Forum Hysteria Allegory

Early January of 2008, I was on Christmas break, spending time with friends and family, shoveling endless amounts of snow, and spending a good deal of my time in IRC waiting for any news of the imminent Darkfall release. I was not alone; the IRC was bursting with activity, and things were quite out of hand. I had been following the game for about 3 years at that point, and tried to give clarity to certain aspects of the game where some people were confused.

For whatever reason, I was recruited to become one of the IRC mods. Suddenly, I couldn't talk much about the game I was excited about, because despite the indicator under my forum name, people took my word as official. I still popped into the forums now and then, and especially at times where "Forum Hysteria" would hit. One person would have a bad beta experience, post about it, and mass panic would spread. The first instance of this is I noticed was when a developer mistakenly placed a guard tower in the middle of nowhere. Someone found it, made a thread, and everyone assumed these towers were everywhere, ruining potential PvP. Later that night, the devs made a post that the tower was a bug, and had been removed in a hotfix, but the threads continued. I kept linking people to the dev announcement about it, but it did little to stem the hysteria. People continued to believe that PvP was impossible, and that guard towers where rampant in the game well into release.

I am very familiar with Forum Hysteria. It happens to every game. And it's happening again now on the Darkfall forums. Oddly enough, a VERY similar thing happened with Asheron's Call 1, with what is happening on the Darkfall forums now. I listened to a former Turbine developer talk about their system of monster weaknesses and resistances on a podcast.

Once upon a time, there was apparently a mob called a lightning rat. It used electric attacks, which were strong against people wearing chainmail. One chainmail wearing player had found this mob in game and had been killed very quickly. In his shock he posted about how overpowered the mobs were. A few others confirmed his post and soon mass hysteria broke out. Threads were popping up faster than anyone could keep up with, demanding these rats be removed from the game or patched immediately.

Among all the madness, a few players had discovered that all you had to do, was wear armor that had lightning resistance. Lightning rat, makes sense. These posts were BURIED under all the screaming, which started pouring from people who hadn't even fought the rats yet. There was outrage when Turbine didn't patch the rats until slowly, people began to realize what was happening. Some weren't happy that they had to wear leather armor or enchanted chain for a specific mob, but it helped at more depth to the system, that's how all of Asheron's Call worked anyway.

I find it kind of funny, considering almost the same thing is happening in Darkfall at the moment with the revamped Monster AI and the resist/weakness system. Personally, what I think needs to be done is have the system reflect better what was said in the spotlight article. (original article here)

Mobs with resistances would take much longer to kill, but would be possible. The resistant damage wouldn't be something insane like 1 (which it isn't now, after the patch) and most other damage types are neutral, with the mob having a weakness, which you could optionally exploit for better productivity. Now people have the option of seeking out monsters they are strong against, or grouping up with friends to take out harder mobs than they would normally be able to handle. We're quickly getting there, I just hope Aventurine doesn't revert back to the mindless AI we had before.

Probably not the best subject to bring up in my first post, as it seems highly controversial between the people who want a deeper more fleshed out PvE system, and those that are offended the devs are putting any time into an aspect of the game they have no interest in, and making their income harder to earn.


Anyway, my first impressions of Darkfall, progress from beta to Conquer the Seas, and the Travelogues will be coming soon.