DDO - Guild Airships!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.