This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few hours at the Penny Arcade Expo otherwise known as PAX at the Seattle Convention Center. This year’s incarnation of PAX was much bigger and boisterous then the previous PAX I attended back in 2006. As in previous trade shows like E3 I tend to hover around the MMO company booths.
As I only had a couple of hours to spare, I decided spend my time walking around the exhibit hall instead of attending yet another talk on game design. Therefore my report is going to be somewhat limited and reflective of my own MMO preferences. All of the big hitters were there except for SoE which I’m going to discuss later on in the article.
General Impressions
As I wandered through the exhibit hall the influence of WoW’s highly polished user interface could be seen on almost every monitor as game after game looked eerily the same. Strangely enough the only games that didn’t seem to emulate the WoW interface were the 2 “other” offerings by Blizzard — Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
Part of me is worried about the lack of originality and experimentation given this apparent grand consolidation of gaming features. This is probably because of WoW’s success and the simple fact that most people in the industry creating video games have either played WoW or are playing WoW and are understandably enamored of its success. I suppose in some ways it’s good to see features becoming standard much like a rear view mirror and seat-belts became much like standard features in the automobile industry. Still, it is a bit unsettling that all games seem to be converging into one game.
Blizzcon Lite…Very Lite
To be expected, my goal was to locate the Blizzard area as fast as possible. After watching the whole weekend of Blizzcon via PPV on the Internet I felt compelled to check out the demos of Cataclysm myself.
The Blizzard booth was manned by community reps who were there almost as a token form of representation. There were no Blizzard panels or any sense of any kind of new or expanded information being released or discussed at PAX which naturally is anti-climactic coming after recent big event at Blizzcon. The Blizzard reps were basically babysitting maybe 60 or so computers set up to demo all 3 of their future games: Cataclysm, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.
When I asked the reps about changes to fishing and the new MMO they were working on their lips were predictably sealed. I got the understandable “when it’s ready” response. One nice woman there who’s part of their PR department told me that she used to be in customer service — most likely a Blizzard GM. She explained that Blizzard believes in hiring from within. She also told me how much she likes working there and how cool the Blizzard culture is.
No swag at the Blizzard booth but it would have been nice if Blizzard would have been able to give out a few beta slots for Cataclysm. The truth is they didn’t need it. Instead they let their games speak for themselves. Warcraft: Cataclysm, Starcraft II and Diablo III were all being previewed and opened to convention attendees.
The Blizzard presence at PAX was a pittance of what they had to show at Blizzcon. I think that they must have decided that due to the proximity of Seattle on the west coast of the USA and the fact that Blizzcon was held 2 weeks ago must have made it somehow worth it for them to be at PAX.
Cataclysm Impressions
It was in a large area next to where the Blizzard reps were standing behind a counter that they allowed players to play both the worgen and goblin starting areas of Cataclysm — as was demonstrated at Blizzcon in August. Both starting areas are very slick and heavily scripted. Blizzard has pulled out all of the stops to create a very heavily story based newbie experienced on the same caliber as the Death Knight starting area of Wrath of the Lich King.
From the outset your character is on the famous Blizzard amusement park ride as the focus of the story all of the elements revolve around the player. Despite being given a carefully crafted narrative, many of the players I witnessed demoing the MMO weren’t really interested in the story and kept clicking through the quests like Pavlovian dogs in anticipation of getting to the meat and potatoes of the action.
Somehow seeing everyone experiencing the exact same storyline complete with phasing really made me pause and reflect if this is truly the right direction for MMOs. Yes, I know I keep repeating this theme but perhaps someday players will actually be able to tell their own stories or at the very least *choose* what story they will experience via important and meaningful choices. For my tastes it seemed that there was far too much intrusion by the story and not enough actual gameplay.
Back to the Cataclysm starting areas…
The worgen player starts off as a level 6 character locked up in a stock in worgen form with the townspeople and the major trying to figure out a way to save you from your “problem”. The goblin newbie character starts off unconscious on a life raft with a fellow goblin trying to bring you back to life with jumper cables. There was a huge contrast between the foggy 19th century London of the worgen area versus the lush tropical island area of the goblins.
I noticed a bulldog roaming around in one of the farmer’s yards in the Worgen starting area. Finally Blizzard has created artwork for a real dog instead of the typical wolf graphics. Prediction: given the dark, spooky Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper/British feel of Gilneas it looks like bulldogs might be the Worgen vanity pets.
The artwork, quests and general experience of the Worgen and Goblin areas are so much more superior to the original starting areas found in the original WoW. Therefore I feel that Blizzard really had no choice but to redo them in the light of the ramped up quality of the new Cataclysm zones.
Despite the Ozzy inspired name, Crowley Orchard looked outstanding. At least it wasn’t called Afrasiabi Orchard.
Conclusion: Nothing really new from what we saw at Blizzcon 2009. I’m still very concerned that WoW is becoming far too story driven.
The Turbine Booth
DDO was definitely the focus here. Only one monitor was previewing LOTRO and it was the new $20 mini-expansion Mirkwood slated to be released this Fall. I got a sneak peak at the upcoming Mirkwood expansion which includes Sauron’s original dark fortress of Dol Gudur which will play an expanded role in both of Peter Jackson’s upcoming two Hobbit movies.
Mirkwood looked refined and simply amazing! It was just announced at PAX and it will be coming with long overdue combat mechanics revamp. Some of the animations of the new monsters were awesome. After speaking to both of the passionate producers and seeing the awesomeness of Mirkwood I got the feeling that I just might try LOTRO again.
Jeffrey Steefel the executive producer of LOTRO was kind enough to let me take this exclusive photo of the Mirkwood map.
The one LOTRO rep I spoke to (sorry I didn’t get his name) was very passionate about the MMO. We talked about many things dealing with Tolkien Enterprises, Saul Zaentz and of course the Tolkien Estate. The feeling is that although they’d love to get access to the rich lore of the Silmarillion (currently not available as per the wishes of Christopher Tolkien) they feel they have ample enough material to last until 2017 at which point the Tolkien license will need to be renewed.
We talked about the synergies that occurred with the release of Peter Jackson’s three Lord of the Rings films. He confided to me that they could not have released LOTRO without the commercial and cultural impact of those movies. Understandably, they are absolutely primed and stoked about the two upcoming Hobbit movies. Expect a full-blown LOTRO expansion that deals with the Hobbit content at around the time of the release of the motion pictures. A very wise move indeed and this probably explains why they have not yet gone northward toward Laketown and the Lonely Mountain the lair of the dragon Smaug.
I explained to him my concerns about LOTRO and why I as a hardcore Tolkien fan (long before the movies) have not found the game to be captivating enough for me. I told him that the newbie experience really needed work and he replied that they have reworked them this year. He also revealed that many of the older quests had far too much of the “collect and return” variety and had been replaced with more bread-crumbing quests where you go from point A to point B.
He agreed with my sentiments that the newbie experience was very important. He explained that they actually collect data as to when players stop playing. He also admited to me that the average MMO player has a lifespan of about 9 months which even further reinforces my strongly held opinions about making the newbie experience as accessible as possible.
Conclusion: A big thumbs up for the future of LOTRO as a result of what I saw and heard about the new Mirkwood expansion.
SOE Not in Attendance
I realize that SOE is at this week’s DragonCon in Atlanta but it seems rather strange that they would not be at PAX as every other major MMO company was there. With their stable of MMO offerings including their newly successful Free Realms I felt that SOE really *should* have been there in some capacity. The only company that could be excused from being there was Blizzard as they had recently completed their triumphant Blizzon event yet somehow they found the wherewithal to attend. Let’s not forget SOE has a studio here in Seattle as well.
Conclusion: If SOE wants to be a major player and spread the news about their EverQuest IPs then they really need to attend shows like PAX.
Other Misc. Stuff
Lots of buzz around the NCSoft AION booth — nothing new here considering the amount of hype and publicity that the closed beta has been getting for them. They obviously are spending a lot of money promoting this MMO. Somehow I could not find the Arenanet booth to preview Guild Wars 2.
The God of War Collection which will be released later this year on the PS3 looked great and I look forward to buying it.
After a couple of hours, my senses were pretty much overloaded and it was time to meet my wife for some Asian fusion cuisine at Wild Ginger in Seattle. She had spent the afternoon at the Seatle Art Museum leaving me with a few hours in gamer bliss. All around a perfect day.
-Wolfshead
“DDO was definitely the focus here. ”
That being the only mention DDO gets shows are uninterested by the game you seem to be, hehe. It was the main focus and it still only got one line. 😛
As Spinks already said on Twitter, an awesome summary. Very informative. I got the impression you got a bit more into personal face to fact contact than during the mass convention Blizzcon , which without doubt had more to show, but in a different manner. I actually prefer the smaller conventions, I did not like the Games Convention in Leipzig, felt more like a Booth Babe whorehouse with hours of waiting time to see or play a demo.
A pity you missed GW2. Did you play an Asmodian or an Elyos in Aion? I found the Elyos side much more enjoyable, the Asmodians are a bit too emo and have even more this eastern manga touch in both style and storyline. I do not like what they do to norse mythology in eastern countries. I just cannot have glimpses of norse legends combined with mangababes and metrosexual boys, sorry…^^
P.S.: Not only in regards to LOTRO, but if Christopher Tolkien would love the heritage of his father, he would just die or stop it. He is not protecting the purity of the lore or anything else. He probably thinks he does, but I am sure daddy would not approve of his sauronic grip on Middle Earth lore.
Tangent for you, Longasc: Have you played the Valkyrie Profile games? Tri-Ace takes some liberties with the original legends, but I’ve found them to be interesting and at least mostly respectful of the source material’s spirit, if not the particulars.
Oh, and I’ve got to remember the “Booth Babe whorehouse” comment. So beautifully apt, and a big reason why I don’t go to conventions.
My company sent some people to PAX this year, but I opted out. I really should have gone, and can perhaps make it a point to go next year, if the world hasn’t imploded by then.
Well said. I don’t see that AION will be the success that they think it will be. The Asian look and feel is going to cripple it for the western market. I too agree that the Asmodian side was sub-par. I hated it all around.
I’m fed up with Christopher Tolkien as well.
I loved reading this article! It was very well written and interesting 🙂 Nice to get a down-to-Earth view of PAX 🙂
I share your concern about SOE too. They seem to have just stopped caring these days. For example, their EQ2 expansion website is terrible! I thought it was a spoof site when I first went there. Maybe they’re running low on money?
Awesome stuf. Thanks again! 🙂
So what you’re saying is everyone Demoing Cataclysm was skipping the detailed back story & quests and was just concentrating on “killing 10 Rats”. Why bother even trying the Demo then?
Indeed. It makes me think, once again, that SWTOR is on the wrong path by focusing on story. There will be those who appreciate it, but if the mainstream consumer is indeed just looking for More of the Same in a Pavlovian locust rush, that’s a lot of wasted dev time and money making something that really would be better appreciated as a single player offline game.
I think they realize that’s it’s a huge risk. Personally,. I even have an hard time thinking in how that can be well integrated into an MMO. When I see their demo, I always wind up thinking “That looks like a cool game but I’m not quite sure if it will make a good MMO?”
But, if no one is willing to risks, we’ll be stuck playing the same game for another ten years with only a few minor tweaks. Maybe it’ll be extremely popular by being revolutionary and offering what gamers didn’t know they wanted, or maybe it,ll be the next DDO and fail because it took too much risks.
But, time will tell. I, for one, am glad that BioWare is willing to take that risk.
^ Proofreading fail. Sorry for the (numerous) grammar mistakes.
It’s not the notion of innovation that bothers me, it’s that the game design is working to opposite ends. Games with strong stories work for different reasons than MMOs work. The dichotomy is a real one, so they aren’t gambling on something that *might not* be a dichotomy.
I’m seeing a conflict, in that by being in an online world the story telling becomes much harder if not unimportant because gamers just want to play rather than read but, maybe it can be done effectively?
We’re talking about BioWare, here. While they might not be experienced in MMOs, they still got a renown in the RPG department. If they do it and are willing to invest millions into that, there has to be something that at least seems promising.
Of course, whether the potential playerbase will embrace it or not is another whole new question.
Note that I reserve a lot of reservations: I can’t conceive a way to get it done. But, even if the game is a flop, it will be a lesson learned. The gaming industry is fairly new and hardly learned lessons are valuable. We’ve got still so much to learn. I think SWTOR will be one to follow, for that, whether it fails or succeed.
I think the story focused MMO is at the tipping point of what the average player can tolerate. If I wanted to read a story I’d read any of the thousands of excellent fantasy books out there; I would not resort to playing a MMO.
The problem is that many companies are looking at the success of WoW and saying: “Look WoW is successful because they have this quest-based system that tells a story. So let’s tell even better and bigger stories!”.
That’s not going to work. People will only put up with so much of this. Prepare yourself for a backlash against this kind of MMO.
Come to think of it, if I play expansion demo I would also be concentrating on worgen skills and racials, getting my bearings in the new territories and checking out the cool sights.
Reading walls of boring text would be pretty low on my list 🙂
Which says much about blizzard quest content 🙂
Although I presume most of the quests will be scripted NPC dialogs, such as Arthas and Uther dialog in CoT: Stratholme
To be honest I was glad to see SOE at Dragon*Con. Most of the MMO companies skipped it this year since PAX fell at the same time.
SOE did several great panels and put out some pretty good information. So, at least from the perspective of a person there, I was glad to see them. I totally get your point though. PAX is much bigger for MMOs than Dragon*Con
Thanks for the nice comments about the article 🙂
As far as Cataclysm I sincerely believe that like me, most players just wanted to try out the new races: What do they look like? How do they move? What are the combat animations like?
Honestly, given my observations in a looking over the shoulder perspective, I found that most players were skipping the text; so much for the carefully crafted storyline of WoW. I’m worried that Blizzard is starting to believe their own press about how awesome the story is in their MMO and have somehow forgotten about the other more important elements of playing an MMO.
Since I only had a limited amount of time (thanks Seattle rush hour congestion!) I opted to focus on the MMOs that I was interested in which was WoW and LOTRO. There were other MMO’s there like AION, Runes of Magic and others but there was nothing really new or interesting from my point of view. I’m not really into DDO so that is why I didn’t spend much time investigating it.
“I’m not really into DDO so that is why I didn’t spend much time investigating it.”
I realized that. I was just amused at the fact that all it got was saying it was to focus, and how contradictory that was. That game has been my game of choice for many years now because it stands out from the rest, and it always had no press. I was shocked when you started to mention it, only to realize it’s the only line it got. That’s all. 🙂
@Wolfshead
“The problem is that many companies are looking at the success of WoW and saying: “Look WoW is successful because they have this quest-based system that tells a story. So let’s tell even better and bigger stories!”.”
I have an hard time believing anyone could be dumb enough to believe that, or anything remotely close to that, and an even harder time believing a professional game designer would. It’s a known fact on the DDO forums that very few players read the stories, let alone remember them after. I even remember one of the developers posting “Wow! You read the story.” after someone made a small comment about it. He was shocked, and understandably so! I personally have been playing for nearly three years now and I don’t even know the story line of the six modules I have seen pass in front of me. I don’t think I have read anything after the first two weeks, actually. And, it’s not any different on other MMOs. I don’t think I have read much in most MMOs I have played or tried past the first few weeks. As a general rule, players don’t want to read text; they want to play. They want loot, and more of it.
If WoW’s quests work, it’s because humans are goal-driven creatures and it’s easier to accomplish an action with a specific goal in mind than if you have to decide yourself what to do, where to go, etc. That’s what makes them fun, not the story line. I would be impressed if even 20% of WoW’s subscribers know what was going on in the last few quests they ran. I mean, if the story line had any relevance or effect, why would they keep using “kill ten rats” goals? Seriously, it’s anything but a good story and I hope everyone realizes that much. It’s the goal that matters, just like it’s because there is a goal that players will harm their gameplay experience on purpose to finish a grind.
We’re talking about basic game design knowledge here. If BioWare or other competitors don’t know that, it is to wonder if they even played MMOs before trying to make their own.
What I think they are thinking is “WoW has that crummy story line for each of its quests. Maybe we can use narrative to immerse gamers in gameplay. As of right now, MMO players are nothing but immersed in the world they explore, what if the missing component is well-implemented story line?”
It’s already less absurd, IMO.
Which reminds me – perhaps quests can be improved by actually removing the text and adding in cutscenes and actor narrated dialogue.
I tried AION beta yesterday and the animated cutscenes when completing some quests got my attention.
Something like that was implemented in AoC as well.
I think this might be the step in the right direction – you know noone is going to read the quest text. Might as well make a cutscene movie out of it, but this will still be frustrating to the player, as he will lose control of hic character and be forced to endure a cutscene that he is not interested in.
Maybe the best choice would be to have the quest story narrated to him by a voice actor in the background, while the player is free to do what he normally does in the game.
That sort of “short voiceover” narration works pretty well in DDO. The “Dungeon Master” tells you things as you proceed through a dungeon, and you’re free to go about playing while he prattles on, or you can stop and soak in the ambiance.
It only works with smallish clips, though, say, 25 words or less. More than that and the impatient player is past the point of relevance for the imparted information.
I maintain that MMOs aren’t the place for story. Setting, definitely, but the stories really should be coming from the players.
No doubt about that.
But if you absolutely want to incorporate some story in your game, perhaps the voiceover narrator would be best, as it leaves the player free to go about his business. I was comparing it to written WoW quests, where you have to stand still to read, and to cutscenes, where you don’t have control of your character as well.
If the player doesn’t want to get involved in the story – nothing you can do about that. Question is how to incorporate your story in the least intrusive to the player way, so that whoever is interested could soak it up without boring the rest of the audience.
Perhaps you could do it by leaving text notes that could be read without standing still – something like Warhammer, but still not many players could read some text and play the game at the same time. It seems to me that sound is the perfect medium to convey the message 🙂
On a side note, I absolutely love the AION quest tracker and search system. They couldn’t have done it any better.
Here’s a good article on the upcoming LOTRO Mirkwood expansion:
http://www.massively.com/2009/09/08/pax-2009-turbine-tells-us-all-about-siege-of-mirkwood/