Resort vs. Sandbox MMOG Design Part 1 - Immersion

As my adventures in Darkfall continue, so does the analyzing of its design concepts. This post was actually started several days ago, and has been slowly germinating ever since. Now it's just too big for its pot, so I'll be splitting it into two parts. Part 1 will venture into the systems which make players attempt to have fun, in Darkfall Online and World of Warcraft. Part 2 will contrast the risk and reward circuits between both games. 

Despite Aventurine's self-destructive attitude towards its community, they are in fact continuing to make Darkfall Online a functioning game. Cities finally have gates to go with their gatehouses. They've balanced out more pseudo-exploits that take advantage of the macro mindset. More people have successfully purchased it. However, they still don't give warning before server restarts, even though players can lose their mounts or rafts when that happens. They say they're working on a fix for that, but in the meantime they give the cold shoulder to unfortunate players. Apparently, a clan managed to bring the entire server down just by building a guard tower, which was glitched to the point it attacked its makers. Two steps forward, one step backward, apparently.

They may not know what they're doing on a Public Relations level, but Aventurine did pretty well for themselves by designing a world system that empowers its playerbase to make their own fun. Experienced players are self-guided in their playspace, as they don't need missions or quests in order to procure a productive experience. Instead, other players and player-driven situations provide opportunities.

Darkfall, simply stated, relies heavily on players being responsible for their own immersion.

A game like World of Warcraft, however, makes the player into a tourist.  They're shuffled from one location to the next activity, towards bigger and cooler locations, to more awesome drinks and fireworks.  They can give themselves up, and go with the flow.  The sweet, turn-off-your-brain river of repetition and reward.

Residents of Agon are left to their own devices, with little guidance outside of other players. They become engaged beyond the aesthetics and simple mechanics, quickly joining the rain of pebbles descending on the pond, each attempting to push back the waves from enemy players.  In Darkfall, even a newbie can help influence the world stage, if they're at the right spot at the right time.  That's pretty exhilirating. 

For example, you start off in one of the racial starting cities - one of three surrounding fortresses per race Capitol.  Quickly getting ordered to kill goblins, you run out with your newbie weapon and start the difficult fight, slowly collecting crappy armor as you watch your skill go up with the weapon.  Passing by the city is a small patrol of a large clan, who you strike up a conversation with.  Impressed with your outlook, they give you a mount so you can follow them to their home city.  Along the way, you manage to spot a large enemy force stalking your party, and you alert your new allies.  They quickly alert their clan on Ventrilo, and set up an ambush. 

Because of you, 10 players lost everything on their characters. And it's your first day.

By limiting the game-driven influence on a player, they allow the user to take a larger ownership - and investment - in the game experience itself. 

Contrast this with something like World of Warcraft, which is designed around holding the player's hand as their character simply follows the giant glowing exclamation marks to their next activity. Naturally more options become available to a player later on the game, concerning what they want to do in Azeroth, just as return visitors know what rides to attend or avoid when they go to Disneyworld.

This isn't inherently bad design, as WoW's success can attest.  I do wonder, however, if people in Azeroth become more mesmerized than immersed in the world.  I've heard somewhere that the human brain easily goes into auto-pilot when in a sensory-collection mode, as if in a grocery store.  

Due to the ever-changing conditions that lie just under the surface of Darkfall, though, I find myself almost always engaged on a higher level.

State of Darkfall Online

The steady fall of Ultima Online has taken with it the promised land of persistent, hardcore PvP. Nearly all MMOGs since have focused on the EverQuest/MUD-based model of gameplay. By simplifying and streamlining those theories, World of Warcraft introduced a huge audience to the genre. These 'carebears' ended up marginalizing the players out there who desired something more out of an MMOG since every company wanted to take a slice of Blizzard's multi-million-dollar-per-month cake.

Being 'gamers first,' and not businessfolk, Athens-based indie company Aventurine has struggled through nearly a decade of development. Often whispered as Ultima Online's 'spiritual successor,' Darkfall would reintroduce the concepts of risk, danger, and control to the MMOG playbook. Full loot, first-person style combat, and character skill-based stats had the hopeful drooling and the naysayers crying, "Vaporware!"
Finally, late last year, Darkfall entered its Closed Beta. Not everyone was let in, but I was fortunate enough to participate. While the world of Agon had its glitches, its potential was easy to see. Players didn't have levels, so there was no "you have to be this old to ride the mount" mechanic. Someone could come in game, get geared up by a friend, and start fighting other players. If they really wanted to, at least.
At the end of February, Darkfall was 'launched' in an absolutely terrible fashion. A sequence of hoops was created, and at the end was a pre-order which would allow beta-testers to have a head start. At least, that was the plan.
The Account Management that Aventurine used was inadequate for the demand, on top of ISP issues preventing a great deal of people from even seeing the webpage properly to begin with. Some Accounts which were made - like mine - were bugged from the beginning to never work. Others would only pretend to pre-order the game, instead failing utterly.
Unsurprisingly, the Account Management link that was given out to the Beta Testers as a whole was quickly posted to the forums. Aventurine was too busy trying to get its game launched to even apologize properly (read: give them Accounts) to the beta testers left high and dry. While they've since fixed Account Management and everyone who wants an Account can make one, not everyone who wants to purchase the game can, at the moment. There's just not enough servers for the demand.
This is all beside mechanics which had yet to be fully balanced while still in Beta. Mounted combat was given a huge boon right before 'launch,' but refinement of the new damage dealt had yet to occur. Sieges - the practice of, not neccessarily including Warhulks and Cannons - were far too rare to have given much accurate feedback. The servers would still shut down for maintenance at the drop of a hat, with no warning, essentially destroying any travel progress one has made along with their mount. 
However, those who considered themselves fortunate enough to have taken their chance at purchasing Darkfall soon found intense sync issues once back in-game. At its peak, the most profitable thing to do was fish for lobster, since a player was unable to react to the goblins blinking around them.
While the syncing was being worked on, Aventurine prevented new purchases of the game. There was a new issue, with the queue to enter the game growing longer and longer. Players were leaving their clients on while they went to work, and were still waiting for a play slot when they returned home. In order to allow people to play Darkfall from any browser, the Darkfall Simulator was made - essentially a few images on a web-page showing Darkfall's unmoving queue. In essence, people were paying to wait to play an Open Beta version of Darkfall. 
For those still in-game, lag is still a major issue when large groups gather. Though outside of that, I'm reassured that Darkfall is very enjoyable for those players who love skirmish-sized combat, as well as having a sense of pride for building a city. 
It bears clarification: the players in-game are a fraction of those who want to be. The community is exceedingly frustrated with Aventurine. I clearly remember stating back in Beta that I would pay the subscription just to sight-see, since Darkfall's settings could be so beautiful. There were times I could just sit down on a cliff and watch the clouds go by. That charm is still there, but its being eclipsed by Aventurine's projected incompetance more and more. 
It's harsh to phrase it that way, and I agree. If you think I'm overdoing it, you should visit Darkfall's forums. At least I have compassion. I think what Aventurine has done is spectacular, and they have the making of one of the 'essential' MMOGs. However, the cold shoulder that the Darkfall community feels from Aventurine only amplifies the game's shortcomings, and further threatens its longevity. 
As can be expected, a lot of players and players-to-be are wondering about the true state of Aventurine's finances. It's not a huge step of logic to consider that the company was forced, one way or another, to launch before the game was ready in order to start some sort of cash flow.
Despite a stumble out of the starting gate, Aventurine and Darkfall can still rejoin the pack. There is an obviously neglected niche, which Darkfall (mostly) covers. Aesthetic and social details, which are outvoted by the hardcore PvP types, need to be addressed as soon as mechanics are balanced well. Otherwise, Agon will be a simulation instead of a world.
Even though the community is highly dedicated to Darkfall, 'forumfall' is quite simply too toxic to stand. Players are juggling the theories of arrogance, incompetence, and apathy in order to cope with Aventurine's vague and shallow-looking Public Relations. The company's image needs more than a pinata saying, "There will be ample compensation for any missed game-time." 
I believe that offering up some transparency into the operations of Aventurine would go a long, long way. Several studios have successfully used developer video-diaries and mini-documentaries to help with an irritable playerbase. The outspoken players may tend to be fickle and crude but they're actually very forgiving. And patient, too.
In short, Darkfall is having trouble with its eggshell. Aventurine seems to be an aloof parent doing the best it can. The hatchling isn't exactly strong enough for the real world quite yet, but now that it's here the only option is to nurture it. The beast has a strong heart, and as long as Aventurine can keep itself alive I think Darkfall can grow out of its emaciated and bewildered state into a fire-breathing contender.

How not to release a MMORPFPRTSG

[The following is mostly casual complaining with a bit of information and opinion thrown in.  Hey, at least I'm posting again!]

In case you hadn't notice, Darkfall was released on February 25th after several weeks of extensive Beta testing, of which I was a part.  Now that Aventurine has taken the liberty of denying me access to something I enjoy, I find I have time to do other things with my life again.  So thank you, Aventurine, for sucking really hard at such a convenient time.

Anyway, it all started a few days before the star-crossed released date, when Aventurine figured out that a "large network provider in the US is facing a serious network issue and this is affecting an account management service we're using. As a result account creation and pre-ordering are timing out."

It's a hunch, but I think it was Comcast.  They're prone to sucking.

On Sunday, February 22nd, we were given this update on the ISP issues:

"Two major ISPs, one in Europe, the other in the US are cooperating on the issue we've been facing. We've been supporting them, and they've been working around the clock. The issue has been escalated as far as it can go, and we believe it's just a matter of time before it's solved. The minute it's done we'll likely launch the pre-orders." 

February 23rd, and the pre-order issue was apparently solved.  Personally, this is when I made my account.  What I didn't learn until yesterday, however, was that the majority of the accounts made on that day were bugged, and wouldn't nor ever would save information it needed for pre-ordering.   

As can be expected, all pre-orders were sold out long before launch day.  On that day, the 'retail' version sold out incredibly fast.  A great deal of the beta-testing community, however, was still out in the cold.  This is a huge group of players who stuck with the game for the better part of a decade, who believed that it would in fact not be vaporware, despite the majority opinion on the matter.  

It seems as though Aventurine has simply decided to let serendipity decide who gets to purchase the game and play.  For awhile there, people were spamming their F5 keys, refreshing the Account page, in the hopes that the server would wake out if its stupor long enough to let them pass.  Then Aventurine went and got themselves some anti-multi-session software or something to alleviate the stress and auto-temp-ban the folks trying to give them money.

Why didn't they just email all the beta testers personalized links to purchase the game?  Surely that would have been easier on... well... everyone.

It's been over a week since Darkfall launch, and I still haven't been able to buy the game.  There is no 'retail box' that needs to be purchased.  Are they using pen-and-paper to process accounts? 

So, ultimately, there were people playing the game.  Not a lot of people, but enough.  Apparently the experience was like Beta Testing II: The Reckoning.  A horribly laggy, unsyncable sequel to a a great college film.  I don't quite understand how Aventurine went from having a stable game with lots of beta testers, to an unstable game with few beta testers, in such a short amount of time, without patching anything.  I didn't particularly care at the time though, due to the large spite-filled tumor that started colonizing my brain.

I cannot wait to read the Post-Partum on this one!  Dear Gamasutra, send someone to Greece to stare impatiently at Aventurine until someone talks.  

Am I being too hard on Aventurine, an underdog developer trying to fill Ultima Online's big shoes?  Maybe, but there's a couple pretty unacceptable things going on.  Even now, Darkfall's servers still crash without warning on a semi-regular basis.  Anyone using a mount, at the time, loses it.  The moons of Darkfall's world can be seen through the horizon when you're in higher elevations.  The front page of Darkfall's website hasn't been updated since before Beta started. The world is large and mostly barren of wildlife - despite having beautiful landscapes for them to inhabit.

This is something Aventurine did very well, that I must commend them for.  It adds to my patience with them greatly.  Darkfall has the most beautiful god damn sky I've ever seen in a video game.  I am completely ready to pay them money to let me sit and watch their virtual clouds go by.  That is genius art design right there.

What else would placate me?  I don't even mind not playing at this point.  I've got enough things to keep me busy.  First, I'd stop calling this a 'launch' and admit that things went wrong beyond just the Account Management software.  Level with the community on what exactly is being worked on and why, and what the timeline is for further development of the game - as opposed to its infrastructure.

Expect me to go into a much more intelligent consultation on Darkfall's mechanics and design, soon.

Did you get burned by Darkfall's release? Did I skim over anything crucial?  Please comment and correct!

Mega Update #1 - Part 2 - Darkfall

Check out this absolutely gorgeous screenshot of a Mirdain, the 'elves' of Agon. And as Tasos Flambouras, the head honcho behind Darkfall, has stated:

"I see official screenshots from other games that look amazing, then I see some in-game screens and they're an insult. We don't have a 'screenshot setting only' to sell you the game - all of Darkfall's graphics settings are fully useable."

Give it up for the Mirdain. Join us.

I'm very happy with how Darkfall is shaping up, and look forward to possibly partaking in the Beta.

Blogspam #1

First, dear future readers, forgive me for the rapid-fire posts which are about to commence. I have a lot to catch up on.

Due to my membership in the Darkfall clan Oromea, I got to sit in on a developer IRC open house for Exanimus. A zombie MMOG in the works.

I'm kind of worried, because RCT (Rotting Corpse Team - the devs) seems to be composed of a good chunk of people from outside the gaming industry. They say they've gotten a large part of prototyping out of the way, and are working on their middleware products playing nicely together. I don't know what to make of that exactly - I almost translate that as 'we have a ton of money, let's see what we can do.'

Jealousy is probably a large part of that, though. I'd love to take a look at their design document and see what kind of mechanics they're planning. The forums have spurred a bit of creativity within me and I have some pretty cool ideas that I'd like for them to implement. Hopefully, one day, they'll notice my wonderful posts and let me in on it. I think having an online world of dramatic horror would be simply amazing - with zombie abilities reaching into the meta-physics of horror. Causing survivors to stumble or trip with fear, reload slowly or drop the reload altogether...

...I can hear the heartbeat getting louder as the zombies get closer...