TERA Online Review

My “Review” of TERA Online (or at least, its Open Beta).  Yes, I use the quote marks as usual.  I am not sure one can review an MMO based on one weekend of play, so please take my comments with a box of salt.

However, you should know that this commentary comes with no previous bias.  I have not been following TERA at all, and I didn’t make the connection that this was the game with all the commercials from that MMA guy until after the fact.  I just got an email with an invitation to the open beta, and I am always down for that.  Its also worth noting that the political system is supposedly a big part of this game, but it was not open for the beta and I know next to nothing about it, so it is not covered here at all.  So without further ado, in the usual format, my “review”.

The character models tend to be oversexed, but its also hard to deny the level of detail involved here, or just how beautiful the models are.

The Good

A New Spin on Old Ideas:  The first thing I have to say is that I was thrilled with the class selection.  Having a healing class that was pet driven (Mystic) and whose heals actually geographically deployed powerups was a lot of fun for a guy who is used to just sending in his pet to attack and then nuking the hell out of one target.  I also spent about half my time playing around with the Warrior class to see how melee really worked.  It brought back some fond memories of the Devil May Cry series (particularly when I gave the Slayer class a whirl).   I enjoyed that the warrior class tended to be a giant hat tip to Musashi, with a spiritual tint to the abilities and removal from its usual role of “tank.”   There is definitely a skill and learning curve to be tended too, particularly for melee classes.   Solo play with the Mystic was for the most part a breeze, with the warrior it was for the most part a challenge.  Eventually you will get the hang of dodging and ducking – but here is the great part – you may master the basic moves, but the opponents keep changing, and so do their tactics.  So each new quest and quest area will also bring with it renewed attention to how you play your class.  The skill chain you set up that worked great with this guy may not be useful at all for that guy.  Whack-a-mole this game is not!  Which leads me too…

Action Combat:  I can see where the idea that this is the first true action MMO could come from.  All of your gameplay and strategy are forced to be fluid and ultimately three dimensional.  Healing takes on a whole new challenge when you have to be actively viewing your intended ally.  Many of the skills have components that are location based in a whole new way.  Its like growing up playing wargames on squares and hexes and then diving into the world of miniatures for the first time, where the only measure of distance is with a ruler and relative to the units actual location.  Same thing here.  There is the usual cone and AOE and so on, but the battle no long involves orienting oneself around a North-South pole of tank and mob.  Standing still will get you dead in a hurry.  Skills are important, but skill chains (which are conveniently activated player customizable) generate interesting tactics of their own.    And then there are the mobs, which come in big, medium, and small variety.  Its not unusual to have to face one or two normal sized mobs with a squad of smaller mobs in tow, both of which may be using different strategies.   This is where group combat really shines, allowing groups to tackle challenges and quests in a way that really does make the game better in a way beyond artificially tweaking the xp curve with, say, the size of the group.

Player friendly.  I talked with one person over the weekend, another MMO player, who was surprised I was even playing TERA.  The words “Korean grind-fest” were used.  If that is the reputation or rumor about TERA, it is unfounded.  The leveling time I encountered was part with most other  games I’ve played, like TOR and WoW and so on.  It may feel longer since it involves doing something other than mindlessly hitting the same five buttons in order over and over while chatting with your friends about the latest Jennifer Love Hewiit show over VOIP.  Call me crazy, but that’s a good thing in my book.   I am a casual MMO gamer in the sense of time invested, not in the sense that I want all my games to play out like the latest Zynga Facebook monstrosity.  Beyond that – lets talk about other things, like the fact that you not only have the usual “port home” skill on a timer, but a common mob drob is a “safe haven scroll” that drops you back at the nearest quest hub, and stacks in your inventory.  Or that flight points are unlocked by level and storyline, and not by whether or not you slogged cross-continent to get there.  Or that you get your first mount, with a 140% speed increase, for free, when you finish the introductory island (level 10-12).  Or that crafting and harvesting are not limited artificially but open to whatever you want to pursue.  Or that you can mark quest mobs on your map and on their nameplate so you can find them with no fuss, even that one boss guy you just got vague directions too.  Or that you not only have healing potions, but regeneration motes that drop from mobs, healing you and cutting down on down time between combats.  Or that campfires can be used (or build anywhere) that raise your stamina – boosting your basic levels of HP and MP up to 30% – and that those fires can have buffs added to them to just about every other statistic.  And that is above and beyond the usual doubling rate for “Rest XP.”  Quite honestly, I’m not sure what more they could have done to make the game *more* convenient.

Beautiful.  Yes, I’ll talk more about the overly sexy toons in a nother section.  But in general, the graphics on TERA are easily the best I’ve ever seen in an MMO.  And they are optimized to the hilt.  I can’t run TOR on anything other than minimal settings, and even then my PvP FPS is about 8.  Yet I have a computer that should be running that game easily.   Meanwhile, in TERA, my computer which doesn’t clear the recommended specs, can run it with great settings and amazing detail.    I played even in the middle of some dense player formations and never slowed down once.

Attention to detail is one of TERA's most admirable successes. Note that my female character is riding side saddle!

The Bad

Keyboard vs. Controller.   While I played just fine on a keyboard, coming up with some pretty interesting ways to chain skills and use my class to the fullest, I still can’t see how you would play a character at max level, with some 20+ unique skills to draw on, without a controller.  And that alone may be the only obstacle a lot of MMO players will find that turns them away.   Granted, most of us have a 360 or PS3 also floating in our house, and the items to connect the controller to our PC run a measly $10 (or sometimes less), the idea of playing with a controller may just seem to be foreign.  In fact, the whole action combat system itself calls for a change in they way people think about and approach MMO’s.    That may be the ultimate death knell of this game, or what resigns it to a niche location.   And let me say that while I understand this, it does not in fact bother me in the least.  My first MMO, EQOA (May It Rest In Peace) I played with both a keyboard *and* a controller…at the same time!   Its one of the few times I have utilized macros to the hilt, chaining warnings of adds and low health with roots and aggro decreases with glee.  In fact, while this will be a barrier to the general populace of MMO gaming, its got me wondering in truth if its not just what the doctor ordered for the genre.

Kill Stealing is Back!  Without a traditional targeting system, you run into some unique problems.  Like kill-stealing, which used to be dead.  Several times on the weekend I tossed off a basic ranged attack, only to see someone come blurring into the mob in a melee charge.   And then I knew I could walk away.  Because no matter what happened next, the AI was going to react (intelligently I might add) to the threat in front of it…and I was going to get the credit for that kill.   Tagging of the mob is active, but its hard to tell who is sizing up a battle when you don’t see a toon 20m away staring down said mob because they have them targeted.   Also, because the aggro system works a bit differently than Yellow/Red (with a rage mechanic and creatures that actively react to your presence, even when you are not acting threatening), this can happen entirely by accident.  And that’s not even taking into account what happens when you love playing a Sorcerer but can’t aim your fireballs worth a flying poo and you end up tagging some mob you had no intention of crossing wands with.  You can tell TERA has tried to address this somewhat because all the skill ranges are lower than the typical 30m you find in other MMO’s.  My standard magic missile attack for my Mystic had a range of about 18m, and that was my longest.    But I’m not sure that’s a solid solution to the problem.  I think it might be time to rethink the tagging process and how that works, at least for TERA.

The Ugly

The Character Models.  Yes, they are way too sexy.  You know things are bad when you breathe a sigh of relief that at least the outfits of the race that looks like 10 year old girls is *mostly* decent, if  a bit too much purple leopard print and 1960′s era Playboy Bunny outfits can be considered decent.  So in this case, decent is more relative to the fact that the opening outfit for female Elf/Castanic leather armor wearers looks like something out of a Wicked Weasel swimwear catalog (And no, I’m not going to link to it, and you should be fully prepared for what assails you should you decide to go looking for it, lol).   And it doesn’t get noticeably better when you get to metal armor either, with half the outfits looking like a full-lingerie version of the Everlast Chastity Belt from Men in Tights.   And speaking of men in tights…the boys be showing some skin too.  I couldn’t find a single male Elven/Castanic outfit that wasn’t bear chested.  Usually with a fur coat or some bondage equipment thrown on for good measure.   Stick in a few pandas to appeal to the WoW crowd, and you’re off!

Variety is the Spice of Life.  And you won’t find any in your gear or outfits.  When you create a character you get to preview how they would look in four different outfits of the armor type you wear (the first of the four is the actual starting outfit), and as far as I can tell from looking around at all the characters in the starting island and capital city – that may be the only four armor models available period.   And of course you are stuck with the one weapon your class is allowed to wield.  God forbid an Archer should have a sword or dagger for close in work, or a priest should ever wield a scepter instead of a staff.  But then, this tends to be an industry standard these days, so its more of a gripe than a deal breaker.  Now there is one notable exception to this…

While the storyline isn't as deep as, say TOR's, it is more in depth, and presented in greater detail, than a standard MMO like Rift's is. Not the conversation level camera lock in here to highlight that this is a storyline quest.

The Tilt

Glyphs and Crystals.  Even if you don’t have a lot of variety in your looks or available weapons, thanks to these two little gems (pun intended) you have a staggering amount of control over the statistics and ways you can influence your skill and weapons respectively.  Glyphs are like a more flexible and precise AA system – allowing you to add duration or power or crits or even extending the abilities of a particular skill.   Crystals have lots of very precise statistical benefits you can plug (and unplug at will) into your gear.  Not only can you put in something to boost your crit, you can have a standard boost, or sacrifice some utility for a bigger boost – say, a higher crit percentage than the normal crystal boost if it only works when your opponent is knocked down.  A straight up MP regen boost – or a bigger one limited to blows you land when behind your target?  These are great little ways to boost your ability to build and plan your character, without tying you down into one particular skill tree or even a handful of particular builds.

I had fun.  Ultimately, this is my biggest tilt in favor of the game.  I came into it knowing nothing other than it was an eastern import that was an “action mmo” and may require me to use a controller.   I ended up playing it almost exclusively over the weekend, despite the opening of the test server once again for WoT, and despite having a night when I could have played TOR instead.  I had fun to the point where I have TERA bookmarked on Amazon and am seriously considering purchasing it and paying the sub fee.   I can’t think of any recommendation greater than that to give you.

Conclusion

If you don’t think you will enjoy TERA, skip it…its pretty obvious what it is, and if that doesn’t appeal to you, don’t bother.  If however, it sounds interesting to you, if you want something a little more involved than the standard MMO, something a little different, then this may just be the shot of caffeine you’ve been looking for to wake up your MMO life.

Max Levels, Time Played, and Just What Is Loyalty?

So I managed to, for the second time, to max level in an MMORPG.  Meet Vice Admiral Gharrett…or at least, his backside as he dings 50:

 

Oooh, shiny.

 

And, with all the hubub about SWTOR’s loyalty rewards for those people who have totally played the game the way Bioware told you not to (yes, this smells of EA, not BW), I had some questions myself.  I did some checking of time played.  Hitting 50 in STO took me almost exactly 100 hours.  Of course this time was broken up and spread out, but there you have it.

In SWTOR on the other hand, I have invest 93 hours into my main, and I just dinged 31.  Incidentally, I’d show you a screenshot, but as it turns out, amond the myriad of things still bugged 4 months in is the screenshot function (sometimes it captures, sometimes it doesn’t).   I’d say I’ve put in another 50 or so hours with my alt and various piddly starter characters, which means my playing time on average has been about an hour a day.

At that rate, I most certainly am not a “loyal customer” (at least, according to EA/BW).  And all those shiny new fun goodies in the Legacy system?  Well they mostly revolve around items either required you to be 50 (another 100 hours or so?) or costing in the 500k to 1m range in credits (I currently have about 50k to my name).

In other words, 1.2 did nothing for me.  It fixed none of the bugs I was struggling with, it added no new content for me, and did nothing to enrich my game experience.  But that makes sense if I am not a loyal customer.

 

So what does that mean?  It means that I have to vote with my wallet.  When my six month sub is up in June – what am I going to do?  Keep paying for a buggy game with a snail-paced development cycle?  Keep paying for a game that considers me a second class citizen?  I don’t know.  I do have lots of friends (and family) playing, so as long as they want to play, I will too, but that’s about as far as my loyalty extends at this point.

 

So maybe EA/BW is right after all.  But its hard to think of it as anything other than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

World of Tanks: 7.2 and Learning to Drive the T110!

I think that, if you count WoT as an MMO (and there are good arguments both for and against doing just that), this is the longest I have stuck with (and actively, regularly played) a game of the genre.   At this point, counting beta testing, test server runs, and my regular account, I have close to 5,000 battles under my belt.  Now that is not a grand number in the scheme of things (its not unusual to see veteran players with 8-10k battles played), but its still significant.

 

So let me just say as a regular player that 7.2 (or technically, .72) is probably the best patch to date.  The performance of the game got a noticeable boost, the UI overhaul is excellent, and the new vehicles are fun to roll with.    First on performance, I’m not sure what to say other than the matches load in half the time they used to, and that I have been able to *increase* my graphics detail settings across the board, the first and only time I’ve been able to do that in an MMO (though I have a feeling TOR will be headed in that direction, at least, if they want to stay afloat).  To have an update that makes the game both look better and play smoother is a rare feat in the gaming world, especially the online one.   Part of that is the new UI, which allows more playability and information to the player.  The ability to see exact HP rather than percentages, and to customize the display interface down to names and tiers is a welcome move.

 

And the new tanks are great.  I spent great time and energy grinding my way up the heavy line and then grinding the 6+ million credits to hold onto both my T34 and T30, and I am not disappointed with the investment.  The M103 is a nice upgrade to the T34, doing all that the US heavy line should, but without the glaring weaknesses of the T34.  But the line really shines in the T110E5.

 

 

At first I had no idea what to do with the tank.  I did the usual heavy tank thing, which got me killed a good bit.  The armor is good, but not up to the usual heavy tank levels.  The gun has a high penetration value and solid rate of fire, but doesn’t do an abundance of damage.  The speed and manueverability are, if anything, better than the US heavy line has been to this point.  But that doesn’t help you when squaring off against E-100′s and IS-7′s.   And so in one match on the Cliffs, in frustration, I decided to have fun and race with one of our teams Pershings to the center of the map.  This is usually the dueling ground of the new French tanks and the traditional mediums – get there quick and hold it to help jam up the map and flank the other team.

 

As it turns out the T110 can keep up just fine with the Pershing, and the enemy T-54, Pershing, and T-44 that opposed us clearly were not sure how to handle the sudden appearance of a tier 10 heavy in their usual playground.  And then I got it.   You see, the E-100 and Maus are mobile forts, absorbing huge hits and taking up lanes, as well as drawing the attention of artillary.  The IS-7 is a mobile assault unit, the vanguard of your attacks.   The AMX 50B is a DPS machine.  And the T110 – the T110 is a foil for medium tanks.  Its the perfect counter to the T-54 and the Type-59, with the penetration to handle their sloped armor and the hit points to outlast them, all bundled with the mobility needed to keep base with them and the armor that’s just tough enough to make their tango with you a dicey proposition.

 

And, as it turns out, this makes it the perfect heavy tank for me.  I’m not really all that good with heavies, I’m a natural born medium driver.  And that means that the T110 could become and exceedingly dangerous weapon in my hands.  I’m looking forward to exploring just how much so in the coming weeks.

How Did I End Up Here?

If you had jumped back in time (haha, if I had a nickel for everytime that happened in…well, you’ll see) to two weeks ago, and told me, HZero (some of my internet friends have a disconcerting habit of calling me Zero by the way 0-O ),  a few weeks from now, you will voluntarily give up a night of playing TOR to play some STO, I would have laughed at you.  And in fact, I did, literally “lol” at the person who asked me to play with them.  And then I felt bad, so I went and downloaded the game and logged in.  And went ahead and got my Akira (what the hell, that goal has only been on hold for like, 13 months, right?).

 

My Akira/Zephyr class. Yes, it is rather awesome looking, isn't it?

 

And along the way I realized that Cryptic and Perfect World have done a great job of improving the game.  Granted, some stuff is still just plain bad.  Ground combat, for example, continues to be unresponsive, boring, and at times, just plain odd (why is that AI alien armed with a plasma mini-gun trying desperately to get as close to me as possible?).    But there are a lot of things being done absolutely right.  Ground combat, bad as it is, is much improved over a year ago.  The Foundry delivers some excelling user-generated content.  The Duty Officer system is fantastic.  The Episodic story format, with its weekly story-driven missions, are great, almost like an interactive online comic book.   You can actually fail missions if you don’t read the text.  The opportunities for RP are so deep its hard to truly appreciate them all (it occurs to me that, despite the lack of true dialogue interaction with my bridge crew, I am far more attached to some of them than I am to any of my TOR companions…).  And perhaps best of all, the atrocious grind is gone, and replaced with a decent leveling curve.

 

But this might come at a good time.  I’ve about tapped out World of Tanks.  Or, more specifically, I’ve about opened up all the tank lines I wanted to, with the possible exception of some individual historical tanks, which can honestly wait until they put in actual historical matches.  So it may be time to step down from a premium account there, which has acted as a sort of “second sub” for me, and put the $5-10 a month I was spending there into STO instead.  I see no reason to sub up to STO, since a subscription offers me nothing of interest at this point.  But with 400-800 Cryptic points a month, I would be in heaven with a well stocked duty roster, fun uniforms and ships, and a regular XP boost.  Even if I do nothing more than log in on the weekend to play the new episode, and occasionally during the week to piddle around with duty assignments.

 

So, in summary, I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m glad I did.  And my friend is too, because those continuing missions are more fun with a second ship and captain at your disposal.

A Storm is Brewing

 

Given the wording here you can also safely exclude Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and virtually any online retailer.  Other than, you know, the people actually making Guild Wars 2.   But don’t worry, I’m sure the game will be great.  Revolutionary.  And always super free to play.

Right?

Sandbox Vistas I: Visiting Istaria

So, at the urging of Ben and Flosch, I am undertaking an odyssey to explore some obscure sandbox games.  First up on the list is one that I’ve been curious about for some time, a game called Istaria.  Istaria has just recently (last December) celebrated its 9th year in existence.  That in and of itself is nothing to sneeze about.  Originally entitled “Horizons” the game had an ambitious development goal of a fully PvE game with an automated AI enemy that would actively oppose players and player settlements in a never ending conflict.  As you can imagine, this was difficult to implement, so it was scaled back to something more static in nature.

Currently the game is rolling along nicely with a standard and RP server, though I gather from the forums that the population of the RP server is fractured and at times contentious, in addition to being lower than the one on the regular server.  So naturally, I signed up there.

The two week trial account allows three character slots among any of the diverse races, though after some time delving in the outdated wiki and in the community, I decided to start with a human character and try a dragon character later down the line.  And boy am I glad I did.   Why?

Truth.

I kid you not.  You can not swing a dead rat in this game without hitting five dragons.  The moment I exited the mystic portal from the tutorial island onto the live server itself, I was awash in dragons.  I’ve seen perhaps twenty or thirty players in the game thus far, and all but two of them have been dragons.

In fact, it occurred to me that, had I been really role-playing, my poor little character would have seen the dragons all lying around the starter village, screamed, turned around, ran right back into the mystic portal, and lived out his immortal life in the relative peace and quiet of that great utopia.

No idea who this guy is. Google image search ftw.

So, I’ve been spending a lot of time outside the village itself.  Where I’m alone with the baby pigs, and hatchling spiders, tiny grass beetles, skeletal warriors, aand OH MY GOD GIANT WOLVES AND MUMMIFIED REANIMATORS.

Yeah, basically there are two types of mobs thus far.  Those that you can kill, albeit with a large investment of time but little worry.  And there are creatures that will kick your ass into the ground without a second thought.  And telling them apart is almost impossible.   I was a level 8, and I was grinding level 5 and 6 skeletons (and boy was it a grind…) when a level 9 mummy thing wandered into the fight.   This guy is on a wide loop for his AI path, and I hadn’t seen him before.  But he was only a bit ahead of me, so I didn’t worry about it.  Until his first shot took 15% of my health.   And his second, another 15%.  And meanwhile, I was doing 3% a shot off of his.  It got ugly fast.  Fortunately, death is about as inconsequential in Istaria as any MMO, albeit they have cooler and more interactive ways to remove the death penalty, which I like.

You may think so far that I have not liked Istaria, but that’s not quite true.  I have enjoyed it a lot, and intend to keep at it for the remaining week or so of my two week trial at least.  The class/school system is great, keeping a familiar vibe going on in character creation and building, while allowing you to tweak your character in a way normally reserved to skill based systems.  The crafting is deep and gets deeper the more you get into it.    Harvesting is a bit of a chore, but there’s enough RP channels out there to keep you entertained, and on top of that, as an older game, Istaria runs fine in windowed mode, allowing you to browse and harvest at the same time.

Anyway, we’ll see where this takes us.  I may do another post on Istaria, or I may move on to some of the other options out there, like Wurm Online (which looks…complicated) or Xyson (where technology is rare or nonexistent…yet there is a screenshot with a car sitting in it…).   And hopefully Dawntide will come back up in the interim as well.   So my posting will be kinda…sandbox.  Heh.

World of Tanks Introducing Matchmaker Improvements

Two of the things that always seem to vex players of World of  Tanks are the matchmaker (probably everyone’s number 1 gripe!) and trying to earn enough money in the upper tiers.   The new Q&A does a great job of handling questions about both of these, and explaining some of the developers thought process behind them.   First up is the Matchmaker updates that are long overdue, and in the next post we will explore the issues with making enough credits to actually *play* your high tier tanks.

 

The Match maker is a complicated issue that is being addressed.  Players would like to see both more even battles, (less 15-0), balanced artillery with a maximum number in a game, scouts being available in only those battles that artillery are present, platoon balance, not constantly being put in the lowest tiers in a battle, and the spread of the tiers. This all needs to be done without taking a long time to find you a match.

 

This sums up the whole problem in a nutshell.  The reality that the WoT crew doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge though is that people are willing to wait for a match.  Heck, I wait an upwards of 5 minutes for areas to load in TOR, thanks to its crappy optimization, I’m more than willing to wait 60 seconds for a match in WoT.  I say that because its rare to wait more than 15 seconds for a match right now, and often as soon as you hit the battle button, you are dropped immediately into place.

 

While complicated, the first version of this new Match Maker should be available around the 7.2 timeframe. It will take into account many of the above listed issues that players have brought up. The one thing that will be absent is a hard 3 tier spread.

  

While this is on the surface good news, its kind of a silver bullet as well.   A “hard 3 tier spread” means limiting matches to nothing more than three tiers of tanks at a time.  For example, one of the most enjoyable matches in the game now is one of the battles the matchmaker will created that involves only tanks from tiers 3, 4 , and 5.   So Stuarts and Luchs will face Mark IV‘s and Shermans, which is difficult, but not impossible.  As it stands now though, there are matches that commonly occur where those same Mark IV’s and Shermans can end up in battle against Pershings and IS-3‘s.  Now as you can imagine, that kind of stuff happened in real life…and it was about as fun as it ends up being in the game.  However, the reason is that its not *all* about tiers.

 

The Match Maker does not use tiers as a determination, but instead assigns “weights” to each vehicle or vehicle type. It will try to create fun and balanced matches with vehicles that are available at the time. It will no longer immediately assign you to the first available battle you are qualified for, but rather hold your tank and make it available to several matches that are gathering players. This will add the flexibility of generating better matches.

 

Well, to start off, this is something of a lie.  Tiers do form the basis of how matches are made.  Then weights are assigned that modify the tier into the full calculations used (since obviously a tier 5 heavy and a tier 5 light are not the same thing).  Holding the tank will increase time, but as we’ve already said, since the time at this point is negligible its a worthwhile exchange.

 

You may still see some matches with wide tier spreads; however you may also see more matches with lower tier spreads, including some that may only contain one tier. Much of this will depend on server population and the population distribution at the time you enter the queue. The matchmaker will have a better chance to deal with lower populations as it will take a little time to find better matches. If the population is so low, or badly distributed that it can’t find a “perfect” match it will also have the ability to launch with less than 15 players on a side, if it feels it offers a fair match and waiting additional time may not allow for finding the needed players to fill the rosters.

So overall this change to the matchmaker is a large step towards filling the community’s desires. It is also something that can be continued to be improved and balanced. 

 

This is good news.  The only downside to sub 15 tank matches is that there is a less potential earnings for those involved.  But, given that those matches will be more balanced, there will be more opposing tanks that a player can actually do damage too, and so the actual earning will probably be higher.

Overall, this is a good improvement.  Trading time for flexibility, and allowing some variations in matchmaking should be good.  Now the matchmaker will not just throw your mid-tier medium tank into a match of all high-tier heavies to balance out some artificial equation, it will hold and check for other potential matches and determine a “best fit.”   Doesn’t mean you won’t get into those lopsided matches still, but it should be a more rare occurrence.

TOR Criticized for Being Too Realistic

A quote from Tobold, via Rowan Blaze:

“There is a sort of intellectual honesty about the evilness of the Empire, while the Republic comes over as the people who would like to be the good guys, but never really manage.”

So basically, what we are angsty about is the fact that TOR models the political and moral dichotomies present in reality too well for our taste.  We’d like our Axis a little more evil and our Allies a little more squeaky clean.

Look, this is not to point a finger, I’ve seen this reposted in lots of places from lots of people, not to mention the chatter in my own guild and on the forums.  It is simply to say that I’m not sure what people were expecting.   I had assumed we would delve into the Empire to find some of the evil was mostly a result bureaucratic or apathetic tendencies.  To quote an old movie:  ”Very few people can be totally ruthless. It isn’t easy; it takes more strength than you might believe. ”   Likewise, I had assumed that under the  guise of altruistic motives and ra-ra patriotism, we would find that the Republic was ultimately tarnished.

(Ironically, from the Empire side, this is exactly what Darth Bane noticed, /facepalmed, and created the Rule of Two for.)

As for me, I’m satisfied.  Bioware did a great job of fleshing out two imperfect civilizations, and leaving room for all of us to navigate the waters of rebellion and heroism, good and evil.  If anything, they did too good a job – my brother’s Sith Warrior had to purchase a new lightsaber this week.  Turns out he enjoyed a storyline too much, and the end result was light side points he hadn’t counted it.  Which mean that his current lightsaber was no longer usable.  In other words – what he planned for his character met reality, and the result was a less than efficient character development.

Hey wait a second…a storyline so powerful it makes us change the conceptions of our character.  Weren’t we begging for that?

Congrat’s Bioware, you trolled us hard, on a whole new plane of existence.

2012 Predictions

I thought this would be easy.  At least it has been in past years, but this year I’m a little stumped.  More specifically, I’m stumped about what to make predictions *about*.   It seems obvious what will and will not happen this year.

 

1) FunCom will be FunCom…they will release a conceptually brilliant game long before it is ready, and oblivious to whether or not they have enabled their target audience to consume it (think system requirements re: AoC at its launch).

 

2) Guild Wars will ship to much acclaim and joy, and find its niche…and then promptly fall off the radar, as people complete is PvE campaign in the course of a week and are left with nothing but hardcore PvP or the next $50 box drop.

 

3) World of Warplanes Beta will come winging our way at some point during the year.  My guess is that it will not be nearly the success that World of Tanks has been.  Primarily because the inclusion of joystick support indicates that the basic keyboard controls are going to be awkward, and lets face it, that’s what most people use.  Again..that whole “know your target audience” mentality.

 

And then there is stuff that is less obvious.  And that is the stuff that I will really judge myself on predicting, because its a little tougher.

 

1) Dawntide may not survive another year.  After previously announcing plans for a launch and unveiling payment plans, Dawntide had to do a quick E-brake 180 when they lost funding.  They reaquired funding almost immidiately, and promised an updated release date within three weeks time.  Two months later, the big news was instead that the whole world was coming down for a complete redesign/regraphic-ing (is that a word?).  That smacks of desperation or fear, one of the two.  One of the GM’s in the forum is on record as saying he believes a new launch will come late in the year, perhaps around August, but there is simply no  good way to tell at this point.

On the other hand,  I could be wrong.  The redesign of the world could indicate an influx of funding allowing them to modernize and fully realize the game.  And in this case, I truly hope I’m wrong.  The innovations present in the game are wonderful, and I’d like to see it make some inroads.

 

2) Sony will find a new flagship.  They have to, right?  I’m shocked that Everquest 3  took so long to get off the ground, even in whispered rumor form.  To be the advance they want it to be will require a full development cycle, which means we are looking at another 4 years probably before it hits.  So part B is this: I fully expect Sony to pick up distribution rights to ArchAge Online.  They have shown no qualms about bringing other people’s developments into their fold (Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea).  Pairing this with a PlanetSide 2 launch would mean fresh blood in the Sci Fi and Fantasy domains.  That’s not to say that ArchAge comes out way in 2012, but I think it will find a home in this time period (call that part C if you will)

 

3)  Titan will lose its codename and we will began to get some information on it.  Quite frankly, my belief is that if you’ve been holding it in your backpocket for over four years, without even giving a hint of what it is, its just as likely rotten eggs as it is a hit.   But I’ll be curious to see what’s been rattling around in the heads of Blizzard and whether or not this is the time to unveil it.

 

In the most and least categories:

My most anticipated game is…I don’t have one.  Honestly, I don’t.  I’d say Secret World, but I’m pretty sure its gonna flop like a drunk noob off the high dive platform.  I’m honestly not excited about anything that is to come this year.  So, I guess the challenge is to see what does finally get me excited.

My least anticipated game is…Guild Wars 2.  I’m glad that everyone is nuts over it, but I honestly do not see the draw.  The art direction in the first one and from what I’ve seen in this one, is ugly to my eye.  Guild Wars is honestly the only game I’ve quit playing because I wanted to claw my eyeballs out just looking at the screen.  Does that make me weird?  You bet it does.

The game everyone is excited about that will actually be horrible…that’s gotta be WildStar.  It looks like Champions Online’s graphically impaired World of Warcraft wannabe offspring.  Reminds me a bit of Alganon, which, as we all know, had great success in the MMO world.

Dual of the mini Mecha MMO’s.  Which will win my affection:  Hawken or Mechwarrior Online?  Personally I’m leaning Mechwarrior myself, but the decision to continue a timeline that was already beyond salvage is humorous.  And I could see it being neither.  When I think mecha I think strategic.  I do not think super-action fest.  Which is what both of these games seem like they may be, at first blush.  Which means that the dark horse alternate candidate in this race may actually be the wildly-innacurately name Gratuitous Tank Battles.  Which is actually Gratuitous Mecha Battles…that also happen to have some Tanks in them.   Seriously…are we that desperate to cash in on the World of Tanks fanbase?

2011 Predictions Review

Yeah, I should have done this awhile ago, but I didn’t, so tough cookies.  Not that I predicted anything earth shattering last year for 2012 (get it?) but I had the usual mix of success and failure (last year I got 2 out of 5 correct).

 

1.  We will finally get some news about the World of Darkness MMO from CCP /White Wolf…lets add a part B  to this that reinforces my point - we won’t see a beta for this in 2011.

Not only was there absolutely no more information, the website I linked was not updated at all, and so we clearly did not see a beta for it either.  CCP’s struggles this year have been well documented.   As a gamer, former Atlanta resident, and guy who pulled every card he could trying to get in the door at White Wolf years and years ago, it saddens me to see that company down in the dirt, and its IP virtually untouched.  And its a huge loss for CCP, in a time when wizards and werewolves and vampires and such have never been more popular or mainstream.   I’m not surprised the MMO is not out, but I am shocked that no move has  been made to profit from the IP.  Heck, even a half lame Facebook game would have generated some revenue at this point.  +1 for me.

 

2.   2011 will show a decline in the number of WoW subscriptions.

On target.  A 2 million subber drop.  This was of course, part of a series of posts and thoughts that Cataclysm would be, not a giant failure, but simply the high water mark of the game.  And so far that has been very true.  +1 for me.

 

3.  Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch in April.

Missed it by a mile.  But we all knew that.  A month or so after writing this we got the unofficial word that TOR was definitely not delayed, since no release had ever been announced.  And the thread with the spring release date disappeared into the ether.  With all we know now, no amount of cash recoup by launching early would have saved the game if they had launched in April.  In fact, there’s good evidence that the game was nowhere close to being done at that point.  TOR has had a reasonably successful launch and (so far) first month, but its hard to shake the feeling that for a project in development for six years, with the resources they had at their fingertips, that it falls short of what it could have been.

 

4.  Vanguard will go F2P.  Okay, this is more of a hope than a prediction…I think that the addition of DCUO to the Station lineup will probably help make this possible.

You can maybe score this one as a halfway.  The success of DCUO’s transition to F2P, as well as EQII, have Sony clearly interested in investing a bit in Vanguard.  New updates are incoming, and the general feeling is that its only a matter of time before the game transitions.  But…it didn’t happen in 2011, so no love for me.

 

5.  Cryptic Studios will finally reveal what this is.  Because its copyright 2007, and it makes me itch.

Not only did they not reveal what it is, they basically went belly up and the concept art, and indeed the entire website, that the link pointed to last year, no longer exist.  I still believe it was a deal with Chaosium to produce an official Cthulhu MMO, for a number of reasons.  At this point though, its likely that we will never know.

 

So there you go, 2 out of 5 again.  I am nothing if not consistent…at least as far as my predictions are concerned.  On to the other 2011 thoughts I had:

My most anticipated release was a toss up between Rift and TOR.  I opted to pass on the Rift release, only for the one reason that I had played it so much in Beta that I was tuckered out.  I came into it a few months later and it became the first, and so far only, MMO that I have ever capped in.  Unless you count WoT.  TOR’s launch I was there for in the sense that I had a preorder and was in from day one.  But in truth, I have played precious little of it due to real life complications.  My highest character sits still at level 18.  So I guess it really was a toss up after all.

My least anticipated release was DCUO and that was pretty much true.  I am already 100% on board with what my least anticipated will be for next year too.  Seems I have a keener eye for what I don’t like than what I do like.  But you may have already noticed that about me.

My most desired Beta was TOR.  I got in, but so late in the process I really hate to count it as being in Beta.  :-p

My most desired industry change was to create something between F2P and $15 a month.   Thought there have been some nice transitions in the last year, I’m still waiting for that change.  The truth is that most of the F2P models leave out the part of the game that would make it fun for me (ability to have alts, housing, flexibility in character building) and so I never explore the F2P option, so they never have a chance to sell me on other things.  As successful as F2P has been…it missed the boat somewhere along the line.

 

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at 2012 and what is to come.