See this? This is STAMINA.

Get used to it because it’s going to be in just about every MMO available… or every F2P at least.

There’s been a huge amount of debate around the stamina issue for Atlantica, with the vast majority of people calling for a boycott of the game if the stamina system is not removed. But I suppose you wanna know what stamina is, right?

For the uninitiated, stamina is a system that limits players to 100 random battles per day (reduced to 50 once the player passes level 50). 100 stamina is offered from the beginning of the game and one point removed for each battle the player is in. Once the stamina counter reaches zero the player receives no experience points or items from any further battles. Stamina resets once every 24 hours.

Stamina was introduced to Atlantica with the closed beta 2.0 patch and received a massive backlash from the gaming community – and I do mean massive.

Thousands of players have been flooding forum boards and comment sections whining about how stamina has ruined the game for them. Starelf (some sort of writer I guess) revised one of his/her reviews to include stamina, reducing Atlantica’s score from a perfect ten to a zero on every single detail and explained with wonderful clarity why this is the case. Starelf is dead wrong, though I heartily recommend finding his review and pinning it up to your wall to remind you to never-ever be such a greedy, clueless gamer.

The stamina system is a fantastic innovation that has the potential to completely change the face of F2P (and possibly even some P2P) games as we know them. I know what you’re thinking: “Tob u L4m3r n00b, how can I possibly play a game that limits me from playing?!”

The answer is simple; you just have to calm down for a moment and think of the gaming industry as a whole.

Atlantica is free to play. Free.You don’t need to pay anything unless you want to.

However, I can guarantee that it was not free to make. Real people with real jobs and real lives developed this game – not just for your enjoyment but to earn a living themselves. Ndoors (the developer) has chosen to go F2P purely to allow people to enjoy the game as much as they want and still make some money through the Ingame Mall from gamers who want to step up their game a bit. I would imagine that a lot of thought went into balancing the stamina system as well as the number given (before level 50 at least) is not incredibly restrictive. 100 stamina allowed me to play for 8 hours straight, clearing through quests and traveling from place to place, without running out. I don’t think I want to meet anyone who wants to play for longer than that in one sitting. While the game is still in beta the system will be tweaked to allow for maximum enjoyment from players. The closed beta ended a few days ago and already Ndoors has announced that the stamina system will be changed to allow 20 unused points to rollover to the next day and 1 point regenerated every ten minutes while not in battle. Too bad they’re being drowned out in a sea of cruel, merciless gamers who think that Ndoors is completely evil for taking away the game that they loved so much and are now calling for blood. These very same people are also overlooking other additional benefits that will change MMO gaming for the better.

For example, limiting the amount of battles available will completely stop botting and greatly discourage gold farming. Botting/farming is a plague on our industry and ruin worlds created for us to enjoy. It’s not just our industry either. Most of us will have seen gold farming sweatshops, places where people (sometimes even children) are paid a pitiful amount to constantly play games in order to make ingame currency to sell on to wealthier players. One reported farming “company” have paid their workers as little as 30 cents an hour. You might think it’d be fun to be paid to play video games all day, but remember: These are REAL people, trying to earn a living or feed their family, and they’re being treated like slaves.

It also stops people from constantly grinding the lower level mobs to obtain tons of items (which is bad because the economy is determined by players)

I know, I know… the extraordinary amount of items needed in Atlantica for crafting or upgrading might seem like you’re being forced to grind and now stamina restricts that, but guess what?

While you were busy yelling for a boycott you failed to notice that the drop rates for these items had been increased! Yup, they can be found on lower level mobs and more frequently than before. Ndoors actually have put a lot of thought into this… so why haven’t the gamers?

Simple. It’s because we are so passionate about what we do. Atlantica IS a great game, with or without stamina, but players feel like they’re being ripped off by this new system. If this had been introduced into a much crappier game (and it may have already for all I know, I don’t spend a lot of time playing crappy games) then people would not have been involved in such a huge argument. The sheer amount of people calling for a boycott over stamina is a testament to how great Atlantica is. Ndoors should be proud.

As gamers, we all have expectations… but when a developer makes a beta game available then there are certain things expected of us as well.

As gamers, we should be encouraging our developers to improve games by providing constructive feedback when they make a wrong move.

As gamers… we should not be afraid to try something new before spitting on the people who try so hard to feed our passions.

I really hope that this is not the end for Atlantica. Years from now we should be able to look back and say that this is the moment that F2P games were changed for the better.

Either that, or it’ll be the day that a great game was killed by it’s own players…

-Tob