NCSoft has donated over 6,000,000 USD directly to Japan, which overshadowed every other Korean corporation donation at the time it was made (including Samsung and LG). It even outshadowed Japanese corporations donations like Nintendo and Sony. Now it is likely that Japanese corporations are “donating” with paid-time off and other ways to help employees and their communities, but it does put a point on NCSoft’s significant generosity.

US-based Trion Worlds with the shiny-new MMO Rift is taking a more personal route. They are finding their Japanese customers and giving them a free month of play. It’s not necessarily as humanitarian as donating money to aid, but it adds yet another showing that Trion Worlds values its customers. I have recently been a little critical of the mid-level zones and fuzzy edges of the dynamic content engine, yet as I noted in my last Rift post, they are keeping me a happy customer.

Prayers and thoughts continue to go to the island gaming nation. Also, one can never have too many hats.

–Ravious

MMO Love to Japan is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The tl;dr version is that security holes existed in the NCSoft Master Account page, according to fans, that allowed people to randomly access other people’s accounts by merely signing in to their own accounts.  Then you could do fun things like change game account passwords without needing old game account passwords or jot down personal information.  The powers that be are working hard this weekend to fix or ameliorate security and information issues.

The most pertinent posts are: The OP.  The Aion fan who knows things.  ArenaNet’s Community Manager response.  ArenaNet’s Support Liaison response.  Holiday Hacker’s guide to the NCSoft page.  ArenaNet’s Community Manager response in lieu of the support response.

Good luck to all those that were hacked, and thank you to all the people working this weekend to deal with the issues.  It wouldn’t be even half as bad if there was a way to recover deleted Guild Wars characters, which is something that should be fixed in Guild Wars 2.  But, still a good quick New Year’s resolution is to change your passwords for the precious pixels we pretend to own.

–Ravious
a crescendo, annie

Happy Fun Security Issues is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

What would you be without grind?

Visions move me, still.

–Ravious
in the shadow of leaves

Haiku for the Day is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The z-axis is appearing more and more in MMOs as another dimension to be explored.  In most MMOs players can jump, fall, and explore structures with multiple stories from the ground.  Underwater provides a fully three-dimensional exploring space.  Then flying is also becoming more of a mainstream item with World of Warcraft having received player controlled flight with the Burning Crusade expansion, and Aion Online’s entire game being built around the flying mechanic. Flight actually even came up in dev discussions on Lord of the Rings Online because, you know, giant eagles carried Gandalf and the hobbits.  One of the Turbine devs however remarked that many of the maps looked pretty terrible from above, and it was unlikely that the great eagles would stoop to mere steeds in the sky.

Even with the current aerial progression of exploration in MMOs, I like underwater exploration better than flying.  Flying requires ground content below it to be notable.  Then there may or may not also be in-air content as well.  For underwater places, what is underwater is the content.  Sure there can be shipwrecks and mer-giants walking on the sea floor, but it doesn’t feel like the seafloor is really the originating plane.  I might also like it better because swimming is real.  It’s something that I can relate to, whereas flying only occurs on the silver screen and in my imagination.

This leads me to a Guild Wars 2 tidbit I touched upon in an earlier post.  ArenaNet is creating a complete underwater continent.  They don’t want the danger of air to factor in either, and an easily gained consumable will be available for your fish-breathing enjoyment.  Exploration is one of the key goals to this zone (or zones).  It excites me that their focus is on having underwater explorable content rather than it being a small slice of the normal E-pie (as in EASK, or what have you..ummm… pie).  Afterall with that badass dragon in the trailer coming from below, it only makes sense.

Lord of the Rings Online, which is my MMO pony of the moment, has no three-dimensional combat that I can think of.  Either the mob will go into exploit mode or run up the cliff face.  Plus players can only swim on the water.  The three-dimensional architecture and level construction found in the game can be amazing.  The Forges and the Grand Stairs, two Mora instances, are beautifully designed multi-leveled zones.  For the moment, though, the game as far as combat is concerned might as well be compared to the jumpless, “2-d” Guild Wars.  Maybe this will be rectified someday, but I feel we will get mounted combat before 3-d combat in the MMO.  Amazingly enough, I had not really noticed the deficiency until writing this article.  Of course I was quite happy playing years of Guild Wars without a jump button until ArenaNet suggested that maybe it should have been there in the first place.

–Ravious
a half-crustacean band

Under Da Sea is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Syncaine’s stories about Darkfall over at Hardcore Casual are great because I can feel the risk inherent in his adventures.  He is sure to discuss his choice of equipment which comes a long for some adventure and what stays in his vault, the thought of losing the past two hours worth of farming due to a well-planned gank, and the risk versus reward in ganking that one other person in the dungeon.  Ultimately though losing in PvP just results in lost time.  Equipment can be re-made, money can be re-farmed, and horses can be re-bought.  Still the system seems to work.  A person with tons of time to play Darkfall becomes a tasty trophy for the casual peasants.  The greater skill points and equipment will make it a hard prey to take down, but Darkfall seems to be all about timing and planning.  A careful patient assassin may very well have his day in the sun.

EVE Online stories, I hear, are much the same.  Only replace armor and swords with ships.  A veteran with some super ship might be a pretty tasty target.  They can no longer play stupid.  The happy casuals in their easily replaceable ships.  They had fun with their toys, and died.  A little trading, a little mining, and they are back where they started.  The veterans don’t have toys.  They have flying trophies and badges.  The gigantic ships they operate are not for fun.  They are for purpose.  Just like Darkfall, though, a hardcore PvP will have a ton of options (ships) for different purposes… some yes, will be for throwaway fun.  The elite don’t have to wear a bullseye all the time.

Enter Aion Online, where Werit makes a great post(based off another good post) about the ante in Aion Online’s PvP – Abyss points.  Abyss points are gained through PvP and Abyss PvE and can be used like currency to buy rankings and equipment.   Abyss points can also be lost by dying to an enemy player or NPC in the Abyss.  The “problem” is that the more brass a player is showing, the more elite that PvP’er is, the more Abyss points she will lose when she is killed.  Now, go cry, carebear.  If you were a true PvP’er, you’d stiffen that upper lip and suck less. 

Anyway, people don’t seem to care for the system, but I think it is for the wrong reasons.  It is not that Abyss points can be lost upon death or that a player will lose more Abyss points the “better” they are; the reason is because Aion Online does not have the ante system that Darkfall and EVE Online both have built inherently in their risk/reward system.  In Aion Online, a player cannot choose to go out with less Abyss points on the table.  The players that PvP the most will always have the most to lose.  It would be like being forced to wear your best gear in Darkfall or fly your most expensive ship in EVE Online all the time.  I think the best PvP environments are filled with aggressive people with something to lose (either personally or for their team), and I am not sure that Aion Online’s system will have that.  Turtling and other careful tactics are boring for gameplay in any game.

–Ravious
matrydom of saint me

The PvP Protectionists is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

–Ravious
oh well, whatever, nevermind

The Jacobs Test: Champions Online and Aion is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The Good:

• It is hands down the best visual and aural feast in any MMO I have played in.  Only Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online come close to beauty (I have not yet played Age of Conan).   Each small pocket and sub-zone is intricately designed, and the NPC enemy concepts feel new.  The modeling for everything is fantastic.
• The game engine runs smooth as silk on my 1.5 year old gaming laptop on nearly high everything (in contrast, Lord of the Rings Online can seriously chug a long in some places).  Fast travel involves being flown by some sort of angelic bird at warp speed through the trees and gullies, and the framerate remained rock steady.  I get load hitching in World of Warcraft on a gryphon sometimes.  And, areas filled with active people were not even an issue on my processors.  Serious kudos to tech wizards that wrangled the engine just-so.
• Refreshing gameplay.  It’s like all the MMO’s we know and love, but just different enough to have its own drummer.  Two quick things I really like: (1) enemies have a field of vision. I could actually run up behind one and whack it without it omnisciently agro-ing as soon as I get within range.  This really changes things, I think, and (2) skill books.  I level far out in the field, and I can just open my pre-bought skill books instead of running back in town to a trainer.  Okay, I lied, three things… XP for crafting.
• Flying.  It’s fun.  I can rain arrows down on the unjust.  The engine loves it.  Enough said.

The Bad:

• No mob tagging.  Whoever does the most damage gets the kill.  It’s not horrible, and the griefing was near minimal.  However, a few times another player and I were hitting the same creature without knowing whose it really was.  In a genre based on efficiency, it is a tad annoying (apart from the griefing possibilities).
• Unimaginative quest design.  It is mostly kill ten rats and fedex this thing.  They do get a few bonus points because collecting dead-mob items was easy due to the high percentage of dropping the quest item and the quest text was generally enjoyable to read.  The cut scenes were kind of nice (and reminiscent of Guild Wars), and I had a laugh-out-loud moment when I found out the quest giver’s lost pet pig of many years was spitroasted by kobolds.  There was a cut scene for that moment.

The Unsure:

• The feeling of bait-and-switch (biggest concern).  Honestly, I likely would not buy Aion just for PvE (though it seems fairly solid).  I am far more interested in PvPvE.  However, I get the feeling I might be playing through one whole MMO in order to get to another different MMO.  Granted, I did only play through the levels 1-10 tutorial zone and a few post-Ascension steps beyond.  If anyone knows when the PvPvE really starts, I would love to hear because that’s what I really want to play in Aion.
• Feeling that grind is imminent.  I am a quest player.  I would much rather kill 30 rats in order to get a 10% dropped rat tail for a quest than kill 30 rats to hit another leveling bar.  The “knowledgeable” people say that leveling is mostly quest based until levels 35-40, or so.  Then to get to level 50 it becomes very grindy.  The thought of this turns me off, but I will reserve judgment.
• Foreign markets are primary.  It is clear that this is not just a “Korean grind-based game” brought stateside.  It feels like Aion was truly made to be a worldwide MMO.  However, the MMO culture in Korea, China, NA, EU, etc. are all different.  Some seem to have small differences (NA and EU), and some have big differences (Korea and NA).  I get the feeling that Aion players might have to get used to some mechanics not right for their MMO culture because the developers are primarily concerned with the foreign markets.  I am unsure about this because it does not necessarily mean the content developers will ignore the secondary markets, but it is something to be wary of.

All in all, I had a great time.  I get the feeling that I am just beginning to scratch the surface of a very solid game.  I am looking forward to more beta events.

–Ravious
he came forth conquering, and to conquer

p.s. I swear WordPress is randomly deleting spaces on me. I apologize for any crammedtogether words. ;)

Aion Weekend Wrapup is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The release is going to be interesting because the game has already been released in some Asian countries, and there Aion is enjoying immense popularity.  The Yanks and Euros will get the game, I believe, nearly a year after Korea’s open beta.  All that polish that MMOs usually require that first few months will already be built in to the core gameplay.  This means that Aion might possibly be one of the smoothest “AAA” MMO launches yet.

I am excited about the game, but not to an MMO degree.  For Warhammer Online, I was excited to an MMO degree.  This meant I was willing to forsake all other games, especially other time consuming MMOs, to play Warhammer Online exclusively.  I would suck the marrow from all that Mythic would offer.  I really don’t feel that way about the current or 2009 MMOs right now.  I am currently playing Guild Wars (mostly casual PvP), Lord of the Rings Online (two Loth rep quests/day, then log), and World of Warcraft (I’ll blog about that later).  This is on top of Mount & Blade (lttp), Assasin’s Creed (yay, Steam sales), and Peggle (I can’t quit yooo).  I think that some upcoming expansions and games will get me back in to the hyper-focused MMO degree of gameplay, but thus far Aion is not quite that far in on my radar.

However, I will still likely play Aion.  I have heard that it can be played very casually (WoW with wings), and if nothing else flying around with very pretty graphics might be worth a couple Jacksons.  I also really like the idea of PvPvE, where enemies to all invade battlegrounds.  I have always thought RvR would be more fun with the addition of NPC enemies, and Aion seems to have taken this idea and run with it.  Hopefully, one of those exquisite beta keys lands in my lap (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, NCSoft ^ ^).

–Ravious
and war broke out in heaven

Aion Engine Revs Up is a post from: Kill Ten Rats