Experiences from the Final Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

 Posted by on August 6, 2012  Beta, Community Commentary, Feedback, Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Oh shit maths  5 Responses »
Aug 062012
 

In a few weeks we’ll be stepping foot inside Tyria again for real. One important decision everyone will need to make is what server to call home and I’ve set myself the challenge of researching the communities on each of the Guild Wars 2 servers. So after the final beta weekend I asked members of the Guild Wars 2 community for the experiences of their servers. The response was more immense than I could of hoped for. I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to everyone who took the time to fill in the survey and help their fellow players (and myself) out!

 

Gathering information

Using the previous survey as a base and building on the areas that the survey fell short on last time, I built up a short set of questions covering information that included the number of guilds people were a member of, how satisfied they were with their choice of server, their experiences on their servers and the languages spoken on them. The existence of the survey was promoted to my followers on Twitter and retweeted several times by individuals and fansites within the Guild Wars 2 community. It was also promoted on Guild Wars 2 Guru, the Guild Wars 2 sub-Reddit and Guild Wars 2 Nederlandstalige Community.

As with the last survey, I have included every response I received even where I felt that response may have been deliberately misleading, and removed offensive words and identifying comments from the feedback. Again, the questions, original responses and some statistical analysis is available in a pdf for you to enjoy (if you enjoy that kind of thing). I’ll refer to some feedback below, and draw out the more interesting statistics.

General comments

There was a far larger response to this survey than the previous two undertaken. Combined with the fewer number of servers provided for the final Beta Weekend event, the responses will give a better indication of what the communities and experiences of people on those surveys were actually like. However, caution must be undertaken when applying the findings of this survey. The ArenaNet blog post What’s New in the Final Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event indicated that “hundreds of thousands of players” were expected to take part in the final event, and the 365 responses are a very small sample of that expected amount.

That said, only 2 servers gave no response at all and there were 13 servers who gave 10 or more responses. This makes this the most reliable of my surveys so far and I am hopeful that people may find the information contained within it useful when it comes to choosing their server for release. However the variety of comments from the same server means that the results must be taken with a large pinch of salt!

 

Game Formats

There are no large differences between the two regions when it comes to the main formats people were playing over the final beta weekend. Overall 83% of responders said they spent most of their time this weekend in PvE, compared with 12% in WvW and 5% in PvP.

When asked about their experiences in the different formats, some interesting differences emerged. There was some irregularity between those who answered “Did Not Play Format” between the 3 questions (for example, some who indicated they did not play a format in one question gave their experiences of that format in the other two). Overall nearly 98% did some form of pve, while only 35% did some form of sPvP. Those on European servers are more likely to do some form of PvP than American Servers – over 7% difference in both sPvP and WvW.

 

Guilds

There was a large difference between the number of people who chose not to be in a guild on the American and European servers, with 13% more Europeans being a member of one or more guild(s).

Across all servers, of those in a guild 79% of those who responded were in only 1 guild. This was slightly lower on American servers (75%), who had proportionally more people in 2 (17%) or 3 (5%) guilds than Europe (14% and 1%).

 

Countries & Languages

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were 10 more countries represented on European servers (25) than on American servers (15). In addition there were 9 more languages seen on European servers (17) than on US servers (8). This diversity showed through in comments about server communities, with some responses expressing frustration at the number of different languages spoken on their chosen server. Some also commented about the overflow servers being grouped together, which added to linguistic frustration. In general these comments did not occur alongside reports of negative server satisfaction.

Even though there was a large variety of languages spoken on the various European servers, each server did seem to have a primary language. English was spoken to some extent on all servers.

 

Sense of Community Throughout the Formats

Trying to measure a sense of community is extremely tricky, but the responses from 3 questions broken by format were used to attempt to get an impression of moment to moment life on a server and in the two regions. The amount of text in the various formats gives an indication of communication and resurrection gives an indication of symbolic interaction while perceived co-ordination gives an indication of working towards a common goal.

By format overall PvE scored highest on the sense of community factors, with more positive responses to the quantity of text communication, resurrection and overall coordination. WvW was positive overall, but less so than PvE. However, PvP scored quite low on the text and resurrection factors, and less positively in cooperation. This may be in part due to the fast paced nature of PvP compared to the other two formats, along with its quick resurrection timers.

The differences in responses between the two regions were highest in PvP, with a less negative reaction overall in text and cooperation on US servers while EU servers were slightly ahead with resurrection. Overall the differences don’t give a clear indication of one region scoring higher in sense of community factors.

 

Community

Just as with the second Beta Weekend, the comments received on community are pretty hard to analyse objectively. Generally speaking the comments seem positive about the communities on all servers, with most containing some form of positive and negative experience. Few of the comments were entirely negative about their server. A number of people commented that they spent most of the weekend playing solo and some of these highlighted a lack of community outside a guild. Others said they didn’t notice any community on their servers at all, which was countered by rare stories of people going significantly out of their way to help their server mates.

Amongst the various comments, there were a few that spoke of the community in Guild Wars 2 being better than the community in other MMOs, but some of these also mentioned that they felt the community was worse than it had been for Beta Weekend 2. A few comments expressed frustration at being forced to move servers that they had been on for the last 2 weekends to the detriment of the community. Amongst European servers, there were comments of frustration about the number of different languages being used on overflow servers.

Compared to the community responses for Beta Weekend 2, there were more comments relating to trolls on the servers and complaints about being forced into overflow servers.

 

Satisfaction and Server Population

When it comes to server population, there are a few relatively minor differences between the two regions. Those on American servers expressed a higher preference for their servers to be busier than their European counterparts (35.75% reported they’d prefer the servers to be “A little busier” or “A lot busier” compared to 30.64% in Europe). Conversely 15.59% of those who responded from European servers would have preferred their servers to be “A little quieter” compared with 6.70% of those on American servers. Both regions had roughly the same percentage of responses that expressed “No strong feelings” about their server populations.

The overall results between the two regions when it comes to server satisfaction are roughly equal, with there being slightly more people who reported being unsatisfied with their server choice on US servers. 5% more of their counterparts on European servers reported being satisfied with their server choice.

 

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing a server for release, it’ll be up to you to consider what the most important factors are to your in game happiness. The overwhelming outcome of this survey is the variety of differences between all servers in terms what formats the majority of the population play, the language base and the sense of community on the server. Hopefully it’ll be of some use when people come to make their decisions.

It’s unfortunate that some contributors commented that the sense of community had deteriorated from Beta Weekend 2 to Beta Weekend 3 (the final beta weekend), but this is in line with expectations. Further analysis will need to be done to see if there is any statistical evidence to back up these reports. However there did seem to be a better quantity of servers for the final weekend, especially for US servers. Given the comments regarding the language problems on overflow servers in Europe, I think it may be a good idea for ArenaNet to investigate how they are grouping the servers together to try to provide the most harmonious output.

 

Your Feedback

If you’ve found this information useful to you, please do drop a note in the comments below. Currently I have no plans to do any more of these surveys, but if I get enough feedback from people saying it’s worthwhile doing, I will.  Likewise, please contact me if you have any feedback you’d like to give about the content of the survey itself.

Pick and Mix

 Posted by on July 18, 2012  Beta, Community Commentary, Guild Wars 2, Personal, Software development  2 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

I haven’t felt the need to write a proper Guild Wars 2 article for a while (I presume because of the amount of work those server community surveys take to do) but there’s been a few bits lately that have registered enough interest to be worth writing about.

A few days ago, ArenaNet released this behind the scenes video which briefly interviews a number of faces in the Seattle office.

The most notable thing for me out of this wasn’t the double health bar for Necromancers, but that ArenaNet have hired an economist, John (Jon?) Smith, to look after what goes on in game and in the gem store. It’s a growing trend in gaming, and recently Valve hired an economist who is analysing the market in TF2 and looking at joining game economies together. It’s a reassuring trend for those of us who enjoy the trading thing, knowing that someone is looking out for inflation and either taking direct steps to combat it or working with developers to do so. And with the gem model ArenaNet have carved out for themselves (as demonstrated over at Distilled Willpower), I’m glad they’ve got someone trained in economics to look after it.

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time lately working on a guild roster mod for my guild (see here and here), which has expanded my knowledge of web development immensely. 5 days ago I’d done little in the way of javascript and now I’ve written and expanded several scripts to expand and collapse lists and sort tables. The whole thing has been designed to be completely expandable to cover any game, for members to create profiles for new games and enter accounts and characters into the list. It goes some way to solving a huge problem for MYST – who is this person I’m playing with? We’re not a big guild, around 40 members, but when people have different forum, steam, account and character names, and you ask people to call you by your real name it will cause a problem eventually. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m so pleased with how it’s going and proud of the work I’ve done. I’m aiming to get everything done in 2 weeks, before we get all befuddled with trying to get ready for Guild Wars 2 launch.

Speaking of guilds, I also started my column over at Dragon Season last week. It’s called Guild Matters and it’s about anything and everything related to running a guild. It’s my hope that it becomes a central resource for all guild leaders who are struggling with an aspect of guild leadership, and while I’m writing a load of articles now, that’s just the start. I sincerely want to hear from other guild leaders to learn from them and understand what they’ve found tough so I’m armed for as and when that problem faces me. I’ll be looking for guild leaders to interview soon, but in the meantime I’m writing a series of articles that cover the basics of leading a guild in my mind.

Finally, it’s a Guild Wars 2 beta weekend this weekend and while I’m looking forward to it, it feels a bit less exciting than the other weekends. I think it’s because the characters have been wiped and I know that trying to WvW from level 1 will be painful economically. I’ve done a lot of the human, charr and norn starter areas and want to leave asura and sylvari for release so I have something completely fresh, so you’ll likely find me in WvW and sPvP this weekend. I’m loving the game so far, and moreso seeing the progression and speed at which ArenaNet improves and stabilises their game.

Oh and for anyone who’s having a discussion about which server to pick this weekend, you might find this useful…

Have fun!

Quest Types in RPGs

 Posted by on June 29, 2012  Community Commentary, MMO Gaming  1 Response »
Jun 292012
 

Escort the caravan. Rescue the princess. Kill ten rats. Cliches, everyone one. Aren’t you sick of them? Don’t you wish that developers would drop them and do something different?

This actually has nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 or any other particular MMO. It’s a general problem with all rpg games. In order to progress through the game you have to have your character do something, and there’s only so many different types of somethings you can do.

If you weren’t tasked with escorting an npc from one place to another, rescuing a damsel in distress, collecting a number of items, or taking out some targets, what would your character be doing in the game? And, if you did come up with something else to do that didn’t ultimately fall into one of those 4 categories, how long before it became as old and stale to you as those have?

Ultimately there’s only so many types of things that developers can do with a world, especially one that very closely mimics our own. We collect groceries from the supermarket, go to find our lost pets, go paint balling and take our less able family members (read: children and grandparents) out to the shops or zoo because they can’t go by themselves. That in game activities reflect our real life ones may be why there are frequent complaints about a certain quest type in a given rpg; people want to escape that world, rather than jump into another that copies it. But what are the alternatives?

Maybe there aren’t any and maybe we as a gamers should stop rolling our eyes when we see “yet another” escort quest and instead take a look at how those quest types are executed. Our next assignment may be to kill ten rats, but what if those rats are smart and are going after an npc vital to your character? Sure, not every task undertaken can be an epic battle for survival otherwise we’d grow unappreciative of the scale of the task, but execution is key. Make us care, determined to succeed and analyse the failures to rise another day.

Games may not be able to generate the same amount of emotional involvement as some movies because of the way they are played, but that doesn’t mean every session can’t be filled with a tug on the heart strings and be full of entertaining and memorable moments. In my opinion there’s nothing wrong with the notion of saving the damsel in distress – just make us give a damn first.

Experiences from the Second Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

 Posted by on June 21, 2012  Beta, Community Commentary, Feedback, Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Oh shit maths  2 Responses »
Jun 212012
 

After the success of the first community survey following the first beta weekend, it was time to do it all over again! Just like last time, I asked members of the Guild Wars 2 community for the experiences of their servers to gather data that would help people to pick their server and to generally capture the state of the in-game Guild Wars 2 community. And everyone really delivered (which is why this is a little later than I’d have liked)! Thank you to everyone who filled in the survey, encouraged a friend to or posted it somewhere for people to see. You are the backbone of this community.

Gathering information

Using the previous survey as a base, I built up a short set of questions covering information that included the number of guilds people were a member of, how satisfied they were with their choice of server, their experiences on their servers and the languages spoken on them. The existence of the survey was promoted to my followers on Twitter and retweeted several times by individuals and fansites within the Guild Wars 2 community. It was also promoted on Guild Wars 2 Guru and Guild Wars 2 Nederlandstalige Community.

As with the last survey, I have included every response I received even where I felt that response may have been deliberately misleading, and removed offensive words and identifying comments from the feedback. Again, the questions, original responses and some statistical analysis is available in a pdf for you to enjoy (if you enjoy that kind of thing). I’ll refer to some feedback below, and draw out the more interesting statistics.

Results

In total the survey was completed by 220 people, 123 from European servers (56% )and 97 from American servers (44%). This was over 3 times the number of direct responses I received last survey, and nearly 100 more total responses. However while were significantly more direct responses to the survey this time around to last, there were also twice as many servers as last time as well. Of the 96 servers for the second beta weekend, I received a survey from one or more residents of 63 servers. Responses were not received from 14 servers from Europe and 19 servers from America.

3 servers had more than 10 responses US Eternal Grove, EU Far Shiverpeaks and EU Desolation. These servers with 11, 37 and 11 responses respectively had a significant effect on the mean number of responses per server which was 2.292. This is compared with a median of 1 and a mode of 0. If these results are excluded, the mean is 1.731 – much closer to the median result. Unfortunately this means that once again we can’t draw any concrete conclusions about the state of any one particular server off the back of these results – one person’s response can’t give a full and accurate account of the entire community on any server on the list.

The reason for these servers producing such large results are likely to be down to the platforms that the survey was promoted on and the populations that had chosen to inhabit those servers. For example, during the first beta weekend, US Eternal Grove was designated the server for a large number of independent fan site leader and bloggers, several of whom follow my twitter account and are more likely to participate in community projects. In addition, EU Far Shiverpeaks was designated the server for the Dutch and Scandinavian population in both beta weekends – since GWNL is a Dutch language fansite, it’s likely that Dutch people would be resident on this server and hear about the survey. The reasons behind the reply spike from EU Desolation is less clear, but information about communities and the servers they had chosen from the first beta weekend suggests that the gaming websites Rock Paper Shotgun and PCGamer were choosing that server along with a few guilds. However, it’s not clear why that particular server got so many replies when compared to EU Gandara (for example) which was the designated Guild Wars 2 Guru server.

Server populations and satisfaction

While  I’m hesitant to try to draw any conclusions from individual server, there are some interesting trends across the group. For example, 85% of replies were of the opinion that the server was appropriately populated or could have been a little bit busier. Less than 1% of replies felt their server could have been a lot quieter. There wasn’t a large amount of variation between European and American Servers. This may indicate that if more servers need to be added to support the expected population for the third beta weekend, then adding less than 48 may be appropriate.

As to server satisfaction, overall 62% of those who responded said they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the server they had chosen to be on. 16% responded that they were either unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with their choice of server. It was noted that several of those who responded that they were very unsatisfied had said they had been separated from guild members or friends because of servera being full, and that was the reason for their lack of satisfaction.  Proportionally, European servers had more responses indicating players were very satisfied than American servers while American servers had more responses indicating players were satisfied than European Servers. The reason for this difference is not clear.

Languages

Respondents were asked to list the languages that they saw being spoken on their servers. A language was counted every time it was mentioned by a different replier for a server. For example, if 5 replies mentioned English as being spoken then that language was given a score of 5, whereas if 3 of those mentioned German, then that language was given a score of 3 for that server. The result is a weighting of languages for the particular server. Some “languages” were disregarded for not being officially recognised languages (eg “World of Warcraftish”).  While analysing the results in this manner, it was noted that several people had trouble distinguishing with certainty between Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian, so the decision was taken to group them into a Scandinavian category.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the language of the survey and the target audiences for Guild Wars 2, English got the highest overall score being mentioned a total of 209 times. After English, German, French and Dutch were the most frequently seen languages. In total 17 languages were noted.

Some responses expressed frustration at certain linguistic communities residing on a particular server and this information not being readily available to those choosing which servers to choose. In other words, there’s work to be done to increase the profile of lists that note which communities are choosing to reside on a particular server so they can join or avoid linguistic communities as appropriate.

Guilds

The survey asked people to disclose the number of guilds they were a member of during the second beta weekend, ranging from 0 to 6 or more. All but 4 of the respondents replied they were a member of 3 guilds or less, and the remaining 4 replied with 6 or more. The lack of replies for 4 or 5 guilds raised suspicion for the validity of those results for me, especially since 3 of those didn’t leave valid contact details. The one I did contact said they were playing around with the guild system as there were no penalties to doing so.

Overall, 58% of people who responded are a member of 1 guild, with 22% electing not to be a member of any guild. Only 18% took advantage of the ability to be a member of more than one guild. This suggests that in general, people will only be a member of one guild when given the choice. Interestingly, there is a difference between those on European and American servers. On European servers 63% of people are a member of one guild, while on America servers 52% of people are in one guild. Conversely, 16% of respondents on American servers are in 2 guilds compared with 12% on European servers, and 25% of those on American servers are not in a guild, compared to 19% in European servers. The number of people in 3 or more guilds did not significantly differ between server groups.

Overall 75% of those questioned chose to be in a guild were only a member of 1 guild.

Communication

A large amount of feedback from the first survey contained comments about how infrequently players communicated by text to others nearby. Some of the frustrations may have been down to technical problems with the game itself, but this time around I wanted to try to capture any difference in experience with text communication. The responses were reviewed and categorized into a high quantity of text, some text (or an unclear result) and none.

66% of those who responded to the survey said that their server had a high level of text communication. 20% responded that they either didn’t pay attention to text communication, registered a moderate level or encountered differing amounts of text communication in various areas of the game (such as PvE vs WvW). Many commented that there was more communication in WvW than other areas of the game, and that in all areas of the game people tended to thank others that resurrected them. Others commented that there seemed to be more communication via text than the last beta. There wasn’t a lot of difference between responses from both sides of the Atlantic.

Coordination

Across all servers, 44% of people responded that they considered players on their servers to be coordinated with each other, however there were a large number of comments about a difference between WvW (more coordinated) and PvE (less coordinated).  There was around 10% difference in the amount of responses that counted coordination as being high between European and American servers, with European servers rating higher. American servers recorded around 40% with no clear view compared to 37% for European servers.

There is a great deal of ambiguity around what counts as coordination though and what it actually means in different areas of gameplay. This is a question I’ll be looking to improve for the survey following the third beta weekend.

Resurrection

Perhaps the most encouraging of all the data collected, 95% of respondents said that they felt that they and others were resurrecting players all, or nearly all of the time. Less than 1% felt no one on their server was being resurrected. There was no significant difference between European and American servers. As this can be a considered an example of symbolic exchange between players, this is quite encouraging to helping foster a positive sense of community across all servers.

Community experiences

These seemed to be a really mixed bag of responses and when it came to analyse them into some form of statistical information, I found it hard to do it in any way that would be really meaningful. As a result this will be a question I’ll be looking to improve for the survey following the third beta weekend.

While reading the replies though, a few things stuck out for me. One was the number of people who said they had really positive experiences of the community on their servers, saying they were better than either they expected, or other mmos they had played. Some commented on the lack of rudeness, swearing or similar in general chat, and the eagerness of others to answer questions. Others however said that a few trolls or similar had had an effect on their experiences, but regardless they enjoyed themselves. Some complained of a lack of population.

Comparison to the first beta survey

In the first beta survey there were lots of comments about the overflow server separating friends from one another. The overflow servers were not mentioned once in the 220 responses received. However, some did mention problems with joining friends on other servers and that they got separated from players they would have liked to be with, which was something that was mentioned last time.

Conclusions & further research

As with the results of the first beta weekend survey, there are signs that on the whole that Guild Wars 2 in game experiences are generally positive and some were really impressed by their experiences of their server community. There are no definitive signs that one server is substantially worse than any other. There is more work to do on behalf of the community to inform players of unofficial language servers to help people make educated choices about their server. ArenaNet will need to closely monitor the quantity of servers needed to balance having a lag free playing experience with a well populated world.

I have already received some feedback on the questions in this survey and what others would like to see included in the survey for the third beta weekend, including player orientation (PvE, PvP, WvW or PvX) and country. I’d also like to break down some questions so they’re easier to analyse, while still allowing room for detailed expression of experiences.

If you have any feedback you’d like to provide about the questions that are used in this survey, or would just like to let me know that you’ve found this useful (it does help motivate me to do this again), please drop me a note. Thank you.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend – Have Your Say Part Deux

 Posted by on June 11, 2012  Beta, Community Commentary, Feedback, Guild Wars 2, maths, Personal  Comments Off
Jun 112012
 

Last beta weekend I did a survey to try and get an idea of communities developing on each beta server. It was pretty successful by my accounts so I’m doing another one!

I’d like you to fill in the form below with with your experiences of your server this weekend. If you moved servers, you can fill the form in twice for each server. Try not to think about any problems you had with Guild Wars 2 except where you think your server would have made a difference. I’ll be collating all the information gathered from this form until Friday 15th June and posting the results on the 18th June.

Please do share the link around! This kind of survey only has worth if lots of people from different servers take part. Thank you!

Edit: Thank you for the response, it has been immense and has surpassed the number I collected from all sources last time. Despite the large number of responses there are still some servers that no one has commented on. If you were from one of these servers I’d especially like to hear from you:

US Anvil RockUS Tanglewood CopseEU Mahnkelon
US Ferguson’s CrossingUS Eve’s WarrenEU Aurora Glade
US VasburgUS Port SledgeEU Blacktide
US Eredon TerraceUS Bearce FallsEU Sharp’s Corner
US Sanctum CayUS Massey’s GrottoEU Dzagonur  [DE]
US Basalt GrottoUS Bauer’s PassEU Elona Reach  [DE]
US Quarrel FallsUS Arachnia PlateauEU Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
US Frazar LakeEU Umbral GrottoEU Jade Sea [FR]
US Frost GateEU Norrhart DomainEU Vizunah Square [FR]
US Fort WitterEU Dasha [DE]EU Urgoz’s Warren [FR]
US Loew’s PointEU Nundu Bay [DE]EU Arborstone [FR]
US Bloodstone FenEU Drakkar Lake [DE]
US Seafarer’s RestEU Miller’s Sound [DE]

Please share this post with your friends and followers to help get the largest amount of feedback possible.

Thank you.

Final Edit:

I’ve stopped collecting responses for this survey. Thank you to everyone who responded – I’ve had three times more direct responses than last time! You can view the final results here.

E3 2012 Thoughts

 Posted by on June 5, 2012  Community Commentary, Personal  1 Response »
Jun 052012
 

Aaaah E3. This year’s show coincided with 2 days of celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which meant in between throwing a bbq for some friends and enjoying the pomp and ceremony of the occasion, I could sit and watch the keynote presentations. Since I did an impressions post on E3 last year I figured I’d do another one!

There were several themes throughout the presentations this year. Of course there was the obligatory parade of sports stars to sell games, and for some reason companies now feel it is necessary to trot out musicians to sell their dancing games. Usher performed to sell Dance Central on the Kinect for Microsoft (badly attempting to sing. He needs autotune), while Flo Rida pimped out Just Dance 4 for Ubisoft. I guess these kinds of promotions are less derogatory than parading out scantily clad ladies to try and sell games, but the impression is the same – the games can’t sell themselves, so celebrity endorsement is required.

Of course though, E3 is about games and someone should remind Microsoft of that. Most of their presentation was not spent showcasing upcoming games, but dealing with upgrades to the extra stuff that comes with an XBox (like more ways to watch sports) and the introduction of their SmartGlass technology.  SmartGlass allows you to turn your tablet or smartphone into a control for your XBox, get extra information about what you are watching or playing and use it as an extra display or controller for your game. It sounds cool, but I can’t say there’s many times that I’ve wanted any piece of technology in my house to interrupt my first watch of a movie with cast information or family trees. And of course, this technology was showcased with spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 2 and Prometheus. Nice work.

So games then. There were depressingly few new IPs this year, but those that were announced look awesome. Watch Dog has me all excited with a Grand Theft Auto meets The Matrix open world shooter with coop. The trailer and gameplay should be watched. I will be watching this one intensely and with PC rumours abound, it might just be too good to be true. The other significant new IP was Beyond, by the makers of Heavy Rain dealing with what happens after death and spirits that haunt us. Intriguing and visually amazing, although I’m not sure it is my kind of game. The Last of Us, while not being brand new IP (it was announced in December 2011), did have an extended gameplay demo and looks interesting, if not my cup of tea. Zombi U, again looks good, but I need to be persuaded on a Wii U first and Nintendo’s keynote… well less said the better.

Of the new games from existing IPs, I’m probably most excited for Sim City. The requirement of a constant connection does rather put a downer on the enthusiasm though. I’d like it if more developers understood that socialisation in a PC game should be optional rather than required, and constant connection to stop pirates stops everyone but the pirates playing (see Diablo 3). I still need to play any game in the Assassin’s Creed series, but 3 on PS3 has my interest piqued for the water battles alone. The South Park RPG looks hilariously funny both to watch and play, but as I don’t have an XBox I’ll probably have to pass on it.

In other show themes, bows seem to be in fashion this year. Crysis, Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 3… they’ve all featured bows and arrows, from the very basic to the ultra Hawkeye-style futuristic. I’m sure it is just a happy co-incidence, but I’m really happy to see them getting love. Would it be too much to hope people are getting fed up with guns? Probably.

The worst moments? Usher’s bum notes, listening to the SW:TOR presentation by someone who clearly did not believe what he was saying, the pregnant pauses for non-existent applause in the Microsoft keynote, Ubisoft’s new eSport being showcased with a battle of the sexes that had the girls in hotpants and the guys covered up, and the entirety of Nintendo’s showing.

Overall I’d say E3 has been a poor bag that has been saved by a few gems. I won’t be going to gamescom this year, but I’m looking forward to trying some or all of these titles at Eurogamer in September.

 

International Pricing Inequalities

 Posted by on March 15, 2012  Community Commentary, Guild Wars 2, Oh shit maths  7 Responses »
Mar 152012
 

I could have stuck this as a reply to comments on my last post regarding the Guild Wars 2 Pre-Purchase but felt it deserved more attention.

There’s a lot of crying about the inequalities between the amount that USA, UK and EU will have to pay for the CE. It is understandable. There’s is a lot of money difference. But this post by DoubleFine on Steam lends a whole new perspective on the issue.

For those of you who don’t want to read the wall of text (what the heck are you doing reading my posts anyway?), the jist is this. DoubleFine have realised that charging the same amount across the board on Steam is unfair to people overseas and are adjusting their pricing to follow a formula which takes into consideration the exchange rate over the last 6 months and local taxes.

It is worth noting that this only applies to Steam purchases. The difference being that in the UK and EU, taxes get taken before Steam and the developers get their cut while in the USA sales taxes are unmonitored for online purchases and on good faith so of course no one pays them. For physical purchases, every state has their own taxes which get added to the price in store (I think, that’s how it worked last time I was over there anyway).

Applying the DoubleFine formula to the Guild Wars 2 CE we get the following:

British Pounds Sterling (0.64 conversion rate)

$150 = £96 + 20% VAT = £ 115.20

Euro (0.75 conversion rate)

$150 = E112.5 + 20% VAT = E135

This doesn’t take into consideration any additional shipping costs or admin overhead caused by importing and all those other bits.

(It also doesn’t consider the scenario where stuff gets taken to the EU from UK, which would make the CE around E140.)

You could argue that ArenaNet could artificially raise the price of the USA CE to make everything seem fairer, but to me that’s worse than the situation we’re in now. And you can argue that the governments of Europe shouldn’t be so greedy with their taxes, but heck I like that I don’t have to worry about hospital bills and that the roads get fixed.

Overall, I’m not arguing that it doesn’t suck that we have to pay more for being a Euro, but I am arguing that it isn’t entirely ArenaNet’s fault.

 

Seriously…

 Posted by on February 16, 2012  Community Commentary, Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Personal  6 Responses »
Feb 162012
 

What happened yesterday with regards to the “news” about Guild Wars 2 maybe coming on a console was a load of crap. It seems to be a reoccurring theme of late – small piece of maybe news gets twisted in some person’s head, rabid population explodes, community manager has to put it in perspective.

I could write a big long piece here about how I’m disappointed in some people who call themselves “fans” (which isn’t a good word to call oneself in my opinion, look at the etymology for why) or journalists but what’s the point? The people who are causing the image of Guild Wars 2 harm and would benefit from having their actions examined won’t read this.

Thing is knowing these people are actively trashing a game I’ve willingly dedicated a lot of my spare time to doesn’t make me want to continue doing so. It is a given I will play the game for all the flaws I consider it to have and will support my friends and guild mates on their adventures through it. But when it comes to the wider community, trying to do something beneficial when I know it will get shit on just seems like a waste of time and unnecessary stress. Some people may not view that as a loss to the community but if I’m feeling it, how long till others start feeling it too? And more importantly, how long before those who are employed by ArenaNet to deal with the community get fed up of putting their real work on hold to put out fires and decide they’d be better off looking for new jobs?

Year of the Dragon

 Posted by on January 23, 2012  Community Commentary, Guild Wars 2, Personal, Software development  2 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

So I’m guessing you’ve heard the news, wooped some, pinched yourself and wanted to hug Mike O’Brien until his eyes pop. I’m right there with you. Although I had to hold in the excitement for 8 hours or so as I had demo’s of my own to give.

I could do what many commentators will do and speculate on what this means on where they are in the development schedule & what’s left, but really, there’s no point. Other than knowing we’re on the home straight and that Guild Wars 2 will be in our hands in 99 days at a minimum or 342 days at a maximum, there’s nothing else I wish to try to infer from this news.

I’m excited. I’m also looking at the checklist of stuff I wanted to do before launch and wincing. GW Templates is still in development, and I’m hoping to get it out of test in the next month. All the features are in, its a question of entering the masses of information about Guild Wars skills. Then there’s the additional features I want for the guild’s website. And then seeing what stuff can be offered for Guild Wars 2.

99 days is enough right?

 

Pricing Halfway House

 Posted by on November 10, 2011  Community Commentary, MMO Gaming  1 Response »
Nov 102011
 

If like me, you’re an MMO lover, you’ve probably got a few (virtual) boxes sitting on your shelf of titles you’ve tried. Chances are you didn’t fall in love with all of them, but you’ve probably had the odd withdrawl pang a few months (or years) after you cancelled your subscription. And on a dark, lonely night, your eye has wandered over to the shelf and you wonder what’s going on in the world you left behind. Did they finally fix that overpowered class? Are your old guild still playing?

It’s at these moments that MMO business models tend to shoot themselves in the foot. If your game was or has gone free to play then there’s nothing to stop you picking up the game and seeing what’s happened. But if it’s pay to play, there’s a psychological barrier to you getting back in game – will you play it enough to warrant buying a whole month’s extra gaming time?

I’m sure this has been suggested before by someone else, but I think pay to play games need a level between not playing and buying a month’s sub. In the East, players pay for MMOs on the number of hours they play in internet cafes and a similar idea could be very popular in the West. In the situation above it’s going to be far more tempting to pay an amount less than a monthly sub, for a few hours of gametime that expires over a few months than to pay the subscription fee. Priced correctly, it would entice players to give a game another go while still being profitable for a business.

For example, lets say an average subscribed MMO player spends 3 evenings a week in their game, at 2 hours a time, making 24 hours a month in game for £10 (42p an hour). A company could also offer an option to buy 12 hours of game for £6 (50p an hour) that expires 3 months after purchase. An avid player will still buy the subscription as the best cost option for them. Those who want to try the game again or don’t play a lot could buy game time. I have a feeling this option may also be better for parents monitoring how much time their children spend in game. Course there’d have to be some way of stopping players entering long content if there’s only 15 mins left on their clock.

There’s quite a few ways forward with this system, like added value with subscriptions (veteran rewards), but I think it’s something that is missing from the gaming landscape. Getting players to try your game again is something a lot of developers do in the hope of translating that into purchases or subscriptions. Why wait to run another free weekend when you can offer a halfway house between the two that runs all year round?

 

This blog post was brought to you by the desire to play Aion again.

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