I’ve heard lots of comments lately (especially pertaining to Age of Conan’s open beta) about the amount of content going into this game at launch.  One particular comment was from the thread on FoH:

I think theres enough content in the game to keep peoples interest until they can add more content…. They have a solid month of gameplay for casuals that has a reasonable level of polish.. if they fix up the 50+ zones that will turn into 2-3 months of content and with cities and crafting if they are good and worthwhile thats content for the forseeable future.

So you’re a new game on the scene.  You’re releasing your game at a time that is a relatively good time to launch - the big boy is still between expansion cycles (WoW), some newer games have launched within the past 6-8 months and haven’t made much of a dent in your audience (PotBS, Hellgate:London, Tabula Rasa, etc.), some games are sort of chugging along but not doing anything terribly exciting right now (LotRO, EQ2).  People are waiting for ‘the next big thing’ and you hope to capture those people. 

How do you balance the amount of content you’re providing vs. how polished your game is?  We’ve seen games that have provided a decent amount of content but have been low on the polish (EQ2 at launch.  We’ve seen lots of games that were high on polish but low on content at launch that have grown substantially (Lord of the Rings Online comes to mind most of all).  And we’ve seen games that provided a good amount of both (WoW).  We’ve also seen games that failed to provide much of either (Vanguard, Hellgate:London). 

How much content do you think is the bare minimum to launch your game?  Where would you place the bar for how poor your polish can be as long as you have plenty of ’stuff’ for people to do?  Where do you think Age of Conan fits in the spectrum?  How little polished content is acceptable, and how fast do you need to put out new content to satiate the appetites of your new subscribers?  Do you subscribe to a game in hopes that eventually there will be a lot of things to do, or do you wait until they’re in and be "behind the times" a bit while you catch up? 

As someone mentioned in the previous thread, here is the latest patch release notes just about the Demonologist class alone:

Demonologist
» Updated numerous names and descriptions on spells and feats for the demonoloist.
» Demon Heart of Chatha should now increase both mana and health regeneration.
» Cursed by Hell should now have a more consistent effect.
» Cursed by Heaven should now have a more consistent debuff and effect.
» Chaotic Blast should now deal area damage if Cursed by the Heavens or Hell are active.
» Consume Flames now has the proper cooldown.
» Demonic Frenzy now correctly adds splash damage to pet spells.
» Demonic Heart now correctly lowers the caster’s Holy Invulnerability.
» Some issues with Detonation should now be resolved.
» Diabolic Insight has been converted to a single rank spell. Ranks 2-4 have been removed from the game.
» Earth Recharge should now trigger off all ranks of the spell lines affected.
» Fires of Gehenna (Rank 6) should now have the correct fatality chance.
» Gates of Hell should now deal damage upon expiring if the target is a Demon.
» Gates of Hell should now have the appropriate visual effects.
» Greater Flames should now properly increase the damage and casting time of Fires of Gehenna. Spells granted by feats should no longer persist in the spellbook after untraining the feat. Spells granted by feats should now have manacosts based on a percentage of base mana at the character level instead of a static amount.
» Hell’s Pavise Rank 3 should now grant the correct increase to the damage shield granted by the Demon Avenger.
» Infernal Knowledge has been converted to a single rank spell. Ranks 2-4 have been removed from the game.
» Let Them Burn should now have the correct cooldown. It will also now properly increase in damage the longer it is channeled.
» Living Thunderstorm should now correctly disappear after exploding.
» Overload should now trigger from and affect the Fires of Gehenna, Shockstrike, Inferno of Amher, Shockblast, Hellfire Stream, Shock and Wicked Bolt spells.
» Planar Shift will now correctly reduce the aggro of targets in the vicinity. Planar Shift no longer mistakenly decreases the caster’s miss chance.
» Set’s Chosen should now correctly decrease the periodic damage dealt by Pact with Set and Bloody Pact with Set.
» The secondary splash damage from Shockblast is now limited to 3 targets per splash.
» Thunderclap now has the correct 40 second cooldown.
» Unholy Hate should now have the correct description.
» The Whispers of War spell no longer exists. (Note: If you already had this spell trained, you may have issues in your spellbook if you attempt to use the spell.) The Demonic War feat now grants the Demonic War spell.
» Base damage of Hellfire Stream has been increased
» Base damage of Shock has been increased
» The base damage of Inferno of Amher has been decreased and its benefit from bonus fire damage increased
» Inferno of Amher now has a 3 second reuse time
» The base damage of Shockblast has been decreased and its benefit from bonus electrical damage increased
» Shockblast now has a 3 second reuse time
» The base damage and benefit from bonus damage on Chaotic Blast has been significantly increased
» Pyromancer and Natural Conductor feats now grant significantly more bonus damage, to be in line with normalized bonus damage contributions.
» Fixed a problem where Fiery Torment was not doing correct damage when you have Infernal Knowledge running.

Wow.  That’s a lot of class changes for right before launch.  I haven’t yet played Age of Conan so I’m not going to pass any judgement - but that’s a bit scary. 

Anyway, content vs. polish - the age old debate.  Is content really king with a game launch?  And here’s the money question:

Is it harder to recover from a launch with low polish or a launch with low content?  The answer might not be as simple as it seems.

Some great news surfaced today about the next WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

• All raid dungeons will have both 10-man and 25-man versions
• mebeliThe 10 and 25-man progressions will not depend on each other
• There will be no attunements or keys necessary for any raid
• The 25-man loot will be a tier higher than the 10-man loot
• The 10 and 25-man versions of the same raid will be on different timers so that each can be attempted on the same day by the same people

Wahoo! Finally, lore junkies like myself will be able to see all the content in the game! Nothing irks me more than the fact that if I want to see Maiev and Vashj help kill Illidan - I’ll have to do a 25 man raid. There are lots of NPC conversations and voiceovers that I’ve never heard in-game because I haven’t been a raider. And especially with Arthas making a return, I won’t have to miss out on it because I’m not doing 25 mans. 10 mans are a lot easier for me to participate in.

Also the no attunements/keys necessary idea is a wise one. I look forward to being able to participate.

There is also more information here from 1UP.

• Every race will be able to be a Death Knight (can’t wait to see the lore explanation for that one)
• Death Knights start at 55, there is no longer a quest required to get one. Anyone who has a level 55 character can make 1 death knight per account per realm.
• Mounted combat will be in!!! Apparently they showed 1UP some mounted combat action on a wooly mammoth, and free flying in a gnomish flying machine shooting down gargoyles.

All those things sound interesting, especially the mounted combat. My favorite quest in WoW so far (for sheer fun) are the bombing quests in Hellfire Peninsula where you get to fly in the area and destroy NPC’s and towers below you. Having flying and mounted combat would bring that level of fun everywhere.

As far as the Death Knight, I’m not all that interested in them. They sound, well, a bit overpowered. They sound like something that everyone will want to be, and everyone probably will be. Here is some more released information on that:

The blood/frost/unholy-rune mechanic still operates as advertised (see our previous coverage for details), and the class still fills a DPS/tanking hybrid role (Death Knights are being designed as the best tanks against magic users), but Blizzard revealed a few new twists. First, Death Knights have three “presences,” similar to a Warrior’s stances, that grant the player a buff. Here’s an oversimplified breakdown: Frost presence for tanking, Blood for soloing, and Unholy for PVPing. Death Knights also have a separate Runic Power meter that fills up as players use rune abilities; some abilities require the expense of Runic Power, too. One Death Knight ability allows players to create Ghouls from the corpses of NPCs and other players, each with a pet bar. Dead friendly players hit with the spell can control the Ghoul themselves — a battle rez of sorts.

Sounds interesting. I’m sure my boyfriend will be ALL over that. =)  Lots of new videos here too.

WoW is still going well.  Pawtopsy is halfway through level 62, and I’ve done Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, and Underbog so far.  Last night she got a shiny new mace and a cloth robe that she cannot wear quite yet.  I did end up respeccing Resto and I really like it so far.  Even though I do a lot less DPS, Luke and I can kill just about anything because of my staying power with healing.  I really enjoy healing over anything else, and I have +500 healing now.

Anyway, I made Pawtopsy a forum signature yesterday:

It has been a *long* time since I’ve done any MMO art for myself.  I forgot how fun it is.  =)

For those who don’t read the official Metaplace blog (and you should!), I posted a blog yesterday about my early learning experience with Metaplace. Written to be slightly entertaining, it’s a more lighthearted post than the ones I normally put up there.

Source:

So there I was, the freshly hired Community Manager for Metaplace. It was last summer, and a lengthy drive across the country brought me to my first day on the job – my dream job! I had never been so excited in my life. What is better than spending every day submerged in games, with people who are deeply familiar with the anatomy of games, socializing with a community of future players who are just as passionate about games as you are? So there I was sitting at my new desk, looking at my new shiny computer, and feeling a little apprehensive about my new adventure.

Let me briefly inform you about my programming experience (or lack thereof). I know a little bit of HTML, enough to format some text on a page. I’d never ventured into the intimidating world of CSS or Javascript, but bold text and line breaks are a breeze! As far as Lua goes, I’d taken a peek at several addons for World of Warcraft and learned how to tweak them a bit – but that’s the extent of it. So when I heard that Metaplace worlds used a form of Lua called Metascript, I was a little worried about how long the learning curve would be for me. Since my first task as a new employee was to start working on our public wiki, I started digging and becoming familiar with the API functions that I was documenting. (Keep in mind, I had never heard of an API function in my life). Some of them appeared to make sense at first, like SlideObject(). I mean, how hard could it be to slide an object from one place to another? Well, that’s when I was introduced to things like arguments. All of a sudden there are things like object ids, coordinates, and milliseconds. Phew, I had some learning to do.

So I decided I needed an ambition. In my interview before being hired, I was asked “What kind of game would you make on Metaplace?”. I promptly told them that I’d make a game with ponies, of course *rolls eyes*. I figured that combining two of my loves, ponies and RPG’s would be a great idea. With that, Ponyplace as an idea and an inspiration was conceived.

I pulled up our build tools (which were pre-alpha at this point, not even on the web yet!) and started poking around. I saw all sorts of options – things like templates, sprites, tiles, backgrounds. Under templates, I noticed something called “player”. In typical Cuppycake destructive fashion, I had a brilliant idea to delete the player template. I figured I could make it later, right? What good is having a template there that I’m not even using? Well – I crashed my game server in a way that had never happened before at the company. I’ve always been the master of first impressions. It was Day 1 on the job, and I had already spilled coffee into my keyboard and blew up my first attempt at a game. W00t! Luckily, our programmers here disabled the ability to delete your own player template pretty much right after I discovered it was possible. Some testing really takes a n00b to find the obscure things that amateurs will try to do.

Since things were looking so good, I started out by learning about tiles. I had watched Raph do demos of Metaplace already, and I remembered him uploading tiles from the Web and then painting with them across his world. It all looked so simple! My very first experience was with a free tileset that I found by doing a Google search. I was pretty excited at seeing tons of search results for tilesets – it made me look forward to being able to skip the whole art creation process of making a game. Away I went, uploading tiles and painting all over my world – deleting and restarting every few minutes to get used to using the different tools. I laid all the tiles down and then I thought that perhaps I wanted some mountains and valleys. I then tried to use the elevation tool to add some variety to my terrain, which was when I learned about view modes.

Apparently there are lots of different view modes that games can be built in. There is an isometric view which I found looked really similar to games like Ultima Online, it was almost 3D. Then there was a side view, and an overhead view. I picked the overhead view because it was nicknamed “Zelda mode” and I figured that Ponyplace would be just as good as if not better than Zelda eventually. I didn’t remember any mountains in Zelda, so I assumed that the overhead view didn’t support elevation changes (and I ended up being correct.)

Now that I was familiar with painting tiles, I set out to find the exact tiles that I wanted to use for Ponyplace. I was looking for something that would look good in a fantasy world, something fun and cute. I ended up finding a generic fantasy tileset that worked perfectly. There were grass tiles, mountain tiles, water tiles, edges of water tiles, and so on. It was a blast to arrange the tiles to make my game background, which I learned is actually called a map. I now had the background all ready to go to start work on the meat of the game, which was the pony avatar of course!

This was the part I was most excited for, putting my pony into the game. I figured that since there were pages and pages of tileset results on Google, I’d be able to find a pony avatar that faced in different directions. Man, was I wrong. Apparently I was one of the only people in the world who was trying to make a robust, lush, equestrian world of exploration and intrigue, mixed with RPG elements like classic turnbased combat and a deep meaningful storyline (with ponies). Completely baffled that there weren’t pages upon pages of search results to assist me, I decided I’d “make my own” and downloaded Paint.net.

I am a very accomplished artist, so I combined all my skills that I learned at the four different art institutes that I attended. It look all the talent I could muster to Google for My Little Pony and cut a pony out of a random image from the Hasbro site with the selection tool. Not to mention how I slaved over the process of flipping the image horizontally so that I could have a left walking pony and a right walking pony. And then, the bright pink and orange pony with palm trees on its butt was born:

(Editor’s note: This original art was removed because it’s not really all that original. Remember folks, make sure to have permission before using art from the web and claiming it as your own!)

I uploaded the pony into my world, and figured out how to make the pony be my avatar. When you first upload an image into a world, it puts it into a gallery of images called sprites. Each sprite is given its own unique sprite ID to reference it anywhere else. The player template (yeah, that pesky one I deleted earlier) automatically comes with a default sprite ID attached to it (right now it’s a stick figure). All I had to do was open up the player template and change the default sprite ID number to the number of the pony I just put in. Easy! I now had a stationary object that resembled a hideous looking pony positioned in a brightly gaudy fantasy land. Eventually I intend to switch the pony out for some original art, but this worked fine for prototyping. Things were looking better by the end of my first day in my new job; I had accomplished the very first steps of creating what would eventually be the deepest role playing game the web would ever see.

(Stay tuned if you can’t get enough of the exciting adventure that Ponyplace promises to deliver! Part 2 coming soon.)

I thought I’d take some time to talk about a few nifty programs and plugins that I’ve been playing around with lately.  They’ve made my life easier or more fun, so I should share them with you all!

First off is Digsby.  Digsby is another multiprotocol IM client that supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber.  Much like Trillian, Miranda, and Pidgin - this is a downloadable client.  Much like the new Trillian Astra (in closed beta now I believe) Digsby does require you to make an account with them.  A benefit of this is that it stores settings like your skin, layout, and options so that you have synchronized IMing from computer to computer. 

Another difference is the social networking integration.  Digsby works with the new Facebook chat, allowing you to talk with your friends right within the client.  It also works with MySpace, giving you status updates from both networks.  Want to stay on top of your friends’ wall in Facebook?  Are you interested in knowing about upcoming birthdays?  How about Twitter?  Read all your friends’ latest Twitters and update your status right through the IM.  Also supports all the popular email providers like Gmail, Hotmail/MSN, AOL/AIM, Yahoo, and POP mail. 

It has a really simple looking interface much like Pidgin (I believe it’s actually built on Pidgin) but the social networking features really give it the edge.  Another neat feature is the "multitasking".  If you minimize an IM or navigate away and give focus to another window, a small unannoying window will pop up in the corner of your screen that simply shows you what was said and allows you to reply without having to alt-tab back to the IM window. Makes life a bit easier for those of us who are IM addicts with many many windows open at a time.

And the last, probably most inventive feature is the embedded IM chat for my blog.  You can see this in action on the right.  The widget can be embedded anywhere.  It shows everyone when I’m online, and allows you to pick your name and chat with me.  If I’m logged into my Digsby, I’ll get the chat as if it’s any normal IM.  I can pick whatever alias I want my returning IMs to come from, so it basically allows me to be contacted via IM with an anonymous screenname that no one will see.  Try it out!  If I’m online in the widget to the  right, send me a message.  Pretty neat.

So if you’re looking for a replacement IM client, try out Digsby.  I’ve liked it so far. =)

Windows Live Writer

I’m *always* down for trying out new blogging software.  When this launched, I initially thought it was going to be just for the Windows Live Spaces (you know, those blogs that no one uses).  Apparently it supports hosted solutions like Wordpress/Blogger as well.  I downloaded it (and I’m typing this blog in it right now).  It’s pretty neat.  Allows for mostly everything that the Wordpress editor allows - except it can be used offline.  Can schedule posting, has a nice WYSIWYG editor, allows saving of draft, inserting videos, etc.  I like it because it just "feels good" to type in.  I haven’t found many practical reasons why I’d want to use it over the online Wordpress composer, but it’s pretty nifty to try out.

Xobni

This is probably the neatest of the new ‘gadgets’ I have tried.

Xobni is basically like a Google Desktop for your email.  It is a plugin for Outlook (for those of you who use this at work, it’s quite invaluable) that really changes the way you’ll use Outlook for the better.  It allows for things like threaded conversations, INSTANT SEARCHING (woo!), statistics, quick attachment discovery (you click on a contact, it gives you a list of every attachment they have sent you), email analytics (more neat than helpful), social networking of sorts (view people’s connections), and one button appointment scheduling with people.  It’s really awesome and it’s something I’m keeping around.

—-

Anyway, if you check any of these out, let me know.  I’m always excited about new shiny toys.

Say what you want about the community of WoW, there are always beautiful moments like this one that make you remember there are real people behind the toons, and there are genuinely kind people in WoW. One guild, Aetherial Circle of Drenden, had one of their guildmembers pass away named Sharvan. In her honor, they held a Running of the Bulls event in which 500 Taurens got together and ran across Azeroth.

I love hearing about stories like this. It’s nice to know that the community stepped up and did something special in her name (that her RL family even participated in.) Kudos to you BigRedKitty for organizing and planning such a beautiful tribute.

Here’s a video for those interested:

Yay!

I know most of you are probably extremely uninterested in the Kentucky Derby or in horse racing at all, but tomorrow is the Run for the Roses!  At 6:04pm EST (or 3:04pm my time!) the greatest 3 minutes in sports will occur.

I would normally be cheering for Pyro, but since I drew “Court Vision” out of a hat today at work - I’m rooting for him so that I can win the prize.

So, go Court Vision!

I was trying to resist posting this, because when I created my Tauren Druid, I told myself that she would always be a feral druid through and through.  I have such a blast hanging out in cat form, lurking in the shadows and pouncing on innocent creatures and Alliance.  Of course when I created her in 2005, the Resto spec was simply for healing with not very much utility.  It was completely pigeon-holing, and limited the class drastically.

Now I’m at a point where I’m really on the fence about what spec I want to be.  I’m only level 60 now, and I am Feral (0, 41, 10 currently) and I am geared in all agi/sta/str gear.  My armory link is here for context.  I feel like it is kind of a waste to be picking up all feral gear for the next 10 levels if I’m going to end up speccing Resto at 70.

Why Resto?

Here’s some background about my playstyle.  For me, WoW is all about the PvP (well, and the lore too).  I am so eager and excited for arenas and battlegrounds.  I have never been level 70, so I haven’t yet had the opportunity to experience arenas yet.  Although some people say they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, they’re right up my alley.  Don’t seem to require too much time commitment, just a couple friends who you can rely on to play regularly.  My guild raids twice a week, and I don’t honestly care whether I’m DPSing or healing..that is, if I ever end up raiding.

Resto is apparently the spec for arenas, especially when paired with a warrior, which I am.  Everything I have read so far about ferals in arena, is truly dismal.  Unless you’re in a 5v5, you spend more time shifted out and healing/reacting to CC then you do actually killing anyway.  One of the better threads I’ve read about this is here, and contains many pages of signs and bumps from feral druids who feel like they’re underrepresented in the arena.  There are claims that it is extremely difficult for a feral druid in 2v2 or 3v3 to gain an 1800 rating, and that druids are forced to spec Resto in order to get a high enough rating to get some of the Dragonhide gear (you know, that set they put in for Ferals).

Looking for Advice

So, here’s where everyone comes in.  If you were a fledgling level 60 druid in my shoes, and you knew that in 10 levels you wanted to spend your WoW time between running dungeons with your friends, PvPing in the arenas and battlegrounds, and doing dailies - what spec would you choose now?  I do the majority of my leveling right now with my boyfriend who is a fury warrior.  I’m not really needed as a tank in my circle of friends because of my boyfriend and also we have a paladin who plays with us too.  We don’t really have a healer right now, but I do have a 62 priest for 2boxing goodness, and we have a friend who is a 66 shadow priest who will most likely be down for playing with us too.  There have been many choices in Outland so far between feral or caster gear, and I’ve had a hard time deciding and wish I’d just make up a choice.

Here are a few questions:

1. How viable is a feral specced druid at level 70 at healing in dungeons if they have another backup set of healing gear?
2. How viable is a 2v2 team with a DPS warrior and a feral druid? How about a 3v3 by adding in a rogue?
3. Should I worry about this now, or just wait until level 70 to respec and start gearing up?
4. Are there any good feral druid arena guides out there that I haven’t found?
5. Can I still provide decent dps in my forms if I’m Resto specced but have a backup set of agi/sta/str gear?

I’m posting these questions here because I know that some of the best WoW bloggers out there are druids (and I’m not just biased), and yes I’m trying to lure them over here to provide some advice

WoW druids are by far the best class I have played in any MMO, ever.  I have so much fun with the shapeshifting and the multiple roles and utility.  I know I’d have fun with whichever spec I decide on, but the min/maxer side of me is having a moral dilemma about the viability of ferals in the arena. =/  Hepl!

So, in March when I went to IMGDC I stayed in my parent’s house.  Best thing about staying there, was that they have a piano!  I never brought my keyboard with me to San Diego (and it was crappy anyway) so I’d been itching to play one again.   As soon as I got off the plane and arrived and got settled, I sat down and taught myself to play a song I’d been listening to on the plane.  The song is 9 Crimes by Damien Rice, which is actually a duet between him and a female.

So here it is.  Recorded with a computer mic, a slightly out of tune piano, and no vocal effects or editing.

9 Crimes

Please, after you listen - listen to the original. Such a beautiful song.

I don’t normally get TOO into the whole MMO machinima thing, but every once in awhile I actually watch one and find myself entertained. This one is entitled Thrall’s Crib, and is a perfect clone of MTV Cribs, except obviously with Thrall.

“These are my epic mounts”. Awesome.