Author: Zubon

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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More Serious Thoughts on Chicken Play

I have made several brief comments about The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢’s session play, so I thought I would make a more coherent statement.

As gameplay, the chickens are disappointing. It is a set of “go talk to x” quests, with poor directions to x. Despite being just outside the hobbit starting area, this is not newbie content. You must know where things are and be able to find them with a blank map while playing a level one character. Taking a chicken through the higher level areas is presumably an interesting challenge, although having a babysitter makes it much easier. The greatest annoyance is uninteresting running. If your quest is “talk to animals in Bree,” your first step is a five-minute run across the Shire to Bree, an almost perfectly safe run with just enough twists to keep you from going AFK with autorun on. Bottom line: not fun once the novelty of “lol chicken” wears off.

As a story, it is without value as far as I have seen. Chickens are scared, you talk to other animals, they say they will not help. Every time. As a tech demo, I suppose it is okay. There must be some technical issues in moving from a PC to a connected one-shot puppet. It is a shame that everything is flushed between sessions, including your map. Building up a chicken could be amusing.

In many ways, chicken play is the logical extreme of The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. If you read The Lord of the Rings and thought, “I wish I could be a secondary character doing sidequests while Frodo carries The One Ring,” The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ is designed for you. Taking it one step further, what if you were a hobbit in The Shire, and you could level by delivering mail or gathering eggs? Taking it one step further, what if you were a chicken in The Shire, laying those eggs? Just $15/month, baby!

I have not tried a troll or ranger in session play. From what I hear in /ooc as a monster, the freeps use rangers as mobile artillery platforms at the center of groups, while the creeps avoid using the trolls for fear that the human players will give up and leave. Your server may vary.

: Zubon

Shire as a Place

Taking a whirl around Middle Earth, I remade my hobbit hunter from beta and am almost back to where I was, looking forward to seeing new things. There have already been several new things, what with the updates since beta, but I don’t think I cleared level 20, so there is a lot of game ahead.

Hobbits start in The Shire, which is a wonderfully executed zone. It comes across as a part of the world, rather than a convenient place to stock bandits and goblins. There are bandits and goblins, but those are not the center of The Shire. The focus is on farms, rolling hills, and peaceful people. It is not high adventure, but it is setting-appropriate.

This is the place that feels like Middle Earth online, rather than Yet Another Fantasy MMORPG. Two major concerns are improving the postal service and delivering pies. Your early fights are against wolves that are eating chickens. You fight bears because of concerns about honey, and you get a title for slaying giant flies that would otherwise eat the crops. If there were somewhere in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ where you would go and just be, it would probably be The Shire.

And then it is The Lord of the Rings. Dwarf and human bandits are in the opposing zone corners, connected to those lands’ foes. Goblins and spiders infest the north. A black rider is looking for a certain Baggins. Mordor casts a long shadow.

: Zubon

MT

Facilitating a statewide planning meeting last week, I had a keyboard connected to the room’s projectors. This let us visually track notes, issues to resolve, action items, etc. It also made me very aware that I should not try to talk smack about people in /gu.

: Zubon

Quote of the Week

From Moorgard‘s friend Kohath:

“You guys have an uphill battle differentiating yourselves from all the other MMOs that no one cares about.”

And there are good reasons not to care about lousy MMOs. And there are a lot of them. A lot. And more coming. And Raph is helping people make their own at home. I can only hope that Sturgeon’s Law is not too optimistic.

: Zubon

Red-Shirt Data Analysis

While the game itself seems to be wearing a red shirt, the makers of Star Trek Online (in whatever final form it may appear) may want to read this presentation on the deaths of Star Trek red-shirts. The canny player might be tempted never to put his crew in red outfits, but that is obvious cheating that is just asking for karmic revenge; you want the enemy to focus fire there, rather than hitting valuable bridge crew members. Instead, note the bit showing that Captain Kirk’s sex life is a primary determinant of whether crew members live or die. Now I’m not saying that there is any cause-and-effect, since Kirk was not one to seduce fanged tentacle fiends, but a noble PC captain must be willing to take one for the team. Age of Conan is trailbreaking this gameplay, so be sure to earn your crew buff on each new planet.

: Zubon

H/T: Mark Krikorian

Extra Slots Implementation: For Your Discussion

As previously contemplated and announced, City of Heroes is selling extra character slots. The official implementation is here. (2 free for current subscribers, 1 free per year that you are subscribed, one time fee of $6/$10/$20 for 1/2/5 slots, add up to 24 per server) I open this for your comments, as I am curious about what you think of the option, pricing, likely staff time needed, the limits placed, other options that could be viable, etc.

Kicking it off, I note that you are buying one slot for one server, not one slot per server. Also, if you want your cap of 36 slots on a server, that will cost ~$100, or $80 if you are a two-year subscriber who puts all the free slots there.

I predict many people returning for at least one month for Issue 12: two free slots for being a current subscriber, plus new archetypes and power sets to play with. Lots of new characters will be made to play with those, so it is a good time to start too. Great marketing item, definitely worth e-mailing to former players with the “$10 value!” note. Of course, that is still at least a month away, so keep your powder dry. I am on-break from CoX until then.

: Zubon

D&D 4E quasi-bleg

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is available for pre-order at 40% off. That is pretty tempting for me, what with my bookcase of gaming books. I feel reasonably certain that I will buy at least the PHB, but buyer’s remorse on many other products makes me hesitate to pre-order. I avoid pre-ordering anything these days unless I have direct experience with it, which seems unlikely to be available here. On the other hand, there is lots of info at EN World and DnD4.com.

So basically I am asking if you have any advice, comments, leaks, etc. I am leaning towards it, so I don’t need a big shove, but I remain worried about getting another RPG book/system that I will never use, a failure of both fluff and mechanics.

: Zubon