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STO: Beta Events

Today was the last day of beta for Star Trek Online. For the last day of beta, the developers gave the fanboys a chance to play what they were asking for.

A lot of PVP fanboys were asking for open-world PVP. That was part of the event. Klingons could fly all the way to the starting location for humans and attack enemy players as they loaded in. Unfortunately for the Klingons, there are far less of them than there are of Federation players, so once they loaded into the zone, they found themselves to be the ones being spawn-camped. I heard Klingons complaining that they were dead before they could move. I heard federation players complaining that killing the same Klingon player over and over at the spawn-point was boring. For all the requests I read on message boards about wanting open-world PVP in STO, I only heard complaints from both sides in zone chat today.

A few Star Trek fanboys were complaining that the Borg in the game were too weak. In the tv-show, one Borg cube destroyed an entire fleet of ships. In Star Trek Online, you easily kill dozens of Borg on your own during the tutorial. During today’s last-day event, the Borg were everywhere. They spawned in the earth spacedock by the dozen. Individual Borg-drones one-shotted Klingon and Federation players alike. In space encounters, no fleet of players could hope to take out a single Borg-cube. The reaction to the Borg invasion was less negative, but I doubt even Star Trek fanboys would enjoy being one-shotted in the starting area once the game launched.

So why is Cryptic giving players in open-beta a chance to test things that won’t be in the game? Partially, this kind of event is a chance to celebrate the end of beta. But also, this gives Cryptic a chance to show what things would be like if they actually did something like this during launch. In Champions Online, their last-day of beta event in Millennium city was a slide-show for most people. The Borg invasion and open world PVP showed that some ideas fans have are more fun as concepts than they are in-game.

Baptismal Learning Curve

Via Chocobo at RPG.net:

Funny story that predates LFD: When I first did Old Kingdom, as a healer, the tank asked if we all knew the fight. I said, “No, what should I know?” He said, “You’ll find out when it happens,” then he charged in.

Reminds me of a TV Trope… like Wanted where its The Only Way They Will Learn.  Hopefully Chocobo also shot the wings off of flies.

–Ravious
Welcome… to the Fraternity

Blogging, As Seen in 1968

From His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem:

The inflation of the printed word has been caused, no doubt, by the exponential increase in the number of those writing, but in equal degree by editorial policies. In the childhood of our civilization only select, well-educated individuals were able to read and write, and much the same criterion held after the invention of printing; and even if the works of imbeciles were published (which, I suppose, is impossible to avoid completely), their total number was not astronomical, as it is today. Today, in the flood of garbage, valuable publications must go under, because it is easier to find one worthwhile book among ten worthless than a thousand among a million. …

… It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of imposters, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?

We will note that similar complaints against the masses have abounded since before the printed word, back when any danged fool thought he was the next Sophocles. I am mollified in the pointless narcissism of blogging every book I read by the Victorian tendency to do something very similar in print, so as to circulate with their friends what they were reading and what they all thought about it. The Victorians were strong in introspection but had terrible latency.

: Zubon

Love Thy CM

Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day!  Thank you to all of the CM’s that we hound mercilessly.  I do not envy your job of having to walk the line between the screaming yang of your fans and the cutthroat yin of your bosses and marketing, but you do it day in and day out.  Thank you for supporting us gamers, and being our advocate when we need it most even though we don’t see most of the work you do.  Thank you for being our friends when you could easily wall us out for non-gaming related activities.  Thank you for sticking with us through our worst when our rabid bile gets caught in our throats and you hold our hair while we grace the porcelain seat with o… well you get the idea.  Thank you, community managers.

–Ravious
two score and five we came alive

Three Guild Wars Things

Mondes Persistants was able to interview the Guild Wars Live Team, and there are some pretty interesting answers (HT: Fril Estelin @ Guild Wars Guru) .  The most interesting answer to a pretty common question regarding future content additions / events was:

Yes, we have a lot of ideas on our minds, probably more than we will be able to implement. We love the game and always try to come up with new things we hope players will enjoy. Who knows, maybe players will bear witness to some of the cataclysmic events that transform Tyria prior to Guild Wars 2?

ArenaNet keeps mildly hinting at using Guild Wars as a platform to introduce some Guild Wars 2 lore, but that is an overly candid response to an easily shunted question.  We know that skill balance is a top priority, but we haven’t heard anything about upcoming features or content. Hopefully after the dust from the skill balances clears, the Live Team can preview what else they are working on.

The second is that the popular Guild Wars fansite Guild Wars Guru was hacked, and the hacker was able to obtain some personal information.  Read about it here, but the bottom line is to change your passwords to Guild Wars Guru and Guild Wars 2 Guru (and Auction Site).  I would also watch any other sites / games where you combo your email, username, and/or current Guru password.

The third is I have to say with one of my last controversial posts on Guild Wars, I had the weirdest pingback ever.  We are breaking grounds with the MMO genre people! (And go River Rats!)

–Ravious
remember two things

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

This gaming life

I’m the gamer in my family. I’ve been playing video games for 25 years and it’s a habit which doesn’t show any signs of letting up. Apart from a few drunken, post-pub sessions on Dance Dance Revolution on the PS2, my wife is a total non-gamer. She is vaguely aware of World of Warcraft and knows that I will sometimes stay up late to play “those silly games” on my laptop.

A fair few years ago, shortly after I started playing SWG, I attempted to explain to her all about MMOs, that a lot of the other characters on the screen were other players and that I was able to interact with them, talk to them, play with them. She showed about as much interest in it as I tend to do whenever Strictly Celebrity X Wife Jungle Dance Factor is on.

So, guess which one of us introduced our four-year-old son to Club Penguin!

Guild Wars Holy Trinity

The holy trinity is well known.  The DPS fight the mobs with damage.  The Healer fights the damage from the mobs.  And, the Tank fights the agro from the DPS and Healer.  In World of Warcraft the formula is pretty well set for easy gameplay.  Lord of the Rings gets a bit hazier with their use of hybrid classes, range tanking, and tank swapping, but for the most part it follows the doctrine of the holy trinity.

Guild Wars came very close to shirking the entire thing.  Agro does not really exist like it does in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online.  Each battle with PvE mobs is reminiscent of a PvP battle.  Players have 8 bodies against the team of enemies to kill.  Because PvE can feel so much like PvP (especially in comparison to the stark contrast of PvE/PvP in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online), ArenaNet moved away from the holy trinity to a more enlightened trinity: the three lines.

Continue reading Guild Wars Holy Trinity

YAMMOB

A new MMO blog is up and running over at GameMonkey.  I know the writer personally (as personal as we get in our internet ways), and as the writer is a gamer and developer, the articles will have an unabashedly clear viewpoint from which to criticize and comment.  There should be some very good, possibly controversial posts on our favorite game genre.

–Ravious
but first take care of head