Category: MMO

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

Vanguard crafting

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tonight I popped back into Vanguard to do the crafting intro quests. I’d forgotten how complex the crafting system is. Basically its a turn-based mini-strategy game where you have a finite number of Action Points to create an item. You can spend these points to progress the item towards completion, or to try to improve the quality of the item. Sometimes bad things happen, and then you need to spend Action Points to counter the bad things. That’s a very, very brief overview.

I’ve been doing a lot of crafting in EQ2 recently and the differences & similarities of the two systems are interesting. EQ2’s system is a lot simpler (the current system…at launch it was quite complex) but happens in real time. You fire off skills to improve progress and durability. Durability goes down as progress goes up and the goal is to keep durability high while progress climbs from zero. Sometimes bad things happen, and then you need to cast a skill to counter it.

So in both systems you need to get Progress to 100%. Both systems use raw materials to start the creation process. In Vanguard, you do what you can to improve Quality from Grade D to C to B to A. If you run out of Action Points, you fail to make anything. But there’s no timer… you can stop and ponder your next action for as long as you like. Some actions use various additives which are consumed in the process of crafting, and you can only bring a finite number of these additives into the crafting mini-game.

In EQ2, you strive to keep the Durability meter high. There are 4 ‘tiers’ of Durability and the quality of the finished product depends on what tier the Durability meter is in. At lower Tiers you’ll create nothing but might get some components back. At Tier 3 you’ll get a basic item, and at Tier 4 you’ll get a Pristine item (this varies with what you’re making..sometimes you’ll get a higher quantity rather than better quality). The limiting factor here is your mana, since casting skills use that up. And the clock is always ticking. You aren’t limited in the amount of time you take, but you are limited in the amount of time you have to react to bad things happening.

The EQ2 process quickly becomes fairly routine and doesn’t take much thought. It’s a good unwinding exercise; something you can do while chatting or just kind of zoning out and letting the cares of the day drain away. It’s very rare that you fail to make a Pristine item once you have the system down. And you can churn out item after item pretty quickly.

It’ll be interesting to see how Vanguard compares to this experience. Running through the newbie quests, I was fairly bewildered, and things are very simple at the start. Apparently the number of Actions available rises as you get to higher levels of crafting. At this stage, it’s more fun and interesting than crafting in EQ2, but I’m not sure if that’ll hold up when it comes time to grind for levels. One nice thing is that you can get Work Orders that don’t seem to require raw materials (and don’t produce anything usable) just to skill-up on. Of course, EQ2 has Work Orders as well, but they require raws. On the other hand they generate status for you and your guild, so there’s an added benefit to them.

Anyway, I just find the two systems from two SOE games to be similar in some ways and yet very different. I’m not sure how far I’ll get crafting in Vanguard for now, but I hope some time to be able to return and take it to higher levels.

Honestly, the lure of adventure is pretty strong right now. So many bizarre creatures out there to hunt!
Vanguard Moon

EDIT: Or not… logged back in to Train (because I know me, otherwise I’d forget) and got caught up in a bunch of crafting quests and did almost no more fighting!! Fun crafting quests, too. Helping build defenses for a village under attack by Hobgoblins. 🙂

Steamfont Grinding

Posted on by Nimgimli

So Riowa my Berserker has all his level 52 Frostfell gear, but can’t wear it yet. So last night I decided I wanted to get him to 52, or at least closer. I opened up my (perpetually full) Quest Journal and just about *everything* in it was now gray, I’ve spent so many levels in the Frostfell version of the Icy Keep. Deleting quests is hard for me (that A to B to C character trait again) but I didn’t want to spend my time finishing gray quests, so Angela offered to take me “grinding” in Steamfont.

It was her level 61 Fury and my level 50 Berserker. She didn’t technically have to mentor me (I didn’t get the warning that she was too high when we formed the group), but I asked her to, more for the fun factor than for the experience (though that was a nice plus for me). In my lay-person’s opinion the Fury is kind of over-powered to begin with, and I knew if she kept her natural level I’d just be on Looting Duty, which I hate. I want to at least nominally contribute to groups I’m in (even though she loves nothing more than mass-killing groups of mobs with her crazy AOE spells).

The good news is that we roamed through the zone, killing named mobs and me getting the ‘zerker to 51 and nearly to 52 before his Vitality ran out. It was late enough that I didn’t want to quaff an exp buff potion so we called it a night there (I’ve got scads of these things since I’ve never used them and I have all the veteran rewards — Sony counts the time since you first activated the account, ignoring whether you had an active sub or not, and I bought EQ2 at launch ). Her Fury hit 62 and earned an Achievement point and I earned two Achievement points and even got some gear drops. So everyone made progress.

The bad news was that Steamfont seems to top out at Blue-Con mobs for Riowa, and he’s really never been there! I’ve leveled him so quickly that I’ve just passed whole zones by, apparently. I guess that’s what my other six characters are for, eh? But I want to make a point with them of hitting different zones when I get around to leveling them. SO MUCH CONTENT! Wow, this is a huge game!

Earlier in the day I played a bit of LOTRO and got my Champion to a whopping level 33. Again, a game I bought at launch…I’m not exactly a leveling machine. That’s what happens when you play too many different MMOs, I guess. 🙂

Dragonchasers goes Free2Play!

Posted on by Nimgimli

This being a new year and all, I sat down with the budget today, and things are not looking good. I’m still not entirely sure what the 10% salary reduction will look like after taxes, but we were playing it pretty close to the bone to begin with. Just a few posts ago I was idly wondering if I could swing a Station Pass so I could play EQ2 and Vanguard, but after looking at the numbers, not only was the answer “no” but in fact I had to cancel EQ2 as well, at least for a couple months. I need to get some regular freelance income rolling in (or have things look up at work and have my full salary reinstated) and until then a monthly game subscription isn’t really in the cards.

I still have almost a full month of EQ2 paid for, over a month of Warhammer Online, and until Jan 31 in Vanguard’s “Come back to Vanguard” promo, so I’m not going to be feeling any kind of a sting for a while (and who knows, by then maybe another source of income will have made itself known). And I’m patting myself on the back for springing for the Lifetime membership to LOTRO, because I’ll have at least that one AAA title to play.

But rather than be glum about this turn of events, I’m looking at it as a challenge. Free-To-Play MMOs are getting better all the time, and micro-transactions rock in that they’re a) micro and b) one-time expenses. So I’ll be looking at a lot of F2P MMOs, and watching for other gaming deals, and getting the most fun I can for the least money. (Right now I’m downloading the ad-supported version of FPS Area-51… about 2 days after I said I’d never play a FPS again… but I figured its FREE so why not give it a try.)

Hopefully I can keep things semi-interesting around here, though I acknowledge it’ll be a challenge when I’m playing some obscure game about sand gardening while everyone else is playing DC Universe Online or something. But I’ll try!!

Another MMO smorgasbord

Posted on by Nimgimli

The snow was coming down and we’d finished all the chores we’d set out to do this week, so today was a perfect “Stay home and play games” day.

Lots of tokens to spend!I started in EQ2 where Riowa ran that silly ice-instance *four* more times, twice each with two of Angela’s characters (one 80 and the other 60), and he finally made level 50. Yay! It took a couple of experience buff potions and the 5-year vet reward that replenishes your vitality to 100% to do it, but he made it. And promptly went to spend his *huge* horde of tokens on all kinds of new gear. Now of course he has to get to level 52 to actually *wear* his new stuff. 🙂

Then earlier this evening I dipped my head back into Vanguard again. Still very fun and I’m liking the bard’s song book (where you can combine melodies and embellishments to make just the song you want to make, with each part having a different buff associated). There are some things I really don’t understand and I think I’ll have to go read a Bard guide somewhere if I’m going to keep playing him. A tutorial pop-up told me I was going to learn my first “finishing move” but I’m not sure where that is, and there’s some little widget above my hot bar that gives me a 4% buff but doesn’t seem to be an ‘active’ control, so I’m not sure what’s up with it. The newbie island is (I think?) a new addition (at least, I don’t remember it from my time playing at launch) and it has a nice bunch of pretty linear “getting started” quests that both gear you up nicely and have a good storyline. I haven’t touched Crafting or Diplomacy yet…I’m not sure how ‘deep’ I want to get into the game give that I only have 30 days to play it. I’ve been delighted to find random named mobs in the wilds, and to get decent drops off them after I defeated them, without it being part of a Quest. And I have to admit to having a total nerdgasm the first time someone flew by on a Pegasus. I noticed the shadow on the ground first, then craned my neck up to see the steed far overhead. Since I was rounding up wayward chickens for a villager at the time, it was a truly aspirational moment and got me wondering if I could manage the cost of a Station Pass membership…

Finally, tonight I logged into Warhammer Online, planning to totally ignore Scenarios and RvR, which I did. The regional chat had me very happy to be doing this, as the idiots were fapping away at their epeens at a remarkable rate, with plenty of “lern 2 play!!1!omg!!” level accusations being thrown back and forth. Someone needs to teach these little cretins that sitting in front of a PC playing computer games does *not* make you a tough guy, and the level of testosterone they bring to the table just makes them look like idiots. And bragging about being drunk is just bragging about being too stupid to be able to control yourself and/or being too feeble to hold your liquor.

Ahem. Anyway…aside from the chat, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Actually it was quite nice. I did a little quest line that takes you through “The Catacombs” to a back door of the “Grim Monastery,” clearing out various bad dudes as you go. The atmosphere was awesome (and got me thinking about Vampire Wars). Sadly it ended with a Champion level NPC that I couldn’t handle, but it made me really hope that Mythic at some point turns its talents to more PvE content. After I’d gotten as far as I could with that, I headed into High Pass and established a new base at Nuhr’s Crest.

All this fighting had me falling in love with the Witch Hunter battle mechanics once again; I just love the pistol/sword combination and building up Accusations to unleash onto your foes. One adjustment I really need to make, and I wonder if this is at the root of the “not enough PvE content to level” debate, is gettin used to the idea that you can fight well over your level in NPC combat. Gillain (my Witch Hunter) is level 18 and he’s fighting ogres around Nuhr’s Crest that are level 22 or 23 — in most games that’d mean a ton of downtime (or a ton of deaths) but in Warhammer it’s very manageable (social mobs are very rare and aggro ranges are very small), and of course the experience rewards are quite nice, particularly if you’re on “Rested” experience. Speaking of which, I had to run an errand in Altdorf, and when I got there I decided it’d be a good place to camp in order to get that bonus rested exp.

It was good to have pure PvE fun in Warhammer since it means I can get some use out of my 45 or so days left I have on the account. I’m unconvinced that the RvR enthusiasts will be around for years doing just RvR, so I’m hoping that as the game matures, Mythic will give some attention to PvE content. I mean think about it: how do other games keep players around? By releasing new content with new encounters to master. And by encounters, I mean new mobs that have new abilities and new weaknesses to discover. How do you go about adding new, fresh RvR experiences when the armies don’t change? But giving classes new abilities for every content push while keeping the sides balanced doesn’t seem like a viable course of action. I guess we’ll see. Maybe I’m just projecting in order to nurture my daydreams of a rich PvE MMO experience in the Warhammer universe that I’m growing so fond of (via the novels I’ve been reading). Eh, a man can dream, can’t he?

2009 Gaming Resolutions

Posted on by Nimgimli

So I’ve looked back on the past year, now its time to look forward. I really am using the word “resolutions” just to tie in with the New Year, but mostly these are plans, and we know how easy it is for plans to go awry.

In 2009 I want to dig into my back-log of single-player games rather than constantly running out to buy the next shiny new toy. Part of this “resolution” is based on the fiscal reality that here at Dragonchasers HQ we are damn broke and 2009 is going to be a tough, tough year as far as money goes. But another part is because it just seems a damned shame to have all these experiences locked away in little boxes. I’ve always struggled with “game-grazing” but now I’ll be forced to stop. Actually I’ve already started this: I still don’t own Fallout 3 (waiting for a price drop) and the only reason I ended up with Fable 2 was that it was a gift from my awesome lady Angela. Single player games age better now than they used to, and I don’t hang out in forums constantly in danger of having a game “spoiled” for me, so why not wait a few months and save $20-$30 on the cost of a game?

In 2009 I will embrace the fact that I’m just not a guild kind of gamer. In all my years of gaming I’ve gotten into about three guilds that I actually felt a part of, and one of them was composed of friends from outside the game. Even in a group of awesome people like Casualties of War, I never really clicked with the guild as an entity, just singled out certain individuals who I felt I could relate to. I need to factor this trait in when I pick an MMO. I might’ve enjoyed Age of Conan a little bit more if I was a more social person (I was in a huge guild — The Older Gamers — but rarely talked to anyone and never grouped). I’m not a “team-oriented” person in ‘real life’ either; not sure why I ever thought I could be on in-game.

The rise of voice chat as an assumed tool is making this even more of an issue to me; I hate talking on Vent, or for that matter on the phone, or anywhere that I can’t see the face of the person I’m talking to. I hate listening, too. I play MMOs for the RP experience even if I’m not actively RPing, and hearing the voices of the players behind the characters shatters that sense of immersion. I can understand the appeal of voice chat to folks who play these games to make friends, because voice chat does lead to friendships. But I’m a fairly “lone wolf” kind of individual in the real world as much as I am in-game. I can count my “real life” friends on one hand and have plenty of fingers left over. I’ll use voice chat when it is needed as a tool, like in a WoW instance or a War scenario, but day-to-day, I just don’t like it, and these days most guilds use it and assume you’ll be using it too. So no guilds for me in 2009.

A lot about 2008 brought home the fact of my own mortality. In 2009, I’m going to accept that fact that I’m damned near 50 and my tastes in games are changing. The last FPS I enjoyed was Resistance: Fall of Man and I probably will never play another FPS. I’m no longer interested (if really, I ever was) in gouts of blood and “gibs” as they used to be called. Gears of War was a bust for me. Halo 3 was “meh”. I find violence with no context unappealing.

But beyond subject, my tastes in game systems are changing. I read folks like Rick talk about how much they love the RvR in Warhammer because of the adrenaline rush they get from it, and I while I can remember craving that rush, I no longer do. I don’t play games for excitement any more; I play them to relax. I no longer like a frantic pace to my gaming; frantic in any aspect of my life just leaves me feeling jittery and irritated. I see myself playing a lot of turn-based single-player RPGs and Strategy games from here on out. And spending a lot of time soloing and exploring content in MMOs. And ditching PvP once and for all. I joked over at Ysh’s place about my looking forward to Hello Kitty Online (read this preview!), but I really *am* intrigued by some of the systems in that game (if only it didn’t have that huge thick layer of cute all over it).

I think 2009 is going to be a strange year. Although some analysts have called gaming ‘recession proof’ I’ve been reading an awful lot of news stories about layoffs and closings inside the gaming industry. And I know for a fact that I’m not the only one having to curtail game and MMO subscription purchases because of hard times. As hard as its going to be for the individuals who make the games we love, I think it might be good for gaming as an industry if we get a bit of ‘burn off’ and see fewer (but higher-quality) games released in future years.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the MMO space. If Mythic, with the resources of EA behind them, can’t manage to release a fully polished MMO, I don’t know who can. And yet players are going to continue to compare every new release to games that have been running for years and have had plenty of time to do that polishing, and those new releases are going to come up short. Is Tabula Rasa the start of a trend? Will Warhammer Online and Age of Conan end up with short lifespans?

I’m actually taking comfort in the pile of DS, PS2 and PSP turn-based RPGs I have sitting on the shelf. I’m ready to hunker down and ride out the storm. And keep exploring smaller ‘niche’ MMOs as I go.

Meanwhile, in MMO land…

Posted on by Nimgimli

So lest you think all this Valkyria Chronicles talk means I’ve given up MMOs…

The other day I logged into Warhammer and *gasp!* found a group, finished a few quests, and gained a level. That said, I think I’m done. I have to work too hard to find the fun in Warhammer, while it comes so easily in other games. And as I just commented over at Stylish Corpse, I don’t think I like the reality of RvR. Maybe I’d like it in Dofus where everything is turn-based, but I’m just not into the lag-fest chaos franticality (I need to submit that word to Websters) that is RvR/PvP in most MMOs. I suppose the fact that I *greatly* prefer turn-based combat in my single player RPGs speaks to that as well. But y’know, I’m *loving* these Warhammer novels to the point where I’m so glad I tried the game, even though I don’t really enjoy it. I never would’ve picked up the novels if I hadn’t been exposed to the lore in the game.

Over in EQ2, my Berserker is slogging forward. He’s a hair’s breath from level 49 and I need to get him to 50 before the Frostfell event ends. I’ve got over 50 tokens stored up to buy him all new gear once the next tier of stuff opens up. The other day he Mentored Angela’s level 18 Warden and in one session we got her to 23. It was fun to be the Mentor-er rather than the Mentor-ee for a change. 🙂 I guess I need to /claim my 5-year veteran award and get that charm that gives you 100% vitality once a week.


And, just because I’m me, I fired up Vanguard last night! It’s open to ex-players through the end of January (I think?) and I’ve been reading good things about it lately so figured I’d at least poke my nose in. The world looks fabulous (has it always looked this good? Maybe I just never had a graphics card capable of showing it at its best) but the avatars still bug me. The community seems pretty helpful and chatty. I rolled a Bard and he’s kind of a bad-ass. I might dip my head back in there again. I do still feel a lack of polish in interface tweaking and so forth, but the game ran pretty well once (I presume) a bunch of textures got cached. I hitched like mad for the first few minutes then everything smoothed out.

I also downloading Florensia, a free2play, but haven’t done much with it. It has naval battles, and I’m still trying to scratch the itch and Pirates of the Burning Seas just aggravated.

Poor LOTRO still awaits my attention. I *really* need to get back to that. I think I need to quit my guild, Soldiers of Valor though. I’ve been away long enough that it feels awkward to log in and have to answer all the questions about where I’ve been (or worse, “Who the heck are you?”), and while they’re a nice group of people (and if you’re looking for a guild on Landroval, do check them out!), I play LOTRO so infrequently that it really isn’t right that I’m in a guild, and I’ll never feel any kind of attachment to a guild until such time as I play more regularly.

2008: My Top 5 Disappointments

Posted on by Nimgimli

Let’s get this depressing topic out of the way. Without further ado, my top 5 (gaming related) disappointments for 2008:

5: XBox 360 #2 rolled over and died on me. I’m on my 3rd 360 now, but that’s not so bad since I have friends who are on #5. #3 is thus far stable but I still feel a bit of anxiety every time I turn the machine on.

4: MMO closings and the loss of Mythos. Flagship Studios’ implosion was a big disappointment, not because of the end of Hellgate London, but because we lost Mythos, which was an *awesome* MMO/Diablo hybrid. I played in the beta and it was solid and so much fun. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I held-off on playing it waiting for “release” so I wouldn’t get burned out and then… *poof!*. Such a loss. Later in the year we learned that Tabula Rasa is being shut down. I liked TR when I first tired it, and my intent was always to get back to the game once it’d cooked for a while, but alas, that won’t happen now. The lesson I’ve learned? Play ’em while you got ’em since I don’t think we’ve seen the end of MMO closings.

3: Spore. I had wild hopes for this game; probably too wild. I really was hoping for an Evolution simulator and instead I got an Intelligent Design simulator, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the game had a bit more meat to it. It was an awful lot of fun for about 3 nights and I’ve barely touched it since.

2: Pirates of the Burning Seas was in development *forever* and still shipped half-finished. I adored the mechanics of the ship combat, but the economy stuff was way too spread-sheet heavy for me, and the PvP was a bit too hard-core for my tastes at launch. You’d haggle and finagle for a couple weeks to get a ship built and could lose it in an evening of PvP. This aspect was loved by some, but not by me. The ‘swashbuckling’ was broken, and cookie cutter towns and adventure areas removed any sense of exploration. Still looking for a good Wooden Ships-theme MMO.

1: Age of Conan. So much hype, but I should’ve been warned off by the fact that the devs kept trying to draw our attention back to the topless women. The revolutionary combat system wasn’t revolutionary at all (City of Heroes did it better). All that said, the first 20 levels were pretty darned fun, but after that the game was kind of grindy and catered far too heavily to zerg-guilds for my tastes.

So what were your biggest gaming disappointments this year?

2008: My Year in Games

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it’s about time to put 2008 to bed, and I thought I’d take a few moments to sum up my year in gaming terms.

From an MMO point of view, its been a year of disappointments: Pirates of the Burning Seas didn’t sit at all well with me after a brief fling of romantic night-time sea battles. Age of Conan was amazing for 20 levels then fell flat on its face. Warhammer Online was awesome in beta but didn’t hold me in launch for reasons I’m still stirring around in my head. It feels like every day I find a new reason for why Warhammer and I didn’t click, and each new reason nullifies the last one. Anyway that’s recent enough news not to dwell on.

Oddly, where I had the most fun in MMOs is with older titles. EQ2 (via a free ‘welcome back’ month) and particularly LOTRO filled the gaps between Age of Conan and Warhammer. It was the first time I really got traction in LOTRO and started doing a lot of Fellowship PUGs that actually didn’t suck. In retrospect, I almost wish Warhammer hadn’t come out and that I’d stuck with LOTRO.

After I fizzled on Warhammer, I went back to WoW and did my usual “This is great!” two-week stint before getting bored with it for the umpteenth time. Not to disparage WOW; I just played it (and loved it) for so long during its alpha, beta and early launch years that it feels old hat now. Currently I’m dabbling in EQ2 again, but not very seriously.

2008 was the year that Free2Play MMOs got good, though, and I’m looking forward to exploring Wizard 101, Mabinogi, Dream of Mirror Online, Florensia and a few others in 2009.

But my really amazing gaming experiences in 2008 have been single player games. Early in the year I played through Jeanne d’Arc on the PSP, and that was a great strategy-RPG (one of my favorite genres) that made the PSP worth owning. After that I spent a lot of time playing Etrian Odyssey II on the Nintendo DS. I was so hooked on that one that I’d slip out to my car at lunchtime to play a bit. Classic turn-based first-person dungeon crawling; brought back memories of Wizardry and Dungeon Master.

But the two games that truly left me breathless this year were Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for the PS3, and Fable 2 for the XBox 360. Uncharted perfectly captured the Saturday matinee vibe that the devs were going for. I was swept along in the story, gleefully exploring these old ruins and uncovering the mystery.

Fable 2, however, gets my personal Game of The Year. Molyneaux finally pulled it off; I really cared about the characters and felt like my actions had a very real impact on the world. The ending left me staring slack-jawed at the screen for long moments, contemplating what I’d just done and wondering whether I’d done the right thing (and this after I panicked and undid my initial choice). After the game “ended” (and really, you can keep playing and playing) I immediately rolled a new character and started all over again, just to see what would happen if I played things differently: I can’t remember the last time I did something like that. So yeah, Fable 2 was awesome.

Going into 2009, I’m really hot on Valkyria Chronicles right now, and I’ve been enjoying Izuna 2, a rogue-like on the Nintendo DS. I’m tepid at best on MMOs. As mentioned, I’ve been dabbling in EQ2 lately. I’ve logged into Warhammer exactly twice since I re-activated the account about 10 days ago. I still want to play LOTRO more, and the only reason I don’t is because I’m paying for War and EQ2 and feel like I “should” be playing one of those if I’m playing an MMO (and instead, I end up going back to single-player games…yes, I’m a freak).

I’m semi-interested in Chronicles of Spellborn, but beyond that 2009 doesn’t have anything I’m all that jazzed about in the world of “AAA” MMOs (not sure Chronicles is in that category). I’m not a super-hero fan so Champions Online and DC Universe don’t have me excited. I doubt SW:TOR will ship this year and even if it did, I’m not much of a Star Wars fan, either. I am rather interested in Bioware’s Dragon Age game, and hope I live long enough to see Blizzard release Diablo 3.

I don’t know, maybe 2009 will be a year of single-player gaming for me??