The Lazy NPC

Multimedia Technology

2009-11-30T09:48:00.003-09:00

Sometimes it is necessary to take a break in your regularly scheduled program to highlight something that needs it. While not gaming related, it is internet nerd related which is acceptable in my book. I am submitting this blog as part of an assignment for school related to a class on multimedia technology. As someone that has been around this stuff since I was a wee lad I have come to appreciate the enriching experience that can be had combining several media technologies for one application.

I am a couple classes from a degree and I tell ya, after reading on a subject forever it helps tons to watch a video or listen to a sound clip related to the writing material. It definitely aids in making connections that you just can't on your own.

PS- Hello Ms. Tambini!! :P

I'm Alive!

2009-11-24T16:30:00.004-09:00

Yes, contrary to the attempts of armies of ninja zombies, I am still alive. Out of the list of possible zombies I would have to say that ninja zombies are the worst. They own your face with ninja moves then chomp on it like a little elementary school kid eating cafeteria tater tots. OM NOM NOM!

So in between defending myself from the undead trained in martial arts I have been playing several MMO's including Aion, Champions Online and Allods Online. Stealing the term coined by the folks over at Multiplaying I am going to give those games a 'Half Assed Review'. Just to put it out there, I never go into a game planning on not liking it. I am not going to go to the store and drop $35 - $50 on a product with the expectation of giving it to the dog as a chew toy. Without further delay here we go...

Aion:

To be truthful, I bought this game on an impulse. I was bored and was looking for an MMO that could hold my attention and inject a little gamer joy into the normal day of combating the walking dead. After surfing over to Direct2Drive and purchasing a digital copy of the game, downloading, installing, updating and logging on I was really surprised at how beautiful this game is. Going off of what I have learned in the past I wanted to have a character that was pretty decent at PvP. After years of playing a tank in MMO's I decided to go with one of the lesser played DPS classes. It only took minutes of research to find out that Ranger was the class for me.

Character creation was pretty good. While all characters are human, there are several hair styles and face choices. The one thing that seperated characters from one another were the sizes. The ability to have your character size vary from a leprachaun to a behemoth of a man (or woman) was unique to most MMO's out today.

I leveled my Ranger to around 19 and discovered that the game was OK. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. If I had to put my finger on it I would say that the game was very vanilla. You get your quests, you do your quests and that's it. Killing mobs for quests while occasionally flying around. Unfortunately Aion didn't keep my attention long enough to get into the Abyss and get my PvP on. Maybe I didn't give it enough time but there wasn't enough depth for it to grab me and pull me in. Character development was very mundane. My Ranger was the same as all the other Rangers running around.

Depending on what is going on at work tomorrow I will continue my slew of half assed reviews.

Same bat time, same bat channel.... maybe.

Does motivation come in pill form?

2009-07-30T09:40:00.004-08:00

Once again I epic fail when it comes to keeping this updated. I have, for the last time, quit Warhammer Online and I don't think I will be going back. I wanted to like that game for a long time and I've given it three or four chances but it still came up short for me. I was only holding my attention for a few weeks at a time. I think the major reason was population. The public quests and RvR on multiple tiers between three pairings required an immense population at all times of the day and night to support all of these things simultaneously. Oh well, I'm still a Mythic fan because of Dark Age of Camelot but they fell short with Warhammer. The compartmentalized feel to the world and the lack of 'fluff' didn't help at all. Class specific gear is something else that I didn't like. Come to think of it, the more I write about it the more I can come up with issues that turned me off of the game.

I am back into World of Warcraft and I am enjoying myself there for the time being. There are quite a few MMO's that are coming out soon and my next post (whenever the hell that will happen) will be going over the pros and cons that I have found so far for Aion, Fallen Earth, Champions and whatever else is coming out in the next couple of months.

WAR City Sieges and Land of the Dead

2009-06-24T15:15:00.008-08:00

Last night when I logged onto my Warhammer Online shaman I discovered that we were raiding the city of Altdorf. Just to get anyone up to speed that isn't, raiding the enemy's capital city is the pinnacle of WAR's endgame. All the best gear comes from killing the other factions king/overlord/head honcho and the focus of the entire RvR portion of the game is to bring the fight to the bad, or good, guys doorstep. So, I immediately ran to Altdorf on my level 31 (out of 40) healer and figured I would see if I can help out. Having never done anything like that in WAR before I was completely n00bcake. After finding the rest of the warband I stuck with them and healed my little goblin butt off. I'm not entirely sure how the whole thing works but we were absolutely slaughtering the Order in there. The public quest tracker said that we were killing them something along the lines of 4 to 1. We were completing our missions before they were but the little zone control meter climbed to just below us completing phase 1 and stopped. I did get a really nice purple healing ring out of it all so overall I think it was a fun experience. I just wish that kind of stuff would kick off during the times when I can play so I can stop catching the tail end of it all.

After the two hour timer for the city raid expired I figured I could log onto my warrior priest on Ironfist and take a look at the new Land of the Dead expansion. For the little bit that I was able to play I think I liked it. It adds a bit of a gear chase to the game. I think that is exactly what WAR was lacking. That carrot on a stick that gives you a sense of personal accomplishment. There are ways that you can get an accomplishment for your faction but that is very impersonal. The individual accomplishment is what gives me, as a gamer, the motivation to keep going.

I look forward to doing more of it on both my shaman and warrior priest.

Shameless Plug

2009-06-23T16:25:00.005-08:00

Just wanted to give a blatant, unadulterated, shameless plug for my brother and good friend Puppy Master. He just started blogging today and I am showin him some love. Check him out at Tales From the Geek.

From one geek to another, welcome to the blogosphere mang. I look forward to peering into the depths of the seedy geek underworld.

Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent

2009-06-22T11:11:00.006-08:00

My son, Brendon, and I started playing a game called Neo Steam. It's another free to play Asian game that has been out for a while. They recently westernized it and put up a North American server slapped a little name addition on it and called it good. I created a little Pom mage just for shits and giggles. In a nutshell, just about literally, he is a micro sized dude that sports a giant head.

Brendon created a werewolf machinist character. It's essentially the trade skill class with some rifle skills thrown in to level with. So far it's a neat little game. I really don't know the intricacies but I think it will be worth it to dabble in the game every now and then. I enjoy the graphic style and game play. It reminds me of a Final Fantasy-esque set up without all the turn based ka-ka combat.

Other than Neo Steam I have been playing both Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft again. I got my shaman to 80 and did a few 10 and 25 man raids with him. I really do enjoy raiding on WoW. Everything else I think is old hat and I don't care to do it. Things like doing dailies and crap are just meh. I will consider leveling my warrior from 76 to 80 just so I can try raiding with him. There are a ton of classes that use plate armor and two handed weapons so it will be slower to gear him up. Regardless, raiding as a DPS warrior back in the day it was a blast.

As far as WAR goes I have been leveling my gobbo shaman on Volkmar named Grailz. The whole greenskin motif is badass. Makes me want to read up on the whole lore and all that and I never care too much for that sort of stuff. But my little healbot is rockin. I get compliments at level 31 to the tune of me healing better than capped healers at level 40. After all, online gaming is about being awesomesauce and showing how much everyone else sucks, AMIRITE!?

Windows Live Writer

2009-05-16T18:29:00.002-08:00

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer. So far it’s a nifty little program that lets me write and publish from my desktop without having to use Blogger.com. If this post looks good I think I will start using this on a regular basis. It might even motivate me to write more. Hah, SUUUUUUURE.

I haven’t been playing many games lately. I did hop on to Runes of Magic for the first time in a month or so. I have a mid twenties priest/knight that I enjoy playing. Frogster is doing a bang up job with updates and constantly adding new content. It’s free to play with a pay per month quality to it. If you decide to roll on the PvP server look me up. Name is Slaynn.

Stopped Playing WAR

2009-05-14T10:20:00.004-08:00

I quit playing WAR all together. It became very monotonous. I found it difficult to find decent people to play with. The community as a whole is what I think drove me away from it. While leveling up no one speaks to each other. It really gave what otherwise was a pretty decent virtual world a ghost town feeling. I might check it out again after Land of the Dead pops up but I doubt it.

I bit the bullet and reactivated my WoW account. Knowing people that play regularly and will actually talk and hang out with you is something that I deem to be necessary when playing these kinds of games. This dude in a guild that I was in said, "I don't play to talk, I play to XP," when I mentioned how quiet everyone was, which is fine I suppose. To each their own but social interaction is a big part of why I play these games. If all I wanted to do was solo and not even say hello to anyone I would be jammin some single player games. They do the whole solo thing tons better seeing as they are, well, single player.

Oh well, I am having fun with my undead mage as of now. The last time I played him was in a 40 man Molten Core raid back in the day so I have tons of things to catch up on which keeps me occupied. I got him to 77 and hes an enchanting/tailor so my pocketbook is looking really thin and I have yet to purchase any flying mount skills whatsoever. Combining that with the real life friends that I have that play is a recipe for success in my book.

I Fail

2009-04-13T14:51:00.006-08:00

Yeeeeah... I know I said I was going to post again but I didn't. While I'd like to say that evil communist ninjas attacked me and my internet connection but I simply forgot. That's all there is to it. No awesome asskicking reason other then I am a dumbass. It seems that I do that a lot. I cannot seem to remember anything for the life of me. Not stuff that matters anyway. How about this one:

up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A

If that means anything to you go ahead and give yourself some old school cool points. For those of you who don't, it's the lives code for the old NES game Contra. You have to hit all those buttons before the title screen slides completely into view in order to score a buncha lives. So I can remember something like that from around 20 years ago but I can't remember to get gas on my way home from work, or post a blog entry. It's not as if I don't have anything to talk about, I have plenty.

What can you do?

As I stated before I started playing WAR again. I am enjoying myself more this time around. Deciding on a main is something else entirely. I have a Bright Wizard, Choppa, Warrior Priest and Archmage that I have been bouncing back and forth between.

The Bright Wizard is a blast to play. Conflagration spec is where it's at. Destroying huge swathes of Destruction in one fell swoop is pretty bad ass. When I have a competent healer and tank that is. There is a ton of whining coming out of every WAR portal on the internet about Bright Wizards being overpowered. I don't think they are. One thing that I do think needs a tweak is the ground targeted AE being able to fire off without line of sight. If they changed that it would alleviate a ton of the grief they are getting. If they required line of sight then whatever they are hitting could hit them back and there would no longer be Rain of Fire spam being fired off with impunity. Like I said, fun class but there are a million of them. I enjoy playing underplayed classes. Not being a dime a dozen is something that appeals to me.

CHOPPA!!!! Awesome concept, awesome execution, awesome setting. Being my first Destruction class I was sincerely impressed. The Greenskin speak and lore is actually pretty damn entertaining. As far as dishing out asswhoopins this guy is top notch. They do suffer from the same problems that all of WAR's melee DPS share, you run in, try to kill someone before you die, rinse and repeat. This gets old but I am only rank 21. I'm going to keep playing him until he no longer tickles my fancy.

Ahhh the Warrior Priest. My first and only rank 40. He's no book holding sissy, he smashes faces in the name of Sigmar! This guy was a blast up until the addition of Righteous Fury to offhand books. Warrior Priests have gotten pigeon holed into being heal bots. If you aren't Salvation spec with a book you are worthless. At least that's the impression I get.

Last choice is the Archmage. Now this guy is a healbot and I like it that way. He is rank 19 and climbing fast. This guy lets me be a less played class and fill a needed spot in the MMO universe causing the warm and fuzziness that we all love and adore to crop up. My main problem with his is solo PvE is about as fun and fast paced as sliding down a hill covered in glass.... with no pants on. Essentially when the scenarios and open RvR die down in the evening this guy is zero fun.

Those are the choices. I actually considered deciding on one and deleting all the others so that I won't be tempted to play them. Desperate measures for desperate times.

Back to WAR

2009-04-08T16:03:00.008-08:00

I became seriously disenchanted with this whole blog thing when it seemed like no one was reading my super duper, ultra uber and just basically bad ass posts. So I stopped. I would always come by and see if anyone said anything or not but mostly that was a big fat negatory.

I did have a change of heart though. I think blogging is more like a journal that others can read if they want to. After coming back again I read some older posts and they actually entertained me even though I'm the one that wrote them. Call me narcissistic or egotistical but it's the truth. So here I am again plugging away at my online journal in an attempt to create more of a gaming history that I can read again way later down the road. Welcome if this is your first visit and welcome back if you have stopped by my little corner of the interwebz before.

I did the free to play circuit for a while searching for that something that can take me back to my Asheron's Call days but I gave up. Anyone else see a reoccurring trend here? Hah. Most of the free to play ones are all way too grindy for my tastes. Now all MMO's are grindy. No doubt about it. That is the nature of the beast. In my eyes a game that hides that the most is FTW. A game that I wanted to like was WAR. I started in open beta and went for about three months before stopping. I stopped because of the server populations being horrible. You really need a TON of people on a server to enjoy it. Specially being in Alaska and in the army by the time I get around to playing the rest of the real world is asleep. Well, Mythic consolidated their servers and wow, huge difference. I am digging it. My little Choppa is level 16 and climbing quickly.

More to follow tomorrow. I need to get off my ass before I'm late for a work obligation.

Self Revelation

2009-02-10T10:07:00.004-09:00

So, I was messing around on the MMORPG.com forums this morning having a conversation with a dude about how our boredom with MMO's could possibly be the fact that we are getting older. Most of the gents that have been around since the beginning are the ones that I think are getting bored. When I say beginning I mean Meridian 59, The Realm, Everquest and Asheron's Call.
I'm talking playing these kinds of games since the beginning of time, when Moses was a private in the army etc.

Well, we came to the conclusion that a lot of what is affecting our enjoyment of MMO's and other games in general are our ages. At first I took the route that any 'almost thirty' guy would take and told myself "No fuckin way man, GAMERZ 4 LIFE!"

Then I turned around, saw my wife of 11 years and my three kids all getting ready to go to school. It dawned on me, I think I may be 'out growing' video games. Video games have been part of my life for so long that I still play them and they are still fun but not in that adrenaline pumping way. Not like they used to anyway. It's one of those things where you WANT to like them and you WANT to have a ton of fun but you just don't. You end up playing them out of habit or nothing better to do.

After purchasing a treadmill a couple weeks ago I have been staying away from playing games for hours a day and trying to get in shape. The weird thing is I feel fine about it. I actually enjoy having more time with the kids, the wife and to get in shape.

I am still going to play MMO's due to the fact that I still do have fun with them, it's just not as much as before. There is a reason you never see really old folks jamming an iTouch version of Q-bert I suppose. On the other hand, my first assessment could still definitely be true: they all just plain suck anus right now.

Changing Gears

2009-02-09T09:03:00.003-09:00

I had plans to update this on a daily basis but feedback and reader participation has been lackluster. As a matter of fact it's non-existant. The one comment made was by my wife and it was made in a joking manner.

I will still make posts on occasion but things will definitely be less frequent.

Tried and True Method, That Sucks

2009-01-29T15:59:00.013-09:00

With the recent discoveries of some potentially great MMO's that are in development I am finally going to get a break from the standard MMO template. All of the mainstream online RPG's are the same i.e. they all have the following:

Humans:

This is a given. Humans are always the most balanced as far as starting stats. They are the standard to base other races off of. I get that and it's logical. We are all human and can relate to them.

Some sort of fancy pants elves:

You know, the high elves. The prancy ones that are smart and are good with magic. They are physically weaker than most other races but make up for it with their intelligence and agility. They are experts and painting rainbows and installing track lighting. Racial bonus is the ability to wear assless chaps.

Some sort of evil elves:

These guys are pretty much fancy pants elves but with darker skin. They are for the manly men that want to play elves. RAWR so mean! Experts at painting gothic dark rainbows and applying black lipstick. Racial bonus is a special /scowl emote.

Drunken midgets from Scotland:

Dwarves, alcoholic ones with a Scottish accent. They HAVE to be included in any game that is going to be successful right? I mean... where the hell would I be if I couldn't play a midget that drinks all the time and likes to dig? Where's he goin? NOWHERE! Experts at using a shovel and being abrasive. Racial bonus is the ability to make their livers explode providing minor AoE damage.

There are others to mention, the dude on steroids that has no intelligence but strength through the roof blah, blah,blah. We've heard and played it all before. Break the mold people! Get something different on the table. I'm tired of using magic. I'm tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again.

A few games did come out in the past that broke the mold but were too buggy or cheap to make a good foundation of non-magical games. Either that or they had a poor design that allowed people to PK noobs without recourse causing said noobs to quit before they really even started.

This one goes out to all the development teams out there that are trying to break this Tolkien mold and provide the MMO customer base something different.

Here's to you Mr. Sci-FI MMO development guy. This Bud's for you.

Another Hidden Gem

2009-01-28T14:47:00.006-09:00

After checking out Fallen Earth I stumbled on another similar post apocalyptic MMO in the works called Earthrise. It is along the same lines as Fallen Earth but still separates itself. This one is in the distant future also but is set in the aftermath of a world war. The technology is back in the world but, and it's a big but, a single city government controls almost all of it. They control the only means of cloning and therefore dictate who lives and who dies.

Individuals that disagree with this arrangement are part of an insurgency, the Noir, that is trying to take control of these technologies away from the government, the Cantinoma, and give it to the people. Enter the PvP conflict.

Combat in Earthrise is going to focus more on the RPG aspects than FPS ones like in Fallen Earth. Targeting is going to be via 'soft lock' which requires a lot less twitch gaming to be successful. Soft locking is sort of a loose target lock that will still require you to maintain constant reticle to target contact but it's a little wishy washy on exactly how it will work.

Personally I like the idea of some sort of a lock system better than a Quake game with stats. The community over on the Fallen Earth forums is much more robust and the faction choices there are vastly different. Nevertheless this one looks to be very cool too. The graphics are better and they are just about to head into the beta phase of development so time wise we will more than likely see this one before Fallen Earth.

Head over to the site and sign up. The forums are very active and the community is very hopeful.

Fallen Earth Accepting Alpha Testers

2009-01-27T10:01:00.009-09:00

A little known, to me anyway, promising MMO in development is accepting alpha testers. This one looks to be very cool. Set in a post apocalyptic time, Fallen Earth is shaping up to be one of this years hidden gems. With a classless skill based system and a game world where crafters make 95% of the items it seems to be something that I was looking for in an MMO. See State of the Game.

Set in the year 2156 after a plague wiped out most of humanity there are 6 factions battling it out. My personal choice after reading the descriptions here will be to join the Enforcers. Maybe it's my military background or some weird attraction to discipline I feel they would fit me perfectly.

FE is toting itself as an MMOFPS. Just about all the other games that claimed this label were complete and utter poopola. Games like Neocron and Mankind were great in concept but the game play and rampant ganking made baby Jesus cry.

The developers, Icarus Studios, are claiming that the game will have heaping portions of PvE and PvP content. Factions will be able to battle it out and claim towns and possibly zones. The good part about it is these zones will be clearly marked and if you aren't into shooting faces you can steer clear. What I'm getting from this is a Dark Age of Camelot like system that allows you to PvP all you want but if you aren't in the mood you can partake in some mob slaughtering without looking over your shoulder every two seconds.

Release date hasn't been set yet. There are rumors that it will be Q2 2009 but nothing has been confirmed by the devs. Check out the site and read up about it. Vehicles, dynamic clothing (ski masks that are warn can be rolled up or down, etc.) and a huge game world are all coming our way.

Can't wait to tear into some hippy ass lawbreakers. Muahahah!!

"Without law there is no society, without society there is no hope"

-- Captain Lance Deveroe

eFriends Make Me Wiggle

2009-01-25T21:35:00.008-09:00

It happened today. The point where you meet one or more people within an MMO and that seals the deal. You will be playing it for a while just for the simple fact that you want to hang out with them.

Judging by all the previous MMOs that I stayed playing for more than a week other players were probably the deciding factor. The kind of people that will play with you until the wee hours of the morning regardless of the fact that you are drunk off your ass and incessantly typing retarded ass jokes (hey, they were funny at the time). That's how I met a good interwebz friend of mine named Zeathen. That night was a little fuzzy but we were on Vent talking all kinds of shit. All I have to say is that pizza guy was one great American that night. I loved him six ways from Sunday. One of those nights of supreme nerdness that will live on forever in the halls of dorkdom.

Amazingly I met my new found eFriends in my second group since I started playing. My wife likes to call me a social butterfly, which makes me twitch (not to be confused with being made to wiggle, more on that in a second) but it could be an appropriate label.

For the most part I like my friends to be in my computer. That way when they do something stupid, become annoying etc. I can just turn them off. Something about MMOs brings out the chatter box in me. /shrug

So we were in some place near the human city, Ahkma I think, and just jibber jabbering about whatever came to mind when a female Dark Elf runs by. I have always liked the Victorian look on a woman. The corset top thingy majigger and the big dress just do something for me. I felt the need to just blurt out my idea that Dark Elf females were hot and they make me wiggle. The rest of the night was all about this new expression. I think that is what set it off and really broke the ice with the group.

All in all it was a fun night. I haven't had that sort of social interaction with a group of fellow gamers for a long time.

Regardless of the game play and innovative features a developer includes in whatever MMO if you don't ever make friends it will truly never be fun.

Requiem - First Look

2009-01-24T22:49:00.005-09:00

Well, I tried another free to play MMO tonight. It's called Requiem - Bloodymare. What intrigued me about this one is the fact that it's main catch is that it's a horror game. I was thinking about the other horror games that I have played. You know 'those'. The first couple of Resident Evils, just about all the Silent Hill games. The eerie creepy experiences that make you jump and sometimes scream, in a very manly way of course. So, I was expecting to play this one for about 20 minutes at the most, pick up my testicles and not play again due to my girliness when it comes to horror.

My main character is now 13 and I'm still playing it if that's any indication of the scare factor that this one holds.

I'm gonna have to head in a bit of a non-MMO direction for a second here. There are horror movies and there are gore movies. An example of a horror movie is The Exorcism of Emily Rose, that movie scares the poop outta me. On the other hand there are the Freddy and Jason movies. They aren't really that scary because they are off the wall, no way in all levels of hell, that they could happen. Sure they are gory but that isn't scary. The only thing that does is make you crave Italian. However, Emily Rose is supposed to be based off of a true story and there aren't any mask wearing, chainsaw equipped maniacs running around. If you believe in the supernatural it COULD happen. Therefore, logically, if it COULD happen than it COULD happen to you... which scares the piss out of me.

Damn you vivid imagination!

Getting back on track here, Requiem is pretty run of the mill as far as recent MMO's go. You choose between four races, the standard human (Turan), the big gray human like dudes(Bartuk), and the agile looking gray dudes (Kruxena).

You may be thinking to yourself, "Self, he said four races and that's only three!"

Well, Self, you would be correct. The previously mentioned races all look like they belong in a horror setting, they are tough looking mean Michael mean-men. The fourth race happens to be fairy looking and way out of place. The Xenoa are short, tiny and.... well.... dainty looking.

The latest incarnation of Slaynn looks like he should be the president of the artist formerly known as Prince's fan club. If I wasn't such a cheapskate I would probably spring for the cash shop item to change his name to PurpleRain.

It's just bad. The game play was alright but I could not get over the fact that if they put player housing in the character formerly known as Slaynn would not be able to resist installing lots of track lighting and playing Village People songs while painting his Blue Oyster Club sign in preparation for hanging it over his front door.

Monster Kill and You

2009-01-23T09:13:00.006-09:00

First off I would like to say that Monster Kill, or M.Kill, is your friend. What it essentially does is reward you for grinding.

Some people may cringe at the 'grind' word.

/gasp

You GRIND!? Terrible game! BAD!

Well, so far Cathaal is level 20 and I have been grinding almost exclusively. There is something about Rohan Online that makes grinding not that bad. The devs implemented this great system that lets you take baby steps in terms of XP. Essentially the M.Kill number gives you intermediate goals to look forward to throughout a level. Every 20 mobs you kill a HUGE XP bonus is thrown in your direction.

20th kill = 7 times the XP

40th kill = 10 times the XP

60th kill = 13 times the XP

80th kill = 16 times the XP

100th kill = 19 times the XP

So, while you are leveling you end up looking forward to those huge jumps in XP and will actually seek out a mob that is very hard in order to get the biggest jump possible. Under level 20 you will get as much as half a level or more on your 100th kill.

The funny part is when you are one kill away from getting your M.Kill bonus a bell rings to let you know that the next time you kill something you are getting the bonus so make it count. When that happens I start to salivate.

MmmmmMMmmm, Pavlov.

RF Online Opens

2009-01-22T09:38:00.006-09:00

RF Online is a game that I have been wanting to try out for a few weeks. I discovered it when I first started cruising the free MMO scene and was disappointed to discover that Codemasters and the game developers had a licensing disagreement. This caused them to shut the North American servers down November of last year. From what I was reading it was a pretty good MMO set in the distant future but with mystical aspects mixed in.

Well, they are back and in business. I logged in to my Bellatio Union ranger and began to poke around in a pretty good looking game. Once again, I was hit with the click-to-do-everything interface that makes baby Jesus cry. At first I was irritated, once again, but after actually playing for a bit that sort of interface fits with the game play. RFO is a Diablo-esque game with guns, robots and lasers.

Pretty cool stuff right?

Yeah, for about an hour. After I realized that I was going to have to grind with the same couple of skills for hours and there isn't a talent/skill tree that allows for at least some character customization I lost a lot of steam. Maybe I am missing something but I am level 23 and still have the two buffs and one attack skill that I started with. Sure those skills have raised in effectiveness, how much I don't know because the tooltip doesn't say anything except that the duration on the buffs is longer, but they are the same. I am going to attempt to stick it out and see if the game opens up after I get out of the n00b area. Once that happens it's open season as far as PvP goes.

I have a sinking feeling that's just going to mean I will get one shot killed 87 times in a row until I get pissed, uninstall and come on here to rant and rave about people ganking lowbies and driving new players away from an otherwise decent game.

Gaming Forums

2009-01-22T09:00:00.006-09:00

So, I was playing my Dark Elf mage for a bit and the curiosity struck me. I wanted to try an archer with aspirations to eventually take the scout route.

Get it?!? Scout route!?!?!? Har har har I'm a poet and didn't know it... BA-DUM-CHING

Naturally, I logged onto the forums to soak in all of the information, trial and error, and testing that others have already done. Low and behold everyone claims that the scout is pure unadulterated poop. Worst class in the game according to the majority of Rohan veterans.

After I read that it hit me, I did it again. Did what you ask? I ruined my game experience by going to the forums. A bad habit that I always tell myself that I will not do is to visit the class specific forums for whatever MMO it is that I'm playing at the time. It's like Groundhog Day. I do it all the time. The only difference is Bill Murray changes what he does but for some reason I cannot resist. I get excited about a class, work out a certain talent/skill build and then I screw it all up. I go and see what others are doing, what talents or skills are the best and, most of the time, they disagree or put a lot of stock in something that I deemed as no good and I lose my character motivation. Without that I will play it a couple times and then just not log on again. This happened and I went back to my future warlock who, by the way, is forming up to be a farming machine.

Rohan: First Impressions

2009-01-12T10:25:00.006-09:00

So, I fired Rohan Online up and decided to create a mage with aspirations to eventually go down the warlock path.

Why warlock?

Warlock just sounds awesome. Slaynn the mighty WARLOCK of dOOm!1!!one!1!!eleventy!!!!111 MuahAHhAhAhAH!!!1!!!

I ended up using Cathaal for his name. I suppose that will do. Correction to the above, Cathaal the WARLOCK of d00m!1!!1!

Anywho, the noob area is pretty bland but effective. With some of these free games the translation is pretty ghetto fabulous and you walk away from some of the quests thinking to yourself, "WTF am I supposed to do?." Not so with Rohan. The translation is pretty good. It's done well enough to get the reader involved in the quest lines and story.

The clicky crap still irks me, however. Clicking to do everything is just so limiting and frustrating. The play style is a lot like Diablo except for the fact that the camera doesn't follow your character so you can click on a mob, run away to get some distance, hit your attack skills and your character will turn around and engage the target without the screen moving. This makes you have to manually move the camera so you can see whats going on.

Overall, so far, it's a pretty good game. I would have to give my first impression rating a 6 out of 10. Enough to keep me interested for a while longer but nothing to write home about.

Gonna Give Rohan a Spin

2009-01-09T08:42:00.007-09:00

I spent last night perusing many of the MMO sites that are out there. Here are a few that I use to keep up on the ever expanding free to play or F2P games out there:

Free MMO Gamer

MMOFury

MMOHub

There are more but most of em will have the same stuff that you can find on any of those.

So after checking those sites out looking for my next addiction I found a game called Rohan. I was only able to log on for a minute this morning before real life called my name and I had to leave for work but it looked pretty decent. The only thing that irked me in the beginning is that it uses the typical Asian made click-to-do-everything interface that I hate. Maybe I'm not used to it but you always end up running near mobs (monsters) when you are trying to select them and they move. It adds such a clunky separated feel to the game interaction compared to using WASD to move.

Regardless I'm gonna give it a spin after work today to see if the rest of the gameplay makes up for the awful clicky stuff.

The State of the Game

2009-01-08T13:27:00.004-09:00

Well, this is my first attempt at blogging. I know all the cool kids have been doing it for a while but what can I say? I'm a little slow on the uptake.

I am all about playing MMOs. Massively multiplayer online games to me are the pinnacle of modern gaming. After you get addicted to one of them it is really hard to go back to playing a normal single player game. The average single player game is regarded as worth the money if you can get around 40 hours of playtime out of it. 40 hours? Some gamers can get 40 hours out of an MMO in a single day (they are talented). The success of an MMO is gauged on how many YEARS someone could be entertained by it. Some people playing as much as 15+ hours a day.

My wife and myself played an MMO called Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years or so. We played, probably too much, at least 10 hours a day when we were not away from home. That's nuts! Those days are gone now. I have been searching the web for a game that will keep my interest for that long and I haven't found one yet. I've played just about all of them out on the market. From the free ones to the pay by month versions.

In my opinion one of the reasons is the simplicity. Back in the heyday of MMOs the games were complicated and very confusing for new players. People that stuck with them were dedicated players that felt a connection to the game. This, in turn, created a tight community that supported each other and were very civil. After World of Warcraft came along simplicity became the name of the game.

Wait, you mean I can actually fail at this in game task!? EPIC FAILZ0RZ!1!!!!11!???one!1!!??

Where are the consequences for dying? Where are the repercussions of being an asshole to someone? The dumbing down of the genre has brought out all the lazy gamers. The ones that don't care that they just made your play experience suck because of their actions. They would be black listed and shunned before and now it's accepted behavior. Hell, sometimes it's actually applauded by others.

It could just be that I'm becoming the old dude on the corner that shouts at kids to get off his lawn and bores his grand kids with stories about how the old days used to be.

Who knows?