NEW YEARS PREDICTIONS

Sorry, I guess somehow I didn’t realize I was supposed to do this since I had a blog – and I apologize for totally missing the boat last January.  So here’s five predictions and a few tidbits from me to  you about the year to come:

Five Predictions…

1.  Despite the obvious interest and backing they could generate, no on will announce work on a Transformers or G.I. Joe MMORPG in the coming year.   Which is probably fine, because if the movies are any indication, their ability to completely trash the IP is unparalleled.

2.  Bethesda will finally…officially… announce their Elder Scrolls MMO.  Also, this is a hunch, but…it won’t be set in Tamriel.  I know it would make no sense not to use their established IP, but…companies don’t always do the smart thing.

3.  SWTOR will not be released in 2010.

4.  WAR will finally announce what everyone has been waiting for – more races and classes.  I’m betting Wood Elves and Vampire Counts.

5.  EVE will finally get ambulated.  They won’t have a choice – its time to step up to the plate, or let STO own a patch of the space mmo business that they don’t have a flag already planted on.

My most….

Anticipated Release:       Star Trek Online

I’ll know in about two weeks if it was worth the sleepless nights I’m enduring right now.  And honestly, some of my anticipation is the happiness of again having a game with real life friends playing along right beside me.  The last time I had  that was, outside of a random few nights in Vanguard, World of Warcraft.  How this will stack up with my online community in EVE will be interesting.  I have no beef with Cryptic myself – I’m enjoying Champions, so I’m hopeful that the game will be halfway decent.

Anticipated Failure:  Cataclysm

You can smell it in the air already.  Big, successful companies start dying when they start drinking their own koolaid, and believing in their own invulnerability, buying into their own hype.  WoW believes it can’t be killed.  It believes it has too many people and too much control over the market to fall.  And so they are going to do something that is guarenteed to alienate people – making changes to old favorites – and they believe that it can’t hurt them – that they will carry on and grow even bigger from it.  They are wrong.  This will be WoW’s “jumping the shark” moment.

Desired Beta Spot:  The Secret World

It just looks awesome.  And its either that or World of Darkness, but I’m not a huge fan of WoD.  Anyway, it looks good, and I’m hoping to get in.

My least…

Anticipated Release:  Everything that’s not an MMORPG

There is a growing trend of releasing shooters online and calling them MMO’s – which they technically are – but covering them and treating them and in some cases even trying to call and designate them as RPG’s.   Stargate, The Agency, Jumpgate, That…criminal one who’s name I can’t remember.  I have no interest in any of these.  By the current market definition, Modern Warfare 2 is an MMO.  Something about that just isn’t right.

Wanted Game Death:  Pirates of the Burning Sea

I don’t want it, but I’m pretty sure its going to happen.  Which is sad – the combat by ship is solid, proof of that comes from its reincarnation in Star Trek Online.  The avatar combat is fun and the builds are myriad.  But…the economy is a horrific mess.  It is literally impossible to build most of the ships with one character – even with one account.  And there is…very little else to build.  The supply bundle and unrest system though is amazing – I’m surprised EVE hasn’t done something similar yet – and I hope it shows up elsewhere.   Not to mention the raw material sludgefest that you need a chart or six to untangle.  Anyway, the bottom line is that SOE will need to clear some cap space to bring in its new games, ands it already proven its willingness to ditch titles with the loss of Matrix Online this year.  Sad but true.

And award for the game that will interest me the most and make me watch the most this year…

Heroes of Telara

Van Canegham has had a hand in breaking  new ground in the RPG industry not once.  Not twice.  But three times.  So we can be reasonably assured that he sees or is working himself on something very new and intriquing with his backers at Trion.

Anyway, that’s my 2010 stuff, such as it is.

Merry Christmas!

Just a word about that by the way, given Ysh’s post on the subject:  My philosophy on wishing people things in the holiday season is – its no problem.  See, I don’t celebrate, say, Hannukah, but if you say to me, Happy Hannukah!  I understand that what you are doing is offering a blessing.

You are wishing on me the spirit of Hannukah, and I think that is wonderful – I’m happy to accept such a blessing and pleased that you would think to offer it for me, *especially* since I don’t celebrate it.  Its a way of passing that blessing onward and outward, and I like it.

And by the same token, I wish you a Merry Christmas.  In doing so, I mean no offense, and I don’t really know or care whether or not you celebrate it.  When I say it, what I’m really saying is – “May the spirit of the Christmas holiday – the spirit of generosity, of joy, of community, of peace – may that spirit rest on you.”   And I hope that this blessing is pleasing to you and helpful to you.

As for me, I’m happy, cozy with my presents and sitting now chatting with my family.  Gifts relevant to your interests:  My brother and I exchanged ETC for the holidays, which we thought was an excellent idea, but everyone else rolled their eyes at.  And I have to install Fallout 3: GOTY edition on my ‘puter tomorrow or tonight.  But mostly I’m excited about the impending arrival of STO and my preorder of it.

And I’m loving Champions Online, strangely enough.  I hadn’t heard anything good about it – but when Atari offered it up (first month included) for $15, I couldn’t resist.  Definitely an improvement on CoX in every way from what I’ve seen so far.

Which leads me to this closing thought…does this mean, pending moderate to full STO success – that Cryptic will be the new Sony?

Something to chew on.

A Genuine WTF Moment…

Oh Shi- He found me. I don't how, but he found me.

Return of the King

Okay, well, I’m not a king, but I did get to return to gaming last night.  The issue was that I left my check card in the ATM a while back, and my EVE subscription just happened to come up after I had cancelled the card and was waiting for them to issue me a new one.   So no EVE.  And no Conan.  And no DAoC.

So I spent some time transferring games to my new laptop to open up space on the shared desktop for my wife.  Her photgraphy business has taken off and we were starting to have storage issues.  And so I spent a few days playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I’d never gotten all that far into the game, and I enjoyed Two Worlds better (crazy I know) for the simple reason that I hate the leveling system that they use.  I decided that in playing it this time I would throw the guide out the window, pick the seven skills I wanted and go with it.  And you know what?  So far its been good.  I’m sure it will bog down at higher levels, but I’m having alot more fun.

For those not in the know, basically the more you use a skill, the higher it gets, and for every ten skill ups in our major seven, you gain a level.  You also get to pick attributes to raise, which raise somewhere between 1 and 5 depending on the number of related skill ups you got in any related skill (not just the majors) during that level.  The problem is that you quickly outlevel your ability to handle enemies, especially if you have a specialized character like a magic user or stealthy rogue type.  Even worse, some of the storyline quests box you into areas where you are at a disadvantage being either.   Still its a good game, and this time rather than stress myself out over counting strength related skill ups, I just decided to make judicious use of the difficulty slider bar! 

Morrowind was a little better I think – better setting, better storyline, more fun random events.  On the downside, it was way more exploitable.

Anyway, got my new card yesterday afternoon, so its time for a little Dominion of EVE and explorin’ in DAoC.  Yay!

Holiday Malaise

I have it.   And as usual, its a chain reaction.  I’ve been swamped at work, with some major things going down, that probably won’t be resolved fully for another month or so.

Artwork by Dale Wicks, visit his site and see his other awesome prints!

And once I get hit at work, it pushes my game time.  In part because I have less time to play, and in part because by the time I get home, get family stuff done, and hit my usual playing time, I can’t bring myself to do much more than stare at the computer screen.  I’m either so stressed or so exhausted that its hard to get over that hump.  It helps having a good corp in EVE that I can just log on and chat with.  Even if I decline to do much of anything with them, they understand, presumably because they’ve been there before too.  (The two month long long marathon to Cruiser V/Med. Turret V/Weapon Upgrades V/Hull Upgrades V doesn’t help either, esp. coming after the corp required two week long starbase gunner training.)

So the best way to break malaise is with something new and exciting and shiny right?  I’m sure the two weeks of Conan will pass pleasently, but unless I stumble into a good guild, I don’t think I’ll be resubbing there at the moment.  Honestly, I’ve contemplated two paths.

There's no giant yellow question marks or red dots - how do I know which way to go?!

One is Everquest II.  Its still by far the only fantasy MMO that has “the complete package.”  Fun crafting, solo and group adventuring, housing, and tradition behind it (I get goosebumps and flashbacks when I hear the main theme redux on the loading screen).  And I have a waiting guild invite.  It would mean either transferring my character or starting fresh (tempting here is the new box version at Best Buy – start a new account, with two months free, and all expansions, and 500 Station Cash, for $20).   I could also go the Access Pass route, tempting because this is my favorite time of the year to play Vanguard (Randolph the Free Flying Mount!), which still has my favorite class to play out of any game out there.  Plus, Pirates.  On the flip side – if I start a new account for EQ2 , it won’t be linked with my Station Pass sadly.  And none of it is really new – so will it help my malaise?

The other option is a pretty oddball one, but it might just work.  I missed the glory days of DAoC.  And I still kick myself for it.  WAR is really nothing more than a stripped down kiddy version of DAoC.  I asked around on the forums and it seems there might be a few guilds left kicking over there that would be willing to take a complete noob in and help him level and show him the ropes.  The downside is that population is down, and so finding friends to just go explore and grind with might be difficult.  As one responder said to me “Most people PvE to powerlevel. Almost no one does it for the content anymore because everyone has done it.”  So there is the inherent frustration – what will be new to me will be ho hum to all others.  I don’t suppose I could convince some one out there to go in with me to make for a better experience for us both eh?  Normally I’d drag my brother in, but between EVE and FE and WoW he’s got his hands full already…

So there’s my dilemma in a nutshell.  And what good is having a blog if you can’t share your dilemma’s and find aid for your DMD (decision making disorder)?  Even if you don’t respond, if you’ve made it this far, I feel better just knowing that through transference I might have a chance at another saving throw to overcome this Paralyze status ftw.  ::wink wink::

The Ghost of a Game

One of the great oddities of MMO’s that we are perhaps only just now experiencing is this – what happens when an MMO dies?

SOE created a Matrix Online scrapbook of sorts in memoriarium.

The Shadowbane site is gone it seems, but the Wiki lives on, preserving the lore and information of the world.  (What a grand PnP RPG setting that would make!)

But one game I’ve come across several times now, and only just realized this week that it was dead.  Kaput.  Belly Up, Servers Down.

Dark and Light.

I don’t know much about the game other than what I have been able to glean from Wikipedia and some random news archives, but basically the game suffered from poor developer communication and in house business partner fighting, and was thus dead before it was really ever unveiled.

Of course, other games have suffered like this and yet still continue to stumble onwards.

Hello? Oh God, where is everyone? Everyone's lost but me...

But what is amazing about Dark and Light’s site is that there is no announcement, news release, or indication that the game is completely and totally dead.  You could navigate the site, read all about it, even download the client, only to find that it would repeatedly fail to connect.  And then you might check the forums and poke around a bit and then notice that its actually…you know, dead.

Apparently you can still play around solo in the demo world, but the game is so buggy even that might not happen.  I’m tempted to do it anyway though.  God knows why.  I mean, I like exploring, but that would be sick and twisted right.  To download a dead game’s client just to ride around in the dead world solo.  Alone.   Nobody in their right mind would do that right?  Right?

…I need some kind of an intervention don’t I?

Congratulations – And A Change

First off, high congratulations and praise for the 19 blogs that were selected to be a part of the blog pack.  I applaud CK for expanding the count to 40 to incorporate as many of the new blogs as possible!

That said, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.  There were 39 blogs submitted, which means just about half of the blogs submitted were admitted.  These days I blog almost exclusively about EVE, and if I can’t keep the quality of the blog above the 50th percentile – well, that’s a problem.

I’ve been powering ahead nonstop in EVE, especially with starting our own corp and I’ve been blogging about four times a week about my experiences.  And I’m feeling what may be the front edges of burnout.  I say that because I have a free weekend – not alot of work, wife and kids out of town – and I’ve spent less time than I expected playing EVE.  I have a hunch I need to throttle back from my current pace.

Given that, I’ve decided to make some changes.  First off, for the month of September, there will be only two posts a week – on Tuesdays and Fridays.  Maybe if I slow the quantity, I can improve the quality.  Secondly, only one of these two posts will be about EVE.

I’v been holding onto my birthday money, and I think its time to branch out and split my time some.  I haven’t decided which yet.  Originally I was going to do a Station Pass, as I enjoy the variety, and it would allow me to continue Pirates of the Burning Sea with my brother – but he has since stopped playing to concentrate on school, and so I may just par down to a single game.  Maybe EQ to finally experience that epic server, maybe EQ2, which really offers the complete package, maybe something else.  Suggestions (and a regular group or guild home) are welcome.

Hope you are having a great Labor Day weekend.  So far I’ve spent most of my free time watching old sci fi movies!  H G Wells anyone?

One Year and Counting!

Yay!  Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!  Part of me can’t actually believe that I made it a full year.  So today, a retrospective…

Quick Stats:

101 Posts, 153 Comments

Total Views – 3,055 (Best Month: July 2009 – 1000 views!)

Busiest Day – 100 (Thursday May 21, 2009)

Top 5 Posts – Carrier Strike Force, A New Breed of CSM, Blog Banter #9, Order in All Its Glory, Wizard 102

Worst Posts – a 10 way tie, including 5 posts of posting schedule updates.  All of these had 1 page view each…

Most Prolific Search Term – Banhammer and its varients ~ 260 times

Most Active Commenter – Ysharros ~ 26 times

Quick Thoughts:

The blog took off in May, thanks to the combined efforts of some heavy hitters.  Thanks again to The Ancient Gaming Noob, Kirith Kodachi, and Ysharros for their intentional efforts to boost traffic for me!  The direct link to Carrier Strike Force by TAGN (and also picked up by Virgin Worlds) just about blew up my site.  My only regret was that if I had known in advance, I would have tried alot harder to write a better post!  The surprising second place though, was a post I wrote off the cuff – A New Breed of CSM, wherein I endorsed CSM’s coming down hard on forum trolls.  Does that mean people agree with me?

The biggest disappointment in page views, for me, was Five Things Your Guild Should Be Doing, which I think is a must read for any guild leader.  So if you go back and read one post you missed from this year, let that be the one!  My other disappointment was that no one even bothered asking me what Queasy Tom Snot meant.  Hint – anagram.  (-:

 

Goals for the Coming Year:

1) Though I’m not sure why this would stand out above anything else, it would tickle me pink to be on the West Karana daily blogroll at some point.  I just love the quick fire nature and the host of links and the off the cuff comments, and seeing my blog linked there would be a joyous occasion.

2) Be a part of someone’s podcast show.  I’ve never done it, and I don’t know how to do it, but I would gladly do whatever I needed to do to learn to be a guest on somebody’s show.   Again, not so much for fame of fortune, but just because it would make my day and probably be a fantastically fun experience for me.

Games:

Best PC Game I Played This Year:  (tie) World In Conflict, Dominions 3, (Honorable Mention: Two Worlds – better than I thought it would be)

Best Console Game I Played This Year: Need For Speed Carbon (yeah, I know, I’m behind in the series…)

Best Pen and Paper RPG This Year:  (tie) Anima: Beyond Fantasy (seriously worth all $60 for the rulebook, I promise), Burning Wheel (Crane = genius)

Best Boardgame This Year:  I just got Twilight Imperium for my birthday, and though I haven’t played it yet…its gotta be the one.

MMO Subscriptions:  Eve Online (5 months), Warhammer (2 months),Age of Conan (2 months), LotRO (2 months), Station Pass (1 month), EQ 2 (Pass + 1 month), Pirates of the Burning Sea (Pass + 2 months)  – these include free months where appropriate, and months not yet complete.

 

THANK YOU!

Again, thanks to all of you who come here and read what I write!  I hope you continue coming in the next year, and I hope I can provide you with even more entertainment and a growing skill in this thing we call blogging!

A Weekend Without Games

Makes one board and dull for the coming week.  I did get some play time, mostly last night, mostly in the world of EVE, but…what should have been chock full of gaming was instead just trying to keep up with things.  With the kids back in school last week, they were exhausted, and thus by extension whiny, which in turn exhausts us.  I crashed on the couch Sunday afternoon for more than two hours.  Its rare for me to be out more than an hour if  I take a nap.

Anyway, I did spend some time this weekend loading more of my gear onto my laptop and removing all the crap that doesn’t need to be on my laptop.

And I did get in one leve l 4 mission last night in EVE now that my buddy has rigged his most recent Megathron.  Oh, and I fell in love with the Machariel.  That’s a handsome looking ship.  At the 1b ISK pricetag though, its a little out of my range.  It did prompt a small debate though, when I announced that if I had 1b ISK, I would buy one of those before I bought a carrier.  Which reminds me, whats the difference between a corp hanger and a ship maintenance bay?

Well the end result of the mission was twofold:  first, and most exciting, was that my wallet now exceeds 100m ISK, for the first time ever (yay!), and will soon be gone as I buy my first battleship.

Secondly: its time to pull the trigger and become my own person instead of riding on the coat tails of my current corp or my buddy’s minmatar standings (lol).  I need a corp that will let me do my own thing, but also allow for fun community through the chat rooms and also group events in the form of group missions or patrols.  Let me know if you have a recommendation.

Huh? Wha?

Okay, small confession.  I stayed up way too late last night playing Civ 4.  Zulu’s sacked my capital, and let’s face it, that’s not cool.  Especially since it put the rest of my empire in the toilet and set my time table back about 200 years.  Its 1900 AD and the best I can muster is grenadiers and cannons.  Not to mention right after I took the capital back these thieving Russian Knights came swooping in on the barbarian city that I had been seiging for 10 years and took it right from under my nose, all because my Great General Erwin Rommel rolled a one or some crap, because I have no idea how level 5 Axemen lose to a level 1 Archer with no defensive bonuses.   So I pillaged the hell out of the surrounding land while he was taking over.  Then I dropped a missionary in his lap and converted the town to Hinduism, the state religion of the Celts. OH SNAP!  What now you mustached communist backstabber!

…

So today I just don’t have the intellectual focus to write coherently.  But tomorrow is my day off…and a ”choose your own adventure” post dealing with a recent fleet op.

Freaking Zulu’s.