Mythos, still in closed beta, has completely relaunched. No more beta codes to give out (sorry), but if you have been a beta tester, you will have to uninstall your current client and download the new one. I did this this morning; things look shinier. Expect a new look at Mythos soon.
Bristlebane’s Day (apparently) goes live today. The revelers are in North Qeynos at the Claymore, and West Freeport outside the Executioner’s Pit. I have no idea if there are quests associated with them; I couldn’t get a word out of them on the Test server.
Sins of the Solar Empire, the game, is harder than Sins of the Solar Empire, the demo. I’ve had to restart twice. First time I expanded too slow, the second time, too fast.
I’ve been very, very bad with EQ2 news. I promise to be better! There’s been some lower level stuff I’ve been doing that I really do need to write about.
WAR has been kicked back to the fall. This means that people who were trying to decide between AoC and WAR need worry no longer; they can get AoC and play it until WotLK or WAR come out, then move on. This gives AoC a good four-five month window, which is more than I expected for it. So: WAR moving, good for AoC, bad for WAR, since now it has to compete with Wrath of the Lich King, and I think we all know who will win that battle.
No news on the EQ2 or EQ1 expansion front. SOE did a DevDiary chat with Thomas Sincinch, an EQ2 character artist, and he said the next expansion was still early in production. However, the Shard of Hate will be live soon — it’s on Test now, and I hope to take a look inside it soon.
Rock Band solo project — since I got a mic stand for Rock Band, I’ve been working on a solo-duo — me singing and playing guitar at the same time, guitar on hard, singing on medium. It is VERY DIFFICULT to play songs you have never played on the guitar controller on hard, while singing songs somewhat on time and in key. I’m singing now in Amsterdam for something, I forget which. My last battle was for Dan, Dan the Super Sound Man in Stockholm, where I finished Highway Star with five stars — but I knew the song and the words. Hardest has been when Metallica’s “… And Justice for All” came up in a random song set. I’m sorry. Just wasn’t up to speed. Just a couple of songs from completing Rock Band drums on Hard — Police’s “Next to You” and “Run to the Hills”. I’ve been working on how I sit when I play and can get the double kicks fairly well (they tend to “bounce” when you’re in the groove). I’ve also been dipping back into online dueling, this time on Hard. So I guess, I’ve officially graduated from a skilled Medium player to a fairly confident Hard player. Boston’s album makes me crave more albums from 70s rockers. My pick would be Blue Oyster Cult’s “Imaginos”, but that’s a dream that will never come true. Perhaps “Fire of Unknown Origin”? That contains a lot of their hits. Of course, the obvious pick would be Phish.
Working at Massively really is *work*. It doesn’t leave me as much time for gaming as I would like, but I know I will get faster with the articles as I do them. Right now it is taking me an hour or two for each post. I want to get that down to half an hour per.
It’s not so much that it takes me a long time to write — heck, I can sit down and write pages without pause — it’s making the Massively style my own. It’s incredibly easy to write in my own ‘voice’ — I’ve had so much experience with it, after all — harder to write in someone else’s. And my own particular writing style is long and rambling; Massively wants tight, focused articles that get right to their target, deliver their payload of news and information, then fly quickly off — without sounding forced or boring. It’s a real education. Every article I write has to be trimmed down substantially — especially if it’s about something I’m really interested in, like Spellborn.
Anyway, the weekend is here soon. Hoping for three Massively articles each day, time spent in both Vanguard and EverQuest 1, and I’ll be taking my Bloodletter into some new parts of Mythos to see what’s new.
I might sleep, too, but I’ll have to check my schedule first.
16 thoughts on “Quick Takes: Mythos, EQ2, WAR, AoC and Massively”
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You’re on XBL right? Add me: anubis211
I’ll duel you on drums any day, or we can just jam!
Speaking of long and rambling, I finally started my treatise of everything I would do if I was making an MMO. So everybody come over and flame me for hating fast travel and cosmetic pets!
I’ll add ya. I’m using my son’s XBL account, Scurvsnicker. I’d make my own, but I have paid for all this DLC already. Doing drum duels with a friend would be awesome in a box wrapped in frilly ribbons.
I read your part 1 of how you would write an MMO. Mind if I mention it on Massively?
Maybe after I get a couple parts done, the intro is just a tease!
Wow…a lot of news…
I had tried Mythos, but it did not seem to move fast enough (Diablo style yea!)…but, even more shinier? Hmmm…load it back up I guess…(and did they take away all our invites?…just saw the site, and no option for this anymore…BOOoo)
The WAR news is good in several ways….yes, number 1 is AoC…a chance to see if it will be worth a darn (minus goggling at bewbies….(j/k)) as I like the idea of a more action oriented combat. Second is that WAR could get really polished, and maybe pull some scrips from some other games that do NOT deserve them (like the boredom of LOTRO…) and yes…maybe even WoW…but, Blizzard will definitely be ready and match their release date with the expansion…guarantee it…how they killed Vanguard (besides the mess the Vanguard team put themselves in)
As to Vanguard, I am actually starting to like it…but give me time..I am quite critical so, I am bound to find something…but, I got lost for 2 hours before the wife walked in and said. “I am home”…(oh crud…better log off…)
Thanks
Great update! It really puts the life of a gaming maven into perspective. I can feel sympathy pangs with each handful of hair you rip out and I will be purchasing numerous sequined wigs this afternoon in your honor!
Busy Tipa is busy!
I’m telling ya, Tip. AoC will surprise people… it’s not all blood and boobs. Though, even I can admit both are present. You may even enjoy bits of it. 🙂
The pixies from EQ1 had visible nipples through their flowing white clothes. A friend of mine was happy to point this out to me. We started playing the same day – creating a duo of wood elves. He finished character creation a few minutes before me and tore off into the forest. As soon as I logged into the game, the first thing I see is a private message from him in my chat window detailing his first discovery upon setting foot into the magical world of Norrath:
“PIXIE NIPPLES!”
That was my very first memory of EQ 1, sad isn’t it?
As far as AoC – I’m very happy about the boobs – and not because I’m perverted, seriously.
No, really, I am being completely serious.
Call me the odd-man out, but the only reason I am happy is because it is just another level of realism that so many other games are too afraid to touch for fear of their target market getting upset. AoC seems to be a very mature game, with a mature audience being the expected market, and so it’s not afraid to cross into these pointy-when-cold uncharted lands.
Look at any bare-chested female creature in EQ2 and it honestly appears as if they were originally nude, nipples-a-plenty, and then at the last second someone hastily photoshop-blurred the cherries off the sundae. Sirens and Fairies both have completely nude bodies, exposed breasts, but blurry patchiness over each mound!
I’m a graphic designer. My seething, angry ilk detests pixels. When we see even a single pixel distorting something that’s supposed to be smooth – it’s like shoving unlubricated contact lenses carved out of a garlic clove directly into the eyes of an astigmatic Vampire and then easing his pain with a kick to the groin*. I wouldn’t care if they had perfectly smooth bodies with no features at all, but the smudged out naughty bits is very poor form to the darting, bloodshot eyes of a graphic designer.
*Still working on finding those MP3s, Tipster.
I wouldn’t mind so much if they had fully naked men as well. Fully naked, sexually aroused men. In AoC. It would be only fair. Doing it just for women kind of sets the genders apart, doesn’t it? One’s the fully armored man with his weapons, masculine, impermeable, victorious — and the other has nothing to protect her, no way to fend the man off, she must do whatever he wants as he leers at her unclothed body, taking screenshots and advancing on her… Does this seem fair or right to you?
Run Einhorn. Run you fools!
To be fair, Howard’s Hyboria had just as many almost-nude men as nude women. He frequently describes men as wearing little more than a small loincloth, and goes into great detail about their rippling muscles and radiating masculinity.
No idea if that carries over to the game or not.
Tipa, you’re off milady. The women in Hyboria will be just as buff and covered as men. Sure there are whores… in fact the first woman you meet is one, and your created femal character is a sex slave… but that’s Hyboria for you.
From every video I’ve seen of actual gameplay (not the blood and headchopping promos) the game’s very serious and not as bad as those promotional videos make it sound. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating, those videos claiming blood and sex as the main points are just bad marketing and NOT indicative of the final game.
Give it 5 dollar pre-order and see for yourself with a 3 day headstart on May 17th (or the Open Beta whenever it happens).
@ Cameron: As seen in the early videos (probably still the same), as a male character you awake shipwrecked on an island wearing said loincloth for the first few levels of your life… and only said loincloth.
I actually agree with you Tipa, and I’m not even attracted to men. I also think as the male characters slaughter they should at some point (after X amount of kills in Y period of time) enter a state of blood lust in which they gain bonus damage, but have a decreased movement speed from a raging erection.
But Bildo has a point – not ALL the women are going to be topless. Just the whores. And there should be male whores too!
…Big, strong dark-skinned male whores with chains around their necks and tiny little scraps of groin-covering…..glistening with sweat and spilled red wine…..languidly strewn over large mountains of satin and silk pillows in a dark smoky room…..a rough, sinewy warrior with a now-broken spirit moaning softly in confusion as he tugs at his tiny golden collar…
….Uh oh……blood lust….
I actually will be trying the game. Now that I work for Massively, I feel it’s only fair that I give every game a chance. While I understand the milieu in which the stories were set, and have read many of them myself, I also understand they were written in the sentiment of seventy years ago. We can’t give them a pass to modern sensibilities just because they were written in the 1930s. I’d like to think we’ve come a long way in racial and gender issues since then. Maybe we have or maybe we have not, but this is how I feel.
That said — to repeat — I will be playing the game at least a little.
The Conan mythos isn’t representative of the 1930s or any other time. It could just as easily have been written today. In fact, extreme and sensationalist as it is, I’d consider it a welcome balance to the modern political nonsense that pretends men and women are almost exactly the same.
Anyway, I’m sorry to say I doubt you’ll be spending much less time writing those Massively articles in the future. The time each article takes depends more on the subject of that particular article than your experience in journalism. You’ll probably be doing more news-oriented writing than I ever did, but even time doing news research varies greatly with the subjects at hand.