by Jeff Woleslagle on Apr 06, 2009
Welcome to the 1,051st Edition of Loading...
Loading... is the premier and only MMORPG news and commentary daily newsletter from Ten Ton Hammer.
In today's Loading... we go after inflation in today's maturing MMOs. How can devs limit or at least contain the effects of a player-influenced economy? We have a solution or two and we welcome your comments too. A new and exclusive Ether Saga Online dev diary, 4 new WoW and WAR guides, and an opinion piece on what exactly makes a MMO "free to play" in today's Loading... Inflated Expectations.
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The Pulse
You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?).
Here's today's top 5 Pulse results for today:
World of Warcraft EverQuest 2 Age of Conan Warhammer Online Lord of the Rings OnlineBiggest Movers in the Top 20 today :
Lineage 2 (UP 2 to #17) CrimeCraft (down 2 to #19) Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (UP 1 to #7)Loading... Daily
Loading... inflating expectations since 2005.
Given the empty ciné noir landscape that is the newbie game in most well-aged MMOs, I should be grateful that the few hours spent leveling yet another WoW character this weekend yielded at least one friendly encounter. That group, a mute pairing that lasted exactly the thirty seconds that it took to take down Taskmaster Dizzywig, was a group born of convenience rather than the difficulty of the encounter - another one of WoW secrets that takes a heady, milling population to pull off.
In most lowbie areas with a population to boast (and I spend a lot of time in a lot of newbie areas these days), the characters bumble around like bad guests at the world's worst cocktail party. In WoW, it's become a race. Barrens chat and Norris one-liners have turned into recruitment chatter and linked "bargain" epics from the auction house. It's a little sad to see WoW grow up, but I'll manage.
I was determined to level this character without an ounce of twinkage. I wanted to play classic WoW as nature intended, pulling myself up by the bootstraps to determine how well WoW has held up. After all, WoW has changed it's new player experience barely if at all in the past four and a half years, in stark contrast to every other top-tier MMO that's at least half its age. Things were going well; I'd scrimped and saved, sold everything I could through the AH and taken more than a few inconvenient trips back to town when my meager assortment of bags were full. A lowbie bag quest for races other than draenei and blood elf remains high on my wishlist, fortunately we have a guide for every purpose.
I'd managed to save up a few silver and was feeling pretty good until the class quest at level 14, which required an herb that couldn't be bought from an NPC, it had to be gathered or bought at the auction house. Now I realized my mistake; I'd picked a Tauren Druid, and after a few years of Taurens in leather jokes, I'd picked skinning and leatherworking for my professions, even managing to skill up and farm the mats for a few kodo bags. I'd saved a little silver too; more than enough for the stack of Earthroot I needed. Or so I thought, or so it had been the last time someone from Blizz had looked at the quest. Inflation had taken hold, and bidding for a 5-spot of Earthroot started at about five times my life savings. I can't fault the herbalists - I'd want some recompense for trekking around picking flowers at random spawns too. And if I were smart and had taken my own advice, I would have picked two gathering professions and saved the crafting profession for when my character had money to blow. Still, herbalism isn't the best gathering profession for a druid (who has a bevy of healing spells anyway).
So I'm sure I wasn't the only druid that depended on the AH for my Earthroot fix, and inflation is the byproduct of growth - a player population that's farming more gold than it's sinking back into the game. Frankly I'm surprised it's not worse in WoW. All the same, inflation punishes those starting from scratch or returning to an online game disproportionately. And there's no need for it, with a little planning. At the risk of sounding like a complete wuss, complaining about WoW mid-teens, I'd just ask that devs keep raw crafting items and quest items separate.
Fortunately a guildmate gave me a handfull of gold (I still insist on calling it a loan), and it's amazing how much difference a few gold makes. Too bad exploiters, if not inflation, would punish an early moneybags quest that offers gold for a mundane task. Have another solution for inflation? If so, you can either apply to the treasury department or post your solution in the Loading... forum. Or skip the middleman and send me an email!
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day7 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 25 in April! 412 in 2009!
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]
Ether Saga Dev Diary #3 - Events and InstancesHot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:
CrimeCraft: Exclusive Interview with Vogster's Matt McEnerney World of Warcraft Comic: Goob & Begud - Happy Ending Exclusive Interview with Nexon's Min Kim Can Aion Take North America by Storm? Loading... Live #10 Podcast: Post-Book 7 Dev Chat with LotRO's Jeffrey Steefel The Symbiosis of Ship, Captain and Crew in Star Trek Online geeked: Patience is a Virtue Exclusive Star Trek Online Interview with Craig Zinkievich Exclusive Interview with Champions Online's Bill Roper Paul Barnett's GDC Blog #3 - Elvis is in the GDCReal World News
Budapest, Hungary referred to as the 'Paris of Europe'Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
-Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team