What does the future hold? - A look at MMO games

MMO games have come a long way since their humble beginnings, and they appear so prolific that it makes one wonder: just how much further can they go? Aion was just released, Blade and Soul is coming from NCSoft in the future, as well as Guild Wars 2. Blizzard has an unannounced MMO title that they are working on, and there are new free to play MMO’s hitting the market almost weekly. By the same token, many MMO’s are seeing dwindling numbers; Mythic has recently cut half of their Warhammer Online staff, the Matrix Online shut its servers entirely a few months ago, and Aion is already losing many subscribers if the forums are to be believed, practically all of whom came from WoW with many who aren’t going back.

There is of course the blame for the unusual tidal wave of hot non MMO games: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Assassins Creed 2, Bioware 2, etc.. All top notch games, all being released between Q4 2009 and Q1 2010. If there was a war going on between MMO publishers and non MMO publishers, this is probably what it would look like. The point being, all of these are amazing titles for gamers, and due to the now standard additions of RPG elements within multiplayer environments, as well as the achievement systems all single player games now have, there is a lot of time to be spent away from MMO games.

Quickly, MW2 multiplayer is not bleeding into the MMO seen. Yes, it’s online, yes, it’s multiplayer, no, it is not an MMO. This is because it does not have a persistent world. There is a lobby, you connect to a game, the game loads, you play the game, you disconnect, and you’re back in the lobby. That’s not how MMO’s work. MW2 is a FPS RPG though. Just like the traditional MMO is an RPG, MW2 is one of the culminating transformations of including RPG elements into FPS’s. I say culminating because it’s been done before, even in MW1, but Activision has really hit the RPG aspect dead center this time.

With that out of the way, we can get back to the issue at hand. MMO games are here to stay, and it looks like they are attempting to push the boundaries. As mentioned before, a traditional MMO is a multiplayer RPG game with a persistent world; from Ultima Online to Everquest to WoW and beyond. While the traditional model still works, WoW can vouch for that, most producers have realized that in order to compete with WoW, the investment isn’t worth the payout and risk.

Taking Aion as an example, the game is more polished than WoW was when it launched, and it is seeing improvements constantly, but players are already disillusioned. In order to break into the traditional MMO market right now, you need a game that has seen practically 2 additional years of polish, much like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan are just now approaching. Aion of course launched after having been released for 1 year in Korea, so it still has a year to go before enough polish has been applied. Of course, by the time a game has gotten 2 years of polish, most interested players have bought it, tried it, and then tossed it to the side, looking to the new great thing on the horizon that promises better features and graphics than the now outdated MMO can provide. It is a vicious cycle.

Developers aren’t willing to just let this gold mine slip through their fingers though, despite the risks. Some decided to destroy the reputation of their companies to try and make as much money back as possible for investors, like Age of Conan did. Others keep pushing at it as long as they can, knowing they have an A list title on their hands, but things just aren’t clicking, which is what is happening with Warhammer Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Later developers have treaded lightly on the outskirts of the land mine that WoW has turned the traditional MMO market into, and have come up with some fresher concepts.

EvE Online created a persistent world with no rules, a sandbox. Or I guess a “universe” would be a better term. They’ve managed to garner a ton of attention and a solid fan base, despite the “low compared to top list MMO” numbers. Then there’s the rash outbreak of free to play MMO’s as well and here is where innovation is at its peak. Low budget companies throwing concepts together in a mad hope that something sticks and makes an impact on players long enough for them to gain a profit on their investment through micro transactions.

It may be strange to think of it, but games like Evony Online are actually MMO’s. They are multiplayer, they are online, and they have a persistent world that players can interact in. Though many of these browser games are missing the massively part. You could argue that Guild Wars was never a true MMO because it didn’t allow for large amounts of players to accumulate in a single location for adventures, aka lacking on the “Massive”. But that word has basically been forgotten from the acronym, as MMO has come to take on a meaning despite what it originally stood for.

The point of bringing up Evony is to showcase an example of just how much further MMO’s can go. While Evony Online is a browser MMO and is very bare bones, Dawn of Fantasy is a new MMO coming out that fleshes out the basic concepts. Dawn of Fantasy was most likely in production before Evony ever was, so there is no suggestion here that it is literally a take off of it. And before Evony Online ever did it, Glitchless’s Race War Kingdoms did it, but that’s another story. Dawn of Fantasy isn’t a typical MMO, it’s a MMO RTS. Base building, unit and army control, all with a world to conquer. While players are not destroying forests and digging up mountains (as far as I know anyway) in this game, they are building cities and armies in the RTS style and fighting with other players in an RTS style, all in the persistent online world of an MMO. Other MMO’s have allowed you to modify the game world before: Darkfall Online, Age of Conan, some A list MMO that I forgot the name of, Star Wars Galaxies as well. An actual RTS MMO though is one of the new directions some developers are going in order to try and scoop up part of the MMO pie. (note - I don’t condone actually playing Evony Online )

The next step in MMO development, the true “next-gen” is going to go beyond genre mashing though. Some people have been fantasizing about the possibilities for decades, just waiting for the technology and resources to match up so that it can be created. While all MMO’s require a persistent world, and many MMO’s allow players to interact and change things within those worlds, nobody has made a game where players can truly interact with the land itself: cutting down trees that are literally cut down and will take a long time to grow again assuming that they are given the chance, killing rabbits that actually disappear and don’t just respawn 2 minutes later, digging into mountains and having caves left behind. MMO 2.0 is another name for it, and there’s a small possibility that this is what Blizzard-Activision has in mind when they refer to their next-gen MMO that they are making.

MMO’s have a lot of life left in them, and they are going to keep invading the gaming world for years to come. If there is a genre out there, then it can be made into an MMO. Another spin on MMO’s is bringing them to consoles. EvE Online is doing this with their new MMO addition Dusk514, and FPS console MMO set in the same universe as EvE Online. While not next-gen, definitely a step forward for the MMO platform. MMO games have muscled their way into the same platform definition where one would only use the words “single player” or “multi player” in the past. It’s not just a multiplayer game, it’s an MMO.

Aion "Actually it's not me, it's you."

Aion is a beautiful game, probably the most beautiful MMO out on the market. But just like an obnoxious girl, you have to balance out her sexual appeal to how willing you are to stand for her bullshit.

Aion. I love crafting in your game. It is a solid experience with a continual churning of mini rewards that make me feel like my time is well spent in upgrading my character. I love all the quirks and polish snuck into the world itself like hidden Easter eggs just waiting to be found. Every zone, many of the quests, NPC names, have little parts to them that can make you chuckle if you take the time. I love your ridiculous graphics that make my PC feel like it’s running a marathon, you are so beautiful. It feels like watching those old-school high-rendered next-gen top quality video game commercials, but this time the game play actually looks that way. I love how many different monsters you have in the world. I love how PvP is not an option, but a way of life.

All of that just isn’t enough compared to your bad side.

My video card is up to date, I have a dual core processor, sure I’m not as buff as I used to be a couple years ago, but you didn’t even know me back then! Aion is intended to work with PC’s like mine, but due to coding complications, or Something, the game has a major problem with dual core processors. Many players actually got better results by turning off one of their processors.

The problems range from frame rate spikes to rubber banding, which is basically the same thing as rollback lag, to just not working at all. These aren’t isolated incidents, many players have had to deal with these problems, and NCSoft suffers from a sever lack of support. Make that a lack of any support. They offer a forum where players can talk to each other about problems, but no one from their company actually chimes in with any assistance. Maybe that’s better than being told to delete your WTF folder for everything from lag to lost loot… but not really.

Now, there’s nothing worse than going out with your significant other, or maybe just someone you hope will be, and discovering bugs hopping off of them onto you and biting you. Okay, so that example is a bit extreme, but gold spammers and bots in Aion are just as invasive, if not as disgusting. You cannot enter a city without seeing a gold seller sitting somewhere, and you won’t go a single game session without having your chat box filled with at least a couple gold spammers.

The problem with bots and gold spammers further highlights the disconnect between the developers/community leaders and the players. In the most recent patch, players couldn’t even block gold spammers anymore, which means that their chat boxes were filled with gold spam endlessly. I hope NCSoft put the block functionality back into their game, and that it was just a bug, but launching with such an error really does make the game unplayable. There was a recent article somewhere, if someone else remembers where please put a link in the comments, which discussed how MMO companies typically take one of two stances: either an open community forum with developers or a closed one. NCSoft definitely takes the closed version; it was even mentioned in the article that way. It is a major turn off when you have a problem and you have no idea how to go about fixing it, and neither does anybody else, because it’s not your fault, it’s the games fault.

Other gripes with Aion are that some of the classes suck at soloing. Templars for example can’t solo worth a damn. If you want to solo, either take a high damage class or a healing class… oh wait, that’s actually everyone except Templars. So just don’t roll a Templar. Yet NCSoft is probably wondering why there is a tank shortage…

The final stake through my heart? The grind. I don’t mind grinding, I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, putting in my time, scraping together the pieces in order to foster the growth of something fantastic. But Aion asks too much. The level cap should have been 30, not 50, because once you pass level 30, the experience needed to get from one level to the next is exorbitant, and it only gets work. Going from level 49 to 50 takes over 1 billion experience points. Someone did the math; it’s the same amount of XP you would need to get from level 1 to 45. A game that requires some grinding is okay as long as you’re enjoying yourself. A game that promotes bots to grind because there’s no way a human being in their right mind could sit through that much time is not a game you want to be around. Even if she makes the best damn cookies in the world.

And by the way, it's also a terrible sign when the company is already churning out another MMO that looks so similar to the one you were just playing. This guy at Massively.com is already talking about it, Blade And Soul, and honestly I can't blame her. Though I will disagree. Blade and Soul will be great for 2 months and then fail. If you want an MMO from NCSoft, stick with Guild Wars 2.

No Longer a Correspondent

Well, it looks like MMORPG.com has finally shut the doors on their correspondent program. No word on why exactly, but I'm honestly not that surprised. Keeping track of so many different writers, many who probably only wrote a couple articles and then left, was probably too big of a headache compared to the return value. It appears they also hired a good number of additional staff to handle all of their important news issues, so they should be good for the future. It was a very enjoyable experience, and I'm glad I was able to participate in it. Getting paid to write, even if it's a negligible amount, felt really good. It looks like I'll have more time to spend updating this blog now though.

I'll go ahead and update today with the last article I wrote for MMORPG.com. I naturally would never repost something elsewhere that I've written for someone, but my last article was pulled due to a misunderstanding on its content. "Promoting cheating" was the reason, though they're also shutting down the program so that would have been reason enough for me. If you ever want to read my old articles they can be found here, though you'll have to sift through to find articles written by Robert Duckworth, the websites search feature can't seem to narrow it down any further.

My last article in its submission form... honestly barely different from its final form.

Swing Timers and Animation Cancelling

Whenever you do anything with your avatar in an MMO you get visual feedback. If you press the forward button then your character starts moving forward, if you use a special attack then you get to see some flashy lights. Those are all animations. Some things you do with your avatar will cause an animation that locks your character into place, essentially removing control of your character from you until the animation has been completed. For example, in Aion if a Ranger uses their Stunning Shot, they are locked in one place until the approximately 1 second animation has been completed, losing all control over their character, they cannot even cancel the shot if they want to by moving. Animation cancelling helps fix this, and is done by revoking the games process which locks your character into an animation sequence. The action continues anyway, but the player is allowed to maintain control over their character. So going back to the Ranger example, they would be able to shoot the Stunning Shot faster by cutting down or completely eliminating the animation before the shot is fired.

This is not something new with Aion; it has been around for a long time in video games. Some players consider the concept to be cheating, while others consider it just another aspect of a player’s grasp of skill over a game. It can definitely feel like someone is cheating if they are using it against you and you do not know how to respond. Whether or not it is considered cheating seems to depend on the community that surrounds it. A factor is how easy it is to successfully cancel an animation, the easier it is to do the more acceptable the practice appears to become. WoW, as must almost always be mentioned when discussing MMO’s, actually does not have any animation cancelling. Character avatars in WoW are never locked into an animation for anything, and it makes the game feel incredibly smooth. WoW used to have another issue though that is sort of like animation cancelling, but is more related to swing timers, which will be discussed first. (Img#1 – Lovely View)

My personal experiences in Aion have mainly been restricted to a Ranger and a Templar so far, so those are the two classes I am going to use in my explanations. The Templar does not have the same amount of animation canceling that the Ranger has, but they do involve the important concept of swing timers. Each weapon has an attack speed associated with it, depending on what type of weapon it is. A Templars Great Sword for example has an attack speed of 2.4 seconds. This means that every 2.4 seconds, the Templar will swing their weapon for a normal auto attack.

The issue here is that when a player uses a special attack, it will delay their swing timer. So if I press a special attack on my Templar 2.3 seconds after their last auto attack, I will not get another auto attack until the animation for my special attack has finished, plus a little bit of extra time even. It actually lowers your damage if you hit special attacks back to back, because you never give your avatar time to get any of their auto attacks in. Normally you would think that special attacks would hit for more damage than auto attacks, and they may at some of the higher levels, but when you take into account a weapons extra hit chance, the auto attacks often hit for more than the special attacks. Great Swords are classified as a “Very slow 3 hit weapon”. This means that for every auto attack done by a Great Sword, you have a chance to hit your target 3 times instead of just once, while special attacks only ever hit their target once.

Auto attack animations, unlike special attack animations, do not restrict your character from using new abilities. In order to maximize your damage, you have to press your special attack right after the auto attack animation starts. You will deal your full auto attack damage, plus your special attack damage, and while going through your special attack animation which you are locked into, your auto attack timer is counting down, coming off the timer shortly after you finish your special attack. Doing nothing but chaining all your available attacks one after the other hurts your damage output by a lot, making solo leveling almost impossible if you do this, and of course not bringing your full potential to a group either.

One thing of note is that because you have over written your auto attack animation, your auto attack damage is applied instantly rather than after the animation. So using your special attacks this ways also lets you spike damage closer together, instead of having it laid out evenly. (Img#2 – Auto Swing)

The Rangers auto attacks work the same way as the Templars, though Rangers deal a lot more damage with their special attacks than they do with their auto attacks. In a PvE setting the ranger will want to do the same thing a Templar does, waiting until right after their auto attack animation starts before using a special attack. In PvP though, Rangers will want to do something different. If someone is chasing you, you typically cannot afford to stop and stand there, letting them close the distance to you while you charge up a 1 second special attack. The solution: cast your shots instantly by canceling the 1 second cast time animation. This is also very good practice for solo questing. Rather than use a trap on every mob, or constantly switching back and forth between melee and ranged attacks, you can kite them and still deal special attack damage.

The process to get instant cast shots out of a ranger sounds a little complex, but actually doing it in game will show that it is not that hard to pull off. The first thing you have to do is make sure that your auto attack timer is fully charged. If you have your attack turned on, then your auto attack is turned on, and the timer will recharge itself no matter what direction you’re facing or if you’re in range of your target or not. So as a Ranger, make sure that your auto attack is turned on, but is charged, so it has not fired in the last few seconds. The only way to really accomplish this is to have your avatar turned away from your target.

Next, you will want to jump. If all you do is face away, charge your auto attack, and then press your special attack, you will turn around and go through the same 1 second cast. So you are jumping, and starting at right before you land, up to right after you land, is the time where you want to hit your special attack button. You also want to make sure that when you are landing your target is in your frontal cone of vision, so you want to go from facing away from them to facing towards them. I have noticed that sometimes if you spam your special attack that it will push you into the cast animation, whereas if you just press it once or twice you will get an instant shot. And that is really all there is to it. Instead of taking over a second of cast time to fire off a supposed zero cast time instant shot, you take less than a quarter of a second before you can start moving again in whatever direction you please.

You will not get your auto attack shot out of this because you are resetting the auto attack timer by shooting your special attack. For Rangers, this is not that important anyway since auto shots do so little damage when compared to special attacks. Also, while your character is not going through the animation for their casted shot, they are frozen from committing any new special attacks until the animation timer that they cancelled would have finished. But instead of firing the special attack at the end of the animation, it is fired instantly and you maintain full control of your characters movement throughout the time where normally you would be stuck in one place. (Img#3 – 15% Cast Time Perhaps)

A few of the other classes probably share the same issues with auto attacks that the Templar and Ranger do. The Gladiator for example I can imagine. I do not see any of the caster classes having to deal with these issues because if they move they cancel their spell casts. Rangers cannot cancel their attack animations by moving, and neither can melee classes. Spell casters may have their own form of animation cancelling but I do not have any experience with it if they do. I have seen an in game advertisement by a player from a private store selling a type of food that transforms you into something else, claiming it cuts down on casting animations by 15%, and thus increasing your casting speed by 15%, but they were AFK so I never got a real answer.

I have noticed a general acceptance of animation cancelling for Rangers. NCSoft has done nothing to stop it from happening for 10 months, and it does not appear to make Rangers over powered. Instead it looks as if it is an intended feature of the class. Forced animations are one of the sad side effects of pushing a game to look better rather than play better, often leading to that annoying clunky feeling. Cutting down on lengthy character animations, as well as the concept of global cool downs between activating abilities, are the two main methods I have seen over the years used to combat this issue.

- Averice

Beginning of the comic

I'm going to start working on the comic with some real effort tommorow. My drawings are still somewhat not that great, but I think I'll be able to manage. I mean Dark Legacy is drawn on a sheet of lined paper, then uploaded and colored so... yeah. I don't have a scanner, but I guess this old digital camera will work to start. So, hopefully it can work.

If you haven't seen it, it has language but it's rather good, CCP's rap video called HTFU by Permabaned. A nice twist on words for the name of the band. Now my only question is, when is Blizzard going to release something even more awesome? Since Blizz isn't underground though, they should go for some more mainstream kanye style. Speaking of kanye, which you have to include P. Diddy in with that, which brings me to this video I can't believe I like by Ke$ha. Tik-Tok is the name of the single, as well as her album. This song, with the video, is just the perfect mixture of california, pop, the 80's, rap, techno, and rock all mixed into one. I mean, she's singing about a young Mick Jagger while also having lyrics regarding the way a DJ works the party. It's a pretty amazing song. I say I can't believe I like it just because it's so pop.

I was reading penny arcade the other day and noticed that gabe mentioned that Aion doesn't even really get going until level 10. I gotta say, that's what I thought at first too. Then you hit level 20... and go wow, the world just opened up a lot more. And then, and then you hit 25 and can go into the Abyss. I haven't hit 30 yet, but I'm pretty sure 25 to 50 is the real game, since I believe there are two different levels of Abyss zones. If they can get rid of the bots, make leveling 15% faster, and crafting/gathering etc. 40% faster, and fix the controls, they would have a top of the line game. Right now it's a little below top of the line. Everything works, but it's not that perfect. It's a hard thing for many gaming companies to get right, and it's surprising, you put all this money into your game, but then the camera or controls suck. Developers need to focus beyond the final dollar and work on making the damn thing run right first.

Wow vs. Aion once more

Not a full blown review, but I will say that, despite how much I loathe WoW right now, I'm still logging into it over Aion. Aion requires concentration, lots of effort, you can't multi-task, you should probably be in a group with other people. I can't afford all those things when I have a chance to play, and so I'm back to WoW in part... though WoW is making it harder to do these things as well. Lower time before you get kicked from a BG, lower time to enter a BG once you get the queue, it's all rather sad for casual players like myself.

I applied for a job at IGN the other day, but I'm pretty sure my application was rather horrible. They asked for my resume, so I used my resume... but my resume doesn't exactly consist of all my MMO experience, which is what the job was about. I really should have probably added in a cover letter, and just made a resume fit solely for that job... but the whole process confuses me to be honest. They use an outsource program to take in resumes, and the outsource program only asks for a general resume, it doesn't want any type of cover letter or specific details, so I feel that while I completed the outsourced resume part right, I really f'd up when it came to the real resume and now I probably won't get the job. I didn't have all of the qualifications in the first place, but it still would have looked better if I had just listed my MMO experience instead of the crap that's on my actual resume... which really is crap. I need a real job so bad. Money, experience, for my resume to show I'm doing Something... sigh.

Aion After a Week

I actually have a new article going up on the various play styles of each class in Aion over at MMORPG.com in the next couple of weeks. It was already such a long article I couldn't put everything I wanted to into it. One thing that would have been fun is to compare the classes in Aion to other classes from other games, mainly WoW. I feel comfortable doing this since the game of Aion itself is so different from WoW, but many of the class abilities appear similar. I really did not have the room to write a bunch of clarifying information for my article, plus it would add extra length for no reason. So here goes:

Templar -> A Protection Paladin/DK

Gladiator -> Warrior

Chanter -> Bard

Cleric -> Generic Healer

Spiritmaster -> Warlock

Ranger -> Vanilla WoW Hunter minus pet

Assassin -> Rogue/AoC Assassin

Sorcerer -> Mage

If I had put that list in the article, I would have had to explain it all, but since it's here I don't have to worry about it! Those are how I see the various classes. Chanters are a little bit like WoW shamans as well, but not completely. Templars really could be Protection Paladins just lifted and put into Aion, they really only have one DK live ability, but it's a pretty sweet ability. Divine Grip: Grabs a target up to 25 meters away, and all enemy targets within 20 meters of that, and brings all of them straight in front of you. Mass DK death grip.

Aion is still enjoyable, I haven't made it past level 18 though : ( I probably played about 4 hours of WoW this weekend, and way too many hours of Aion, but Friday and Saturday sleep just wasn't happening so I was up and awake forever. I caught up a little yesterday, slept for about 3 hours during the day then I went to bed at 1am and got up at 7:30, so that was some nice extra hours. Still feeling tired. Probably why I'm writing about it instead of Aion.

In Aion you have to complete special quests, I forget what they're called but they're special, they have their own tab in the quest book, in order to level up every 10 levels or so. You work on the quest throughout the 10 levels, but then the storyline all culminates at the end. These end quests, sadly in my opinion, do in fact require a group effort. You will need a healer, so either a chanter or a cleric, and you will need a tank, so either a templar or a gladiator, and you will even need some good DPS. So far I have yet to see a group go through these quests with less than 5 people, and that was rare, almost everyone was going as a group of 6. This is because dying is such a painful experience I believe, that bringing less people just doesn't feel safe. The mobs are elite, so they hit harder, and have a lot more health. They don't hit ridiculously harder though, so it's really all about killing them down.

These quests, so far, are not instanced, though players can still switch game instances if they wish. But this means that the mobs are free for all, and while most of them are just kill so many of this type, there are some boss mobs that can be farmed for gear. I'm hoping that the later stages of Aion has instanced dungeons so players can farm them in peace, but we'll see, I really haven't heard one way or the other, so if anyone knows, feel free to leave a comment about it.

My Templar is level 18 and, while fun, just doesn't hit as hard as I wish it did. My ranger is now level 17, I'm slowly getting her up in the levels, I think it took almost twice as long to level her than it did my Templar. Partly because when I was leveling my Templar I was grouped up with a friend, but also just because even when solo I could level as my Templar with no issues in crowded areas because I could move up to the mob, and not have to worry about other mobs around. As a ranger though... constantly kiting mobs, you have to constantly be aware of your surroundings, and sometimes you really just have no choice but to run away because you are surrounded and there's no way to kite your mob without aggro'ing a bunch of others.

On that note, rangers seem OP to me so far. Animation cancelling will always be powerful, and rangers can definitely pull it off much easier than any other class. I haven't seen any mages manage to pull off animation cancelling yet, but perhaps I just haven't been looking close enough. I know that the mage style of mob killing doesn't require much kiting, and in order to animation cancel on the mage you need to be jump kiting, so we'll see, I'll probably level a Sorcerer later... but I don't want to start any new characters until finally hitting level 20 hopefully sometime this coming weekend.

That's all for now ^^

WoW's new problem, the BG issue

Patch day has come and gone, and everyone is upset for various reasons, as normal. Major issue right now, AV is a wasteland. Where once was a thriving angry mob playing a fun BG, there is now a thriving angry mob playing the WoW forums. The forums actually give a sense of reward in terms of stress relief and getting your feelings out there. Funny, that's really the entire issue in the first place. The following is a post I made on those forums:

"Northrend leveling just wasn't interesting. Level 71 was, but that's about it. I know Blizzard spent forever on it, and they're all proud of it, but it still blew. Leveling has become so easy, yet still mind numbing in longevity,that it's about as interesting as afk'ing in a BG.

It's pretty obvious players aren't viewing leveling as a mode of progression for a character anymore. It's just a grind that they have to jump hoops through in order to get to the progression paths in the end game. WoW is an old game and it's expected, but it's also expected of Blizzard to fart miracles.

Why even increase the level cap to 85, why not just make a really involving and entertaining quest chain that players have to complete, takes maybe 5 hours, and call it a day. Congratulations, you can join the rest of the remade 80's.

It's the same problem with battle grounds. For arena players, they aren't viewed as a mode of progression, they're just like leveling. That's the real problem with battle grounds. If you don't offer a reward, many people won't want to participate. Thanks for the treadmill guys, where's mah carrot at!?"

Now, I wrote that after participating in some BG's myself today, to see what all the fuss was about. I went on a level 80 toon. Well, it's true that AV is a wasteland, there wasn't a single game running when normally there would be 7, but everything else was normal. When you go off the forums into the game itself, it's like a magical cloth is pulled over your eyes, and all you see is happy people.

It's a real issue in this aging MMO. MMO's need to stay fresh, they need to offer a reward for the grind. Currently there is no reward for leveling, except that hey, now you can actually level in a way important to the game itself. I won't bring up Aion's leveling just yet, because I feel I need to experience it a little more to get the full scope of how it's working. I could generalize it, as I have before, but I'll reserve from doing so for this post.

Aion Day 3

For many it's day 1, but since I pre-ordered I got to mess around starting 2 days ago in the actual game. Is it everything I hoped it would be? More or less. There are a few glaring weaknesses, but honestly, they were already expected. Assassins can't solo for anything in the mid teen levels, not that I'm playing one, but my friend is, and the only people ever "lfg" is Assassins and Clerics. The assassins are supposed to be a force starting at level 25 though, so as long as you have someone to level with you it shouldn't be too bad.

Duo questing was frustrating due to the amount of peo

ple at launch, and may be today, but when it works, aka not too many people doing gathering quests, or kill for item quests, it works really, really well. There is no XP loss for being in a duo group, and I believe no XP loss for being in a party at all, so that's a major plus. It makes leveling faster, and more enjoyable for all. You can gain a semblance of chain pulling when you group up which is impossible for solo players, at these levels anyway.

Eurogamer did a review, and I'm a little surprised they gave the game a 7 instead of an 8. Their score numbers seem to get very arbitrary when it comes to MMO's. From reading the review, it sounded more like the reviewer was trying to play a game that Aion isn't, and then putting this ideal game on a pedestal that Aion was not meant to be compared to. Itis like matching a horror film in a race for an oscar against an action film in the Best Action Film category. Sure, the horror film may have some good action, but that wasn't the complete intent of the director.

Anyway, there's my Templar. She's just a warrior in this picture. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that not everyone took horns, since only one hair style allows horns and, to me anyway it seems, is one of the best options available. Not that I made all of my characters with horns, but for my first and most carefully crafted one. One word of note in the character creation, the face you choose actually determines just how much the sliders can effect your character. Some of the options just aren't there, like the tilt of the inner eye, you can't change that in any way except by looking at each face and choosing a face with the inner eye tilt you want from the beginning. A little annoying, but I'm guessing it has something to do with making the game run smoother despite all the different possible features.

I'm hoping to get an Aion comic up and going soon, just a small one, not a full blown color one cause I can't draw, but making little circles and lines look semi like characters isn't too hard, especially in the full ink styles of Sinfest or Applegeeks mini's.

Well, I spoke too soon

About the druid buffs. They get a Maelstrom weapon in the upcoming patch, but they also just got infected wounds fixed, so it's properly removed, and nerfed for PvP. Though apparently it is a PvE buff since it had a conflicting issue on mobs with a DK's Icy Talons.

I've got a new Aion article up over at MMORPG.com, not sure if I'm supposed to talk about that really 0_o but oh well, I doubt it matters. It went up yesterday, so look for it if you want, it just goes over the different starter weapons available to the different classes, and how to use them. Focusing specifically on the second tier of starter weapons, so players don't make mistakes and take the wrong one.

Besides those wonderful personal issues, I've got to say I love the thought of these new contacts. I can't wait until we can just use the headsets for true 3d immersion in games. A headset plus a controller and first person view, or even 3rd person just more screen space. They've done studies that having a screen closer to your eyes is not a bad thing, you just need to make sure that you're not watching in the dark. Close up screens can give you bad headaches apparently as well though. I'm grabbing this info on eye care from another CNN.com article, I just can't remember the link. You don't even need a round screen, the front of the headset can be large and square, the screen just has to be close to you. Gaining the ability to use full peripheral vision just sounds amazing to me.

3rd person view from not too far back from your avatar sort of works, but then the screen feels way too cluttered because you're missing out on everything in front of your avatar. Perhaps the best solution is to have an avatar that is liquid, so you can see through yourself. That would be great for shooters, not so much for MMO games since seeing your avatar is so important for that genre, but I think it could work. Why no one hasn't just kept the normal FPS mode, but moved the camera about a foot back behind the body, but then ignored the body to the player so all they see is their see through hands holding the gun, is beyond me. Blur the edges, get your peripheral vision on.

Aion

Aion beta is open again! You can level all the way to level 20. Honestly, the sheer amount of possible grinding in this game is making me hesitate from doing just that. Now, there's nothing wrong with a game that takes a little time and is enjoyable on the way up, but as with most MMO's I've encounters, that enjoyment only lasts the first time through.

I want to make an Aion comic, so I'm hoping to test out my black and white 4 panel across simple drawing skills soon. Nothing as awesome as Sinfest, more along the lines of simple like Applegeeks mini comic thing at the bottom.

Crafting in Aion is very grindy. It's not a necessity either, so I'm not sure if I'll put too much time into it once the real game launches. I'm also completely addicted to harvesting. I was addicted to it in Age of Conan, I'm addicted to it in Aion. Whenever I see a resource I have to go get it, even though I know it's going to respawn in less than 5 minutes and I'll be tempted to take it all over again. It's not like anyone else is taking the damn things, but I just feel the need to when I see them. And honestly, I think I'm about doing it on pace to keep the gathering skill up, which is both enjoyable for me, and scary at the same time, because I've been doing a hell of a lot of gathering.

Still haven't seen the end game of Aion, just knowing that leveling more than 1 character is going to be a major pain in the ass. I'm currently looking at a Templar, but I'm growing disappointed with the lag that occasionally plagues the game. I don't know where this lag is coming from, probably Comcast so me, but the rate of it just makes me think it has something to do with Aion as well. When I can get the Templar to weapon swap perfectly and use abilities at the right time without having to press... wait to see if it worked... no it didn't press again... wait another second... that's what this game turns into sometimes and it's Horrible when it does. When the game runs smooth the combat with a Templar is nice, when it runs even the slightest big laggy you're screwed and going to end up healing yourself between every mob.

So I've been thinking about maybe leveling something else, but I'm not sure what yet. The ranger is fun, the kiting takes skill just like hunters used to in WoW, but I don't know if I'm ready to go back to the same play style I used over 3 years ago and had to watch it deteriorate before my eyes over the last 3. Current WoW hunters are a complete joke in comparison. Aion rangers take that same kind of skill, but the weapon manual weapon swapping is again a deterrent to the class in my eyes. This time from ranged weapon to melee weapon you actually have to swap before using. Considering the up to 2 seconds of weapon swap lag depending on what your doing when you hit the button, it's a terribly unresponsive system. I'm also looking at a Summoner just because the pets look f'in awesome, but I'd probably rather have a sorcerer if I leveled a mage. I don't like either the cleric or the chanter really, and I'm not sure which I would take over the other. The chanter looks like more fun, but it also looks more like the other melee classes, so a cleric might be more interesting.

But we'll see. Also, just started watching some show where this girl dies and ends up being a grim reaper... pretty good so far.

Monday, June 29

So it's been awhile, a lot has happened.

First, I was finally able to return the Empire: Total War game to Best Buy. I received full in store credit after explaining to them how broken the game was. I'm so glad I tried to return it, apparently they have changed their software return policies. The breaking point for me with the game was when I attempted to play it one night, but the Steam service was down. I had internet access, but I could not access Steam, which meant that I could not play Empire: Total War offline because you have to load Steam either offline or online in order to play. But if you're online but Steam is down, you can't join Steam in offline mode. I was very upset with Steam more then the game, and I plan on never using Steam again. I hope the concept fades out, but for me the best games are MMO's and thankfully Steam hasn't entered that realm of server service yet and hopefully they never do.

Second, I have quit WoW. I cancelled my account just the other day. My arena partner was not happy, but she saw it coming after the terrible changes that have been made to the game for patch 3.2. The tiered reward system of WoW is horrible, and that will actually be my last article for MMORPG.com in the WoW setting, I have it written it just needs some polish before I send it in. The illusion of an MMO has been gutted from WoW, and now it's nothing more than a giant competition. If I wanted to play a game that involved 99% of the player base failing so that 1% can succeed I would... I can't think of any other game like that to be honest. Blizzard has polarized the end game rewards and it is truly ruining their MMO. I am still looking forward to the future Blizzard MMO, as well as Diablo 3, so I haven't given up on the company, though I can't help but sigh each time I look back at what made WoW start to fail, and then I just see the Activision-Blizzard merger.

I'm looking forward to Aion as my next MMO, and may continue to write articles for MMORPG.com related to Aion. Here's Penny Arcade's news post on Aion, the chipmunk and ferret reference is spot on. Perhaps I'll even attempt a little video editing technique with those articles since I'm in the beta, but I would really have to rush to get that working. When you're the guy after the guy after the guy after the guy in a system, your articles don't get published when you submit them, they just aren't high priority, and I've come to realize that with my WoW articles that, sadly by the time they are put up on the site, they are usually out of date by 2 or 3 weeks. MMORPG.com is a busy company and I'm just a coresspondent, not a writer or columnist. And even those two positions I can only imagine suffer under some minor publishing delay.

Aion looks beautiful. I'm in the beta with a pre-order key from Gamestop. Comcast internet has been spiky recently so I've had some unfortunate lag while playing that others haven't had to deal with, hopefully these hangups will go away soon. I honestly don't notice them with regular browsing, but with streaming videos from Hulu.com or trying to play a game online, the hangups are very noticeable. In the future I'm hoping I can ditch Comcast and get a more reliable ISP, or I hope that Comcast stops being so corporate bad.

One of my current projects is my book, which is set in a mid-fantasy, as opposed to low or high fantasy, world. In my mind, these may not be the proper descriptions, High Fantasy is the mixing of major magic and new races set in a low tech, possibly steam punk, but not sci-fi setting. While Low Fantasy involves very rare magic use and low technologies, an almost barbaric setting that covers the concept of magic through idea types such as Oracles. Not that Low is worse than High, it's just a different world. I'm hoping to make a book somewhere in between. Violence is prevalent in many fantasy stories, but not like what I'm hoping to produce. I'm experimenting with the process of violent action being used to create thicker emotions and attachment to characters as well as development.

I'm also working on a d6 mech system. I just feel that there needs to be faster, dirtier, stream lined battles for some of the worlds out there, for many games. Many players of table top games love to pour over numbers and modifiers and obscure bonuses and penalties. Honestly, if you have to keep track of the way your Mechs turret is facing... that's just too much in my mind. Table top games should be approachable and not forever hardcore realistic. Warhammer has done a great job of this I feel with their rulebooks, granted I've only ever read Rulebook 6 (possibly 5) I believe, and not 7 or 8 which have been released since I bought it. Brettonian's vs. Lizardmen boxed set. That editions rule book covered all of the basics of the game in the first 40 pages or so, and then the next half of the book covered technicalities that were all pretty optional. Yes, you can play a game and pour over the finer details of it and never really get anything done, or you can play a game and have a good time, and then play another and another.

I love working on model terrain, and hope to get to spend a little time doing that in the near future for Mechs. I'm currently looking at using the hexagonal system in play, while square cut boards that can be pieced together in any shape or form desired.

I'm also still looking for a real job so I can fund some of these wishes of mine. Such as getting an Air Conditioner, clothes, The Sims 3, a hair cut... food...

Had a great time at the Brewhouse the other day, excellent sports bar, or pub rather. Watching the USA vs. Brazil game. One of the best scenes for watching Soccer I've ever been to. The owner is an Arsenal fan, as are some of my friends, so once the game was over and USA lost and we were all feeling terrible, myself mainly due to the start of a hangover already since we got there 2 hours before the match even started, the owner came out to cheer us up with an endless supply of beers.