This is what makes an MMO; an online organic world that is always growing and evolving based on what the players themselves do and decide. It’s why SWTOR won’t be a long term hit – story is wonderful in a single player game, but an MMO needs to be player driven. Players can take seemingly mundane game attributes to new and exciting directions that the developers never dreamed would happen. The auction house in WoW is a fine example of this.

Goblinworks have released their third blog instalment for the new Pathfinder Online MMO. In it they outline how they hope character progression will proceed; things can change of course, and they acknowledge that. This is the first blog installment where they come out and say that they will be adapting many of the core game processes from EVE Online to their game. Ryan Dancey is the head of this new game, and he worked for many years on EVE. I have seen numerous bloggers and commenters in the past cry for a fantasy version of EVE – now it looks like they might be getting their wish. Ryan admits that there are downsides to the EVE system, but they feel that the upsides will outweigh those negative aspects.

There are many things in this blog post that get me excited. Not excited enough to go out and purchase a repair kit for my ancient inflatable woman, Suzie, but excited nonetheless. The core idea is that instead of levelling to get new skills, you will get new skills in order to level:

“… In Pathfinder Online, we’ve turned the system on its head: instead of using experience points as a prerequisite for improving in a skill, improving skills are part of the prerequisite for gaining new abilities. Your character must earn all the things needed to qualify for a new “level,” and then you’re rewarded with a special bonus …”

There will be 20 bonuses available for each class which give a nominal 20 levels. How long will it take the first players to reach level cap? Ryan hopes to not see the first level 20 character for at least 2 years of real time. The gloves are off – these guys want a long time commitment from their player base. Is this fair? Well, isn’t this what MMOs are supposed to be about?

One of the features of the Pathfinder tabletop RPG is the freedom to switch between class skills, and this aspect will be replicated in the online game. So a fighter can choose a cleric bonus or a mage bonus etc. That gives a player a lot of customisation possibilities. However, stick to the one true path and level up a pure 20th level fighter and you will get an additional capstone ability. While this is nice, the volume of uproar on the forums over this means it may have to be changed. Time will tell if the developers stick to their vision. I hope they stick to their vision because this system gives players choice with real consequences, something lacking in most games today.

There are a couple of things that cause me concern, however. The use of attributes as in the standard RPG model is nice, but the way in which they are generated will be crucial, otherwise you will see every player running around with scores hovering at 18. Alignment is very briefly mentioned, but this sets all sorts of warning bells off in my head. Witness SWTOR’s attempts to introduce merely a light/dark side system and one wonders who this could possibly work in a player driven world with no set story, let alone all the possible alignment combinations. Merit badges are set out as a way to get new abilities, but I dread the thought of it degenerating into the awful achievement system that is used to keep players busy as a substitute for an uninspiring game world.

All in all though there is a lot to be hopeful for here. The teaser at the end about crafting characters is welcome news indeed, and I eagerly await the next blog to see whether Pathfinder Online will be a cross between EVE and Minecraft. If so it may just be the MMO that hard core players have been waiting for.

Check it out for yourself and I’ll go into it in more detail with my thoughts next week.

” … If I post these, nobody is going to read them because nobody reads my blog. So I want to get people to read my blog before I post the really good stuff …”

Yes, I said. But in order to get anyone to read your blog you need to post really good stuff in the first place. Either that or pick on the biggest blogger you can find and hope to bait them into starting a blog war with you, (worked for me numerous times). He then offered to post them on my blog under his own name, an offer which I refused as I like to keep my readers focused when issuing me with death threats. Can’t have all the hate being diffused, that really wouldn’t do you know. And then who would moderate his comments? You don’t want me to as I let any old idiot on the site to make a fool of themselves, although I did delete a couple of particularly stupid ones this morning.

It’s tricky this blogging game, getting yourself established and finding a nice group of people to hate you enough to regularly comment on your site. Gevlon is a master at it, but that’s just because he’s a big meanie and we all know he only pretends not to like Christmas. I can just picture him on Christmas morning, sitting under his tree with the lights twinkling, and him rubbing his hands at glee at all the lovely presents which he convinced his readership he’d never open. Ha! Spoilt that one for you, didn’t I, Gevlon!

Anyway, I’m going away for Christmas to a nice little luxury resort that bans children within 500 meters of the place and has assured my wife and I that if any staff member even looks like uttering a dreaded holiday greeting they won’t only be sacked they will be summarily executed. I’m going to pack a cooler full of oysters, salmon, prawns and marinated steaks and take a case of good Italian prosecco down with me. I’ve also promised the good wife that I will leave the computer at home. Little does she realise that this will just mean that I’ll take a dozen books and I’ll ignore her anyway.

But I’d like to take the occasion to thank each and every one of you who have clustered around my blog this year, like fruit fly around a rotting durian. Hopefully next year circumstances will allow me to install a fixed internet line and I can get back to playing and blogging about games that you all seem to give a shit about.

And that is because this is a single player RPG slapped into a MMO universe. Gordon has come up with a bunch of flaws that are interesting in of themselves. But what is really telling are his good points about the game.

“… But I don’t want to be completely negative. The ability to select from different answers in conversations, even if they really have no impact of meaning whatsoever, is very fun and unique in the MMO world …”

In an MMO world, maybe, but in a single player RPG this is so standard as to be not worthy of comment. And it just proves my point that SWTOR is a single player RPG. And because of that it will have a definite shelf like. I mean, I love Skyrim, but don’t ask me to make a different toon and play through it all again. I know what that would be like; I’d rush through the whole thing and try to get to certain bits that I had missed the first time around. Going through the motions.

From Gordon again:

“… Likewise the whole Dark Side/Light Side mission options are very enjoyable plus the general maturity of the content is refreshing (it’s nice that you see a lot of moral ambiguity in the Republic story lines, for instance) …”

Sounds nice I suppose. But why is this so unique to an MMO? I mean really, what has this MMO done to advance the genre or improve on things that have gone before? I’m sure that everyone playing the game is having a great time, but while doing that they are ruthlessly chewing through content in a game format that was out of date three years ago. I’m having a great time in Skyrim as well, but there’s no way I’m going to be playing it in three months time.

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head.”

Hitch was a big influence on my writing and my critical thinking. And my drinking. He will be sorely missed.

So here’s a smattering of a few nice ‘Hitch-Slaps’ as they’re called for posterity.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

In this analysis, the writer explores the idea that the player in the game has an effect on the game-world that goes beyond merely playing through the content. The effect is metaphysical, in such that through the texts found in game it is revealed, for example, that the inhabitants of the world are affected each time the player reboots the game to avoid an unwelcome end. The inhabitants cannot articulate their concerns, but their historians have an inkling that someone or something is “playing” with them. They know that time is being altered and lost in some way.

This is taken a step further when the player meets the character of Vivec in Morrowind. Vivec is an NPC who is aware that he is merely a character in a game, and because of his awareness he is able to free himself from the bonds of his in-game limitations. This he communicates to the player through a series of books to be found in the game, the thirty six lessons of Vivec. Thus he also knows of the player, and their god-like role and effect on the game world. In effect there is no wrong way to play the game. If the player wishes to min/max their abilities, to save and reload when things don’t go their way, to limit themselves to have more of a challenge, to modify the game code itself, all is acceptable. To quote Kateri from her final post in that series:

“… A game is a created reality, and TES invites the player to invest their imagination in that reality, and to interact with it. To shape it as they see fit. They release tools to mod it, so any player can make themselves an all-powerful god. Cheating? Wrong word. It’s part of the game. It is allowing the player to change their world.
And so it makes sense that Bethesda create ingame lore that plays with these ideas of so-called cheating, of power and agency, of warping the world around you. If the devs are the Godhead, then each player is immersed in their own god-dream. But the good player, the ruling king, is a lucid dreamer. If they can master the dream-game, if they can gain enough power, or cheat, or create their own reality in the Construction Set – this player has not just beaten the game, they have *become* part of the Godhead. Of the creative process. CHIM…”

Fascinating stuff. But if a player is a god, if there is no wrong way to play a single player RPG, where does that leave an MMO based on the same criteria? Let us now imagine the Elder Scrolls series as an MMO. While it makes sense for one player to be a God playing within his own lucid dream, it makes no sense at all when multiple Gods appear in the same dream. Now we move from there being no wrong way to play the game to there being no right way. Skyrim only works when there are an infinite number of alternate universes extrapolating on the same idea. Place a second player within the same game, make it multiplayer, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. The game no longer works as intended. Having thousands of Gods or ‘heros’ in the same world only serves to invalidate the reason for them being heros. Even more when you realize that you leaving the game, after all of your world changing hero status, will leave no effect at all. There can be many worthy characters within a game world, but there can only be one God overlooking the entire dynamic, if the God itself is bound in some way by the limits of the game universe, (ie the devs are the Godhead and each player is in their own unique God-dream.)

The starting area of Tortage in Age of Conan is routinely held up as an excellent example of a starting zone in an MMO, but it is merely a good example of a single player RPG which happens to be set in an MMO universe. Apart from multi-player quest lines, there is no need to interact with another player in Tortage, and it could be cynically said that these quest lines were made multi-player to satisfy some sort of semblance of an MMO. Once the player left the starting zone and ventured into the world of Conan, the game fell down, precisely because there was no more content on a scale that was found in the opening 20 levels. Age of Conan is two games in one: a well-designed single player RPG in Tortage, and an ill thought-out MMO for the rest, where the devs unwisely assumed that the players themselves would somehow generate content in a theme-park world. Likewise, the only conceivable reason for the new Star Wars game to be an MMO is that this is the only way for the company designing the game to recoup their development costs and show a profit.

Placing a theme-park RPG in an MMO environment merely defeats the purpose of the game itself. In an MMO you populate the world with players and bring it to life. But if every player is a God or a hero involved in their own ‘unique’ storyline of saving the world from this and that monster then the whole thing loses any sense of validity and you are reduced to mindless quests and repetitive tasks.

Which is why the new announcement from Goblinworks regarding the Pathfinder MMO title is so intriguing. In it they list a number of areas which they want to follow in development. Not all of these are new; SWTOR for example has made quite a lot of use of middleware technology. But it is the culture behind these ideas which is of most importance. And Goblinworks appears to be determined to learn from past MMOs and to not only avoid their mistakes but to take game development in new directions.

So when I read this announcement I wonder if we just might be getting what we have long asked for:

At launch, and for the first seven months following, we will cap new paying players at 4,500 per month. Four thousand five hundred new paying players monthly. We expect to keep only about 25% of those players on a long-term basis, so after we factor in attrition of each month’s signups, we end up with 16,500 paying players at the end of that seven-month period.

After the first seven months, we’ll raise the limit on new paying players to 12,000 per month. That will remain our goal for the next couple years of Pathfinder Online’s life cycle. Factoring in attrition, by the end of the game’s third year of operation, we expect to have about 120,000 paying players. For many MMOs, that number would be considered a failure, but because of our lean development strategy, achieving that number of paying customers will mean success for Pathfinder Online.

Details aside for the moment, this is thinking outside of the box. And above all it is an attempt to set up a game to succeed as opposed to positioning yourself for an epic load of failure. I can see issues with this of course, the major one being that MMOs are a social game and players like to bring their friends which this will restrict. But when you add in some more of their goals such as a non-instanced world and possibly only one server, then things start to get very interesting.

We have long lamented the fact that the ultimate expression of MMOs got bogged down with the super theme-park style display. To be honest, after Ultima Online it has been a long and slow rush downhill to where players are akin to lab rats pushing buttons to get rewards and an emotional hit. The achievement system is the ultimate expression of a game without soul and players with no mind of their own. To be honest I don’t know if this will work. But I love that at least they’re trying a different approach.

A lot of big picture work has already been done on Pathfinder Online, and it’s going to be a bit different from your traditional fantasy MMO. It’s going to focus around the characters you create, in a world that will grow out of your interactions, developing the way you choose to develop it. It takes place in the River Kingdoms of Golarion, with our own Kingmaker Adventure Path providing some of the inspiration. There will be an overarching storyline, and dungeons aplenty to explore, but where Pathfinder Online is going to thrive is in the ability of each of you to leave your mark on the world. Do you want to build a castle that you own and control? Go for it. Want to start a town and rally folks to your banner? Do that. Do you want to ally with the neighboring villages to form a new nation—or perhaps wage war on them instead? The choice is yours. Want to become the most feared bandit in the River Kingdoms? The path is available. Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.

A new company called goblinworks has been set up to make the title, (Gevlon will be pleased). From what I can gather thus far it is in the very early stages of development. But their focus will be on crafting systems, as well as player housing and settlements. Many of the things that we have been crowing about for the past year.

I really hope that they get this right. Because we all know that they will only get the one chance to nail it. Stuff it up on release and watch it all go Age of Conan. I ask the developers to carefully consider the opportunity they have to appeal to the disenfranchised gamer. Hopefully they’ll have a winner on their hands, and thus we’ll benefit. I do not have any news on a release date, but will do more digging this weekend.

I’ll tell you why I personally wouldn’t want a “Skyrim MMO” Nils; I think a world like that could work perfectly online, I can see a Skyrim co-op where friends simply meet up to travel together, do a few quests cooperatively, craft a little, decorate their houses etc.

…but I’d never want the beautiful world of Skyrim overrun by hundreds of people – ever. I wouldn’t play it.
even less would I want to share that world with the type of “where are the raids? the achievements? the loots?”-players, asking for auction houses and PvP and whatnot because any online game needs to be like WoW.

I understand Syl’s point here, I really do. But it betrays the hidden bugbear waiting in the gaming community. Namely that you cannot ever successfully play an MMO if you don’t want to share it with other people. Because that is what MMOs are about. That’s what makes them unique. And if we take this attitude a step further it means that you’ll only play an MMO that you don’t really like that much, seeing as you wouldn’t want to share a good one. Which is kind of masochistic when you think about it.

And perhaps the big companies who make these games worked this out a long time ago. And meanwhile we’re all furiously writing diatribes on our blogs about how this game could be better, and how the hell could they make that change what on earth were they thinking?? And they’re just nodding away to themselves and thinking, yeah whatever. They make games that appeal to the lowest common denominator because that’s the only type of game we’d be prepared to share with them. Is this true? I don’t know, but it sure is food for thought.

My lovely wife said, take the time out and see if you can really do this. You have to do it for yourself, to see if you’re capable of getting it done right.

I have a whole lotta love for the good lady wife.

So I’ve been treating writing as a job. I get up, do breakfast things, and then I go into my study and I write until late morning. This is normally about four hours. Any more than this and I burn out. Afternoons are for doing other things and working stuff out in my head which I then try and set to paper the following day. I have Sundays off from writing. Thus far in the month of November I have written 40,000 words. In the previous 4 years I managed to get down 50,000. My editor is very pleased at the quality, as is the big publishing house that he works for.

As I am at home, and as I have access to the internet, I am avoiding games and gaming during this time. If I purchased Skyrim now I think it might be dangerous for my progress on the book. Thus my lack of posting on the blog. Kind of a roundabout way for me to get to the point, but there you have it.

What is the book about? I’ll talk about it when it’s done. Not fantasy though, if that’s what you all were wondering.

I still have my finger on the gaming pulse though, and will still make the occasional post when I see something that I want to comment on. But for the next few weeks it will be a bit dry on the blog front.