Loading... Reality Bytes

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Posted Tue, Oct 06, 2009 by Shayalyn

Welcome to the 1,180th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

We sometimes hear gamers complain that combat in a MMOG isn't very true to life, or that character models and environments look too "cartoony," or that a certain feature or mechanic detracts from a game's realism. But is realism truly what we're after when it comes to games? Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg talks about how too much realsim could detract from a MMOG's real purpose, to distract us from our daily lives, in today's Loading... Reality Bytes.

The Pulse You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?). Here's today's top 5 Pulse results: World of Warcraft Dungeons & Dragons Online Aion EverQuest 2 EVE Online Biggest movers this past week: Global Agenda (up 9 to #17) Runes of Magic (up 2 to #14) Champions Online (down 4 to #10)	Recent MMO Releases 8/25 - CrimeCraft (release date) 9/1 - Champions Online (release date) 9/9 - Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date) 9/15 - Runes of Magic "The Elven Prophecy" (expansion) 9/22 - Fallen Earth (release date) 9/22 - Aion (release date)
	Upcoming Releases 10/9 - Cities XL (release date) 12/1 - Lord of the Rings Online - "Siege of Mirkwood" (release date) 12/2 - DOFUS 2.0 (release date) Early 2010 - APB
	Important Dates 10/23 - 10/24 - Hero-Con
Click here to explore the best free-to-play MMORPG - Runes of Magic The Elven Prophecy. Join now and create the ultimate fantasy hero.

Loading... Daily

The last time you logged into a MMOG you likely saw and accomplished things you would never see or accomplish in the real world: you cast a spell that shot a bolt of lightning at your foe; you donned tights and flew through the skies as a superhero; you wielded a sword that, in the real world, would’ve weighed at least a third of your own body weight, and yet you not only held it upright but leapt through the air, swinging it at your enemies with apparent ease. Even more realistic games (think some of the post-apoc titles) contain some unrealistic (or at least futuristic) elements, from ginormous weapons to gadgets utilizing advanced technology. Why? Because we live and work in the real world, and when we play games we want to be…elsewhere.

With games, we’re more than willing to suspend disbelief and accept that our online avatar really is a night elf druid, or a winged daeva, or a spandex-clad superhero. In fact, that sense of being transported to a different time, place, and set of global circumstances is what online gaming, and most video gaming in general, is all about. Even simulators like The Sims have their fantastical elements--teleportation, magic, toilets that flush themselves. (Wait, we have those self-flushing toilets. Never mind.)

Our longing to adventure in other worlds, and the way the gaming industry is constantly delivering those worlds to us, might lead us to believe that, at the very least, reality is something we want to escape from when we game. And yet, when things aren’t realistic enough, we tend to balk. Some of us object to “cartoony” graphics. Others object to things like weapons landing what should amount to finishing blows over and over again to the same opponent. Our forum regular, BahamutKaiser, put it well in a recent post:

“…in a real battle, two steep opponents are parrying, blocking and guarding attacks until one eventually gets the upper hand and lands damaging blows. [MMOG developers] could step up the realism and make it so, when you’re fighting, lost hit points are reflected visually as near misses or armor glances up until the last few blows, which land deadly injuries for the kill.”

It’s a good point BahamutKaiser makes, and I agree that it would be interesting to see a game with a more a realistic type of sword battle, yet somehow I’m not sure that’s what we sign up for when we play a MMOG. No one wants to miss for most of the fight only to land a few crippling blows toward the end. What we want to see is our character repeatedly bashing our virtual opponent (or nuking it with spells, or shooting it with guns) until it’s dead. There’s a reason why monsters intended for soloing, as long as they’re within our level range, don’t easily defeat us--losing detracts from the idea that we are great and powerful.

My last entry in Loading… talked about the gamers’ need to feel epic, and I think that topic relates to this one. Certain special cases (or deluded individuals) aside, we’re just not all that epic in our day-to-day lives. We wake up, we brush our teeth, we go to work or school (and if we’re lucky we enjoy that part of our lives at least a little), we come home, we eat dinner, we do something either lazy or social or recreational for a few hours (gaming, perhaps?), and we go to bed and sleep until it’s time to repeat the process all over again. Games let us escape that real world grind--sometimes in order to participate in a virtual one, but that’s another topic altogether--and experience the excitement of being someone else, someplace else, doing something else.

Are we ready for a more realistic experience in a MMOG? I’m not sure. Although I often hear gamers cry that they’re tired of fantasy-based games, developers keep making them, and Aion proves yet again that gamers will keep buying and subscribing to them. Space- or sci-fi- or horror-based games are still fantastical, featuring technology or creatures that aren’t a part of our lives in the 21st century. Even realism-based games like Second Life transport us somewhere and give us the ability to don different virtual skins and different personas, and to lead completely different lives from the ones we’re living outside of their pixelized realms.

If games didn’t transport us we’d have no need of them--our own lives would be adventure enough. And yet, as much as life can be an adventure unto itself, we’ve always longed for the thing that takes us out of our time and space and into something else, whether it’s another world or another life or just another person’s moment in time. Games are merely an extension of our need to be stolen away by a story or idea, a need that has always been with us. In ancient times, we shared verbal storytelling traditions. We progressed to books, and learned that the written word could convey us to other places, and allow us to feel as though we were witnessing or experiencing events outside of our real world experiences. Plays, television, cinema…they all take us elsewhere. And now video games do that, too.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe that reality is an awful thing that must be escaped from at any cost. In fact, reality is where it’s at…most of the time. But we humans start flexing our imaginations in early childhood and I believe it’s important that we never stop exercising them in as many different ways as we can. Gaming provides another venue for imagination.

Are MMOGs not realistic enough, too realistic, or just right? Have your say in the Loading... forum.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Aion General Discussion Forum

Spam is totally out of control!!!

I'm morally opposed to the exclamation point. As punctuation goes, I find it overused. But in this case, I'm going to let the poster of this thread in our Aion forum, MikeHawthorne, get away with not just one but three of them in the title of his post: "Spam is totally out of control!!!"

Spam in Aion is totally out of control--there's no question. The gold spammers hit Atreia very early on and, as they've amassed more stores of virtual currency, the problem is increasing. Via character names like Yffmydggie, they're cranking out messages in chat channels (so much so that you often can't read the real channel chat), sending /whispers, and even dropping in with in-game mail. The problem is epidemic and, although NCSoft appears to be working to alleviate some of the spamming (I've seen system messages telling me that players Xxxx and Yyyy have been banned for spamming advertisements), it continues to rage out of control.

Do you share MikeHawthorne's frustration with spam in Aion? Do you have suggestions for how to deal with it? Share both your hostility toward gold spammers and your tips for eradicating them in today's epic thread.

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"Nezekam's public channels are a completely lost cause. It's nothing but the gold spammers spamming each other now. The text scrolls so fast you can't even read them unless you stop the scrolling.

The whispers oh god the whispers."

- Anacche
==============================

Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

6 new Ten Ton Hammer MMOG features today! 26 in October! 1,074 in 2009!

Ten Ton Hammer at EVE FanFest 2009

NEW! Video: DUST 514 Overview and Gameplay
This three-part video answers some of the questions swirling around the newly announced MMOFPS DUST 514 and its ties to EVE Online. First, in planetary interaction, Senior Producer Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Noah Ward will set the stage by showing the need for and benefits from having boots on the ground. Creative Director Alti Mar Sveinsson will then deliver a point by point overview of DUST 514 that gives some background on the game and addresses many of the concerns voiced by EVE players.
EVE Online Dominion Expansion Screens
The details of Dominion were covered - in painfully stream-of-consciousness style - in our live blog from yesterday's panel. While there wasn't too much in Torfi's presentation that we didn't know, it was more than worth the while to see the kind of planet improvements you'll glimpse in these screenshots.
Goonswarm's Darius Johnson at the EVE FanFest 2009 Alliance Panel
Former GoonSwarm CEO Darius Johnson stole the show again this year at the EVE FanFest 2009 Alliance leaders panel. Arriving 30 minutes late and dressed in full "aeronaut" attire, Johnson did his yearly review of propaganda and fan mail from CCP censors, offered his artistic take on the Delve war, showed off some disturbing images from Goon gatherings, and did the Goons proud by answering audience questions to the best of his visibly intoxicated ability.
EVE Online Incarna Teaser Trailer
EVE Online's more hardcore element has long questioned the time and effort CCP's putting into the newly renamed Incarna project, which will allow players to step out of their pods and into stations for the first time. While this year's FanFest lacked last year's Walking in Stations playable demo, Senior Producer Torfi Ólafsson hinted at a new and more serious "twist" to Incarna and offered us this teaser video.
CCP Reveals More Details about DUST 514 at EVE FanFest 2009
DUST 514 (pronounced five-fourteen) is the newly announced MMO first-person shooter currently in development at CCP Asia. This new MMOG that shares a world with EVE Online was announced at EVE Fanfest 2009 and Ten Ton Hammer Editor-in-Chief, Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle, was there to catch all the info.
EVE Online's Economics and "Unholy Rage" Video
For this year's EVE Online economics panel, Dr. Eyjólfur "EyjóG" Guðundsson, EVE Online's Lead Economist, schooled us on market info and much more. The focus of the panel was on the positive economic and performance effects of the ongoing "Unholy Rage" initiative. Unholy Rage has led to the banning of over 18,000 accounts for illicit RMT (Real Money Trade), a more balanced economy, and (most surprisingly) 15% less server-side CPU usage per user.

Today's New MMO Coverage and Features

Ease of Access - Case Studies in Accessibility and Popularity of MMOGs
Ask just about anyone in the industry for one word to describe why World of Warcraft is so successful, and if they don't say "Blizzard," they'll likely say "accessibility." What does accessibility mean? Is it as simple as lowering the barriers to entry or offering casual players a shot at succeeding in the endgame? We'll attempt to define accessibility, then examine three case studies in an accessible MMO, an inaccessible MMO that by many accounts failed, and an inaccessible MMO that became a success story.
EVE Online Editorial: Sins of the Solar Spymaster #28 - Irresponsible Speculation Edition!
Chaos, distrust, breaking alliances, and anarchy are just a few things that could be coming to Eve Online. This week The Mittani examines the new sovereignty mechanics and what impact combat and ship changes might have on the Eve Online universe.
Aion Lore: The Day the Tower was Lost
There are many different theories floating around as to what really happened on that fateful day in Aion lore when the world was quite literally ripped apart. Sepharious takes a closer look at a few of the possibilities, shedding some new insights into the cleverly crafted lore of the Elyos and Asmodians along the way.
WoW Feature: Getting Ready for Cataclysm
With at least a few months until Cataclysm is released what should players be doing to get ready for it? Byron “Messiah”Mudry looks at some possible answers to just that question in this week's WoW feature.
Champions Online Comic: Zeroes - "Selfish Endeavors"
Champions Online is based on superheroes. The big, the bad, and the bold all share Millennium City as their home. But what about the less than average caped crusaders? Who will tell their story? This week a healer defends her battle-strategy...badly: