Last night my buddy Eric (who you may know as BlamefulGecko) dragged me out of my self-imposed MMO exile and into Champions Online.

This isn’t the first time I played CO; I played at launch and even have a Lifetime Membership. But as with so many other MMOs I eventually lost interest and moved on to something else. According to the character select screen, it’d been 169 days since I last played my characters and if I recall correctly that was a 1 time log in during a welcome back week or something. Really it’s been since a few months after launch since I seriously played. (I still have my “Hall of Champions” listed over to the right, with some origin stories.)

Eric wanted to show me the new Episodes that Cryptic has been adding (similar to what they’ve done with Star Trek Online) so we did the first one. I probably didn’t get as much out of it as I should have, since I was feeling really clumsy and focused more on how to play than what was going on, but Eric did a great job of narrating the storyline as we played. It was a ton of fun!

Afterwards, Eric put on a fashion show of sorts, showing me his different characters and all the crazy-awesome costumes he’s created for them, including a lot of splashy bits that he’s either earned through playing or bought at the C-Store.

I found myself trying to remember why I’d stopped playing; I really enjoyed my visit to this comic book world. I might have to roll a new character to take through the tutorials and get my bearings that way, though. I’ve got unused points to spend, bags full of junk that I have no idea what to do with, and I was halfway through our play session before I remembered some powers work for as long as you hold down a key (and Eric had to remind me that you could ‘charge’ your travel power).

Everything old is new again, I guess. Thanks Eric!

Just a PSA to remind you all that Heatwave Interactive’s MMO Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising launches today. I guess there was a headstart program for those who pre-ordered, but I haven’t heard much about what’s going on.

I kind of liked G&H back when Perpetual Entertainment was developing it, but then it died. When Heatwave resurrected it, I liked it again for its old-school charm. But as the beta progressed, Heatwave modernized the game, which was probably a smart marketing move, but it kind of made the whole experience feel a bit too “me too” for my tastes. I liked it when I had to read the quest text in order to figure out where to go, for instance. But then they added a guide system to remove that challenge.

The Estate System sounded pretty interesting, but by the time that rolled around I was drifting away from MMOs and there wasn’t enough there to pull me back in. So I’m sitting out this launch, though I wish Heatwave the very best of luck.

The last time I played, and it was a while ago in beta, the combat engine was still kind of janky. I loved the gladiator’s (the class I was playing) animations when they flowed smoothly, but too often they’d stutter, or you could see models change from animated NPC to corpse. Likewise, in a quest that had me destroying cages, it was jarring to see the model switch abruptly from “intact cage” to “broken cage.” These just seemed like technical rough spots that hadn’t yet been polished out; I’m hoping they have been for launch.

I seem to be forming a pattern here. I liked Rift a lot more in beta, before they made it more marketable and mainstream, and same thing here. Maybe I need to re-sub to Dark Age of Camelot or something. Maybe what’s got me drifting away from MMOs is all the hand holding and lack of challenge?

Anyway, congrats to Heatwave for the launch! And again, here’s hoping the game finds its niche. I’ll come and give it a try eventually, when that MMO itch starts up again!

The good folk at Heatwave Interactive reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in sharing some info about upcoming MMO Gods & Heroes with my readers, and of course I said I would. I haven’t personally found much time to get back into the beta (or any other games, really) since my previous post but I’m hoping to get more hands-on time this weekend.

This dev diary is about Estates. I know lots of MMO players who enjoy housing. Well Estates seem to be housing on steroids. It sounds as though you’ll spend time improving your estate; adding and improving buildings, and as the estate gets more elaborate you’ll get access to better minions. Sounds fun, at least on paper, and I can’t wait to see how it works in game.

The diary is also unique for another reason. As I mentioned, Gods & Heroes was in development by Perpetual before they gave up on it in order to focus on another game. Heatwave Interactive bought the unfinished game and are finishing what another team started. The devs here are pretty frank in referring to the things they’re fixing and improving. This isn’t a super-slick marketing-driven dev diary. It feels a lot more ‘real’ than most similar videos from other teams. I enjoyed it. I hope you do too.

In October of 2006 I went out and picked up a copy of the now defunct Massive magazine (a short-lived publication from my one-time colleagues at Computer Games Magazine, nee Strategy Plus). Why? Because it had a code to get into the Gods & Heroes beta. G&H was an in-development MMO coming from Perpetual Publishing.

It took until August 2007, but I finally got into the beta. Along the way Sony Online Entertainment announced they’d be a “co-publisher” of the game. Then they backed away and said they’d be a marketer for it. Meanwhile Perpetual kept laying people off. Then in October of 2007, they canceled the game to focus on the other MMO they were working on: Star Trek Online. Needless to say, Perpetual never published STO: they went bankrupt and faded from existence.

Fast forward to February 2010, when Heatwave Interactive announced that they’d acquired the rights and assets for Gods & Heroes and were going to publish it in 2011.

Today I once again entered the beta of G&H, and what a strange experience it was. After a few minutes of playing I started recognizing areas I’d been to 4 years ago. The graphics feel kind of old (though they aren’t bad) and the gameplay feels a bit like a throwback. Quest NPCs have markers over their heads, but you have to read quest texts to know where to go to complete a task. There’re no “Go here to complete the quest” markers or anything like that.

I liked it, even if things felt kind of rough to me. One of the big draws of G&H is that you eventually form squads of yourself and NPC minions. I didn’t get too far into that now or in 2007. I got one minion and she’s essentially a DoT so far. A pet. We’ll see what things feel like when I have a few minions.

I can’t see G&H being a mainstream hit; it just doesn’t feel modern enough. But for us old-timers who were playing MMOs way before WoW came out (or who fondly remember Vanilla WoW), it might offer some nostalgic fun. I only played for about an hour so I can’t give any deep insight into the game yet. But I can’t help but hope that Heatwave carves out a niche for themselves. I was really disappointed when G&H was canceled and I’m delighted to see it getting a 2nd chance.

Last night was my 3rd evening in Wurm Online. I once again had fun.

Before I went back to my wandering I took some time to work on skills. I chopped down a tree, then chopped the tree into logs, and then whittled the logs into shafts and staves. Then sawed up some planks. I didn’t have anything to do with this stuff…was just getting a feel for how long it took to do make things. It takes a long time.

It’s fun, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t using the Wiki so I was just combining random items to see what I could make. During my time I got 1 point in lumberjacking and 1 point in hatchet. Since a free account is capped at skill level 20, I see I could play for a long time on a free account. My highest skill is forage, at 3.

Next I whittled up some kindling, started a fire and cooked up a lingonberry and garlic casserole. By the time I’d made two of those I was getting bored of sitting by the side of the road and decided to continue on with my adventure to find Moxie’s Cherryglade Farm. I got turned around early on and had to backtrack. I was cutting through someone’s estate when I turned around and *eep!* there was a person there!

I dunno why it startled me, but it really did. I felt a little bit guilty, like I shouldn’t be wandering around their property. Population density in Wurm is pretty low and to just stumble into another player in the middle of the woods was surprising. I told the person they had scared me, got a ‘LOL’ response and headed on.

Second time was a charm and soon I found the road through The Grand Steppe. It’s big! I was out in the middle of nowhere when I saw a couple of huge scorpion carcasses. I swallowed nervously. I don’t know what the death penalty is like but I’m pretty sure a bunny could kill me if it wanted to. I still have no clue how to fight. I assume I activate a weapon then right click on a mob? But that’s a guess. I looked around worried about live giant scorpions, but none were found.

As I continued on I saw more and more carcasses of things that could’ve killed me had they been alive. I was getting pretty thirsty by this time, and remembered Moxie warning me to get a good drink before I started my trip. And then shimmering in the distance I saw a barrel by the side of the road. I thought it was a mirage but no…some generous soul had taken the time to leave a barrel of good drinking water right out in the middle of the Steppe. I wished I could leave a note or something, thanking the person.

I headed on. Eventually the Steppes ended and I was in wilderness. I saw a settlement with smoke rising over it. I headed over to see what was cooking. Eep! Lava spiders were cooking. Well, they were smoking anyway! I ran as fast as I could but they took no heed of me. Onward then. A bit later I heard a wolf howling. Then a bear growling. I was whipping my head back and forth, trying to locate the vile things. And then I ‘heard’ (in chat) two adventurers talking. “There’s that damned wolf, want to go after it?” said one. “KK” said the other.

A few minutes later I came across the pair, and their two pet bears, standing over the carcass of a wolf. I waved and skirted past them, eyeing the bears anxiously. A few minutes later I came to a tower near Mist Lake and decided to call it a night.

Quite an adventure, eh? Or was it? I made 2 casseroles, earned 2 skill points and traveled a little ways across the world. That’s what I had to show for my evening’s gaming time.

I had a ton of fun, don’t get me wrong, but I can see my pace through the Wurm Online experience is going to be S-L-O-W as heck, given the limited amount of time I have for gaming these days. Ergo the title of this post.

Yesterday I was all set to throw some real money at the game in order to buy a deed and start building a cottage for myself, but now I’m thinking that’s a bit pre-emptive. It might be better for me to remain a wanderer while I gradually build up some skills so when (or if) I start to pay I’ll at least be able to make some progress in the building.

On the other hand, owning a plot has its own rewards. I can leave stuff laying around and it won’t poof, as far as I understand it. I can make it so no one else can chop my trees or forage my lands, so I’ll have a steady place to practice those skills. A “square” of land can only be foraged once every 24 hours (of real time I think) so it can be really hard to find a place to practice those foraging skills, and you seem to need to forage up a good amount of materials while starting out.

So I dunno. I’m a bit on the fence now. I absolutely find Wurm Online fascinating, but I find EVE Online fascinating too, but in practical terms I don’t have the time to play EVE, so I just limit my enjoyment to reading about it. Wurm might fit in that same box. I’m not writing it off yet, but it may be the kind of game I just read stories about, rather than playing. At least until life calms down a bit… which will probably be a few minutes after they pound that final nail in my coffin!!

This week I’ve been devouring Moxie’s Wurm Online posts over at BattlePriestess.com. I just had to try it again.

The first time I started Wurm Online I spawned into a mysterious world and as I was looking at settings to figure out what key did what, some dude ran up to me and attacked. As I tried to figure out a) if I had a sword and b) how I would use one if I had it, he killed me. I respawned and a few seconds later he (or someone else) killed me again. That was the end of my 1st Wurm Online experience.

Now though, there’s a PvE server and *gasp* a bit of a tutorial. Getting into the game was much, much easier and soon I was roaming this world, still totally lost and clueless but drinking in all this potential. Wurm Online really hits me as a ‘graphical MUD’ in the best sense of the phrase. Anything seems possible (I’m sure it isn’t and I’ll hit limitations soon) but you need to use your imagination to supplement the graphics.

I haven’t done enough to tell great stories like Moxie is doing; hopefully those will come. But I wanted to talk about why I’m so delighted by the game.

Bootstrapping. Y’know, starting with nothing and building up to something. Minecraft is another game that scratches this itch (no coincidence since Notch was an early dev on Wurm Online, or so I’m told). In Minecraft you start with just your fists and punch trees to get wood to make wooden tools so you can dig up stone to make stone tools, etc, etc. The best part of Minecraft, to me, is starting out. Once I’m “secure” and established I start losing interest to some extent.

Wurm Online does the same kind of thing. For instance to make some basic food you use your shovel (you are given a few tools to begin) to dig up clay, then use your hand to make an unfinished clay bowl. Then you use an axe to chop down a tree, use your axe again to shop the tree into logs, then use a carving knife to turn a log into kindling, then use the kindling and a flint to start a fire. Feed more wood into the fire, then put your bowl into the fire to Finish them. Then forage for berries and herbs and cook them together in your bowl to make a meal.

So easy! LOL

I *love* this kind of thing! I love it both in games and stories. Stuff like Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire series (where a modern town is transported back to 1632 and has to rebuild their tech), or William R. Forstchen’s Lost Regiment series (where a Civil War regiment gets transported to another world where people are essentially cattle for another species, and again they use their technological know-how to rebuild). For that matter, this week’s episode of Stargate Atlantis dealt with the same kind of thing!

What I love about this ‘genre’ of game, though, is that it is based around building up, rather than destroying. Sure there’s combat and stuff but crafting is about creating more complex items out of simpler ones, and that scratches a deep itch in my psyche. The Harvest Moon games tend to scratch the same itch, too.

Anyway dear friends, I was wondering if anyone else out there loves this same kind of gameplay, and if you have any other game (or book!) suggestions that cover this same kind of theme of starting from nothing and building up. (Actually now that I think of it, a lot of RTS games touch on this too, to a lesser degree.)

So I have my own gripe about the World Event.

Trion has always prided themselves about their communication with their customers, and I think they’re doing great with content, but I think they’re stumbling when it comes to delivery.

So we had two weeks of Phase 1 of this world event and a little in-game tracker that told us when Phase 2 would begin. Excellent so far! But what it didn’t say was “and Phase 2 is a 1-time, short duration event so be ready when it launches!”

If I hadn’t happened to check Twitter on Saturday I would’ve totally missed Phase 2 of the event (oh wait, I did anyway, but that’s another gripe). I guess people learned about this from the forums and maybe from European players who experienced it first hand?

Scott Hartsman posted about the event both before and after it, and both times in the forums. Kudos to him for owning up to the problems but how many players didn’t see these messages? If you go to http://www.riftgame.com right now, the most recent news is about the addition of Authenticators, posted on 4/15. I guess there’s preliminary patch notes about 1.2 up somewhere in the forums, too?

Bottom line is that Trion relies exclusively on its forums to communicate with its audience, and that, to me, is horribly short-sighted of them. Communicate to me through the game client please. Make better use of the space in the Launcher. For longer form communication, how about setting up a blog like every other non-MMO company does? That way your customers can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog and never have to worry that they’re missing out on important news about the game they’re paying for. Sure, cross-post to the forums as well; I’m not suggesting getting rid of that.

But if the idea is that to play your game effectively I need to remember to troll through your forums once a day (even if that means going to your devTracker) then over time you’ll lose me as a customer. I’ll forget to visit and so will miss out on events and features and that in turn will lead to me becoming disenfranchised with the game. That’s not a happy thing for either of us.

Setting up a blog should be pretty trivial. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Look at what Netflix does, for instance (they use Blogger). I can subscribe to that feed and have all the Netflix news I need pushed to me.

I wish I could do the same with Rift.

How about it, Trion?

When Patch 1.1 went live, my Rogue got all his soul points refunded. Ugh. My Warrior did as well.

I love that Trion makes a point of letting us rebuild when they make significant changes to a soul, but I’d like it even more if they gave us a chance to take one last look at our old build before we got wiped, because I can *never* remember exactly how I had my points spent!

See, I’m not a min-maxer. Planning out a character sucks all the fun out of a game for me. I live for the rat pellet reward of the Ding and when I already know exactly how I’m going to spend my points, it takes the fun out of the process. Suddenly leveling becomes a chore intended to unlock the points I need to follow my plan. That sounds like my day job all of a sudden. (And absolutely no offense intended towards people who study skill trees and work out ideal rotations and things of that nature…we all have our own personal set of activities that are fun for us.)

So I wing it and have fun. But after the last patch I decided to be… responsible? Instead of winging it, I maxed out my Bard points so I could do some healing, and spent the rest in my Nightblade. At level 17 that meant 5 points for the Night Blade, 17 into Bard.

Now I’m a responsible adult who runs his group buffs and spams Cadence to heal 5 other members of the raid. I guess people like having me around and I don’t die. I feel like my Rogue is more ‘efficient’ than he used to be.

But I’m bored as hell. In groups I basically spam 2-3 abilities over and over, sticking in a Motif now and then. Last night, for the first time, doing massive invasions started feeling a bit like a chore.

And I realized I’d fallen into the trap of playing my game the way others think I should play it. I think a numbers person would approve of my build so far, but I’m not a numbers person. Well, I am…I mean I write code for a living. But when I’m playing a game I’m not about the numbers, I’m about the emotions. About seat-of-my-pants adventuring.

I’ll probably keep this build for when a group I’m in for more than 2 minutes needs extra healing, but I need to buy a 2nd role and spent points in a way that’s fun for me, even if ‘hardcore’ players look down their nose at me.

I need to roll an alt as a gatherer…I’m really thinking, just for grins, of making him totally random. Pick a class randomly, pick my souls randomly, assign the points to souls randomly. I think it’d be fun to see how hard such a character would be to play…

So I’ve been pretty busy lately and not having a lot of time to do the things I enjoy.

During this time I’ve been skimming Twitter and, without really digging in to what’s going on, my casual glances seem to be picking up on a theme of some discontent coming about in response to some planned (or already implemented?) changes to some of the Rift souls. I’m am honestly ignorant of the details; something about balancing PvE souls based on PvP? One specific I heard is that the Bard’s reactive heals (Cadence, for instance) will only affect a party, not an entire raid.

Meaning no disrespect to the people who’re upset about the changes but… these are games. If you have the kind of free time to get so immersed in a game that you can be upset about these changes, you should feel thankful.

I have an experiment to try: set aside 5 days and don’t play any games. Instead, spend those 5 days working at your job, cleaning/rearranging your house, filling out forms, talking to lawyers, paying taxes, dealing with your landlord and all the other unpleasant chores that life throws our way. You’ll knock your “To-do” list down and feel so much better about yourself for having all that crap out of the way.

Now go log into Rift and tell me that the changes that have been made have really ruined the game for you.

I could be wrong, but I think instead of being disappointed you’ll be delighted to be in-game having fun again.

<Begin Vaguely Related Anecdote>

Last night I finally sat down to do some gaming about 10:15. This week has sucked and will continue to suck through Sunday, so I was just grateful to have the chance to unwind a bit. I didn’t have long to play but wanted to at least smell the air of Silverwood and do some crafting quests.

I awoke in Sanctum and got the quests from that strange little man that always has work to do. I wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on when I activated my portal to teleport back to Argent Glade. Mistake on my part.

As the aether settled around me in Argent Glade I opened my eyes to a world where all hell had broken loose. There was an open rift in front of the tavern and another smack-dab in the middle of Quicksilver College. The countryside was awash in rifts, in fact. I wasted no time in joining my fellow Guardians in beating back the denizens of the Plane of Earth.

Alas it was too little too late and the Guardian Wardstone in Argent Glade fell. Only one remained in Sanctum Watch so I ran to the porticulum and returned to Sanctum, and from there out to the Watch. A dozen or more invasions were headed for the Wardstone but were still some ways off. I joined a raid and we made our way up one road, slashing, hacking and burning down invasion force after invasion force. I worried that we were over-extended so I left the raid and rode back to the Watch. Sure enough forces were drawing near along the other road, but happily I wasn’t the only one who’d fallen back. Another raid formed, and another purge of Earth denizens was underway. The Wardstone was saved!

In the meantime other Guardians were gathering to fight epic bosses from the Earth Plane. The community was self-organizing very nicely. We headed to Overwatch Keep to take down the final opponent and just as we arrived, he fell.

After that it was just a matter of mopping up and finally peace returned to Silverwood.

* * *

I looked up. Somewhere in all that I’d gained a level, and I won a purple sourcestone to get myself some shiny new gear with. I had two green gear upgrades in my rifting goodie-bags.

I looked at the clock. It was nearly midnight. Where had the time gone? My legs and back were cramped, my dog was looking neglected, the world seemed a bit fuzzy and indistinct. I had been so focused on the game that I hadn’t moved (aside from fingers on keyboard and mouse). My quick visit to make some Burlap Shoes had turned into an epic confrontation that left me grinning ear-to-ear and thankful for having a way to escape the depressingly mundane life I’d been leading this week, at least for a few hours.

When our grandfathers wanted to have some fun they rolled a hoop down the road with the aid of a stick.

We’re blessed with the chance to play these wonderful games that no other generation has experienced. Take a moment every now and then to appreciate how good you have it.

As mentioned on Twitter, going to PAX East has dampened my enthusiasm for MMOs a bit. Or more accurately, it has enhanced my enthusiasm for other games; I saw so many non-MMOs that I’m interested in playing that it makes dedicating myself to an MMO seem constricting. Since PAX East I’ve purchased Slam Bolt Scrappers (PS3), Atomic Zombie Smasher (PC), Arthur: The Role-Playing Game (PC but not new…it was on Impulse for $2.99 last weekend) and snagged the demo of Dungeons (PC). Whew!

So on top of going back to The Witcher (based on everyone having fun with DA2… I want to finish The Witcher so I can then go back to DA:O and Awakening and finally catch up and play DA2) I haven’t put a lot of time into MMOs recently.

But I did get some time into Rift this past weekend and, as usual, got caught up in events beyond those I’d planned when I logged in, having a ton of fun in the process.

But one thing I did encounter which irked me a tad. I ran into a non-public group while trying to close a rift. There I was, ready to beat back the denizens of the plane of earth. It was going slowly since I was alone. Then I spotted help on the horizon. Huzzah! I went to click the Public Group button and it wasn’t there.

Bwa? Huh?

Turns out it was a private group consisting of members from a guild. They got to work sealing the rift. There wasn’t much I could do buy lurk behind them and contribute DPS (was playing a Rogue DPS build). If I tagged a mob and got aggro they’d ignore me, working as a team to kill the mobs they’d tagged. Generally this resulted in my death, which then allowed them to tag the mob I’d been fighting and get credit for the kill. I’m not saying they were doing this maliciously but when you’re in a group you tend to only pay attention to other members of your group.

So like a hyena I skulked around the edges of the party, sniping at mobs they’d already tagged. Aside from making me feel like a leech it wasn’t really that bad. I still got decent rewards and stuff, so I’m not really complaining so much as marveling at the fact that I missed that Public Group button, since I wasn’t really a fan of the system when it was first introduced.

But now I find I miss it when it isn’t there. I guess I’ve been converted.