We’ve long held that the problem with most MMOGs is that they don’t offer up enough of a developed sandbox to capture the imaginations of a broader gaming audience who may not want a mere hack’n slash adventure. In other words, casual pursuits like thorough, in-depth crafting systems in lieu of adventuring were not concepts that most developers considered. So too, the idea of a robust roleplaying system for those who did not want to simply go out and kill things.

As it turns out, Blizzard managed to simplify even hack’n slash, by pushing the high of a constant item reward system, combined with a simplified skill-rotation algorithm, making World of Warcraft (WoW) appeal to the largest possible audience. To many, this is interpreted as WoW catering to the lowest-common-denominator. In this respect, focusing on more complex non-crafting pursuits was hardly necessary.

Syncaine suggests that MMOGs different from WoW (e.g. EVE, Darkfall) will never be able to attract the large player-base that WoW boasts, simply because the elements that would foster that attraction are the very same elements that would detract from these games being “true” virtual worlds. (For the purpose of this post, we think it’s a fair assessment to suggest that games with more sandbox-like qualities are a “truer” representation of an ideal virtual world, and so we’ll follow Syncaine’s lead here, even though WoW is a “virtual world” in a more abstract sense, too.)

Gamers at large want their avatars on a fairly level treadmill; too much of an incline for progression, and players will get frustrated and quit. But games like Darkfall and EVE are all about frustration because a big factor in their success is player-driven events. Only by avoiding the things about these games that make them popular among the niche audience can you avoid as much frustration as possible.

So maybe the issue is PvP, here: maybe sandbox MMOGs reliant on PvP cannot attract the type of audience WoW has, because progression is in great part limited by what other players let you do, and what they let you get away with. We can look at a game like Minecraft, for example, and say that yes, a robust, non-combat MMOG has the potential to obtain a pretty large audience, even one rivaling that of WoW.

But this presents another challenge: balancing combat vs non-combat professions. If we try to capture the elements that make games like Minecraft and, say, Farmville popular, then how do we balance that against the combat elements that other MMO gamers desire? In effect, developers will be building two games in one, and adding a strong degree of synchronicity such that interactions between the two remain meaningful for all involved, and no “true path” exists for the average player (i.e. investing one’s time exclusively in either path will not provide the majority of game benefits).

We can look at one aspect of this argument by analyzing MMOG crafting, which in most games is a part-time endeavor to be done alongside the chief objective, combat. Yet to capture a larger audience, say, including people who desire to chiefly craft, then perhaps there needs to be a cut-off point in which part-time crafting ceases to make sense, and to become a great crafter, a large skill and/or time investment becomes mandatory. In other words, if you want to “max-out” a crafting profession, then you can’t max-out a combat profession, and artisan crafters will require players who spend most of their game-time on crafting, rather than on combat (like traditional MMO gamers).

But what we now have is a deeper game with more paths for players to take, but it doesn’t alleviate the issue of combat itself, in which “hardcore” players want combat more akin to EVE and Darkfall, but more casual gamers want something like WoW. In a sense, we’re back at the PvE vs PvP argument.

Games like Warhammer Online have attempted a PvE/PvP experiment to surpass that in WoW, to questionable success. Mythic had the idea right, but perhaps the implementation is where the problem is. Returning to our initial issue, rather than offering a PvE game game like WoW and focusing on simplifying and expediting progress, nor focusing purely on the niche sandbox PvPers, what if we had a game with multiple paths for players to take, some dependent on PvE, and others on PvP, each with different “max” outcomes? Some characters would be PvP soldiers aiding their kingdom in Darkfall-esque battles, while others would focus primarily on collecting resources in PvE scenarios, which they could then provide crafters who made the majority of goods that all characters needed for their respective professions.

In this example, players could choose which role they fulfill in the game, but no role would ultimately be more important than any other, and while those who enjoy combat would be in it for the glory, other players may be in it for the cold, hard cash. Either way, end-game items would be obtainable by everyone, as their acquisition would primarily be a cash affair, as they’d be crafted items.

Syncaine may be half-right in his assertion. Developers should be creating the best-possible niche MMOGs, but if they have the resources and come upon a formula for developing true professional tiers in an MMOG that offer more than just combat, then by all means, go with it and see if you can capture an audience that may one day rival that of WoW.

But in the meantime, we’d be happy with a more accessible niche title, too.

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Electronic Arts (EA) is already preparing the Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise for the future vehicle for software proliferation: digital distribution. Kotaku, meanwhile, says that some fans are skeptical:

News of the transition was sending fears of a Facebook-ized, watered-down C&C among some series fans.

And yet C&C always was watered down, offering little more than eye-candy to recent sequels. The good news is that EA CEO John Riccitiello hopes to change that, and bring more innovation to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre.

“…I have a shared vision that the RTS category is due for fundamental innovation and not just cooler graphics,” Riccitiello said. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can see the particles around individual grenade explosions inside rooms where windows fall apart. That was never what made RTS good. That was just sort of eye candy on top of a very traditional game mechanic. From when Red Alert and Starcraft sort of defined the genre, it hasn’t moved.”

While Riccitiello’s take on RTS games mirrors our own, his seniority is at question when he uses Red Alert and Starcraft as examples of genre-defining games. In reality, predecessors Command & Conquer (yes, the original), Warcraft, and Warcraft II, solidified the genre that Dune II built. And really, nothing fundamental has changed since then, either. And that portends danger for developers not willing to let go of the tried-and-true method of simple throwing a new unit or two at a player each level, while making them rebuild from scratch on a new map. The repetitive play is what kills the genre in one game alone, let alone when looking at new RTS games.

“Some of what Facebook does, in terms of letting you collectively experience things, have not been stitched together by the game industry in terms of lessons learned there. You start applying that thinking to a C&C franchise you get something pretty special.”

This is where Riccitiello’s price as CEO may be worth it, because at least Riccitiello is looking at some aspects of what make Facebook games, and MMOGs, so alluring. If RTS games are meant to illustrate a greater struggle, then the thousands of players participating in battlefield combat should be able to assist one another, participate in local battles, and change the tide of war one small step at a time. In many ways, this mirrors the idea of Warhammer Online’s Realm vs. Realm PvP scenario, but at a less granular level.

If there’s a clear disadvantage for one player to effectively handle a large army, compared to many players handling less units at a more focused level, then new aspects in RTS titles emerge: buildings alliances, strategies, and resource flows become important. And ultimately, the complexity of individual units can grow, because with less units, players have the ability to use more unit abilities in order to create battlefield synergy, whereas in purely single-player games, players must first be concerned with amassing large armies and rushing the enemy head-on.

Adopting certain key aspects of social and multiplayer games can be a good thing for the RTS genre, as long as it’s done right and with the intent to grow the genre “up,” rather than “out.” That is to say, adopting the wrong aspects of social games will result in a watered-down RTS experience that may be more accessible to non-gamers, but at the expense of the RTS faithful. Maintaining the complexity of strategy and risk-taking, however, and adding on top of this formula a perpetual battlefront that all players share, will only satiate RTS gamers more.

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We pretty much agree with Wolfshead’s suggestion that the next World of Warcraft (WoW) hero class will likely be a melee-oriented healer ala a monk, or, as Wolfshead proposed, the Runemaster:

I expect Blizzard to slightly morph the monk into one of their own creations and use one of the existing classes from their Warcraft RPG or RTS games. The Runemaster is the natural candidate as he incorporates magical runes which should give the archetypal placid monk a injection of pizazz. Martial arts classes are fun to play and quite popular in today’s video game culture.

While the Paladin class is already based on the monk mold, it differs in its pleasant take on tanking, compared to what we would envision as more of a “Rogue with healing” class. Quite simply, a Runemaster character could employ mechanics perhaps based on the Death Knight rune system, and differ from the Paladin by being too weak to handle damage that tanks are meant to soak. The trick will be in keeping a Runemaster’s DPS high without taking over Rogue roles. This could chiefly be addressed by letting a Runemaster’s DPS power their healing abilities, much like healing classes in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) work. Indeed, the Runemaster could serve as a great short-range AoE healer that would help maintain health for those around him, instead of focusing on direct healing like Paladins, Priests, and Druids. And, instead of working to buff group-mates like the Paladin does, the Runemaster would instead serve a greater crowd-control function, perhaps through the use of debuffs.

Interestingly, what we’re seeing in the Death Knight, and what we may very well see in future hero classes, is less “new” classes, but rather better designed classes evolved from WoW’s traditional cast. For example, we can easily see the Death Knight reworked slightly (mostly in atmosphere) such that he could entirely replace the Warrior class, and with something like the Runemaster a viable class alternative, we really don’t need a Rogue class if the Runemaster were built equally flexible. Of course, that’s the type of evolution we’d expect from a seven-year-old game.

Regardless, there’s no denying that hero classes will continue on as WoW ages, if for no other reason than they add additional replayability to an aging game. While newer players may feel that catching up to WoW veterans is nigh impossible, that’s hardly the case if they jump on the WoW bandwagon around the time a new expansion comes out.

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Scott Jennings makes a great point about why Darkfall won’t make it in the end:

…people enjoy hardcore PvP in the abstract. Or, to put another way, many more people believe they are ‘hardc0re’ then actually are. And they dislike being proved wrong pretty powerfully… The Mordred problem is simply that a great majority of the people who believe they are hardcore are not, and after being violently disabused of the notion, will leave.

Many people want PvP, and we’ve even stated in the past how it’s the PvP element that can make many MMOGs not get stale when characters reach the end-game. However, the industry still hasn’t gotten it perfectly right. World of Warcraft (WoW) ignores PvP for the most part, relegating it to a novelty or distraction from the “true” end-game: raiding. Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) makes PvE just another way to get to the PvP end-game, but in WAR’s implementation, PvP can quickly get old, in that the end-game is effectively and truly the end of the game as far as new experiences are concerned.

Only EVE arguably has PvP done right, as it strikes a fair balance between true, impact PvP (“the hardcore”) and a casual advancement game. Still, if Ultima Online (UO) managed to achieve success in its day, can we realistically argue that its success was based purely on the fact that there weren’t any other graphical MMOGs to attract gamers? Or was there actually something other than time investment that kept players of UO from immediately jumping ship to Meridian 59 or Everquest? More than likely, there’s a powerful, but niche market for real impact PvP, so even if Darkfall’s numbers drop significantly after a few months, it’s likely that subscriptions will level out and slowly begin to climb again.

Certainly, a game like Darkfall won’t become a viable threat to WoW’s market share, but we don’t think anyone’s claiming otherwise. Some gamers, particularly legacy MMOG players who were introduced to the genre with UO, will adore games like Darkfall. The important take-away, though, is whether there are enough “hardcore” gamers to make Darkfall’s development pay off monetarily, and that’s not something we’ll know for another year or so.

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One of the primary reasons that World of Warcraft (WoW) managed to make MMOGs mainstream is because of timing. That’s not to say that WoW isn’t a good game in its own right, but chances are, if the stars weren’t in perfect alignment, WoW wouldn’t have amazed observers with its vacuum-like prowess at sucking in millions of gamers. Hardcore Casual’s syncaine wrote a great synopsis of these events:

In short, late 2004 was a ‘perfect storm’ of sorts to launch an MMO. The current king shot himself in the foot, removing himself right before your arrival. The previous king told his core audience to screw, and gaming itself was moving out of its nerd niche and into the mainstream thanks to Sony and the Playstation brand. Oh yea, and WoW was a great game.

Among the contributing factors to WoW’s success was the rather poor timing of Blizzard’s competitors, such as Sony’s arguably premature release of Everquest 2, and Mythic’s change of focus with Dark Age of Camelot’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. These, and other factors, allowed Blizzard to release WoW in a state in which gamers were willing to put up with significant blunders:

It’s nice to think WoW had this perfect launch, and by 2004 standards it sure seemed like it. If fact, it was so perfect, Blizzard handed out weeks worth of free account time to players due to servers being down for 8+ hours at a time, and server queues of an hour+. If you happen to pick one of the ‘troubled’ servers in the early days, it was not uncommon 3-5 MONTHS after release for that server to still be down for extended maintenance.

This was on top of some major balancing issues, back when WoW’s PvP game was an afterthought at best. Most WoW players today can’t even recall when Druids were unbelievably slow to level thanks to unbearably low DPS, and when Shamans were king of the roost for virtually all PvP engagements, though serving little purpose in end-game group environments. With hindsight, one can see the rather drastic changes Blizzard made with WoW’s classes, and how the poor state of the game would be ridiculed were it reflected in any new MMOG release. In other words, if a publisher released an MMOG today with the same release deficiencies WoW had in its day, no matter how polished or innovative compared to WoW, it still wouldn’t pose a significant threat to WoW because the market simply isn’t as tumultuous as it was in 2004.

How then, to capture an audience larger than Warhammer’s 300k? Simply, by filling a niche made up of “real” MMOG players and letting them pimp the game. In other words, targeting WoW directly by attempting to lure its players en masse will be impossible, as the majority of WoW gamers are casual “lemmings” (to use syncaine’s term), who are only playing WoW because that’s where they were influenced to go in the first place. It’s the early adopters of WoW, who were already versed in MMOGs, who will ultimately decide where the industry goes next. Some of these early adopters are the “tourists” eagerly trying out whichever MMOG flavor-of-the-month is available, while some are the “jaded” gamers currently filling Mythic’s pockets by subscribing to Warhammer.

So yes, 300k is the number MMOG publishers need to initially shoot for, with an understanding in place that a new MMOG’s infrastructure needs to be scalable reasonably quickly, and that the core mechanics need to be adaptable to a casual gamer’s play-style down the road. Perhaps Blizzard was right, then, to initially focus on end-game raiding versus casual play, because that’s what sucked in the MMOG faithful. By the time WoW had firmly enraptured the masses, hints of casual gameplay began to materialize, to the point where Wrath of the Lich King is regularly referred to as a casual expansion.

The fortunate variable for future MMOG publishers is that Blizzard’s business strategy in regards to future expansions is simply not sustainable. One can’t simply keep raising the level cap and adding new PvE content, because even if it captures the attention of past subscribers, it’s doubtful that the same people will re-subscribe over and over again. Realistically, these expansions will simply keep the majority of subscribers busy enough until Blizzard releases their next MMOG, with the major risk being taken that the right competitor will release mid-way between WoW expansions. That kind of timing is what Blizzard needs to be afraid of, because it will be at a point where leeriness of WoW will be at a peak, and when capturing 300k subscribers will be much easier than when a new MMOG title is in direct competition with a new WoW expansion, however mediocre this expansion is.

Ultimately, the luck involved in succeeding at MMOG publishing can be influenced to some extent. Observing the market conditions, and predicting the state of one’s competitor’s games at the end of one’s own release cycle, is key. After all, 300k subscribers won’t pay one’s bills until a handful of years have passed, which means that while 300k is a population to shoot for, it needs to be a goal that will springboard the population to greater levels for true profit to be realized.

Fortunately, for a lucky few, that profit isn’t a pipe dream.

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Tobold recently commented on the polish prevalent in World of Warcraft’s recent expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), in that it outshines Warhamer: Age of Reckoning (WAR).

I prefer the term quality of execution over the term “polish”, but however you call it, Wrath of the Lich King has oodles of it. And if I compare it with the last two major MMORPGs released, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I can only say that Wrath of the Lich King wins easily in the quality department. That isn’t to say that somebody can’t prefer the faster combat of AoC, or the PvP of WAR. WoW remains WoW, and if you prefer a fundamentally different sort of gameplay, WotLK won’t deliver that. But at no point in Wrath of the Lich King does one have the impression that one is playing an outdated game.

There’s a stark difference between an expansion built on a game four years old, and a game not even one year old yet. That’s not to say that we want to take anything away from Blizzard’s execution with WoW’s graphics, as they certainly meet our expectations of graphics in modern games. We are, after all, more for the gameplay experience than pretty moving pictures. Nonetheless, WotLK should have a strong execution because it does little to evolve the MMORPG scene: it’s more of the same, and that’s certainly a good thing for the WoW faithful, yet utterly bad for its critics.

WAR, on the other hand, attempted to move MMORPGs towards a more PvP-centric base, or at the very least, capitalize on the fact that WoW has a horrible PvP implementation, in that Blizzard clearly ignored PvP aficionados for years, and then patched in a piss-poor e-sports initiative. To this latter end, Warhammer has been successful. As for the game’s polish, it’s naturally not at the level that WoW is today, but compare it to where WoW was a few months after its respective release, and we can draw much clearer parallels.

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We don’t do many post-mortem posts at mendax.org, but perhaps we should start. We say that because things are usually clearer in hindsight, and understanding historical events is a boon to future decision making. That’s why when we commented on the World of Warcraft (WoW) miniatures game the other day, we thought about the interesting success, and ultimate downfall, of Mage Knight. More interestingly, the lessons that Mage Knight can teach not only the miniature wargaming industry, but the gaming industry as a whole, are important ones.

What was so special about Mage Knight?

Rather than explore the specifics of Mage Knight (which we covered in our review of the game five years ago), we’ll instead summarize the beast that WizKids spawned and later killed. In short, Mage Knight set itself apart from other wargames (and arguably revitalized the genre as a result) by targeting would-be wargamers who wanted to spend minimal money to get started, and who wanted to jump right into gameplay. This was a new idea, since most miniature wargames up until this time required a fair amount of preparation time before units could be fielded for gameplay: units required assembly, cleaning, and painting. Furthermore, wargames ala Warhammer required the purchase of rulebooks that outlined gameplay and the abilities of individual units. Mage Knight, on the other hand, offered comparatively cheaper, pre-painted plastic figures mounted to a dial. This dial had windows to show all the unit’s attributes, and turning the dial showed modified attributes based on the damage the unit was taking. Quick-start rules were packaged alongside units, and could even be downloaded online. So while Mage Knight didn’t come with as much fluff as other miniature wargames, the barrier of entry was much shorter.

By the time Mage Knight was discontinued, it had about 17 sets released, five of which could be considered “core” sets for late-adopters of the original game. Unfortunately, by November, 2003, WizKids decided to revamp the game with a major refresh, and released a set of 2.0 figures, followed by four expansions. Two years later, the game was discontinued after a five-year lifespan.

So what killed Mage Knight?

We already covered what set Mage Knight apart from traditional miniature wargames, and the heart of that difference, at least in terms of gameplay, was the dial, or “Clix” system which simplified gameplay. The Clix system was simple to learn, was pretty robust, but wasn’t particularly expandable. That was fine for a fledgling set of figures, but as WizKids wanted to release more and more units, they realized that as strategic as their game was, its relative simplicity meant that only a limited amount of unique figures could ultimately be produced. Surely, by the time the game was two years old, WizKids began to ponder what they could do to keep new units interesting, and they realized that they’d have to extend the rules. This is why Mage Knight 2.0 was conceived: by adding new unit abilities, they were increasing the combinations of attributes that new units could have, which meant that they could keep producing new units and sets. The problem with this revision is that it effectively killed the pre-2.0 units.

Despite the new rules being compatible with the old ones (as it was just an evolved form of the older system), even the more powerful older units couldn’t compete with the abilities of newer units. This became especially true when WizKids allowed certain units to increase their power with items, which older units could not wield. In other words, by releasing Mage Knight 2.0, WizKids forced their players to effectively start from scratch.

Having to start from scratch meant players had a couple options:

1. Build a brand new Mage Knight army from the ground-up. [Scaling investment.]
2. Stop playing Mage Knight and pick-up WizKids’ Mechwarrior or HeroClix games, which had more players interested because of theme, were based on the familiar Clix system that Mage Knight pioneered, and had units that weren’t being deemed irrelevant with a product refresh. [Considerable investment.]
3. Stop playing Mage Knight and advance to a more traditional wargame like Warhammer. [Considerable investment.]
4. Give up miniature wargames. [No investment.]

For the wargaming enthusiast, only three of these options made sense, but with the increasing popularity of HeroClix, most Mage Knight gamers jumped ship to WizKids’ new flagship, which is still alive and kicking today. The thematic differences between Mage Knight and HeroClix were significant, but the transition of gamers from one to the other illustrated that gamers didn’t care: they wanted a system that offered a similar experience, not an aesthetic similarity.

What does this mean for MMOGs?

Drawing parallels between Mage Knight’s career and that of other tabletop wargames is a moot point, as the pitfalls to avoid for a new publisher should be obvious. They’re not quite as obvious when applied to other gaming genres, such as MMOGs, however. These pitfalls may stand out more when we break them down:

Firstly, we have game mechanics, which applies not just to the fundamentals of a system, but also to the ease of entry and simplicity. Mage Knight wouldn’t have caught on like it did if it catered to the tried-and-true wargaming aficionados; Mage Knight didn’t sell itself through books and an array of purchase options. Rather, getting into Mage Knight was as simple as buying a starter set and then buying boosters to expand one’s army. With a barrier of entry so low, and with quick start rules packed in every box, learning the basics of the game was incredibly simple. In a similar fashion, Blizzard’s Word of Warcraft (WoW) set the bar very low for new gamers, by giving new characters very few abilities from the get-go, and holding the player’s hands for the first few levels until they understand how the greater game worked. This degree of polish and simplicity is one of the primary reasons that WoW attracted a pool of subscribers as large as it currently has, and why it became the first mainstream MMOG. For any competitor in the MMOG space, the barrier of entry as exemplified by Mage Knight and WoW is an important one, because it determines the ease of obtaining new players and keeping their attention long enough to give a new title a real try.

Secondly, we have the issue of player investment. WoW itself has succumb to this pitfall not just with class nerfs, but with fundamental class design issues. That’s because the class one plays in the early leveling game, can become a drastically different class in the end-game. Players should realize the “true” role of their class as late as they do, and instead should have a very keen idea as to what their class is about after investing only a couple hours in a character. Instead, Blizzard fails to explain to players that certain classes will become bastard stepchildren unless specced a certain way, many times in a way that the player didn’t use that character for the majority of the character’s existence. In short, players shouldn’t feel betrayed by the state of the game after investing many, many hours developing a character. Instead, the character they develop should play in a consistent manner throughout a player’s journey. Mage Knight’s failure to address legacy units after 2.0 was the catalyst that killed the game, and forcing a class to tank in an MMOG when that wasn’t a clear role in the early game will similarly chase players away from a game they’ve already invested in.

Following the same issue is a related note: gameplay evolution. Games do need to evolve in order to keep making money, and in the case of Mage Knight, the game was doomed one way or another, as a lack of new attribute combinations meant that the game would stagnate and die if it didn’t refresh the rules. Sadly, that refresh killed the game, which begs the questions as to whether WizKids could have somehow fixed the old system on conjunction with releasing the 2.0 rules. For example, releasing updated dials for old units via a direct-purchase option (even if it mean sending the old bases in), or somehow retrofitting the old dials.

For MMOGs, the issue is similarly real: with Blizzard’s “more of the same” attitude, the game will stagnate and die, but drastic changes may not be the best bet either, especially if those changes seriously alter the mechanics players have come to love. That’s why WoW’s arena system wasn’t universally praised, and why Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) is receiving great reviews for its world PvP focus (which WoW players have asked for since the game’s inception).

And what about wargaming?

The miniature wargaming market is a different one today than it was when Mage Knight premiered. With the landscape changed, players now have multiple options for quick-play, in the form of other collectible miniature games spanning numerous genres, from fantasy, to science-fiction, to historical periods like WW2. Furthermore, many systems utilizing the tried-and-true build-and-paint methods of unit selection and army building are much friendlier to new players, as the respective rule systems resolve quicker, are made for smaller armies, and yet still incorporate the flexibility of rules changes and gameplay evolution.

It may not be accurate to say that Mage Knight is what got us to where we are today, but certainly, without Mage Knight, there’d likely be a lot less fuel behind the wargaming fire that so easily captures out attention. Without the success of the Clix system, who knows if there’d be major labels behind todays wargames, be that Axis & Allies, D&D, Star Wars, and even WoW. While some of these may not escape the pitfalls that Mage Knight fell into, we’re bound to see better and better design behind wargaming systems. Heck, for all we know, WizKids may give Mage Knight another go when the timing’s right, and when disgruntled former players are no longer cursing the game’s name.

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It’s an accepted fact that competition among companies is good for consumers, as it gives them more options. In the MMOG space, that good becomes questionable, as players are attached to their characters, and are not likely to move onto a new game just because of a few key improvements. However, for players of World of Warcraft (WoW), the future looks a tad more promising now that Blizzard has taken notice of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR).

First, Blizzard followed Mythic’s announcement that WAR would have a built-in achievements system, and now with WAR touting 500,000 players shortly after release, Blizzard is again following Mythic’s innovation and claiming that they’re reevaluating WoW’s non-Arena PvP mechanic. And fear they should, because WAR’s draw isn’t purely on its general improvements on WoW, but on WAR’s PvP focus that enables more casual gamers to participate in end-game content that’s not raid-targeted.

Hardcore Casual’s syncaine [sic] inserted entertaining commentary in a Blizzard post on the state of their PvP, and while somewhat exaggerated, the essence of Blizzard’s thinking is kept intact. In short, Blizzard was able to keep up a stagnating product because there was no real competition out there, so greedy players were relatively content paying for a product whose quality was drastically slipping in regards to gameplay options. With WAR now available for consumers, and having earned a respectable player-base already, the million or so WAR players expected by the holiday season means that Mythic isn’t just catering to those who want a WoW alternative, but rather targeting Blizzard’s very own subscription base. Sure, the MMOG market is bigger than the pool of WoW subscribers at WoW’s height, but the pool of interested fantasy MMOG players isn’t quite the same size, and WAR is clearly the the closest MMOG to WoW similarity-wise, and polish-wise.

So finally, Blizzard has competition worth a damn, and sadly, the resulting reaction from Blizzard doesn’t make us happy that Blizzard is gearing up for some gameplay evolution, but rather makes us sad at just how obvious it’s become that WoW let a weak PvP system last this long. While Blizzard ought be respected for what they did for the MMOG scene, they should also be lambasted for not pushing the envelope after their initial high-speed WoW success. That is to say, we’re rather disappointed that the Blizzard we’ve come to love is no longer the Blizzard around today, and it makes us hesitantly skeptical about future Blizzard products.

Competition in the MMOG space is definitely good in the long run, but it will undoubtedly disappoint many WoW gamers who will be forced to abandon their beloved characters if they want to keep playing an innovative, evolving MMOG. We don’t feel too sorry for them, though, else we wouldn’t keep our fingers crossed that WAR surpasses the one-million player expectation by year’s end. Let’s shoot for two.

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We were too lazy to report on the World of Warcraft (WoW) miniatures game slated for release on November 11th when we heard about it many months ago, but Massively’s recent post on the release reminded us of the irony.

Warcraft has taken the opposite approach of its initial inspiration, Warhammer, by starting with video games and later moving on to miniature-based board games!

Massively’s reporting leaves something to be desired, as Warcraft is only partially based on Warhammer, and Warhammer isn’t a board game, it’s a tabletop wargame, as it doesn’t rely on the use of a board and pre-packaged elements at all, as armies are constructed from different packages. Nonetheless, Massively makes its point, in that WoW’s success prompted Blizzard to try their hand at miniature wargaming. This isn’t the same as Games Workshop bringing their Warhammer license to the MMOG space, however, because WoW’s miniature game won’t likely compete with Warhammer at all, since WoW’s miniature game is collectible.

Like Mage Knight before it, the WoW miniature game is based on purchasing a starter pack, and then booster packs to acquire new units for one’s army. The downside for buyers is that the boosters contain units that the buyer can’t see until they open the box, which makes collectible miniature games into the same type of enormous money-sink that collectible card games (CCGs) are. Warhammer, on the other hand, is not collectible in the same sense, as players directly buy the units they want to field in an army.

There are also other differences: Warhammer’s sculptures are of a higher quality than those of most (if not all) collectible miniature games, and most units do not come assembled, and are unpainted when purchased. This means that players spend considerable preparation time before having an army ready to field, but for most wargamers, that’s half the fun.

From what we can tell, the WoW miniatures game is designed to field very small armies (~5 units), whereas games like Warhammer excel at fielding many more, for a much more epic battle experience. So, rather than take Warhammer head-on, Blizzard is pushing the WoW miniatures game at much more casual wargamers who are new to the hobby, else haven’t yet jumped in. For veteran wargamers, the WoW miniatures game will likely be little more than a novelty for fans of WoW, and ignored otherwise.

We’d be surprised if the WoW miniatures game even comes close to reaching the success Mage Knight did in its peak, and as we know, Mage Knight didn’t last long even after a product refresh (which arguably did more harm than good). If Blizzard’s entry into this space is an honest one, we’ll still be surprised if the game ends up with more than two or three expansions on top of its limited unit pool at release.

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When Wolfshead commented on Tobold’s ego several days ago, we didn’t intend to comment on it. Not because Wolfshead isn’t dead-on, but because we had nothing further to add. In short, commentary on Tobold’s ego came up after Tobold announced that Mythic handed him a media subscription to Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR). In other words, Tobold was given a free account, which some readers perceived as a conflict of interest, thinking that Tobold’s objectivity about the game would clearly come into play. We seized the opportunity to jest that we, too, would accept such an account to keep writing about WAR. We let the topic rest until today, after Tobold’s recent post, entitled “Hear me brag!” naturally reminded us of Wolfshead’s comments days earlier. Says Tobold:

Writing this blog is a considerable effort, which I sustained now for over 5 years and over 2,200 posts. I don’t do it out of financial considerations, which is why you don’t see any ads here. I do it because I want my voice to be heard, and because of the recognition blogging earns me. Official recognition, in the form of a press pass to a Blizzard convention, and a comped account for WAR is nice.

Well, we can’t say Tobold didn’t warn us that he was going to brag, what with all that back-patting. Fair enough, he’s a popular blogger, and he relishes the fandom. He should be proud of his blogging accomplishments, but let’s not ignore the fact that he quickly feigns being a victim when the slightest disagreement comes his way, and finds a clever way to fight back with his Toboldgate proclamations. Yes, word-play like that is likely tongue-in-cheek and we don’t fault him for it quite as much as Wolfshead appears to, but there’s something really annoying about someone who goes to unneeded lengths to point out how great they are, how they are above the corruption inherent in the industry (despite accepting benefits thereof), and constantly catering to whatever readership he can earn and maintain. Any blog devoted to a particular subjects, particularly one as volatile as the MMOG market, needs to be hard on a variety of topics, and if one is constantly playing the political game, their positions will ultimately be contested and accused of corruption. In short, a “suck it, I got a free subscription to WAR” would have been far more preferable to the attitude Tobold projected.

As for the very act of being offered a media subscription, we all know that they’re out there (well, we do now). How does one think most gaming reviews happen? There’s a reason blogs like Opposable Thumbs are able to write weekly features on WAR before the game’s release, and why they can review hardware that would otherwise be too expensive for the lone, homebrew blogger to afford. On the one hand, knowing about these free review subscriptions/copies may make a reader feel like the publication won’t be objective in the future (as has been the case with print-publications in the past, particularly when advertising comes into the mix), but on the other hand, we’d like to be able to make that decision ourselves with full disclosure from the publication/blog given ahead of time.

In other words, Tobold’s revelation of his free subscription isn’t the issue. How he mentioned it, and how he reacted to commentary afterwards, was. As for the companies offering these subscriptions/copies, they ought to make the publication mention it in any features/reviews, particularly when it comes to lone bloggers like Tobold, who most people don’t expect to be given a media subscription in the first place. Otherwise, the integrity of the lone blogger is put into question, which is bad enough considering that most lone bloggers aren’t worth following in the first place. What the blogosphere doesn’t need is industry souring the words of the few bloggers who do manage to stand out, despite their ego.

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