These range from some free time to give the game another go, to a beta spot in The Secret World in exchange for a three month subscription. For longer subscriptions there are also additional benefits.

Quite honestly, I find myself a little tempted by this offer. Even the concept of paying for a guaranteed place in the TSW beta doesn’t bother me all that much, after all if it helps what is looking like a very interesting game make it out the door, then what’s wrong with a little creative fund raising. And if I choose not to resub for three months, then I still have a chance to get in to the beta free of charge.

Where the temptation gets a bit more help is that I have always intended to return to Age of Conan at some point. I was planning on giving Funcom a chance to get their game systems working properly, add some more content, and apply some polish. From all accounts this has happened, but I also understand that there are still problems. Still, it’s been on my mind recently.

The big drawback to resubbing to Age of Conan, for me at least, is that there is so much gaming going on for me at the moment. There’s Dragon Age, Torchlight, Everquest 2 (having some problems there though), Fallen Earth, and a dabbling of DDO. Adding another game to the mix is problematic, especially considering I’ll be looking at getting my freelancing business going again from December.  I may need to pull back from some gaming at that time anyway.

Personally, I think Funcom has jumped the gun with this offer a little bit.

They’ve picked a time when gamers have so much to choose from, and with more releases coming for the Christmas season, they’ve got a lot of competition to draw people back who weren’t all that happy with it in the first place.

It may have been better for Funcom to make this offer sometime in the new year when gaming is a bit quieter.

Conan Wants Me Back

Now first of all, after re-reading, I’m not sure if he’s being serious or just being a tad sarcastic. For the purpose of this post, I’ll assume he’s being serious when he says: “What did people think would happen to a company making bad games and being constantly robbed, in the middle of an economic crisis? If you wanted to save an EA programmer’s job, all you had to do was buy some EA games legitimately” in response to the amount of ‘outrage’ today against EA for laying off 1500 employees.

Now me, I think that piracy-is-a-bad-thing, it is a violation of a long standing set of laws designed to protect those who create those things that we love against the unscrupulous. It’s not theft as such, technically anyway, since no-one is actually deprived of anything, but that can be a hard distinction to make. It seems like theft.

But that’s where I think Tobold is off base. There is no real evidence that the people who pirate software, music, or other media were actually going to buy those things in the first place. So a single act of piracy cannot be logically equated with a lost sale, or a lost amount of revenue or profit. I’m not sure if anyone even has any statistics on what the ratio of pirated goods to lost sales really is. Is it one in a hundred? Or would one pirate in a thousand have bought that copy if a legitimate sale was the only option.

Having said that, I do believe that piracy results in lost income, but I don’t think it is anywhere near as much as publishers are saying.

In fact, I’ve seen in print statements made by the RIAA and MPAA where the figures they are stating for lost revenue seem indicate that their ratio is more than a lost sale per act of piracy.  Does that seem a bit strange to you? How can you lose more than what was pirated?

Secondly, and as Tobold points out in his post, it is an economic crisis. People haven’t just lost jobs and have less disposable income to buy games, a lot of people — a huge number in fact — are turning away strongly from using debt to buy things. This I think is the first key to EA’s financial woes. Less disposable income plus a reluctance to use credit means people are buying less of everything.

Which leads to the second key to EA’s crisis. They do a lot, and I mean a huge amount, of sales of their sports franchise games. They’re the only game in town for the US football games, yet each year they produce what is basically the same game with a few enhancements and a set of roster changes. These games also appeal to the more casual gaming sports fan, a fairly giant demographic.

Less disposable income plus a reluctance to use credit plus casual gamers owning the five previous versions of the same game equals cutting out Madden from the discretionary spending.

The clincher for me is that up until this last year, the game industry reported strong growth year after year. I’m sure you read the reports that said that the computer game industry was going to overtake Hollywood in revenue in just a few short years. This strong growth was all happening at the same time as people were pirating games. Computer game piracy hasn’t jumped by 200 percent in 2009 has it? How much of an increase in piracy would it take to drop revenue by 20 percent, especially considering that those pirates must come from the buying customers. People who would normally buy a game, but have defected across to the pirates.

If nothing else has changed, then EA’s woes must surely be the result of something other than piracy.

Saving that programmers job would have been a little more tricky than buying that sixth version of Madden.

By the way, I agree with Tobold on this; Piracy is a crime. It’s a bad thing to do. If you want to play a game — buy it!

EA Layoffs – Piracy Is Not To Blame

With 1500 job being dumped at EA, including 80 at Mythic which is a bit less than half their staff, you’d be forgiven for thinking that EA is in financial difficulty. And you’d be right as this year their revenue has declined by something like 20 percent.

There aren’t too many business that wouldn’t lay off some staff under those kind of circumstances.

Still, EA hasn’t really got that great a reputation for employee management. Even in the best of times they tend to work them like dogs, and then dump them when projects fail, and sometimes even when they are successfully completed. So it’s no surprise that the same happens when times are tough.

1500 employees though. That’s a lot, and considering many of those would be the creatives. The people who make the games, there may not be as many in-house games being developed by EA over the next few years.

Which could be a silver lining in all this. EA is certainly going to want to sell as many games as it can, so we can expect it to go outside to get them. This could be a good time for non-affiliate game developers (I’m not talking small indie developers here) to develop their own IP and look to EA to do the publishing. This may even lead to us seeing some break-the-mould games appearing somewhere down the track.

The Mythic layoffs are concerning though. With many of their development staff layed off, it’s hard to see how they are going to do more than just maintain Warhammer Online. It’s entirely possible all we’ll see from now on are patches and minor content updates. New expansions, difficult to see them happening with such a heavily reduced staff.

I’m even going to go so far as suggest that Warhammer might now be on life support with the hand of the EA board hovering over the switch.

I think it also shows that these internal teams are regarded by EA as only as good as (the board of directors perception of) their last game. If Mythic, a popular and successful developer, can be gutted because Warhammer didn’t meet expectations, then perhaps no team is safe.

I’m sure the Bioware team is completely aware of that little fact.

EA – Mass Layoff Effect

Well, mine officially has a beginning.

I spent a few hours after I wrote my last (first) NaNoWriMo post trying to work out what my story is going to be about, and have a very thin (so far) theme.

I considered going the fantasy route, possibly even some fan fiction based on one of the games that I play, but ended up deciding against that option and going for an original science fiction piece.

And since time and busyness is against me, I’m hoping to complete a long short story, or perhaps a short novella. Instead of aiming at the 1666 words per day necessary for a NaNoWriMo novel, I’ve decided to just make sure I write something each day. That might be a paragraph, or it might be a page, the point is that something is getting written and progress is being made.

Speaking of progress, tonight I put down approximately 200 words, including the first and last sentences in the story. It seems the writing Muse saw fit to give me that bit of inspiration at least. I hope she sticks around for the long haul.

Now comes the hard part.

NaNoWriMo: Beginnings

There are at least some quests in Dragon Age: Origins that have an element of time criticality, and I’m not all at sure if ’some’ should read as ‘all’ since I’ve only done about 15% of the game after nearly 15 hours on this one character. It may be too soon to be conclusive about that.

Now for the spoilage.

The first village I came to offers a quest to deliver notices of conscription to three individuals scattered about the kingdom. I’m not sure if the quest indicated a timed element, but I instead went off and did two of the premium downloadable content quests before I went to Redcliffe and (as part of my other activities) delivered one of the notices. I then saved the village… hurrah! Checked my journal and noticed the quest was missing.

It turned out the Blight was on the move and had overrun the village I received the quest from. That was something I wasn’t aware of. It may be that completing the major parts of the Blight quests advance the Blight across the map, in which case it’s a good idea to do side quests when they are received rather than let them pile up and do other quests first.

If only I hadn’t dilly dallied.

Although, in keeping with the game play aspects of making choices that matter in Dragon Age: Origins, it may be that whatever I do in one direction, the big bad will affect something else.

Tis something to keep in mind for the other quests.

Dragon Age Time Tip

Every year something has come up to thwart that intention. And this year ain’t no different. The contract I’m working was extended yet again at the end of September, not for one month as I expected, but for two. I was kinda hoping it was going to finish at October’s end to give me a chance to get involved in NaNoWriMo.

I did consider attempting a story in any case, but there’s always only so much one can do at the end of a day. It’s hard enough sometimes to unscramble my brain long enough to write a 400 – 600 word blog post for Stropp’s World, let alone 1600 – 2000 words. Some nights I’m not even focussed enough to play a game. I was attempting some crafting the other night in EQ2 and found myself nodding off.

What I might do, if I can come up with a idea for a plot, is to write a short story, something that won’t take quite as much effort. Perhaps some fanfic related to a game, we’ll see.

In the meantime, Syp, Ysharros, Stargrace, Scarybooster (who is attempting the task using an iPhone) and a bunch of others are attempting this epic feat. They’re definitely worth watching. No pressure guys!

Good luck to everyone!

NaNoWriMo

I didn’t create a Bioware social network account yet, nor have I registered the game. I really just wanted to hop in and get playing. That was probably a good move since I’ve since heard that Bioware experienced the release day blues with their site, and players have had a tough time getting it all to work properly.

I’ll probably do that tonight, especially since I need to register to get the downloadable content and rewards from buying the digital deluxe edition on Steam.

Since this isn’t a review, more a first impressions, I won’t rate the various parts of the game like the graphics (which are excellent and smooth by the way.) Instead, I want to rave about the story.

Dragon Age Origins provides six character origins to choose from. Each of these relates to race and class.

Humans can be warriors, mages, or rogues, and have a single noble origin.

Elves have the same class choices, and have the city elf, or country elf origins.

Dwarves can only be warriors or rogues, and have a choice of noble or commoner origin.

Mages only have one origin as they are effectively imprisoned, a gilded cage of sorts.

Each origin provides a different story, and so far I have played four characters, a human noble warrior, human mage, city elf warrior, and a dwarf noble. Each of these stories has been told excellently, which is one of the reasons I’ve done all four to date.

Each of the characters, except for the first; the human noble, has taken me a little over an hour to complete. At that point you are taken into the main storyline, which is the same for all character types. However, there are apparently still differences here, and your race and origin affect how NPCs treat you. I’m also wondering if  those choices affect how the game progresses.

So far my favorite is the Dwarf noble warrior. I really enjoyed the quests leading up to… hmmm, perhaps I should say any more, eh?

Hopefully I’m not speaking too soon, but I think once again Bioware has shown themselves to be masters of storytelling in games. They’ve drawn me into their plotlines to the point where I’ve felt some pretty strong emotions in some scenes, and towards some characters.

And that King I met. I’m really not too sure what to make of him yet. I’ll have to watch him closely…

Can Bioware Tell A Story, Or What?

The bar has been raised.

It doesn’t matter if World of Warcraft started life with more than a few bugs and far less content than it has now. Your game has to have at least as much content as WoW does now. And it has to be at least as stable.

It doesn’t matter if World of Warcraft wasn’t as polished upon release as it is now. Your game has to have at least as much polish as WoW. (That means no graphical glitches, spelling mistakes, or placeholders in the quest text.)

Your new game has to have at least as many quests as World of Warcraft after two expansions. And they must work cleanly.

That new MMORPG doesn’t just need the best release of all time, it needs to operate as smoothly as WoW does now, from the first day (or at least before the end of the free month.)

In short, if you are developing a WoW Clone, and want people to not only buy the box, but stay after the first month, then your game must be better than WoW in every way.

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason that no-one has created a World of Warcraft killer yet, isn’t because Blizzard pleased The Fates with the correct sacrifices, or that they were in the right place at the right time. Perhaps the reason is that they really do have a superior product. Could that be all it takes for someone else to make the much sought after WoW Killer?

It may even be possible that a World of Warcraft clone with simply more content and the same level of polish, and at least the dedication to marketing that the WoW marketing team has shown, would be a World of Warcraft killer.

The thing is, no-one has done that yet.

About That WoW Killer

The transfer of the licence to a new operator didn’t go smoothly at all. The transfer of what must have been many terabytes of data kept Chinese players from the game for a long time. It must have seemed like an eternity for dedicated World of Warcraft players.

The servers haven’t really been back in operation for long, and there is another problem. A bunfight between the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has broken out and World of Warcraft is caught in the middle like Kurt Russell. It seems that the MoC has recently taken over responsibility for the administration of all things foreign MMORPG related in China from the GAPP, and the GAPP is more than a little pissed off. So while the Ministry of Culture is treading lightly and has given the all clear for World of Warcraft to go ahead, the GAPP has tightened the rules and has demanded the WoW severs to go dark.

It does make me wonder who is actually overseeing these two Chinese government departments. Surely, there is the equivalent of a Congress or Cabinet (or even the Chinese Premier himself) who could tell one or the other to pull their heads in.

It does seem a little anarchic for such a tightly controlled governance system.

WoW Trouble In Little China

It’s worth noting that the monthly events are one of the things that are unique to Asheron’s Call. No other MMORPG releases new content along with updates to the storyline each and every month. Sure a lot of games patch monthly, or even weekly in some cases, but new content? That is the strength of Asheron’s Call, and probably the major reason the game has survived to this day in a world of new shiny.

Without further ado, here are the release notes for the tenth anniversary event.

Happy 10 Years Dereth!

Greetings and welcome to the Release Notes for the 10th Anniversary of Asheron’s Call! It has been an incredible journey so far, one which we hope continues for a long time. As our way of celebrating this occasion, we have made some really exciting additions to the game. We are really excited about these changes and what we have in store going forward. Most importantly we want to thank all of our players. Without you, none of us would be here working on the game we love. Thank you!

So without further delay, lets see what is new and exciting this month in Asheron’s Call!

Two Handed Weapons
The Viamontian masters have agreed to offer training in the art of Two Handed Combat to the peoples of Dereth. Due to the expanded use of Two Handed weapons they have become more readily available and will be available in all tiers of loot.

This new skill can either be used as a new player, or can be trained via the training temples already in-game.

Gearcrafting
With the return of the Gear Knights to Dereth also comes Gearcrafting. This skill is used by the Gear Knights to augment their abilities through a variety of implements and trinkets. The clever peoples of Dereth have quickly learned and adapted Gearcrafting.

Implements have been crafted to Expose Weaknesses of creatures through Creature Assessment, so that Leaders can increase the moral of their fellowship and with it their Health, to enhance both the Stamina and Mana of a party through tokens of Loyalty and in combination with Virindi magic using Deception to enhance understanding of Arcane Lore.

Gear Knights bring a variety of technological trinkets to Dereth. These trinkets may be imbued through the use of Gearcrafting to unlock latent magic. These magics enhance Health, Stamina, Mana, XP Gain, Damage and Damage Reduction.

You can read more about Gearcrafting here.

Quest Journal
Players can now keep track of all their quests in the game via an editable in-game quest journal. You can read more on the Quest Journal here.

Augmentations
Eleven New Augmentations have been introduced with this Update! These Augmentations include:

• Foci Free Casting for War, Creature, Item, and Life magic.
• Weapon Master Augments that will increase all Magic, Missile, or Melee skills by 10 points.
• Damage Boosting and Reducing Augmentations that can enhance players Damage Rating.
• Augmentations that will increase players Critical hit Frequency and Critical hit Multiplier.

Gear Knights
Gear Knights have returned to Dereth!  Originally encountered by the Empyreans before the Olthoi Invasion, this race of mechanical beings has reopened their Portals to Dereth, seeking lost compatriots and vengeance against those who endangered them.  Will you seek to do battle with this new threat to the peoples of Ispar?

New Quest Hubs
Players can now explore low and high level versions of the new Gear Knights, via quest hubs.

Quest XP
Quest XP will now pass up from Vassals to Patrons to Monarchs. This will help encourage more questing.

10th Anniversary rewards
For those with existing characters on actively subscribed accounts when the 10th Anniversary goes live, you may find yourselves with a new companion on your adventures through Dereth.

Special Live Events to celebrate 10 years of Asheron’s Call
On November 2nd, special Live Events will take place all day long. Asheron has discovered that the portals of Dereth have become unstable after being open for 10 years. This is causing portals from the past to open in the present. Creatures from the past 10years are suddenly going to appear all over Dereth. Asheron, Elysa, Borelean and others will need players help to contain this “invasion” from the past.

Miscellaneous Changes/fixes

Throne of Destiny
With this update, every player will now have access to all Throne of Destiny Content. Please be aware that the migration of accounts will still be a Premium Service.

Nvidia/Sky Flickering
Good News! After many, many long hours of work, this issue should now be resolved!

Chat
For some time now, we have been trying to discover the cause of some players having trouble entering chat when logging into the game. While we were unable to determine the root cause, the team has added a retry on entering chat when players are logging into the game. If a player does not enter chat when they first log in, the game will see this and retry up to three times for them. This should help resolve the issue.

So there are just some of the things we have in store for Asheron’s Call in October. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the October Event. 

Asheron’s Call October 2009 Event Release Notes