Tag: Trammel

Ultima Online: Rampant PvP Drove Away 70% Of New Players


ultima-online-asia-maybe-580

Ultima Online’s second expansion, and its new continent Trammel, has been debated nonstop since its introduction way back in the year 2000. Gordon Walton, currently working on the upcoming MMO Crowfall, is responsible for Trammel and posted a lengthy piece explaining why the update came to be.

In his post, Walton explains that Ultima Online was losing 70+% of its new players within 60 days of subscribing due to the intense nature of the game’s PvP. Trammel was introduced in a time when Electronic Arts had planned on shutting down Ultima Online to push players towards the then in-development Ultima Online 2, noting that the executives at the time didn’t fully understand the idea of an MMO (supporting a game long after release as opposed to launching a new title). The good news is that Trammel doubled the subscriber base, the bad news?

The bad: Without the “sheep to shear” the hard core PvP’ers were disenfranchised. They didn’t like preying on each other (hard targets versus soft targets), and they became a smaller minority in the overall game. The real bad though was that the intensity and “realness” of the game for all players was diminished. This was the major unintended consequence.

Walton admits that Trammel was unsuccessful in bringing back the disenfranchised players, only 5% of whom returned of which few stayed. As for Crowfall, that game is being developed with the mistakes of Ultima Online in mind.

We are specifically making our game for players who will like the kind of experience we will create, not trying to cast a wide net to get a mass market audience. We want the folks who will appreciate an intense gaming experience with real risk, winning and losing. While we want as many players who are engaged in our game as possible, we won’t need millions of players to make our game work.

(Source: Reddit)

Darkfall: Down The Path of Trammel


Whenever the topic turns to a free for all PvP MMO, I often bring up the subject of what I refer to as “Trammeling.” It is also known as “pulling an NGE,” and occurs when a developer makes dramatic changes to underlying fundamentals of a game in order to achieve what they believe will appeal to a broader range of gamers. And like New Game Enhancements, this runs the risk that the current population who are more likely to depart may not be fully replaced by the potential for newer, more casual customers. This is not the same as Ropering, the concept of alienating potential customers by monetizing everything up to each individual breath.

Today’s topic covers death in the upcoming Darkfall 2.0 relaunch. As of now, when a character hits zero health, they enter an incapacitated state during which another player can gank them, or they can wait out the timer or hit a button the bleed out and respawn at their bind stone.

When 2.0 launches, death will work slightly different. Rather than bleeding out, when the bar empties players will revive with minimum health. Aventurine hopes this will add another layer to larger scale PvP combat as downed players will need to be ganked to ensure that they are unable to get back up and start fighting. To balance this feature out in player vs environment situations, higher level monsters will be more likely to outright execute the player, rather than simply incapacitate them.

The changes don’t end at ganking, however. When ganked, a player will enter a state of limbo, during which they will be able to equip items from their bank box and then respawn near their tombstone. This is time based, will cost gold based on how much equipment you take, and is time based: If you don’t hit a specific button in time, you are still teleported back to your bind stone.

Community reaction to this news is naturally divided. More news to come as Aventurine releases more details.

(Source: Epic Blog)

Darkfall: Newbie Protection Program


Kill the newbie!

Last month I talked about Aventurine’s plans for Darkfall this year, more specifically the focus on making the new player experience much more of a soft palm and not a bronze-knuckled fist. I also raised concern that this is creating speculation in the Darkfall community that this will bring updates along the lines of the New Game Enhancements, Ultima Online’s Trammel, and Runescape’s trade restrictions. The fact that those updates went through with as cryptic a notice, and Star Wars Galaxies did a lot of damage to developer-customer trust, doesn’t help the situation. I noted that more information would be coming in the near future.

I can say what I want, but with a recent announcement by Aventurine, the usual group just got another reason to call care-bear on the title. In a message to the community earlier today, Tasos announced the specifics of the previously mentioned new player experience. With it brings a very limited protection program, where new accounts have what is called newbie protection, that protects them from other players. Lasting for only a few hours, newbie protection will only allow for combat against monsters, inside of the new player zone. You can not damage other players, nor can you use structures that cause damage to other players. Teleports, Runestones, portals, clans, mounts, and skilling up on other players is also disabled while Newbie Mode is active.

The NPE is optional, and can be turned off at any point. Luckily the Darkfall community as a whole is backing up this protection, and Tasos’ confirmation that it was implemented specifically “without softening the game.” Despite the outcry of the normal vocal minority, who still believe this to be a ‘slippery slop’ towards a Trammel-esque update, Aventurine is showing that they know who they are advertising to, but that those players should be helped as they get used to the game, not punished.

More on Darkfall 2010 as it appears.

One Month Later: Champions Online


champ_banner

It was one month ago that Champions Online launched to the waiting crowd, the first in our Mega September that saw a number of new titles launch, old titles receive expansion packs, and an oldie hit its twelfth birthday. It is one month after an MMO launches that the honeymoon is over, as is the free month of membership included in the game, and the true players are separated from those who just stuck around because they had the free month.

Continue reading “One Month Later: Champions Online”

Did Champions Online Pull A Trammel?


champs

There’s a very specific reason I don’t do previews of MMOs while they are in open beta: Because the final product may be very different than what players are testing out for the developers. As a rule, I remind people to never preorder on the assumption that, when the game launches, it will be the same as it is now. The open beta is a perfect opportunity for testers to show exactly what needs to be changed, and changed it will be. Abilities get tweaked, some features get buffed, and yes some features get nerfed. MMOs are never a final product, and big changes should always be expected.

Continue reading “Did Champions Online Pull A Trammel?”

Unrestricted: A Dead Feature


Imagine, if you will, that you live in Medellin, Columbia. Not only that, but imagine Medellin is the only city, and you have no other choice but to live there. You are forced to deal with the daily life of terrorists, drug lords, bombings, kidnappings, and random muggings and shootings. The government does nothing about these murders, because they don’t have the resources, and may be in the pockets of some of these drug lords. The leaders may be manipulating data to make the records sounds better than they are. Now imagine a new city forms, where there is still a little crime here and there, but it’s more along the lines of littering, with violence much, much lower and a government that cares. Would you (We’re disregarding financial issues here) move to this new city? Of course you would!

The reason for this analogy is to focus on the point that anything looks more popular when people have no choice. In this analogy, Ultima Online was Medellin, Columbia. I’ve always referred to Ultima Online as the Wise Granddaddy of MMOs, that other titles should take wisdom from and learn from both the good times and the bad. Ultima Online was the first mainstream MMO, and the release version was also insanely unapologetic and unforgiving; but there was no competition. When Everquest was released two years later, players began flocking out of Ultima Online, and resulted in Origin pulling what I’ve dubbed the Trammel Effect, bringing major changes to the game’s pvp aspects.

Full PvP is a dead feature, and I intent to explain exactly why.

Continue reading “Unrestricted: A Dead Feature”