Ophiga and friend

The big news yesterday was the dropping of the Press NDA for Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. I read all the press reviews I could find; I’ll point to some of those later on, but almost all of them credited the storyline for pulling them deeper into the game. The game mechanics may be old hat, and the standard roles, dungeons and raids are present, but the story, by all accounts, is worth the price of admission.

I still fondly remember the story from the original Knights of the Old Republic. I played the game twice, once good and once evil, and the story didn’t change that much, but that was okay because it was a good story.

That’s really the job of an MMO, isn’t it? To give you something that gets you to log in again each day, and then when you shut the game down one last time, to leave you with some memories.

I don’t HAVE a screenshot of SWTOR, so up there is a shot of my DDO rogue with a Favored Soul hireling. We’ve destroyed a generation of kobolds and I made two new discoveries in the Sands of Menechtarum, but in a few minutes, I and my hireling would be dead. Stupid swarm of revenge-minded kobolds and their named chief…

News? We have that.

SWTOR vs WoW

Well, there’s just not going to be any way of getting around SWTOR for awhile. Not until June, anyway.

After reading all the SWTOR articles, Google Plusser Tasha Schmidt had this to say (unfortunately, I can’t link to it because it wasn’t public (until now)):

Going through all the new SWTOR articles after the embargo drop, I kept seeing the same question in the comments: “Why should I pay $15 a month for essentially a single player game?”

Simply, for a persistent world. Even if you play it mostly single player there is still something to be gained just from it being a persistent world. It can stop being just a game and start to feel like a real RPG where your character matters to you. Even if you decide not to participate in any group content, you will still have experiences with other characters who are not NPCs. This brings a certain level of unpredictability into the game that is just not possible with actual single player games. You can find a social guild and meet other people to share your experiences with even if you choose not to PVP or raid. People who can help you find that last elusive datacron, or suggest a fun path for your next alt.

She’s not wrong. Most MMOs these days are single player games played with other people. Especially toward the beginning. But I just imagine how boring the original Star Wars movie would be if Luke had to do everything alone. (Well, in SWTOR, everyone but Luke would be a scripted NPC).

Over at Player vs Developer, the Chartreuse Cingulata notes the suspiciously suspicious timing that puts Blizzcon just a couple days after SWTOR makes its grab for publicity. Will Blizzard announce their next-gen MMO, Titan, and push SWTOR news back to the dusty digital archives?

The Ancient Gaming Noob hopes so. He’s still reeling from the Cataclysm that killed his interest in WoW. A new expansion might do it… a new MMO, definitely.

Syp over at Bio Break has a good roundup of the SWTOR press coverage.

Lingering Malaise

Tobold has done SCIENCE! to discover just exactly at what rate the global interest in MMORPGs has declined. But we must always remember that there are not “MMORPGs” to most people, there is only “WoW” and “games that just want to be WoW”. The genre went mainstream with WoW, and will become niche again as WoW fades away.

Then again, people are paying up to $180 on eBay for a single Blizzcon ticket… It can’t be doing that bad.

Millions and Millions

SOE announced that 20 million accounts have been created in Free Realms, which is by any measure pretty damn impressive. For comparison, Wizard101 made that milestone in July, which is cool, too. RuneScape, on the other hand, hit the 156 million account mark way back in 2009.

I appreciate that these are great milestones, but the only figure I’m really interested in, in a free to play game, is how much money they take in per user. Subscription games make $10-$15/month/user. We know F2P players pay MUCH less. If they can get away with it, they pay nothing at all. It’s the “Whales” that splurge on F2P games that keep these games running.

So, F2P games — how many whales swim in your oceans?

The Secret World

Funcom has been teasing us with news and forum games about their conspiracy-laden MMO, “The Secret World”. Ars Technica got a chance to see it in action at the New York Comic Con last week. People have been begging for a horror-themed MMO for years; will Funcom be able to deliver? High-profile misses like Anarchy Online and Age of Conan have made people understandably wary of Funcom’s ability to make a game as good as the hype. Ars thinks the lore might possibly be enough to make people overlook the wooden characterizations.

Well, people said that about Age of Conan, too.

Bless

MMOSite blurbs forthcoming Korean MMO “Bless”. According to the article,

“BLESS” aims to surpass not just the limits of current MMORPGs, but games as a whole.

Judge for yourself. Included in the “Bless” trailer, which in the grand old MMO tradition, contains no hint of what the actual game is like.

In this as in so many other things, EverQuest was a leader. After seeing the opening video below, people loudly wondered in Verant’s hearing why the GAME wasn’t like this?

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Pining for Hrundle Fjord

It’s been no real secret that Wizard101′s Ravenwood Academy owes at least a little of its inspiration to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. Alison Goldtalon and I were having a chat with Grandmother Raven over in Wintertusk; we’d just tied some gewgaws to the threads of our destiny in the Loom of Fate and freed her. Forgotten was that we’d earlier been told that because we were outsiders, the threads of our destiny were not part of the fabric of Wintertusk reality.

Well, NOW they are. ANYWAY, Headmaster Ambrose, using that mind talk voodoo all the Ravenwood faculty have mastered, summoned us back from deciding the fate of Wintertusk to give us some exciting news.

The Spiral Cup!

Finally! We’d teach those uppity upstarts at Hogwarts a thing or three. Those losers get all heartsore if they just see a couple of giant spiders. At Ravenwood, we fight the primal forces of nature.

Get ready, Potter. You may have overcome Death, but you have no power over Life.

Ambrose gave us the Spiral Key for the world of Wysteria, and we set off.

Wysteria, home of the famous wizarding school of… Pigswick?

Pigswick?

This is not Dumbledore.

Bait and switch much, Ambrose?

Well, before we can compete in the competition for the Spiral Cup, we have to win a series of duels against Pigswick students, and if the first couple of battles are any clue, this should be an easy run. But… rumor has it that the higher form students cheat. And the headmistress knows about it and does nothing!

The grand prize

That doesn’t matter. I will defeat my enemies. I will drive them before me and hear the lamentation of their pets.

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Alison Goldtalon notices something

THE CONTEST HAS ENDED! SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR THE LIST OF WINNERS!

The answer was Greyson Chance, and the silver chest was in the Library.

Woot! West Karana is proud to announce that we are giving away *15* Balance Houses to anyone that can solve Alison Goldtalon’s puzzle! Since everyone says my puzzles have been too easy, I’ve made this one (I hope) a little more challenging!

Here’s how to enter.

First, solve Alison’s puzzle. It *may* help to go into Wizard101 and have a look around the Balance home there. It shouldn’t be necessary. Once you have the solution, e-mail it to me at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. This is important. I will be turning off comments on this post so that the puzzle doesn’t get spoiled for everyone else.

Each day I will choose *two winners* from among the correct answers received until then. Be sure you have included an e-mail address with your entry where I can send a code if you win! I will be posting the winner’s names to this post as the codes are won.

If you are a lucky winner, head to http://www.wizard101.com/promo to redeem your prize and claim your new home! (Be sure you have space enough for a new home on the wizard who claims the prize!)

That’s the important stuff! Now, here’s the puzzle:

Map of Balance Excavation

Alison Goldtalon was standing in the basement excavation of her Balance home, when she, by chance, noticed that each of the seven rooms had a chest in it, and each of the chests was made of a different material. If you went counter-clockwise starting in the nearest room, the first letters of the material the chest in that room was made in would spell the name of her favorite singer.

She is keeping the Balance House codes in a silver chest. Who is Alison Goldtalon’s favorite singer, and which room holds the silver chest?

HINTS!!!!!

• The room that looks like it might say “SALINA” really should say “SAUNA”. Selena Gomez is not the singer. Good guess, though!
• Alison is standing outside the Wyrmkin Room. If you look carefully, you can find the chest in that room.
• The material of that chest provides the first letter of the singer’s name. The singer’s last name is given somewhere in the puzzle description.
• Woody Guthrie is not the answer :-) We’re looking for a ROOM name and a SINGER’S name.

WINNERS!!!

1. Morgrim Deathwielder
2. Adrianna Aune
3. Alura HexCaster
4. Justus Story
5. Saffron Fireblossom
6. Jose
7. Alyssa Moonheart
8. Paige Unicorncaller
9. Matthew
10. Valdus Talegiver
11. Noffin (forgot your wizard name :/ )
12. Eric Bearstrider
13. Lane Mills
14. Dylan GhostRider, the hardest working wizard in the Spiral!

I used random.org to help me award the last two homes to the people who gave the correct answer today. Here’s the list from random.org:

There were 6 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. Jacob Redblade
2. Victoria AngleBlossom
3. Moria Shadow
4. Blaine Lionheart
5. Amanda
6. Wolf NIghttail

Timestamp: 2011-08-19 02:23:16 UTC

Grats to Jacob and Victoria!

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Mythology 101!

I spent a few nights last week getting my Myth wizard, Tara Mythcrafter, through Grizzleheim so she could enter Wintertusk. She was already max level when Grizzleheim came out, and it just made more sense to put my alt team through, as they could use the experience and loot. When Wintertusk was released and I found it required Grizzleheim, I was at a loss.

Nothing for it but to rush through from showing my bravery to bears to destroying the coven — twice. I’d missed a necessary update the first time through. It wasn’t tough, though — a level 60 balance wizard and a level 60 life wizard have little to fear from some old crows.

Imagine my surprise when, in Wintertusk, that same team was almost wiped out by three “trash” frost goblins. I officially hate Tower spells, when monsters play them, anyway.

So, here are the Norns. Ravens here, but in myth, they represented the divine force of women. From the sacred Eddas:

12. “Tell me then, Fafnir,
for wise thou art famed,
And much thou knowest now:
Who are the Norns
who are helpful in need,
And the babe from the mother bring?”

Fafnir spake:
13. “Of many births
the Norns must be,
Nor one in race they were;
Some to gods, others
to elves are kin,
And Dvalin’s daughters some.”

So they might as well be ravens as anything else. Note that some of the Norns were kin to Dvalin, that is to say, dwarfs. Note that Tolkein stole Dvalin from the Eddas, named him Dwalin, and inserted him into The Hobbit. These old Norse songs and legends are the truth source of Middle-Earth. Tolkein himself was a scholar of the old Norse legends, and never made a secret of the source of his stories. The One Ring itself was based on old legends that were woven into an epic opera of heroic fantasy, Das Ring der Nibulengen, a fifteen hour work meant to be presented over four nights. The first night is a prelude. The next three nights are the trilogy. Tolkein happily followed suit in his Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

So anyway, these particular raven Norns informed me that, as an outsider (an Auslander?), I am not part of the destiny they weave, so I can change the Fate that would cover the entire Spiral in ice once the evil ravens awaken the Ice Titan.

I was consumed by questions.

• Shouldn’t this be an Ice Jotun from Jotunheim?
• Now that Wintertusk is inviting wizards in, does this mean the Fate they weave is pretty much destroyed forever now?
• If Norns traditionally were midwives that helped women birth their children, what role do they have in a race that lays eggs?
• Why do the raven Norns have breasts?
• If they are weaving Fate, why can’t they just weave the Ice Titan’s defeat?
• Why can’t these Norns just do the tasks themselves?

I ask too many questions. But… I am on a quest for answers! One thing’s for sure, though. I bet I’ll be meeting the Ice Titan in battle at some point.

And it’s for damn sure that I won’t be getting any help from Ambrose or the other master wizards at Ravenwood. That Ambrose fella even informed me that even though I would be saving the world — ALL the worlds — I shouldn’t expect to get a pass on any schoolwork.

Forget that. When I save Wintertusk, I’m going back to Dragonspyre and re-opening the Dragonspyre Academy. Our motto: More saving the world. Less homework.

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I received over 1,400 correct entries to my Manta Ray giveaway! That was a LOT! So, I guess the answer (A ARMY ANT) was pretty obvious, and maybe letting everyone see what everyone else answered made it REALLY easy but hey, I wasn’t interested in giving the SAT here :)

Extra smiles to the people who said “ANT MARY”! I’m from New England and we pronounce “aunt”, “ahhnt”, so I didn’t get the pun until several people pointed it out to me :) That was considered a correct answer as well.

The winners were (I have removed their host name to save them from spam):

Ryan ryanrosen@removed.com
Jessica jess7525@removed.com
kevin sgt.banana64@removed.com
Morgan FairyBlossom phoenix_starlight_dreamer@removed.com
Brooke bmhoese@removed.com
David Blueeyes davntam@removed.com
Kieran Stormcaller kstormcaller@removed.com
Ebony Midnight ebonymidnight@removed.com
scott fireman11@removed.com
Heather SkyRunner hcjohnson5412@removed.com
Michael rexblaze3@removed.com
Grace gracepoulos@removed.com
DANIEL pastdjmp@removed.com
Dazzlegreen girtalk78@removed.com
Matthew mathumatster16@removed.com

Congratulations on your new MANTA RAY! E-Mails have been sent to each of you with your code. If you haven’t gotten it, let me know. Check your spam folder! I tried not to use any words which would make the e-mail seem to be spam, but you never know.

I have ONE MORE CODE to give away! And I’m just going to put it right here in this post — the first one to redeem it, gets it. Since everyone was asking for a hard contest, this last ray will go out to a master puzzle solver indeed. Don’t ask for help or hints — this is meant to be hard (at least I’d find it so if I were trying to solve it). I also won’t know if someone guesses it and gets the ray unless someone tells me — so if you solve it and get the fish, let me know!

Good luck! If you think you’ve got it, head to http://www.wizard101.com/promo and enter it to see if you’ve won. The code is 20 letters and digits long.

The riddle was solved by Zitio (see comment below). Grats Zitio!

I am the beginning of all things. I can be found in hospitals, libraries and classrooms but never in orbit, underground or cafeterias (but booksellers know me well). I am the number of fingers on one hand, but not on two. If you know I hate thumbs, then you know how I count the fingers on two hands. I haven’t failed, but almost missed the grade. Now that you know I hate thumbs, how many fingers on my left hand? I like tollbooths, swallows, and willows but not minnows, toboggans or bosses. Pie are round, but six are square. I like coral, teal and pearl but hate tin, tan and brown. Six are still square. Why isn’t a woman an oman? How many hands, again? Why isn’t a man an an? How many feet again? I love quizzes, quarries and Qatar, but I hate tests, pits and Kuwait. Call me ‘sir’ as I make this letter on the chessboard. I play games so poorly that all I ever see are a pair of crying eyes.

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The first place they’d have to come to find the Very Best Manta Rays would be very deep in the Spiral, in a watery realm called Celestia. Maybe Selena Gomez could mention it to them because, heck, she’s been there already. She’s scoped out the fine mantas of Calypso’s realm for sure. Camera crews might be on their way — in fact one camera crew surprised me in my home while I was training a new crop of rays.

Fact is, we’re overstocked with manta rays. I can’t afford to keep them all, and besides, who can ride more than one? KingsIsle has graciously offered me codes for fifteen of the startled looking ocean gliders, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to tell you a few facts about manta rays, and at the end I’m going to ask you a question about manta rays. Leave a comment with your answer, and I will randomly choose fifteen of the correct answers and send you a code for a Permanent Manta Ray mount!

A couple of rules before we get started: Make sure you leave an e-mail address where you can be reached with the comment — there’s a field for it. Don’t put your e-mail address in the body of the comment, spammers will find it there.

Second, the contest will run from Wednesday, March 30 to Thursday, April 7th.

Third, I do not work for KingsIsle; I have no affiliation with them aside from being a big fan of Wizard101. I can’t get more codes; when these are gone, they’re gone.

SO ANYWAY! Here’s some facts about MANTA RAYS.

1. Manta rays love paintings by A ARTY MAN.
2. Serve sweet potatoes to a manta ray and you’ll hear A YAM RANT.
3. if a manta ray goes to a zoo, they will stop and stare AT ANY RAM.
4. Last time a manta ray went to a concert, it RAN AT MYA.
5. And in spring, manta rays like to swim in A MAY TARN.

Now the question for YOU is…

What is a manta ray’s favorite insect?

Leave a comment and let me know below!

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After the couple of weeks at Master Gardener, I didn’t expect to get to Grandmaster Gardener quite so soon. It was those Silver Trumpet Vines that did it; 300 xp per harvest, 3000 xp when they went elder, and I had four of the plants, the only remainders of my once-flourishing garden. I had a whole new plot picked out that has never seen a single seedling.

Now that leveling isn’t a concern any more, I’ll have to pick out plants for what they harvest. With all the pet snacks they’ve given, maybe I could finally level up one of my pets :)

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Who owns your MMO character? The game companies say they do, but they didn’t put hundreds of hours into turning the character from an animated paper doll into a person with relationships, memories, friends, victories, stories and history. But it’s precisely because you HAVE taken the time and done all these things that the companies can keep running their game. But as long as game companies control access to your character, you’re paying them so that you can add value to their game.

There’s no technical reason why you can’t take your character out of the game and put it somewhere else — Second Life, for instance. There’s LEGAL reasons, based on the assumption that you don’t own your character, but technically it’s possible. Take a video while spinning the camera around your character and you could have enough info to make a 3D model and then do whatever you like with it.

This issue comes up again and again, I know. But, darnit, it may be their game but it’s MY character!

Anyway. News after the break.

Earth Empires

Just when you thought it was safe to be an MMO player, giving your mom advice on gearing up her holy paladin, chatting with strangers on the bus about your latest boss kill in Cataclysm… and then some whack job goes nuts and slaughters a bunch of people in Tucson and word gets out that … HE WAS A MMO PLAYER, TOO.

Helpful hint: If you play EARTH EMPIRES, just keep it to yourself for awhile.

EverQuest 2

This just in from superblogger Stargrace: EverQuest 2′s next expansion, Destiny of Velious, has been delayed a couple weeks until February 22. Reminder: If you’re a subscriber, purchasing and registering this expansion is the last piece of the puzzle to get you your own bloodsucker to play with.

Cryptic’s Secret Project

Via Gaming Blend, word that Cryptic is working on a FOURTH MMO. No hint of what it is. This will be their second game for Atari, after announced but not released Neverwinter. With their first game, Champions Online, due to go Free2Play soon, and heavy speculation that their second game, Star Trek Online, will soon follow, Cryptic certainly isn’t sitting back and resting on its laurels.

I have no good guesses on what the new game could be. The Atari of today is not the Atari we grew up with, so I don’t know what kind of intellectual properties they control. If I had to guess, I’d guess Star Raiders.

Rift

Via Massively, et al, a cool video showing the “souls” system in action to instantly change a warrior from a solo spec, to a tank spec, to a PvP spec, by mixing three souls together in interesting ways. Everyone in WoW who isn’t a hybrid shares a little bit of envy for the paladins, druids and shaman out there who move easily among different roles. Well, in Rift, you can more or less do that same thing with any class. The video shows a warrior switching from a dual-wielding pet class, to a sword-and-board tank, and then to some sort of vampiric killing machine thing for PvP.

On my Rift guild’s forums, we’ve come up with the perfect (we think) rogue spec… here’s hoping Trion does one of these videos for every calling so we can see if they agree. And damn, that video makes me want to level up and see these places. Those raids look like FUN.

Pete Smith of Dragonchasers tries to explain how the soul system is NOT like WoW talent trees, once again…

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats kinda likes the single group rift sealing, and kinda likes the zone wide invasion fights, but there’s that mushy spot in the middle where things seem like a big deal but nothing you can do seems to help? Well, all his fears have been laid to rest (but we’ll see). There were complaints of maybe too many rifts from those dedicated souls who just wanted to finish their quests in peace!

Hint: that’s Rift’s way of telling you you don’t need to quest as much as you think you do.

Zam’s got the scoop on the fifth beta test. This one raises the level cap to 30 and adds a new zone and dungeon — and it’s SOUNDING like this will be the first contested zone, with Guardians and Defiants mingling. Could be some hot open world PvP action going on. Too bad it’s in the middle of the week.

Brannagar at Horriftic Intentions has been reading the RIFT forums and has decided that WoW players have just two fundamental issues with the game. The first is, it is too much like WoW. The second is, it’s not enough like WoW. Geez, even Tyler Durden plays WoW?

I’m with Brannagar. Flying mounts, Dungeon Finder, and Arenas would decimate Rift. If people really want to play World of Warcraft, it’s RIGHT OVER THERE! GO!

Earthrise

Rift hasn’t convinced EVERYONE of its obvious superiority to every other game (kidding!). Sente of A Ding World is eying Earthrise, the new post-apocalyptic MMO from Masthead Studios which announced its early February launch date a couple weeks ago.

Whatever. Nothing but a Fallen Earth clone! :) Earth falls, Earth rises… come on, could you get more blatant?

Goodbye, Adventure Historian

After a year as a blogger, the Adventure Historian is hanging up his blogger spurs. You’ll be missed! It was great playing with ya in Star Trek Online! Good luck wherever gaming takes you!

World of Warcraft

Wasdstomp’s got a bone to pick with lazy players, by which he means World of Warcraft players. With those add-ons and dungeon finders and Youtube strat videos and just hanging out in a capital city for your next instant group… Hey, that’s not fair, is it? NO! Go give him a piece of your mind!

He forgot VAMPIRE$!

Justin Olivetti of Massively did a great look at ten “unconventional” fantasy races. He may have forgotten EQ’s Iksar, Vah’shir/Kerrans, Frogloks and Drakken (and EQ2′s version of the touched-by-magic Erudites), BUT! he remembered Horizons! Why did that game sink like a rock once launched? Mainly because the game they launched wasn’t the game they said they were making. I was always a little dubious about the dragons as a race, anyway, once the devs said that dragon players could pick up players of any other race, fly up a mile, and drop them to their inevitable deaths.

Wizard101

The Friendly Necromancer scored a cool interview with KingsIsle’s “lore guy” and got some answers about the story behind the Spiral, hints at the continuation of the Lady Morganthe plot (she’s the new big baddie you meet briefly toward the end of Celestia). And it’s not a “podcast” or a “video”, it’s all words that you can just go and read! Words are good!

Scared of the Dark

This isn’t about an MMO (yet), but Ars Techica ran a story today about Papa Sangre, an audio only game — no graphics, nothing to see here. You have to navigate around a world you can’t see.

Imagine that in an MMO.

They are going to have a “big field” mode — go out and stand in a big field, put on a blindfold and some headphones, and try to keep away from the monsters.

THIS is something I want. Though I guess if someone CATCHES you wandering blindfolded in a field waving a stick-sword and screaming about monsters…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I long ago pre-ordered SOE’s DC Universe Online, but this was my first opportunity to play it, in beta, on the PC. Though it’s on the PC, the little picture hints and controls clearly expect you to be using a PS3 controller to play the game. I don’t have a PS3 controller, but I do have a XBox controller, so I plugged it in and away I went.

In a niche genre already filled by City of Heroes, Champions Online, and Avenger Babies Super Hero Squad Online, it must be asked what DCUO brings to the table?

After admittedly only a few hours of play, I can think of two things right off: The Justice League and the PS3 integration. If you want to fight aside Batman, Superman, the Joker and their pals, DCUO is the only game that’s gonna let ya. And if you want to play an MMO on the PS3, again, you have nowhere else to go but DCUO. On the PC, however, the cup runneth over, and there’s nothing to particularly distinguish the game, aside from the strong and constant use of the DC milieu and characters.

Anyway, more on that later. On with the blogroll!

DC Universe Online

The Roadkill with the Greenish Hue has a few thoughts on DC Universe Online. He came away with a somewhat better impression than I did, but then, he’s playing it on the PS3, as God and Sony intended.

City of Heroes

DCUO might be the new gunslinger in town, but venerable genre leader City of Heroes still has some life in it. Sente of A Ding World romps around in the latest new content with news about all the cool stuff Paragon Studios has been stuffing into the venerable spandex-clad blockbuster.

Gods & Heroes

Mostly remembered as the game Perpetual Entertainment killed so it could try to save Star Trek Online before Cryptic inherited it, the rebirth of the collectible hero MMO proceeds apace with new developers, publishers, and a shiny beta to boot. Sounds like the game is off to a great start, with the gods of Mt. Olympus throwing a New Year’s Eve bash and celebrating the birthday of one of their community managers.

I’m not sure it’s wise to get so chummy with the pantheon, though. That never really worked out well.

Craft of Worldwar

Copra had a notion to try and level a character in World of Warcraft as a pacifist — without any unnecessary killing. In a sandbox game, you could have many paths through the game — some bloodthirsty, others not so.

Lord of the Rings Online has a pacifist path right in the wiki. In EQ2, you can reach max level without killing even one thing — as a crafter. I’m not sure anyone has maxed out a non-violent adventurer character. But World of Warcraft, well… it says “war” right in the name. You’re gonna end up killing someone in a war.

Rift

I had the hardest time getting the Rift beta working for me. The patcher kept giving me a 2002 Error: Unauthorized, even though everything looked okay with my account from the Trion side and from the account page side. To see if maybe my account was just borked, I made a new account and Trion accepted it into the beta. Worked fine. I guess there’s a few reasons someone might get the 2002 error, but if nothing seems to fix it, it might just be your account.

The folks at fan site Rift Junkies have put together an impressive collection of starter guides for each other the game’s four archetypes (or ‘callings’). They’ve got build guides for Warriors, Mages, Clerics and Rogues (and no, the Rogue guide is more than “don’t play a rogue”).

I can’t say I 100% agree with their build suggestions, but follow their guides and you won’t be gimped at all.

Agree with him or not, Wolfshead has his opinions and isn’t afraid to share them, though typically always shaded by his experiences in World of Warcraft, which must have touched him in a bad place when he was a child. This time, he turns his WoW-colored lens onto Rift.

He highlights a question in his article:

Questing is quickly suffocating the MMO genre right now as most people have stopped reading quest text and are grinding them for experience, gold, items and reputation. Take away all of the rewards and incentives and I ask you: would players even bother to quest in MMOs

You might just as well ask if, without rewards and incentives, anyone would do ANYTHING in an MMO. Raid, dungeon crawl, PvP, log in… It sure would be a lot easier to develop an MMO if people stopped wanting those quests. The ironically named EverQuest lured players on, not with quests, but with the chance that the next mob might drop a rare item… okay, maybe the NEXT one… etc.

Wizard101

W101 community god Stingite, the Friendly Necromancer continues his march through the Spiral playing a character wearing nothing and wielding just the starter wand. He’s just about to finish up the third world, Marleybone, wearing nothing but what the Good Headmaster gave him. How far can he go? It’d be really cool to see someone do this in WoW…

EverQuest II

Lots of people are up in arms about EQ2′s new cash shop race, the vampiric Freebloods, but I haven’t seen anyone talking about whether or not they were fun to play. Kaozz at ECTMMO took the plunge and bought the Freeblood, the Freeblood Estate, the special “swarm of bats” travel form and so on and shows them off in glorious 24fps video. But the background music… “Barracuda”? Someone get that girl some Sisters of Mercy…

All MMOs Everywhere Forever

Ardwulf read Ten Ton Hammer’s look back at the most notable MMOs of the past ten years and shared his thoughts on the matter. Was EQ’s “Planes of Power” really the best expansion of the decade? Say what you will about EQ, but it was the game that invented raiding as we know it today, and PoP has still never been equaled for sheer depth. Then again, it also emptied the old world, making it and Luclin the expansions most old EQers blame for killing the game.

Earthrise

When I was a kid, “the future” was a cheery place mostly concerned with how to spend our infinite leisure time now that everything was free and robots did all the work. Now, you see the phrase “near-future setting” and you don’t have to hunt far to find “post-apocalyptic”. I guess everyone is pretty certain we’re nearing the end times so, hey, might as well play a game!

Increasing the total number of post-apocalyptic by a substantial percentage and the number of Bulgarian post-apocalyptic MMOs by infinity percent, Masthead’s Earthrise is now scheduled to be released in February, 2011. Single server, player-driven economy, PvP, sandbox style game — yup, it ticks off all the EVE checkboxes (and EVE Online itself is a post-apocalyptic game; in fact the lore suggests at least two apocalypses).

Empire of the Immortals

Perfect World International’s announced the start of closed beta for Empire of the Immortals, the sequel to its hit Battle of the Immortals. This new game promises “novel gaming experiences with a vast selection of vehicles built on ancient armory and weapons technologies”. So, if you’re looking for vehicle-based fantasy MMO gaming, you could do worse than look here.

I always thought a battle between immortals would be kinda boring after awhile. “You hit Boss X for a zillion HP! He doesn’t die! You hit Boss X for ten zillion HP! He still doesn’t die! He’s immortal!”

Herotopia

And lastly, one more late entrant in the superhero genre — Herotopia, a game where you become a superhero and fight, not supervillains, but bullies. Yup. Herotopia is an anti-bullying game. A game where you become a superpowered character, find someone weaker than you, and beat the crap out of him.

That will teach him to be a bully!

(Actually, it’s mostly a minigame portal, but whatev)

Anyway, see you all tomorrow, and keep gaming!

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