Allods Online A Second Time

So here's some more Allod's online info. Massively.com put up this report on the gPotato in game store fiasco which I mentioned in my last post. Apparently some of those outrageous prices were supposed to be there. The Allod's PR guy didn't do a very good job of communicating what he was talking about, so personally I haven't drawn any real conclusions. If you're enjoying the game right now though, I think you should just keep enjoying it, there's no reason to quit before you even hit the wall if you're actually having fun.

Which I think is the major issue here, most of the players weren't actually having fun, even if they had tricked themselves into thinking they were. A new shiny MMO is always fun because you get the whole sense of exploration. You can discover new things for the first time. I compare it to walking up to a sample game console at a store - "Hey this thing looks shiny, I want to check it out."

Because when all is said and done Allod's Online is not ground breaking, or really giving players anything horribly new. Sure, it's got new twists on the same old ideas, but it hasn't even perfected the old ideas. That's the difference between Blizzards games and other companies games. Blizzard perfects and then twists, other companies twist and never manage to perfect.

Not to go completely counter to my last post, Allod's Online is still an okay game, it's moving a little too slowly for me though. I'm sitting at level 9 and I'm on yet another grind kill quest. I feel kind of like I'm trying to level a mage in WoW, except that I have less buttons to have fun with. Considering that there's also no such thing as joint aggro from any of the mobs... granted I'm only level 9, I don't exactly need any more buttons. I've put around 12 hours into the game though, and while I don't consider 12 hours of an MMO anywhere near the necessary length of time needed to review one properly, I'm not a professional reviewer so it doesn't really matter if I keep playing or not. Plus the games Free. Part of being a professional reviewer involves letting people know if the game is worth the ticket price. Considering that the ticket price is zero, not much work to do in this case.

This is a video of me doing a quest on my mage. First I hit the target with a channeled ice spell. Next I use the pre-casted meteor spell which has the targeting reticule. And then I'm casting normal fire spells into the mob before finishing it off with instant cast lightning bolts.

It's actually an interesting mechanic, it's just that once you have it down it just repeats itself over and over again. The ice spell stacks 6 debuffs on the target, which when you hit them with a fire spell consumes 2 of the stack and does additional damage. The meteor spell is pre-casted, which is fun, but at the same time a little worthless. It does more damage than the single target fire spell, but not enough to be worth the 5 second casting time versus the 1.5 second casting time mid fight. Pre-casted spells are cool, but when the only chance you have to use a spell is if it is pre-casted kind of ruins it. The lightning bolts at the end deal extra damage when the target is under 25% health. So while I'm using most of the spells in my repertoire, it's only 4 repeated over and over.

You might have noticed the orbs counting up right above the skill bar. The quality might not be good enough to see them. Those are the counters I was mentioning in my last post, where they count upwards until 5, and then give you a good or negative buff. I don't think those become more in-depth in their use until maybe level 20, but I don't know if I'm willing to level that high just to try it out.

I doubt I play this game much more. I do like how easy it is to alt tab with it, and it's a well made game compared to what's out there. But I'd rather pay a sub to Blizzard then deal with all the minor issues that plague f2p games. A lot of the p2p games also suffer from these same issues, but I just don't go anywhere near those, looking at you Cryptic.

Oh yeah, and a grats to Funcom on, from what I've heard, making Age of Conan a good playable game. Sadly I'll never subscribe again just because I don't know, the IP doesn't interest me maybe. I should have tried that free 10 days promotion they had going on, but I didn't.

I think the best thing to do would be for Funcom to give everybody with a deactivated account a free 1 week that starts whenever they next log in to the game. Something more is needed from MMO companies to draw players back into their game. Just because a company announces a promotion doesn't mean that everybody is going to flock to it, these things take time and nobody flocks to free stuff they didn't like the first time. Companies need to make these free sessions available whenever, so that players can come try it again at their leisure. Funcom, you aren't going to get old players trying your game again just by word of mouth and a free 10 days of play at some long past point where most ex-players probably didn't even know it was going on. That goes for all the other MMO's that had a poor launch as well. Aion. I'd say Warhammer as well, but even with their 10 day free trial I had no interest in playing it. Just another case of WoW already did it better. I hope WH40K is cool.