2010.09.03 22:29:42

kefkah

Lord of the Rings Online is an MMO I have played now for about a year and marks the 3rd MMO that I have played for any real length of time. As you all know, it announced a little while back that it was going to the F2P model like it had done somewhat successfully with DDO. This also marks the 2nd time that I have played an MMO seriously only to have a huge change come down the pipe. The last one being SWG's NGE which in that case, wiped out my class entirely and rendered the game useless to me.

This time around, I thought I would document things leading up to, during and shortly after the change to give the world the perspective of what it is like to be facing such a switch. True, it is quite unlike the NGE as it isn't a replacement of the entire game system as a whole. What this change does is add an ingame store element to the game and make levels below 50th accessible to players for free though some content costing them to access it.

My fears as a whole as as follows:

1. A change to the overall playerbase and its mature feel and culture. In the year I have played, I have not encountered leet speak nor any griefers. I have had a handful of disagreements with some players but thus is the nature of interaction with other people. This could all change because I was present at the F2P change over for DDO and witnessed the influx of people coming in. While the DDO crowd still was slightly less reserved in the first place - the newer blood seemed to be more of the less harmonic type. They did not observe server traditions or etiquette and had little or no respect for the previous subscribers. It was more of a "You should be thankful I am here" kind of mentality. It drove me off... well that and 1st level players walking around with flaming swords.

The LOTRO audience seems to be more reserved, more respectful and patient. Sure there are other types but that is not the norm. Don't get me wrong - we need new blood. Perhaps it will bring relevance to the Auction Houses and economy again. But it is my concern that it will come at a cost of the harmony that exists on my server.

2. Future Updates Geared Soley towards RMT. One thing that Turbine has done for LOTRO has been consistent qulaity updates containing pertinent fixes and meaningful content. Most of it for free. This has kept my interest up for longer than I expected. I had my doubts about the Skirmish system but now look forward to playing them as well as any new additions they drop down on us.

My fear is that this will go away and be replaced with content that I have to pay for that costs more than what I get with my monthly subscription fee. If I get little over 500 points each month and access to something that I would have normally had access to in the regular game costs over this - it will force me to decide whether or not I should pay Turbine additional money or do without. Should this become a frequent (or even slightly frequent) occurence - I will have to walk away from the game. It is my belief that if you are paying a monthly subscription that an MMO counts on in order to run - it should cover the normal player experience and also grant you the perks of premium experiences as Turbine should be making more money off of me as a whole than what they make off of their new F2P crowd.

3. Immersion will be broken with wholesale whoring of item and effect content. Much like that 1st level player walking around with a flaming sword in DDO - the balance and immersion from Tolkein's world could be shattered if items or visual effects are put into the game for the sake of making additional revenue quickly. Greed factor could break the game for the existing audience.

Don't get me wrong - I need for Turbine to make more money because I want this game to continue until we reach the gates of Mordor. I just think it can be achieved by smart implementation of perks and items and content that are not immersion breaking.  Sure there will be calls by this new audience for more items and thus power. Turbine just needs to hold the line and cater to the existing playerbase as well and keep the overall change to a minimum.

In my next blog - I will cover the lead up posts and overall playerbase thinking about this change.

lord of the rings | lotro | free to play | f2p | turbine | rmt | mmo

2010.08.13 20:19:54

kefkah

This month has brought us one step closer to being where I would like the site to be. Working on a number of upgrades here. First up was our PM system which apparently ancient in versions and had quite a few security patches.

Next up revising this blogging feature. You may note the error at the top of the page.

If any of you have any other suggestions or recommendations - let either Troneas or myself know.

2010.05.15 10:54:43

Hamilton

One of the many problems of being part of the "Tell All" generation (if you believe in privacy, you must be old and paranoid). And Facebook keeps driving on this belief of Sharing is Ok... well more as a means of greed and perhaps of unethical practices.

I do remember others telling me to go to Facebook as it was more "mature" than MySpace.  But considering the belief of Open Sharing and of Mr. Zukerman's recent past of unethical behavior... heck there is a new term being used, "You’re Zucked!"  Facebook does not seem any different. I think another social site can gain a good market share by promoting more of privacy.

In the meantime though, there is a what appears to be a significant amount of people quiting or deleting their profiles from Facebook. I suspect the increase of users (400 million) may be most of duplicated accounts for game apps, as even Zynga games are going down in numbers.  Now that is something to go over in a later discussion... Facebook vs Zynga.

However, back to the point.  "Kill Your Facebook Page" is gaining steam. The following blogger, Richi Jennings has gathered a listing of other blogs of the given subject (see link below). Of those one particular blog by Jason Calacanis provides some good insight:

Over the past month, Mark Zuckerberg, the hottest new card player in town,
has overplayed his hand. Facebook is officially “out,” as in uncool, amongst
partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and
his company are–simply put–not trustworthy.

...

Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Asperger’s-like
entrepreneur, I told Zynga CEO Mark Pincus that Zuckerberg would try
and slit his throat. I knew this because I watched Zuckerberg screw over
his users again and again in terms of privacy, and I heard about the stories
of him screwing over his former employers at ConnectU and his early
partners at Facebook.

Seems that people are catching on. According to the Financial Times;

The number of Facebook users considering deleting their accounts appeared
to rise after censure from European data protection officials and critical press
coverage prompted several prominent technology commentators to remove
their data from the site.
According to figures from Google, the largest search engine, global queries
for “delete Facebook account” have more than doubled in the past week,
reaching a high.
Most of those searches came from the US, where the phrase was in
Google’s top ten “hot trends” on Friday.

But Facebook counters this, saying there are more users, it is that the privacy controls are too complicated and need to be simplified. Appearently MMO companies are not the only ones to say such things. Which almost seems that Facebook is following along the lines of SOE.  After all, virtual worlds are Social Networking sites in a way as well.

First there was AOL, then MySpace, now there is Facebook and up next we'll see...

Ref Links:
The Escapist Magazine (thanks for Kazara for this)
Facebook CEO: People Who Trust Me Are "Dumb F*cks"

The Financial Times
Facebook to simplify its controls

Computer World: IT Blogwatch
"Kill your Facebook page" backlash gains speed

The Jason Calacanis Weblog (a good one)
The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand

2010.04.22 05:18:09

Troneas

"...and of Time you will make a stream upon which bank you will sit and watch its flowing; yet the Timeless in you is aware of Time's timelessness; and know that yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow, but today's dream". Khalil Gibran.

Lets remember; but above all, lets dream.

It has been a year since the Fringe has transformed its site into what it is today.

During this time, we have continued to provide gaming refugees with a safe haven in which to post freely and debate on fair and neutral grounds. "Coruscant" might have a trillion people, but many inhabit underground slums where troll gangs reign supreme; policed by mindless trigger-happy judiciary driods who can't tell the difference between the slum troll and the honest troll hunter.

...But, not on this small outpost on the fringe of the Galaxy.

We have covered E3, interviewed noticeable players and a former community manager, provided insight on games and MMO trends and ideas through our articles, posts, reviews and the Rodo Report.

We have alerted the Galaxy of wanted trolls and their wereabouts; we have recognised and identified their "contributions" to the MMO culture as well as challenged their "ideas".

We have denounced dodgy practices by the industry - called them out on their insistance to victimise unaware customers in their efforts to depart them from their honest dollars by selling broken products; submitting them to poor customer relations practices and/or changing their gaming experience driven by their unchecked greed...

In this small outpost, we have stimulated our passion for MMO games by challenging each other's ideas sharing the news that are of note to us, regarless of who or what the victim or the beneficiary might be. This, all under the watchful eye of... ourselves; and those lurkers who get greeted by our tiredless moderator and contributor Kaz every morning.

MMOFringe; more than a news site, a famous (or infamous to some) culture of gaming community reporting from the fringe of the MMO world. Some might not think highly of us, but they have heard of us; and will continue to do so as long as our frequency endures the strength of the mainstream holonet. And endure it will.

Happy birthday MMOFringe!

mmofringe

2010.01.07 13:42:37

Troneas

Reading back on Wildcat's 2008 Reviewed, 2009 A Look Ahead topic I have come to the conlcusion that 2009 has indeed been a dull year for the MMO industry- as predicted on his post.

I have lost the will to write about, debate on or engage in MMO conversations due to the reality that we find ourselves in.

What's worse, it seems that 2010 will continue on this unimaginative and failed concept of MMO design.

Every single MMO title which was supposed to live up to its stratospheric hype or which was expected to take off from a poor launch has failed to meet expectations and are cruising on a downhill road with very little chance of changing course.

I'm just going to throw a few names out here: AoC, PoTBs, Darkfall, Fallen Earth, Warhammer Online... Epic fail by all measurable means. I don't care if other sites find AoC the greatest improvement of the year or if Darkfall or Fallen Earth are developed by small indy companies which are happy with their current plans - truth be told they will live and die without major honours and their unimpressive active members will most probably decline in the forthcoming months.

These titles all have one thing in common: they are built upon an idea and concept which has already been sold before by previous products in one way or another, yet they are incomplete and in some cases lack the features which will keep a steady number of active subscribers over the long haul.

To put it boldy - they are boring, unimaginative, rinse-repeat games in a time where people jump from one game to the next at the smallest hint of a cheap dejà-vu system of game play.

The hyped and new MMOs of today are more like atractive street sluts than an decent lady- they will keep you entertained for a few days but after realising you've seen it all before and better you will turn around and go back hunting at a game forums on the net for your next seemingly impossible MMO love.

Lets forget themepark and sandbox here. During the past year or two, neither of both models have managed to attract and retain a healthy number of subscribers or managed to offer a sense of security in terms of growth (either in numbers or development).

As Wildcat righfully pointed out, the ongoing winners will continue to be Blizzard, Turbine and CCP, with their titles World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and EvE Online respectively. Any SOE title is looking at death in their face right now even if its still in development; Vanguard, SWG, Free Realms and PoTBs are one step away from the abysm and Everquest will fuel itself out of the old playerbase. The Agency? Sorry, but it won't fly. Funcom's AoC has had its chance and no matter what they do now to their existing model it just won't take off. They do have a fair chance with their Secret World MMO if they get it right. NCSoft- yes they've got Guild Wars 2 to save themselves and will probably do given their faithful fanbase and F2P model.

Again, I'll side with Wildcat's assessment that RMT will play an ever growing role in MMOs and I'll go as far as to predict that Bioware's Old Republic MMO will run on RMT. I am expecting a Dragon Age-style RPG MMO with single player unique advancement paths and end-play PVP. It will be polished, it will be fresh and it will be Star Wars, and it will attract a large playerbase; but it will have "extra" content for sale or items at a RMT price. I suspect, however, it will not charge the standard monthly fee.

Earthrise will not be the pre-cu mesiah or refugee saviour of any kind and will start counting cancelled subscriptions as fast as they are made, so I won't spend time on it.

With that my friends, Fringers and lurking alliens, I predict another boring MMO experience for us all this year.

That and... MMOFringe is the bomb!- even if it gives me migrane at times...

Have a great 2010 yall!

2009.11.13 23:20:51

Troneas

Well here goes my thoughts and experience on the dragon age game that I have been playing as of late.

This won't be a review as such just jotting down some words on what has attracted my attention and some features worth mentionning; without going into too much detail. In this light I won't be focusing on the UI, graphics, sound, and all of that stuff (which I suspect everyone assumes they are all great, immersive, etc.)  - and the are. Nor will I get into the essence of RP games and how they work and how this game mechanics compares to older ones; so if you've never played one this blog won't help you understand Dragon Age much.

In general terms, the game is a stunning, immersive and detailed RP game everyone has come to expect from Bioware; and, to get the obvious out of the way, its a medieval fantacy setting with a great ambience and feel to it.

2009.11.07 01:38:46

Troneas

In my capacity as a total noob forum assistant administrator, these past six months helping kefkah out with MMOFringe has not only given me the opportunity to immerse myself in a total foreign land of intimidating codes and menus (as well as curious words such as "breadcrumbs"); but also to experience moments which, thinking back on them, make me smile. At the time of course, those moments were anything but humerous.

So, in this blog entry I wanted to share one of these curious moments which would otherwise just sit in my mind but that in some form or another have molded to site to what we have today.

The day was somewhere around June when I had set my mind to change the colour of the site's links on the text. White, I concluded, was just too similar to the grey text in which we type.

The first step then was to find where to go to make this happen (yes I was this lost!). So I went on my quest by opening virtually every drop down menu and window on the admin pannel to try and find key words or phrases which might give me a clue. At the same time, I googled Joomla in the hopes that I would find my answer on their official forums. I assumed, naively, that on their site I would find noob forum admins pretending to run sites such as myself. Obviously, I was wrong. I type in "link color" on their search engine and bingo! - i find topics on the subject. Full of pride at my resourcefulness, I go inside the "Having issues with my link color" thread topic . The reply hit me like a bucket of cold water: "try this

#pillmenu li#current a:link, #pillmenu li#current a:hover, #pillmenu li#current a:visited {
color: #fff;
}"

Riiight... The OP was pleased by the answer - I was pulling my hairs out.

Determined, I went back to the MMOFringe admin pannel and kept searching. Alas, I found a template section which was screaming to be clicked on: Template Manager. The first option prompts me to chose between Site or Admin, and I thought: Admin must give me more options so I'd better go in there... Digging myself deeper and deeper into the Template Manager sub sections, I finally find something which can be edited: the site theme - Nice! As I opened the file I was hit by a wall of code which as far as I was concerned was the closest I had ever seen to hieroglyphics.

I scroll down in an attempt to find anything that resembles english or, if lucky,  the word link. I was lucky. It was still a load of giberish, but the code section title gave it away. aha! At that moment, though, I began having second thoughts about my crusade... What if I'm at the wrong place? What if the whole site breaks down with my efforts? How do I explain this to kefkah? "Ya I wanted to change the colour but now we have not site..." Ya not a moment I was looking forward to.

So I exited all the way back, went back and forth to the joomla site, re-did my steps at the Template Manager to make sure I was on the right path. After much research, I found a piece of code on the joomla forums which had a very good chance of working. Taking the leap, I copied and pasted the code and hoped for the best. After all, I had invested the whole afternoon on this affair and was determined to not log off empty handed. Took a deep breath and clicked the save button.

Quickly, I reloaded the MMOFringe site to see the results of my efforts. Nothing. No change at all. Well at least its still there - I thought to myself.

Giving up for the day, I went back to the Admin pannel to undo the changes, and, to my surprise, all the links on the Administrator site had changed to orange! (the colour I was testing). Confused, I traced all the steps I took to make these changes and eventually learnt that the Admin option I had chosen on the Template Manager menu was not, as I suspected, a "can do anything here" section of the admin site but rather the place to edit the admin site itself!

It was a step forward, I thought to myself. Now I know that little piece of code works, even if I applied it to the wrong site. Another day, I will investigate the wall of code of the actual public site and hopefully have something to show for my efforts.

At the end of the day, we never managed to find a way to change the link colours of the public site (kefkah and hamilton joined the crusade at a point), but the orange links remains on the admin site to this date, even if they were never intended to be changed!

2009.11.06 21:01:07

Troneas

Dolly is how I will name Blizzard's newly created virtual pet in their highly successfull MMORPG World of Warcraft. I will name it Dolly because, similarly to the first cloned living being, Blizzard's new virtual pet is their first step into an astounding (and controversial) growing business of trading individual virtual items.

Yes. Dolly is a fitting name.

Dolly was just born and has immediately created quite the stir (read outright disgust)amongst World of Warcraft's players as well as online gaming enthusiasts. Similar reactions took place in other games, in other companies, which charge a premium fee to the consumer to play their online games, and, after a period of time, introduced "extra" virtual items at a separate cost. Most notably, Sony Online Entertainment via their Trading Card game proposes the user to buy their electronic cards in the hope that some may contain an attached virtual item to be used in their NGE game.

Virtual item revenues on in the internet and online games alike represent a deep and ever growing gold mine with apparent unlimited resources. In 2010, total revenues in the business could reach U$ 1.6 billion, according to a new report by Justin Smith et al of Inside Network: “The Facebook platform went from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in two and a half years. It reflects a broader shift in society where people are spending more time on casual games.” Dean Takahashi of Games Beat comments: "Hardcore MMOs such as Eve Online are also generating virtual goods revenues. Those games have more paying users, but the games are intimidating to more casual users. And there are emerging areas worth paying attention to, such as virtual goods in console games and iPhone games. With the launch of version 3.0 of the iPhone software, virtual goods trading on the mobile phone has more potential."

Given these facts, it is not surprising that any community-driven online industry working with whatever subscription model will consider creating Dollys, that is of course if they haven't done so yet. Ethical considerations or impact on the users' mood who have been billed a premium subscription to support a "persistant online game" (including advertised "extras" and fluff items such as pets, housing, decoration, etc.) for so long will not be as important as the bottom line and the bottom line's prospects of selling Dollys.

Blizzard, the online heavy weight of MMORPGs, has clearly ignored any and all past player reactions to such practices in rival companies and Dolly is out there to test the waters. Yes, some players will be upset, but to put it in economical terms: what is Dolly's elasticity? Will more Dollys and perhaps more elaborate Dollys compensate for the segment of players who vote with their feet? Or is there a definate barrier which will determine the point in which producing more Dolly's alongside a monthly subscription will reduce the revenue margin?

Players are voicing their opinions, but are they prepared to act on them? And another question to think about: Will online players (or users) ever be protected from changing revenue models to their online games or otherwise? Or will companies rely on the user's invested time, passion, community etc and blackmail them all their way to their wallet?

Comment on this blog in the Vet Blogs section.

mmo | rmt | micro-transactions | wow | blizzard

2009.10.03 01:05:56

kefkah

Recently on a forum far far away, I had a discussion with another poster about the recent addition of player made content toolsets to SOE's Star War Galaxies. A comparison was drawn between that toolset and the one put in place for Ryzom. While I had made comparisons between the two games (PreCU of course), I never made the connection between the player content tools. It was while I was responding that a thought hit me like an NGE. Is it at the end of an MMO's lifecycle that tools for the players to create quests, missions...content are necessary or perhaps the standard?

Sure you may argue that I have provided just two examples and that is hardly enough to go about winning this argument. But perhaps I should include City of Heroes as well to my list. It too is at the late stage of its life with no less than 2 superhero themed mmos knocking on its door.

If you are willing to read this far, then perhaps you are willing to meander with me about some thoughts on the idea. Are these toolsets put in as a last minute stop gap to wring out a few more subscription dollars? Any meaningful development for these games have long since ceased so perhaps it could be said that giving the players the ball will help them stay put for a few extra months.

If content toolsets are such an innovative idea - then why are they not standard features on mmos just now launching? Surely, some of these developers have played other mmos or even Neverwinter Nights. Wouldn't the incluson of these modules would just be modified variations of the ones that are used on special events? I would gather that the reason they are not out for public consumption is the bugginess they inflict upon the server as a whole. Drop a few AT-ATs on any SWG server to see what I mean.

At any rate, I just thought I would through this idea out there to be chewed on. Let me know what you think - here

player created content | mmo | server | development | toolsets