Deciphering the rage

Okay, so after ranting and raving in the last post (With lovely bad spelling and grammar) I've calmed down a bit.

The reason I was so annoyed was that I saw Blizzard as setting a precedent for selling players fluff for excessive amounts of money. Blizzard are setting precedents in all the wrong areas, as leader of the MMO genre, you would think they would have some shame at what they are creating. To sell a fluff item at an exorbitant price in a pay-by-month game to me seems extremely arrogant and greedy.

That said Blizzard is a business (As I said before) and are there to make money not do gamers any favors. The MMO genre will not improve in any way unless gamers demand it, and in this instance it is clear that commercial gamers are clamouring for the opposite.

Just when you thought it couldn't fall any lower...

News just in: Blizzard are charging 25 bucks for a new ingame mount. That's zero new content for half the price of an expansion, or one of many, many brilliant games. Its hard to get your mind around this situation, with over 115k people lining up to get their virtual mount.

On one hand I jsut want to slap every single one of those 115000+ idiots. Its people like them that are bogging gaming down and holding it back from quality experiences.

Bliazzard, I really want to say its all their fault, but it really isn't. They know its going to make millions with minimal effort, and ultimately they are a business, so it really is down to the players. I made a post a while back discussing how I felt that WoW was holding the MMO genre back from developing and becoming the beast that it can be, and this action just reinforces that.

I'm /facepalming so hard right now, that I can't express it adequately. Ultimately its the customer's fault and it frustrates me no end that these morons are not just buying a fluffy virtual item for a horrendous amount of money, but by that they are setting a precedent which spells nothing but trouble for the general gaming population.

Commercial gaming, if possible, just got worse.

Elitist Noobs (The brilliant new MMO)

Let's be honest, MMOs are a bit of an elitist spawning genre of gaming, second only to the wonderful world of FPS. Except a lot of what commands respect and admiration (And a lot of misfounded self-importance) in MMOs is items which take a very low level of skill. This especially is prevalent in the F2P market, where complete noobs can buy insane gear without thinking. In the end, what constitutes an elite player in MMOs in many cases is the time they have put into the game to aquire the gear that everyone else salivates over and lusts hopelessly after. However, it doesn't just have to be in free MMOs, I've seen a bunch of people on youtube in the top raids of WoW and they still have no idea what key-binding is and s-key all over the place. In the same vein you also get very geared players in WoW instances who are horrible at healing/holding agro/controlling agro/doing any amount of damage.

Following this train of thought I have come up with an MMO which will celebrate the time-spam elitists who appear in every MMO. I was inspired in a way by a free MMO I heard of in which it takes month of hardcore leveling to get a single level, and if you died it would set you back a week or more of progress. Anyway, my game is called Exponential (Creative eh?) This is its story...

In Exponential, everything is...well...you know. Every time you level your stats get twice as good, the time it takes to reach the level is twice as long, and there is absolutely no limit on anything. A death in the game will set you back one whole level, which has varying ramifications depending on how far in the game you are. The game is completely free-to-play but the cash shop nothing that will in any way speed up your leveling. Instead it offers such items that inhibit loss when you die.

(All figures in AUD)
$300.00 ....Will prevent you from losing any experience if/when you are killed.
$140.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 50% of a level if/when you are killed.
$50.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 25% of a level if/when you are killed.
You can also buy a wonderful array of fancy shmancy clothing and non-combat pets for low prices.

Now of course no one would even think of buying the $300 pot for a long long time, because its hard to justify spending such a huge amount of money unless you have been working (Oops I mean, playing) long enough for the risk to warrant such a cost. Say if a gamer is at the point where it takes them 80 days of play time to level once, then they may think the $300 would be well spent.

The beautiful thing about this game is it appeals to the most hardcore elitist noobs imaginable, people would go crazy over hitting the next level before anyone else because it would make them twice as powerful. (World PvP kills only reduce experience by 10% of a level) Of course there are just one or two little elements which I haven't really considered, but those are the main points.

Ah the joys of taking fun out of gaming, and making you work so that at the end of it all you feel slightly rewarded at the end, but ultimately realise that you had to WORK. But that's another post for another time.

CoS goes completely free to play (?)

Well just days after I said it would be great if CoS was completely free to play I got this email:

"At point, you checked out The Chronicles of Spellborn. Today, as you
read this, Spellborn as it currently exists is now free to play. Keep
in mind that there will be no upgrades and no patches. It has become
in effect, an Action RPG with superior Multiplayer. The only thing it
will cost you to play is the time it takes to download.

So play it. http://www.tcos.com

Now because it is frozen in time, we will be creating events for the
players and we will help support any players that want to make their
own events. And if you have thoughts on how we might make this
version more enjoyable as we wait for the New free to play version,
we are glad to listen."

So after this extremely confusing email, I think I can draw the conclusion that its now completely free to play...I think. :P

Chronicles of Spellborn Screenshots

Downloaded this game yesterday and after playing it a bit today I thought it looked pretty enough to post some screenshots. Its too bad that you can only play for free up to a certain level as the game is a lot of fun and looks great. (Apparently it will become complete free to play sometime during 2010). Enjoy!

Allods Online

Heard about this game just this morning and after looking around I started to be intrigued by it. It calls itself a 'free AAA MMORPG' where 'fantasy meets space opera'. After watching various videos on youtube you can see that the graphics are extremely similar to WoW, slightly like RoM, but even better. However, the fact that the developers are classifying it as a AAA MMO is intriguing and I'm dying to try it out. At the moment its in closed beta, but when it hits open beta you can bet that we're going to be hearing a lot about this game. Watch the official trailer here.

What I'm up to...

I haven't been playing many games lately and nothing really solidly at all. Unfortunately all my hopes of the RoM endgame have been dashed with my guild being a major let down. Apparantly I'm in one of the best guilds on my server but they are terrible at communication and have no real organization. I really want to do some of the tougher instances but not enough people are on when I play, so the only solution is to be on all day every day to raid. Its makes it even more frustrating when they don't have a fixed time when they try and raid. So RoM really isn't working out, as the guild is sucking, and the solo end-game is nonexistent.

In other news I have been playing Half Life 2 which I borrowed from a friend, and am having a great time. Unfortunately, all these years of junky MMOs means even the simplest puzzles often take a little while for my feeble brain to solve. :P Nevertheless, its hugely atmospheric, even though I have only played an hour or so.

Lastly, I'm in the closed beta of the long-coming MMOFPS: Huxley and enjoying my time quite a lot. The game looks fantastic and a whoel lot of fun at the moment. The Unreal type PvP is a lot of fun (When I'm not lagging to death) so this looks like the game I'll be playing the most in the near future. I might be breaking an NDA here but I made a first impressions video of Huxley on my youtube channel and in that I breakdown some of the things you can expect in the game.

Warrior Epic Closed Beta

I mentioned this game a while back but I just got an email saying I got into the closed beta, will play a little bit, if study allows, and see how it goes from there.

The Warlords open beta

Open beta for The Warlords in out in an hour or so. Have no idea what it is but as I just received an email informing me, I must have checked it out at some point.

Grinding: your second job except you're paying for it

Do we owe anything to game developers? I was thinking about this the other day when I remembered one blogger saying that he felt it was important to stick with a developer (or in this case a MMO) because in the end it will be rewarding, or something along those lines. It seems people are also doing this with WAR with people barely playing, but still waiting out for some new content to be released, with their monthly sub still ticking away. Why do we feel an obligation to keep on paying, hoping that it will get better? In my view, when a game stops being fun then its time to drop it. Most people have jobs and it hardly seems logical to come home and pay for something that you don't enjoy.

People say that often there are bumps where the game is no fun, but once you get over that the game really shines. This is fair enough; games cannot be perfect the entire time, but its up to the developers to decide how long this period is going to be. In RoM I am really beginning to feel slightly hopeless when a guildie told me that I would need 1.9 million experience to get from 49-50. At the moment I think I need a bit over 300k to get to 37 and its already taking me long enough. I'm sorry, but why is the leveling stage so long? It would be understandable if this was a pay-to-play game as the devs would have wanted subscriptions to run as long as possible. But then, once again, it brings up the issue of these non-fun periods. Seems to me like nearly the entire game is a period which isn't seen as 'fun'.

I think the figure of people who got to the higher-end raiding in WoW before Wrath was something like 1%, I'm guessing that this is probably an accurate figure for the amount of people who will get to 50 in RoM, let alone 50/50. The incentive for powering through all those levels is the end-game raiding, but I've heard from various people that this is just another grind: a gear grind. People see higher lvl toons running around in their shiny gear and wish they could look like them. They just think if they grind for a few months more, then they can get to the top and begin getting that gear. Turns out they have moved from one grinding aspect to another and the end-game is not much different. Hmmm, maybe I need to take a break from MMOs for a while. :P Get back to my roots and play some Baldur's...

Blizzard's next MMO

Blizzard's next MMO will be nothing like WOW yet will have many of the same elements and style. This tiem around Blizzard will opt for a higher graphical level because they know no matter what kind of game they will make people will play it, so making significantly better graphics will not drive away people but most likely lure them in. Their next MMO will obviously have no fantasy connections whatsoever, but they will not make anything in the present/past day, because that's not very interesting. Space looks like the way to go, with jumpsuits and Spore-like customization on your various races.

Blizzard will focus on some sort of instance based game because that is what they do best, but my guess is that they will put a lot of effort into dolling up the PvP aspect. WoW will always probably be the best raiding type MMO out there and they don't want to detract from that so their next MMO won't have raiding. Open world PvP is hard to get right and Mythic are the closest to getting that nailed so Blizzard's next MMO will have instance based PvP galour. Also they don't want to make it too familiar to EVE so that's another reason why open world PvP wouldn't be a focus.

The last thing is that Blizzard's next MMO will be easy to grasp and will just require a lot of time dedicated to it. This will be the big challenge. When you think 'futuristic' and 'space' you think 'massive' and 'expansive' and, dare I say it, 'complicated' making a space/futuristic MMO simple and easy to play will be a pretty big challenge for them.

So to summarise; Blizzard's next MMO will be space/futuristic.
It will have many different aspects to WoW but many similar ones.
It will have a different audience, probably a bit older and mature.
And it will be more focused around PvP.

My thoughts on Darkfall and PvP

So, everyone is talking about this upcoming PvP-orientated MMORPG that is soon to be released. First thing to note about the game is that it is going to be a niche market. WAR is not as hardcore as this game and it has quite a limited audience, so its not hard to imagine that despite the enormous interest Darkfall will ultimately have a relatively small following which isn't necessarily bad.

Originally I was quite interested in the game but although my ultimate love is in PvP there are a lot of things that Darkfall really needs to demonstrate that it has done properly before I jump on the bandwagon. A few aspects such as truly free PvP where basically anyone can attack anyone anywhere, as well as looting everything off an opposing player are interesting but potentially disastrous. This style of gaming even if pulled off right will only suite certain players, and if done wrong then no one will probably want to play it. Its a fine line that the developer will have to tread, probably even more so with the sudden spike of interest.

Many people for a long time have called for a PvP system where winning does not depend on the gear of each player but their skill. Its a nice concept but in my opinion virtually impossible to implement. To make a game sufficiently tactical the fights would have to go for longer, a larger variety of abilities provided, and a combat system that somehow incorporates skill into the equation, and this would probably be the hardest thing. What defines skill? Does it mean you know what skills go best together, what build to choose, what to use and when?

For Darkfall to survive and succeed, because of its very nature, it needs to have the best PvP system around, and that probably translates to a skill-based system. Its not going to be easy for them to get it right because we know that most people prefer a clear easy path to the top of the gear chain and having phat epix lewt to working hard at the game and having the simple satisfaction of beating a guy because they're better then him.

Ancient Rome questing

At the moment I am working on an extensive research assignment on Ancient Rome. My class were told to look into a certain aspect of the society such as slavery, or the military back then and then present the results a few weeks later. As an extensive research assignment it is worth a significant amount of our semester mark so its important to do it well. Of course, I have been procrastinating like crazy and only now realize how much work I'm going to have to do. As we were given about 4 weeks to do the assignment I had half-heartedly tried to get an early start on it but almost instantly lost interest and then stowed it away and forgotten about it, but now its come back to haunt me. This is a quite bad metaphor of some the types of quests that I have encountered in my mmorpg gaming life.

The quests I am talking about are the ones that are too difficult, take too long, or just aren't very interesting and quickly accumulate. When you grab one of the said quests you of course have a stab at it, but then realize how boring/long/hard it is and just leave it for later. Note that these are not the quests that do not give any decent gear because those you can easily discard without a second thought, these quests are the ones that really mean something, that have great rewards and incentives. As a result you keep those quests in your options so you can always do it later when you are more powerful. Soon, these quests compile and you are stuck with tons of quests whose rewards aren't that great anymore because you left it too late to try it again.

So what's the solution? Well, the logical one is to make all the quests easier/more interesting. Yeah, thats simple enough. I had an idea that these quests rewards could increase slightly over time as you gain lvls, but the objective remains the same. I mean, as the player gains lvl the gear in the quests improve slightly, not very much, just a little. Leave it too long and the gear quickly becomes redundant, but if you wait 2 or 3 lvls then the gear could still be nice and the objective much easier. I haven't thought a whole lot about this, but it would be interesting to see how well it would work in the situation. I know I would certainly like to have it, but it is my idea after all. But while I think there is a solution for the boring/time-consuming/tough quests, there will never be one for the quests where you carry around a 'quest item' that hogs your inventory space except, of course, for total extermination. *Shudder* Those quests are evil.

Hyperlicious

I thought I should make a post about hype because it seems as though everyone is talking about it. And by everyone I mean just a couple of my fellow bloggers. The word is going around that Mythic have been over-hyping their game like crazy, and when its going to be released there will be some repercussions. The repercussions may be in the form of raging gamers who thought that WAR would be THE next game, maybe others will just be slightly disappointed. Personally I feel that the complaints of over-hyping a game are pointless until the actual game comes out. Why? Because you can't tell whether the game is going to actually live up to the hype until you have actually experienced it. Perhaps, of course, some of the bloggers are in the closed beta and have been playing for a while and do not feel that the game lives up to the hype which is understandable.

I don't think that Mythic have over-hyped their game. I think what they have done is clever marketing. (which can be I guess be seen as just another way of saying 'over-hype') They have released a lot of production podcasts which explain the interesting and exciting aspects of the game, they have made their development interviews exciting and interesting (Thank you Paul Barnett) and they have listened to their fanbase and given them what they asked for. Can this be classified as hype?

About a year ago I had recently quit WoW and was looking for a new MMO and I came across Fury. It was a game developed by an Aussie team which focused completely on PvP. The hype for Fury wasn't significant, and certainly quite timid as opposed to WAR, yet I was still really excited about the game. Sadly there were many, many things wrong with it and it didn't sell. Only a few days ago it shut down its servers. Why am I mentioning this? Well, I think that there is nothing wrong with hype. While there was very little hype for Fury I still was very interested in it, and consequently was extremely disappointed with the result. WAR (apparently) has been overloaded with hype and I am waiting with sweaty hands to play it, yet I know that if the game doesn't turn out as I hoped I will be no more disappointed then with Fury. Developers should not be blamed for over-hyping their game; its their job and in the end hype is not what the developers make out their game to be, but what the player makes out the game to be in their mind. While this ideal may be effected by the stuff churned out by the developers it is not totally dependent on it as demonstrated by my experience with Fury.

What I hate about some guilds

This post isn't meant to be just a 100% negative post funneling all my rage its just meant to be about what I really can't stand about certain guilds and what they are doing wrong.
Maybe its just me but I hate hardcore guilds in general. I also dislike many 18+ guilds' attitudes towards others. I don't like guilds who's only aim is to get over 1000 members regardless of their level or status, meaning that they don't kick anyone despite them having not played the game for over a year. (Yes I have seen it) And I don't like guilds whose higher lvls form a whole little elite group amongst themselves and you only get counted in after you get to their lvl of awesomeness. You might say after this that I am a guild hopper and I guess that is true, for the times that I played WoW and LotRO I didn't have very good guild experiences.

In WoW I mostly got entangled in guilds that really didn't really who I was, or where I was in the game, just that I was a number in the long list of members. Hoarding members is not productive or helpful and yet you still see guilds advertising that they "now have over 400 members!!!" The guilds often tend to be run by a lvl 32 kid who spends more time spamming general chat with his guild advertisement then he does actually moving his piddly little character around.

Then there are the hardcore guilds who do care about their guild numbers, and also care about where you are from (what timezone) what class you are, what spec you are, how long on average do you play on weekdays, how long on average you play on weekends, and the biggest thing of all; whats your gear like? After all this, if you manage to squeeze in they will slap a one month trial membership on you until you prove your worth in the higher eclipses of the raiding instances. I understand all this, I know that there are always people that are not satisfied with playing normally but it still gets irritating to go through all the questions and tests just to find that your resilience isn't up to scratch.

18+ guilds are kind of a pet peeve for me and not just because I'm not 18. The rule is obviously set in place so the guilds don't get flooded by squeaky voiced kids that ask to be run through instances all the time, and also so that everyone in the guild is able to swear and tell dirty jokes without an angry parent beating them over the head, in summary; immature people. I understand this, and that isn't what I hate about these guilds, its the all too often fact that the rule is disregarded, and I don't mean that in the literal sense where the guild allows a 16 year old (like me) to join, but in the sense that they allow immature players in all the time. These players are often over the age of 18 and this is used almost as a badge that prevents them from being accused of the horrendous crime that is immaturity. Too many times I have entered a 18+ guild (I am just a naturally mature person...most of the time) and found myself hating it because everyone was studying me all the time for any stupid, or bad taste remark while all the other fellas where acting like obscene apes. Age does not equal maturity.

Finally the guilds that have a hierarchy of members that are of a high lvl and that seem separate from the rest of the guild. They never help anyone, never give advice, and only help those that can help them. Its a sad site to see a guild in this state for it always seems to end that those member eventually leave and the rest of the lower lvl players have to rebuild up once again. Its happened once and it was pretty bad.

Thats a lot to hate, I have just realized that its become a pretty long post, it wasn't really mean to be. Guilds can make you enjoy a game for a lot longer then you would have alone, but there are a lot out there that make you want to quit the game. Since the guilds play such a significant role in WAR I think its very important to find the best guild for you. It is a matter of personal preference as some people will accept things which others would leave for. Just a few days ago I was in a great WAR guild and this were looking really exciting with the looming release of the game, and all of a sudden the GM had had enough and the entire guild just folded. It was pretty saddening as I had hoped that I would have stayed there for a long time, but once again I have begun my search for the perfect guild. Funny but I have never even considered going through WAR without a guild.

My brief affair with EVE Online

After urgings from some friends I was persuaded to give EVE Online a shot a few days ago. I wasn't really interested in the idea or concept of an mmorpg centered around spaceships but I am utterly bored at the moment and would have given pretty much anything a go at that point.

Before starting the game you need to choose a race, some sort of clan or something, some stats, attributes and other confusing stuff that is not fully explained. It was interesting that they put in so many options of character customization when I thought the whole game was focused around the massive spaceships, although they could be there just to create a more in-depth, realistic feel to the game. So, I picked at random buttons, not really reading or caring what the different options were as I really just wanted to get into the game. As the last option I was able to finely adjust the facial features of my character. I was able to make his jaw wider or thinner, longer or shorter, I could extend his cheekbones and other crazy stuff like that. It took me at least five minutes before I had finally settled on a particular face and even then I would have liked to mess around a bit longer.

After finishing off the face I entered the game tutorial of sorts. It was fairly simple and easy and I liked the camera freedom but I was lost in all the option menus and fancy buttons. Maybe its just me (And it probably is) but I like simplicity. But once again I say it may have been designed like that to give the player a sense of realism, as if they are actually in control of a real spaceship. And in this way the game really achieves this. The only problem is I don't really want to be in charge of a massive spaceship with all its fiddly buttons and controls; too much responsibility and confusion. Then again I also could be a simpleton and in fact the controls and buttons could be simple to learn and adapt to, which I think is the most likely.

After killing some baddies, and mining an astronaut, I mean asteroid, I went over to a base to dock my ship. At this point I thought it would give a me an opportunity to run around with my crazy toon in an advanced city but all that happened was I got a boring picture of my spaceship floating around with even more options then usual surrounding it. The tutorial thingy introduced me to the 'agent' option that supplies me with quests supposedly. Slightly confused I got my first quest and looked at it, it was complicated and once again confusing. One minute later I quit the game.

Now, I am not saying at all that the game is rubbish, in fact I know many people that consider it a great game and I believe that it is for many people. I am just saying that it didn't entertain me for the first 15 minutes and so I quit. Maybe it is because it is because I am part of the new generation that needs instant gratification, and the fact that I seem to get confused easily. But I think that everyone has their own tastes and EVE Online didn't really match mine.

But that wasn't quite the end of my EVE adventuring. A bit later I remembered my enjoyment with the character customization and logged back in to give it another go. This time I picked a different race so the base figure I started with was different. I spent the next 45 minutes messing around and I have put in screenshots of the results of my efforts. Even if you don't like the concept of a spaceship mmorpg, try out EVE Online character customization as it really is entertaining.