EverQuest II Throws in With Random Lockbox Schemes

Step Right Up!

We are adding a feature where you can play instanced mini-games to win random loot in game!  You purchase a ticket that gives you access to a mini-game instance.  Should you beat the simple, fun game, you receive a random reward from a chest, or opt for tokens you can spend on items available on a merchant.  We will be selling the tickets for Station Cash in the marketplace.

As noted over at The EQ2 Wire, there is a new cash shop item in the EQII August Update Planes posted by Holly “Windstalker” Longdale.  That is the quote at the top of the page.

While still pretty vague in the “how much” and “what do I get” departments, it looks like SOE is stepping into new territory in order to hustle Station Cash.  New for them at least, this is old hat elsewhere.

Other games have been criticized for selling random prize boxes.  Syp did a post over at Massively called The Truth About Lockboxes, which includes directly calling them gambling, which has been the literal truth in some cases.

SOE looks like they are going to try to skirt the gambling charge by following the carnival game example.

As I recall, in my home state, the elements of gambling of gambling are:

• Consideration – You have to pay something in order to participate
• Prize – You get something of value if you win
• Chance – There is an element of luck which may keep you from getting a prize

Rules in your jurisdiction may vary.

Carnival games do not qualify by being about skill and not chance.  You need just the right throw to get that hoop over the stuffed dog and the base on which he rests.  And lockboxes like the ones Star Trek Online hawks so vigorously do not count in my state either, since you always get a prize.  But the random nature of the boxes trips over the rules in other places.

In a carnival game, you know what the prize is in advance, so if you have the skill, there is no chance.

SOE is also trying to introduce some skill with the mini game.  We shall see how easy or fun the games really are.

But SOE is still offering up the random prize box, which might make the whole skill aspect moot.  The hinging factor might be that they added in the option to simply take tokens which you can spend.  You can opt out of the random factor.

Will this avoid a gambling charge in all jurisdictions?

We shall see.

Will this take “pay to win” and make it “gamble to win?”

I can hardly wait to see what the prizes will be.

I guess if your cash shop is overly dependent on certain items… like mounts or heavily discounted Gold subscriptions… you have to find a way to branch out.  And these sort of random box schemes have been a gold mine in other games.  They might even be why STO is Not Dying.

I’ve said it before and I am sure I will say it again.  I like that there we are entering an era of varied subscription options.  The box price and monthly fee add up to a big barrier to entry for many.

On the other hand, I am not really happy about what some games become when they go free to play.  And if you look at the MMOs I am actually playing lately… Rift, EVE, and a bit of WoW… you will see the common thread is that they are classic subscription model games.  I am not sure if that is an accident or not.  Like others, I seem to like my subscription.

How about you?  Do you like random lockboxes?

And how soon after conversion will they show up in SWTOR?

Star Trek Online “Not Dying,” Nixon “Not a Crook”

Shiva H. Christ on a crutch, when will people learn?  How can you get so far and business and not know how this works… or at least not be working for EA?

Here is the process, step by step.

A corporate representative gives an interview in which they say something that seems like a “good thing.”

In this case we have Dan Stahl of Perfect World Entertainment who went to the Star Trek Online forums to try and spread some joy.  And so he wrote… which implies he thought about it in advance… the following:

Cryptic was sold because it was a profitable business and worth at least $50 million to Perfect World… STO is not dying by any means and continues to grow stronger. Just last month we took over as the top performing game for Perfect World in North America.

He probably wrote a lot more than that, but this is what got quoted in the press, so is all most of us are ever going to see.

His message was that STO was not only a valuable asset to Perfect World, it was their best performing game.  Great stuff!  The game lives!  Fans rejoice!

Then, of course, the gaming press gets wind of it.  I saw this reported over at Massively with the above quote.  And what is the headline of that article?

Cryptic producer: Star Trek Online ‘not dying by any means’

Hrmm… well, that does kind of emphasize the negative perception, doesn’t it?

But negative headlines draw in page views.  Nobody buys a paper when the headline is “Nothing Bad Happened.”  Likewise, a headline like “STO Worth $50 Million” or “STO is Perfect World’s Top Performer” do not grab attention… at least not like that “dying” quote does.

“Not dying by any means” smells of desperation.

You want to go take a look because there is something going on.  The headline is the smoke and you just have to see the fire.  After all, if he is denying the game is dying, then clearly somebody thinks it is on its last legs.  Time to go see how the company is rationalizing things.

And if we follow the link and go read the article, we will see the “not dying” quote in context.  But for most people, unless you have some investment in the positive side of the story… in this case, you play STO and want it to survive… the headline has already tainted your point of view.

You are very likely to come away from that article still thinking that STO is dying despite the value assigned to it and its position in Perfect World’s stable of games.  He might be trying to put a brave face on for his dying game.  And, frankly, maybe Perfect World is about to go down the tubes if a dying game is their top performer.

Now, you may argue that you are smarter than that.  But that is likely because you are already involved with the topic being discussed.  If something new comes up, the headline is very likely to set your perception.

Merrie Spaeth, a former White House director of media relations calls this “The Bimbo Moment.”  This is when you make a statement in the negative that becomes a headline and which reinforces the exact perception you meant to deflect.  One of the most famous is probably Nixon saying, “I am not a crook.”  Spaeth, being a staunch conservative, isn’t likely to name something negative after our 36th president.

So, instead, it was named for… well, I’ll just quote her site:

…memorializing the protest of a young lady whose tryst with a well-known evangelist some years ago made news around the world. Her comment, “I Am Not a Bimbo,” became the headline in scores of newspapers and made the cover of People Magazine in 1987.

I actually remember that Jessica Hahn quote.

And she just kinda ran with it…

Merrie Spaeth and her staff actually put out a monthly Bimbo Memo newsletter that points out ways in which quotes are taken, often out of context, and become headlines that simply reinforce the negative view the person saying them was trying to avoid.

If you deal with the public, you should probably read this.  It is both amusing and informative, even if it does slant to the right at times. (Merrie Spaeth does hate the Occupy movement to an almost unseemly degree.)

Anyway, you can sign up for the newsletter here (or get the somewhat less reliable RSS feed), or go through some of the past annual winners on the archive page.

In the mean time, live and learn.  Star Trek Online is THRIVING!

That is what you meant to say, right Dan?

January 2012 in Review

The Site

After five years, I updated the About page for the blog.

The primary improvements, a relative term on the best of days, were removing my picture and rewriting the whole thing up as something mildly resembling a FAQ, despite the fact that none of the questions listed have ever been asked with any frequency whatsoever.  Still, one less picture of me, so a win for the internet!

And the whole thing does give some sort of outline to the philosophy behind this blog.  Read it at your peril, and remember that any promise of candy is likely to be a lie.

Then, due to an RSS feed misfire, my very first post on the blog… a “Welcome” message which coincidentally also attempted to establish some sort of blogging philosophy, though it was clearly in a much more primitive state at that point… received more views this month than it had during the entire history of the blog so far.

So for all of you who missed it five years ago, welcome.

And finally, I’d just like to say that I think the special iPad format that WordPress.com has looks pretty neat.

iPad version of TAGN

Of course, since it is graphically focused, my urge to make sure every post has at least one picture has been reinforced.

One Year Ago

Eschewing the predicting convention, I issued demands for 2011.

The blog was listed at a Vietnamese gaming site in a top 10 post that looked suspiciously like one from Massively.

TERA was trying to win notice by telling people how they had boars in their game!  BOARS!  Can you imagine?

EuroGamer tried to tell us PlanetSide 2 would be out by Q2 2011.

It was time to start messing with the then new EVE Online character creator.

DC Universe Online launched.  I played in the beta just long enough to remind myself I am not a superhero kind of guy.

I used Google to tell me World of Warcraft’s five most pressing issues at the time.

Meanwhile, the Twilight Cadre was back in Azeroth in force and checking out Cataclysm.  We got our first guild achievement.  Our group of new characters, four worgen and a gnome, went through Westfall and all its phasing magic, wailed in the Wailing Caverns, before settling down to a pattern of doing three instances every Saturday night.  I wasn’t sure if we had skilled up a lot or if the game had been dumbed down that much, but clearly the 1-60 game in Cataclysm was proving to be not much of a challenge.

There was some cool stuff in Cataclysm.  I like the balloons.  Redridge, never one of my favorite places, got turned into a fun solo experience.  And there was the Murloc combat ability.  But otherwise, the game was starting to lose us.

And, finally, Pokemon was coming to town.

Five Years Ago

The MMO blogesphere starting talking about generations of MMOs, and I asked if we had even gotten past the first generation, then quoted Wikipedia’s takeon the generation debate.

The instance group finished up the Scarlet Monestary and rolled through Razorfen Downs.

Blintz, my swashbuckler in EQ2 was just digging into Zek, The Orcish Wastes, one of my favorite zones in post-cataclysm Norrath.

Scott Hartsman described some of the goals for the EverQuest II expansion that would eventually become The Rise of Kunark.

I played in some of the Vanguard open beta, once I got it downloaded, but when the game actually launched, I declined to buy the box.

And, finally, Blizzard launched the Burning Crusade without the usual first day disasters that tend to accompany an expansion, though I couldn’t figure out why I was bothering to buy a copy.

New Linking Sites

I would like to thank the following site for linking here in their blog rolls.

• Hunter Bikutanda of Nazgrel
• Jester’s Trek
• MMO Overflow

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Post in January

1. Hulkageddon V: Unholy Union – Coming Soon
2. How to Catch Zorua and Zoroark
3. Play On: Guild Name Generator
4. Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
5. Twelve Questions for 2012
6. The MPAA Paints A Chilling Portrait of Things to Come
7. What Happens After the End of White Noise in Branch?
8. LEGO Lord of the Rings: The Video Game – It Could Happen
9. Remembering My First PvP Death in EVE…
10. Type 59 Being Pulled from the World of Tanks Store
11. Considering Star Wars Galaxies Emulation? Better Grab a Disk!
12. Scraping Off the Rust in the Iron Tomb

Spam Comment of the Month

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EVE Online

After an eventful December in which I first ventured into 0.0 space, January has been kind of quiet.  The war in Branch hit a lull and I spent most of my time worried about skills and ratting in my Tengu.  Of course, just as I have been closing in on my final Maelstrom skills, the word was passed down that those with the right skills should fly a Drake.  Well, that was where I started.

And now the war is back on.  The corp has declared war time rules again, which amount to “knock off that carebear crap when fleet ops are active!”  Maybe, just maybe, I can get on the kill boards for something other than structures, in a Drake or not.

Rift

I have been playing a whole lot of Rift.  I post regularly about the instance group, but that is generally one night a week plus maybe a little bit of prep.  I have to find some time to write about what I have been doing with the other 75% of the time I have been spending in Telara.

But, as a whole, I am pretty happy with Rift for now.

Star Trek Online

It went free to play and do I care?  I am a lifetime subscriber.  Maybe not.  I keep the game patched up, but I do not play.  I did actually log in after it went free to play, just to see where I stood.  I have 1040 Cryptic bucks, or whatever their currency is called, and so many changes since I last logged in that I probably need to start over.  We’ll see.

World of Warcraft

Hrmm… I hit level 85 and haven’t done much since.

Coming Up

I think I summed up my to do list above.  Post about new null sec adventures in EVE (if any), write up something about all the non-instance group stuff I have done in Rift, and figure out where I stand with Star Trek Online and World of Warcraft.

Other than that, maybe something about iPad games and the PS3 and… oh, I don’t know… baseball movies.  We just saw Moneyball and spring training is coming up.  Or maybe not.

Struck from the List…

With the new year comes some feeling, some need to assess and reassess things.  And so it is today with the side bar of my blog.

For those viewing via remote reader or those who have never looked at it, down the right hand side there are two sections among the many categories of links titled “The Games I Play” and “The Games I Watch.”  They are so named partially so that they will sort in the order I want along the side bar.  WordPress.com only lets you have one list of links in your side bar (though you can whip up your own with a text field and some simple HTML if you really need more, but that goes beyond my ability to care about the side bar really) that can be divided into as many categories as you like.  But the categories sort alphabetically.  So I had to name them all in such a way that they would sort out correctly.

They are also named as an indication of my status vis-a-vis a given set of  games.  “The Games I Play” are the titles, usually just two, that I am actively playing.  It is easy enough to understand that.

Then there is the section “The Games I Watch,” which sounds a little odd, like they are being broadcast on TV or something.  The title was chosen for its ability to sort where I wanted it more than its clarity of message, obviously.

Games on that list are ones that I am not playing actively.  Sometimes there are games that have not even shipped yet on that list.  Diablo III is on that list right now, and it is months away at best.

Games in that section are games to which I pay attention, games which interest me, and games which I fully intend to either play when they ship, or go back and play at some point if I have already been there at some point.

And now, in the harsh light of the new year, I look at that list and I can see some entries that no longer fit the bill.

Runes of Magic

Remember back when a free to play games of any quality were a rare thing?  And there was Runes of Magic trying to bridge the gap between subscription quality and free to play access with, among other things, that $10 horse.

Back in the day, when he wasn’t on about that horse, Darren called it a WoW rip-off, which at the time, what with being free and all, seemed like a hearty endorsement to me.  So much so that, despite one of the worst installers ever, some of the instance group ran off to try the game at one point.

And it was okay.  It had the usual stuff, a few interesting twists like dual (and now triple) classing, as well as the standard “suffer or give us money” options when it came to storage and experience gain.  And gold spammers.  Many, many gold spammers.

My primary memory of RoM

But in the end, there was nothing there that really stuck with me.  We ran off to play other games.  Half the subscription MMO universe went free to play in the mean time, so that no longer suffices as an attraction.  I’ve totally forgotten my password… both of them, since there was a second login and password required to access the RMT currency, some of which I purchased at one point.

And then there is that installer.  Have they fixed that yet?  Or does somebody new still install the 2009 version of the game and then spend the next week patching?

Finally, the game is no longer interesting merely for its free to play model.  That was something worthy of note a couple years back, but not so today.

So I think it is time to admit that I am just not that interested in the game and the odds of my going back to falls somewhere between “slim” and “none.”  So it gets struck from the list.

Warhammer Online

You might be surprised that I still had Warhammer Online on my list until now.  Despite the howls of the now repentant fanbois every time I dared say anything negative about the game, there was a lot I did like about the Warhammer Online.  Our guild did have some excellent PvP battles at times, though for every good battle there were a couple of empty roll-over victories.  And then there was our first taste of a dungeon, which left nobody interested in a second.

The instance group in Warhammer

But the world itself was very well done, worthy of exploration.  And if I was complaining about the quest log, it was because I was using it a lot to run through the PvE portion of the game to see that world.  In fact, it was the idea of seeing the world that kept the game on my list.

The instance group moved on and there were other games higher on my list, but I kept thinking that at some point Mythic would change something in the game worth seeing or put out a “come back and play” offer that would get me to return.

They did have a come back and play offer at one point, ten whole free days, how generous!  But it involved giving Mythic a credit card, and that seemed like a really good way to get screwed by Mythic, given their past sloppy handling of credit card transactions.  So I didn’t try that.

Then, more than a year after launch, they made the trial version of the game, which restricted  you to a tier 1 character, unlimited.  That was interesting for some I suppose, but where I wanted to go would have put me well outside of tier 1.

They even talked about producing a Mac version of the game.  Did they think that Mac users were that desperate for an MMO?  I was tempted to try that just to see how bad it was, but never got around to it.  I don’t even know if that came to pass in the end or if it is even still supported.

In the end, no “right moment” to go back ever materialized.  Nothing compelling to me was ever offered up after launch.  And I would still have to pay a subscription fee to go back and explore, and the bar to get me to do that has only gone up in the last couple of years.

So that world will remain unexplored by me, as Warhammer Online is off the list.

Games Close to Being Struck

Star Trek Online is on the edge. I keep thinking I will go back and play.  But every time I log in, I am faced with a wave of changes similar to what Ravious described in going back to LOTRO, and I end up so mired in figuring out what to do that I end up logging off for a few more months, only to repeat the cycle again.

I logged on long enough to get this screen shot!

At some point I hope I will have enough time and desire to play, at which point I will start with a fresh character and learn it all from scratch again.  Only there are always a couple of other games I would rather play first.  Well, maybe some day.  But for now it stays on the list, if only because of that lifetime subscription I bought.  Oof.

And then there is Dunegons & Dragons Online, which I really want to like, but which is likewise always in 4th or 5th place on my to-do list.  At least it is free to play and uses the Turbine patcher which at least puts it a couple steps ahead of Runes of Magic.  But it is in jeopardy of being struck at some point.  I just never get to it.

Games On or to be Added

You might point out that I have declined to play Star Wars: The Old Republic so far post-beta.  But I will likely play the game again at some point.  There is enthusiasm for it in the instance group, and even Gaff has picked it up already.  And I do watch the news about it.  I am interested to see, for example, if torture ever comes up as an issue the way it did for WoW back with Wrath of the Lich King.  I am guessing that for most people, that ends up being a matter of “Sith will be Sith.”

I should probably add Torchlight II to the list.  I have no doubt that I will play that when it launches.

Likewise, Guild Wars 2 will probably get a slot at some point.  It is on my list to play, but I haven’t spent much time with the news or marketing build-up.  So I am not really “watching” it yet.

And the rest of the list… well, those are games I am sure I will continue to keep an eye on and poke my nose into every so often.

How about you?  Have you reassessed any games on your list, be it written down or just in your head?  Are there games you have decided that you just are never going to get back to?

Reviewing My Demands for 2011

This year I eschewed the traditional practice of making predictions and issued a series of demands for the MMO industry for 2011.

Why demands?

Well, when you make predictions and you are wrong, it is your fault.  If you make demands though, and the company does not live up to them, it is THEIR fault!  Ha!  Rather than scoring my own predictions, I get to score their behavior.

So it is time to review my demands for 2011, made way back on January 2nd.  I gave everybody until December 15th to meet my demands.  Now it is time to see who complied.

Blizzard:

Stop looking so damn smug.  Tell us what Titan is,  ship Diablo III, and add some more content to the top end of World of Warcraft.  I swear half the game is already level 85.  Oh, and another sparkle pony, but something a little less frou-frou this time.  And an expansion for StarCraft II.  Somebody has to sell some PC games this year.

See, this is what is wrong with Blizzard these days.  I threw a crapload of demands at them, six if you include “stop looking so damn smug,” and they barely made any of them.

To sum up, we still do not know what Titan is, Diablo III is out in 2012 somewhere, and no expansion for StarCraft II.  I mean, how tough was that last one?  Oh, and they still look damn smug.’

All we got was a new sparkly pony, the Winged Guardian Mount, and some more content at the top end of Cataclysm.  Not enough I say! Not enough.

Sparkle Kitty vs. Sparkle Pony

For this I decree that Mike Morhaime will have to come up with more public rationalizations about WoW subscription numbers, including at least one additional convoluted SWTOR impact denial.

Sony Online Entertainment:

Smedley? SMEDLEY!  Pull yourself together.  I know those PlayStation people are bossing you around, but you make money.  Certainly more than they make on hardware.  Refine what you have.  More server merges.  Reconcile EverQuest II Live and EverQuest II Extended.  Work on the PC controls for DC Universe Online because I am NOT hooking up a console controller to my PC just to play it.  And finish with the Agency already, you’re starting to embarrass us all.

SOE on the other hand, complied with almost all of my demands.  We certainly got server merges on a number of fronts, and some are still coming, including the merger of the Live Gamer EverQuest II servers into standard servers. EverQuest II Live and EverQuest II Extended were reconciled, with Live eating and then becoming Extended.

And they certainly finished up The Agency.  Ouch.

In fact, the only demand they missed on was fixing the controls for the PC version of DC Universe Online, and they were so busy launching, consolidating servers, and then converting to free to play that I guess they can have a pass on that.

For this I grant favorable portents for Planetside 2… provided they don’t pull an “Agency” move with it and string us along for several years.

Cryptic:

Just go free to play across the board already.  Champions and Star Trek Online.  Everybody else is doing it.  But don’t screw over the lifetime subscribers.  And when you go free to play, make sure you have something shiny and new to bring people back.  Oh, and Neverwinter, get it out this year and don’t screw it up!

Cryptic… Well, everything is either free to play or in the works.  They’ll be a month late on the demand in the case of Star Trek Online.

Neverwinter though… just where are you guys even going with that title these days?  Cryptic is supposed to be your company name, not your business plan.

I put a curse of market confusion upon Cryptic for Neverwinter… which they deserve just for choosing that name.  There are OTHER locations in Forgotten Realms you know.

BioWare:

Everybody is watching you.  You’re not making some single player game.  You’re making an engine, an engine that is supposed to take in money and deliver the joy of being in the Star Wars universe.  Don’t let those wankers in San Mateo make you ship early.  Meanwhile, since you guys seem to be in the MMO driver’s seat at EA, for now, don’t screw around with Ultima Online, but do something about Warhammer Online.  You’re bright guys, you’ll figure something out.

Wow, talk about delivering.  I am pretty sure they moved the early access back to the 13th of December just to be clearly within the scope of my demand.  And yet it is late enough that we cannot really tell if the engine is set to vacuum up money from Star Wars loving fans.

Plus they didn’t screw around with Ultima Online and they came up with a DoTA-like game reusing Warhammer Online assets and branding it as Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes.

Full points all around.  For this the force will be with them… for three months.  They are on their own after that!

CCP:

Will you put that drink down already?  EVE is still going, still making money, still popular, still unique, I get it.  And you are improving it over time.  But really, you’re starting to look like a one-trick pony.  What are all those people in Atlanta doing?  You don’t have to ship something new this year, but at least make us believe you’re really working on something new.  We’re starting to think you’re spending all that money you make on akvavit and exotic dancers.

CCP is the only company that actually responded directly to my demands.  CCP Manifest dropped my a note just 8 days after my post promising that we would all see amazing things from CCP this year and that my demands would be fully met.

And then, of course, Incarna hit, the player base blew up… more than usual…  plans were re-assessed, people were laid off, projects were set aside, and the summer of discontent basically loomed over the staff at CCP.

And then they refocused, shipped the Crucible expansion to mostly favorable reaction (it sure is pretty), and plans seem to be solid for DUST 514, with a release target (Spring 2012… which means by Christmas, right?) and a platform (PlayStation 3 works for me).

So I guess, in the end, they met my demands.

I would suggest that we did not need all the drama, but that seems to be one of the vital ingredients to any CCP operation.  That and alcohol.  I know they aren’t spending all their money on booze, but I suspect there is still a line item in the budget for it.

For this I grant an early Spring and no bankruptcy in 2012.

NCsoft:

Aion, City of Whatever, and Guild Wars.  Is that really all you have going in North America?  Well, there is Lineage II I suppose.  And what do you have on your to do list?  Blade & Soul?  Really?  Don’t bother.  And let Guild Wars 2 gestate to full term, which means don’t ship it in 2011.

I didn’t ask much from NCsoft, and they delivered.  No Guild Wars 2 in 2011.  Now the question is will we see it in 2012?

Your boon is the usual subscriber boost as you move all of your titles to free to play business model.

Trion Worlds:

Your big opportunity is coming.  Ship Rift at just about the time when WoW Players have finally wrapped up the high-end content and you could get… a stable half a million subscribers.  Okay, that isn’t WoW numbers, but history shows that most people just stick with their favorite MMO forever due to the social network they develop.  Hrmm… that is sounding like a prediction, not a demand.  Okay, go and get a half a million subscribers already!  By June!  With your shield or on it and all that!

Trion, you made it.  While you were out there claiming a million customers, I am going to take it as read that that meant more that half a million subscribers at one time.  And you even kept them for a while, thanks to Cataclysm backlash, a late ship date for SWTOR, and essentially no new competitors in your field.

For this you get favorable portents for End of Nations and a soft landing from the SWTOR effect.

Other MMO Studios:

Which of you is even poised to do anything in 2011?  TERA is going to be another Asian oddity, soon forgotten by the mainstream.  It was all that Aventurine could do to ship Darkfall, they won’t be doing anything else. Funcom won’t get The Secret World out in 2011, they’re more likely to cut more staff.  All of you other studios, select a champion and send it out to do battle.  Yes, it can be TERA if you cannot find anything else, but I’m telling you it is going to be completely forgettable.

Nothing?  Really, no small studio champion has arisen?

Fine, you’re all doomed to mutter about the success of Minecraft and Angry Birds.

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw:

When Star Wars: The Old Republic ships this year, review it.  I know, it is a muh-more-puh-gah, but this is Star Wars and BioWare.  I demand it.  We all demand it!

Alright, you’re absolved because of the late ship date of SWTOR.  But  I expect a review of it next year.

Dr. Richard Bartle:

You were awfully quiet in 2010.  And you’ve got your three level 85s in WoW now. (A very common claim these days.)  Go say something controversial.  Declare WoW dead.  Predict SWTOR will be a failure as a virtual world.  Make some news.  Do an interview with those people at Massively.  They’ll print anything you say.

Dr. Bartle was kind enough to comment on my original demands list that, while I found the past controversies surrounding his statements in the gaming press amusing (remember the “I’d Close WoW” headline or his positive view of Stranglethorn Vale), the whole thing tends not to be so much fun for him.

And he managed to steer clear of such controversies, despite my egging on certain members of the Massively staff.

So he gets a pass as well.  We can just hope that somebody takes note of his idea of how to break the current state of stagnation in MMOs and that he has a good fortune in 2012 as he attempts to educate us on the obvious.  I personally look forward to further education.

Scoring

What is there to score?

Okay, if you want to view my demands as predictions, I think I did okay this year.  But I did not really go out on a limb with anything either.  2011 was a quiet year in many ways, with titles being pushed off into 2012.

Now, do I go back to outrageous predictions for 2012 or stick with unreasonable demands?

How Was Star Trek Online NOT Free to Play Already?

When I think of subscription games that have switch to the free to play model, Star Trek Online pops into my head, and has for some time.

And then I have had to remind myself that no, the game is not F2P, not yet.

Now though, that appears to have changed.

Perfect World Entertainment, which is apparently my company of the day, and which acquired Cryptic Studios back in May, has announced that Star Trek Online will be going F2P this year, or so reports Massively.

F2P... it is a gold mine... like re-runs!

Now, as a lifetime subscriber facing yet another company changing business models, I do wonder how they will treat me.  Not that I have played the game in the last year.  My one year anniversary post for the game is still sitting as a draft.

Look, I logged on long enough to get a screen shot!

The Lord of the Rings Online transition from subscription to F2P treated lifetime subscribers very well I felt.  I was quite satisfied with how that turned out last summer.  I will be interested to see how this plays out with STO.

And you can just bet if they shaft the lifetime subscribers, I will complain about it despite having no real investment in the game.  It is just the way it has to be.

What is the Scale of this Blog Health-o-Meter?

WordPress.com had something new for me this new years.  They sent to me, and presumably anybody else with an active WordPress.com blog a little year end summary report on my blog.

Actually, I received a report for three different blogs: this blog, EVE Online Pictures, and Star Trek Online Pictures.

(That last one represents how committed I was to STO a year ago.)

The report came with the option to automatically post it to your blog, though I declined to do that here as I found the formatting awkward and inconsistent with the theme I use.  But if you really want to see a full report, I did post the one for EVE Online Pictures just to see what it looked like. (Awkward and inconsistent.)

But getting three reports let me see something that somebody might not notice if they only had a single blog or perhaps multiple blogs that got about the same number of page views over the course of the past year.  The report has a “Blog Health-o-Meter” as part of the package, and it is, I gather, based on the number of page views your blog received in 2010.

So, for example, this was the meter reading for The Ancient Gaming Noob:

Health of The Ancient Gaming Noob

I think that “Wow” is their assessment of the blog and not an indication of what I a lot of my posts are about.

And then they include some text to give some basis to the reading of the meter.

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 460,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 20 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, you wrote 396 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1763 posts. You uploaded 894 pictures, taking up a total of 160mb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.

20 days of Louvre traffic.  So that is what it takes to get my reading on the meter. (The site actually had 473,063 page views, but I guess I fell into a bucket of 460-475K or the like.)

So there, I thought, is the scale.

Then I went and looked at the EVE Online Pictures report, which had this meter reading:

Health of EVE Online Pictures

Not bad.  I’m on fire, which I guess is a good thing.  And given the size of the whole meter and the difference in position between the two blogs, you might guess that EVE Online Pictures is somewhere in the same zone as TAGN.

Here is what WordPress.com said:

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 38,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, you wrote 107 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 308 posts. You uploaded 155 pictures, taking up a total of 59mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The ratio there is about 12 to 1 in favor of TAGN, something you don’t really get a sense of from the meter. (The actual page view number is 38,966 for 2010, so they were closer this time around.)

And we learn that the Lourve is more than twice as popular as the Taj Mahal.  I bet you didn’t know that!

And then there is Star Trek Online Pictures, which I suspended posting to when I stopped playing regularly, which wasn’t that long after launch.  Here is the meter for that:

Health of Star Trek Online Pictures

Doing awesome, up there on the line between the green and the… not green section of the meter.  And what does it take to get on the line like that?

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

In 2010, you wrote 13 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 21 posts. You uploaded 25 pictures, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

There is about a 17 to 1 ratio in favor of EVE Pics and a 209 to 1 ratio in favor of TAGN, but still in the green.  They were nearly spot on with the number of page views (2246 total) and they left me with the strange desire to calculate how many 747-400 jets it would take to transport all the visitors to the Louvre… or the Taj Mahal… or both.

But the scale of the meter, that is still somewhat ambiguous.

Okay, I get it.  WordPress.com is in the business of hosting blogs and you get people to pay for services by encouraging them.  With that goal you can’t really send people a meter with the arrow all the way to the left and the caption, “Nobody even knows you exist!” then compare them to, say, the number of live births at the North Pole and expect that to be a winning formula for customer encouragement and retention.

And maybe the green segment has significance.  Maybe you do not even get a chart if you do not meet a certain minimum threshold.

I have two other blogs that I was experimenting with at one point, one of which got 516 page views in 2010, and one which got 5.  I did not get a report for either of those.  Then again, maybe they haven’t gotten that far down the list.  I wonder how many page views is at the mean of the bell curve.  With 16 million blogs hosted, I cannot imagine it is a huge number.

Do you have a WordPress.com blog?  Did you get a new year’s chart?  To what did they compare your traffic?

Do you use a different service for your blog?  Do they do anything similar?

Integrated stats is one of the main reasons I went with WordPress.com over four years ago, after experimenting with a couple of other services.  But things change.

My Demands for 2011

It is the new year, and with that comes predictions.  You can find plenty of them out there.  Lots of people have them, like Tipa, Spinks, Lum (those were predictions, right?), Green Armadillo and Keen. (More linked as I find them.)

Me?  I’m done with predictions.  Predictions come from a position of weakness!  I think my 2008, 2009, and 2010 predictions pretty much prove that.

For 2011 I am making demands!

And if my demands are not met, there will be consequences!  Consequences I tell you!

You have until December 15th to meet these demands!

Blizzard:

Stop looking so damn smug.  Tell us what Titan is,  ship Diablo III, and add some more content to the top end of World of Warcraft.  I swear half the game is already level 85.  Oh, and another sparkle pony, but something a little less frou-frou this time.  And an expansion for StarCraft II.  Somebody has to sell some PC games this year.

Sony Online Entertainment:

Smedley? SMEDLEY!  Pull yourself together.  I know those PlayStation people are bossing you around, but you make money.  Certainly more than they make on hardware.  Refine what you have.  More server merges.  Reconcile EverQuest II Live and EverQuest II Extended.  Work on the PC controls for DC Universe Online because I am NOT hooking up a console controller to my PC just to play it.  And finish with the Agency already, you’re starting to embarrass us all.

Cryptic:

Just go free to play across the board already.  Champions and Star Trek Online.  Everybody else is doing it.  But don’t screw over the lifetime subscribers.  And when you go free to play, make sure you have something shiny and new to bring people back.  Oh, and Neverwinter, get it out this year and don’t screw it up!

BioWare:

Everybody is watching you.  You’re not making some single player game.  You’re making an engine, an engine that is supposed to take in money and deliver the joy of being in the Star Wars universe.  Don’t let those wankers in San Mateo make you ship early.  Meanwhile, since you guys seem to be in the MMO driver’s seat at EA, for now, don’t screw around with Ultima Online, but do something about Warhammer Online.  You’re bright guys, you’ll figure something out.

CCP:

Will you put that drink down already?  EVE is still going, still making money, still popular, still unique, I get it.  And you are improving it over time.  But really, you’re starting to look like a one-trick pony.  What are all those people in Atlanta doing?  You don’t have to ship something new this year, but at least make us believe you’re really working on something new.  We’re starting to think you’re spending all that money you make on akvavit and exotic dancers.

NCsoft:

Aion, City of Whatever, and Guild Wars.  Is that really all you have going in North America?  Well, there is Lineage II I suppose.  And what do you have on your to do list?  Blade & Soul?  Really?  Don’t bother.  And let Guild Wars 2 gestate to full term, which means don’t ship it in 2011.

Trion Worlds:

Your big opportunity is coming.  Ship Rift at just about the time when WoW Players have finally wrapped up the high-end content and you could get… a stable half a million subscribers.  Okay, that isn’t WoW numbers, but history shows that most people just stick with their favorite MMO forever due to the social network they develop.  Hrmm… that is sounding like a prediction, not a demand.  Okay, go and get a half a million subscribers already!  By June!  With your shield or on it and all that!

Other MMO Studios:

Which of you is even poised to do anything in 2011?  TERA is going to be another Asian oddity, soon forgotten by the mainstream.  It was all that Aventurine could do to ship Darkfall, they won’t be doing anything else. Funcom won’t get The Secret World out in 2011, they’re more likely to cut more staff.  All of you other studios, select a champion and send it out to do battle.  Yes, it can be TERA if you cannot find anything else, but I’m telling you it is going to be completely forgettable.

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw:

When Star Wars: The Old Republic ships this year, review it.  I know, it is a muh-more-puh-gah, but this is Star Wars and BioWare.  I demand it.  We all demand it!

Dr. Richard Bartle:

You were awfully quiet in 2010.  And you’ve got your three level 85s in WoW now. (A very common claim these days.)  Go say something controversial.  Declare WoW dead.  Predict SWTOR will be a failure as a virtual world.  Make some news.  Do an interview with those people at Massively.  They’ll print anything you say.

Points?

I suppose you expect me to assign points to these, and to score my success at the end of the year?  Screw that.  If my demands are not met, I will just sit back and announce the consequences.  And I have 11 or so months to work on that.  Remember, you have until December 15th!

Looking Back at 2010 – Highs and Lows

Yesterday I looked forward to figure out where I might be headed in the new year, at least for MMOs. (There are some single and multi-player games on my list, but that is another post.)

Today, it is time to look back at what came to pass in 2010, or at least what came to pass in my little corner of the gaming world.

Lord of the Rings Online

Highs:

• The instance group had a great summer diversion from WoW into Middle-earth.  LOTRO gets better every time I go back to it.
• I had more fun than I probably should have playing with the music system in LOTRO.
• The transition to Free to Play seemed to be mostly a good thing for the game.  There were a lot more people playing.  And Turbine has been adjusting what is free and what you need to purchase from the LOTRO Store based on feedback.
• I feel quite satisfied, as a Lifetime Subscriber, as to how I was treated as part of the transition to F2P.

Lows:

• Only four of us hit Middle-earth, and since there is no mentoring or “buy a level” method in LOTRO, there seems little likelihood that we will be able to carry on past where we stand with the whole group involved.
• Still haven’t seen Moria yet. (Only 8 levels away though!)  And Mirkwood?

EverQuest

Highs:

• It still lives!  And look at how many servers it still has!  Not bad considering its age.
• Now has housing in what looks to be an interesting mix of the EQII and LOTRO approaches.  It is really well done, given the architecture and interface that EQ has been carrying along with it for nearly 12 years.
• Server merges, once I could find my characters, beefed up the visible population somewhat.

Lows:

• Only focused sustaining the current population, though that is probably both the right and practical choice.  It just makes me a little sad to have to admit that there just isn’t going to be any significant new player base.
• Server populations feel pretty small even post-merger.  I suspect we’ll see another round soon.
• The game is really feeling its age.  Every time I go back the interface feels older and more cobbled together.

EverQuest II

Highs:

• EverQuest II Extended is bringing in enough people to its single server to make the game feel more alive than it has in a long, long time.
• New Halas is a good starting area and if you follow the quest line all the way through, you get a mount as a quest reward.  One more for the “why didn’t you do that sooner?” list.
• The integrated quest guide functionality really helps out in New Halas.
• The basic New Halas housing makes the old single room cells we got as housing in the racial ghettos at launch seem like… well… single room cells. (Though they are now two-room cells these days.)
• The Revelry and Honor guild hall (on Guk) is still awe inspiring, and in a much less game-lagging sort of way.

Lows:

• EverQuest II Extended has effectively ended any possible influx of new players for the old EverQuest II servers.  How soon until EverQuest II live is just the Antonia Bayle server?
• On the server with my main characters (Crushbone), nobody on my friends list or in either of my guilds is still playing.
• The integrated quest guide appears to be a work in progress, at least in some of the older zones.
• The rest of the New Halas housing looks just like the basic from what I have seen, with a room added here or there.  I’ll just stick with the basic.
• Eyesore marketing.  EQII deserves better.
• The Freeblood Station Cash Grab.  $65 for the race and all the accessories.
• The loss of Stargrace as a subscriber.

TorilMUD

Highs:

• TorilMUD is still up and running.  I’ve only been logging into it since the Fall of 1993.
• ZMud still works for me on Windows 7!  More than a decade of triggers, scripts, and macros preserved a while longer!

Lows:

• Oy, you think EverQuest or EverQuest II Live have population problems?

Star Trek Online

Highs-

• It shipped!  A Star Trek MMO at last!
• My classic NCC-1701 ship model looks great!  I love it!  I make original series sound effects whey I fly it!
• Seems to be getting all sorts of of new episodic updates.

Lows –

• Apparently it wasn’t the game I wanted.  If you ask me, I’ll tell you I like the game, and I’ll mean it when I say it, but I obviously can’t be trusted to speak the truth.  It is installed.  I keep it patched.  I never play. Damn.
• Then there is the whole C-Store thing…

Civilization V

Highs-

• Gets back to the series roots and what made my most favorite Civ game, Civ II, great.
• Actually runs well on my new machine.

Lows-

• Gets just as laborious to manage as you get closer to the end game (unless you’re losing badly) as Civ II
• Ghandi the Terrible! (Supposed to be fixed with the latest patch)
• Didn’t run at all on my old machine for no reason I could divine.
• Individual Civs and tiny scenarios as for-pay downloadable content?  I’ll wait for a big Steam sale.  And then I’ll wait some more.

Total Annihilation

Highs-

• Atari updated it so it has a single, all-in-one installer and it runs on my new machine.
• Game Ranger supports online multiplayer for TA.
• Continues to be one of my three best-ever RTS games. (the other two being StarCraft and Age of Kings)

Lows-

• I still don’t have anybody to play against. (Same for Age of Kings, and I am so out of practice with StarCraft I get slaughtered by the sharks on BNet so fast it is scary.)

Pokemon

Highs:

• HeartGold and SoulSilver continued the tradition of improving the Pokemon franchise in many ways with each release, both large and small.
• Lots of downloadable events.
• National Pokedex complete, including the rare, special event Pokemon.
• I am totally ready for Black and White this coming March.

Lows:

• I still need 325,217 steps to max out the Pokewalker.  I wear the damn thing everywhere.  Obviously I need to walk more or rebuild the Pokewalker LEGO machine… and then hide it from the cats.
• We didn’t get all of the download events they got in Japan. (Where is my special Celebi?)
• WiFi co-op play in HeartGold and SoulSilver limited to battles.   I miss the underground from Diamond and Pearl.
• Pokemon Ranch was no help at all.

Wii

Highs:

• LEGO Harry Potter shows that Traveller’s Tales still has the magic.
• Netflix Streaming… the downloadable version.  Perfect for our current setup, which includes a 14 year old 32″ tube TV.  And there are a lot of MST3K episodes available.
• Just Dance – If only Wii Music could have been that good.
• My daughter loves Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Lows:

• The Wii, on the other hand, seems extremely taxed playing LEGO Harry Potter.  At first I thought there was something wrong with the game, but it is the Wii huffing and puffing trying to keep up. The LEGO games look much better on the XBox 360 or PS3.  It is time for some better hardware from Nintendo.
• Netflix Streaming selection is still too small… and too random.  How do you make season 2 of a series available on streaming, but season 1 not?  I know, it is all in the licensing details, but they need to get those details worked out.
• I totally suck at Super Mario Bros. Wii.  My daughter and her little pals play, and I am the one always in the bubble.

World of Warcraft

Highs-

• The instance group is back together in Azeroth
• I can fly in old Azeroth! OMFG that is so worth it!  Especially with my druid.
• An all new race to play, redone level 1-60 content to go through, including updated instances, plus guilds have levels and achievements that give access to interesting things.
• With only five levels to cap out, I am taking it easy and enjoying the new content.
• The game is still smooth and polished and a lot of fun to play with my friends and family.

Lows-

• Once the instance group hits 60, there are 20 levels of unchanged content between us and the next new thing.
• Level 85 seems to come awfully quick for most.  Nobody else seems to be taking it easy.
• Can’t fly in some parts of meso and neo Azeroth.
• Guild levels come very slowly for small guilds.  I think we’re 25% of the way to level 2.  Achievements are also easier for bigger guilds.
• More reputation grinds… including one with your own damn guild!  I helped found the guild five years ago, and now I’m neutral with it?
• Gear inflation – my best welfare epics: Gearscore 245.  My first green drop at Mt. Hyjal: Gearscore 272.  My hunter gained a base 100 DPS rating by trading in his blue gun for the first green quest reward gun.
• Wintergrasp is dead… and when it isn’t, I end up getting owned by level 85s with gearscores that seem to be an order of magnitude above my own.

Blizzard in General

Highs:

• Still the brightest star in the PC games sales chart, with booming sales of StarCraft II and Cataclysm.
• Hasn’t been completely destroyed by Bobby Kotick yet.
• Tenacious D – Completely uncensored at BlizzCon.  Told my daughter she could watch until the first swear word.  She barely got to watch a minute.
• Gave Red Shirt guy his due.

Lows:

• Didn’t ship Diablo III… or give us a release date.
• Didn’t tell us a damn thing at BlizzCon.  We had to find stuff out this way.
• Forcing RealID on users who want to post to the forums?  That didn’t piss anybody off…
• RealID and Facebook integration plans in general.
• I still hate the new BNet Parental Controls window.  Firefox doesn’t seem to like it either.  There may be a correlation.
• It is starting to get easier to count the people I know who play WoW and who HAVEN’T had their accounts hacked.
• Still no cast list for the Warcraft movie.

Facebook

Highs:

• Family Feud – Comes in great, bite-sized doses and you can help your friends score more… or embarrass yourself in front of them.  The answers piss you off, but in a good way.  You feel smarter than your fellow man and woman.
• Warzone Tower Defense – In the MindJolt section, it isn’t really a Facebook game, you can play it other places, but I first found it on Facebook.  It is fun.

Lows:

• FarmVille, FrontierVille, and most everything else became an annoying, wall-filling, endless notification grind.  Not for me.
• I actually made a Facebook category for this site.  eeew.
• Those pirates at Zynga still haven’t sent me my damn FarmVille fridge magnet!  And they not only kept my magnet, but they probably sold my mailing address to somebody along the way.

Other Semi-Related Items

Highs:

• Scott Hartsman’s back and looking like all win with Rift
• Duke Nukem (and 2K Games) might have the last laugh after all.  Hail to the chief, baby!
• The MMO market in general looks like it is in for an uptick in the coming year.
• EALouse get’s it all off his chest.  I’m not sure any of it was a surprise though.

Lows:

• APB… I blinked and missed it.
• MassiveBlips, gone… and probably forgotten.  Who will continue to decide who runs the #1 WoW blog?
• For what seemed like forever this past Spring and Summer, Derek Smart and David Allen just could not shut up.  Well, at least until somebody got paid off and went away quietly.  (Okay, it was like Jerry Springer, we decried it, but we couldn’t look away.)
• The EALouse comment thread makes Derek and David look like the pinnacle politeness and restraint.

The Blog

Highs:

• Lots of great comments from the regular readership.  Tobold has a point, being less popular generally begets better quality.  There is probably a lesson in that which applies outside of blogging.
• Very little trollish behavior aside from SynCaine… and he can’t help it, he just foams at the mouth when somebody says “World of Warcraft.”
• Still writing regularly after more than four years.
• Writing and recording stuff that I enjoy going back and looking at years later, which was my main goal for the site.  This is my gaming memory.
• A very high complement and honor paid to me in the form of a mention from Massively.  Thank you so very much.

Low:

• I have a backlog of things I want to write about, much of which I fear I will never get to or, worse, that I’ll simply forget.
• I never got to a bunch of things that were somewhat topical and have since lost some meaning, but which I should have recorded at the time, if only for context.
• My most popular posts this year involved a World Cup predicting octopus, Talking Cats Playing Patty Cake, and Blood Elf Porn.  Now you know the secret to popularity.
• I still cannot find another WordPress.com theme that I like better than Regulus.  Not that I need to change, but something in my keeps looking. (Something in that probably explains men.)
• I looked at my site the other day without being logged in and saw the ads that WordPress.com slips in for the readers.  Gold seller ads.  I swear, I didn’t know.

And that was about it for 2010, wasn’t it?  Thank you all for being involved!

Now what highs or lows did I miss in my myopia?

Reviewing My 2010 Predictions

Oh yeah, I made a bunch of crazy predictions back in January, didn’t I?

For some reason last year I changed my predictions format from a set of paragraph long generalizations to a series of one line, very specific (well, mostly) guesses at the future.  I think I was pressed for time and the humor muse had not bothered to visit.  Plus it was always hard to score those paragraphs, especially since I seemed to insist on points. (I have accounting in my background, I must quantify everything!)

Now, of course, we’re here at the end of the year and I have discovered the flaw in my plan; I need to go figure out whatinthehell I got right or wrong.  And there are like a bunch of them, some of which I have not bothered to pay attention to and others about which I really didn’t give a damn in the first place but was trying to get to a 200 point total for some maniacal round-number reason.

Anyway, what’s done is done.  Next year I think I am going to go back to big predictions and a pass/fail model.  Or something.

I started on this Thanksgiving weekend and, because of apathy, I haven’t found all the answers yet.  Fortunately, other people have started posting their prediction results, so I can crib from that a bit.  Plus I’ll make you, the reader, correct my mistakes.  How about that?

So let’s see how good that cold medication was last December.  What did I predict?

Predictions for Blizzard in 2010! (5 points each)

• StarCraft II – Will ship second quarter 2010 – Missed by 27 days, 0 points
• Cataclysm – Will ship fourth quarter 2010 – A pretty safe guess, 5 points
• Cataclysm – Will beat WotLK’s 24 hour sales record – Yes indeed.  I do wonder how much digital pre-orders helped.  5 points
• Diablo III – Will not ship in 2010 – Another safe one, in my opinion, 5 points
• New MMO – An announcement at BlizzCon with the usual Blizzard mystery build-up – Nothing at BlizzCon, 0 Points

15 out of 25 points

Big Miss – RealID and Battle.net focus?  I’m not sure those were that big in the end.

Sony Online Entertainment predictions! (5 points each)

• Planetside – Dead by December – Still alive… barely… but I always thought that The Agency had to come online before it went. 0 points
• Norrath – Official details about the next Norrath based MMORPG some time in 2010 – We artist conceptions and some vague information, so I’m claiming 3 out of 5 points
• Norrath – The next Norrath based MMORPG won’t be called EverQuest III – Do we have that in writing? No? 0 points
  EverQuest II – All digital distribution after the February expansion – I don’t see Destiny of Velious listed at Amazon.com, so I’m taking this as a yes. – 5 points.
• EverQuest – The next round of server consolidation will happen, and it will be a good thing – And so it was.  I should have predicted it for EQII as well. – 5 points
• The Agency – Won’t ship in 2010 – Saying The Agency won’t ship is like betting against the Cubs, and no, the Facebook game does not count – 5 points
• PlayStation 3 – SOE still won’t have a PS3 MMO title by the end of 2010 – The put Free Realms on the Mac, but no PS3 support yet.  They’ve been talking about stuff on the PS3 since E3 in 2008 at least… go listen to VW Podcast #125… and still nothing.  You guys at SOE work for the PlayStation people now, right? – 5 points

23 out of 30 points

Big Miss – A free to play version of EQII

What will EA do? (5 Points each)

SWTOR – Not in 2010, no no no. – Another safe bet – 5 points

WAR – Won’t die in 2010, but won’t magically spring back to life either.  It will just trudge on with enough resources to keep it going and improve it slightly, but not enough to change anything dramatically. – Vague enough for 5 points

10 out of 10 points

Big miss – Umm… Lord of Ultima?  Was there a UO expansion or something?

Turbine predictions (5 points each)

• LOTRO – Next expansion, announced in 2010, will be the Riders of Rohan! – Isengard, not Rohan – 0 points
• LOTRO – Riders of Rohan will feature real mounted combat – 0 points
• DDO – Continued success under the free to play banner with a push into some overland content – vaguely fulfilled – 1 point
• New – We’ll hear about Turbine’s next project in 2010. – Not so much – 0 points

1 out of 20 points

Big Miss – LOTRO going free to play

CCP Predictions (5 points each)

• Station ambulation – Still just a myth in 2010 – Again, like betting against the Cubs – 5 points
• Dust 514 – Not for 2010 – What was that? – 5 points
• EVE – Two Content Releases, don’t we always get two a year? – Well, we got 1.1 expansions – 2 points
• EVE – Tech III ships will finally become common enough that you might actually see one now and again. – I have one and, while flying it, have ended up at a jump gate with another, is that common enough? – 5 points

17 out of 20 points

Big Miss – What was the big CCP story this year?

Runic Games (5 points each)

• An inexpensive expansion will be released for Torchlight to keep funding going for Runic’s MMO – Nope – 0 points
• Runic will give us some concrete details about said MMO – Nope – 0 points
• That MMO won’t ship in 2010 – Well, they didn’t announce it, so 0 points
• But said details will make some pundit say, “Wow, that’s what Dungeon Runners should have done.” – 0 points

0 out of 20 points.  I thought they would move faster than they are.

Big Miss – Multiplayer Torchlight, sort of the interim step between the first game and the MMO.

NCSoft (5 points each)

• Aion – Going to seem like a replay of Lineage II, popular in Asia, less so in the west.  Still, it will have enough customers to keep going.  Given how readily NCSoft shuts things down, that will be saying something. – Um, I can’t even answer that – 0 points
• GuildWars 2 – Not for 2010 – 5 points
• PlayStation 3 – NCSoft still won’t have a PS3 MMO title by the end of 2010 – I guess I can let that old SCEA/NCSoft agreement die now – 5 points

10 out of 15 points

Other Titles (5 points each)

• Darkfall – Will continue walking the tightrope between hardcore PvP focus and giving players something to do when they aren’t actively engaged in battle.  Slow growth with at most a single server added to the game for 2010. – Sounds vaguely right, but SynCaine will correct me – 5 points
• Star Trek Online – Won’t disappoint Trek fans, but we’re all co-dependent on the franchise after years of reckless treatment by the studio.  We’ll all still be there after the first 30 days playing with our pre-order bonus items.  The rest of you people though… – I stopped playing, so there is a big claim I missed – 0 points
• Hero’s Journey – It was best of show at E3 in 2005, but it will still be a no-show in 2010. – Like betting against the Twins – 5 points (Amusingly, Simutronics now has a somewhat whiny entry in their Hero Engine FAQ about Hero’s Journey, saying that the work for it is all in the Hero Engine so stop bugging them about it already.  Anyway, Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the eventual showcase for their work, pretty much the make or break I’d guess.)

10 out of 15 points

MMO Industry

The following people will have new companies and new projects announced in 2010 (2 point each):

• Mark Jacobs – No word here – 0 points
• Richard Garriott – Some awful Facebook thing – 2 points
• Bill Roper – Still at Cryptic doing… something – 0 points
• Brian Green – Umm… The Fae’s Wyrd was a project, right?  – 2 points
• Scott Hartsman – Rift, about which so many are talking of late – 2 points

6 out of 10 points

One of the following companies will announce their first/next project, and it won’t be an MMO (5 points):

• Aventurine – no announcement
• Carbine Studios – no announcement
• Red5 Studios – Firefall – it is an online, co-op shooter, so not really a traditional MMO –   5 points
• Simutronics – no announcement
• Turbine – No announcement

5 points

One of the following people will move to Canada (5 points):

• Scott Jennings
• Mark Jacobs
• Brian Green
• Scott Hartsman
• Richard Bartle
• Alan Crosby
• David Reid

Isn’t there some Canadian sovereign territory at Disneyland?  No?  0 points

Spurious Logic Random neurons firing for the following guesses.

Most subscription MMOs that sell vanity items like pets or appearance gear will sell custom mounts by the end of 2010.  WoW and EQ2 will be the benchmark. (5 points) – erm… can’t really say yes to that – 0 points

“Yahtzee” Croshaw will review exactly ONE muh-more-puh-gah on Zero Punctuation during 2010, and it will be Star Trek Online.  He won’t like it (duh) but the Trekkie humor will be too much for him to resist doing a review. (5 points) – Nope, 0 points

We will find out that the following people will be appearing or doing voice work in the Warcraft movie (IMDB  shows no actors as of this date – 1 point each):

• Jack Black
• William Shatner
• Keanu Reeves
• Ben Stein
• James Earl Jones
• John Ratzenberger
• Bruce Campbell
• Sarah Silverman
• David Spade
• Lucy Lawless

Nothing – No cast announcements yet.  IMDB puts it as a possible 2013 release – 0 points

0 out of 20 points

Total Points

My first pass, hand-waving total is 97 out of 200 points.

Not bad for my mix of obvious slam-dunks and way off the reservation guesses I suppose.

Now, I will look to comments for corrections and will post an updated score once people point out that I was really wrong about those 97 points and that my total should be much lower.

So correct me already.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a less intensive set of predictions for next year.