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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Technology Column

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Stanley Miller II, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Feb. 7--Long-distance relationships can be difficult when friends are separated a few states -- but what about when they're worlds apart?

The popularity of online games and the communities they create is leading to a more common conundrum as these virtual worlds mature.

As time passes, these digital kingdoms and their citizenry change -- take a break from an online game for too long and you can return to a world full of strangers.

That's because massively multiplayer online games run nearly constantly -- the adventures don't stop just because you log off or cancel your subscription.

A quick fix can be as simple as beaming one's virtual self to what is essentially a parallel universe.

The cities, skies and critters are all the same, but all the players change.

The technical name for this service is character transfer and as more casual players continue exploring online games, their popularity might grow.

"People who use this kind of service now are definitely more casual players," said Scott Hartsman, a senior producer at Sony Online Entertainment and expert on the company's character transfer technology. "If you are a hardcore player, you are more likely to have an established base of friends. You've established yourself in your existing community.

"People with fewer attachments in the community are more likely to find out they have friends in real life playing the game" on another system, he said. "They are more likely to head to where their friends are."

Massively multiplayer online games have thousands of players simultaneously exploring, competing, bartering and socializing in large simulated environments.

Each player has at least one character they advance accomplishing goals, ranging from hunting wolves, to slaying dragons, to blowing up ships in space.

Millions of people play these games -- "World of Warcraft," one of the most popular, has more than 5.5 million players. Sony's "EverQuest II" has more than 300,000 active accounts, and the original "EverQuest" has about 300,000.

Industry research suggests that the online gaming market is lucrative and growing.

According to data from IGN Entertainment, the number of persistent world online games grew from 38 titles in the first half of 2003, to 73 games in the first half of 2005.

The study, "Get Hooked on MMOs: Inside the Phenomena of Massively Multiplayer Online Games," also found that the average revenue per unit rose from $34 to $42 between 2003 and 2005.

Players typically invest hours growing these characters. They also spend plenty of money -- in addition to buying the game they also pay monthly subscription fees of about $15 to access the online system creating the shared game environment.

So when a player pulls a character out of retirement, it can be disheartening to find friends have left or are playing on a different server.

To manage the often incredible number of players connecting online to play, subscribers to massively multiplayer games select servers run the game companies that will be the home to their characters. Servers are usually distinguished things such as the region, time zone or a special theme.

Without special intervention, after a character is born on a server it's there for life. For example, players creating characters on the Llane server in the game "World of Warcraft" can't meet up with characters on the Feathermoon server. The game is the same, but the realm is different.

You can always create a new character on a new server and start at the bottom of the food chain again. But doing so abandons all of the accomplishments of the past, including virtual possessions, from rare items serving as status symbols, to artifacts boosting their characters' talents.

Going from a wealthy, high-level wizard to a penniless, powerless shadow of one's virtual self is something many online players aren't eager to do.

That's where character transfer services come in for games such as "EverQuest II,""PlanetSide" and "Star Wars Galaxies," all run Sony Online Entertainment. These services typically cost $40 to $50.

"The original plan for it in EQ, it really wasn't something we thought there would be much of a demand for," said Hartsman, who grew up in Milwaukee. "In probably a year, year-and-a-half -- when there was this consistent asking for it -- we knew this is a service people want.

"Ever since then, we assume there is going to be a demand for it, and in case of EQ2, we were working on it from the beginning," he said. "We definitely try to put it into all our games now."

Blizzard Entertainment, which runs "World of Warcraft," has promised its subscribers robust, fee-based character transfer services -- someday.

The company currently offers limited transfers from servers with high populations to servers with fewer players. Players can't choose which low-population server they want as a new home, and the trip is one way -- after the transfer, there is no going back.

NCsoft, a major online game publisher -- with a library that includes "City of Heroes,""Lineage 2" and "Guild Wars" -- offers limited character transfer services, too, depending on the game. For example, character transfers are not available in "Lineage 2," a hardcore, combat-heavy, fantasy game.

But players can transfer characters in the comic-book-themed "City of Heroes," from U.S. servers to those in Europe.

According to NCsoft's Web site, the company offered the service for free for players in Europe who started playing the game before it was widely available there.

"This will allow long-standing players to continue to play with their favorite characters, but at EU-friendly peak times, while teaming up with other EU-based players," NCsoft's Web site says.

In Sony's games, the process isn't as simple as copying a few files from one networked computer to another, Hartsman said.

"It's definitely a fairly complicated process," he said. "One reason why the price is set is because it used to be a manual thing, and there was no automated service."

It used to take an employee up to 90 minutes to painstakingly transfer a character from one world to another, he said.

"Now for the automated service, it depends on the architecture of the game," Hartsman said. "'PlanetSide' is more of an action game, so it's not as complex. But for EQ2, you're talking about the character, items like houses, in-game e-mail, quests and advancement history.

The complexity is invisible to the player.

For example, transferring a character in "Star Wars Galaxies" is as simple as logging into Sony's Web site, clicking through a few pages and making selections as you go.

Ten minutes and a couple of confirmation e-mail messages later -- as well as $50 poorer -- and the transfer was complete.

"Building the technology to transfer all those things is fairly weighty," he said. "There is a certain amount of work to make it work . . . it depends on how intricate the game is."

Technical issues aside, character transfer services must be designed so they don't damage online game communities or their virtual economies destabilizing them through massive shifts in populations.

"There are ways to abuse it and there are things we do to make sure there are not abuses," Hartsman said.

For example, depending on the game, there are limits on the number and types of virtual items players can move between servers.

"The barrier of a fee tends to keep large instabilities from getting in there," Hartsman said. "If they have to pay $50, that is something they are going to commit to after they've really thought about it.

"What we tend to see, is a guy comes back to playing EQ2 after a while and realizes he has a bunch of old friends on a different server," Hartsman said. "It's really more about letting one guy catch up with his friends."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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