The ending is awesome. Totally awesome. It was beautiful. I almost cried.
From Full Time Ninjas
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Solo Missions in EQ2
I'd like to see some kind of mission system created for solo and small group players. Early on, EverQuest II introduced some instances that could be done both solo or heroic, but lately the content has become split such that the overworld is largely solo and instances are all heroic.
Its good to encourage grouping by putting the best gear in the heroic dungeons, and there are certainly a lot of quests to keep soloers and small group players occupied, but it would be nice to be able to do something besides questing when we don't have the time (or desire) to group with others. I vastly prefer dungeon crawls over questing, and missions in the various dungeons would be a great alternative to keep solo and small group players occupied.
The loot should, of course, not be comparable to TSO void shard loot, but providing soloers and more time constrained players with their equivalent of "elite end game" gear would be a nice way of continuing the EQ2 tradition of supporting every kind of player. Developers wouldn't even need to make all new zones to support this; recycling existing content could be a good way to bring that about without using up as much developer bandwidth.
Its good to encourage grouping by putting the best gear in the heroic dungeons, and there are certainly a lot of quests to keep soloers and small group players occupied, but it would be nice to be able to do something besides questing when we don't have the time (or desire) to group with others. I vastly prefer dungeon crawls over questing, and missions in the various dungeons would be a great alternative to keep solo and small group players occupied.
The loot should, of course, not be comparable to TSO void shard loot, but providing soloers and more time constrained players with their equivalent of "elite end game" gear would be a nice way of continuing the EQ2 tradition of supporting every kind of player. Developers wouldn't even need to make all new zones to support this; recycling existing content could be a good way to bring that about without using up as much developer bandwidth.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Recycle Old Content
One of the things I enjoy about EQ2's epic quests is that it brings people back into older, otherwise unused zones in the game. I wish SOE would come up with more permanent reasons to revisit older content.
One good way to do that would be by introducing a new faction of historians or scholars who send people on daily missions for tokens, similar to the TSO scholars. Adventurers would go into special versions of Unrest, Poet's Palace, and other zones that don't receive many visitors anymore. The special zones would be mostly the same, except they would scale to the latest level cap and have new loot tables for the higher tiers.
Or maybe the adventurers might go into regular open zones, such as Sanctum of the Scaleborn, even though that means almost everything is gray, but along the way level-appropriate "ambushers" show up at various places while you try to complete your mission.
It takes time to create new loot tables for each additional tier, as well as itemizing the faction merchants, but I think it would be worth it. This game has a lot of content and its a shame for so much of it to go to waste because the majority of the playerbase has leveled past the point where those zones are viable. Or, in the case of some of the ROK instances, mudflation has progressed us to a point that it no longer makes much sense to go there.
One good way to do that would be by introducing a new faction of historians or scholars who send people on daily missions for tokens, similar to the TSO scholars. Adventurers would go into special versions of Unrest, Poet's Palace, and other zones that don't receive many visitors anymore. The special zones would be mostly the same, except they would scale to the latest level cap and have new loot tables for the higher tiers.
Or maybe the adventurers might go into regular open zones, such as Sanctum of the Scaleborn, even though that means almost everything is gray, but along the way level-appropriate "ambushers" show up at various places while you try to complete your mission.
It takes time to create new loot tables for each additional tier, as well as itemizing the faction merchants, but I think it would be worth it. This game has a lot of content and its a shame for so much of it to go to waste because the majority of the playerbase has leveled past the point where those zones are viable. Or, in the case of some of the ROK instances, mudflation has progressed us to a point that it no longer makes much sense to go there.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
WAR! What Is It Good For?
Absolutely nothing? It seems a few other bloggers have decided that Warhammer Online may no longer be for them. I've been saying the same thing for a while now, but I decided to log on a few times over the last few days to give it one last hurrah.
It was the same old story: empty PQs, lackluster PVE. I've never complained that a game had 'too much content' before, but its apparent that the servers can't handle the number of players necessary to fill out the content they have. Unfortunately, the content they have isn't very compelling either. While PQs are a nice step forward in MMORPG design, the rest of the PVE game is very poor compared to World of Warcraft and similar games.
There was some Open RvR going on, and since that's one of the central reasons to play this game, I joined in. That was fun, but we had a warband and Destruction at the moment wasn't really putting up a defense, so we basically took everything effortlessly. They may as well just have put a big "Order Wins" button up at the moment. In fact, the only part of the game I still really enjoy are Scenarios, and half of those fell apart due to imbalances.
The only part I seem to continue to enjoy is Scenarios and, unfortunately, Scenarios alone are not enough to keep me in game. Not when its the same six Scenarios over and over again until I level up high enough to move to finally hit tier 4.
I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe the problem I have with Warhammer is that I tend to prefer strategy in games. I don't mind losing a game, but I prefer losing if the opponent outplays me. I don't enjoy losing if the other team wins because they have more people, or if they simply play more often (and therefore level up higher). I also don't really enjoy winning if I'm on the winning side simply because we have a zerg.
Maybe my problem is that Realm vs Realm just isn't for me, because it is inherently an unbalanced form of competition. There is no way to guarantee that an RvR zone accepts the same number of people, balanced by level and class. And, of course, it's probably not even worth trying to "fix", since many people DO like that kind of gameplay.
Some day someone will recapture the essence of Warhammer's Scenarios, hopefully without the level grind attached to it, and I'll definitely check that out.
The Slovenian band Laibach's version of the song War. Everyone has heard the Edwin Starr original. Laibach actually answers the question.
It was the same old story: empty PQs, lackluster PVE. I've never complained that a game had 'too much content' before, but its apparent that the servers can't handle the number of players necessary to fill out the content they have. Unfortunately, the content they have isn't very compelling either. While PQs are a nice step forward in MMORPG design, the rest of the PVE game is very poor compared to World of Warcraft and similar games.
There was some Open RvR going on, and since that's one of the central reasons to play this game, I joined in. That was fun, but we had a warband and Destruction at the moment wasn't really putting up a defense, so we basically took everything effortlessly. They may as well just have put a big "Order Wins" button up at the moment. In fact, the only part of the game I still really enjoy are Scenarios, and half of those fell apart due to imbalances.
The only part I seem to continue to enjoy is Scenarios and, unfortunately, Scenarios alone are not enough to keep me in game. Not when its the same six Scenarios over and over again until I level up high enough to move to finally hit tier 4.
I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe the problem I have with Warhammer is that I tend to prefer strategy in games. I don't mind losing a game, but I prefer losing if the opponent outplays me. I don't enjoy losing if the other team wins because they have more people, or if they simply play more often (and therefore level up higher). I also don't really enjoy winning if I'm on the winning side simply because we have a zerg.
Maybe my problem is that Realm vs Realm just isn't for me, because it is inherently an unbalanced form of competition. There is no way to guarantee that an RvR zone accepts the same number of people, balanced by level and class. And, of course, it's probably not even worth trying to "fix", since many people DO like that kind of gameplay.
Some day someone will recapture the essence of Warhammer's Scenarios, hopefully without the level grind attached to it, and I'll definitely check that out.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Dream Scorcher
My defiler finally got her fabled weapon, Dream Scorcher.
It was quite an undertaking, but its a relief to have it done. I couldn't have done it without my guild. Thanks to Terst, Vozz, Dracodo, Shellshock, Wadia, Esadia, Gatomontez, Umadin, Ringleberry, Brigida, Jillianne, Pscymin, Hanbin, and way too many others to remember!
Now, I find myself in search of new dreams to conquer. What next? I guess one of those 50 shard mounts... that might take me a while. :)
It was quite an undertaking, but its a relief to have it done. I couldn't have done it without my guild. Thanks to Terst, Vozz, Dracodo, Shellshock, Wadia, Esadia, Gatomontez, Umadin, Ringleberry, Brigida, Jillianne, Pscymin, Hanbin, and way too many others to remember!
Now, I find myself in search of new dreams to conquer. What next? I guess one of those 50 shard mounts... that might take me a while. :)
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Culling the Herd
OK, I've gotten ridiculous. I'm subscribing to too many games. I have two subscriptions to EverQuest II plus Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, and Eve Online. I've also jumped in and out of Guild Wars a lot lately.
EverQuest II
This one is definitely going to stay. This game is where I spend most of my online time. I have too much to do in game.
Last weekend, I earned a few void shards with my monk. Scion of Ice is always a fun zone.
Then I did the new Frostfell zones. I like how Frostfell keeps a lot of the quests from the previous years, with a few minor tweaks to the rewards and so on. Basically, the festivities get bigger and better as the game progresses. This year, we have a few quests that let you earn tokens and the loot you can get for the tokens are actually pretty nice. None of the armor looked like something I would use, but there were some 15-token charms that were very nice.
I helped some guildmates out with their epic updates, and then tried to run Chelsith with my Defiler to get her epic update. That didn't go too well and we had to abort the mission for now. That zone is really hard, with lots of wandering bubbles (floating hordes of elementals), and you either need two healers or a very competent mezzer. I was solo healing it. We got several nameds down and we burned through fights quickly. The only time we had trouble was when we had a bad pull and got two encounters at once, or if we pulled a bubble. That happened a few times, and then the illusionist left. By that point, it was too hard to find a replacement so we called it a night.
On Monday, some guildmates went back in to Chelsith to help someone else. They were kind enough to leave Majora Leviathan up, just for me. I have the best guild ever. So my defiler is now one step closer to having their epic.
I've been keeping my monk busy working on Far Seas Supply Division faction. I also took some time to level up some alts. I took my Berserker through Splitpaw and finally earned their trust. It only took four years; my Berserker was actually my first EQ2 character, but I stopped playing it early on and switched to the monk. Now I finally got it to level 43...
On Tuesday, I did the daily double in Obelisk of Ahkzul. Except it wasn't really a daily double since it normally has zero shards to offer. But people kept calling it that. I'm glad it wasn't really, since the double of zero is zero, and I got two, which makes me happy, since I will soon have my third piece of void shard armor.
Yesterday and today, I worked on my defiler's epic weapon. Yesterday, we took on the Priest of Fear in Unrest. Today, we took on Huntmaster Viswin in Castle Mistmoore. I understand the need to make an epic weapon quest difficult; if it was easy to get, it wouldn't be as valuable. But some of the epic quest updates are more time consuming than difficult. It took two hours to grab enough people to take on the x2 content in Castle Mistmoore and once I had it, only about 15 minutes to kill. I guess gathering a group together to take on the content is part of the game, but the more quests the game gets, and every time the level cap moves, or a new expansion pack comes out, it gets more frustrating to do the older ones.
Granted, it feels great when you finally accomplish it, but I still think that leveling games that emphasize grouping like EQ2 could still maintain their risk-reward nature and still be more fun if there was some kind of way to reward people for helping others out. That is, if I'm grouping with someone and they get a ding, I earn some kind of points which can be exchanged for some rewards. Just so there's a little icing on the cake for the people who lose two hours of their day travelling through Unrest or some crazy zone that they get absolutely nothing from. Sure, that's what guilds are for, and mine has been very helpful so far, but a little social engineering to help encourage more grouping couldn't hurt.
Warhammer Online
I did a few scenarios last weekend but I just can't get into this game anymore. I guess I'll let this subscription lapse.
The game has had a lot of changes lately but the major flaw with me is the level grind. This game tried to be too many different things. It should have focussed solely on the RVR and dropped the whole lame WOW-clone PVE portion.
The PVE had some nice features, such as Public Quests, but those don't work when the population spreads out. One of the major changes in the recent update: they made several Public Quests soloable. So they're basically just lackluster ring events you can grind on your own now.
Mythic made a bad design decision when deciding to make this yet another leveling game. They should have used Renown ranks and Influence and the story progression in the Chapters as the carrot. They could have added hundreds more renown ranks to give us a good effective grind. But by throwing battle ranks into the mix, you spread people out, you have the weird tiering system, where as you level you become uber powerful (for your tier) and then suddenly DING! and you are a weakling again as you get promoted to the next tier. The chicken system is idiotic; they should let people mentor down so that at least the lower tiers will have life, even if its only bored high level players running around filling up the Influence for Chapters they skipped.
World of Warcraft
I keep hearing how Wrath of the Lich King has improved quest design dramatically, and I'd love to see it. I'd especially love to see how they use phasing. EQ2 uses it in a few quests, and I always enjoyed seeing the world actually change because of my actions. But Blizzard must have done something truly incredible with it, considering everyone's acting like they invented the concept...
So I resubscribed, but I have hardly played it. I start to, but the quests in the original zones are so bland, being little more than your typical kill/fetch/deliver quests. I'm not a huge of the solo quest grind in EQ2 either, but the quests in EQ2 have always been a little more involved.
Blizzard should release updates to the old world to liven it up and make it more attractive. Just tossing all the improvements at the tail end of the game might keep their existing player base entertained, but there's probably a few million (or at least a couple hundred thousand?) of us out there who probably WOULD play WOW if they would just steal the handful of ideas that the other games still do better and revamp the 1-70 part of the world too.
Eve Online
This game has a lot of depth and I love the sandbox be what you want to be, do whatever you want to do nature of the game. People in game can become researchers, miners, pirates, pirate hunters, archaeologists, traders, and more. And its very relaxing, though that's mostly because its a game you can more easily play distracted. Like right now, I'm targeting a Pithi something or another in between sentences, and my destroyer takes care automatically.
But that strength is also its weakness. Lately, I've wanted more active entertainment, so I haven't played Eve much. So much of the game is on autopilot that it can get really boring at times. That's perfect when I'm only half paying attention to it, otherwise its not.
Guild Wars
I spent a little time in here, finishing a few more quests that my Dervish had been stuck on. This is a game I rave about on other people's blogs all the time, but sadly, I never actually finished more than one Campaign. While I love the game mechanics, the excessive use of instancing does have a tendency to make the world feel empty. The towns and other hubs are often filled with people, but there isn't much interaction there either.
Culling the Herd
I guess its time to say goodbye to Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft (not that I gave it much of a hello.) I'm playing EQ2 and enjoying that, but one can only play so many leveling games.
I like leveling games, even though I may complain about them from time to time. However, I also like sandboxes, and wish there were more options there. Sometimes I want a goal set out for me, and to be guided through a story. Other times, I want to tell the story. Unfortunately, there aren't many sandboxes out there; Eve Online is the main one.
So Eve Online gets a reprieve for now, but I think I like the IDEA of Eve more than its implementation though. I love the sandbox nature of the game, but I kind of think I'd prefer the game if it had a free flight model, and combat wasn't a matter of clicking auto attack and watching your ship orbit the other while HP bars drop. This games greatest strength is also its weakness. I can play it while distracted, but that's because most of the time I'm watching it, not playing it.
But it looks like there are a lot of sandbox games coming out soon... I wonder if Jumpgate Evolution would be the sci-fi sandbox that I'm really looking for. Or maybe Earthrise? Or maybe I'll find what I'm looking for in a fantasy sandbox like Darkfall? Has anyone heard anything about any of these games?
EverQuest II
This one is definitely going to stay. This game is where I spend most of my online time. I have too much to do in game.
Last weekend, I earned a few void shards with my monk. Scion of Ice is always a fun zone.
Then I did the new Frostfell zones. I like how Frostfell keeps a lot of the quests from the previous years, with a few minor tweaks to the rewards and so on. Basically, the festivities get bigger and better as the game progresses. This year, we have a few quests that let you earn tokens and the loot you can get for the tokens are actually pretty nice. None of the armor looked like something I would use, but there were some 15-token charms that were very nice.
I helped some guildmates out with their epic updates, and then tried to run Chelsith with my Defiler to get her epic update. That didn't go too well and we had to abort the mission for now. That zone is really hard, with lots of wandering bubbles (floating hordes of elementals), and you either need two healers or a very competent mezzer. I was solo healing it. We got several nameds down and we burned through fights quickly. The only time we had trouble was when we had a bad pull and got two encounters at once, or if we pulled a bubble. That happened a few times, and then the illusionist left. By that point, it was too hard to find a replacement so we called it a night.
On Monday, some guildmates went back in to Chelsith to help someone else. They were kind enough to leave Majora Leviathan up, just for me. I have the best guild ever. So my defiler is now one step closer to having their epic.
I've been keeping my monk busy working on Far Seas Supply Division faction. I also took some time to level up some alts. I took my Berserker through Splitpaw and finally earned their trust. It only took four years; my Berserker was actually my first EQ2 character, but I stopped playing it early on and switched to the monk. Now I finally got it to level 43...
On Tuesday, I did the daily double in Obelisk of Ahkzul. Except it wasn't really a daily double since it normally has zero shards to offer. But people kept calling it that. I'm glad it wasn't really, since the double of zero is zero, and I got two, which makes me happy, since I will soon have my third piece of void shard armor.
Yesterday and today, I worked on my defiler's epic weapon. Yesterday, we took on the Priest of Fear in Unrest. Today, we took on Huntmaster Viswin in Castle Mistmoore. I understand the need to make an epic weapon quest difficult; if it was easy to get, it wouldn't be as valuable. But some of the epic quest updates are more time consuming than difficult. It took two hours to grab enough people to take on the x2 content in Castle Mistmoore and once I had it, only about 15 minutes to kill. I guess gathering a group together to take on the content is part of the game, but the more quests the game gets, and every time the level cap moves, or a new expansion pack comes out, it gets more frustrating to do the older ones.
Granted, it feels great when you finally accomplish it, but I still think that leveling games that emphasize grouping like EQ2 could still maintain their risk-reward nature and still be more fun if there was some kind of way to reward people for helping others out. That is, if I'm grouping with someone and they get a ding, I earn some kind of points which can be exchanged for some rewards. Just so there's a little icing on the cake for the people who lose two hours of their day travelling through Unrest or some crazy zone that they get absolutely nothing from. Sure, that's what guilds are for, and mine has been very helpful so far, but a little social engineering to help encourage more grouping couldn't hurt.
Warhammer Online
I did a few scenarios last weekend but I just can't get into this game anymore. I guess I'll let this subscription lapse.
The game has had a lot of changes lately but the major flaw with me is the level grind. This game tried to be too many different things. It should have focussed solely on the RVR and dropped the whole lame WOW-clone PVE portion.
The PVE had some nice features, such as Public Quests, but those don't work when the population spreads out. One of the major changes in the recent update: they made several Public Quests soloable. So they're basically just lackluster ring events you can grind on your own now.
Mythic made a bad design decision when deciding to make this yet another leveling game. They should have used Renown ranks and Influence and the story progression in the Chapters as the carrot. They could have added hundreds more renown ranks to give us a good effective grind. But by throwing battle ranks into the mix, you spread people out, you have the weird tiering system, where as you level you become uber powerful (for your tier) and then suddenly DING! and you are a weakling again as you get promoted to the next tier. The chicken system is idiotic; they should let people mentor down so that at least the lower tiers will have life, even if its only bored high level players running around filling up the Influence for Chapters they skipped.
World of Warcraft
I keep hearing how Wrath of the Lich King has improved quest design dramatically, and I'd love to see it. I'd especially love to see how they use phasing. EQ2 uses it in a few quests, and I always enjoyed seeing the world actually change because of my actions. But Blizzard must have done something truly incredible with it, considering everyone's acting like they invented the concept...
So I resubscribed, but I have hardly played it. I start to, but the quests in the original zones are so bland, being little more than your typical kill/fetch/deliver quests. I'm not a huge of the solo quest grind in EQ2 either, but the quests in EQ2 have always been a little more involved.
Blizzard should release updates to the old world to liven it up and make it more attractive. Just tossing all the improvements at the tail end of the game might keep their existing player base entertained, but there's probably a few million (or at least a couple hundred thousand?) of us out there who probably WOULD play WOW if they would just steal the handful of ideas that the other games still do better and revamp the 1-70 part of the world too.
Eve Online
This game has a lot of depth and I love the sandbox be what you want to be, do whatever you want to do nature of the game. People in game can become researchers, miners, pirates, pirate hunters, archaeologists, traders, and more. And its very relaxing, though that's mostly because its a game you can more easily play distracted. Like right now, I'm targeting a Pithi something or another in between sentences, and my destroyer takes care automatically.
But that strength is also its weakness. Lately, I've wanted more active entertainment, so I haven't played Eve much. So much of the game is on autopilot that it can get really boring at times. That's perfect when I'm only half paying attention to it, otherwise its not.
Guild Wars
I spent a little time in here, finishing a few more quests that my Dervish had been stuck on. This is a game I rave about on other people's blogs all the time, but sadly, I never actually finished more than one Campaign. While I love the game mechanics, the excessive use of instancing does have a tendency to make the world feel empty. The towns and other hubs are often filled with people, but there isn't much interaction there either.
Culling the Herd
I guess its time to say goodbye to Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft (not that I gave it much of a hello.) I'm playing EQ2 and enjoying that, but one can only play so many leveling games.
I like leveling games, even though I may complain about them from time to time. However, I also like sandboxes, and wish there were more options there. Sometimes I want a goal set out for me, and to be guided through a story. Other times, I want to tell the story. Unfortunately, there aren't many sandboxes out there; Eve Online is the main one.
So Eve Online gets a reprieve for now, but I think I like the IDEA of Eve more than its implementation though. I love the sandbox nature of the game, but I kind of think I'd prefer the game if it had a free flight model, and combat wasn't a matter of clicking auto attack and watching your ship orbit the other while HP bars drop. This games greatest strength is also its weakness. I can play it while distracted, but that's because most of the time I'm watching it, not playing it.
But it looks like there are a lot of sandbox games coming out soon... I wonder if Jumpgate Evolution would be the sci-fi sandbox that I'm really looking for. Or maybe Earthrise? Or maybe I'll find what I'm looking for in a fantasy sandbox like Darkfall? Has anyone heard anything about any of these games?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Ding! 100 - A MMOment of Zen Retrospective
If Blogger is to be believed, this appears to be my 100th post on MMOment of Zen. I started this a year and half ago, and I had no idea that I would continue with it this long. A lot has happened in game and with the blog over the course of that year and a half.
My first post coincided with my return to EverQuest II from a six month break from MMORPGs. I rejoined Explorers of Legend, which was the guild I had been with since EverQuest II lanched. Since then, the guild fell apart. A number of the officers decided they wanted to pursue other opportunities, mostly because of our inability to get a viable raiding force off the ground. I understand and respect their decisions; however, the way the entire group of officers left en masse caused a lot of bitter feelings among many of the players left behind, who felt like their leadership betrayed them.
Some EOL members ended up quitting EQ2 entirely because of it. I can sympathize with that: community is usually what binds us to a game, so having a guild you belong to fall apart can often become "the final straw" so to speak. My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI and I played that for months longer than I probably would have if I had not become attached to my in game "linkshell" (the FFXI equivalent of a guild.)
Since last July, I have tried nearly every major MMO to come out. I have a wanderlust with regards to MMORPGs. There's an explorer in me that is often more fascinated by the game play mechanics than the actual games. I like to see how all of these games are built. Sadly, there really isn't as much diversity in gameplay in the genre as there could be.
I tried Tabula Rasa during the beta and I thought it had an interesting cover mechanic. Aside from that, it felt like World of Warcraft with guns since I was being sent on quests to find caves and shoot 10 mobs and come back and being rewarded upgraded guns and whatever. So I went back to EverQuest II.
Then I tried Pirates of the Burning Sea. I loved the ship combat in this game, but the economy never seemed to work right. They only had a few markets that were active. They really needed to implement something like buy orders to draw merchants to the outlying areas. The missions were repeated too often, and avatar combat was terrible. I got a Freetrader up to level 30, and then the servers started merging, and my guild started losing half its members. So I threw in the towel and went back to EverQuest II.
Then Age of Conan came out. The advertising promised us: heads will roll! Truth in advertising would have promised us: eyes will roll! The game had a strong intro area for the first twenty levels. That was both its greatest strength and weakness. After killing Saddur with my fifth alt, I never wanted to play it again. The character I took past 20 found himself surrounded by lame World of Warcraft style quests without the World of Warcraft motivator: better loot. Itemization in the game was pointless. I suppose this was deliberate: they wanted PVP to be more based on skill than gear. But it meant the PVE game simply didn't work. And I didn't see any PVP going on. I'm not sure where it was, and didn't feel like looking for it, so I went back to EverQuest II.
Most recently, I tried Warhammer Online. Its not a bad game, but they tried to be too many games. The leveling mechanic makes sense for a World of Warcraft style PVE game, but it simply did not work in an RVR game. People were too spread out across tiers, you couldn't find anyone to play with, and quite frankly, when you did, it was only fun when you were at the tail end of your tier. Once you progressed to the next tier, you were suddenly a weakling again. That's very jarring: the leveling mechanic is supposed to measure your progress, but at each tier transition, it had the opposite effect. I gave up around level 27, shortly after the server merges started happening, and the PQs were still empty and half my scenarios were still being cancelled early due to imbalance. So, guess where I went next?
Yep, back to EverQuest II.
Right now, I have two subscriptions to EverQuest II, one to Warhammer Online, one to World of Wracraft, and I'm still on my first month of Eve Online. That's going to have to change soon.
Some random facts about my site:
This isn't one of the more popular destinations among MMO bloggers; I only tend to average about 30 visitors a day, but about 40% of them are return visitors, so I guess somebody out there actually thinks I have something worthwhile to say.
The first person to post a comment on my site was Kanthalos from MMOre Insight. I had been inspired by an article series on Voyages in Eternity about Damianov's dream settings for MMORPGs. My dream setting was the Doctor Who universe because having all of time and space at your fingertips would open up any kind of story imaginable. Also, I love the iconic enemies in the game like the Daleks and the Cybermen. Neither MMOre Insight nor Voyages in Eternity seem to have been updated in a while, which saddens me, since those were two of the sites I read daily back then, and the principal reason I started doing this.
My most popular article was a writeup on the Obelisk of Ahkzul. Many people had trouble figuring out Kierax when TSO launched.
The other article that receives the most visits from Google is one I did about two boxing software aids. If you have two computers next to each other (including laptops), Multiplicity from Stardock is an amazing tool.
One of my first articles, EverQuest II: A Review of the Races still receives a great deal of attention from Google. In that article, I basically explain the difference between the eighteen races that were in game at that point in time.
I suppose I should add an entry for the nineteenth race, so here it is:
Sarnak: Overgrown, fire breathing lizards with scoliosis. They are the result of the cross breeding between iksar and dragons. How do you get a dragon to make sweet love with an iksar? Well, you have to get them good and drunk. The Sarnak aren't evil in the sadistic sense that Neriak or Freeport citizens are known for. But they are considered to be evil because they have an inherent distrust of all other races. That's mostly because all the other races are always chuckling under their breath when a Sarnak comes wandering by. It's because of their parentage... how can you NOT laugh at that?
So, yeah, anyway, as I was saying:
DING
My first post coincided with my return to EverQuest II from a six month break from MMORPGs. I rejoined Explorers of Legend, which was the guild I had been with since EverQuest II lanched. Since then, the guild fell apart. A number of the officers decided they wanted to pursue other opportunities, mostly because of our inability to get a viable raiding force off the ground. I understand and respect their decisions; however, the way the entire group of officers left en masse caused a lot of bitter feelings among many of the players left behind, who felt like their leadership betrayed them.
Some EOL members ended up quitting EQ2 entirely because of it. I can sympathize with that: community is usually what binds us to a game, so having a guild you belong to fall apart can often become "the final straw" so to speak. My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI and I played that for months longer than I probably would have if I had not become attached to my in game "linkshell" (the FFXI equivalent of a guild.)
Since last July, I have tried nearly every major MMO to come out. I have a wanderlust with regards to MMORPGs. There's an explorer in me that is often more fascinated by the game play mechanics than the actual games. I like to see how all of these games are built. Sadly, there really isn't as much diversity in gameplay in the genre as there could be.
I tried Tabula Rasa during the beta and I thought it had an interesting cover mechanic. Aside from that, it felt like World of Warcraft with guns since I was being sent on quests to find caves and shoot 10 mobs and come back and being rewarded upgraded guns and whatever. So I went back to EverQuest II.
Then I tried Pirates of the Burning Sea. I loved the ship combat in this game, but the economy never seemed to work right. They only had a few markets that were active. They really needed to implement something like buy orders to draw merchants to the outlying areas. The missions were repeated too often, and avatar combat was terrible. I got a Freetrader up to level 30, and then the servers started merging, and my guild started losing half its members. So I threw in the towel and went back to EverQuest II.
Then Age of Conan came out. The advertising promised us: heads will roll! Truth in advertising would have promised us: eyes will roll! The game had a strong intro area for the first twenty levels. That was both its greatest strength and weakness. After killing Saddur with my fifth alt, I never wanted to play it again. The character I took past 20 found himself surrounded by lame World of Warcraft style quests without the World of Warcraft motivator: better loot. Itemization in the game was pointless. I suppose this was deliberate: they wanted PVP to be more based on skill than gear. But it meant the PVE game simply didn't work. And I didn't see any PVP going on. I'm not sure where it was, and didn't feel like looking for it, so I went back to EverQuest II.
Most recently, I tried Warhammer Online. Its not a bad game, but they tried to be too many games. The leveling mechanic makes sense for a World of Warcraft style PVE game, but it simply did not work in an RVR game. People were too spread out across tiers, you couldn't find anyone to play with, and quite frankly, when you did, it was only fun when you were at the tail end of your tier. Once you progressed to the next tier, you were suddenly a weakling again. That's very jarring: the leveling mechanic is supposed to measure your progress, but at each tier transition, it had the opposite effect. I gave up around level 27, shortly after the server merges started happening, and the PQs were still empty and half my scenarios were still being cancelled early due to imbalance. So, guess where I went next?
Yep, back to EverQuest II.
Right now, I have two subscriptions to EverQuest II, one to Warhammer Online, one to World of Wracraft, and I'm still on my first month of Eve Online. That's going to have to change soon.
Some random facts about my site:
This isn't one of the more popular destinations among MMO bloggers; I only tend to average about 30 visitors a day, but about 40% of them are return visitors, so I guess somebody out there actually thinks I have something worthwhile to say.
The first person to post a comment on my site was Kanthalos from MMOre Insight. I had been inspired by an article series on Voyages in Eternity about Damianov's dream settings for MMORPGs. My dream setting was the Doctor Who universe because having all of time and space at your fingertips would open up any kind of story imaginable. Also, I love the iconic enemies in the game like the Daleks and the Cybermen. Neither MMOre Insight nor Voyages in Eternity seem to have been updated in a while, which saddens me, since those were two of the sites I read daily back then, and the principal reason I started doing this.
My most popular article was a writeup on the Obelisk of Ahkzul. Many people had trouble figuring out Kierax when TSO launched.
The other article that receives the most visits from Google is one I did about two boxing software aids. If you have two computers next to each other (including laptops), Multiplicity from Stardock is an amazing tool.
One of my first articles, EverQuest II: A Review of the Races still receives a great deal of attention from Google. In that article, I basically explain the difference between the eighteen races that were in game at that point in time.
I suppose I should add an entry for the nineteenth race, so here it is:
Sarnak: Overgrown, fire breathing lizards with scoliosis. They are the result of the cross breeding between iksar and dragons. How do you get a dragon to make sweet love with an iksar? Well, you have to get them good and drunk. The Sarnak aren't evil in the sadistic sense that Neriak or Freeport citizens are known for. But they are considered to be evil because they have an inherent distrust of all other races. That's mostly because all the other races are always chuckling under their breath when a Sarnak comes wandering by. It's because of their parentage... how can you NOT laugh at that?
So, yeah, anyway, as I was saying:
DING
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