Aspen's Blog

If you don't have anything nice to say...

2010-09-03T09:25:00.004-04:00

I know it's been getting more and more quiet around here. But honestly when I feel like saying something lately, it's just not been anything positive, so it's best left unsaid. I didn't want to turn this into some grumpy ramblings blog. Oh but what the heck.

I've been back to EQ2 for a couple months now just in time for the new FTP update. I played through the expansion, which felt like something that was quickly thrown together in a couple weeks. The zone is very small with quests mindlessly running back and forth to the same spot to kill the same mob multiple times. And there weren't enough quests to get you to the next level cap, so there is some grinding required for a few levels. The appearance of the items, even Legendary and Fabled, were just re-used graphics from the low levels. Gone are the neat cloaks and glowing weapons. Those are only in the Marketplace now.

EQ2 has always had a different approach to spells and abilities compared to other games. Along with armor, your spells also need to be upgraded. You get an Apprentice version of your ability automatically when you level, and this gets upgraded to better versions either via crafting or drops. So it used to be that when you dinged, your new Apprentice spell would appear in an empty spot on your hotbar as a reminder you have a new spell to upgrade. But this was changed so now the Apprentice version overwrites your Master version from the previous tier. Definitely not a fun thing to lose your best spells in the middle of a large fight and have to find them again in your spell book. But this was done to help the players on the free to play server who can't upgrade their spells anyway. And I won't get into the UI and merchant changes, and removal of experience potions from veteran rewards to help promote their Marketplace further.

Taken individually, some of this stuff you could just suck it up and get used to, but when they're all lumped in together, the community has not been pleased. I thought the feedback thread when Station Cash was introduced a couple years ago was huge. But that's nothing compared to the feedback from these particular changes.

And then there's Final Fantasy XIV. I had been testing since Alpha but passed on the open beta as I was having to force myself to log in to test. Even though they made the mouse eventually usable along with some other positive changes, it felt like I was playing an interface game rather than an MMO. Everyone has probably heard all about the number of steps involved to perform the most simplest of activities, so won't rehash it here. Pretty world, but otherwise a huge disappointment.

And there are my grumblings for the day. Still waiting for Rift and Guild Wars 2.

Rift - Dungeon Lovers Rejoice

2010-08-20T07:41:00.006-04:00

With Gamescon taking place right now in Germany, Trion has been pretty active releasing a couple articles or videos each day. IGN shared their hands-on experience at Gamescon. At the end of that article they stated that the developers' ultimate goal was to have enough dungeons that the player could reach maximum level by running each dungeon once. Either leveling is really fast or that's a heck of a lot of dungeons.

The videos coming out have been short teasers. The dungeon mentioned in the IGN article was Realm of the Fae, where you experience the four seasons as you progress through it. And it will be something we can experience early on, as it's a lower level dungeon. Rumors are that beta will begin in September. It's seriously getting harder for me to wait for Rift to release.

Forum Popularity = Beta Invite

2010-08-11T09:30:00.009-04:00

I've never been a fan of forums that utilize a reputation system. People vote up those that represent their view point and vote down the opposing view. It's just never made any sense to me to even have this "feature". So it's just been something that I pretend isn't there. But that's been hard to do lately over on the Rift forums since the topic seems to work its way into the majority of posts.

A couple weeks ago the CM announced that forum reputation would be one of the things they would look at when choosing beta participants. What a huge mistake that was. Groups started forming exchanging private messages to vote for each others' posts. Some members admitted to creating multiple accounts in order to vote for their own posts. Members who were voted down were posting the names of those who had done so in retaliation. Those who found themselves at the bottom of the reputation list hurried to fill the forums with their idea of "thoughtful" posts, hoping to regain some favor with the forum posters.

Recently, one fellow posted a suggestion that all the released Rift information be consolidated in one spot on the forums so it is easier to find. Currently, if you want to find the latest information on Rift, you have to do some digging on your own to visit fan sites, listen to podcasts, etc. Now if the reputation system weren't in place, I expect the forum thread would have had more normal responses to that post. Instead, hoping to gain forum favor with the fansite people and the CM responsible for posting forum info, members insulted the fellow, called him a troll for disparaging all the hard work they'd done. It's like some high school reality show over there. What a mess.

For any interested, the CM has also started a thread for you to post why you should be in beta. I'm not a fan of publicly selling myself so will likely be sitting this beta out unless I get invited through some other means. *crosses fingers*

To end on a more positive note, have you guys seen this Guild Wars 2 video? Wow, just wow. This is really looking and sounding amazing.

News from SOE Fan Faire

2010-08-06T08:53:00.003-04:00

As most were expecting, the next EQ2 expansion will be Destiny of Velious and releases February 8. I'm crossing my fingers it's not a bunch of snowy islands high up in the sky with some sort of snowdrift-type hover board transport. The expansion will include EQ2's first flying mounts.

The EQ1 expansion releases in October and includes player housing!! Woohoo! Not that I'm playing, but maybe I'll have a look. :)

And they released some concept art for EverQuest Next, which you can find here.

DC Universe Online releases November 2. Not something I have an interest in personally. Just not into the comic books. But pre-ordering supposedly gets you a lot of free goodies.

And I Write Like...

2010-07-28T08:39:00.003-04:00

Joining the I Write Like bandwagon, I took a two blog samples and came up with:

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

and then:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

To get a different perspective, I took a sample of some fiction I wrote elsewhere and came up with:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So I suppose Dan Brown it is.

EQ2 Extended - FTP Option

2010-07-27T13:59:00.003-04:00

SOE has announced they will soon be offering their own version of free-to-play for EverQuest 2.

They will continue to offer the subscription model; however the Extended model will function separately on completely different server lists. While you technically can play completely for free, your options will be limited to two character slots, two backpacks, eight classes, and four races. Free players also will be unable to upgrade their spells and gear, and will have restrictions in gold and broker usage. There will also be a subscription model available on these servers. As far as I can tell, the difference for subscribers between the Extended and Regular servers will be a more "robust" cash marketplace including the ability to purchase stat armor, buffs, and cutting your spell research time.

While initially, I suppose current players opposed to ftp or this type of cash shop will rejoice that they're not on the same servers, I don't think in the long run this will be a good thing for the population of the current servers. New players trying the game will automatically start on the other servers now and are more likely to stay there than have to start over on new servers, especially knowing the option to purchase certain perks will be available. Researching a spell currently takes me 30 days to complete...who wouldn't want to pay to speed that up? Also players from normal servers will be able to have their characters copied to the new servers for a fee and minus their gold and many of their items.

I realize they've done it this way to not chase off their current subscribers as they've done in previous MMO's, but in the long run I don't think this fares well for the old servers and is more a way of getting players used to the idea before merging the old servers with the new.

EQ2 - Direct2Drive Special

2010-07-18T04:56:00.002-04:00

For the next week Direct2Drive is offering EQ2's latest expansion Sentinel's Fate (including all previous expansions and content), along with 25% bonus experience flasks and some sets of appearance armor, all for $14.95. New accounts also get a 30-day subscription.

This deal was too good for even me to pass up.

Final Fantasy XIV - Possible UI/Mouse Changes?

2010-07-17T10:39:00.010-04:00

After reading that Rift interview a couple blogs down regarding customer being king, I couldn't help but think about FFXIV. If anyone has been reading mmorpg.com or FoH forums, it's clear that the controls are worse than FFXI and can be a huge road block for attracting new players to FFXIV. With release supposedly just two months away, I couldn't help but wonder why they'd be so stubborn with this one issue when every other mmo out there is playable with a keyboard/mouse.

Now Gamer released an interview yesterday with FFXIV's Hiromichi Tanaka. Here's a couple responses:

Do you fear that some MMO players, unfamiliar with Final Fantasy, might feel like they’re coming to the franchise too late to join in?

There may be some people who are unfamiliar with the series, and it’s very important that we communicate the game well to them. But our main target is Final Fantasy XI players who have stuck with us for eight years and want to proceed into the next generation of MMO.

How has your approach to MMO development changed alongside the market?

We had an alpha test for Final Fantasy XIV and received a lot of feedback from players in Japan, Europe and America. A lot of them said that ‘because World Of Warcraft works in this way then we also expect Final Fantasy XIV to play in the same way’. We heard that a lot and though we’re not trying to imitate any other games we are taking player feedback into account.

I think it's great that they want to keep in mind their loyal fan base for all these years. You often don't see that as companies only see WoW dollar signs/WoW game play to strive for. But I'm sure they'd love to find a way to keep that base and bring in new folks. I'm not sure specifically what sort of World of Warcraft feedback they've gotten, but have to imagine it's UI or control related more than anything.

I just could not get the hang of the controls in the old Final Fantasy. And when I heard it was the same way or even worse in the new version, I just had no plans to even bother. If this article is an indication they might consider making it playable with keyboard and mouse combination, and it's actually playable on my system (not looking good if the benchmark is correct), then I'd definitely give it another look.

VIE - August Beta

2010-07-16T14:10:00.005-04:00

Virtual Island of Entertainment is now accepting beta applications. Per their website: "Like a lot of resorts, the emphasis is on fun and making sure our guests have a good time together. It's not just some giant island chat room where you are left to your own devices in order to make and build friendships. Our planned activities bring people together," said Steve Coallier, Executive Director of Product Development at enVie Interactive. "We are developing a multitude of games to play, an assortment of adventures to puzzle through, a plethora of parties to attend, lots of things to earn and buy, and all sorts of fun miscellaneous activities to facilitate interaction. First off we will have several customization options for your avatar, clothes to buy, and things to decorate your house," adds Coallier. "Then there will be characters to meet, mysteries to dig into and ways to connect to your fellow players that you just don't see anywhere else. "

I'm curious, but cautious, particularly when I see a statement like this: VIE's stunning 3-D realistic virtual world includes episodic adventures with multiple storylines. It provides the only realistic virtual environment where it is safe to take part in a variety of desirable activities for adults. Players can explore, experience and indulge in activities they have only been curious about in the real world. If it's in your face "adult", then it won't be for me.

But I do have to say the screenshots look quite nice and realistic, assuming these are actual in-game shots.

Rift - The Customer is King

2010-07-16T07:56:00.005-04:00

MMO Gamer released an interview yesterday with Trion's Russ Brown (VP of Development) and Cindy Bowens (Sr. Community Manager), and this has to be one of my favorite interviews to date. While they're not releasing much as far as game features we didn't already know (except for dwarves!), the article mainly focuses on their views of the customer and community.

Cindy discussed the value of community feedback and that major changes may in fact be made as a result of polls. While I love the community there now and the polls to date have been more representative of my play style, still I hope they use their best judgment on some decisions rather than us fickle forum posters. Rift does have a relatively small forum community compared to other MMO's on the horizon, with a good lot of us seeming to be EQ/Vanguard refugees.

This portion of the interview, however, was what really had me cheering:

Russ Brown: I also think it’s important, as I rant against other companies sometimes, I never understand why companies change things that are popular.

The customer is king. If they like it, encourage it. If your game has something else, oh well, they like it!

So many times I see companies say, “Oh my god! Millions of people are exploiting this! Or doing this in the game!” And yes, they like it, they’re enjoying it, encourage it. They’re the customer. You are a service, that’s what an MMO is.

The MMO Gamer: That’s very similar to the position of Craig Morrison, the game director of Age of Conan.

We had a very long conversation last year, revolving around the question of “Why can’t MMOs just be fun?”

His position was that designers generally spend the bulk of their time trying to keep people playing the way they want them to, as opposed to just letting players find their own fun—even if some might consider it to be “not as designed.”

Can I assume based on that answer that you’re more of the let the players play the game the way they wan—

Russ Brown: Damn straight.

The way I’d like to see it work, the way I want it to work, is that as long as players aren’t griefing, or totally making it terrible for other players, let the players play the way they want to play, as long as they enjoy themselves.

As long as they make it a fun place to be, and a fun place to play.

I love these guys.

Player Housing in FFXIV?

2010-07-06T09:47:00.003-04:00

I missed this article from a few weeks ago, particularly this snippet:

Mr. Tanaka mentioned that players would be able to create and join groups called "Companies." Similar to player guilds in other games, Companies can themselves "level up," presumably offering additional benefits to the members therein. When asked if Companies would have shared housing or other group-owned assets, they smiled and said that players would have real-estate to call their own, but "weren't ready to announce anything more at this time" - sounds like a "yes" to me!

Since it was lumped in with a discussion on guilds or "companies" as they call them, not sure if this will be in the form of guild halls, player housing, or maybe both. For an MMO scheduled to release in a couple months, they certainly are tight-lipped. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Sometimes we tend to do so much reading and studying up prior to release that there are no surprises. My past vacations tended to be like that. I spent all year looking up information, seeing pictures, and planning everything out, that by the time I got there, I felt like I'd already seen everything. Here's hoping FFXIV has some amazing surprises.

TERA E3 Video

2010-07-02T14:15:00.002-04:00

Just caught a condensed version of a video that was shown behind closed doors during E3. It's looking great in my opinion...except why does that girl have to run all bent over?

Video Games | T.E.R.A. | E3 2010: Exclusive Demo Walkthrough

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Things People Say After A Couple Pints

2010-06-30T21:16:00.004-04:00

Overheard at the water cooler in regards to Warhammer Online, "EA is going to shut it down later this year I know that for a fact, the entire team is being retasked and the dead weight is being laid off, GW is quietly taking the license to a new company I have it on good authority that THQ will get that as well as they are working on a yet unannounced WHF RTS similar to Dawn of War. But don't expect it till 2015 way after the fail of WAR has been forgotten. And no links no way to prove any of this I just know folks at GW who like to talk after a couple pints."

Yeah I know...people say all kinds of things on the internet, and this one is a bit hard to believe. But something is definitely going on over at Mythic as I posted before. Still though, shut down completely? While not necessarily a reliable source, MMO Data thinks Warhammer has around 125,000 subs. Definitely not close to the million they were expecting, but other MMO's have been running for years with less than that. But then again, there's word of merging their existing US servers into one, which would indicate a much smaller subscriber number.

The fellow above linked a blog article which seems to be his own regarding what Warhammer was initially intended to be like and eventually ended up as. I thought was a pretty good read which I wanted to share. His final paragraph summed up much of my own thoughts of why I've not been enjoying the latest batch of MMO offerings:

"I also hope that one day they will sit down and look at the train wreck they helped create in a realistic way, and that EA will understand that you can not have a subscription based MMO that is basically Halo with swords, that you need to appeal to a broad base, of players PVPers, Crafters PVE players and socializers, etc. the companies that got it right and are successful (as in will still be here in five years) understand that, the companies that don’t produce harebrained catch phrases, and pour zippo fluid on a game that is already burning…. I think the last nail in the Warhammer Coffin is when at the Febuary Baltimore Gamesday Erik Mogensen more or less apologized for the game, and assured people that would never happen to another Games Workshop License again, he seemed more than a little agitated as he spoke those words..."

Final Fantasy XIV - September 2010

2010-06-30T13:27:00.006-04:00

Looks like FFXIV has announced a North American release date of September 22, 2010. There will also be a collector's edition, which along with some fluff items, includes eight-day early access. The subscription start $12.99 per month for one character slot and an additional $3 for each extra character.

With so many in an MMO slump and release of the other big name MMO's not yet announced, I would expect they'd at least have a decent number of box sales for the NA version. But unless they change the awful keyboard controls between now and then, I wouldn't expect it to be widely accepted here. Not sure if anyone caught that painful combat demo at E3, but the player was obviously having trouble moving. But there's still a couple months yet. If I don't have to go out and buy a controller in order to play comfortably, I'll definitely be trying it out.

If Facebook Indicated Subscriber Numbers...

2010-06-28T21:41:00.006-04:00

As someone who is anticipating Rift: Planes of Telara, I have it added to my Facebook page to get the latest news. Seeing how many fans they had on Facebook, I was curious to see the fan numbers for some of the other upcoming MMO's. And while I was at it, I then took a look at some of the existing MMO's.

So with no facts whatsoever backing this up and strictly for fun, assuming that Facebook fans represent 10% of the subscribers, here first is a list of current MMO subscriber numbers.

2,465,000 - World of Warcraft
810,000 - Aion
515,000 - Star Trek Online
498,000 - Eve Online
476,000 - Lineage2
420,000 - Guild Wars
317,000 - Lord of the Rings Online
229,000 - Dungeons and Dragons Online
185,000 - EverQuest2
162,000 - City of Heroes
153,000 - Champions Online
146,000 - EverQuest
135,000 - Final Fantasy XI
115,000 - Age of Conan
75,000 - Dark Age of Camelot
63,000 - Warhammer Online
53,000 - Anarchy Online
35,000 - Star Wars Galaxies
17,000 - Fallen Earth
14,000 - Asheron's Call
8,000 - Darkfall
7,000 - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
2,000 - Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted

Some of these numbers are actually believable, but obviously others aren't. But still was interesting to see how many fans these games have. Looking at the Final Fantasy number, Facebook definitely doesn't represent a world-wide interest, Asia in particular. And in more recent MMO's such as Aion and STO, those numbers make me think members added those games to their profile early on and then left them there. But I was more curious about the hype surrounding some of the upcoming games. If fans would subscribe today using the same 10% figure, here's what we'd have:

1,203,000 - Star Wars: The Old Republic
660,000 - Guild Wars 2
213,000 - DC Universe Online
170,000 - Secret World
94,000 - Final Fantasy XIV
14,000 - Rift: Planes of Telara
7,000 - Tera Online

I would have included The Agency, but they had only a very small fan-generated page. Rift and Tera definitely have some work ahead of them to generate more interest. I truly hope Rift doesn't get lost in the crowd of more recognizable names.

DAOC - The Day The Guilds Died

2010-06-23T13:38:00.005-04:00

Things just don't seem to be going well over at Mythic. They had that billing snafu where subscribers were majorly overcharged. The past couple months they've let go of several major devs; some have been part of DAOC since nearly the beginning.

And today was a patch. While there were some nice loot updates to old dungeons as well as some mysterious content in which the world is now covered in darkness, everyone on Gaheris server logged in to find all guilds had been disbanded. All the guild homes are without owners and homes have been randomly assigned various guild emblem designs. I can't imagine this can be fixed without a roll-back.

I have to be honest that while there's so much that I like about DAOC, the game in its current state is a bit depressing. I was one of the few players that didn't have an army of bots following me. When you see ten people online in guild, it usually means there's really only three players on. And there's no communication at all from anyone at Mythic except for the occasional "here's the patch notes". Players never know what they're working on, if anything at all. While they caved on their stance of not having official forums for Warhammer, the DAOC community has had to rely on VN boards which isn't always a friendly place to be. I guess the reality is that they're done with this one as EA continues in their pursuit of million+ subscriber MMO's. And what a shame that is.

I've let my subscription go, and it runs out in a couple weeks. Looks like I may be without an MMO home for awhile. *gasp*

Reliving the Past

2010-06-22T00:17:00.004-04:00

If you've ever checked out the links to the right, you've noticed one particular blog called Being Bahama. The writer is always in character and tells stories of her life in SWG, her business there, her guild's town, and the comings and goings of its citizens. Although I no longer played SWG, I would read the wonderful stories and couldn't help but feel an occasional tug wanting to relive what once was.

So it was with a mixture of sadness and excitement to read about the closure of their guild's town and a dream sequence in which she finds herself with her friends in the same place, but a different time. That story, coupled with another old acquaintance also stepping into the past, motivated me to do the same.

I wanted to just have a bit of fun and ease into things slowly so I went with an entertainer for my first character. As someone who always loved Naboo, I made the poor choice of starting in Theed. There were only a few people in the cantina and no trainers in site. Fortunately, they started me off with a small sum of money, so I caught the first ship out to Mos Eisley. I spent a little bit of time here, learned some languages so I could understand what the non-humans were saying and struck up some conversations. As nicely populated as Mos Eisley was, I was told Coronet was the place to be, and I'd have better luck finding other entertainers to train me. So spending the last bit of money I had for a ticket, it was off to Coronet. And it was packed with people.

It's been very much like the old days, both good and bad. Ninety percent of the entertainers are still afk and macroing their *winks* and *tips appreciated*. But also like the old days, lots of nice people are to be found and I really had a great time. Lots of things still aren't implemented and I can't speak yet for how well the combat side of things works out. But with the other half looking over my shoulder, I got him interested enough to start the download. There are no character slot limitations this time around, so I'll likely be starting up a Teras Kasi with him again. For anyone who enjoyed the game before the CU, it's definitely worth a look. And if you find yourself in the Coronet cantina, look for the dark-haired human in the dingy brown starter clothes.

Brad McQuaid Hiring For New Company

2010-06-20T23:00:00.003-04:00

Per his blog:

"I am pleased to announce that I am a co-founder of a new company based here in the San Diego area. We’re starting small and growing as needed. Our focus is going to be on bringing some sophistication to casual/social gaming. At some point we will also return to developing MMOs.

After a needed 3 year break from 11 years of working on massively multiplayer games with the large teams, budgets, and 3-5 year development cycles I think this will be a nice change of pace. I’m also very excited to be involved in a genre that is relatively new to me. I look forward to bringing MMO design principles to casual/social gaming."

More information on the specific jobs can be found at his website. If I understand correctly, it seems he wants to somehow merge MMO ideas with Farmville type games. Regardless of some past mistakes, personally I've had a lot of enjoyment from games he's been involved in. So I wish him the best of luck and look forward to seeing what the company team come up with.

TERA - E3 Update

2010-06-16T19:55:00.003-04:00

I learned a few more tidbits about TERA from an interview posted at theGamerVg. One of the more unique concepts will be targeting/aiming. If I understand correctly, where you first aim is where the attack or spell will land, even if the mob or player moves. So groups will need to keep the mob steady so that all ranged attacks will actually land. And this will apply to healers as well. If the tank keeps running around, they will not be able to heal. There will be collision to prevent mobs from running through the tank. This sounds like it could really offer a fun challenge for groups and I'm curious to see this in action.

There was also definite confirmation on PvE/PvP. The PvP servers will be open world PvP, while the PvP on PvE servers will be strictly consensual either by dueling or entering their battleground system. But they have stated their focus will be on the PvE experience much more so than their Korean counterpart, and they are adding enough quests from 1-60 so there will never be any grind required. And while there is a strong focus on group play, they are adding additional skills and areas so that soloing is a viable option as well.

There was also vague mention of crafting where you'd be able to take regular gear and craft it up to be epic gear equivalent to what would drop from dungeon monsters. But given where the game was original developed, I'm not expecting an involved crafting system such as EQ2 or LotRO.

Their trailer can be found here.

I Don't Think So, Tim

2010-06-16T11:23:00.002-04:00

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/TopStories.aspx?Id=1335243&SM=1

Well that was a good chuckle. But stranger things have happened so you never know.

E3 Excitement

2010-06-15T20:52:00.003-04:00

It's always exciting to see and hear the new stuff coming from E3. Most of you are probably already on top of what's going on there, but for those wanting all the details, there's a live stream at IGN, as well as continuous updates at E3Feed.

SW:TOR released a pretty amazing trailer. While I'm still not sold on playing this one and the trailer isn't in-game footage, it was really well done and worth a watch. Rift: Planes of Telara also just released a trailer. I'm already a bit excited over this one and the trailer only reinforced that. And finally, Final Fantasy XIV released a trailer as well. After having seen the other two, this seemed a bit boring and was a disappointment. Definitely nothing in the video inspiring me to play. But still going to keep my eye on this one regardless.

CItadel of Sorcery - Guild Halls/Housing

2010-06-04T07:24:00.005-04:00

Although they are still early in development and no official forums up yet, Citadel of Sorcery does update the developer's blog on occasion. The Memorial Day weekend update included this juicy bit of info:

Our Art Department has been busy with upgrading the in game User Interface art. Our goal is to add this new art to the game within the next month. In addition our modelers have been building castles, lots of castles, big castles, massive fortresses and tall fantasy castles. With a world as massive as CoS we wanted to make sure that the castles were equally impressive. I know you would like to see some screenshots of these castles, but we are holding off on those until the new terrain system is far enough along. Be patient, it will be worth the wait.

Design has been working on our Guild system. This is very important to the game and the designers have been revisiting the Guild system to make sure that it has everything we want. Guilds will have a physical Guild Hall that Players build out in the Reflected Worlds. They can build them, improve them, add new halls and ramparts and they can keep improving their Guild Hall over time. In addition Players may purchase land around their Guild Hall (from the Guild) and construct their own house and business. Eventually they will construct their own village or town around their Guild Hall. Only Guild members may enter the actual Hall, but other players (non-guild members) can visit the village / town and make use of the various player run businesses.

There can be a whole economy setup and run by the Guild in these locations and we are trying to give the Guilds many options on how they want to run their Guild.

First, I can't wait to see those fantasy castles. But I love the guild hall system where members can build houses and businesses around the hall and construct their own villages. Reminds me a bit of SWG's guild towns. And last I heard, there's no forced PvP or even any sort of PvP-focus, so another "yay!" from me.

They have stated the world will be the size of Earth, so that you could play for over a year and still not have seen everything. This also guarantees there will always be real estate available to guilds.

And equally interesting was this comment, "CoS is a new kind of Quest world, not a PVP mmo or typical cheesy PVE game. It contains no time sinks, no farming zones, no typical crafting. In fact, it has very little to do with any MMO game you or anyone else has played in the past. This is an entirely new system of game play, not another rehash of the same old system. Citadel of Sorcery is about quests, but not like what you may have seen in other PVE MMO games. The depth and quality of our Quests are what set this game apart from other MMORPGs. Each quest in CoS is the equivalent of a multi novel fantasy book series. It is about involved game play content with no time sinks, grinds, repetitive play or any of the other methods MMOs have traditionally used to keep from adding rich content."

Rift: Planes of Telara

2010-05-27T08:03:00.004-04:00

A couple posts back when I discussed some of the upcoming MMO's, Rift: Planes of Telara was not on that list. To be honest, I had seen the title and a few screenshots and immediately thought of Aion's rifts. Thinking it was yet another Eastern open PvP MMO, I just overlooked the game.

So here I was Sunday night watching four and a half hours of the Lost finale (yikes!) and reading the latest issue of Beckett Massive Online Gamer during those hundreds of commercials. One of the articles included an interview with Scott Hartsman on Rift. Hey, that's the EQ/EQ2 guy. Reading further I learned they have some tremendous talent on this team from just about every Western MMO made. They've got people who worked on diplomacy in Vanguard, as well as the public quests in Warhammer.

The world will be seamless with no zoning. Your decisions often will affect the world around you and your future dealings with NPC's. They also plan to have different ruleset servers--PvP, PvE, RP, etc. Checking out their official forums, I was amazed at the number of names I recognized from EQ2 and Vanguard. Given the large PvE following, there have been posts wanting clarification of forced PvP via the rifts. Mr. Hartsman's answer was "I didn't say 'it could never happen' just 'not as a matter of course' (e.g. all over the place, when you're not expecting it, etc - That would be unsmart/unfun.)"

Rift is still at least a year or two from release and one I've definitely added to my watch list. I'm hoping from the feedback they've been getting they might reconsider the "occasional forced PvP" at least on a separate ruleset server. Otherwise the large following they have from EQ/EQ2/Vanguard may likely move on, as will I.

EQ2 Cash Shop - Then and Now

2010-05-26T09:57:00.003-04:00

There's lots of opinions circulating about EQ2's recent expensive mount addition to their cash shop, including a recent article over at Massively. Based on comments, this is definitely a heated topic. Those in support of this type of business model feel it will encourage innovation and the extra income will go towards providing more content and a better gaming experience overall.

SOE introduced Station Cash in December 2008. I thought I'd refresh my memory by reading through all the update notes in both the year prior and after to see how well all that extra income has been put to use in EQ2.

In the year 2008 prior to SC, game updates included 1 raid zone, 2 group zones, 1 complete zone revamp, and six events. For those not familiar with the events, this is additional content added that runs for a few weeks involving new NPC's and new quests. I'm not including the holiday events which occur every year. This year also brought the Shadow Odyssey expansion which included additional overland and group/raid dungeons.

In the year 2009 following SC, game updates included 2 raid zones, 2 group zones, 1 complete zone revamp, and three events. This year also included the addition of Moonlight Enchantments and City Festivals. These are events which consist of the same repeatable quests each month as a way of obtaining housing and other fluff items. This also was the first year that an expansion was not released. The Sentinel's Fate expansion eventually was released in February 2010 somewhat incomplete. Dungeons aside, it was a very small expansion, and while the level cap was increased to 90, there were only enough quests to reach level 87.

To be fair, 2008 was a pretty phenomenal year as far as events go and there were other years a bit more sparse. However, given all the positive theories regarding the cash shop, shouldn't EQ2 players have gotten more? Why then was the expansion delayed and so incomplete? They also seem to be going towards more recyclable events that just involve turning the switch on rather than creating completely new events. You can't blame players for feeling gouged and thinking perhaps the money may in fact just be funding their three other games in development and/or deepening someone's pockets. Personally, I'm not a fan of this business model and it was part of the reason I left EQ2 behind.

On the bright side, SOE has a job posting for a Senior Programmer where they state they are "working to revamp, rethink, and enlarge upon the efforts that have gone before, working to make this already excellent game into something even larger, better, and more entertaining for its players." Let's see what the rest of 2010 brings.

Server Merges for EverQuest

2010-05-23T18:12:00.003-04:00

EQ1 will be processing server merges beginning June 22. Twenty servers will be merged into ten. Only eight characters will be permitted on your account, so if you have characters on both servers that are merging you will need to delete some of them. The list of merged servers is here.

I was under the impression that EQ1 might actually be doing better than EQ2 since they had many more servers, but I guess that wasn't the case. As much as I'm sure they hate the impression merged servers leaves, it's definitely the right thing to do for the remaining players.

The Current and Future State of MMO's

2010-05-22T20:03:00.005-04:00

Wolfshead wrote a great article expressing his views on the current MMO situation. It's well worth a read.

I recall when my husband and I were playing EverQuest and imagining how amazing MMO's might be ten years from then. Here we are ten years later and we're both playing old MMO's because the new stuff is so lackluster. What the heck happened? I think Wolfshead's explanation of what happened is pretty spot on.

Will we see something more innovative and going back to our community roots in the next ten years? Well, let's see what's coming up:

- From SOE we have DC Universe Online, The Agency, and references to EverQuest "Next". I'm sure there will be some innovative items for sale in the cash shop, but as for gameplay, guess we'll wait and see.

- Many old school gamers seem to have their hopes in Final Fantasy XIV. This is one of the few upcoming titles I have an interest in. We'll see if they innovate and improve upon the previous version or are just slapping the WoW formula on top of it.

- Admittedly, I haven't read up much on Guild Wars 2. Having recently purchased the original Guild Wars Trilogy and no longer playing, I just have no enthusiasm for it. I felt too isolated with all the instancing.

- Star Wars: The Old Republic is another one I have no interest in. It seems like a single player game with not enough features to keep me interested for any length of time.

- Still not enough information yet on TERA. Not getting hopes up for innovation and community.

- Funcom is working on The Secret World. Not much more to say.

- Cryptic will announce a new MMO this summer. Please no. *crosses fingers it's not related to Forgotten Realms.*

- Add to that a Wheel of Time MMO by Red Eagle Games, and some yet unannounced titles by 38 Studios, Slipgate Ironworks, and ZeniMax Studios.

This list is by no means complete but that's a lot of games. I honestly don't expect any of these to be an improvement and offer something completely new. I hope I'm wrong but I think it's going to take more than ten years. It's going to take time for the WoW effect to start wearing off. Maybe as the current gaming population ages, their tastes will change so they begin to seek out greener pastures. Or maybe many be too deeply rooted to leave. I can only guess, but I'm definitely not as inspired to imagine the wondrous things that companies might bring to an MMO ten years from now as I once was.

Funny Quote of the Day

2010-05-21T14:32:00.003-04:00

So over on the forums of that one game I used to play where the recent update introduced group instances, a couple players commented that while they really enjoyed the game, they had concerns about the population and how long the company can stay afloat.

The response from the current fellow in charge: "I simple(sp) don't understand the furor and commentary over player numbers. How does the issue of low numbers affect your gameplay experience and what is the relevance?"

DAOC - Continuing Adventures

2010-05-21T08:15:00.008-04:00

My Cabalist's most recent adventures took me across multiple zones (again). Starting at level 5 up until 50 there are NPC's in the main cities that give you tasks. They send you to various zones to make deliveries or kill mobs, and they're great for getting an idea of where you should be hunting at that particular level.

My first task involved a delivery to the Abandoned Mines. The Mines are located under each of the three cities, and they also connect to all the dungeons in that realm. Quests start in the mid 20's and continue through the 30's. It's easy to get lost, but fortunately you can use the mine carts to help you get around.

The next task involved killing toads in Avalon Marsh. While toads aren't particularly exciting, I'm amazed at the variety of mobs found here and throughout DAOC, especially compared to more recent MMO's I've played. Along with the typical marshy type critters like frogs, rats, lizards, crabs, and worms, it's also home to various forms of undead, bogmen, mud golems, marsh scrags, ogres, and other misshapen sentients.

Needing to dry out my boots, I headed back to the city for another task which took me to the Shrouded Isles. Each realm has their own version of the Isles, but I was off to Albion's version. Unlike the other zones, faction plays an important role here and you need to do a bit of research before you start randomly killing. Once faction is high enough, at later levels additional towns become available to you for further questing. My task here involved ridding the apple orchards of some undead.

Despite my best efforts, the undead continued to return so it was off to the New Frontiers for my next task. The Frontiers connects all three realms and on the RvR server this is where all the action is. While there is no RvR happening on the Gaheris server, certain restrictions are still in place here making this not one of my favorite areas for hunting. Run speed is much slower, you can't use your level 10 mount, and you can't use any port stones to get out. So getting around is very slow. But with all the huge keeps, it is pretty neat to see once in awhile and I managed to arrive as the sun was coming up.

I've reached level 33 and still have a lot of content yet to experience. I may start dabbling in the other realms to keep things fresh.

DAOC had a patch this week and with the patch came an oops...Christmas in May! Seems the December holiday activities were reactivated so I quickly took advantage of it with one of my higher level toons and snagged some quested decorative housing items before it gets taken down again. Ho, Ho, Ho!

Vanguard, Oh Vanguard

2010-05-13T07:43:00.003-04:00

So I was on my daily two-hour car trek yesterday. The rain was pouring and the radio was annoying. I reached in the glove compartment and pulled out the CD on top. It was the Vanguard soundtrack. A couple years ago I was able to pick up the collector's edition for a steal at $9.99, and it included the soundtrack. I absolutely love the music Todd Masten produced for Vanguard and haven't heard it for over a year.

Later in the day while visiting mmorpg.com, I noticed page after page of players saying they are returning, forming guilds, looking for helpful information. What's with the sudden renewed interest in Vanguard?

Then I thought I'd catch up on my Massively articles and read Beau's article linking the wonderful pages players have put together for Vanguard.

Darn you all for enticing me back again. I really can't afford to take on another monthly payment right now, so stop tempting me!

Alganon - Update from a Little Known Blog

2010-05-12T13:11:00.004-04:00

I told myself I wouldn't post anything further on Alganon. There's plenty of sites covering the continuing saga and I really didn't have much to add that hadn't been said already before. But...

If the whole plagiarism arguing didn't seem like that much news before, it just got a bit funnier. For the couple of you that read here that might have missed the story on another blog, check out n3rfed who contacted John Smedley for a response. Thanks to Broken Toys for pointing me to the site.

Now back to my life less ordinary.

DAOC - Exploring the Early Levels

2010-05-10T08:36:00.006-04:00

Aside from the occasional diversion of Free Realms, Dark Age of Camelot continues to be my only MMO. While I've never been in more than one guild at a time in any MMO, it seems to be a very common practice here, or at least on the Gaheris server. Part of that is because you can have up to 30 alts. Another factor is that most of the guilds on the server seem to be part of one of two alliances. Alliance chat functions just like guild chat and has its own separate tab where you can see who is online. It's one big happy family as everyone has alts spread throughout guilds in the alliance.

When I first returned a couple months ago, I had alts in two guilds--one with a couple members logging in here and there, and the other with no signs of life for the last three years. Shortly after resubscribing I also joined a more active guild with my main. Two weeks ago my husband received an email from Mythic that since there has been no active guild leader, as the most recent character logged in, he had been promoted to guild leader. While I knew it was their policy to do this, with their small staff I was surprised they are still actively managing the comings and goings of guild players. So now we have a guild! And housing nut that I am, the first order of business was to spend most of the rest of my puny fortune and set up a guild house.

With access to a new guild house, guild port stones, and the ability to enable guild bonuses...along with needing a break from farming seals, glass, and scales on my main...I decided to start an alt. Having a level 50, I could have taken a shortcut and used the /level feature which bumps me to level 20 from the start. But I wanted to re-experience the old stuff and without the tutorial. Never having played a class with a persistent pet, I decided on a Cabalist and started my journey in Camelot Hills. The quests here are much more enjoyable than the tutorial and really offers more to get you into the setting of the realm vs. the generic tutorial. Early on there were more quests than I could possibly complete and I was having to delete several as I out-leveled them.

Coming from Camelot, I wanted to focus all my experiencing in Albion. In the mid-teens the quests began to dwindle some so I thought it was time for an old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Mobs spawn a bit too quickly in the open dungeons, though, so it was more of a dungeon camp than crawl.

With bags completely full, I headed back to the city to sell and continued my leveling in the Roman Aqueducts, which is part of The Catacombs expansion. Quests were plentiful once again. The Catacombs are some of my favorite zones. Visually they are really neat to explore and the dungeon instances found within them drop items which you can turn in for armor. I did get in over my head here though, and suffered my first death shortly after taking this shot.

So far I'm having a ton of fun with the Cabalist and revisiting zones. Next stop will be Shrouded Isles.

Five Indie Games - Name Your Price

2010-05-04T22:34:00.006-04:00

Just wanted to pass this along as it will be something I intend to take them up on. Five different independent game developers are offering a bundle of five games for whatever price you wish to offer. Also, you have the option of any or all of that amount going to one or both of two charities--Child's Play or Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The games you will be getting are Aquaria, Penumbra, Lugaru, Gish, and World of Goo.

Some of the games look like they might be fun, and hopefully most players are making reasonable contributions to help support both the independent developers as well as the charities. Offer only available for another six days. Visit The Humble Indie Bundle for details and to make your purchase.

NCsoft Woes and Getting Realms Roll'd

2010-05-02T20:03:00.006-04:00

Trying to get Guild Wars set up for both of us has been an exercise in patience to the point where the other half was ready to give up on playing. When we originally played, our Guild Wars accounts weren't tied to NCsoft in anyway. But we did have NCsoft accounts from when we both tried CoH and more recently for Aion beta. The game now requires you to log in through NCsoft and tie your Guild Wars account to it. Long story short, it was impossible to get the previous account up and running so I just had to create a new account and start new characters.

My husband upon attempting to log into his Guild Wars account received a popup stating they believed his account had been compromised and he needs to contact them. He then logged into NCsoft and saw a big red "banned" next to the Aion link. Considering at least two games under his account had been hacked, he decided to just start over as well. Then you get to the log in screen which makes you go through more hoops just to get in. The whole process was beyond annoying so we played only briefly.

On a more lighthearted note, after a DAOC marathon weekend taking advantage of bonuses, I spent a little time in Free Realms for stress-free fun. I've had some Station Cash accumulated that SOE gave away as rewards when I was playing EQ2 and decided to buy something in Free Realms. Along with mounts, pets, and clothes, some of what they sell are items that can be dropped on the ground for a few minutes for other players to enjoy. It might be a clickable illusion, balloons, temporary pets, and then there's boomboxes. One box was called a Realms Roll'd Boombox. I honestly had no idea how this was different from the other boomboxes but I bought it out of curiosity.

The box looked like a typical one. The music started playing like a typical one. Then the music scratched and cut off and was replaced with a fancier boombox. And then it began playing "Never Gonna Give You Up". Everyone nearby turned into Rick Astly and did his cute little dance. This was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen in any game. So kudos to SOE on this one. Unfortunately the young ones weren't getting it and were asking why they were dressed like a boy in ugly clothes. Ah well, I had a good laugh anyway.

Guild Wars Trilogy on Sale at Steam

2010-04-30T19:15:00.003-04:00

This week only Steam is offering a $19.99 deal on the entire Guild Wars Trilogy. Considering there is no subscription fee and you get all this content for the same cost as Alganon, this was just too good a deal for me to pass up.

I played the original Guild Wars, but never had picked up the other campaigns. I really liked the early game, but the content toward the end game had just gotten more and more frustrating for us to a point where we couldn't proceed any further as a duo. So we'll see how far we get this go around.

Another Server Merge for Vanguard

2010-04-26T13:35:00.004-04:00

On the official Vanguard forums, Silius has confirmed another server merge in the works for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. They are still working out the details but the future looks grim.

There are currently only four servers left, three PvE and one PvP. My guess is that the three will be combined, while the PvP server left as is. Since it's one big open world, I can only assume players will lose their homes and guild halls in the transfer. But I have to wonder how long will SOE continue to support an MMO with two servers?

As was mentioned in comments in a previous post, Vanguard could have been the real Everquest successor. It just needed a little TLC...okay maybe a lot of TLC. If SOE had piled on the love and care EQ2 has received, I think Vanguard could be a phenomenal game. But maybe that was intentional. Maybe they didn't want Vanguard to be good enough to compete with EQ2 which might have caused population issues there as well. They want to bring in new subscribers not spread out the ones they already have. Could they have let it flounder for that reason? I don't know, but whatever their reasons, the state of the game is a tremendous shame.

If You Liked That MMO, Then You Might Like This

2010-04-24T16:18:00.004-04:00

While doing some internet searches for relevant DAOC information, when I'm not landing on dead links, I often find myself at old DAOC guild sites. Many of these sites had referring links as the guild has now moved on to another MMO. What was surprising was that in nearly all instances, they had moved to one of two games--LotRO or WAR. The role-play and more realm pride focused guilds tended to be in LotRO, while the RvR "we're going to kick some arse" focused guilds moved on to WAR.

It got me curious as to what players from other older MMO's were more likely to be playing now or for an extended period of time after leaving. So I did some searching through old guild sites, as well as lots of posts by individuals to see where they came from and what they liked afterward. Obviously, everyone's taste is different so there's much room for differences of opinion. But here's a summary based on gamers' first MMO experiences and where they moved on to for long terms:

If you liked Dark Age of Camelot, you might like WoW, LotRO, WAR, or Darkfall. The first three were mentioned most frequently from retired DAOC players, with Darkfall in a distant fourth. Single players more often went to WoW and LotRO, while entire guilds tended to focus on WAR or LotRO.

If you liked Everquest, you might like WoW, LotRO, DAOC, SWG, EQ2, or Vanguard. Considering how hardcore EQ1 was considered, it was surprising how the majority seemed to end up in WoW. WoW offered something for both the raiders and the casual players who had been struggling to continue in EQ1 as each expansion and mob difficulty became more raid focused. But aside from WoW, EQ1 players had varied tastes and ended up across several MMO's.

If you liked Ultima Online, you might like SWG, EVE, DAOC, WoW, or EQ. I never played this to make comparisons, but SWG and EVE were mentioned more frequently. I'm guessing the whole sandbox thing has some relevance here.

If you liked Asheron's Call 1 or 2, you might like LotRO, EQ2, WoW, or Vanguard. I didn't notice a clear number one choice here, but these were the MMO's most mentioned.

If you liked Anarchy Online, you might like EVE, Age of Conan, Ryzom, WoW, CoH, or SWG. EVE seemed to be the winner here, and I was surprised at how often Ryzom was mentioned. Also surprised to see CoH, but I guess they share similarities in the mission styles--pick them up, click on door.

If you liked SWG, you might like EVE, LotRO, CoH, and perhaps STO. LotRO was about even with EVE. Definitely something to be said for a good story line you're already familiar with. More recently, several guilds had set up shop in STO, but still too early to tell if they'll be sticking around.

I'm sure there's some I've left off here, but these were some of the older MMO's I was more famliar with. There's a few things to note here. The taste in MMO's definitely doesn't work both ways. While many EQ1 players may like WoW, odds of WoW players liking EQ1 may be slim. Same goes for DAOC/LotRO. Also there seems to be some brand loyalty in some of these cases. Why are Anarchy Online fans interested more often in Age of Conan than other gamers? Sometimes there's a comfortableness with your developer. You know what to expect from them and you already feel at home before even playing their next title.

It also reminded me how varied the older titles were compared to newer ones. Dark Age of Camelot had features to accommodate different tastes. You had a sense of belonging to your realm rather than a visitor passing through. This created such immersive play which also was a great setting for role-play guilds to form. The PvE content was expansive enough that you didn't have to RvR if you didn't care to. I felt none of that immersion playing WAR. I felt no connection to where I was and just was a visitor plopped down in a blazing outpost. The city was a place to bank, not a place to belong to. And the PvE.....bleh.

But not everyone is into that immersive play and RvR is plenty enough for them. So a portion of that type of DAOC player went to WAR, while some of those seeking the open world adventures, housing and immersion went to LotRO. How could an older game on a much smaller budget accommodate several play styles, while newer MMO's spending millions of dollars are so narrowly focused?

Ten years from now I wonder where those whose first MMO was WoW will be playing. If the new MMO's keep churning out like the last several, I'm guessing they'll still be playing WoW.

Mythic's Apology

2010-04-21T12:26:00.004-04:00

For the billing blunders that took place a couple weeks ago which affected players of both Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot, Mythic issued a public apology explaining what and how it occurred and implementing precautions to ensure it doesn't happen again.

To help restore relationships with their players and as a thank you, they will be implementing some special goodies in both games:

FOR WARHAMMER ONLINE PLAYERS

For starters all players will earn 100% bonus experience and renown when killing enemies and monsters for two weeks. As well, during this time we’ll be hard at work designing and implementing a special vendor. This vendor will only accept special tokens that will be sent to your mailbox, using these two tokens each of your characters will be able to receive two of the following items:

• Bottomless Black Dye
• Bottomless White Dye
• Imperial Griffon Mount (Order)
• Enslaved Manticore Mount (Destruction)
• WAR Tract – earn a free level
• Choose from any of these pets – Order: Imperial Hunting Hound or Dwarf Keg Handler; Destruction: Warlord’s Fell Hound or the Goblin Bar-Back.
• Change your appearance with any of these illusion items: Skaven Skin Cloak (skaven), Kossar’s Helm (bear), or the Signet of the Cursed Company (skeleton)

Since I'm playing DAOC, I was more interested in what's coming my way, which is:

FOR DAOC PLAYERS

For starters all players will earn 100% bonus experience, bounty and realm points when killing enemies and monsters for two weeks. As well, during this time we’ll be hard at work designing and implementing a special NPC. This NPC will allow each of your characters to select two of the following items:

• Bottomless Black Dye
• Bottomless Crimson Dye (Albion), Hunter Green Dye (Hibernia), and Royal Blue Dye (Midgard)
• A selection of rare mounts: The Fire Steed, Clockwork Steed, and Storm Steed
• Choose from any of these pets – Clockwork Cat, a Mini-Dragon, and a pet of your realm.
• Vegas Round Table Trophy
• The Old Dragon Heads of Smoldering Golestandt (Albion), Frozen Gjalpinulva (Midgard), and Glimmering Culldurach (Hibernia)

Dye is easy enough to get, so not sure why that's there. I'm guessing I'll be going with some of the trophies as I'm not big on overly flashy mounts. Time to start stocking up on my realm point seals!

Gods and Heroes Nostalgia

2010-04-18T08:19:00.004-04:00

I came across some old screenshots from the Gods and Heroes beta. While there was no transgender option in character creation, I logged in once to find some funny business going on with my female toon. And here I thought the TERA armor was skimpy.

Westernizing Asian MMO's

2010-04-14T16:38:00.004-04:00

I was reading about yet another new free to play Asian MMO. I've gotten into the habit of not bothering to take a look since I know how it will turn out. But the screenshots in this one seemed sort of pretty along with some cool mounts so I thought maybe...just maybe. But no, yet another open PvP MMO.

So I couldn't help but think "about darn time" as I read an interview with former Blizzard guy Patrick Wyatt, who is now one of the head honchos at En Masse Entertainment. While I realized En Masse would be the Western publisher of TERA, I hadn't realized the company was formed for the purpose of adapting games to make them more suited to the Western audience.

According to the interview, they will be enhancing aspects that Western players like, while de-emphasizing anything that doesn't work well here. They will be rewriting stories as necessary that might not otherwise translate well. And in the case of TERA, there will be PvE servers.

TERA is their first project. There are currently six races and eight classes planned. It will be releasing in Korea this summer, while the Western version is scheduled for some time in early 2011. Definitely one I'll be watching. And hopefully there will be other female armor options to cover up a little more *cough cough*.

Alganon - Civil Action Filed

2010-04-09T15:11:00.004-04:00

Per David Allen:

In an effort to enhance Alganon’s® market visibility and following the direction of certain investors, QOL hired Derek Smart as a consultant on December 3, 2009 to assist in the area of sales and marketing. Soon thereafter, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, Mr. Smart began a smear campaign attacking my credibility, first privately among the investors, and then publicly. As many have read on various Internet websites, Mr. Smart has made disparaging remarks concerning my professional work and comments that could lead others to question my loyalty, honesty, and ability to successfully create, build, run, and manage a multi-million dollar MMOG development company; something I have been doing successfully for over four years. Please be aware that Mr. Smart’s comments are false and that I have filed a civil action against him in Maricopa County Superior Court for his defamatory conduct, among other things. I have been advised by my legal counsel to offer no further comment at this time on this matter during the pendency of the litigation.

I've read the entire complaint which covers Smart's scheme to infiltrate and take over Quest Online, Allen's unlawful removal in violation of the Operating Agreement, and Smart's false and defamatory statements which has caused irreparable damage to Allen's career. I think the defamation went to extremes so I hope he at least gains some compensation for that. A very interesting read and I wish him much luck.

The Greener Pastures of Aerrevan

2010-04-06T14:09:00.004-04:00

There have only been a few MMO's where I involved myself in the forums prior to or even after the game's launch--Vanguard, Alganon, and more recently Aerrevan. I'm typically not much of a forum poster. But when the community is smaller and new, it's not so intimidating to be joining in and adding your own voice and opinion. So it was a pleasant surprise to find myself not so alone over there when someone I'm familiar with from Alganon read my blog and posted over at the Aerrevan forums. And then more came. She in turn spread the word to other displaced Alganites, and each day I've seen another one or two familiar names show up there as more continue to trickle in.

And then I started thinking (yeah I know...uh oh). I wondered what the motivating factor was for our interest in Aerrevan. We don't know enough to really say it's the game itself. Considering we've all come from Alganon, it's likely we all have a common interest in a smaller gaming community. Although I've never held a conversation with many of these players, there's a certain familiarity after months of reading their posts and seeing them in the chat channels in game. And with a smaller community, there's often a keener developer interaction both in the forums and in game, further cementing that community bond. It has a very cozy feel to it and is what kept many playing Alganon despite all the problems.

Hopefully, the good people over at Aerrevan and its established community aren't feeling invaded upon as the migration continues. We're just looking for a friendly place to hang our hats for hopefully a long while.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T10:24:00.002-04:00

Free Realms - One Year Later

2010-04-03T09:27:00.003-04:00

With Free Realms approaching their one year anniversary, I thought I'd have a look at all the new things added that I've read about. I had played at release and stuck around for a month or two. There have been a heck of a lot of changes since then.

I opted for the $4.99 subscription which is really hard to beat. While you can do some things for free, it's become much more restrictive. The combat has been completely revamped. I had left as an 18 archer and still had quests on me that were too difficult to complete. The past few levels had become a bit tedious.

So checking my quest list, I headed into one of the instances I couldn't complete previously. I'm not sure why, but they removed targeting of mobs. I used to try to single pull a mob, since getting too many would mean being knocked out. But now you just pretty much charge in and your attack abilities hit whatever is in front of you. The first time I saw about a dozen mobs rush at me I thought "uh oh". But my main arrow attack is now an area attack and they all went down pretty easily. Combat has definitely been sped up and the instances don't take nearly as long as they used to. Also, instead of being granted three knockouts before you fail the instance, you are given 15 in most.

Regeneration also seems higher. I used to be annoyed at all the potions I had to buy and consume. Now I only had to use them for the boss fights and a few times when I just took on too many. I'm sure many were not happy with the combat being made easier. But for their targeted younger audience, I do think it was a bit too hard before. And I even thought it was fun blasting tons of mobs at a time.

Housing has been added and I was given a small house with a yard for free. You can buy a larger house with Station Cash, but I thought the small one was plenty large enough for now. There's furniture of course in the SC store, but you can also purchase furniture from various merchants with game coins. Since there is no housing zone (you just click a button to get to your home), I haven't seen any way to randomly visit other player's homes to see how they've decorated them.

Guilds were also added and anyone can start one up solo. I think the kids are having a lot of fun with this. Looking at some of the guild names, it's pretty easy to tell it wasn't started by an adult, but some are actually cute. The guild names all are sent for approval before showing up, so you can be sure you won't see some offensive name as you or your child runs around.

Travel has been made much easier, not that it was difficult before. You used to be able to only teleport to certain hubs which you've opened up. Now you can teleport directly to any point of interest or instance.

While you always were able to see new areas referenced on the edge of the map, these areas still have not been implemented yet. But they have added more quests and more activities such as soccer and pirate plunder. And of course the SC market is filled with tons of stuff like furniture, pets, mounts, and cosmetic outfits. You do also get lots of free stuff. There's a daily wheel that spins that gives you some random item. Also, if you go to the main Free Realms page, there's usually an item displayed that you can claim.

I like the changes they've made, and I think it's a great value for 5 bucks a month. It's a cute, casual diversion from the typical MMO grind.

Alganon - No Soup For You!

2010-03-31T13:18:00.008-04:00

Remember that episode of Seinfeld with the soup guy, where basically if he didn't like something a customer said or did he yelled "No soup for you!", and out they went? Typically, you wouldn't want to run a business that way. Especially when there are other bigger and better soup kitchens in town. Especially when you have a reputation for customers finding bugs in their soup. And especially when you only have a declining few dozen customers who stroll in each day.

With my morning coffee in hand, I looked to see what was new over at the Alganon forums. There's been a continuing post on what people would like to see in game. One mentioned they weren't posting much anymore waiting to see what developed. Another member added to that and Derek Smart responded with the following:

Wow, how rude to a customer. Might as well have said "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." Just as a background, the poster above has been with the community a long time and has been extremely supportive to the point of picking up several one-year subscriptions. While he certainly shouldn't be shown preferred treatment, he should at least be treated as a customer, as we all should, and not expendable trash.

But unfortunately it didn't end there. A couple community members posted that they thought the response a bit inappropriate. Their posts were respectful, well thought out, and in no way inappropriate. I left to run some errands, and when I returned they were deleted. Now I've seen some posts in the past that warranted deletion. There was one fellow who created an account called "QOLSucks" and you can imagine what sort of posts those were. Ok, I get that. But if you want to keep even the slightest hint of negative posting off the forums, then it needs to work both ways, you know?

There were some responses of upset members who had seen the posts and questioned their deletion. But then many of these posts were also deleted. I did manage to catch a couple posts before deletion. There is no valid reason to be deleting this stuff.

Well, anyway I guess I have to admit defeat at this point and throw in the towel. This is above and beyond even my tolerance level which is much higher than most. Mr. Smart stated he's only there temporarily. Maybe once he's gone it will be safe to come back.

DDO - Guild Airships!

2010-03-30T08:02:00.005-04:00

Turbine announced their summer update will focus on an entire revamping of the guild system, including the addition of guild airships. The ships will function similar to the guild halls in EQ2, where you acquire amenities such as an auctioneer. There also will be a navigator npc that provides transportation. After the update, guilds will gain status through player actions unlocking additional amenities and rewards.

I've already been tempted to fire up DDO to see how things have progressed with all the changes this past year, but this sounds much too cool to pass up. This will be a great opportunity for guilds to gain new players, giving the unguilded a little more incentive to join up.

The spring update comes next month, which includes a bunch of nifty new dungeons. But guild airships!! I have to see that.

Alganon Needs a Community Manager

2010-03-24T08:40:00.007-04:00

In my long years of gaming, I've really developed an appreciation for the great Community Managers of various MMO's. They handle the angry posts with grace, patience, and wit, while conveying a genuine affection for all the players. And they relay information from other folks in the company who don't have the temperament for posting on the forums. For potential new players coming to the forums looking for a general idea of type of community present in an MMO, a great CM can really set the tone for the entire forum and the game.

I've been part of the Alganon community for four years. So having a prior long-term connection there, it's a little easier for me to not take the recent shenanigans that seriously. But if I knew nothing of the game and the people involved and just started reading the forums, I'd be really put off and wouldn't be playing.

I've stated before that I appreciated the candor that Derek Smart initially expressed to the players. It was great to finally know what was going on and what direction the game would be taking. And it was great to hear that someone actually wanted to fix the game instead of leaving it broken while adding more broken new stuff on top of it. But he shouldn't be posting anymore. They desperately need a Community Manager.

In reading his posts as well as the subscriber posts over the last few days, this is not is not a direction in community I like to see. His more recent posts have been along the lines of, "If you don't like the game, leave. Any negative posts will be deleted and the poster banned with no warning!" (yes, he did boldface those words) I've been reading the posts and have seen nothing ban-worthy. I have never been part of an MMO community where negative posts are deleted and users banned. I mean seriously, what the heck? Foul language, yes. Name calling, yes. But negative opinions?

This in turn has changed some of the posting styles of some community members. For some there seems to be a need to get on his good side as they join in on snide remarks against the negative poster. His display of preferential treatment to certain players who agree with him or impress him drives the wedge further. And if I hear one more gushing "I really like you, Derek!" grrr. What was already a niche game may become even more niche.

I think he's well intentioned with wanting to help the game and I still appreciate his effort in "getting er done". But he needs to hire a Community Manager pronto to moderate with a kind, gentle hand and stay off the forums. They need to contact Sandra Weathers for advice. She knows how it's done.

Aerrevan Beta Testing Beginning Soon

2010-03-21T21:58:00.004-04:00

In my continuing search for MMO's off the beaten path, I recently discovered Aerrevan, created by The 13th Hour Studios located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They just wrapped up alpha testing a few days ago and are about to enter beta. So keep an eye on their website over the next couple weeks for anyone interested in signing up.

Aerrevan will consist of humans, elves, and orcs, on the continent of Lurris. At some point in history, a huge meteor crashed into the continent bringing with it excess amounts of something called Aer. This stuff begins to accumulate in your body and if you don't periodically cleanse yourself of it, you will begin to mutate. Two separate great mages rose to power, one working toward ridding the world of Aer, while the other wishes to harness its power for use.

The world is 100% seamless and there will be zero loading screens. They are introducing some sort of dynamic npc conversation system. You can communicate with npc's as you would other players. They are programmed to understand the English language and will respond back in meaningful ways. There will be no classes. You just choose which skills you wish to use. There will be player run shops, which you can hire shopkeepers to run for you.

The most important aspect to me and the first thing I scanned for was that there would not be forced pvp. You can pvp in hostile territories where you will receive a warning upon entering. And you may also be subject to pvp if your guild is at war with another guild. Pvp is not based on the three races, but rather which of two great mage alliances you choose.

There will actually be two types of guild structures, depending on whether or not you wish to participate in pvp. The first is referred to as a "guild". The guild and its members will follow one of the two alliances. Guilds will be able to take control of towers and capital cities. They also are subject somehow to corruption, which requires much responsibility from the guild leader to manage. Not sure exactly how that will play out, but sounds like a stressful job. For the pve players, rather than guild, their organization will be referred to as a "battlegroup". These are for players who have not chosen an alliance. They function as a guild, but they will not be able to take control of territories as the guilds do.

The screenshots look very pretty, but there are only concept drawings for character models. I discovered the site in a very roundabout way. Considering they intend to release this year, they definitely should be doing some advertising. And I'll definitely be keeping my eye out on this one.

SW:TOR - One Million Needed to Break Even

2010-03-19T08:10:00.004-04:00

I caught this article over at Joystiq where EA management has reported that earnings are somewhat depressed due to development costs of SW:TOR. But they are hopeful to recover expenses when the title brings in over two million subscribers and will need at least one million to break even.

While it's not as lofty as the three million that Warhammer was expecting, that seems to be an awfully high expectation. But then again maybe they are just referring to the initial box sales rather than continued subscribers. There is a high interest and a lot of sci fi mmo refugees looking for a new home. And it's made by BioWare, which is enough reason for many. It looks great from what I've seen, but so great that it probably won't run well on my system, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Still no word on the official pricing model aside from the statement that the plan will "be more of the traditional business model with maybe some twists as well."

Alganon Didn't Fail Because It's A WoW Clone

2010-03-17T15:26:00.004-04:00

There's a bit of bantering going on over at Gamusutra between Derek Smart and one of the recently departed QOL team members (**edit-more than one now**), who stated "I'm very sorry if this next comment makes things rough on Alganon's players. They are the one's we built the game for, so I've avoided statements like this is the past, but: Yes. The game Alganon failed. It failed because despite being fun and all original work, it appeared and played too similar to World of Warcraft. I failed because I did not realize that was a "deal breaker" for so many people."

While I realize the similarity was constantly discussed, when you talked to people who played and left in frustration it had nothing to do with any similarities. The game at release was mostly unplayable. Constant disconnects and crashes, mobs warping, broken game mechanics, tons of bugged quests, and as low end as the graphics appear, it requires a pretty decent system to play well. And as the months progressed and much of the bugs were worked out, where many could remain logged in and start to enjoy the game, it became apparent there wasn't much content beyond 30 and lesser still after 40.

Then add to this mix the crafting. The interdependence wasn't much fun, and even less so with a dwindling population causing more frustration for players. So how do they address this? They added an interdependence requirement for the gathering skills as well which now required rare components from other crafters just to raise your gathering skill.

Seriously, I wondered if they played their own game. But I think Derek Smart gets it. He's stated the game failed because it wasn't finished and he intends to finish it. Yeah I know people don't like him and he's said some abrasive stuff in the past. But to be honest, after all these months of the community getting the runaround and given very vague answers on the forums, his directness is refreshing. He has ruffled a few feathers on the forums though. His prior games seem to be of the boys' club type and guys speak differently when women aren't present. Alganon has a large percentage of female players. Give him a few months with us and maybe you'll have a kinder, gentler Derek Smart.

I've also noticed a different posting style from the other devs. There almost seems to be this tension lifted and there are more lighthearted responses in their posts. So whatever has been happening behind the scenes, it seems to be positive.

If you read the entire Gamusutra comments, it reveals a heck of a lot. Too much to go into detail here. But I've come away from it with a little more understanding and hopefulness in Alganon's future.

DAOC - Into the Labyrinth

2010-03-15T17:43:00.006-04:00

In case anyone has ever wondered where Aspendawn originated (okay I know you don't care, but I'm telling you anyway), it was in DAOC. With so many alts, I was running out of name ideas. I had been using some form of Aspen in my last names for some time. I was creating an Avalonian Theurgist and wanted Aspen somewhere in the first name. Since Aspen was already taken as a first name, I turned to my baby name book that I use for mmorpg naming inspirations. When I saw Dawn in there, it just seemed appropriate for my fair-skinned, redhead and so Aspendawn was born. And being the gushing girly girl that I am, someone complimented me on my name and so it stuck.

DAOC's most recent expansion involves a dungeon called The Labyrinth. My other half's Friar had begun the new quest line involving the minotaurs' arrival which quickly turned into group quests. One of the nice things about group quests in DAOC is they often can be done with two or three. In order to complete the same quest, he needed an Albion partner, so Aspen came out to play.

The Labyrinth was huge and we got lost often. The first quest chain was the typical back and forth kill or click this type. But it did have a really neat finish when we realized we'd been duped and made a mad dash to the King's throne room in Camelot where a big battle ensued. That part was really a lot of fun. And the platinum earned wasn't too bad either.

On another note, for anyone returning to DAOC or thinking of trying, I've come across a blog, Back to the Dark Age. Going back through all the posts, it's been a great refresher course on how things work. They also have a great section entitled While you were Mezzed, where you can click on whatever class you left behind to see what changes have been made to them via patch notes.

And for nostalgia's sake, I'll leave you with this Mythic Memories video, where certain developers talk about their experiences in DAOC.

Alganon - The Plot Thickens

2010-03-11T17:17:00.003-05:00

Derek Smart posted to clarify some of the speculations going on. He was more forthcoming with behind the scenes goings on than I expected, but the games direction itself is still a bit uncertain.

It was made clear that HE had fired David Allen a few weeks ago for insubordination and acting against the interests of the company, and also fired one of his buddies. Mr. Smart was brought on board in December to help move the game along. But David wanted to continue doing his own thing and would not recognize Mr. Smart's authority even after he was promoted to president and David Allen was demoted. Yeah this whole insubordination and recognizing authority stuff does seem to confirm some of the bad rep.

But anyways, there were some positive things. All paid subscriptions will be refunded 100%. He also stated the December launch never should have happened and was a huge mistake, and that "this whole WoW look-alike rubbish is gone". He's asked the artists to throw it all out and come up with their own unique look for the game's ui.

One comment that was a bit confusing was that "EVERYTHING that was added to the game - when it should have been about fixing the game, tweaking it etc - has been disabled/removed on my orders." Honestly, don't know what that means.

There are many more changes coming, but he did not have time to go over them all at this time. He closed the post with a comment that Alganon would not be Quest Online's only game.

So there you go. The drama can't get much better than this.

Alganon - Uh Oh

2010-03-11T06:33:00.004-05:00

David Allen has left his second failed attempt (first being Horizons) at making an MMO, and now Alganon is in the hands of the notorious Derek Smart. I say notorious because Mr. Smart doesn't have the most stellar of reputations when it comes to interacting with the gaming community. Here's a quote from one particular interview, "Sometimes when I get online, and it's quiet, and I see something that attracts my attention, I'll post just to piss these guys off. That's why I do it. Because I'm in a good mood that day, I go in there and I start trouble."

There goes the neighborhood. Personality issues aside, he is held in high regard as an indie developer.(*edit - in certain circles)

The Alganon members didn't receive the courtesy of receiving this information on the official forums, but rather through massively.com. This should get interesting.

Establishing Roots in Midgard

2010-03-09T08:06:00.005-05:00

While initially I thought I'd be spending the weekend leveling my mauler in DAOC further, there were more pressing issues calling me...one of them being housing. Even though I'm not sure how long my stay will be, I just couldn't resist. I spent nearly two hours Saturday evening riding through Hibernia and Midgard housing zones looking for that perfect spot. It had to be waterfront and close to the market. Finally, I settled on a plot. There are four sizes of homes and the cost and maintenance of three of them were reduced drastically from last time I played. For new players, however, the costs are still high but definitely doable in a month or two of play time.

During my Saturday session of gaming, my partner in crime a couple feet away kept looking over to see what I was up to. Eventually, the nostalgia wore him down and he started the DAOC download. His tutorial perspective was different than mine though. Unfortunately, he has succumbed to the leash-led zombie masses and was heard grumbling "Why the $@*& can't they just show me where to go and why the $@*% is it so dark here?" I thought his stay was cut short as he logged out frustrated.

Meanwhile, I logged in all my old high level toons. Several of them had received respecs and I had no clue where their points were spent previously. And trying to find information on how to spec wasn't very successful. Unfortunately, Mythic never had any official DAOC forums for players to share information, and there are very few outside sources these days to find help for DAOC. One of my favorite classes back then was my valewalker and fortunately her spec hadn't been reset. So after about an hour of dragging skills to hotbars and hoping I was using the right ones, I took her out for a test drive.

I picked up one of the instanced mission quests, headed in, and kicked some serious butt. My other half returned and did the same with his friar, his prior favorite. So it looks like he'll be sticking around awhile as well as I now have a house neighbor.

Surprisingly, I've been seeing over a dozen members online in my old guild. One of them was a familiar face who coincidentally is just playing for the ten free days as well. And alliance chat has been busy with lots of activities scheduled, which is great to see.

Funny thing about nostalgia. When I returned to EQ1 I realized my memories were sweeter than reality and I just couldn't play it anymore. My return to DAOC is just as sweet as I remembered. It's such a great game with so much to do and definitely deserves more players than it has.

Return to Camelot

2010-03-06T08:43:00.007-05:00

Early this week I received in my mail box the most recent Warhammer update. I usually read the whole thing to see if there's anything that would interest me in coming back to play. At the bottom of the letter the topic turned to Dark Age of Camelot. Any returning players can play free for 10 days. Also, everyone gets the last two expansions for free now.

With my interest in STO already dwindling and the addition of a death penalty not helping that situation, I thought this might be as good a time as any to revisit DAOC. The most recent expansion included a minotaur race and mauler class, playable across all three realms. To get back in the swing of things, I thought it would be best to start from scratch and go through the tutorial.

I played on the Gaheris server, which is the only completely PvP-free server. Playing here here also allows you to have characters in all three realms--Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard, which also means access to three times as many quests as you can freely travel throughout the realms. Loading up my account, I had forgotten how many alts I had played here. You are given 10 character slots in each realm, and I had a whopping 27 alts, with 8 of them being max level. I have never had anything close to this number of alts in any mmo. There are about 45 different classes which is enormous. Some of them do have some similarities. For example, there are three different ranged classes from each realm--the scout, ranger, and hunter. But they each have completely different skills along with strengths and weaknesses. And then there are some classes that are completely unique to that realm with no similar counterpart.

I had one slot available in each realm and decided to go with my favorite, Midgard. I love the viking structures, the music, and the entire realm is a bit dark and brooding. You can almost feel the chill in the air and I have this temptation to curl up in my chair with a hot cup of coffee as I play. Although I'm usually not a fan of furries, I was going to try the minotaur. But there was no female option, just a big, brawny male. That only left the norsewoman for the mauler class, which was my typical racial choice for Midgard anyway.

So on to the tutorial. This was not a quick 15 minute affair. My weekday play time is limited, but I did play each night throughout the week and only just finished it up Friday evening. For those used to not reading quests and just wanting to follow the mini map to git er done, they may be disappointed. There is a very small map with red dots giving you a general idea of where to go which does help. But quest npc's are not highlighted once a quest is completed, so you do need to read up on who gets what.

Actions aren't always quick jobs some might be used to. You may need to click and type /use for some things. You may need to click on your icon in your quest journal, which then puts it in your inventory, which then must be clicked on again. This is an older game, so the functions are older style, but nothing that can't be picked up on fairly quickly.

In the tutorial there are three different towns or quest hubs. One of the quests takes you into Demon's Breach which is a dungeon accessible by the tutorial of all three realms. On a typical server, this would mean your first exposure to PvP. But here it just means a chance to come across other players and say hello. Loot drops are great here and it's worthwhile to stick around a bit.

You will finish up the quests at around level 11 where you'll receive a complete set of armor as well as a mount. Now if you weren't reading your quests in the first hub, you will be left wondering what you're supposed to do now that the quests are finished. But if you were paying attention, you'll know you need to head back to the first quest hub and speak to the channeler. Even though he's not highlighted, he will offer a quest and whisk you away to your first real town hub just outside Jordheim.

Once here, your quest options can be overwhelming. And considering your quest journal is very limited, you need to pick and choose which area to focus on for quests. You can stay in town and follow the town quest progression. You can head into the city and pick up your Epic quest line, which can be soloed for most levels. You can do the quest lines in the Undercity, located under Jordheim. This was always one of my favorite areas for questing. You can head to the Shrouded Isles for a change of scenery for questing. There are task dungeons which can be done over and over if you like the grind method of leveling. There are dungeons to be explored that are very much soloable if you don't have a group. Often the barkeeps in the towns will tell you where to go based on your level.

There is a new quest line in the city involving some dragonslayer. Since this was completely new to me, this was the area I decided to focus on. Now with a little more play time this weekend, we'll see where this leads me.

Dark Age of Camelot definitely isn't an mmo with linear progression. If you need to be told specifically where to go and what path to follow, you will be frustrated. But if you like the freedom to explore and have the world completely open to you, the PvE options here are just tremendous.

...to be continued...

VIE - Virtual Island of Entertainment

2010-03-03T13:34:00.003-05:00

Just earlier today I was blogging about the lack of social features in games correlating to fewer females playing, and I came across this:

"enVie Interactive™ announces the development of a new game that targets the most underserved market in the gaming community: women. This massively multiplayer online social game (MMOSG) caters to women looking for an engaging online game that speaks to them."

Speak to me! It goes on to say, "VIE is an online playground for adults that offers stunning graphics, unique customization and the ultimate entertainment experience to a market that has been virtually ignored by the gaming industry. VIE offers an ongoing series of episodic content, unique shopping experiences, high fashion, art design, and intimate encounters, all in a tropical island setting. It provides a mature audience the opportunity to escape and indulge in mysterious adventures at their leisure."

High fashion and intimate encounters? Bwow-chika-bwow-bwow

And it appears there could potentially be some real life benefits! "VIE supports the theory of Productive Play allowing gamers to explore and expand their creative and artistic sides as well as their social interaction in a virtual world. Reports show that people who engage in Productive Play are actually more productive in their real world lives."

Despite my silliness, let's just say my interest has been piqued and I did sign up for the beta.

Maybe it will actually speak to me.

The Loss of Community

2010-03-03T08:40:00.009-05:00

It's hard to find positive posts lately on the Star Trek Online forums. The amount of rants filling the pages is overwhelming. Most of the rants are directed at Cryptic and what they aren't doing right or aren't doing at all.

But I came across one post in particular where the poster had ended his subscription in large part due to the community. The zone chat is pretty horrific and has been one of the worst I've seen anywhere. For some reason I had envisioned Star Trek attracting more of role play community, or at least a more mature one. While that was part of the poster's issue, his main beef was lack of response from anyone when auto grouping. I had positive experiences in beta, but once the game went live, players just stopped talking when grouped. I've made a point to speak in every single auto team encounter, whether it's just "hello" or "thanks for the team." Pretty close to 100% of the time I get nothing back. It made me wonder where all the loud mouths from zone chat are. Do they only speak in community zones? Or maybe they just never leave the zone or team up.

There were several responses, however, indicating that many are in voice chat with their fleets or friends and pay absolutely no attention to the chat tab. And so their solution was to join a fleet. While I agree a guild/fleet can make all the difference in one's gaming experience, unfortunately many will never bother to pursue that route when their first impression is such a lack of community.

But I can't imagine every single person I teamed with who didn't speak was in voice chat. I'm sure some just want to get the quest done and not be bothered, while others may not even speak English since we're all on one server. But whatever the reasons, the silent treatment most are receiving combined with the obnoxious zone chat is very discouraging.

When I think of games that I consider to have great communities, I place LotRO at the top with EQ2 following behind. What those mmo's both have that's missing from most others is non-combat social activities. LotRO has a wonderful music system and I always stopped to enjoy any impromptu concerts. Often I'd strike up conversations with the band when they were done or with other listeners as we gave them a round of applause. Then there are those wonderful festivals and fairs, which both games offer, with EQ2 having a slight edge. Add to that the housing and guild halls, and there are just so many opportunities for socializing and meeting other players.

When you see these type of activities in an mmo, you also see more females. And when there are more females, the community is nicer. Yeah, yeah I know I'm stereotyping. I know there are some women out enjoying Darkfall ganking with the best of them. But in general, when I notice a higher female population, I notice a nicer community. And there is a distinct lack of females in STO. Our guild of 60+ in EQ2 has more women than men playing. In my fleet in STO, there were four of us out of 90 members.

The new crop of mmo's just completely overlook this aspect of gaming. I know budgets are tight these days when making games. But they're really missing an opportunity here. Without the foundation of a good community, they're just an empty shell of pew pew.

Alganon - The Big March 1 Patch

2010-03-01T19:13:00.003-05:00

Well the patch didn't come. This was to be the content patch that included new dungeons as a result of the Dawning event.

What did come, however, as the official announcement regarding their new subscription-free model. They are calling it subscription-free rather than free to play because there will still be a purchase price. Their hope is that this will minimize the troublemakers and help maintain some social maturity in game.

They are adding a Tribute Market System as their method of real money transactions. Those of us with prepaid subscriptions will have Tribute deposited into our accounts following the official relaunch in mid-April. Along with items typically seen in ftp such as mounts, pets, and equipment, they also will be selling study time. Currently, longer term subscribers would have had an advantage due to the study system. However, those with padded wallets will now be able to buy their studies rather than wait. Also, it appears items such as mounts will not just be purchased outright. You will need to continue to pay for them in the form of maintenance.

Also coming with the April relaunch will be a redesigned starter experience and new starter areas, along with a collection of dungeon instances.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of it yet. It's still over a month away, so I'll have to wait and see what sort of pricing structures they have. But I am disappointed the studies will now be tied to how much money you have rather than how long you've been playing. That was probably the biggest let down of the whole thing.

TERA - Open PvP or Not

2010-02-25T08:59:00.006-05:00

Back when I first heard about TERA a year ago, their comments on how PvP would be handled was really vague. Now that they've found a publisher to bring this Korean product to the West, and seeing that it will actually be a subscription-based model, I took a look over at the site to see if there was further detail.

But looks like that aspect is still undecided. They have a poll in their forums asking players if they would still play TERA if PvP was highly limited. Based on the current poll numbers, about 50% would not play without open PvP and the other 50% either don't want PvP at all or prefer PvP in a battleground/arena environment. But if you read the posts that follow it, you would think 90% of the posters prefer open PvP. PvE types tend not to post as we don't want to be ganked in the forums any more than in our MMO's.

My guess is they will go with some form of forced PvP. It may not come till later levels, it may be through content restrictions, or through some other mechanisms. And that would be a shame, as the majority of the Western audience won't play it. They may try it. They may enjoy a few levels of it. And then they move on.

The world graphics are pretty from what I've seen, and the character models are pretty spiffy too, including the obligatory cute player critter. It's still a year away from release, so maybe there's still hope yet for me.

Comings and Goings

2010-02-22T17:35:00.004-05:00

Over a year ago I posted about an upcoming steampunk mmo called Gatheryn. They went into open beta the end of last summer but I doubt few really noticed. It was a huge disappointment and the few times I logged in, it was rare to see another player. The last official posting came last October and the game suddenly went offline with no further posts as to why or the status. So I guess this one is done. It was to be the first released mmo using the new HeroEngine, but I guess that honor will now go to SW:TOR.

I'm not losing hope yet for a steampunk mmo. Though still in very early, rough stages, I continue to follow AIR and also found out about Clockwork Symphony. At least there's still official activity there anyway.

Also way back when, I was in the Gods and Heroes beta--another one which went kablooie. Looks like it may see the light of day yet. Heatwave Interactive has obtained the rights and launched a new website. No information yet, but my beta experiences were pleasant enough that I will watch the progress of this one.

I also recently gave City of Eternals a try. If you have a Facebook account, you can just log right in. It's a vampire-themed game and nothing particularly fancy, but hey it's free.

Alganon Going Free to Play?

2010-02-15T14:38:00.002-05:00

Even though I am mostly playing STO, I still log into Alganon to keep my studies updated and just generally tinker around a bit. Yesterday I noticed a new icon on my screen placed next to my total money display. A few discussed it in general chat coming up with some theories and a GM responded we will found out quite soon.

Today a dev posted to explain this was part of a new Tribute system as part of "the new subscription-free pricing model that Alganon is adopting, as seen elsewhere on the site." Unfortunately, there is no mention of free to play elsewhere on the site at this point, but I guess it's coming.

I was one of those ~~idiots~~ supportive people who purchased a one-year subscription in hopes of bigger things coming. I have yet to enjoy any free to play model I've tried to date, particularly the communities it attracts. But I'll have to wait and see how it actually evolves.

Blowing Stuff Up and Putting Out Fires

2010-02-02T07:12:00.007-05:00

Having spent much of the last ten MMO years stabbing bugs and woodland creatures for various farmers and citizens, there's been a lot of satisfaction in blowing up ships and vaporizing Klingons. One quest has you removing a fire extinguisher from the wall and putting out the fires in your way. Oddly, even spraying that extinguisher is heck of a lot of fun and I wished I could keep it once the quest was over.

I haven't been focused on leveling at all and am just enjoying the quests and story line. But by the end of the head start weekend, I did receive my first promotion which granted me my new ship. I went with a science vessel and first order of business was to customize my vessel, including my bridge.

Along with a ship upgrade, I gained an additional officer. I did have concerns about being overwhelmed managing so many officers or "pets", but even this aspect of the game has been fun. You can name them and play dress up, but I opted for a matched team in Next Generation garb.

The weekend wasn't without a few glitches. The server came down a few times both Friday and Saturday for emergency maintenance. But by Sunday it seemed they worked out some kinks and things ran fairly smoothly. Today is the official launch date. We'll likely be seeing even more subscribers come in to strain the server further, so we'll see how it goes.

Farewell Celebration on Risa

2010-01-27T07:26:00.004-05:00

I had the good fortune of hooking up with a great fleet recently. Their roots are in SWG, where they still maintain a presence. The members are mature and I appreciated their laid back application process. The process of most fleets I looked into felt too much like a job application. So it's been a good fit so far.

As the final hour of open beta began to count down, the vacation planet Risa seemed to be the place to be. So popular, in fact, that several versions of Risa were generated. We hooked up in Risa #5 and made our way to a secluded end of the beach for some photo opportunities followed by dancing with the natives.

Head start begins this Friday. Can't wait!

Getting Quieter Around Here

2010-01-22T07:43:00.004-05:00

While Alganon has always had a small player base, I logged in last night and there were 13 players on my faction's side. Considering even fewer people play the ugly faction, I'd be surprised if there were more than 20 people on.

With Star Trek Online being much more fun, I've been logging in less and less. I ran out of quests in Alganon at around level 44 so have been grinding the last five levels. I don't object to some grinding if only I had more places to go and see. I've been killing the same mobs in the same zone for all these levels. There is one other zone I suppose I could alternate the grind. But for some reason, whether by design or an oversight, chests don't drop at all there. So if I'm going to grind, I at least want to make a little money while doing it.

I've been sitting at 49 for awhile now, logging in now and then to kill more of the same mobs. There's really no reason to hit 50 any time soon. I've tried some alts, but with only four classes total, the other three classes just haven't been much fun. Dungeons are supposedly coming. They've released some screenshots of them this week. But considering no mobs were visible in any of the screenshots, I'm guessing this is still a long while off yet.

So I'm logging in mostly for the wonderful people in guild and the community in general. A very poor reason to stick around I know. But I keep hoping more and better stuff is on the way.

Lag-Free in STO

2010-01-15T15:20:00.003-05:00

I'm coming across so many posts and blogs regarding lag and stuttering in STO and I have to wonder why I'm not experiencing this. With my very mediocre system, I can't play Vanguard, AoC, or even LotRO without lag issues, but have had absolutely none in STO.

Missions have been a lot of fun and with open beta being much more populated than closed, there's pretty much always someone auto grouped with me when I enter an instance. I've met and spoken with more players in a few days here than I have in six months in most other MMO's.

STO is not without issues though. The first couple nights, the server was so overwhelmed that I was experiencing too many disconnects to bother. And there was one instance I've come across so far that wasn't functioning. The last couple days the server definitely seems to be behaving better and I've had no disconnects.

Similar to LotRO, they are offering a lifetime subscription deal. A bit too steep for me at this point and still not sure if it will be as fun six months from now. But for now, I'm having a blast.

Unplanned Detour Into Space

2010-01-13T06:19:00.002-05:00

I wasn't planning on playing Star Trek Online. While I've been a Star Trek fan since the original series, I've read all the previews over the past months and knew this wouldn't be the kind of Star Trek I had in mind. Plus, I hate to fly. Or at least I did in every attempt I've made in other games including SWG.

It was out of sheer boredom that I accepted a closed beta invite and began the long download. My husband even remarked, "Why are you bothering with that? You know you're not going to like it." I just shrugged. Maybe at least the ground missions might be somewhat fun.

I've gotten so spoiled with quest markers in more recent games, that sometimes I wasn't sure where to go in the tutorial. But nothing that a bit of exploration couldn't resolve. Once out of the tutorial and onto the space station, it astounded me the number of players asking where to find certain npc's on the station. The station is not that big and is easy to navigate. Yeah, we've gotten spoiled with quest markers and have become lazy.

I picked up some missions here and out into space I went. And I had no idea what I was doing. And I blew up. A lot. I logged off frustrated as I expected but was determined to give it my best shot for the duration of closed beta. Taking a better look at all my ship options, it really wasn't all that confusing relative to other games and after a few changes to how I was handling fights, I was the victor more often than the victim. I was flying and actually having a bit of fun.

One of the aspects to the missions I enjoyed was auto grouping. If someone else just zoned into the same mission, you'd be automatically grouped with them (however, you can change this in options). Usually, there would be three or four of us and it made the missions more quick and efficient. On easy missions, generally nothing would be said. We'd go in, get the job done, zone out and disband. On some of the more challenging missions, we'd talk about trying things differently and have a good laugh when we'd get blown up. Fortunately, at this point there was no death penalty and you could just fly right back in to join the fight.

Then I came across the larger scale missions. These reminded me of the public quests in Warhammer. There generally would be 15-20 players with a mission to kill several groups of enemies. After completion, the zone resets in 5 minutes so you can do them over and over. One of the final patches before open beta resulted in an increase in the difficulty of the smaller missions. They became almost impossible to complete solo and eventually everyone just seemed to stick with the large scale battles, as it was more efficient to level this way.

Ground missions weren't particularly exciting, but I hadn't been able to experience many of them since I just was not receiving many of them as quests. But oddly I was having enough fun in space that I wasn't missing it.

There's a lot of zoning. Everything is instanced. But the upside to this is that there is only one server and I like that. And as I said previously, you do need to do a bit of digging sometimes to find your way around. Sometimes a mission may take you to a certain cluster that's in a different system. You'll need to check the star chart to find the cluster, see what system it's in and determine what direction it is relative to your current point. It's nothing difficult, but just takes more time than what some players might be used to.

Unexpectedly, I did find myself having enough fun that I preordered. I know some players feel the missions are too repetitive and maybe my enjoyment will be short-lived. So we'll just have to see how long the fun lasts.

EQ2 Sentinel's Fate: The Return of Odus...err Otis?

2009-11-23T19:06:00.006-05:00

Snatched from the EQ2 Forums, I thought this was cute and had to share:

EverQuest®II Sentinel's Fate(tm) - His origins revealed.. His destiny fulfilled. At last we discover the truth!

The sixth expansion of the groundbreaking franchise, EverQuest II Sentinel's Fate is an all-in-one compilation pack which transports players into the universe of Mayberry, with the iconic legends of long past. The fabled home of Otis, filled with epic adventures, magnificient jail cells and limitless content provide the ultimate MMO experience for new players and seasonsed veterans alike. Sentinel's Fate presents the next chapter of the EverQuest II legacy which will allow players to find out the mysterious origins of Otis and uncover his ultimate destiny and how they tie in with it.

* Achieve your greatest potential with a level cap increase to 90
* Discover two expansive new overland zones, the Town Center and the Fishing Hole
* Battle through 12 epic dungeon additions including the town Jail, Floyd's Barber Shop and more
* Experience the origins and fate of Otis through 400 new quests
* Conquer five new Heritage quests with valuable new loot such as the Sheriffs Badge and the Deputys One Shot Crossbow
* Equip over 2,000 new weapons and pieces of armor and special items such as Floyd's Razor, Goobers Wrench and much more.
* Add all new alternate advancement abilities to your arsenal of powers
* Defeat hundreds of new dangerous and cunning creatures
* Includes Legends of Norrath(tm) strategic online trading card game and the Drunkards Walk scenario

Open Beta and "The Big Patch"

2009-11-17T09:03:00.003-05:00

Last week Alganon went into open beta and released a large patch a few hours prior. I was hoping this might be "the" patch that would really polish some things up. But unfortunately most of the patch consisted fluff additions such as emotes and mail icons. Any actual fixes really wouldn't be evident to anyone just starting the beta.

What many perceived as a nerf to the healer class, was supposedly a fix. The fix was to add pushback so spells would be interrupted when you are hit. So instead of nuking, I am having to rely on my wand and hit them to death. It's not an impossible feat unless there are multiple mobs, but it certainly isn't very fun. The magus class was difficult to play already since all their abilities are not yet functional. Now they are fairly impossible to play.

So I shelved my healer for a bit and decided to try a class unaffected by pushback -- the soldier. And I got to view things from the perspective of those just entering beta. Back when I started, two out of the first ten quests I received weren't functional. And I learned they still aren't functional. There's an issue with any quest that involves harvesting or picking up a specific item. The item never respawns if someone else has done the quest. And you have to wait for a server reset for it to spawn again and hope someone else hasn't picked it up.

As a healer, I was pulling with nukes and never really had much difficulty engaging mobs. As a soldier, I didn't have a ranged item yet, so was having to run up and hit the mob. And the mobs were ignoring me and walking away. I'd chase and hit an attack. Nothing. It was taking me several attempts to actually engage the mob. So for those just coming into beta, their frustration is really understandable. This kind of stuff should have been more a priority than adding emotes. I hate to be gloomy about a game I actually do like in many ways, but based on open beta numbers, I'm not sure they'll have enough subscribers to function.

In other news, Turbine has tempted me once again with their continual emails. They offered a deal where if I subscribed for three months at the $9/month rate, they'd give me the next expansion free. So both of us loaded LotRO up once again. And much like Keen, I'm a bit at a loss on how to play. For some reason I always have trouble relearning my class when I come back to LotRO. I've got hotbars full of so many darn abilities. It really takes me a long time to get back in the swing of things. And unfortunately, the game still doesn't like the SB X-Fi soundcard. Both hubby and I are still getting the blue screens of death we had previously and have to play with sounds completely off. We're not playing often but we'll see how long we last this go around.

Alganon - Digging Deeper

2009-11-08T17:27:00.003-05:00

With the launch delayed for a month, I thought I'd take some time to do a bit more crafting and exploring.

Unfortunately, the more I got into crafting, the less I liked it and decided I'll be strictly gathering on release. For anyone that played EQ2 on launch, remember that crafting interdependency they initially had? You know...the one where you needed products from other crafters to make items? It caused much frustration for many crafters and high prices for adventurers, and eventually was done away with. Well it's seeing the light of day again in Alganon. While on paper it may seem like a neat idea to form a lovely crafting community where we all work together, most hardcore crafters just end up creating alts to get the job done more efficiently, cheaply, and quickly. The casual crafters give up in frustration.

But the crafting frustration doesn't end there. Using EQ2 again as a reference point, now imagine that in order to make mastercrafted items, you will need transmuted components. So you will either have to take up transmuting as well, or buy those transmuted items from the broker. Only instead of transmuting, they call it salvaging here. And it's nearly every bit as painful and expensive to level as EQ2's transmuting. Fortunately though, the quest rewards and dropped armor I've received so far seem to get the job done well enough, that I won't be too concerned with not having crafting in my future.

So on to adventuring. I decided to backtrack through some lower level zones to completely open up my maps and see if I might have missed some things. I love finding those off the beaten track places and there were many. There were many places that quests just never lead me to, but that had perhaps some special item to click on. For example I found an altar-type structure hidden in the side of a hill. On the altar was a book, and I was to share my findings with a certain npc. I love large, open worlds like this, just waiting to be explored. In this regard, it reminds me more of Vanguard and LotRO. And it's this sort of exploration that is lacking in more recent games.

Rather than starting at the bottom of some map and quests taking you northward up the same road from quest hub to quest hub, quest hubs are more randomly placed and you're not always lead directly there. Some places I only learned about from city npc's while I was visiting to do some banking. And it pays to revisit the towns you've moved on from on occasion, as I've been given higher level quests from there sometimes as well. And with the study system, I've had even more quests open up to me.

The game keeps growing on me as I continue to level, but unfortunately, there are still bugs. On November 11, they are going into completely open beta. That's just a couple days away and although it's come a long way, there's still work to be done. So for anyone that wants to give it a try then, I'd suggest giving it more than a couple days try. And do expect there to be some bugs and crashes.

Upgraded Engine for DAOC!

2009-10-28T13:02:00.002-04:00

Ok not really.

But Silakka has been working on their own personal project upgrading DAOC to to the Crysis engine. Check out their site for screenshots and more videos.

OLD THIDRANKI

Alganon Launch Delayed

2009-10-27T13:59:00.003-04:00

Looks like they decided to try to polish a few more things up. Launch is now scheduled for December 1.

Slightly disappointed that I can't get started next week but probably a good decision in the long run to get more kinks worked out.

Alganon Beta Review

2009-10-27T07:38:00.004-04:00

With the NDA lifted, I thought I'd share my thoughts on my experiences in Alganon. I'm referring to this as a beta review, however, since the game hasn't officially launched and updates are still in the works. Since I will be subscribing, I will do another review a couple months in.

Even though I'd been in beta for awhile, I've only really been able to fully test this past month. The reason? My graphics card. I had an 256MB ATI Radeon X1300PRO, which just wasn't cutting it here. The lag made it difficult to get much done; and it was a chore to play and test. However, as luck would have it, hubby's card went out. While he was out getting a new one, he picked up one for me. Nothing high end and it was fairly cheap. But I upgraded to a 1 GB ATI Radeon HD4650.

What a difference that made. My fps went from 15-20 to 50-70. My performance issues were very minimal and I found myself having fun. Ok now on to specifics:

Character Creation

There are two factions, the Asharr and Kujix. Unfortunately, there are only two races at this point -- human and Talrok. There are four classes -- soldier, ranger, healer, and magus. Each class can specialize using ability points. A ranger, for example, can be a decent healer if they spend their points in that line; and a magus can actually tank if specialized that way.

Once you have your race and class chosen, there is also a family to chose. The families have specific names but they are oriented around being either an achiever, competitor, explorer, crafter, or socializer. It's really just a way to hook you up with some other players with similar interests from the start and you'll have your own private chat channel.

General Game Play

Depending on your race, there are two different starting areas. The Asharr area is green, lush, and heavily forested. I did the majority of my testing here as a healer. The Kujix area is very yellow and sandy and did remind me a bit of WoW's horde starting area. My fps was much higher here, presumably because of the minimal landscape. And I heard some folks have less performance issues here in general.

Combat was fairly standard with no down time. And that was a big factor in my enjoyment. I absolutely hate having to stand around waiting to regenerate, or spend my limited newbie money on concoctions filling my small bags and having to stop, sit and drink. To me it's just tedium and darn annoying.

There are portals that you need to first open up with a quest. Each hub has a portal, as well as the main city. There are mounts; however, they were too expensive for me to try out. From what I saw the Asharr can ride a mule, while the Kujix get a boar.

Quests objectives are marked on the map making it relatively easy to get things done. Having trouble with a quest or seeking other game-related information? They have a built-in library system where players can submit information they've discovered. It's a bit like an in-game wiki, but you don't need to minimize your screen to search outside the game. I found it to be very handy. I was dabbling in crafting and needed an item dropped by mobs. I searched the item name and it told me all mobs that dropped it, along with level range.

Also, there is a studies system where you can advance certain skills even when offline. You pick what you want to start studying and you can queue up other skills as well so the studying continues overnight.

Crafting

In beta we could pick up an unlimited number of crafts. However, it is my understanding you will be limited to two on release. Just by looking at the craft names you might assume that tailoring is for the magus/healer, leatherworking for rangers, and blacksmithing for soldiers. But this is not necessarily so. Each of these three crafts makes armor for all professions. But the stats will be different. So before you choose a craft, you may want to investigate which of the three is more appropriate for your play style. There is also an alchemy profession, as well as harvest-type abilities where the nodes show up on your mini map.

Graphics

Graphics are more along the lines of WoW and Runes of Magic, rather than say EQ2 or LotRO. Character models are ok. I could create a fairly attractive human female with long hair; however, the Kujix females were a bit ugly. Although my Kujix ranger did have a pretty cute tushie. But considering the low-end graphics, the required system specs are fairly high. So even though you may be able to play WoW, that may not be the case here. The required specs are 2gb ram, 4gb hard drive. So that right there will unfortunately exclude many players in a Vanguard sort of way.

Sound

I've always been a fan of good game music. I don't put music cd's in while I play; I'd rather hear the game environment. And the music here doesn't disappoint. In some places the music is quite beautiful and I keep my music volume turned up.

But other sounds I found to be annoying. The skill-up sounds can be loud. And the combat sounds of my healer starts to get to me after awhile. I tried turning combat volume down but it hasn't made a difference, so I just had to grit my teeth and get used to it. My ranger on the other hand just made pleasant plunking sounds, so I might rethink my class choice on release.

Community

I've been a registered member of the Alganon community since 2006. As a game goes through various development stages, usually the community changes as well. But I have to say, except for the week that the Fileplanet floodgates were opened, the community for the most part has remained stellar. Yes, there are the occasional fanbois who chide anyone who even mentions any sort of WoW comparison or just makes any sort of complaint about the game in general. But for the most part everyone gets along and is welcoming and understanding to newcomers.

One evening in game chat, folks were discussing their ages. Surprisingly, a good portion of those online at that moment were 40+. Or maybe not surprisingly. It may be that us older gamers have enough on our real life plate that we're just wanting to relax and have fun. Bugs aside (and I'll get into that later), Alganon is probably one of the most stress-free games I've played. Maybe too easy and simplistic for some gamers, but at this point in my life, it suits me.

"Niche Game"

I hear this term all the time when describing Alganon and some wonder what the heck is so niche about it?

As I've already stated, it's stress-free game play and much easier than WoW at low levels. It's probably more akin to the EQ2 or LotRO early levels as far as managing mobs and no down time. Every class can solo and you don't need a perfect group composition to manage tougher mobs.

The community is small, older, and close-knit. There's some seriously nice people here and many are here because it's smaller.

The team is hands-on. I never beta'd a game before where developers were visible in game and asked how things were going in the game chat channel. Some that were having issues subscribing got personal phone calls at home. And I like the idea of hired staff to role-play with the community.

It's currently a PvE focus. Most of what's come out the past couple years have been PvP. PvP will be added at some point, but for now it's one of the few PvE-only options.

Some say there's nothing new here. They've copied the studies system from Eve and the abilities from WoW. But I don't like those games, so why can't I have those ideas in a game I actually enjoy?

The Bugs

As much as I'm enjoying my time here and intend to stay on, there's no denying there are some bugs. I've heard some say they haven't had any; and I've heard many with bugs I have never experienced at all. Here are just some things I personally encountered.

Log-in/Character Creation - When I first try to log in, I'm stuck at the image that says "loading". I have to ctrl-alt-del out and my second attempt always gets me in. No idea what is causing this. I've just gotten used to having to log in twice. While I had no issues creating my healer, when I created my ranger the screen froze at "sending request to server". Again had to c-a-l out, but when I went back in my ranger had indeed been created.

Novice Crafting - There's a craft called "novice crafting". I've never been able to make anything in this particular craft. The creation slider advances across but it doesn't actually make anything or use up components. And once I use novice crafting, it bugs out my other crafts which can only be resolved by logging out. To be honest, I don't really know what the point of novice crafting is. It seems to overlap with some of the other tradeskills.

Lock-ups - They don't happen often, but in combat occasionally everything freezes and I need to log out and back to correct. Fortunately, it seems my character leaves immediately as I've never logged in to find myself dead.

Slow Rendering - I don't often hear of others with this issue, but while mobs appear instantly, objects can take a long while to show up for me. I'll be running through what appears to be an open field and find myself stuck inside a tree that wasn't there a second ago. When I first come to a town, it's just full of npc's in an open field. Sometimes it can take a couple minutes for all the buildings to form. And it seems like I have to walk to a certain trigger point to get them to spawn.

Server Crashes - It was happening about once every few hours in beta.

UI Size - Not everyone has this problem but I've been unable to resize my resolution. I select the resolution, hit accept, but nothing changes and it resets to default.

Those are pretty much the major bugs I've experienced. I've heard some having issues with mobs warping or attacking from distance, but I haven't had that happen. Fights have gone smoothly for me.

The Future

Despite the bugs, the game has come along tremendously from when I first started beta. The team is extremely polite, helpful, and responsive. I like these guys. But let's be frank here. If Blizzard or SOE released this game like this right now, would I play? No. So yes, the team is partly influencing my decision to play.

I like the ease of game play and I like the classes. I know PvP will be introduced at some point. Maybe then my class will be nerfed and I won't have fun anymore. Maybe they'll make things harder because people complain and I won't have fun anymore. But here and now, I'm having a good time, so I will subscribe.

At some point they will be adding deities that will be played by in-house staff hired specifically to role-play with the community. Supposedly, they will be leading us into massive battles against the other faction. I want to be here to see that.

On October 31, they will have an event called "The Dawning". These events will unlock new instances we haven't seen in beta. And we'll be able to purchase special items and armor only during this event. I sure hope more than copper drops during the event so I can afford these items!

This pretty much sums up my experiences to date. There are a lot that had negative experiences and this game definitely isn't for them. But hopefully, some might understand why some of us are enjoying ourselves here. And I truly do look forward to seeing how the game develops in the future.

Still Here!

2009-10-26T13:42:00.003-04:00

For anyone wondering, I am still among the living. Real life has had me a bit preoccupied. As some of you might know, I have a non-verbal son with autism. That's been a challenge in itself but now he's going through puberty and doing "boy things" in public. Doc says this is actually normal thoughts for even typical teenage boys. So parents of teenage girls, hide them until they are 18.

And then there's been the potty training. At 15, he's in diapers. I finally found a school willing to work with me on this so we're trying to undo 15 years of a habit. It won't happen in a day, a week, or even a month, but I'm seeing progress. His school day is very short so this stuff has been taking up most of my day. And when the evening comes and I have a couple hours free time, blogging just hasn't been a desired activity, particularly with other things going on in the household such as layoffs, blah blah. But now he's doing great in so many ways that I have more bits of free time and my brain can actually focus on other things.

So for anyone still here after that boring real life spiel, now on to gaming stuff. I've still been in EQ2 during this time. Our guild reached max level and we upgraded our hall to the big castle in the sea. Was a lot of fun decorating while still trying to keep performance manageable for everyone, so anyone with an EQ2 account please stop in to visit anytime! And some exciting news. If any of you have the current edition of Beckett Massive Online Gamer, our guild is featured on the last page. Yay for Ancient Disorder! The guild is doing well. We had the typical summer slump where a lot of us have more fun enjoying the outdoors than our computer chairs. But now that the weather has turned cooler, old members and a few new ones have been making their way back to EQ2.

Turbine keeps tempting me with mail messages to reactivate my LotRO account. If I reactivate, I can do so at the founders $9.99/month rate, plus get the next expansion completely free. I'm sure I'll end up leaving again at some point but something about this game tends to have me wanting to try yet again.

And then there's Alganon. Despite some of the negative publicity generating in certain forums, I have preordered and intend to play. I'll be playing on the Asharr side if anyone else is interested. Once the NDA is lifted, I'll share a bit more information, as well as my adventures in game once it goes live.

I'm debating on jumping over to Wordpress. I had issues with the site a long while back but testing things out there to see if it's worthwhile to move.

Ok that's enough updating for now!

New Flagship MMO for SOE

2009-03-06T08:19:00.003-05:00

SOE recently advertised they are seeking a Lead Game Designer for what they are referring to as a New Flagship Project. Their use of the term "flagship" has me curious what they might possibly have planned. I would consider their current flagship to be Everquest, versions 1 and 2. John Smedley did mention in a previous interview ... "when we say "the EverQuest franchise," we'll be visiting that world again, and we're definitely in development on some things."

So if it is another version of the world of Norrath, how would they do this differently? They will want it to be more profitable than the other two, so most definitely not as hardcore as EQ1. And I would also think it would be less graphic intensive than EQ2 to cover a wider audience. And based on SOE's current trends, it might not be a subscription model.

If not Everquest, then what else would they have up their sleeves to warrant being referred to as flagship? The other themes they have in the works are action spy, comic book hero , and DisneyWorld. Might they do something fresh and new or use a pre-existing ip? Fresh and new is always a risk. With all the current and upcoming offerings, it really will need to offer something unique. But pre-existing ip's sometimes put limitations on where the game can go due to lore or franchise restrictions. Inquiring minds want to know!

"And they call it a mine. A mine!"

2009-03-01T13:02:00.004-05:00

While we were braving blizzards in Forochel, the dwarves had been setting up bases inside Moria and making it a bit more hospitable. So with legendary weapons in hand, we decided it was time.

While we've spent several play sessions in Moria already, we've only seen a very small fraction of the place. My feelings are a bit mixed at this point. Visually, it's an impressive place to see. And aggressive mob placement is reasonable so that you're not constantly having to fight just to take a few steps. But getting around has been a challenge. There are steps and ramps in all directions. While you might see your quest objective in the distance, good luck figuring out how to get there. We've wasted quite a bit of time just running in circles and not getting anywhere.

One quest hub in particular, which contains the npc's needed for upgrading legendary weapons, has been a hot bed of player activity. The zone in general is pretty crowded with players, some not always on their best behavior. And it's a bit laggy. But overall, it's been a neat experience and definitely something different than anything I've ever seen before. I think if we can get a better handle on the zone layout, we won't be quite so frustrated.

In other news, I finally maxed my Rivendell faction. This is the only faction I've bothered with since I was able to gain faction by turning in scholar-created items. I wanted Rivendell faction purely for cosmetic reasons. I was able to purchase an elven dress, along with a couple statues to place outside my home and a map table for the inside. Yes, I like my fluff.

Continent of the Ninth

2009-02-22T21:04:00.005-05:00

Although not really news for some, I only just recently heard about Continent of the Ninth. Again, this is another site written entirely in Korean so I've only been able to gather bits of information from other sources.

Word is that it will have some similarities to Guild Wars, in that you can enter instances solo or with a group. Monsters supposedly are smarter than in typical MMO's. They adapt to your actions and if you perform actions that create noise, such as jumping into an area, they can hear you and will attack. There are 20-30 minute dungeon runs that can be set by difficulty. Also, most are speculating that system requirements will be high.

Here are a couple screenshots and a video. The combat in the video might seem a bit over the top but they make taking out groups of mobs at a time sure look like fun:

Tera, The Exiled Realm of Arborea

2009-02-21T11:14:00.008-05:00

I came across a couple Korean MMO's in the works. While I typically am not a fan of MMO's produced in this region of the world because of PvP and item shops, I heard these referred to as PvE-oriented games, so thought I'd at least take a look.

I'll discuss the other later, but the first is Tera. It looks stunning, particularly the city shots. I understand it will be pay to play, there will be no targeting of mobs, and the world is seamless with no zoning. This is being developed by Bluehole Studio, founded by former NCsoft employees. There will be six races and eight classes. It will be marketed globally, not just in Korea.

Per MMORiot, "PvE and PvP are two patterns included in the whole battle system. However, these aren't implemented as a separate system. Gamers can see that this is a system working as one. For example, in Warhammer Online, PvE and PvP have different levels. This makes sense conceptually, but from a gamer's point of view it does not work very well. This game will try to make a seamless difference between these systems to make the game more enjoyable." I'm not really sure what that means, so whether it will in fact be open PvP I have yet to determine.

I'll be keeping my eye on this one. Here's a couple screenshots as well as a video:

MyAlganon Beta Launches Today

2009-02-16T14:06:00.003-05:00

MyAlganon Beta went live today. For anyone that might be interested in participating in open beta, registered members of MyAlganon will receive priority access. Closed beta is scheduled to begin in March (*crosses fingers*), while open beta is tentatively scheduled for May/June.

Some more specifics on the game, as well as recent screenshots, can be found in today's interview at RPG Vault. Some highlights from the interview:

- "We are working to create a stronger community base - more solid than our predecessors' - by giving people a centralized place enabling members to interact with each other, even outside the game (e.g. MyAlganon). We also want players to be able to actively contribute to the exploration of the world by allowing them to scry things like creatures, items and places within a grand library that serves as an information repository. Why ask them to go to an outside source to get information on an item or creature? We will provide it in-game, and recognize those who participate in gathering it."

- "We've developed the Alganon Study System that will reward players not just for playing, but for subscribing, giving them the ability to grow their characters in the "background" even while they are not in the game. This will let them "compete" with power users by actively managing their subscription studies; a year down the line, even if they didn't put in eight hours a day, they will have studies that no one could have achieved without the same year of diligence. Additionally, we improved interaction with the world and other players via the creation of the Family and Domain Objective / Deities / Crusades systems."

- "We are the only home-grown privately financed MMOG company that I know of in the US that has built the client, server, tools and core technology from scratch. We didn't sub-license anything. We spent the years necessary to build the "right" foundation for a true MMOG, and that choice was one of the best we could have made."

- "We're in a great position right now. Being privately financed, we aren't under the gun of a VC or publisher. This allows us to design the game we set out to create, and gives us flexibility in our release schedule and in choosing a distribution partner. 2009 is going to be a very exciting year!"

This was just a small portion of the interview. Please check out RPG Vault for the complete interview. Also, there is some new gameplay footage that you can view when you go to the MyAlganon signup page.

EQ2 TSO - Mission Complete

2009-02-15T13:41:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago I realized I had accomplished everything I set out to do with The Shadow Odyssey expansion. Just two months after the expansion's release, there was no reason for me to return to these zones. In contrast, I still visit zones from RoK, the previous expansion. It might just be for harvesting or working on writs for the guild. But I am still getting good use out of Kunark zones.

The Moors of Ykesha was the overland zone and the first part of the expansion we tackled. We finished the quests here after two weeks. There is really no reason to harvest or complete writs here. The zone is just too tightly packed with mobs and this can be done much more conveniently in Kunark.

Next we moved on to the mission dungeons to outfit ourselves in shard armor. Some were kind of neat the first time; others were frustrating. But after we got the routine down and figured them out, it was a repetitive chore. After two months, I had acquired all the pieces I wanted that were upgrades.

In between the missions, I also worked on the new crafting missions. I acquired all the crafting and harvesting gear I wanted. So there is no reason for me to continue working on the missions. Besides which, I honestly can't tell any difference in my skills with the gear equipped.

For me, this has been the shortest lasting expansion EQ2 has ever released. I'm sure many would disagree and are continuing to enjoy the dungeons. But I guess it all boils down to play style. For how I play, it felt more like a couple mini adventure packs, rather than an expansion.

They do have a free Lavastorm revamp coming up in which they are adding some level 80 solo and raid content, as well as a new crafting zone. So even though the expansion doesn't have anything left to offer us, looks like new content is still on the way for this year. And I'm still hopeful about this year's expansion!

Moria Preparations

2009-02-12T07:24:00.003-05:00

At the suggestion of Yeebo, we headed over to the Moria entrance earlier than we originally planned. And what sound advice that was. I hadn't really understood this whole legendary item thing and all that was involved. I also hadn't realized the prerequisites that were involved before gaining entry to Moria. I had wrongly assumed that since I purchased the expansion, I could just waltz in. But that's not the case.

I am not usually a fan of access quests. I was glad when EQ2 removed them as I just won't do them. So when I saw that I had to complete a series of epic quests just to gain access to Moria, I thought I might not see the place after all. But it turned out the whole series was soloable and enjoyable even. At level 48 though, I might have had some difficulty with certain parts. But as a duo, we had no problems.

The dwarves are intending to retake Moria and you are asked to assist them in clearing the rubble outside the door, along with several other tasks. At one point you travel back to the past to see Moria in its former glory and also witness the beginning of its destruction. I really did enjoy taking part in that. But even after completing the epic, you are still not quite ready for entry. You are given your first legendary weapon and must raise it up to level 10 first. You kill mobs to level it. Each time it levels, you receive a certain amount of points which can be spent to add class specific skill bonuses to your weapon. We finished off some quests in the area and the weapon leveled fairly quickly. We did zone inside to at least have a look around and obtained a second legendary item to level.

We were still a bit low level to be in there so we decided to finish up or clear out our quests in Angmar, Misty Mountains, and Forochel. Angmar quests were entirely deleted. The zone is bleak, as it should be. But with other options available to us, I'd rather quest in a place less oppressive. We had several quests involving Goblin Town in Misty Mountains, so we started running out there from Rivendell....and running.....and running. We had to fight through quite a bit of mobs to get to our quest objectives, so our small bags filled quickly and unlooted corpses had to be left behind. After completing the first round of quests, rather than run all the way back, we bid farewell to The Misty Mountains. My husband complained about how this game runs you to death. I understand that quicker travel would make the world seem smaller, but we are getting annoyed often at the slow travel.

I hit level 50 and now we've moved on to Forochel. I like the zone and we've got tons of quests here left to do. Once we finish this off, then it will be time to head back to Moria.

Quest Overload

2009-02-02T08:59:00.003-05:00

I didn't have too much time to play LotRO this week, but I did ding 48 over the weekend. I remember the early 20's being a bit rough to get through as there didn't seem to be enough quests within my level range to do. So I worked on traits and just killed mobs over and over.

But now in the 40's I have so many quests in so many areas that my journal is full. I honestly don't know at this point where I should really be going. I have a full set of quests in Angmar, Forochel, and Misty Mountains. And now the new zone Eregion has opened up with more quests.

They seem to penalize you for not doing quests when they con an even color and the experience granted dwindles away the longer you wait to do them. For example, say I complete a level 48 quest at 48 and get 4,000 experience. If I do that same quest instead at 49, I might get only 2,000 experience for it. So it seems we should just move on to Eregion and put off or forget the others. I've only seen half of Angmar yet and haven't even been to all the quest hubs. There is supposedly some faction quests to the north somewhere. Although why I want the faction, I'm not sure. Forochel we only touched briefly on at the entrance and have tons more quests further and yet another faction. Misty Mountains I may still want to work on, as that is Rivendell faction. Rivendell is where I go for my scholarly pursuits and they have a pretty spiffy dress on their merchant, so I would like to work this one up. The options at this level are tremendous and overwhelming and we likely will just delete the majority of them.

All these factional items we're looting, given the skimpy bag space we're alotted, get to be annoying. We actually are disappointed when we loot armor, since it takes up an inventory slot that won't stack and doesn't sell on the broker anyway. So trips out in the field tend to be pretty short since we need to head back to town to sell frequently.

So where we head to next login I just don't know. So many quests!

Gatheryn - First to Use HeroEngine

2009-01-26T14:02:00.005-05:00

A long while back, I followed the progress of an mmo in the works called Hero's Journey. What set this one apart at the time was that Simutronics, the company behind it, was also developing their own engine for it. So rather than being stuck within the confines of someone else's engine, they were building their own to make the game their way.

They started showing off their engine at tradeshows and even won some awards for it. Other companies started showing an interest in licensing it and Hero's Journey got put on the back burner as Simutronics' focus switched to the engine itself.

I actually forgot all about them until I heard Gatheryn, an mmo I mentioned a few weeks ago, will be the first on the market to use this new engine. Release is scheduled the first half of this year already, which I find pretty surprising. This has piqued my interest even more for Gatheryn. I'm really interested in seeing what sort of new things are in store with this engine.

Other mmo's that will be using this new engine include BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic, Colony Studio's Universe Online, and some unnamed mmo planned by Stray Bullet Studios, the company currently running Shadowbane.

Alganon - New Years Update

2009-01-22T09:55:00.003-05:00

David Allen has posted an update this week regarding the current status of Alganon. While they have been keeping things somewhat quiet over there to avoid too much hype too early on, they have now begun releasing more details.

Release is scheduled for this year, with beta to begin this Spring. In February, they will be releasing the MyAlganon community system. It looks to be something similar to MyLOTRO, where you can find members, guilds, blogs, etc.

One interesting feature will be a grand library located in both capital cities. While you must visit the library in person to contribute information, you will be able to access the library's information from anywhere in game. Here is where you go to look up a quest, item, or creature information. Also, there is a studies system that progresses your character even when you are offline. However, you can only have one character studying at one time. The studies system will apply to both adventuring and crafting. There are abilities that can only be gained this way, so that long-term players will have an advantage even if they only get to actually play a few hours a week.

Although the core game revolves around PvE, there are two factions and there will be battlegrounds on both PvE and PvP servers. Neither side can group or guild with one another; however, you will be able to create characters on both sides on the same server.

The graphics are not as high end as some may be accustomed to based on some of the more recently released mmo's. But I usually don't have too much issue with graphics, as long as my character looks reasonable. I still haven't had much of a good view on the female avatars, so I'll have to wait and see how they've turned out.

I've been following the progress of Alganon for three years. I'm not letting myself get overly hyped as I did with Vanguard, but I definitely plan to be trying it out.

Wheel of Time MMO

2009-01-19T13:32:00.004-05:00

Red Eagle Games has announced that they will launch and operate an MMO based on the world and characters of Wheel of Time. Electronic Arts will be handling distribution. Red Eagle also is partnering with Universal Pictures to produce at least three films based on the series.

The first few books in this series are some of my absolute favorite reads. I was so enthralled by it at one time, that I had recreated Tar Valon and a few other WoT places of interest back when Active Worlds was a bustling place.

I'm not sure what sort of classes they can create aside from Aes Sedai and their Gaidin, but I'll certainly be keeping my eye on how this MMO progresses. The movies I'm not so sure about. Aside from LotR, it seems fantasy films are never done particularly well. So not getting my hopes up too much there.

Fairwell to the Fellowship

2009-01-19T06:20:00.004-05:00

One of the things I noticed upon my return to LotRO was that key figures had moved from their previous spots and offered new quests. The story line of the fellowship was advancing. I was sent to see Aragorn and Boromir to see if I could assist in their preparations for departure. They sent me on a few errands, after which I entered a private instance. Words were exchanged between fellowship members and with me as well, and then I watched them all go. It was all so touching, I almost got a bit teary-eyed and wanted to join in after them.

It left me wondering what their plans are for continuing the story. Will they reach a point in the fellowship's journey and then stop? I can't imagine they'd see it through to the end or we'd be left in a more pleasant world, killing just boars and neekerbreakers.

I really enjoy these type of private quests involving you in the story line. But the bugs lately have been a bit frustrating. Since our return, both of us have been experiencing crashes to desktop and blue screens of death. I have never had a bsod in any other game before. And then there's the rubberbanding, which I haven't experienced since SWG. I hit certain paths where I cannot proceed forward and keep getting bounced back. I either have to circle around a different way, or if it's an enclosed path where I have no other options, I just have to camp. A check on the forums shows this has been occurring for a couple years now.

Last night was a new type of bug. My husband and I were in Misty Mountains. I needed to run back to Rivendell to pick up a quest. So down into the valley I go, into Rivendell and I find the quest giver at the marketplace. She sends me to Elrond. I run up to the main house, zone in, and up the steps to zone into Elrond's library. He sends me to Gloin back in the Misty Mountains. I zone back out of the house, get stuck on the zone and get disconnected. I log back in and find myself back at the valley entrance with no record of my having gotten the quest.

So back down I go, pick it up again, back to Elrond, zone out successfully, and start running up the hill when I'm just frozen in place. I look over at my husband's screen. He's still killing stuff so I know we've not been disconnected. But his mobs are standing up straight when they die, and when he attempts to loot them, receives a message that they have too many hitpoints for that action. I can't use any abilities and still can't move. Eventually, I receive a disconnected from server message.

I log back in and there I am again at the valley entrance with no record of having picked up the quest. Grrrrrr. I called it a night at that point. I think I have a lot of patience, but this gets aggravating. Particularly, when I've not experienced this in other games. I really hope that was an isolated incidence or my time here will be short.

Continuing Adventures in Middle Earth

2009-01-12T07:31:00.005-05:00

While we initially started out with a warden/rune-keeper duo, I had started a warden of my own to solo with and he a hunter and eventually we hooked up to duo this pair instead. He kept mentioning how he wish he had his higher level hunter from our previous server here so we each decided to transfer one character. I decided on my 39 captain. She was also a scholar and I remember enjoying rummaging through ancient ruins to collect artifacts.

Even at this level, money is still difficult to come by without some sort of farming. So while I still didn't have a horse as it seems a waste of money to me (you get knocked off when a mob hits you), I just had to have a home. So I settled into one of the Elven neighborhoods:

Furnishing options are very limited, as is the placement. For example, you can't have a table with chairs around it. You can place a table on the large hook in the center, and maybe have one small chair on a small hook against the wall. But the home came with storage that can be shared by my alts, as well as anyone else I designate, so that was a plus. And I did get to plant those trees and bushes on the outside.

We checked our journals to see where we had left off in quests. We had a couple things left in Evendim to do. And after a bit, I recalled why I disliked questing here. Most of your time is spent doing this:

Swim at slow speeds to this island and that island, then back to this one and way over to that one. So we moved on. We found a new quest hub in the Trollshaws. This is one of my favorite zones. It is just beautiful and I love the music throughout the zone. And lots of wonderful ruins for my scholar. We were standing atop one of the ruins just yesterday. Looking out in the distance, we spotted a place we hadn't seen before. We thought we had been everywhere, but must have missed a path somewhere. So we set out exploring to find our way to reach it. I commented to my husband that this is one aspect of the game that I love and is missing from others. The world is huge and there is so much to explore and see. Many places have no quests that ever lead you there. They are just there for you to find on your own.

I noticed my husband logging off from EQ2 to play LotRO much more frequently than me. I think this newfound interest can be attributed somewhat to their new reputation system. He's a faction hound and likes working up factions. I do it if that particular faction offers me something I want, but he does it just cause. Overall, we are definitely enjoying our experience in LotRO much more this time around.

We both hit 42 this weekend. The road to Moria doesn't seem so far off now.

There And Back Again

2008-12-22T06:07:00.004-05:00

With Station Access canceled, and EQ1, Vanguard and SWG removed from our computers, we did decide to reactivate LotRO for the time being. They had advertised this deal where if you got their recent Moria expansion for $29.99, the monthly subscription would be $9.99. But it turned out that was an error that founding members were viewing this pricing. But after talking to a rep on the phone, they did honor the $9.99 deal. Anyone who was a founding member at the $9.99 rate will have to call Turbine to reactivate. There is some bug in the system when you try to reactivate your account online. But no big deal. After being on hold for a few minutes, they were pretty quick at resolving the issue.

I have heard a lot of good things regarding the Mines of Moria and would really like to experience it, but the expansion is for 50+ and our alts we left behind were 39. While we could grind them out some levels to catch up, neither one of us liked our classes nor the server we were on. The tank and healer combo served us well in other games, but not here. His guardian and my minstrel were very ineffective. We killed slowly, his taunts never worked well, and once I was getting hit, I couldn't channel off heals. So we died often.

But the expansion brought with it a new version of the tank and healer, the warden and runemaster. The wardens use this new gambit system where using combinations of attacks opens up new attacks. It's a bit more complicated than their previous classes and involves some memorization regarding knowing what combos activate what. The runekeeper can play the role of healer or damage dealer, or do both less effectively. The more you heal, the more powerful your heals become. The more you hurl damage spells, the more powerful they become. If you go back and forth between the two in a fight, neither are very powerful. There is an attunement bar that shows your current effectiveness for both abilities.

So we started fresh on the Landroval server. The community seems very nice and the general chat channel is usually pleasant, more so than EQ2 general chat. Low level areas are still very active and I see people everywhere. The early level money frustrations are still there. When you only have 25 silver, 5-15 silver horse travel, 6 silver repairs, and several silver to train is really steep. So we'll be hoofing it for awhile and just letting our armor decay. I'm trying to avoid the things that annoyed me previously. I'm not going to grind mobs for traits and no pie delivery quests while trying to avoid hungry hobbits.

I took a jog over to the various housing zones. I won't be able to afford even the small home for awhile, but the neighborhoods were very nice. There are four housing areas, each racially themed (dwarves, elves, hobbits and humans). You are not restricted to your own race's community, but can only have one home per account. Supposedly it's cheaper to repair in neighborhoods and you receive a direct gate there. It seemed similar in some ways to DAoC housing. Your items you place in the home are limited to certain hook spots, and you can place trees and such outside your home.

I don't know if we'll last long enough to hit 50 and see Moria, but at the moment it's a nice occasional diversion. Here are some shots from the housing instances:

The Face of Things to Come

2008-12-12T08:53:00.003-05:00

RMT Has Arrived in EQ1&2

2008-12-09T14:42:00.005-05:00

Servers in EQ2 came down this morning to patch in SOE's new Station Cash which they are offering in both EQ1 and EQ2. After you have added cash to your account with your credit card, you can then purchase items in game using the new Marketplace tab.

I took a look at the few items they have. It was certainly nothing game breaking and included some ugly appearance armor sets, experience potions and some pets.

Part of me isn't bothered since I could care less about any of these items. Maybe they are just breaking us in gently before adding the nice stuff. But considering how stingy they are with character slots, and many of us are already paying $30 for Station Access just for more alts, another part of me is annoyed. But I guess it was just a matter of time.

TCoS - Not Looking Good For US Players

2008-12-09T08:57:00.004-05:00

While news that Acclaim would be the US publisher for The Chronicles of Spellborn was a disappointment for many, their non-informative, uninspired website is even more disappointing.

The artwork links lead to empty pages and the forums are generally empty with much moderator locking going on. Their website looks like something you'd see three years before a game is released, not weeks before. Europeans have had to deal with crappy publishers in other games so I guess it's just our turn. :P

Considering the download will be free, I still intend to try it. Hopefully, their servers function better than their website.

EQ2 - Working the System

2008-12-09T07:55:00.003-05:00

One of the fun aspects of EQ2's mentoring system is being able to participate in lower level content with friends but as a more powerful character. Even though technically you are at the reduced level of whoever you are mentoring, you still retain a portion of your higher level abilities.

Since the dungeons in the latest expansion could not be completed by many casual players, the mentoring system has been put to use. It was assumed that bringing in a lower level member to mentor would make the dungeons more manageable. Unfortunately, the dungeons didn't scale down well initially, and the level 50 mobs were hitting like level 70 mobs. So players unmentored, making the mobs gray to complete the missions.

While some complained on the forums about this, it didn't seem to really be too much of an issue since you can only do each instance once a day, meaning it will still take weeks to have enough shards for one piece of armor. And with mobs being gray, there are no drops to be had. We've been doing some guild runs but some members have already lost interest. While the dungeons were interesting to figure out and see the first time or two, after that it's just a repetitive grind to get shards.

But the option to obtain shards this way may soon not be available. Seems people have been selling space to enter cleared dungeons for lots of platinum. While this sort of thing has been going in EQ2 for years and really is nothing new, devs have stated on the forums they are looking into this situation. If they remove mentoring capabilities completely from TSO dungeons, there will be a lot of unhappy players.

My hope is that they tweak down at least 3 of the 20 dungeons so they are manageable for casual players. By casual I mean wearing mastercrafted gear and not having the absolute perfect group setup. We are running these with a full group -- one healer, three tanks, and two dps. We're told we need to dump the two other tanks for another healer and dps. I'm not dumping anyone. A full group with a tank and healer should be enough for a dungeon crawl. I don't think anyone really enjoys doing these dungeons gray, so I really do hope they come up with some other options.

AIR - Steampunk Online RPG

2008-11-26T13:39:00.002-05:00

"Picture the Earth, post apocalypse. Land has been broken and thrown inexplicitly into the aether, and there hangs a world of floating cities - islands in a sea of clouds.."

That's a description of a new indie steampunk game in the works, called AIR. Players will be able to sail the skies as a sky pirate, naval officer, or mercenary. Other professions include Eyot Miner and Farmer, Tinkerer, Chemist, Scientist, and Noble. No screenshots yet or much other information.

Captain Robert of Abney Park will be doing the soundtrack. I love these guys. Can't wait to see how this develops.

EQ2-Shadow Odyssey Impressions

2008-11-24T06:05:00.003-05:00

While my beta experience wasn't favorable, I was still hopeful some modifications might have been made after I left. So I set out to experience all aspects of the most recent expansion, except for raiding.

Moors of Ykesha - This is considered to be the outdoor solo zone. It's separated into three main areas. Normally, EQ2 travel involves zoning, but the Moors is one mega zone with no zoning involved. And this approach has been causing some problems. For many, this area is unplayable due to lag and delays. Fights are taking forever as you stand there not moving unable to do anything for seconds at a time.

The quests do have you running long distances back and forth but many have been fun to complete. Several involve using illusions to gather information from the hostiles. There are three factions you are working for. I have not seen any armor or weapon rewards, but have received some upgraded charm slot items. I'm assuming the intention is you work through the dungeons if you want armor. Also, the only purpose I've seen so far to gain faction is to purchase furniture recipe books.

While it is considered a solo zone, I've been hearing a lot of grumblings in guild from people attempting to do so and several have given up already. Many areas are jam packed with mobs making it more difficult to solo. And they dot you to death. I have never seen mobs constantly stacking up the dots like these. They root you, stun you, and put all sorts of nonsense on you. And if you cure it, it's immediately put back on. This part is a bit annoying. My husband and I have been duoing, so it's not been so bad for us. But I have seen very few soloers running around. Most have been guild groups. Overall, we're having a decent time doing the quests. With the new achievement points they've introduced, it's the most efficient way for our level 80's to gain more points.

The Dungeons - There are 20 new dungeons and they had been rated by difficulty from easy, moderate or hard and some in between. This is assuming you are raid geared. For casual players the rating is extremely hard or forget about it. We ventured with a full group into one of the "easy" dungeons. We picked up a mission to acquire four items. While there were some neat DDO type aspects like traps and solving puzzles, the mobs themselves were just too much to handle. Three hours and multiple deaths later, we had only one of the four items. Folks started saying they either had to go or needed to repair so we split up and left to lick our wounds. I logged back in a few hours later and one guild member asked if we wanted to try again. Everyone responded "no" and discussion followed about how the casual players got the shaft here. We all felt so inadequate. Our guild's intention was to run dungeon instances one week night and every weekend. But we're done. These dungeons clearly weren't intended for us.

Some people have been working around this by having a second account with a lower level. Everyone mentors the lower level and then unmentors once in the dungeon so the mobs are grey. They don't get experience but they get their shard for completing the mission. We shouldn't have to work around the system this way. Some had returned to EQ2 recently thinking we'd be getting an LDoN type experience. What a huge disappointment.

Crafting Missions - Ok on to something more positive. There is a new faction and they are stationed on the Isle of Mara. You can do a solo mission for them once a week and a group mission once a day. You receive a token and save them up to buy mounts, recipes, or crafting armor. The intent was that crafters would get together to work on these, but I have yet to see anyone asking for groups or looking for more in the crafting channel. I did my first crafting mission with some guild mates. We were stocking up some troops to beef them up for this battle that was taking place as we crafted. Upon completion, a big fight took place and a chest dropped with crafting related goodies. True to my usual luck in MMO's, I walked away with none of it. The next day I enlisted hubby to do one with me and will likely just go that route so I can at least get something from it. My guess is others are soloing them to be sure they get something. It does take longer to solo, about three hours I hear, but it can be done. Would be nice if other aspects of the game worked this way.

For crafters, this is the best expansion to date. For the well-equipped more hardcore, they are likely having fun in the dungeons. Since they are already geared up, not sure what they will spend those shards on though. For the casual soloer, you might be able to solo in the Moors depending on class. For the casual grouper, nothing to see here; move along.

Meaningful Solo in MMO's

2008-11-10T13:50:00.004-05:00

Not a week goes by where I don't see a remark somewhere on some forum that the current trend of soloing is ruining MMO's. But I think they have it all wrong. In comparison to older titles, the more recent ones are actually less solo friendly.

Let's look at EQ1, what many consider to have been the ultimate grouping game. A good portion of folks I knew there soloed at some point. Every one of my alts soloed, of course some better than others. It took a long while to kill something, your experience bar didn't move much, and maybe you had to stick to green/light blue mobs. But it was done. Typically, I'd go to a zone and start soloing. If someone shouted out that they were looking for more, I joined in. If someone shouted looking for a group, I invited them to join me and eventually more would join. While leveling was still slow, grouping took some of the tedium away and just made things more enjoyable overall.

In more recent titles, leveling speed is increased and quests often yield more than the kills. It's not efficient to group since many are on different quests. And forming up groups is more tedious than just going out and getting it done on your own.

All that's changed is leveling speed, color of mobs you can take on, and the introduction of quests. But there's one major difference in current titles from prior. There is no meaningful solo content anymore. In EQ1 there were numerous dungeons that could be soloed, many with placeholders for named mobs that dropped nice items. This wasn't exclusive to dungeons though. Named mobs could be found in outdoor zones as well, if you didn't mind camping a spot to get them to spawn. In DAOC also dungeons and named mobs indoors and out could be soloed, both for armor and trophy heads which could be mounted and placed in your home. I didn't have the best gear and didn't always have the best solo class. But there were meaningful things for me to do on my own while out adventuring. Even SWG was more solo friendly pre-NGE than it is today.

In the current games I've played, you solo strictly to level. It doesn't lead to eventual groups and usually gains you nothing but experience. Anything meaningful, and what I consider to be fun, requires groups, usually full ones at that. And they are organized events, not chance encounters while you're out and about. Occasionally you might meet someone on the same quest. You group up for a few minutes to get it done and then part ways. So come to think of it, not only are current games less solo friendly, but also less group friendly.

So soloing has always been around. It's just not very fun anymore.

Dungeons & Dragons Online - New Player Revamp

2008-11-04T08:05:00.003-05:00

DDO has launched Module 8: Prisoners of Prophecy. Along with a graphics engine upgrade, a new wilderness area, and some high level dungeons, they have added the following:

- Enhanced New Player Experience: To support a more story-based and friendly introduction to the game and make DDO more accessible to players unfamiliar with the 3.5 Edition rules-set, we have created a completely new starter experience. Players will now have the option to create well-built characters based on their play style without needing to assign any stat or skill points, or select any feats or spells. Subsequent characters created on the account will have the option to skip the tutorial, and will gain relevant XP and rewards as if they had completed it.

- Introducing Hirelings: Hirelings is a huge new system designed to improve the solo play experience in DDO by letting players contract henchmen to help them in their adventures. Hirelings are player controlled NPC combatants with a given class, level and personality that can be contracted to aid a player in the dungeons of Stormreach. Players can contract with one Hireling of their level or lower for a few hours at a time, or until the adventure they are playing is complete. This massive new system will be introduced to players through a series of live in-game events after the launch of Prisoners of Prophecy.

Although I had heard of D&D, I had never played it and was not someone familiar with the rules and the die rolls. I had to do a lot of reading to figure out how to set up my character. My husband wasn't too keen on DDO during our trial, particularly since we really couldn't duo anything past the first few dungeons. But I enjoyed it enough to subscribe for a couple months afterwards. I did join in on some pickup groups of experienced players whom had already been through the dungeons so raced through them rather quickly. I really felt like a noob in this game though. If I could have convinced my husband to join me and perhaps join a guild, I think I might have enjoyed it for awhile. So I think the new player experience change is a good thing, making the game a little less intimidating for those unfamiliar.

The hirelings system seems to be the new trend. Considering we couldn't duo, not sure how well a hireling will benefit a soloer unless the game has changed since I played. But I'm curious enough to see how well it will work for a duo. I'm going to resubscribe at least for a month to see these changes firsthand and maybe I can convince the other half to finally explore it with me.

I'm not sure at this stage of the game if it's enough to bring in players. But their timing is pretty good. There's a lot of discontent right now with the new releases this year, so some will likely at least be willing to try it.

EQ2 - The Shadow Odyssey

2008-11-03T06:39:00.004-05:00

It's been about a week since the NDA was lifted for EQ2's upcoming expansion. I thought I'd hear more buzz about it as I had for prior expansions, but things have been pretty quiet, except for complaining on the forums.

I was in the beta for this expansion and personally was extremely disappointed. First, there is the overland solo zone, Moors of Ykesha. You access this zone from an airship in Sinking Sands, which was actually pretty cool the first time I saw one. The zone itself I didn't find particularly attractive and was confusing to nagivate. It's sort of like Sinking Sands but with rocks instead of sand. The mobs start at level 76 and will serve as a way for level 80's to obtain achievement experience so they have points to spend in the new achievement lines.

Some classes will gain some nice damage increases from the new achievements. For my mystic, they were a bit uninspiring...2% more to this buff or this heal, etc. And to get to that point, I have to spend a lot of prior points on unnecessary things. The one nice ability though was the achievement granting the chance to gain additional harvests while out harvesting.

There are 20 new dungeons. You gain a shard for completing the dungeon and accumulate shards to purchase legendary gear. We were given fabled gear to test the dungeons so difficulty was adjusted according to fabled testers. I'm not sure what the logic there was. Anyone who has fabled won't need the legendary except for some filler pieces here and there. Those who would want the legendary gear are in mastercrafted/treasured, but the dungeons will be difficult to complete in that gear. I was a huge fan of LDoN in EQ1. This is no LDoN where you could complete one with three people or an all beastlord group (now that was fun). These are full group difficult dungeons requiring all the necessary classes to succeed. In beta one piece of armor required about 10 shards; however, we were told the requirement would be doubled or tripled for the expansion. So expect to do 20 to 30 dungeons to acquire one piece.

The expansion seems to me to be an overreaction to the complaints about last year's expansion being too solo oriented. We do plan to attempt them with our guild to try to gear us up. So we'll just have to wait and see if we can actually complete any. Once people have a few pieces and have done them 50 times though, I think it will be difficult finding full groups to do them. The one or two that are determined to be easier than others will still get some traffic for awhile, while 10+ dungeons will sit empty, much like most Kunark dungeons are empty.

I think anyone who enjoyed the KoS expansion will probably enjoy this one. I'm not a fan of KoS and never go there. My favorite expansion so far has been EoF. There was content from 1-70, a new starting area, and the zones were beautiful. I pretty much do all my leveling exclusively in these zones. With so many expressing disappointment with this expansion, there's lots of talk on what the next expansion might bring instead. Looking at what zones from EQ1 are still missing in EQ2, there's some speculation that maybe it would be the continent of Odus with Paineel and Erudin as new starting areas. At least that's how I hope they would offer those cities, instead of what they've done to poor Kaladim, Ak'Anon and Felwithe.

Conan in LotRO

2008-11-02T06:33:00.003-05:00

I was always amazed by some of the performances I came across in LotRO.

World of Gatheryn

2008-10-30T13:27:00.003-04:00

I just caught word of a new multiplayer online world in the works called Gatheryn. The setting is Victorian era with elements of fantasy. Rather than what most consider to be a typical mmo, this seems to be a combination of mmo, virtual world, and Myst. There are lands to explore and quests which involve mini-games and puzzles, rather than slaughter. You will have a home which you will be able to furnish. But all is not peaceful, as the background story involves the struggle of the people to free themselves from the powerful overlord.

The screenshots so far are very nice. Although the information available is pretty limited right now, it definitely looks to be something quite different from anything else out there. I'm not a puzzle type person, but this has piqued my interest enough that I'll be keeping my eye out on this one.

Carebears vs. PvP'rs - The Final Showdown

2008-10-30T07:30:00.003-04:00

Errmm ok not really. But the developers of Crusades sure seem to think so. Here's a snip from a recent interview:

"Carebear players might form large guilds in order to protect their cities. We all know how much time they spend crafting. Thus, they will most likely have the best crafted items which the PvP'rs will enjoy looting (if they can) and that will force the Carebears to unite and fight, or perhaps hire the best PvP'rs to fight. Within an infinite universe setting, confrontations for territory and resources may escalate into major battles between the two player-styles. The current speculation is that PvP'rs may not survive. PvP'rs need to work with the Carebears to obtain the best weapons, planetary defenses, and spacecraft, and Carebears won't tolerate being attacked everywhere they go. Thus we have a potential Yin & Yang per say, where Carebears vs. PvP'rs could develop into a final showdown. Personally I think it is long overdue, and it could make for some interesting gameplay. But only the players may answer the question as to who would win."

Since when does carebear = crafting? They are correct though about one statement they made. As a card-carrying member of my local Carebears Union, it is true that I will not tolerate being attacked everywhere I go. However, my solution to that is not to unite and fight or hire someone to fight for me. It's to not play in the first place.

Aside from the PvP, they do have some interesting elements, some of them reminiscent of pre-NGE SWG. It will be a player-based economy, there will be player-run cities, and rather than levels it will be a tier-based skill system. Similar to Guild Wars, there will be one server and you will be able to hire NPC henchman. Release date currently planned for 2009.

As We Approach Election Day

2008-10-29T07:35:00.004-04:00

I have my own political opinions which I won't share here, but as a fan of Dancing With The Stars, this gave me a chuckle and I just had to share:

TCoS - Small Groups and No Raiding

2008-10-29T06:55:00.004-04:00

Over a year ago I had The Chronicles of Spellborn listed as one of my anticipated games. But as I read more about it, it seemed to be a PvP-focused game so I dropped it from my radar. However, I came across the following recent post from TCoS staff:

"So far for PvE biggest group is 4 people and we do not intend to increase it, so far for PvP biggest group is 8. We also do not intend to have EQ/WoW style raids - that sort of thing where you need numbers to be able to do it."

I may just have to try this out after all. My biggest gripes with EQ2 have been the full-group requirements for dungeons as well as the trickle down effects of raiding. We tried to do a Kunark dungeon with four guildmates last week. The mobs were seven levels below us and we couldn't do it. Our gear just wasn't good enough. I hear raiders can solo this dungeon, but four of us in regular gear couldn't. And with the upcoming expansion being centered around dungeons, I'm guessing I'm not geared well enough for that either. Just as in EQ1, I anticipate the expansions will continue to get more difficult with raid/instance gear in mind, and the casual players will get further and further behind.

Honestly, I've been so annoyed with this aspect of EQ2 lately that if it weren't for the guild, I wanted to just cancel and uninstall. But really, where is there to go? I might have tried out LotRO again with the upcoming Moria expansion. But with TCoS coming out in a month, I plan to give this a try now. While originally there was just one server type, due to popular demand they have added a FFA PvP server. So maybe it won't be quite so bad on the other servers as the gankers have found a new home.