There are essentially five driving forces for MMORPG players. These games, by their very nature have numerous (or at least multiple) activities and each player is motivated by the following:

1. Progression - Experience to level, or obtaining gear at Endgame.
2. Rewards - Gear, currency, notoriety or any other status-symbol or in-game possession.
3. Fun Factors - Is the activity just plain fun to do, or awe-inspiring in some way?
4. Competition - Many players are keen to compete and compare their performance with other players / groups / guilds / factions.
5. Social Interaction - At the core of any multiplayer RPG is the basic social satisfaction from hanging out with your friends & guildmates, teaming up in a cooperative way and meeting / interacting with new people. Human desire to be accepted as part of a group should not be overlooked.

Each of these can motivate players in different directions. For instance, an activity could be fun, but the players may feel discouraged if it doesn't provide experience. It's great to be social, but if solo'ing is the fastest way to level, players will shun teaming up.

The first two motivations can be considered incentives in their purest form, in a way they are both rewards although it's important to separate them because one will motivate a certain type of player whereas the other may not.

In an interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Mark Jacobs repeated an established adage in MMORPGs:

I'd call this more truthiness than truism, because it's missing an important element--

Add Convenience

Convenience is the sixth motivator and it's the trump card. You can take any combination of the above and mix in convenience and whatever the activity is, it will go over in a big way. One example is if quests are trackable on a map, most players will naturally complete the quests that are closest rather than any sort of story-progression.

Players will always find the shortcuts.

For Warhammer, Scenarios match multiple categories, they're certainly competitive and fun and if the queues are short the experience is good. But above all, they're super-convenient.

Mythic may try to nerf Scenarios, or more likely boost the incentives for other activities, but the fact of the matter is that they need to boost all of the motivators, not just exp and rewards if they hope to make their game more well rounded and get players deeper into RvR and Public Quests.

A few guildmates noticed that WAR players seem less polite than other games. They don't tend to say hello or goodbye as they join / leave the group and many don't say anything at all. We pondered whether it was about WAR's PvP focus, but I think it's related to the Open Group system.

A Parable of Dinner

Last night Nelg, Sakkara and I went out to eat at a local Indian Diner & Sweets shop. Our server was rather curt. She wasn't rude, she just didn't throw in the usual pleasantries we're accustomed to having during dining. She was insanely busy as the only serving staff in the place: she waited on tables, dropped off food and all the while handled the steady flow of walk-in customers at the front counter picking up takeout and selecting sweet treats.

At one point she was walking away from the table while I asked for some extra rice and rather than stop and dutifully reply, she just nodded her head in acknowledgement. She promptly returned with the rice on her next trip back from the kitchen.

We ended up tipping big:

• Service was zippy and prompt even in such a busy place.
• The food was excellent.

The moral of the story the lack of niceties can actually be refreshing. I'm really appreciating WAR's Open Group and Public Quest combination that allows for some single-serving friends without the lengthy introductions and yeah, without some of the politeness. It's quick, efficient and enjoyable. It also doesn't preclude being social when you want to be, although not everyone will reply to your hellos.

And for those that like good Indian food, I recommend:

New Novelty Restaurant & Sweet (Google Map link)
6669 Fraser St.
Vancouver, BC

They've just moved two doors over for a bigger dining room, so I'm not sure if the address is exact but I'm sure you'll find it if you want to. They serve both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. We had the Chicken Vindaloo and Lamb Curry (delicious!). I love their Samosas w/ chickpea sauce as well.

Update: Mythic may have some features in place to make their public dungeons a little more sane, much like their public quests. This post has been made without experiencing them first-hand, so I'm open to retracting depending on how it works once I've seen it personally. Regardless, I dislike the idea, why bandaid something that works so poorly when there are already better options?

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Public Dungeons suck, that is all.

Or at least, that should be all.

I'd have thought that this antiquated design in MMOs would have been long buried. a throwback from the early days of UO and EQ. Whether it's on a PvP server or PvE, making a dungeon open as a public space is a welcome invitation to the worse kinds of asshattery. Didn't we have enough of that already?

Anyone who's experienced one shouldn't need me to list the numerous idiotic activities that public / open dungeons attract, so I won't bother.

But Funcom revived this tired concept and made some public dungeons in Age of Conan. It was a huge mess and a low point for AoC and that's saying something. Now apparently Mythic has also left some of their Warhammer dungeons as open spaces. What were they thinking?

I can guess the intention, to have a bit of extra crazyness on 'Open RvR' servers. But shouldn't the designated RvR capture areas be the focal point for skirmishes, not some cheap ganking while players are occupied with a dungeon boss / mob?

If they've got to balance these dungeons for the extra sorts of 'activity' they'll have, then the encounters won't be well balanced for a standard 3-6 man team. That's a big disappointment to me, because the small team tailored stuff is the best fun I have in these games.

Note: There's a huge difference between Warhammer's Public Quests and a dungeon that's just left open. Public Quests have inclusion so that all players can participate and benefit, they're completely designed around having crowds go at them.

I'm really hoping they don't have much in the way of these open dungeons in tier 4, that would be a huge disappointment for me and such a waste of content that could be great otherwise.

I totally overreacted today on someone that was sending me multiple blind invites as I crossed through a Public Quest today. On that note, here are...

5 Things that suck about Public Quests:

1. Spam invites as you enter Public Quest areas even if you're not doing the quest.
2. Some Chapters have many Public Quests, so the ones off the beaten path get few players, while other Chapters only have one Public Quest to choose from.
3. Influence takes just as long in Chapters with only one Public Quest, making repeating it tedious.
4. Many Public Quests are not really events, but just kill 100 of these mobs, then 5 of those Champions and 1 of this Boss.
5. Disproportionate participation bonuses that favour melee classes.

For the most part, I'm loving the Public Quests but they could get a lot better.

I hit the jackpot with Skereye during the Greenskin Chapter 8 Public Quest today. I rolled highest for a golden bag and receiving my first WAR epic, a pair of boots: "Squigkickas of the Driven".

I kid you not, I ran the same PQ again to maximize my Influence and once again I won the roll on a golden bag. The epic was the same pair of boots of course, so I chose the next item in the bag, some blue shoulders: "Vilein Shouldateef".

Add to these the other blue items I obtained last night and today and suddenly my Squig Herder is covered in pretty damn good gear.

Some days, you just get lucky.

I'd just logged into WAR's Open Beta for about 10 minutes. I'd poked around and settled on a Squig Herder which I'd obtained the lofty height of Rank 2 (that's Level 2 for people who don't speak Mythic terminology). I decided to explore but got not much further than over the next hill.

A large group of players were assembled near a shoreline. The kind of crowd that makes you think some kind of parade must be starting. Suddenly this big Ogre appears and starts shouting "get these Squigs off me!" or somesuch. I find myself caught up in the excitement, killing the beasties, then finding beer barrels and then finally after a few waves of Dwarven troops I'm tossing my arrows at a Boss.

It was one big Woot! moment that lasted for several minutes. There were a ton of players participating and incredulously after I was awarded my share of loot, a timer popped up for the whole thing to start again in a couple of minutes.

I'd experienced my first Public Quest.

I ended up repeating it several times, dragging Nelg along with me and we both had a blast. This past Sunday that was my introduction to WAR.

My friend Chris would have described this as one of those "Oh wow" moments. He figures every MMORPG needs at least one big glorious moment, like the first time you take a flight path in World of Warcraft, or your first fatality in Age of Conan. Without those experiences there would be nothing epic about these games. And an MMORPG without epic-- well it just wouldn't be epic. =P

The Public Quest magic is so simple, it's basically just an event that players can jump into, even if it's in-progress. This is something we've needed in these games awhile, a chance to just run in and have a blast, without worrying about organizing the proper group to do so.

I hope Mythic can maintain this kind of magic throughout all of WAR's lifespan.

The most fun I've had so far with WAR's Open Beta has been with the Public Quests (which I love, when they work) and in PvP (RvR areas and Scenarios). That is-- during Primetime hours.

Unfortunately, I tend to play most during the off-hours, either early morning or late evening. Outside of Primetime the RvR areas are ghost towns and Scenario queues don't pop at all. And Public quests aren't playable when only one or two players aside from myself show up.

In other words, this Beta has only been great fun for me between 3pm - 9pm. For Michelle, she's usually working during those hours so she has yet to see a single bit of RvR or Scenario combat and her opinion of Public Quests hasn't been as favourable as mine.

Is WAR just a game for Primetime players? I certainly hope not.

The central design of WAR appears to require a balanced high population present at all times. Public Quests don't scale. RvR works only when there are more / less equal numbers on both sides (Order & Destruction). I cannot say I'm fond of Mythic's queue approach to the problem, I would have much preferred instancing of their RvR areas (say what you like about instancing, at least it lets you play).

I'm hoping this crummy status of boring off-hours is more indicative of the Beta and perhaps our late choice of server: Wurtbad, since at the time all other servers were maxed and in queue for Destruction. I can't imagine myself being more pleased on a high pop server if I'm hitting queues tho, so I've been in a conundrum here.

Hopefully Mythic can balance their server populations better than they've done so far.

Every server should be fun at ALL times.

Update: Right after I posted this I noticed that Ethic @ Kill Ten Rats has similar concerns, you may appreciate his perspective.