Category: MMO

A visit to Aion

Posted on by Nimgimli

Back before launch I played in the beta of Aion. At the time I didn’t find the experience compelling enough to pay full price for the client at launch (and, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t it come out somewhere around the same time as Warhammer, which I did get at launch?) but I always meant to check the game out when I could get a good deal on it.

During the big holiday sale, Steam offered Aion for $10, so I finally took the plunge. I have to say after all I’d heard (or not heard) about Aion since it launched, my expectations were pretty low.

The first (potential) challenge facing new Aion players is NCSoft’s byzantine support system. After installing I found I couldn’t log in. Their knowledge base had no answers and while I did open a support ticket, in an attempt to get faster help I headed to the official forums. I got some ideas there but when I tried to post a message I was told I couldn’t post unless I linked my forum account with a character name. Well since I couldn’t log in, I didn’t have any character names, ergo I couldn’t ask for help on the forums.

This is a small thing but generally speaking I’ve had terrible luck with NCSoft’s account management. In my support ticket I included a ton of information, including my ISP, my router name and model, the name of my anti-virus program and the information that I had turned it off as well as shutting down my firewall for testing. The next day I got a response (so points for timeliness) and the first questions they asked me were who my ISP was, had I tried turning off my anti-virus, etc, etc. It’s so frustrating when it becomes clear that support people can’t take the time to read your support request.

Anyway, this is a blog post about Aion, isn’t it? Sorry for the sidetrack.

It turns out the problem was with their servers or something. (A tracert to their authorization servers was dying about 15 hops down the line from me.) Since then I’ve had no problems.

I’d been playing my pet-using mage in Rift and having fun with it so I decided to go Mage in Aion too. I’d go with the Spiritmaster class when I hit 10. Aion’s leveling progression has you as a base class for the first 9 levels, then at level 10 you “ascend” and get your wings (literally) and pick a final class.

Levels 1-9 were familiar to me from the beta; that’s the problem with tightly scripted quest lines that have to be run through on more than one character. However they were a bit more challenging and interesting (at least towards the end) when there weren’t crowds of people doing them.

I’d forgotten how lovely the art style of Aion is (well to me at least). Screenshots can’t capture the whole experience; animals make some really interesting sounds too. And sometimes silly ones, like the patter of their feet. This is very much an Eastern game. When a mob notices you, there’s a Metal-Gear like “plink!” sound accompanied by a ! over the mob’s head.

That said, the gameplay in these levels really isn’t anything special. It isn’t bad, just very familiar. The one interesting mechanic are spell chains; cast Ice Spell 1 followed by Ice Spell 2 and get a bonus effect. Unfortunately this happens automatically. When you case Ice Spell 1 the icon then changes to that of Ice Spell 2. There’s no way to cast Ice Spell 1 twice in a row and then Ice Spell 2 (unless there’s a setting somewhere). If part 2 of a chain is off cool-down, that’s what’ll fire.

I’d been playing Rift before I jumped into Aion, and ironically enough, Rift felt more polished than Aion did, just in tiny details. Aion was a bit laggy and I saw other players rubber-banding around a few times. Jumping feels clunky. You can get hung up on the terrain pretty easily when you’re just trying to jump over a small obstacle. There’re places with invisible walls between an object and a geometry wall (for instance when trying to hug the wall of a canyon, if there’s a tree growing a few feet from the wall, you can’t go between the tree and the canyon wall) and some sloppy combat feedback at times (if a mob is slowed by a spell, when it dies you get feedback that its speed has returned to normal). None of these are deal breakers but they just seem like issues that should’ve been ironed out in the time since release.

Finally at level 9 I Ascended and remembered why I hadn’t played Aion at launch. After a semi-epic battle at the end of the 1-9 quest chains you get your wings and…become an errand boy. You’ll spend the next hour or so running around the Sanctum (or whatever the other side’s main city is called) doing FedEx quests which are, I suspect, intended to force you to learn how to get around the city. In general the city is too big and too empty. I find myself jumping from one end to the other and having nothing at all to do in the middle except run through it. I was already frustrated by this when I noticed something that wasn’t in beta: a teleport system to jump you across the city. If you play, find it and use it!

Just to give you a feel for how Eastern and grind-happy the game is, there’s one quest to take an item from 1 NPC to another that can be repeated 100 times for some special reward. I did it 3 times and never wanted to look at these NPCs again.

Another problem is this:

The word “Mythrazil” is my character name floating in space. But in amongst that mass of player names and guild tags are 3 NPCs in a different shade of bluish-green (or greenish-blue?). If you know where you’re going this isn’t a problem but for a noob looking for a specific NPC this is a real PITA. Aion also uses character item shops so in some places all you’ll see is a mass of characters sitting around with sales pitches floating over their heads. Thanks to Aion’s dwindling population this isn’t as bad as it was in beta but I still dislike these schemes.

When you finally beam down to the planet to go back to adventuring, you’ll realize just how low on the Ascended totem pole you are now. Your first tasks will be to kill crustaceans and turtles and even inert blocks of rock. IIRC this was where I bailed in beta. This time out I pushed on and once you get past those first few quests things start getting a little more interesting.

One of Aion’s big hooks was the ability to fly. So far I haven’t done a lot of that so I can’t comment much on it. It’s fun though. 🙂

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the community. When you first enter an established and potentially struggling game like Aion, you tend to feel like a real stranger. There’re all kinds of vernacular and game systems that I still don’t really understand, and listening to the chat going back and forth is like listening to another language. It’s like crashing a party or something.

There’s clearly some kind of appearance armor system in play since I saw tons of different ‘styles’ of outfit. Everything from typical fantasy gear with huge glowy weapons, to characters in very mundane gear that look liked they just walked in off the set of The Sims or something. Doing all my FedEx quests in the Sanctum was made somewhat more interesting just via people watching.

One thing I haven’t noticed is a lot of spam. In fact I haven’t noticed a General channel at all (maybe its off by default) but there are Trade and LFG channels that get plenty of traffic and it seems fairly ‘orderly.’ I’ve had invitations to Duel a few times but so far no whispers to buy gold or anything like that.

All in all, my time in Aion has been pleasant. Is that damning with faint praise? The world and creatures in it are interesting even if the combat system is (so far) fairly average. I don’t think I’ll stick around long enough to get to the PvPvE stuff that kicks in at level 25, but for my $10 I’m having fun. If you can get a similar deal and feel the urge to be an MMO tourist for a week or so, I’d say go for it.

Rift Beta 3

Posted on by Nimgimli

So on Thursday morning, the 3rd day of beta 3, I dejectedly ran the Rift Patcher that I’d spent the previous two days pulling my hair out over. And /facepalm it worked. I hadn’t changed anything since the previous day, but miracles do happen I guess. Of course then I had to “patch” 7 GB since I’d uninstalled the game (though honestly that didn’t take long at all).

Anyway since I got such a late start I decided to just keep playing Grima and get him to level 20, which I did about an hour before the beta ended. Betas 1 & 2 ended while I was at work, so this was the first time I got to see an end and it was pretty crazy. Huge invasions were spawned and kept on spawning. Tons of fun but the next time I play I’m going to be really puzzled by all the stuff in my inventory. At one point I had almost 30 of those Rift gift-pack thingies!

Hey, I don’t usually play a mage so maybe this is common, but one thing I found really helpful was how my debuffs, dots and stuff were show at the top of the mob’s list of bad things happening to him. Since I have some skills that pair nicely (thunderbolts to electrify the mob followed up by a water attack that does bonus when the enemy is electrified, and things like that) being able to easily see the countdown timers on my debuffs and effects was really handy.

One last thing then I’ll fling some pics at you. I had to respend all my skill points and I put Humpty Grima Dumpty back together differently this time around, and he played a lot differently. That’s probably obvious but it was nice having the 1st hand experience that says using the same 2 souls and allocating points different leads to a very different feel to the character.

I don’t take great videos, but here’re a couple I grabbed.

The first just showcases the animation of a particular mob. I love the animations in Rift. Heck my Recall spell is amazing to watch. Anyway this is an ent moseying along until he sees me.

And here’s the passing of an invasion force from The Great Hunt.

This one just gives you an idea of how massive the battles were getting during the major invasions.

And last, part of a fight against an epic mob (better pictures of him below). Oh yes, and my dying. I die a LOT in Rift…it’s kind of refreshing to be challenged in an MMO. Maybe that’s just because I’m not used to being a cloth-wearing mage, though.

Next up, a few still shots. Two of that big boss critter from the video (well actually, two different ones). I left the interface and everything intact so you can see how many various dots, debuffs and other effects he has on him!

One of my strange looking mount (though “George” is the name of my earth elemental tank buddy…the mount has no name, poor creature):

Here’s a shot of the map during the big invasion. All those little markers are another battle in the making:

And lastly, another “Holy smokes that’s a lot of players!” shots (and this is why Rift will be a Day 1 purchase for me…I want to be in those early crowds of players…I had boatloads of fun roaming around in random mobs. I got a ton of experience (a level and a half this afternoon), more loot than I could manage (more inventory space please) and an Orb of Heroes which is used to buy really nice gear once you collect a few of them. And all this without ever joining a Group.

Now then… what does Beta 4 start!? LOL

Seriously, I’m so delighted that that damned patcher finally started working. Apparently there was a big reboot on Trion’s end the night before so maybe that cleared something up. I’m convinced they were blocking my IP for some reason. And from what I’ve heard, everyone else with the error #2005 had theirs clear up at the same time.

So now I can go back to being a breathless Rift fanboy again. 🙂

Rift & me

Posted on by Nimgimli

This will be a redundant post for my Twitter friends. Sorry for the rehash.

But to other regular readers, you know how excited I’ve been for Rift and might be wondering why I’m not posting about Beta 3.

Unfortunately I’ve been unable to participate in Beta 3 due to an error I keep getting when I try to patch. Last week, before Christmas, I ran the patcher in anticipation of Beta 3 and all was well. Then Monday night, the night before the new beta phase started, I ran it again and got an error #2005 – Couldn’t connect to the Authentication Servers. I figured the servers were just offline but when I heard other folk had been patching I grew concerned.

As well I should have. The problem persists. Trion’s Tech Support was unable to help me (though bless them, they tried). It seems to have something to do with my network connection. I tried Rift on 3 different computers in the house, using two different Rift accounts. When that didn’t help I focused on the modem/router that FiOS supplies. I hadn’t changed any settings so it was odd that it’d suddenly become a problem but you never know. I called FiOS support (they were spectacularly unhelpful) and finally reset the modem back to its factory settings. No joy.

I literally spent all of Tuesday working on the problem and have now accepted that, for now at least, Rift doesn’t work in my house. Even though it worked flawlessly during Beta 1, Beta 2 and the patcher worked fine last week.

I’ve found a few kindred spirits who’re encountering the same problem, but it’s hard to get attention since there are other problems with the patcher being slow and an authorization error (#2002 I think) and people get confused and think we’re having the same problem.

I can ping the patcher, traceroute to it, but of course the problem isn’t the patch servers, it’s contacting the authentication servers, and I don’t know what those IP addresses are.

The saddest part is that since it seems to be a low frequency error, and one that Trion Tech Support couldn’t fix, I’m not convinced it’ll ever be fixed. At this point I’m assuming that I won’t be able to play Rift again. Which makes me sad… it really rekindled my love for MMOs, to the point where I’d kind of planned my holiday break around playing the third beta like mad.

Anyway, so that’s why no Rift posts from me. Technological issues have me shut out.

Rift Media

Posted on by Nimgimli

OK so I’m home now and can share some odds and ends I captured during Beta 2.

First a short video of me watching a Fae Invasion. Too many to take on alone and there’s only one other person nearby, so we’re waiting for more firepower. Mostly I was messing around with video capture at this point.

And here’s a second video of jumping into a rift battle that is, honestly, a bit over my head. I’m level 10 and the mobs are level 15, but there’re plenty of higher level folks to hold aggro so I cast a few spells into the mix. You can probably see I’m not trying very hard…if I get aggro from these guys I’ll die.

Here’s my character from Beta 2, an Elementalist/Storm Called name Grima

Here’re a couple of shots of Jarmok, an elite (though thankfully non-aggro) and very large Goblin that you might come across early in your time as a Guardian. I attacked him…and died.

This dude is an NPC’s pet. I wonder if I can get a pet like this if I’m a druid?

And here’s me running down an invasion of the Fae. Notice someone is already engaged and no doubt needs help. I was never ‘scolded’ for helping people in the beta. Notice also the weird ground textures…as rift creatures move across the land they corrupt the very earth they walk on.

Finally, regular readers know I’m a sucker for skies (click for a full 1680×1050 version):

Rift beta NDA dropped

Posted on by Nimgimli

That roar you heard today was the news spreading that the Rift NDA has dropped.

THANK GOODNESS!

I’ve been dying to talk about this game… I was lucky enough to snag a VIP Beta Pass from Massively, so was able to get into both the recent beta events. In both cases, Rift became a disruptive event in my life. I’m not sure if that’s good or not, but it sure was fun.

I can’t remember the last time a game has pulled me in and gripped me so tightly. I’d have entire conversations with Angela that I later had no recollection of, I was so focused on the game.

That’s the good news. Rift is a certain purchase to me (well, unless they suddenly take off in a radically different direction).

The bad news? I have trouble articulating exactly what it was that sucked me in.

I mean, there’s a great character creation system. You’re this “Ascended” being that gets to ‘equip’ the souls of fallen heros and so take on their skills. You start by picking in archetype (warrior, rogue, mage, cleric) and then your first soul (class, essentially). You get a skill tree for that soul. At level 5 or so you get to pick a 2nd soul and equip it, and it gives you a 2nd skill tree. At 20 you get a 3rd soul and in the full game there will be more to ‘collect’ though only 3 can be ‘equipped’ at any one time.

Every time you level you get a skill point. It’s up to you if you want to focus on 1 skill tree or travel up several. You also have multiple roles, which are basically sets of souls and skills. So you can focus on DPS in one role and healing in another.

Anyway, this is covered everywhere Rift is mentioned. But I love alts and there’s just incredible potential for lots of character “classes” created by combining souls.

The PvE leveling is fairly typical in terms of quests. You go from hub to hub but there is always plenty to do and generally several areas for you to ‘work’ in at any given time. Y’know how I griped about the new WoW newbie experience and how you always have 1-3 quests at a time… it was nice to get into Rift and have 15 quests to choose from.

The lore is rich and deep and I found myself wanting to learn more about it. I can see myself reading Rift novels in the not-too-distant future.

There are also daily quests from very early on, usually built around killing Rift creatures. There are “Story” quests that I was right in the middle of when Beta 2 ended. 🙁 I’m not sure if they finish differently or if they’re just tagged Story because of strong lore.

So that’s all fun: a very polished, solid PvE questing system with really interesting character development.

But then there are the rifts. Rifts are going to be the acid test for the game. Some people will HATE them, others will love them. To start, think of Rifts like Warhammer public quests, but they’re public quests that can happen anywhere.

A rift forms…like a tear in space. It’s a huge, awesome looking effect. And then creatures start spilling from this tear and it’s up to the players to fight them back. Rifts have several stages of increasing difficulty. There’s a nice balance mechanic in that if there aren’t a lot of players around the rift will have some kind of helper technique…generally an NPC that you can spawn to help you fight back.

Eventually you can seal a rift and when you do, everyone gets goodies. Lots of consumable items, then some items that you can trade to a broker for stuff you can use. Once in a while a piece of gear.

Now what if there’s a rift and no one closes it? Then parties of rift npcs spawn and head out to attack outposts across the lands. I saw more than one person go AFK in the middle of a road in a ‘safe’ spot and then get stomped by one of these roaming parties. If no one stops these rift creatures they’ll eventually start fighting NPCs, including quest givers. By the end of beta 2 (when the Rift spawn frequency got bumped up quite a bit) there was some bitching from people who couldn’t turn in quests because their NPC was fighting rift creatures.

If you feel sympathy for those people then maybe Rift isn’t for you. For me it was a freakin’ breath of fresh air to be playing in a world that wasn’t so compartmentalized into safe zones and fighting zones. There is chaos, wonderful, glorious chaos, in the world of Rift. Yes, you WILL get ganked by roving bands of NPCs that come upon you while you’re fighting a conveniently difficult mob. It’s just part of the game.

I also dabbled a bit in crafting in beta 2. It’s a solid crafting system, very WoW-ish. I took butchering (essentially skinning but you get more than just leather from fallen beasts) and gathering (picking herbs and harvesting wood) and apothecary. I sold the leather and wood on the auction house and used the herbs and organs to make healing and mana potions. Nothing really fancy here but skill level 1 I was making stuff I could use.

In Beta 1 I played a Reaver/Void Knight to level 17. It was a challenging combo because I played him pretty much full melee but had no self heals. There was a certain amount of downtime that went with it. In Beta 2 I played an Elementalist/Storm Caller. I don’t usually play mages but this guy was pretty awesome. The Elementalist side gave me pets and the Storm Caller side gave me lightning attacks. I put most of my points into Elementalist. He still didn’t have any heals but with the pet and ranged combat he didn’t need them very often.

I should probably attribute this to beta but the community was (mostly) awesome. Fighting rifts was all about random people banding together and fighting. No one was mentioning kill stealing or worrying about who is grouped with what… the rift mechanic seems to reward you whether you’re in a Group or just fighting alongside others. When the rift frequency cranked up, gangs of rift-sealers formed and charged from location to location, beating back the enemy from the other side.

If you think Rift might be for you I urge you to play at launch. This is going to be one of those games that really shines with a lot of people playing together. In case Rift doesn’t do well (and I have some concerns about that because so many people expect MMORPGs to be very orderly and safe) you’ll miss the fun if you don’t play until the population diminishes.

Beta 3 is next week. I’ll be reporting from there. I also have some screenshots that are on my PC at him; I’ll post some of those later today.

Apologies if this post is a jumble. I’m at work and was too excited about the NDA dropping to take the time to properly compose my thoughts. 🙂 Rift is my Next Big MMO, without a doubt.

Update:
Comments from Tipa: “You have to do story quests to get the quests for the dungeon and to get your third soul (at 18, not 20)” Thanks, Tipa!!

WoW update; time to rile up the natives

Posted on by Nimgimli

It’s been a tough week here at Chez Dragonchasers. I was sick as heck, then Angela got it, then the puppy needed to go get spayed and came home hurting something awful (requiring lots of cuddling on the couch). So not a lot of gaming has been done, but when I’ve had a few minutes I’ve been puttering around on my Worgen.

But y’know, I haven’t gotten the WoW Faithful all in a tizzy by saying something bad about their beloved game, so I figured I’d shoot out a post anyway.

The Worgen quest line has possibly been even more hand-holdy than the Night Elf quest line is! There are some quests that literally task you to click on a vehicle. Once you do, your character jumps in, goes on a canned ride where you have no control, then jumps out in front of a quest NPC that you have to click on to finish the quest. SUCCESS! You’re an awesome wolfie, you pulled it off! It’s like an MMO for pre-schoolers.

So anyway yeah… I’m loving it. Ha, psych! You militant WoW SOBs can put down your torches and your pitchforks. I mean, there are a couple of quests that do just that and from a pure gameplay point of view they’re beyond trivial, but by the time I got to them I was so immersed in the lore and the storyline that I didn’t care. I was just anxious to see what happens next.

Right now WoW, for me, is a lot like Dragon Age: Origins. I’m playing different races to experience these difference storylines and they’re all interesting and fun to go through. The Night Elf has, so far, been my least favorite and it was the one I did first when I returned, which had a lot to do with my voicing concerns with the gameplay. For my 2nd run-throughs I’ll be skipping quests and finding other ways to advance, probably.

The other thing the Worgen quest line does is really show off the power of phasing. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if, like me, you think of phasing in terms of an NPC moving from spot to spot (which is most of what I’d seen up until my Worgen days), well you ain’t seen nothing yet.

There’s a nice variety of quests in the Worgen start-up too. Sure, some of them are old school trivial fetch quests along the lines of “Go 5 feet outside my door and pick up that object” but even then they kind of lead up to something…they seem deliberately dull in a semi-successful attempt to lull you so you can be surprised (it’d be more successful if the starter area wasn’t so populated that you see things happen before you get the quest to do them, but I don’t see any good way around that). But others having you manning guns or riding mounts or sneaking around… things feel mixed up so I never get bored doing the same thing over and over. Some great new swamp environments, too.

At one point you have to save innocent people from alligators in a swamp. I saved the requisite number to complete the quest but on my way out, I just couldn’t leave the others to fend for themselves. I kept saving more and more of them; that to me is a good sign. I was immersed in the task and not just ticking off a check box of “Things to Do” (and I’ll admit, leveling up my Skinning at the same time).

I’ve also been reading a WoW novel (Christie Golden’s World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King) which is helping me stay immersed in the lore of the world. When I’m questing in a town that I was just reading about in the book the previous night, it kind of adds to the overall experience.

I honestly thought I’d be done with my return to WoW by now, but I’m still anxious to play more of the human starter area, and I haven’t *touched* horde side yet. I’ve managed to snag the week between Christmas and New Year’s as vacation days from one of my jobs, so I should have some real time to devote to WoW during that week.

I still have no interest in jumping into the Dungeon Finder and dealing with other people. WoW has been completely a single player game for me so far, and I’m not sure that’ll change, but we’ll see. But there’s enough new stuff that I do not regret my purchase of Cataclysm at all; something that was not true of my purchase of Wrath of the Lich King, which I regretted buying after just a few hours of playing as a Death Knight.

Maybe I just wasn’t ready to go back to WoW, or maybe this content is just that much better (for as much as I bitch about it being too easy, and yeah, it is still too easy) but for whatever reason, WoW is ‘sticking’ this time around.

My only real gripe at this point is that there are SO many servers and people I know are scattered all over them. How come we can get tossed into a dungeon with a random stranger from another server, but we can’t choose a friend on another server to jump into a dungeon with (or can we?).

A taste of Worgen

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it turns out if you marinate Worgen flank steak over night, then slow cook it over moist heat, it can be very tasty!

OK so this is why I’m not a stand-up comic.

I got a late start last night and it was closing in on 10 pm before I tore the shrink wrap off my Collector’s Edition of WOW: Cataclysm. I’m a little annoyed with myself for springing for the CE. I mean, it’s a great CE: it has a very nice art-book, some Friend Passes, a soundtrack CD, “Making of” DVD, some CCG cards (I guess) and of course the game itself. Oh and a mouse pad. But what generally interests me in Collector’s Editions is the in-game goodies, and it looks like the only in-game goodie with this one is a mini-Deathwing vanity pet. Or maybe I’m missing something. I still prefer the Panda Cub that came with the original WoW CE.

Anyway, installation took no time at all (a wee bit of data loaded off the DVD to supplement what I’d already d/led in the patch, then a quick online patch) and I was ready to play. I’ve found that a few people I know on Twitter play on Argent Dawn so I was going to roll my Worgen there, but there was a 15 minute queue. That’s not *too* bad except that about 5 minutes later the queue was still 15 minutes. Given how late it was I didn’t want to spend too much time waiting. I decided maybe I’d work on my Druid on Silver Hand, but that realm was listed as Full. Eric at Channel Massive has been bugging me to roll on Tanaris, but I had trouble logging in there. By the time I got into it and created a shaman goblin I’d come to realize that I really wanted to be a Worgen.

So I headed to my old haunt, Kirin Tor. No queue and before too long, Bartowski the Worgen Hunter was born.

Even without a queue there were plenty of fresh-made Worgen-to-be scurrying about (you start out as human, y’see), but not so many that it made completing those early quests difficult. In fact the “bad” Worgen were spawning so fast that we players relied on each other to keep ourselves alive. It was madness and totally fun. I kept waiting for someone to scream at me for kill stealing but it never happened.

Things got glitchy a few times with the ‘phasing’ technology but it was more amusing than annoying. Overall, given the press of players, I thought things went swimmingly.

I love the Victorian vibe of the Worgen starting area. The quests were more story-driven than interesting-game-play driven, but that was OK (keep in mind I only played for a half-hour or so…maybe level 5? 6?). I still think the new Human starting area is my favorite. The homage to Mario Sunshine tickles the heck out of me.

Tales of werewolves are so ubiquitous that I don’t know how Blizzard could’ve added real tension to the process of being turned, so instead they went for camp. When you get bit (or is it scratched?) by a Worgen your character says something like “Ow! That beast bit me. I’m sure it will be all right but it does sting a bit!” and I couldn’t help but LOL. And there are a few clever quests that, if nothing else, offer a spectacle to other players.

I didn’t get to play for long as a Worgen. Shortly after I transformed I also turned into a pumpkin and had to head to bed.

Now of course I have to decide if I want to keep playing on Kirin Tor, start a new character on Argent Dawn, or go back to Silver Hand. Maybe I’ll just give the crowds a few days to thin out while I decide.

DC Universe Online NDA drops

Posted on by Nimgimli

I got into the DC Universe Online beta in mid-November. I must confess I haven’t spent a ton of time with it, what with all the other goings on in the gaming universe. But what I have played I’ve enjoyed. It’s a great “I have 10 minutes free, what can I do?” game. Jump in, pummel some baddies and jump out.

It remains to be seen if there’s enough here to get me to subscribe, but we’ll see.

Here’s the thing you have to know about DC Universe Online. It isn’t an MMORPG. It’s a MMO action game. You’re almost certainly going to want to play it with a gamepad since you’re constantly having to move the camera to lock on to different enemies while mashing buttons to pull off combo attacks.

Put it this way: if a “Hit Counter” (think Devil May Cry) turns you off, you’re not going to want to play this one.

Now that the NDA is lifted I’ll try to focus a bit more on it, maybe grab some screenshots or a video to show how gameplay flows. Also keep an eye on ChannelMassive since I know Eric has been playing this one a lot more than I have, and is enjoying it a lot.

How much travel is too much?

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of the many details that came out of the discussion of the New WoW New Player Experience is that travel has been greatly reduced. There’re more flight paths and lots of NPC’s offer you a temporary mount to get from quest hub to questing grounds.

I think we can all agree that in Ye Olde WoW Darkshore had way too much traveling back and forth. LOTRO is another game that gets dinged on too much time spent traveling.

In my [it was a joke people!] WoW in 5 Years post I postulated a time when there was NO travel. Instead, the quests and scenery came to you. It’s pretty clear that none of us would really want that.

So what’s the perfect amount of travel? We don’t want to have our time wasted, obviously. For many of us time is our most precious resource. But at some point reducing travel time gets to a point where it begins taking away from the game.

Here’s what I, personally, like about traveling:
1) The chance to encounter other people. Now in today’s landscape of highly instanced quests and dungeons and automagical instance-joiners, I’m the old man waving his cane at the youngsters. I miss the old days when you’d be traveling from point A to point B, and yup, maybe grumbling under your breath about it, when you’d encounter a group of players taking on a beastie just a wee bit too hard for them. They’d give a shout and you’d join forces, help them defeat the Evil and then go on your merry way, perhaps after adding a few names to your friends list.

The less we travel, the less likely it is to have this kind of encounter. On the other hand hardly anyone fights in a group outside instances these days, I guess.

2) Exploration. I enjoyed trying to find the most efficient way between point A and point B, and discovering neat things that the game’s artists had left laying around for me to find. A crashed gnome flying machine deep in the woods of a swamp; one that appears to be there just to be a cool thing to find? I love stuff like that!

Of course, no one is stopping us from exploring randomly at any time, so this is an arguable ‘Pro’ in this discussion, but a good world builder can look at likely travel paths between locations and drop some surprises to be found along the way. And I do find that I sometimes get caught up in ‘keeping up’ with friends and thus don’t take time to stop and explore and having to travel could be a nudge in that direction, reminding me to stop and look around now and then.

On the other hand, there’s nothing in the world more boring than running back and forth from point A to point B and back to point A and never encountering other players or discovering new things, and honestly the ‘chance encounters’ that I so took delight in were the exception rather than the rule. We all quickly figured out how to get best use out of various ‘teleport home’ spells that most games give us.

Looking at WoW again, just from the point of view of it being so familiar… I sure don’t want to go back to the way Darkshore used to be. But I kind of miss those random encounters and the sense of distance and scale games used to have. When it took you 20 minutes to get somewhere…you knew you were way the f’ out there in the middle of the wilds. That felt like exploring and you’d tend to work a little harder at doing everything you needed to do before you made the long trip back.

I don’t envy game designers finding the right balance here, particularly since the right balance is going to be different for every player. I’m sure that somewhere there’s a player that thought my joke post sounded like a great new system. And I’m sure there’re people that really miss those epic, peril-fraught treks accross Sossaria (that’s the Ultima Online world, in case you didn’t know).

I like enough travel time to feel like, well, I’m traveling. But I don’t want to spend an evening getting from point A to point B, either (well, unless it’s an evening spent on new discoveries and quick adventures with random travelers). I think Fast Travel points once you’ve reached a distant place are a good compromise but they tend to quickly be known by all and suddenly you’re back to no one traveling on foot any more.

I’ve got an idea (with no clue how the mechanics would work) of some kind of Fast Travel system that worked on a sliding scale. The more often you traveled to a specific location, the most often you could Fast Travel there. Maybe when you’ve been there once you can Fast Travel back once/day. After you’ve visited 5 times you can do it once ever 4 hours. And when you’ve been there 10 times you can Fast Travel whenever you like. Because the more often you go somewhere, the less likely it is that you’re going to discovering something new along the way in subsequent trips.

Anyway, I’m just wondering if anyone else had an idea of what’s an acceptable amount of travel time in their MMOs?

In praise of WoW!

Posted on by Nimgimli

OK so as threatened in the comments of my last post, I figured it was time to dedicate a post to what I like about the new WoW experience. Some readers seem unable to get past the concept that I can like a product while still criticizing some aspects of it.

The thing is, I’m uncomfortable talking too much about the stuff I’m liking because I don’t want to spoil anything. There’s spectacle in the new starter experience and it’s fun to come upon it. And if I talk about the new player experience for one race, someone is bound to tell me about the new player experience for another race, and ruin things for me.

I’m the guy that laughs out loud (sometimes) at quest text. Yeah, I read every word of it (the first time through). I expect the developers to have put thought into the quest text and so far in WoW (both old and new) they have. I appreciate that a lot. So I come upon a pun or a funny comment in a quest’s text, and I have to tell Angela all about it, including back story and stuff. I love quests lines and the new player experience is one quest line after another. In the Night Elf area, at least, there are very few “1 off” quests with no context.

So I give a huge thumbs up to the folk writing the quests (and this is part of why I wave dismissively at suggestions that I just leave this area and go find a better challenge…I *want* to experience all the new lore at least once).

And, there’ve been a good number of what I guess we’re calling vehicle quests? I call ’em gadget quests. Basically quests that somehow change up game play in some way. They haven’t been hard, but they’ve been silly fun and I was glad to have experienced them. Again, no spoilers.

There’ve been some little interface changes that are new to me. Like these little side-loaded portraits and descriptions of named mobs you need to take down. Love those.

I have mixed feelings about the names of mobs only showing up if you need them for a quest. They sure make things easy to find and I’m sure that’s the intent, and it does add to the immersion that not everything is clearly labeled. But it takes something away from the thrill of the hunt. Here’s a shot I took to illustrate my griping about quests being so tightly clustered. You see here Steeltalon (??) (the bird with the yellow name) and some corrupted bears (red names). I need to kill all these guys but for two completely different quests. In the name of no extraneous traveling (I guess) they all helpfully travel together:

Further good news is that I hit level 20 tonight and saw things are starting to change. Quests were getting a bit more challenging, sending me after mobs that were level 19 and clustered tightly together so adds were common. There was a quest that forced me out of my Druid’s Cat form, reminding me of how wimpy I am as a Night Elf. 🙂 For the first time I had to keep an eye on my health, and had to think about mana management. I drank for the first time after a series of quick fights that left my mana depleted. In short, I started having to *think* about what I was doing. The dreary routine of every battle being exactly the same began to fall away. The actual game play started getting fun, and the quests continue to be interesting.

Hopefully this isn’t a bump in the road but the start of a nice ramp up in difficulty. The bad news? My skinning has fallen behind so I’m going to have to back up and kill mobs to catch it up. I *really* wish I could turn off combat experience while doing this (hmm, maybe I can level up skinning on the corpses of gray mobs?) because I don’t want to get out-leveled on the quests again.

Anyway, so there’s a brief post on the things I like about WoW. One last time… I can criticize some aspects of a game (or a book, or a movie) and still enjoy the game as a whole. I’m sure you can too.