week Brian and I have decided to take a global look at the gaming industry, as it seems to be under going some rather major changes at present. As a result this takes up the majority of the show. Due to the site outage a week ago, we lost some of the blog comments that had been previously posted. So we skip “views from the perilous realm” this week. Hopefully, a cogent, well conceived and vitriolic rant (courtesy of myself) helps balance the schedule. Here’s a summary of the show:
What is going on with gaming? With so many games going F2P, the decline in the hand-held gaming and the move to digital sourcing and cloud gaming in general, what does the future hold for the industry? Is the rate and speed of change a good or bad thing. Are we looking at a new golden age of gaming, or will over commercialisation kill off public interest.
Most of the MMOs that I have played over the years have had a plethora of servers to play on. This is still very much the norm with gamers being given the opportunity to choose between different play styles such as PVE, PVP or RP. This is particularly common to the MMO genre. In the past, servers are segregated between geographical regions to resolve language differences or technical issues such as lag. However even this has changed, with LOTRO recently moving to at least a central geographical point of presence. Ongoing changes to server technology and ever increasing internet connection speeds have made the concept of megaservers viable.
DC Universe Online will be moving to a new megaserver structure Monday. A new developer diary has been posted on the respective benefits of the process, to help get everyone orientated. The selling points are more people on servers and better grouping opportunities. However there are other repercussions to consider. Character names will have to be changed in the case of duplicates. Preference will be given to those who have spent the highest periods online, although there will be the means to replace a system generated rename, if one is imposed. It should also be noted that PC and PSN communities for this title will remain segregated. I also think that the recent security outages associated with Sony have played a part in this move.
Treyarch have announced the fourth DLC (downloadable content) for Black Ops. Rezurrection, containing five zombie levels, will retail in the UK for £11.49. So if you brought the original game at it’s full retail price, along with the previous expansions, First Strike, Escalation and Annihilation, the total outlay when you add the new one will be £85.86 or thereabouts. If a gamer has been playing the entire year between instalments of the franchise, then the overall cost breaks down to approximately £0.24 a day.
Now I think that when benefits of paid DLC are broken down in such a simple economic fashion, then I can accept the fact that it was chargeable in the first place. However, a good many gamers chafe at the idea. We can all remember the good old days when DLC was benevolently bestowed upon us by sagely developers. This policy, along with the benefits of a healthy modding scene, made gamers feel that they were getting exceptional value for money from their initial purchase. Then games went and got popular with the rest of society. That really screwed the pooch.
