Alganon: No New Ideas

Not that long ago, this quote appeared on Massively:

The December first launch of the game “should never have happened,” and Smart is working to fix this. Among other things, he says the “WoW lookalike rubbish” is gone. The design team is throwing it out and working in a completely different direction to give the game its own unique look and feel. “You don’t go competing with WoW when you don’t have a WoW sized budget or the manpower to match.”

They copied World of Warcraft, realized it was a dumb idea, and are going to take all that WoW rubbish out.

Then I get the Alganon launch email and it has this quote:

“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” Derek Smart continued. “In Alganon, in addition to these we’ve added the fourth pillar to the equation; a story.

Where have I heard that before? Oh right, Star Wars:The Old Republic. Also, nice spelling. Multiplier?

Traditionally MMOs are built on three pillars; Exploration, Combat, and Progression. We at BioWare and LucasArts believe there is a fourth pillar: Story.

Do they have any original ideas? They didn’t have a WoW budget but they do have a SWTOR budget?

– Ethic

Dear Quickfoot Cat Burglar

BoomI infiltrated your warehouse the other day and, well, perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this but I think you guys are getting some bad advice. You see, some of the barrels in your warehouse are rather clearly labeled as “Explosive Barrel” and yet each and every last one of you chose to stand right next to one. I mean, even though it made it quite enjoyable to put you guys out of business, you might find more success standing next the the plain old “barrel” next time.

Not that I can blame you, your boss was standing between 2 explosive barrels.

Respectfully,

– Ethic

Misery’s Peak

Last night was Day 2 (or Week 2?) of Massively’s Nights of Eberron. Last week was fun but perhaps a bit disorganized.

During the week off, I took my Cleric out back and had him shot, to be replaced with a Ranger. I spent some time getting him back up to level 2 so he would be ready to go. Even still, I had a lot of things to learn. For example, how to use a quiver. It’s not obvious. It kind of works like a bag. You equip it and then you open it and put your arrows in it. However, not all quivers are alike. The two varieties I could find for sale at a vendor are called “narrow” and “wide”. They both can hold 1,200 arrows (that’s a big quiver!). The “wide” quiver can hold 6 types of arrows, with a maximum of 200 each type. The narrow can hold 3 types of arrows, with a maximum of 400 each. Since I only had 2 types of arrows I opted for the “narrow” quiver so I could hold 400 of the arrows I’m using right now.

Continue reading Misery’s Peak

DDO and Super Rewards, Part 3

Ravious has hit his quota of DDO posts so I’ve been forced to do the final update on the “Saga of Super Rewards”.

Marketroid posted a “final” update on the story here. The important part may be this:

Based on your feedback, we’re stepping away from the ‘Offer’ category for now. We’ll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We’ll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that’s who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We’ll collect all the feedback we’ve received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions.

Follow the link above to read the rest. In my opinion this should have never gotten off the ground floor but at they did a pretty decent job of responding to the player base (and finally responding to the security complaints). And hey, at least they didn’t charge folks 21 times for the last month. Bazinga!

– Ethic

DDO: Static Style

Last night was the first night of the Massively DDO static night, officially called “Massively’s Nights of Eberron”. I’ve always said that I’d love to play DDO in a static group so I rolled up a Cleric the night before and then logged in last night. I expected maybe 15 or 20 people to show up. I’d guess it was closer to 50, including some famous folks like Psychochild and Green Armadillo. Syp would have been there but instead he was off doing something important like “welcoming a new baby into the world”. Yeah, whatever dude. Seriously though, congratulations!

The first thing that confused me is that we all were on Korthos but some of us had snow and some had sun. We had to all get to the sunny version which meant we had to sail to Stormreach and then back to Korthos. At this point we tried to form groups of 5 to do some quests. I invited one person and we stood around waiting for others to express interest. Eventually we got a group of 4 together, 1 Cleric and 3 Rogues. Off we went with voice chat enabled.

Continue reading DDO: Static Style

The Quiet Before the sTORm

Hi.

You may not know me, but I go by the name Ethic. I used to play MMOs and write about them here. Somewhere along the line, I found myself with just enough time to play games for a few hours a week with nothing much to say afterwards. Same old same old, know what I mean? Thankfully, some other folks keep things going around here when I’m not feeling “wordy”.

Over the years, I have seen my interests flit about from here to there and back. TV has taken up more of my free time with Lost, Fringe, 24, Castle, Big Bang Theory, Justified and my Farscape complete series DVDs. There are some really enjoyable TV shows out there lately. After I get caught up with my shows on the DVR, I turn my attention to the PC.

Continue reading The Quiet Before the sTORm

Game of Thrones

HBO is going to have one more sub soon thanks to this news:

Winter is, indeed, coming.

HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series “Game of Thrones.”

The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.

Awesome.

– Ethic

Fire Up The Hype Machine

Or don’t. Anyway, Curt Schilling (of Green Monster Games 38 Studios) posted this over at the F13.net forums:

Look for something that actually matters, information wise, soon, REAL soon. Like before the end of the month soon.

They are planning to release a non-MMO console game first, that ties into the MMO later. What the “something that actually matters” applies to, we will find out soon, REAL soon. Like before the end of the month soon.

– Ethic

Allods Online Announces Open Beta

Just a brief note, this one is worth checking out in my opinion.

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your neighbors, tell your dog, Allods Online is going Open Beta! The Allods Online team is pleased to announce that the Open Beta will officially go live on February 16th, 2010! All players will be able to access the game (no beta key needed) and all current content through level 40 will be available for play!

Please note that all CBT characters will be deleted prior to Open Beta. Characters created in Open Beta will NOT be deleted.

– Ethic

Worthless Announcement

This just in from Interplay, regarding the “upcoming” “Fallout” “MMORPG”:

This MMOG will have many unique features that we will disclose before launch of the public Beta in 2012.

Hey everyone, guess what? We will open up for beta testing in 2012! Save some time for beta testing in 2012! We only started work on this in 2007, give us a break! Unless the Mayan thing is true. In that case, nevermind.

-Ethic