2008 has been an absolutely amazing year for MMOs, and my personal progress through them.

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 :)

Well, first of all, I’m not playing WAR because I’m at work.

But even when not working, I have a bunch of games I’m already playing. And its exciting stuff for all of them!

* EverQuest — Nostalgia FTW. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had an official group xp night in the same zone twice. The only time we revisited a place was Sol B and Permafrost when we were farming the dragons. And we have still only seen a small fraction of the zones in the game. Friday, we grouped in Plane of Storms, Warslik Woods and Dagnor’s Cauldron for various things — all new zones for us on a group night. Small fraction of total zones. It’s wild how big EQ is.

* EverQuest II — Getting the guild ready for guild halls is going to take more time at the loom to get my level up to the point where I can go on crafting missions as either tailor or jeweler. Plus, the construction of the griffin towers and teleport spires happened while I was off in EQ and World of Warcraft respectively, so this is one world event I am determined not to miss. Also, I need to finish the Veksar quests. My group bailed out at the last mob for no good reason, even though I could easily keep the boss mob mezzed while the group killed the adds. They just decided to leave.

* Vanguard — Vanguard got a new game update yesterday, haven’t had a chance to see if Tipa the Startled Halfling Bard and Henry Stout the Astonished Disciple have gotten their eyelids back. Plus, I need to finish Stout Henry goes to War. Last week’s craziness pushed everything back a week.

* Guild Wars: Nightfall — I actually have played this some, though I didn’t write about it because it went terribly. So I have to go back and try the next mission again. It wasn’t the game’s fault. My head just wasn’t in gaming last week.

* Wizard 101 — I love this game. Meeting Gnewt and his wife, and then right after making a new friend and doing a VERY TOUGH instance together that took a LOT of teamwork, strategy and deck management, rekindled my love for the game. It’s an MMO which does things differently. That’s what we WANT, right? If only they had an adults-only server that drops the kid protection features.

* Metaplace — I was just offered the opportunity to be part of the beta test. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and in fact if Spore hadn’t taken over my life this week, Metaplace surely would have.

* City of Heroes/Villains — When Issue 13 comes out. I am going to HAVE to take a few days and see if my dream of becoming a pro game designer could be more than a dream by WRITING some missions. Can I craft a great story and also design interesting levels and challenges? Here’s my chance to find out.

So which of these do I give up for WAR?

I don’t have time for the games I am ALREADY playing. I wanted to start writing a series on free-to-play games, but the three hours or so a night I have to myself are already overscheduled, so I have no chance to do more… even though I want to.

Okay, this is skipping ahead a bit, but I’m so mad. I basically manage to single-handedly hold the Sunspears together after Spearmarshall Kosmir became demon-chow. Veshta totally killed us. We fled to some caves — caves filled with vermin! Huge bugs! Koss was kidnapped! So I pretty much had to do it all myself. Afterward, I was totally the hero. It was MY place. MINE.

So WHERE THE HECK did all these OTHER players come from? *I* didn’t invite them!

Sigh.

Okay, wayback machine time.

When we left back at Day 2 (and sorry for no Day 3 last week, I was at the SOE Fan Faire), I was level 19 and finishing up all the quests I could find before I moved on.

Today, I lept right into the fray. The Castellan in the Sunspear castle gave me three tasks that I needed to complete in order to prepare for the battle against Koura that was sure to come.

The first task was to bolster the army by going to the Sunspear Tombs and enlist the help of the dead. Which is kinda weird because, hey, they’re DEAD. They probably got dead by LOSING, and I doubt death has given them many opportunities for training, except for training in decomposing or providing homes for worm colonies.

But hey, I’m not in charge (yet), if that’s what i gotta do… so I went to the tombs and knelt in front of the gate, and a Sunspear warrior appeared — and attacked us. Just as a test. And guess what — we WON. EASILY. I DON’T see how much help a bunch of dead warriors will be when their leader can’t even put up a decent showing against a bunch of newbie adventurers.

So, color me dubious.

The second task was to train some recruits, which just involved taking them bug hunting. But they would come in handy later (although not handy enough to change the outcome of the battle in which they took part).

The third task was to obtain the blessings of the wind gods to give us safe passage from Istan to Koura.

This involved summoning the wind spirits — and killing them. See a little pattern here? After we killed enough of them, they promised to speed our ships on their way. Which is really interesting, because we basically kicked their butts. We kicked ghost butt at the Sunspear tomb, wind spirit butt at the docks, and we expect these people to HELP us?

Well, I think we have to really wonder about the quality of help we will be receiving from them. Or, who they will be helping.

Anyway, tasks done, we formed up on the docks, marched into the ships, and the wind spirits sped us to Koura.

Ah, the sounds and smells of battle. The crash of high-flung stones plowing through the troops. The screams, the blood, the horrid monsters, barely controlled by their summoners. The thrill of victory.

Not, of course, OUR victory. Not even MY victory.

Oh, we were well-routed by forces beyond our control. The wind spirits brought us here because they knew what we would find here. Our own deaths. The Sunspear dead must have been nearby as well, to carry their dead back with them to their eternal rest in the Sunspear Tomb. They carried Spearmarshall Kormir with them.

We started off well, going from place to place, easily defeating the enemy. One of the new recruites even figured out a way to turn the bombards against the city, opening its heart to us. And so we rushed in, certain of victory. Spearwarden Veshta of the Koura, though, summoned the power of the disgraced Sixth God, Abaddon, and four demons appeared. One bit through Kormir, and busied itself swallowing her from the inside out. Those of us that lived ran and ran and ran. Most of my squad survived, but Koss was gone. Dead, captured or scattered, we didn’t know. But as the days and weeks passed, as we Sunspears stuck on Koura looked for a place where we could stop running and regroup and no word came, we had to come to terms with his loss.

I chose an anonymous henchman to take the place of the boisterous, fun-loving Koss.

We Sunspears and Istan in general aren’t any too popular on Koura. A lot of the people think we got what we had coming to us on the Consulate Docks. Donkoro, who thankfully had managed to escape with me and had invaluable wisdom to share, suggested a friend he knew. That friend wanted nothing to do with us, but he did know of a cave system which would be perfect, if bugs hadn’t overrun it. Perhaps we could…?

Oh, yes we could. I eat bugs like that for breakfast.

Um. Not really.

With the caves cleared, the Sunspears that survived the rout trickled in (and opened a new hub). We took on odd jobs. While interrogating a Kouran scout, we heard tell of some prisoners that had just been captured. Koss? No, these prisoners were all dead, and the villagers who had been healing them were themselves arrested.

We freed them, but they hadn’t seen anyone like Koss. Although…. there were rumors of some very important prisoners at a castle on the coast. We soon found out that Koss was alive, and among them. KOSS!

What do you think? Of course we rescued him!

After that, I spent a few hours working on random quests. I got my first elite ability, Simple Thievery, from a corsair named. He had a regular skill I don’t have yet on him, so I might go back for that one, except that it took a very long time to fight down that deep. So: level 20 — would be like 22 if I were still leveling, but that’s two more skill points to use. Opened a new hub with a new advanced weapon crafter (haven’t found armor crafter yet). I can now change my secondary job, have a new hero skill trainer and a new regular skill trainer.

I only got two blades on the Consulate Docks mission because I couldn’t find the last field marshal units before I accidentally triggered the final encounter, so I’ll have to go back and do that again. I am now a Sunspear General and well into the main portion of the game. Sixteen missions to go in the main plot, but I’m taking my time and doing every side quest so it may be some time before I finish Nightfall.

So before Guild Wars kindly implored me to log off after a mere four hours playing (and how kind of it to be so concerned for my health!), I had cleared out every single quest, aside from the main storyline quest, in my quest journal. Monuments had been protected. Salads had been made. Sentient seeds had been traded. A guild invite had been rejected (after I did some research in how to reply to tells… was the first time I had ever spoken to someone in the game). Forlorn lovers, brought together. Wayward children, found and brought home.

And the Sunspears were grateful. So grateful were they, that the Sunspear scouts would no longer give me bounty buffs. I guess once I became ***SUNSPEAR CHAMPION*** (woohoo), I was above such things as “promotion points” and “experience” and “loot”. I did learn that my party takes a share of loot, and that in a full eight character party, I am getting 1/8 of the loot that drops. Which seems unfair. For some of the rarer drops, I had to boot everyone from the party and go out hunting alone.

Just me and my giant, eight foot, pink flamingo. Of DEATH.

Now I know why people are always talking about “farming builds”. You need to go solo so you can get the loot. But that’s okay. I’m set on loot for now. I crafted all my level 15 armor and a new weapon and have stacks of raw materials in my storage vault for the next tier.

At level 18, I was ready to take on the main quest once again and save the world. After… I did some recruiting.

Is it like this in the real military, where just before you get shipped out on important missions, you have to go recruiting? Well, that’s what they had me do, anyway. I had to placate some visiting dignitaries by agreeing to train one of their students. And THEN I had to go running around finding new Sunspear recruits, without letting them know the fates of the Sunspears they are replacing. Naturally, none of the recruitees would be at all available unless I took care of the critters that had been hanging around forever, eating children and the such.

I went back and mastered the Apocrypha mission, then moved on. In this mission, which I had to do twice due to not completing one of the bonus mission objectives, you find a corsair delegation, KILL them, dress up in their clothes (first pic), talk your way through some Kouran guards (Koura is an ally nation who is really your enemy but nobody on Istan knows that, officially), and this is important, KILL EVERY SKALE IN THE AREA for the occasional Rhiktul monitor lizard that hangs out with them. Okay, no, I don’t know what this has to do with a clandestine meeting between the corsairs and the Kourans. But you only get 1/3 swords for completing the mission if you don’t kill them.

Anyway, once you meet up with the Kouran spear marshall, the mouthy monk you were forced to bring along starts spoiling the whole thing by flinging off her disguise and vowing to kill them all. So, yeah, we’re kinda forced to fight with our lives from that point. That was NOT part of the plan, and the Sunspears back home are LIVIDLY ANGRY. They know nothing about any corsair/Kouran conspiracy, and so it’s off to face the Tribunal.

There’s a couple of progress bars on the left which shows how well your case is going. Each person you summon to the stands makes your case worse. Every statement you make regarding the facts of the mission are twisted and distorted. All seems lost until Tennoli (the mouthy monk) brings Kosmir back from the hinterlands, and she puts a quick stop to the kangaroo court. Because she has PROOF the Kourans and the corsairs are in collusion, and she knows what Nightfall is.

And that was the end of Day 2. Level 19 and about dive more into this dark conspiracy. I haven’t changed my build, it’s still working out fine, and I think I have to get access to more skills before I can really start with the complicated builds.

There’s little hints that I will be sent to the mainland soon…