January 2006 Entries
Here's the real problem with Planetside (from the PS Forums):
How long have you been playing Planetside?
88 Vote(s) - Since Beta (34%)
80 Vote(s) - Since Launch, May 2003 (31%)
48 Vote(s) - Started between August-December 2003, (Core Combat - October 2003) (19%)
19 Vote(s) - Started between January-June 2004 (7%)
9 Vote(s) - Started between July-December 2004, (Aftershock - October 2004) (3%)
12 Vote(s) - Started between January-June 2005 (5%)
0 Vote(s) - Started between July-December 2005 (0%)
2 Vote(s) - Just started January 2006 (1%)
Total Votes: 258
A vicious circle of self-constricting Pareto's Principle then, as the longer it is since beta, the harsher it is for...
World of Warcraft news here:
Slashdot: New World of Warcraft Raid Dungeon
In short, a new really HUGE, really HARD 40-man mega-raid zone with AT LEAST 18 bosses, and MORE phat lootz. And my server hasn’t even finished scouring for Peaceblooms to get the previous one open yet!
The accompanying quotes do seem to suggest that Blizzard’s position on future content is clear; 40-up and Raid, or start a new character, which seems like a bit of a middle-finger to the great many players clamouring for something to do post-60 that doesn’t involve 39 other half-way competent idiots, and I do begin to...
Planetside is bought to you this week by: The Switchblade!
According to the General Forum, which is always a good place to find out which weapon iss currently overpowered, this Core Combat deployable hoverbike turrety thing seems to have accidentally been given as much armour as a medium battle tank, but only costs one cert, travels at 80kph and can be deployed for wholesale infantry slaughter. Vroom vroom!
And so the wheel turns again, and I’m back to Everquest II. Thinking back, I’m not sure I’ve ever played one MMO exclusively for more than a year – well, not since Everquest was new anyway, and I wonder if any of them are supposed to be fun for 4+ hours a night, every night for a year. Is that even possible? It could just be me, I guess, but I’ve even managed to get bored of World of Warcraft at least once already…pre-level 60!
Anyway, having the SOE Access Pass, and a set of EQ2 discs, it was only a...
"Saigon, shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing... I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to a divorce. When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get...
So to my other brief encounter with the distant future; Jumpgate. This title, first released in 2001, is a fairly robust and involved space mining/trading/combat MMO, featuring full joystick support, twitch flight, aliens, equipment, credits and PvP.
The setting is the distant future; mankind has travelled to the stars, via some kind of intergalactic jumpgatey thing, which subsequently collapsed. The remaining humans split into three factions, the militarist Octavius, the mercantile Solrain and the spiritual Quantar. These three factions, under the shakey oversight of the TRI, then set about rebuilding society and looking for a way home, all the while fighting...
Ha…that didn’t take nearly as long as the event designers planned, I bet. Never under-estimate the power of the catass!
AFK Gamer: Medivh Wins World of Warcraft!
Foton has the details, but basically, Medivh server has farmed its way to victory, completing the big server resource hunt event. Predictably enough, every one on the other servers all went to have a look, causing server overloading, and requiring GM intervention and a ban on new characters. And there wasn’t anything to see anyway – there’s a five day buffer on the thing actually happening – a thinly disguised attempt to let everyone else...
Mankind is a curiously different sort of game. I’ve only been playing a few days now, so don’t take this as an exhaustive review or anything, but those few days have kind of reminded me of what the whole thing is about, sort of.
Essential, it’s an MMO RTS, based in space and on various planetary surfaces. You start life with a ‘Vibz’ class construction spaceship, a modest pile of credits, 500 settlers, and a Destiny, and form there you’re on your own. The first steps of the game focus on a very involved infrastructure creation exercise, as you scout out...
Ouch...looks like the long anticipated Dungeons and Dragons Online is out of NDA then:
Aggro Me: Not Impressed
Kill Ten Rats: Somewhat Indifferent
Tobold: Content Concerns
Penny Arcade: Tentative
Virgin Worlds: Scathing Roundup
Etcetera, etcetera. All in all, a mixed bag, tending more toward...er...Chaotic Evil than Lawful Good. The chiefest concerns seem to revolve around the current shortage of content, with estimates placing around 1-2 months of medium-to-hardcore powergaming gameplay in the game as it stands. Other problems seem to be an almost total lack of soloability, a complete dependence on instance pick-up grouping to get anything done at all, a somewhat stale and un-inovative setting...
I never came here looking for Orcs.
Or Elves, or XP, or Treasure. It must be getting on for at least seven years now, since I started the self-destructive spiral that began with Everquest, back in 1999, but I was an online gamer, of sorts, before that, and it certainly didn’t used to be about firing my magic missiles at the darkness back then.
My very first real go at ‘online gaming’ was through the Microsoft Gaming Zone, which amounted to little more than a bunch of Chess and Tetris style games, and more importantly, a matchmaking lobby for proper games with...
Big World of Warcraft weekend, what with the big new patch and all; The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. Now I don’t know what it’s like over in the Colonies, but back in the Old World, the main feature this patch seems to have added is massive server overcrowding and hardware failures, with almost all of the established European English servers reporting ‘Full’, and as a result, the few newer servers suddenly gaining huge login queues, as we the addicted seek our fix as newbies on temporary servers.
I did the same, unable to get at my usual character (L49 Troll Warrior) on...
Second Life seems to be getting a bit busy lately. Almost certainly a direct result of my patronage and ramblings here, no doubt!
In the few months I’ve been pottering about with it, it’s ‘residents’ figure, listed on the front page of their website, seems to have risen from about 71,000 or so, to 108,000 and more. However, this is almost certainly misleading, and the ‘residents currently online’ figure is, as with most MMOs, a more accurate number to work with, particularly since being a Basic Level Resident, is tantamount to having a free trial, and it’s very difficult to ‘cancel’...
Carnival time! You know the drill...
Kill Ten Rats: Carnival of Gamers X
All kinds of good stuff there. Go see!
Well, with that many days off work, the psychotic episode was somewhat inevitable, thinking about it. A generally lazy demeanour, coupled with a lack of routine, conspired to turn me firstly nocturnal, and then make me sleep only one night in two, so to fill the time, I’ve been back to work in World of Warcraft mostly, and I’m really quite surprised how accessible the game still is.
Most MMOs seem to have two parts:
The Casual Newbie Friendly Start Game: This consists of character creation, the tutorial island/space station/holothingey/dungeon, the initial city and environs, the first dabbling recipes of tradeskill, and...