Category: MMO

Is Guild Wars a CCG?

Posted on by Nimgimli

So with Alan Wake winging his way back to Gamefly, last night I hopped back into Guild Wars.

Now, I have to beg your patience, all you Guild War veterans… I’m probably about to cause you a great deal of eye-rolling.

I’ve added a few more heroes to my roster and each one brings some skills with them, and I’ve picked up the odd skill here and there. I could buy skills, but haven’t yet, since I read I can earn a bunch of them for free in one of the other campaigns, and so far I’m getting by with my limited selection.

But staring at those skill bars, and prompted by someone (my mind is like a sieve) mentioning how skills interact with each other and the best way to build a set for your skill bar, my brain suddenly switched into collectible card game mode. So all my skills…those are like my deck of cards, and part of the fun of the game is collecting more. The skillbar is like a hand of cards that I can put together and will eventually tweak depending on circumstances and companions.

Right? Am I right, Guild War vets? I mean, obviously there’s a ton more to it than just this skill collecting/arranging sub-system…

Anyway, another new thing I learned was that you can have more than one hero with you. I have no idea how I got it into my head that you could only have one. Last night I did a Mission with a party of 6, even though I was playing alone. I had my character +3 heroes +1 NPC who was part of the mission +1 Fire Imp ally. Crazy fun!!

Though, *gasp* at one point I thought “This would be better with friends.”

I unlocked the mission that in turns unlocks Eye of the North, but I’m sort of engaged with the Nightfall story now so I’m not sure I want to divert. And the mission I did had a bonus objective that I screwed up, so I’ll want to go re-do that.

Still having a lot of fun…still kind of bemused at how I wound up here after all these years.

My next goal is getting better about giving Heroes orders. Right now I let them run around in default behavior, which means swarming whatever I’m attacking. I was reading the Wiki and apparently you can ‘lock’ them onto a target, which, combined with calling targets, could be pretty handy if I’m a fast enough mouse clicker!

Revisiting Guild Wars

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m tired today. It’s my own fault, really. I was up too late playing video games (again). Will I never learn?

The only reason this is remotely interesting is because I was playing Guild Wars, a game that came out in 2005. A game that I’ve dutifully purchased every expansion for, yet never really played. I’ve tried to get into Guild Wars over and over again since it launched but it’s never ‘stuck’ with me.

Then this weekend I saw Scopique was playing it and that just sort of put it in my head again. I got to thinking about Guild Wars 2 and that mechanic where accomplishments you achieve in Guild Wars 1 will unlock stuff in Guild Wars 2. So I decided to give it another go.

Before I dove back in, I re-read Rubi Bayer’s excellent piece, Stop telling me how to get to 50 points when I only have 3 over at Massively. I also spent a lot of time using the Wiki to answer questions that came up, and browsed a bunch of Rubi’s other “Flameseeker Chronicles” to stuff my brain full of GW info.

I think every game that’s been on the market for a while needs a Rubi Bayer.

One of the things I learned was that I had a Fire Imp ready to be claimed, thanks to my purchase of one of the expansions. That little dude, while kind of a pain in the arse at times (he attacks any and everything he sees) really made my “party” of me and Koss (the first Hero you get in the Factions Nightfall [thanks for the correction, folks!] campaign) a lot more viable. And a lot more fun. That last time I tried Guild Wars my level 6 ass was being handed to me over and over. The Imp made it better.

Pretty soon I added a Monk henchman to keep me healed up, and I started to read quest texts more carefully, taking note of where they started and mentally assigning them a ‘level’ that way. I started doing a lot better, though I’m still probably spending skill points in dumb ways. But I feel like I’m getting a feel for the game. I got my dude from level 6 to level 10 which (get ready to laugh) is the highest level I’ve reading in Guild Wars.

Everyone has already at least tried Guild Wars, so I won’t go on about it much. But I just found it interesting that, 6 years after my initial purchase, and probably after a dozen false starts over those years, I’m finally enjoying the game.

PS Oh, one question for people who enjoy the game. Is the $10 (iirc) “Optional Missions” pack worth buying? And do I need it now or should I wait until I hit 20?

Vindictus!

Posted on by Nimgimli

I don’t even know myself anymore. First I got lured into Champions Online, and now I’ve been playing Vindictus. Once again, I blame Eric. Thank god that kid isn’t a drug dealer or I’d be a wreck. Not only does he have me back playing MMOs, but he has me *gasp* using voice chat and yakking away.

Anyway, if you’ve somehow missed it, Vindictus is an action-MO-RPG. No, I didn’t leave off an “M” by mistake..it isn’t massive. Well, the towns where you shop and craft are massive, but when you’re ready to actually play the game, it’s 4-man instances, similar to how Guild Wars handles it.

So, things I like about Vindictus:

  • It has a nice JRPG vibe to it, and I like JRPGs. There’s a sense that there’s a story here, though I’m too low level to have seen most of it.
  • It’s very respectful of your time. You hang out in a town, then teleport to a “Battle Quest” where you’ll fight. It takes 10-20 minutes to go through one of these, then you’re back in town. How fast you go through is a function of how much scrounging you want to do (you can break containers to get gold and items if you like) and how many people are in your party.
  • It’s fast paced. The actual combat is arcade-style rather than triggered skills and cool downs. Combo attacks, active dodging, stuff like that. A nice change from the more sedate pace of most MMORPGs I play.
  • It’s free. You can spend real money but so far I’m not really sure when I’ll get around to doing it. When I do, it’ll probably be for some vanity item rather than on something I need in order to progress.

The first time I played I was asked if I wanted to summon a mentor, or something like that. I did so, and was surprised that an actual player had teleported into my instance. And he was personable and helpful. Most of the time since I’ve been playing solo, but the few times I’ve jumped into other people’s missions I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the community. At worst, people have been silent.

The devs did a good job on removing drama from playing. If you see an item, grab it. Everyone else can grab it too. There’s no worry about loot ninjas or anything along those lines. Maybe I’ve just been lucky but so far Vindictus is dangerously close to turning me into a PUGger.

Last night Eric and I ran through 4 (I think) missions over the course of a couple of hours. Sometimes just him and I, once with a friend of his and once with a couple of strangers. It was all fun, and the game has the monster-pinata thing going on. You kill a boss mob and hope to get something good. If you don’t…well, just re-run the mission and try again!

I dunno if I’ll be playing this for months, but hey, it’s free! No commitment..just fun. Nothing wrong with that!

A dip into Champions Online: Free For All

Posted on by Nimgimli

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!

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising launches

Posted on by Nimgimli

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!

Gods & Heroes Dev Diary: Estates

Posted on by Nimgimli

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.

The resurrection of Gods & Heroes

Posted on by Nimgimli

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.

Wurm Online vs Real Life

Posted on by Nimgimli

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!! 🙂

Bootstrapping RPGs

Posted on by Nimgimli

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.)

Trion: Communication needs to extend beyond forums

Posted on by Nimgimli

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?