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Degrees of WoW – 100 Minutes

I played the blood elf for a couple more levels, and I finally ran into two people at the second quest hub.  It was interesting because at first the duo (one blood elf and one troll) just blew by me, but due to QuestHelper we were clearly following the same path of quests.  It felt like drafting.  We exchanged pleasantries and buffs, and they played through.  Then, Indy came down the MMO mountain like Pai Mei, and told me what I had seemingly overlooked.  I could play a death knight, and just start out with the second expansion’s material.

Numina became Excrucian, and my days serving the Lich King began.  With the death knight starting area, Blizzard had clearly found the inclusivity I felt was lacking in the other starting areas.  There was activity, things were dying, and I felt like I had a job to do.  Through my next degree of WoW, I only ran into two or three other people, but this time it did not matter.  The world felt alive.

And in this strange dichotomy of degrees, I learned something about myself.  I liked MMOs not just because it was multiplayer, but it was massively so.  The first word in the acronym took on new meaning.  Maybe it wasn’t a matter of objective degree, such as the number of players on a server.  It felt like it was more subjectively about the activities going on around me.  When I walk in to town with players chatting, using the auction house, fishing, crafting, and dancing that’s when it felt like dancing.  The death knight starting area and a few other MMO starting areas showed me that to some degree, the feeling of massive-ness could be faked with good use of NPC’s.  But, I digress…

Continue reading Degrees of WoW – 100 Minutes

Degrees of WoW – 10 Minutes

I did get a single add-on before heading out to the blood elf starting area: QuestHelper.  QuestHelper is a popular add-on that adds the location and direction of the fedex items or NPCs to kill for each quest (much like Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, or Lord of the Rings Online).  The added benefit is the add-on seeks to map out an efficient route for the player to complete the quests.  I liked it.  It made things faster.

So, I grab my first quest.  Kill weak mana creatures that are standing a stone’s throw from the little blood elf enclave.  It seems that through the first few quests that the animals have gone ape-y due to the blood elves loss of control of magic.  It starts really simply, and even though this is a new zone, it feels much like my start so long ago killing wolves in the human starting area.  My first ten minutes are really basic, and I am kind of disappointed.  This was Blizzard’s chance to redo a starting area so that it is engaging.

The NPCs might as well have been sign posts, and the animals could have been boxes.  The area was pretty, but there was no sense of inclusivity.  It was clearly a tutorial in the most banal sense.  I guess I was a little spoiled by Lord of the Rings Online immediate foray into the epic story.  And, Warhammer Online was perfect in giving players the feeling that this was war and war was where they belonged.  NPC’s were fighting NPC’s.  Things were dying.  Cannons were destroying things.  Even when I was alone in the area it didn’t feel like it.  And, honestly that might have been the problem.  I was dead alone on a workday night in a game with nearly 12 million subscribers.  I hope I will run in to someone in the next degree of WoW.

–Ravious
sleepless long nights

Degrees of WoW – 1 Minute

After hours of downloading and updating, I am finally in.  The RPGNet crew beckons me to Kirin Tor, and I choose blood elf because I am told that the new starting areas are much better.  Plus, for a while I will actually have access to new content.  I choose a priest because it feels like comfortable, old slippers.  Click random, click random, hot enough.  Enter world.

I had not set foot in the game for three years.  I joined World of Warcraft about four months after launch.  I had a brand new laptop to play the game on, and a little time to play each day.  My character was a human priest on Feathermoon, the most populous RP server at the time.  With the time I played it took me quite a while to get up to level 46, and then I quit.  I just could not take the seeming no-man’s land between 40-59 anymore.  It felt like that last mile in a race, only everybody was finished and that mile was longer than all the other ones before it.  I guess it didn’t help that I liked to fish for those oilies so much.

Why am I playing again?

A few reasons spring to mind.  Blizzard does a good job at many things, and since they have come back from the elitist edge of The Burning Crusade into something much more casual, it grabbed my interest.  I want to try out the new expansion.  The phased storyline and Wintergrasp are two things I really want to experience.  I am kind of in a lull with the other MMOs I play.  Unlike some other new MMOs, this has uber-polish.  Hit and miss F2P games are not worth my time to try.

Things I am not excited about?

The subscription.  With the amount I play I kind of agree with the subscription seen as welfare for the hardcore.  Luckily, money is less of an issue at the moment.  The grind.  In the early stages things move rather quickly, but in World of Warcraft of past, I quickly hit a wall.  I’ve heard that Blizzard has graded the leveling curve to be a bit quicker now, and I can always transfer a level 55+ character to Kirn Tor and make a Death Knight.  That being said, I am playing how I want to play and casually.  I am praying that Blizzard has pumped up this type of gameplay in the “old” content.

We’ll see how this adventure goes.

Ravious
1, 2, 3, 4 tell me that you love me more

Aion Engine Revs Up

This weekend starts the publicly announced closed beta events for Aion.  I seemed to have completely missed my chance everywhere to get a key, but I am sure there will be more.  The next couple of months are likely going to be filled with Aion hype.  Its only marketing/release competition is Champions Online, which seems to be the only other “AAA” MMO set for 2009 release.  Plus with the World of Warcraft “boredom” setting in for many and the summer slowdown, I think Aion is in good position for a strong release.

The release is going to be interesting because the game has already been released in some Asian countries, and there Aion is enjoying immense popularity.  The Yanks and Euros will get the game, I believe, nearly a year after Korea’s open beta.  All that polish that MMOs usually require that first few months will already be built in to the core gameplay.  This means that Aion might possibly be one of the smoothest “AAA” MMO launches yet.

I am excited about the game, but not to an MMO degree.  For Warhammer Online, I was excited to an MMO degree.  This meant I was willing to forsake all other games, especially other time consuming MMOs, to play Warhammer Online exclusively.  I would suck the marrow from all that Mythic would offer.  I really don’t feel that way about the current or 2009 MMOs right now.  I am currently playing Guild Wars (mostly casual PvP), Lord of the Rings Online (two Loth rep quests/day, then log), and World of Warcraft (I’ll blog about that later).  This is on top of Mount & Blade (lttp), Assasin’s Creed (yay, Steam sales), and Peggle (I can’t quit yooo).  I think that some upcoming expansions and games will get me back in to the hyper-focused MMO degree of gameplay, but thus far Aion is not quite that far in on my radar.

However, I will still likely play Aion.  I have heard that it can be played very casually (WoW with wings), and if nothing else flying around with very pretty graphics might be worth a couple Jacksons.  I also really like the idea of PvPvE, where enemies to all invade battlegrounds.  I have always thought RvR would be more fun with the addition of NPC enemies, and Aion seems to have taken this idea and run with it.  Hopefully, one of those exquisite beta keys lands in my lap (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, NCSoft ^ ^).

–Ravious
and war broke out in heaven

Lotro Dev chat for June

As I type this, I’m currently sitting in a chat room for the Lotro developer chat for June 3rd.  The last dev chat was pretty flat with hardly any new info.  Questions were along the lines of, “What’s it like to work on the set?”  and “Where do you get inspiration for art?”  You know… fluff.

So far, questions in this chat seem to be more specific.  Questions seem to focus on the Legendary Item system and the radiance requirements of the new raid.  My question was “Any possibility to have a quest (like the rift) to switch a legacy on a Legendary Item?”  My question was quickly typed and kinda crappyily written, because I was litterally fighting with a group in a quest called Defending Dori while typing it.  I had already said I’d do the quest, yet wanted to participate in the chat, so I decided to multi-task!   … Yes… I’m even so much of a multi-tasker that I’m reading the dev-chat while typing this blog.  It boggles the mind.

Continue reading Lotro Dev chat for June

Evendim and Hengstacer

Last night was a good night in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. We have a Casualties of War static group on Tuesday nights, which is pretty much my only MMO time for the past month. When you’re not really excited about playing, it can be hard to log on at all, even to see the guys. I’m glad I played last night.

In 100 minutes, we ran about a dozen quests in eastern Evendim. If you know the area, we hit the desert, all the wanted posters, and the assorted relics, robbers, bears, wargs, etc. around the named tomb robbers, along with the first three steps of the “riddle” chain. Almost all of this is trivially easy in a group of four. We over-pulled, were reckless, and generally stomped a bunch of even-level enemies with a few signature foes mixed in. It was kind of like playing City of Heroes, although a non-CoH “massive over-pull” is five to eight enemies.

Note: not a single bugged-out enemy the entire time, including a rampage through Rantost and along the beach. Fixed!

We all leveled, with all but one of us now level 35 or higher, time for mounts. Mounts are 4.2 gold each (Casualties, if anyone else needs mount cash, we have not emptied my level 60 of her gold yet. Post on our boards), so cue the whining about the quests to get the riding skill.

I originally had the full narration of how long it takes to run these quests, which I timed at 35 minutes of story-free, challenge-free, alt-tabbed horse riding. If even a description of the quests is TL;DR, you can imagine how much fun running them on a fourth character is. Bree-land is next on the zone revamp list, so I hope this ridiculous waste is removed. I can see how the timed obstacle course at the end if challenging, with the traps that make you fail if you trust the path, but has anyone, anyone enjoyed riding across three zones to build up anticipation of getting your own horse? The failure is only reinforced by the fact that the horse farm does not have a stable. If there is one place in the world that should absolutely have a stable, it is the one where you can see several stables full of horses.

: Zubon

The Agency E3 Glimpses

I am liking what I see:

*Good use of instancing.  The demo goes from instanced to public to instanced in a flowing manner.

*Reinforces player creativity, instead of shoehorning.  The speaker talks about how using all sorts of skills, costumes (like FreeRealms classes), and allies can change up the whole mission… and they are all about that.

*Smooth, fast combat.  I am sure between now and 2010 there will only be more polish and AI tactics, but it looks pretty good right now. 

All in all, I think this MMO is going to take people by surprise.  What I really want to know, though, is what is the business model going to be?  Lots of rumors on that one.

–Ravious
if it comes down to you or them… send flowers

Trailers

Good: The Old Republic.
Bad: Book 8.

I think I have scorned every piece of marketing for The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ that I have seen, dating back at least to citing the number of characters created. That teaser trailer has approximately five seconds of video of new content, showing one boss doing one animation. I mean, if that one animation makes you want to put down your $15, I guess it worked, but I would hold out for at least five animations and maybe a tile set.

On the other hand, I have liked every piece of marketing that Bioware has done for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Syp keeps linking their stuff, like this Republic Trooper video. It is just graphics and concept, and I am the least visual person you know, but I found that really compelling. Everything that Bioware is releasing is high quality, and they are releasing it at a stately pace that does not imply a cry for attention or too early of hype. (And that trailer is showing some serious conservation of The Force.)

I also like the early media strategy from 38 Studios. What do you know about code name Copernicus? Almost nothing. That’s great! If a game is more than a year from release, I don’t even need to know its name. Call me when you have something to show me.

: Zubon

Storytelling

I just got back from a four day camping trip with my folks, my brother, my sister, and my husband.  The day before I left, my husband and I stayed up all night questing and burning off the blue ‘bonus xp’ from our alts.  Sleep-deprived, we hit the road.  As soon as we were rolling, my sister suggested we play a pen-and-paper RPG on the way. What a refreshing experience this turned out to be!

We didn’t take any RPG books or character sheets.  We ended up just making up various character bio’s and linking them all together by saying each person’s character was sucked through a dimensional rift to the same place in Rifts Earth where they had to team up to fight the various demons that also came through the rift.

We didn’t have any dice, so I made up a coin based combat system based on the change I had in my pocket.  On a combat roll, I might toss a nickle, dime and penny into the cup-holder next to me.  A heads meant damage was dealt (in the amount of the coin’s worth) while a tails meant a miss.  To keep track of hit-points, I just wrote down everybody’s name with “100 hp” next to their name.  As combat went on, I’d scratch out or erase and re-write their health amounts.  Combat was surprisingly both challenging and satisfying for everyone.

What kept us laughing our asses off and screaming wildly was the story we created.  I let the players do whatever they wanted, and they did some crazy things.  Whenever they went someplace new, I made up something new for them to encounter there.  They fought terminators and kid-napped psychics.  They time traveled and killed a flying spaghetti monster.  At one point, one of the characters became a triple amputee with machine guns grafted onto her stubs.  At another point, the entire party of adventurers were bit by vampires and forced to serve their glorious vampire lord for a hundred years.

We may have spent more time talking about what happened to our characters than we did actually playing our characters.  At times we laughed so hard that our sides hurt and we had to try thinking unfunny thoughts just to breathe.  In short, it was awesome.

Once you get away from the dice and the rulesets, pen and paper RPGs are story-telling games.  I have a hard time recreating that feeling in an MMO.  Sure, I may talk about ‘The time the tank died’ and my medic had to finish tanking until the end of the battle, but it’s not quite the same.  If a developer was so inclined to make an MMO be heavy on storytelling, would it even be possible?