My greatest complaint about the otherwise testoterone-tastic Gears of War 2 is how cheesy and clunky the romance subplot comes across as, and I think the reason is clear - it’s not amateurish writing or awkward dialogue, but rather the fact that Dom’s struggle to find his wife Maria, who went missing during the Locust horde onslaught, just doesn’t come close to the emotional gravitas of his unspoken love for fellow Gear-head, Marcus Fenix. And I’m not the only ones who thinks so. GameDaily is highlighting the top 12 greatest, and chastest, dude-on-dude love affairs in the history of gaming, the purely platonic phenomenon known as the “bromance.”

“Their heterosexual love affair plays out through a series of fist-pounding frathouse antics,” according to GameDaily. “Think Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in Superbad, Vince Vaughn and John Favreau in Swingers, or, in the video game world, Marcus Fenix and his buddy Dom in Gears of War 2.”

Counted among the happy couples are Bill Rizer and Lance Bean from Contra, Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem from Army of Two and Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles “Tails” Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, proving that true love knows neither gender nor species. But it’s still not okay for Harry Potter to schtupp that horse.

By the power of Greyskull!

It has been a long time since my last diary post and in that time, I have raised from rank 23 to 30. That’s about a month for seven ranks. Most of the people I know can average one level every two or three play sessions, but not this guy… I found the last seven levels to really challenge my interest in the game, which you’ll have noticed if you’ve read any of my posts since the last journal entry.

The main reason I wasn’t writing WAR Diary posts for each or every few ranks was because nothing of much import actually happened. I didn’t find much of it interesting enough to report on, so I couldn’t imagine any of the readers finding it interesting either.

Here my highlights from ranks 23-30:

• Witching Night - This really got people interested in oRvR in T3 and every time I logged on I could find some pretty decent fights in Black Fire Pass. Yeah, some, if not most of it was zergy, it sure beat grinding out scenarios and quests over and over again.
• My gear finally got some new skins by rank 30 (T4 quests and RvR drops), which is a welcome change from the same boring textures I’ve been used to since the beginning of T3. Dyes are a great way to customize your character, but would it hurt to have more than two skins and weapon models per tier?
• My guild finally achieved rank 15, so we picked a background style for our heraldry. Once we hit rank 21 we can finally add an emblem to make us truly stand out. Unfortunately, there appears to be a graphical glitch that prevents me from actually seeing the heraldry on my cloak half the time. It’s about a 50/50 toss-up as to whether or not my cloak texture will show up every time I load into a new zone/scenario.
• I can finally join T4 scenarios and participate in T4 oRvR. Serpent’s Passage seems to load a lot and apparently Order heavily outranks Destruction on my server, so it’s usually five or six rank 36-40 Order guys with a couple of rank 39 and a ton of rank 28-33 Destruction guys.
• Rank 30 finally unlocked a new backpack and two more tactic slots. Woot.

I got vertigo... and I threw up a little.

Here are some of the lowlights from ranks 23-30:

• You’d think with all the morale abilities, career skills, and tactics I would actually learn something new and cool at each rank. This doesn’t seem to be the case. Often times I would gain a new rank and not be able to learn anything at all. Most of the time I would gain a new rank and be able to train some trash abilities (I still have about 8 untrained career skills/tactics/morales because I know I’ll never use them). I have only found a skill/morale/tactic worth training three times since rank 23.
• I am so damned sick of grinding away at Public Quests, solo or in a group. I have levelled a few alts lately and I really miss how quickly the influence bar seemed to move in chapter 1 and 2. Why must they make the latter PQs (chapter 15+) so brutal? It’s not like the rewards are itemized very well anyway… Half the time I don’t even want the junk they consider rewards.
• Kill ten rats. Collect five foozles. Go talk to this guy. And then go talk to that guy. Go scout this area. Mythic has shown some glimpses of brilliance with quests in earlier chapters, but it really starts to wear on you after doing it for so many ranks.  I like to balance my oRvR with scenarios and with PvE. The PvE just isn’t engaging at all anymore.
• Scenarios. There are six of them. Yet I only ever get into two or three with any frequency - Tor Anroc, Temple of Isha, and Doomfist Crater. All three are fairly fast-paced, but it is easy to get dominated early in them and become unable to recover. Mostly this is a PuG issue. Half the time people are running around like challenged folk with protective headgear and when you try bring a little organization via scenario chat you are either ignored or called an idiot. The remaining three unplayed scenarios are even worse in PuGs because people play them so defensively.
• Aside from Witching Night, T3 oRvR has been quite dead. Most of the time I log on we already own all the keeps and BOs, so there’s nothing to do but wait for something to go under siege. Unfortunately, I think the majority of Order is in T4, so T3 isn’t very important to them on my server these days.

What am I looking forward to?

• Heavy Metal - Depending on the daily tasks, this event might actually be quite fun. They did a great job with Witching Night even though there was no way I could possibly fill the Live Event influence bar on a casual schedule, even after maxing out on Lords, Crones, and Spirits and doing a ton of oRvR. I hope to fill the Heavy Metal Live Event influence bar and participate in the new scenario.
• A potential respec to Quick Shootin’ mastery. I’ve been training in Big Shootin’ since rank 10, so I welcome a change in playstyle, especially one that keeps me a moving target instead of a stationary pin cushion.
• The 1.06 Combat and Career patch that will finally address a number of my Squig Herder’s balance issues.

Cheating the system - going back to the chapter 1 PQ for a Daily unlock and a bit o' revenge.

Maybe the outlook isn’t so bleak afterall? The fact that I’m looking forward to a few things has to be good, right?

Related posts:

1. Day 1 (again): Secret Diaries of a Goblin Squig Herder And so starts a new blog category: WAR Diary....
2. Day 2/3: Squig Herder Confessions Last night I went from ranks 7-9 by doing...
3. 1.05 Squig Herder Buffs Delayed I want to say I’m shocked here, but that wouldn’t...

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Warhammer is plagued by some rather terrible flaws, flaws that should have been tested in beta. The flaws have nothing to do with coding errors or graphical problems, but rather center around player actions and motivation. Warhammer Online’s biggest problem is the players are simply not playing it correctly.

Now before you go and post a “don’t blame the players” comment, relax and keep reading. On paper, everything in WAR works. In execution, each piece also works on its own. Scenarios are a noticeable improvement over WoW battlegrounds, PQs are a clever new way to implement PvE, and RvR is a ton of fun when players are battling over keeps or objectives, and truly does separate WAR from other MMOs in that regard. The engine supports PvP above and beyond what previous MMOs have done, and the balance is remarkable for a new MMO with so many class options and abilities.

The problem occurs when you put everything together, and then let MMO players enter the world and decide what they do next. Who could have predicted that contrary to the massive Alliance/Horde imbalance, WAR would feature the exact opposite? What happened to everyone wanting to be the knight in shining armor? Who could have predicted that in a game that starts at level one, rather than at the cap, players would STILL race towards the end regardless of anything around them, and do so in the most grind-like manner? (one scenario per tier)

Mythic coded an amazing game. They nailed the look and feel of the Warhammer IP, they had a great launch, and they continue to support the game at a rapid pace. What Mythic failed to do is provide enough motivation to herd players in the right direction, to guide them towards the great content they have provided. In today’s MMO market, it’s no longer enough just to provide quality content; you also have to guide your players to it. Take for instance open groups. Open groups make finding players for PQs or RvR rather simple, yet many players still don’t know about the /join command, or that you can look at all the open groups around you by clicking an icon. The best way to gather players is still to advertise in regional chat, and this clearly shows the general lack of awareness by players. Lairs are another example of wasted content. Instead of being explored and discovered by players, lairs go largely ignore, not because they are not entertaining (they are), but because the players are not guided to them. (Which is the design point of lairs, to be found by explorers, but clearly catering to the explorer means you exclude the masses)

It’s safe to say Mythic is now aware of this rather dire problem, as the last two events have been a virtual hand-holding to guide players into content. The Witching Night brought RvR lakes to life, and now Heavy Metal directs players on a daily basis, be it towards a scenario, some PQs, or whatever else Mythic has planned. It’s a good first step, but it makes you wonder why it’s a step being taken a month after release, rather than something fleshed out and ready to go on day one. What would Mythic’s retention rate look like if more players have experienced a great keep battle before bolting towards more neon pastures?

Blizzard, masters of hand-holding, gave the MMO market an innovative step forward with daily instances (was Blizzard the first MMO to do this? It’s always dangerous saying Blizzard was the first to do anything…), but Mythic should ‘borrow’ the idea and take it a step further. As others have commented in the past, we need daily RvR lakes, or daily keeps, or even daily scenarios. Each day a new focus, something that drives the majority towards a single point. Fluff rewards are enough to drive players, so create an overall influence bar that runs for a month or so of time, and at each influence level hand out trophies, titles, whatever. Each month reset the bar, mix up the rewards, and continue to guide players. Save the major events for really game-changing stuff like new classes or major content updates.

Who would have guessed that the biggest problem facing WAR would not be content, bugs, or stability, but rather player motivation? Clearly not Mythic, but now lets just hope they move quickly to provide that motivation, and get players into the great content they already created.

And just for the record, I myself have not really experience the majority of the problems listed above. I’ve never had an issue finding a group for a PQ, I’ve seen plenty of RvR, and I’ve never been at a lack for content or something new. That said, Monolith seems to be a very well balanced server, and playing with Forsaken and CoW really helps, so I understand that my situation is somewhat different from the majority. I also understand how /join works, but that’s just elitist old me…

Arguably the best WWII game ever. Simply put, if you like first-person shooters this is absolutely essential.

• Guitar Hero: World Tour Band Kit (Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii)
• Fallout 3 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC)
  
• 007: Quantum of Solace (Xbox 360, PS3, PS2)
• Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)
  
• WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 (Xbox 360, PS3, PS2)
• Call of Duty: World at War (PS3, Xbox 360)

This is not just a holiday promotion for us, but a brand new product line-up that will be available year-round. We may not be a total entertainment destination... yet, but we're hoping to expand our selection beyond the high-dollar, hot-selling games to include options for all budgets, like value-priced video games as well as DVD movies. For consumers wanting convenient one-stop shopping for at-home entertainment along with groceries and gas or who just want to avoid big-store shopping inconveniences, their local 7-Eleven is open and ready.

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/fanart/fanart2008.php

Enjoy that Skaven Skin cloak and keep up the amazing work. You get better with each and every comic/wallpaper! I can’t wait to read the Thanksgiving special!

Related posts:

1. Newsletter Delay = ChaosCast #5 Delay Unfortunately, the Warhammer Herald is reporting that the July 2008...
2. November Newsletter - Here’s da lewt The Warhammer Online November Newsletter is upon us… well, for...
3. Newsletter Review Forthcoming! I’ve slowly been going through the January 2008 newsletter and...

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Back in May I asked whether or not WoW was an unstoppable train. To sum it up briefly and simply, I didn’t think so. With today’s news of Blizzard selling 2.8M copies of WotLK and breaking their previous first day sales record of 2.4M with the launch of TBC, I am starting to rethink things a bit. That is 400k more copies, which can be represented as a 14% increase.

I was basing my earlier theory on a bit of expert opinion by none other than MMO Chart‘ s SirBruce. This guy has been analyzing the MMO scene for a long time here and he had put together a presentation with the following:

• The MMOG subscription market continues to grow; 16M+ now, 20M+ in 2009 (pred. 2006), 30M+ in 2012
• World of Warcraft to peak at 11M – 12M by 2010
• Most retail-launched MMOGs have an initial growth phase during the first year, followed by 1 – 3 years of a more stable, “mature” subscription base, and then a noticeably and often sharp decline.
• New markets grow subscriptions, but expansions packs mostly cover churn and provide a retail presence.

I don’t know about the overall subscription market, but I’m going to assume it is growing. Also, Blizzard recently announced that they now have over 11M accounts (however you slice ‘em up), which is pretty much on par with his second bullet. We’re on the brink of finding out what will happen with the third bullet as WoW celebrates its fourth birthday. Will it ring in the next 12 months with a “sharp decline?”

I’m most interested in the fourth bullet. According to Sir Bruce, MMO expansions cover churn, aka, player loss. Well, since the release of TBC, WoW’s population has shot up from 8M to 11M, an increase of roughly 3M players. Obviously, you release expansions to keep your customers in new and exciting content, but are they also serving the purpose of helping World of Warcraft grow? Without TBC, I don’t think we’d see the current numbers at 11M…

Let’s talk a bit more about player retention here. My WAR guild is made up entirely of ex-WoW players. We were a WoW guild that moved to WAR (even though I had quit WoW a long time before WAR was even in the picture). At one point we had 69 members in our guild. We now have about 20 “active” members (active yet ultra casual). Where do you think the other ones went? Back to WoW for the most part. The most I have seen online at prime time these past couple weeks has been 8 players. Most of the time it is 3 to 4.

This isn’t an isolated occurrence either. Last night I did a quick server check and found about 70% of them to be low/low, 30% of them to be med/med (or some variation of med/low or low/med), and none of them was showing a “high” value anywhere in the entire list. During WAR’s first free month it wasn’t uncommon to see dozens of “high” and “full” values.

Having spoken with another blogger who shall remain nameless (protect the innocent!), he went from having a guild of 150 to about 20 actives as well. Even one of his best friends and a family member quit - though I don’t think those two in particular went back to WoW. Most of the rest? You guessed it.

You can blame some of this on the fact that these people weren’t enjoying WAR enough to stick around regardless and that many of them may not have run back to WoW, but you’d be a complete fool to say that WotLK hasn’t had a huge impact on WAR’s retention rate…

WotLK is definitely addressing WoW’s churn issues.

I think the next 12-months will be exciting for both WoW and WAR and we’ll start being able to see where the chips are falling. A couple of the original bullets are a bit conflicting on second glance: First he says that WoW will grow to 11-12M by 2010 but then he says that most MMOs see a sharp decline in their fifth year. Will WoW be able to break the industry norms by actually continuing to grow into their fifth year (2010) and beyond? Could the expansions help this to happen rather than simply addressing churn?

If I had to make a prediction, it would be this:

WoW will do extremely well for the next 6-12 months and may even reach that 12M peak, but without another expansion on the horizon for an additional 6-12 months beyond then, they will start to see that sharp decline SirBruce talks about. No MMO launch since 2004 has yet managed to make a permanent dent in WoW’s subscription figures, including both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. There’s still a chance for these MMOs to gobble up the players getting bored of WoW in the next year, but I don’t think it will be too substantial (maybe a total loss of 1-2M, which is still pretty good). They’ll also have to share those fleeing subscribers with a number of other MMOs, including those joining the scene.

Both WAR and AoC are in a subscription slump compared to the momentary peaks they attained in their first months of launch, however, the numbers are bound to rise back up again as people experience all or at least most of what WotLK has to offer. And as I said, I believe this will happen within the next 6-12 months, but it could happen even sooner.

I’ve personally been so up and down with WAR lately because I have no other MMO to run back to. I’ll never touch WoW again and I don’t feel the slightest inclination to start up a new MMO. The game has immense potential and I know it will be 10x the game it is today within the next few months. The trouble is that WAR is highly population-based as an RvR game and right now the servers are feeling dead to me. Ostermark was a destination server for many of the recent transfer pushes and yet we’re still maxing out at Med/Med. Even at that number, oRvR seems dead most of the times I log on and I usually spend 10-20 minutes in the scenario queue before anything pops. The PvE is sub-par at my current-rank and until I can get into Bastion Stair, it’s just painful to do.

I know it’s a difficult thing for Mythic to do, but they truly need to merge servers ASAP. Mark shot off his mouth about the state of your game being not-so-hot if you have to resort to server merges rather than adding new servers shortly after launch, but he should take the blow to his ego and help out his players.

Waiting 4-12 months for the slow trickle of WoW-quitters to fill these servers back up again isn’t a smart move. Listen to the people playing your game. Listen to your paying customers, man… Otherwise you’ll see a slow trickle the other way - people getting fed up and quitting WAR for something else or nothing at all.

If you aren’t having fun - why are you paying/playing, right? Here’s a quote from my May WoW-Train article:

I’m not trying to pick on World of Warcraft specifically with this post, but it’s a proven fact that time has been the dark red line creeping slowly towards the heart of every MMORPG to date. Time allows for competitive growth. Time leads to player complacency and boredom. Time is what makes the present become the past.

I think the same can be said about not responding to big game issues quick enough.

I should also mention this little anecdote: When I quit DAOC for WoW, it didn’t take the first time. I spent about 3 months in WoW then went crawling back to DAOC for several more months. DAOC eventually lost its charm and I went back to WoW, where I spent almost 2 years. I would imagine the same thing is happening with a lot of people who are leaving WoW for other games: their first or second attempts may not work, but eventually they’ll break the habit.

Related posts:

1. Is WoW an unstoppable train? Right now? Perhaps, though I haven’t really been a part...
2. Upping the 30-day free trial to 90-days? Here’s an interesting idea: I firmly believe companies like Mythic...
3. Playing the “WHAT IF” Game… Syp asks some interesting WHAT IF questions, so I decided...

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So we're having a No Apparent Reason Party tomorrow night.  Wanna come?

It's hard to believe that Destructoid's Miami NARP begins in less than 24 hours. Time flies when you're passing out two thousand flyers, illegally taping posters to Taco Bell drive-thru's, and juggling the logistics of a little hometown gaming event. I'm so happy! I'm so scared!  Special huge and perverse thanks to our headline sponsor Goozex for making all possible. We'd be at home naked on the sofa playing Left 4 Dead otherwise. Not that it's a bad thing either, but it's better to be naked together.

Gamertag Radio will be hosting a special edition of their podcast and also scheduled to make a special announcement at midnight (tease tease), SFX-360 and GameWars will be hosting the $200 2v2 Gears of War 2 and $200 Halo 3 tournaments ($10 per team) and Destructoid and AGA will be presenting the $100 Smash Brothers Brawl tournament (free), and everything will be streamed live (barring internet issues) here and on R3Y's Gameday. Check out the video above from the last South Florida event as you may recognize some faces from the Dtoid community.

Random prizes will also be awarded for unnatural prowess displayed in Left 4 Dead, Street Fighter II, Rock Band 2, and whatever we put on my Dreamcast at the last minute plus random door prizes for early birds. You have to utterly suck at gaming and punctuality to leave empty handed, lest you pick up some swag from Epic Sugarworks. We're also pleased to formally announce a live performance by GuitarAtomik at 11pm. Don't wear panties, ladies. It's gonna rock!

The final schedule of events follows after the jump. Hope you can make it!

The event is held at 11200 S.W. 8th Street inside Florida International University's Gracie's Grill.  Just head to the main building where the restaurants are, then just walk towards the shrieking noises.  If you see a guy with a pink wig and bathrobe or some other dude in a robot helmet, you've arrived my friend.

Also, I came.