If you want to hear about the huge controversy over Jef Reahard’s one hour dismissal of Rift, well, I’ve already said all I’m going to say about it. There’s lots of MMOs, like Kung FOO, Fists of Fu, and Mabinogi that I played for an hour or two and felt no attachment. If someone had come up to me and asked me how I felt about those games after that hour or two playing them, I’d have told them what I thought.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about on this first blogroll of the new year is: what makes an MMO polished? A comment on one of Beau’s posts on Facebook (warning: link goes to Facebook) turned into a discussion between me and a person who probably won’t friend me now that, among other things, a serious, polished MMO would, or would not, have full voiceovers.
My view: The more voice-overs you have in your game, the more streamlined the game must be, and the less room players will have to leave the guided tour and strike out on their own. And for me, playing an MMO is all about being set free to live in the MMO’s world. While this does mean that I don’t consider Star Wars: The Old Republic to be what I would necessarily consider an MMO — being fully voiced with set paths from start to finish — that does not mean I don’t think it will be a fun online game, because I do. I love Bioware games! It’s just that SWTOR isn’t what I think of when I think “MMO”.
More mucking about in the latest MMO bloggery after the break.
Tipa
1 Hour Review of: Your Life
After an hour, I still couldn’t pick you out from the other babies. Wrinkled, wet, head shaped weird, crying… I’d seen it before. I’m thinking this whole baby nonsense has run its course. There’s plenty of adults around that can drive cars, climb trees, and feed themselves. I can’t really see what a baby that … Read more
EverQuest: I can admit to myself that I like Velious now.
Even in a California summer, the icy blankness of Velious’ frozen wastes could make me feel chilly. EverQuest was always immersive for me in that way; the first time we raided the underwater dungeon of Kedge Keep, I thought I might drown, I was so short of breath.
Every race had its own starting zone, with plenty of things to do up to around till around level 10 or so without ever having to encounter another race — which, in most cases, would mean braving some dangerous encounters. The total immersion was what I loved most about EQ.
Treasure Abyss: The Enchanted Tower (walk-through)
It’s been a few months since the last significant content update to Namco-Bandai’s “Treasure Abyss”, when they added the Samurai class and the associated “Tower of the Samurai”, wherein lay the components for creating the Samurai class weapons.
Since then, there’s been precious little to do on the TA front. Namco-Bandai released some appearance armor for players who recruit more people to the game, but the low stats gear was inappropriate for dungeon crawling, and I haven’t seen any of my friends, not even the low level ones, wearing even one piece.
Daily Blogroll 1/1/11 — Happy New Year edition
We’re way behind on our latest project at work, so I’ spent most of Friday working. I did take a break, though, to log on and participate in the final Beta 3 invasion event this afternoon. I’d spent all night (until 4:30AM) leveling my cleric from 12 to 20, and though I didn’t get a chance to visit the Iron Tombs, I did want to help keep Freemarch free. I’d leveled from 16 to 18 in a raid group at one of Thursday’s invasions. That also earned me nearly enough planar currency to get some nice epic items. I logged on, joined in, and earned enough to get some “purple” leggings. Good stuff.
While waiting for the servers to get turned off, I ported over to the Guardian lands and tried to invade the scholar’s grove. Those places are MADE for PvP — as you near an enemy stronghold, the familiar rift/public quest panel gets added to your quest display, and you get a nice list of goals that need to be met in order to capture the area. First, kill the guards. Then destroy the wardstone. All the while fending off the enemy players, who are being summoned to the area by broadcast warnings.
I could post a lot more about Rift — lots of people are. It’s all a reminder of the similar enthusiasm around Warhammer and Age of Conan etc, where the betas were incredibly fun and everyone was stoked. When the games went live, the laid back beta fun turned into laser-sharp focused achievements and min-maxing.
Will this happen to Rift? Of course it will.
Anyway, let’s see what’s on the collective blog-consciousness, this start of a new year.