Putting the Dynamite in Dynamic Content

A Companion Piece to Tempting FATE

NOTE: This is a companion piece to my MMORPG article which looks at the history of dynamic content in MMO’s.  That piece is scheduled to publish in mid-March.  When that piece publishes, we will update this article with the link back to that column.

In my article, Tempting FATE, I discussed the origins and evolution of dynamic content in MMO’s.  In part, I wanted to counter the misconception that Guild Wars 2 invented dynamic content.  Additionally, I wanted to give credit where credit is due for the origin of ideas we associate with dynamic content.  I also wanted to identify some of the better concepts to emerge in the dynamic content arena.

One thing that stood out in that column, dynamic content has been around a lot longer than we think.  Anarchy Online introduced the first iteration of dynamic content with its Alien Invasion expansion nearly a decade ago.  In that decade, at least six MMO’s (including FFXIV 1.0) have included some aspect of dynamic content.

We are at a point where dynamic content should have an identified set of best practices.  In … Continue reading →

Thirty Days in the Sun

Search Traffic for Modern MMO’s

Note: This article is a companion piece to my upcoming MMORPG.com column.  That column should post in early March.  Once it posts, we will update this post to link back to it’s companion.

In my MMORPG.com article, I observed that FFXIV may be experiencing a bit of a rebirth.  In a Google Trends analysis I showed that, while search traffic remains low, there is a definite uptick starting at the end of February, 2013.  In this column I want to continue that analysis by depicting how there are predictable search patterns for MMO’s.

One of the observations I made in the MMORPG column is that MMO’s experience a Google Search peak right around their launch window.  As evidence of this, I present the launch window for FFXIV, The Secret World, SW:ToR, RIFT and GW2.  This figure was prepared using Google Trends examination indpendently for each title, so all of them have a 100 peak.  The correct way to interpret the changes from week to week is to think of them as a percentage of the peak week.  You can’t make comparisons between titles (other than the general … Continue reading →

Too Similar and Too Many

Commodity and Saturation Problems with Gear in MMO’s

Note: This article is the second companion piece to my similarly titled article at MMORPG.Com.  The initial companion piece examining market efficiencies in MMO’s can be found here.

In the first companion piece, I outlined market efficiency problems in MMORPG’s.  This is a response to recent announcements calling for player driven economies (good) along with abandonment of auction houses (bad).  My premise there is that removal of auction houses adds an information asymmetry to your MMO economy and that is really never a good idea.  Auction houses didn’t create a problem in MMO’s, auction houses illuminated a pre-existing problem and auction houses are now erroneously catching the blame for those problems.  

My position is that the blame the auction house crowd fall victim to a few fallacies.  First, that auction houses decrease socialization in economic transactions.  This is a sweeping over-generalization, some bargaining and haggling very much occurs in an auction house model and paying attention to where and what would be prudent.  The second fallacy is the idea that auction houses harm the smaller … Continue reading →

Of Hammers and Scales

Economics and Crafting in MMO’s

Note: This article is a companion piece to my similarly titled article at MMORPG.Com.    There is a second companion piece, here, dealing with the commoditization and saturation problem.

As I indicated over at MMORPG, MMO’s are currently in a reflective period.  We have had enough trial and failures that we are beginning to see established ideas questioned, old ideas revisited and new ideas attempted.  In general, this is a good thing and a sign that the market segment is out of its post-WoW rut.  However, during these periods of reflection we sometimes through out the good and bring in the bad.  This Eorzea Reborn entry is a discussion of one area where some odd thinking is starting to manifest: the player driven economy and what makes it tick.

It’s no surprise that gear is a key part of the MMO.  Fabled and exotic gear is as much a fundamental element of the hero saga as is the nemesis.  What, for instance, would Arthur be without Excalibur?

The question in MMO’s is where should gear come from: crafting or adventuring.  If we look at … Continue reading →

Enough with the (solo) quest hubs

A Companion Piece to “Of Augury and Speculation”

Musing on Massively Multiplayer Games

Note: This is the companion piece to my 30-Jan, MMORPG.com article. There is a second companion piece to this series located at, “what have we lost to solo play?”

In a recent post, I queried “what have we lost to solo play?”  My premise in that article was that building our game worlds around solo-based quest hubs has trivialized the MMO worlds and led us to a series of parallel solo-play games.  Feedback from the article has been quite strong, my thanks to everyone who read the article and an extra dose of thanks to those who commented (good and bad).

Detractors for the column assumed I wanted to see games return to camping, most likely due to my references to Everquest.  That, though, is a mistaken assumption.  I rarely camped in EQ (my group did nightly dungeon circuits, not sit in one room sessions) and I would rather not change one limited premise (quest hubs) for another (camping).  The second mistaken assumption regarding my last post was that I didn’t … Continue reading →

What have we lost to solo play?

A Companion Piece to “Of Augury and Speculation”

Musing on Massively Multiplayer Games

Edited Note: This is the companion piece to my 30-Jan, MMORPG.com article. There is a second companion to this column called “Enough with the (solo) quest hubs.”  You can see the rest of my MMORPG.com column here. 

In a companion piece to my MMORPG.com column about combat, I queried “what have we lost to the global cooldown?”  In those articles, I observe that the pursuit of immersive MMO combat has paradoxically produced the opposite.  MMO combat is largely repetitive and trivial and winning is virtually guaranteed in all but the hardest of encounters.  While I noted that some of that triviality is an aspect of moving away from strategic combat, there is more afoot.  I noted that:

“I also think it’s part of a number of MMO elements that have had their complexity simply watered down over the past decade.  Some of it could also be the natural evolution of “solo based” character advancement, requiring PVE encounters that can be … Continue reading →

What have we lost to the GCD?

Combat in MMO’s

A Companion Piece to Cerebral vs. Visceral

  (Note from Ryahl:  Thanks to anyone who is seeing this from the Lodestone.  Since both Aela and myself are more then a month out of playing the game at this point, we’re unable to respond to the discussion.  Please feel free to leave comments on this page, or visit my Lodestone blog if you wish to touch base or comment to either of us.)

So, my MMORPG.com article on combat styles (edit: Part 2 has now posted) has produced quite a bit of interesting commentary.  Now, that commentary is divided across a few different spectrum   Most of it is over at MMORPG.com, where the article was hosted.  But there has also been very good conversation over at Reddit in both the FFXIV and MMORPG subreddits.

One of the common themes in the comments is that MMO combat, since moving to the more action-oriented, global cooldown (GCD) style is that combat has become even more boring … Continue reading →

Raiding in MMO’s

A Companion Piece to Cerebral vs. Visceral

Over at MMORPG.com, my recent column looks at the different combat systems in MMO’s.  In that column, I break combat down to (a) turn-based, (b) simulator and (c) action systems.  I also provided some video clips of combat in each of those systems.  I didn’t, though, put up much in the way of party or multi-party (e.g. raid) videos.

Quite simply, I don’t have that many of those of my own.  While I have raided for years, I didn’t start using FRAPS until recently.  Additionally, as a tank, most of my FRAPS tend to look like a giant monster kneecap.

All the same, I did want to run through what raiding (or end game in one case) combat looks like in some of these systems.

Simulator Systems – Old School

In simulator systems, combat is largely determined by random rolls and extensive use of automated combat.  In these systems, character abilities are used intermittently and (hopefully) to good effect.  In the older simulator systems, combat largely focused on interdependencies between players and/or abilities.  Raid-wide responsibility checks were rare, but occasionally fights required some movement … Continue reading →

Eorzea Reborn

About Us

Just who are Aela and Ryahl anyhow?

Hi there and welcome to EorzeaReborn.  This is a fansite we have prepared for the upcoming relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.  For now, this is primarily the repository for some of my working editorials as well as a place for me to extend some of my thoughts from my Eorzea Reborn column at MMORPG.Com.  (For a full list of my editorials visit our editorial page)

Aela and Ryahl are a married couple living near Houston, TX.  We have been gaming together for a decade now and we tend to focus on massively multiplayer RPG’s.  Our longest running gaming stints have been with Everquest 2 (2005-2008 on the Test and Mistmoore servers), Dark Age of Camelot (2001-2003 on the Palomides server) and Everquest (1999-2001 on the Brell Serilis server).  We also have had fairly lengthy stints in the Secret World and RIFT.

We were the original hosts of the Palomides.net community website for Dark Age of Camelot and we currently run the The Secret World guide site, TSWGuides.com.  We … Continue reading →