Hardcore on Vanguard Silky Venom

The Vanguard fansite Silky Venom has an interesting article and discussion about what hardcore is, and whether Vanguard is hardcore. As usual nobody comes up with an easy answer to that, because there *is* no easy answer. Many people think of themselves at being not hardcore, while others think of them as hardcore, which doesn't make classification easy.

For me "hardcore" has always been about dedication. But at Silky Venom there is far too much talk about "challenge", which is a very misleading term. In terms of intellectual challenge, there is not a single mass market MMORPG in existance or planning which is too challenging for the average gamer. Anyone who played World of Warcraft to above level 20 will be able to play Vanguard as well. But while he will be able to play, it is totally possible that he won't be able to have fun.

The two main barriers to success in a MMORPG are total amount of time spent, and dedicated time for grouping. Note that both of these barriers are about time, and thus often related more to what is going on in your Real Life ® than to how well you play in the game world.

Regarding the total amount of time spent barrier, you can look either at the time it takes to gain one level, or the time it takes to go from level one to the highest possible level in the game. The time to reach the top is relatively easy to measure, as most games have /played command. If you take all players and measure their /played time at the moment where they hit the top level, you get a remarkably narrow distribution. For example in WoW the average time to level 60 is 500 hours, but even skilled players would have problems cutting that time to less than half (unless powerleveled), and even the greatest slackers don't take more than twice that. A much bigger difference exists between the number of hours different players play per week, which can range more than one order of magnitude from less than 10 to over 100 hours. Which means that even the worst possible player who plays 100 hours a week will reach the top level earlier than the best possible player who plays 10 hours per week.

When looking at the time needed for one level, the barrier becomes more visible. Nearly all games have a leveling curve which gets steeper and steeper towards the end. You get from level 1 to 2 in minutes, but from level 59 to 60 takes many hours. But people tend to measure their success not in relation to the hours they spent, but in relation to the days and weeks that went by. If you didn't level up in several weeks, you tend to become extremely frustrated, and might well quit the game. World of Warcraft takes on average 15 hours from level 59 to 60, which means that even somebody playing just 10 hours per week will never go two complete weeks without leveling. Thus everybody reaches level 60 eventually.

We don't know yet how many hours it will take to level up to the top level in Vanguard, but we do know that the number will be closer to the old Everquest average of 2000 hours than to the WoW average of 500 hours. On Silky Venom somebody mentioned 1500 hours. Which means that in Vanguard it is totally possible for a player on a 10-hour-per-week schedule to get stuck somewhere in the second half of the game, and not have a motivating leveling experience for a month. Furthermore at 10 hours per week, a 1500 hours game takes 3 years to complete, and that is just with one character, which might well be too long for some people. Of course if you play 50 to 100 hours per week, a 1500 hour game might be just what you were looking for. This is the first reason to think of Vanguard as a "hardcore" game.

Related to the amount of hours is the dilution of content, where players are forced to kill the same mob over and over. Nobody really believes that Vanguard will have three times the amount of content than WoW has, a more likely scenario is Vanguard being the same size or smaller than WoW, and the players having to stay in each zone three or more times as long as they did in WoW. Now imagine having to stay three times as long in Stranglethorn Vale, and you'll be probably running away screaming.

The other barrier I was talking about is the dedicated time for grouping. For some types of content you need to find a group, and then stay with that group for a continuous block of time. The most extreme is a 40-player raid, where you probably have to reserve that time in advance, subscribe to the raid, and then be online for over 4 hours. World of Warcraft is a curious case in that respect, because until level 60 that barrier doesn't exist, you can make level 60 without grouping once, and thus it doesn't matter much how long your play sessions are. But *at* 60 World of Warcraft turns into a raid game, which needs a maximum of preplanning and time spent in continuous blocks coordinated with 39 other players. Thus for example if for some reasons you could only play during morning hours, you would probably never be able to raid, and the dedicated time for grouping barrier becomes impassable.

Vanguard will go back to the old Everquest model of "forced grouping". That is after a certain level it will be impossible to gain levels when soloing. And if you can't solo, you will need to play when other people are playing, and you will need to have blocks of time of over one hour in which to group. Again that will not be a problem if you are playing many hours per week. But if somebody plays few hours per week, and those in small packages of half-hours, or with lots of interruptions, he won't be able to group much, thus he won't be able to advance. That is the second reason to consider Vanguard as a "hardcore" game.

Unless you play in a "virtual world" without a game, like Second Life, character advancement is important. But unfortunately your character advancement in a MMORPG depends mostly on the time spent in the game, and the length of the blocks in which you spend that time. Playing skill is nice to have, but is not the determining factor to character advancement. Instead of saying that WoW is casual and Vanguard is hardcore, it would be better to state the total number of hours to reach the highest level, and the shortest continuous play session in which that would be possible.
- posted by Tobold @ 1:52 PM Permanent Link