A mixture of hope and apathy

At the moment I’m kind of adrift on an uninspiring sea of MMORPGs. There’s no siren call strong enough to tempt me into paying a subscription fee, I’m just not finding anything particularly alluring. Too much of the same old same old I suppose. So instead I’m just fiddling about with single player and F2P stuff, whilst I wait for one of the more interesting online games on the horizon.

As always I am tempted to return to EVE, but also as always, it’s just not life style friendly enough for me and my regular AFKing. Alas, I can’t see me being able to play EVE the way I would like to anytime soon. Though it’s probably a positive thing that real life prevents me from doing so, as I know EVE can devour you like a Sarlacc with the munchies. For now I’m mainly playing Star Trek Online. Just nipping on for an hour here and there to play through episodes or missions and set my next batch of Duty Officer assignments running. It’s free to play, quite engaging and I’ve always had a soft spot for STO. That said, the game won’t ever be my long term MMO love affair, but is more of a regular casual flirtation, perhaps with the occasional tongue. Flashing eyes across the office, the odd late night drinking session, but not quite worth a divorce.

Oh, I've downloaded RIFT again and will dick about the free 1-20 bit. Not logged in yet.
The only other online game I’m playing at the moment is Tribes: Ascend. It’s free to play, the cash shop is not essential and most importantly, it’s fun. This reimagining of the classic Tribes 1 and 2 is getting better and better and I recommend people try it out. Just be warned that it is not like your normal online shooters. It’s MUCH faster and you have to learn to lead your shots a lot more than normal. It’s all about predicting people’s movement and it can take some getting used to. Anyway, it’s a good game and recommended.

At some point soon I will be making use of my 2 weeks free in both WAR and DAoC, but I doubt very much I would subscribe to either in the near future. Obviously I’m a fan of both games, or at least what they once were, it’s just that WAR would really need to do quite a lot to make up for the Wrath of Heroes disappointment. The less said about that the better. Actually, as I write this I’m changing my mind slightly regarding DAoC. There is a bit more chance that DAoC could persuade me to take up a month’s subscription. It did grab me last year, surprising me how well so many things still played and looked. I swear if that game had a decent UI update it could see a reasonable resurgence.

Aside from those retro distractions, for me it’s all about the upcoming games; Planetside 2 and Mechwarrior Online. There’s a load more Planetside 2 news appeared in the last couple of days, which I’ll gather up and post about soon. Mechwarrior is continuing to drip feed news at a slow steady rate, though we’re still waiting to see some in-game footage. I hear we may see something soon however. Mechwarrior isn’t a MMO of course, but this blog is about stuff that interest me, so meh whatever. Oh and Hawken looks great. Me like mechs.

Elsewhere, I’m not totally writing off Funcom’s “The Secret World”, yet I don’t find myself particularly caring about it either way. To be honest I’m not quite sure why. Despite my many misgivings regarding Funcom, I do like what they try to do and certainly TSW has many features that tick my boxes. My apathy confuses me slightly. If I don’t get on the beta then I doubt I will try it until well after launch.

And on the subject of apathy… If for a moment I take off my Hat of Trolling+3, yes Guild Wars 2 has much potential and does look like some serious PvP goodness. That doesn’t change the fact that it will never be a game I get excited about and I still find it hard to motivate myself to write about it, but it’s certainly one I would like to see realise its PvP potential. Obviously Kill Frenzy and I will try it out.

Hopefully sometime soon we’ll start to get more news on Dark Millennium Online and World of Darkness. Both games are perceived as being on rather rough seas, what with the challenges faced by THQ and CCP, but I guess we just have to wait and see what news arrives. I still have high hopes for both games, purely due to their settings. Actually that’s not true. I have some confidence in CCP to deliver something interesting and hopefully sandboxy. Plus THQ have some excellent 40k games in their stable, so we know they’ll do the 40k universe credit when it comes to atmosphere at least.

I think that’s it for major MMOs of interest to me, can’t think of anything else. There are a few small games I have an eye on, but they’ll get posts of their own at some point. Oh and for the record, Diablo 3 I’m indifferent to and World of Warcraft Panda bear stuff just doesn’t work for me. Sorry Blizzard, as if you care lol :D

Bits and MMO bobs

Right now I'm in that slightly awkward phase between MMO obsessions, so my attention is leaping all over the place as I hawk around for news on something to inspire me. So since my head is all random, here's a few random bits and bobs of MMO news I've read lately and felt like commenting on...

World of Darkness, CCP's vampire MMO (same setting as the legendary Vampire The Masquerade RPG), is going to have perma-death. Interesting, bold and a little surprising, but then CCP do have slightly bigger balls than most developers. Though apparently you'll get plenty of warning and opportunity to prevent it, so I'm not sure quite how much of a risk it is, yet it will at least be a genuine possibility.

Also, and this I didn't see coming, in World of Darkness you'll be able to play as a human?! I'm not sure why anyone would want to with the range of different vampire types in that setting (from bestial mingers, to psycho killers, to kinky boot beasts). Presumably there's something fancy planned there. Very little info out there about this game at the moment, but it's one I'm very keen on hearing more about.

On the WAR front the only glimmer we have is the line "And next year we are about encounter bloodlust in an additional way.", which I expect to be the Sylvannia stuff appearing in some form. It irritates me that something like this isn't appearing now, it would make so much difference to the game. Mythic desperately need to speed up their patch cycle. Dramatically.

Planetside 2 will be F2P. Instantly we could choose to start worrying about it being pay2win, but actually I'm not that concerned. The original Planetside's level system didn't work like most MMOs, in that instead of levels giving you power, they gave you options. It allowed you access to a wider range of weapons and vehicles that gave you options in what kind of gameplay you experienced, but it didn't make you better as such. For example the big MAX suits had huge weaponry and armour, but their mobility was terrible. A basic agile armoured infantry set up would still be lethal if played to it's strengths. So I am hoping that the cash shop (I presume it will have one) will sell options rather than power. This remains the big hope for my next long term game, unless SWTOR proves to have long term appeal.

Star Wars The Old Republic has a release date of 20th/22nd December US/EU. No news yet on the head start dates, presumably a good few days beforehand. I just hope people with boxed pre-orders (like me) are given a download option because having to rely on the post at that time of year is less than ideal.

It's a funny time to release the game really, I assume its being done to further break up people logging in (combined with the staggered launch malarkey) to help Bioware with a smooth launch. If it's not nigh on perfect there will be much rage spewing across the internet. Personally I don't care much, it gives me plenty of time with Skyrim :P I do feel sorry for those Bioware employees and their families that have effectively had Christmas cancelled.

Outside of MMOs, because THEY ARE NOT MMOs (Massively I am looking at you), I'm intrigued to see the makers of World of Tanks developing both World of Battleships and World of Warplanes. WoT is a very good game, if a little too cash shop dependent, and as someone with a Silent Hunter addiction, I'm particularly intrigued to see what Wargaming.net can do with the big shooty ships. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be World of Battleshops.