This picture doesn’t really sell the game much.

The latest update for Dungeons & Dragons Online has been released. Dungeons & Dragons Online is a game I have been playing quite a bit recently this is because I’m getting tired of traditional hot key MMORPGs. D&D Online is good because it’s a hack and slash type of game where you can play it like a single player RPG or invite a small group of friends to have a more fun experience.

Theres much more that makes Dungeons & Dragons Online good so I might talk about it more in the future but the main selling point is that you can play the game for free or choose to pay for certain benefits.

Update 17: Return to Gianthold (19/02/13):

Happy Birthday DDO

DDO is turning 7 years old this year, and we’re celebrating by giving a gift to all our players! A birthday giftbox will be placed in the inventory of all characters created prior to Update 17. Simply activate the box to open a list of lovely gifts and pick the one you like best!

Return to Gianthold

Gianthold is now available for Epic level characters in addition to heroic level characters. The mysteries of the Draconic Prophecy await you!

• Gianthold now supports heroic and epic mode!
• Raid and quest flagging mechanics have been changed for heroic and epic versions of Gianthold.
• Epic Dragonscale armor is now available!
• It is no longer possible to turn in outdated Dragonscale Armor in exchange for scales.
• The Epic version of the landscape features random encounters.
• Players who already own the Gianthold adventure pack will automatically have access to the new Epic difficulty versions of the quests.

Introducing Augments

Augments are a new way to customize your equipment with additional bonuses and effects!

• An item with an augment slot can have an Augment placed in it. A slotted Augment bestows an additional effect to the item for as long as it is slotted.
• Augment slots will be introduced on some new named items, and randomly generated items have a 5% chance of having an augment slot. Some augments are also available in the DDO Store.

Full Update 17 Release Notes.

Exciting times in Dungeons & Dragons Online.

My other Dungeons & Dragons Online posts:

• Steam: LOTRO, DDO and Vindictus MMORPGs Now Available to Play for Free and My Thoughts on Them.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online Expansion Coming this Summer.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online Update 11: Secrets of the Artificers Now Available.

• 2008 – Predictions (silly, mostly wrong)
• 2009 – Predictions (mostly silly, mostly wrong)
• 2010 – Predictions (lots of bullet points, mostly wrong)
• 2011 – Demands (mostly unmet)
• 2012 – Questions (mostly unanswered)

Now it is time for the 2013 version of my yearly post.

This year I think I am going to set goals, which is just another way of drawing some marks in the sand to measure what happened when the year finally comes to a close.

1- Finish Rift

Well, finish Rift for a specific definition of “finish.”  MMOs are designed to never truly be finishable and Rift, with all its possible class builds, especially so.

In this case, it means hitting the level cap and running all of the five person instances with my main character, Hillmar, and the rest of the regular group.  And, just to put another parameter in the mix, I would like to see this happen before the inevitable Summer hiatus when we head out for vacations and other distractions.

2- Find a new goal in EVE

2012 was about learning to live in null sec and flying in large fleet operations.  There were large wars going on throughout most of the year and I flew all over null sec in fleet ops.  Now, however, things have quieted down.  There was no “Winter Break War” as there was last year and the prospect of any big conflict seems pretty remote right now.  We have been effectively ordered to not do anything that might result in the CFC having to deal with any more sovereignty.

Which puts me out of a job.

So I am in training mode with a little bit of ratting and selling now and again.  That can be lucrative, but it is also dull, as is mining.  (Though I hear from Gaff that with the new NPC AI, he has to actually tank all his mining ships as the rats now change targets.   And they pop drones without mercy, making drones pretty much useless for mission running and the like. So mining is dull AND annoying now!)

There are some things I could train up.  There are a few decent guides on planetary interaction out there, if I wanted to add that do my EVE resume.  There are some player skills I could work on, like scanning.  I am hopeless at scanning at the moment and, historically, every time I make an effort to figure it out, CCP changes how it works.

But as for what would essentially be a new vocation in EVE, I do not have a plan… or even a general direction.  It might be time to go back to that chart.

3- Get to Tier IX in World of Tanks

This is something of a vague goal, as I do not really have my eye on any specific Tier IX tank in WoT.  For now the Soviet heavy tanks seem to be my favorites, followed by the German tank destroyers.  But who knows, I might be mad for French self propelled guns or get the itch to nip about the field of battle in one of those Cromwells.  And then there is the Chinese tank line coming along soon.  Or so they say.

Anyway, barring any dramatic need to start up on another branch of the tree, Tier IX ought to be an obtainable goal even with my somewhat sporadic play schedule.  I just need some focus.

Good luck on that.

4- Finish that Second Instance Group Video

Almost a year back I put together a video about the first year of the regular instance group in World of Warcraft.  Fun stuff.  I like to go back and watch that video now and again.  Not quite as emotionally evocative as Sayonara Norrath, but a lot closer to home.

Originally I was going to make a video about our whole experience, but that was a huge project, so I cut it back to just the first year with the idea that I would do one for each of our six… headed into seven… years.

But while the first year was a good plan (for me at least) as it gets our origin, how do you distinguish it from year two, three, four, and so on?  So I decided I needed another specific subject.

I chose our time in Wrath of the Lich King for the next video.  I even started in on the long job of reviewing and editing pictures.  WotLK was the pinnacle of the instance group in WoW, where we finally got our act together.  It was also our downfall, the last happy time in WoW.  We got good at the game only to find that it isn’t that much fun when you are good.  When you are a random, badly equipped group running comedy specs in the wrong roles, every boss kill is a major victory.  When you are geared appropriately, using the right spec, and playing your role correctly, it starts to become a matter of just figuring out the gimmick for any given boss.

Archaedas was exaltation.  By the time we hit King Ymiron, he was just another boss on the long list.

Still, those were good times and set a standard of effort and fun that Cataclysm couldn’t match.  And it was a nice, discreet time frame.  We were there the day the expansion launched through to finishing off the last instance.

Piece of cake to put it together, right?

Except I cannot find the right music.  I need that to inspire me.  Earl’s rendition of Eleanor Rigby, with its twangy sounds and great mix of nostalgia and irony (all the lonely people indeed!) really moved me to finish the first video.  But I have not found the right music to get me excited to finish this video yet.  What will capture Northrend and the instance group, our travels, our defeats, and our victories?

So really my goal is really to find the right music.  We shall see if I can get there.

5- Retry an MMO That Didn’t Stick

There are a number of MMOs out there which I have tried and let drop after some effort.  For one reason or another the games just did not hold my attention or otherwise compel me to keep moving forward.

There are a number of options for this goal.  Possibilities include Vanguard, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, Runes of Magic, Warhammer Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and probably a few more I have forgotten.  Pirates of the Burning Sea maybe!

The trick here of course is to find a game where whatever made me stop playing has either been changed/fixed or was something that I have since changed my mind about.  And that, in turn, is something of a function of the time that has passed since I last played the game.

SWTOR, for example, is just a year gone by, and I did not like blaster combat or having dialog forced on my character. The former probably hasn’t changed, while the latter is the vaunted “fourth pillar” that was going to distinguish the game, so it seems like unlikely that I am going to like the game any more than I did the first time around.

At the other end of the spectrum is Vanguard, which I haven’t really played since late beta, and which I only recall as being an ugly, lagging, broken, resource hog of a game that was clearly not ready for prime time.  Six years down the road it is possible they may have addressed some of those issues.

6- Scout for the Next Instance Group Game

With the downfall of WoW as our default game, it has become an ongoing task to scout for the next game we might try.  We are currently settled in Rift, but since the first goal on my list is to “finish” Rift before the Summer hiatus, it seems likely that we will need something new come the end of vacation.

As always, the usual parameters are in place.  It must have content that caters to groups of five or six people.  It has to work for a variety of play time budgets. (Some of us will play all week long, others will only play on group night.)  It has to have content that we can enjoy in our standard “three hours on a Saturday night” parameter.   And it has to be something that we can all buy into.

There are a lot of options out there, even discounting things some of us have already played.  I think that, as a group, we might find a month or two of fun in PlanetSide 2.  Four of us would probably find Need for Speed: World or World of Tanks good fun, but I am not sure about all five.  And there are candidates from both the previous and the next goal that are possibilities.  Picking one though and getting everybody to download and commit, that can be a challenge.

7- Book My Autumn Nostalgia Tour Early

Every autumn I get the urge to go back and play some game from my past.  Sometimes it is EverQuest or TorilMUD.  This past year is was EverQuest II.  And given my long time attachment to the games, you can probably put WoW and Lord of the Rings Online on the list of potential candidates.

The thing is, the urge tends to hit me rather suddenly and I run off, play for the requisite month or so solo, then the urge tapers off and I am pretty much done. (Pro Tip: Always subscribe month-to-month for nostalgia based events.)

But while this is often fun, it is usually a lot more fun if I can get Gaff or Potshot in on the tour.  Nostalgia is a meal best served family style or some such.  So if I can just peer into the future and maybe decide on my target, we can get together on the plan and have a great time.  The thing is, which game?  Do I book a room in old Qeynos for the rainy season, or is the Forsaken Inn a more likely holiday spot?

8- Blog Stuff

Often when I look at the future, I will tack on something about “playing more and writing less.”  Over time though, this has increasingly looked like nonsense.  Writing here on the blog is clearly part of the process of playing games… or at least online games… for me.  The writing, the remembering, the picking of screen shots, and the clicking of the “publish” button are all part of the package.

So my goal for the blog is pretty much “stay the course.”  And maybe find a new theme.  Though I have been saying that for about six years and I am still using the same WordPress theme that I had on day one.

So those are my goals for 2013.  Not very exciting.  We shall see how they play out.

How does 2013 look to you?  And any ideas for music for that video?

Medieval Tavern

Remember when I wrote about Syrinscape last week? It’s a soundscape program for RPGs that allows to create background noises for your RPG sessions. It already comes with a nice amount of different soundscapes that can be used for different uses, but at least one was a blatant omission: there was no soundset for a tavern or inn. The place where the whole adventure starts in, or at least stops by at one point or another.

But do not fret, I was sick the last week and spent a lot of time playing around with my computer. So here it is: the Tavern soundset.

Download (zip) 42mb (downloads from Dropbox)

Some notes about it:

1. To use it in Syrinscape it has to be unpacked  into the Syrinscape folder. After that it can be chosen as normal from inside the program

2. I originally created this with the Tavern music from Dungeons and Dragons Online in the background. Of course I can’t put that one on here for copyright reasons. If you want to use it then just download the DDO tavern music into the folder, maybe convert it to .ogg, and rename it so the additional files start with “e4″. The program then uses them in the music channel.

3. the soundset does use sounds found on freesound.org and CC-licensed music found on Jamendo.com (specifically from Fatzwerk, ENoz, and The Racoons, check them out!)

EVE Online – Caldari Freighters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I haven’t really been playing MMORPGs lately, not since I switched over to a Linux system in 2006, and so I am not really current with a whole lot of things here. MMORPGs never really caught my interest that much anyway. The only thing I ever played for longer was The Empire of Martial Heroes, and that one switched off it’s non-Korean servers in 2010. So there is that.

But I have been sickand bound to my bed for two weeks, and during that time I played a lot with my PC. Well, playing in this case was more trying to see if I can get Windows games running on Linux and then losing interest once it works.

I never said I was exactly normal.

Anyway, one of the things I found during that time was that there are a lot of games which put the music from their game online. Maybe for marketing purposes, maybe just as a bonus for fans, but the fun thing is: these things are wonderful for normal roleplaying games as well. Most of them are loopable to some extent, a lot capture the whole fantasy world sound quite effectively, and they are free. What more do we want?

Dungeons and Dragons Online: especially the tavern/bar sounds here are really nice for some unobtrusive background music in bar scenes. There are even different sets of those for different styles of bars. And the rest isn’t bad either. Will definitely use that one.

Star Wars – The Old Republic: made a large part of it’s soundtrack available for free just before their launch. Sounds pretty much like a Star Wars soundtrack should sound like

Eve Online: something more futuristic, synth sounds for space ambience; quite good as well

Lord of the Rings Online: the made the soundtrack available for a while, and it still is online. One of the most impressive ones around actually, I can definitely see me using that one in the next session

Allods Online: this one is a bit strange, as the official website links to a fansite and a torrent because they themselves can’t get to the files themselves. Huh? How is that even possible? Anyway, some nice atmospheric music.

Anarchy Online -Shadowlands and Anarchy Online 2: I don’t know much about these games, but the soundtracks are online and might be useful

Planeshift: well, I wasn’t too impressed the last few times I tried this game. But the soundtrack is quite nice.

Related articles

• Old School RPG Coming to Linux, Maybe (news.softpedia.com)
• Turbine hires veteran RPG designer Ken Rolston (gamasutra.com)
• Best free MMORPGs (gamesradar.com)

I first pulled Buzz Index numbers on December 15. I last pulled the Facebook and Twitter numbers yesterday, August 1. That’s a full seven and a half months, and today, I’d like to look at how games have risen (or fallen) in that time to see how well their changes match up with their overall standing. It stands to reason that someone who followed a game in that time is new to the game — whether they’re actually playing or just interested — and isn’t just someone who subscribed when the hype was high around launch and stayed on after because they forgot, or were too lazy to, unfriend or unfollow. It might give us a better indicator of what games actually are growing and who’s growing the fastest.

The first column in the chart below indicates the top 25 games in overall Facebook Likes, counting only games that launched prior to December 2011, so as to avoid that “new game” rush. The second column includes games with those same criteria, ranked by changes in their FB Like totals from Dec. 15 to Aug. 1.

For the most part, the two charts aren’t too different. APB: Reloaded, which has been up and down with Facebook, is understandably near the bottom of the second chart, but what’s most amazing to me is to see several very old games — five+ years or more — still bringing in new people, and at a rate that makes them among the best in the industry. These include Eve Online, LOTRO, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Final Fantasy XI, Runescape, and Guild Wars. Oh, and if you’re not yet believing John Smedley when he says DC Universe Online has been wildly successful since going F2P… well, start believing.

So how about Twitter? Using the same criteria, here’s what we get:

First of all, it’s amazing how much more attention newer games get. Perfect World is #37 on the overall Twitter charts, which includes new and unreleased games. The #1 game in most new followers is Guild Wars 2 (85,321), followed closely behind by Star Wars: The Old Republic (82,730). World of Warcraft is #3, and PlanetSide 2 is #4 (35,947). All are in the top 7 overall, with The Elder Scrolls Online sitting at #5 after just three months.

There are still a number of older games on both charts, though perhaps the extra thousand or so followers for either EverQuest isn’t that significant. Still, all of these charts might disprove the notion, which I voiced in a Gamebreaker hit the other day, that “everyone who will play World of Warcraft has already played World of Warcraft.” While the Facebook change is misleading, as explained earlier, that’s still about 600,000 FB fans and 60,000 on Twitter who are choosing to follow the game for the first time. According to Wikipedia, Facebook grows at the rate of about 100 million new users every 200 days, which roughly accounts for the 7 1/2 months covered here, so maybe these gains just represent the small portion of new FB users who have been playing WoW for a long time.

Finally, just for fun, here are the month-by-month breakdowns of two other highly anticipated games, one that launched right around when I started this and another that’s yet to come out. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions:

This week is just a quick one featuring Dungeons and Dragons: Online. A friend of mine is really into this game right now, so I figured I’d give it another shot. I’m not big on the whole MMORPG genre, but it’s free to play and it’s on Steam now. If you play any kind of games on a PC, you owe it to yourself to get Steam. It’s free, has tons of free to play games and at least twice a year they have a colossal sale where triple A titles can be as much as 75% to 90% off. Not only that, but they have any type of game you can imagine from titles for hardcore gamers to casual gamers alike.

Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.

Turbines The Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Nexon’s Vindictus are all now available to play for free on Steam.

I have played all three for a considerable amount of time and what they all set out to do they quite well.

Vindictus which I played the less out all three I wouldn’t recommend as my time with it was pretty boring. The combat is meaty and active but the story and the endless text you have to read from two-dimensional characters left a lot to be desired.

The Lord of the Rings Online is the most comparable out of all three to World of Warcraft and because this it suffers. Both feature hot key combat with a emphasise on traditional group combat for example DPS, Tank etc. Of course LOTRO has points that make it better than WoW such as being able to buy and decorate your own house and the Lore and atmosphere in places is arguably better than WoW. However it isn’t ageing well compared to WoWs timeless art style.

Dungeons and Dragons Online is more similar to Vindictus in which you have one major hub with which you get quests then you set of into instanced dungeons. All DDO quests take place in these dungeons which mean you don’t have to worry about waiting for enemies to respawn. Also like Vindictus, DDO has an active combat system which requires you to hit enemies by clicking your mouse to hit enemies with positioning and tactics being important.

Play them?

You should try them all out if they sound interesting but be warned they are free to play which mean you don’t have to pay to play however a lot of features are left out from the game such as bank space meaning to get the most of the games you are required to play a monthly fee. Of course you can get quite far without paying anything but after for example around level 25-35 in LOTRO questing and leveling come to a near grind so paying a fee will allow you to get access to new quests and much more.

Think free to play as a very long demo because in the end you will need to pay some money if you want to get to the end. Turbines games have various expansions which can be only accessed by buying them first from the in-game store as they aren’t included in the base game. You have been warned.

Related posts:

• Vindictus Closed Beta Testing Now Available.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online Expansion Coming this Summer.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online Update 11: Secrets of the Artificers Now Available.
• The Lord of the Rings Online Update 6 is Available.
• Lord of the Rings Online 5th Anniversary Festival Guide.
• The Lord of the Rings Online 5th Anniversary is Currently Available.

I have also applauded games like Star Trek Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online and most recently Star Wars: The Old Republic, and to a lesser extent EverQuest 2. Each of these games have polished the MMORPG experience, and brought story based gaming to the web. These games have an interesting story, and make you actually feel like you are part of this epic grandiose world. That’s what an RPG should be!

That being said, I have returned to World of Warcraft! Don’t get me wrong, the games I had applauded earlier, still have my utmost respect, however after the most recent cataclysm expansion pack, I felt world of Warcraft deserved a second look. It seems as if the game has gotten some polishing, and the newer content is actually VERY heavy story based. The Worgen story is extremely interesting, epic and most importantly fun!

Will I stick with WoW this time? Well, that all depend on how the rest of the game plays out. The Cataclysm has altered the entire game world, so almost everything is a new experience. I am eager to see all the changes, and for now at least, and probably at least for a few months, World of Warcraft will have my attention.

Kidding!

No, seriously, I’ve given it quite a bit of thought, even since we’ve been hearing details about it, which for me has been about two years now. In those two years, I’ve been waiting for something about the game to emerge, something that makes me want to play it. And it’s occurred to me that that’s pretty much what every MMO needs: that “hook” to make you want to play it more than its competitors. The problem is, that’s all most games have to distinguish themselves from the crowd — one or two slight differences — while the rest of the game is pretty much the same thing we’ve already seen dozens of times already.

It isn’t news to anyone that most MMOs are pretty much the same at their core. TERA is no different in that regards, but it’s hardly the only game that’s taken the WoW formula and ran with it. Rift has rifts and a cool soul system. SWTOR has fully voiced cut scenes and, well, Star Friggin’ Wars. LOTRO has great lore to draw from. TERA has “action combat.” But at their core, all these games pretty much ask you to do the same thing: Find the guy with the thing over his head who tells you to kill X things or click on Y whatevers, rinse, repeat until you hit max levels, then go and spend most of your time in dungeons. Some games follow the formula a little more closely than others, and they all have their variations, but they work pretty much the same way.

No other MMO allows you to leap in to attack a monster. Nope. Not a one.

Counterpoint #1: “Nuh-uh! My game’s different! It’s better!”
Pardon me for saying so, but… bullshit. I’ve been hearing that argument for nearly 20 years. Yes, before there were MMOs, there were trading-card games, and many of them greatly resembled the industry leader, Magic: The Gathering. I got demos at conventions for about a hundred of them, and whenever I said, “Oh, so this part is like Magic” — even if the rest of the game was totally different — I’d inevitably hear, “No, it isn’t” from the demo-er, who might have also been the game’s designer. Games often resemble the games that come before them, and people who are very closely attached to the “new” game are frequently loathe to admit their game is a copycat.

Also “my game” for five years has been LOTRO. See how I included it up there? I accept it for what it is.

When all your game has is that very limited number of schticks to differentiate it from the others, it needs to be a schtick that I really want to enjoy. I like the lore of LOTRO. I liked the idea of dynamic events or cutscenes. I’m not as big a fan of action combat.

Counterpoint #2: “Awwww, action combat’s too hard for you, go back to your tab targeting, loser!”
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not very good at shooters. But I’ve played a lot of Skyrim — and plenty of Oblivion before it — so it’s not like I’ve only ever played games where you can lock on to a target. Action combat is the major thing TERA‘s got going for it that makes it really different from other MMOs, and that’s not enough to get me to shell out my money.

Counterpoint #3: “It’s not just action combat! There’s also BAMs! And the political system!”
BAMs are semi-boss fights. They look interesting, but they’re still just combat. And I’m not interested in putting in the effort to “run for office” or whatever you have to do. So sure, it’s got a little more than action combat, but that’s been the primary talking point, and the other 90% of the game still looks more or less the same.

Now, toss in where TERA appears to be regressing, with a poor storyline, no battlegrounds at launch, and an apparently long grind to get to the “fun,” and the question is: Why should I play it?

Counterpoint #4: “Because you’re press and you have to play to get a reasonable idea of what it is so you can talk about it.”
I am press… sorta. Six months ago, as the editor of a magazine, I could have called En Masse Entertainment’s PR director and gotten a free copy of the game and probably a multi-month subscription. Now? I’m just a freelance writer for a site with about a dozen freelance writers, so I don’t really enjoy those kind of privileges. For the foreseeable future, I’ll probably be paying for my games, same as the rest of you. And I only want to spend my money on things I figure I’ll enjoy. You can hardly fault me for that.

Counterpoint #5: “But you can get into the beta now! For free!”
I also only want to spend my time on things I figure I’ll enjoy. Do I have a professional obligation to play it? Only if I also have a professional obligation to play EVE Online, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and any number of other games that I’ve barely or never played that I’ve covered in news hits or on TWIMMO. Fortunately, I have 218 hours every day to — oh, hang on. I try to avoid “claiming” hits for games I don’t know, at least where significant knowledge of the game is required; TWIMMO’s a little less forgiving, as the topics are picked out usually independent of the hosts’ knowledge, but we all make do as best we can.

"Don't kill him yet! I need to earn my 'Kneecap Basher' title!"

I’ve also watched several people’s livestreams and videos of TERA and before you come up with Counterpoint 5.5 along the lines of “play it yourself, don’t listen to others,” I don’t see how my experience would be a whole lot different. I don’t need to personally wait for a boss to respawn while 20 people are waiting for it or read bad quest text on my own monitor or wait five minutes for my health to refill after a fight — all things I’ve seen on others’ streams. Think of how many games you’ve probably watched on livestreams and thought “Wow, that looks cool, I might check that out!” Then there are games you’ve probably watched streaming and thought the opposite. And I highly doubt that you’ve never based a purchase decision for a game solely by seeing it being played, seeing a trailer, reading about it, etc. If you’re not going to play everything extensively, in demos or a beta, before making a purchase, then don’t ask me to do the same.

For what it’s worth, I have played TERA, getting through basically half an encounter at GDC. Visually and viscerally, I thought it was pretty nice, but it wasn’t enough to make me want to check it out further.

Counterpoint #6: “Media people just hate TERA. Especially you Gamebreaker folks, who never do their research and always get their facts wrong.”
This is somewhat related to my overall point, but us media folks do play a lot of MMOs. Just like an increasing number of fans, we’re getting tired of seeing pretty much the same stuff in games — and we’ve probably seen it in more games than you have.

As for the fact-checking part of things… you might be right on that, at least some of the time. I’d refer back to my “generalist” post to explain why we don’t know about every detail in every press release or every set of patch notes, but that’s only a partial excuse. But it’s not like we treat TERA any different from any other game; we’re just as likely to make mistakes covering it as we are for anything else. There’s no hidden agenda, no TERA hit job that we’ve all secretly planned, not among the GBTV crew or any other media sites that I’m aware of. Sometimes, when a large number of people — particularly professionals in the field that they’re covering — say something bad (or good) about something, that’s because it actually is bad (or good).

That said, I think game developers could do a better job overall to make people aware of when they’re changing things in their games that people previously didn’t like — but that would be too much like admitting a mistake, which some people Simply Cannot Do. Some companies, like CCP Games, are better at that than others, but the TERA PR seems to be in pretty much full-bore “Everything about our game is incredibly awesome” mode, which screams “BS” to people who’ve heard that kind of thing countless times before from countless other MMORPG developers.

And if I actually told you some of the things TERA‘s PR team told me in our meeting at GDC about the incredibly basic, “MMO Design 101″-style changes they were making because of player feedback…

Hey, if TERA looks good to you, that’s great. I hope you enjoy it. I’m just a gamer, like you are, and we’re going to have different likes and dislikes. Deal.

Free MMO soundtracks:

• EVE Online: Good on CCP for making a bulk of EVE’s synth score available for free mp3 downloads!
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: About half of the game’s original score is available for a free download on the game’s site.  The studio did this right before the game launched.
• Anarchy Online vol 2: WARNING – this starts a download from Funcom’s FTP server!
• Anarchy Online: Shadowlands
• Atlantica Online: A sampling of the game’s music
• Dungeons and Dragons Online: A HUGE amount of music from the game, including a 5th anniversary piece
• Global Agenda: Only seven tracks are available, but hey, that’s seven more than you had previously, right?  And the Christmas piece rocks.
• Wizard101: They’re short ringtone versions, but still very much worth downloading
• Chronicles of Spellborn: Right side of the page

Amazon MP3 downloads:

• Age of Conan ($9): One of the most acclaimed MMO soundtracks ever
• Pirates of the Burning Sea Volume 1 and Volume 2: Great piratey music for $9 and $10 respectively
• Aion ($9)
• City of Heroes: Going Rogue ($9)
• EverQuest ($8) Note that this is a fan project, not the original, but it’s not that shabby
• Fallen Earth ($9) Love this soundtrack, it really is something different than the norm
• Lineage – Legacy Vol. 2 ($9)
• Lineage 2: Chaotic Chronicle ($10.50)
• Lineage 2: Interlude ($9)
• Lineage 2: Goddess of Destruction ($9)
• Lineage 2: Chaotic Throne ($9)

Direct Song:

• Guild Wars: Prophecies ($6)
• Guild Wars: Factions ($10)
• Guild Wars: Nightfall ($10)
• Guild Wars: Eye of the North ($10)

Blizzard Store/iTunes/misc.:

• World of Warcraft ($10, also available on iTunes)
• World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade ($10)
• World of Warcraft: Taverns of Azeroth ($10)
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ($10)
• Final Fantasy XI: 8th Anniversary Album ($10)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Battle Tracks
• Final Fantasy XIV: Field Tracks

Let me know if I missed any and I’ll add them to the list (I’m not looking to list/link torrents and CDs, however)!

I don’t know what happened.

I started NH Grog long ago when I was attempting to learn Advanced Squad Leader and wanted to document my progress. Life got in the way and I no longer had time to play ASL.

The blog, forgotten, got dusty and cobwebby and then hidden completely when I started a new blog.

Time is now on my side and I decided to revive NH Grog, but I’m changing the focus from ASL to all games in general.

I’ve been playing a lot of stuff lately and now NH Grog is back and will be active.

All that said, I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, 3rd Edition D&D, League of Legends, Munchkin and Mansions of Madness in the past weeks.

Join me in this gaming adventure, won’t you?

One good looking dwarf.

Free-to-play game Dungeons & Dragons Online is getting an expansion on the 25th June entitled Menace of the Underdark.

“The shadow of Lolth has cast darkness over the kingdom of Cormyr where heroes struggle to stem the unrelenting tide of the Drow forces.

Descend into the Menace of the Underdark.

The hopes of the Realms lie with champions from Eberron, whose world has become entangled in Lolth’s schemes, bringing them to Faerun where they will make the final stand against the Queen of the Demonweb!”

The expansion raises the level cap to 25 from the preivios level cap of level 20, features three Forgotten Realms adventure packs (The King’s Forest, The Demonweb, and The Underdark), and introduces the Druid class.

There will be three versions of the expansion, the base version (£22.99), standard edition (£39.99), and the collector’s edition (£59.99). Each edition has tons of stuff you can get. The more you spend the more you get.

Still in search of the “perfect” (or “at least good enough”) multiplayer RPG. Yeah, sad isn’t it? My friend TW told me to look on Faceboot and Twits and some ForumSpring thing for RP. Oh. My. God. Has the world sunk so low?? I am not that desperate yet.

I am open to almost any other suggestion, though — from text-only IRC channels through Second Life’s “3D Chat” and even including MMOs, whether they be free or purchaseable. (However, NOT subscription-based.) If you have an idea, you got a favorite, let’s hear it! Gimme a url, gimme a slurl, gimme an amazon.com page. Gimme a server/channel. Come on, you know you want to. (PS: comments are at the bottom of the post. Not the top.)

Or, maybe you don’t. See, me and Jester, we have some particular tastes. Some of which are apparently not popular in this era.

1: We want a SMALL group of dedicated, old-school RPers. Not so small that we have to organize a time when everyone can play, because that ALWAYS goes badly. Enough population that there’s likely to be a few folks to interact with when we do make it into the game.

2: No munchkins. IF there’s a half-dragon, half-demon, half-fae, half-mermaid vampirc werewolf mage character… okay, fine. Uniquness is good. But he better bloody well be trying to HIDE all that and fit in so as not to get mobbed with torches and pitchforks. Capiche? And for Maker’s sake, nobody running around talking about homework in chat-speek, and lolzorzing at the RP.

3: Real-Time RP. I don’t want to get into the mud-slinging of para-rp vs real-time rp (or “one-liners” as they like to call us). Aright? Like I said in my essay, paragraph rp has its place. I just happen to think its place is on forums or in play-by-email. Not live games. Our RP is based on character interaction — that is, talking to one another; having a conversation. Also, we like to play it as a game, to try to figure out the other characters’ thoughts and feelings. Not have them all written out in between the actual spoken words. Even reading that is god-moding. So. A lively pace.

4: Character Driven Plot. Not the godawful run-on-rails things. Unless it’s a good story, WITH multiple choices and outcomes, that the entire group wants to play through (I’m envisioning a multiple-player Dragon Age, here). Something like NWN, which provides a venue for RP, and the freeformers on a server who provide the plots and storyline.

5: No Combat, or at least not twitch versions. I’m looking at YOU, Second Life! I am far too old (and have too much bloody RSI) to be jumping around like a monkey, shooting sword-sized ‘bullets’ at people, trying to hit them in high lag. If we CAN’T just imagine a fair fight and play it out in RP, just… something dice-based. Heck, flip a coin. Oh, and levels? Forget those, please! What IS the point of having some level 4 people, and some level 60 people? Are they even playing the same game? Why do new characters always have to be total idiot wusses who don’t even know how to HOLD a sword? You know? Sometimes I like to develop a character who is an old veteran campaigner. How the blazes do you logically explain his decades of experience and his ineptitude at level 1? Uh, you don’t. Right. You can’t even play your character the way you envision him/her until you reach a high level. So what is the point of having low levels? See my point?

All righty, so on with a report. Jester has been researching RPGs. He says his results always boil down to LOTRO and DDO as being the epitome of multi-player RPG. (That’s Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online.) Now I’ll tell you why these suck. :X Yes, yes, ONLY from my own, biased viewpoint.

Lord of the Rings Online

It’s based on one of the greatest fantasy epics of our time. (Well, actually, it’s kinda old. OMG, they’re like making kids read it in school, cuz it’s like classic literature! Cripes, in my day, we had to read that boring real-world stuff.) It’s a very rich world, high fantasy, yadda yadda yadda. Now we all know how the story goes. Of course, the story has to go like that in the game. So, don’t plan on having any (Middle)earth-shattering affect on things.

In fact, don’t plan on having any affect on anything. This game is so run-on-rails, and there is like one option in any conversation. For example, me and Jester were playing a pair of badass Polonian brothers I created. Some manor-owner git sent us into a trap. After we… wet our pants and ran away (that is just SO out of character!), did we go punch his face in? Uh, NO. No, because he’s somebody important. Here’s a hint, Polonians don’t care WHO you are, you mess with them, they kick your butt. Capiche?

Otherwise, it was a nice-looking game. Just… not a role-playing game. Playing a guy in a story like an actor, maybe, with all your lines pre-written.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

Okay, now THIS is based on the CORE of role-playing. Oh, to be sure, it has classes and stats and all that, but this created the idea of a DM running the game, and the players affecting the outcome. By… yeah, playing their roles.

Now, I’m going to have to put things on hold, because we can’t remember why we quit DDO. So, I’m re-installing the client, and I will have a follow-up report on that. Shaddap, I’m old and senile.

Actually, as I recall, it was the same stupid everyone lumped together in one place doing their thing and NOT role-playing as everything else. And I seem to remember it being bad for my RSI. Was this one of the ones where you had to tuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrn your character around and FACE the thing you were trying to attack? Will double-check.

Mabinogi

It’s against the TOS for me to link to the Mabinogi page; you have to navigate to it from Nexon’s home page. Sorry.

MMOhut had some interesting things to say about this game, about how much freedom there is in the world NOT to have to fight and kill things and grind and level. And about how much creativity there is in the crafting: sewing, tailoring, cooking; you can hold down a job. You could practically be a farmer in this game, not the typical fighter/archer/rogue/cleric/mage stuff. Grow some corn, raise some chickens. Build a campfire, play a lute for your friends as you all sit around…. TALKING! zomg, the talking!

Now, first up, this is world’s biggest pain in the butt to get running. For some reason, the shortcut takes you to the web page. If you log into the web page and hit the “Play” button there… it might actually launch the game. My friend who has Vista had trouble with the hacker-protection guard-dog software it comes with. The sucker will not run.

It’s world’s second biggest pain to learn the paradigm of quests and such. For example, when a quest is completed, you don’t get your reward. You have to go to the quest page and press the “Complete” button yourself. Why? I don’t know. When the game tells you that you can use the CTRL key to “auto target” enemies… it means you can ONLY use the LEFT CTRL key. The right CTRL key does exactly doodle-squat. That took another ten minutes to figure out. I also didn’t realize I had more quests to do, because you get the quest, and the first step of the quest is to talk to the quest-giver. Yeah, kinda backwards, that.

So it’s different from most games in that respect. I have to give it points, though, because the “you are a clueless newbie in our world, and I will now teach you how to walk and hold your weapon at the same time” stuff is not as stupidly annoying as most MMOs. Yes, you still have to go kill 5 harmless little armadillos as a first quest. And then go punch a wall. But, seriously, after you leave the basic training area, the little newbie quests are well-rounded.

For example, you can discover things. One quest I found was to sketch an armadillo, NOT to shoot it. Nice, huh? The only downer on that quest was, I already HAD an armadillo sketch I made in the starter area. Noooo, it wouldn’t take that one. I had to go draw a new one and turn that in.

Now I’m trying to learn spinning and weaving so I can graduate to tailor and make some clothes. Because those suckers are EXPENSIVE!

Let’s pause for a moment and talk about the look of Mabinogi. It’s very anime-cartoonish. In fact, the characters are all cel-shaded. With those chibi-style eyes and stuff. Oh, not super-deformed. But very “bright” shall we say. You can’t select your clothing colour when you create your character. Somehow, the type/colour of hair and eyes you pick changes your clothing. When I “graduated” from the newbie training, I got a desert robe. That was purple and green. OMG, I sold that sucker first chance I got. And then I couldn’t afford to buy a new robe! So I’m stuck with green tunic and blue shorts. Now I have huge purple gloves. Where’s a dye kit when you need one!?

Also, the maximum age you can start out is 17. Well, that does explain why your character has low stats! :X Your character will age and grow throughout the game. In fact, for some reason, I’m gaining weight, my legs are getting skinny, and my upper body strength is going to pieces. Growing pains!? OMG. It’s not like I’m not running around! And punching trees. (Well, elves don’t seem to have mastered tree-harvesting techniques like using a ladder to pick berries.)

Let’s not dwell entirely on the negative. What the heck is attracting me to this game, anyway? A few things.

Remember how I mentioned my obsession with pets and mounts? They have these, in spades! And, pets that ARE mounts. Plus, horses can seat two people. The thing is… you have to buy a pet with real money. Well, with NX points. Actually, they also have four different providers of free NX offers, which I am working on. For not getting inundated with spam and calls from insurance agents… I can make about 100nx per day. It costs 9,900nx for a horse. (In real world US money, thats $9.90 About 12 bucks for a tiger, and 6 bucks and change for a falcon.) If I enjoy the game, I wouldn’t mind blowing a couple bucks on it. Five. Maybe ten. Depends. But for now, I’m getting free points, and it’ll only take me 99 days to earn a horse.

And, it has jousting! Now, hang on. Jousting is a mini-game, so you don’t actually have to OWN a horse (or any lance(s)) to play it.

I like the creative opportunities. From what I understand, you can design the clothing outfits somewhat like in the NWN servers that had the Mil Tailor. In something like UWO, you can make a feathered hat, you can make a pre-defined dress, you can dye things… but you can’t actually design the whole look and components of an outfit. Plus, they have music you can compose and play in-world. I’m not great at music, but Jester is always playing bards and he likes his lute.

Did I also mention how I’m a sucker for fishing? There’s fishing! Oh yeah, I’m all over that. There’s even a record of how many different types of fish you catch! Plus you can tame animals, and there’s over 100 of those you can get. (Not sure how or even if that relates to pets, but it’s something.)

So I’m shearing sheep and learning how to spin thread. Taking some jobs with the shy clothing shop guy to try to learn more skills and earn some money. (Uh, and sorta failing, there. How mortifying! I wanted him to like me! The NPCs have a bit of character memory, so they get to know you and remember you, and can develop a liking or disliking for you. Not talking DA romance options here, but it’s different from your pre-programmed NPCs in most games.)

It’s keeping me busy, like UWO keeps me busy. Trading and crafting. Travelling around. Fishing. I need bucks for that fishing pole…. But so far, I don’t really feel I’ve moved past the “newbie MMO training area.” Not yet. Could it be that flavor never goes away? Could be. Could there be actual living towns with artisans and craftsmen, plying their trades? Could be.

Could there be actual freeform role-playing going on between characters?? Eh, I won’t hold my breath. Would be nice, though.

I have such a long history of bemusement with SOE on that front.  I have literally been complaining since the Desert of Flames expansion… the very first expansion… introduced lying carpets as a mount.  I have posts more than five years old on the subject at this point.

So many things wrong with this picture...

And while the flying carpets still bug me a bit, I have gotten over them for the most part.  Though the reason I have gotten over them is because much worse has come since.

The setup to a "frog in a blender" joke

And while ugly mounts pre-date the Station Cash store, the whole drive of mount mania… mounts with stats, hideously ugly mounts, hovering mounts, flying mounts, leaping mounts, gliding mounts, and now wings as mounts… seems to have been accelerating ever since the store went live.

As Raph Koster pointed out in his recent post on the free to play model, the ongoing process of buying decisions by the free to play players acts as a safety valve to keep the company from doing anything the comes across as too greedy.

The flip side though is that the cash shop, being an essential part of the revenue model, will have a sales quota to meet because people won’t buy your RMT currency if they cannot buy anything cool with it.  You need a plan for every month, every quarter, and every year that lays out your sales goals and how you plan to get there.

It is nice if you can sell consumables, things that boost experience or faction gain.  But if you’ve already drastically softened the leveling curve and handed out dozens of experience boost potions as veteran rewards in you game (I have even more unused potions sitting around now that all my characters are six year vets) that might not be enough.  I am sure SOE sells some of those potions (though they seem a bit pricey for a consumable), but I am far more likely to buy a deed accelerator in LOTRO since deed are still grind-tastic and I do not have a pile of them already.

An expansion is nice to have, though I bet the cash shop only gets partial credit on those sales.

You can always juice things up a bit by having a sale on your RMT currency.  The thought of everything in the store essentially being half off will get some people to buy, but only if there is something they want in the first place.

And on the flip side, you can always put things on the store on sale as well.  We all read that splash screen that comes up with the latest sale items in detail every time we log in, right?  Okay, maybe not.  And most people won’t buy something they didn’t already want even if it goes on deep discount.

All of which has to lead the cash shop planners to focus on what people have bought in the past.  What was a success before?  Just looking around on the Freeport server, I am going to have to say that mounts have sold well in the past.

And if mounts were a success in the past, that is a big incentive to make more.  And while there are no doubt people out there who will buy any new mount just to collect them all… and I speak as somebody whose main in WoW has 87 mounts… a lot more people will buy in if the latest mount is cooler than, or at least different from, anything that has gone before.

And so, as tough as it is for me to admit, wings on your character as a flying mount do seem cooler than just a flying mount.  I am sure that sales will be brisk, and not just with people who name their characters something like “Stabzudead.”

So that will cover some part of sales quota.  But eventually sales will slow and, to repeat that success, SOE will have to top the whole wings thing.  And so the chain of events that lead us to wings goes on, and something new and more outrageous will likely replace it.

And so it is.  Due to its success, we will likely see something in World of Tanks that will top the Type 59.  And, if they sell well, I am sure that LOTRO will offer us more gear with stats.

Raph Koster was certainly correct in the summary at the end of his post in saying, “Free to play is not evil, it’s just different.”

It is just different, and one of the differences is who and what matters when a cash shop is part of the plan.  If goofy stuff sells in your game, be prepared to see a lot more of it.

Meanwhile, I wonder what will come after those wings in the Station Cash store.

For those viewing via remote reader or those who have never looked at it, down the right hand side there are two sections among the many categories of links titled “The Games I Play” and “The Games I Watch.”  They are so named partially so that they will sort in the order I want along the side bar.  WordPress.com only lets you have one list of links in your side bar (though you can whip up your own with a text field and some simple HTML if you really need more, but that goes beyond my ability to care about the side bar really) that can be divided into as many categories as you like.  But the categories sort alphabetically.  So I had to name them all in such a way that they would sort out correctly.

They are also named as an indication of my status vis-a-vis a given set of  games.  “The Games I Play” are the titles, usually just two, that I am actively playing.  It is easy enough to understand that.

Then there is the section “The Games I Watch,” which sounds a little odd, like they are being broadcast on TV or something.  The title was chosen for its ability to sort where I wanted it more than its clarity of message, obviously.

Games on that list are ones that I am not playing actively.  Sometimes there are games that have not even shipped yet on that list.  Diablo III is on that list right now, and it is months away at best.

Games in that section are games to which I pay attention, games which interest me, and games which I fully intend to either play when they ship, or go back and play at some point if I have already been there at some point.

And now, in the harsh light of the new year, I look at that list and I can see some entries that no longer fit the bill.

Runes of Magic

Remember back when a free to play games of any quality were a rare thing?  And there was Runes of Magic trying to bridge the gap between subscription quality and free to play access with, among other things, that $10 horse.

Back in the day, when he wasn’t on about that horse, Darren called it a WoW rip-off, which at the time, what with being free and all, seemed like a hearty endorsement to me.  So much so that, despite one of the worst installers ever, some of the instance group ran off to try the game at one point.

And it was okay.  It had the usual stuff, a few interesting twists like dual (and now triple) classing, as well as the standard “suffer or give us money” options when it came to storage and experience gain.  And gold spammers.  Many, many gold spammers.

My primary memory of RoM

But in the end, there was nothing there that really stuck with me.  We ran off to play other games.  Half the subscription MMO universe went free to play in the mean time, so that no longer suffices as an attraction.  I’ve totally forgotten my password… both of them, since there was a second login and password required to access the RMT currency, some of which I purchased at one point.

And then there is that installer.  Have they fixed that yet?  Or does somebody new still install the 2009 version of the game and then spend the next week patching?

Finally, the game is no longer interesting merely for its free to play model.  That was something worthy of note a couple years back, but not so today.

So I think it is time to admit that I am just not that interested in the game and the odds of my going back to falls somewhere between “slim” and “none.”  So it gets struck from the list.

Warhammer Online

You might be surprised that I still had Warhammer Online on my list until now.  Despite the howls of the now repentant fanbois every time I dared say anything negative about the game, there was a lot I did like about the Warhammer Online.  Our guild did have some excellent PvP battles at times, though for every good battle there were a couple of empty roll-over victories.  And then there was our first taste of a dungeon, which left nobody interested in a second.

The instance group in Warhammer

But the world itself was very well done, worthy of exploration.  And if I was complaining about the quest log, it was because I was using it a lot to run through the PvE portion of the game to see that world.  In fact, it was the idea of seeing the world that kept the game on my list.

The instance group moved on and there were other games higher on my list, but I kept thinking that at some point Mythic would change something in the game worth seeing or put out a “come back and play” offer that would get me to return.

They did have a come back and play offer at one point, ten whole free days, how generous!  But it involved giving Mythic a credit card, and that seemed like a really good way to get screwed by Mythic, given their past sloppy handling of credit card transactions.  So I didn’t try that.

Then, more than a year after launch, they made the trial version of the game, which restricted  you to a tier 1 character, unlimited.  That was interesting for some I suppose, but where I wanted to go would have put me well outside of tier 1.

They even talked about producing a Mac version of the game.  Did they think that Mac users were that desperate for an MMO?  I was tempted to try that just to see how bad it was, but never got around to it.  I don’t even know if that came to pass in the end or if it is even still supported.

In the end, no “right moment” to go back ever materialized.  Nothing compelling to me was ever offered up after launch.  And I would still have to pay a subscription fee to go back and explore, and the bar to get me to do that has only gone up in the last couple of years.

So that world will remain unexplored by me, as Warhammer Online is off the list.

Games Close to Being Struck

Star Trek Online is on the edge. I keep thinking I will go back and play.  But every time I log in, I am faced with a wave of changes similar to what Ravious described in going back to LOTRO, and I end up so mired in figuring out what to do that I end up logging off for a few more months, only to repeat the cycle again.

I logged on long enough to get this screen shot!

At some point I hope I will have enough time and desire to play, at which point I will start with a fresh character and learn it all from scratch again.  Only there are always a couple of other games I would rather play first.  Well, maybe some day.  But for now it stays on the list, if only because of that lifetime subscription I bought.  Oof.

And then there is Dunegons & Dragons Online, which I really want to like, but which is likewise always in 4th or 5th place on my to-do list.  At least it is free to play and uses the Turbine patcher which at least puts it a couple steps ahead of Runes of Magic.  But it is in jeopardy of being struck at some point.  I just never get to it.

Games On or to be Added

You might point out that I have declined to play Star Wars: The Old Republic so far post-beta.  But I will likely play the game again at some point.  There is enthusiasm for it in the instance group, and even Gaff has picked it up already.  And I do watch the news about it.  I am interested to see, for example, if torture ever comes up as an issue the way it did for WoW back with Wrath of the Lich King.  I am guessing that for most people, that ends up being a matter of “Sith will be Sith.”

I should probably add Torchlight II to the list.  I have no doubt that I will play that when it launches.

Likewise, Guild Wars 2 will probably get a slot at some point.  It is on my list to play, but I haven’t spent much time with the news or marketing build-up.  So I am not really “watching” it yet.

And the rest of the list… well, those are games I am sure I will continue to keep an eye on and poke my nose into every so often.

How about you?  Have you reassessed any games on your list, be it written down or just in your head?  Are there games you have decided that you just are never going to get back to?