When Do You Stop Paying?

I find myself in a conundrum as of late. Summer has officially arrived, and with it, the requisite outdoor activities. Gaming time is squeezed because I'm simply not in front of a computer as much. You know, typical summer slump stuff.

When your game time is limited, you find yourself re-evaluating the money allocated to gaming. Why pay for something you're not using? I found myself in such a preponderance this weekend. The subject of much thought: SWTOR.

Currently, my game time is allocated thus:

1. Still poking around in Diablo
2. Do some mindless Casteville when I have a few minutes
3. ???
4. Profit.

Okay, there isn't really any profit. Four is more like "pay bills." I'm not really playing WoW. However, since Diablo was free, the subscription there still makes sense. Casteville is free. That leaves SWTOR. I'm paying, but not playing.

I've always viewed subscription games like I would magazines. Remember those? When you used to get subscriptions to paper things that had words and pictures on them and were delivered to your door. Yeah, I haven't had a magazine subscription in years. However, I kept paying long after I probably should have called it quits. Why? Well, I liked having the possibility to read. And, in the case of Sports Illustrated, there's always the swimsuit issue to look forward to, right?

Diablo was sort of the swimsuit edition of Blizzard Monthly, for me. A quick, sexy run through. Good to glance at, but it's not like I'm digging into the articles. When Mists comes out, it'll be like the Fantasy Preview SI editions. Have to get the down low before my fantasy football drafts, y'know.

I'm not sure where SWTOR fits into all of this. The awkward Playboy subscription that your "bros" bought for you for your birthday that you have to then explain when your mom finds during a visit? (True story. She was hanging the laundry she did for me. Never let your mother into your tiny college closet. My buddies in the dorm thought it was hilarious way back when. Which really wasn't "way" back for me, but whatever. It was a Tuesday.) I don't have any real issues with the game. It's just not high on my priority list at the moment. I'm not gaming for lengths of time because it's nice outside, and thus I gravitate to games that can be digested in smaller chunks. Hence, Diablo and Casteville.

Maybe my biggest complaint about TOR is the lack of new content. They're being pretty slow right now, if you ask me. Once they get this 1.3 business released, I'll probably be more interested. At least for the month or so it takes me to do what I want to do with it.

And therein lies the problem. The current trend in gaming, at least for me, is to only really read every other issue. Or, perhaps more succinctly, I play one month hard, then take a month or two off. That's how I keep up with content, and I'm just fine with that. I like experiencing multiple games. It doesn't make me angry.

But when that monthly bill comes... it seems dumb to pay on those "off" months. Yet, I want the games I play to succeed, to keep going. At what point have I fulfilled my "obligation" to the game (yes, I know feeling obligated it stupid). At what point have I paid enough that they won't fold up, but not so much that I'm throwing money into a furnace.

The real answer is: my meager contribution doesn't matter. One person doesn't make or break these companies. If I asked them, they'd say "Yeah, keep paying. Heck, pay double! Here's a pony. We lurve you. Bring Money." If I ask my pocket book, it pushes its glasses up the bridge of its nose and sneers, "Pay only when you're getting value out of the game. No more, no less. And three shall be the number of the counting."

I sort of wish there was a way I could unsubscribe for a few months, but check a box that says, "Yeah, I'll be back when you release something new." In today's age of "investor calls" and crap like that, where subscriber numbers are reviewed and decisions are made based on some giant bottom line, I don't want to be a black mark on a game I've enjoyed. I don't want to be just another user jumping ship. But I don't want to pay for something I'm not using either.

So when do I stop? When do you stop?

I'm paid up through August for TOR. After that, I'm going month-by-month. I'll pay for one month when I want to play, and after that I'll let the sub lapse if there's nothing new to do, if I feel satisfied. After my year commitment with WoW is up, I'll probably do the same thing there. I've decided that makes the most sense for me. I used to simply pay the bill for the year and think nothing of it... yet I don't feel like we get a year's worth of content. Over 12 months, in any game, I feel like I'm given 6 months and then a lot of time-wasting fluff. The fluff can be good (like pet collecting and stuff), but it's not for me. When it's nice out, when there are other things to do (like writing novels), I'm just not going to sit down and spend my time on fluff.

Where do you draw the line? Especially, if you're not "rage-quitting," if you want the game to continue to exist. Are we supposed to keep paying? Or is month-by-month just enough?

#Diablo - Speed Play

Okay, I retract my previous statement. Namely, that I wasn't all that interested in replaying Diablo. I didn't have a lot of time to play this weekend, but I did start my monk on the next difficulty mode. Because I was expecting malaise, I decided to remove the band-aid quickly. That is to say, I tried to move as fast as possible to each objective, spamming the fel out of space bar whenever people tried to talk to me.

It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, color me surprised. It wasn't so bad when you skip everything. And when you're not being compulsive about trying to explore every nook and cranny of the map, the game actually moves pretty quickly. So far, I've been rolling over things still. I can tell stuff hits harder, but there have only been a few rough patches. I'm not very far in. I'll be it'll toughen up sooner rather than later.

Speed play is pretty intoxicating. I'm not just playing, but trying to play faster, more efficient. It's sort of like gold farming, only with an secondary purpose in mind (of progressing). At least, I think it is. I've never been a big gold farmer, but I imagine you try to really maximize your profits over time.

Anyway, thought I'd mention this. Thanks to the comment tips last week on how to speed up play (like spacebar... though my spacebar does not thank you). Now back to your regularly sucky Monday, already in progress.

#Diablo - Vanquished, Now What?

This post may contain mild spoilers. Fair warning. I'm not going to do it on purpose, but I didn't want folks to take a chance if they didn't want to. I finished Diablo last night, on normal mode. It was a great game for the price of free. Probably would have been solid at full price, but you can't beat free.

I've learned that my monk is pretty much OP. Some of the normal bosses are a struggle on my Demon Hunter. I have to be quick with moving out of the bad and such, but the Monk can just stand and take it. My self-healing is ridiculous. Made the final boss a bit of a joke, if you ask me. I wasn't really ever in danger of dying.

I didn't care for the ending so much. Maybe I wasn't emotionally invested enough, but it just didn't speak to me. I guess it was a happy ending. I'm not sure. Seemed like more of an ambivalent, quickly produced ending. Are there alternate endings on harder difficulties? Extended cuts? I guess after all the build-up, it was just a pretty mundane ending. I don't know if I was expecting to see shots of them toppling Emperor Palpatine's statue, dancing Ewoks, and space fireworks, or what.

Long time fans of the series may note that the story was pretty true to the flavor of the games. These are gore-fests. Perhaps a happy, emotional ending would tarnish the art. I don't know. Having only played Diablo III, I enjoyed the lore, the gameplay, and the story right up until the end. Is it just me, or did the ending seem rushed? Act IV went so much faster than the previous acts. I guess I would have liked them to be more balanced.

Or maybe I'd just figured out the game, so what took me a long time before was much quicker. Like I said, my Monk felt OP, so perhaps I just picked the "easy" class. If I had struggled more at the end, it probably would have seemed longer.

I'm not sure what I want to do now. I wish I could max out my character by doing something other than simply replaying what I just finished. Like if they had some challenge modes or something. Not just a difficulty slider, but like where they throw you into a scenario and you just try to beat it. Like zombie mode in FPSes or some sort of PvE arena. Make the reward dependent on how long you survive or something.

I plan try and jump into groups with some of my friends. That should help extend the life of the game, but only if I can find them on. I'm not sure what I'll do when left to my own devices. Am I the only one that would just like a simple "killing mode" where you don't have to experience the story again? I'm probably just being picky.

Gaming in Waves

Here's another crazy idea I had the other day. Call this "mixing what I enjoy about Diablo with what I enjoy about WoW." Add in a dash of SWTOR's fourth pillar. That's where this idea was brewed.

We've seen a whole bunch of MMOs that basically start on some day, and then run perpetually forward, never looking back, until the servers are switched off. Somewhere around, say, year five, I'm pretty sure story hooks that were never meant to run for five years are being exhausted and stretched so much that we turn to the Bronze Dragonflight. Or time travel... second only in (my personal) annoyance to dream sequences.

I'm not saying a story can't run past five years, I'm just saying that within the media of video games, the way we're doing it right now, today, makes it pretty difficult. If the games going to be profitable, you're going to have people jumping on at a variety of points during that five year run. You'll have TBC babies, Wrath babies, and Cata babies. People that never saw Vanilla. People that have no idea what the Burning Legion even is. Why? Because they missed a whole bunch of story!

So here's a potentially revolutionary idea: what if a game was designed with this sort of "wave-like" adoption pattern in mind. That is, what if there were "launch dates" every month. Once a month, there was a server launched that started the story fresh. Maybe eventually these servers "caught up" and get merged, but they start fresh from vanilla with a certain time cycle in mind.

Each new shard could definitely incorporate the latest "quality of life" changes (or not). Each would have a firmly published schedule of events (or not). Each would follow the same storyline (or not).

You could have spoilers, or alternate endings. You could have everyone dumped into a common "max level" continent at the end. You could have a "sidekick" system allowing people to transport their main "back in time" (I know, I know. I just bashed time travel). Or you could have a "refresh" where a character "relives" their previous adventure. Perhaps the character could just jump into a prior spot in the flow (not necessarily the beginning) and experience the story again from there (getting de-leveled to match the point in time), jumping out (and back to max level) whenever they'd like. Maybe the leveling would be completely dependent on the timeline (and not the concept of experience points). Most importantly, you could jump into a game a year down the road and not feel like you missed anything.

And think of the press? Launch days are cool! What if you had one of those every month. Sure, they'd probably lose their shine after the first one, but there would still be some hype for each one. You could even manufacture it to some extent. Maybe with each launch there is a server limit, and you get "wait listed" for the next launch if you join between launches. Now, this would have to be done carefully so as not to piss people off, but as long as you're only talking "wait a few weeks" (and not months), I don't think it would be too bad. (Also, a clearly communicated schedule would be key, here.) There would be special launch events for each one, localized maybe. I don't know.

There are a whole bunch of possibilities for a game like this. It's like phasing on 'roids (or something). A game that is constantly launching. Think about it. I'd be interested... maybe in the second wave after I've seen how it goes and they work out all the server kinks...

The Grinch Was a Warlock

I had a fleeting concern the other night. I say fleeting because I'm a Warlock, not a Paladin. As this concern has to do with others' feelings, it's not very warlocky of me to have it. Still, it was an interesting thought that I wanted to share.

It came, uninvited, when I logged into a raid my buddy was running. I'm not a regular raider anymore, but I get asked to come regularly. I'm only able to make perhaps every fifth raid, but I do like the occasional nighttime Deathwing ride. My gear/skill is tolerable enough that I'm never a drag on the teams I help out, but I'm no longer competing for top spot on the charts, either.

Anyway, I noticed I had a somewhat jaded attitude, especially toward gear. My buddy, the raid leader, is rather new to the game still. He joined at the end of Wrath. He's in the prime of his WoW career. Everything excites him. Especially the loot.

Me, on the other hand... I think it's fair to say that I'm in the winter of my time with WoW. This isn't to say that I have immediate plans of leaving, just that I've been through enough that I don't get very excited about a lot of the game. Especially the loot. Indeed, I find myself focused more on long-needed quality-of-life improvements (like talent tree improvements) than the more transitory tier gear, or raiding instances. It just doesn't get me excited because I know if I wait a few months, there'll be a new batch of content.

Now, I haven't really said anything to this person, or really in public (apart from this post), but I've developed an attitude that anyone who cares about gear is silly. I'm not an asshat about it. I don't force this belief on others. I just sort of do the behind-the-screen eye-roll when people get overly excited about a drop. When someone starts talking about gear score and what gear you should have and yadda-yadda... I want to scream: NONE OF IT MATTERS! But I don't.

As I was stopping myself from yelling yet again during the raid (while a prolonged who-gets-the-loot discussion was going on), I thought: Why should I rain on their parade? They think gear is fun, and divvying up the spoils is a big part of the game to them. Who am I to ruin that, to steal that joy? Doing more than my private eye-roll would be akin to walking into their house and taking a poop right in the middle of the living room during a party. Or maybe ordering a minion to. If it were a party of mages, I might be on board with this plan, but it's a party of friends.

If we pull back and look at the state of WoW from 30k ft, I think it's fair to say that, in general, more players are in the winter of their careers than the prime. This isn't to say there's a significant portion of each, just that the game's been out for a while. Newbies are going to naturally get harder and harder to find. Yet how many veterans are raining on the newbie parade? How many let their jaded attitudes go further than a private eye-roll?

I, for one, am going to endeavor to keep my curmudgeonly-ness sequestered in the dark corners of my soul. I want for others to find the same joy in this game that I've experienced over the years. I'd love for them to make it to their own winter. I don't want to be the Grinch Who Stole WoW. It is perhaps a personal flaw in the first place that I even feel the slightest bit of resentment toward their joy. Why is it sometimes such a struggle to just be happy for others?

And then I realized I'm a Warlock. I'm not supposed to be happy. Period. I'm supposed to enslave demons, and lurk, and stuff like that. I carry around the souls of the dearly departed in candy-like crystals. I've probably popped one or twelve in my mouth simply to taste the sweetness. I shouldn't feel too guilty about a spot of random irritability, right?

SERIOUSLY GUYS, THIS GEAR IS GONNA SUCK IN LIKE... when is MoP coming out again?

JK. Get on wit' your bad looty self. You go, newb.

#Diablo - Musta Been Tuesday

Got the "Error 37" rigamarole last night. Awesome. My evening activities were cancelled. I'd already cleaned the bathrooms. My wife was raiding... but there were no spots for me. All I wanted to do was log in and play my purchased single-player game in peace. Oh, wait. It's patch day. And WoW is up, running smoothly, but Diablo is full? Must have been full because the server was up.

So here's my question, if Blizz is trying to make Diablo like WoW in that it runs from a server and all that... where the hell is my queue? I never thought I'd say those words. Or these: Can we get a felling queue? Seriously. If this "Error 37" crap is caused by overburdened servers, then the least they could do is put me in a line for spots when they open up.

Maybe it was something else. Like I said, the website indicated the servers were up. I noticed on The Facebook and The Twitter that other folks were playing. I had patched completely. Why was I getting an E37? Was I just unlucky, something was messed up? Or were the servers really full.

I wanted to highlight a post by Targeter. It's pretty ranty, I'll warn you, but he raises good points. Points that I thought about, sort of irked me, but ultimately dismissed. The big one that I disagree with him on is the whole gold selling thing. I know Blizz said they didn't want to do gold selling, but it happened anyway (and companies, like people, can change their stance on things). My thought is that the best way to stop gold selling from third parties is to simply offer the gold yourself. Make it cheaper and more convenient than the other guy. Heck, I don't even mind them taking a cut. Whatever, this is a business. In my dream world, they'd make a bunch of money, stop charging subscriptions, and sell cheaper games (also never sell stuff in the AH that isn't readily available in the game. Make sure you didn't miss the "dream" part of this world).

I think it's silly that they're doing a second AH. I don't see how that lets you opt out. I mean, you can just buy gold and then go shop on the non-$$ AH, right? I guess it's a nice gesture.

At the end of the day, I can turn a blind eye to the AH stuff. I may throw some things up, maybe I'll make a couple bucks, who knows? Ultimately, the AH is a completely optional facet of the game. You can play from start to finish and never do any dealings on the AH. Thus, ignorable (unless you have moral qualms against it, which is your right, I just adopt a more live-and-let-live view, so it doesn't rile me up).

This logging online to try to play a single player game stuff, though... this is getting old. It wouldn't be so bad if it worked. But any DRM that prevents you from playing game is felling stupid in my opinion. Great way to lose customers. Blizz can afford to make these mistakes. They've delivered enough to convince people to give them the benefit of the doubt (me included), but they're the exception.

As things stand now, if I had not purchased a year pass, I would not have bought Diablo III. It is a great game. I'm enjoying playing it, when I can. I would have missed out. The game is great. All the other crap? Seems like one blunder after another.

Fine Blizz, if you're going to make us log into every game from now on... fine. Then make it felling work. My game time is precious. I can deal with maintenance windows. I can deal with full servers. But at least give me a queue. Really, is that too much to ask? I can be flexible, but only if I know what I'm being flexible for. If I know where I am in line, I can go do other things. Getting straight E37s just makes me want to write a strongly worded letter to the developer. Much like Targeter did.

Now, where did I put my lightsaber?

If Hollywood Can Do It...

With layoffs happening at Bioware and now the news that 38 Studios gave everyone the boot, I find myself wondering: Just what is a good launch metric? 3 million is not good. 1.2 million is not good. How about 5? Or is anything short of WoW's double digit millions just not good enough?

It's not an easy question to answer. Obviously, it varies a lot based on the size of production budget. Still, I can't help but feeling like there's a lot of dumbassery going around. If you sell 3 million copies of something, especially something that costs like $50 a pop, how are you losing money? Well, spending it, derp, and I suppose video game production ain't cheap.

It makes me think about movies. Aren't there a whole bunch of movies with ginormous budgets that completely tank and lose money. Yet, you don't hear about huge layoffs at Universal, do you? (It's an honest question, I confess that I don't really know). It seems to me that perhaps video game companies are going about this the wrong way.

How do movies work? Don't they secure a whole bunch of financing and then create a specific subsidiary company to produce the movie? Contracts are signed, people get paid (a lot in some cases), and the movie gets made. If it tanks, the smaller company files for bankruptcy or something and the big cogs keep on spinning.

Okay, a financial analyst I am not. This is just me spitballing here. I may be completely off base. I'm just saying that perhaps game companies need to shift to a more Hollywood approach. Currently, it feels like gaming companies need to hit a home run on absolutely every release. That's a horrible way to do business. It's just not going to happen. You can execute everything to perfection and still have a flop. Maybe the idea was flawed. Maybe the fickle waves of society have swung in a new direction. It happens.

Not that Hollywood is a bastion of fiscal responsibility or anything. I guess I just feel like, if they can muddle through it, with all the egos and flash, why can't gaming companies? Or maybe the movie studios have all the same problems, they just don't make Internet news as much. I don't know.

Who takes the loss when a movie flops? The stars still get paid, right? Maybe video game developers should have similar contracts where they get paid for the job, then... done. Not salaried, but contract work. I don't know, that probably sucks. As an engineer myself, going from the security of salaried to the rick of contract is rough. However, how much security is there really in the video game industry?

Like I said, this is all just idle, mostly uninformed speculation. I was reading the gaming news and thought about how I've heard of, say, superhero movies with a lot of special effects that brought in $100 million or something... and oh, darn, had a $200 million price tag. By the time those numbers are in... the stars have already been paid and moved on to the next project. You don't hear about people getting laid off. I assume that lawyers just fight it out in the dark of the night or something. (Lawyers are like Batman, is the main point here.)

My point is just that if Hollywood can weather $100's of millions in shortfall, keep producing movies (many of which probably fail), then why can't game companies figure out a sustainable system? Or is my image of Hollywood just overblown and it doesn't really work either?

I guess at the end of the day, I'd be thrilled if a million people are buying my work. Maybe gaming companies should just aim (and budget) lower. I don't know that we're going to see a 10 million subscriber behemoth again (except when Zynga perfects mind-control and puts out Hypnotoadville). I'm okay with a lot of niche 1 million subscriber games done well. How about you?