Werit, that admirable servant of the WAR community, has also heard the siren call of SWTOR. Typically the guy has got busy with the fizzy and cooked up a useful website for gamers with an interest in SWTOR. In his words:
"Lately, I've been having trouble keeping up with all the the Star Wars: The Old Republic news and content being generated by the community. I needed a better (and quicker) way of dealing with them, so the TOR Nexus was born.
What is it? The TOR Nexus is basically an aggregator, but takes in a bunch of different sources. Currently, it looks for TOR content at a number of blogs, fansites, BioWare, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Live Streams. My goal for the project is to keep it simple, quick and useful."
You can find the TOR Nexus at www.tornexus.com and you can find his full post explaining the plan on his blog which you should have bookmarked already ;)
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
My SWTOR weekend
I could just recycle one of my old posts about SWTOR, as it was indeed pretty much what I expected, but that would be lazy and to be honest there were a few small surprises both good and bad, so a new post it is. BTW I've had a limited time slot to write this in, so apologies in advance for any ropey grammar, etc... ;)
Firstly let’s get the bad out of the way….
It was a little buggier than I had hoped. Not like some horribad Funcom style bugfest and yes of course I do expect a MMO in beta to be buggy, but I have high expectations of Bioware and in reality last weekend wasn’t a beta test. The game will barely change between now and its launch in a few weeks and to rely on the usual “BUT ITS BETA!!!11” excuse would be a bit weak. It was however a genuine stress test and that may account for some of the problems, particularly with the regular crashes when logging out which I know many folks experienced.
There were some problems that felt like what we gamers (rightly or wrongly) call memory leaks, where the game starts hogging memory and chugs along painfully. This didn’t happen often but each time it did would eventually lead to a crash when starting a NPC conversation. It wasn’t regular enough to really annoy me, apart from where it crashed right at the end of the entire Esseles instance and lost all my progress…grrr! Though I’m fairly confident it will get dealt with around launch.
The other bugs were fairly minor; getting stuck on scenery, lots of sound problems in the Huttball PvP scenario (which appear to be related to the match commentary), the occasional NPC clutching an invisible weapon and a range of other little odds and sodds
My favourite bug was where for some reason a NPC (the Panthro like dude from the Trooper starting storyline) had been shrunk in size… Full of attitude he walked into the room and started ranting, to which my initial thought was roughly LOL LOL WTF?? since the poor dude was half the height of my shoes and through what must have been force levitation powers was standing directly over a hole in the grated floor (he was that small yes). This made for a bizarrely comical cut-scene as my character struggled to maintain eye contact with a 6 inch high and rather angry officer cat man Panthro beast cat man thing…
I must stress however that I’m not concerned about bugs at all; I saw these bugs over a serious amount of gametime and compared with most MMOs at this stage I think it’s safe to say SWTOR is in very good nick, it’s just not at the same glorious level that RIFT was. I suspect the quality of RIFT’s beta will remain unsurpassed for some time.
There were some lag issues and really they should be expected in a stress test, so are not something to complain about at all, but worth acknowledging. If the test does its job then these lag issues should be eliminated for launch.
The game oozes quality and attention to detail, which does have the side effect of any drops in quality stand out and are perhaps more noticeable than they should be. For example the first thing you’ll see when logging in with a Twilek Jedi is that the sword strapped to his back clips straight through his dangly head bits in a BIG way and I immediately questioned how this not noticed by Bioware when they've been so diligent elsewhere? Then there’s things like how the bind stone type devices didn’t appear to be explained and actually I didn’t even realise they existed until after I had left the first planet. They’re just not noticeable enough. Probably small things really, but well, you notice.
One thing that did annoy me no end is for some strange reason there are various keybinds related to sound that are set to use the CTRL key with one of the standard WASD movement keys, so if like many people you use CTRL for your vent push to talk or for ability binds, you’ll keep turning off your sound off. Unfortunately not all of those sound related keybinds are available in the command listing and as such can not be changed. Sure, I could just rebind my push to talk or whatever, but I’ve never had to before with any other MMO and to be honest there’s no reason why we even need to turn off ambient sound with a keybind…
And now the good stuff.
The game looks fantastic. I really didn't think I would be that sold on the cartoony style, but Bioware have really nailed it with the artwork. SWTOR is packed with true Star Wars atmosphere and the sense of scale is spot on. Some areas are of course more impressive than others, but there was nothing that I thought was poor and plenty that I thought was very impressive. I marked out totally when I walked my Bounty Hunter out of the building she first spawned in and witnessed the Hutt goodness. I only dabbled briefly with the Bounty Hunter as I wanted to save the Sith Empire stuff until launch, so most of my time was spent with the boy scout Jedi lickers, which worked out quite well as it meant I got to see Coruscant. It wasn't instantly as impressive as I hoped, but the more I explored the better and better it got. Huge potential for expansion there too.
Combat was standard MMO fare, nothing new here at all, though everything worked well and was quite fun to play. Obviously everyone has their preferred play styles and that makes any comments on the classes fairly subjective. I tried out the following classes into the teens:
The big sell for SWTOR has always been the voice overs and more storyline focused quests. And yes it does make for a huge improvement and I did actually pay attention to the quest stories for once. Also the roll off for who gets to answer dialogue when grouped made for much comedy on vent with some of us more psychotic than others. However don't be thinking your choices mean anything, because they most often don't. The quest storylines are regularly on rails (much like in Dragon Age) and really your choices only determine your light/dark side points (which effects your character, not the world iself). That said, it was still fun and better than what we normally get, you just need to accept and enjoy the roller coaster ride for what it is.
I do however wonder about replay-ability within the same faction, because aside from your main class storylines all the quests I saw were identical when played with a different class. On top of this I'm not convinced I'll want to go through all those voice overs again and again. That applies to repeating dungeons as well as leveling alts. It strikes me that I will have a really enjoyable time leveling my first Sith character, I'm just not entirely sure how great repeating things will be.
The UI needs a LOT more customisation options, scaling in particular, but aside from that I thought it was clean, efficient, easy to use and very Star Warsy. I liked it.
PvP... I did quite a lot of PvP, though this was all warzones (scenarios/battlegrounds/whateeeeeeever) and as result I have no idea how the open world stuff will work out. The warzones were variations on the standard capture the flag or control point systems we've seen elsewhere and I thought they looked great and worked very well. There was, as always, some people grumbling about CC (crowd control), however they to be frank are a bunch of whiney little bitches that just dont want anything stopping them spamming killy buttons. Most of each classes CC doesn't work at all in PvP (abilities flagged to stun lesser opponents, etc) and I didn't find the amount that did to be too much at all. Having no CC makes games mindless DPS spam, whereas too much makes it purely who CC firsts wins, personally I think SWTOR is looking promising on this front. However, remember I only played characters into the teens, so who knows if it goes to shite later on.
In general my viewpoint on the game hasn't changed. I'm really looking forward to it and will be playing it heavily. I still have little interest in dungeon farming and raiding, so once I hit the end game the question of how long term I continue to play depends entirely on how engaging the PvP is. I'm not expecting miracles there at all, but am open to having my mind changed and haven't ruled out the possibility. At present though I am still expecting a fun ride with SWTOR up to the point where I burn out, which should be perfectly timed to move on to Mechwarrior Online and Planetside 2.
Firstly let’s get the bad out of the way….
It was a little buggier than I had hoped. Not like some horribad Funcom style bugfest and yes of course I do expect a MMO in beta to be buggy, but I have high expectations of Bioware and in reality last weekend wasn’t a beta test. The game will barely change between now and its launch in a few weeks and to rely on the usual “BUT ITS BETA!!!11” excuse would be a bit weak. It was however a genuine stress test and that may account for some of the problems, particularly with the regular crashes when logging out which I know many folks experienced.
There were some problems that felt like what we gamers (rightly or wrongly) call memory leaks, where the game starts hogging memory and chugs along painfully. This didn’t happen often but each time it did would eventually lead to a crash when starting a NPC conversation. It wasn’t regular enough to really annoy me, apart from where it crashed right at the end of the entire Esseles instance and lost all my progress…grrr! Though I’m fairly confident it will get dealt with around launch.
The other bugs were fairly minor; getting stuck on scenery, lots of sound problems in the Huttball PvP scenario (which appear to be related to the match commentary), the occasional NPC clutching an invisible weapon and a range of other little odds and sodds
My favourite bug was where for some reason a NPC (the Panthro like dude from the Trooper starting storyline) had been shrunk in size… Full of attitude he walked into the room and started ranting, to which my initial thought was roughly LOL LOL WTF?? since the poor dude was half the height of my shoes and through what must have been force levitation powers was standing directly over a hole in the grated floor (he was that small yes). This made for a bizarrely comical cut-scene as my character struggled to maintain eye contact with a 6 inch high and rather angry officer cat man Panthro beast cat man thing…
I must stress however that I’m not concerned about bugs at all; I saw these bugs over a serious amount of gametime and compared with most MMOs at this stage I think it’s safe to say SWTOR is in very good nick, it’s just not at the same glorious level that RIFT was. I suspect the quality of RIFT’s beta will remain unsurpassed for some time.
There were some lag issues and really they should be expected in a stress test, so are not something to complain about at all, but worth acknowledging. If the test does its job then these lag issues should be eliminated for launch.
The game oozes quality and attention to detail, which does have the side effect of any drops in quality stand out and are perhaps more noticeable than they should be. For example the first thing you’ll see when logging in with a Twilek Jedi is that the sword strapped to his back clips straight through his dangly head bits in a BIG way and I immediately questioned how this not noticed by Bioware when they've been so diligent elsewhere? Then there’s things like how the bind stone type devices didn’t appear to be explained and actually I didn’t even realise they existed until after I had left the first planet. They’re just not noticeable enough. Probably small things really, but well, you notice.
One thing that did annoy me no end is for some strange reason there are various keybinds related to sound that are set to use the CTRL key with one of the standard WASD movement keys, so if like many people you use CTRL for your vent push to talk or for ability binds, you’ll keep turning off your sound off. Unfortunately not all of those sound related keybinds are available in the command listing and as such can not be changed. Sure, I could just rebind my push to talk or whatever, but I’ve never had to before with any other MMO and to be honest there’s no reason why we even need to turn off ambient sound with a keybind…
And now the good stuff.
The game looks fantastic. I really didn't think I would be that sold on the cartoony style, but Bioware have really nailed it with the artwork. SWTOR is packed with true Star Wars atmosphere and the sense of scale is spot on. Some areas are of course more impressive than others, but there was nothing that I thought was poor and plenty that I thought was very impressive. I marked out totally when I walked my Bounty Hunter out of the building she first spawned in and witnessed the Hutt goodness. I only dabbled briefly with the Bounty Hunter as I wanted to save the Sith Empire stuff until launch, so most of my time was spent with the boy scout Jedi lickers, which worked out quite well as it meant I got to see Coruscant. It wasn't instantly as impressive as I hoped, but the more I explored the better and better it got. Huge potential for expansion there too.
Combat was standard MMO fare, nothing new here at all, though everything worked well and was quite fun to play. Obviously everyone has their preferred play styles and that makes any comments on the classes fairly subjective. I tried out the following classes into the teens:
- Jedi Knight (Guardian)
- Jedi Counselor (Shadow)
- Trooper (Vanguard)
The big sell for SWTOR has always been the voice overs and more storyline focused quests. And yes it does make for a huge improvement and I did actually pay attention to the quest stories for once. Also the roll off for who gets to answer dialogue when grouped made for much comedy on vent with some of us more psychotic than others. However don't be thinking your choices mean anything, because they most often don't. The quest storylines are regularly on rails (much like in Dragon Age) and really your choices only determine your light/dark side points (which effects your character, not the world iself). That said, it was still fun and better than what we normally get, you just need to accept and enjoy the roller coaster ride for what it is.
I do however wonder about replay-ability within the same faction, because aside from your main class storylines all the quests I saw were identical when played with a different class. On top of this I'm not convinced I'll want to go through all those voice overs again and again. That applies to repeating dungeons as well as leveling alts. It strikes me that I will have a really enjoyable time leveling my first Sith character, I'm just not entirely sure how great repeating things will be.
The UI needs a LOT more customisation options, scaling in particular, but aside from that I thought it was clean, efficient, easy to use and very Star Warsy. I liked it.
PvP... I did quite a lot of PvP, though this was all warzones (scenarios/battlegrounds/whateeeeeeever) and as result I have no idea how the open world stuff will work out. The warzones were variations on the standard capture the flag or control point systems we've seen elsewhere and I thought they looked great and worked very well. There was, as always, some people grumbling about CC (crowd control), however they to be frank are a bunch of whiney little bitches that just dont want anything stopping them spamming killy buttons. Most of each classes CC doesn't work at all in PvP (abilities flagged to stun lesser opponents, etc) and I didn't find the amount that did to be too much at all. Having no CC makes games mindless DPS spam, whereas too much makes it purely who CC firsts wins, personally I think SWTOR is looking promising on this front. However, remember I only played characters into the teens, so who knows if it goes to shite later on.
In general my viewpoint on the game hasn't changed. I'm really looking forward to it and will be playing it heavily. I still have little interest in dungeon farming and raiding, so once I hit the end game the question of how long term I continue to play depends entirely on how engaging the PvP is. I'm not expecting miracles there at all, but am open to having my mind changed and haven't ruled out the possibility. At present though I am still expecting a fun ride with SWTOR up to the point where I burn out, which should be perfectly timed to move on to Mechwarrior Online and Planetside 2.
Latest SWTOR beta client will be patched for headstart & launch
That's the client from this weekend just gone. So that's cool.
I'll post thoughts about the SWTOR beta later on.
I'll post thoughts about the SWTOR beta later on.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Well spank my arse and call me Charlie! WAR stuff
OK there's not much here that is actually new news, it's just confirmation of rough dates and things we knew were being considered for the forts, but there are confirmations of patch content and regardless it's good to finally see Mythic talking about something other than WoH.
So if you want some WAR stuff to read check out the interviews with Mykiel at Stratics and Werit at his blog.
So if you want some WAR stuff to read check out the interviews with Mykiel at Stratics and Werit at his blog.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Pew Pew Classics
You might think that the iconic gaming sound effects of 2012 will be the pew pew of blasters and the crackling hum of lightsabers, For many folks you’d no doubt be right, but for me no bloody way. Like any self respecting 30 something I like a good bit of Star Wars action, but personally 2012 is all about the return of the SCHHHHAAAAPEW!!!
That isn’t some combat caption from the Batman TV show, oh no; this glorious uber-pew is the distinctive sound of a Particle Projector Cannon (PPC) mashing shit up with ionised particles of death. You could say it’s the BFG of Battletech. So whilst the announcement of Mechwarrior Online brought back many excellent gaming memories, for some reason at the forefront of them is the sound of the PPC. When thinking about mechs for some reason I just can’t get it out of my head… SCHHHHAAAAPEW!!! That’s a credit to the people that did the sound effects I think. So often with games we talk about graphics, gameplay and the music, but it’s good to remember the sound effects are a huge part of the gaming experience and sometimes are just as classic as anything else.
So what are your classic sounds from games?
That isn’t some combat caption from the Batman TV show, oh no; this glorious uber-pew is the distinctive sound of a Particle Projector Cannon (PPC) mashing shit up with ionised particles of death. You could say it’s the BFG of Battletech. So whilst the announcement of Mechwarrior Online brought back many excellent gaming memories, for some reason at the forefront of them is the sound of the PPC. When thinking about mechs for some reason I just can’t get it out of my head… SCHHHHAAAAPEW!!! That’s a credit to the people that did the sound effects I think. So often with games we talk about graphics, gameplay and the music, but it’s good to remember the sound effects are a huge part of the gaming experience and sometimes are just as classic as anything else.
So what are your classic sounds from games?
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Latest Mech in the lineup revealed
Another Battlemech has been announced for Mechwarrior Online. The Dragon, a heavy class mech that generally specialises in long range combat. The announcement and a bit of lore fluff can be found here.
So the list so far is:
So the list so far is:
- Atlas
- Dragon
- Hunchback
- Jenner
I must say that I am totally loving the art for these new versions of classic mechs. A lot of the old battletech art looks very dated, but this new stuff looks very current indeed.
Skyrim, MMOs and dead eyes.
This is a really good post I saw linked on G+ today: I do not wish for an Elder Scrolls MMO. Go have a read, once you're done here. ;)
I compared the atmosphere and sense of place that Skyrim has with MMOs recently, but I too wouldn't want to see Bethseda make the next Elder Scrolls game as an MMO, they're too good at making single player games and we still need to have quality single player games. What I would like to see is some MMO developers be a bit more influenced by games like Skyrim and less by the long standing traditions of firmly rooted spawn camps merely existing to service questing and/or grinding. As really all we get in the vast majority of games are worlds that quickly start to feel sterile and lifeless with their soulless automaton mobs and overall static nature. I'd just like something that wee bit more alive. Which is considerably easier for me to type than for some poor sod to make reality of course, but there you go.
One of the reasons I was quite enamored with RIFT was it almost did this, well, ok "almost" is a bit much... lets just say it at least it tried a little bit. The rifts added a nice random and chaotic element to things, but unfortunately that was still overlayed on the standard essentially static game world and actually the impact of the rifts was lacking at level 50. I know when SWTOR arrives it will also be the same and once the nice new glow from all those sabers wears off I'll probably notice the game staring at me with sinister dead eyes.
Though as I've said many times before regarding SWTOR, I am looking forward to it, but thanks to my slightly jaded/tired (or perhaps experienced?) state I'm not super hyped or anything. It will be the same again and that's no bad thing, it just is what it is.
To be honest though whilst I'm a bit tired of the status quo, that doesn't mean developers should do much different to the WoW winning forumla. It still sells after all. Perhaps I'm just experiencing the symptoms of having played too many MMOs since Ultima. It's no coincidence that the true faction based RvR games (DAoC & WAR) were the ones that held my attention the longest, as I think that higher level and complexity of player interaction in those games distracts from how sterile I often find the PvE side of MMOs to be.
Ah well, bring on Planetside 2 :)
I compared the atmosphere and sense of place that Skyrim has with MMOs recently, but I too wouldn't want to see Bethseda make the next Elder Scrolls game as an MMO, they're too good at making single player games and we still need to have quality single player games. What I would like to see is some MMO developers be a bit more influenced by games like Skyrim and less by the long standing traditions of firmly rooted spawn camps merely existing to service questing and/or grinding. As really all we get in the vast majority of games are worlds that quickly start to feel sterile and lifeless with their soulless automaton mobs and overall static nature. I'd just like something that wee bit more alive. Which is considerably easier for me to type than for some poor sod to make reality of course, but there you go.
 |
| OK this screenie is not an example of anything except pretty, but meh, I like pretty. |
One of the reasons I was quite enamored with RIFT was it almost did this, well, ok "almost" is a bit much... lets just say it at least it tried a little bit. The rifts added a nice random and chaotic element to things, but unfortunately that was still overlayed on the standard essentially static game world and actually the impact of the rifts was lacking at level 50. I know when SWTOR arrives it will also be the same and once the nice new glow from all those sabers wears off I'll probably notice the game staring at me with sinister dead eyes.
 |
| Lots of undead eyes in Skyrim. |
Though as I've said many times before regarding SWTOR, I am looking forward to it, but thanks to my slightly jaded/tired (or perhaps experienced?) state I'm not super hyped or anything. It will be the same again and that's no bad thing, it just is what it is.
To be honest though whilst I'm a bit tired of the status quo, that doesn't mean developers should do much different to the WoW winning forumla. It still sells after all. Perhaps I'm just experiencing the symptoms of having played too many MMOs since Ultima. It's no coincidence that the true faction based RvR games (DAoC & WAR) were the ones that held my attention the longest, as I think that higher level and complexity of player interaction in those games distracts from how sterile I often find the PvE side of MMOs to be.
Ah well, bring on Planetside 2 :)
Monday, 21 November 2011
No WAR Boots?
A few folks have asked me now that I've quit WAR and not returned for a while, am I now done with blogging about it?
The answer is a mixed yes and no. I can only write stuff about WAR if there are things to talk about, but unfortunately right now there is nothing but negatives to say. Despite the forts supposedly being imminent, there's no news, no talk of the future and barely any sign of Mythic. The forums have descended to an all time low and are now quite probably the most depressing MMO forums I have ever had the misfortune to read. And with no attempts at damage control from Mythic, well... I don't know if Bioware Mythic realise this, but for an outsider things with WAR look beyond terrible. It looks like WAR has been dropped for WoH, which at the blogger meeting where we were first shown WoH is exactly what I said to Carrie would be everyone's concern if they didn't play it right and give WAR players reasons to feel otherwise.
They didn't play it right. Far from it in fact and now WAR looks totally fucked. It might not be, they might have stuff up their sleeves, but it looks and is perceived as being totally FUBAR. This is not me as someone that's quit having a whinge, this is the reality of the hugely negative light WAR is now seen in by almost everyone.
To change that Bioware Mythic need to actually do something. Unfortunately for WAR I think they believe Wrath of Heroes is the answer to everything, however as anyone not too close to the two games can see, it really isn't.
Since I have no interest in WoH, that leaves me with precious little to talk about regarding WAR. :(
The answer is a mixed yes and no. I can only write stuff about WAR if there are things to talk about, but unfortunately right now there is nothing but negatives to say. Despite the forts supposedly being imminent, there's no news, no talk of the future and barely any sign of Mythic. The forums have descended to an all time low and are now quite probably the most depressing MMO forums I have ever had the misfortune to read. And with no attempts at damage control from Mythic, well... I don't know if Bioware Mythic realise this, but for an outsider things with WAR look beyond terrible. It looks like WAR has been dropped for WoH, which at the blogger meeting where we were first shown WoH is exactly what I said to Carrie would be everyone's concern if they didn't play it right and give WAR players reasons to feel otherwise.
They didn't play it right. Far from it in fact and now WAR looks totally fucked. It might not be, they might have stuff up their sleeves, but it looks and is perceived as being totally FUBAR. This is not me as someone that's quit having a whinge, this is the reality of the hugely negative light WAR is now seen in by almost everyone.
To change that Bioware Mythic need to actually do something. Unfortunately for WAR I think they believe Wrath of Heroes is the answer to everything, however as anyone not too close to the two games can see, it really isn't.
Since I have no interest in WoH, that leaves me with precious little to talk about regarding WAR. :(
Friday, 18 November 2011
Mechwarrior Online, what we know so far
- It's scheduled to release summer 2012
- It's F2P with cashshop, etc.
- The plan is to avoid Pay2win and make it Pay4Options (we'll see... but I have hope).
- MWO is being made using the Crytek engine.
- It is not an MMO and you do not play within a persistent world.
- It will be instanced battles you take part in like the old MMO games, but with a bit more of a scenario/battleground twist.
- It does have a persistent campaign system that your battles will influence.
- There is a focus on "information war" and making lighter mechs very important.
- Old Mechwarrior games had very open terrain, MWO will move away from this into much denser and tactically important terrain. Bye bye circle strafing.
- Gameplay will be sticking as close as possible to the tabletop game and will be a shooter-simulator again.
- It is primarily being designed to play from within the cockpit, though how to add external views without it being a dodgy advantage are being considered.
- The cockpits will have working and useful instrumentation, scanners, etc that provider information beyond the neural UI link thingy.
- The game is being set in the year 3049. In Battletech terms this is just before the Clan invasion and means the game will (initially at least) be focused on the Inner Sphere. However going forward the Clans and other major events will feature in a big way.
- Players will be able to level their pilot and gain skills of some form (I suspect like the specialisations in Mech Commander).
- Players will be able to form Mercenary Corps (guilds).
- This is a PvP game but they are looking into adding some form of PvE too.
- Piranha (the developers) are aiming for bi-weekly content patches. Yes you heard that right... New content every 2 weeks... I'll be amazed if that actually happens, but it's a positive thing for them to be aiming for.
There's a fair bit of other info out there too, but those are the key points for now.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Star Trek Online F2P launch date
Latest dev blog delivers the date of 17-JAN-2012. Interesting timing, being roughly a month after the SWTOR release. It could work quite well for those players that burn out fast with SWTOR and as F2P there's no downside to trying it out, though to be honest I just can't see it becoming a big player or even denting SWTOR's sub numbers. Too many folks wrote the game off already.
I'll definitely return and dabble with it. Despite it's many faults, I've always liked STO. It's a game with a nice atmosphere and the missions are fun, it just struggles to hold my sub long as I'm not huge into repeating PvE experiences over and over. As F2P though I'll gladly enjoy the freedom of playing it whenever I feel like a change.
I'll definitely return and dabble with it. Despite it's many faults, I've always liked STO. It's a game with a nice atmosphere and the missions are fun, it just struggles to hold my sub long as I'm not huge into repeating PvE experiences over and over. As F2P though I'll gladly enjoy the freedom of playing it whenever I feel like a change.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
A bit more Skyrimming
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you must have heard all about the release of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The internet is absolutely smothered with reviews, articles, posts and tweets about this hugely anticipated game and I’m sure you will have already seen the great acclaim it’s (deservedly) getting. So I’m not going to bother writing a proper review and will just ramble a little bit, as I feel I would be remiss in my duties were I not to at least say something about it.
It’s bloody brilliant. I’ve carefully removed my rose tinted spectacles about past games of legend and I’m steering clear of the immense stupidity of trying to be cool NME style with their “slag it off cos it’s popular” bollocks. As a result I think it is safe to say that this is the best RPG of all time, one of the best games of any format ever and is certainly the new benchmark in creating a truly organic feeling gameworld. Normally one could assume these would be bold fanboi style claims, yet this time round they’re really not. Skyrim is an exceptional game and one of the best I have ever played.
However, that does not mean everyone will like it. People that like games of little depth or just want constant mob spam gun waving action of BLLLAAARRGHHH!!! may well not get on with Skyrim. That’s not a criticism of their gameplay desires, but it should be recognised that Skyrim is a massive true RPG and as such takes time and effort to play. I’m absolutely loving it and have put almost all other gaming on hold (our KF Bloodbowl league is the only exception).
What I’ve found interesting from my MMO skewed view is just how much Skyrim highlights the abject failure of recent MMOs to create a living, breathing gameworld that aren’t just graphics with sterile feeling spawn points. When it comes to creating a world with an immersive atmosphere, where it actually feels that bit more alive, Skyrim has absolutely nailed it. Nailed it hard... HARD! With a huge bloody hammer wielded by a very angry Viking. It’s so good that despite the game having horse drawn coaches that can take you to towns you’ve not been to before, I’ve actually not used one once. I prefer walking and in fact I’ve not even rode a horse yet. Seriously, I have walked for bloody miles and it was fun. Walking… fun? Unusual I know, but it’s actually enjoyable just travelling through Skyrim’s vast landscape. And there’s a damned good chance that you’ll be having a bit of adventure on the way.
I don’t think there’s any one thing that I could say is the reason the world feels so much more real, it’s more a combination of many factors; the dynamic weather, the way mobs interact with each other, the scale of everything, the way the land has been hand crafted, etc. In theory you could take all of the things that make Skyrim’s world feel so alive and put it into an MMO, but you’d immediately hit big problems when Gandullf and NoobRaper turn up spamming /dance macros and farming mobs faster than they can respawn. To be honest it’s probably unfair to compare a single player game with a multiplayer one, they have very different problems to deal with and I imagine the developers have different goals, but as a player that doesn’t really matter, it’s not my problem. As RPG gaming experiences they are comparable and that difference in immersion and quality stands out like a sore thumb.
Skyrim is easily my game of the year; in just a few days I’ve had more “O M G that looks amaaaaaaaaaaazing” moments and unscripted scenes of epic drama than I have in months of other games. I’m already considering how I’ll replay it totally differently (sneaky murdering rogue style next!) when I’ve finished the game, which judging by the size of the thing I imagine will be sometime in 2013…
It’s bloody brilliant. I’ve carefully removed my rose tinted spectacles about past games of legend and I’m steering clear of the immense stupidity of trying to be cool NME style with their “slag it off cos it’s popular” bollocks. As a result I think it is safe to say that this is the best RPG of all time, one of the best games of any format ever and is certainly the new benchmark in creating a truly organic feeling gameworld. Normally one could assume these would be bold fanboi style claims, yet this time round they’re really not. Skyrim is an exceptional game and one of the best I have ever played.
However, that does not mean everyone will like it. People that like games of little depth or just want constant mob spam gun waving action of BLLLAAARRGHHH!!! may well not get on with Skyrim. That’s not a criticism of their gameplay desires, but it should be recognised that Skyrim is a massive true RPG and as such takes time and effort to play. I’m absolutely loving it and have put almost all other gaming on hold (our KF Bloodbowl league is the only exception).
What I’ve found interesting from my MMO skewed view is just how much Skyrim highlights the abject failure of recent MMOs to create a living, breathing gameworld that aren’t just graphics with sterile feeling spawn points. When it comes to creating a world with an immersive atmosphere, where it actually feels that bit more alive, Skyrim has absolutely nailed it. Nailed it hard... HARD! With a huge bloody hammer wielded by a very angry Viking. It’s so good that despite the game having horse drawn coaches that can take you to towns you’ve not been to before, I’ve actually not used one once. I prefer walking and in fact I’ve not even rode a horse yet. Seriously, I have walked for bloody miles and it was fun. Walking… fun? Unusual I know, but it’s actually enjoyable just travelling through Skyrim’s vast landscape. And there’s a damned good chance that you’ll be having a bit of adventure on the way.
I don’t think there’s any one thing that I could say is the reason the world feels so much more real, it’s more a combination of many factors; the dynamic weather, the way mobs interact with each other, the scale of everything, the way the land has been hand crafted, etc. In theory you could take all of the things that make Skyrim’s world feel so alive and put it into an MMO, but you’d immediately hit big problems when Gandullf and NoobRaper turn up spamming /dance macros and farming mobs faster than they can respawn. To be honest it’s probably unfair to compare a single player game with a multiplayer one, they have very different problems to deal with and I imagine the developers have different goals, but as a player that doesn’t really matter, it’s not my problem. As RPG gaming experiences they are comparable and that difference in immersion and quality stands out like a sore thumb.
Skyrim is easily my game of the year; in just a few days I’ve had more “O M G that looks amaaaaaaaaaaazing” moments and unscripted scenes of epic drama than I have in months of other games. I’m already considering how I’ll replay it totally differently (sneaky murdering rogue style next!) when I’ve finished the game, which judging by the size of the thing I imagine will be sometime in 2013…
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Friday, 11 November 2011
Planetside 2 videos
Latest is this one showing off some New Conglomerate designs.
Then there's also a vid for the Terran Republic. I'm liking the look of that heavy assault armour.
Should be a vid for the Vanu Sovereignty soon I guess.
Then there's also a vid for the Terran Republic. I'm liking the look of that heavy assault armour.
Should be a vid for the Vanu Sovereignty soon I guess.
ALERT! Steam hacked
Here's the info:
"Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe."
NO need to panic, but definately change your passwords and keep an eye on your credit card statements.
"Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe."
NO need to panic, but definately change your passwords and keep an eye on your credit card statements.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
My 2012 online gaming schedule
Summer time arrives and it’s Mechwarrior Online, for the rest of the year… If the game lives up to even half of my expectation levels then I could well be playing this extremely long term. Which means playing it alongside whatever else I’m looking at and since I’ve often said how I get bored quickly of instanced PvP, well, that should give you some indication of how highly I rate Mechwarrior games. That said, I am assuming it’s going to be instanced match making stuff from what’s been said so far, which really is the only way I can see it working without going for something extremely bold that I just can’t see any company having the balls to do. So it sounds like it’s going to be instanced PvP within a persistent world campaign system. If it means I get a decent mechwarrior game then that’s more than fine with me.
As for the rest of the year, I'll no doubt be sticking with MWO, but there are a couple of other games that will also see some Bootae action, but I don’t yet know when they’re due. Planetside 2 fits in here somewhere and has the potential to have a major impact on my and Kill Frenzy’s long term gaming plans. Then there’s Dust 514, which as a PS3 game will have limited impact for me in some ways, but as a potentially landmark title in a MASSIVE way it’s something I simply have to be involved with.
That’s it for me until Dark Millenium Online in 2013. I am of course aware that my damned curiosity may lure me into trying out Secret World and Guild Wars 2, but I have no current desire to play either. Plus with that lot mentioned above, single player games and limited gaming time, I’m not convinced I’ll be able to get much more in.
How’s your schedule looking?
Thursday, 3 November 2011
A classic bit of Mech to tickle your memory
Classic MW4 into :)
And here's the trailer from a while back for the game that has turned into Mechwarrior Online
And here's the trailer from a while back for the game that has turned into Mechwarrior Online
It's all just Everquest with extra sprinkles
I’ve heard a few folks recently talking about the end of traditional MMORPGs, sometimes with some fairly dramatic terms used describing the death of the genre and the imminent demise of its Warcraft overlord. There’s probably quite a bit of overstatement going on there, well actually there’s no probably about it, MMORPGs are not going to die out anytime soon, but I think it would be more than fair to say that the genre has stagnated in quite a big way. The current lack of imagination (effectively game development by numbers) means that all the games coming out are still just Everquest with sprinkles on top. They might look different, be available in a range of flavours and some might even have a flake chocolate bar stuck on top, but essentially they’re all just bloody ice-cream again and again and again.
The only goal is to upgrade your equipment. Sure, you could perhaps claim it’s the achievements of beating bosses and dungeons, but if that was true then having beaten the boss once you wouldn’t repeat it over and over, after all people don’t often play through single player games more than once. Players are only repeating dungeons whilst they need upgrades from them, it’s not like these dungeons are better than single player experiences and the most fun thing ever... So like it or not, the whole point of the game is that upgrading of equipment. To do this you will collect 10 missing socks, kill 10 rats, go up levels, farm the basic dungeons, get raid ready, start raiding and then raid, raid, raid until all upgrades are done. By which time an expansion arrives to raise the equipment bar and you’ll repeat the process.
That in itself is fine, we’ve had a good time over the last 14 years of MMORPG gaming and I’m not saying that the concept of the games has been flawed or anything. It’s just that I’m now seeing many veteran gamers burning out on games far earlier than before. Once you’ve seen all the new scenery, mastered playing your choice of class and done a good chunk of the instanced dungeon experience, things start to get a bit meh a whole lot faster. Can you really be bothered to go through the hours of grinding raid content to get to the final event? A final event that is only a temporary finale anyway, since an expansion will arrive and cancel out all your past effort. And you’ve done all of this before in EQ, WoW, AoC, Aion, EQ2, RIFT, etc, etc. Better surely to move on to the next game and go through the process with new scenery and things to learn, then move on to yet another game once this one gets dull.
We used to stay loyally subbed to one MMORPG for years, but now I feel that this stagnation is nudging us more towards being game world tourists. The theme-park moniker for games like WoW, RIFT, etc has become all to true. They are turning into somewhere we go on holiday to, have a great time, but then we leave and go somewhere else. I’m expecting SWTOR and GW2 to have roughly a 3-6 month lifespan for most people, after which people will start to succumb to that nagging sensation of déjà vue. We’ve been here before… it’s all the same… disappointment kicks in and back to Warcraft (most people’s first MMO) they go. I think this is one of the major reasons so many people end up going back to the comfortable familiarity of WoW, it’s not because of some incredible difference in quality, it’s simply because people move on expecting new stuff, but the new games are not actually new. They’re just WoW reskinned, or Everquest with extra sprinkles.
So you’ve got the WoW hooked people only dipping into other games for a holiday and then returning disappointedly to WoW, or you’ve got us veteran types totally bored of WoW that just move from game to game looking for Eldorado, but ultimately we’re just stuck in a never ending coach tour of virtual worlds.
Of course when it comes to the amount of time subbed to a game there are exceptions for everyone, when a game has an IP that is special to us for example, but there are no games coming that we’ll ALL be playing long term because of the “game” itself. Folks can talk about WoW beaters all they like, but I just can’t see anything reaching and most importantly maintaining those kind of sub levels until something offers genuinely different motivations to play. Right now, no matter how people try and hype up SWTOR, GW2, etc, there is nothing on the horizon that isn’t just bloody Everquest again.
Note I’m talking about MMORPGs, not MMOs or arena games, as those are a whole other kettle of fish :D
The only goal is to upgrade your equipment. Sure, you could perhaps claim it’s the achievements of beating bosses and dungeons, but if that was true then having beaten the boss once you wouldn’t repeat it over and over, after all people don’t often play through single player games more than once. Players are only repeating dungeons whilst they need upgrades from them, it’s not like these dungeons are better than single player experiences and the most fun thing ever... So like it or not, the whole point of the game is that upgrading of equipment. To do this you will collect 10 missing socks, kill 10 rats, go up levels, farm the basic dungeons, get raid ready, start raiding and then raid, raid, raid until all upgrades are done. By which time an expansion arrives to raise the equipment bar and you’ll repeat the process.
That in itself is fine, we’ve had a good time over the last 14 years of MMORPG gaming and I’m not saying that the concept of the games has been flawed or anything. It’s just that I’m now seeing many veteran gamers burning out on games far earlier than before. Once you’ve seen all the new scenery, mastered playing your choice of class and done a good chunk of the instanced dungeon experience, things start to get a bit meh a whole lot faster. Can you really be bothered to go through the hours of grinding raid content to get to the final event? A final event that is only a temporary finale anyway, since an expansion will arrive and cancel out all your past effort. And you’ve done all of this before in EQ, WoW, AoC, Aion, EQ2, RIFT, etc, etc. Better surely to move on to the next game and go through the process with new scenery and things to learn, then move on to yet another game once this one gets dull.
We used to stay loyally subbed to one MMORPG for years, but now I feel that this stagnation is nudging us more towards being game world tourists. The theme-park moniker for games like WoW, RIFT, etc has become all to true. They are turning into somewhere we go on holiday to, have a great time, but then we leave and go somewhere else. I’m expecting SWTOR and GW2 to have roughly a 3-6 month lifespan for most people, after which people will start to succumb to that nagging sensation of déjà vue. We’ve been here before… it’s all the same… disappointment kicks in and back to Warcraft (most people’s first MMO) they go. I think this is one of the major reasons so many people end up going back to the comfortable familiarity of WoW, it’s not because of some incredible difference in quality, it’s simply because people move on expecting new stuff, but the new games are not actually new. They’re just WoW reskinned, or Everquest with extra sprinkles.
So you’ve got the WoW hooked people only dipping into other games for a holiday and then returning disappointedly to WoW, or you’ve got us veteran types totally bored of WoW that just move from game to game looking for Eldorado, but ultimately we’re just stuck in a never ending coach tour of virtual worlds.
Of course when it comes to the amount of time subbed to a game there are exceptions for everyone, when a game has an IP that is special to us for example, but there are no games coming that we’ll ALL be playing long term because of the “game” itself. Folks can talk about WoW beaters all they like, but I just can’t see anything reaching and most importantly maintaining those kind of sub levels until something offers genuinely different motivations to play. Right now, no matter how people try and hype up SWTOR, GW2, etc, there is nothing on the horizon that isn’t just bloody Everquest again.
Note I’m talking about MMORPGs, not MMOs or arena games, as those are a whole other kettle of fish :D
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Oh hellllllllloooooooo! Mechwarrior Online
I've just been provided with a massive e-boner from a tweet by @Jeff_Skalski who spotted this baby.
I am a huge fan of the Mechwarrior games, particularly Mechwarrior 4 and I've spent many, maaaany hours pew pewing lasers in it's multiplayer awesome. Seriously, it's one of my joint all time fave online PvP games (alongside XwA, UO and DAoC). I can't wait to have a go on it.
Official site here: http://mwomercs.com/
PC Gamer article about it here.
Happy Bootae is happy.