Aion Online

I have played a lot of MMO’s in my time.. I feel I have a pretty good handle on the genre and have a very good idea of what makes a game good, and what makes a game bad.  Both in terms of what I personally feel, and as well as taking a broader view as a whole.  I can readily recognize why one game or another may not appeal to me, but be appealing to others.

What’s interesting is that I find that as time has gone on I have had to lower my expectations because none of contemporary games are ever as good as the now lofty memories of the games of old..

I fully realize that it’s not fair of me to compare a modern game to the memory of a previous game.  A memory full of good times, good people and fun events.  Memories that I generally cherish in some way, oh and there was a game involved too..

Aion Online is the first game in a long time that actually holds up under this scrutiny..  I was shocked..

Generally I use three games as my virtual yard sticks;  Ultima Online, because it was basically the first and implemented many things correctly, and many more incorrectly.  Everquest, again because it was ground breaking and a first but also because many of the things that made it most memorable are absolutely horrible by todays standards.  Ah memories.  And finally World of Warcraft because it’s everything that Everquest wasn’t — including good in some cases.  I played all three of those games for at least more than 2 years.. Five in the case of EQ, and am still playing WoW as I type this though I can honestly say that I dread it at times..

Aion Online might find itself added to that yardstick for comparison to future games..

Initially I was a bit horrified by the notion of a JRPG style game.. The very thought of a game in which the women were high pitch voiced busty school girls with bobbed hair and the men where androgynous she-males wielding swords you would otherwise need a forklift to move didn’t exactly excite me.. Still doesn’t to be honest, but that’s not what Aion is..

While I have seen a few extremely improbable swords the rest of the game isn’t bad at all..   The JRPG aspect is fairly minor all things considered and the game itself is beautiful and full of depth.

The game itself isn’t super innovative in that they really have only one thing that other games don’t have and thats flight..  Their flight model is really great and does a lot for the game once you figure it out.  Flight has two modes;  Flying and Gliding.  When you glide, you have a chance of finding thermals and can soar just like a bird!   The only down side to flight is that no matter how you go about it you can only do it for so long bfeore you have to rest..

Everything else is what you would expect, but done very well.. The game engine works well, if maybe a tad laggy from time to time and of course looks fantastic as it’s based on the crysis engine..

My only true concern at this point is the end game.. It touts a brand new end game that they are calling PVPVE.. which is code for PVE while some one ganks you..  I’m not fooled..  But at the same time I havent’ experienced it yet.. Maybe its good..

I’ll have to wait and see..

Wow versus War

I love the Warhammer universe.  I have been an avid player of the various table top miniature games as well as the couple RPG games in the same universe.   So when Warhammer Online came out a year ago, I was stoked!

I figured it would be pure liquid awesome and finally give me a computer version of the game world I have enjoyed playing in for so long.

Of course I was let down quite a bit in that the game was lacking..  but I get ahead of myself.

When I learned that Warhammer online was licensed to Mythic Entertainment, I was less than thrilled. Their only other game of note is Dark Age of Camelot which was a one trick pony (realm versus realm combat) that has no long term play associated with it.. And while the game is still around, it’s just not fun. There is nothing there to keep players like me playing the game.. I just don’t enjoy it nor does it have the massive fan base that it could have if they had bothered to keep innovating.

WoW on the other hand has gobs and gobs of things to do long term as well as lots of mindless achievements and other end game elements to keep players attention.  They are adding new content and new fun things to the game all the time and this is from a guy who really doesn’t like WoW..

When it comes to long term play, WoW is the clear winner. I play it still today and have for a while now. My guild has killed the end game boss (Yogg) many times at this point and is starting to work on getting to the next guy..

I’m playing WAR too at this point, but it’s just not that fun and my interest is waning.. As I played WAR originally (and as I am relearning more recently), I realize it is exactly the same game as DAoC just in a slightly different universe. It suffers the same issues that DAoC did and really brings very little new to the table..

What WAR does wrong:

• The PVE aspects of the game are absolutely horrible.. The questing is painfully linear and just about always forces you to venture into PVP areas even if you don’t want to.
• The zone’s are confusing and poorly laid out which makes navigation with out the flight system near impossible.
• The flight mechanic from zone to zone is long loading and lame — considering that you must use it, it needs an overhaul.
• The models are pretty bad, but the animations are down right dreadful…
• I can go on and on but will leave it be as otherwise this list will be too long…

What WAR does right:

PQ’s, SC’s and PVP.

The public quest system is neat and I wouldn’t be surprised if blizzard “adopts” such a system in the near future.. It’s well thought out and works quite nicely. This I think is likely to be the single innovation that folks will remember WAR for in several years..

So far the majority of the scenarios (SC’s.. Think battlegrounds for you WoW players) are a lot of fun. Again way more so than any of the BG’s in WoW which I find to be tedious and boring.

DAoC’s big plus was the Realm versus Realm thing.. Mythic of course followed that same model in producing WAR and as such their PVP model is excellent. The realm versus realm thing is a lot of fun.. for a while.. it becomes tedious and boring fairly quickly, but still the PVP is very good.

The PVP in WAR is far far far better than what is offered by WoW. Period. Full stop.

The reason for that is how the classes are balanced as well as the fact that blocking is turned on. In WoW it’s perfectly reasonable for a frail clothy to stand toe to toe with a fella in full plate and win. Generally in WoW PVP any one class well played, can defeat any one other class.. What’s the point?

In War, this is unreasonable and usually punished harshly. As a bright wizard (weak clothy) I know that if a tank (guy in plate) charges me I have only a few seconds to react before death.. I better make them count! Each class in the game has a specific function and is only really good at that function!

With blocking turned on (collision detection) the tanks can stand in front of the more frail classes and prevent them from being slaughtered..

The only place that this fails WAR is you have a lot of WoW players playing WAR who don’t realize their place and as such just charge in and die, or refuse to block, or simply wont heal..etc. I can’t fault War for the players being stupid..

The problem here is that the game somewhat encourages players to play stupidly in that even if they don’t work together in a SC the losing team still gets’ a lot of experience for it.. but that’s an aside.. again I really can’t fault Mythic for morons..

What I can do though is fault Mythic for producing a game that is so completely unrefined. There are so many little things about War that is a complete fail..

The Macro system is bad.. The map system sucks.. The models are lame.. The animations are really bad.. The PVE content is tedious.. Some of the classes seem out of balance.. The crafting system is horrible and pointless.. etc.. It’s just not that fun of a game and a lot of that is due to these little things..

Let me be perfectly clear.  I don’t like World of Warcraft.  I don’t enjoy the universe at all, the stylistic game play, the mindless grinding, the life sucking raiding..etc..    I play it solely because my wife enjoys it..  Fine I’ll play for her..  But I don’t really like it.   I do however have to say that Blizzard has made a good game.   It’s very refined in that stuff works.  It has it’s own problems too.. (the inability to launch more dungeon instances is a big one.. )   But over all WoW is a good game.

Mythic with WAR however isn’t all that good.  It really seems like they doggedly stuck to their one trick (realm vs realm) in the hopes that it would make a WoW Killer and not bother to innovate.  Okay fine, PQ’s.. but that’s ONE thing..   And of course just as DAoC’s one trick failed to make the game a success, the exact same trick on WAR also failed..

The real issue I have is, it’s been a year..  the game has done nothing in that time and at this point it doesn’t look like its going to do anything..  If they don’t care enough to fix their game, or innovate and make it better.. then I don’t care enough to play it..

Can’t fix stupid.

Cryptic had sold CoH to the masses as this do anything engine that would mirror “Champions” the role playing game, without actually saying the word champions. And to be honest, it turned out to be much less than champions. Still a good game, but not the freeform system that everyone envisioned. Lots of work and updates went into the game and it’s still pretty fun. I still play it.

In November of 2007 Cryptic sold their ownership of the CoH and City of Villains franchise to NCSoft so that they could work on their new super secret project!

Enter, the real Champions Online. Everyone kind of assumed that the super secret project that Cryptic was working on was Champions Online. I don’t know this for sure, but I get the impression that they were trying to get the Champions Intellectual Property license for a long time — like even back while working on CoH. They didn’t get it until recently,  once they got it they dropped CoH like a bad habit.

The Champions Online website was pretty lack luster to be fair and in all honesty the game as awhole looks like nothing but CoH 2.0.   I’m okay with that — I think that the City of Heroes game is a great game with a lot of casual game play, and a lot of hidden depth as well for the hard core gamer..    So seeing them simply move forward with what City of Heroes is, but meld it a bit to make it more Champions like with new and improved, safe for carpets hotness..

Oh man that’d be great!  Having said that, the Champions Online website had a count down clock that finally counted down just the other day.  Most of us expected a new video, graphics, eyecandy or someting.. But I doubt anyone expected, what we got..

Star trek online’s website went live..  Cryptic got the Star Trek IP!!    So.. what that means is that Cryptic is doing two major MMO franchises at once!     Ugh..

This sorta seems bad to me.  Firstly, Star Trek seems to have a bit of a curse associated with it..  And now they are saying they are going to do both Star Trek AND Champions Online at the same time? Hrmmm This is worrisome.. I fear that this means we are going to get 2 bad games..  Bad for business, bad for the customers.. just.. bad.

It’s a good game, and a good starter game for those who aren’t really sure about the whole MMO scene. It’s very simple to play and enjoy, and doesn’t bog you down with many of the more complex MMO aspects. For new comers to the market, its perfect. It’s how I got my wife into MMO’s and now I can’t get her away from the computer.. heh (“I just have this one last quest to do..” “Uh huh.. sure honey.. ” heh)

After a while I moved on to other games, but found myself reactivating my account from time to time to give it a try. For a while I played my City of Villains character almost exclusively until it once again just tired and I moved on.

Well I’m back at it. They have added a lot of content and depth to the game that really is interesting. Firstly its not like your more modern / typical MMO in that there aren’t characters standing around with question marks over their head letting you know there is something to do. Lets be honest here, World of Warcraft is a good game but its seriously “dumbed down” in that it almost holds your hand while it plays itself.

City of Heroes hearkens back to the days of EverQuest 1 whereby you didn’t know if someone had a quest or something for you unless you talked to them. Accomplishments were hidden from you, and thereby meant more to you when you actually accomplished it.

Death in CoH means something too compared to modern day MMO’s. CoH has debt! Now I played Ultima Online and EverQuest 1 for years, so extremely painful death was the norm for me. In UO each time some naked PK ran up and killed you, you lost EVERYTHING! It sucked. In EQ1 though they changed that a lot in that you just had to make a corpse run and lost exp. But you didn’t lose your stuff.. When CoH came out and they made it so you just got a little bit of debt, I was stunned. They made death meaningless.

HA! Look at what modern games do. In the most recent MMO, Age of Conan, death means absolutely nothing. You just get shot back to a respawn point.

But I get side tracked — the CoH is a good game and I’m finding I really enjoy the new Rikti invasion stuff and I hope they will let us “counter invade” at some point. It’d be really cool to go to the Rikit homeworld or whatever and attack them back!! (maybe you can do this already and I just havent gotten to that content.. I dunno)

Something else they have added to the game is a pretty thorough marketplace and crafting system. I like that — thats pretty darn cool. Well, one of the tricks of old is to watch your prices on that market. I mean I dont understand why players, in game after game, will put stuff on the market below what they could sell them to the merchant for!!

I spent about 4 hours last night just running goods from the market to the local merchant to sell. People would put stuff on the market for 10INF, that they could sell to the merchants for 4500+INF. Seriously.

In 4 hours I made 2 million INF which just goes to show you, super heroes is st00pid. Or lazy. I prefer to think of them as stupid.

Er let me amend that.. I do want to.. I mean I enjoy doing this stuff, but I do it all day long!   I’m one of those lucky guys who managed to turn a hobby into a career, but in so doing; I lost my hobby.

I program and work on computers, all.. day.. long..  I don’t much care to come home and do it some more.  Its the main reason some of my online projects are suffering.  It’s not that I don’t wish to make something of them, I just can’t get in the mood to do it.

The upside is, the folks I deal with at IBM are brilliant on a level WAY above me and I am learning a ton.  So when I do finally get around to getting some of this done I’ll be that much better at it.

At this point when I get home each night I usually do one of three things;

1. Play Call of Duty 4 in order to kill people
2. Play World of Warcraft in order to get frustrated with the state of MMO’s
3. Paint miniatures for my 40k Ork Army.

that’s about it.  It’s typically one of those..  More programming or updating one of my sites just usually isn’t in the cards..   I guess tonight was your lucky night!

On the plus side my 40k Ork Army is coming along nicely!

First let me start by saying that I think Eve Online is a beautiful game and can be fun once you get DEEP into the game, and it’s certainly challenging. However a new players experience is terrible and doesn’t give any clues as to what is to come later, more over the PVE aspect of the game is down right bad which means new players are forced to deal with experienced players in a PVP realm often resulting in repeated trouncings with no end in sight.

Is it any wonder that many new players leave pretty quick? Think of what kind of power house this game would be if it’s new player experience was just a bit better..

The biggest problem with Eve online is it’s learning curve, it’s steep to the point of making Mt. Everest look small. Combine the learning curve with the complete lack of “newbie” game and the fact that it’s PVE content is nearly non-existent and you have the core issues.

A new player to Eve is immediately overwhelmed with the UI and all the possible features and functions in the game. CCP has done a pretty good job creating a tutorial for the new players to follow, but even so once the tutorial is over you’re very much thrown to the wolves. And trust me when I say, the players in Eve aren’t forgiving or kind in their treatment of others. If you cross the wrong line you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of some pretty big guns..

As I said above, the PVE aspect of Eve is nearly non-existent and this is a damn shame. They could have done so much with this. Look at the major (read: successful/profitable) MMO games out there and see that all of them have vast loads of PVE content. Some of that very simple content could benefit the game as a whole greatly. I think Eve and CCP could do a lot of justice to the game by taking a realistic look at what the other MMO games are doing and maybe implementing some of it. I’m not suggesting changing any of the end game PVP stuff.. (So calm down guys..)

Our goal as gamers is to have fun, their goal as a game producer is to make money. Chasing away players due to complexity and other issues is bad and ultimately doesn’t meet either goal, thus implementing some of the stuff that makes WoW or EQ2 popular might help the game.

Now I just crossed a line. I am sure the rabid pack of Eve players that do actually read this are now frothing at the mouth because of what I just suggested.. It seems at every turn the hard core gamers out there bash games like WoW and EQ2 for being too easy or being too “care bear.” Its very easy for these extremists to badmouth WoW without looking at all the things they are doing right. Personally I don’t care for WoW either, but I atleast can recognize some of the things that the game has done right and what other games can take from it.

Giving the players something easy to do will help the people become in tune with their character. It will help them build a sense of ownership and pride in there online persona, as well as foster a desire to achieve greater and greater goals. In other words, it makes them want to keep playing the game.

Realistically, in Eve the PVE content should give the players something to do while waiting for their skills to train up. There only other option really is to mine rocks in high security space, which is tough with all the farmers — Not to mention down right boring.

The real “fun” of Eve doesn’t come until Much MUCH later in the game. And new players don’t get to experience any of that for months. But just like a new player to EQ2 doesn’t get to raid gods their first day, neither should Eve players. The difference is EQ2 players CAN raid smaller boss mobs, or at least get some idea of what a raid would be like at lower levels. Eve players have no clue what its like to play with the big boys until its too late and they are “egging” their way back to a home base. Trust me, this isn’t fun — it’s frustrating as hell.

You don’t want to piss off your players — it hurts your bottom line.

I fear that so many new games that are being created by small developers, like Infinity Earth, are so against creating what they call a “WoW clone” that they aren’t willing to even look at some of the stuff that WoW did right.

I’m all for thinking outside the box, and implementing things others haven’t tried, but to dismiss everything that WoW did simply because “its been done” or because they don’t want to be identified with something that the big boys did, is folly.

Games should be fun. More over to be successful they should be fun for the majority, not just a niche market. An example was Omega. Omega was a programmers game in that to truly play it and know how to play it, you had to know how to program. Talk about niche! I thought it was HUGELY fun, and thought it would take off like a rocket. Of course it didn’t do that well because most people didn’t know how to write the code required to program the tanks.. Sure it was fun to me, but not to the majority — the majority rule, don’t lose sight of that.

People want to play games because they are fun.. I think its the responsibility of developers to give them fun games to play. And in Eve’s case it would be easy! You could add low level content, without altering the rest of the game at all.

I wonder why they wont..

I’ll try to add more information about each one, opinions, dates, beta vs live..etc..

Aion Online

Anarchy Online

Asheron’s Call

Asheron’s Call 2

Auto Assault

City of Heroes

City of Villains

Dark Age of Camelot

Dungeons & Dragons Online

Dungeon Runners

Earth & Beyond

Eve Online

EverQuest

EverQuest II

Final Fantasy XI

Gemstone IV

Hellgate: London

Lord of the Rings Online

Meridian 59

Neocron

Pirates of the Burning Sea

PlanetSide

The Realm Online

Shadowbane

Star Wars Galaxies

Tabula Rasa

Time of Defiance

Ultima Online

Warhammer Online

World of Warcraft