Category: MMO

Rebutting Wolfshead’s Rebuttal of Tipa’s Rebuttal

Posted on by Nimgimli

I think I have the nesting correct in that headline. 🙂

So the saga so far:

An anonymous game designer who goes by the handle ‘Wolfshead’ posted a fairly scathing critique of the first 15 minutes of EQ2. Tipa rebutted his post. And Wolfshead rebutted her rebuttal.

I was posted a few comments in response to Tipa’s post, and this morning posted a comment on Wolfshead’s blog. Comments there are moderated (as they are here) and s/he chose not to approve my comment. Which is fine — your blog, your prerogative. But my spidey-sense was tingling when I posted that comment and I had the forethought to keep a copy of it.

So here is that comment. Imagine it was in the comments section of Wolfshead’s last post. I’ve left it intact, poor phrasing included (I was rushing to post it before work). The only change I’ve made is to add italics to quotes from the original post:

===
The problem I have with you is, you make too many assumptions about
EQ2 players. For example:

I would like to challenge Tipa and others to put forth their
suggestions to help SOE make a better EQ2 newbie experience.

What makes you think she doesn’t? My significant other is a die-hard
EQ2 fan, and she is constantly giving feedback to the team via proper
channels.

You, once again, act as if your interests are altruistic, but any
potential new EQ2 player that read your ‘First 15 minutes’ would be
pushed to give up on the idea of trying the game; you make it sound
about as much fun as bamboo shoots shoved under the fingernails.

In my experience (I dabble in EQ2, but honestly never stay in it for
very long myself) the EQ2 community is pretty welcoming to new
players. I’ll admit I see that situation through the lens of my SO and
her guild and all the new EQ2 players in it.

But neither can you. You have no idea what SOE is doing back at its HQ.

You say:

Companies pay thousands of dollars in consulting fees to get into the
head space of their potential customers.

Well how do you know SOE hasn’t done that? Doesn’t continue to do it?
Some of the things you critique (eg, the background images at
character creation) were the way you suggest that should be (different
background for ‘evil’ characters) but SOE changed it so that all
characters are in front of the same background. Why did they toss out
the ‘evil’ artwork? Was it an arbitrary decision, or was it based on
market research and focus testing?

If you truly, honestly want to help SOE improve the game, then submit
feedback TO THEM. Don’t trash the game on your blog…all that really
helps is your page view count. And I know you’ll say you weren’t
trashing it, and maybe that wasn’t your intent, but that is definitely
the feeling one comes away with after reading your 15 minutes post.
You come across extremely arrogant and dismissive. I’m not saying you
*are* either of those things, but that’s how the post reads.
====

Since I posted that, Wolfshead has approved other comments, so I suppose I’ve hit a nerve. Redacted. SmakenDahed makes a good point…the other comments might be ‘auto-approved’ by virtue of them being previous posters. Update: Confirmed that this was indeed what was going on, so I fully retract the ‘hit a nerve’ statement.

Revisting Bartle’s MMO player types

Posted on by Nimgimli

We haven’t talked about the old Killer-Socializer-Explorer-Achiever thing in a while. Time to drag it out and beat it again…

So to start, I would self-categorize myself as almost full on Explorer. Logic:

Killer — I don’t like being killed in an MMO. And I assume that other people don’t like being killed, either. I am, when centered, a generally nice person. I don’t like to inflict pain, suffering or unhappiness on other people. (Other people would probably not say I’m a nice person because I am often not centered, and when I’m frustrated, or angry, or sad, I’m a royal son-of-a-bitch, but we generally point our introspection lens at ourselves when we are ‘neutral’.) So I don’t like PVP because I don’t like killing other people because I assume that upsets them, and I get no pleasure out of upsetting other people.

But, curiously enough, even though I don’t like being killed, I do kind of like being in danger. It really adds something to the MMO experience when you know you can be unexpectedly attacked at any moment (in days of yore you’d have to worry about that from NPCs, but that’s not often the case these days).

Point being, I don’t put my Killer quotient at zero, but it’s pretty low. I enjoy, now and then, the thrill of running through PvP areas and having to be on the lookout constantly.

Socializer — I solo almost exclusively. I don’t chat a lot; I’m *extremely* impatient with people who are intolerant, and most MMOs are full of people who are intolerant. The irony of me being intolerant of people who are intolerant is not lost on me…I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either. 🙂 I do like to swoop in and save people in trouble; that makes me feel heroic. I do like player-driven economies and the dynamic feel that lots of players brings to a game. I love people watching, in game and out. People are strange and twisted beasts and you never know what they’ll do next.

Point here being, Socializer again very low, but not quite at zero.

And now things get really interesting.

I would self-evaluate myself as being low Achiever, and high Explorer. Or I would have, until I got into a comment thread with Tipa over gaining levels. Quick summary: Tipa thinks of leveling as a chore, and she’d just assume games not have levels. She points to Eve as a game where you can go anywhere and do anything on Day 1.

Now that baffled me. It’d be like saying you don’t like ice cream! There’s nothing wrong at all with not liking ice cream, but I just find it hard to fathom. I love gaining levels, or speaking more generally, progressing a character (levels, talents, skills, traits, gear…whatever ‘increases’ to make your character more capable).

Tipa says she is an Explorer, not an Achiever, and that explains why she feels the way she does.

It took me a few days of pushing this around in my brain before I realized that I *am* an Achiever. I never thought I was because I very, very rarely make level cap. I never log in with intent to gain more levels, but when I do get them, I smile a lot. I never raid, I never stay up past a reasonable bedtime in pursuit of a goal. I don’t feel driven my Achiever-ness. But it turns out I am an Achiever.

I’m Explorer too, but that exploration has to be tempered with Achiever goals. Give me a brand new MMO where I can toggle on god mode and fly everywhere around the world and see everything the game has to offer, and I’m done with the game in a week. To me, Exploring new parts of an MMO world is the reward for Achieving new levels. [Tangent: I love Japanese RPGs, too, even though they tend to be very linear and so not very popular in the West. I love having to ‘earn’ the next bit of the story, the next area to explore. Same basic mechanics as in my MMOs.]

All of which is why I probably don’t buy into the popular “DIKU-MUD based MMOs must DIE” sentiment that is so popular these days. I don’t play for the game mechanics, I play to Explore a new world. Once I stop regularly visiting new areas in a game, I move on to another game. The mechanics are irrelevant, and in fact I might argue that I prefer them not to change much because I don’t feel like putting in the effort to learn a new set of controls. Take WoW or EQ2, strip out the geography, lore and npcs and replace those with new geography, lore and npcs and I’ll happily repurchase as a new game.

So I think if I were to self assign my Bartle archetype, it’d be something like:

Explorer: 40%
Achiever: 40%
Killer: 10%
Socializer: 10%

(Not that Bartle results add up to 100%)

For reference, the last time I took the test I was:

How about you? Forget the test… how do you see yourself?

* * *
After reading such a diatribe, I can at least share with you the kinds of views I play for:

wallpapers,lotrowallpapers,lotro

Click through for 1680×1050 wallpaper versions.

Aion beta’s nerdrage evoking policy

Posted on by Nimgimli

I resisted posting this whine, and it is a whine, but I just can’t get it out of my head.

I got into the Aion beta via a paid-subscription to Fileplanet (and getting into betas is my main reason for being a paid member there). By the end of the July 4th beta weekend, I was pretty burned out on Aion and had decided not to pre-order.

In the weeks since, I’ve been feeling the urge to play it again. Specifically to experience the combat system again. I’m not even sure why; I wanted to play more to identify what it was that was calling me back, or if this urge was even based on reality or just faulty memory.

So I was excited about this weekend’s beta event. I eagerly updated my client, logged in and got the message that my account wasn’t eligible for this beta event. A bit of research confirmed it: the Fileplanet keys (and many, many other keys) were for that 1 single weekend in July.

Nerdrage ensued. I could try to justify it (it was a pretty big download just for a couple days of play; I would’ve tried more classes had I know I just had 3 days, etc) but the real truth of the matter is, it just felt like a bait and switch. Jump through the hoops to get in, we’ll give you a taste, but now we’re going to cut you off. It felt like artificial scarcity designed to try to increase demand. It felt sleazy, like a tactic that crystal meth dealer who hangs out down on the corner would use.

My assumption is that their plan is something like this:

Give a bunch of people a very short beta access, then cut them off. Wait a few weeks for the satisfaction levels to settle, then open beta again, but deny most of the people access, unless they pre-order.

A marketing-driven scheme to psychologically manipulate the audience into pre-ordering. It has nothing to do with beta-testing. But to be honest, over that July weekend I was just playing for free, not really testing. So on some level we’re even.

But I come out of the situation pretty angry at NCSoft and Aion, feeling the urge to say something childish like “I hope the company goes bankrupt!” but of course that isn’t really true — it isn’t the worker bees coding the AI and creating the art that made this decision, and I wouldn’t want to see such a tragic outcome for them. But whatever marketing person came up with this plan…his or her head on a pike? That I’d like to see (metaphorically speaking). Sometimes psychological marketing tactics backfire, I guess. And I bet a lot of people did turn around and pre-order so as to get into this beta event.

A strange slant on the Sony layoffs

Posted on by Nimgimli

The news broke yesterday that Sony Online Entertainment laid off 5% of its workforce (41 full time employees).

First of all, my heart goes out to these people. I’ve been through it, many of us have, but I’ve never been through it when the job market is as tragically bad as it is now. It’s a time when employers are grabbing us all by the sensitive parts and squeezing the lifeblood out of us and we don’t have the leverage we ought to have when it comes to negotiating new positions and salaries. I hope in spite of this, all 41 individuals quickly find fulfilling jobs that pay them a fair wage.

Anyway, many sites covered it, including Virtual World News. But what struck me as odd was how they phrased the headline: “Free Realms Developer Details Layoffs.” I read that headline and thought “Oh, I guess many of the 41 must have come from the Free Realms team.” but the article said nothing of the sort. In fact they offer no more details than any other site has.

But to Virtual World News, SOE is apparently known as ‘the company that makes Free Realms.’ With its long history of EQ products, and its big licenses like Star Wars & DC Comics…Free Realms is what stands out to VWN.

I just found that interesting and a little bit bizarre, so thought I’d share.

The MMO as religion

Posted on by Nimgimli

So as I mentioned, I’m taking advantage of the 2-week freebie period in Age of Conan. I was so lost when I logged back in that I left Global Chat on, something I rarely do.

And for the most part, it was pretty civil. Enough so that I left it on and learned some things. The vets seemed willing to help with the flood of “Hi, I haven’t played in a year, can someone remind me how to…” questions with very little snark. I’d shifted servers to Wicanna in hopes of hooking up with Stargrace or Krys and I was liking the vibe there.

And then, the inevitable happened. Someone mentioned World of Warcraft. And the vitriol started spilling out, the chat pane scrolling like a waterfall. A few brave souls make the foolish choice of admitting that they *gasp* enjoyed WoW, and were verbally crucified for their heretical beliefs.

I should have, normally would have, just turned off Global Chat, chalking it up to the generally abhorrent hive-mind that dwells in every MMO. But I’d been lulled into this sense that the community of Wicanna was somehow different, and the sudden change in tone put me off to the point where I logged out, needing to get away from MMOs for a while.

Now in fairness, it takes a very, very small percentage of a server’s population to turn a chat channel into a cesspool, and once I settle down I’ll realize that these few verbal gankers are insignificant compared to the decent folk who’d been helping out the returnees. I don’t want to take away from the good deeds those individuals had been doing and in general I’m liking the population of Wicanna.

But it did get me to wondering why a significant number of people seem to treat MMOs like a religion. What is it about a person playing both Age of Conan and World of Warcraft (or any other 2 games, though if one of the 2 is WoW it seems to heighten the effect) that upsets a certain segment of the population? This isn’t limited to in-game chat; you see it on forums and blogs (more on forums) too. It’s like we’re all expected to pick ONE MMO to completely devote ourselves too, and enjoying more than one is blasphemous, like trying to be both Catholic and Jewish at the same time.

Why do people *care* what we play, or what we like? I understand wanting people to enjoy the game you love, since you want ‘your’ game to have lots of subscribers and do well. But beyond that, it just baffles me. Tearing into a person because they admit to liking another game as well is just going to drive people away from ‘your’ game, and it taints the entire MMO experience.

Think I’ll go back to my policy of turning off Global/General Chat for a while.

Fool me once…

Posted on by Nimgimli

So as everyone knows by now, Funcom has invited ex-Age of Conan players back for two weeks. I like to give things (and usually, people) a second chance, so I happily signed up. I spent an evening getting everything patched (client was still installed) and then the next night I logged in my level 32 Scout and…found that I had not a clue as to what I was doing. Plus all my skill points/feats/talents/whatever they are called, had been reset and I had even less of a clue as to how to spend them. I didn’t last very long in that session.

Today I decided I’d start a new character to get used to the game anew. Started playing and noticed how nicely the game ran. I had the settings on high (making the world look sumptuous) and was getting 50+ FPS on the starter beach (I’ve upgraded video cards since I last played). Combat was fun and fast and engaging. I started to think to myself “Yeah, I can see re-subscribing to this for a month, while I wait for Champions open beta.”

Then I arrived at the gates of Tortage and remembered… I really loved the start of the game the first time I played it, too! By rolling a new character I’d stepped into a (probably non-intentional) trap! I really did enjoy Age of Conan from level 1 to level 20 the first time I played it.

Thankfully I caught myself before getting caught up in self-hype and re-subscribing. Tonight I’m going back to my 32 Scout and will take the time to get used to him again (a much easier task to focus on during weekend play sessions, in any case).

I’m still willing to give AoC another chance, but I need to play at the levels that caused problems the first time around, if I’m going to get any value out of the 2-week trial.

Consequences, memories, and making an impact

Posted on by Nimgimli

Warning: This is going to be one of those rambling, stream-of-consciousness posts. A few different ideas have been thrown at my head recently, and they’re all twisting together in my brain, and I have to write my thoughts down to sort them out.

First, Ysharros wrote about wanting her actions to make a real difference in an MMO world: Persistence: ourstory

Then Ascii Dreams wrote about Permadeath (which also touches on emergent gameplay), which got me thinking about risk in MMOs.

In my comments on Ysharros’s post, I first wondered how developers could build a game in which every player can have a measurable impact on the world, and still remain fiscally solvent (the devs, not the players). But as I navel-gazed on Ysh’s dime, I started to wonder about what matters more: our actions having an impact on the MMO world, or our actions having an impact on us?

I decided that I, at least, don’t really care if my character’s actions change the MMO world as much as I care that my character’s actions leave me with rich memories of virtual adventures. I can remember adventures and exchanges from launch-era Ultima Online and EQ1 – things that happened 10+ years ago. But I remember very little from my time in Warhammer Online or Age of Conan, games I played in the last year. Nothing worth remembering happened in those games. I mean, I remember playing the games, of course, but I have no “Tales of Adventure” that I could share with you.

Again in the comments at Ysh’s, Tesh suggested that killing Onyxia when hundreds of other groups had already killed her is a weak substitute for telling your own unique stories, and yet one of my most recent “Tales of Adventure” comes from a similar (lower level!) encounter in WOW, and that was fighting General Drakkisath in the pre-Burning Crusades days. As a hunter, it was my job to ‘kite’ Drak away from the battle so that the rest of my comrades could take down his minions before fighing the General himself.

A zillion people had done this before me, and yet (in my mind at least) it remains one of my “Tales of Adventure.” And why is that?

Consequences.

I knew if I failed, Drak would return and wipe out my comrades.

For 99% of the things I do in MMOs these days, failure brings with it consequences so light as to really not matter. And that’s how I’ve wanted it. Wandering into the wrong area in UO and being ganked and stripped of everything I’d worked so hard to acquire was not fun. Dying in EQ and losing a level was not fun.

And yet those were the games where real memories and adventures were formed.

As MMO players, we argue against anything not-fun. We want insta-travel, hate death penalties, don’t want to grind, don’t want to have to spend hours at a time playing in order to accomplish anything. We want everything convenient and risk-free and for the most part, developers have obliged us.

And what we’re left with is games where we don’t have stories worth telling because nothing we do entails risk, and without an element of risk, a story isn’t worth telling. Without adversity, there can be no heroes.

I’m not arguing that grinding is adversity, or that having to run 10 minutes is, either. No, but these ‘features’ are deterrents. If we know that failing means having to grind for another hour (or even run for 10 minutes) to get back to where we were, then suddenly failing has real meaning, and from the real meaning comes emotional involvement.

I don’t know what the solution is, or if this is even a problem for very many people. I think back on my “Tales of Adventure” and I’d love to experience that kind of intensity in my gaming again, but I’m not willing to put the rest of my life in a box in order to obtain it, and that is surely what I was doing back then. UO almost cost me my job and my relationship. Kiting Drak only happened because I was unemployed. These days, when I can only squeeze in an hour to play an MMO in a given evening, I don’t *want* to have to spend it grinding or running around.

And yet, the games feel like games now, not alternate worlds of adventure. And damn, do I miss being a hero.

Aion verdict — no preorder (for now)

Posted on by Nimgimli

This morning I jumped back into the Aion beta, and after an hour or so, logged out. I’ve decided not to do a pre-order at this time. Which is odd because yesterday afternoon I almost did pre-order. I’m glad I slept on it. Here’s why:

First, the level 10 experience has been a *bit* of a disappointment. I have Ascended. I am now an immortal, ageless being with angel-like wings, dwelling in a city in the heavens. Great tasks await me. One of the first? Go kill some over-grown snails.

Huh? Now I said in my last post that I don’t mind “Kill 10 rats” quests, but when that phrase is taken literally, I do mind it. The critters I was sent to kill were about a foot high and looked about as threatening as your average garden snail. And why did I have to kill them? Because they’ve been eating too many scallops.

I can stomach (barely) doing this kind of ultra-trivial, non-heroic quest at level 1, but not after I spent a day getting to level 10 (granted it wouldn’t take a day to do it if I wasn’t a lore-reader).  To be fair, there’s a rebel faction of people I have to kill 10 of, and that’s fine. And there are lots of quests available and I haven’t checked them all out. But the one that happened to be at the top of my journal was kill 10 snail-like critters that I forget the name of.

This wasn’t really the reason for me deciding not to pre-order. It was just the factor that snapped me out of my ‘crush’ on the game and helped me to see it more objectively. It’s a pretty, polished game (with great music) but there are other pretty, polished games out there that don’t require me to throw down $50 just to get started playing. And we all know that MMO clients drop in price, often to $0, pretty quickly. I do intend to try Aion, but probably not at launch.

Second factor: Timing. The Champions Online open beta starts in August, with a launch of September 1st, I do believe. Aion is launching on September 22nd. Aion is a fantasy-based MMO in a sea of fantasy-based MMOs, whereas Champions is a Superhero MMO, and the only other (mainstream, at least) one of those we have is City of Heroes. The general buzz I’m getting on CO is that it’s a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to trying the beta of that, and hope to find myself playing at launch. Which means Aion will launch during the free month of Champions Online, which creates quite a conflict, given my limited play time.

Third: Player stores. I mentioned these yesterday, and between then and now they’ve already gotten much, much worse. This is a personal peeve of mine — I just can’t stand the things. I’m going to wait and hope they get removed.

Fourth: The holiday rush of single-player games. I don’t only play MMOs — I love me some console games, too. And there’s a bunch coming out this fall that I’m interested in, starting in early October. So this kind of feeds into timing, too.

Fifth: Levels 1-9. It was fun doing these once, but I did every available quest in order to get to level 10. OK, it’s possible I missed 1 or 2, but the area isn’t big enough for there to be any substantial quest chains hidden. As an altaholic, that means for every alt I want to test out, I have to do the same exact quests again. I can see that becoming a real drag.

So for now at least, I’m not going to pre-order Aion. Hopefully I’ll get into future beta weekends and be able to level up my Gladiator a bit more and see more of the world, and if that happens I might change my mind. We’ll see.

First look at Aion: Better late than never edition

Posted on by Nimgimli

So I finally got into an Aion beta session, compliments of File Planet. I’d heard a lot of good things about the game and was looking forward to trying it out myself.

I rolled a fighter, my basic ‘go-to’ class for testing new games. I chose Elyos because I’d heard their side of the world was prettier. Character creation was pretty good. You can either pick from a selection of pre-sets, or customize your character via sliders. I did both, really. Used pre-sets then tweaked them.

So many people have covered the game that I’m just going to highlight some things that made an impression (for good or ill) on me. To lay the foundations of what Aion is, I’ll refer you to Tipa (A first look at Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Aion: The User Interface) & Stargrace (Aion Beta Impressions, Aion Beta Weekend – Round II).

So very briefly, I agree with the general consensus. The game feels like a pretty typical Korean game, but polished much, much more than most of the F2P games. It’s also very pretty, and yet runs quite smoothly on my good-but-not-great hardware.

My highest level character is now level 10. I wanted to get to 10 so I could see how the game changes when you “ascend.” I played the beta of Age of Conan and never got past level 20 and ended up wasting money that way. My understanding was that Aion changes at level 10 once you get your wings, so I wanted to see how much it changes. I’ve *just* made 10 so don’t really have a feel for the changes yet.

BTW, a quick word about beta-testing. When I’m selected for a beta, I try to be a good tester, trying to replicate bugs, playing in ways to try to break the game so I can report faults, and so on. When a publisher starts giving away beta keys in contests or (in my case) through a paid service (File Planet) all bets are off and I’m just playing the game as a demo to see if I’m interested in it enough to purchase.

So assuming you’ve read Tipa and Stargrace (or someone else) and have the basic idea of what the game is like, here’s my list of things I liked and didn’t like. We’ll start with the bad stuff first.

Things that bugged me:

Personal Shops: This is a mainstay of Korean games. A player can turn his or her character into a ‘stall’ to sell goods out of their inventory. This is fine in theory, but in practice what happens is you get areas that are just *blanketed* with personal shops. It isn’t so bad in the beta yet, but it will be after launch, I’m sure, if nothing changes. I really hope this system gets replaced with a centralized broker.

When you Ascend you get this very spiritual vibe from the game, that you’re going to this mystical place, and as soon as you arrive here’s what you see (click for full size):

stores

Name filters: I’ve seen a high percentage of names that annoy me. EasyHo and CMyTits and the like. We need some kind of name filtering in here. And if I were running the game I wouldn’t let names start or end in X. I’m so sick of XDethNiteX and the like (I made these up but in each case they’re similar to something I saw).

Class choice at 10: Running one guy up to level 10 was fun, but I’m not looking forward to doing it again and again as I try various ‘final classes’ to pick the one I want to play. My prediction is that within 6 months of release they’ll let you create a level 10 character once you’ve run at least one character through levels 1-9.

Things I like but that might bug others:

Resting: In order to regain health at any kind of reasonable pace, you have to rest. That is, sit down on the ground. And of course you’re vulnerable like that, so it suits you best to find a safe place to do it. This is a tiny bit old school, but I kind of like it.

Kill Ten Rats: Lots of ‘Kill 10 Lizards” and “Bring me 10 Lizard Tails” type quests, which I know the blogging community wants abolished for all time. These feel comfortable and easy to me, and I don’t mind them. YMMV.

Things I like:

Lore, Quest Text and Dictionary: Yes, I am one of those people who reads the text quest. When you do, certain words will be highlighted. Clicking on one of these words pops up a ‘dictionary window’ with more info, and in some cases, a “Locate” button which will throw a waypoint onto your map. Even if you’re not looking for someone, it’s a great way to remind the player who is doing what and why in terms of lore. There’s also some semi-hidden lore, like a FedEx quest that has you delivering the book, but if you stop to read the book it’s a folktale that helps make sense of why certain characters are doing what they’re doing.

Here’s a dictionary example:

dictionary

Map Overlay: Hitting M brings up a traditional map window, but hitting N brings up an overlaid map. This is something you see often in single player console RPGs, but it’s a nice addition to the MMO space.

Can you see the map overlaid on the world in this screenshot? The green dot with a yellow arrowhead is my location.

map

Sell all Misc: When you’re talking to a vendor to sell your vendor trash, there’s a “Sell all Misc” button that’ll deposit all vendor trash into the shopping cart. Armor, weapons, crafting materials, quest items…anything with any kind of use is ignored. It’s just the gray loot stuff that gets turned into coin with 1 handy click.

‘Gambling’ upgrades: Weapons and armor have ‘manastone slots’ and you’ll often find manastones to put in this slots. They’ll add some buff to the item. +10 HP or +12 Accuracy, that kind of thing. Adding 1 stone is always a sure thing. But if the gear has 2 or more slots, there’s a risk when adding additional stones. If the insertion fails, all the stones get destroyed. So you have to decide if you want to risk it. There’s an item that sells for 1000 coins that’ll break down a piece of gear into Enchantment Stones, which can also be added to a piece of gear, and the same applies here. Making a sword into a +1 sword is pretty safe, but if you want to re-enchant it to +2, you risk failing and wiping out the existing +1 enchantment. How far you take the enchanting is up to you (I’m sure there are some kind of limits) but it costs a lot to break down gear and I assume every level of enchantment has a greater possibility of risk.

Shared Bank: I only know this from a loading screen tip, but somewhere there’s a Warehouse and your warehouse is shared between all characters on an account. Not unique to Aion, but still good news.

Things I didn’t understand:

Inventory: Instead of an backpack, your inventory space is called a Cube. When you see an NPC who offers to upgrade your cube, he’s offering to give you more inventory space.

Power Shards: You equip these and…they do nothing. Because equipping them is only step 1. Step 2 is activating them (I believe B activates them). Once activated they’ll give you an attack buff (and make your weapon all glowy), but be warned, you burn through them FAST. I believe every attack uses up a Power Shard. I know the one time I used them I had 5 equipped and by the end of 1 fight they were all gone.

Well, this has gone on long enough. I’ve spent most of the day playing (and 1-10 are completely solo friendly, btw) and I’ve enjoyed myself quite a bit. I still need to discover more about what goes on at higher levels. I ran into an NPC that offers gear for some kind of trophies you get from PvP, and said NPC claimed that was the best gear a person could get. If that’s true and the main focus of the game at higher levels is PVP, I’ll pass. We’ll see though.

Also, haven’t really touched crafting, aside from harvesting various items. The harvesting side of things is similar to WoW or EQ2. Double click a node, and maybe get some materials, and maybe get a skill-up.

MMO news from Sony Fan Faire

Posted on by Nimgimli

Just finished watching the live stream of the SOE Conference thingie from the Sony Fan Faire in Vegas. I didn’t take notes or anything, but here’s what stuck in my head:

Free Realms has a new soccer minigame incoming, as well as full progression for the two driving games, along with customizable cars and garages for the latter. Beyond that, a new desert area, the home of the dwarves, is incoming, and a new combat job (Druid) as well as a level bump for all jobs (how much wasn’t mentioned).

Oh, and you can get you avatar put onto a CCG game card (a real one, sent to your house). Kinda neat.

The next EQ2 expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, is due out in February 2010 and will raise the level cap to 90. It adds a bunch of areas that have EQ fans all giddy, but I never got very high in EQ so I didn’t make much note of them. But Halas is being added as a new newbie island. I wonder if you’ll have to swim back and forth in the frigid waters to get to it?

Nearer term, the next Game Update is going to have ‘auto-mentoring’ which will allow you and friends to access any content and be mentored down to where you can get adventuring and achievement experience for doing it. So I guess it’s time to stop working on those gray quests and just let them sit for a few months until we get the next update.

Previews of The Agency and DC Universe Online showed us nothing we haven’t already seen, and there was talk about a new EQ Expansion (the 16th!), Pox Nora, and some weird SWG expansion that adds undead for October.

I’m sure all the real news sites will have much more details by tomorrow at the latest!