We’re way behind on our latest project at work, so I’ spent most of Friday working. I did take a break, though, to log on and participate in the final Beta 3 invasion event this afternoon. I’d spent all night (until 4:30AM) leveling my cleric from 12 to 20, and though I didn’t get a chance to visit the Iron Tombs, I did want to help keep Freemarch free. I’d leveled from 16 to 18 in a raid group at one of Thursday’s invasions. That also earned me nearly enough planar currency to get some nice epic items. I logged on, joined in, and earned enough to get some “purple” leggings. Good stuff.

While waiting for the servers to get turned off, I ported over to the Guardian lands and tried to invade the scholar’s grove. Those places are MADE for PvP — as you near an enemy stronghold, the familiar rift/public quest panel gets added to your quest display, and you get a nice list of goals that need to be met in order to capture the area. First, kill the guards. Then destroy the wardstone. All the while fending off the enemy players, who are being summoned to the area by broadcast warnings.

I could post a lot more about Rift — lots of people are. It’s all a reminder of the similar enthusiasm around Warhammer and Age of Conan etc, where the betas were incredibly fun and everyone was stoked. When the games went live, the laid back beta fun turned into laser-sharp focused achievements and min-maxing.

Will this happen to Rift? Of course it will.

Anyway, let’s see what’s on the collective blog-consciousness, this start of a new year.

Ex-subscription MMOs

2010 was a year that saw a lot of new acceptance for the “cash shop” model. Previously known as “free to play”, I’m really very tired of cheapening of the word “free”. There ARE free to play games where the majority of players never pay a cent in any way, but it’s hard to build a business plan on that.

As Keen puts it:

…the bottom line is that AAA games aren’t being released as F2P — that’s how they retire or reinvent themselves as a plan B.

That probably depends upon Keen’s definition of “AAA game”, which I suspect means “game that charges a monthly subscription”. I doubt the makers of Tera or, say, Lucent Heart, consider their games anything less than AAA, despite being released on the cash shop model. Keen might also extend his definition to exclude Asian imports… and then that runs right into Allods Online, the Russian MMO that mishandled its cash shop to the anger and disappointment of its many fans.

Moving on, Muckbeast points to a newly cash shop converted MMO, Lord of the Rings Online:

I think it was a wise move to do it before it seemed desperate. All available information pointed to LOTRO doing pretty well with subs, but Turbine must have been inspired by the success they had with their own game, DDO, and went for it. Doing it before it smells desperate is smart.

Star Trek Online

I don’t care what some people might say — I had a hell of a lot of fun with Star Trek Online in its first year. If I don’t play right now, it’s only because there’s so many games out right now that I simply don’t have time to spend on a game where I’m max level on one character and near max on another.

Sente of A Ding World looks back at his career in STO’s Federation; the ships, the missions, the crafting and the player-generated content, and pretty much likes what he sees.

EVE Online

Grats to Stargrace of Nomadic Gamer, who finally achieved one of her long time goals in EVE Online by flying the pseudo-capital mining control ship, the Orca. Is this the only ship with a hangar that can dock at stations? Anyway, grats!

EVE Online is still giving me the hard sell with its latest campaign to bring me back for five days.

Tipa Pinneau,

Five free days of game time and the free CONCORD Echelon are almost gone. Reactivate before January 3rd and get:

• Five Free Days of EVE Online
• The CONCORD Echelon, a frigate-class codebreaker ship
• Thousands or even Millions of Skill Points that are waiting for you as a result of the recent Learning skills change

As an added bonus, when you reactivate, you can get 60 Days of EVE Online for only 19.95.

I had my mouse finger on the link, ready to resub. I probably would have, if I remembered the trick to docking my borrowed battleship in my corp’s hangar so I could jump clone back to Empire space, leave the corp, and just go back to making stuff and playing the market. Why I thought my gameplay style (updating spreadsheets and spending only a few minutes each day online) was at all compatible with a nullsec corp, I’ll never know.

Rift

Via Pete Smith, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat actually called “Rift” a WoW-killer… Thankfully, the Trion guys didn’t take the bait.

VB: What is your marketing message these days about your game being the “WOW killer”?

DR: Well, to be clear, no one in Trion has ever said that, and I don’t think anybody in Trion ever will. If you look at the lineage of great MMOs, starting with Ultima Online, you see generational improvements. Ultima Online was the first commercial success in the MMO business, but it was two-dimensional and weighted toward players fighting other players. That wasn’t much fun for the new players. EverQuest came along with 3D animation and players fighting against the environment. It was a real commercial success and it was prettier. Still, it had its bugs. World of WarCraft came along in 2004. It was an improvement on what came before and it was very polished. Within that game, you could have some great solo experiences. Other games have tried to emulate it.

WoW-killer. When I hear a game labeled a WoW-killer, I only expect the worse from then on.

While not actually planned in the game, as far as I know, Rift Junkies has a video some player made of some potential PvP “souls” for each of the four callings. While there are certainly instanced battlegrounds in the game (as many PvPs in Meridian kept reminding me), there is also going to be a strong world PvP component — and I just can’t see giving invaders access to tools that defenders (in that case) would not have.

Chris of Level Capped wonders just how sustainable the “rifts”/public quest model will be once the game goes live. Everyone looks back to Warhammer’s public quests, which were fun and community building in beta, but turned out to be largely abandoned soon after the game went live.

Arkenor of Ark’s Ark has been posting a blow-by-blow play through of the beta from the perspective of a dwarf on the Mathosian front lines. Great stuff if, somehow, you haven’t got your fill of the game yet :)

Stargate Worlds

Via Massively, an interview with Cheyenne Mountain’s Jim Brown, who talks a bit about the game and the company and has some words of hope for those who’d like to adventure in the Stargate universe. Have to admit that it’s the perfect backstory for an MMO. Through every gate is a new world…

Tabula Rasa

A new year puts everyone in a nostalgic mood, and we’re back with Sente again as he waxes nostalgic in a gallery sharing his best time with Richard Garriott‘s follow-up to his legendary Ultima Online:

I miss this game… or at least I miss it where it was at some stage after the crafting became somewhat decent and before they screwed up the user interface. Of course I do choose to not think so much about that the game did not have any alternate leveling paths as in entirely different zones and that it was really bad at handling disconnects when you were in the middle of a mission or even wore running some missions in an instanced area.

Well, maybe it’s best left in the past after all. Tabula Rasa probably would still be around today if it had launched on the cash shop model.

Garriott is now a firm believer in the cash shop genre, by the way, having bent his considerable MMO and RPG making expertise toward Facebook games — Port Casino Poker (previously Sweet Ass Poker) and its innovative follow-up, Port Casino Blackjack.

I don’t really have anything useful to say about the guy whose games once kept me glued to my Atari 800 for hours and days on end. But I’d like to embed the video from his website.

“Pioneering game developer, explorer, adventurer, award-winning entrepreneur, and global ambassador for space travel privatization.” Now making boring ass Facebook games. And I LIKE Facebook games!

Core Blaze

Via Big Download comes word of Core Blaze, a MMO that uses the Unreal 3 engine along with a detailed physics engine to make a lifelike world built on Eastern myth blahblahblah. That isn’t the interesting part. Here’s the interesting part:

“Moreover, numerous in-game dynamics such as geography, weapon alignment while fighting, team compatibility and the character’s own element will contribute to player’s overall development in the game.”

Well, people have been asking for a fantasy FPS for some time… but I’m not sure Core Blaze is it. Looks to be treading ground Vindictus has already passed.

Finding Neverland Online

I’ve just started following Viiral of Epic-Hero.com. Viiral’s blog showcases the latest in Asian MMOs; pretty cool stuff. You can find the latest and greatest about new games such as Tera there. His latest post brings us “Finding Neverland Online”, a game which doesn’t look to have fallen far from the DOMO/Florensia tree as far as graphics and UI go.

I take it all back. This no eyes girl gives me the creeps.

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World of Warcraft’s forthcoming Cataclysm expansion (1 week away!!!!) is still setting fire to the blogroll today. Hey, if all a MMO has to do these days to generate some buzz is destroy the world, well, I have a couple candidates who could use some devastation.

I logged on to Vanguard yesterday evening to check on how my characters had fared in the big colossal server merge last July, and was shocked to find that whenever it was I last logged into the game, there had been no patches since. For a game that has had zero developer support in eleven months, the community there still seems vibrant and positive. You just can’t kill a good community.

You know? Forget EQ Next. EverQuest doesn’t need another reboot. EverQuest players are never going to jump ship to a completely new game, anyway. Why not VANGUARD Next? Come on, let’s start a petition or something.

Crunchy hot blog stuff after the break.

The Armadillo that is of a Greenish Hue wonders if maybe he didn’t need to twink his Cataclysm alt in quite as much heirloom gear, given how unchallenging and railsy the new content turned out to be. It’s telling that he’s already thinking about the next expansion AFTER Cataclysm.

Pete of Dragon Chasers flits five years into the future with a glimpse at how Blizzard will make World of Warcraft even easier. Better get your time machine checked, Pete. That wasn’t years, that was MONTHS.

Spinks was stunned to realize that there’s actually a New Star Trek vs Old Star Trek vibe going on in the Shattering — sure, the 1-60 lands may have a new story, but to the NPCs in the Burning Crusade, imminent destruction by Illidan and the Burning Leagion still threaten, and Northrend still groans under the weight of Arthas’ treachery.

Frogster announced a partnership with Chinese MMO giant Shanda Games to bring a new F2P, item-shop funded game designed for Western audiences to North America and most of Europe in 2012. Since the world will have ended by then, I probably don’t need to point out that they have previously partnered with a Chinese MMO company to bring a F2P, item-shop funded game designed for Western audiences to North America and most of Europe a couple years ago — Runes of Magic.

So, well, now there’s going to be a new one. The game will be developed with the cross-platform Gamebryo engine, which offers the possibility of a console port at some point.

Via Massively, we’ve learned that Flying Lab’s Pirates of the Burning Sea has gone Free-to-Play. This is a game that needs to be kept running, for diversity if nothing else. Pirate-themed MMOs have not exactly set the ocean on fire.

Please, give me a moment. I just found out Kaozz hates me. :( Or am I just a snob?

Anjin of Bullet Points finally found his true online love — crafting, via EQ2X, the F2P version of EverQuest II. Someone get him into Star Wars Galaxies, STAT!

It’s official, Massively will absolutely print any news about fantasy softporn MMO Tera they can dig up. Their latest windfall? Loading screens from the Korean version of the game. Someone paste “Sekrit TERA pics” to the front of a Victoria’s Secret catalog and drop it in the mail to the good folks at Massively, would ya?

Lastly, the brave Melmoth of Killed in a Smiling Accident uncovers the hidden perils of Lord of the Ring Online’s new “assist” feature.

See ya tomorrow, and enjoy yourself in whichever realm you roam!

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Bioware announces their new downloadable content for their Dragon Age RPG, “The Darkspawn Chronicles“. Meant as an alternate story — one where your character from Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening dies during the Grey Warden initiation — here you command the forces of the Darkspawn against the remnants of the forces of Light, led by the man who wouldn’t be king, Alistair.

Complete the module, unlock an item in the main games. And hey, you can buy some replica swords with which to terrorize your friends, family and co-workers. THAT won’t get you arrested. Perfect for slaying any stray Darkspawn you happen to meet on the bus.

Jolt Online announces a new toolbar for their Legends of Zork browser game. The toolbar will let you keep track of your character when you aren’t playing the game, but are in your browser (IE and FF only, folks. Sorry, Safari and Chrome users) where… you could just load the game up if you wanted to see this information. I wondered idly on Twitter if this apparently useless add-on had some nefarious purpose. And I got a reply!

@JoltOnline went on to explain:

We get happier players, and happier players are more likely to keep playing our game (and buying stuff). It’s that simple :P

If you’re a Legends of Zork player, and want to install this toolbar, well, Jolt will give you 60 extra action points per character on your account. My gameplay these days is pretty much limited to seeing how my Accountant sidekick is doing with my stash.

I found out that there was ALSO a toolbar for XFire that can detect you playing browser games, but it only works in IE, so sorry everyone who prefers another browser. It also optionally loads plugins, like music players and stuff, which you likely don’t need. I use Chrome, so toolbar authors hate me. Or something.

Swords and ships MMO Florensia wants us to know about all their new and fancy outfits. Outfits are nice, but I always liked the sea game better than the rather standard land game.

I doubt I need to mention EverQuest II’s new $25 mounts. The uproar has been amazing, especially since Blizzard’s own quarter Benjamin horsey of last month was hailed by millions as manna from heaven. Fools and their money are soon parted and all that. Can’t use the cash cats in most dungeons and on most raids. I wonder if they can be used in the battlegrounds? Anyway, if you have a fin and a couple sawbucks to spare, here’s a place to spend it.

I think everyone should only refer to money with slang. I’ll go first.

KingsIsle uncovers another shadowy figure from their forthcoming Wizard101 expansion, Celestia. The huge crab, dressed in shell armor and carrying a wicked polearm, looks menacing enough. If Celestia continues the trend of new Wizard101 worlds, we’ll have to kill approximately a million of these critters at half an hour per fight.

Dragonspyre is SO TEDIOUS.

Anyway, that’s all the barely relevant stuff from this last week. If you’re a game developer and want to send me press releases, please do! I love getting mail!

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I was a little surprised to see that my character from Florensia’s open beta last year was still around, though naturally I’d entirely forgotten how to play her.

To get back up to speed, I put my Saint (healer) aside and started a new character, an Explorer (ranged dps specializing in guns). The very detailed tutorial took me through setting skills, inventory management, ship construction and combat, and I was just about to set out on my new life as an Explorer when I read in chat that people were desperate for Saints in their higher-level groups.

So I went back to Tipa and went my merry way… killing ten (strong dodos, weak fungi, wild boars, devil’s scarecrows, etc). Now as back last year, I was struck by just how similar quests and combat were to Dream of Mirror Online. I finished up my quests in the area (leveling from 7 to 9) and headed back to town, because you can be an adventurer in ANY game. I wanted to be a pirate.

The port master of Roxbury took great pains to inform me that pirates aren’t bad people — in fact, most of them consider themselves “gentleman pirates” who would never harm an honest sailor.

Ah, but some have sailed into a more troubled sea — and them — THEM — you must destroy.

Ten of this sort, a dozen of that, and collect banners from these and those if you could, please!

Ships — which you build, crew and outfit, more or less like you do in Pirates of the Burning Sea — come in several types which are roughly analogous to adventuring classes — you have the tanks, the rammers (mine), the gunners (but no healers, unless I missed it). Sailing the seas is a matter of adjusting your sails and course for the best wind, tacking as necessary to ensure you have the upper hand when meeting the enemy. You want to be, as much as possible, out of their firing arc while they stay in yours.

As a land-based MMO, Florensia travels a well-trodden road. There’s little there to set it apart from dozens of similar Asian imports. On the sea, though, is where Florensia shines. The sailing mini-game is fun and strategic, and as far as I have seen, doesn’t require you to ever set foot on land. The game even goes so far as to put floating save points and merchants out in the open sea, and that would be my recommendation: Dabble in the land game, but head as soon as you can for the deep water. You’ll find a sea game far more approachable than PotBS’ slowness.

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Yup, back in Florensia for a second try at it. Because, hey, be a pirate on the sea and an adventurer on the land, build your own ship, hire a (NPC) crew, two separate career paths, and it costs nuttin’. The cash shop only has some potions… I dunno how they make money in this game. The general chat is about what you’d expect, though.

Big news today was that ex-EverQuest and Vanguard helmer Brad McQuaid was ending his self-imposed exile of idyllic days spent racing cars and playing games to jump back into the spotlight with his very own blog. Or did he? Genda believes the whole thing is a hoax, someone (possibly drummer Keith Sharward) just having a bit of fun. The actual Brad McQuaid doesn’t seem to have taken the steps of building up his LinkedIn profile in awhile, anyway.

And would he really have started off a blog by writing to all the folks who lost their jobs and perhaps careers that he’d been wiling away the past three years living an idyllic life of leisure? I think not.

So use your own judgment, there. But I wouldn’t go gushing to “Brad” about how much you liked/hated EverQuest/Vanguard *just* yet.

With EQ2′s update 52 coming today and bringing loads and loads of goodies, and the recent absolutely cheap price Steam charged for the full game — everything — for $20, there’s been lots of interest lately in EverQuest’s sequel.

Ogrebears is betting that Velious will bring another ten levels with it, which would bring the total to 90 — for a new record among the WoW-likes. He likes the idea, I don’t, but I guess if you don’t flush everyone’s current gear and spells down the toilet every couple of years, what are people going to strive for? Me, I’m off that particular treadmill. I might level a char or two to 90, if that’s what happens, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend another hundred nights sitting in this chair doing the same damned thing over and over again just because some yokel in San Diego plinked a counter from 8 to 9. Life is too short.

Angry Raider ignores the cries of the so-called hardcore denouncing the dumbing down of EQ2 with the latest update. Spell ranks — simplified. Research assistants who will get you the spells you need for nothing. And so on. Ogre and Angry have a point. If you’re gonna toss 90 levels in the face of a new player, with the uncomfortable truth that they won’t be seeing a group for the first fifty or sixty levels unless they brought it with them, you better make sure you coddle them until they get where the people are.

WoW learned that lesson.

I’m just being a contrarian here, I know, but I DON’T think pumping levels up all the time is the answer. That may make the grind-loving achievers happy, but it just turns me off. Someone commented today that the base stats for a raider in EQ these days is level 85 and about 3000 AAs. That’s madness. That’s actually making it impossible to start the game new.

Somehow, WoW has managed to both keep pumping up the requirements and yet keep getting people. Saylah writes about a cousin that wanted to try “Worldcraft” because (in unintended irony) she liked Free Realms and wanted to play something LIKE Free Realms, but more serious, like they talked about at work.

The Evil Theurgist’s Wizard 101 account was hacked recently. I hope it’s resolved quickly. He says hacked, but in almost every case I came across when I was an EverQuest guide, it turned out that the victim had given their account information to someone they trusted. Or they had shared it with their guild because everyone did. I don’t know if this was the case with E.T., but just a word to the wise: your hacker is usually someone you know.

And we leave you now with Aggro Me’s “Teen Vogue Confidential: Your Most Embarrassing Gaming Moments (plus fifty rad fashion tips)”.

Sleep well, or stay awake — it’s a free country — but keep gaming!

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Last year at this time, I’d just found the absolutely most perfect EQ2 guild — they were great raiders, loved grouping, and were fantastic people besides. With Clan of Shadows, I managed to do every flagging raid for Ruins of Kunark and was ready to step in and do my best to help the guild as they conquered Veeshan’s Peak. It wasn’t to be; I didn’t make the full membership vote. It wasn’t even close. That disappointment, along with other things to fill my evenings, eventually led to the end of raiding. Without raiding, though, I didn’t have much incentive to log in anymore. I tried to make things work with another guild, Delusions of Grandeur, but it just wasn’t CoS. I guess if I couldn’t make it in CoS, I didn’t want to settle for a lesser guild.

I started poking around back on EverQuest. I really missed my characters there. Not raiding, so much, but the friends, community and camaraderie that makes EQ unique. A lot of people commented that they’d love to play through EQ again, if they didn’t have to do it alone. So I thought we might do together what we’d never do alone, and along with ten or so fellow former EQ players, started Nostalgia the Guild on the Luclin server. NtG peaked in mid-summer when we got to dragon killing level and put the hurt on two of the three bosses of the original EQ, Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox. (We never killed the third, Phinegal Atropos, as a guild). SOE’s summer Living Legacy program had the unexpected side effect of boosting the power of our armor and weapons to raid levels, and a lot of things became possible with very few people. Although fairly diminished, NtG still meets Fridays to explore Old Norrath.

Stargrace took the Nostalgia idea and brought it forward 500 years to the devastated Norrath of EverQuest II. I eventually transferred half my characters from Befallen to Najena to join the guild there. I’m getting the urge to raid and group again, so I may be moving some of them back to Befallen… the loneliness of a server I have no history with dooms me to pickup groups with players I have never met and will never meet again. Nostalgia EQ2′s two active members aren’t enough to build a group or a raid… so there’s not much to do unless I want to do it alone. I hate playing by myself.

In February, I restarted my Neopets account with the sole goal of reaching and beating level 100 of their Shapeshifter mini-game. Shapeshifter starts out as the kind of brain twister that is fun to solve, but quickly goes well beyond the bounds of anything that can be solved by unaided humans in a normal lifetime. So this supposed kids game is really a test of your ability to develop an algorithm that can solve an enormous non-directed decision tree before the Sun goes nova. With help and encouragement from other solvers, I developed a Python program I called Shifter that could solve the hardest levels in no more than a day, and often far faster. On April 1st, 2008, I solved the last puzzle and was the Neopets Shapeshifter Champion for the entire month.

February also started my short-lived affair with Pirates of the Burning Sea. My son wanted to give it a try, so I bought a copy for him, intending to buy a copy for myself if I liked it. He grew bored with it. I liked it a lot, and made a character on his account, got up to a fairly decent level and was getting my free trading skills up, working through the storyline, and getting involved in some really exciting battles at sea.

It was on Station Pass, too! This was somewhat of a killer, actually. My son is not on the Station Pass, so I would have had to start paying for one or pay the PotBS subscription fee to keep playing, all the time I could be playing it for nothing extra if I just had my own account.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to start all over again, or pay to buy another copy of the game, so I just let it lapse. There were plenty of issues, but the game had amazing character and ship customization, absolutely gorgeous and tense battles, and I even liked the story. Sailing back and forth on the Caribbean though, not so much. Having to depend on a wide variety of people to make goods, definitely not so much. I wanted to play, but I just didn’t have the time or the money.

I felt sure that by the end of the year, I’d be totally engulfed in the one sure-fire hit MMO of the year, Flagship Studio’s Mythos. I’ve played a lot of Diablo clones, and even some, like Cronous, that try and take the action RPG into the MMO realm, but none had nailed it like Mythos. Even before they expanded the heavily instanced Overworld into a more world-like map with zoning only for cities and dungeons, I felt they had made perhaps the ultimate casual MMO… Rumors of money trouble inside Flagship turned out to be truth, and over a tumultuous weekend, Hellgate: London, their other title, was taken by their Asian publishing partner, and Mythos was dead.

I would like to be playing Mythos right now.

In March, a major new chapter of my life began when I was hired to blog about breaking MMO news for Massively.com. The pressure of writing so many articles, keeping a full time job, trying to keep Nostalgia rolling, and raiding in EQ2 eventually left me unable to do any of these things well. I put my full time job first, where it had to be, and focused on real life issues, like getting my son enrolled in college and figuring out how to pay for it (answer: I didn’t. I am broke all the time now :( ). My Massively adventure ended after an ill-fated trip to the SOE Fan Faire put me in massive (sorry) debt, and my job was cut down to doing EQ2 guides, a task for which I was incredibly unsuited, since I was hardly playing EQ2 at all at that point (which continues to this day), and I’d never written a guide to anything in my life :P Massively and I parted ways in September.

I went back to writing just for West Karana, where I planned to change the direction of the blog from just chronicling my adventures in mainstream MMOs to seeking out, playing and being an advocate for lesser known MMOs.

It’s not that I don’t like the AAA, high budget, huge marketing department MMOs. I just find them too similar to each other. So many players look eagerly to a new MMO to banish the blahs they feel with the game they currently play. They play the new MMO for awhile, discover that it’s essentially the same as the game they already played, and pronounce the entire genre dead.

I was looking through MMORPG.com’s list of games, and some of them looked totally, wildly different from anything I had ever played. Somewhere in those hundreds of games would have to be dozens that went in a new direction.

Oh yeah, there were. BUNCHES!

In early July, I discovered Wizard 101, probably via Massively. This was an entire MMO built around a wildly kooky collectible card game. I was absolutely and utterly hooked. This was the sort of thing I’d been looking for — an MMO that was just entirely out of left field. It was superficially a kid’s game but quickly turned into a game requiring strategy and teamwork and great skill in deck building. I played until they turned out the beta lights, took a couple week’s break, then started right in on the live game.

If anyone wanted to dip their toes into MMO gaming, I wouldn’t give them a copy of EverQuest II or World of Warcraft. I’d sit them down in front of Wizard 101, right where the Headmaster of Ravenwood School of Wizardry is giving a test to see what sort of wizard you are. It’s not Hogwart’s by another name. It’s something new, unique and fun. Wizard 101 was one of the breakout hits of 2008, and I expect wonderful things from it in 2009.

My on-again, off-again relationship with City of Villains flipped “on” again for awhile in July and August. I love the idea of a super-hero, comic book game, and I like what NCsoft has done with the game since they acquired it from Cryptic, and the character creator is unparalleled, but… the repetitive gameplay just can’t keep me for long. I started to get into their crafting system, but after awhile I just stopped logging in. I’m still subscribed, for now, because I am waiting for the mission designer coming in Issue 14 or 15. I want to see what that is like.

Spore owned my gaming time for a few weeks in September. I really wanted to like the game and very much enjoyed building new creatures, vehicles and space ships. I just didn’t get into the space game that is the majority of the time spent playing — you breeze through the other portions in an hour or less. It still has a place on my hard drive.

Recently, I’ve chucked pretty much every game into the back seat in order to play Dream of Mirror Online. I played this game briefly earlier in the year, and it made a very good impression, but the huge number of games out at that time pushed it away before I’d gotten to level 10, where the jobs, and the game itself, open up. As I played it, I couldn’t help remembering the last game that made me feel this way — the original EverQuest. I began to notice a lot of similarities between the games — death penalties, slow leveling, an emphasis on community over leveling, wide open zones and dungeons — it was EverQuest! A Taiwanese game company had managed, somehow, to meld EQ’s gameplay and community with the Asian anime-flavored, cinematic games. Absolutely stunned me, and I am having a lot of fun playing it.

Honorable mentions: Guild Wars — I want to play this more. Why don’t I? I don’t know! Probably because I hate playing alone. Florensia — another Asian import. I loved the fact that it had a cool land game AND a pirate-themed sea game, but it reminded me of DOMO so much, I figured I’d just play DOMO (good call). Vanguard — even though it runs crappy on my machine, I still pick it up now and again, and it still has a spot on my hard drive. Spellborn — this was intended to be a major part of my fall gaming, but it has been pushed to next year. I still have high hopes for the game, if not for the publisher’s commitment to the title.

2008 was a very intense year for MMO gaming, full of tales of intrigue and adventure — and that’s just the marketing departments! Some of this year’s biggest releases — WoW’s expansion, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online — I just could not find time for. 2009 isn’t looking as intense as 2008, but it might well be SOE’s time to shine if they can get The Agency and Free Realms out the door. Champions Online is also scheduled for the year, and perhaps DC Universe Online as well, giving NCsoft’s City of Heroes a run for its money and market share. News of Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic should keep people thirsting for more space-themed adventure in 2010. And, Spellborn!

Happy holidays, fellow gamers :)

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Since last week’s patch, some of the tougher fights in Wizard 101 have been eased up. I did a lot more of the Krok fights, cleared out the Djesserit tombs and working on the Anjit ones. The Emperor’s Retreat is still a little tough; I’m going to have to find some friends to help on that one. I have been exploring Marleybone, the next world, by looking up friends who are there and teleporting to them. I’ll have a post about Wizard 101 tonight, I didn’t have time this morning. With any luck, I’ll be able to piggyback to the fourth world, Mooshoo, soon.

I logged on to Dina in EQ2 for awhile; couldn’t find a group, but I chatted with a guy who wanted me to move to Butcherblock and return to raiding. Even if all my nights were free — which they aren’t — I will NEVER sign up for a six or seven day a week raiding commitment, unless I am being paid for my time. There are no rewards for raiding that are worth giving up half my life to obtain. None. Not even one. The fact that WoW, EQ, EQ2 and their clones encourage and require this to raid is proof enough as to how out of step these games are with the time most people have to spend on something like that.

How to bring the casual player into raiding? Guaranteed reward. Every time I complete a raid, I get a master spell or another piece to my set gear. I get it, it goes right into my inventory, same for everyone else. Having to raid something dozens of times for a chance to get something you need is the way things used to be.

Honestly, the only rewards worth working for are the ones that will remain even after I hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button. Friendships, or real-world loot.

I logged into my EQ2.Najena assassin, Brightknife, and headed over to Timorous Deep to work on some more gray quests that nonetheless would improve my armor while looking for a group, but lost interest quickly and logged off.

I see Cryptic has finally officially announced they are working on Star Trek Online, which probably comes close to being just as much a surprise as the fact that Bioware is working on a Knights of the Old Republic MMO. Which is to say, no surprise at all. Cryptic has not yet proven to me that they can make an MMO worth playing. City of Heroes/Villains comes close, but its grindy, repetitive gameplay is only worth doing if you are doing it with friends. Since nearly ANY MMO is worth playing if it’s with friends, this isn’t any sort of recommendation.

Looking at the screenshots, it looks like they didn’t use any of Perpetual’s code not because Perpetual didn’t want them to have it, but because they refused to buy it. The screenshots look entirely different from that of Perpetual’s game. There’s just one thing I want out of a STO game. And that is, my character, sitting in the captain’s seat, ordering the bridge crew around and talking with aliens on the viewscreen as we jockey for the best firing position. A tactical game that requires teamwork. And I’ll stand at the science station or whatever I have to do to earn those captain’s stripes.

If it’s friggin’ WoW-in-space like Perpetual’s seemed to be — forget it. No more WoW-likes, PLEASE. We have WoW already. Even though there were battles and stuff in Star Trek, that was NOT the point of the show. Most of the time the point was to AVOID killing. If Cryptic says I have to kill a thousand Gorn soldiers to LEVEL, they will have TRAMPLED the whole meaning of Star Trek. To seek out new life and new civilizations — and BRUTALLY MURDER THEM? NO. Star Trek Online had better be a game where you AVOID killing for the best score.

Somehow I have the feeling that the people at Cryptic, as able as they are, will not be able to make a Star Trek game that isn’t loaded with senseless killing. Maybe it will be a mirror universe Star Trek game, that universe where people delighted in senseless killing, and a universe far better suited to a WoW-like.

Ya know what? Star Trek Online shouldn’t be like an MMO at all. It should be more like — some sort of social web thing, where you could work on science projects or try to heal alien creatures, or experiment, or play on the holo-deck, or attend command school, or try to tune engines up to a better efficiency, or figure out a new way to use the deflector dish, or explore the ruins of ancient civilizations, or attend a peace conference as part of an ambassador’s retinue, or… see what I’m getting at? Having to assassinate just ten more Romulan Centurions to ding before you get your next Phaser upgrade goes against EVERYTHING ST STANDS FOR. You should be able to experience the breadth and depth of the Star Trek/Starfleet universe, which CAN INCLUDE space battles and dangerous away missions, but those would be a small part of everything you can do. And not necessary to level. Why even have levels?

Anyway, I’ve ranted about STO plenty in its last incarnation. Perpetual was going to cheapen it. Cryptic might not. I hope they don’t. But I don’t think they are daring enough to make a game that isn’t a grindy murderfest. It’s what’s easiest.

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Adventure on land and sea? Lush, detailed world? Dual talent trees that let you mold your character however you like? How can it miss?

Florensia’s kinship with Dream of Mirror Online couldn’t be more unmistakable. That same sort of soft focus, cell-shaded look of the characters against backdrops so lush they seem to be almost painted. And these guys don’t just sit around and swing at each other… they put their bodies into it, jumping and swinging and spiking stuff at the enemy. The birth of the aerobic adventurer.

You start off in the port town of Roxbury on Cardiff Island — any relationship to actual cities is purely coincidental. This small fishing village is being assaulted from both land and sea by a variety of pests. On land, someone delved into a cave where no mortal was meant to tread, and a vile mist began corrupting the local wildlife. On the sea, the port is being harassed by gigantic lobster men who seem to be in league with some pirates.

The residents of Roxbury are going to need all your abilities on land AND on sea in order to survive. Also, you will need to fish.

Nothing says “hi, this game is from Japan” like hundreds of people all lined up against the water, fishing. And why not? Fish up some rare stuff and you can turn it in for upgrades.

The quests are thoroughly standard. Bring this thing to someone else. Go talk to that guy about something. Go kill ten of that and three of this and all the thoses you can find until you get ten wazzits from it.

The extensive tutorial leads you easily through battles on land, building and equipping a ship, and setting sail. It does fail a bit on how to actually kill stuff on the water; it took awhile before I figured out how to successfully join the fight against the Lobstermen from the Deep but yeah, I eventually got all Cloverfield on their butts.

I designed and built that ship, by the way. That ain’t no tutorial ship.

There’s only the one race — humans — and just four classes — explorer, noble, mercenary and saint. Explorers are the rangers and hunters of Florensia. Nobles, those people in silks who never got their hands dirty with real work, are the nukers. The mercenaries are the basic tanks, and the saints are the healers. My character is a Saint. Isn’t she JUST, though? Carrying a candle to show you how devout she is. A candle of FIERY DEATH she can HURL 50 FEET.

Those are just the templates. Similar to the late and lamented Mythos, you can build out your character anyway you like based on the talent trees. Each level, you buy a new skill. And each level, you get a point to put in a skill. The more points you allocate, the more powerful that skill becomes. All Saints get a basic heal, but that won’t do anything unless you point points into it — the more the better. But points in healing is points you can’t spend on nukes and dots. And that’s how that talent tree branches — a healing saint, a nuking saint, or a DoT saint? It’s up to you, and you can do a combination of, but you won’t ever be good at all of them.

I haven’t seen a respec NPC, but I can’t see how there would not be one.

But is the game any good? I can’t tell you that. I can tell you it isn’t BAD. It does need some work — for instance, the UI is not modifiable. These old eyes need text to be a little larger, and I’d like some of the other UI elements moved around. The movement keys are a little wacky; you can’t turn in place, you can only turn while moving forward, which is weird. And you can’t redefine them. The bouncy music plays continuously whether you are in battle or not, and it’s always the same tune. So yeah, there’s work to be done.

I feel it’s impossible to actually judge how good an MMO is unless you play it for a month. Getting to land level 6 and sea level 2 hasn’t taught me much about the higher level parts of the game. The animations are great, very over the top and entirely appropriate for the anime look. The talent trees are deep and it’s easy to see how you can make a character that plays out just as you like it. You can just buy one skill and every level pump it higher and higher and become fantastic at that one thing, or spread out your abilities and be more a generalist. That’s very nice. There’s even (ahem) a menu that lets you select among the several languages Florensia supports (be sure to set this to English if you’re an English speaker!)

If you can’t stand cute anime characters, you’re not going to like Florensia much. But if you liked Dream of Mirror Online but wanted something with a less Asian, more Western setting — Florensia might be worth a look. And hey, it’s free.

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MMOs:

Mythos had one of the strongest beta communities on record, with unparalleled access to devs. Community Manager Taylor Baldree would hold court in the #mythos IRC channel every night. Devs would respond daily on the forums. And all that was leading to a game that I very much wanted to play. With Hellgate: London’s reprieve by Namco Bandai, let’s hope there IS hope for Mythos as well.

Pi Story and Florensia — I played a few hours of Pi Story in closed beta, but it ended before I got too far in the game. Florensia, I didn’t get into the closed beta but has since gone open. Pi Story is a 2D side scroller MMO in the vein of Secret of Mana or Legend of Mana — a fast, action RPG MMO. Florensia is a Japanese pirate/fantasy adventure which has been compared to OnePiece. I like Japanese MMOs because they generally are closer to Western sensibilities than Chinese or Korean MMOs. I really want to get back to Pi Story, but will probably be on Florensia for a few days to check it out. Huge production values, I want to get a look at it.

Wizard 101 — W101 has been my addiction the past couple of weeks, but it is getting a little grindy and bugs in the Tomb of Storms in Krokotopia are making it difficult to progress. It IS beta, after all, so I am not too concerned. I am about at the point where I can write a decent first look at it, and then sit back and wait for release. This is one darn addictive game, but I begin to dread battles because as you move up in levels, each battle takes more and more time. Even with other people, the games have become so fantastically strategic that it’s hard to see how well their target audience does once they’re facing two rows of Rank 4 Elites and your deck contains only three 404 point heals…

City of Villains — love the game, love the characters, just don’t have time for the grind. I didn’t even actually intend on playing it last weekend, I just wanted to use the character creator. I just kept getting swallowed up into mission groups — random people would invite me all the time, and all but one of the groups were great.

EverQuest — Tuesday and Friday nights are for EQ. It took awhile to get used to the game again after so long away, but I am very comfortable there once again. Finding groups outside the Nostalgia nights is still a hassle, so, as when I played before, I don’t bother looking for groups. I just run around and explore or work on my epic. I don’t hold out the hope that the next expansion will bring anything for casual players; sounds like the whole faction grind, tiered high end raiding system they love so much now. But that’s okay. They already wrote MY EverQuest, and it’s still there to play.

EverQuest 2 — I haven’t logged on EQ2 again since I finished my storm armor quests. I hate soloing, and I only stuck it through the considerable soloing for that assassin armor because I wanted to take a screenshot of my character wearing it. My goals in EQ2 — getting my troubadour’s mythical epic, or finding a high level casual raiding guild — seem impossible. My level 80 troubadour and inquisitor are guildless, and it’s so depressing not having anyone to talk to when I log in that I don’t spend much time playing. I think my inquisitor might still be sitting in the bottom of RE2 where she was when she was kicked out of the group so they could bring someone else’s healer in. My troubadour has been unable to even get a RE2 group, and I have no idea how I am supposed to report on EQ2 happenings when I don’t even have a guild :/ It’s tough and depressing.

Vanguard — I’ve been spending some time in Vanguard, running around, doing quests, and hoping to get a good sense for the current state of the game. Again, being guildless and playing entirely solo are so crushingly soul-draining that I can’t play long before I just want to fill the emptiness with a game that has people I can talk to in it.

Looking back, it looks like I have been largely playing games with easy grouping and fast-paced gameplay. Not surprisingly, these are the two trends I think herald the forthcoming next wave of MMOs that will supplant the WoW-likes.

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