A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
Mighty and majestic, scaly in hide and shrewd of mind, smoking with fury unabated… these are the Battle Bards! Also, dragons. Yes, in today’s episode, the Bards tackle the soundtracks to one of the most iconic fantasy creatures of all time. So call over your good luck dragon and get your best Sean Connery voice on as we loot the musical hoard of these beasts.
Episode 116 show notes (show page, direct download)
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
Forgettable ambient noise or entrancing space sounds? This is the debate that’s at the core of today’s episode, as the Battle Bards take on EVE Online’s beloved and perhaps misunderstood soundtrack. It’s a journey that goes far beyond our galaxy to one full of intrigue, industry, and space discotheques!
Episode 115 show notes (show page, direct download)
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
Yes officer, these Battle Bards were well above the speed limit and violated many noise complaints in the local neighborhoods. But it was for a good cause, sir! This music from vehicular MMOs is just way too good to keep quiet! What’s that? You’ll let them go with just a warning? You only know they’re going to peel out and look for another score to settle!
Episode 114 show notes (show page, direct download)
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
Alien, quiet, and weird — that’s the Anarchy Online soundtrack for you in a nutshell. For the first episode of 2018, the ever-contentious Battle Bards are back to quibble about, gush over, and nitpick the score to one of the older sci-fi MMOs on the market today.
Episode 113 show notes (show page, direct download)
The spirit moves me to write a little bit to keep some of you who check this site interested!
I’ve been a little slack lately about dealing with emails. While clearing out my backlog (“inbox zero” still seeming like an impossible dream) I found an email where someone sent me a link to a page about Quantum Link. This is the network that hosted Habitat on the Commodore 64. An interesting bit of history for those of us who weren’t able to afford connection fees (or maybe even born yet!) back then.
I always like a little glimpse at the past like that.
As I said in my birthday post, I’m hanging in there. Gaming is going. Still mostly playing FFXIV and DDO as my MMOs of choice. Both are games I feel somewhat invested in, mostly because of the other people that play. DDO works well for me because it’s a game I can play once a week with my two static groups and still feel like I’m getting a good value from my money since I’m free-to-play.
FFXIV on the other hand is still a game very much in the DIKU form. The recent expansion has been pretty fun, with some good changes to class mechanics and PvP that has really made things more interesting. But at the end of the day it’s still the same type of game we’ve seen since 1999.
So, where are the new games that are supposed to sweep us off our feet? After the wave of Kickstarter games some years ago we haven’t heard much from them. Missed deadlines and dragged out development times have kind of taken the spotlight away from them. Few new games have been announced so there’s not much exciting on the horizon. The shift of focus to mobile has hurt MMOs in a way, since smaller screens don’t handle DIKU gameplay very well.
The reality is that games are still very hit-driven. MMOs in particular need a certain minimum “critical mass” to thrive, and it’s hard to stand out from the crowd now. Unfortunately even a promising game like The Exiled (formerly Das Tal) releases to little fanfare and has a har time finding players to reach that critical mass. I guess we’ll see how well Project Gorgon does in this environment.
This doesn’t mean that MMOs are unprofitable. Obviously FFXIV is going strong; the game boasts big sales and income. The problem is that MMOs aren’t big and exciting anymore. To investors there’s no potential for seemingly unlimited growth; we know what the audience for MMOs is, and many people see money invested in something new and exciting as a better opportunity. VR and AR are bigger draws right now in the gaming space, with some interest lingering in mobile to see if there is still more growth.
Investing craziness
You can see this attitude outside the games industry with the fascination with “blockchain” buzzword. A bottled iced tea company’s stock soars after they say they’re going to invest in blockchain technologies. And more recently The holding company for Hooters saw its stock soar when one of their franchises started to offer cryptocurrency loyalty rewards. In other words, selling tea and burgers is less exciting than some cryptographic technology that suddenly captured a lot of attention.
This same attitude holds within a company. A company like EA or Square Enix has to believe that the money invested into an MMO will provide better returns than another type of game. I think this is why we’ve seen some games come out with more MMO type elements rather than traditional MMOs games; game companies have seen this as a way to mitigate the risk of MMOs.
Your thoughts?
I know things have been quiet on my blog. Things just haven’t been all that exciting recently, with the same bleak news happening over and over. But, maybe you see something I don’t. Do you see something exciting happening in MMOs, or even online gaming, that I haven’t talked about? Post a comment below!
Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:
Old year bad, new year good
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
It’s time to take a diversion to play — and listen — to the minigames tucked inside of our MMOs! The Battle Bards haul out their last show of 2012 with an eclectic and fun assortment of minigame soundtracks. While minigame-specific music might be hard to hunt down, this trio did their best and are reasonably satisfied with the result. Which is good, because no refunds on this podcast!
Episode 112 show notes (show page, direct download)
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
The Battle Bards are always up for a musical bargain, and on today’s episode, they’ll deliver two MMORPGs for the price of one (sitting)! It’s a look at two rather obscure eastern MMOs, Cabal Online and Cabal 2, both of which have some surprisingly good music tucked away. So expand your video game musical horizons with this show!
Episode 111 show notes (show page, direct download)
A new episode of Battle Bards is up!
The Battle Bards are quite familiar with the power of the strummed guitar and lute, knowing that such simple instruments can bring down walls, devastate armies, and dethrone monarchs. But on their off days, acoustic guitars are simply pleasurable to hear and are sprinkled throughout many a-MMO’s soundtrack. It’s six-stringed serenity in the 110th episode of this podcast!
Episode 110 show notes (show page, direct download)
I’ve been quiet lately. Part of it is just general negativity the last few years about many things. Some of it is disappointment in MMOs in general. Some of it is not really feeling like I have much to say that people are interested in.
But, let me go over a little bit of what’s happening in my life for those of you still reading.
I’m currently playing FFXIV as my MMO of choice right now. The new expansion, Stormblood, has been pretty fun as a whole. The story isn’t quite as good as it was in Heavensward (the part with Ysale and Hraesvelgr is just amazing), but it was solid enough. FFXIV lets you play every class on one character and I’m on track to get all the classes to max level again. I’ve already maximized my crafting classes and over half the combat classes.
I recently dipped a toe into the RP community. I followed a friend to an unofficial RP server and have been playing there a bit. RP communities (particularly in WoW) were a bit inspiration for us for Storybricks, so it’s been fun to look at an RP community up close and personal. Maybe I’ll be motivated to make a post on some observations from that.
I still play DDO with my static groups. I don’t play solo characters much anymore, all that time is poured into FFXIV now. It’s still a tremendously fun game in static groups, although it’s obvious the game is on the decline. Events don’t draw as large of a player crowd anymore, and you just don’t see as many people around anymore. But a new Ravenloft expansion was announced which may drives some interest back to the game!
Otherwise MMOs have been… disappointing. After a lot of talk and bluster, the recent MMOs in development seem to be dragging through development. For all the talk about light design and smart component use making for fast development, it seems the current crop of developers are falling into their same old habits. I fear we’ll see games that can’t live up to even their modest expectations given the time and resources being poured into them. It’s sad that the most interesting MMO in the last few years has been yet another DIKU style clone.
I’m still playing other games. Board games are still a favorite of mine. I’ve been doing board gaming on occasion with a local group which has been a lot of fun. Some of my recent favorites have been Tokaido. It’s a fun board game with a fun movement mechanic that doesn’t rely on randomness; the person furthest behind always moves, and that’s sometimes the same person multiple times in a row. The setting is also interesting, traveling on a pilgrimage in ancient Japan, and the art is amazing.
I recently went to WashingCon, a big board gaming convention. There I played a fun game called Between Two Citeis. This had a neat mechanic where you had to cooperatively build two cities with the players on either side of you and your lowest scoring city was your final score. Lots of interesting strategy!
My mobile game intake has slowed down considerably. After playing a bunch of grinding games, I got bored of the sameness of the games and never felt compelled to spend my entertainment budget on them. And a few games have simply shut down meaning I can’t play them anymore. Most of the excitement has been going to VR and AR games lately, although the luster on VR seems to be fading fast.
Finally, I’ve been in a 5th edition D&D campaign for a while now. I’m playing a Tiefling Sorcerer with a Draconic Bloodline… Demonic features and gold scaly skin make for an interesting visual. The game has been a lot of fun with a new DM and a collaboratively built world. We use a virtual tabletop system which is a lot of fun.
I’ve been quiet about my work. Unfortunately, The Humanity Hypothesis has been shelved as my dev partner Dave “Over00″ Toulous has had to deal with some personal issues. I’d still like to pick the game back up and release it in the future, but we’ve obviously lost a lot of momentum on the marketing and development side of things.
I am working on another project, but it’s something not quite ready for prime time. I’ll hit that it’s related to tabletop RPGs more than MMOs. It’s something I’m very excited about. When it’s ready, I’ll talk about it on here and on all social media I can.
But, I’ve been growing and learning. I’ve gotten back into Javascript programming after several years. I’m avoiding most of the framework craziness as I can and sticking to some basics using Meteor and Pixi. I’ve also been doing some fun design work, beating ideas into shape using my design experience.
Keep an eye on here soon!
Writing this has felt good. Maybe I should blog more often. Got a topic you want me to write more about? Post it in the comments. Some inspiration might be just what the doctor ordered!
Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:
Another trip around the sun survived!
Go read it. A few more thoughts below.
As is the nature of these things, I answered a lot more questions than went into that article. I’ll include a copy of the questions and answers below.
I think Samuel’s feelings are interesting. I respect that the open source developers are doing what they think is best for the game, but there are many reasons why I didn’t “modernize” the game like they have. A lot of the charm of the game was that the information was hidden, and that figuring out some mechanic was an advantage over others. Making things plain like adding an xp bar takes away some of the charm of the game that appealed to the older players.
I don’t think Meridian 59 is going to see popularity soar by becoming a clone of existing games. It was its own special thing for the time. As I say in the interview, we did a big change to update the rendering engine. Even despite the timing of releasing around the time WoW did, I still don’t think the game would have been a huge success.
But, it was certainly fun to work on it when I did. At the end of the day, I’m glad people are still finding fun with the game as open source developers or as players.
Tell the story, in your own words, of how you came to work on Meridian 59, what happened while you worked there, how you later acquired it, and how you later handed it off.
My first job after graduating from university was a soul-crushing Dilbert-type job. I had worked on text MUDs as a hobby in university, and interviewed at a game development company before graduation, but things kind of fell apart so I took this other job. I still wanted to get into the game industry, though.
I contacted a recruiter who sent my resume to 3DO for a console programming job. But, they saw the MUD experience I had and needed someone for their game Meridian 59. I flew out, interviewed, was stoked, got an offer, and joined the team. I worked on the game for about a year and a half before I was moved to another team on a game I wasn’t as excited about working on. That game shipped after a very short development cycle, but during that time 3DO made the decision to shut down Meridian 59. I left the company when that last game shipped.
I got in touch with one of the early developers, Rob ‘Q’ Ellis II, who kept contacting Trip Hawkins, CEO of 3DO at the time, to see if he’d sell Meridian 59. He finally agreed, and we closed the deal with our company, Near Death Studios, Inc., a little before 3DO went bankrupt and closed down. We got the game for a good price, on the condition that it was “As Is”. I borrowed against credit cards to pay for my part of the game.
We worked hard to get the game back in working condition. Rob had the idea to print and sell CDs to help fund some of the costs we were incurring to get the game up and running again, which helped a lot. I learned a ton about business and management of a small company. We launched the game in 2002 and kept it running until the end of 2009. The game was licensed to a company in Germany as well.
It was never a massive success, enough to keep a few people on very low wages. After a few years, I started doing outside contract and consulting work for other MMO companies, which helped to pay off the debt.
In 2009 we lost our billing provider for Near Death Studios. After trying to find a new billing provider, we decided to close down the company rather than pay out of pocket to keep the company running. To keep the game running, we sold the game to the Kirmse brothers for a token amount of money. They made it clear they did not want me involved with the game, so I let them have it in order to keep the game running.
They later opened the source for the game, letting players peek into the internals and start developing their own extensions to the game.
Did you ever wish you could have done more content, rather than systems, updates to Meridian while you owned it?
Not particularly. With the help of a friend at the time, we did re-write the rendering engine from a software renderer like the original DOOM to a hardware-accelerated renderer like modern games have. This took a lot of time and effort, and ultimately did little for the game and some players even criticized us for focusing on that rather than other aspects they felt were higher priority.
The focus of the game was mostly Player vs. Player (PvP) fights. Adding more content to PvP tends to make it more difficult to balance. We did add more skills, zones, items, and other features, but a lot of the focus was on balancing the systems to make PvP more fun and feel more fair. I think this was the right decision for the audience at the time.
Meridian 59′s development tools were notoriously terrible, especially the map editor. What was so bad about them?
Well, the programming tools were pretty solid. We used a command line driven system to build the code.
The art and level layout tools were not that great. To be fair, this is true of most games, particularly in the 1990s; tool work isn’t seen as very sexy, and it is often given to junior programmers because the senior programmers want to do the “fun stuff”. Especially art tools can be seen as difficult to do or tedious, because many programmers aren’t very art savvy. The notoriously awful level layout tool was an altered version of a freeware DOOM room editor. Unfortunately, that editor didn’t support all the features of the M59 engine, particularly sloped floors. It was a bit of black magic to get them to work, something that Rob was very good at.
The game industry has gotten better about tools. As the mod communities have gotten stronger we’ve seen tools become a little more accepted as worth programmer time. Plus we have new positions like “Technical Artist” where someone with technical skills and art skills help develop tools that the artists will use; not surprisingly, this has resulted in much better art tools available in game development.
Why do you think Meridian 59 has stayed relevant all these years?
It was an important transition game between the older online games that were bound to proprietary services like GEnie or AOL. It set the standard for the flat rate subscription fee that MMOs and other games used for years afterward. I think that Near Death Studios was also an early pioneer in indie game development; we were just a bunch of developers trying to figure things out. We showed what was possible for a small, motivated team to do; this was important, especially since MMOs were seen as giant monstrosities requiring huge teams when we started Near Death Studios.
What do you think of the open source development efforts happening on servers/communities like 103?
I’m sincerely glad the game is still out there and inspiring people. It’s nice that people are so passionate about the game that they continue to dig into it and find ways to improve it. I hope that the game helps people discover the joy and creativity of game development.
I’ve heard from people that the PvP fights that used to happen in-game now happen in code, though! I gotta imagine it’s “fun” looking through pull requests, trying to find if someone slipped in something that would let them get an unfair advantage if they had the right knowledge. ;)
What would you change in Meridian now if you could?
I don’t think I’d change much of the game itself. I think it’d have been nice to have better marketing in the past. But, marketing is the hardest part of being an indie, and tough to do well. Especially for a product like M59 that was a pioneer in many ways.
What’s your impression of the fact that one of the server hobbyist dev teams has now created an entire new continent in a Revelations-style expansion?
Good for them! I saw a bit of it a while ago when a fellow former M59 team member, Tony Lyran, invited me onto her Twitch stream. It was neat seeing the enthusiasm people had. But, as with most things MMO, the development is just the first part. The next part is the support, which can be a lot less fun….
What is Meridian 59′s relevance to games today? Is it influential on stuff like Minecraft, DayZ, Battlegrounds, etc? Is there more or less to it than that?
As a game, I think it had a lot of influence in its time. It helped bring the idea of MMORPGs on the open internet to many people. As I said, it pioneered the flat monthly subscription business model that many other games used back then and still use today. Many other developers saw what was possible from what M59 did with a small team.
And, I think the indie spirit of Near Death Studios paved the way for other indies. Those of us who took a chance and did our own thing before the rise of the current indie developers. I won’t say they would name us directly, but I’d like to think that Near Death Studios helped build the environment that let the indies thrive.
Post questions as comments below, and I’ll answer them the best I can.
Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:
An article about Meridian 59
Team bonus: I'm in team Mystic (blue), the largest team in my region. When doing legendary raids, I often get extra balls to throw at the bird for team contribution. I'm a patient player and the majority of my throws hit. I will take an average amount of 10 attempts into account for this thought experiment.Throwing strategy: I always throw curve balls. Unfortunately, I'm not amazing enough to throw excellent curve balls every time, but I consistently hit great. So I will assume great curve ball throws for this experiment.Feeding: I use a golden razzberry for every throw.
Medals: I have a gold medal for both flying and psychic (+3), silver medals for fire and electric (+2) and a bronze medal for ice (+1). The legendary birds have double typings (for instance Articuno is both flying and ice type). When pokemon have double typings, the average medal bonus gets applied (see the Gamepress article).
Legendary bird | Catch chance per throw | Catch chance per encounter | Calculation for encounter |
Articuno | 17% | 84,5% | 0,8310 ≈ 0,155 |
Moltres | 18% | 86,3% | 0,8210 ≈ 0,137 |
Zapdos | 18% | 86,3% | 0,8210 ≈ 0,137 |
Lugia | 13% | 75,2% | 0,8710 ≈ 0,248 |
Legendary bird | My success rate | Chance to get this result | Calculation |
Articuno | 3 out of 4 | 37,4% | 4(0,155 ∙ 0,8453) |
Moltres | 3 out of 6 | 3,3% | 20(0,1372 ∙ 0,8632 ∙ 0,137 ∙ 0,863) |
Zapdos | 3 out of 4 | 35,2% | 4(0,8632 ∙ 0,137 ∙ 0,863) |
Lugia | 1 out of 3* | 13,9% | 3(0,752 ∙ 0,2482) |
Team bonus: I'm in team Mystic (blue), the largest team in my region. When doing legendary raids, I often get extra balls to throw at the bird for team contribution. I'm a patient player and the majority of my throws hit. I will take an average amount of 10 attempts into account for this thought experiment.Throwing strategy: I always throw curve balls. Unfortunately, I'm not amazing enough to throw excellent curve balls every time, but I consistently hit great. So I will assume great curve ball throws for this experiment.Feeding: I use a golden razzberry for every throw.
Medals: I have a gold medal for both flying and psychic (+3), silver medals for fire and electric (+2) and a bronze medal for ice (+1). The legendary birds have double typings (for instance Articuno is both flying and ice type). When pokemon have double typings, the average medal bonus gets applied (see the Gamepress article).
Legendary bird | Catch chance per throw | Catch chance per encounter | Calculation for encounter |
Articuno | 17% | 84,5% | 0,8310 ≈ 0,155 |
Moltres | 18% | 86,3% | 0,8210 ≈ 0,137 |
Zapdos | 18% | 86,3% | 0,8210 ≈ 0,137 |
Lugia | 13% | 75,2% | 0,8710 ≈ 0,248 |
Legendary bird | My success rate | Chance to get this result | Calculation |
Articuno | 3 out of 4 | 37,4% | 4(0,155 ∙ 0,8453) |
Moltres | 3 out of 6 | 3,3% | 20(0,1372 ∙ 0,8632 ∙ 0,137 ∙ 0,863) |
Zapdos | 3 out of 4 | 35,2% | 4(0,8632 ∙ 0,137 ∙ 0,863) |
Lugia | 1 out of 3* | 13,9% | 3(0,752 ∙ 0,2482) |
As I’ve been running low on podcasts that capture my interest lately, I decided to try Audible. I’ve got about an hour’s worth of work commute five days a week, the perfect time to broaden my literary horizons. The first audiobook I decided to purchase with my Audible subscription was one that I’ve heard much about from within geek/gaming circles: Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. As a standalone story (not part of some huge epic series), it seemed like the obvious choice on which to whet my audiobook whistle.
The version I bought included narration by Wil Wheaton. While I neither revere nor despise Mr. Wheaton, I was a little hesitant at first. Could I stand hours and hours of Wesley Crusher droning on in my ear holes? As it turns out, Mr. Wheaton did an adequate job with the text and I eventually forgot who it was that was guiding me through the story.
Ready Player One is set in a dystopian future where energy from fossil fuels is at a premium and only the wealthy can afford to travel about. There are few jobs to be had, and many meth labs set up in “the stacks”, piles of decrepit mobile homes, with scaffolding for both support and access to the upper levels. The stacks is where our main character, Wade Owen Watts, resides. While the real world has fallen into disarray, a virtual world (the Oasis, or as I like to think of it, Second Life on steroids) created by game dev genius James Halliday , is where a vast portion of humanity spends it’s time escaping from the harshness that surrounds them. Accessing to the Oasis requires a special type of virtual reality hardware that immerses the senses of the wearer to varying degrees depending on the capabilities available within the gear. Entry to the Oasis is free, but travel within the Oasis is expensive, which is why our protagonist Wade has been stuck as a low-level avatar, limited to attending virtual school and hanging out in private chat rooms.
But school isn’t the only thing Wade does to pass the time. When Halliday, the creator of the Oasis, died, he left behind a video that set in motion a worldwide treasure hunt. Hidden somewhere within the Oasis was an Easter egg that, when found, would bestow Halliday’s entire fortune, along with control of the Oasis, to the finder. Wade (Parzival, as he’s known within the Oasis) is one of the egg hunters, or “gunters” in the parlance of his day. With the stakes of the game being what they are, entire organizations in the form of both gunter clans and corporations, have sprung up with the sole purpose of finding the promised fortune. It is in one such evil corporation, Innovative Online Industries (IOI), that we find our major antagonist, Nolan Sorrento.
Wade comes to Sorrento’s attention after he becomes the first gunter to find a key and solve a puzzle that puts him on the path to the famous Eater egg. Sorrento first tries to recruit Wade with promises of a high-paying egg hunting job, but soon resorts to attempting to kill Wade (in real life) after his offer is refused, effectively solidifying him as the personification of the evils of capitalism.
The story includes a series of puzzles and games, mostly from the 1980’s (Halliday’s favorite era and the timeframe in which he grew up), and culminates in a race between Wade, other gunters, and IOI en route to a final, epic showdown between independent gunter clans and Sorrento’s paid IOI minions. Along the way, us Gen Xer’s are treated to such nostalgic set pieces as Pac Man, Joust, Zork, War Games, Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, Tempest, Dungeons and Dragons, and Rush. It’s a veritable feast of nuggets from both my and Ernest Cline’s (who was born a few years before me) childhood. I admit to catching myself in a half-grin more than once when one of the 80’s references triggered an old memory of a bygone time.
Ready Player One is a fun journey through some familiar terrain. Dystopian futures are all the rage on the big screen nowadays, thanks to the popularity of films like The Hunger Games, Mad Max, and Logan. The book spends some time in the early chapters establishing Wade’s predicament and the sorry state of the world at large, but it is mostly forgotten or ignored over the course of the rest of the story. So much so that Wade’s best friend Aech, a displaced teen with only a van to call home, is able to travel from place to place at will, energy crisis or no. I understand that the van is solar powered – which leads to even greater questions about why fossil fuels have caused a worldwide depression when solar power is a viable alternative. But, in retrospect, this is only one of several nits I could pick.
For one, as a protagonist I didn’t find Wade very likable. He hardly bats an eye when IOI sees fit to destroy the stacks where all of this friends and relatives live. He turns his back on his friends at his first taste of money and success. And for all of his implied cleverness, he practically provokes Sorrento into a physical attack with his curt and unsubtle insults during their first meeting. While Wade does eventually admit the need for friendship and trust towards the end of the novel, it takes him quite a while to finally come to that realization.
Something that many probably gloss over, but that stood out to me, was a completely unnecessary trashing of traditional religious beliefs. I’m not exactly sure why Cline saw fit to include it, unless he was attempting to endear Wade’s character to a geek culture that more often than not does reject this type of worldview. It does nothing to further the story, and seems only to serve as a soapbox for the author’s personal beliefs. As perhaps a proverbial bone tossed to those of us who think differently, the only character described as “religious” in the book is an elderly neighbor who is depicted favorably, even fondly, if perhaps a bit naive.
Cline’s writing style is straightforward, modern and simple. Contrasting it with the Patrick Rothfuss fantasy book I’m currently reading. it’s almost childlike in it’s simplicity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m not sure there’s enough meat to the story to prolong it with fancy metaphors and descriptive text. Taken at face value, Ready Player One is a fun ride through a playground of nostalgia. Peering a bit further unearths some larger themes that could be explored, such as the effects (both beneficial and detrimental) of technology on a society that prefers not to face reality, our dependence on natural resources, and of course the ever-present evils of big business that is so eagerly embraced by recent generations. But don’t dig too deeply, as I don’t think this story was intended to make any major statements.
Overall, I enjoyed Ready Player One. I felt like it accomplished it’s mission of entertaining me for a few weeks. I could relate to many of the references used throughout the story, and the characters were believable enough, in a comic-book sort of way. While Ready Player One is not the latest Brave New World or 1984, it was certainly worth spending an Audible credit on. It allows for some imagination stretching, and by the end you’re left with a feeling that everything is going to be ok. Relatively speaking, of course.
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"If I was a prospective player, I would see that and not even try the game. Even as a veteran player, that trailer did nothing to excite me."In the same thread, player "bobbylobs" observes a trend of SSG becoming the laughing stock in the MMO gamer community:
- Player Kanoma on the LOTRO forum
"SSG do yourselves a huge favour and do as the OP suggests - take it down - it's a laughing stock right now, I'm not joking I've logged on to two other games tonight and players there are literally laughing at this, people are searching the internet to see it and no-one, absolutely no-one has anything complimentary to say about it, I am supremely confident it isn't generating any customers but it is definitely turning people away."
"Well I'd probably be classed as hopeless fanboi as I've bought the expansion, have no problem with the launch delay, disagreed with all the moaners about the delay, happily had my tea and watched some TV whilst the update downloaded and am really looking forward to Mordor, BUT that trailer is truly awful. On second viewing it's even worse, I really don't understand the thought process behind it. It makes LOTRO look terrible, the trailer has no plus points."
"If I was a prospective player, I would see that and not even try the game. Even as a veteran player, that trailer did nothing to excite me."In the same thread, player "bobbylobs" observes a trend of SSG becoming the laughing stock in the MMO gamer community:
- Player Kanoma on the LOTRO forum
"SSG do yourselves a huge favour and do as the OP suggests - take it down - it's a laughing stock right now, I'm not joking I've logged on to two other games tonight and players there are literally laughing at this, people are searching the internet to see it and no-one, absolutely no-one has anything complimentary to say about it, I am supremely confident it isn't generating any customers but it is definitely turning people away."
"Well I'd probably be classed as hopeless fanboi as I've bought the expansion, have no problem with the launch delay, disagreed with all the moaners about the delay, happily had my tea and watched some TV whilst the update downloaded and am really looking forward to Mordor, BUT that trailer is truly awful. On second viewing it's even worse, I really don't understand the thought process behind it. It makes LOTRO look terrible, the trailer has no plus points."
As someone who grew up during the age of the original Star Wars trilogy, I’ve always loved that kind of action space fantasy. Before I’d ever heard of Frodo and his suicide mission to Mount Doom, I was soaking in the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Alex Rogan, and James T Kirk on the big screen. Our recess playtime was occupied not with team sports, but with imaginary space battles and light sabre duals.
Since the 80’s, many different video games have attempted to satisfy the itch of our generation to step into the shoes of our galactic heroes. In particular, one of my all-time favorites was “Star Wars the Arcade game” which simulated both a tie-fighter/X-Wing dogfight as well as the epic trench sequence from episode IV. The vector graphics combined with a midi-style soundtrack and audio samples from the films (The force is strong with this one!) struck a chord with me as few games have since.
Despite early triumphs, no space game has tried to tackle so many aspects of the genre as Star Citizen, the polarizing, record-setting behemoth. Back in 2014, I watched a slick promotional video showcasing the Origin 300 series space ship, and decided to spring for one. The ship just looked great. It’s a one-person all-purpose jobbie with a modular design that can be modified to fit your play style preferences. I figured I could swing $60 (about the cost of a new game) to take a chance on an immersive space world where I could fly my own ship around. I downloaded the client, shot a couple of YouTube videos doing some of the very limited things you could do in the game at the time, and then mostly forgot about Star Citizen.
Fast forward to June 2017. I signed up for an Audible account. I spent my first credit on “Ready Player One”, since I’ve heard so much about it and wanted to see if it was any good (it’s not bad, BTW). Anyway, listening to Wade enter the Internet world of his time and pilot around the galaxy got me thinking about Star Citizen once again. It had been over a year since I launched it. My old graphics card made tromping around the ‘verse feel like watching an old slide projector on a bedsheet, but my new Nvidia should be better equipped for the job.
My first time logging back in was interesting. You don’t just log into Star Citizen and start playing. You have to choose whether you want to play the Arena Commander (ship dogfighting/racing) module, the FPS module, or the persistent world. I chose to try out the persistent world, since that aspect is what interests me the most. I woke up inside a space station, got out of bed, and looked around. I tapped the clothing locker…hmm, didn’t seem to do anything. I made my way to an impressive looking room with a ring of computer terminals. I found that interacting with a terminal called my ship to one of the landing pads just outside. I made my way to the airlock, entered through the interior door, and pressed the button to open the exterior door into space. Immediately, my view became cloudy and my avatar slumped over like a scarecrow, dead.
It took me a few seconds to realize that when I’d tapped on the locker in my space station bedroom, it automatically changed me from my space suit to street clothes. Being brand new to the game, I didn’t notice that my UI changed slightly when the spaceman helmet was removed. So, I had just waltzed into the vacuum of space in my skivvies. So much for my first flight!
My second try was met with more success. I made it out of the airlock and ran up to my ship. There was another player hanging out on the landing pads but I paid him little mind. I climbed up the ladder into my Origin 300i’s cargo bay. As I turned around to get a better look at my surroundings, I’d noticed that the other player had followed me into my ship! I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what to do. What is the proper etiquette when some random dude squats in your cargo bay? So I took the only logical course of action. I stared at him until he went away. Most likely, if I got into the pilot’s seat, it would have kicked him out. My ship is only a one-person transport so I don’t imagine they’d allow a second player onboard during flight. Still, I’m not sure if he was just taking a look around or if he was genuinely looking for a ride!
My first flight wasn’t exactly pretty. I was able to take off from the platform using the “forward” key but I had an indicator on my HUD telling me that my landing gear was deployed. I dug into the keybinding options but retracting landing gear was nowhere to be found. I soon learned that the keybinding options are not remotely complete, and the only way to figure out how to do things is to Google the answer, ask in local chat, or just push various keys until something happens. In this case, I asked in chat (landing gear is “n”, in case you were wondering) and was happy to see that people supplied me the answer quickly and without being demeaning. My experience with local in-game chat has so far been either pleasant or indifferent (my questions have either been answered or ignored). Maybe I’ve just been lucky on that front. With as many backers as this game has, I assume there are a least a few trolls out there.
Once my landing gear was retracted, my ship flew much faster. I’m not sure why, since there should be no atmospheric resistance in space, but maybe my ship has a built-in safety precaution. Even so, pointing my ship towards the nearest satellite relay and watching the distance slowly tick down made me realize that there must be an even faster way to travel, because otherwise I was going to have to spend hours and hours of sitting around doing nothing just to get to a quest objective. I just started punching keys, and eventually my HUD changed to a display that, if my reticle hovered over a destination, it would highlight as if I could travel to that spot. I pressed enter (the chat window came up). I pressed spacebar. I even tried pressing backspace, but could not get my ship to fast-travel to the highlighted destination. So, to YouTube I went. And there it was – the “F” button (because of course it is). So, I tabbed back over to the game and tapped “F” to engage my quantum engine, and WOW, was that fun! Say what you will about RSI and their development of this game, they’ve got the feel right, and the quantum drive feels *just* like traveling at light speed in Star Wars. I could spend several minutes just jumping between satellites!
Once I had flight movement more or less figured out, I exited my flight chair and opened the hatch to my ship. It was time for my Major Tom moment. I stepped out of the craft….and I was floating in space. I’m not sure if the ship is supposed to have some kind of artificial gravity, but stepping outside the craft certainly feels different than walking around inside of it. Also, traveling by personal thrusters is really, really slow. If you need to do a spacewalk for a mission, make sure you get as close as you can to the objective with your ship first, otherwise you’ll be floating for what seems like days. And maybe that’s ok if you’ve got Space Oddity blaring out of your speakers on repeat, I’m not here to judge. But for me, I’d rather get out, complete the mission, and get back in.
After my first few flights, I decided that I liked the direction the game was headed enough to go take another peek at the available ships on Star Citizen’s website. I’m not going to spend $70 or more on another ship, mind you, but I was curious what the price floor was for the smaller models. To my surprise, Star Citizen now has an “upgrade” option. You can upgrade to a ship of equal or more value by paying only the difference between the price of the ships. With this in mind, I took a peek at the other Origin 300 series ships. I could upgrade to an “explorer” model for $10, or a fighter for $15. I decided that both exploring and $10 were more in my wheelhouse, so I upgraded my boring old 300i to an Origin 315P, with the hope that when the game is fully developed, the advanced long-range scanner equipped on my new ship would help with my space exploration ambitions. For now, the only perceptible difference is that there is now a broad yellow stripe on the front of my ship. Yeah, yeah, I spent more money on a nonexistent feature for a nonexistent game. But I haven’t given them anything since 2014, and seeing the kind of progress they’ve made got me a little excited.
Speaking of ships, I noticed that mine, when viewed from the website, has several modular slots (weapons, engine, shields) that can be modified and upgraded as well. Disappointingly, I learned that the only upgrades that can be performed at the moment are in the form of equipment rentals for Arena Commander (PvP) dogfights. I don’t really have any interest in Arena Commander, nor do I want to continue to rent upgrades for all eternity. Supposedly, more permanent upgrades will someday be available in the persistent world. I hope this is the case, because the default mini-cannons on the Origin ships (Ominisky IV Lasers) feel more like pea shooters than a viable defense mechanism.
How do I know this, you ask? Well, I got into a little scuffle over a communications array against some space pirates. Once I finally figured out quantum travel, the missions to repair communications arrays started to make much more sense. You know, because I could actually get to them. Unfortunately, sometimes there are mean NPC ships guarding the arrays, and if there are more than, say….one of them, I usually end up dead. I guess those moments are when it would be beneficial to be playing with a fleet or as a member of a crew on a much larger, more powerful ship. And here I’ve been hoping to go it alone for a little bit. I’m not sure how viable of an option that’s going to be, unless my long-range scanners (when they’re put into the game) can detect trouble far enough in advance for me to make a clean getaway.
Due to this game still being in alpha testing, it has many, many things to iron out. I’d say my biggest complaint at the moment is lack of clarity regarding keyboard commands, and little documentation on the subject. I still haven’t figured out how to pull up my quest tracker (the Internet says F9, but that key doesn’t do anything for me), and I had to hunt for such simple things like “how do I retract my landing gear?”, “how do I travel faster?”, and “how do I exit my pilot seat?”. A lot of things are non-intuitive, like the removal of my spaceman suit by tapping a locker. Or the fact that there’s no way to retract your ship’s ladder, other than to just take off. Also, even with my new Nvidia GTX 1060 the movement can be hitchy and blurry. I hope that performance tweaks are somewhere on the radar.
But I’ll give it to them, for what little it seems RSI has done in five years, they’ve done most of it very well. The graphics/atmosphere is somehow both gritty and polished. The sound effects are fantastic. The dogfighting can be fun, but also frustrating. Moving within the world is non-instanced and seamless, whether you’re traveling through an airlock onto the landing pad, or stepping out from your ship into the vastness of space, it feels like one big world. The current build has started to show me what could be possible with this game, and I’m hearing that Alpha 3.0, which includes such notable updates as planet landings, item interaction (fueling, power supplies, radars, quantum drives etc.), cargo, and character customization could boost my hope even more. The question remains though, after five years in alpha testing, has RSI bitten off more than they can hope to deliver? Can the final product hope to match the inflated expectations of the backers/community?
]]>Riders of Rohan (2012) | Helm’s Deep (2013) | Mordor (2017) | |
Basic | $40,- | $40,- | $40,- |
Deluxe | $50,- | $60,- | $80,- |
Legendary | $70,- | - | $130,- |
Riders of Rohan (2012) | Helm’s Deep (2013) | Mordor (2017) | |
Basic | $40,- | $40,- | $40,- |
Deluxe | $50,- | $60,- | $80,- |
Legendary | $70,- | - | $130,- |
One mechanic that is going away is Accuracy. This was a secondary stat that increased your chance to hit monsters, particularly important for raid bosses. In fact, it was vitally important to be “accuracy capped” if you wanted to do the hardest raids in FFXIV.
But, the stat had some problems. Let’s take a look at those problems and the problems with other stats like it, as well as some solutions.
The problem with Accuracy is that there’s a very specific amount you want; no less, for sure, but also no more. Any amount below the cap means you have a chance to miss and therefore are missing out on your DPS or landing abilities; if you miss 5% of the time, you’re looking at an average 5% decrease in damage. Any points over the cap have absolutely no effect; once you can hit 100% of the time, there’s no need for more Accuracy.
We have to look at how modern MMO gear is designed to understand why too much Accuracy is a problem. Each piece of gear has a “budget” for total stats. This is represented by the item level (or ilvl), which is explicit in a lot of modern MMOs. FFXIV even measures your character by item level, showing the average item level as part of your character profile. Item level ensures that higher item level equipment is better than lower item level stuff. And each stat has a certain weight when added to a piece of gear to make sure it’s balanced with other gear.
What this all means is that the extra Accuracy over your cap counts against an item’s budget, but it doesn’t give you any actual gameplay advantage! Those wasted points of Accuracy could have been more critical rating, more strength, or whatever other desirable stat you might want. And, since there’s limited options in gear, you may not hit your cap precisely; you have to figure out if a loss of DPS from too much accuracy is going to make up for the DPS gain from having another stat.
WoW had the same problem back in prior expansions, where you needed precisely the right amount of “Hit” to hit targets otherwise you were sub-optimal. Like FFXIV, WoW eventually removed this stat.
The same thing can happen with any other stat, particularly stats that cap out at 100% of something. Another example from FFXIV is gathering, where your Gathering stat translates to a chance to gather items based on the target item’s level. You need increasing amounts of the Gathering stat on your gathering gear in order to gather higher level items. But, too much gathering is pointless, as you can’t get over 100% chance to gather items.
This is exacerbated by some gathering nodes where you can get a bonus to gathering. If you’re already at 100% chance to gather, this bonus is pointless to you. But other bonuses on nodes, such as the chance to get a high quality (HQ) result, still apply; even if your stats only increase the HQ chance to a max of 15%, node bonuses go over that.
This is less of an issue for gathering in FFXIV, because you have less stats to worry about. “Too much” gathering is harder to accomplish since there is only one upgrade path for gathering gear. Combat gear, however, has different options, so you have to choose more carefully.
So, how could we fix this stat? We want some way for “too much” accuracy to be valuable and not wasted. Ideally we would want to do this without a massive redesign of how MMOs create gear stats or to the fundamentals of the game. The trials and tribulations of the live team!
My solution is to take that excess accuracy and apply it to another effect. For example, additional accuracy could increase your chance to score a critical hit. This makes a sort of sense, as someone who is very, very precise would be able to score hits against critical areas easier.
This would be particularly appropriate for FFXIV. One of the problems with the pre-Stormblood stats on gear is that the “Critical” secondary stat does double-duty: it influences not only your chance to score a critical hit, but also the magnitude of the critical effect. This makes the stat much more desirable than other stats because it helps in two dimensions: you will crit more often and the crit damage will be higher.
So, offloading the chance to score a critical hit to Accuracy makes sense, while keeping Critical to determine the magnitude.
A rough design proposal, using FFXIV as an example.
Every player has a base chance to score a critical hit, regardless of accuracy or other stats. Let’s say this is 5%, but penalized if the character’s level is lower than the target’s level.
Every player has a base chance to hit a target. Let’s say this is 90%, and is adjusted up or down based on the difference between the character’s levels and the target’s levels; as the target’s levels are higher than the character the character takes a penalty, but if the character’s levels are higher, then they get a bonus to hit.
Accuracy gives a bonus to hit based on a calculation. Let’s say at level X that each point of Accuracy is 0.1% chance to hit, so it takes 100 Accuracy to hit 100% of the time against monsters at your level.
As the player has more accuracy than required to hit the monster, the additional points are translated to increased chance to score a critical hit. A formula translates this to a percent based on level. At level X, we’ll say that each additional point of Accuracy over 100 translates to 0.05% chance to crit. Item budgets will make sure this stays within reasonable levels.
And, now we have an Accuracy stat that is desirable and has meaning over cap.
So, what do you think? Have you been annoyed by Accuracy type stats before in other games? Do you like the idea of the stat having a purpose over the cap that gives you 100%?
Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:
Overflow stats, or what to do about Accuracy
My experience with LOTRO can probably best be described as a three-act play. When I first created my character, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I knew a grand adventure lay ahead. As I ran around Archet, killing boars and wolves with the two or three skills bestowed upon a baby hunter, I was unwittingly developing a future nostalgia for that area. The music, especially, still puts me in a peaceful state of mind. The snapping sound of a quickshot skill and the groan of a dying boar take me back to those fantastic days, anticipating learning a new skill every couple of levels. When the tutorial lay behind and Combe lied ahead. Crafting? What is that? I can make my own stuff? Kinship? Sure I’ll join, why not? No research needed, I’m sure. Wait, you mean there’s more? What’s this immense city before me? Bree? Wow, look at all of the other players! As with most games, the most exciting part of LOTRO for me was during the first act, when I was still learning the landscape, the systems, and the many different ways to progress. The possibilities seemed endless. The game was so rich with content, much of it still undiscovered to me.
During the “first act”, I managed to talk three of my “real life” friends into playing the game with me. We formed a tiny kindship and enjoyed leveling up into the 30’s or 40’s together. It was great. We’d catch each other online several nights a week, and then talk strategy and share verbal experiences when we’d see each other outside of the game. During this timeframe I talked my wife into creating a minstrel, and we started dou-ing together. I brought her up to speed on many aspects of the game, but she quickly surpassed me in both level and ability. However, as we all approached level 50, it became clear that we were going to need the help of some more experienced players if we wanted to explore some of the more advanced group content. Our tank, Shouse, had randomly grouped with some hunters doing landscape content and decided to join their kinship. The kin was called The Mallahdrim Defenders and boasted a handful of mid to late-range players who were friendly and who occasionally grouped for small instances and skirmishes. Agreeing that we needed to be a part of a larger group, I somewhat reluctantly disbanded our small kin and joined the Mallahdrim Defenders along with my wife and two other members of my “real life” circle.
The second act of my LOTRO experience begins as we joined the Defenders. Members introduced me to small group content, helped me through Moria, and eventually rode over the plains of Rohan with me, downing war bands on our newly earned steeds. Act 2 was my heyday in LOTRO. I now knew how to play the game, had spun up several alts, and had cranked through Hytbold in order to earn, for the first time, the best PVE gear available. Yeah, the dailies were kind of a pain, and sure, killing off war chief Bugud several times a night was repetitive, but we were doing it together. Eventually, I started to look for ways to continue to expand the my enjoyment of LOTRO. Even as members of my real-life crew stopped logging in on a nightly, weekly, or even monthly basis, I became an officer within the kinship. I created a kin site to help us stay connected and organized outside of the game. I joined LOTRO Players, and started blogging and podcasting. I wrote hunter guides and documented travel maps. I connected with other prominent members of the LOTRO community. Although never much of a role player, I showed up at Weatherstock, the Fellowship Walk, the whole bit. I did several YouTube videos with my kids. And it was all incredible. I made some amazing friends during this time, and tried things that I never had the courage to try before. When a new update came out, the more consistent members of the kin would log in every night until we were once again caught up to cap. And then, even when we were caught up, we’d log in to run Iorbar’s peak, or The School, or Library, or just to see how everybody else was doing. I might make some obnoxious pun in kin chat to distract people from a wretched night of crafting. One night, I got a PM from Rolfkrage asking if I could help a PUG he’d joined finish up The Rift. Our kin had attempted to complete the Rift a couple of times, but could never get past the final stage before the nagging urge to sleep overcame us. What transpired that night can only be described as my largest single accomplishment in LOTRO. Not only did we take down the Balrog Thaurlach, but my bow struck the deciding blow! It was a night long remembered by….well, probably just me.
The third act begins as I started to tire of many aspects of the game. The repetitiveness of questing. The constant yammering on the forums. The lack of community involvement by Turbine. Fun turned to obligation. If I didn’t log in for a few days, would others stop logging in as well? As an officer, shouldn’t I be available? Why can’t we recruit any new players that stick with the kin? If we’re not growing, are we slowly dying? Is the whole game slowly dying? Can I continue podcasting if I’m no longer playing the game? What if I miss a piece of news? It all became too much to worry about. In the end, I did slowly fade away, like so many before me had done. There was a feeling of sadness, but also of relief. Act three is when I rode into the sunset, content that my experiences and contributions had come to an end.
I miss acts 1 and 2, but it’s not the game I miss. It’s excitedly explaining a new discovery to my real-life friends. It’s taking down a boss with my kinmates for the first time. It’s bantering with the co-hosts of LOTRO Players, before, during, and after the podcast. It’s catching up with someone in kin chat. The things I miss about the game aren’t really about the game at all. They’re about the people who play the game. The people are what make an MMO great. Not the graphics, nor the size of the landscape, nor the dungeon design. The people.
Thank you, LOTRO, for being the medium through which I could meet and get to know all of these amazing people.
]]>"I hit disintegrate on a grophet and immediately felt a terrible jolt of guilt. It doesn't really make sense. I don't worry about what an uncomfortable life these creatures must lead, being stashed away between armour pieces and companion gifts inside of crates that mysteriously appear out of thin air. But when you ask me to take action myself, to actively destroy them... I suddenly feel bad."
]]>What do you do with the grophet (command crate tier 4 reward)? #swtorfamily— Ravanel Griffon (@Rav_Griffon) April 27, 2017
"I hit disintegrate on a grophet and immediately felt a terrible jolt of guilt. It doesn't really make sense. I don't worry about what an uncomfortable life these creatures must lead, being stashed away between armour pieces and companion gifts inside of crates that mysteriously appear out of thin air. But when you ask me to take action myself, to actively destroy them... I suddenly feel bad."
]]>What do you do with the grophet (command crate tier 4 reward)? #swtorfamily— Ravanel Griffon (@Rav_Griffon) April 27, 2017
I’d heard a lot about the Mass Effect series. The games seemed to have a huge following, and I loved the idea that events from one game could carry over into the next title. But Mass Effect 1 never really hooked me. I enjoyed the character interaction, but the story seemed slow to get going and I never really figured out how to navigate myself around the galaxy once it opened up. After a few nights’ worth of play sessions, I found myself driving around in a physics-defying moon patrol car wondering if I was even on the right planet for the mission I’d been handed. After that night, I never launched ME1 again. I took a small break from gaming altogether and when I returned, it was Elder Scrolls Online that beckoned and not Mass Effect.
Fast forward a few months. Still enjoying ESO, but starting to remember how annoying MMO’s can sometimes be, I decided to go ahead and install Mass Effect 2, the much heralded sequel to moon patrol madness. ME2 starts with a bang, inserts a bit of mystery, and then sends you off to assemble your team of super soldiers. I was all in from the get-go. I felt like Nick Fury, putting my team together before the ever-nearing final battle.
Some would say that Mass Effect is a squad-based combat game. That’s probably fair, as certain aspects do remind me of the Rainbow Six type of strategic combat. But more than half of the game is probably dialog/cutscenes with NPCs, similar to Life is Strange and with consequences that can affect outcomes within the game and beyond. I found that these interactions are what really brought the game to life for me. Not only was the feel vastly more cinematic/dramatic, but I really grew to care about (or not care for) characters with recurring roles. So much so that after I’d lost some of my squad members in the final mission (thanks to choices I had to make), visiting their empty quarters on the Normandy ship evoked a true feeling of loss. I thought about replaying the final mission from one of my saved files, but somehow that just didn’t feel right. I made the choices, I should have to live with it. And perhaps that loss will serve as a motivation going into Mass Effect 3.
I have only a few gripes about the game. For one, there are some things that you can mess up without realizing it, and the game just lets you do it. For example, I purchased a biotic upgrade for my Shepard, and selected one that I’d already purchased (and forgotten about). The game gave me no warning, just let me waste my resources on it for a 2nd time. It was my dumb mistake, I get it, but a warning box would have been nice. Also, I didn’t realize that starting Legion’s loyalty mission would trigger the events leading up to the end of the game. True, you don’t have to go to the Omega Relay right away, but putting it off in favor of more intergalactic exploration means almost certain death for my abducted crew, so I felt like I was forced into the suicide mission before I was ready. I would have liked to have done a few more side missions, maybe beefed up my squad a little more first. Again, a warning dialog box would have been nice.
As far as my future with the Mass Effect series, I’m looking forward to ME3, and am keeping my eyes open for a sale. Granted, it’s only $20 ($30 for deluxe), but that still seems a little steep for a game that’s now five years old. If I see it for $15, I’ll probably bite. I’m not sure if the deluxe version is worth another $10 or not. If you have an opinion on that, let me know! I’m also interested in the latest installment, ME: Andromeda. But that one’s going to have to come down quite a bit for me to spring for it. I’ve toyed with the idea of giving ME1 another shot, since I understand the game mechanics a bit more, but I think it might be difficult to jump back in time now that I’ve seen the future.
At any rate, I finally see what all the fuss is about. Count me as a Mass Effect fan!
]]>"Have you ever been so critical about a game that you read back that post later and gasped? As in, you start wondering if any dev addressed would jump off a cliff after reading it?"
"Have you ever been so critical about a game that you read back that post later and gasped? As in, you start wondering if any dev addressed would jump off a cliff after reading it?"
"This will not erase your progression in The Secret World though! Secret World Legends will exist on a different server than The Secret World, meaning you will still be able to play your old character on The Secret World server."In many ways, I still feel woefully uninformed as to the direction Funcom is taking with their IP. It seems that they'll be putting TSW into maintenance mode; that is, all new content will be presented in SWL instead. But they seem to have learned at least one thing from SOE's NGE debacle: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe I'll get LoneStarBelle to Panoptic Core after all.
"This will not erase your progression in The Secret World though! Secret World Legends will exist on a different server than The Secret World, meaning you will still be able to play your old character on The Secret World server."In many ways, I still feel woefully uninformed as to the direction Funcom is taking with their IP. It seems that they'll be putting TSW into maintenance mode; that is, all new content will be presented in SWL instead. But they seem to have learned at least one thing from SOE's NGE debacle: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe I'll get LoneStarBelle to Panoptic Core after all.