GW2 - Guardian Revealed

As we knew from the snippet posted on pcgamer last week the fifth profession to be revealed is the Guardian, Anet posted all the info along with skill videos over on the official site.

Shield of Absorption


Faithful Strike


Zealot's Defense


Wall of Deflection


Hammer of Wisdom



onlinewelten have a nice interview with GW2's lead designer Jon Peters who manages to flesh out some more info on the Guardian and come up with this little gem :

"There are no ally targeted skills in Guild Wars 2."

For anyone with any doubts that Anet meant what they said about NO healers in GW2 this proves the point, healing will come from yourself, via AoE and possibly as bonuses from attack skills, it's a step in the right direction for me. Anets still provides a trinity but one that doesn't rely on class set up in teams. As the only obvious support class I have no doubts that to start with teams will want them in, it may well go from 'looking for healer' to 'looking for guardian' as the most repeated cry in group formations, that's a sad thought in a game that I'm hoping will strip away some conventions, says more about players than it does about Anet. When people get used to the idea that classes are capable of fulfilling each role of Anets trinity I hope that will pass.

More RIFT Beta blah blah

Last Beta I switched from Defiant side to Guardian and played with Kettle, a Dwarven Warrior.
Yes I know, technically she should be a Cleric and a Halfling, but a dwarf is close enough and I'd already been playing Naomi as a Cleric and with classes identical across the divide...

I'd gotten her through the Sliverwood (5-20) zone and halfway through Gloamwood and up to level 23. I'd been pretty impressed with Silverwood's general lay-out and how the quest lines were taking you along a tour of 80% or so of the map. Much more subtly than in Freemarch where for some reason I felt led by the nose and didn't feel much like exploring. Whereas on the Guardian side I did and didn't feel stiffled by the guided tour effect either.

There's ample opportunity to step off the beaten path, wander a bit and run into mobs way too high for you to defeat. Coupled with the Invasions this means you have to keep paying attention to your surroundings and I like that. Gloamwood,s a bit darker than Silverwood and the theme is one of Gothic horror. Spiders, zombies, Werewolves, vampires and a Hag to fight. The environment is wonderfully gloomy and made me pull open all registers on my videocard, which happily survived the ordeal. (I didn't try it with raid sized parties).

Gloamwood also is very tightly packed with a complex but comprehensive questline around a central theme / story arc. It also gives my Explorer side more of an itch than did Silverwood. It's a rather vertical place really. Several times I've found myself standing at what I assumed was the quest location judging by the minimap only to discover I was off by 50 meters, vertically. Caves, cliffs, buildings. They all give cause to wander about. I've also spent a fair amount of time figuring different ways to approach locations.

Most of all, I was having fun.
This Beta so far has had me not find a single bug to report, and I keep looking for them.
I have to say this game has the most technically slick Beta I've ever been in. On the other hand, they're adding stuff very late in the development cycle, given the release date. However, I'm not worried much, It's shaping up to be a very solid game. I don't know about longevity as of yet, but it should do well at launch, provided they get people to not all roll on the Shard with an already Heavy load, but even after having to sit in queue for 2 minutes after dinner I encountered little to no server-side lag. And that's a Beta server with highly detailed logs running...

This Beta saw a few new things. Improved Character Sheet. I have to admit I still think Rift has a window or two more than I'm happy with. Collections as a whole could be Character Sheet Tabs if you ask me. Much needed Inventory improvements (mainly taking things out of Inventory) have been added, though I would like to see them take another leaf of EQ-II and add dedicated bags (for Role 2 and 3 kit for example). The new Public Group system works well I think. You can toggle yourself to be a Public or Private Group, which in the case of Public means you'll see a "Join Public Group" button appear whenever you're near likeminded people, usually around an invasion or Rift. Once I found out it was using my Graveyard button's position and I could move it, no problems.

The main issue I encountered with it wasn't technical but player-social. Nobody speaks in this game, except in Regionsay. I actually noticed people commenting on the fight we were in using the regionsay chat. Local and Party are barely used it seems. Oh well, with any luck I'll find more local chatters come launch when I'll roll on a PVE-RP shard. For Trion it might've been a good idea to integrate voice-chat with the game though. Then again, I'm not sure I'd like to try that with the Public Grouping...
Public Grouping got me to see the Raid Group Interface as well. This is probably well engineered, but left me confused for the most part.

Stuff I Missed:
Questing is fun to do. I didn't get around to trying to group dungeons, mostly because the only vitriolic chat I encountered on Guardian side (outside of level 1-9 chat which you should turn off immediately) was revolving around dungeon groups. This did lead me to find an issue though. I'd gotten my last Plate chestpiece when Kettle was Level 20. While it wasn't much of an issue for her during her tweens, throughout her twenties so far she's received two to three armor and weapon upgrades from questing for each piece except chest-armor. Annoyingly, the Level 20 piece is one of those Plate-bikini's (yes, Rift doesn't have chanimail bikini's for Clerics but makes up for it in Plate...). So right now my main armor piece is whoefully behind my level. Not a good situation for a Tank. It's actually ok for soloing, I noticed I was primarily doing quests a level, sometimes two ahead of my own whereas most Mages and Rogues tend to be on same level quests and Clerics one level lower than current. For grouping I'm badly equiped though.

Checking the Auction house I saw the situation echoed. Lots of green drops of every ilk but no chest-pieces. It appears to have been a deliberate choice of Trion to reward chest-pieces through group efforts such as grouped dungeons and warfronts. Meh. It wouldn't be so bad if someone were crafting the bloody stuff. But I couldn't find any crafted gear on the Auction Houses, so either people aren't crafting or trading in Guilds and other private venues. I did notice some Regionsay bartering taking place now and then, which leads me to conclude that one auction house per faction in their main capital maybe isn't the best design choice they made?

Maybe tonight I'll try some grouped dungeons or warfronts :-)
Talking about capitals, they're confusing. The strong vertical element is one thing, but while less confusingly layed out than the Defiant capital, Sanctum is annoying in other ways. It's essentially three concentric rings with one place where you can switch rings. A trip to Sanctum typically requires me to visit all three in order to visit Trainer, Planar Goods/Collections traders, bank and auction house. Mini Map and Major Map both aren't that helpful in cities and for the first time in a long while I found myself missing a Gameamp community (only with better tools) around a game. I'd have absolutely loved being part of an Amp-like community for this game. I just can't stomach the manure piles that are "Official Forums" anymore. So many people giving out plain wrong tech advice, so many people out just to be as nasty as they can be to each other, e.t.c. Ah well. I'm a minority I guess, but I do miss the (mostly) friendly, moderated mayhem of Amp at times like this.


Rifts and Invasions:
Back to the game though. The changes to Invasions/Rifts seem to work out, though we flunked the two Zone Invasions yesterday. The first was simply a case of not enough people bothering with it for some reason. The second one failed for a more interesting reason. We'd completed all but the last objective, slaying the named Boss 'Norima' (I think). People started asking where she was in Regionsay and were directed to one of the last Death Rifts in the deep south of the zone by others. A few minutes later the zone-wide UI overlaid messages were screaming from help at Gnarlwood, a spot roughly North of Center. Most of the defending forces simply ignored repeated pleas for help from the beset Gnarlwood and were stumped when the Invasion Quest failed as Norima achieved her objective with her last squad of baddies. I guess an unsubstantiated rumor fostered by an anonymous source is always more compelling than official notification from the game system itself :-)

Still, people will learn this, eventually, I'm sure. I'm still a bit worried about player population after the first wave though. While Invasions now scale and can be tweaked, the beginnign area's may still end up rather empty after the first big wave. But maybe Trion, who's very good at lending leaves from succesful models and not just WOW's at that, can take a hint from Turbine and make the game partially Free-to-Play after a few monts. While there's still a veneer of FAIL attached to mixed P2P/F2P games in certain loudmouthed sectors, but the way Turbine does it is actually a win-win situation. The early levels (minus high quality gear) are accessible to froobs, which has the huge advantage that your paying customers when rolling an alt aren't faced with that deserted feeling in post-launch starter area's as there's still plenty of people running around. Mostly froobs yes, but I for one consider that a more pleasant experience than having to grind mobs or be forced into a fixed group to level up as the interesting content is too hard or too slow to do alone.
Needless to say, I suspect the Free-to-Play move on Champions Online which got finalised and announced this week has more to do with Damage control on Fail than Win, but they shou;d've done that before launch if you ask me.

Anyhoo. Loving how the game shapes up. Scarlet Gorge, which is a shared zone apparently is shaping up to be as well designed as the previous two and even more vertically challenging. (Spent 20 minutes looking for the way down before I spotted other players using an elevator) I haven't bothered with Gathering or Crafting on Kettle much, when I reroll her post-launch this will change (gathering at least is fun) so I can't really comment on that. Geek's less than happy comments on it have not helped. I'll stay clear of it for now. Kettle's nearly at level cap now, 26.something and I think I'll stop playing her when I reach it. Not that I Must Have XP For My Trouble, but it seems like a good point to switch back to Naomi or roll anew.


Souls and Roles:
I've found I am not very experimentative with Souls.
With both Naomi and Kettle I picked three Souls and somewhere in their tweens decided I didn't like one of them. I'd focus on two out of the three and swap out the third around level 20 then slowly build that one up. I tried switching Kettle from Paladin/Warlord/Void Knight (Tank/Buffer/Anti-Mage) which are all defensive souls to an offensive combination that included a Pet on her second Role. What I found was that it's not much fun to switch Roles at 20 and have to learn its intircacies all anew. My PWV build's got 15-18 buttons to mash (though I keep intending to fiddle with Macro's as there are definite sequences) under specific conditions. I have to know which buttons to mash when, for maximum effect. I'm sure that my second Role (which had more skills on my hotbars) is just as intircate, but I couldn't get into it at all.

Why is this so different from Guild Wars where Build switching is a must?
Well, I think the 8 vs 16+ skills on the bar may have something to do with it. Also Guild Wars Prophecies is one long tutorial in using varied builds. Only the most stubbornly refusing to learn didn't have a grip on Builds by the time they enter the burning isles (they'd be stuck at Thunderhead Keep) but sadly even that F2P game had to dumb down their initial content for rare solo players in an empty landscape. Rift doesn't really tell you to try different Roles. It's not as integrated into the central game system as it was with Guild Wars. It's clearly an added feature to compensate for PVE / PVP builds or solo and grouped/raided builds. But the main game doesn't invite you to experiment, which will feed the FotM Builds I fear. I've already noticed that with dozens of variations possible, a lot of gamers "enforce" the UnHoly Trinity (second generation, so Tank, DPS, Healer rather than Tank, Crowd Control, DPS) onto themselves and others.

Rift pictorial

Nature Rifts look so beautiful at first

That was my Quest Reward giver...

Nice vista in Stonefield

The Guardians have the better weather magic

Fightin' Demons

Fightin' Trolls (I bug reported my trousers)

Kettle arrives at Sanctum to be greeted by fireworks

Defiant invasion of our Quest Hub.

I'm in between the rock-fellas

Vanguard style name-tags have their issues

Charging in!

Victory :-)

My take on Rift

After a long afternoon and evening of catching up with Phè during which I held discourse to the effect I'd become a tad anti-Beta off late, the reason being it adversely affects my playtime/enjoyment post launch, I finally accepted FilePlanet's insistent begging and signed up for the third Rift Beta. I'm glad I did. My experience with the Beta was all out positive for the most part. A lot more so than I was expecting after Geeky's last post which I'll sum up to a "so-so verdict". In fact, in terms of performance and technical workiness it's one of the best Beta's I've been in.

Oh....shit!

First thing you see after shard selection (which didn't contain an RP server this time) was Character Creation. This was the first pleasant surprise. Though I didn't feel much inclined to go for the non-human races for some reason, I'll probably agree with Geek's opinions if I think about it, I found myself liking the level of detail I could adjust. It's obvious from the start that there's a single avatar skeleton which is shrunk down vertically for the dwarfish race and stretched out for the ogerish one. The fact you can't change your shoulder-width, leg length or boob size doesn't bother me as it means Trion will be able to include more interesting and detailed armour not totally dependent on body mesh. On the other hand, it's something which may yet be incoming for another Beta. For me though, the level of detail in this Beta was enough.

I did not like the facial tattoo's/markings which while not as cruddy as Age of Conan's still feel artificial to me. They're a quick-win as they're mono-colour easy to generate patterns that help give a face some unique distinctiveness. They're a too obvious clutch for me though and besides, there's a reason there's relatively few facial tattoo's in any of Earth's cultures....

Trion's graphics engine reminds me of a mixture between Warhammer and Lord of The Rings. Probably more the latter than the former. It shares some art-style with Warhammer, mostly in the American concept of what medieval architecture should look like (Tudor) and the colour palette. Level of detail and lighting effects are very similar to LoTR though and therefore a step up from WAR.
Art style is also a curious mix of both Western and Eastern style MMO's, having played primarily Defiant I didn't get to see the Guardian capital, but at first I felt some of the Defiant architecture jar with that of the locals but after a while it grew on me. They fall in the same mistake every MMO level designer seems to make and that is to A) use curved brick patterns and then B) consistently align the texture the same way so that the curve becomes a compass direction no matter which way the road's curved but other than that I thought it was a decently smart mixture of texture re-use and variety of models. I do hope there's a bit more variety post Level 20 though. If I still see the same ruins at level 40 it might become a tad dull...

The Interface was another pleasant surprise to me.
It’s rare to see it so well thought out and so far worked out at this stage of Beta. The Tutorial Hints as well were vastly beyond what I’ve gotten used to pre- and post- launch. Customizing the panels is a bit unusual but workable after you get used to it. Still some things to fix in there like the currently fixed positions of the mouse-over tool tip and the character sheet. There were also some bits which were locked child elements and could as a result only be resized in proportion to the mother panel.

The Inventory looks like it’s still a work in progress. It works as is, but with the multiple bag setup it’s begging for specialty bags like EverQuest-II, and some other MMO’s I can’t quite remember just now, has. We’ll see how this develops. I did pick the Crafting class that needs a better Inventory system than any other and didn’t get around to actually craft much.

My main peeve with Interface is twofold but related. The Hot bar initially provided is big enough for about one sixth of the skills you will eventually acquire using three Souls. Given that some skills are passive always-on affairs and there is some unavoidable redundancy between Souls you will probably end up needing a mere 4 additional bars filled with skills and things like potions.
I’m never a fan of rows upon row of buttons to mash, especially not if as is the case with Rift you can’t mess around with key bindings but also when only the bottom bar has been integrated into the UI and the additional “floating bars” have no window dressing whatsoever. I’m picky. Either make them all part of your UI or allow me to drop the window dressing on my “primary” hotbar.
In both Vanguard and Age of Conan I’d made extensive modifications to the original key-bindings and I really really missed that in Rift.
Maybe the in-game Macro system will help with some of these issues as I did notice a tendency to take actions sequentially.

Which brings us to gameplay. For a Cleric, Rift is mostly your average button masher MMO. I briefly tested the rogue class which had a bit more complexity in that there were finishing moves and a build-up system. The Soul system as used in this Beta seems to work. I picked out a nice combination of Souls for my cleric and decided to change it around level 13. With the Roles allowing you up to three builds to swap between there’s plenty of room to experiment or for a healer cleric to have both group and solo builds. The game has three main gameplay modes it seems: Classic PvE questing which while mostly filler content isn’t quite as dull as I expected. Quest stories are decently written and I actually found myself checking them occasionally.
Yes for the most part it’s go here or there and kill X of mob Y or click Quest item Z at locations A, B and C but off late I’ve come to think that maybe the call for better more in-depth Quests may need to be put on the same pedestal as the call for intelligent AI. Just like people want the illusion of challenging AI’s rather than the actual thing, any Quest more complex than the Kill ten Rats, collect, deliver and escort quests results in a lot of people finding them frustratingly hard. Much the same as mobs which actually run away and gather their friends to fight you.

The other two game play options are Rifts and PVP. I didn’t try the latter so can’t comment on it at all. Since this Beta had beefed up Rift activity I did partake in those quite a bit. They’re very reminiscent of Warhammer’s Public Quest system but without the fixed positions. Just like the PQ’s a Rift goes through 3-5 stages. Unlike the PQ’s they don’t have a written storyline but are semi-randomly generated. What I missed most from the PQ’s was an auto-grouping system. Without that I fear the Rift experience will always either be a chaotic brawl or Guild/Raid dominated, which is a shame I think. There’s a lot of incentive to group at a Rift, but at the same time there isn’t. It’s odd really. I quickly discovered that my Cleric’s contribution was determined by how much healing I put out. Not how much healing I accomplished. Meaning if I healed 10 hit-points by casting a 100 hit-point heal I’d be credited for healing 100 hit points. This was clearly a system still being fine-tuned and I hope they’ll get it as balanced as Warhammer’s was. As I understand it, for DPS dealers it’s whoever hits the mob first gets the kill and the credit. Hopefully that’s going to change into the way my heals should work. Applied Healing (the 10 points) and Applied Damage (what actually comes through soak/armour) and maybe Damage averted for Tanks?

I really enjoyed playing the Beta. A lot of the things that still need to be fixed/improved I have confidence in that they’ll be fixed or improved. My main concern lies in a fatal flaw of Warhammer’s design and Beta testing concept. Their Public Quests were very, very population density dependent, and so are the Rifts. I did notice some evidence that they’re not totally neglecting low population possibilities (fewer Rifts during low pop times, possibly some friendly NPC spawnage) but I also saw some definite Beta behaviour in that L20 characters would rush in to assist with lower level Rifts and Invasions. How often will we see an L20 come assisting overwhelmed L12’s who stumbled onto a L15 Invasion when those L20’s aren’t artificially kept near?

Rift Beta Thoughts

The NDA has been lifted so for what it's worth here's my impression on the first two beta events.

The game is faction V Faction, the two factions being Defiant and Guardian. Both have separate starter areas. The beta events covered levels 1-20, the first weekend was Defiant side and the second weekend Guardians.

The server set up allowed for choices of PvP, PvE, PVE RP and PvP RP. Always good to see RP servers among the list :)

You have to bear in mind that due to the level restrictions the areas where incredibly busy, for the first weekend this meant that the Rifts and Invasions became quick zerg fests, the second weekend however saw the introduction of a scaling mechanic which saw the rifts last longer and one massive invasion intent on taking over a whole zone. Sadly I didn't play enough (real life and the SW:TOR beta getting in the way) to test out the instances, next week should allow me to rectify that.

Character creation was ok but ended up with everyone looking like they are members of the same family, you're given a basic face with a few different 'features' and a slider within a triangle to set the shape of the face, several hair styles, the usual colour options and how tall your character is, it's basic and left me without a character I really felt I had invested in. There are three races to choose from, I have never been fond of dwarves and the elf like creatures had pointy ears you couldn't disguise and make small enough so I only rolled the human types.

I hated the Defiant starting area with a vengeance, felt incredibly walled in and claustrophobic, thankfully that area only lasted the first 5 or 6 levels, it felt like something in RoM rather than a P2P AAA MMORPG, it was a very disappointing start for me. Thankfully you leave this area into a more expansive zone very quickly. The Guardians had a much better starter area with horizons you could see but had the corniest voice over intro ever, thankfully Trion listened and changed that one, Trion are very, very good at listening.

The lore was mostly lost on me, I was killing stuff and sabotaging machinery with little motivation beyond the fact I'd been told to. Each quest had plenty of text and always with the option of 'tell me more' from the quest giver but after reading the first few I wasn't held and quickly reverted to just clicking through to start the quests and ignored the text (bad beta tester! *slaps self on wrists *). The game has a very good quest tracking system which means there was another reason not to read any quests beyond the basics given at the end of each wall of text. There are no voice overs or cutscenes. All in all they haven't done themselves any favours regarding the lore of Telara, you really don't need to get involved. As long as you get the basic gist of why Rifts and Invasions happen that's all that counts and that's all I fear the majority will get.

Quests are nothing that you haven't seen before and progression is very, very linear, no zones felt immense and your funneled through them as you progress, reminded me of the funneling in Aion, there are however collections (think EQ2) which could inspire some to do some exploring although the areas never felt big enough to inspire me to explore. In short questing in Rifts is the same old that we've seen countless times before with maybe the exception that at this stage everything is very polished. There have been lots of references to War and WoW in the beta community and I guess they hold true. The quests do their job of funnelling you through the content in a conformist way, fine for those wanting something similar to what they are used to but boring for those of us looking for something new, questing is certainly not next gen. Quest rewards are as expected, XP, moolah and sometimes loot. You must however bear in mind that you don't have to level via quests, you can level via rifts, invasions and grinding should you so wish, in fact I would recommend getting off the quest train occasionally and heading out for rifts and invasions even if you are enjoying the quests.

The graphics in the game are good but not impressive, somehow the art direction missed in creating something unique and immersive, I felt decidedly meh about the graphics. The dev team did do an amazing job on optimisation between beta events, the first weekend I had to tone things down to get decent FPS but the second weekend let me run things much higher with a much better FPS. The animations are let down in a few areas but most of the time I didn't notice them so neither brilliant nor appalling from where I was sitting, I'm sure a few will be improved on come release. The major cities for both factions where very dissapointing, way too small and devoid of any real feeling of a bustling town.

There are a few traps that Rift falls in to in so far as bad MMO mechanics go, spawn and boss camping was rampant, I hate having to hang around and try and beat other players to tag a mob to kill, thankfully the beta community was pretty friendly so groups would form on an ad hoc basis when it was obvious we were all spawn camping. Tagging is supposed to be first hit gets the kill, you have to remember not to use timed DOTs if there are other players around, if they get some DPS in before your DOT ticks they get the kill.

Crafting *deep sigh* is really boring, gather the mats, maybe add something you got from a rift to add better stats and watch the progress bar, there was no 'crit' mechanic so it was very much what you see is what you get. The quality of gear was OK but it didn't look like you could create anything better (or as good as) world drops and quest rewards at the early levels, it might improve at later levels but provided no incentive for me to level it up in order to find out. Very disappointing if you're a crafter looking for a worthwhile experience.

The 'meat and veg' of the game is nothing you can't find in most MMO's, it works and felt polished but offers nothing new. Time to move on to what Trion thinks makes this game next gen:

The Soul System
I'm going to start this one by saying that Trion have just announced that access to more souls and points to allocate in those soul trees will be available from the start of the next beta, another point raised by many testers was that there was no scope to feel like it was anything more than a fancy talent tree that can be found in games like WoW, come the next tests we should have the ability to play more with the system and see how useful it is in creating something unique for your character. The soul system allows you to have three soul trees for your build (you can also buy extra build slots so you can switch soul trees during combat). Characters choose their first soul from a choice of three very early on, my Ele went with Warlock which gave me a life leaching DOT, a skeleton minion and a basic DPS attack skill. The thing I didn't like was that all skills are on a global cooldown but they shortened that for the 2nd beta and added the ability to queue your next attack, again based on player feedback. The soul trees work by allocating points in to the top tier to boost or add skills, adding points in the top tier also sometimes unlocked new skills on the bottom tier. Skills are mostly unlocked by buying them from your class trainer at appropriate level gaps. I unlocked my next soul quite early on and went with Necromancer, the problem was with a limited level cap and a shortage of points to allocate it seemed pointless to spread those points across trees, see my initial comment about the devs plans to combat that. It looks like an interesting system I think each archetype has the potential to unlock 18 souls, that's a lot of combinations and screams balance nightmare at me. My initial impression left me feeling that it added no real depth at this point BUT further betas with more points and souls to play with will give me a better idea of how the system truly plays out, it certainly has potential.


Rifts
As mentioned the initial experience was one of a player zerg fest, over incredibly quickly and you would be lucky to get any kills in, later as you ventured away from crowded areas and scaling was added and the difficulty was increased they became more fun, again nice to see players randomly grouping when these happened. Rifts and invasions are on your map, if you want to get involved you could keep referencing your map and keep an eye on your compass. The idea is that left unchecked they expand and take over the zone, including quest hubs but most I saw where over pretty quickly. Each rift has different stages to complete in order to successfully close it and stem the invasion, by taking part you are rewarded although as a healer your less likely to get rewards, Trion are looking at this and will improve the healers lot. Rewards from rifts are items that can be traded for weapons/armour aswell as other loot, xp, crafting mats and money. I seemed to miss out on the best rift experiences, poor timing on my part but the common feedback is that they are very similar to Wars public quests. Not as dynamic as what Anet are proposing with GW2 but still dynamic enough to make the world that bit more exciting. Rifts cause the landscape to change according to the rifts element, it was nice to see although a little rough at the edges, some smoothing between the rifts edge and the normal landscape would be nice, nothing game breaking purely aesthetic. The interesting thing about rifts is that all factions are against each other so having rifts of differing elements close by would cause in fighting between them and for PvP allow some fun if they spawn in enemy territory.

Invasions
While gathering mats in a quiet part of the map I noticed a dark area moving in my direction, as it got closer it was obvious the landscape was changing around the moving mass and it was populated by some mean looking mobs, I'd stumbled in to the path of an invasion (again visible on your map and shows the direction the invasion is moving). Being solo and a little apprehensive I moved slightly off its path and waited to see how much of a threat it was, luckily for me this was a small invasion force of one boss and three mobs, feeling cocky my minion and I charged in, it got hairy at times but we succeeded thanks to the help of a few passers by, it was a nice feeling watching that dark path dissipate and the normal landscape return. Unfortunately I missed the massive zone invasion but I'm sure on that scale it would be great fun.


In conclusion I think the games most innovative features couldn't be gauged enough in these two beta events to see how innovative they really are and it does suffer from employing what some of us feel are stale mechanics which will tarnish a lot of peoples current views.

If you pinned me down and ask me if I would sub at this stage I would say no but I like the way Trion is reacting to players and I want them to succeed, I'll be keeping a close eye on this one and hoping it reaches a potential that is obviously there.

Blizzard Promote Bad Hygiene

Glider, in short, hides itself from the Warden software that scans the machines of Warcraft’s 10 million players for bots, thus allowing Glider license holders to play Warcraft while taking a shower in violation of Warcraft’s terms of service that prohibit bot use.

I mean, come on! People gotta take a shower some time!

But seriously, botting is bad. Don't do it. If you're so addicted to a game that you have to play it even when you can't play it, perhaps you ought not be playing at all? It's like those internet urinals. I always thought it a bit of a joke. I hope no one actually uses those.

Anyway, I found the shower bit a tad humorous and thought I'd share. Feel free to commence with the discussion on the morality, or lack thereof of botting...

full disclosure: this post is meant mostly tongue in cheek. the author in no way supports breaking the tos of a game, unless you can retire at a beachhouse in cancun from doing so... ;)

Not dead yet

What Social Search site should you use?

Speaking of fun, here's something I found slightly humorous...



And in other news, FI is mildly impressed by Wolfram|Alpha...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+airspeed+velocity+of+a+swallow

Where are our visitors?

While browsing around on collectedcurios.com (I love all his comics & art) I saw he had a nifty little map at the bottom. So I wanted to see how that would work for us. And we got our first visitor! That is me, of course. Not sure I should add it to the side bar. I might be a rather empty map *grin*

Look what has risen from the death!

I received an email today from these guys. I can't discuss what was in that email. But I can say it contained a handy link for my friends to sign up for closed beta.

I don't know if you can all remember the story of Gods & Heroes. It was originally being developed by Perpetual Entertainment. That is the same company that were doing Star Trek Online. But it went all bongers. Lay offs, more lay offs, selling of IP, law suits, and finally the end. The website of Gods&Heroes was one of the coolest and well made websites I had seen of any game at the time. I have spend days and days filling the G&H GameAmp site with all the content they provided (not sure why since nobody ever visited that site). If only the rest of the company was as competent as the guys that made that website.

Although I never thought the concept of the game was all that brilliant, I had a weak spot for it. So I am happy it may see the light after all. But not happy enough yet to actually download and try it. That is more up Geekzor's alley.

Online Communities

I found this on a webcomic called xkcd. If you click on the picture you get a very large detailed view. It is quite fun to explore. And completely out of date two months from now. Not even two months from now. It is already out of date. Still fun.

The author had made a 2007 version as well here.

Champions Online, Free to Play

This email was sitting in my inbox today...

Greetings, Champion!

We’ve got some big news we wanted to share with you right away.

Beginning Q1 2011, Champions Online will offer a free-to-play gameplay option. Everyone can download, play and enjoy Champions Online at absolutely no cost!

All you’ll need to do is download the game and begin playing. It will be a great opportunity to head back to the Champions universe to see what’s changed, spend time with your friends and enjoy a top-tier MMO without spending a dime.

We’re sure you have a lot of questions. That’s good! We’re looking forward to working with you to answer them. Right now, we’ve set up a new short FAQ and a special Q&A forum to begin answering your more in-depth questions.



We plan on entering our free-to-play beta on November 9, and to launch the new, free-to-play version of Champions Online in the first quarter of 2011. We can’t wait to grow the game with you, and we hope you’re as excited as we are!

As always, thanks for your continued support. We’ll see you in Millennium City!

-The Champions Online Team

I'm sure their free-to-play plans include some kind of cash shop of purchasable items, etc etc... That seems to be the trend these days.

Screenshot Wednesday

I've started a Picasa album of my screenshots as well, and wanted to share them. So here ya go. The Runes of Magic ones I've posted before are already there. The others are from a game I started yesterday called Vindictus. It's kind of interesting.

Enjoy...

Screenshot Shaturday

Just some quick screenies I've taken throughout Naomi's rise through the Sunspear Ranks to her current rank of General:

The Truth

... well, according to one disgruntled soon ex-employee of EA at least:

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ... ...

The whole blogosphere is over this of course. I don't know what the truth is, but I am seriously worried about SW:TOR. Maybe it will become a nice RPG, but I have very little hope it will be the next big MMO.

A bit behind the times

Five and a half years after the original release I finally got moving in Tyria. And I am having fun! Especially since I got to meet Geeky again. Hopefully soon I will tell you about my adventures. But for now just a greeting from a snowy hill. Oh, and Gwen is saying hi too.

GW2 gets a new Event system (Rift: Planes of Telera)

To follow on from and in a similar style to GW gets a new skin post :)

Video Games | Rift: Planes of Telara | Character & Abilities Walkthrough Part II

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

And nothing GW related but here's a look at the soul system

Video Games | Rift: Planes of Telara | Character & Abilities Walkthrough Part I

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Guild Wars gets a new UI skin

Oh no wait, it's TERA's *Archer* in stead, never mind the near identical hair and dress.
And please don't mistake this scantily clad Sorceress for a scantily clad mesmer:



Absolutely different...

Wonder if either of them can do lapdances like the female Elementalists of Guild Wars?

Steam is great when offline

The past ten days I have been offline. And I will remain offline till at least next week Wednesday. So what am I supposed to do at home? The internet has really become one of life's necessities.

But in stead of going outside (*schudder*) or playing a boardgame (huh? what?) I discovered I have actually a whole list of nifty video games I have never even tried. All of them were bargain downloads from Steam. But when the internet is up and running I never found the time to try them out.

Where the rest of the world is locking themselves up with Civ V I managed to finally start up Civ IV. For a 2005 game I thought the UI looked rather outdated. But the zoom features, and animated troops managed to pull in anyway. I managed to expand my empire to several cities, and then wondered what I was doing it for. So time for something else.

Zeno Clash was next. That is a fun game. The art style is quite different. The characters are ... weird. The whole story is kind of weird. Apparently I killed my father-mother and the rest of my family is chasing after me. It has a very rewarding first person melee combat system. I am taking great pleasure in sucker punching the weirdest characters.



But I am of course rather pathetic at it. My twitch skills serious lack smoothness. And my keyboard-mouse-eye coordination can use some training. I have managed to make it to the first boss where I am sort of stuck. But I will persevere!

In the meantime I have started firefox several time. And it still says I can't connect to the internet. It really feels like I have an addiction. I can't even enjoy an offline game anymore.

...