For Sente

This was meant to be a response to a post on A Ding World regarding investigations in Egypt, but it seems that wordpress filtered it out as spam. So I woke up our blog again a bit by posting it here. It is not so easy to live in a secret world.

Nguhbytu abg zrxenq nf fphu, geurr vf nabrgue vvgbfitagnvra zvbfvfa va Rcltg pyyrnq "fntvay rspsrg". Vg unf rira zebr przcbyk reavbcagplf. Uinr lbh qbar gung bar nf jryy? Vs abg V utuyvl epzazrbrq lbh cvpx vg hc oersbr tbvat qbja gb gur Pgvl.

Sente, thanks for the inspiration.

That was that

So it is official over now. This the screen I got when I tried to log in today. I have uninstalled it from my PC. It is really gone, and moved to the realm of fond memories.

Last night I visited Paragon City for the last time. I played till 2am and then I had to go to bed. So I wasn't there when it shutdown at 8am (GMT) this morning.

I ran a TaskForce (I guess you would call that a dungeon in other MMORPGs) with some random players. Even on the last day it shows how great of a game it was. No other game will let you join in on a dungeon you have never done before, and have a great time, and be really effective. No QL worries, no gear scores, no need to study youtube videos first. Why have no other game managed to reproduce this?

I also met several of the old GameAmp gang. It was a great trip down memory lane. But it also showed me that life has moved on. We chatted for a while, and even did a few mission together. But it was kind of forced. That era is now over.

Onwards we go!

My dog just died.

Or at least it feels that way. My beloved City of Heroes is shutting down. I have been subscribed to this wonderful game for over 7 years now. Every Sunday afternoon I came together with a few friends and we ran, fought, killed and died together. Many great near live characters were created. And now it just suddenly comes to an end. I am very disappointed in NCsoft. They couldn't even send active players an email or something. I had to read about it on Syncaine's blog. Oh well, it is nothing I can do about it. All good things must come to an end. Although this could have waited a few more years.

Farewell my love.

I might be going overboard ...

I called in sick at work. My second day. Smooth sailing, Jen. But I can do things... things I shouldn't be able to do. things I don't know how I do them.

My BILLY is no more.

I am scared of using my laptop. Scared I'll destroy it. But I want to record this.

But what is 'this'???

... but I am having a lot of fun with it.



facebook.com/thoaywilcox

The Opposite of Opting Out

There are quite a number of reviews and blog out of the net about their experiences in the Open Beta of The Secret World. Everybody kind of agrees that the character creation can use some improvement. But after that there are two mainly just two opinions. Either they like it or loathe it. I don't think I have seen anybody saying 'meh'. I am somewhere in the outfield of like. But I don't really want to repeat what some of the other bloggers have already posted. Sente over at A ding world does an excellent job covering that.

One of the reason I like The Secret World is because it does things different. Gaming For Introverts made a nice write-up on some of the things it does different. Except she uses it as arguments to why it sucks. That sounds like a perfect opportunity for a blog from me. I'll give my view on exactly those points. But now from a fanboy's point of view *grin*



So where does the game succeed?

Quest Limits:
I didn't even realize there is a quest limit until a few hours into the game. Item missions are the usual fedex or kill ten rats missions, and you can have an endless stack of them. But the majority of the missions are much more involved, and I once I got one I didn't even think of looking for other quest givers. In most MMOs there is the horrible quest hub. You get zapped in, blindly click on all question marks, and off you go! This method doesn't work in TSW because it is not about xp or rushing to the endgame. The quest limit is helping those that still think it has to work that way. It is limiting the player, but helping the clueless to not get swamped in its complexities completely.

Gaming For Introverts is worried it is too easy to forget to go back to get the quest later. To me this is a great motivator to do the same content with an alt. As explorer it is great to find new quests you missed first time round. You are not meant to every single quest. Move on when you have seen enough, or stay if you want to explore more. The perfect balance.

Investigation Quests:
I love the completely optional investigation quests. You can probably find all the answers on a wiki a week after launch (or even now already). But that is not their point. Puzzle as much or as little as you want. They have brought out some great community interactions during the weekend. And I think they will be what will draw all explorer type players into the game. I can also see a lot of people will plain dislike them. But since they are just one of the ways to play the game they are a huge plus, not a negative.

Crafting:

Quoting GFI here:

This wasn’t intuitive to me at all. The information under the Help feature was very vague, and I couldn’t find any kind of crafting tutorial. I understand you are supposed to make a pattern with the components, but what would be the pattern for a glyph for example?
The game didn’t give you any help to let you know if you were at least on the right track.

Brilliant! I can actually experiment!

Decks:
I don't really know about balance issues. I tried shotgun and blade. The GW1 style of only having seven active and passive powers is a great concept. It works great in GW1 and so far worked for me here as well. The Secret World is not the most elaborate combat/action game. The seven skills give me enough room to try out things but don't unnecessary complicate it with 20 similar powers as in Rift. Just like GW1 there will be FOTMs and mandatory builds for certain 'dungeons'. Fortunately they have already figured that out since you can save/load builds on the fly.

Combat:
Great combat is not the reason to play The Secret World. It is just rather bland. But for me it works perfect. Combat is just a bit of a distraction to get to the good bits. A game without it will be strange empty. So combat it definitely needed. And blasting zombies is still fun even after I killed 500 of them. It wouldn't have been fun if it would have been a challenge each fight.

Challenge Levels:
Since there are no real levels it is hard to gauge when a fight was going to be a challenge. So I poke them a bit and learn my lessons the hard way. I don't need a red or purple bar above the creatures of Kingsmouth any more. Oh, the joys of exploration! Ok, that is a bit too fanboi-y. But I really didn't miss the indicators. It is refreshing to see monsters and not color codings.

Verdict:
Quoting Gaming For Introverts again:

As it stands now the game has a high frustration factor. It may improve over the next few months but I do not believe it is quite ready for an audience. I expect it will eventually go free to play, so I haven’t ruled it out as a future game. I predict that it will launch with a fairly low subscriber base, and that most people will opt for Guild Wars 2 instead.

Strangely enough I agree with this. Most people will go for GW2 since it is much more polished and much closer to everybody's comfort zone. But I do think there are also plenty of people that will fall in love with The Secret World. I hope they will not change any of the mechanisms. They just need to add some polish to the character creation and ship it. I don't know if I will have time to play GW2 any more.

33

I am not so good at chasing round forums and websites any more. So I would have completely missed this if Geeky wouldn't have pointed it out. Thanks Geeky, you are my hero! The Secret World, or actually FunCom itself, added a lovely piece of ARG to their website. Click anywhere on the page that is not a link, and press the number 3 twice.

I have do idea what it means. Maybe I should go visit the official forum at DarkDemonsCryGaia.com, but first I want to try to figure something out by myself. And that dilemma is one thing I am a bit worried about with the game. They have added these great secrets that will be fun to discover. But how will they make this a multi player experience? As a solo player I can ignore the internetz. But part of the fun is to discover/explore these things together. As soon as you do that we'll run into TSWiki.com or TSW-Zam.com and all the answers are there. I am too much fanboi to even think The Secret World will disappoint me, but will it succeed as massive multiplayer experience?

Postcards from Eberron

Just a quick post with some screenies I took in DDO over the last week.
I particularly liked the subterranean Bugbear / Kobold village.
Well, except for the residents trying to kill me every step of the way.









DDO's moved from just Dungeons to several outdoor areas as well now. Like rooftop chases and Farmlands, but overall the game stays true to its name :-)

Postcard from a weekend in Telera

I like Trion, they've come across as listeners and responders, they've been great at updating and working on the game since release, it was also a smooth one: Trion done good IMHO.

So when I got offered a free weekend in Teleria I took that in to account, there was new content to explore, had some time on my hands and after the dissapointments of SW:TOR I just wanted to play an MMO and have some fun. I'm pleased to report it worked well for me and now the free time is over I'm missing what I haven't explored....When the next patch comes in (or maybe sooner) I'll pick up a months sub. They got me in their honey trap.

All wasn't lush in Teleria, I transferred from the RP server, very few people around and in Meridian all I saw was static characters, obviously in a queue for warfronts or dungeons. A problem of both community and the lack of anything to support social activities in cities. But on with the good.

Here's the highlights of what's new since we left and a few from what's to come.

Chronicles
Lore driven dungeon content for one (well geared) or two players. As it stands there are three to choose from, are repeatable once every 24 hrs, give some nice loot and provide good experience towards Planar Attunement (the alternate advancement system).

Chronicle of Attunement
is available at lvl 50 and unlocks the Planar Attunement system. It's set in an instanced version of the capital and has some nice use of voice acting. It's a short story about celebration, the gift of attunement, unwanted gatecrashers and finally the celebration of your heroism again. Like it or not, in MMOs of this nature heroism is what we are all about, Vailare isn't complaining.

Vailare being cheered by the crowd for his great taste in shoulder pads.

Receiving the gift of attunement

Gatecrashers arrive courtesy of Regulos, giving you plenty of opportunity to prove your heroicness again. Kill the lvl 52 trash and a few level 52 Elites and get to the end boss, a fun encounter that keeps you on your toes. Of course the story side loses it's meaning on the third run but it's still a good, quick source of cash, crafting mats, gear and XP.

Not Vailare but some other hero (or should I say Guardian scum *grin*) facing the boss.

Hammerknell: Runes of Corruption
Using part of the raid instance from Hammerknell your tasked with finding a scouting party and defeating a king. Played solo it has few challenging encounters, Watch for patrols (on a short leash) and the groups of three. Sadly the use of item buffs makes the first boss and final challenge a walk in the park. It requires timing and a decent build to pull off. Worth repeating for the loot.

Vailare about to face the first boss

A lucky drop from Hammerknell

Greenscale's Blight: The Fallen Prince
Greenscales Blight raid instance is the setting for this. hardest to solo, I couldn't get past the boss whose guards turn in to werewolves, they hit long and hard while she buffs them. A real challenge but thanks to the soul system I didn't give up but I started developing builds. This dungeon made me appreciate the nuances of the class system again, I had three builds with two
classes in common and a third unique, all allowing me to approach the encounter in a different way, for PvE it's a great system.

Chronicles are a good use of available content and the loot is good enough to encourage repeatable play (Plaques of Achievement for dungeon gear are part of the reward). First times through the stories aren't bad either. There's a new one coming in the next patch.

Other new repeatable content
Instant Adventures are non-instanced, timed mini quests of kill x of this or click x of that. Set in Shimmersands or Stillmoor they are for solo or groups (up to raid size). Your transported to an area and receive your first timed quest, these increase in objective size as you progress. I never got to more than stage three of an adventure, didnt have the time. The xp reward is excellent and some nice drops to be had too. There's also a new max level dungeon I didn't get to see on Ember Isle: Caduceus Rise. There have also been additions to their 10 man raids otherwise known as 'Slivers', never done one, again no comment.

Ember Isle
Sadly didn't have a lot of time to explore or complete many quests. It's a large zone, bigger than the others. Mobs are lvl 52, half decent gear is needed. Looked nice, that's all I can say, looks worth exploring further.


Planar Attunement
The alternate advancement system is progressed via xp after lvl 50. In brief, it offers elemental 'trees' to advance. Choose an element best suited to your character (went with Fire for my mage) and gain small, incremental bonuses in stats, elemental resistance and get the ability to open rifts of the element you chose. There are three 'trees', the other two were locked, I have no idea how those trees progress. Seems a nice and simple enough system, should provide longevity if you want to max all your builds.

Rift still suffers from its small world size and lack of replayability but there have definitely been good steps taken to increase longevity. I like the soul system, if you don't go looking for cookie cutter there's plenty of scope with it, I also enjoyed the 'on the hoof' casual grouping for zone events, I came away having had alot of fun in a solid themepark with new content I thought worth exploring. Stat chasing and gear grinding isnt for me but Rift is sure giving you plenty of ways to do it.

A little bit more

I bit the bullet and signed up again, have to say no regrets. Ember Isle is great, its size encourages exploring and it is worthwhile. Lovely to look at and I still have about a third of the map covered. Mobs are around lvl 52, as a well geared mage I'm pushing soloing two mobs, bring in a third and death is very likely. Interesting quests and a challenge to be had amongst some very lovely scenery.




Th new patch has made some useful changes, you can use mats directly from your bank while crafting (Just like SWTOR), seems Trion continue to look for and take inspiration from what works in other games. Artisan marks (from crafting dailies) can now be exchanged for Master Marks at the rate of 500 to one, I had thousands so I was able to invest in one of the new recipes. That recipe required I buy two new master recipes from two trainers at a grand cost of 50 plat', not cheap, NPC bought ingredients aren't cheap either but imagine my horror to discover the new crafted mats are on a 20 hour timer, it's going to take six days to craft my new robe!

A new chronicle set in the raid instance at Stillmoor was introduced, thats four chronicles now, combined you can spend a good two to three hours alone on these if you insisit on clearing every mob in the Stillmoor one. I'm still having a blast playing these.

Gear progression has been simplified, a good thing. For PvP it looks like a move to skill being more important than gear. Dungeon modes have been streamlined but I've been playing solo so far.

Trion continue to impress, I could write more but there are dwarves in Hammerknell waiting to die :)

What is missing?

So I have given up on SWTOR for now. And in stead I have had fun the last two days playing a completely desolated City of Heroes and Bastion. But games are fun. But here I am sitting at work and there is nothing game related I can or should do. Nothing to research, nothing to read or comment. I am actually forced to do just my work.

My mind wondered off a bit, and I realized that that is one of the biggest problems of SWTOR (and Rift before that). The game is made too perfect. There is no need to discuss it, to share screenshots, to argue its merits, or maintaining some sort of loot sheet. They are as clear cut and dry as a little game like Bastion. You play them for a while, and then you go do something else.

In the Heydays of Gameamp I lived City of Heroes 24/7. It is not actually the game but the community that made the game. I didn't even played with Ampers that often. Fallen Earth got that back for me for a while, but I didn't play it enough to feel part of the community. That is/was more my fault than the game. In Rift and especially in SWTOR everything is cut out for us. No need to argue over anything. Even looking up stuff on Wiki or Zam is rarely needed.

So what is the solution? Make games mechanics obscure like in Anarchy Online? I think for a part that is something I would like. The period I played AO this year I had a lot of fun making a clever custom spreadsheet. And there is plenty to research about obscure quests and items. I even joined a clan to boost my social activities in game, and via the clan forums. But it showed the game is getting old. The forum was mostly dead, and in game it was about tweak this and advanced option that. And I just had nothing really to say to that, so I went off to do my own thing. Pretty much being alone in and outside of the game.

I would like to blame it on not having enough time anymore, but I don't think I am playing less than 5 or 10 years ago. Mostly it is that it adds no entertainment value anymore for me. The social types in MMOs seem to have become mostly the e-peen types that want to show off their knowledge, money or prowess. I have no business at all with them. But I am sure there are a whole lot of people like me out there. We all love to socialize over our 10 killed rats.

The answer must be that we do that while trying to achieve something that will take us months to complete. Short term quests work much better solo. But what goal could there be in a game that I would be interested in to spend months on? For me personally player housing or guildhall are wasted fluff. Although it was a good goal in Vanguard for our guild. Maybe a house is it, but then really in the idea of a real town. Not just some artificial area with unconnected buildings you never want to visit.

And it is essential that it is not some sort of grind fest thing. The e-peens can get their whatever, and I will go play a different game. Me doing my bit should be meaningful for the larger group, and at the same time meaningful for me personally. A real village could be it.

But maybe I am just dreaming here. And what does it matter even what I think? It doesn't, but I just needed to talk about my favourite hobby. My hobby of talking about massive mulitplayer video games.

Yet Another SW:TOR review

I couldn't resist stealing the title :) It is not much of a review. More ramblings from my head.

The game is up and about for a month now, and that should be enough time for me to know whether I like it or not. It has it good bits and bad bits. As a game I like it, as an MMO it is rather uninteresting. I wish it was a single player game, without a subscription.

I pick up nearly any quest I can find while walking around. That means automatically that I will also get the [Heroic] missions. I have run a quite few of them together with some random people. It was not a bad experience at all. The players ranged from dead weight to done-this-20-times-before. I don't think I have dealt with any real jerk. But I didn't get anything positive out of it either. Each heroic mission I've done was about getting xp and clearing it off the list. It didn't add anything to main reason I play the game, and that is immersing myself in being a badass evil intelligence agent for the Sith Empire. I felt like I was teaming up because that is what you are supposed to do in an MMO.

Although it is silly, I started to avoid teaming up completely. Abandon the heroics, and just do my thing alone. I like the environments I am walking around in. I also like my character, the way she moves, fights, looks and talks. My companion is even cooler. She says and does some of the more memorable gaming experiences. But it sits kind of wrong with me that I am playing this game for 10 pound a month. Why am I not playing Mass Effect 2 or Portal 2 or any of the other 20 Steam games I have bought the last year or so?

The answer probably lies a bit in what makes an MMO different from a single player game (SPG). An SPG has a fixed beginning an end. An MMO is an escape from reality with an alter ego. This is a bit blurred though. In an MMO I do start at level 1 and the journey ends when I reach the level cap, so in a way there is an end. But in an MMO I can create a new alter ego and the world starts over. You can't do that in a SPG. When I play an SPG I start with the intention of finishing it, and if I don't I (usually) won't ever return to it. So along those same lines if I would stop SWTOR now, will I pick it up again later like I've done with other MMOs or if I quit now that is the end of it?

I am feeling some guilt towards my agent to just drop her and never see her again. So I continued playing on Saturday. And I am having a good time. I do want to see what other worlds are out there. And I do want to know what the Empire has in store for her. But it is all a bit more in the same way I want to know what happens in the next episode of Hollyoaks.

On Sunday I played City of Heroes with my usual group. We played through the latest Signature Story Arc. It was a lot of fun. I also played Bastion and had a lot of fun with that too. I enjoyed both those games more than I did SWTOR on Saturday. Is it compulsive bahaviour that I can't let go of SWTOR just yet? It could also be guilt towards MMOs in general. It has been my biggest hobby these past 10 years. I just have to enjoy SWTOR!

Skyrim review: No time

Geeky asked me if I could review Skyrim for here...

I can, I will...

Just not now, too busy playing the game still :-)


It's very, very good. Imagine Age of Conan without Conan, annoying community, grinding but with the whole world one overland map :-)

Here's a slideshow of some screenshots I've made:

The stills don't do the lush countryside justice though.

Yes the Interface is awful. It's bad enough to win a Darwin award when used on a console if you ask me, and the PC version's worse. Also if you're playing the PC version you *NEED* the following MOD that makes Skyrim Large Address Aware (using more than 2 GB of memory). For some reason Bethesda actually released a single patch to the PC game so far which disabled modifying its exe file so it's Large Address Aware. Weird stuff.
Without it the game's very prone to crashing due to a memory leak or two. With LAA it's still there but anyone with more than 2GB of memory (so both 32 bits and 64 bits OSes benefit from this) generally doesn't crash anymore.

Isn't it Ironic?

That just a week after I pick up my old habit of sharing items I read through Google Reader, Google launches a new an improved (read: stripped of whatever lay-out embellishments it used to have and replace everything with road-sign style buttons) version of Reader which is better integrated with the newfangled Google+ (which as far as I can tell is Google's 5th attempt at doing social network platform thingies?).

The downside to this is that classic sharing appears to have been disabled now.
If I click the new "Share/bookmark" link I get about 30 or 40 sharing options for various likes, digs, probes, pokes and whatnots. By the looks of it I can share an item I like with everything except my old sharing option of creating a Google Reader newsfeed of Interesting Items.

With luck I'll figure out how to keep doing this sometime tonight, the Lani's Interested Item feed still exists, just need to figure out how to (easily) add new items to it.

Dragon Age: Redemption

Bioware is already blurring the lines between video games and movies. I have just (finally) finished Mass Effect this weekend. Not only is almost half the time spend on listening and watching cut scenes and dialogues. But most of the characters in the game have crossed the uncanny valley in my view. I am really looking forward to see how they manage to even improve on that in ME2, and ME3. And as that was not enough there is Dragon Age (Origins, II, Mark of the Assassin) as well. The near living characters make for me for very compelling game play.

Although I did want to tell the world about my ME1 accomplishments, I actually have a different reason for this post. The folks of The Guild are blurring the lines between game and movie even further with Dragon Age: Redemption. A high production quality web series that is extending the virtual Dragon Age world into a real one.
Hmm, no, not a real world. They are actors running around 21st century California. I can't think of a fitting term for the 'reality' they live in. But it doesn't matter. It is worth watching.

How does this go again?

A multifunctional title there :-)
First of all it's such a long time that I posted something here, I'm having some trouble with some controls.

The same is also true for playing Fallen Earth. Such a simple chore as mining a copper node (Left) took some doing at first. I also haven't recalled yet how to make screenies in this game without telltale UI elements, so you'll have to put up with those for this post at least.

Fallen Earth relaunched as a F2P/P2P hybrid game last Thursday, and since appears to be buckling under its own success. Thursday evening I barely managed to be in game at all. I spent a lot of time in an empty character creation / selection screen waiting for my characters to load in from the old character server or wherever they were stored.

Oddly enough only one of my characters had made it through the original account merge process.
Due to some slight stupidity on my part I unlocked the freebie spiked chopper on this account before checking my old one for leftover characters. I later did go back and discoered that my L20 character and another toon were still there.
Since the account transfer/merge thingy overwrites any toons you may have on the gamerfirst side of things I ended up doing a second account for Olwyn (my L20) and my new toon Arezou which I'm using to get through the "How does this go again" phase of returning to any MMO.

On a side note. Have you noticed how global chat is really the same in any MMO? Regardless of the business model? It always seems to be full of people who are in the wrong game. Bitching about how "was/is/will be" so much better than the one they're currently playing. Either looking at an awesome game through the binoculars of nostalgia (while for some reason *not* playing said game) or with the pinkly tinted glasses of overexpectation at the Next New Thing (to disappoint them). Weirdest of all are the ones compalining how that other current game is so much better. Why aren't these people playing the games they obviously enjoy more? Sure, some comparison chatter is to be expected, and no game compares favourably to every other game on every topic. It's particularly hard to measure up to people's expectations of yet urneleased games, but often the bitching goes way beyond that.
Oh well. Some people just need to be muted.
On that note, the Help channel is really handy. Take a peek every 5 minutes, block everyone who asks questions USING ONLY CAPS and you're golden...

Getting my account sorted out and trying to get into the game e.t.c. took me most of Friday evening. About half the time servers were down and you'd be told to "check your Internet connection" by the client, showing how dangerous that is for a default message... Luckily the transfer service was still up. But due to a *lot* of people returning to the game this week as well as loads of newbie players giving it a go, the single server isn't really handling the load.

The game's tutorial has been revamped since we saw it last so it's about half the original length before you save the day by blowing up. Unfortunately one problem at this time is you get stuck at starting zone selection if you go through the tutorial. Took me a while to figure out I could bypass it at the start of the tutorial after a (possibly therapeutic?) pummeling of some in-the-way tech.

Once I got passed all that and wisely picked a Medium Population spot (Southern Burbs) over the High ones it was smooth sailing all day long. Well, a smooth ride, right up until the US woke up and doubled the load on that single server which promptly went down.


So, is the game worth all this trouble?
I kinda think it is. :-)
One of a studio's greatest fears for a Launch is (should be) being too popular for the infrasturcture to handle. This is clearly what's happening to Gamersfirst and the boys at Reloaded Productions. With eagle eyed hindsight it was probalby better to launch with at least one server each for EU and US.

Despite all that, the game's still very much fun, compulsively harvesting every node I come across and doing every crafting related quest I still managed to get up to Level 5 in about 6-7 hours of play and that's with the supposedly XP-crippled F2P account. I don't know if the feature was added by Fallen Earth LLC or Reloaded Productions who took over the torch, but someone seems to ahve added some nice features for toons having to play catch up. You now have a sleuth of Training Mutations. Abilities that you can sue up to level 15, giving you a little boost levelling up in a possibly rather lonely environment and giving ou a sense of the different ability trees at the same time.

All in all I'm very much enjoying my return to the apocalypse, when I can get in anyway.
My one point of criticism at this point is that Gamerfirst doesn't seem to really 'get' Marketplaces yet. With most of the buyable items over $10,- it's hardly a microtransactions scheme. The succesful F2P projects understand that you should primarily offer items under 5$, preferably around the 1-2$ range. Oh well, we'll see how things unfold.

Not sure if you guys are enjoying Invictus Europealis, I hope so. But if not, come see the Apocalypse (when/if the serverpark allows)

Vindictus Europealis

More than a year ago fracturedInfinity told us about Vindictus. He described it as 'It's kind of interesting'. I think he had a good time playing it for a while. But for some reason the rest of us were not allowed to play it. And for even more obscure reasons the European website for Vindictus was a static image with the text 'coming soon', and a facebook page that was just as dead (except for players begging for any kind of info). By May I had given up on it. Folks in the US had moved on, and I assumed the game had closed down.

But over the weekend I saw an advertisement for it on Rock,Paper Shotgun. So I followed the link and found out the game is live! Apparently they had been working on it behind the scenes, and it got released sometime in September. I downloaded it yesterday evening, played through the tutorial and wandered around town. It really looks good. Great graphics, easy controls, smooth character animations, and fun combat. When it came out in the US it was hailed as the game that proved that F2P can be high quality. I'm planning to find out if they were right.

Website: http://vindictus.nexoneu.com

I haven't made any screenshots yet, so I am 'borrowing' some screenies from fI. The characters I could chose from in the character creation screen seemd to be quite different. So maybe I'll never get to see the same things. The screenshots came from this post.

100

Our lovely blog is dead. Maybe we should rename it to Yadmmob. It seems it is not just our blog that died. The entire blogosphere is suffering. No great discussions, adventures, insights, or developments. Could it be the MMO as a genre completely is coming to an end? Perhaps it is.

But personally I am as active in my all time favourite MMO as I have ever been. I am daily popping in, doing research at work, printing out guides, even designed a spreadsheet for it, and generally just have a whole lot of fun.



So much so that this morning Tamera "Lourin" Phare managed to reach level 100! I felt pretty damn good about myself. Although AO is now more than 10 years old I am still at awe at some of the vistas, the atmosphere when walking around Elysium, the busy hubble in Borealis, or the immement danger of running into a nanostorm near the cyborg camps. The game still gives me that feeling of walking in a different world.

I don't think I can ever get bored of playing a game that lets me immerse myself into a virtual world. But unfortunately I have the feeling less and less people think the same as me. Rift shrunk a world into a nice set of quest hubs. Games like League of Legends and World of Tanks abandon the idea of a world completely. I don't know if it can be profitable anymore for any company to make such a wide world. Probably not. But I don't have to worry too much yet. I am not even half way in AO yet.

*drool*

Click here for the video hosted at mmorpg.com.

If the in-game environments are really as good looking as in the video, and I can roam around freely as that than I am sold. Well, I was sold already. But this video is making me hunger for the release.

And after that they will hopefully finally finish the AO engine update.

TSW - GDC Developer Walkthrough

Poor quality video/audio, recorded by a hand held camera rather than direct to drive. Not a lot revealed we didn't already know but some good eye candy (check the beach scenes). One thing is for sure - developers don't always make the best presenters.





'Dynamic' is the buzzword of 2011 :)

Here's a few new screens too.

From fantasy to a fantasy/steampunk hybrid, GW2- the shock of the new.

Guild wars in a lot of ways was a traditional fantasy MMO, as the game progressed and further chapters released the use of technology remained consistent, with the exception of a few anomalies (the giant robotic boss in Sorrows Furnace), the dwarves had their gunpowder while all else relied on the edge of their blade and/or their magic. It was only with the introduction of the Asura in 'Eye of the North' did we start to see any technology beyond the simple explosives of the dwarves. The asura bought with them the manipulation of magical crystals and their Golem creations, creatures fashioned from a magical technology previously alien to the races of Tyria and beyond. Somehow though they still fitted within the world, their technology seemed more magical than industrial, 250 years later the world has changed and with it the technology.

Over that 250 years the Charr has been the race to create the industrial revolution of Tyria, this sat well with the majority of the fanbase, the few minor outcries about the inclusion of what look like steam powered buggies in the Charr homeland video did little to temper its warm welcome.




The inclusion of guns had some fans upset that the world had moved too far away from its fantasy roots, but in my mind the progression from gundpowder to guns over 250 years seems perfectly logical as does progression beyond that. That progression became very real with this weeks profession release, it also marked a significant change in the way we look at the world of Guild Wars 2. Fantasy purists can pick up their coat on the way out of the door, Anet has made a significant statement this week - The world of Tyria is now firmly a fantasy/steampunk hybrid. Say hello to the Engineer.



I don't want to talk about the profession, watch the video and read this interview to get an overview on how the class plays.

What I'm more interested in is how this profession has created a split in what was a pretty consistent and solid fanbase and what your thoughts are.


The biggest gripe from that video has been the inclusion of a beeping/flashing mine, a technology too close to modern times to sit comfortably with a lot of people, more digital than clockwork, something that seems to have been a bad aesthetic choice by Anet, but something that can be easily rectified, get rid of the flashing light and its beeping audio, replace it with something clockwork and it's sorted. The fact that this is still close to the April Fools Commando Profession reveal can't be ignored either, the memory of that has influenced a few fans judgement on the Engineer as too much too far and not far enough away from the Commando to be taken seriously.


How is all this going to affect the fanbase and the future playerbase of the game? There seems to be a small minority who don't like such a sharp shift away from fantasy who are pledging that their interest in the game has now gone and they won't be investing come release, another section simply don't like the class, wish it wasn't there but will still invest and simply won't be playing it. It's hard to say what the majority feeling is right now, we need more information and to see it in action rather than the highly choreographed skill videos before we can judge how it will play, right now it seems OP but I felt that way about the Thief too.

Me? I like the move forward into a more steampunk feel both with it's environments and this new class reveal. I have the feeling this is going to widen the games appeal, the dynamic combat mixed with a gunner class is going to attract FPS and action orientated players from other genres, not a bad thing for Anet but likely we'll see far too many engineers on the playing fields at first. With Anets statement that the further in to profession reveals we get the more difficult and complex their gameplay becomes I figure we will see less as the game progresses as players discover there is more to the class than simply blowing things up.

It's a controversial move from Anet to take this profession so far, it's still a long way until release and as a company that listens to its fans it will be interesting to see how this will develop as more info is revealed, I expect we'll get more info very soon considering the controversy its caused.

I'm embracing the steampunk feel, I'm happy with fantasy but happier when it moves forward and it's a step in a direction I like, what do you folks think?

Henry Hawthorne