You underestimate the power of the Bark Side

Not seen this on telly over here yet.. Clearly Volkswagen love their Star Wars right now.

STO is now F2P

OK so I am a few days late announcing this, but I forgot, sorry :P



I would say that of all the free to play games out there these days, it's Star Trek Online that gives you the most content for free. Seriously folks this game pretty much throws everything at you for free and is very reasonable in what it expects people to pay for. It's also, in my mind anyway, the most improved since launch MMORPG probably ever.

As a free download this is one of the easiest recommendations I've been able to make.

Official site: http://www.startrekonline.com/

SWTOR 1.1 patch is not the PvP disaster people think it is

I say that for two main reasons:

1) It made players start fighting and doing actual PvP.
Sure it was a horrible clusterfuck of spawn camping badly tested crap. Yes it was horrible for those being spawn camped with no way out except to quit the game. And yes it demonstrated that the game simply can not handle lots of players in one area, but despite this we did actually see players fighting each other. Players doing PvP in the main PvP zone instead of standing around mostly AFK not even playing the game (not quite the point of a "game" eh?), whilst a few folks take turns to click the objective stuff and auto-complete the AFKers daily missions for them. So in that respect it is progress and is a step in the right direction. Albeit a step that led to Bioware immediately tripping over and faceplanting in a bloody mess hard on Ilum's frozen rocks.

But the main thing people will remember from yesterday was the lag. Oh... My... God... The... Lag.... In fact it lagged just as badly as the early days of WAR fortress battles, but was so worse because the number of players present in those bases on Illum was clearly far lower than we used to see in WAR. Plus SWTOR doesn't even have the excuse of collision detection complications. What Bioware need to immediately realise from this1.1 lesson is that Ilum and SWTOR will NEVER work as large scale zerg Realm vs Realm combat, that is unless they do something absolutely revolutionary with their game engine and servers. Really they need to ensure that future changes work towards making it about lots of small scale fighting all over the zone.

Not large scale combat in a small area, but instead it should be large scale combat over a large area..

Bioware's former Mythic employees should understand this, if they don't then I would question if they actually worked on WAR or just sat around smoking fags, drinking tequila and fiddling with their funky bits.


2) The major development screw ups for PvP were already made long ago. 
Yup. SWTOR was already up to it's neck in PvP problems, that is if you want anything other than arena e-sport. Firstly you can not make a balanced faction based PvP campaign with just 2 sides. It has never worked in anything and the only successful PvP campaigns are in games with 3 or more factions, be those game defined factions (DAoC) or player created ones (EVE, UO). Two faction PvP populations will decline over time as they turn into farcical alt-character switching nonsense and people get either sick of being zerged or bored of the lack of an actual campaign of any meaning.

Sure with instanced PvP you can get away with it to a point, but as the insane amount of Hutballs demonstrate, you'll either have to fight your own faction or wait a long time for those instances to pop.

Then we have PvP specific stats, in SWTOR's case "Expertise". It's always a stupid idea as it heightens vertical progression, lessens the impact of player skill and means new players (AKA new customers) join in PvP and get utterly steamrolled by those of us in fancy armour. Armour that, thanks to the expertise stat, boosts our damage against players AND reduces the damage they do, essentially doubling the percentage increase in it's effectiveness. PvP needs progression to have incentives that will appeal to a wide player base, but that doesn't mean progression has to be at the detriment of game balance and neither should it serve to alienate new players. Subtle stat gain, new abilities, different appearances and a myriad of other rewards can easily be implemented and will provide more than enough incentive. It does however require developers to think for themselves and not just dump a PvP stat on "cos that's what you do for PvP init".

Finally and as already discussed, the game just can't handle lots of players in one small area. Ilum must be redirected to spread the players across the zone and encourage them to fight all over the place. Otherwise it will always be a complete failure of a RvR zone. Which would be a tragic shame because it's a beautifully designed zone in many ways and has massive potential. But as any WAR veteran knows, waiting on potential is a right bitch.


So in summary, it was of course a bad patch and will be remembered for it's many problems, but it did at least kick off some actual PvP and perhaps more importantly highlighted some major issues that MUST be addressed if Ilum is to ever have a chance of succeeding. We just have to see if Bioware realise this.

SWTOR - Level 50 done and done

Yup, that's my Sith Assassin at max level in SWTOR. I've immediately started doing a lot more PvP, which basically means Warzones (scenarios/battlegrounds) because bugger all PvP is happening in Ilum yet. Having said that, last night I was kinda half afk and as such was not PvPing, but the guys were telling me it had actually started to kick off a bit in Ilum. So there's some hope at least on that front. Plus once the patch arrives (it's been delayed again) it will change the Ilum daily/weekly quests to require player kills, which should in theory spark things up dramatically. As long as there's not too much of a faction balance problem...

The first thing I did at 50 was go and check out Ilum, which as mentioned before is just point swapping crap at the moment, but that's a real shame because the design of the zone itself is brilliant. It's got lots of routes for travel, loads of ambush points and a mixture of wide open and more funneled areas. The basic concept of the campaign system is good, it's basically like a RvR lake from WAR with keep at each end and the objectives between, but it has been completely let down by the lack of any incentive to kill the enemy players. Once (or if...) Bioware get that sorted out, then in theory it should make for an excellent RvR/PvP zone and I can see it being exactly the sort of thing that would keep me subbed.

In fact if Bioware were to sort out the incentives so that all the materialistic purple pixel obsessed lame arsed humans playing the game actually started fighting and combined this with adding further RvR themed planets,  then SWTOR could actually be both a WoW and WAR replacement. That is a very big IF though... We shall see.

In other news, I've rolled my first proper alt. Gone for an Agent with the Sniper advanced class. Interesting so far, but more on that another time.

Dark Millenium cancelled? Nope says THQ

First Kotaku and other sites reported Dark Millenium Online was no more, after Kevin Dent, a games industry type chap, tweeted  that THQ had canceled an MMO it was developing under license from Games Workshop. However this was quickly followed up by THQ giving out this statement:

"THQ has not cancelled its 2014 line-up, and has not made any decisions regarding the planned MMO. As part of the ongoing review of our business, we have made decisions to ensure that the company is strategically addressing the most attractive markets. As we have previously announced, we have dramatically reduced our commitment to the kids’ boxed games sector which leads to a significantly more focused release schedule moving forward. Our slate for calendar 2012 and beyond is focused on high-quality core games and continues to build our digital platform and business. We are excited for our pipeline of original and high-quality content along with our relationships with some of the best talent in the industry.


Additionally, we are thrilled with the great performance of Saints Row: The Third, which on a like for like period in North America has tripled in sell-through from Saints Row 2. In addition, WWE ’12’s worldwide sell-through sales are up almost 40% year-over-year for the same sales period with fewer platforms. According to NPD, for the month of December and the 2011 year, THQ was the #5 publisher overall, #4 third party, with reported sell through growing over 18% in a market that was down almost 6%. And coming up next, we have two great titles for the first half of the year including UFC Undisputed 3 and Darksiders 2."

Fairly comprehensive, though you could argue that "has not made any decisions regarding the planned MMO" (emphasis mine) is not quite as concrete a statement as folks may want to see. Probably just nitpicking though.

Level 50 approaches

I'm level 47 with my Sith Assassin, almost 48 and I would imagine I'll get to 50 some time next week. This will quickly be crunch time for SWTOR and I. Will there be enough to keep me entertained?

I'm really not into farming instances and dungeons anymore, I just lose interest. Once I've completed a dungeon, I seriously struggle to motivate myself to do it again. It's not that PvP is purely where I prefer to spend my time after the leveling process is done (though it is top of the list), it's more a case of I like to do new things or events that are more dynamic and subject to change. This is why I've always loved things like DAoC's RvR campaign and why I'm so looking forward to Planetside 2. There are things I will do at 50 aside from PvP, like collecting the Datacrons and I'm not ruling out doing instances, but as the main thing I've enjoyed while leveling was the storylines, what takes over once they're finished? Dailies and all that zzzzzzzzzz?

So exactly as I've been saying for the last year or so, I think SWTOR will keep me there for a month or two at least, but beyond that is still reliant on the PvP. However as you probably know, I wasn't expecting much from the PvP and as my last post suggests, that was probably wise. Yet it could improve. I'm finding that warzones are lagging considerably less and it's not just sodding Huttball all the time now, so it seems there are  more Republic players around now. Apparently Hoth was packed with them yesterday.

Of course as I've said many times before, I find instanced PvP gets stale rather quickly too, so for me it's all about Ilum and openworld PvP. Which means the big question for me and my long term interest in SWTOR is:

Will the Ilum RvR zone mature and stop being a load of point trading shite? 

If it doesn't and there isn't something else within SWTOR that starts to captivate me at level 50, then at some point I may well return to DAoC or WAR for a bit. Most likely DAoC.

Ilum? Lolum more like.

Last night whilst doing a bit of levelling, I was on ventrilo listening in on a group of Kill Frenzy guildies that were playing in SWTOR’s Ilum RvR zone. The guys were laughing on vent because they were getting people from our own faction complaining that KF were attacking enemy players. Yes, you read that correctly. Complaining because people on their faction were attacking enemy players in a RvR zone, on a PvP server. This of course will only encourage us further and I can’t wait to get to 50 and join in.

The KF lads weren’t interrupting a player organised PvP event, duelling, funeral procession or any such thing, oh no sir, their heinous crime was so much worse. By fighting players in a supposedly PvP focussed zone, the terrible KF criminals had stopped our server’s awesome pro PvPers from emoting at each other whilst taking turns to capture objectives! Yes, you also read that correctly. Instead of fighting each other, these hardcore pvpers stand together at the objectives and take turns to capture them. That way they can still progress their character simply by tapping their keyboard occasionally to stop auto log outs and now and again activate the objective thing. Of course this means they can concentrate on writing hate posts about the cancellation of Firefly (or whatever is the fashion these days) and knocking one out (probably into a sock) over facebook photos of their mate’s girlfriend on her holiday to Butlins.

Now perhaps it’s just me, but if I’m paying a sub fee for a game it’s because I actually want to play the game. Which if on a PvP zone on a PvP server would normally involve some PvP. A shocking suggestion I know. Of course if people are paying their sub fee then they can do whatever they like in game (within the rules) but this seems to be the most horrible retarded waste of their time and for them to actually complain when people do try to play the game is stupidity of epic proportions. Sure, in WAR there would be times when people would let the enemy lock a zone pairing while we concentrated on another and perhaps at times this bordered on point trading, but I’ve never seen enemy players actually standing next to each other taking turns. Of course with 2 faction PvP there will always be problems like this, everyone with a brain knows it is incredibly stupid to make 2 faction games and expect PvP of any quality, but by Odin’s scruttock this shit is a whole other level of apathy and tragic comedy.

I will now make a huge assumption and blame it on ex-WoW players, since they wouldn’t know any better and are generally cretins. WoW was the first MMO after all :P