In the mean time, I had a bit of a look at the upcoming Bioware MMO yesterday. Star Wars: The Old Republic claims that its new emphasis on story, voice acting and player conversation choice is going to change the MMO playing field for ever. It’s quite a claim, particularly given the general Star Wars game concerns that Jedi and Sith are always going to be wildly over-represented when players have a choice and, to stay true to the universe, will be wildly over-powered.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M1PCIW2JSI

Having watched some of the gameplay and info videos, it looks as if the class balance in Old Republic is going to be pretty solid. The Jedi and Sith are powerful, yes, but they’ve split both into two classes, one more lightsabery and one more force-wizardy. That allows both to be a little less utterly uber.

On top of that, they’ve brought the other classes up so that they do, in fact, kick lots of ass. Rather than weaken Jedis to the point where it’s time to go off and fight cave rats for ten levels, they’ve brought everyone up to being seriously dangerous from the off. In addition to the four Force classes, there are bounty hunters and secret agents on the Imperial side, and troopers and smugglers on the Republic. Force users don’t get much in the way of armour or insane gadgets; the other classes do.

The weakest class in terms of sexy image is the Republic trooper, but they’ve shored that up by making the character feel quite considerably like the Master Chief from Halo. The sod has some pretty colossal guns, too. They claim everyone is fully balanced, and honestly, it looks like that’s the case.

They’re insisting that all classes are flexible. They do break down into the old tank-melee-ranged-heal pattern, to my disgust, but there are plenty of options in class development. One class each side can be adapted to all four roles, two more to three roles, and one to just two, and the devs insist that once specialised into a role, each class is as potent as any other in that slot. Respeccing will be possible, at least partially. Everyone gets companions, although they’re not compulsory, and healers will be happy to know that the more healery they get, the more their companion gets boosted, so you can actually level as a healer.

One thing that does definitely excite me is that they’re encouraging exploration of the worlds — not just as a necessary way of stumbling over extra quests and the such, but also with rewards of hidden, out of the way goodies. They mentioned holochrons, if I recall correctly, giving permanent stat bonuses. As a dedicated explorer, that rocks.

There will undoubtedly be plenty of Jedi weenies… but all of the roles have the potential to be very entertaining. Plus they’re saying that there are absolutely no duplicated quests from class to class, let alone from faction to faction. Each class is the focus of a specific dedicated story line, has an entirely different pool of companions to draw from, &c &c. I assume the various storylines will dovetail towards the top levels, but they’re claiming that there will be massive replayability, and the stuff they’ve put out so far does seem to back them up. So even if there is a glut of Jediots, they may well then dissolve into other types as the game progresses.

Having said all that, I note that there are ‘World Quests’ and ‘Flashpoints’ (dungeons, effectively), and I suspect that when they say there are no duplicated quests, they’re talking only about Class Quests. I seem to remember seeing that Class Quests are a high %age of starter worlds, about 40% of mid-range worlds, and a smaller %age still of later worlds — so there could in fact be a bunch of tedious common content to have to wade through. It depends on how level-scalable the Class Quests are, I guess.

The story devs are saying that each class’ personal story will extend as updates roll in, and it seems to me that an update adding a class will give a whole new meaning to the idea of extra alts. There is an end-game, they say, but it looks like they want different play-throughs to be as compelling an option. One dev estimated the time to levcap — 50, at launch — as 200 hours.

Having looked at some of the “What character do you want to play” developer polls on the main site, the four Force classes are getting an average around 14% of the vote each, with the other four classes getting an approx av of 10% each. If people really mean it, class balance will be no worse than in WoW.

The combat looks really good, incidentally. It appears, from gameplay footage, as if the game choreographs fights a lot — so you might just be hitting “bash with light-saber” or whatever, but your toon will be swinging, lunging, slashing, stabbing, leaping, and so on. On top of that, the emphasis on moving combat from ‘one mob per party’ to ‘one PC per group’ does appear to make things feel much more fluid and epic.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeZYGgcUDcY

Of course, take all the above with a big pinch of salt. All the videos will have been PR’ed to the max. The most recent gameplay video, of ‘Flashpoint’ Taral V, managed to come off feeling like it had been shaved, lubed and buggered comatose by the Marketing department, which was depressing. It also immediately split the party into the same boring quad of taunting tank / sneaky distance DPS / big melee DPS / control ‘n’ heal. Then there are those uncertain World Quests, and there’s been a couple of comments about side-quests that sound like they involve killing X nearby gribblies. So it could all end up as “WoW with a LOT of cut scenes”.

But this is Bioware, with Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age under their recent belt. Almost everyone is bored with WoW now, so anyone planning to base off that is setting themselves up to fail mightily, as Rift is finding out. Bioware are claiming a very different effect, and the bait-n-switch strategy has been a spectacular failure in MMO land repeatedly, so they’d have to be utterly stupid to be relying on that. Given that their release date has recently slipped from Q1 2011 to ‘before the end of 2011′, it could be that they’re busy tweaking some of the more tedious aspects. Or they might just be dragging their heels.

We’ll see, in time…

Most Western histories of chess are happy to state that the game was invented in India in the 6th century AD, and that xiangqi then travelled from India to China, possibly carried along the silk trade routes. On the other hand, there do seem to be references to xiangqi in very early Chinese literature. These documents date back to the culturally famous Warring States period, 480BC to 221BC.

During this period, the setting for a lot of myths, legends and romantic tales in China, a succession of kingdoms struggled together in a series of savage battles. The wars eventually led to the triumph of the Chin people and the establishment of their realm, China. It would make sense that a game so clearly based on a battle would arise out of a time like this, and the pieces that the game uses do represent the major standard troop types used during the period. This is particularly true of the Chariots, which faded out of standard Chinese war practice soon after the period closed.

Orthodox opinion amongst Western, Indian and Middle Eastern chess historians tends to be that this earlier game was in fact related to wei-qi, known as Go in Japan. Wei-qi/Go is the game which holds the actual position of world’s oldest known board game. It remains a very highly-paid sport game in the Far East, but there are key differences to chess-type games. One of the greatest is that in wei-qi, there is only one type of piece, and it cannot be moved once placed on the board.

The fact remains that the early game described in Chinese literature appears to be much closer in nature and play style to xiangqi than to wei-qi. This presents the interesting possibility that chess may have originally travelled to India from China rather than vice-versa, and from there to the middle east and up into Europe. This would make xiangqi – at least in its early ancestral form – the original Chess game.

Playing Chess at the Temple, by Rosino

Many western chess historians are dismissive, generally taking the suggest as some sort of obscure insult. There have been claims that as xiangqi just cannot be the origin of chess, it must be a case of parallel evolution – the same ideas sparking the same sort of game with the same sort of moves just by accident. Occam’s razor however clearly suggests that such similar games arising coincidentally is unlikely – the games have enough in common that a historical link of some sort seems certain. Comparing early xiangqi and early forms of Chaturanga, the similarities are even clearer, sharing similarities which have been dropped entirely from Chess. We may never know for certain, of course – the controversy will continue as long as there are professional historians earning money from the topic.

Even the game’s name is the source of much argument and debate. Read literally, it means ‘The Elephant Game’ – which has often been used as a supporting argument for the Indian origin theory. There is a piece in the game called The Elephant, and Elephants are a big part of Indian culture. The Western bishop too, which was added in the 15th century, is still an Elephant in Indian, Russian and Spanish chess. However, it’s not clear-cut – elephants do seem to have existed in China at one point, as many legends refer to them. They may even have been used as war beasts.

Another argument on the Chinese side is that the word ‘xiang’ originally held a different meaning. When it is linked with another Chinese character, its meaning becomes that of a constellation of stars. Some scholars have suggested that this may mean the game had some astrological origins, and may even have been used in divination. It is known for certain that Chinese writing started this way, an offshoot of a system of divination that involved heating tortoise shells to cracking point and then reading the lines and patterns formed. Another piece of evidence to back this notion up is the weakness of the xiangqi Elephant piece, which is very odd compared to the overwhelming strength of elephant cavalry on early battlefields. A degree of linguistic confusion might explain the discrepancy.

Both sides claim to be proven of course, and there’s no real way to tell. I’m keeping an open mind. One thing though is certain – most Chinese people will be delighted if you tell them you support the view that Chess is a Chinese invention. Like most nations, they love to think that they invented just about everything! On the other hand, Western and Indian chess fans may be less pleased, even though the Chinese origin theory is becoming more acceptable.

The megapack has almost 200 RPG books in it. Many of them are supplements, unsurprisingly, but there are several complete systems in there as well, and the usual total value of the pack’s products is well over $1000.

RPG books are typically packed with all sorts of ideas, so as well as gamers, writers, world-builders and creatives of all types could stand to pick up a very useful resource here for really not very much money.

To quote from the site itself:

DriveThruRPG announced a major incentive to the roleplaying gamer community today (Jan 19th – T.) to incite donations to aid in rescue and recovery in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Called the “Gamers Helping Haiti Bundle,” the product includes over a hundred products totaling over $1000.00 in retail value. For a simple donation of $20 – all of which goes to Doctors Without Borders to support their post-earthquake Haiti relief efforts – RPG fans can have this once-in-a-lifetime collection of gaming products.

DriveThruRPG already had opportunities to donate up and running within a day of the disaster. When publishers began asking how they could support the cause, the bundle was created to be an all-inclusive shared effort. Those who donated at the lesser levels won’t be left out, however; gamers who have already donated $5 or $10 will be receiving a special coupon code that lets them pay the difference from their initial donation to get the bundle.

…

There is no set date for terminating the donation efforts, though the bundle will only be available until the end of January.

Please give it a thought, at least.

Whilst I’m on the topic of unhappy events, there’s also this:

“The control mechanism of a ‘mass-surveillance prison’ is being developed within society, so that all citizens are gradually being transformed into suspects who need to be monitored.“

Exoriare — it’s Latin for ‘Rise up’ — is a graphic novel written by Rushkoff that is being put out on line in meaty chunks. The art is fascinating, and the story is dense with enigmas and hints. It seems as if it might be part of a teaser campaign for a computer game (slated for 2011?)… But it is more than just another webcomic. It is, quite literally, a gateway.

Exoriare

The Exoriare graphic novel makes it clear that something strange is going on at NASA and in the US military. A grass-roots movement is trying to investigate, and organise itself into a covert communications network, the Darknet. Mystical powers may possibly be stirring, too.

There is also a link hidden within the graphic novel. Follow it, and it will take you straight into a net-based Alternate Reality Game. The first challenge will be on familiar footing if you played computer games in the 80s, but find your way through, and you gain access to the Darknet itself…

Go explore Exoriare. Even if you just read the graphic novel, it’s still well worth it. But if you find your way in deeper, be prepared for one hell of a ride.

Large chunks of the old Condor/Blizzard North team are now working together as a small independent company, Runic Games. The team has fallen back on its roots and just released Torchlight, an action RPG with its roots back in Diablo. Like the original game, it’s an isometric-view RPG in which your character delves down into a randomly-generated dungeon to fight monsters, collect treasure, and complete quests. You have access to three different character classes — thumpy, sneaky and blasty — and a town you can pop back to in order to sell your ill-gotten loot. Also like the original game, it’s one hell of a lot of fun.

This is not a game out of the 90s, though. The controls feel slick and easy to get to grips with, the graphics are good — taking a cartoony style somewhat reminiscent of WoW — and the quests owe a bit to it as well. The story is non-intrusive, there are plenty of NPCs up in town, the skill system is as satisfying as you’d expect, and you even get to choose a pet cat or dog to help you in your battles. Assorted enigmatic dungeon features, like altars and fishing pools, add some crunchiness. The sound comes from the same guy who did the sound in Diablo; it is charmingly cheeky in places, and always works well with the action.

There isn’t really anything ground-breaking in Torchlight, but they have managed to do what no-one else has been able to achieve since Diablo II shipped: release a pretty, accessible, fun game that actually captures the spirit of Diablo. The fact that they’ve done it as a small, independent team in less than a year just makes it all the more impressive. The game comes with a full set of constructor’s tools too, so you can be sure there’ll be lots of fan-made extensions available in the very near future.

Torchlight costs a measly $20* to download from the publishers, but if even that is too pricey for you to take a risk on, there’s a free demo too.

* That’s £12.36 at today’s rates, which is less than a large pizza. Yes, I have put my money where my mouth is!

As is often the case, all delight aside, I’m a little surprised by this book. For only the second time ever, the surprise is pleasant. The book is a hard-back, which I didn’t expect, with an unusual padded cover. The cover illustration is a bit random, but that’s par for the course. The text has made it through editing without any significant mangling. The illustrations have been nicely coloured, and the page textures are reasonably sympathetic, both of which are pleasant bonuses. The only real negative is that the publisher took my name off the cover for the UK version, which is a bit offensive. Still, all in all, I’m very pleased.

The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved, by Tim Dedopulos

The book is a selection of the most historically significant, scientifically important and/or culturally interesting puzzles ever produced. This includes deliberate recreational puzzles like Crosswords and Sudoku to philosophical dilemmas, riddles, and mathematical problems. They range from very easy to insanely hard, although obviously the vast majority are, I hope, entertainingly challenging. I’ve done my best to give proper context for all the puzzles, so that their importance is clear, and to explain how the answers are found. I always get annoyed by complicated puzzles where the answer just says “23″ or whatever. In other words, I’ve done my best to do a good job, and it’s nice that the book itself is a decent physical thing.

In the interests of full disclosure, it is important that I point out that I’m not getting any royalties for this book *sigh*. So if you go and buy a copy, I’ll never even hear about it, let alone get any money from it. So, please, only buy this book if it actually sounds like you might enjoy it…!

(Yes, that is one of my infamous table runners in the picture.)

Funcom, the company that are producing the game, have not had a particularly great track record with multi-player online games so far. They got a lot of interest and early enthusiasm with Conan, but poorly thought through design cost them a lot of their player base, and the game is still fighting to recover; Anarchy Online was just a fiasco from the start. In both cases, they’ve promised more than they’ve been able to deliver, and cost themselves subscribers in the process.

So it’s difficult to know whether they’ve learnt their lessons and are going to deliver with the Secret World, or whether it’s going to be another horrible mess. Going by what the designers are saying though, it actually has a shot at being the first genuinely post-Warcraft online rpg.

The designer, Ragnar, has been plotting the Secret World for years. It’s an urban fantasy action adventure game, set in — and behind — the real world. Dark forces are breaking through into reality, and the players are called up to help drive it back again, and to get one over their rivals, if chance permits. It’s hardly a unique premise, but it’s not an area that online games have really addressed so far.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsLXQEeLiI0

But it’s in the details that the really exciting stuff is lurking. No character classes. No levels. No forced progression of play zones depending on character skill. An open world, where a freshly-minted character can play effectively alongside pals who have been going for six months or more. Combat without auto-attacks, where the process is actually engaging. Fluid strategic situations driven by selections from a basket of skills. Gameplay options involving puzzles, story progression, and social interaction. Exploration of the world being a valid way of actually getting to grips with the game. Character costume and appearance being a matter entirely of preference, with no game ramifications at all. Lots of cool toys and effects for more experienced characters, just for the hell of it. A dark, sinister atmosphere. Even the option to learn Voodoo, for God’s sake.

It sounds, on paper, like all of my gaming dreams come true at once.

OK, it may well be horrible. But the game’s marketing campaign to date has been sophisticated, atmospheric, and utterly uncompromising towards the ‘lowest common denominator’. It started with a few teaser web-sites with stylish splash-screen city-scapes. If you clicked on the correct (small) spot in the picture, you got an enigmatic puzzle. Play with it for a while, and you’d discover how it worked mechanically. Actually solving it took a lot of thought. Months later, a bizarre, grainy video gave hints which led to a different site, packed with arcane imagery and a fiendishly tough problem to solve. It’s been a game equivalent of the writer’s “Show, Don’t Tell” rule. The Secret World has laid hidden, where the curious might stumble across it, and get sucked in — a great analogy for the game world itself, and one that suggests perhaps Ragnar really can pull this off.

Today, an ‘inititation test’ appeared on one of the game’s several anagrammatical websites, www.darkdaysarecoming.com. Complete the test, and it tells you which of three rival secret societies you’re best suited to — the ruthless Illuminati, the zealous Knights Templar, or the shadowy Dragons. You can also enter an email address for the chance to win a Beta-test key, which is attracting massive attention.

Significant further details about the game are expected over this weekend’s Penny Arcade eXpo in Seattle, so there’ll be much more available in a few days. In the mean time, the game’s latest cinematic trailer is pure awesome urban fantasy action. Don’t be put off by the Norwegian web-site (Ragnar is a Norwegian chap), the trailer doesn’t have vocals.

One way or another, Dark Days are Coming.

My World of Warcraft guild is famous! :) For fifteen minutes, anyway *grin*.

(Yes, I play some WoW.)

So you know what I’m on about, I’m going to explain what I mean, before trying to imagine how a game without them might look. Obviously, this will be mostly boring gibberish if you don’t play online games! I can’t give any fairer warning than that… :)

Here’s my particularly Dirty Dozen:

The Doctrine of Incompetence. The single most horrible assumption there is, that everyone has to start out useless and fight their way up to being good.

The Maxim of Heroism. The player has to be the sole focus of an epic, world-changing story. Great for books, kinda insane when there’s 20,000 of you running around a server.

One Mob, One Challenge. The idea that one monster should always provide a meaningful challenge to one or more players.

The THUD Protocol. The only strategic option is to divide players into Tank / Healer / Utility / DPS.

P-NPC Syndrome. Paraplegic NPC Syndrome is where otherwise perfectly sensible and highly-powered NPCs are unable to do even the smallest, most menial nonsense for themselves.

Dangerous Lands. Every inch of the world has to be bristling with threat.

Levelled Lands. Different game areas should be suitable only for a narrow band of player levels. Rational Sociality. That every person interacts in the same basic manner, and thus enjoys the interactions of every other player.

LoreShame. Background story is nerdy, pointless and a bit embarrassing, and it should never get in the way of gamers taking a mathematical approach to the game.

Look What’s in my Pouch! Mobs will happily carry awesome equipment and never try to use it.

Guilds Militant. The main function of a guild is to give you a group of people to band with for self-defence.

Don’t Think, Shoot. Any game component that requires a degree of intelligent thought and analysis is going to put players off.

Blood Elf from World of Warcraft, by CalvinB

So how could a game work without all these things?

Well, to begin with, you would start your character fully-skilled and equipped with kit of your own choosing (from a selection). No level grind, no skill grind, you’re an ass-kicker from the word go, geared and specced the way you want. Instead of fighting through content because you need to advance, you can fight through content to earn equipment that increases your options rather than power — or that looks much cooler, or that lets you do a range of useful but non-essential stuff. Or for honour, out-of-game rankings, name-badge titles, having military NPCs salute you as you go past, or a hundred other possible genuinely rewarding things to aim for.

If you provide the world with a complex set of damage types, resistances, world-effects and so on, gearing options could become a fascinating pursuit in their own right, and a good reason to aim to build up a big locker of different interesting stuff. Maybe hydro-spec lets you walk on water. Maybe there’s a dozen different monster resistance bands, and mixing and matching your gear makes a big difference depending on where you want to go and what you want to do.

Most importantly, you’d never have a problem grouping or fighting with other players. They may look a LOT cooler than you, but you could take part in all the fun right out of the box. PVP, similarly, would be nicely balanced. Make the combat a bit more skilled and entertaining than just pushing ‘1’ when your cooldown is up, and actual player ability could be a factor.

Get rid of One Mob, One Challenge, and suddenly all sorts of tactical situations open up that can provide a whole range of different challenges rather than just the deathly THUD protocol. What about six monsters, working the environment like a pack of dogs would? Or a horde of little nibbling irritations that are immune to AOE? Or… well, look at any decent military game for a huge range of options. Sure, THUD is a fine strategic approach. It’s just that there’s hundreds of them. There’s also nothing wrong with having some easy areas. Sometimes, it can be really nice just to go somewhere and kick total ass for a while. It’s a game, remember? It’s supposed to be fun?

Why not have the whole world open for exploration right from the start? Even a pacifist-tourist mode that made you entirely combat/reward-exempt, and could only be entered/exited at certain points, would be nice. But why does everywhere have to be lethal? This ties into LoreShame and Don’t Think, Shoot. Combat is the only real point of most games. Why? Why not exploration, or having your character gain real benefits from learning lore, or some puzzle areas, or gaining political power (and with it actual influence), or, heck, any of the many, many sorts of things that TRPGs get up to. Why not have other PC languages you can learn? Why not have genuine mysteries in the Lore that you can explore, and even get temporary or permanent benefits from? Whilst we’re at it, let’s have some atmospherics – how about some extra non-visual info from time to time. A drip in a cavern, or a cold wind. Whispered stories of the horrors of a certain place.

Let’s have some stories to play through. Murder mysteries. Moral quandries. Scavenger hunts. Intrigues. Bethesda’s Oblivion made some great strides in that direction. Quest doesn’t have to mean “kill 20 pigs.” It can easily become an engrossing story, with or without combat.

If there are lore challenges, and political systems, and meaningful game-world choices, and puzzles, then guilds can all tie into that. Why not give guilds actual home bases. Raidable home bases, even. Let guild standing influence game standing, both on a personal and guild level. Have the game environment react to that standing, and suddenly its interesting. If you want a gold sink, why not have a Potlach? The King of the entire server that week is the person who sacrificed the greatest value of goods/gold/reputation/&c to the Gods during that week.

Levelled PCs are traditionally segregated into level ghettoes. I say do away with levels all together anyway, but there’s no need for segregation. If you must have levels, make some mobs/puzzles/whatever only responsive to certain levels bands, and some gatherables ditto, and then you can easily have one area useful to lots of different people. Much more fun.

You won’t get totally persistent world-play until you have an AI running the game (Ender, anyone?) but you can make much better steps in that direction. P-NPCs and Look What’s in my Pouch are both just plain lazy. A frog shouldn’t be carrying a flaming broadsword, and if an Orc is, damn it, he should be using it in combat against you. All games have a wonderful mail system where the PC can transport not just letters but items and money across the world instantly to the right person. Are you really saying NPCs can’t use that? It’s stupid and lazy, and breaks immersion. Think things through, and the game will make more sense. Give NPCs moods, based on world events, hell even on weather, and have those influence their interactions — and even their utility.

Oh and talking of game systems, we have to accept that with varied player-bases come communication issues. Heurstics are good enough now to analyse player interaction styles. Someone who insists on talking like a school teacher and someone who relies on leetspeak are going to have trouble getting on together regardless, and hardcore/casual players will also always have gulfs. There are no rights or wrongs, but analysing play styles, comparing this to other players, and letting your character get a match %age for other PCs — and then using these for PUGging — could make everyone’s social aspect more fun.

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. There’s an utterly awesome game waiting out there to be made, with existing technology and existing computation loads. No World of Warcraft clone is going to beat WoW; it has too much strength. The trick is not to out-WoW it. It’s to make it obsolete.

All the studios have to do is give up the assumptions that they don’t know they even have.

By the way, yes, I know many of the things I’m saying can be found in one game or another. That’s the point. They’re found in isolation though, not together.

Minesweeper solution

Please: let me know what you think on this — occasional puzzles here: good or bad?