Okay, well, I’m not a king, but I did get to return to gaming last night.  The issue was that I left my check card in the ATM a while back, and my EVE subscription just happened to come up after I had cancelled the card and was waiting for them to issue me a new one.   So no EVE.  And no Conan.  And no DAoC.

So I spent some time transferring games to my new laptop to open up space on the shared desktop for my wife.  Her photgraphy business has taken off and we were starting to have storage issues.  And so I spent a few days playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I’d never gotten all that far into the game, and I enjoyed Two Worlds better (crazy I know) for the simple reason that I hate the leveling system that they use.  I decided that in playing it this time I would throw the guide out the window, pick the seven skills I wanted and go with it.  And you know what?  So far its been good.  I’m sure it will bog down at higher levels, but I’m having alot more fun.

For those not in the know, basically the more you use a skill, the higher it gets, and for every ten skill ups in our major seven, you gain a level.  You also get to pick attributes to raise, which raise somewhere between 1 and 5 depending on the number of related skill ups you got in any related skill (not just the majors) during that level.  The problem is that you quickly outlevel your ability to handle enemies, especially if you have a specialized character like a magic user or stealthy rogue type.  Even worse, some of the storyline quests box you into areas where you are at a disadvantage being either.   Still its a good game, and this time rather than stress myself out over counting strength related skill ups, I just decided to make judicious use of the difficulty slider bar! 

Morrowind was a little better I think – better setting, better storyline, more fun random events.  On the downside, it was way more exploitable.

Anyway, got my new card yesterday afternoon, so its time for a little Dominion of EVE and explorin’ in DAoC.  Yay!

By sheer happenstance, I scrolled through the monthly WAR newsletter and saw a piece that said “Allies of WAR: Dark Age of Camelot.” Intrigued, I scrolled down.

The word? 10 days of free play time for old players who want to check out the new server merge and game updates.

The hook: I’m technically an old player, since after my first free trial, I forgot to cancel the sub and ended up with a month of game time. Sadly I only realized it the last part of the month of game time and so I didn’t take advantage of it. But the good news is, I qualify for the 10 days.

So looks like I’ll be burning hard to try to make DAoC work for me. And if it doesn’t? Sony…you’ll be hearing from me.

Off the beer bitches!

I’ll keep this short, as I don’t have much time.

This weekend I dabbled in games, I had to finish a drawing I was doing for my Art class, as well as paint the babies room, so free time was at a bit of a minimum.

WAR – Shadow Warrior: Played maybe 5 scenarios. I did get a piece of mail from the guild leader of a decent guild saying that if I wanted to come join up with them, I’m welcome to see if it would be a good fit. He’s aware of my situation as I’m pretty active on the boards. I’m probably going to give my guild another week, and then make a decision.

WAR – Disciple of Khaine: All city, all weekend. I kid you not. I think Saturday we were in there three times. It’s ridiculous. I played some SCs, did some city sieging. Farmed the palace a bit. The good news: got the purple bag from the invasion PQ and got a hot, HOT jewelry piece. I want to handcuff it and call it dirty names.

Champions Online – I “did” the Lemurian Crisis. Solo. I’m going to have to accept that I will never beat this crisis, and that no one ever does it. Once I got to the boss, I understood why. He’s a legendary villain, and he’s big and nasty, and looks like an overgrown Murlock. The real nasty part though, is that he’s surrounded by this purple-black fog. This fog, while innocuous at first glance, is actually the kryptonite of my character. Whenever anyone within the fog has full endurance, they start taking heavy damage. Yes, I am a END/REC character, built around having as much endurance at all times. I’m going to have to ride the bench on this one coach.

DAoC - Wha? What is this doing here? After my post last week asking about it, I gave it a whirl. It’s actually pretty neat. You can tell they’ve made crazy graphical improvements over the years. The interface is a tad lacking, but surprisingly decent for what it was. My biggest complaint is how the camera interfaces with the turning of my character. If I turned my character (not strafe) the camera is disconnected and remains in the direction as previously. I probably would never pay for it unless they offered some bundle deal with WAR.

I’m curious, why did people quit? I know I hear how horrible Trials of Atlantis was for the game. But how long ago was that? Hasn’t the game outpaced that particular speed bump by this point? Why have none of you gone back to the game if that is so? Is the game no longer worth playing because of it? If you’re craving PvP, and you think WAR isn’t a good fix, or you hate the grind of Aion, and you don’t like the FPS/sandbox gameplay of Darkfall, why do you not return to the world that made Mythic’s name?

I’m just curious, because I hear so often how great it was, especially when ex-players are comparing it to WAR, and wonder why they don’t just go back.

Let me know.

Ok, so this is totally off topic but I just spent a good bit of time checking this blog out and am almost tempted to go download DAOC again   Basically they’ve re-created various parts of DAOC in the Crysis gaming engine and it just looks gorgeous!  The shots of the frontiers bring back lots of goof RvR memories!

I really hope someone else can figure out how to do PvP in a way that is as fun as it was in DAOC.  Not only was it fun, but it actually meant something.  You could get skills and abilities from it that were usable in PvE and bonuses for keeps/relics applied to PvE as well.  I spent many an early morning trying to rally with my fellow Hibernians trying to keep our precious relics

Anyway, enough rambling – if you played DAOC at all, I highly suggest you check out this blog.

For some of you this will be of interest, especially you Ex-DAOCers and it most certainly will take you back a few years. So thanks to Bluesky who dropped this golden nugget on the guild forums. When I actually started viewing the screenshots and videos, there was definitely a nostalgia trip going on, maybe even a hint of a tear in the corner of my eye.

When I started viewing all this material, what concerned me the most, was how much I had forgotten about the old frontiers in DAOC. I struggled to remember places, especially when there wasn’t a keep or milegate around to provide some kind of reference point. I could blame the camera angles, but I honestly think it’s my memory starting to show signs of wear and tear and that’s without the aid of any mind altering substances.

As an ex DAOC player it was lovely to see the sun coming up over the hills, the shadows and such, but as a friend commented, it does show you how sparse these old landscapes were in comparison to modern-day games. What made me chuckle were some of the before and after water scenes. I just remember being wowed by the water in DAOC and yet compared to the Crysis engine equivalent, it has all the artistic merit of a corpse. Again another example of how much progress has been made in video game art/engines these last 10 years.

I remember with fondness all the action that took place at the Milegates, which were positioned at the end of area belonging to one of the THREE realms. This one was positioned to protect the Midgard teleport keep, if I remember correctly. If you went a little bit south from here, you had the Albion milegate and since the Albion and Midgard factions were the most populous, there was always a shedload of action between these points. Poor old Hibernia had to hike all the way up from their ORvR main gates. Don’t feel to sorry for them, at least in DAOC you had speed, I mean proper speed. Of course that was assuming you had a skald/ministrel or bard in your party, otherwise you were destined for life in the slow lane. This was also the reason you always had one person in your group panning behind, looking for faster moving incoming groups.

Those mile gates were places of intense action. The place would be riddled with stealther classes, reminiscent of the scene at the end of Predator 2, when the aliens all decloak. But in this case, it wasn’t to thank you for your efforts. It was to leave your rotting corpse on the ground. You would then wait 5 – 10 minutes before you could port to that particular frontier again.

Oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t all as rosy as that, but it was still glorious for its time. You’d never know that all that experience gained from DAOC: Old and New Frontiers, had been imbued into Warhammer Online product, now would you?

I posted a new page today with some info on my 3 main toons.  Also some snapshots and view of my gear…  Check out the My-Toons page or go here:

My Toons

The final part of my 1.3.2 PTS preview and a small thank god from me. The next one of these I do, I’m aiming to be a lot less verbal.

So we’re down to the changes to the keeps and fortresses. It seems like the keeps in Warhammer are proving to be a bit of a tough nut for Mythic to crack. To difficult, then they just stand alone like a steaming turd on a winters day, to easy and they’re up and down like a whores draws.  Now I’m really sympathetic to the apathy regarding keeps, I just find them so goddamn boring, not matter what the rewards are, they just don’t justify the time invested, especially when heavily defended. It doesn’t help that they bring my antique PC to its knees, with nary a glance in their direction. I thought I found keep takes boring in DAOC, yet Warhammer certainly surpasses them in that regard, which is funny considering Warhammer provides significantly more rewards for capturing those miserable heaps. For me it comes down to lack of fun, design and performance.

If you’re new frontiers DAOC player, you will probably remember the more complicated keeps we had, where you could fire back and forth from the inner to outer keep walls. The keeps could be raised in level (1-10), which then changed their height and complexity, you could knock a new hole in the wall, if you found the current door opening inconvenient. Each keep had 4 surrounding towers, which were placed different distances from the keep, taking these towers reduced the numbers of guards protecting the main keep. They also provided locations for small group fights and once captured the tower door would go back up. Sometimes though they would remain uncaptured to provide bait, since the map would show them as still being contested, so groups(s) would wait for their victims to arrive. Now artistically the Warhammer keeps are nicer,  but so much more simplistic,  lacking the opportunities for clever play. 

We used to have groups fighting it out just in the corner towers of the keep, or above the main gates, where the surrounding forces would try to barge their way in and this is without the use of collision detection. Sometimes we’d have one realm in a keep, another realm seiging the keep and the 3rd realm, just hanging back waiting for the doors to go down, so they could slaughter the sieging realm against the walls of the inner keep, 3 way battles in the courtyard, people jumping down from the walls to get involved (Which considering Warhammer is a console game, why do we have such a nasty jumping penalty). 

Now I know I just went off on one there, but I’m trying to convey to you the void in my heart I have regarding Warhammer keeps. Boy I’d love to sit down with the Warhammer design team and crack some heads.

Anyway enough of my whining, onto the Keep Difficulty System. Lets be frank who knows what’s going to stick with the current player base. Are people really going to hammer it out for hours and hours on a defended keep, regardless of the increased loot levels? God knows. I think it’s going to have to be a wait and see. I think as long as it works as promised and people can see the loot/difficulty increasing, we may well get the buy in we need. The performance updates will compliment the potentially higher numbers in keep takes. Possibly this is why these features are coming out at the same time?

Fortresses, well they were certainly expansive and magnificent in a Dros Delnoch fashion, but they’ve always hit the style over substance button with me, which infact could also be applied to the keeps. But at the moment I don’t really care what happens to them, they can rot for all I care, since they have been an abject failure. Harsh maybe, but hardly a success from a gameplay perspective. If I was to brainstorm a new use for them, then this is what I’d suggest.

1. Stick dungeons under them, yawn.

2. Turn them into Arcane Relic Keeps, but first of all knock them all down and make them significantly more interesting from an attack/defense point of view.

3. If more capital cities return, then use the 3 of them to control what capital cities are captured in a city seige. This kind of implies that we would need specific rewards from each capital city to help motivate people to take the different capitals, instead of just ignoring them.

4. They could become the capital cities of a 3rd NPC race, which could be called into play for your realm? God knows how that would work, a heap more thought needed on that. The potential for abuse by the strongest realm could be considerable. I’d prefer for this not to win an award, since I still hold a candle for a player run 3rd realm. NPC AI could be a step to far for the Mythic code monkeys.

That’s me done for now, shame I finished on keeps and fortresses, I would have prefered not to finish on a downer considering that the rest of the patch shows a lot of promise, but c’est la vie.

Oh yes, how could I forget …. capture 2 zones to seige the capital. Some realms are going to be spending an awful lot of time in their own capital city defending and I’m not to sure they’re going to be happy about it, then again neither am I.

Having previously covered the smaller noteworthy items, it’s time to move onto the juicier parts of 1.3.2.

First up is the Apprentice System. Now I’ve never been exposed to such a facility in my previous 2 MMO’s (DAOC & WoW), but I do have a hangup about experiencing content out of sequence, but I’m sure this will not be that big a problem in the long run.

In all the MMO games I’ve played, I’ve often levelled relatively slowly in comparison to others in the guild, who seemed to have an abundance of free time (The bastardo’s). So this has meant that leveling in an MMO hasn’t been that much of a shared experience, apart from various times when other guildies have briefly been within my level range. So it will be nice to have the opportunity to group up more frequently, that’s assuming they return from Aion. I need to get online soon, so I can checkout how there getting on, it’s been a couple of weeks now, so we should be through the Aion acclimatization phase now.

There is a small concern that we could end up with people actively down sizing to play in the 1st tier. For instance, there was a phase within the guild where they were just rerolling lowbies to play tier 1, where things were felt to be so much simpler with the absence of CC. I honestly don’t think it’s going to be that big an issue anyway. It’s all about choice in the end.

Due to my general inexperience with these buddy systems, I will be intrigued to see how the RP/XP is awarded for the level adjusted people. So for example, I kill someone in tier 1 who is worth 100 rp, is this then factored by up to my actual level, so I actually get 500 rp or is it just 100 rps?

I also assume that the downsized level 40’s, don’t get turned into chickens until the level 11 they are apprenticed to, hits 12, which will be quite amusing when it happens.

When I originally started my comments on the Apprentice System, I was more negative, but I think I was just being contrary. Over the last couple of days, I have pretty much rewritten that negativity out. I am sure there are going to be issues, but as I’ve said, I’ve no experience of other similar MMO systems, from which to base any realistic concerns, bar the obvious xp/rp scaling, so I’ll just wait and see. If it brings people back or makes life better for new starters, then what’s there not to like.

Moving onto the New User Journey, which apes what happened in DAOC. The numbers dropped off and the point of having multiple starting zones, became a negative more than a positive. No one likes to be on their own when they start an MMO, it just doesn’t create the right first impression. Oh on a side note, at least I now know where I would start my 3rd realm Skaven tier 1 zone, obviously underneath Destruction vs Order.

When you actually look at what Mythic have done, it’s all positive. A lot of similar stuff got added to DAOC after a few years (A newbie guild, one starting place, reworked tutorials etc), though I’d expect these additions to be of a higher quality. Mythic obviously felt it was needed within DAOC, so why was this polish felt to be unnecessary in a newly launching game? I know, I know, insufficient time before launch.

I like the idea on limiting the interface until the player actually needs that functionality, a nice graphic tutorial system which will hopefully ease the learning curve for new and current players. Starting on the far side of the burning village outside of Grimmerhagen (Empire) just makes such a much more a dramatic introduction to the War, rather than starting in the middle of Grimmerhagen. Again a polish issue. If you follow the link you can read James Caseys blurb on it all. 

Now I am slightly perplexed by the addition of the Apprentice System and the New User experience. I appreciate that they new user experience is more than just grouping all the new characters in the same zone. However, if you trying to achieve that, then why come along and allow users to have their level to be artificially bumped  up, which then allows them to leave the very zones which you are seeking to make appear busy. I can only deduce, that Mythic believe the impact of the apprentice system will be minimal for tier 1 zones and is more a convenience factor. It will be quite cool for new starters to see level 40’s wandering around in their warlord gear.

Now there are things still to cover in 1.3.2 PTS, but any thoughts I have on them will hopefully follow shortly. I’ve been trying rather unsuccessfully to cut the number of rambling monologes, which is one of the reasons for the breaks. At least now I can go and read Bootae’s post on the subject.

Massively has laid down the gauntlet to bloggers to write about aspects of MMOs that are being redefined. And much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, character classes ain’t what they used to be.

Let’s go back to the pen and paper era. Dungeons and Dragons originally introduced character classes: some would be instantly recognisable to MMO players today and others wouldn’t quite fit. The D&D cleric was a healer but had a huge amount of utility spells too. The D&D warrior was a heavily armoured fighter but not really a tank as we’d understand it today. The D&D thief wasn’t really a dps class (although they could get in the odd lucky backstab) so much as a utility build.  Fans quickly developed rules for all sorts of weird and wonderful new character races, classes and subclasses. TSR themselves hefted in with druids and bards and assassins until there really was something for everyone. A lot of those classes had very specialised abilities, but it didn’t matter because a human GM was running the game and could balance encounters to make sure everyone felt useful. If the player party was lacking some vital role (ie. healer) then the GM could allow an NPC healer to go with them to help out.

Coding up the Classes

MUDs took some of the D&D classes and worked the mechanics around to get a playable game. Many utility spells were removed from casters because they needed a human GM to resolve their use (e.g. mind control or telepathy). The ones that stayed in were the ones that were easiest to code. MUD wizards often took a ‘more is better’ approach to classes and included more and more strange and wacky classes or races to attract new players to the game. Balance became an issue. MUD wizards wanted all of their classes to be popular and to be played so experimented with niche protection – some classes were given useful buffs, others had spells that were needed on different encounters.

And that’s where we move into MMOs. Earlier games like EQ and DaoC had a lot of classes, they were wildly fanciful, not well balanced, and there was really something for everyone. Many classes were given niche protection by being given essential raid or group buffs. Others were given the niche of off-healer or off-tank – these would later be considered as hybrids, their healing/ tanking wasn’t as strong as the main healer/ tank but in return they had better damage or buffs. Others were considered utility classes, with crowd control or several essential raid buffs. Putting a good PvP or raid group together was tricky, and a class could go from desired to undesired in the space of a single patch.

It was considered to be OK for a group friendly class (such as a main healer) to have pitiful soloing ability. It was a payoff for having such strong niche protection in groups. It was also considered fair by the player base for a PvP friendly class (such as a stealther) not to be in demand for PvE content.

Because there weren’t many MMO choices, and the levelling curve was so slow, people tended to stick with their main characters. Even with all the checks, balances, and niche protection, it would take a lot of time and effort to switch classes. It was considered quite radical when games actually allowed players to even respec, and it certainly wasn’t encouraged. (In DaoC, you had to go raid a dragon to be able to do this when it was first introduced.)

The era of ‘what if I want to actually play the whole game?’

More recent games set about reducing the number of niches to be protected, and addressing the (obvious) fact that people might want to both solo AND group, and they might want to play PvE AND PvP, and they might not want to go level up a new alt just to do it. In fact, with the amount of competition in the market right now, if a player picked a main class that didn’t work out, they might just leave the game and not come back.

WoW raised eyebrows by allowing unlimited respecs (at a cost), right off the bat. Guild Wars took this a step further by not only allowing but encouraging free and unlimited respecs between adventures; rejigging your character to face the challenge at hand became an important part of the game.

Later on, LOTRO would give their main tank and healer a solo friendly stance, boosting their soloing ability, but which they could turn off in groups for better tanking or healing. WAR let players configure their characters for different facets of the game without requiring them to change all their talents and skills. WoW’s dual specs take a sledgehammer approach and lets you save two very different specs and switch between them easily.

In any case, the trend is very clear. Players are being given options to respec or tailor their characters flexibly within game. Decisions made at the start are not set in stone. Champions Online doesn’t really have fixed classes, instead allowing players to build their own skillset. Free Realms lets them train up many different careers and switch as often as they like, Final Fantasy 14 is going to use a similar mechanic.

Whatever the game has in store, we expect our characters to be able to adjust and deal with it. And if we plan to play for several months or even years, our interests in game may change and we expect our characters to be able to adjust to that also. This gives designers more freedom in encounter planning also, you don’t have to require that every group has 17 different buffs and that each class has a specific role to play in every encounter.

But what will the fallout be of throwing away the niche protection? It served a useful role in making sure that people mixed with strangers and kept the game sociable. If you needed a minstrel for your DaoC group and none of your friends played that class, you’d be motivated to go play with new people. If one of your mates could just switch class to fill that role then yes, it’s easier to get the groups together, but what happens to the community?

We’ll find out in the next few years. Step lightly for here be dragons.

Den folgenden Artikel hatte ich eigentlich schon vor etlichen Monaten aufgesetzt aber nie zu Ende gebracht. Ich denke das war Anfang 2009, als ich zwischendurch mal wieder bei Warhammer Online vorbaigeschaut hatte. Diese “Come-Back-Aktion” war eine willkommene Gelegenheit, vor allem, weil zu dem Zeitpunkt gerade die langersehnten fehlenden Klassen (Choppa und Slayer) nachgepatcht wurden. Also hab ich mir einen Ork erstellt und mir das Game nochmal zu Gemüte geführt.

Zugegebenermaßen nicht ganz unvoreingenommen, denn ich hatte bei Release ja schon einigermaßen ausführlich gespielt und war mit meiner Sorceress bis Level 40 gekommen. Nur hatte mich mangels erbauendem RvR die Lust recht bald verlassen. Für den erneuten Anlauf hatte ich mir vorgenommen die vielgepriesene Möglichkeit in Anspruch zu nehmen, PvE völlig außen vor zu lassen und nur in Battlegrounds sowie Open-RvR-Gebieten zu spielen.

Das ganze habe ich dann genau so durchgezogen und festgestellt, dass es – auch wenn das ganze auf Tier 1 stattgefunden hat – mit RvR so gut wie gar nix zu tun hatte. Letztendlich sind sich die Gruppen von Ordnung und Zerstörung in der Contested Area gegenseitig aus dem Weg gegangen und haben in schöner Regelmäßigkeit die Eroberungspunkte eingenommen und wieder verloren. So bekamen alle ihre Einflusspunkte und dadurch auch die entsprechenden Ausrüstungsteile.

Wäre dann nicht ohnehin die Gratiszeit wieder ihrem Ende zumarschiert … ich hätte es nicht mehr ausgehalten, denn aufgrund der höchsteffektiven Vorgehensweise konnte man dem eigentlichen Inhalt fast voll aus dem Weg gehen. Und dann entsinnt man sich wieder der Floskeln, die man vor dem Release aufgetischt bekam.

 ”We have learned so much from Dark Age of Camelot”.

Dieser Satz von Jeff “The” Hickman, seines Zeichens Senior Producer von Warhammer Online, klang mir immer wieder in den Ohren, wenn ich in WAR eingeloggt habe. Und unvermeidlich stellte ich mir die Frage: “Ja wo denn, verdammt?”

Drei Fraktionen? Nein.
Vielseitiges Klassensystem? Nein.
Anspruchvolles RvR? Nein.
Trennung von PvE und PvP? Nein.

All die Dinge die DAoC zur Referenz in Punkto fraktionsbasiertes PvP machten, findet man in WAR nicht wieder. Da muss man dann schon mal nach dem Grund fragen dürfen. Den wird man vermutlich recht schnell bei der Firmenpolitik von EA finden. Das Mothership wird seiner MMO-Drohne vermutlich recht unmissverständlich aufgetragen haben, Geld ins Haus zu bringen – und das nicht zu knapp. Um die Vorgaben zu erfüllen, musste man einen möglichst großen Kundenstamm anlocken, der die Kohlen ins Trockene holt. Nur hat man bei der ganzen Aktion meiner Meinung nach einen der wichtigsten Punkte vergessen:

RvR bzw. PvP ist nichts für die Masse. RvR ist Stoff für Nerds. Das wäre eigentlich die größte Lehre gewesen, die man aus DAoC hätte ziehen können. Immer wenn ein Spiel an den Punkt kommt, wo sich Spieler gegenseitig die Birne einschalgen können, trennt sich die spielerische Spreu vom Weizen. Da kommen die typischen Min/Max-er auf den Plan, die ihren Char bis aufs Letzte durchstylen, um auch das letzte halbe Prozent an DPS oder Hitpoints rauszukitzeln. Und wenn die Balance nicht völlig im Eimer ist, gehen die dann – zumindest im Vergleich zum Normalspieler, der eben ein wenig daddeln will – ab wie Schmidts Katze. Das ist einfach nicht Jedermanns Sache.

Aus dieser Erkenntnis lassen sich mehrere Schlussfolgerungen ziehen.

1. Sei dir darüber im Klaren sein, welche Zielgruppe du ansprechen willst
2. Zielgruppen definieren sich in der Regel selbst. Versuche nicht eine Gruppe in die andere zu integrieren – sie wird enttäuscht sein
3. Glaube nicht, dass du beide Zielgruppen gleichzeitig ansprechen kannst
4. Neue Besen kehren nicht zwangsweise gut – vor allem nicht unter den Teppich

Der MMO-Markt für Casual-Player ist durch WoW seit über 4 Jahren sehr gut abgedeckt und bedarf derzeit noch immer keiner wirklichen Alternative. Die einizge Möglichkeit auf dem Markt einen Platz zu erobern, bietet sich in den Nischen, die sich entweder durch das Setting (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Apocalypse usw.), den Content (PvE, PvP, RP, Eco) und den Schwierigkeitsgrad definieren. Bestes Beispiel, wie sowas laufen kann, ist meienr Ansicht nach Pirates of the Burning Sea. Ein Piraten MMO, das sich mit den Schwerpunkten PvP/RvR und Wirtschaftssimulation in vielen Punkten sehr deutlich vom Branchenprimus abhebt.

Aber bei einem Projekt dieser Art muss man sich einfach darüber im Klaren sein, dass im Focus des Betreiber ein nachhaltiges Spielkonzept stehen muss, das beim Start möglicherweise zu vergleichsweise geringen Abo-Zahlen führen wird. Aber Qualität setzt sich letztendlich durch, auch wenn man dafür etwas mehr Luft braucht. Nur steht das im totalen Gegensatz zur üblichen Vorgehensweise großer Studios. Und das läuft dann so wie bei WAR. Man will es jedem recht machen und am Ende ist jeder unzufrieden, weil man weder Fisch noch Fleisch bekommt.

Das der Selbstfindungsprozess bei WAR noch immer nicht abgeschlossen ist, ist nach meiner Auffassung sehr gut am Interview, das Jeff Hickman am Rande der PAX gegeben hat. Es werden Fehler an WAR eingeräumt, die eigentlich gar nix am globalen Misserfolg zu tun haben. EA/Mythic hat einfach geglaubt sie könnten WoW ein Bein stellen, aber faktisch sind sie ihnen nicht mal auf den Großen Zeh getreten. Hätten sie mal lieber den kleinen Zeh angepeilt, der tut meistens viel mehr weh, als man denkt …

So I saw this post and got a little excited:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/11/feature/3534/page/1

There’s a teaser about some work being done by the EA Mythic team on DAOC!  That was an awesome PvP experience and I’d love to see them do something to bring that current.  Lotta ideas tossed out in the interview, so we’ll just have to wait and see…

Ywainが遂に稼動開始しました。
いくつかトラぶっていた様ですが思ったよりすんなり行った方がじゃないでしょうか
といってもまだバグは残っている様ですが・・・

稼動開始したという事でAkatsukiサーバーからYwainへキャラクターを移さなければならない訳ですがちょっとどきどきしますねｗ
実際はコマンド(/freexfer)入れるだけの極簡単な作業で済みました
ちなみにキャラクターの転送を行う前から既に自分の家が消えていてかなり焦りました
コマンド入れなくても家は既に飛ばしてある状態だったらしいのですが残ってる家もあったんですよね
あれってアカウント止めてる人の家なんでしょうかね？

自分の場合、ギルドも移す必要がありましたので、先にギルド関係のコマンド(/gc packhouseと/gc transfer)を入れた後キャラクター転送という手順でばっちぐーだった
しかしギルドハウスのオブジェクトが多いのなんのって
移動する時には外しておかないと駄目という事でしたので移動前にせっせこせっせこ取り外しては倉庫に投げ込み取り外しては倉庫に投げ込み・・・
ちなみに倉庫にあったartiのスクロールやMLに必要なアイテムはすべて外に捨てましたｗ

そういえばYwainって10サーバーに分かれているんですね
家のzoneだけ？10に分かれていて他は一緒っぽい？
でもキャラクターは指定した番号のYwainでしか出てこないみたい

 
気になるzone間の移動はこんな感じになってました
実際問題Ywainって家どうするんだろ・・・と思っていたのですが、元々いたサーバーに関係なくYwainで新たに土地を買い家を建てろって事だったみたい
家の権利書等はNPCが預かっていてくれましたが土地は結局買わなければならないという

そうとは知らずのんびりやってしまったのでいい土地が・・・

 
夜なんで見難くてすいません
Akatsukiで家を建てていた場所に行ってみたのですがこんな事になってました・・・
なんだよこのばかでけー家は
お気に入りの場所だったのに遅すぎた様です・・・
しかもこれエンブレム揃ってるからおそらく同じ奴がbot加えて同時に建てたかギルドで打ち合わせして即行土地買いに走ってますね
正直うぜーｗ
昔のUOじゃないんだからさ・・・

という事で色々と良さそうな土地を回っていたのですが家が無くても土地だけ買われていたりと結構厳しい状態でした
少しズレると空き地だらけなんですがなんか悔しいですね(´_｀
結局自分は川沿いに面した橋の側の土地を買いました。
川側に入り口があると思い買ったんですが実際は予想とは真逆で川からそっぽ向いてましたｗ
なんてこったい

そして色々アイテムなどを移しつつマーチャントも設置しとこうと思い設置したのですが

 
あのー
こっち向いてくれませんか
すいません

・・・

ちょ・・・
aggressiveじゃねーか！
勘弁してくださいｗ

このことで外人がチャットで盛り上がってました
戦えばいいんじゃねとかｗ
外人のこういうノリ大好きです

このblogを書いている現在0時30分でYwainの数はこんな感じです

 
結構いるなー
下手すると倍ぐらいになってるかも
これなら遊べるかもしれない
でも実際の人数とNFに出てる人数は全然違うんだよなぁ
ただ、今現在はlvl50のキャラクターしか転送出来なかったと思うのですべてのキャラが転送可能になったら相当な数になるかもしれません

今現在メンテ中でメンテ開けと共にYwain稼動予定の様です
HeraldでFAQ等の更新が色々と行われていて導入直後の混乱を軽減する為にがんばってるみたい

うちらのgrpは一度解散という形になりそうです
リアル事情が色々と重なり人が揃わなくなってしまったので今は各々分かれて遊んでるっぽいです
Ywain稼動後どうするかはまだ全然決まってません(´_｀
また人集めから始めないと駄目かなぁ
これが一番しんどいわけですがなんとかしないと遊べないゲームだからなんとかしなければ
この辺りはやはりどうしても敷居は高くなっちゃいますね・・・
昔の様に多くの日本人が遊んでいるなら楽なんですが現状それは厳しいので人を誘う場合も一緒にやろうというより「DAoC復帰してくれ」みたいなノリになっちゃうんだよねｗ
しかし実際問題復帰してくれる人は少ないのが現状です
面白いゲームである事に変わりは無いのですが経験者はDAoCの辛さも解ってるのでなかなか最後の1歩が踏み出せない

という事でYwain稼動してもすぐにgrpで遊ぶってのは自分は難しそうだ・・・
実際問題asian timeのNFの人の数次第って所もあるので少しの間様子見になってしまいそうです
人が増えて盛り上がれば誘いやすくもなりますしね

ただ、個人的に色々と愚痴を聞いてくれたりDAoC復帰した時にかなりお世話になっていた方が結婚でゲーム離れしちゃったのが辛い！辛すぎる！
でも結婚本当におめでとうございます。
この歳になると身近な人が結婚するとすげー焦るんですがｗ

DAoCはまだYwainのテストしてるみたいです
最近全然出れてないのでちょっと寂しい
基本的に出れない日はログインもしないのでほっといたら家が腐りそうって知らせるメールが来てしまったｗ
久々にログインしてみるとこんな事になってました

 
Ywain増殖しすぎｗ
ちょっと面白かった

 
そしてロード画面が歴代のDAoCパッケージに変わってました。
個人的にはToAが一番好きだなぁ
牛はちょっと駄目でしょこれはｗ

久々にログインするとキャラクター選択画面にキャラクターが一人もおらずすべてのスロットでキャラクターが作成出来る状態になっていてかなり焦りました
キャラクターから直接ログインさせると無事ログイン出来ましたがこれはやばいバグでしょー
ひやひやものです

現状DAoCは中々出れない状態なのでYwainが出た時にまたどうするか話し合いたいななんて思っています。
個人的にはYwainがDAoCの最後だと思うので遊びつくして終わりたいですね
1.99で簡単にML等を揃える事が出来るのでやった事のないステでも作ってみようかなとか思ってたりします
それにしてもYwainって家はどうするんでしょうね？
家zoneの検索で全鯖どわーっとリストに出てくるんだろうかｗ
カオスだ！
でもベンダーは稼ぎ時だろうな

そうそう、現在10日間のカムバックキャンペーン？実施中みたいです
Ywain出てないのに意味あるのかな・・・とかちょっと思ったり思わなかったり
既に終わったのかいつまで期間あるのかちょっと解らないので気になる方はherald辺りをご確認ください。

そしてスト4です。
親指が腫れて痛いです
先日シチューを作る準備でじゃがいもの皮を皮むき機で切っていたんですが、油断して自分の親指の爪の横から下にかけてザックリ行ってしまい血が一杯・・・
その時は血が出ただけだったんですが1,2日経ってから腫れが出始めてしまい激痛が
だもんであまりスト4が出来ない
それでも無理して30分ぐらいちょこちょこやってたりするんですがｗ

サンF絡みのコンボが大分安定して出るようになったかも
それでも焦ると相変わらずEXセイスモFになってしまい失敗します
BPは2000ちょっと行きました
でも安定しないので大体1600～2000ちょいを行き来してる状態でしょうか
PC版は2000前後になると途端にサガットが増えますねぇ
ほんと勘弁してほしい
それにしてもPC版はちょっと地雷じゃないの？と思うことも
何が地雷ってやはりスペック不足によるラグがやばい
未だにアンテナ安定しててもラグラグな奴が来たりしますしそういう奴が来るとほんと萎える
たのむから設定落としてくれー
ヴァイパー使っててラグとか完全に死亡フラグじゃないか！

10月頃に箱〇欲しいななんて思っているのでその時にスト4も買おうかな・・・でもなんか勿体無い気もする今日この頃です

ちょっと更新間隔が酷い事になってます
今現在風邪でダウン中です
クーラーがききまくった部屋で何もかけず寝てたらやられました・・・
熱は全然ないんですが地味に引きずってる感じでダルくてしょうがないのでゲームほとんどしてません
スト4はちょくちょくやってますけど１日１時間やればいい方です
まだまだ全然飽きてないので風邪治ったらバリバリやります

スト4といえばGODSGARDENと闘劇ですよ！
更新遅くなったので書くのも遅くなりましたけどGODSGARDENの熱さは半端じゃなかった！
見てる方もアドレナリン出るぐらいのすげー盛り上がりで面白すぎましたね
闘劇の方は配信すらないのでどうでもよかった
でもどちらの大会でもヴァイパーが暴れまわってましたね
でもなぁ、実際問題あんなに使いこなせてる人なんてそれこそ大会上位者ぐらいなもんだと思うんだ
ヴァイパーは云々言われる事に違和感を覚える今日この頃です
弱いキャラじゃないけど1回の事故で体力半分を軽く持ってかれるキャラなので正直しんどいよorz
しかしうまい人のヴァイパーはほんと見惚れてしまいます

DAoCの方は現在1.99のテストがpendragonで行われているようです
パッチ情報も少しずつ出てきていますが、一番いいのはやはりBPで買えるアイテムがトレード可能になる事でしょうか
RRが高い人のBPはあまりまくってるはずなので、これが出来る様になれば作ったばかりのキャラでもレベルさえ足りていればMLやartiが取り放題となります。

どうやら復帰キャンペーンっぽい事も行うようですので最後のDAoCどうですか奥さん！

とりあえず風邪治したいと思います・・・