Wolvorine

Okay, I was asked what I don’t like about Arcanaville's ideas, so I’ll try to explain the problems I see with them.

The simple answer is, this takes the MMO out of the MMO, and as kind of an afterthought tries to slap it back on at the end with some duct tape. That doesn’t tend to work very well though. But I’ll try to be more specific than that.
What follows may or may not be very organized, it’s going to be the things that occur to me as they occur to me while I write.

The basic idea is very much, as others have mentioned, how Neverwinter Nights worked. The problem with that is that how NWN did multiplayer was great *on paper*. But in reality it was a d@mned mess. The shard lists were endless (how shall I chose?), nearly all of them were modded to hell and back (now I have to go research every shard I consider to find out the changes, and possibly DL all of the custom content for the really enterprising ones), once I chose one (and maybe finished DLing and installing the cool mod stuff) I log into a virtual ghost-town because that near-endless list of shards has diluted the playerbase to the point that you nearly never see more than a small handful of people on any given shard.

And that was what NWN was like. I played it a Lot, and it never got any better.

Ultima Online private shards were exponentially worse. Pretty much every one was code-modded beyond recognition. To extend the UO private shards to a CoX analogy… I don’t want to log into CoX with a new character and find I have 100,000,000 Inf, five of every piece of rare invention salvage, and a full set of the best two invention sets for my ArchType.

And that was what player-run UO shards were like. Played those a Lot too.

Another problem that NWN shards had was that putting up a shard in the first place was something nearly no one wanted to do. You had to learn SO MUCH (to the casual player) before you could even start to try to set one up. How complicated will setting up your little CoX server and configuring it to communicate with the server hubs et al be? Because unless it’s nearly entirely automated, most people won’t bother.

And how does one go about becoming a ‘Trusted’ server? How much work (and waiting to be validated) is that going to entail? Because I can’t really play much with other people with the character I’ve been playing single-player until I do that, because I really don’t want to have my character get gimped out just because I wanted to play with other people. But if it’s too much work to become ‘Trusted’, many people won’t bother regardless. Not to mention the way it often works out in games that use this ‘Trusted Server’ approach is that these Trusted Servers end up becoming the special superstars of that game’s social hierarchy, and that leads to Ego problems, which leads to abuse of those who aren’t the special snowflakes. Always expect the worst, even with a better-than-average community like this one, because you’re going to get at least some of it.

As for the single-player experience, again this sounds groovy *on paper*. But then I consider how much fun it’ll be to try running a low-level Controller in a private world where there is no help, no Tank or Scrapper to pull agro for me… and suddenly I’m having visions of the old CoH Beta days and everyone starts just creating heal-tanks because they can *survive*.

This idea also loses something that is central to an MMO: Persistence. Persistence is crucial to an MMO experience, because if we aren’t all seeing the same thing, then we aren’t playing in a shared worldspace, and that’s one of the points of an MMO. But if you’ve broken the experience down into various player-centric shards then you don’t have any actual persistent world. And as much as I’m sure a lot of people will rail against this statement, the central story is NOT that of Your character. The central story is the story of the world we’re playing in. You are a character in that story. Are you the Main character in that story? You are to you, probably. But the fact remains that the Story is that of the world we play in. But this proposal has taken the world we play in and called that part of the whole unimportant.

Now you can say that the forum community is where the community actually happens, but the people who visit the forums is actually a very small number of the players and everyone knows it. If you try to make the forums the social aspect of the game, then you’ve cut out the majority of the playerbase who doesn’t come here. That means those players now have no social aspect to the game, and stop playing.

So we add chat channels, right? But those chat channels are only going to reach the server we’re playing on. That wasn’t much of a problem with the CoX we have now, just change servers, there’s only so many to chose from. But in your proposal we now have as many servers as people who want to put one up. The playerbase is scattered from hell to breakfast and unless I have some way of contacting my in-game friends outside of the game then I have no way to know where they play. So now I’ve lost the ability to play with the people I like to play with, unless we all communicate outside of the game as well.

Basically, this idea fractures the playerbase, shatters the social aspects of the game, introduces layers upon layers of unnecessary complications to just the simple act of playing the game, sets up hurtles to new players in the form of those complications of getting into the game and playing it, likely isolates existing micro-communities, and likely introduces wildly divergent gameplay experiences between players.
In short, it takes the MMO out of the MMO.

Just to add another voice to the topic... this sound horrid, and I wouldn't play it.

Not in the least, no.

Not to mention Wil Wheaton. Last I knew he was a legit lover of geekdom and gamedom.

My first MMO was... Ultima Online, actually. And it ended in hurt feelings and my swearing I would never get involved in an MMO or any kind of pay-to-play Anything ever again. Some years later my best friend started harping me about playing this new game he was playing. He knew I was an old comics fan, and he tried to leverage that into getting me to play. I refused. For a few years I refused. "Never again, man", I said.

Eventually he bought me a copy of City of Heroes and paid for the first couple of months subscription, and I relented. And my subscription has been active for the last I'm not sure how many years, and I fell in love with this game. I just kind of assumed it'd always be there. I play, my friends play, my kids and their mother play. It's a central connection that everyone I care about shares. And now it's been killed, and I still - days after the announcement - feel like I've been punched.

Matt, if you guys were able to find a financial backer that could pay everyone at Paragon Studios a minimum living wage while you guys wrote a new engine, developed new art assets to go with it, re-tooled the IP to be non-infringing, and would extend the studio a loan for starting servers (I wish I were that person, if I had the money I would be in a heartbeat)... I would be here when you all were finished with my CC in hand ready to step back on-board with you guys. I know that's a ridiculous scenario, but I hate the idea of Paragon Studios breaking apart as you all find new jobs. I'll miss you guys, and this game, and everything we all had with it.

The part about this that's starting to make me think is Recluse, and how they're going to write him in reaction to all this.
First, I wouldn't expect Recluse to be like "Oh, someone killed Statesman. Good." No, I'd expect Recluse to be PO'ed that someone ELSE killed Statesman. But that's a relatively minor point really.
Because I think that Recluse is next on the chopping block, perhaps even in this SSA arc.

Recluse's brother-in-law has been killed, his niece has been killed, by some little Rouge Isles nobody. Not only that, but The Power of Zeus has been jacked by some Rogue Isles nobody. That's a MAJOR problem. Because that little Rogue Isles nobody now has the power to possibly take Recluse down and take over Arachnos AND the Rogue Isles if he so wishes. Recluse simply can't afford to let that stand.

^^^^^
This sums up my thoughts pretty much completely. I hated it when CCGs did it, and I hate it more in the MMO I love to play enough that I pay to subscribe to it (which, for me - regardless of subscription price - is a Huge deal).

I have to agree with the general consensus here... I like the dog, I'd buy the dog (even as a non-combat vanity pet, although I really don't like pure vanity pets for the most part). I'd love to help support the development of the 4-legged rig and it's potential uses.
But at 500 pts, I just can't justify that expense. Even at a lower price I'd have to debate it for a PURELY vanity pet.

Again, I'd really like to buy the dog, I just can't do it at anything like this price.

Mythus Prime (SS/Invul tank) is the avatar of Horus, so he'd be an Incarnate of Horus.

Death to Statesman! My god why won't you just die!!?

Please?

I know I'm late to the party and all,
best wishes to BABs, he'll be missed.

Since I said I'd report back, I tried Cende's advice and it worked beautifully. Thank you again.