Author: Ethic

I own this little MMO gaming blog but I hardly ever write on it any more. I'm more of a bloglord or something. Thankfully I have several minions to keep things rolling along.
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What’s The Rush?

clock As I often spend more time thinking about games than I do playing them, I occasionally find myself discovering some aspect of gaming I had not recognized before. In this most recent inspiration, I realized that I hurry through games too fast.

Perhaps it is the monthly fee (doubtful because I’m speeding through Guild Wars too)? Perhaps it is the desire to reach a new level or the “end game” (whatever that is, I swear I’ve never seen it) or perhaps it is the desire to see a new area or a new monster to fight. Whatever it is, it gets me in a mode that has me blowing through the content as fast as I can.

I skim the quest descriptions looking for my objective and I run off seeking to accomplish it as soon as possible. I don’t read the story. I don’t get pulled into the plot. Thus, I find myself losing interest in MMOs at an alarming rate.

World of Warcraft is perhaps the most interesting MMO I have played in a long time and yet I only lasted a couple of months. Level 28 out of a possible 60 is the furthest I made with any one character. Having people playing more often than I do, I find myself trying to maximize my time to try to keep up. I have started to avoid crafting and side-activities like fishing. I figured that stuff is all in place to slow down the hard-core players a little, not for me.

I think I would like to try to play a game slower, but how? I can think of a few options here. I could play on a server that nobody I know is on. I could read EVERYTHING that there is to read (do you know there are many books in WoW to be read?). I could walk everywhere instead of using instant transportation. I could do more exploring and less fighting. I could take up role-playing. I could choose a place to live and make sure I start and finish each session there.

I remember back to my first MMORPG, Asheron’s Call. I played that game with a few people I knew. They had all been playing a long while and were high level, but they were also very social. We often spent the evening sitting on a rooftop shooting the breeze or making up quests for prospective allegiance members to do in order to be allowed to join. I look back on it now as one of the best times I have ever had in an MMO. So perhaps the socialization is what I am missing the most. It seems that a guild chat channel just doesn’t work as well as standing in front of someone and talking, even if it is just a virtual person.

Anyone else feel the same way? Have any other ideas? Feel free to share.

– Ethic

Player-Made Content

[Saga of Ryzom] Why is this not a bigger deal in the industry? I think it is a very exciting step in a different direction for MMOs. Listen to the details:

…designing, creating and animating your own scenarios for the players of the Saga of Ryzom.

…allowing you to run your own zones within the world of Atys.

Create a setting and lay out the buildings, flora, fauna, challenges and safe zones that will bring it to life.

Delve into the complete libraries of SoR to dress and populate your map.

…use it to build a dank domain full of monsters, or a serene vale perfect for wedding chapel, the Ryzom Ring provides the means to express yourself.

Share your creation with massive numbers of players. Open your maps to everyone, or reserve them for a selected group of characters. Develop your maps in real time.

Provide a unique game experience for others players by controlling every aspect of a scenario that you have designed.

Fellow players will seamlessly wander from the mainland of Atys into your new map.

This is a bold step. It could be really great, or a huge failure, but it’s bold and I like it. It has potential to increase quality content or increase crappy content. It has potential to increase griefing and cheating. It has potential to give you the opportunity to actually leave a mark on the world.

I eagerly await more details…

– Ethic

Jason Booth Leaves The Scene

One of the main characters involved in Turbine (makers of AC, AC2, DDO, and MEOLOTRO or something) left a few weeks ago and has now found new employment.

Jason Booth is working for some non-MMO company so it’s unimportant. Ha.

Anyway, he left some comments regarding MMOs that I wanted to point out to see what people think about them. There is a lot of truth there to be sure, but is it really that black and white? Here is an excerpt:

… the MMP industry is boiling the formula down to a very destructive set of lesson for our society. These lessons appear to be:

    Achievement is far more important in life than enjoyment, family, friends, etc.

    We should all be equal, regardless of our given talents. Time and devotion to achievement is all that matters, skill and smarts are worthless.

    Don’t think, just grind.

    If you grind harder, you will be “more cool” than others.

The problem is that none of these really lead to a happy or compelling life. Play is supposed to be an enjoyable learning function which helps you to understand some aspect of life, not a time waster, or worse, something which literally drives you to neglect your life.

Good luck in the future Jason!

– Ethic

Trebuchet

[Guild Wars] I’ll give you another screenshot from GW. This time it’s my elementalist.

gw e1

Oh, interestingly enough, if you join a guild – all your characters join the guild. I did not know that. I had made a guild with one of my characters just to see how it works and next thing you know all my characters were in it. Since I am in a real guild now (with capes and a hall!) I had to log in all my characters to see if they had the cape too. They did.

The nice thing is, in the guild list it shows your current character name as well as connecting it to the name of the character you original joined the guild under so it’s easy to see who you really are.

Tonight, my Necromancer got to fire a couple of trebuchets at the enemy. That is my favorite word right there, trebuchet. Trebuchet. Sweet.

The mission involved driving back the Charr forces. As I got closer to the wall I needed to push them behind, I noticed a guy standing by a broken trebuchet (there’s that word again!). He told me to find three parts he needed and we could use the trebuchet to detroy the large groups near the wall.

I located piles of rubble around some other broken trebuchets and eventually found the parts he needed. After giving them to him, he showed me how to use the trebuchet. It was fun to see all the Charr forces falling beneath my bombardments. As I got closer to the wall I found another trebuchet I could fire and of course I did. Nice sound and visual effects.

– Ethic

Project: New Hope

I’m invisioning an MMORPG that I would enjoy and I’m going to share it with you now. You will also find it appealing and will call for game developers to create this world for us. One of you is a developer and will have a great desire to pay me loads of money for the idea and will not want any additional work from me, just the idea. Yeah, right. Copyright me. I’m not claiming it’s original, just claiming it sounds fun to me.

So here we go.

“Project: New Hope” – Our planet was destroyed by a freak ecological
disaster. The few of us that remained were forced to leave on
starships to search for a new planet suitable enough to call our home.

Years go by and we discovered only one planet that would fill our
needs perfectly. The only problem is that it is currently inhabited by
some sentient creatures. These creatures are of a lower intelligence
than us and they are not interested in sharing the planet. They choose
to fight rather than let us live. We have no choice, we must take the
planet by force if we want to survive.

We have the ability to launch small crafts from the main ships which
will allow us to land on the planet surface in small groups. Being
outnumbered, our missions will be precise in nature. Go in – complete
the mission objective – get out. Missions will range from capturing
specific creatures for study, steal natural resources, destroying
military objectives, stealing military plans, finding weaknesses, stop
their crude attacks on our ships, stealing weapons, destroying
important infrastructure, or simply reducing the population of these
creatures.

By completing these various objectives, we hope to be able to take
over a small continent so we can put a base or two on the surface of
the planet. From these bases we can then undergo more advanced
military strikes on the creatures.

Eventually our goal will be the complete eradication of the creatures,
save for a few we may use for our needs. We must take control of the
entire planet, it is our only hope for survival as a species. Our
future depends on it.

Perhaps someday we will have the planet all to ourselves. We need to
make it our home, this planet the creatures call Earth.

– Ethic

It’s a curse…

[Guild Wars] I swear I have this curse regarding video games. Whenever I start to really like a game, something happens to smack me back down where I belong. Tonight was one of those times.

Feeling pretty good about GW, right? Yeah I was. Until I got these two quests. One was to go find some census papers from the wilderness and the other to escort some recruits to a guard station.

For the census quest, I picked a few henchmen and off we went. We got out to the chest the paper was supposed to be in and an ambush closed in on us. We got wiped because of some stupid gameplay by the henchmen (I swear I did nothing wrong, lol). My screen tells me it will be 10 seconds until resurrection.

We resurrect, but the healer henchman is missing. I can see her name in my group panel, but she is nowhere to be seen. We head back towards the chest and I can see that she is taking damage so she must be somewhere. Eventually we show up in the same area and I can see her dot on the radar but she was not there. After watching the pathing of some ranged attacks on her, I realized that she is under the terrain. Nice.

I opened the chest and nothing is in it. No census. Fun. Map travel to town and come back out again and this time it is in the chest. Quest completed. This brings to light an issue with the instancing. I hate that I have to clear out the same areas over and over everytime I leave and then re-enter the instance. Can’t they make it save for a few minutes or something? Would be nice.

Next quest, escort the three recruits to the guard station. I find them easy enough and off we go. A few times I have to go back as the recruits must have failed orienteering. Finally I get to the guard station and he yells at me because he was expecting three recruits and I only have two. Um, what the heck happened to the third guy?

I ran all the way back, retracing our steps and eventually find him standing in the same spot as where we found them. Nice job, soldier! Back we go again making sure he was following this time.

You know the saying that an army can only move as fast as it’s slowest soldier? This guy is living proof. I had to stop over and over again, waiting for Private Lazybones to get it in gear. Eventually, quest completed.

One last thing, I joined a guild tonight. Nobody I know, but they have a nice guild name and there is not one stupid character name in the guild so far. I have a cloak and a guild hall too, kind of cool. They seem like nice people. I guess I’ll find out how this is all going to work.

– Ethic

New Content For Free?

[Guild Wars] I just read that ArenaNet is going to be giving players two new explorable areas for free. Yeah that’s right, a game with no monthly fee is adding content to the game for free. Why aren’t you playing this yet?

As part of our commitment to bringing you new content via our free live updates, the first streaming update for Guild Wars offers players access to two extensive new explorable areas: the barren expanse of Grenth’s Footprint and the fiery depths of Sorrow’s Furnace.

I’ve been trying to think of things that GW doesn’t offer that other MMOs do. I am having a hard time thinking of one single thing I personally miss. Anything that is missing is usually something that sucked in the first place. Perhaps more time will cloud my dreamy view of the game.

– Ethic

3 New MMORPGs

Holy Beast Online: features animal-to-character evolving system that enables players to choose as a member of the six animal races.

Animal-to-character evolving system? Is this some sort of furry thing?

King of Kings 2: focuses not just on the variability of game character but also the country system. By trying out different combinations of the badge received from battle and armaments, players are given more power. As the game progresses, player would decide on the type of government and the position on the issue of scarce resources.

This one sounds good for the casual “only looking for some light fun” type of player.

The Twin Heroes Online: features aesthetic paper dolls, cute and comical pets, dazzling martial arts and interactive community system. The game offers intricate scenarios interweaved with different plots.

Hold on. Paper dolls, cute pets AND martial arts? That is the holy trinity of MMORPGs! How can they go wrong here?

Read the press release here.

– Ethic

Guild Wars For Dummies

[Guild Wars] Judging by the large amount of questions bandied about in the main cities in GW, I assume a lot of people prefer to be led through the game by hand. I guess nobody wants to figure anything out on their own, so I’m here to save the day.

First we will start with the most important questions I keep seeing:

How do I dye my armor? As it says when you move the mouse pointer over the dye, double-click it and then click the item you want to dye.

What is this “salvage kit” for and how does it work? Again, the mouseover trick should do wonders for you here, but in case you still aren’t sure, you double-click on the kit and then click on an item in your pack. If it is salvageable, it will break down into components like “wood” or “bone” or “shell” or “leather”. These can be taken to a crafter that will make things for you.

How do I identify this sword? See the vendor where you bought the salvage kit and buy an identification kit. It works the same way, double-click on it and then click on the item you want identified.

How do I dance? Type in /dance and the coolness begins immediately.

How do I get those cool sparkly effects shooting from my hands when I dance? Buy the Collector’s Edition.

How do I play “rock, paper, scissors”? Type in /rock or /paper or /scissors and let the fun begin.

How do I roll a 20 sided die? Type in /roll 20 (you can use other numbers for extra zany nerd simulations).

Where are the collectors? See those people standing around all over the game with (collector) in their name? Try asking them.

Do you want to join my guild? We have a cool cloak! No.

Why does this little girl want to follow me around all the time? Oh Gwen? Just ignore her and you’ll be better off.

How to I get more pack space? See the collector right outside Ascalon City? Just to the left? Ask that guy.

Now onto more important stuff:

What do you mean this is the newbie area? Well you see, in the beginning of the game you are in “pre-searing”. This is the newbie training area. You can learn about classes and skills and grouping and questing and things like that here. This is where you choose your 2nd class as well. You can stay here as long as you want, but the real game starts in “post-searing”.

How do I get to “post-searing”? After you get a few levels under your belt and you have chosen a second class, go talk to Sir Tydus in Ascalon City and go to the Academy.

What is the Academy? This is where you get your first taste of PvP. You will be put in a random group of 4 people (or maybe some henchmen if there is not enough people joining the Academy at that time) and will be forced to battle in an arena. The winning team moves on, the losing team stays to fight again. It’s not hard, so have fun. (I’ve been corrected here, I guess the result does not matter and everyone moves on. In that case it does not seem as exciting and I am disappointed.)

What is the “searing”? Well if the name is not enough for you, just wait and see. Needless to say, things won’t ever be quite the same again.

OK, final tip for now: The “Adventure with an Ally” quest asks you to go find someone else and join in a group. Then you should return to get the resurrection signet. Now, lots of people stand around asking for someone to join them, but it seems they don’t understand the grouping part. As soon as someone says they will join you, don’t just run off. You must actually invite or be invited to a group and the invitee must accept. Then and only then should you go off to get the signet. I am amazed at how many people have done this to me.

– Ethic