No other game looked like Spellborn

The Chronicles of Spellborn seemed to provide a wish list of what people want in an MMO. You could look cool from day 1; the gear you chose at character creation could be upgraded by slotting in runes to increase their power. You could still find or craft items with more or better slots, but there was never a time when your character would have to look anything but cool as sheets.

Combat was tactical on many levels. You could not access all your abilities whenever you liked; not only were most of them on cooldowns, but you could only choose from the abilities that were showing on a scrolling deck wheel that would shift whenever you used an ability. The abilities themselves were fairly weak alone; but if you built your deck well and arranged the combos in logical ways on the wheel, abilities could build upon each other to become truly devastating.

The art was state of the. Rendered in a uniquely European style, Spellborn looked like no other game. The lore told a story of a shattered world, populated by survivors rescued from the planet just before it went boom by benevolent godlike beings. The shards of the planet still swirl in winds of the Deadspell Storm, and the people live inside caverns carved within them. Voyages between them are only by taking passage on shard ships, which might themselves be attacked by denizens of the Storm as they make their way.

Players want combat mechanics that are more than “Press 1, 2, 3, repeat”? Spellborn had it. Unique world, graphics, and UI? Spellborn had it. Some of the coolest looking gear in any MMO? Nailed.

So, what happened?

Though the Spellborn devs had a long relationship with Frogster to publish the game in Asia and in parts of Europe, they had no American publisher. When they eventually made a handshake agreement with one, they were barred from revealing it for months, while they did some retooling on the game. After months of no news, the publisher was revealed to be Acclaim, a publisher most noted for its free to play games.

The game then went into further hiatus for five more months.

Eventually, in February of 2009, Spellborn went live in the US and the rest of the world. Instead of a standard subscription plan, players needed to by Acclaim’s cash shop currency, and then redeem that for play time. It was fairly complicated, and since people would be spending different amounts to play the game depending on the deals they got for the cash shop currency, it was hard for people to figure out just how much the game cost, and whether or not they were getting a decent deal.

Acclaim promised heavy support for the game, but when it became clear Spellborn was not a hit, such support dried up. In just a few months, rumors arose that the developers, Spellborn N.V., had all left to find other work, and that the game would be moving to a F2P model with an item shop (for a game without a focus on items!) and other such paraphernalia. The game was to be relaunched to begin again as a MMO like most of the others in Acclaim’s stable, but instead, was just set to be free and left alone, patchless, until the decision came to close the game down.

Spellborn Lead Developer El Drijver has posted a complete (and more correct!) timeline on the Acclaim Spellborn forums.

Even aside from Spellborn’s issues with its publisher and the game’s lack of heavy promotion, the game itself may have taken too many chances.

Though soloing was an option in the game, the game itself was fairly hard to play. Having to keep good aim on an enemy while avoiding enemy special attacks (most enemies had a unique ‘tell’ you could use to determine when they were about to unleash a heavy attack) meant it played far more like a third person shooter than an MMO. Slow travel times meant it could take a considerable amount of time to get somewhere new; shard ships ran on their own schedules and were sometimes dangerous to boot. There were no gates, hearthstones or teleports; it was a worldy-world.

Aimed directly for hardcore players, Spellborn had very little to recommend it for casual players, and this was probably its biggest mistake. By basing its combat on an intricate combat mechanic that demanded the player’s full attention, Spellborn shut out the 90% of casual players that are absolutely necessary to populate the world. Without the casual players, even the hardcore players noticed the world was fairly empty. The PvP clique soon moved on to other games; the hardcore players leveled to the end game and then, with nothing left to do, departed; and the few casual players had already gone.

Hundreds of MMOs, it seems, are released every year, but few of them take as many chances and are as filled with new ideas as The Chronicles of Spellborn. Out of all the hundreds of MMOs, it seems, that FAIL every year, I’ll miss Spellborn the most.

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Back in EverQuest, unexpected adds usually meant a group wipe (unless you were specifically doing an AE group). Crowd control or a puller who knew how to split was really important. Modern MMOs ramp down the difficulty quite a lot, and Spinks wonders if specialized crowd control has any sort of place in World of Warcraft, given the tendency to just gather up a room and kill everything at once? And this is why WoW can’t have nice things, like enchanters and bards :)

At Hudson’s Hideout, Rock Hound looks at the two kinds of people who roll up heroes in Champions Online — Conceptionists, who have a backstory and a theme for their hero, and Minmaxists, who just go for the most efficient powers and stats. We used to call these role-players and ROLL-players back in the day…. and this argument has been going on for thirty years.

Jaye from Journeys With is pushing back against the grind. Having to essentially solo for weeks or months upon joining an established game to catch up with max level guildmates has killed many friends’ interest in playing EQ2. With ten more levels coming in February, who could possibly be dedicated enough to go through 89 levels of mostly soloing? It’s an issue for any established game, and I wonder what SOE is planning to help new players bridge the largest level gap of any subscription game. I’m guessing nothing, because there’s one thing that SOE loves more than anything in all its games, and that’s the GRIND. It’s a holy mandate with them.

EQ2′s Game Update 53 that introduced the Shard of Lurrrrv and lots of other coolness to the game has gotten Gestalt Mind’s Rao back in the game. Being able now to pass appearance and quest armor among alts is a nice thing, and the new adventure zone that adjusts to the group level — sweet.

Ogrebears is not so much of a fan, averring that the new WoW-like achievement system is turning everyone into mindless, achievement-hungry zombies who care for nothing more than wracking up pointless accomplishments.

Having trouble getting Age of Conan to look as good for you as it does on their web site? Worry not, Openedge1 is on the case, looking at drivers and settings for two different video cards to see how to best boost AoC’s performance.

And lastly (and only because I have to run to catch a bus!), Andrew of Of Teeth and Claws has journeyed back into the world of Spellborn and pronounced it — AWESOME. Yeah, the game is definitely a feast for the eyes :)

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Wow, can’t believe it’s almost autumn. Summer came so late to New England; cool and rainy through most of it, a couple of hot and humid days, and now the cooler days are back. It’s like living in Seattle.

Played a bit of Champions Online over the weekend. I take a character to level 10, start them in on the Hero Games cage matches, see how well they do and take what I learned to the next character. My most recent character was the Green Reaper, a character with all of Green Lantern’s abilities without the power ring. Custom framework of supernatural + telekinesis, allows for a ranged power builder, ability to make ego weaponry from thought alone, and the ability to toss heavy objects at people — with her mind! Travel power is green fire flight.

This build usually gets me in the top two scorers for a match. Having my main damage power — Ego Weaponry — be a melee attack is a problem. You want to be powerful at ranged in cage matches. You need to be able to cast a hold. You need a travel power that lets you run away — burrowing seems best for that, followed by teleport. DoTs are good for those people. My best cage match character remains Daddy’s Little Girl, my gadgeteer from beta. Heals really help! Swinging was her travel power.

Playing Champions Online and wondering how it compares to City of Heroes? Or vice versa? Scopique has a nice comparison of the two superhero games which gives a decent idea of the differences. I’ll add that City of Heroes has Day Jobs and Mission Architect, while Champions has the excellent Cage Match PvP instances. CO was looking mighty boring before I discovered those.

Saw a tweet from the Spellborn folks last week that implied the F2P version of Spellborn was crazy popular. O rly? Beau of Spouse Aggro says Ya, rly! Looks like new dad Heartless_ is having some fun with it as well.

Both WoW and EQ2 are revamping their innate racial bonuses, and the Verdant Dasypodid at Player vs Developer looks at the reasoning behind the changes, which seems to be at cross purposes. WoW is adding more fluff and less advantage to theirs, while EQ2 aims to give certain race/class combinations a decided advantage over others. I’m just kinda miffed they are taking away the halfling ability to summon pie :(

Spinks continues her mini-symposium on roleplaying in MMOs with a focus on using emotes and fluff items to set a mood. Given how pretty much all her suggestions were commonly implemented in the era of MUDs just shows how much we lost when we moved to games with more of an emphasis on graphics than gameplay.

Syp asks if it’s worth jumping into a MMO after the rush of release day has come and gone? Do late adopters have any fun? Or do they have to catch up to everyone first?

Stargrace at MMOQuests has an excellent guide to EQ2′s new Achievements system. New to EQ2, anyway, since it’s about as blatant a copy of similar systems in WoW and Warhammer as I’ve ever seen. I’m just happy there are still MMOs out there for *non*-Achievers. Ogrebears has the patch notes for the complete list of changes coming for Game Update 53, including the Shard of Lurrrrrv. I am SO HOPING that’s a no combat zone! I’ve been wanting to meet the Goddess of Love, Erollisi Marr, since I spent all those years on her server in EverQuest. I DON’T want to kill her!

Cownose loves Darkfall! He loves the world, loves the big fights, loves the exploration, loves everything about it! So why is he quitting, never to play again?

This is definitely the season for betas. Over the past few years, a game’s beta has taken on an importance way out of proportion to its former status as a way to get some player feedback during development (the pre-2004 model), or a way to stress test the game before launch (the pre-2008 model), to where it is now — a free trial in which the player is not expected to give any feedback on the direction or goals of the game and is more a marketing tool for which players should perhaps expect to pay a token amount. Maybe they should just call it a Gamma or something. Anyway. Syncaine looks at the timing of open betas, asking if companies should time their open betas for the time when no other mindshare-swallowing games are doing theirs? Should MMOs be scheduled like summer blockbuster movies?

Lastly, shout out to Cliffski of Positech Games, an indie developer whose Gratuitous Space Battles lets you create mad space battles between huge fleets. Picture of me horribly failing my first battle in the preview beta for pre-order customers is below.

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Having heard about the EVE Fitting Tool from a helpful commentator, I spent a lot of time last night working some Battle Clinic builds into viable builds for me. VERY happy. Later on, the corps went on an impromptu trip through a wormhole, where we were relentlessly shadowed by the corp (Bones) who had staked it out. They allowed us to take on a Sleeper cell before we left. We got some T3 loot, but since we’d all brought expendable ships (that’s my Exequoror “The Liberator” hovering outside the wormhole), we weren’t up for taking out the second wave, which included a battleship. (Drew at Wizard of Duke Street has a little more about wormholing).

The biggest news in the EVE realm had nothing (or little) to do with the space game. Yesterday, at GDC Europe, EVE developers CCP announced Dust 514, a dirtside FPS for consoles where success on the ground leads to success ij space based planetary and system control.

Not much is known about the title. The teaser video shows standard FPS action on the ground, with two frigates trading shots overhead. I get that Starship Troopers feeling from it, and it’s a good feeling. Darren of Common Sense Gamer doesn’t see any way they can pull off a new MMO in the current generation of consoles. Heartless_ wonders at the connection between Dust 514 and the technology for EVE’s announced “ambulation” mode, where players can walk about on space stations.

With Blizzcon only days away, bloggers have been speculating endlessly about rumors that the next World of Warcraft expansion will bring a complete revamping of the old world. That didn’t go over so well when EverQuest started on that path with the Prophecy of Ro and Depths of Darkhollow expansion, but maybe Blizzard can succeed where SOE failed. Spinks wonders if even a total revamp could get people back into the old zones again, especially if flying mounts and other modern features were brought into the old world. Damion of Zen of Design doubts people will want to revisit zones they were already quite tired of before.

The Cataclysm rumors also suggest that many new previously forbidden (by lore) race and class combinations will get WoW players back in the alts game. Green Armadillo wonders why developers are all so eager to cite lore as reasons for something they didn’t want players doing, but have no problems breaking it at their whim if they change their minds.

Writing about Lord of the Rings Online, Armadillo says:

The problem? This game is set in Middle Earth. I don’t remember Gimli’s axes bursting into flames as he fought the malevolent ice wraiths of Caradhras. (Actually, I don’t remember the malevolent ice wraiths of Caradhras either, maybe Gandalf was busy whining to Aragorn about being forced to go to Moria while the battle raged off camera. Of course, if the game stuck to just foes the Fellowship actually fought during the story, the beastiary would be very repetitive indeed, especially in the context of a game full of “kill 360 of this type of enemy” deeds.)

Naamah at Aionic Thoughts has a new video courtesy of Kotaku about the game’s 1.5 patch, the one that will launch with the game in September and has never been played by Western testers. The developers say there is no grind in Aion? That’s good news. WoW-like gaming has been synonymous with grind for so many years.

And speaking of videos, Werit has been going all Stephen Spielberg lately with Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic MMO which has largely been overshadowed by higher-profile releases. Wanna kill posthuman mutants and zombies and save the scattered fragments of humanity? Fallen Earth might be your game.

A fan of Wizard101, but upset because you can’t get anyone to team up with you for arena dueling? Stingite of The Friendly Necromancer advises sitting down with your friends and finding what it would take to get them into the arena, or why they may be reluctant to go. Seven hour duels would be reason enough for me.

F2P game correspondent Warhammermer has a Dream of Mirror Online AMV to the tune of The Killers’ “Human”. The line, “Are we human, or are we dancer?” refers here to DOMO’s Dancer job. Yes! Dancer is a job in DOMO! Warhammermer also has some news of a movie tie-in within SOE’s Free Realms which left those outside of the US without meatballs.

Anjin at Bullet Points has been spending a bit of time in the F2P version of Dungeons & Dragons Online, and aside from a few crashes, kinda likes how DDO mixes up the standard dungeon crawler with more action.

Spellborn has officially become a Free to Play game, says Acclaim Games’ Community Manager, David “Historian” DeWald:

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.

Is that enough news for you? It’s just gonna keep flooding in as the games we’ve been waiting all year to play start hitting the shelves. So happy hump day, and keep gaming!

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Just got back from Virginia yesterday afternoon (you’ll be seeing some pictures from my trip on my ShutterCal widget to the right in the coming days) and am still catching up on all the blogospheric happenings of the past few days.

Reason enough to show off some 3D images I’ve been making.

A few weeks ago, I got wondering how I could turn game screenshots into three dimensional images. MMORPGs would be a lot more immersive if we could see the game world in the same number of dimensions as we see the real world.

It turned out to be both easier and harder than I thought.

I originally wanted to make stereograms, like for the old View-Masters (and I still want to), but it looked like that would entail a significant effort. That led me to Anaglyphs, the combined red/blue images that you need to view with red/blue glasses.

I found a short tutorial on making anaglyphs in Photoshop, ordered some red/blue glasses, and was off.

1. Bree: The first picture looks down into Bree from the Prancing Pony Inn in Lord of the Rings Online. The 3D effect makes it easy to follow the bumps and dips in the cobblestone road; in particular, there’s a steep bit on the left of the road that wagon drivers likely try and avoid when bringing supplies to the Inn.
2. Cannon: This experimental cannon, found in EQ2′s Moors of Ykesha, hurls people back to the dock area — if they are lucky.
3. Clockwork: One of the roaming clockworks in EQ2′s Moors of Ykesha. The 3D effect is amazing in this shot; not only does the clockwork look real enough to grab, it’s easy to see the depth of the rock shelf to the right, and the distance of the tower on the island to the left.
4. EQ2Bar: This is the bar Stargrace made me for my apartments in Gorowyn.
5. EQ2Camel: A camel standing behind a group of treants in my apartments. I started off with simple indoor scenes where things wouldn’t move, too much.
6. EQ2Clock: I shot this clock scene for my rebuttal to Wolfhead’s First 15 Minutes in EQ2 article. Since the clock and both moons were lined up so nicely, I took another shot for the 3D effect.
7. EQ2Theater: Another shot from my Stargrace-designed apartments. The effect here is amazing; everything looks absolutely solid, if a bit toy-like.
8. EQJunkbeast: The Junk Beast in EverQuest’s Plane of Innovation. The color didn’t come out well in the anaglyph, so I converted it to black and white to enhance the effect. With red/blue glasses on, it’s easy to see the monster is actually hovering above the ground.
9. EQNexus: The main Combine spires in EQ’s Nexus. This used to be the meeting place for the EverQuest community, back when Luclin was new. Now, empty.
10. EQPoJustice: One of the Hammers that guard the portals to the trials in the Plane of Justice.
11. EQSHDwarves: A group of dwarves in Shadow Haven doing what they do best: Drinking. Very nice effect here, but I had to drop to black and white.
12. EVE Online: The next four pictures are all from EVE Online. Since you can’t strafe in EVE, I just rotated the view a little to get the two pictures. I’m convinced. Of all these games, EVE would look the most incredible in 3D.
13. FRMerryVale: Merry Vale from Free Realms. It was too colorful for the 3D effect to work, but it’s better in black and white. Red/Blue anaglyphs leech all the reds from every picture.
14. FRSnowville: Snowville from Free Realms. Anaglyphs LOVE scenes heavy in greens.
15. PrancingPony: The Prancing Pony Inn from Lord of the Rings Online.
16. SBQuarterstone: An inn in Spellborn’s Quarterstone, in the Pit District.
17. SBStatue: Statues from Quarterstone’s Statue District in Chronicles of Spellborn.
18. SBVaultsZigg: A twisty collection of switchbacks leading up the Vaults in Spellborn.
19. W101Car: An auto in my showroom in my house in Wizard 101. It’s hard to take good screenshots in Wizard 101 because your character is always in the picture. In my home, I could place a book case where I wanted to take a picture, stand as close to it as possible, and the camera would place itself in front of both the bookcase and my character. This wasn’t easy to do outside.
20. W101 Krok: Krokotopia seen from Sphinx Island. I cropped out my character. In both this and the Sphinx picture, I waited for the sky to come back to the same position so it would look like I took both pictures at the same time.
21. W101Parlor: The parlor from my Wizard 101 home.
22. W101Sphinx: The Krokosphinx itself. Again, heavily cropped to keep my character out of the picture, and the sky in the same position in both shots was a priority.

I’ve also started on some real-world anaglyphs, but I am having a bit of trouble with those. The real world doesn’t stand still and wait for me.

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The article goes on to say that Spellborn will be relaunched in 2010 as a Free2Play game, funding itself with a cash store that will sell gear and character services. Upon relaunch, Frogster will again operate the European servers.

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Okay, THAT was a day of good discussion, so thanks, Wolfshead :) Why did I feel your “first impressions” article needed rebutting? Well, SOMEONE had to stand up (and thanks to Hudson, who did!). I couldn’t say that stuff about WoW and expect to come away without comment. In grand blogging tradition, Wolfshead now has a rebuttal to my rebuttal :)

Adding fuel to this smoldering fire, Warhammerer does the same first few minutes analysis to SOE’s Vanguard. That company just can’t catch a break these days, even if it had sealed box with the words “WARNING — DO NOT OPEN — LIVE BREAK” stenciled on it.

Planning on playing Aion when it comes out, or have you pre-ordered it and are now allowed to play on the preview weekends? Naamah of Aionic Thoughts has some useful tips which will make your game flow more smoothly. Naamah also has some screenshots of the new lingerie introduced with the latest, 1.5 patch. This is the last major patch before release, if I remember right.

Stingite at Friendly Necromancer shows off the new sword he got from a code in Beckett’s Massive Online Gamer magazine. Pretty swanky, looks like an EQ1 epic…

Hey, did you hear that Sam Raimi of “Evil Dead” fame is making a new movie? About World of Warcraft? Zoso of Killed in a Smiling Accident managed to snag a few pages of the shooting script. Hilarity ensues when the Hunter rolls “need” on everything.

Anjin is concerned that Champions Online won’t encourage solo play, but then corrects himself. Truth is, Champions Online supports solo play the way EQ2 does. You can solo, but you won’t be able to do a certain portion of the quests from the yellow exclamation point dotted quest hubs unless you have a group available.

Yellow exclamation points above the heads of NPCs clustered in quest hubs? Not sounding super-heroish? Green Armadillo is just not a fan of the WoW model at all.

After Saylah of Mystic Worlds has been going on about the multi-boxing lifestyle in World of Warcraft, Spinks chimes in with the goods and bads of duoing through WoW.

Keen continues with his look back to the elder days of MMO gaming with his latest article on the importance of factions in old EverQuest. I remember getting my dark elf shadow knight loved in Rivervale!

And lastly (early meeting today) — as seen on Rock, Paper, Scissors, and from the creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe, a Post-It Note shooter.

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Like an ebbing tide, the weekend slowly recedes, leaving behind the flotsam and jetsam of yet another Monday. Only a few years too late to knock ‘em dead in Mrs. Moran’s 3rd grade English class on similes.

Are the World of Warcraft’s raids too dependent on scripting to be done by unaided humanity? I haven’t played WoW in a few years, but it’s sounding more and more like WoW raids are just a multiplayer, more colorful version of the old “Dragon’s Lair” video game, where you had to move to lit-up squares in a room to defeat monsters. Actually it sounds EXACTLY like it, as Copra found out to his dismay. WoW raiding — an update of a classic 80′s video game for a new generation.

Spinks wonders why people agree to “boost” other people through high level dungeons. I first heard this term from my son, when he would get his Diablo II characters boosted to level 99, and then turn around and boost others (basically, powerleveling). And then he did it in EverQuest II, and in Call of Duty 4. Someone even asked ME to “boost” them through Wizard 101. I don’t think this says anything about the laziness of players, more than just the design of a game that isn’t as much fun played as intended.

Wizard’s Journey has a great post on this weekend’s “Wizard 101 Meet & Greet”, a fantastic opportunity for W101 bloggers and readers to meet up and get on each other’s friend lists. I wasn’t able to attend, but I’ve heard from reliable sources that a fun time was had by all.

Brad McQuaid continues wearing his public hair shirt of taking the piss for other people’s problems leading to the downfall of Sigil in “The All-Star Team“. Sigil hired the best and the brightest, and got a team of MMO superstars all pulling in different directions, claims Brad.

Petter of Don’t Fear the Mutant is taking Final Fantasy XI for a spin, and it’s fun reliving those heady times again, through his adventures. He started off in Windurst, while I started off in Sand Oreo, so I can see why he didn’t stay in the Dunes — he came at them from the wrong side (the low level stuff is on the Oreo side).

Struggling to remain afloat in any form, Chronicles of Spellborn is going Free-to-Play, but with a cash shop. I’m having a tough time figuring out what a game where gear and loot is severely de-emphasized in favor of player skill could offer in a cash shop. Maybe a more standard “press this button until everything is dead” interface. Whatever. Beau of Spouse Aggro looks at several different ways in which Spellborn could relaunch itself as a F2P title.

And finally Gordon of We Fly Spitfires revels in misogyny as he compares MMOs to women. Quick summary: Age of Conan – slut. World of Warcraft – your willing love slave who doesn’t mind if you cheat on her. Extra points for comparing EVE Online to the Soviet Union…

A Monday full of meetings at work! So I’d better be going. See you tomorrow, and keep gaming!

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Yesterday, EverQuest launched its new 51/50 server to rave reviews, and this morning, Wizard 101 launches its latest expansion, Grizzleheim.

So many cool things happening, but who has the time to play them all?

Inspired by the Star Wars: Galaxies news out of SOE’s Fan Faire last weekend, Werit jumped into the game after some time away and found a lot to like with the new battlegrounds, player-created content and factions wars. He even has some video!

Naamah at Aionic Thoughts faces a problem common to a lot of pre-release testers — beta burnout. You like a game and you want to play it, but do you do it all in beta or hold off on serious play until the game goes live? Naamah decides to just jump right in to the beta leveling. Me, I might poke my head in once or twice, but I’m going to wait for the live game.

Lazaretto of Complete Heal has the news from the trenches of EQ’s newest server, Mayong. Want to join a group but still a little rusty from being plopped into a new level 51 character? Spend that time getting used to playing again… it’s worth it!

Big news yesterday was that Spellborn NV has apparently gone bankrupt, and its publishers, Frogster and Acclaim, have decided to turn it into a free to play game by the turn of the year. This comes as no surprise to any Acclaim-followers, since F2P is their strong suit and the Spellborn subscription model always seemed an odd fit for them.

Cities XL has lifted their NDA, and Massively’s Shawn Schuster has a complete run through the current beta. It’s Sims 3 meets Sim City meets Civilization, but is it really an MMO?

Metaplace introduced embeddable virtual worlds yesterday (in a day already bursting with news). Any Metaplace world you can think of, you can put anywhere you could put a YouTube video. Cuppy, Metaplace’s community manager, has an amazing Steampunk world embedded right in the middle of a blog post. Very cool. Raph Koster has more info and the full press release on his blog, as well.

Lots of stuff going on! So much so that I can’t figure out what to play…

Anyway, see you tomorrow, and keep gaming!

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Just like pretty much everyone else, I bought Sims 3 and played it for awhile yesterday. I started off in a full family with two kids, a husband and me, and it didn’t go so well. I restarted living single and had plenty of time to myself, lots of chances to learn and have fun and relax, and never once felt hurried, and in all ways my life was better without a family. But at least I didn’t make my family the cast of Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Yet.

When I say GUILD, you say DRAMA. Guild — DRAMA! Guild — DRAMA! Why do those two words go together so well? There’s this ideal of a guild being a group of good friends who gather together to do things in-game for no better purpose than the pleasure of each other’s company.

Yeah, and I’m about to strap a rocket pack to my back and fly to work. Guilds are started with the best of intentions but always seem to end up mired in drama. Angry Raider’s character Grabthar (by Grabthar’s hammer… by the Sons of Warvan…) lasted a week in his new guild. Everyone was great, friendly … and twelve years old. The guild master demanded he follow his orders and all the little’uns were looking for power leveling. So that didn’t end well.

Spinks tells the sorry tales of two guild hoppers, both of whom decided to switch guilds for guilds further up in the World of Warcraft raid progression. One hopper was treated like dirt by his new guild, the other is only as loyal to the new guild as long as they keep bringing the shinies.

Doesn’t matter what game it is. EverQuest was much, much worse.

Maybe it’s just as well Wizard 101 doesn’t have guilds. It does have, by the way, full voice acting for every quest in the game, so it’s a little surprising to learn that Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the first fully voiced MMO. Um, Wizard 101? And I doubt it was the first.

It’s okay. I figured out how to tell when an E3 game company rep is, um, stretching the truth. Their lips move.

Speaking of Wizard 101, the Evil Theurgist found some lesser evil in the cast picture of W101′s new world, Grizzleheim. Blood? Could we actually be killing stuff in the new expansion? Maybe those glowy swords could do more than fan up a healthy breeze? Could happen. Thomas the Friendly Necromancer serves up some top sekrit promo codes for Wizard 101 that nets you a pet, an end table, gold and an amulet for the cost of free. Cool stuff.

E3 brought news that Square-Enix would be following up their breathtakingly kooky (and grindy) MMO Final Fantasy XI Online with the innovatively-named Final Fantasy XIV Online (rumored for the past four years under the code name “Rapture” and apparently featuring some very new game mechanics if you’ve been following the leaks). The game is promised to be on the PlayStation 3 only, and also the PC. And probably a year or two, the Xbox 360, if this follows the same arc as its predecessor.

Unlike the extremely, super-grindy, group-required gameplay of FFXI, the new game will have content for soloers, groups, and raiders. Whether this is solo content like WoW (who needs groups?) or more like EQ2 (you can solo, but you’ll be wishing you were in a group), who knows?

Beau doesn’t care. He doesn’t even play MMOs. At least not as the games they have become. He plays them as the worlds they want to be — where hanging out and having fun aren’t wasting time, they’re the entire point. Read the comments for some excellent thoughts by Bhagpuss on how MMOs came to their current sorry score-obsessed state.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats has some thoughts about SOE’s new shooter, The Agency, based on its showing at E3. Gotta admit, it’s looking better and better.

Werit takes us on a tour of Warhammer’s new unlockable PvP/adventure zone, The Lands of the Dead. There’s been a lot of speculation on whether this will solve the realm balance issues that exist on most servers, but we won’t know that for awhile. Still — looks quite nice!

Lots of people trying out Vanguard again to check out the new changes. Ardwulf returned to Telon to soak in the ambiance of a vast world waiting to be explored. Openedge1 had a somewhat chillier time with it.

And lastly, Gordon at We Fly Spitfires wonders why people always choose beautiful looking avatars in their games when they could be fat, balding old men with beards? Because, why the hell not?

See you Friday, and keep gaming! Now to just get Sims 3 running and see what my virtual me does when I’m not there to remind her to eat….

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