Yeah, I like TV. I can say that now; for years I refused to watch it. Rotting my mind and all. But having just come off a marathon 30 Rock Season 2 bender, I find I really want to get back to playing MMOs because they are LESS addictive than television. With MMOs, you chat with people, group with them, make friends. With TV, it’s just sitting with the cat and a bowl of popcorn on a lonely couch. So, you know, on the scale of pathetic leisure time activities, MMOs are way above television.

But I still like it! The GOOD shows, I mean. Since you and I like only the good shows, I don’t need to list them, but I think we know Brennan and Booth are gonna get together.

In MMOs, though, well… we’re not in Azeroth anymore. Unless we are.

Earthrise

When a studio thinks critics won’t have anything nice to say about a movie, they tend to not let the critics in to see it early. The same thing happens with MMOs; when a game studio is unsure about their game, they might be reluctant to let the hoi polloi in if they’re just gonna badmouth it all over the forums. That’s what Sente of A Ding World thinks might be going on with Masthead Studios’ Earthrise. Watching the video, I’m reminded a lot of Tabula Rasa, but the clip showing a group of three killing a boar doesn’t make me leap out of my chair to buy it.

Aion

Aion end-game raiders are morons. No, it’s true. I know because I read it on the Internet!

DC Universe Online

It’s been an exciting week for DC Universe Online, SOE’s latest entry in the men with tights genre — this one being the first MMO for the Playstation 3. As the platform leader for the upcoming The Agency and EverQuest Next, there’s a lot riding on these primary-colored shoulders.

And what a week! Entertainment Weekly is openly wondering if DCUO could possibly be the WoW killer everyone’s been looking for. An LA Times article points out that DCUO is one of the ways DC is trying to build enthusiasm for its screen properties, like summer’s Green Lantern. Just Push Start claims SOE has had to rush new servers online to meet the European demand for the game.

Via Tobold comes news of some possible kryptonite in the coffee… Gamespy didn’t give it a stellar first impression. The real test comes a year down the line, but my take is that the game wasn’t meant for PC gamers.

EverQuest 2

Stargrace has the skinny on the features coming with Destiny of Velious. Yeah, it kinda bugs me that the epic scope Velious had in EverQuest is being vastly reduced for EQ2. EQ’s Velious brought a truly vast continent, almost as large as Kunark, with THREE NPC capital cities, with which you could build favor or choose to tear down; the legendary Sleeper’s Tomb, the Dragon Necropolis, the three-dungeons-in-one Temple of Veeshan, the iconic Tower of Frozen Shadow, a huge collection of outdoor contested nameds… it would be nearly impossible to match that.

I have no idea how SOE manage to knock those out year after year.

Well, this one DOES include the end of the world, so that’s something, I guess.

Ferrel of Epic Slant pretty much nails the features Velious SHOULD provide.

Blue Mars

The virtual world that was going to be an upscale shopping and resort destination for those that had tired of the unmitigated chaos of Second Life has fallen on hard times. Tateru Nino examines the reasons why Blue Mars failed to excite virtual worlders, and its perhaps dim prospects in its afterlife on the iPhone.

I dunno. Maybe people don’t really feel the need for a virtual world for shopping? Hard to do online shopping better than Amazon and eBay.

EverQuest

Kaozz is returning to EverQuest! But she won’t be startling Fippy Darkpaw outside the gates of Qeynos; she’s returning to her old home on Firiona Vie, the roleplay server. When SOE makes a roleplay server, it’s more than just a (RP) after the name. All races speak their own language and don’t understand anyone else’s without training. Items that are no drop on other servers can be traded on FV (mostly). There used to be a one character per account limit, but apparently that’s been removed.

If you’re not up for starting completely over on a totally new server, could do worse than to check out FV. You can buy everything there, for a price. A really HIGH price. The Legends server people used to use FV to traffic no drop items between servers, and that really ruined the FV economy.

EVE wasn’t the first MMO to legitimize shady activity, not by a long shot.

Guild Wars 2

Ravious at KTR has written a nice guide to the main features of Guild Wars 2 — “A World of Warcraft Player’s Guide to Guild Wars 2″. I see these kinds of guides all over for various games, and it’s always tuned to the WoW player.

It’s been my limited experience that people who have WoW as their first MMO, and a really huge percentage of those that came to it later, really have two complaints about any non-WoW game. The first, that it’s too similar to WoW. The second, that it’s too different from WoW. The only solution to this paradox? Just play WoW!

I just feel it’s pointless to even try to snare the WoW player to a new MMO. At least, I’ve had no luck getting any of the WoW players in my own family to try anything else.

Vanguard

TAGN pointed out this rare quote from SOE’s John Smedley on the obligations a game developer feels when charging a subscription for a game:

The monthly subscription fee means players can expect a lot of new content from us. And I say a lot — I really mean that. This is something that we feel obligated to the players, because they are paying monthly sub fee…”

Subscription game Vanguard hasn’t had an update since 2009. They still charge a monthly fee.

So… yeah.

Tired now. More later. Just want to point out: No Rift news!

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Soooo…. how about that Massively article? Did it make you mad as hell?

Meh. I had a look at my site analytics today, just to see if people were coming here to read about the so-called controversy and you know? More people came to read my view of Velious through frost-covered glasses. That reinforces what I’ve always known about MMO fans. We just want to get online and PLAY GOOD GAMES.

The article did spark a lot of good discussions about Rift itself and the general desire (or lack of desire) for games that follow the World of Warcraft model vs those that are more original. You’d think those people hungering for originality would have appreciated Star Trek Online more… but oh yes, they did.

2011 will bring a fair amount of non-WoW-like MMOs (Mythos, APB Reloaded, TERA Online) and a few WoW-like MMOs (Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic). (well, maybe not Mythos). Time will tell which people prefer.

On to the blogroll.

A Tale in the Desert

Speaking about MMOs that are, seriously, NOT WOW, there’s A Tale in the Desert. No killing, intensely social, and if your idea gets enough votes, the devs will implement it in the game. Basically, you play an ancient Egyptian just trying to get by with nothing but what you grow or make yourself. And, the game eventually ENDS. Then restarts with new stuff, with everyone starting over at zero with nothing.

Stargrace of MMO Quests was intrigued enough by the idea of MMO devoted to crafting that she took the plunge, and narrates a cool video about her first few hours in the game.

You really can’t get more sandbox than a game set in a desert. Not affiliated with the new indie MMO, A Tail in the Dessert.

(Made with Automotivator)

Rift

You’d think after yesterday’s kerfuffle that opinions on Rift were either “been there, done that” or “OMGBESTGAMEEVER”, but now that the dust has had some time to settle, some saner voices who have been through a good bit of what we’ve been able to play so far are being heard.

Syp of Bio break expands on his comments from the Massively post and shares how the game opens up once you hop off the rails and get to exploring the world. Teljair of Rift Junkies writes about how the game has changed and improved during each beta — more than a marketing tool, Trion Worlds is actually using beta feedback to make massive improvements to the game.

Overstimulation

Zubon at Kill Ten Rats had a great piece about games that just really try too hard to fill every single moment with excitement and fun. Do people really appreciate slack time in games? Back in the EQ days, gameplay was very much terrifying danger mixed with lots of downtime and social stuff. But these days, I’m not just playing a game. I’m playing a game, maybe watching The Daily Show, sometimes talking on the phone or listening to music or chatting with friends on IM or Facebook, and I do things very much on my own schedule.

Aion

Making other Aion players look like the slackers they are, a Chinese player managed to ding 56 in Aion 2.0 when the level cap was just 55. Aside from letting people play with their displayed level, Aion 2.0/2.5 claims to have new anti-bot code that will make the Aion world a place free of spam.

If this is true, they could make more selling this tech to other game studios than they make off Aion itself. Seriously. I played Warhammer for a couple of hours and was continually spammed.

World of Warcraft

Blizzard has applied for a license to operate the Cataclysm expansion in China. If all goes well, Chinese gamers will be able to explore the latest expansion later this year. Expect Blizzard to proudly announce 13 million players at that time….

Hey, like those World of Warcraft battlegrounds? Turns out there’s a patent that covers running tournaments online and storing player information, and WoW is infringing on it. So’s Zynga, makers of fine Facebook games like Farmville and CityVille.

Got to give it to patent troll company “inventor company” Walker Digital, they have guts.

MilMo

Inside Social Games takes a look at the latest Facebook MMO, MilMo. Based on the popular Unity engine, MilMo seems a fairly low ambition MMO, a game without any real goals, levels, or more than the most basic variety of quests.

We’ll keep an eye on this game and see how it improves. Meanwhile, click on the expanded version of the screenshot in the article. Though partially blocked out, you can kind of get the impression that local chat is about as dysfunctional as that in any other kid-focused MMO. Figures.

Lucent Heart

I know you’re as anxious as I am to start playing Lucent Heart. The wait was too much for me; I went searching to see if I could play the game RIGHT NOW. I found the Japanese Lucent Heart site and tried to sign up for an account, but the hiragana captcha foiled me. Typing the hiragana in another program and cut/pasting didn’t work; the ALT-xxx method didn’t work. I guess I’ll just have to wait.

—

Well, there seemed to be a lot of news today, but when I looked back on it, it was mostly about the Rift commentary. Bored now.

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Age of Conan: “Outlook Not So Good”. AoC released its first expansion, “Ride of the Godslayer”, last summer, and that’s pretty much the last I’ve heard of the game. I don’t think the Magic 8 Ball is correct; I think Funcom is content to support their current player base without feeling the need to go F2P. Their massively hyped launch should have helped them recoup their development costs years ago.

Aion: “Concentrate and Ask Again”. November saw Aion publish a massive revamp which added more loot to the game. December brought with it a rebalancing of the world PvP via rifts. Perhaps the Magic 8 Ball’s confusion stemmed from the game’s more Asian market?

Allods Online: “Better Not Tell You Now”. This Russian import stunned the MMO world with its innovative gameplay and Soviet art. It’s famously expensive cash shop instantly dampened the enthusiasm, and it seemed like only a couple of months before the crowds had vanished entirely. We gamers are a fickle folk. What is it, though, that the Magic 8 Ball doesn’t want to tell me? Perhaps a relaunch of the game in the guise of an expansion or a sequel? Only time will tell.

Black Prophecy: “Concentrate and Ask Again”. This space-based dogfighting MMO dropped its beta NDA the same day Rift dropped theirs. And hardly a word was said. Nonetheless, the MMO genre has been waiting for a space dogfighter ever since “Earth & Beyond” went under these many years ago. I expect the game to launch small but experience steady growth as word catches on.

Champions Online: “Very Doubtful”. The Magic 8 Ball clearly feels that going free to play next month won’t be enough to save the struggling superhero MMO. With DC Universe Online launching almost to the day that CO goes F2P, it’s clear there’s going to be an epic battle above the skies of Metropolis and Millennium City. Who will win? The 8 Ball seems to have its money on the SOE offering.

City of Heroes: “Cannot Predict Now”. With DCUO and CO duking it out in January, I have to go along with the Magic 8 Ball. There’s going to be too much mayhem from the two newer titles to have any way to predict how their battle will affect the elder game.

Darkfall: “Cannot Predict Now”. After a stunning six weeks featured on Massively, and Syncaine’s constant recaps, my gut feeling is that Darkfall has found its home with the fantasy PvP sandbox crowd, a niche it dominates. There are lots of fantasy PvP games out there, but few were built to cater to a Western audience. Still, the Magic 8 Ball seems to have its doubts.

DC Universe Online: “It Is Certain”. The 8 Ball is nothing if not consistent. After dissing Champions Online, it’s giving the clear nod to its latest competitor. Will the PlayStation 3 crowd take to the game? DCUO is a game that will live or die on the console.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: “Ask Again Later”. The Magic 8 Ball doesn’t have a strong opinion, and why should it? Since going F2P, Turbine has supported DDO with a steady stream of new content. A reliable money maker like DDO could last for years. However, there are at least two new online games coming based on the D&D license, Neverwinter and Daggerdale. 2011 should be safe for DDO, but come 2012, the story might end a little differently.

Earth Eternal: “Reply Hazy, Try Again”. A spot-on prediction for a troubled game. Earth Eternal joins APB, Gods & Heroes and Mythos as MMOs that either launched and failed, or never launched at all, that have been given new life with new publishers, new developers or both. Last we heard, EE was in the process of finding new hosting and was expected back online any day.

EVE Online: “Don’t Count On It”. Well, we never really expected the “walk around in stations” expansion, Incarna, to ship in 2010, and it didn’t. Magic 8 Ball thinks it won’t ship in 2011 either. Making predictions AGAINST ambulation is an easy win.

EverQuest: “You May Rely On It”. As far as we know, EQ remains the stalwart in SOE’s stable of MMOs, the reliable performer that just keeps chugging along, year after year. The 8 Ball predicts another year of stability, and I see nothing happening this year to prove it wrong. EQ Next? Not happening in 2011.

EverQuest II: “It Is Decidedly So”. The Magic 8 Ball predicts a smashing year for EQ2, but from my vantage point, it’s hard to see that coming true. Maybe EQ2 has found its home with the F2P crowd who are used to spending money on fluff items. The shattered realm still teams with adventure, after all…

Fallen Earth: “Cannot Predict Now”. It’s been a turbulent year for Icarus Studios, and for awhile it looked like they might have downsized too much to keep the game running. Nonetheless, they seem to have found their level and might be positioned such that steady growth could keep them running for a good long time. The 8 Ball can’t call it one way or the other.

Final Fantasy XIV: “It Is Certain”. Um, what are you THINKING, Magic 8 Ball? FFXIV had one of the most disastrous launches of any MMO EVER and heads are STILL rolling! My prediction is that the game is relaunched in Japan only for at least a year before being reintroduced to the West.

Lucent Heart: “It Is Decidedly So”. I dunno why people are always covering games like Tera and consistently ignoring the sleeper import to beat them all, Lucent Heart. The dating sim/MMO is going to definitely be the leader in its niche. Here’s a Chinese spokesmodel in a French maid uniform to explain how Lucent Heart will stop her from being lonely in love:

Pirates of the Burning Sea: “Definitely No”. Flying Lab’s recently made free to play sailing ship MMO hit all the right notes with bloggers when it relaunched earlier this month. Will this be a new start to success? The game definitely has gotten the content and polish it needs to succeed; the problem now is getting the word out. The 8 Ball is pessimistic, but I’m hoping it’s wrong on this one.

Rift: “Outlook Good”. Every year sees a new WoW-like or two; this year we had Allods Online and Alganon. Most make a decent splash and then fall back into the crowd. Rift takes inspiration from WoW, Warhammer, EQ and even Aion, and plans to be a subscription game when the genre is clearly taking a decided turn toward F2P. With history seemingly against it, the Magic 8 Ball nonetheless sees a bright future for the game.

Runes of Magic: “Concentrate and Try Again”. This is my fault. Though I’ve played RoM a bit, I have to admit I haven’t really given it much thought over the past year. With so many new games to try, returning to old ones, even ones I really enjoyed, just hardly ever seems to happen.

Second Life: “Ask Again Later”. Once the darling of the tech set and the subject of endless articles and papers, the world’s premier virtual world has fallen on hard times. Linden Labs is going through a lot of turmoil, and it’s unclear what form the future of SL will take — an uncertainty shared by the Magic 8 Ball.

Star Trek Online: “It Is Decidedly So”. Lauded by some and dismissed as a failure by others, Cryptic’s take on the Star Trek universe started slow but has been steadily building content and polish into its flagship (heh) game. Speculation about a possible transition to F2P sometime in 2011 is likely responsible for the Magic 8 Ball’s sunny prediction.

Warhammer: “Very Doubtful”. Warhammer: Age of Reckoning was going to change the very face of MMO gaming. Instead, it became just more debris beneath the WoW juggernaut. It was the last game that seriously expected to get players in the millions; now it’s content to keep what players remain while EA prepares Star Wars: The Old Republic to take WAR’s place as its primary MMO.

Wizard101: “Outlook Not So Good”. The Magic 8 Ball has dark words for the kid-focused card dueling MMO (and minigame portal). Perhaps it is seeing something I’m not. In the past few months, KingsIsle has released a new expansion (Celestia), pet training and races, gardening, new crafting enhancements and more. It seems to be going strong and there really is no other game like it. We’ll see if the 8 Ball needed another shake or not next year.

World of Warcraft: “It’s Decidedly So”. Of course it is. It’s WoW. Nothing can touch it.

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Exciting MMO news lands in my inbox; I pass it along.

Cryptic is dropping prices in their “C-Store” for the holiday weekend on existing items. Emphasis on existing; they also announce that the Galaxy X/Galaxy Dreadnought class cruiser will soon be available in the shop. This is the three nacelled Enterprise-D variant that Riker commanded in the future segment of The Next Generation’s “All Good Things”, and in particular is the ship that @Longasc has been trying to earn via getting people to sign up. Well, it’ll be in the store soon.

No word on if it will just be a re-skin of the regular Galaxy-class cruiser. If it is, that would be somewhat unfortunate, as the Galaxy-class cruiser is not a rear admiral ship. Since the Galaxy Dreadnought will be the only cruiser that can use the super-damaging dual cannons, a lot of admirals may find themselves downgrading.

Should be a monster in PvP.

STO Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich is saying goodbye to Cryptic to spend more time with his kids. That’s definitely a good reason, but I can’t help wondering if he’d still be leaving if STO had been a wild success.

City of Heroes unleashes its Super Booster Pack V: Mutant. This mini expansion adds Tron-like glowing armor sets to your repertoire, new costume change emotes and Secondary Mutations for your heroes with mutation-based powers. Looks very cool — like EverQuest, City of Heroes never lets its age stand in the way of innovation.

CCP is giving away a Primae, a planetary resources hauler, to every current EVE Online player. These one-of-a-kind ships have special cargo holds for the resources you get from your planetary command centers, and is the fashionable ship of choice for experienced atmo-skimmers.

These irreplaceable ships PROBABLY won’t be targets in Hulkageddon III. Probably.

Runes of Magic announces their patch 3.0.2, which includes a new instance, the “Warnoken Arena”, two-seated mounts, a new pet system and new public events. They are also having a discount on Diamonds (cash shop currency) for the US Independence Day weekend, though in deference to their non-US players, they have taken special care to not mention the holiday.

The iPad/iPhone MMO Pocket Legends announces their lates expansion, Alien Oasis, Part 2. This expansion raises the level cap to 45, adds all new gear, and continues the saga of anthropomorphic bears, cats and hawks as they struggle to survive in a world gone mad.

I need to get back to playing that game….

The folks at Perfect World Entertainment announce double experience for the Independence Day weekend in Perfect World International and Battle of the Immortals.

I can’t help but think a battle between immortals would probably take more than one gaming session. “WHY… WON’T… YOU… DIE!!!!! Oh yeah. Immortal.”

Aion announces free character server transfers and server merges. This isn’t a bad thing; PvP-focused games require very active servers, because if there is nobody to kill, half the fun evaporates.

Aion’s next expansion, Assault on Balaurea, will raise the level cap and continue the epic, world-shattering story of the devas of Atreia as players battle back against the bloodthirsty NPC faction.

And … that’s all the time I have this week. If you’re in the US, enjoy your Independence! If you’re in the UK, enjoy not having to take responsibility for us! If you’re anywhere else, just enjoy!

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Lots of people really do ask me what I DO in EverQuest? Truth be told, most of the time I am either working on my Epic 1.5 (the rogue epic quest is THE WORST of them all), do monster missions for gear and experience, or do the Boomerang! event in Brell’s Rest. It’s a simple arena game; everyone in the party chooses a team — red, blue or gold, like in Star Trek — and each is given boomerangs in their opponent’s two colors. You enter, are transformed into a gnoll of your color, and you run around and fling boomerangs at enemies while dodging boomerangs thrown at you, as well as explosive barrels that drop randomly from the ceiling. You get one point for hitting an enemy; lose one point for being hit twice and lose five points for being blown up by an explosive barrel. After five minutes, the top three get gold tokens (used to buy high level uber weapons), and everyone gets silver tokens appropriate to their point total, used to buy a wide variety of gear and augments.

Anyway. I get e-mails about games, and like a good little consumer, I want to share them with people who manage to get on fewer mailing lists than I do. You can’t stop the signal!

EverQuest 2: From 3PM PDT today to midnight PDT Sunday, you’ll get increased xp in EverQuest 2. That’s nice of them. What really gets me is their little extra note — “Purchase Adventure and AA Experience potions in the Marketplace with Station Cash for even more of a boost. Grind no more, level up quicker!” (Emphasis mine)

First of all, their marketing people don’t know the difference between adjectives and adverbs? I know, I know…. I’ll be damned, though, if this little blurb really makes me wonder. “Grind no more, level up quickly!” I think I have seen that on a hundred F2P games which INTENTIONALLY put in punishing grinds so that players will be driven to their cash shops. What EQ2 is essentially saying is that the stretch from level 80 to level 90 is put there purely to slow you down from getting to the ‘good stuff’ at 90, that there is no reason to take your time leveling. “Spend money and avoid this pointless grind we have put here for no other reason than to annoy you!”

They then go on to ask you to “explore ten more adventure levels with Sentinel’s Fate!” The very same levels they advertised in the previous paragraph as a pointless grind you could spend money to skip.

Granted, players could be leveling through the lower content and not just the final ten levels, but isn’t the POINT of an MMO — a subscription one, anyway — that the journey should be just as fun and rewarding as the end?

Aion: All these extra experience weekends are making me think that something special must be happening. Well, I guess it IS “spring break” in the US, and most of the schools and colleges are giving students the week off. So you can get drunk and party with your closest friends in Florida, or get drunk and party with random abusive strangers in an MMO. Your choice!

Today through Sunday, Aion is having a XXP weekend. “Extra Experience Points”, I guess is what that stands for, but “EEP” doesn’t sound as cool. Maybe it’s “EXTREME EXPERIENCE POINTS!!!!1!!!”, but that’s so 90s. And when did the 90s get so far away? ANYWAY. At least they didn’t say in their e-mail that players could take this opportunity to escape the punishing grind to the good levels.

This is all leads up to their v1.9 patch, which “… adds solo and daily quest content, fine-tunes the leveling experience, and balances class abilities while integrating interface and ease-of-play improvements-and its release is just around the corner!”

Aion is also adding $25 $24.99 character transfers between servers. They fired their old character moving intern and hired a new one at a lower rate, so they were able to knock off that extra cent for you. Free from the tyranny of $25 character transfers, players can now save that extra cent, perhaps buy something nice for the missus! Mother’s Day is coming, you know!

Lord of the Rings Online: Bucking the trend, LotRO doesn’t start their birthday celebrations until Monday. They’re bringing the Spring Festival back for a week. It’s like second breakfast, except this is Second Spring. All the old festival games will be back, the new festival horses which might actually be working this time, etc. Through the month of June, you can also earn tokens for defeating monsters that can be redeemed for extra stuff, and subscribe at the “founders rate” of $9.99/month. It was going to be $10/month, but they dramatically lowered their cost and are passing the savings on to you. Take that extra cent and buy something nice for the kids, they’ll love you for it.

Earth Eternal: The furry anthropomorphic MMO celebrates Earth Day yesterday (sorry) and today with special events. The trees are running wild, and adventurers of every size and shape need to run, slither, fly or teleport to battle to defeat the Rotted Treekin before they turn the future Earth into an arboreal paradise free of intelligent life with axes. It’s a huge GM event! I remember when EQ used to run those….

EE is also adding a new zone, and an option to download the game client so that you won’t need to run it from a browser any more. Are you listening, Free Realms?

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine: The demon hunter/trainer MMO adds a new cinematic plot to their already heavily story-based game. I’m just gonna paste the blurb here, because really, there’s nothing I can say:

Saburo, a would-be famous treasure hunter, is attempting to break free from Snakeman. For some time, Snakeman has been attempting to persuade Saburo into using his finely honed skills in service to Tokyo as a Demon Buster. All of Snakeman’s attempts have been in vain, however; Saburo has been earnestly plotting his escape. In order for Saburo to escape Snakeman’s clutches, he will be asking for your assistance while he tries to escape through the hidden routes under Home III.

Confused? You’ll just have to play to figure out what it all means.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Tired of calling up your family and writing your friends whenever you level in D&D Online? Well, save the stamps and put your cell away, because DDO is offering a new Facebook app that can automatically spread word of your amazing in-game accomplishments to everyone you know. Don’t be surprised if your mom has a cake waiting for you when your epic 32-point drow monk dings 6! It’s important to get the word out!

You can also go skating for fun and profit (theirs) with the return of the Risa Ice Games. You can find the Risa Ice rising (like sunken Ry’leh) from Stormreach Harbor. Compete in games of skill and feats of strength, and don’t forget to let your Facebook friends in on the fun!

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I’ve been playing a bit of Earth Eternal since it went into open-closed beta yesterday. Since I think we’re still unable to actually show the game, here’s a picture of the upcoming stop motion/cgi film, Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Now, I don’t KNOW that Sparkplay’s gonna close down to go to the premiere, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Should kids gamble on the Internet? Evil Theurgists wonders why KingsIsle is encouraging kids to blow their parent’s moolah spinning the virtual wheels of Wizard101′s new slot machine — where you spend 15 (and up) Crowns to win the usual prize of 20 gold. You get 15 twirls a day and the rewards are minuscule so… let’s hope this is one feature that doesn’t make it out of testing.

How long must you play an MMO before you can honestly review it? Tobold thinks 5000 hours should be just about enough to give World of Warcraft a good looking-at. His conclusion? It just might stick around awhile.

Come back in 2014 for Tobold’s take on Champions Online and Fallen Earth :)

And in a similar vein, Anton is wondering if anyone has heard about this new game, “Aion”. Any good?

Dear Anton: Flavor of the month. In a year, they’ll all be playing WoW: Cataclysm and Aion will just be a footnote. Bank on it. Nobody leaves WoW alive.

Think higher level players should (at the very least) be able to speak English well (if on an English server)? Spinks thinks players should have to apply for more powerful characters as they level. And why not? MMOs these days are MUCH more like jobs than games, right?

Now that Cryptic has launched Champions Online to great acclaim, Syp hopes the lessons learned from the Champions launch can ease the way for their next MMO, Star Trek Online. Most importantly, when players complain of the smoke, their might possibly be a fire.

I have to confess to being a total STO newb. Assuming Star Trek Online doesn’t limit ship names to sailing ships of the 17th and 18th centuries, I’ll be captaining the science vessel “Newton” on an archaeological mission to learn more of the Progenitors, the ancient forebears of most humanoid races in the galaxy. Oh, not named after the famed scientist, ISAAC Newton. No, named after the suburb of Boston. Always loved that place.

MMO commentator Petter has a single word for those who buy gold: asshat. It’s going on your permanent record.

Well, I guess that’s enough for this morning. Too much Earth Eternal, not enough writing! I leave you with Dr. Horrible’s Neil Patrick Harris as he sings Batman to death…

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Awwww, over-protective mommy ship takes cute baby alt-ship out for the first time! Yes, I’ve joined the ranks of EVE pilots with two accounts; the lure of EVE’s Power of 2 promotion and the savings in time by having a second account for salvaging, hauling, and extra drones was just too much to ignore.

If you think THAT picture is just too twee, check THIS one out.

So there you have it. Another alt is born.

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Hey, Aion’s out? Already? Wow, how’s it doing? Gold sellers everywhere? Let’s get some economics going. You are spending real money, that you earned, that could go for food or rent or gas on … nothing. NCsoft can always make more gold. They make it by the infinities every day. A resource that has an infinite supply that costs the producer absolutely nothing to produce has NO WORTH. So when you buy gold, you might as well be handing out dollar bills on the street. Anyway, Rer of (Insert Awesome Aion Name) says it a little better. Not only are you pissing away wealth on nothing, you’re ruining the game for everyone else.

Way to go, uber dude.

Stropp has some good ideas to combat gold spam. Simple economics, though, suggest the only real way to combat gold spam is to make NCsoft’s cost to produce more gold non-zero. To, like, make them adhere to the gold standard… So to speak. What if NCsoft had to give a dollar to charity for every thousand gold kinah they added to Aion?

Are you a MMO connoisseur who only plays the BEST, TRIPLE-A titles, like WoW and, um, WoW? Because the other SUB-AAA titles aren’t as good, so you’d be wasting your time on games like Maple Story, Wizard101, Chronicles of Spellborn, et al? Beau Turkey politely asks that you re-think what AAA means with regard to MMOs. Just because it’s a major studio sitting around in executive money chairs doesn’t mean they are the only ones who can make a fun, quality, game.

Gordon of We Fly Spitfires asks how it came to be that raiding is the end-game for MMOs? Why not something else — ANYTHING else? Well, Gordon, it all began with a little game called EverQuest. The EQ devs set their level cap so impossibly high that they never expected many people to ever reach it in the year and a half that they expected the game to run. They had a couple of dragons in the game as impossible challenges. But lots of people DID hit 50, and they found that if they got a hundred of their closest friends together and keep rushing at the dragons that they could eventually kill these beasts. So why is there raiding? Because MMO players INVENTED it. Since then, MMO devs have just been giving players what they ASKED for.

Maybe we should all get together and ask for something else?

If you’ve been stuck on Chaos MUD’s Wolfe Island for the last decade, the zone’s creator has come forth with a walkthrough, so you can finally move on with your life, maybe take a crack at the Telescope Room in Myst :) Seriously, I love reading the stories from the old MUD communities that more than anything else, set the stage for our MMO hobby.

Krystalle at Massively has been playing around in the Eskil Steenberg’s Love MMO’s paid alpha. You’ll remember Love as the game based on procedurally generated content — a world generated by algorithms as opposed to the more usual method of having artists and level developers plan them out. This makes it possible for a single developer to to make an entire world (and is how big-world MMOs like Dawn and Dark&Light intended to make worlds too large to ever be explored). Full featured MMO or glorified tech demo? Check out the videos, or play the game and decide for yourself.

Pete of Dragonchasers has been waxing rhapsodic about Bioware’s forthcoming Dragon Age for awhile, and why not? Looks like a great game, but I personally find it boring to play video games by myself these days. Just having people around makes it more special. Doesn’t mean I won’t play it, though.

Pro tip: Use phrases like “waxing rhapsodic” to confuse your non-English-as-a-first-language friends. It’s fun!

Syp never understood the appeal of sandbox MMOs like EVE Online and Star Wars: Galaxies before, but since he’s been playing Fallen Earth, he’s become a convert. So, I assume we’ll be seeing you in highsec pretty soon? :)

Ramon of Dalayan Diary LIKES grouping in Shards of Dalaya, but dislikes HAVING to group in order to see all the best stuff. Yup. It’s nice to have the choice — but given a choice, people always choose the easiest path. The only way to have a game with a really quality group experience is to make that the best and most obvious choice, alas.

And lastly, the Ultimate Beer Run:

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Aion was my entertainment of choice this weekend. I spent the better part of Friday evening and Saturday playing it. I’ve rejoined MMO comrades from the Casualties of War (COW) guild, first formed as a group of bloggers going into Warhammer Online. The guild has since branched out into a number of other MMOs, including Aion.

Community

Even if you prefer to solo, having a good in-game community is important. This is especially true in PVP oriented games. Being back among the members of COW is fun as always. They’re chatty, extremely helpful and generous. A good guild helps to offset the sometimes “Barren’s chat” atmosphere of newly released or heavily populated games. Your guild is your sanity buffer.

Exploration

I play MMOs largely to exist in fantastical settings ripe with natural phenomenon, myth and magic. Aion is nothing if not beautiful! On land, air and sea, every corner of the world has been detailed with care. Original World of Warcraft was pretty to me. I especially loved the quaint zones like Goldshire, impressive cities like Stormwind and themed zones such as, Booty Bay and Darkshire. It wasn’t until Burning Crusade (BC) that Blizzard added vivid exotic zones like Zangarmarsh, Netherstorm and Terokkar Forest. And while I loved those zones, the abrupt transitions of the BC landscapes seemed awkward. Aion manages to deliver the same variety in zone design but with more fluid and natural transitions. I find myself roaming around new zones to take in the scenery before I begin questing.

Progression

Leveling

I did quite a bit of leveling over the weekend. The “dings” come slower than in a game like WOW. The XP doesn’t flow as quickly and combat takes longer. I haven’t minded the difference so far. If this is the “Asian grind” then it’s fine by me. You don’t get new skills like candy in Aion. The drawn out combat allows you to use your brain – strategy and tactics, to win a fight. You can’t win simply because you got in the first hit. In fact, you can kick a pending-defeat in the teeth by staying composed, thinking ahead and using everything that’s at your disposal, including the terrain. This game is the least rock-paper-scissors I’ve played to date and feels very balanced. You’re not meant to stand toe-to-toe slugging it out until one of you drops. Somewhat similar to Age of Conan, directional movement during combat will increase blocking or damage output. Those directional arrows at your feet have a purpose. *Smile*

I’m doing more quests than grinding which is a compliment to Aion’s PVE content. I must now concede that perhaps, I don’t actually hate quests. Everquest 2 and Asheron’s Call 2 being the exceptions, where I started questing, and how I came to believe that I hate quests. WOW’s quests past level 30 didn’t do much to improve my opinion of quests, which is where I really reverted to grinding and instances to level. In Aion, I’m mostly doing quests, as was the case with Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and Runes of Magic. Aion PVE isn’t perfect but it’s definitely good. If I encounter a quest series that has me running back and forth, I bail once I’ve had enough and move on to something else. At this point there’s been more content in a zone than I need.

Group Content

I did my first group quests with COW this weekend. It was an experience not to be missed. Dealing with the Black Claw Tribe is the first content that really requires a group. It’s an outdoor zone with elites, patrols and treacherous named-bosses roaming the area. Just getting to the NPC Quest Hub can be a death march the first couple of times. The previous content doesn’t prepare you for a zone of tightly packed mobs, with strong social aggro and a long chase leash.

The first time I tried to reach the area I almost died. I was totally unprepared for how densely packed the mobs were and came running in with a train on my butt. It’s amazing how many mobs you can aggro trying to run just a few yards from the safety of the Altgard Fortress. It’s not a zone you can do at the appropriate level and solo.

I have to admit that I liked the heightened sense of danger you don’t typically experience outside of a PVP setting. Black Claw has named mobs roaming around that can and WILL wipe a whole group if you don’t burn them down before a patrol comes along, mobs re-spawn nearby or someone moves around too much and pulls another pack. People don’t like dying in Aion. I certainly don’t like dying. I was proud of my 14 levels with no deaths status. I didn’t want the XP debt. I didn’t want to pay to have the death de-buff removed which get more expensive as you level. Besides, I usually have a nice stash of DP points accumulated for my special skills which you lose when you die. Doing the quests with the COW group was a piece of cake. There was only once occasion when things got out of hand and a few of us died – oh wait, we wiped. *Smile*

Drama and Mayhem

Late Saturday evening, I was sneaking around Black Claw, trying to turn in a couple of quests. I noticed someone in trouble and healed them. He invited me to group, asking if I could just escort him up the road a bit. Sure, no problem. On the way he started attacking random lone mobs and was shocked at how hard they hit. I told him that most of the mobs in the area were elite and to stay as close to the path as possible. Even that doesn’t give you a free run through the zone but at least the mobs near the path aren’t elites. On our way, we ran into a patrol whose route intersects the path. It wasn’t a piece of cake but we successfully dispatched them. I guess he got over confident. He started zigzagging the area killing mobs for a different quest. We were doing okay so I didn’t complain. The coin and loot was dropping at a nice pace so what’s to complain to about? Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, we had our Leroy Jenkins moment…

It happened so quickly but felt like slow motion. I saw the Spellcaster biotch and her pet approaching (Elite mob pair). I started backing up while trying to type, “DO NOT attack her. Run!” But it was too late. Johnny Come Lately Gladiator ran in for the kill. Nooooooooooooo! I knew this was going to hurt. He was taking damage like stomped tomato. I de-buffed the Spellcaster with a couple of hits then start healing Johnny, which caused the pet to attack me. All I could spare for myself was a heal-over-time. Johnny was going down fast. I knew that if he went down, there was nothing between me and face full of dirt, so I kept healing. I drank a health potion and popped my BP shield (last-ditch-hail-Mary, on a loss ass regeneration that is based on building DP points that clear if you die or log out) skill, to soak up some damage while hoping to survive. “Stay alive! No matter what occurs, I will heal you!” *Snicker*

Other Players are Helpful

Another player noticed we were in trouble and joined the fray. I buffed the newcomer, applied more de-buffs the hell-raising Spellcaster and kept healing. A patrol arrived. Oh lord, we’re gonna die. Two more players rushed in to help. By this time my fairy sized character couldn’t see shit. Body blows and magic – BAM, kick, thrust, fire, smoke and block animations were flying every which way. They kept fighting. I kept healing. And we managed to survive. When the last mob feel we looted them quickly and scattered like rats. I jumped off a nearby hill and glided to safety. Immediately after my Gladiator friend whispered, “Damn, I guess BC is serious business!” I fervently agreed and got the hell out of the zone.

Our little escapade capped my Saturday evening in the game. I’d had all the excitement I could take for one session. I flew back to the capital city and began crafting myself into poverty, but that’s a tale for another day.

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I work not half a mile from the house where Samuel Clemens wrote that book, and the book is my “bus book” I read on the way to and from work, and when I saw the lines about dragons and raids, well….

Anyway, lots of people are still waiting in queues in Aion. I think enough has been said about that, and I don’t ding NCsoft for going easy on the servers to start off. (Rer has some ideas on what to tell friends who might be reluctant to try Aion because of queues and other things). Nothing worse than making a million servers and then closing half of them in a couple of months after people go back to WoW. Because you KNOW they will. In the MMO space, WoW is like this huge dark star in the middle of the system. You can travel to another planet for a visit, but unless you nail your feet to the ground, that dark WoW star’s gonna pull you back.

Seems only natural to want to work there. After all, if they already have your soul, might as well make them pay for the privilege. That’s what Ixobelle thought, fresh back from Japan, as he drove to Blizzard headquarters in Irvine, California, with $500 worth of full color, 27 page booklets outlining his painstakingly designed raid dungeon, the Castle of Baron von Lupus. If that doesn’t sound like a natural fit for the new Worgen PC race, what does? Not knowing any Blizzard employees well enough to get through the front gate, he set up a table and sign across the street, hoping for a response. Did it pay off? You’ll have to read the post to find out.

Brad McQuaid writes about Vanguard’s Size Problem. As in, the world is so big, vast, tremendous, huge, etc that unless you stick close to the cities, you will only rarely see another person. Though with all the methods of travel available, 90% of Telon is just there to keep the quest hubs separated. Brad says this vast expanse was a pushback against EverQuest’s omnipresent crowding that had people bumping into one another at every turn. But overcrowding is better than the alternative….

Brad says people will group if there’s enough people in the area with which to do the thing. Thallian insists the reason people don’t group (in WoW) is because it’s not FUN enough. He goes on to give a lot of suggestions about how to make dungeons and other encounters more fun, most of which were done eons ago in EverQuest.

SOE’s working on a new EverQuest, EverQuest Next. They could do far worse than to go back to basics and try to capture what made EQ special for its time. EQ has changed so much now that it’s a different game, but back then…. and as someone who last year started over from scratch, I can avow that EQ still has that same magic, if you’re doing it with a group of friends. EQ nostalgia must be going around, because Rao has got it as bad as I do. I don’t see either of us jumping back into the game, though.

Werit reports that you’ll be able to level up entirely via PvP in Cryptic’s upcoming Star Trek Online, which, I hope, will have a longer shelf life than Champions Online apparently had (I kid, I’m sure it’s doing amazingly). Well, according to XFire, Champions looks like it has already peaked. But I don’t trust those numbers. For one thing, we KNOW the Aion numbers are inflated because so many people are never logging off.

Melmoth and Zoso of Killed in a Smiling Accident have just gotten word that many other MMO companies are planning their own versions of WoW’s Cataclysm. My favorite: Darkfall’s UBACLASYM! It’s IMPACTED!

Openedge1 takes the pulse of a as-yet un-Cataclysmed Age of Conan to see if it will merely last the winter or if it has a long future ahead of it.

And lastly, F2P impresario Warhammermer writes about Ran Online, a “beat em up MMORPG set in a high school/secondary school“.

I don’t know why that reminds me of Pirate Baby’s Cabana, but it does.

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—

Leave it to the creative player-base to find a way around the 3-hour queues on the high population servers. Some have decided to stretch the “Personal Shop” feature that allows you to sell items while unattended, into a means of keeping their characters online 24×7. I mean – seriously, all I could do was laugh my ass off when I logged into the game and saw the sea of players who are mostly just AFK, setup as vendors. I felt like I was in the market district of some turn of the century ghetto. Mind you, somewhere in that mass of “For Sale” slogans and messages are quest NPCs and people that really have things to sell. Can anyone say, “Where’s Waldo?”

I can’t complain or blame them really. If you’re on a server in this situation but don’t want to leave your friends or legion behind, I suppose it’s every gamer for herself. Supposedly NCSoft is going to limit the duration of the inactivity of being in the “Personal Shop” mode to 24 hours, after that if you’re AFK you’ll be disconnected. If I had the time I’d check into how these shops play out in Korea. They are rather painful on the eyes even when people aren’t using them for queue avoidance. I like the idea of the shops but a few features like the ability for me to turn off seeing the signs/messages would be a good improvement. I’d also suggest that the AFK-timeout on them be somewhere between 2 to 4 hours, versus 24 hours.

And no, you can’t just tell people to leave high pop servers if they don’t want queues. Server and race access is very touch and go – minute to minute, making it impossible to migrate as a group. Our legion is now in limbo with some members sitting on the high population server progressing characters. While others reverted to the secondary choice so they could at least start playing. When we tried joining them on the secondary server, which was at least low population last night with no queues, we found that while low population, the server wasn’t accepting more players for our faction. Goodness grief.

I only have this week to play much Aion. In a couple of weeks I’ll be away on business for 12 days and then starting the next writing workshop. It’s a tad bit annoying having to deal with this in my window of availability. I’ve decided to be a bad girl. I’ve succumb to using the unattended vendor trick to log into the game late in the afternoon, so that I can actually play when I get off work. It’s a comically sad situation but when in Rome…

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