This has little to do with Blizzard’s upcoming MMO, code name Titan, largely because I know nothing about it. I’d like to be enthusiastic about it, but like the late, lamented Project Copernicus, no information means no enthusiasm. Teasing can work if it’s followed fairly soon by something real. In Project Copernicus’ case, I think they wanted to show more. In Blizzard’s case, they don’t want to take anything away from World of Warcraft — and that’s understandable. Even in its decline, it’s the most popular MMO in the world.
Not the most popular video game, though. According to XFire, the most popular game is League of Legends, followed by some shooters and Blizzard’s Diablo III — all free-to-play games. Raptr places WoW at #11, and the top ten games on the list are, every one of them, free-to-play games.
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Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system, behind Jupiter’s Ganymede, larger than Mercury, half again larger than our own Moon. That picture above shows Titan _behind_ Saturn’s rings, clear on the other side of them from tiny Epimetheus.
I look at that picture and feel stunned. The bus-sized Cassini probe is diving through and around the Saturn system. We built that. To explore alien worlds. That picture _drips_ with sense of wonder.
If a MMO can’t give that to me, I don’t want to play it. If I am going to spend a hundred hours of my life leveling a character, I want to be confronted by sense of wonder all the time. Transported to alien worlds or fantastical realities, that’s what I want. Games that are spec sheets and class descriptions and 20 man boss battles and stuff, lists of bullet points — meh.
I played that game. I put over a year, 24 hours a day, into EverQuest, then went and was just as hardcore in WoW, DAoC, FFXI, EQ2, Wizard101 and a bunch of other games. Now any game that wants to go there, been there done that.
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I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons Online with some friends, and Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition, with some other friends. That’s pretty much the sum of my online gaming. I’m eternally hopeful. I pre-ordered Guild Wars 2, but I don’t expect much from it. I’m downloading The Secret World right now, because, at least, it will bring me to a place I have never been in a game — modern day New England, where I live in real life.
Seeing reality warped through the lens of a horror-fantasy MMO? Maybe that will do the trick.
6 thoughts on “Titan”
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“If I am going to spend a hundred hours of my life leveling a character, I want to be confronted by sense of wonder all the time. Transported to alien worlds or fantastical realities, that’s what I want. Games that are spec sheets and class descriptions and 20 man boss battles and stuff, lists of bullet points — meh.”
A dream I myself very much want to believe in after almost a decade of MMO’s and much of the same thing being repeated over and over. I want to believe some studio out there can be bold enough to break the mold of MMO games and make something like that a fantastical reality and just mesmerize me and everyone else included.
I want to believe…
I have a feeling you are really going to enjoy TSW.
And I’m not just saying that in hopes it will encourage you to blog more, either. 😉
@Ardent – Remember back when MMOs were just getting started? All the games talked about how they were virtual worlds; pretty much everything was secondary to bringing you someplace else. There are modern MMOs where setting IS the game — FFXIV for one. I didn’t like how they did the story, though. I really wanted more story, but instead you had to grind and grind to see the next chapter.
@Nazgul – Hey, I’m willing to try. I’m not giving up on MMOs! I’ve heard good and bad things about TSW, but the tipping point was when folks here and on G+ mentioned that it takes place at least partially in New England. I love New England!
After playing last weekends beta event for TSW I liked it enough to bite on not only the pre-order but the lifetime as well.
“If I am going to spend a hundred hours of my life leveling a character, I want to be confronted by sense of wonder all the time.”
I will say if you go into it thinking about leveling your character you’re probably going to be disappointed. The actual combat doesn’t really bring anything new to the table and really there’s not a lot that you can do with quests that hasn’t been done before (kill x beasts, go find Joe, deliver this to Bob, find the Big Evil Guy and kill him etc.) Heck, I’ve been doing those types of quests for over 30 years now starting back in my D&D days.
To me the interesting part is the actual quest journal mechanic. You have your main storyline quest, 1 dungeon quest, 1 main quest and up to 3 side quests. When you get to what would be a “quest hub” in most games there will be several people handing out “main” quests but you can only take one of them. There might also be a couple of “side” quests (most of these come from items in the game world) that you can grab. So you pick the your main quest and head out to complete it. It may involve several steps or tiers which can have you doing different things (collecting stuff, killing stuff, delivering stuff etc.) but when you complete the final tier instead of running back to the quest giver to get your reward you phone in a report. If you phone in as soon as you get the completion message then look around the area you’ll probably found another “quest hub” nearby. This encourages you to keep moving around the zone and exploring. It also means that you can come back to that first area later with an alt and not have to progress through the zone exactly the same way.
I will admit that during this past weekend Lore and I didn’t play that way and it was kind of frustrating to run back to the original area and then later run across a new “quest hub” and not be able to take the quest. Now that I understand the mechanic though I think I’ll like it better once it goes live.
I’ll also warn you, make sure your sound is working and be ready for a ton of cut-scenes All of the storyline and the main quests tend to give you the quest background via an in-game cut-scene. I liked it, I realize some won’t. The good news is, if you hate it you can get the main goals of the quest from the initial text box you just won’t get any of the backstory that makes it interesting.
I hope to see you in game. Since Lore and I pre-ordered we’ll get the early start so will be starting Friday. Probably going to start on the RP server, according to the posted list that will be Faerie so maybe the name will keep some of the more…immature… players away, look for us there if you’d like.
I have not played in the beta weekends. I have not watched the live streaming videos. I wasn’t that interested in the ARG or the Facebook game. I am jumping into this entirely blind.
And yet, I’m feeling a lot of anticipation for this. Since I know nothing about it, since it’s going to be all new, I have no expectations about it at all.
I kinda like that.
I wonder if this beta culture that has grown up around MMOs hurts more than it helps.
Quite possibly, I know that I’ve felt kind of let down by a few games that I spent a bit of time beta testing. Some of that was I thought the game wasn’t ready for release (SW:G) but a lot of it was that by the time release rolled around I was starting to get bored with the game. If it was a game that none of my friends were playing I probably moved on.
This one worked out perfectly for me. I had barely heard of the game until I got the email for the last beta weekend but I started seeing several of the gamers on my twitter feed talking about it and the ARG so I was intrigued enough to try it out. With the way real life is working for me now I really only had about 6 hours of play time this weekend but it was enough to wet my appetite and to give me a glimpse into the interesting twists Funcom put on the genre.
If I had been in the previous beta’s I probably wouldn’t be as excited as I am.
Since you’re going into it cold I kind of wish i could take back my previous post but I tried not to spoil to much. My one suggestion is to not only spend time exploring the world but also to spend time exploring the game mechanics themselves. There’s nothing truly revolutionary here but there are some evolutionary steps and some interesting twists on how an MMO can play. Since I know you’re an explorer type I think you’ll find just as much enjoyment there as you do in the environment.
I hope to see you in game. It’s early access day so I’ll drop by and let you know what server we start on, it’ll most likely be whatever the official RP server is.