Almost missed this sucker (then again, I haven’t played WoW in months) but pretty cool…something I’d actually been wanting and that all MMOGs should be doing.
All that’s missing is the ability to chat into servers as your character so you can comm with your guild or friends.
Looks like the team’s back from Comic-Con and ready to open up the gates for another closed beta round. This time, they give us the intriguing “no later than Friday at noon PDT”. I can tell you I’m downloading a 438MB update right now from NCSoft so it might be possible to connect before Friday…we’ll see.
Meanwhile, you can check out yet another class preview at Ten Ton Hammer talking about the Sorcerer, an advanced Mage class that looks to be all about dps. The real question is how one will play out in PvP. You’re not able to fire off spells when moving when you’re playing the PvE game but PvP is a different story with flight. While it sounds like you’ll be kiting a lot when running around solo, grouping and PvP will be all about bringing the rain on your opponents from a distance. Cue the glut of Sorcerer’s this weekend.
I didn’t get a chance to swing by Comic-Con but I heard about this nuttiness. A lesson in how to not get the PR buzz you were hoping for…great job EA. Someone’s getting fired.
By the way, the collector’s edition pre-orders are sold out on Amazon. Makes me think I should’ve gotten two! Link below is for the regular edition.
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Anyone else want to say it’s the end of Blizzard’s golden goose??
Gamasutra’s reporting NetEase was granted the ability to set up a closed beta starting July 30th as they update WoW to meet the Chinese Government’s standards.
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Looks like some Blizzard refugees have decided to bring an MMO to the iPhone that works based on the things you do in real-life.
The real question is, who cares? iMob and its developer’s various cookie-cutter clones created to mint money from unsuspecting non-MMOGers don’t really count in my mind as real MMOGs as they really require little effort and everything is geared towards you making the creators money (if you don’t bring other people in–ponzi-scheme-style–or outlay cash for respect or whatever points, then don’t bother playing as you won’t be able to do anything).
Hand over your money!
These developers need to get a grip…the game is there to ENTERTAIN players and, in ideal circumstances, allow those people to escape their lives for a bit. If we wanted accounting apps (iMob), we’d get a fucking calculator and go to town on it pull square roots of 1023913. We want to be able to do three basic things:
Supposedly, Booyah (yes the company’s got the same name, just to make things confusing) is planning for additional features and enhancements to add to the game like using the iPhones motion sensors and add avatar interaction (a game with no avatar interaction sounds more like a forum). What I find funny is the addition of virtual money is seen as a feature benefiting players.
Jeez, these guys need to realize that WoW isn’t popular because we can spend our money better. It’s popular because everyone’s on it (can’t discount the network effect) but also because it was immersive and had some engaging parts as well. The environments were well-crafted and the endgame PvP gave people a reason to play after they reached the level cap because it became a multiplayer FPS-like game.
Time will tell if they’ll hit some sort of threshold or make the game cute enough to drag in a ton of women so that all the men will join just to try to hit on said women. Gotta love human nature.
Stay tuned…we’re gonna take it for a spin and see how honorable we can be.
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Last month, Star Wars Galaxies reached its sixth year. While not the oldest, it’s up there with the veterans of the MMOG world–EQ is 10 and UO is the granddaddy of modern MMOs at 12 years old.
With the more and more of Star Wars: The Old Republic leaking out and it’s impending launch looming mixed with SOE’s layoffs, I’ve been thinking that SWG’s days are numbered. I can’t say I’m a diehard player. I maintain my crafting business and as ridiculous as it seems, I’m still making money there. I’m not filthy rich but I’m comfortably wealthy in game terms. Still, there are still players in the game…when I do venture into Corellia (on Sunrunner) I’m often surprised by the presence of real players!
So, with a very small population spread over something like 10 servers (including the European ones that seem to be down a lot lately–oh noes!), I’m feeling more and more like the time to pull that great big MMO plug is coming. I don’t know the numbers that SOE deals with so I don’t know if they’re still finding a reason to maintain the game and the staff (yes, there are people who work on updates/patches for the game).
Why isn’t SWG the WoW of Sci-Fi (no, not SyFy) MMOGs? Well, outside of a very outdated game engine that got worse with the NGE, it just wasn’t smooth. It was built off the EQ engine, I’m sure, and was thus forever bound to the hard-core MMOG market, effectively closing the door on the casual gamer. It had great brand recognition but what’s the point of a great brand if you can’t even jump over a friggin rock?
But, the real nail in the coffin for the game? Not making it possible to be a Jedi from day one. The whole BS unlocking process was a joke. Sure it was interesting…but only to the hard core types that are willing to go through all the ridiculous trials and tribulations to find that one path to Jedihood. All you had to do was make it possible to have a Jedi slot without much fuss…even if it was just about reaching a level or even the level cap at the time. So what if it didn’t make sense from a SW Universe perspective. It’s like saying you’ve got to play the garbage collector in SimCity because it’s not like 20 million people can be mayor at the same time.
Anyway, I’ve started FRAPSing what I can and keep thinking about finding a way to sell off all the non essentials and bank the rest. After all, you can’t keep your virtual goods…there are no safes or virtual deposit boxes to horde all those rewards and drops and crafted items that litter your virtual houses.
So, before the end comes unceremoniously, it’s time to start saying goodbye to an old friend–even if it still insists that jumping is an emote and “action” combat involves aiming a reticule to roll a die. I’ll miss the blocky but still beautiful vistas. I’ll miss the random space ships flying over head as you get closer to major cities. I’ll miss the random music spurts that pull straight from the SW movies. I still remember the bustle of the starter cities and how crowded the “suburbs” got with housing. I won’t forget the people that came and went…okay, maybe I’ve already forgotten them.
So long, SWG, and thanks for the really late space combat. You had so much potential and had some fun in there at times. I guess we’ll finally be able to jump, lightsaber and do everything we were supposed to do in SWTOR. Too bad…
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So, the CrimeCraft closed beta’s been closed down for the time being. Again, those lovely NDAs are clamping things down but given its focus on TPS (third-person shooter) PvP combat, it’s made me think about the coming glut of FPS-MMOGs that are looking to come out.
Sanister’s going to talk about one and we’ve all played Planetside at one point in our MMO lives. FPS and MMOs are coming whether we like it or not.
Now, Sanister and I are both FPS players as well. UT, Quake, CS, TF2, COD…we’ve been there. And, as any shooter fan will say, beyond skill, lag is a bitch and a half when playing a game that relies more on skill and less on die rolls.
The big question is, assuming you instance things to keep player counts low and thus ideally limit lag caused by massive numbers of people on the same shard at the same time (gotta love running into IronForge and seeing shadows all around because the game still hasn’t loaded everyone’s toon yet), will there be enough FPS players willing to cross over to a MMOG to fight it out?
Sure there are a number of people who play both game types (just mention WoW or something in chat in COD and you’ll get people talking about their level 8os on some server somewhere). But, will those players really want to grind the PvE environment to hit the end game so that the instanced matches are easier to win? How do you deal with the differences in lag (not to mention skill) from player to player?
I think the most important factor any FPS-MMOG has to address is matchmaking. In most FPS games, you do your own matchmaking. You join a server…get your ass handed to you and move on to another server. Or you stick with it and learn to compete against the best player to become one of them. Battlefield Heroes supposedly matches you up with players of “similar skill”. If that’s based on rank and kills then that’s gonna be a mistake. COD’s mini-RPG in multiplayer is easy enough to max out and reinstalling the game loses enough of your profile if you’re not careful that plenty of solid players might appear as the lowest ranked person on the server.
If these FPS-MMOGs can match based on average ping and to some extent skill level, then they might make the whole FPS/MMOG union work…shotgun optional. Otherwise, if the devs focus on more accurately modelling the trajectory of a 7.64mm bullet as it exits the barrel of an AK instead of matchmaking, you’ll end up with another niche game better suited to those players that love to be one of the few, the proud, the final supports of a once proud game.
Time will tell…
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Alright, folks, Beta 4 came and went. This time around I was able to play grind away at crafting.
Some of this stuff has been covered by some sites so I’ll go into it a bit but I won’t go into crazy detail since I’m a stickler for NDAs.
The first thing you’ll notice is you aren’t limited to what “branch” of crafting you want to follow…want to make armor and knit socks? No problem. My understanding is–I didn’t get a chance to max out the first level of crafting for any trade…I wanted to level them all up roughly equally to see what I could do–you’ll eventually have to pick one (or two?) trade to master. You can keep the others at a lower level. The main philosophy seems to be anti-SWG where you were forced by the game devs to buy certain components from other crafters in an effort to keep you socially engaged.
Problem is, when you’re playing at 1 in the morning and no one’s around to make or sell you something you need…well, let’s say there ain’t much social engagement going around.
One of the other deterrents to levelling up everything is the friggin cost. Once you get past “level” 10 of your current level (confusing, I know) you start needing components that you have to buy (or likely could find in certain cases). There’s a handy vendor nearby in the crafting areas but the costs add up. Again, some things LOOK like you might be able to pick them up as you PvE your way around but I haven’t seem them yet.
Also, the process of actually crafting items bears some similarities with WoW in its simplicity but relies on the same opaque success/failure system used in gathering (which you’ll remember relies on a single gathering skill…at least for “general” items that you’d find in the environment like ore). It’s a bit frustrating. You know inherently that you’re taking more of a risk to craft something that requires a higher skill and is near the limit of your current skill. But, you have no say in the matter and have no way of knowing what’s really governing those bars crawling across your screen. It’s basically like throwing a slot machine arm and hoping you hit the jackpot.
On the innovative side, the trainers double as grinder aids as they offer up crafting jobs that you can complete for experience and skill increases (at the cost of your funds as you level up higher and have to buy the missing components for the recipes given to you). Saves time but really opens the game up to farming and just ridiculous grinding. If I wanted to, I could’ve just spent hours there griding my skills in each trade up to the max…though it would’ve cost me more money than I had.
Plus, your failure will cost you more than your time too: you lose the materials. Definitely going to hurt when you’re crafting some high level monster armor piece with 100k worth of mats and poof, it fails. Ouch.
One last note and maybe this’ll be corrected before launch: if you attempt to craft something when your backpack is full–even if the item your crafting already exists in your pack and is stackable–the system prevents you from crafting it until you clear a slot. So bogus. I partially understand it because sometimes you can “uber” craft an item and get a variant of the original item (kinda like the WAR crafting quality/variant crafting system)…though again, that’s based on luck it (and high skill) for it to happen.
All in all, I definitely like the balance of detail in the crafting system. It’s definitely not Vanguard (overly complicated) but it’s also not WAR (minimalist). I’m curious to see how well it holds up when the masses assault the game and the auctions fill with a million low-level craft-griding items (anyone who played SWG will remember the CDEF pistols and rifles…why would anyone think to sell the first friggin item they can craft?!?).
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Evening folks – it’s a sad day for 41 people, a.k.a 5% of SoE workforce, as Sony has announced job cuts! As a fan of the SoE title EverQuest I have to say I saw this one coming. You can’t stay relevant and, more importantly, profitable on the heels of your 10 year old project with a PEEK of 400,000 subscribers. SoE’s statement to online mag Massively.com is below:
“In a move to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs, Sony Online Entertainment has eliminated 5% of its full-time workforce, equaling 41 people. SOE looks forward to continuing its leadership role in the online games industry as it celebrates the highly successful launch of Free Realms, the 10-year commemoration of its ground-breaking EverQuest franchise, and the continued performance of the company’s other games.”
(source: Massively)
Is this the sign of the end for SoE’s gaming days or will Sony produce a hot fix for this one? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.
-=Sanister=-
An intriguing Tweet about a site called After the Impact. As if there still isn’t the potential for a nuclear war (started by N. Korea or someone), it seems maybe they’re trying for a comet/meteor = end of civilization = new Wasteland?
The site itself is stupid (and slow) but with the success of Fallout, a quality RPG about a post-apocalyptic world to add to the mutant goodness wouldn’t hurt. Note the word “quality”. We’ll just have to see…I’m guessing they’ll reveal all in a couple weeks.
Meanwhile, if you’re into the anime fantasy MMOG Aion, there’s a beta event coming up this weekend. Time to make better use of my wings!!
Funny, I’d have thought that a company that makes billions on their game could afford to maintain their Web site…I guess I was wrong.
Not that I use the site much but…uh…wow?
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