A few years ago, Matt Harding worked for Activision making video games. Eventually, he figured out that wasn’t quite what he wanted to, so he up and quit and started wandering Asia.

Fast-forward a few years, and he managed to convince the folks at Stride gum to finance a trip around the world, where Matt proceeded to visit no less than 42 different countries where he would then dance like an idiot…and invite locals to join in with him!

Commentary aside, this is perhaps one of the best videos I’ve seen online ever. There’s a great story to go with it if you’re interested. Otherwise, just watch and enjoy.

How much are SOE programmers making?

Well, if they’re brought into the U.S. on a work visa, then according to the data gleaned by Christer Ericson (Director of Tools and Technology, Sony Santa Monica), then, “the average programmer salary across all applications was $87K. The average for senior programmers was $103K, and for lead programmers $109K.”

It’s actually terribly interesting how he managed to glean this information (perhaps more interesting than the information itself), and I advise taking a peek at his “Real Time Collision Detection” blog if you’re interested in learning his source or methods. 

A hat tip to Brenda Brathwaite at the Applied Game Design blog for bringing this subject to our attention.

Regardless of which MMO you’re currently spending your free time within, there’s a good chance you’re likely to have to discuss the concept of a “hate list” at some point.

It’s possible you hold this discussion during a nice, civilized chat about general game mechanics whilst also enjoying a cup of hot Earl Grey and a biscuit or two, but more than likely, you’ve held this “chat” during a heated exchange with a group member or two after a particularly nasty wipe deep in some ridiculous dungeon where someone managed to grab hate at the wrong moment.  Chances are that someone blamed the player responsible for holding said hate, and that person probably reciprocated with a similar levy of blame pointed firmly at the person who managed to grab said hate in the first place.

Who’s fault was it, though?  Who’s “job” is it to keep hate?  The real answer?  It’s everyone’s fault, because it’s everyone’s job.
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It seems like these days, you can’t turn on a TV or fire up a website that isn’t talking about our “shrinking dollar”. Either prices are rising or you simply get less of what you used to for the same price.

Walk into your local grocery store and you’ll find that the cereal box costs the same as it did a year ago, but the amount of cereal IN the box is now less. That bad of premade salad you used to buy for $1.99 is still the same price, but now there’s 25% less salad in the bag.

It’s not just food producers who are trying to sell us a smaller bill of goods for the same price - if you’re still paying SOE for access to their EQ2Players site, you’re paying the same as ever, for less of what you used to get.
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A little over a month ago, I was starting to grow concerned over some issues I was seeing regarding my guild.  Activity levels were starting to drop, raid attendance was starting to flag a bit, and I was starting to hear a bit more grumbling than I’m used to in our guild’s chat channels.  When we did raid, we often had to start late due to critical classes being absent, and even then our performance would often be much lower than expected.

None of these issues were particularly troublesome individually, but together, I was starting to see the patterns between the problems, and started to identify the problems I felt were the root causes.

I knew part of the problem was due to the standard summer “doldrums”.  I knew some members were trying out Age of Conan.  I knew other members were probably just tired of hitting the same content over and over.  I had to find ways to overcome these issues and put the guild back on track, or I knew I’d have to deal with the repurcussions all the way up till the next expansion.

It’s now six weeks later, and looking at my guild now, you’d hardly realize that the picture I painted above was ever an accurate depiction of my guild.  Activity levels are soaring.  Raid attendance is at record highs.  We’re taking down new targets frequently.  We’re receiving several new applications to join us per day, which enabled us to pick and choose 8 new members so far.

In less than two months, we’ve gone from a guild which was having issues just getting members to log in to a guild which is the envy of much of our server.

How did we do this?  More importantly, how can YOU do this?

I can’t speak for every guildmaster’s situation, but I can tell you the issues I identified and what I did about it.

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For nine summers I’ve watched.  Every year, I see it happen.  I know it’s coming.  I remind my members to prepare for it.  I try to warn other guildmasters what they can do about it.

Yet, every year, summer arrives and guilds die.

As I’ve mentioned previously, with the coming of summer, playtime tends to slump across the board.  In larger, more stable guilds, this is a time to weather the storm.  The more organized guilds simply accept the downturn in activity and wait for better days to arrive.  For other guilds, however, this drop off in online members can be a death knell.

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A little over a year ago, I wrote a post-mortem on the fall of Sigil. Other players and would-be designers chose to concentrate on Mr. McQuaid’s personal failings, or upon the reports of his peculiar office habits as the head of a studio.

My own analysis at that time was that Vanguard had failed, not because of the issues within the studio per se, and not because of the one man marketing tour de force that McQuaid had become, but because the game’s overall design was simply too ambitious for release.

Had Vanguard cut its scope during one of its monumental five beta stages, who’s to say that the world of Telon would have been any less grand. Did Vanguard truly need THAT many races and THAT many cities spread across THAT many continents which included THAT many features and systems to be a good, solid game? No, and a competent project manager could have reigned in the scope at multiple points in development as a short term hit for a longer term win. The only other option would have been to postpone release, and in a perfect world, perhaps that would have occured.

But, as the ads remind us, we don’t live anywhere near Perfect, and in the really, really real world, we have to deal with the much vaunted triple constraints of any project. As the old Project Management axiom teaches us, I can perform any task you want and I can do it cheaper, faster, or better (pick two).

For many companies, time and money often equate. Sure, you have some level of flexibility with the timelines, but at some point, the money set aside for the project simply starts to dry up. Unless you have a consistent supply of quality developers who have no problems working for reduced pay (or none at all), you’re going to have to release the product at some point, or risk not releasing at all.

I bring all this up today because Mark Jacobs over at EA Mythic has announced some changes to the release version of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. While some players immediately cite only negatives with the decision, I can’t help but finding myself joining the ranks of those applauding Mr. Jacobs for taking the short term hit in favor of the long term goal. In making this choice, Mr. Jacobs is showing that he has no problem re-evaluating the scope of his project in favor of quality over quantity.

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LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment announced a new trading card game to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Star Wars Galaxies.  The new game, called Champions of the Force, is to be released later this summer.  Unlike the original Star Wars CCG, this particular card game will be released and played exclusively online, similarly to the Everquest themed Legends of Norrath card game already published by SOE.

In keeping with the apparently lucrative lessons learned from that game, Champions of the Force will include a selection of “loot cards” which can be redeemed within Star Wars Galaxies for a manner of in-game rewards not specifically related to the card game.

At this rate, I wonder if it’s only a manner of time before SOE Denver starts creating in-game TCG’s for Matrix Online and Planetside.  I wonder if there are plans for similar in-game offerings for DC Universe or The Agency?
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I’m just dropping a note here to share one of the most amusing passages one of my members has ever posted in our guild forums.  In a discussion related to a raid target my guild has been having issues with, we’ve started looking anywhere we can to try to find out what, if anything, we can do to improve our performance.

One of our guild’s brigands, Almayer, decided to share this as part of his contribution to the discussion:

“Finally, and this may be the real key: After watching a large, large number of videos, it has become glaringly apparent that the biggest problem we’re having with this encounter is that we’re not listening to enough hard rock and aggressive rap as we approach the fight. I, for one, will be remedying this by dragging my stereo from my living room to my office and surveying a number of angry, pierced youths on their favorite, most explicit, anger-filled bands. I’m also planning to put some posters of scantily clad rock-goddesses on my walls, and will be digging out an old concert souvenir tee shirt (black, of course) to wear every raid, without laundering, until we defeat the [target]. I’d recommend you all do the same. (perhaps Kendricke could shout random Rage Against the Machine lyrics over Vent at key points in the fight?)”

I was able to spend some time this week running through the new high level Runnyeye instance, “Runnyeye: The Gathering”.  Even though I keep hearing comments from some players that the dungeon is “too hard” or “too exclusive”, I can’t help but think that some of those critics may be missing a very large point.

First, this dungeon is not exclusive - at least not in any traditional sense of the word.  Anyone can get to this dungeon (it’s a level 80+ dungeon sitting in the middle of a level 30-40 zone).  You don’t need high end raid gear to run this dungeon and in fact, it’s entirely possible to run this dungeon without such gear (hint:  groups are already doing this).  Even if you can’t clear the entire dungeon, the first couple of named all but fall over and die within 20 seconds of so much as seeing a player.

Any “exclusivity” is with the dungeon’s ability to skill/gear check.  You can’t just load up on crafted gear and put together any random group of tank/healer/four damage dealers and expect to run the dungeon within a couple of hours.  Even in an ideal group with decent gear, the vast majority of players will still need to pay attention through most every fight, which is a complete turnaround from such dungeons as Crypt of Agony or Vaults of Eternal Sleep.

To be fair, I’m not personally finding there to be that much difficulty in Runnyeye II so far.  Last night, three guildmates and I grabbed a pickup tank and healer and ran the dungeon through in under 2 hours.  With a guild group used to working together, we should be able to blow through the dungeon easily within 90 minutes, and probably closer to an hour.

However, for those players who feel those numbers are simply unrealistic, the dungeon itself has a 3 day timer which gives even the most casual of groups plenty of time to play, take a break, log back in the next night and go again for an hour or so, take a break, and then log in on a third night to finish it off.  You simply won’t find that many group dungeons within Everquest II that allow for 72 hours of attempts.

What’s really and truly different within this dungeon though isn’t the hit points or damage per second that the players are dealing with.  It’s the fact that the encounters themselves have some scripting involved.  In many ways, this is the closest many casual players will get to Tier 8 raiding.  In many ways, Runnyeye II can be seen as the first “raid zone” of the Kunark era.  Guilds that can’t handle Protector’s Realm but who were able to pick up Fabled Epics should look at Runnyeye II as a zone to hone their raid discipline one group at a time.

I think this is the reason you hear so many raiders discussing how easy the zone is while many non-raiding players are decrying the difficulty and pointing to a lack of raid gear as the excuse.

I’d argue that raid gear doesn’t break this dungeon.  Raid experience does.

It’s interesting, because for years I’ve heard arguments from non-raiders (and some raiders) who indicate that raiding isn’t harder than grouping - that raiding doesn’t make better players, only better followers.   Yet, last night as we blew through the instance, I took stock of the reasons we were destroying the goblins by the boatload while other players are getting stopped clean by the first few named.

The obvious answer, at least to me, isn’t the gear.  It’s the fact that raiding gives experience into breaking the “code” revolving around certain encounters.  As raiders - even relatively casual raiders - my guildmates and I are very used to working with each other.  Our communications during the encounters last night reflected this.  Our macros were built around raiding, and came in just as handy during the encounters last night.  Our adornment and achievement builds are based around raiding, and it showed last night.

You don’t need raid gear to succeed in Runnyeye II, though it admittedly will help.  What you need is a raiding mindset.  You need to have the ability to keep from getting into tight situations in the first place, and when you do you need the experience not to panic.  If a wipe occurs, raiders simply revive and get rebuffed - while many non-raiders still take deaths more personally than perhaps they should.  A lot of raiders look for ways to avoid fear, position pulls, and avoid area of effect attacks.  Most raiders look for ways to learn from mistakes quickly, and adapt on the fly.

Do these statements mean that non-raiders do not do these things as well?  No, it does not.  However, the very act of raiding requires a skillset that includes these different abilities and thinking processes.  Most general solo or group content simply does not.

So, if you’re failing at Runnyeye II, try to step back and look at the actual reasons why.  Try to approach the dungeon as a raider might.  Assess your own gear.  Take a long hard look at the group composition you’re choosing.  Take the time to make sure your tank is up to the task.  Make sure you have enough support classes present.  Run a parser.  Watch your logs.  Use voicechat and communications macros.  Accept wipes.  Keep moving.  Keep watching. Keep learning.

When in doubt, ask.  Ask others if they know the “strats”.  Look around and try to research the dungeon a bit.  Don’t look for scapegoats to blame - try to find solutions, instead.

Do these things, and you’ll be dropping the High Shaman before you know it.  Do not, and you’ll likely frustrate yourself by convincing yourself that, once again, the raiders are to blame…