The Digital Continuum: Single-player MMO

Injecting the single-player special sauce into MMOs is hardly a new idea. In fact Phantasy Star Online has done it more than once in the past. It's also been done in small amount, though. Nobody has taken the chance to go all out and merge the single-player and massively multiplayer styles of gaming together like a tasty digital version of peanut butter and chocolate.

My recent excursion into the Age of Conan closed beta has made me realize that I really enjoy having some singleplayer flavor in my massively multiplayer online games. There is definitely something to be said for a game that can give you the best of both worlds: solo story and grouping experiences.



Let me put it in another way. When recounting my exploits in the recently released GTA IV, I can have different types of amazing experiences from the offline mode versus the online multiplayer mode. I think that MMOs can harness this as well.

The recent purchase of Diablo3.com by Blizzard was perfect in its timing, as it got me thinking about what that game could be like. I really think that if Blizzard was going to make Diablo 3 at this point, it wouldn't be anything like the last two games. Diablo is dead, Baal is dead -- so what else can be done at this point?

A new world with new characters could be one thing. Maybe even a new storyline involving Diablo himself would be worth exploring. The big difference could be in the way the game is designed: as a single-player MMO.

It's simply, really. If you've ever played the first two Diablo games then you remember how much fun the single-player experience was. Just keep the singleplayer side of the game while throwing out the multiplayer aspect for more of an MMO experience. Blizzard could use an upgraded version of their Battle.net service to have players login to the play the single-player game (as to avoid cheating and such) and then if players wanted to they could jump into the MMO version of the game at one point or another. Of course, in Age of Conan you have to wait until you're level 20 to get into the full-blown MMO aspects of the game. I suppose a similar restriction would have to be put into place for Diablo 3.

All it really comes down to letting people choose the kind of experience they want from an RPG. Nobody has really done a full-on single-player RPG that dovetails into a complete persistent online RPG. There are all sorts of chances to blend together different gameplay experiences with a single-player MMO. You can have the traditional solo experience, play with a friend co-op style or even play the entire game like a big story-focused instance with five or more friends. Just imagine the kind of water cooler-style discussions you'd be able to have with friends about all your shared exploits. There are some very cool possibilities here.

Allowing people to play in the way they want with the people they want is what's most important about this idea, that's the single-player MMO at its core.

Source : Massively.com

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World of Warcraft: Children's Week Begins

Type: Children's Holiday
Date: May 1 - 7
Location: Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Shattrath

Sightseeing



Stormwind Orphanage

All orphans wish they had someone to show them the wonders of the world. Throughout the year, they spend their time wandering around their home cities of Stormwind or Orgrimmar, dreaming of the day they'll be old enough (and big enough) to venture out into the world alone and see the sights their parents would have shown them. During Children's Week, though, brave adventurers for the Horde and the Alliance can make these kids' dreams come true! To help these kids see the world, all you have to do is visit the orphanage for your faction. Talk to either Orphan Matron Nightingale in Stormwind (Alliance) or Orphan Matron Battlewail in Orgrimmar (Horde). After that, you and your young friend can adventure together across Azeroth! Below are some of the places and people the orphans want to visit:

Orgrimmar Orphanage

* The bank in Darnassus (Alliance)
* The lighthouse in Westfall (Alliance)
* Jaina Proudmoore in Theramore (Alliance)
* Mor'shan Rampart (Horde)
* Lordaeron Throne Room (Horde)
* Cairne Bloodhoof in Thunder Bluff (Horde) Source : WarCry

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Final Fantasy XI 2008 Edition hits stores May 28th

Square Enix has announced that they plan on releasing the 2008 edition of Final Fantasy XI at the end of this month on May 28th. The box will come with the original game plus every expansion released to date. That means players will get Final Fantasy XI, Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, and Wings of the Goddess all in one purchase.



This is nothing new from Square Enix, as they've done this the past couple of years. We would just like to thank them for keeping all the expansions purchasable in a single box, as it makes things a lot easier on newer players trying to get into the game -- or even returning players who've lost their original boxes.

[Update] May 28th is actually the release date for the EU version of Final Fantasy XI 2008 Edition. The US version of this bundle was released on April 15th, 2008.

Source : massively.com

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MMOS X: Is CrossOver a solution?

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

In the header blurb to this column, I state that "Running Boot Camp or Parallels is not an option here." I stand by that still. I don't think that dual-booting or loading XP within a virtual desktop is the solution any of us want. Dual booting takes up valuable hard drive space that I could use to store large media files of consenting adults. Running Parallels throws another layer of processor overhead when I run XP within Parallels within OS X. Not to mention Parallels' DirectX support is poor. Note: I haven't tried VMWare's Fusion, which is the competitor to Parallels.



A week or so ago, our own Mike Schramm wrote up a little piece on TUAW about CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games lets you run some Windows games within an emulator. It's not a pure virtual environment like Parallels, so you don't have the overhead of running two OSs. When I read Mike's piece, my first thought was, "huh." My second thought was, "Huh, I wonder if there's a middle ground here somewhere." At the risk out sounding like I'm eating my own words, CrossOver might be enough of a compromise that doesn't involve buying a copy of Windows to game on a Mac.

Look, I'm as big a proponent of Macintosh-native code as the next Kool-Aid drinker. When every game developer follows Blizzard's lead and releases retail boxes with both Windows and Macintosh versions, I'll finally be able to take off my sandwich board, get off the streets and trade in my tattered robes for a nice suit. I'll probably also get a haircut. Until that day comes -- which I'm sure will be followed by aviating sows, a cure for hunger, and a resolution to the Middle East peace crisis -- I know I'm going to have to suck up a certain amount of pride and try and find some sort of compromise. While I'm against virtualization and dual booting, I started to wonder if maybe some sort of emulation might be ok.

So, I downloaded CrossOver Games. There's a free seven-day trial; after that it's a $40 purchase. Also, for disclosure purposes, this is in no way to be considered a time-tested review; the best I've done is get some games to load and do a little combat to see how things go. Therefore, this is just my view on how things went, and what I think the future might bring.

Out of the box CrossOver Games supports two MMOs: Guild Wars and EVE (it also runs Half Life, but since this an MMO piece we'll focus on those). EVE has a Mac-native client so we'll ignore that. I installed Guild Wars and about 15 minutes later I was presented with the Guild Wars login screen. At least, I thought it was the login screen. I could see the fields where I needed to enter in my account info and some of the background image, but that was it. "Huh," I thought. "This kinda sucks."

Fortunately, CodeWeavers has a good forum with helpful people. Reading up on the Guild Wars' Tip and Tricks section told me the command-line switches I needed to run the game and where to apply them (mostly related to turning off the shaders). A few minutes later, boom, I was in Guild Wars.

Now, I've got a Macbook, so I wasn't expecting the greatest in performance. To further skew any performance matrixes I was downloading a trial and ripping a CD into iTunes (live Motley Crue, in case you were wondering). However, I found performance to be solidly in the "not bad" category.

One supported MMO does not a $40 purchase make. Fortunately, there's a list of unsupported MMOs I started reading about on the forums. One of them was City of Heroes/Villains. I downloaded the client off NCsoft's site, loaded CrossOver, told it to install unsupported software and pointed it to the CoH installer. About an hour later it was done patching and presented me with what was allegedly the login screen. Yep, same deal as before. Back to the forums, where I learned what switches I needed to apply and tweaks to the CrossOver Control Panel I needed to apply. A few minutes later, boom, I was in City of Villains.

After this, things got a little dicey. People have reported success getting EverQuest and Lord of the Rings Online working, but they require actual components from a Windows install to work. In EverQuest's case, it allegedly just needs d3dx9_30.dll, which shouldn't be all that hard to get. Lord of the Rings Online, however, requires access to a Windows install to patch the game, pretty much negating the point in my book.

You will note getting these two games running required a little bit of research. The Steve Jobs Boom Factor (TM and patent pending) came about only after a bit of forum reading and trial and error. The list of MMOs people have had success getting to work is small. If you add in the list of single-player games people have had success with, however, the balance starts to tip in CrossOver's favor. I've been stymied finding Baldur's Gate II for the Mac since it went out of print, so buying CrossOver to run it might make me reach for my wallet.

While my fantasy world has every developer creating nice little Universal Binaries for every game they make, the reality is that's not going to happen, especially for older games. Working through CrossOver, though, made me think with a little developer cooperation, more games could at least work through this emulator. Clicking on the Guild Wars and CoH icons gave me acceptable load times. I didn't have to wait for a full version of Windows XP to load, and both applications loaded about as fast as I'd expect from a Universal Binary.

Unless I've had my head in the sand, no new big-time MMO has plans to release an OS X version. So, we're years away from seeing this situation improve. Programs like CrossOver, though, might help us cross the divide in the meantime. Just be prepared for some trial and error while waiting for your boom.

Source : Massively.com

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EVE Evolved: Controversy brewing over removal of shuttles

On February 20th 2008, EVE Online's economist Dr Eyjo published his fourth quarter economic newsletter for 2007. The newsletter discussed issues ranging from deflation to what ships players use and methods for estimating the total production of Eve. Among the pages of the economic newsletter was a small section commenting on the purchases of shuttles relative to tritanium prices and the ensuing discussion seemed to focus on this. In his more recent devblog, Dr Eyjo informed pilots that following a recent patch, the infinite NPC supply of shuttles was being removed from the market in order to alleviate what he calls "an artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit".

It's no secret that shuttles and tritanium prices are linked. The effect that the supply of shuttles on the market has had on tritanium prices is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon that was even included in the second economist dev-blog back in September of 2007. If prices of tritanium ever increase above 3.6 per unit due to the laws of supply and demand in action, it becomes profitable to buy shuttles at 9000 ISK per unit and refine them into tritanium for sale or industry. The fact that there are people with perfect refine skills willing to do this for profit means that the price of tritanium can never rise any more than fractionally above 3.6 per unit before the shuttle-refiners push it back down.

Read on for a breakdown of the controversy and to find out how this change has affected the EVE markets.


Effects of the change:
The effect that this artificial price cap on tritanium has had on the market has been difficult to measure. Of the five to ten billion units of tritanium sold daily on the market in trade hub Jita, nobody knows how many unique units of tritanium are being sold and how many are being bought and resold. In his devblog announcing the change, Dr Eyjo ventured to suggest that this change "makes the mining industry more profitable", that "the price cap has been lifted" and "the price of tritanium will increase", bold claims that were put to the harsh scrutiny of the EVE populace.

In the midst of the resulting debate over whether or not an increase in tritanium prices was beneficial for the game, it became known that shuttles were not the only item upholding the artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit. After a few days of initial price rises caused by market speculation, several pilots discovered that the Civilian Afterburner I module sold in starting school stations also refined into tritanium at a rate of 3.6 ISK per unit. Costing just 216 ISK each, this module refines for 60 tritanium. Dr Eyjo was slow to respond to the issue, eventually responding several days later by suggesting that "with lower quantity available in fewer places the price cap has effectively been lifted.".

Despite these words of reassurance that the artificial price cap on tritanium had been raised, market data continues to refute that position. The price of tritanium remains stable at a level just above 3.6 per unit in the main trade hubs, being pushed down as usual when it rises above that level. With sales of civilian afterburners of over 21 million units in the past week and their massive availability on the market, it's looking like the cap of 3.6 ISK per unit is here to stay.

Dr Eyjo's recommendation to remove NPC supply of shuttles has been in the pipelines since late September 2007 and has only now reached implementation almost seven months later. With a turnaround of over six months on the initial change, some pilots are left wondering whether a resolution to this issue will even be implemented by this time next year.

Dr Eyjo left pilots with the promise that "Other price caps will be removed in due time", a promise that offers little consolation to those who invested their ISK into playing the tritanium market following his advice that prices would rise. Although tritanium prices are not set to increase in the long term, the removal of shuttles has held some benefit for the EVE markets. With no NPC supply of shuttles on the market, players can now manufacture them for profit. Newcomers to industry could produce shuttles for a substantial profit margin in outlying systems where there are none on the market yet.

The underlying problem:
The main problem with the handling of this change was the short-sighted approach that was taken with it. The economist was aware of the fact that shuttles were being reprocessed to produce tritanium but never really explored the wider issue. If he had explored the issue further, he would have noticed that other price caps exist through other NPC-sold refinable goods and would have at the very least spotted the issue with civilian afterburners. Rather than examining the underlying cause, CCP were content to patch up the most visible and immediate symptom by removing the NPC supply of shuttles.

The underlying problem is that several of EVE's components and mechanics rely on something called the NPC base mineral price index. This is a set of values for minerals which all NPC-related game mechanics use. Everything from insurance to prices of NPC-sold ships and modules uses these values and according to them, tritanium should be worth 1 ISK per unit. NPC sell orders for refinable goods are always priced at 3.6 times their total mineral value according to the NPC base mineral prices and if the minerals that can be obtained from refining the item is greater than this, the item can be purchased and refined for a profit.

With shuttles and civilian afterburners, their abuse to form the 3.6 ISK per unit tritanium price cap is due to them being made entirely of tritanium. Other items like civilian armour repairers are made of mostly tritanium and a small portion of another mineral such as pyerite which is not currently worth over 3.6 times its NPC base price. These items are not currently profitable to refine but if lower tritanium price caps are removed, that could change. These issues are all part of the bigger underlying problem - EVE is starting to show its age and some old game mechanics still rely on the now-defunct NPC base mineral values.

Whether CCP intend to deal with this underlying cause at all and how they might do so is anyone's guess right now. One thing's for sure, this is one topic I will follow with great interest.

Source : Massively.com

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