Random Question – What does ‘Making It’ mean as an MMO blogger?

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Creep

Syp of Bio Break linked over to an article Massively posted up today (Link). So Massively asked some pretty prominent dudes in the MMO blogsphere some interesting questions about MMO blogging. The questions look into just where bloggers fit into the bigger picture of the MMO culture.

The questions that Massively asked were not the kind of fair I expected to see. None of the typical blogger questions were present. The stuff I expected to see like “how do you find stuff to write about” or “how do you deal with obnoxious comments”, were not present. Instead the questions seemed to hint at a bigger role that MMO bloggers have when it comes to their readers and the MMO’s they write about.

Here’s the questions found in the article (Link):

  • A common myth about gaming bloggers is that they all want to eventually become game designers one day. Do you feel this is either true for you, or MMO bloggers in general?
  • Do you feel that your role as a blogger doubles as an “unofficial” community manager?
  • What methods have been most effective for you in reaching out to game developers?
  • What do you feel are the key differences between bloggers and major MMO news sites?
  • A game developer invites you to take an all-expense-paid trip to visit their studio and review their upcoming MMO. They promise a free copy of the game and lifetime account, as well. Would you do the review? Explain why or why not.

From these questions one can almost paint us bloggers as MMO vigilanties. We don’t have editors, we don’t have deadlines and we don’t have the pressure of maintaining hits for advertisers (for the most part).

As solo or even small team bloggers we have flexibiltiy that bigger game sites just don’t have. We can choose to participate in the latest game or avoid it. We can choose to write reviews or we can leave them to the bigger sites. We ‘can’ even go off topic once in a while though granted that never helps us much.

Ok, wall of text aside, let’s get to the heart of the matter, so just what does ‘Making It’ as an MMO blogger really entail? Do you know you’ve made it when you are contacted by or when you are in touch with the folks that work on your game of choice? Have you hit the top when you’ve got a small army of readers behind you?

Perhaps ‘Making It’ as a blogger just means that the opinions you write are shared by those who leave comments on your posts. That would pretty much mean that ‘Making It’ as a blogger has a lot to do with how much influence you, your blog, and that blog’s community, have and how that influence can impact the MMO’s that community participates in.

Perhapse making it as an MMO blogger is actually more about making it as an MMO blog. In that sense, the community that follows a blog is just as important if not even more important than the person posting the wall of text.

Sure it would be neat to be ‘net famous’ as Scary always likes to say. Though I’ve got to say that if even one or two of the things I’ve posted here, or some of the other good ideas or reccomendations I’ve seen on other blogs are actually implimented in game, then you know, to me that would definitely outweigh some of the personal glory.

For those of you that visit MMO blogs and those that have your own MMO blogs, what’s your take on it? What do you think ‘Making It’ means for an MMO blog and or an MMO blogger?

Posted in Gaming, Random Question | 12 Comments

Fallen Earth – How Not to Ride ATV’s (Video)

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Creep

So I figured it was time for a “Public Service Announcement”.

Ok, ok, so I was goofing off again. I am a self proclaimed slacker for a very good reason you know.

Anyway, I’d chosen the “Fallen Earth” ATV as my in game asset for subscribing to Fallen Earth. I figured that I should probably take it for a spin.

This is what happens when I’m allowed to drive vehichles….

Only in game, promise.

Posted in Fallen Earth, MMORPG | Comments Off

Random Question – How Powerful Are Reviews?

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Creep

OK so here’s the skinny. Over the last few years I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to put a lot of weight behind game reviews. Personally, I don’t read reviews before playing anything. I take a look at the game website, I get dropped a line by one of my friends, or I might just get bored and start randomly surfing the web for games I haven’t seen before.

client_ryzom_rd-2009-07-26-21-54-43-55

(Pausing in Ryzom with Redshiftflux)

Recently though another review has been pulled down. Not sure if folks remember the Darkfall review by Eurogamer ( Take one, Take two). The first go round the reviewer gave Darkfall a score of 2/10. Unfortunately it was believed that the reviewer didn’t spend a lot of time in the game. The review was eventually re-done by another reviewer who was left with an overall impression of 4/10.  So after all sorts of fuss, the score went up a whole 2 points. That had to hurt.

On a more recent note Gamespot posted and pulled a review of Global Agenda which (according to the forums) only saw a 5.5 (link). On the Global Agenda forums (link), the players seem to have done a little digging and really didn’t believe that the reviewer spent enough time in game to justify the poor score the reviewer gave the game. They felt that it was not enough time spent in game to really get a feel for what the game has to offer.

Evidently time spent reviewing is basically how you can justify how much a game rocks or sucks. If you give a game a low score, you evidently need to have invested a good chunk of your life in that game before firing a shot over the bow (link).

What really got me into wanting to write a post about this sort of thing is not really these debacles so much as another thread over at the MMORPG.com forum. Evidently a Darkfall player is calling for a re-review of Darkfall by MMORPG.com (Link).

Check out this logic by the way. The player feels that if another game that was recently reviewed deserved a 5.8 score, that the player’s game deserved a score greater than the 6 that Darkfal received. I still can’t decide whether I want to burst out laughing or reach for a bottle of pain killers.

GeistigInTheWild

(Someone needs a hug, Geistig (1))

While that aspect of the poster’s logic makes me scratch my head and wonder if he/she forgot to take their meds before posting, another part of the post does make sense. No, not the picture of the lolcat, or even the title of the post. You see MMO’s change over time and Darkfall is no exception to the rule. The game as it exists today has changed since the original review was launched. In fact the second Eurogame reviewer even noted that changes had been made to the game during the time he spent in game.

So the question is, can you really judge an MMO today based on a review written at launch. No, no, don’t think about the buggy madness that most MMO’s tend to push out at launch these days. I’m not talking about covering up that kind of mess. I’m talking about the fact that MMOs DO change over time. An MMO that doesn’t change is going to bore the pants off of it’s player base and put it’s self into an early grave right? Is it really reasonable to think that a review written about an MMO at launch should be the end all decision as to what that game is like and will always be like?

You see I can’t really say that I’d play an MMO based on what was said in a “review”. MMO’s aren’t like movies. When you go to see a movie now, it’ll be the same movie 10 years from now. The movie doesn’t change. Reviews even work for the standard “play ‘em once” box games. Sure there may be different scenarios, but once you’ve beaten the game it’s over and it goes on the shelf. Even if the game takes forever to actually play through, once it’s done, it’s done. That means any review you write about the game when it’s released stands because the game played on release is the same game played by someone installing it much later.

MMO’s though must change over time and because of that a review written about an MMO at launch probably doesn’t reflect the same MMO a year later, two years later, or like World of Warcraft, 5 years later.

Ask folks who’ve played WoW since beta. They’ll tell you that WoW is not quite the same game it used to be. So on this point a static review of an MMO would just be stale. Chances are it would really only run the risk of turning off players that may enjoy the game it is now even if they would have hated the game it as it had been when the review was written.

Here’s another point on which MMO reviews stand to fail. Think about the time it takes to do things in an MMO. In WoW supposedly “the game starts” at the end game. With that said, if a reviewer only spent 20 hours in the game but didn’t make it to the end game and spend some time in Heroics or Raiding, would that reviewer have a solid grasp on what it’s like to play WoW? If a person tried Free Realms but didn’t get to try the membership only jobs could they give a complete review of the MMO? If a person reviewed Guild Wars, but only had access to the original game (Prophecies) would they have a complete picture of everything Guild Wars has to offer?

So the thing is, can an MMO really be accurately portrayed based on the “number of hours” logged in? I’d have to say that argument totally falls flat. When games are produced to offer it’s subscribers MONTHS of content to keep them subscribed, how can spending 30 hours in that game really give you a well rounded feel for the game.

Hell according to xfire, I’ve logged over 100 hours in World of Warcraft. Does that mean I feel like I could write a review of that MMO? Hell no. That and I um, don’t keep xfire on all the time so chances are that number is just a little low *snickers*.

So thing is, can a consumer really make a purchasing decision based on a review written about an MMO? How much time should a person spend in an MMO to really get a good understanding of the game? Should reviews be written to give separate scores to MMOs that are more PvP focused than PvE focused? Should MMO’s be rated based on the strength of in game crafting or the presence or ease of talent re-speccing? What of the community of an MMO, is that something that should be taken into consideration when writing a review?

WoWScrnShot_010709_201217

(Goofing with Guildies in the Aftermath days)

Better yet, what about reviewers? Should all reviews be written from the focus of the mythical “average gamer” or should PvP focused MMO’s have PvP focused reviewers and PvE focused games have PvE focused reviewers? Should quest driven games have quest loving reviewers? Should sandbox style games be reviewed from the perspective of folks that understand and enjoy sandbox style games?

I mean really, how can some stranger’s 30 hours in an MMO and 5 to 6 paragraphs really sway someone as to whether or not they want to play an MMO?  It’s not like we’re talking about a pair of sneakers or a local restaurant here. We’re talking about a game that you may spend months if not years playing. Do you really want to base a long term decision, not to mention your hard earned cash on an MMO you’re thinking about playing because it got a high review on a website?

Come on folks, if you’ve got enough intelligence to turn on a computer, surely you can make your own decisions about what games you want to play. Be strong, take control of your online destiny.


Posted in Gaming, MMORPG, Random Question | 2 Comments

Fallen Earth – Loving Rifles and A New Mount is in the Queue

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Creep

fallenearth2010-02-19-22-46-22-23 I’m pretty excited. Not only did I get a night in game (Fallen Earth), but I actually managed to get stuff done.

I’m finally up to using an actual Rifle. Not just the crossbows. The crossbows are awesome, and for right now I’m holding onto it as a back up. Really though, the rifle makes a huge difference in the fact that there isn’t as much lag time between hits due to re-loading which can be kind of annoying when you’re using a single shot weapon like the crossbow.

Right now I’m using the base crafted rifle which is a sniper rifle. I totally love it. Most things so far need 2 or 3 shots and they’re out.  The rifle I have now is just a bolt action with a clip which holds 7 rounds. This means I can get off 7 shots before having to spend critical combat time reloading a weapon. In a game of whoever kills faster lives, it’s pretty helpful when you’re able to reduce any time sucks possible.

In reality though I’m still getting myself killed either because I backed into something or I was looking at the chat panel, you know the usual dumb stuff I do. Not even the rifle helps me very much in those situations.

The only downside to the rifle is the Heavy Rifle ammo it requires. This ammo type takes more components to slap together some rounds than the Light Pistol ammo I’d been throwing together previously. That and both types of ammo require more components than the 2 components required for the crossbow (which is why I’m keeping it as a backup.)

Now I’m going to have to boost Geistig’s geological skills, which I’ve been holding out on doing. Really I just haven’t wanted to spend the chips on the books. Since I figured out that making books is just as good as buying books, I’m going with that route. That makes getting the books I need to be well rounded in mining a lot more palatable. It does take more time to make the books than it takes to buy them, that’s the gotcha. Thing is though when you queue up craftables and log off for the night, the wait is totally bearable.

Speaking of the crafting queue (which is absolutely brilliant by the way), I did manage to get up enough chips to get the new mount crafted. I decided to go with the cargo mount over the combat mount. My reasoning is this, if I’m already using almost half my carrying capacity just to carry the now 3 types of ammo I want to lug around, I’m gonna need some extra cargo room somewhere.

That and when you compare the stats of the combat mount to the tier one generalized mount I already have (which wasn’t changed to a specialized mount by the last patch), it seemed kind of silly to pick up the combat mount. Sure it had better range and more stamina than my lower tier general mount, but it actually has less cargo slots. Remember, my tier one general mount was made BEFORE the recent patch which specialized mounts. That means it doesn’t carry a whole lot, but you’re able to fire your gun between it’s ears and it’s totally ok with that.

I figure if it turns out that I need a mount I have to fire from, I’ll just pull out my pretty brown tier one mount. Otherwise, I’ll go with a mount that can haul all of the crafting supplies I’m constantly stopping to nab. I’m also not too worried about getting off my mount before getting into combat anyway. I mostly end up wasting ammo and time just trying to get the mob into a position where I can hit them effectively and efficiently. So hopping down to get a shot off doesn’t bug me much. What really bugs me is having my bags full of crafting materials.

Speaking of crafting I’m pretty much addicted to crafting in Fallen Earth. Right now only 3 items on Geistig are quest rewards (shoes, shoulders, crossbow). Everything else is crafted. Granted the goggles are a hand me down from Redshiftflux, but the rest of the craftables came from Geistig’s queue.

Don’t get me wrong the crafting still has some annoying sides like spending an entire day searching for places to find one type of wood. That and I have yet to find one scrap of glass or plastic on anything. Really though that part just kind of adds to the realism of the game just a tad. I’m pretty sure that in a real apocalypse scenario there would be things that’d be harder to find than others. At that point it’d be down to scavenger’s patience or just making do. So while I could get all whiny about it, I won’t because it makes sense. At least not yet. Should I get to the point where I absolutely need something and can’t find the parts anywhere, I’m sure I’ll start to get pretty crabby.

Really though the best part of crafting is that I’m able to use the stuff that I make at my level. Sometimes I do have to boost armor or my weapon skills a bit to get a chance to use something really neat. At least I am able to do that then and there (if I have the skill points available). It’s not like having an awesome chest piece sitting in your bags for 6 levels (only to be replaced 2 hours after finally equipping it). I’m also able to find components for everything that I need to make. Though there are some things I’d like to make that I can’t get all the components for, those missing parts haven’t been a deal breaker for me so far.

On a side note though most of the more common components can be purchased from vendors. So if it turns out that I’m short one piece of this or that, Billy Bob NPC is more than willing to help me get the last item I need so I can get the item made. It’s always pretty frustrating to not be able to make something because you’re only missing one piece of one component. Not you mention the fact that Fallen Earth’s crafting can get pretty complex, so it’d be beyond frustrating to end up missing one part after you’ve already used up all of the components on making the 4 components required to finally make the friggin’ rifle.

OK wrapping things up, I’m sitting at level 11 and now working on “Fallen Earth, Week 3″. I’d have to say that I’m actually still enjoying it. The quests are still pretty fun. Sure there’s still the “kill x of y” quests, but at least they’re well interspersed with “find this stuff for me” or “go threaten that guy with a shot” hehehe. Just enough to keep life interesting. I mean in how many other games are you sent out to destroy a camp of baddies by not only killing the mobs but then destroying the tent they were hanging out in. Honestly though I wish I’d had more grenades on me, that would have made the tent destruction a LOT more fun hehehe.

Right now though I’m still taking my sweet time leveling. Thing is that with a level cap at 45 or so, I also don’t feel like there’s an endless grind ahead of me. Whether or not that actually turns out to be the case? Well that may be a bridge I’ll have to blow up when I get to it. For now though, I’m just enjoying my current pace. Hey, I am a slacker after all.

Posted in Fallen Earth, MMORPG | Comments Off

Free Games aren’t Free

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Creep

It really does crack me up every time I see folks complaining about how “expensive” Free to Play games can be. The game wasn’t free to make, they have to get money from somewhere. They know they won’t be able to sell the game if they sell you equipment (besides that’s what e-bay is for). Instead they add in gotcha’s that nickle and dime you out of mounts, bigger bag space, and other little niceties that make the game more fun or are just appealing. This way they can make enough money to keep the servers live, provide customer service, and hopefully add new content.

Yeah you didn’t have to PAY for these things in a pay to play. Difference is though that you spent half your life online doing quests, crafting, grinding for gold, or raiding to earn those items. The reason being that the longer it took you to get what you wanted, the more time you’d spend subscribed to the game. The longer you stayed subscribed the more the company made.

It’s all gotcha’s people. This is how they make enough money to keep the servers live. Granted sometimes they go too far. That’s when you let you’re money do the talking and stop paying & playing. Money talks and it’s an international language.

Thing is that with Free to Play games, you’re also “Free to Pay”. You don’t have to spend money on the cash shop if you don’t want to. If you think the game isn’t playable without those items and you don’t think it’s worth dropping the cash, it may be time to exercise your freedom to play something else.

Posted in Gaming, MMORPG | 2 Comments

Night Off Watching Movies – A Girl Named Tex

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Creep

Well I didn’t log into Fallen Earth last night. Not because I don’t want to play Fallen Earth, but because I didn’t want to play anything. I didn’t really want to do anything.

I’d needed a night to slack off and decompress. Life has been… interesting… lately. Last night was no exception. So instead of logging into the game I just made up some munchies and perused YouTube for some Machinima fun.

I watched some Illegal Danish by Myndflame which always cheers me up. Then I figured I wanted to see if there were any fan vids on Tex from Red vs Blue. Not sure what the inspiration was behind that, but I did find an interesting video set to a song written for Tex.

She’s one of my favorite characters on Red vs Blue since she’s the most take charge “guy” on the “Blue” team. That and she’s not a “girl girl”. I’ve heard that before and it cracks me up every time.

I didn’t make the video, but I like it and figured I’d share. If you’re not a country music person you might not dig it, but it’s an interesting story and tune. Not to mention that it’s just fun watching Tex blow up, beat up, and blow away all the boys.

Tex is right up there with one of the female characters in cinema and gaming that stand out by either being tough as nails or just 100% themselves.

Posted in Video | Comments Off

Allods Online Open Beta – Not Touching it

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Creep

“Wait what? Did she just say that she’s not going to play Allods?!?! But everyone’s playing Allods! Allods is the coolest! Everyone wants to play Allods! And didn’t you um, test it in the closed beta and stuff?”

Yes, I’m sure Allods Online is the best Free to Play since Runes of Magic, but I’m just not interested. I’m not going to bash it, I’m just not going to play it. While sure it has some ginchy adds that make it different, in reality it’s just the same MMORPG schtick, but this time it’s in a boat!

So instead of going into why I don’t care to play, since most MMORPG fans don’t get my perspective anyway, here’s a nice snarky post. Enjoy.

Things I expect folks are seeing (and from what I’ve read are seeing) in the Allods Online open beta:

a) QQ’ing – “this game sucks”, “this class sucks”, “wow graphics are better”, blah blah blah, save the drama for yer mama crybabies. If you dislike the game enough to feel the need to actually register a complaint, LEAVE. I did and I feel much better for having done so.

b) Bragging – “this class is better than that class”, “my class is the best”, “I’m the best player in my class”, again with the blahs. If you’re using MMO’s to make you feel better about yourself as a person, you seriously need a reality check, or possibly some therapy. Speak with your physician, they might care.

c) Arguing – “that noob is kill stealing”, “wtf do you mean wow is better”, “you suck”, and more blahs into infinity. Likely the game will be full of bored people competing for quest items AND others just competing for the attention of such a massive audience. Ah the Internet Dickhead theory in all it’s glory. With that winning combination you end up with thesis long debates over “yo momma” and or the state of the game. Not necessarily in that order.

Funny bit is that there’s already enough problems with any new game when you think of bugs, localization, players getting used to the interface, players adjusting to the game’s combat styles, really the list is endless. Now dump on your run of the mill hyper annoying MMO types that think MMO’s are really just an extension of  some “ID10T’s Anonymous” forum and poof, recipe for mayhem.

Sadly I’m actually beginning to enjoy games that are either undiscovered by the drooling masses or are considered “unpopular” by the same. Why? Because they’re devoid of stupid, or at least only include stupid in smaller quantities which can be amusing.

Stupid can be like perfume, a little accentuates, too much is overwhelming.

Ah and now I want to coin a whole new term and or disorder: “Attention Addicts”. We all know someone like this. Usually they dress in black, dye their hair black and listen to the Cure while smoking cloves. That’s back in the good old days. These days you just gotta get a computer and/or an X-Box and sign up for a Blogger account.

You see a high percentage (not all) but a high percentage of folks running like wild to any new game they see are probably not even there to actually PLAY the game. Chances are they’re really there to be seen playing the game or better yet to let other folks know they’re playing this game.

It’s like Los Angeles online style. You go to be seen in a place where everyone else has also gone… to be seen.

I’d probably have a lot more hits per day if I went along with that mindset. Ok that and posted pictures of myself in my posts instead of in game screen shots, but that’s not happening either.

Why? For me, games are supposed to be a playground. Games are supposed to be something you enjoy in your free time. They’re supposed to be a place where you can adventure, you know, go out and do stuff you can’t do in real life. I mean how often do you get to ride a horse, chop up a monster with a huge axe, give a /rude to the instance boss… oh wait that last one’s probably all me.

Point is, that the impression I get from a lot of folks is that they don’t play the games because they’re fun, they play the games because it’s a geek’s version of a country club. You go in to bs, you dink around a bit, hit on the waitresses, compare golf scores, compare trophy wives, compare the latest luxury automobile, blah blah blah.

*snores*

It’s like sitting at a table full of sports nerds and listening to them spout out some random athlete’s latest statistics. Ask that same guy what color his girlfriend’s eyes are and you’ve finally got some action at the table, (insert mischievous laugh here).

Am I “hating” on Allods? If you wanna read it that way, more power to ya. After checking it out in beta I figured it wasn’t a game I was interested in really. There’s more than enough games out there that are just like it. I got pretty bored with those games so I really don’t think that this one’s going to hold my attention for more than 2.5 seconds.

I did seem like a solid game and for folks that are all about elves and magic it has a lot to offer. The price point isn’t bad either considering the fact that it’s a Free to Play game. Graphically it’s a very pretty game with some stunning attributes here and there. If you wanna play it, I say go for it, worse thing that happens is that you like it and have to deal with the petulant masses. If you are playing it and you like it, rock on with your bad self.

Really I just find it amusing that all kinds of sites are hopping with Allods buzz but whining because everyone else is jumping on the band wagon. Really we all know that in 3 to 6 months (if not sooner) they’re all going to get bored with it, they’re going to be cranky about some flaw in the game, or they’re just going to find a new shiny. So just wait it out, good things will come.

Posted in Allods Online, Gaming, MMORPG | 4 Comments

Fallen Earth – Picking up Rifles and Contemplating Mounts

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Creep

Though my goal in mind originally for this evening was not to play Fallen Earth at all, I’m not going to give myself a hard time over that. I’d also really wanted to work on some mob grinding so that I could make enough cash to pick up the tier 2 mount.

Somehow though I wandered off to do whatever, which is what I usually end up doing whenever I end up playing by myself hehe. Trust me it’s not a bad thing. Sometimes I just need to get lost.

So instead of grinding anything I could one shot and hauling back the lewts for cash, I ended up searching around for Scavenged Wood, which isn’t the easiest thing to find. I finally found enough to put together my first real rifle.

Of course I’m also a ninny and didn’t read the specs on what kind of ammo it takes and now I’m working on making and hopefully using the books that’ll let me make heavy gunpowder. Yeah Heavy Rifle Ammo requires Heavy Gunpowder. Then again I could have read it wrong, but I’m not too worried about it. At least this way I’ll have learned three tiers in gunpowder production and that’s not going to hurt me one bit.

The whole point of making the rifle will be to make it that much easier to start knocking off baddies and hopefully make enough to finally pick up the last component I need to make the next tier of horsey.

Since the last patch they made a change to the mounts which kind of tweaked things up a little. Horses break out into two categories, combat and cargo. A combat mount doesn’t carry as much or go as far on a sack of grain, but you can fire a weapon from a combat mount.

Since I’m doing a ranged thing, using a combat mount would mean that I wouldn’t have to dismount if I’m ambushed so that’s a bonus. Thing is that I still have to avoid shooting my horse in the head and it’s not super easy to maneuver a horse to get into firing position. At least not for me because I’m a slacker. So while it is nice to be able to fire from the mount, I’m not sure if the combat allowance is worthwhile for me.

Personally I’ve found that I run out of cargo space and carrying capacity pretty quickly. Since I’m not boosting my strength type abilities in order to beat things melee style, I’m a bit of a lightweight. To me this says that maybe having a ride that can offload stuff to as I’m making my rounds would be a wiser choice. Really one of the main reasons I’m going for a new mount is that I’d like to have more slots to place stuff in. I’ve found that if nothing else it’s nice to store all of my tradeskill kits on my mount since hey, I can just swap them out when I need them. Otherwise they’re all back at town.

At this point I’m not too worried about building and using motorized transports because I haven’t seen the components required to make the gas. With the horses, I’m now up to the level where I can scavenge what I need to keep the silly thing fed. That saves me some cash in the long run. Also horses are able to rest and regenerate their energy just a little bit at a time. I don’t think that vehicles are able to restore gas, that wouldn’t really make sense.

I did choose the atv during my sub and I tried it out. I didn’t really fall in love with it. For me it’s not as responsive as the horse is. When I take my finger off the key, it stops. Simple as that. Driving the vehicles however is just a little more complex and while it would be kickin’ to ride around on a motorcycle, for now the horse just seems a lot more efficient. Bleh, just like in real life.

Meh maybe someday I’ll get the hang of it or maybe I won’t. Either way, I’m not stressing it right now. I mean I’m still just level 10, hehe. I was really close to hitting 11 tonight after going on a killing spree, maybe tomorrow!

Posted in Fallen Earth, MMORPG | Comments Off

Fallen Earth Podcast – Dev Calms Fears

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Creep

I should probably just change my name to Creep the Spaz… It turns out that the Developers of Fallen Earth do have some ideas in mind for EVENTUALLY setting up respecs in Fallen Earth. At least according to the LifeNet podcast where they’re chatting with Lee Hammock (Linky).

Keep in mind though, it’s not something on the road map right now, it’s just something that they’d like to do eventually.

The best part of the podcast though wasn’t so much the discussions of what exist or what may eventually exist, but really how at least Hammock feels about game changes. I was actually impressed by Hammock’s statement at the end of the interview. Though there are changes that they’d like to make to the core of the game, they’re holding off on doing so because of the way it would impact people and their current set ups.

0.o

So instead of saying “we’ll just change it and the players can deal” they’re taking customer satisfaction into account by saying “yeah we want these changes but we’re not going to risk borking existing characters to do that”.

Evidently the developers have also noticed that there are people re-rolling as well. Thing I didn’t realize is that it sounds like it’s not so much people who aren’t enjoying top level play as much as it’s folks who are re-rolling to create very strict pvp builds.

Not being much into pvp, I couldn’t give a prairie chicken feather about whether or not my character can stand up against another player’s character. I just enjoy roaming out in the wilds and knocking off NPC’s. Why? Because the game is more real to me that way, it’s more alive.

Good news for me, I may not have totally ruined Geistig after all. Which would be really nice. Guess in the end we’ll have to see though, heh.

Posted in Fallen Earth, MMORPG | Comments Off

Seeking Balance – Zen in MMO’s

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Creep

Here’s a pretty epic toon from “The Church of Poisoned Minds” (Link)

My ex actually linked this over to me when I stopped playing for a bit. Heh, way to convince me to stop gaming right?

It reminded him of how much I used to grumble back when WoW was constantly rebalancing the Death Knight. I mean come on, every 3 weeks it was like playing a different class.

Thing is that rebalancing can be necessary though. Especially when end users (players in this case) find new and interesting ways to get your software to do stuff you had no idea it’d do. Whether we’re talking exploits, stacking damage, rediculous crits, who knows/who cares. Every once in a while something in the database needs a new value to either keep every one from rolling whatever class has the power or to keep people from throwing their hands up and walking away in bitter, bitter frustration. Which of course means taking monies with them.

I was reminded of this by Smacken when he commented on my last post. I’d whined a bit about the static talent trees. The downside to static talents is that if they’re subject to rebalancing, you’re borked. There’s no re-speccing, there’s only a strait up do – over.

This is really one of the things that totally turned me off to Champions Online during the pre-release days. I really liked the character set up, and some of the abilities were neato, but it was obvious that they were tweaking things behind the scenes. Granted it was just before launch so I’m sure they had some last minute elements to work out and I’m ok with that. What I’m not ok with are all of these monkeys without lives spending their entire day doing nothing but looking for the best way to wtf pwn other players. Through trial, error, word of mouth, or observation, they find some way to make them feel powerful in their otherwise powerless life by picking out a set of talents/abilities and/or combination of both that makes them feel like a god among boys for 15 minutes.

I’m so proud, really, can you see the proud….

Now if you happen to have rolled the class these power monkeys had found the sweet spot in, now you too are wholloped with a steel reinforced nerf bat. You log out one day comfortable with your talents and abilities, feeling that you’ve successfully enjoyed a good day of going out and putting the hurt on NPC’s, but no, it’s a false sense of security. The next day you log in to find that you’re running around trying to kill stuff with a feather duster. The NPC’s that had run in fear the day before either stand laughing or asking “ooooo a little to the left”.

*shakes head* so … very … frustrating …

Best of all is that if you have a stationary talent tree, you’re charcter is now borked by rebalancing and it’s no fault of your own. Personally, I’m adult enough to own up to making mistakes. If I have to do over because I wasn’t paying attention, I can hang with that. It’s not like I haven’t had to do that before, or will have to do that again.

I pull a 180 though when the developers are making game changing modifications that then bork my toon. I have no control over that. Technically I could keep an eye on the forums and make sure that I’m NOT playing any of the popular flavor of the month class types. Thing is though that means I’ll have to avoid entire aspects of the game, even classes that I found or would have found fun and engaging, all because some power hungry teens and tweens really just needed to log into Halo and get on some Red vs Blue action.

Ok, I know it’s not quite that bad, but it’s making me laugh so I’m going to go with it.

Posted in Gaming, MMORPG | 1 Comment