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.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
E3 Excitement
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.
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.
Friday, June 4, 2010
CItadel of Sorcery - Guild Halls/Housing
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."
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."
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Rift: Planes of Telara
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
EQ2 Cash Shop - Then and Now
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.
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.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Server Merges for EverQuest
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.
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.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Current and Future State of MMO's
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.
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.
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