Another failure in the Roper CV, I suppose.
Let’s only hope that Champions will improve from that. In my experience a radical change of direction almost never result in a better game, but… who knows?
Bill Roper no longer executive producer of Champions Online, game improvements promised.
Instead of deciding in their ivory tower the future of the game, Cryptic decided to involve players in the selection of themes for the next content update. While the poll comes with a warning that the winning option will not necessarily be top priority, it’s nice to be able to express an opinion about the direction of changes.
The choice fan is wide and varied, take a look:
- Modern Urban (super-crime in modern-day cities)
- Dark Urban (gritty street crime in run-down cities)
- Exotic Wilderness (mountain-top monasteries, hidden valleys)
- Mysterious Locations (Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge)
- Other Dimensions (the Astral Plane, Faerie, the Netherworld)
- Alternate Earth (alternate reality, alternate history)
- Outer Space (Moon, Mars, Alien Worlds)
- Historical Time Travel (ancient Egypt, Dark Ages)
- Future Time Travel (high-tech future, post-apocalypse)
Being a SciFi buff, my choiche went for Outer Space, I was temped with Other Dimensions, too.
Posted in Online and Massive
Tagged Champions Online, Choices, Community, Cryptic, MMOG
Due to the overwhelming success of the recent Free Character Transfer Service, we want to inform you that on October 15, 2009, at 5:00 PM PT, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will close the following 12 Star WarsGalaxies servers:
- Corbantis
- Europe-Infinity
- Intrepid
- Kauri
- Kettemoor
- Lowca
- Naritus
- Scylla
- Tarquinas
- Tempest
- Valcyn
- Wanderhome
It’s the first time in my life I see an MMOG success that causes a massive shutdown of servers… Not even EverQuest was so successful!
I totally agree to people that say it’s risky to engage in a lifetime relationship with a MMOG in its early days but, despite the disastrous beta, the headstart of Champions Online was very smooth and the game really grew on me.
It’s not an hardcore MMOG, just like City of Heroes wasn’t. It’s more rewarding with better crafting and itemization. Combat it’s very good and I actually like the idea to tweak a few powers instead to have dozens of seldom-used ones. It fits better the idea of a super-hero, in my book.
The decision to go for a lifetime came from my previous City of Heroes experience: as for any other title, I can’t stand a long exposure, I like to change. Nevertheless, I was enamored with the jump-in/jump-out mechanics of the game and more often than not, I paid big money just for the sake of being able to play when I felt the urge.
Now Cryptic just need to fix their UIs: creating a character it’s a confusing experience when you reach the customization phase, with a lot of non-standard uses of the traditional UI usability patterns, a feat that I was surprised to see surpassed int the Powerhouse interface, one of the most confusing and misleading UI designs since ever.
Speechless!
On July 31 The Matrix Online will close down its doors. Despite being a huge letdown at launch, the game managed to fare well for years under Station Access, thanks to a thriving community and live events that advanced the story more than once a week. Sure the game has some repetition going on but, just like City of Heroes, was one of those games where I came back again and again mostly for the people and the events.
If the bad economy didn’t save TMO, with Star Wars: Old Repulic approaching, I guess it won’t be so far in time the day that even Galaxies will fold: as much news Bioware delivers, as less player logs in the old Sony game.
So much for Station Access, I guess. Even if the relaunch of Vanguard wasn’t without merits and I hope to talk about it soon enough…
Here’s the first trailer for Grandia Online, the MMOG based on Grandia Xtreme developed by Game Arts. The game won’t be in beta for long, but up to 5000 users can register here to be invited in the early technical tests.
I’m not even properly back playing EQ2 that the game is delivering one of the most interesting updates so far. Player written books, 80 new quests and a slew of new instances, including the somehow missing Kurn’s Tower from the old, low poly Everquest days. I can’t have a better welcome back gift!
Posted in Online and Massive
I just started to play WAR again after having reached level cap with a White Lion as soon as the servers went live. This time I’m playing with my best friends on an Italian Server and I’m starting from scratch with a Slayer. To be honest, population density it’s not very different from the one of Karak-Izor. The problem is player distribution.
As I wrote months ago, tiers will probably kill slowly the WAR userbase. The game screams for level scaling features game-wide, allowing higher level players to scale back to help newbies on the lower tiers (maybe with a bonus on their renown/exp gain, just like Everquest 2 does), just like now a lower level player will be scaled up if he doesn’t meet the RvR or PvP requirements.
Maybe even more rewarding achievements and events to promote RvR/PQs on every tier may help the cause.
City of Heroes left MMOG one of the most entertaining legacies of all (sidekicks/exemplars), don’t let it fall behind!
WOTLK
The game is enjoyable and as much as streamlined as possible, I suppose (not really, I hope it won’t be more simplified by that). The old problems (seen as problems only by a minority of players, I guess) are the same old problems, problems like this one:
Thankfully, the road to 80 is completely soloable.
Yes, you read comments like that in forums and in reviews. Something that really beat me out is why people pay for a single player experience that is more a burden than a joy. Considering that Blizzard will start soon to ask for micropayments without dropping subscription fees, that’s still more strange. I wonder how they will deal with powerleveling and character trades when the game itself will start selling you the option to skip the useless classic content and let you start right at 55!
Sure, the game is adjusting even more to Eastern tastes and the ever-present grind, plus the huge not-expiring pay-by-time accounts shows that. If only Western realms will remain populated as in these late days!
The game remains a comfortable environment for (deluded) hardcore players and newbies of the genre (even if I started to prefer Wizard 101 to WOW when it comes to a fresh and interesting no-effort MMOG), but if you want to be challenged in anything else than investing lots of time, you may be baffled. It’s the same old grind for better items as before, with new unbalances and one of the most boring PVP out there.
What really drive me nut is why Blizzard is so passive-aggressive against communities, unless your community gaming of choice is a simple chatroom. The game is so single player/small group oriented that is really difficult to crack the shell of isolation that most players build around them. Thankfully, I have access to a lot of hardcore groups for instance runs, but most of the community is playing completely alone or grinding with a couple of friends.
One of the most concerning elements of WOTLK is the lack of original contents: WAR has PVP open zones? WOTLK too (that’s silly since PVP servers should be PVP-open zones, but nobody plays in the classic continents and most of the PVPers prefer to AFK farm in battlegrounds). LOTRO defined achievements in a MMOG? WOTLK invented them (yeah, they said that. The comparison is just embarassing, for WOW). There’s barely anything new inside WOTLK, it’s nice, it’s fun but it’s not very different from the usual grind as soon the shiny paint start to scratch.
My final gripe is the new Prestige Class system. Nice on paper but introducing a few class at time only made most of the people re-roll a 55 Death Knight creating lots of problems to players that really want to enjoy the Massively Multiplayer side of the game. At the moment I’m seeing thousands of players speedrunning a single class to endgame (with all the problems of that, like queueing for nameds and the like) in solo mode and I’m finding very difficult to find balanced groups with all those DKs around!
Mines of Moria
I hated a lot LOTRO when it first came out. Now I love it. The barely finished, ugly bastard has become one of the best around, and surely one of the most community driven around. Spontaneous player driven events are frequent, people play to enjoy the story and the game and to be successfull in epic quests you need people that knows how to play in a group. The new additions are amazing and the new epic gear system (the only true novelty of this rehash of old contents) is something that any hardcore grinder should try. It solves lots of gripes with tiered endgame items and the usual itemization problems that it carries over.
It’s a solid game ever than before, with maybe the best group system around (the quest log just screams to be used to coordinate group questing) and a very deep story-driven gameplay.
The Shadow Odyssey
EQ2 is one of my favourite PVE games. It’s difficult to beat something that can be as seamlessy enjoyable as a solo session and just more rewarding and fun when grouping. In reality nobody says that “Thankfully the game is soloable” because most of the player just groups, since the game itself rewards grouping with more XP, more AAs and generally better drops. Another unusual finding is seeing developers reitemize old contents to not create tier barrages and void any previous content present in the game. Here you still need to run the cap quest or do several labs run if you want to get to endgame with ease. There aren’t world drops better than older Epic Gears.
The new addition are simply rehash of a classic everquest system: dynamic zones that spawns quests and events according to the level of the party. Simple as that, most of the new contents are available from 50 to 80. The experience won’t be the same and even the maps won’t be exactly the same. Questlines will overlap, old enemies will resurface and so on, visiting the same zones from time to time just makes the world feel a bit more real than the classic tiered zone approach.
This year EQ2 proved to have one of the best in-game support, with tons of weekly events and storyline updates (real events, not scripted fairs or global farming endeavours) running regularly that really made the world alive and interesting even for jaded players. SOE did the right choice to invest in the community and the results are there to prove it. It’s nice to see power shifting, mobs changing places and zones evolving as soon major characters take stands in the political turmoils of EQ2. TSO will be the ending of the long story arc that was started this spring, and more will wait us as soon it’s done.
To be honest one of the best feature put later in the game is the new map: slick simple and useful, it makes third party solution in any game seems amteurish. Just imagine Google Maps and Yellow Pages meet your favourite map mod: a valuable addition since your quest log will have 75 entries most of the time and a mundane quest on EQ2 really do justice to the word, involving complex activities, lots of legwork and lots of NPCs in the process!
Conclusion
I’m sad! I have at least two major MMOGs to play to death (and the trusty WOW back-up as soon Wizard 101 will become stale) and I’ll move from my home in two weeks for two or three months! That’s poetic justice!
Rockstar Gamer 