Category: MMO

Return to SWG

Posted on by Nimgimli

In other MMO news… if you have a dormant Star Wars Galaxies account that hasn’t been active since last July, it should be re-activated from now until February 15th.

The bad news is that your house is about to be demolished.

Full text of the email that went out follows:

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House/Structure Pack-Up Notification for Inactive Accounts:

Effective March 3, 2009, at 4:00 AM PST your in-game player owned properties including Houses, Guild Halls, Theaters, Hospitals, Cloning Facilities, Merchant Tents and Factories may be packed-up, removed from the game server(s) and placed in your inventory!

Dear Former Star Wars™ Galaxies Citizens,

On March 3rd, we may pack up and remove items attached to Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been inactive (an account that has not been logged into and had an active, paying, and valid subscription) since July 1, 2008. If your service has been inactive since July 1, 2008, and you do not validly re-subscribe prior to February 15, 2009, your houses, structures and associated assets may be packed up into your inventory and removed from the game servers at 4:00 AM PST on March 3, 2009. Should you decide to return to Star Wars Galaxies after that date, you will have to place these items back into the game world.

Return To The Galaxy and Reclaim Your House… Come Back to Star Wars Galaxies Between January 13, 2009 and February 15, 2009 at No Charge*!

Before you relinquish your valuable real estate and game assets to the House Pack-Up program, take this opportunity to log in and see how much has changed since you left. Here are some of the things you missed since you’ve been gone:

  • Hoth: The Battle of Echo Base Heroic Encounter
  • The Nova Orion Crisis Heroic Encounter
  • The Fury of Exar Kun Heroic Encounter
  • Profession Updates
  • The Search for the Meatlump King Theme Park
  • The online only Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game

We are offering you an opportunity to come back for free between January 13, 2009 at 12:01 AM PST and February 15, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST. Your account has been automatically re-activated; simply log in to take advantage of this offer!

Return and Get Rewarded!

If you return and decide to re-subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies with a valid, paid subscription before the free period ends on February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST, you will be eligible to receive a special Sarlacc Trash Can** in-game item, perfect for that structure you just saved from being removed from the servers!

Coming Back is Easy!

  • Simply log in to your account; it will be reactivated automatically for FREE between January 13, 2009, at 12:01 PM PST and February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST.
  • Don’t have Star Wars Galaxies installed? No problem! Download the Station Launcher installer HERE to get access to the latest version of Star Wars Galaxies.
  • You must log back in to your former account and re-subscribe before February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST to receive the Sarlacc Trash Can in-game item. So don’t delay, log-in today and rejoin your friends!

Hoth, The Meatlump King, Exar Kun and Darth Vader are all waiting for you…

May the Force Be With You!

The Star Wars Galaxies Team

For More Information please visit: www.starwarsgalaxies.com/packup

Please be aware that if you do not reactivate your Star Wars Galaxies account by providing SOE with valid billing information on or before February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST, your house, guild halls, factories, merchant tents, theaters and all associated assets will be packed up into your inventory and removed from the game.

*This offer, and the period of free game-play described in this offer, expires on February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM PST.  This offer is only available for former Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been closed and inactive since July 1, 2008 and is not available for current Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access accounts or for accounts that were banned or were not in good standing when its Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access subscription previously expired or was terminated.

Taking advantage of this free play period will not result in your account being considered an “active” account so that if you do not reactivate your Star Wars Galaxies account by providing SOE with valid billing information prior to February 15, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST, your house, guild halls, factories, merchant tents, theaters and associated assets may be packed up into your inventory effective March 3, 2009.

Entering billing information before February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM will terminate the free service and you will lose the balance of any unused free play period game time.  In addition, if you re-subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies, you will not be entitled to any game time that may be included with the purchase of certain versions of, or other offers related to, Star Wars Galaxies.  Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts do not ensure continuous or error-free access, use or availability of any game content, feature, game-play or server and may change, modify, disable, suspend or remove any such content, feature, game-play or server at their sole discretion.

To add billing information to your account, simply visit www.station.sony.com and log in to your account and select “Subscriptions Info” and click “Add Another Plan”. Select “YES!” to subscribe to the Station Access multi-game subscription offer (game software sold separately) or “No” to only subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies. Choose a Subscription Plan or Pre-Paid Game Card and click “Continue”. Enter the required billing information or Game Card Code (if available) and click “Continue”.  Additional recurring costs apply as part of the Star Wars Galaxies account subscription.

**To receive the “Sarlacc Trash Can” in-game item for former subscribers, former account holders must re-activate billing on your Star Wars Galaxies account before February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM PST. The conversion reward is available through the /claim interface beginning on March 5, 2009.  The Sarlacc Trash Can is offered on a one per account, non-tradeable basis.

FusionFall Launches

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Cartoon Network’s Browser-based MMO FusionFall launched today. There’s a free-to-play area, or full access starts at $5.95/month and drops a bit for longer sub periods. There’s also a $9.95/month family plan that gets you 4 accounts.

FusionFall is clearly aimed at kids, but let’s face it, Cartoon Network has plenty of winks and nods for us adults as well. Let’s hope some of that “duality” made it into the MMO. I remember sitting with my ex’s daughter watching The Power Puff Girls and she and I would laugh at totally different moments. 🙂

How I roll(play)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yesterday I had very little leisure time, and consequently I have nothing to say today. So I thought I’d try something a little different and share my technique for role-playing in MMOs. I’m just not quick-witted enough to role-play in ‘real time’ in games, but I do like to gin up some kind of storyline that explains where my character(s) come from.

In the case of Pirates of the Burning Sea, I was in a guild called The Highland Confederacy. The premise of this guild was that they were a group of Scottish, Irish and Welsh Jacobites fighting on the side of France. In game terms, we figured the English faction was going to be over-crowded, so this allowed us to play under the flag of France but still speak English.

I was playing two characters, a trader and a a privateer. The two were brothers. But what brought them to the New World and led them to The Highland Confederacy? I decided to chronicle their story as a series of log entries written by the elder brother, Morgan Rhydderch of Wales. I had fun weaving some history into their story.

This is pretty long so, y’know, I won’t be offended if you don’t read it all. And I’d best break the post here so I don’t swamp the RSS feeds out there. 🙂

Continue reading “How I roll(play)”

Size matters (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it’s time to buckle down and clean our Riowa’s quest journal. I keep trying to delete quests but my finger just won’t click that button (another of my many character flaws!), so instead Riowa partnered with Angela’s Moonbow (23 Warden), mentored down to her level, and voila, quests that were gray are now yellow.

The quests in question were in Stormhold, a zone I’m not all that familiar with, so I was following Angela’s directions while Riowa was leading Moonbow. One of the reasons I’m not familiar with Stormhold is that I hate the zone. All those tight corridors drive me crazy, and having a knee-high companion wasn’t making things any better — I kept ‘losing’ her.

I finally vocalized my internal grumbling, and Angela suggested I use my “Mystic Moppet Billy” that I’d gotten as a Veteran Reward at some point. This oddly named gizmo shrinks your character by 40%. Now a lot of MMOs have spells or potions or gadgets that shrink you or enlarge you, but I’ve always thought of them as just a lark…something to do for fun. And perhaps that’s the intent, but after activating Billy, my hulking Barbarian frame suddenly fit very nicely in Stormhold. Suddenly all those hallways seemed to be amply sized, and I could relax and have fun.

And have fun we did. Moonbow made four levels, we both snagged Achievement Points (well Riowa got one, I think she got two) and I’m finally starting to be able to find my way around Stormhold. Sadly Riowa did *not* finish any quests though. Stormhold is old-school (ie, annoying) EQ2, and the mobs he needed to kill just weren’t spawning. I’m so glad Sony seems to have moved away from long spawn timers, or tiny numbers of mobs, (or both!) in the later expansions.  One quest had Riowa killing 15 goblin soldiers. As far as I could find (both via running around, and using EQ2Map), 2 spawn in all of Stormhold. I think he’s up to ten killed at this point, and he’s had the quest since level 25 or thereabouts.

Ah well, the point is, sometimes there are tools right in front of us that we just don’t see. I never thought I’d find a ‘practical’ use for Mystic Moppet Billy, but I sure did!

New digs (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I decided that Riowa should celebrate hitting the 50’s by getting his own apartment. He’d been sleeping on the couch at Raffe’s (50 Alchemist) place since forever, which had been ok since most of the time Raffe crashes at the Guild Hall and Riowa is on the road a lot. The two never saw each other and only communicated via notes left to each other.

That said, Riannon (Angela’s 80 Templar) and Kharri (Angela’s 80 Carpenter) had decorated Raffe’s pad very tastefully, but Riowa wanted to try his own hand at decorating. Plus he was constantly hitting his head on that stupid spiral staircase that leads to the second floor of the Irontoes East, where the rented rooms are.

He first looked at some three room apartments, but quickly saw through the marketing hype. One room downstairs, one room upstairs, and then a walled yard with a tarp overhead! That’s not a room! Bah! The five-room homes are lovely but he didn’t quite have the status in the community to swing one. Actually he didn’t have anywhere near the status to swing one.

Treasure TroveIn the end, he rented a two room place in The Lion’s Mane, that cozy Inn in South Qeynos. It was very comfortably affordable, particularly once he did up the place with fancy items that appealed to the snooty housing committee [bringing the Status cost to 0] and placed a Treasure Trove [knocks 25% off the weekly Gold cost] in there. First thing he did was make an ice sculpture out of all the frozen goblins he’d collected in the icy keep.

Then he finally hatched the Mysterious Egg that he’d left unclaimed for several years, and look what hatched from it!

Aviak fighter

Next he bought a large cat, and brought his other pets over from Raffe’s place, taking particular care in transporting the baby dragon.

Baby Dragon

Next he arranged his trophy weapons around the door, so every time he left he’d be reminded of past successes.

Trophies

An ice sculpture of some hot warrior chick rounded the place out. A real bachelor’s pad!

Ice Statue

Not at all like Raffe’s girl-ish place, with his hearth

Raffe's Hearth

and his poncie bedroom

Raffe's Bedroom

Admittedly the eating is better at Raffe’s, though.

Raffe's Feast

The new suite has a long way to go, but Riowa is thinking me might wait until he can afford to five-room place before he really gets started on any serious decorating.

* * *

And while I’m in the image posting mood, here’s two shots of him with his new ice gear. One without the chest piece, and one with. You can see how over-done the ‘snowflake’ effect is on the chest piece. I think that’ll be the first piece I replace! (BTW, it is *uncanny* how simliar Riowa’s physique is to mine!!)

Without Snow EffectWith Snow Effect

Ice, Ice, Baby (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finally got Riowa the Berserker to level 52, which meant he could finally don all that neat Frostfell ice-themed gear he’d earned the tokens for. Woot! I made sure to take a portrait of him all decked out, then of course never uploaded it. Doh.

I’m not actually a fan of the ‘frost’ particle-effects that comes with the gear, and I didn’t have enough time (it was midnight by the time I dinged) to see if it was one particular piece that triggered it. If it is, I’ll have to cover that piece up with something.

The trinkets, sword, shield and bow are all good gear that I can use for a while, but the armor and jewelry all has a big negative to heat damage resistance. So Riowa now has heat resistance of zero — thank goodness they don’t allow negative numbers!! Angela glanced over at my screen, saw the stats and quipped “Don’t go adventuring in Lavastorm!” 🙂

But EQ2 vets will probably be horrified to learn that my level 51 character was still wearing level 32 armor (granted, mastercrafted but still) so even with the lack of heat protection, this stuff is a tremendous upgrade and was free.

Anyway, now that I’m in my new duds, it’s time to go back and clean up a bunch of gray quests (probably mentoring one of Angela’s younger girls to get ’em green) and working up harvesting skills. I only have 8 days left on the account and I have to confess I’m going to miss it.

I had a nibble on some freelance work… it’s a Gift of the Magi conundrum. If I pursue the work, I’ll have money to play games, but no time to play them in (it feels like it’d be an on-going gig). If I skip the work, I’ll have time, but no money to pay for them…

In which Saylah does my job for me…

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was going to rant on about why I enjoy solo play in MMOs tonight, but I’m feeling pretty talked out (thanks to a long comment-discussion at Stylish Corpse) and generally snarky (thanks to spending 90 minutes in a Verizon store today) and anyway, Saylah said in a paragraph pretty much what I was going to say in like 10,000 words. I’m referring to the last paragraph of her post.

I’m not some kind of solo zealot or anything, but my style and my personality (yes, I know you all think I’m warm and cuddly, but really I’m pretty much a prickly bastard with very little patience in real life) just lend themselves to solo play a lot more often than to group play. I like having other players around me to talk to, trade with, and most of all, just to watch (I love the aspirational aspects of seeing high level characters with crazy gear and knowing that eventually I can get there too). I just often don’t want to, or don’t have time to, join myself to these people at the hip. I really don’t do well with waiting, and that’s my biggest problem (along with rather extreme shyness). I start to go bug-nuts after waiting around for 5 minutes to get a group rolling.

And single player RPGs are static. I actually *do* play them, but its a different experience than playing an MMO solo. Anyway, I also like games that change constantly as the developers roll out new features and content. And lastly, I like that MMOs are endless (well, not literally, they’ll all get shut down eventually). This preference of mine often makes me laugh at myself since I so rarely stick to a single game long enough to finish it (in the case of a single player RPG) or hit cap (in the case of an MMO). But we’re often not logical in what we like or dislike.

Anyway, I’m gonna go solo in some MMO or another. 🙂 Like I said, Saylah said it better and more succinctly than I ever could.

MMO Soloers get some love from Turbine

Posted on by Nimgimli

As an oft-time solo MMO gamer, I’m used to being spat upon by the herd-mentality masses. “Go play a single player game!” they scream at me. “Your [sic] an idiot for paying a monthly fee to play a game by yourself!” Or even, “Hey solo player… YOUR MOM!”

OK OK I’m being a bit over-dramatic but seriously, there’s a big component of the community who seems to think there’s something “wrong” with preferring to play an MMO solo. And some day I’ll do a big long whinging post about why I do it, but that day is not today!

No, today I just want to direct you to this guide to Solo Leveling in LOTRO. Why is it worth noting? Because it comes from Turbine themselves. So apparently they acknowledge and appreciate that some of us prefer the solitude of a quiet walk through The Shire to a booze-laden Tavern League Quest Marathon.

Actually, the article doesn’t feel all that solo-oriented and if you’ve never played LOTRO it’s a decent “Getting Started” article for anyone to read. If you’ve played a grouped character and want to start a solo alt, the article isn’t going to teach you very much. Hopefully future installations will be a bit more meaty with regard to the soloist.

War Wishy Washy

Posted on by Nimgimli

I haven’t gone back to check, but I think in my Warhammer posts I alternate liking the game and griping about the game. Maybe it’s because I have fun in one session and it raises my expectations for the next one and then I get disappointed, so have low expectations for the following session and get a pleasant surprise? 🙂

Today’s gripe is once again back on the lack of polish and slow leveling speed. My Witchhunter was level 18 doing quests that required killing mobs level 21-23, and had rested experience. I completed 3 kill ten rats quests, a fed ex quest and a couple of Kill Collector turn-ins and earned maybe 1/6th of a level over the course of the session. That’d be fine for 3 easy quests, but if felt pretty paltry considering they were tough quests for my level (I died a lot…level 23 mobs are dicey) and the fact that I had to clear a lot of trash mobs of level 20-21 to get to the 23s I needed.

I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but I would go back to turn in one of these quests totally psyched to see the EXP bar zoom up and then it’d just nudge over a smidge. 🙁 A tad disappointing. And all the rewards are too high for me to use! LOL.

Worse though was more evidence of the lack of polish. I was fighting big cats that could stun me. What would happen would be my hotbars would suddenly go dark. Then I’d get a text message saying something about being stunned. Then finally my character would switch to a prone stance. These were distinct sequential events. And note how I didn’t say “my character would fall down” because he didn’t. One frame standing, next frame prone.

Plus the old ‘stuck in the shooting animation’ bug when I use my Trial By Pain (I think its called) skill to kill something. This is the Witchhunter skill where he rapid-fires his pistol at point blank range. If the target dies, the Witchhunter keeps firing and firing until you do something that’ll make it stop. I finally figured out jumping would do this. That one’s just aesthetic though and it impacts you *after* a fight, not during it. The stun thing, where seeing your character get knocked down is important feedback, is a bigger deal.

Quote of the day, heard on the regional channel where a warband was doing OpenRvR: “Get ready, I can feel the lag of their approach!”

I can’t wait to try Warhammer next Fall after Mythic has had plenty of time to polish and flesh out some thin spots. There’s a gem of a game hidden in there somewhere!

Runes of Magic

Posted on by Nimgimli

So today I deemed it Long Enough for the aggravation of downloading and installing the Runes of Magic beta client to wear off, allowing me to give the game a fair chance. Problem is, there seems to be an NDA in place, which makes no kind of sense to me… what’s the point of an NDA with an Open Beta? For what its worth, I didn’t notice anything for them to be worried about in letting people talk about the game.

I’m going to ride a fine line here and talk about stuff that you could find out from ‘authorized sources’ with a bit of Googling. You’ve probably heard RoM referred to as a WoW clone, and that definitely is the first impression you get, from the art style (though with a lot more ‘cute’ thrown in here) to the interface. If you’ve played WoW, the game will feel very familiar to you. But then, that could be said for most fantasy-themed MMOs, and you could swap “WoW” for “EQ” or “DAoC” and it’d still pretty much apply. Combat and Harvesting are both very WoW-like indeed, but beyond that the game does diverge somewhat.

The most obvious difference is that there’s no subscription fee, and the idea is that you buy “Diamonds” with real cash to spend in-game on items. To that end, a lot of things in the game are time-limited, and you get a taste of this early on in the life of a character when you get a gift bag with a 24-hour mount in it. This is a horse that’ll be with your character for 24 hours from the time you get it (and I’m assuming they mean 24 real hours regardless of if you’re logged in or not, but I’ll check on that [EDIT: Confirmed, I popped in for a second this morning and my horse had 10 hours left.]). The “Item Shop” is full of stuff like this… buff potions and limited time mounts and so forth. We call these micro-transactions but they aren’t all micro – a permanent mount without a time limit will cost you about $20 USD in Diamonds. Hopefully there are other ways to gain a means of transportation.

housekeeperAnother big difference from WoW is that there is housing, and every player gets a small instanced house early on in their career (I had mine by level 6). There is no charge for the basic house, and you get a nice chest to store items in. But the biggest deal of all is that every house comes with a housekeeper! That’s her to the right there. She looks very professional, doesn’t she? You can expand your house in various ways by spending House Energy, which you get in exchange for Diamonds, which you got in exchange for real cash. Housing looks closer to EQ2 than to LOTRO. Rather than the very-limited “hooks” of LOTRO, it seems like you can place items at will in your house. That was true of the storage chest you’re given, at least. I haven’t managed to get any furniture yet.

Another difference: every character gets a secondary class. My character hasn’t gotten there yet, and there was a lot of debate in chat over whether you can change your secondary class or if, once picked, it’s a permanent part of your character. More exploration needed there.

And then there are the titular Runes. From very early on you’ll be finding Runes of various kinds. Runes can be attached to certain weapons and armor (assuming said item has Rune Slots in it) to give them bonuses, and they are also used in Crafting. They work as you’d probably expect: once a Rune is attached to an item it can’t be removed (possible exception: there’s a potion in the “Item Shop” that sounds like it would remove a Rune). It requires no special skill to apply a Rune to an item. Just right-click the Rune and click on the item you want to attach it to.

New characters get a nice quest chain that takes you through combat and getting harvesting skills and stuff, as well as good basic equipment. I was playing a Scout (think Hunter) and quickly got a nice range of skills to use (ha! pun not intended). Every time you level up you get a bunch of skill points to apply to these skills; so far I’ve been able to keep everything maxed, but I’m sure that won’t be true over the long run.

All in all, it seemed OK. I had fun for the short time I played and will probably give it some more time eventually, as long as I’m not forced to do much buying from the Item Store. I get that they need to fund the game somehow, but $20 for a horse seems pretty steep to me. But there’s no real “US” store to buy Diamonds from, so maybe they’ll adjust the costs for release? I will say that of all the free2play MMOs I’ve tried, this feels the closest to a “traditional” sub-based, fantasy-themed MMO. Whether this is good or bad, I leave to the reader. If you can’t afford WoW or EQ2 its nice to have an option, but its also nice to find unique offerings in the free2play-space like Wizard101 or Atlantica Online