2013 in MMOs

[Anery]

So far we have seen two big releases and two pay models move to pay to win microtransactions (GW2, TSW - TSW and SWTOR moved to microtransactions) whilst I could wax lyrical about why either game went that way I havn't got enough electrons to do that rant full justice, so here are the upcoming MMOs for the remainder of the year:

Neverwinter
This offering comes from the people who brought us City of Heroes/Villains, however they also brought us Champions Online and Star Trek Online - hopefully they have learned from past mistakes and are putting them to bed with this latests.
Set in the D&D universe, after a disaster called the spellplague (and D&D players know what this is?) this single faction game has six different playable races and (from what I can tell from their forums) four distinct archetypes that can be deviated into various specialities - you know the drill, spellcasting damage, spellcasting healing, tanking and sneaky cupcake.
The creators need to sort their website out, too little information.
Graphically the game does nothing exciting, going down the WoW route of being available to play by a lot of people irregardless of how old their system is and the game footage I have seen appears bland and generic - yet the reports coming from recent beta have been positive...perhaps the intricacies of the unrevealed class mechanics, or the crafting system, or any other bit of information we obviously don't need to know is enough to make the game stand out.

The Elder Scrolls Online
I so wanted to just put "Go fuck yourselves" for the description of this.
A blatant cash in by Bethesda, I am only left wondering how they managed to leave it so long before this was attempted.
It is Tamriel 1000 years ago and three factions are at war for the throne of Tamriel. Again information is sparse, I found it easier to find out about their convention tour dates than I did about how their class mechanics work. In fact, I know nothing about their class mechanics other than you can block (which is quite a technical achievement when you think what is involved) they appear to be claiming that you can do what you damn well want with the classes - wear what you want and wield what you want - but I think this would leave the game about as balanced as Tribes:Ascend (although the idea of a plate wearing mage is pretty damn appealing). Bethesda also seem to be putting a pretty strong emphasis on story here, with many areas being phased to various stages of story. Whilst this is nice it has lead to some party confusion in WoW and should be handled with care.
A point worth mentioning is their "mega shard" idea, you don't choose a shard on creating your character, everbody is on the same shard. This hints at heavy instancing of the game world and heavy use of phasing tech...
Graphically at least on a par with GW2.

Wildstar
The most appealing of this years offerings, Wildstar is pretty blatant about what it is and, as an RPS writer pointed out, is not afraid to show it off.
The most MMO of these MMOs, Wildstar is set on a distant planet being fought over by two different factions. At this point in time each faction has one race yet to reveal but what has been seen so far is characterful and fun.
The game purports be be turning levelling on its head with the various ways you can gain XP (these are called "paths" but I hope you are not locked into one or the other) so far the Solder (fighting quests) and explorer (ooh looky) have been revealed which does nothing that GW2 hasn't already done however they have yet to reveal the details about their scientist (puzzle?) and Settler (home improvements?) paths.
Classes are generic MMO with a sci-fi twist and like the two previous mentions, it does seem to rely on the MMO "Trinity" of Tank, Healer, DPS.
Graphically the game is very cartoony, but that fits in quite well with the general feel of not quite taking itself seriously.
This game is kinda like your queer Uncle Derrick who was trying to hide his sexuality then came out and started wearing leather chaps and calling everyone sweety. It looks like MMO+ and fuck everyone else.

Defiance
I'm impressed with Trion, their first offering was Rift and I have never seen an MMO burst out of the gates with as much polish and fresh ideas as that one did. I am hoping that this bizarre combo of tv show/mmo-shooter is just as good.
Built in conjunction with sy-fy (I fucking hate that spelling) this game is set on earth post some apocalyptic event (alien ships exploded in space?) that transforms the world into a futuristic wild west - think more Mad Max than Robot Yul Brynner - the events unfolding on the TV show will have a direct impact on the world that the players explore and likewise occasionally the events of the game will cross over to the show (though don't expect to see 1337sniperkillerheadshotbangfuckImacunt making an appearance) this SHOULD lead to a pretty good storyline, but we shall see.
Gameplay wise the game is pretty standard in its missions, Trion have put in dynamic events again and going off my experience with Rift these should be pretty special. Combat is pretty much 3rd person until you move your weapon into the aim. I have no clue how abilities work.
Graphically the game is pretty sound, not busting 690s or anything but it seems quite pretty.
I've pre-ordered this already.

Firefall
It's the future and we've got jetpacks!
I have beta access to this and played it once then never again. Speaks volumes.
I will patch this and try and put up a fair description, last time I played the PvE aspect was almost an afterthought - which is possibly was, I know there is a large focus on competitive play here.

This isn't everything I know there are others due to be released this year (Marvel Heroes, Otherland...) I will update this post when I can.

[Joose]

As I understand it (although I might be getting it confused with something else) the spellplague was what happened when someone stabbed the god of magic to death. Its effectively an apocalyptic event and has caused the majority of the Forgotten Realms setting to become one massive Bad Place™ with little pockets of goodness dotted around (like Neverwinter). It wasn't hugely well received by the fans, and to me smacks a lot of trying to retcon a world without actually doing a retcon.

The only one of those that tickles my interest gland to any degree is Wildstar. Even then, it looks like the kind of MMO that I will enjoy immensely and play the shit out of for 3-4 months, then never touch it again. Neverwinter hasnt shown me anything of interest, TESO looks like a "fuckit, this will do, people will buy it even though its a bit shit" effort, Defiance *could* be good, but its all a bit high concept in a way that traditionally doesnt work well, and Firefall I played, enjoyed, but there wasn't a lot of depth to it. Shoot a thing! Well done, now shoot a thing! Well done...

[Dog Pants]

The potential for making your own dungeons interests me in Neverwinter, but the wholesale abandoning of any semblance of the D&D rules in place of a generiMMO system leaves me pretty cold. I'm very cynical about MMOs after a majority of poor efforts, and so none of these are of a huge amount of interest until I see something to make me think they might actually be interesting.

[HereComesPete]

By the sound of it Wildstar may be trying a galaxies style levelling so people can become the best at making stuff or running a shop or whatever and level that way. I quite like the idea that characters can be utter pants at combat because they're time is devoted to making armour or selling stuff and instead of it being a twink alt it's a viable way of enjoying the game. I could of course be utterly wrong. Either way the cartoon style leaves me cold.

I like the look of Defiance, I may throw a bit of cash at it. Rift did some stuff well and offered a few new ideas, only issue I had was with some areas of levelling, that burning town being one. Overall through it was pleasant distraction for a few months.


Neverwinter got off to a bad start with me. Cryptic eeing bought out by some random company says to me this could likely end up like chimps, but worse. It looks like it might be a bit bland, it sounds like it may play well but has nothing but lip service to actual D&D rules and have things such as clerics with swords in. I want to try it, but I don't hold out much hope that it will be anything other that an anachronism that would have failed against wow a few years back and now it'll bomb unless they put some pretty special gameplay ideas in. There also appears to be no option to beta sign without pre-buying something. Fuck off.


TESO - it is a blatant cash in by zenimax/bethesda, but as they're companies with an IP that makes money and they have shareholders watching the bottom line and I'm struggling to see how it's actually a problem for them to jump on to what everyone else seems to be trying to do. If they deliver a good looking game that's entertaining and has a few new ideas in I'll happily buy it and play it.

They're putting a quick skill hotbar in, rumours suggest 1st or 3rd person combat as options, they're putting morrowind, oblivion and skyrim in as well as other areas such as summerset isles etc and adding a lot of the places of interest from the actual games. As for mages in plate armour - I've read a ideas ranging from mana is used faster in plate, so a defensive plate wearing healer mage can get stuck in a bit, like the bear shaman in AOC, but not deliver vast healing power. Whereas an offensive fireball throwing mage in cloth has better buffing equipment and a deeper mana pool whilst being squishy. Or that plate has penalties for enhancement, can't be anti-magic buffed without stopping the wearer from also casting. There's plenty of scope to balance. Nothing so far from the pre-alpha in terms of the mechanics for ranged combat other than a soft-lock system and the need to aim with spells and arrows to hit anything.I hope they don't fuck this up and make some piece of shit with the TES name attached.

[Anery]

Defiance

Thanks to my overwhelming faith in Trion I pre-purchased and got a chance to play the beta this weekend. So here are some of those word things that form in my head occasionally:

Graphics
A strange watered down version of cell shading seems to have been used and whilst it isn't bad, it takes some getting used to. The environment is varied without being too schizophrenic and the devs have clearly made efforts to make sure it doesn't end up the boring wasteland of Fallen Earth. I'm not too sure of performance statistics but it definately felt like it could do with a tweak or so.
Customisation options were pretty limited at character creation, but this was a beta event and thats pretty normal.

Gameplay
Remember how in Tabula Rasa you could fire your machine gun into a mobs face at point blank range and still miss? doesn't happen here, all headshots are crits and pretty much insta-kills every normal mob. Heavier, or elite, enemies can take several shots to the head but they do more damage than shooting the body. The shooting can sometimes feel a bit throwaway and lacking substance but not often.
I did see a fair bit of mob teleportation but I am putting that down to lag and the build of the game rather than it being intentional. Should be sorted out by release but it could get pretty boring.
It seems like any quest can be done by anybody at any level, the only restricting factor being whether or not you have concluded preceding quests in the chain. Some are pretty generic MMO stuff - go here, shoot stuff - and some are nicely written stories, and some are batshit crazy.
Transport is a nice touch too, pretty early on you will get an ATV to bomb about in, and you will need it, I reckon walking from one side of an area of the map to the other could take up to an hour (quicker if you don't kill the things stood in your way but then you will probably die)

Levelling/RPG
Not really.
There isn't much of an RPG side to this game, sure you can level up and you have abilities but no more than the likes of Borderlands. For a start you can only have one active abaility at any one time, and there are a set amount of passive abilities you can have too. In the short time I played I unlocked 5 of these passives but could only equip three of them by the end of the weekend, these can all be swapped out at will depending on the situation and include things like take less damage for 3 seconds after making a kill, deal more damage whilst your shield is recharging, reload faster when standing still, etc.
Actives are playstyle choices too, my chosen one was decoy which trundled off in the direction I was facing and all the enemies shot at that instead - pretty basic but at any point the decoy is active you can swap places with it, which opened up some new possibilities when I bought a nice new SMG for close combat, however this did seem prone to bugs - I often ended up stuck in scenery after switching places with my decoy, hopefully this will be fixed at launch. Others include stealth (this is not my suprised face) running faster and hitting things harder and temporary boosts to damage. All can be unlocked over time but you must chose one to start out with.

Gear
Clothes are just that, clothes - wear whatever you want, its all about the looks.
Weapons, grenades and shields are the items with the stats. Sometimes, like Borderlands, they apply status effects like fire or poison (or big gloopy tar bubbles that hold them in place whilst you dance around them naked and hollering) and sometimes they just do a shit ton of damage. No +1 to orc slaying.

Controls
Someone at Trion was smoking crack.

Enemies
Can get repetetive. Mutants only seem to come in 3 varieties, raiders in only a few more and pretty much same for the hellbugs. Hellbugs CAN be headshotted but it's a question of timing (like shooting a skag) and they explode violently.


It's going to be F2P (one off payment for the game) so I see no reason for avoiding it, it can be fun at times boring at others and reminds me a lot of Borderlands (but without the silly)

[friznit]

Why do RPGs never try and model a 'realistic' progression rather than this rather clunky XP for Talents thing? Run around in armour plate and you'll get stronger but slower. Wield axes a lot and you'll get better at wielding axes. Put autorun, face a corner and go afk, you'll get knackered and fall over after an hour. GW2 sort of tried, though you unlocked all the 'specialist' skills seemingly after picking up a weapon and looking at it for a few minutes. If they make the progression steep enough people will still need to specialise to get really good and it would feel a lot more natural than picking points artificially.

Downside is you couldn't respec if you wanted to try something different but most "classes" are restricted to only one or two types anyway. I'd rather have a completely generic system, so if I choose to wear armour and throw spells around that's fine. I'll get big, strong, well protected and good at moving around in armour but wearing plate steel cloves does make it a bit tricky to carve those intricate wavey hand signs that all mages need. And casting electricity bolts would be a very bad idea.

[Dog Pants]

Tabletop RPGs have long since abandoned levels and classes in favour of freeform points based systems. Who knows, they might have even moved on from that in the 15 years or so since I seriously played one. Single player RPGs are catching up - the Elder Scrolls games have used a decent hybrid of the two. MMOs are still way behind, but I suspect that it might be more to keep it basic for players who aren't interested in the theorycrafting and min/maxing.

On the subject of Defiance, the thought of grinding through mobs to get to my quest objective makes me never want to play an MMO again. SWTOR proved that to me. The first one that appears which doesn't do that will have my interest.

[Pnut]

Isn't Defiance tied into a TV show or something?

[Joose]

Tabletop RPGs have long since abandoned levels and classes in favour of freeform points based systems.

Well, many have, but not all. D&D is still very much class and level based, as is the enormously popular D&D spin-off Pathfinder. Theres advantages and disadvantages to both, and I fully expect the tabletop world to swing from a majority of one to the other as tastes change.

[deject]

Isn't Defiance tied into a TV show or something?

Yeah the idea is that things in the show will affect the game and vice-versa.

[Thompy]

It's on Syfy, which is reason enough not to watch it.

[deject]

It's on Syfy, which is reason enough not to watch it.

Hey, they did make Eureka and Warehouse 13, which were/are great cheesy shows. Sure most of it is terrible (I mean even fake wrestling? waaat.) but not everything is dogshit.

[Anery]

SW:G was freeeform(ish) to start with, the more you used a weapon the more you levelled that weapon skill and gained skills assosciated with it - the Sony fucked everyone in the ass and the game died.
Defiance have done something similar in that the more you use a weapon the better your aim is, the more damage you do, etc.

As for SyFy, although I hate the rebrand they have done some pretty good stuff - they finished Battlestar when it had been abandoned and what Deject said. I am curious to see what happens when everything is live - TV show and all.

[Thompy]

I guess I'm just basing my opinion on films like Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus etc

[Joose]

I guess I'm just basing my opinion on films like Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus etc

Wait, im confused. I thought your opinion was that SyFy was *bad*.

[Thompy]

I won't lie, I did watch most of it.

[Pnut]

I'm tempted to get the pre order for Defiance just for the ATV you get, its called a Growler.....

[Dog Pants]

Wasn't the one in BF3 called a Growler?

[Thompy]

Apparently Defiance is not too bad at all. I won't be buying it but I might give it a try if they release a trial.

[Anery]

I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone.
It isn't that the game is bad, its that the game has enough problems (that I see) that I wouldn't want to be responsible for anybody buying it.
Problems like:

ATV going skyward because it hit some unseen bit of scenery, or a bit of scenery that had no right sending it skyward.
Multi-person vehicles look like shit, they remind me of knock-off scalextric cars
Gameplay does have you running here there and everywhere, thankfully you DO get a vehicle
Only one quest can be active at any one time, this extends the running here there adn everywhere time
No real explanation as to how things work other than point gun at enemy.
Menu system is difficult to get to grips with.

All these things were acceptable in beta but should be addressed now that the game is live. I'm still playing, I enjoy it, but can't recommend.