When I was first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons (second edition rules) I created a Ranger. I identified with that particular class because in real life I’m a bowhunter, and the two share many similarities. I thought the idea of a character that could survive in the wilderness, use a bow or swords effectively in combat, and had the ability to track creatures was a neat idea. When I played pencil and paper Dungeons & Dragons, I played rangers. Then the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale games hit my computer, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that the ranger was a completely useless class.

Computer games have inherit limitations in them that make some of the more flavorful classes, like the ranger, more difficult to implement, and thus less attractive. In computer Dungeons & Dragons, rangers became nothing more than weak warriors. The skills that made them unique, like their ability to navigate the wilderness, or track game, couldn’t be properly implemented, and so they were removed from the computer games or severely weakened. This impacted the way I played those games, and thus I never created another ranger. Why play a weak ranger when you could play a strong warrior?

I’ve often wondered what a game might look and play like if it were to do justice to a ranger’s abilities. Now I know. Storm of Zehir is that game.

Storm of Zehir is an expansion to the Neverwinter Nights 2 game. It boasts two new important features:

1. The ability to create an entire party of characters, a la Icewind Dale.
2. An overland map that is used for travel, and which makes use of many ranger/druid skills.

Storm of Zehir leans heavily on these two new features. It succeeds because of them, but it is also dragged down by them. This is a game that doesn’t play nearly as well as it should.

For starters, while the game is billed as allowing you to create a full party of characters, similar to the Icewind Dale series of games, it doesn’t quite deliver on that promise. In Icewind Dale you could create a party of six characters. Six slots turns out to be just about the right size, allowing you to create a robust team of adventurers, complete with the necessary rogues, wizards, clerics and fighters. But Storm of Zehir limits your custom party size to four. Any experienced player will tell you that four just isn’t enough.

You are allowed one extra NPC follower. Two if you blow a precious feat slot on a “Leadership” ability. Unfortunately, unlike NPC characters in previous games, the NPC followers in Storm of Zehir are rather bland, and lack any fun or meaningful dialog. There exists no reason bring them into your party other than to fill a character slot, and most players are going to want to create their own characters anyway. Fortunately, there is a simple configuration fix that will allow you to create a full, six-character party. But that it something that should have been available out of the box.

Then there’s the overland map. This is Storm of Zehir’s greatest strength, and also its greatest weakness.

The overland map achieves something that no previous Dungeons & Dragons game has really been able to do. For the first time, abilities like Survival, Spot, Listen, and Move Silently are not confined to the realm of rogues and thieves. These skills are used extensively while your party is on the overland map. They allow your adventurers to avoid dangerous encounters, find hidden treasures, or discover important locations. Finally, it pays to have a Ranger in the group.

On its own merit, the overland map is a successful new feature. The problem with Storm of Zehir is not the overland map itself, but what the developers did with it. Or more precisely, what they did not do with it.

What they did not do is create a big, vibrant world. There are no large cities to frequent, no majestic ruins to explore, no labyrinthine dungeons to plunder. Everything in Storm of Zehir is small and absent of grandeur (or fun, for that matter).

The game plays very much like a Final Fantasy game. And that’s a shame, because the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine is capable of so much more. Like Final Fantasy, your party spends most of its time wandering the overland map, and when it finally does encounter a ruin, dungeon or random group of bandits, the encounter is small (a single zone), and is over in seconds. In fact, I have yet to encounter one dungeon that is larger than a single zone.

The cities are equally pointless. The main storyline sets your party up as a group of traders (a flaw in itself, since you should be adventuring, not establishing trade routes) and so the cities you encounter along the way are nothing more than trade points on the overland map. You can visit the pub or temple of a city directly, but that’s it. There’s no actual “city” to wander around in; there are no NPC’s to talk to, no quests to be had. The cities exist only to act as points of trade. Even the grand city of Neverwinter, a many-zoned metropolis from previous games, is limited to a single zone, and only a portion of that.

On top of the poor utilization of the overland map, Storm of Zehir turns out to be the most bug-ridden of the Neverwinter Nights games. It is overflowing with glitches and broken code, to the point that there is a 29-page post on the official forums full of complaints.

One of the biggest bugs you’re likely to encounter is watching your characters get stripped of their buffs each time they enter the overland map. This presents a problem when you run into your next random group of trolls or bandits, as you will only have enough time to cast one spell before your enemies are upon you. The four or five spell buffs your character might need to be efficient in combat will be missing. Fortunately, there is a player-created fix available. But this is such a huge flaw that it speaks to the quality (or lack thereof) on the Storm of Zehir development team. It’s the type of bug that should have been discovered in play testing and fixed long before the game came out.

The end result is a severely flawed game. Many of the new features, while welcome, are overshadowed by flaws in the game. The trading mechanism is dumb and boring; crafting was “simplified”, making it more of a money sink than anything else; the plot is thin; the cities are vacant entities; the overland map is relied upon too heavily; the encounters are too small and simple.

Storm of Zehir shows that it is not enough to create a cool, new game mechanism, but you have to actually utilize that mechanism to its fullest potential. Final Fantasy VII was released in 1994 and contained pretty much the same gameplay as Storm of Zehir. Hard to believe that after 14 years, we haven’t advanced the genre any further.

There is hope, however. The overland map gives us a glimmer of what is possible with this sort of game engine when used in conjunction with a lot of previously ignored character skills. Here’s hoping that if there ever is a Baldur’s Gate 3, or even another big expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2, that the developers learn their lessons from the failures of Storm of Zehir and build a better game next time. It would be a shame to have to put the Ranger back on the shelf.

The reason I got into software development was because of video games. My first real career goal as a software developer – the first “dream job” I ever really contemplated – was to work on a great video game. So it was with a certain amount of anger and frustration that I watched as games that I loved to play, and companies who made those games, suffered criticism at the hands of ignorant players.

I’ve long defended the developers of Everquest and Everquest II on various message boards, largely because I, being a software developer, understood the complexities and hurdles that those developers face to bring us these games that we enjoy so much. So it was with great interest that I read Scott’s post today.

While reading his post it struck me how similar his problems are to any other business application. Scott writes:

This is painful for MMOs in particular because of the unique (huge) number of critical, non-sexy things that you have to succeed at, where failing at any one of them can entirely sink your game:

- Pipelines
- Tools
- Infrastructure
- Stability (again, doubling the work – the client and all the servers)
- Scalability
- Stability
- Security (added this in for the blog post – Can’t trust that client)
- Performance (optimize both that client and all those server processes)
- Oh, and..Stability

Are these things really any different from an ERP system, for instance? Looking down the list, I see all the same issues that we (.NET business application developers) face in our domain as well.

Which makes me wonder if part of the problem isn’t the methodology. Scott brings up an interesting point:

MMOs are still really young. To a lot of the people working on them, it very much is creating something entirely new. Compare to movies or single player games, for instance. It’s less of a challenge to staff those types of projects up with people who’ve worked on them before, in all of the right positions. Doing the same on a high-budget MMO remains next to impossible.

I don’t mean “key management” or “leads” like you see in studio announcements and press releases all the time. I mean everyone other than a small number of entry-level folks. Until you’ve done it once, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

But you know what? This is true for all software development, not just MMOG’s.

Just about every job I’ve had, I’ve been asked to develop software that I’ve never done before. Of course, that’s part of what makes this industry so damn cool – we’re always learning new stuff, and we’re always pushing our limits with new technologies, tools and ideas. But the core problem is the same: we work in an industry where we’re asked to do things that we have never done before.

I don’t think this is anything unique to MMOG’s. Sure, there are people in the business application world who have built business software a dozen times. But for every guy who finally achieves a level of expertise with that sort of domain, a dozen other guys graduate from college without any experience.

So I come back to the methodology. In the business software world, we’re learning that Waterfall is a recipe for failure, and Agile is a way to help us succeed. Methodologies like Scrum and Extreme Programming are giving software developers better techniques for minimizing risk and ensuring success. I’m starting to read more and more where game development houses are experimenting with or turning to Agile to help them succeed as well. I think these things add up…

Inexperienced developers is an issue that will never go away; it is going to remain very hard in the future to hire only the people with extensive knowledge in a particular domain. As more new blood enters the workforce, our discipline will continue to be refreshed with talented developers who lack in specific domain expertise. Mentors will always be key, and so will methodologies that help teams succeed.

The trick, as I see it, is to improve the process of software development. When you can accomplish that, even in small measures, then some of the issues Scott raises, like inexperienced developers and “wild miss-scoping” can be minimized.

If you watched the NFL this weekend it was hard to miss the new Toyota ad that incorporated the World of Warcraft. The ad isn’t terribly awesome by itself, but there were two things about it that did stick out, especially to those of us who play MMORPG’s.

First, it signals the first time (that I can think of) that an MMORPG has been used in mainstream advertising on television. I know MMORPG’s have been advertised at movie theaters and on cable TV stations, but to my knowledge no MMORPG has ever been incorporated into an advertisement for another company. And to be shown during NFL games no less. We’re talking about NFL football on Sunday afternoon – the juggernaut of sports in America – the time when every male under the age of 50 is watching. I thought it was a significant leap for World of Warcraft and MMORPG’s in general to be referenced so prominently it a commercial. It showed me that they have finally hit the mainstream in America and that’s pretty damn cool.

The second thing that was neat about the video is that it instantly hearkens to the most famous WoW video of all time: the Leroy Jenkins movie. Even if you’re not a World of Warcraft player or fan, this is one of the funniest videos you’ll ever see. There’s a summary of the event written here:

For those of you who might be unaware of the legend of Leeroy, I’ll lay it out for you, though you’d be best served to watch the video for yourself at www.leeroyjenkins.com. The story goes, Leeroy was away from his keyboard while his teammates waited and strategized about how to defeat the next encounter in the dungeon they were in, which is known as Blackrock Spire. In the midst of the elaborate planning, Leeroy returned and yelled, “Alright, time’s up! Let’s do this! Leeeerooooooy Jeeeeennkins!” And then he charged into the next room. The result was the hilarious death of Leeroy and all his friends. While the video was clearly staged, it was so well done and so classic that it instantly became a phenomenon in the WoW community.

Sometimes I think back to when I started playing roleplaying games – the first time some college friends introduced me to pencil and paper Dungeons and Dragons; the first time I scampered around a MUD with nothing more than a command prompt and my own imagination to fill in the gaps; the first time I experienced a virtual 3D world when I logged into Everquest – and I think about how far this form of entertainment has come. It’s gone from being demonized and misunderstood to mainstream. The Lord of the Rings trilogy showed that Hollywood could take fantasy seriously and still make millions of dollars, and now we have World of Warcraft as a backdrop for Toyota ads. If you’re a fantasy fan, you have to think this is pretty cool.

I just find the whole thing funny. I have been an avid video game player my entire life; I’ve spent hoards of hours playing Everquest and later Everquest 2. When I read the words “online gaming” the thought of gambling doesn’t even enter my mind.

Since I can remember, I’ve been a fan of video games. In fact, it was a video game that eventually caused me to change my major in college from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science. I had to know how the developers were able to do what they did.

As an entertainment medium I think video games have the potential to be the most inventive and engaging; you can tell stories in a way that is simply not possible with the written word or film. But in the history of video game development, the end product has not always lived up to that potential. Rail shooters or the laser disk games like Dragon’s Lair used the medium in very linear, limited ways. For a while the game industry toyed with fad ideas like Full Motion Video and other unsubstantial fluff. But eventually some wise folks finally figured it out. They realized that software didn’t have to be constrained by the same limitations as a novel or movie. There was a lot more that could be done to tell a story; to engage a user; to thrill an audience.

MMORPG‘s were the next step in the evolution of video games. And from the moment I laid my eyes on Everquest I was hooked. I had never before seen such a complete, enormous, engaging, detailed or entertaining virtual world. I was given the chance to create an avatar and adventure in that world with other users. In the process, relationships formed and a lot of time, effort and fun was had by all.

Later, Everquest II was released, and it was an evolution of the genre. Obviously, as I write this, World of Warcraft dominates the MMORPG landscape with some four million subscriptions. But I was “raised” in Norrath, where Everquest was set, and that was the place I’d come to know and love.

In nearly every way I consider Everquest II to be a superior game to its predecessor. It was a better world visually; battling monsters was more fun; there were many more quests in the game and they were much more rewarding; the ability play and progress by yourself was improved; the ability to play and progress as a group was made more fun; raids were limited to a maximum of 24 players, which allowed the developers to fine tune the encounters and make them challenging and rewarding at the same time. In short, every aspect of the game was improved, tweaked and made better.

It is unfortunate then that I have had to cancel my account. And not for any reason related to the quality of the game.

Unfortunately, the internet Gods have seen fit to prevent me from acquiring broadband. The best I could manage was to multilink two modems together over two phone lines and get something that resembled a 56K connection. I even wrote an article about the trick for the EQ2 Vault.

But the problem with teaming two modems together is that you tie up both phone lines. My wife is almost Borg-like the way she attaches a telephone to her person when she gets home from work, so removing her access isn’t a good idea.

After a few years of living in the countryside and dealing with a 28.8 modem speed, my wife finally got tired of waiting for 30 minutes for the Gymboree website to come up and decided we needed a faster connection. There’s no real options out here other than satellite, which is fine for browsing the web but sucks for online gaming. The latency is simply too much to live with.

I tried to tough it out; I tried to play the game with a one or two second delay. But it just sucked the fun right out it. I played a Paladin, a class that relies heavily on its ability to heal or shield group mates at critical moments during battle. Split second decisions make the difference between life or death, and with a satellite connection too many people were ending up dead.

I’m extremely disappointed with the technology options I have. I read all sorts of articles about remote villages in the middle of the deserts that get some sort of special grant to have broadband brought into their towns and it make me jealous. I live five miles from a cellphone tower that I can’t get line of sight to because of the rolling hillsides nearby, and I’m stuck with phone technology at my nearest central office that is so old the phone company is hoping everyone in our vicinity dies before they have to upgrade it.

But back to the point: I’ll miss Norrath. I’ll miss my avatar and the friends I made. Playing Everquest II was like escaping through the wardrobe or falling down the rabbit hole. The worlds that game developers create nowadays are some of the best, most interesting places that my brain has ever journeyed to. I’ve also met some very cool people online while playing these games. I love the strategy and tactics involved in the large raids; I love the social aspects and the teamwork required in group settings; I love investing time and advancing my character. These games are fun, challenging and rewarding all at the same time.

When I was growing up, video games were just electronic toys. But I honestly believe MMORPG’s have pushed video games beyond the realm of trivial entertainment. They’re not just electronic toys anymore. They’re social clubs, meeting places, and adventure environments where some of your wildest dreams can actually be realized. A great MMORPG is as engaging and entertaining as the best literature and film I’ve been exposed to.

MMORPG’s changed the way we have fun. I only hope my internet connection evolves in the next couple of years before the folks at 38 Studios release their work. Because with the talent they’ve collected I think they could build one of the most amazing MMORPG’s ever. And it would be a shame to miss out on that world as well.