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Favorite CG MMO Trailers

The trailer for Guild Wars 2 has all been but confirmed for release tomorrow (August 20) in Cologne at noon (6 AM EST).  In lieu of this momentous occasion, I wanted to share my five favorite CG MMO trailers.  Feel free to share your favorites and most disliked below.  In no particular order:

Tabula Rasa – Even though the game is no longer living, I really enjoyed the Tabula Rasa trailer.  It was well produced, and the tidbits of story was just enough to understand the background conflict.  The scenes showing the conquering of the world and the human refugees were great in giving a feeling of loss.  The point that Earth was gone was well made.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade – The original World of Warcraft trailer was great, and Blizzard took it one step further with the Burning Crusade trailer.  It set up the main conflict for entering the Outlands, it presented the two new races, it had a bit of nostalgia, a bit of humor, and a big badass at the end.  I had long stopped playing World of Warcraft, but the trailer got me excited.  The following Frozen Throne trailer failed to do this for me.  It felt like the “one” scene was stretched thin.

Star Wars The Old Republic – This one was an easy choice.  Even parsing out the superb use of Star Wars lore, the set up and cinematography are top notch.  The combat choreography is well done with the focus where it should be in the huge lightsaber battle.  I do have one complaint.  Both major combatants should have died with the way that final blow was struck.  It gave the Sith a feeling of plot immunity, which further lead to a feeling of the bad guys are cooler.  I think that the good guys deserved a few more “cool” scenes.

Guild Wars Factions – The first Guild Wars trailer was about average, but when the second Guild Wars campaign was coming, ArenaNet outdid themselves with this trailer.  It had a very evocative Asian feel without falling into the horrible Asian tropes (see the Lineage 2 trailer for those), and I loved the use of beads to signify blood.  The Jade Wind was also great, but I wished it also showed the “freezing” of the Jade Sea.  It sucked that Guild Wars Nightfall did not have its own trailer after the outstanding Factions one.

Warhammer Online – This is likely my favorite MMO CG trailer, and possibly my favorite CG trailer.  It showcases a lot of the classes and their conflict with each other.  It gives the good guys some “cool” facetime, and the whole trailer keeps a steady pace.  There are also a lot of small details like the dwarf deciding he needs a drink during the battle or the demon’s necklace warping reality.  My one criticism is that the pacing is almost too steady.  It does not give the frenetic feeling of a battle.  It’s a minor nitpick, though, in a great trailer.

–Ravious
ze Zacred Siegfried Oas

Sith Warrior

I’m not one to take a quote out of context and over analyze it, but I wonder how much exactly was revealed in a statement by James Ohlen of Bioware. He said quote,

“At E3, we did show off a Sith, and today, we are revealing that the Sith that was shown at E3 was specifically the Sith Warrior. Darth Vader was the primary inspiration for the this character class.”

How very nice to reveal that the thing we saw at E3 was a “Sith Warrior”. We saw the red light-sabers, so we’re not surprised it’s a sith. But a Sith Warrior. Is Sith Warrior a class all on it’s own or a sub-class within the greater Sith class? Perhaps there are two kinds of Sith… a warrior and a healer. I really don’t know.

Maybe, just maybe… Sith Warrior is one of three kinds of Sith to be. I guess I’ll get more of a hint if they officially reveal either Sith Warrior as a class or just plain ol’ Sith.

EDIT: While I was reading a thread this morning on the SWTOR general class forum, a thread I was reading was actually moved to a newly created Sith Warrior class forum. This ends all speculation of “Sith Warrior” as being a mere subclass. Subclasses, don’t get their own forum.

Buy Orders

Almost any MMO with an economy has an auction house these days (A Tale in the Desert excepted, for special reasons). Are we to the point yet when buy orders become standard? That seems like something the next set of games needs. A few of the current-generation games have learned the basic lesson that the economy functions more smoothly when you have parity between buying and selling. EVE Online is the best example; steal their economic tools. If that seems like too much for you, look at the City of Heroes consignment house, which is a simplified version of the same thing. Yes, City of Heroes, the game with no equipment as such and where crafting was added years into it, has a better economic system than your game.

: Zubon

Do open betas work better?

It’s a serious question. What do you think? Seems the custom for the last few years has been to open beta this and that, but I’m old enough to remember it didn’t always use to be like this, and open betas were very, very rare.

The question is twofold; there’s the technical angle and the promotional angle. So, on the technical side, are open betas “better” than closed ones? Do you get better results? I know you naturally get more results, but are they better? Do open betas improve or polish the product better than closed ones?

Then publicity, of course. Yes it’s nice to get many people interested in the game before it starts selling, but do they achieve anything that good marketing  (or, hell, even a short demo) can’t do?

Maybe it’s just me and I’m nostalgic like that, but it seems to me in the times of closed betas it wasn’t that we were churning out clunkers (or, rather, we didn’t churn out any more clunkers than we’re churning out now), and people heard about games, got in contact with games and played these games just fine without the need for early access to anything, really.

P.S.: Am I the only human being left that doesn’t give a damn about early open betas, lifetime subs, microtransactions, pay for zone, F2P, refer a friend deals, exclusive items, pre-ordering, collector editions and other aberrations? I can’t be.

Survey Feedback

Dear Turbine,
You just sent me a survey on The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. Things went downhill starting with this question:

“In the list below, please select your favorite features.
Remember that we’re asking you how much you like each feature, not how much time you spend or your thoughts about the current state of the feature.”

So you want to know what features I like, but I should not take into account the current state of the feature? I need a text box here that lets me tell you how lousy a question that is. If I like the idea of legendary items but think the current system is horrible, I should tell you it is my favorite feature? WTF? “New classes” and “new races” are on the list. Am I fond of all possible new classes and races? There have been two new classes and no new races. Is there any basis on which I can answer this question? And it is a required question, so I cannot skip it.

On the rest of the required questions that were nonsensical or inapplicable to my current playstyle, I filled in the least irrelevant answer. I am pretty sure that you just received active disinformation from me, at your own request.

Please hire someone who knows how to write surveys. I work in evaluation, so I might be able to recommend someone to you.

: Zubon

Champions Online: One Night

Go, play through the tutorial. It is worth seeing the character builder and basic implementation, although it may not be worth the download time.

You will first notice that the game is classless. Class roles come in later, but pick whatever you want at the start. That is positive, although it makes it look as though the entire game is just slightly different flavors of a few attacks. The front could use more “and you have this to look forward to.”

I have said enough about how the graphics are horrible. Just terrible. It is as though they maintained art quality by restraining their better artists rather than working on the worse ones. Just wait until you see the running animation that does not match movement speed.

The character builder has some improvements. Continue reading Champions Online: One Night

The Jacobs Test: Champions Online and Aion

Amidst first impressions and “reviews” let us not forget the simple, yet elegant point system disclosed by Mark Jacobs in deciding whether to buy Champions Online or Aion Online.  Champions Online dropped the NDA August 17 which was less than three full weeks away from the September 4th release date.  Mark Jacobs obviously thinks that Champions Online is “okay but not great.”  Aion Online, on the other hand, dropped the North American NDA over 14 weeks out from launch.  I believe I heard Mark Jacobs say Aion Online was “nirvana.”  Of course one must take in to consideration that Aion Online was unfairly released in Korea almost a year ago.  In retort, it seems that there really was no NDA throughout Korean Aion testing at all.  So take that, point system.  Got anything higher than nirvana?

–Ravious
oh well, whatever, nevermind

Champions Online: The Tragedy of First Impressions (A Lack of Review)

I have already said that my first impressions of Champions Online were negative. But that kept stacking, early problem on early problem, such that I made it through the tutorial once after four starts. For all I know, it is problematic turtles all the way down, or perfection lies just beyond the knee-high fence that stops yet another video game character.

When I first tried the closed beta, it was a mess. I started on a night when a mid-level zone was being tested, so I skipped past what would have been a couple dozen levels of learning what all these buttons do and how to build a character. Some of the powers did not work, there were graphics glitches, the handling was odd, the quick start guide was wrong about what some keys did, and I was unclear on the stuff to test for the evening. It is confusing when you do not know what is broken and what is yet to be implemented. I surely could have puzzled it all out with an hour or three on the forums… or I could log and do something else.

Meanwhile, the graphics were horrible. Continue reading Champions Online: The Tragedy of First Impressions (A Lack of Review)

Krokopatra Down

This past weekend I finally bought and pushed through the final two zones in Kroktopia.  It was actually quite difficult for my Storm wizard because the final quest hub in Kroktopia is full of Storm creatures (which are, as one would expect, resistant to Storm spells).  I thankfully had a spell that converted Storm damage in to Myth damage, which Storm creatures are weak against, but then of course the Storm creatures cast spells to protect themselves against Myth damage.

There were some pretty rough fights, with glass jaws going against glass jaws.  Being on the other end of a lightning shark bite was not very fun, especially when it took off 1/3 of my life.  I could have done a lot better with deck-building, but I eked by every boss fight.  The Krokopatra fight was filled with edge-of-my-seat goodness where I luckily got off my one pet skill to diffuse the incoming damage enough until I killed her minion.  Some other fights were over in five turns through clever use of buffing (first in, last out for buffs is very good knowledge to have).

I am having a really tough time deciding where to head next.  Grizzleheim is new and shiny, but a branch off of “the first chapter.”  Marleybone follows the storyline, but I hear it can be frustrating.  Where should a level 26 Storm wizard go?

–Ravious
all strange and terrible events are welcome