When I’m running around the mean streets of the Rogue Isles in City of Heroes, you know what I hate the most? Nah, not the dons of the Family. Not even Longbow. It’s those damn tourists from Paragon City. And NOW I find that the heroes themselves are thinking about slumming their dark sides on my turf?
Sente hopes the expansion adds more depth to the Mission Architect, allowing real choices instead of “if it moves, kill it. If it doesn’t move, harvest it.” gameplay so common in CoX missions. Syp sees this as a necessary move to separate the game from Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Spinks wonders why it took so long for such a basic premise as heroes and villains swapping sides to make it into the game. Hudson hopes the expansion will deal with City of Heroes’ boredom factor.
I dunno anyone who actually pays attention to the plot for CoH missions. It’s all about blowing stuff up. Really LOUD. Enemies are just something to target. Isn’t it a cool coincidence that news of the new expansion has driven the discussion entirely away from player misuse of the Mission Architect?
Via Runic Games Fansite, Perfect World will be at E3 and has full details about the new games they are showcasing; MMO Jade Dynasty, MMO Ether Saga and Single Player Game/MMO to be Torchlight. Bunch of new screenshots, too.
Do you love World of Warcraft for the sense of exploration and meeting up with friends? Razakius tells the different story about a WoW where mindless questing and emphasis on soloing destroys both exploration and socialization. Ya know, whenever anyone disses WoW, I have just one thing to say: 12 million people from all over the world think WoW is the greatest MMO ever written, and are only dimly aware that there are other similar games (though they aren’t as good as WoW because, hey, 12 million people can’t be wrong).
Syp chimes in with all the reasons an emphasis on the soloer in an ostensibly multiplayer game is a really good thing. Well, yes, it used to drive me up the wall in EQ that my characters couldn’t do much without a group, but, I grew bored with soloing on the characters that could. Maybe that’s just me.
TERMINALLY bored. I just hate soloing.
Thom Terrazas introduced himself as EverQuest’s new Executive Producer, replacing recently departed (for EQ3?) producer Clint Worley. Thom has a lot of history with EverQuest, and gives a really extensive resume of his time with SOE. Obvious by his omission is his previous gig as producer of troubled MMO Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. So the real question is… what does this mean for Vanguard? And is Thom going to be bringing the RMT focus to EQ that he oversaw in V:SoH?
Caliga at MMO Gamers buys a castle in Wizard 101 and wonders why all these F2P games can have player housing while the industry giants like WoW and WAR cannot. Maybe, he muses, WAR doesn’t have it because WoW doesn’t have it, and if WoW doesn’t have it, nobody wants it!
Ixobelle is making individual graphic banners for the blogs in his blogroll, which I just think is really neat 🙂 I should do something like that!
Spinks looks back at a Year of WAR and charts the rise and fall of her time in the game, as she lets her subscription expire. Though I never played Warhammer, I did have my fun with the game, and it’s ALWAYS good to have MMO options. Mythic’s only real misstep, I feel, was its unrealistic expectations for the game. There’s no way it could have EVER lived up to its pre-release hype.
Digital brand Tateru Nino only asks that Steam fulfill their part of the bargain and sell older games that work on new systems, as opposed to old games that don’t. Now that Steam is hosting more and more MMOs, relying on them to keep their games up to date is a pretty pressing issue.
Green Armadillo of Player vs Developer wonders if the Lord of the Rings Online Legendary Weapon system is so incredibly grindy so that Turbine is off the hook for more frequent content updates. Having to grind out thousands of mobs to make your shiny new weapon worth wielding? Where have I heard THAT amazing idea before?
And finally, a bit of EQ2 news. Lars of MMOment of Zen writes that max level characters will get more AA experience from combat than before, making AA something you once again can gain just from doing your normal grouping and raiding. Where have I heard THAT amazing idea before? 😉
Keep gaming and have a great day!
Wishing I’d been on Ixobelle’s blogroll because that’s cool as hell! I checked out the one up there now and it’s awesome. The day that EQ2 does a 50/51 server all my other fantasy MMOs can kiss my butt. EQ2 has everything I want in a fantasy MMO except that the questing just just sucks (to me) and I could do with less lag in the cities but hey, I’d deal with both for a starting characters closer to max level. I’d craft and harvest mostly, decorate my house and only worry about leveling when I wanted to. The problem with attempting that at my measly low level is that I can’t harvest in the areas I need to pursue my crafting / storefront. 50/51 for EQ2 please!
P.S. While it sounds fun, I’m not getting the purpose of the housing in W101. Friends Lists being the pain that they were, I had so few on my list. Who would ever even see the beautiful inside of my house? It’s doesn’t sound like EQ2 and ROM where anyone can visit your house, even without you being there. In both of the other games you can also craft inside your house so there’s a purpose, should you choose to pursue it. What is the role of housing in W101. I haven’t seen anything yet that makes that clear.
I do care about the plot in CoX and the game has some great stories. But like in most MMOs it can be slightly difficult to enjoy in fast-paced teams, since the story telling mechanics are not as well developed for the format as it could have been.
Blowing up stuff is fun, but still needs some context to keep it fun.
@Saylah: If you refer a friend to EQ2 to get the triple experience you could have a level 50 character in a matter of days, almost by accident. A friend and I tried it and it was so fast that it actually sort of ruined my enjoyment of the game. However, if you’re someone who just wants to be that level asap, it might work out fine for you.
LOTRO had player housing for a while already and it seems that those areas are mostly deserted ghost towns.
Either it is not worth the price/time to maintain or nobody wants it 🙂
Well, LotRO player housing is cripplingly expensive, very difficult to get to if you are not the owner, and if you just want to visit someone’s home, it requires a major effort. LotRO’s housing is nothing more than a money sink. At least W101 houses you can teleport to and your friends can teleport to join.
As for the purpose of houses? Probably a money sink in W101 as well, but also a place for trophies for your journey through the spiral, at least if it’s your first time through when quest rewards include house items.
@Myrix – Didn’t know that had that program. I will check into it. If it’s not something where you have to play together that might work out for me. My gaming time is almost zero right now. When I do play it’s at very odd hours – a bit here and there. Thanks for the info.
What’s wrong with having no specific purpose for housing other than good old fashion fun?
Why does there have to be a purpose for everything? I just want to decorate my house, invite my friends, and have a place to chat, and play with cool items. I think FUN is a satisfactory purpose.
Nothing wrong with that but I was wondering. W101 is so restrictive because of their audience I doubted seriously that they’d let players in and out of each others homes at will. Since I had very few “friends” in the game and there is no crafting, I don’t know that I’d be inspired to farm house items that 99.9% of the time, only I’d ever see. For me personally, there’s not as much fun in that scenario. I’d probably just decorate my dorm room and call it a day.
You know I’ve never particularly cared for the “well X number of people like the so it must be good.” It rarely proves right. By that logic, McDonald’s is the best restaurant in the world, Walmart is the best store, Old Navy has the best clothes, American Idol is the best TV show, Titanic is the best film, and Mario Brothers is the best game of all time. Now I don’t know about anyone else but none of these is true (Mario is about the closest one that is). In reality, what tends to be the most popular tends to be the lowest common denominator… McDonald’s is one of the worst places to eat, Wal-Mart is one of the worst places to shop, Old Navy has the worst clothes, American Idol may not be the worst show, but it certainly is down there and so on. By this logic I’d say that World of Warcraft has rightfully earned its name as the worst MMO and the fact that X million people subscribe to it.
And btw, if it is so good because of the number of subscribers, then Maple Story is that much better because they have over 92 million, so suck on it WoW fanboys, you are small potatoes. (and yes maple story numbers are inflated, but so are WoW numbers so they likely equal out.)
You know, there was only one MMO RPG that never had a problem with a boredom factor, and never had people quit because there was nothing else to do – that’s Wolfpack’s / Ubisoft’s Shadowbane. The game had other problems, bugs, poor management, but the game design and planning of actual player interaction with environment, and most of all, ability to influence, affect, and CHANGE the world, reshape the map, and craft their names into territories – were excellent. Needless to say, Shadowbane only had 250 000 population at its peak, and never reached popularity, but it was an excellent game, and I hope the new emulator restores the Play To Crush mojo back.
Well, sure, SB was a sandbox pvp game. Darkfall and EVE Online have trod the same path, and to apparently greater success than Shadowbane achieved. but, 250K subs? That’s not a failure, that’s a wild success in my book, especially for an indie MMO.
What I remember about SB (I didn’t play but I did follow) was the rampant asshattery show toward EQ players, like myself, which didn’t entice many of us into playing. I played DAoC around the same time, and the mood there was that the game was really unbalanced. My gut feeling is that SB didn’t really grow the market enough to find its niche.
The ex-Wolfpack folks have hit it out of the park with W101, though. I think it’s weirdly ironic that a kids MMO was built with lessons learned from a hardcore adult pvp sandbox game.