Please Please Please Play Our Game!
So, the biggest news yesterday and today was about the new "Limited Time Offer" Scroll of Resurrection.
I haven't played WOW in a couple years now, so this doesn't affect me. But I can see how this is really going to piss off a lot of current players.
Basically, a player can send a Scroll of Resurrection to a friend. When they accept the scroll, they're given 7 days of free game time. If they have the original WoW, TBC, or WOTLK they are immediately upgraded to the full digital Cataclysm (and all previous expansions) for free.
This is permanent; you get all of the expansion packs including Cataclysm for free.
With the past issues surrounding the various Christmas deals in NA vs EU, I can see this really upsetting a lot of players. This was something that Blizzard has obviously been planning for a long time and during the time when they were offering each expansion pack for a reduced price, they knew that if players were to just wait another couple months they could have gotten it all for free instead. Many players took advantage of the Christmas savings, and will now realize their huge mistake.
It doesn't end there, though.
The recipient also gets a free level 80. They can make use of their free 7 days, create a new level 1 Cataclysm character, and then Claim Rewards from their Battle.net Account. The character is immediately leveled to 80 and they are allowed the option of a free server transfer.
The level 80 also gets the following:
- Full Level 80 gear (All iLvl 232 Greens).
- Level 80 bags (4 Frostweave 20-slots).
- 75 Gold.
- Reagents, Food, Water (20 Baked Manta Ray, 20 Heavy Frostweave Bandages).
- 280% flight speed skill (if not yet learned).
- 280% Fast Mount (e.g. Horde gets Swift Purple Wind Rider Mount.)
- Flight paths for a level 80 character.
- 450/450 First Aid, all other Profession slots open.
- All spells and abilities purchased and learned up to Level 80.
- All talent builds completed for you in advance, however you have no glyphs.
- All old items are unequipped and mailed to you.
This is where it's really clever though. They get all of this cool stuff, but they can only play for 7 days. Once the 7 days expire, they already have the full Cataclysm expansion pack and a Level 80 with great gear and all spells.. they might as well just pay the $15 to continue playing.
Basically, players are paying the subscription fee to get a new Level 80 and a ton of gold while also avoiding a lot of work. The sender of the Scroll, as a reward, will receive an uninspired (but cool looking "must have") mount. I wonder what other pets/mounts they'll just "make spectral" and try to sell? They obviously can't put these up on the Blizzard Store, because it's too obvious as being greedy.. but they can come up with a lot of clever marketing strategies, like what they just did now, to offload these re-skinned virtual items for profit.
This just screams desperation (that's the perception which isn't necessarily a good thing from an investment standpoint) and it's quite obvious to their existing customers what's going on. To mitigate the fan rage, now might be a really good time to finally announce something that has been long anticipated to millions of fans.
Upcoming MOP Press Event
I follow Diablo a lot more closely, and I haven't read anything about MOP since last October (and even then, it was very limited), so forgive me if this has already been covered before in other articles.
With the upcoming Press Event though, I figured I would talk briefly about what I'm generally expecting of the game and at the event.
- During the event they will be discussing, in great detail, the new zones, raids, dungeons, and PVP Battlegrounds. (This doesn't really interest me though.)
- They'll talk about the number (and new types) of quests being added. They'll show off some vanity figures like total number of new quests or creatures created for MOP.
- I'm not expecting any big Guild changes or announcements, but I am hoping that they'll fix Archaeology and discuss major changes to it (to make it more fun or "needed".) They should make dungeons (or other forms of instances), quests, and quest chains that make use Archaeology for example.
- I don't think they'll be cutting anything big out of the game like what they announced during the last Cataclysm Press Event (Path of Titans).
- They'll talk about the major Talent changes. It's going to have a domino effect on many glyphs, too, so they'll be touching on those.
- I think the Item Squish is going to happen, so they'll definitely be talking about this. I think everyone already knows what to expect, but I don't think many players believe it's actually going to happen. It needs to happen though (the issue of content consumption).
- Finally, I don't know if this will be announced during the Press Event or not, but I'm predicting that Blizzard will be removing the 10 player realm limitation. Instead of 50 per account with 10 per realm, it will just be 50 per account. Depending on the outcome of their various marketing schemes over the next year, if subscriptions continue to drop, expect realm merging (possibly disguised as something else.)
This is the one I'm most interested in. And, I'm predicting that you'll see a lot of the same ideas from this old post. Basically, cross-faction quests and dungeons (instances) using all old assets.
Content consumption is a really big problem in World of Warcraft, and it's easier on their developers and creative minds to simply recycle and reuse old dungeons, locations, and assets. The problem is encouraging players to reuse these old assets.
I think PVE Scenarios will either be small instances (or phased areas) that have just been copied and pasted from existing locations. Basically, it's a "dungeon" but some of them will be outdoors. These will also be cross-faction quests and parties (in some scenarios Horde and Alliance will work or party together for a common goal) to reduce queue time and so that Blizzard can get factions to finally visit unvisited territory. So, you can expect a lot of the PVE Scenarios to take place in dungeons or zones that the opposite faction typically don't visit (like early level opposite faction areas, Ragefire, Stockades, etc.) PVE Scenario queuing will also highly likely be cross-realm too.
This might also expand into "larger PVE Scenarios" while will actually just be cross-faction dungeons, but with a really good explanation. This gives WOW Devs the excuse to re-use older dungeons, but having an explanation for their lore (why are mortal enemies working together?) There's also "PVE Battlegrounds", where they're working against each other by doing quests, but they don't actually engage in PVP combat.
The other explanation for the factions suddenly working together has do with the "peace of body and mind" bullcrap brought by the spiritual Pandaren. Metzen kept saying that Mists of Pandaria will be all about "chilling out" and "getting along" with everyone after all..
In the end, though, this is just a LFG for both Alliance/Horde. They all get teleported cross-realm to an instanced area, you do something, you're not allowed to leave the area (or you fail the quest if it's phased), and then you get teleported back to your original location when the PVE Scenario is completed. They've learned a lot of lessons about cross-faction trading, so I don't think players will be able to easily exploit this new feature like how they used to be able to in Battlegrounds.
I'm creating this Wasteland 2 "Status Update" post to keep track of important milestones taking place within the project. My intention is to "sticky" it to the side navigation menu, and continue to update it for some time. When major announcements come along, I might create a new post.. but I will still continue to update this one.
I figured that a timeline of events for everything that has transpired might be interesting to some hardcore fans. Plus, if the Kickstart project and the game itself becomes a success, it might be nice to have a little piece of history about the beginnings of the game that under normal circumstances would be completely forgotten.
Timeline of Events
January 2012
Brian Fargo notes that during this time he had put away all of his Wasteland 2 design notes assuming that it would never happen.
Apparently, much of the basic game design, story, and concepts for Wasteland 2 had already been conceptualized which is why he was able to get a Kickstarter project up so quickly.
February 10
Two days after Double Fine's Kickstarter project was launched, and when it was made evident that it was going to be a huge success, I immediately contacted Brian Fargo to do the same with Wasteland.
Events kicked off from this tweet when I had recommended funding WL2 through Kickstarter.
February 14
Brian Fargo responded to my tweet that he was seriously considering the approach and started an investigation into the possibility.
I immediately updated the blog recommending that readers here add themselves to his Twitter Followers, and to continue encouraging him to develop the game (I noticed a lot of familiar names tweeting him by the way, so thanks for that!). Due to their sheer numbers, I also contacted NMA-Fallout to do the same. He was quickly bombarded with additional tweets, Facebook messages, and emails of encouragement.
February 15
For several months, @brianfargo had been sitting at approximately 128 total followers. By Feb 15, he had reached 187 followers.
Brian spoke to IGN to start promoting the potential Kickstarter project. He mentions that "he and the rest of inXile are currently working on a production schedule to see if its feasible. But he does think that it'd take at least a million dollars, and hopes that the Kickstarter will go live in the next month." He also notes that this preliminary work started due to vocal fans. "The fans started pinging me first."
The new Wasteland game will be authentic and faithful to its roots, meaning a "top-down, probably isometric, party based, skill based -- where if you'd just finished playing Wasteland and moved onto this you'd feel comfortable."
February 17
Kotaku article about Brian's intention to bring back Wasteland, the precursor to Fallout.
Brian announces that Mike Stackpole (one of the original designers) has signed up for the new Wasteland project.
February 17
Kickstarter project should be live within the next 2-3 weeks. They are working through the process and creating a movie.
February 21
Kickstarter and Wasteland 2 Thoughts by Chris Avellone
February 22
Original producer, programmer and designer Alan Pavlish has also been brought on board for the new Wasteland project.
February 24
NMA-Fallout Interview posted.
February 25
RPG Codex Interview posted.
February 27
Eurogamer Article posted.
Brian tweeted that he will be filming the Kickstarter video on Feb 28 and Feb 29.
Announcement that Mark Morgan (who composed the music for Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment) has signed on for the project.
March 3
Kickstarter project, assuming no challenges, should be launched by late next week.
Wasteland 2 website will be live Monday, March 5.
NMA-Fallout has created a Facebook Page for the Wasteland 2 venture.
Since February 14, @brianfargo has grown from 128 to 1,153 followers.
March 5
Brian has announced that Ken St. Andre has been brought on board for the Wasteland 2 project. He's the creator of "Tunnels and Trolls", and was part of the original WL design team.
Brian has announced that the official Wasteland 2 site is now live.
March 9
Wasteland 2 information and video submitted to Kickstarter, will take a few days to be approved.
Brian has announced that Andree Wallin has joined the project as their Concept Artist.
March 13
The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Page is now live. They're looking for pledges totaling $900,000, which Brian Fargo has already donated $100,000 personally. The ETA for the game is October 2013.
It appears that Jason Anderson, one of the originally designers on Fallout 1 & 2 has also re-joined the team to work on Wasteland 2.
Notch just promoted the game, and pledged the first $10,000 to it. Brian must be very excited about this whole thing, probably very surprised by the amount that has been pledged on the first day.
March 14
Brian has announced that another original Wasteland designer working on the project. Liz Danforth also created the Highpool map.
Post on Kotaku, "How Wasteland 2 Went From Hopeless to Half a Million in 24 Hours"
March 15
The WL2 Kickstarter Project has met it's goal in only 2 days (42 hours and 30 minutes to be more precise)!
March 19
The Kickstarter Project is about to hit $1.4 million with 28 days left to go. @Brianfargo has also amassed almost 4,000 followers. Interesting that for years the Twitter account was under 120, but has grown this far since the new Wasteland excitement.
March 21
Brian has announced that their PayPal site is now live. I had actually emailed this recommendation to Brian earlier, but he was already 2 steps ahead of me. :)
Kickstarter is now at $1,465,316 and @brianfargo has 4,170 followers. Not bad.
March 22
$1.5 million milestone reached. Wasteland 2 will have Mac and Linux versions.
Brian Fargo has launched his new "Kicking It Forward" concept. Basically, developers that put the "Kicking It Forward" badge on their Kickstarter project are promising that they will put 5% of their finished product's profit back into other Kickstarter projects.
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What I'm Hoping For (March 5 Update)
When the website goes live, there is supposed to be a way for fans to leave comments on what they want or expect in the game. Here are some of the important items that I'm hoping for:
- Top down isometric view. Squad based combat.
- Real-time movement and exploration, but turn-based combat much like Fallout 1 & 2 (e.g. "entering combat mode" through encounters or via hotkey.) When combat is engaged, you can issue orders and commands to your party members.
- A really awesome main story line. (I'm assuming they probably have a lot of ideas themselves, so there's no point to expand on this.)
- A serious, dark, gritty game. Humor is fine, but nothing overly silly in the game like Killer Clowns. Don't make it a parody.
- A skills based RPG. Large focus on skills, with some players in the party having unique (but useful skills.) Must use skills in order to improve them.
- All of the skills from the original should return, plus many more. For example, Sleight of Hand, Forgery, Alarm Disarm, Bureaucracy.. but make them actually useful in the game (only 1 party member might need them). Pugilism is the only skill that should be removed though, because Brawling makes it redundant.
- A lot of exploration. Breaking into homes, exploring abandoned ruins, hidden & buried secrets, weapon caches, etc. Random events are a must.
- Should be a single player game initially. If highly successful, use momentum for a larger multiplayer game.
Some of you have requested a post about the ME3 ending, even though I had thrown away the older one. I'll see what I can do. I don't know if it will be up today or not, but I do know that it will be titled "The Death and Return of Shepard."
I'm also preparing something on the latest WOW Annual Pass/Beta Access surprise. Apparently, though, I already wrote a post about it. :) I had no idea. This kind of thing happens to me ALL the time though. Unfortunately, it's as though I always have to be on the defensive when it comes to lies and slander.
Speaking of lies, I have something to share. Here's a pitch video from the old Ubisoft days for any fans of Prince of Persia here. As certain followers are aware, I'm a massive fan of the Prince of Persia games and used to talk about them all the time, but I think you'll appreciate this history. This was going to be called "Prince of Persia Redemption" but never made it much farther than the concept video. What you see was pre-rendered, staged and scripted. But still, it was entirely technically possible given the opportunity. Keen eyes may even recognize art assets that have been repurposed in other games and even some to come!
But you know, this video's got to be fake right? I make up this stuff all the time apparently and it's just another hoax video.
Despite the harassment and ridicule, I keep pushing forwards. I even shared this video link with some writers from Joystiq and Kotaku, but you've probably noticed that they just tend to steal content and claim as their own. They never even mention who directed them to the content. Supererogatory can be like that too despite everything I've given him.
Much of my knowledge about Blizzard layoffs and employment difficulties, for example, are stolen by a particular Kotaku employee who regulary follows the blog. It's disappointing that he only credits himself in these "discoveries".
And with that in mind, although there have been many pockets of Blizzard Entertainment layoffs over the past several months (many of which are customer support positions), one of the major "Blizzard 600" layoff dates has been confirmed to be scheduled for 04/28/2012 (which is a Saturday). Basically, Friday will the last day for most (Friday's are always a good time to do it.. less likely chance of "situations" since it's the weekend.) There is one group of 45, and another group of 155. So that's a total of 200 that are being laid off at the Irvine HQ office. Official notices have been sent.