Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Get your build on

As part of their marketing strategy, most MMO’s try to wow us with dramatic visuals and pithy one-liners like “Build an empire!”, “Build an army!” and “Build a unique character to…blah, blah, blah.” After all, they are trying awfully hard to get us to sit up and notice them right? However, you couldn’t really get much better offer than the slogan “Help build a universe!” And when you’re already big enough to have been hard not to notice for years then you’re already halfway towards success when you do launch an MMO. Enter… LEGO Universe.

Yes, it’s not your typical MMO – but then LEGO has never been your typical toy either. And let’s face it, those of us who are old enough to afford a regular multiplayer online game subscription were already buying into the idea for a LEGO MMO when we were desperately trying to authentically replicate a Tie Fighter using just red, blue and yellow bricks – we just didn’t know it at the time.

//HoC

January 30, 2009
General MMO and MMO Gaming News
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Written by Hobbit of Consequence 7 Comments

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A fresh view on things

Both in the real world, and in our beloved synthetic cyberworlds of escapism, succes is often determined by how you interact with people who views the world differently from yourself. We all have a tendency to drift towards people with the same views as ourself, which in the world of MMO’s often result in the making of guilds; a somewhat crude tangent to how we also group up in the real world.

But how about the way we “physically” view our MMO’s or videogames in general? Continue reading ‘A fresh view on things’

January 28, 2009
General MMO
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Written by Ffaffner 2 Comments

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Everquest 2 Tailoring – MMO Fashion

I recently completed my Tailoring epic in Everquest 2 on Yetian and it started me thinking about the appearance clothing items that an Everquest 2 Tailor can make.

If your not an Everquest 2 player then in brief appearance slots are an extra set of inventory slots which allow you to drop armour/clothing items into them. Anything you drop in these slots will overlay your main equipment slots, allowing you to have a set of equipment that controls only your characters appearance. The items you drop in here can be any armour/clothing items found within the game that your class and level can wear. Often players will collect sets, buy them from the broker, or even save their old armour sets and put them into their appearance slots when they upgrade.

From the early levels through to tier 8 Everquest 2 Tailor’s are given recipes for appearance clothing which is great as everyone likes their character to look good. The clothing has different colour variations across the tiers which you might think sounds like a good idea and it does but for one problem. Whilst the colour scheme varies with each recipe the style doesn’t! That’s right, you get one outfit for male characters and one for female characters, just one!! Each tier you are presented with each of these 2 outfits in various colour schemes, but the same style.

Here are a couple of examples (male outfit).

Tier 2 Everquest 2 male tailored outfit

Tier 2 Everquest 2 male tailored outfit

Tier 8 Everquest 2 male tailored outfit

Tier 8 Everquest 2 male tailored outfit

Continue reading ‘Everquest 2 Tailoring – MMO Fashion’

January 22, 2009
Everquest 2
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Written by Yetian 2 Comments

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Yetian’s Heritage Quest… erm quest

As I write this I’m waiting for my work day to finish so I can go back home and join in my guilds regular Everquest 2 Heritage quest night.  I’m a fan of heritage quests in Everquest 2 as they are a good way to bring your group together to work on something that benefits the individual and the guild. Yetian my new upcoming main character has been embarking on his heritage quest path since around level 20 but in the last few weeks has been working the really tedious ones solo (he’s now level 68).

As I said I like heritage quests but there’s always a few I seem to leave for solo when the mobs are grey, namely the Lavastorm and Everfrost HQ’s. You all know the ones I mean, The Lost Legend of Lavastorm, Saving Soles and to a lesser extent An Eye for Power.

I recently went through the 2 in Lavastorm solo as whenever I’ve started these in a group at the right level or mentored, we never get through to the end and then it’s a nightmare trying to get everyone on again long enough to do them. That and the zone isn’t my favourite zone to spend time in, there’s just something really annoying about the layout. I’m sure my guild will remember my rant while I got completely lost in the Sol Ro temple trying to find the hidden door when the mobs were still green.

Continue reading ‘Yetian’s Heritage Quest… erm quest’

January 15, 2009
Everquest 2
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Written by Yetian 0 Comments

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The Daily Grind

The Grind(tm)….It’s part of every MMO out there, whether it’s about collecting gold, status, faction, resources, crafting, spawning of rares or simply getting a less creative quest done. And yes, I did my own share of whiningly bitching about it.

Ofcourse there’s a difference between blatently grind as a simple timesink and a grind wrapped up in a nice questy setting, but my guess is that The Grind(ugh) will be more or less a part of every future MMO too, no matter how many an avid MMO’er will spue discontent mixed with the latest e-Slang on every single web-board in existence…so why not just try and learn to deal with it?

Then again, how the hell do you deal with clicking the same 5 buttons over and over again, in the exact same frequence and the exact same order without going completely and utterly mad? At the start of my own MMO-career(Ffaffners wife: “Pff, career? It’s an addiction, stupid”) I simply clicked the buttons until the in-game music got tattooed into the inner ear of my very soul.
Later on I had the brilliant idea of actually turning off in-game music, and putting on a CD instead. A lot can be said about music, and I personally both love and practice it, but is it really “entertaining” in the long run?
My next move to fight the boredom of powergrinding was to watch some TV during the emptiness of it all. This way I accomplished 2 things: In-game I died a lot and out of game I had no chance following even the simplest plot of the easiest accessible sitcom (I was born before multitasking…OR got dropped on my head by the midwife).

Continue reading ‘The Daily Grind’

January 9, 2009
General MMO
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Written by Ffaffner 3 Comments

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MMO characters and you

As some of you will know my main MMO at the moment is Everquest 2, I’ve been playing Everquest 2 constantly (along with an other MMO or two), since beta. My first MMO however was the original Everquest and although I had all kinds of characters, my final character and the one I became known as was Yetian a Barbarian shaman. Although I never maxed him with regards to his level, Yetian was my highest character in Everquest and I did manage to get my epic. That damn epic had me so stressed the Girlfriend said I was talking about a “damn stick thing” in my sleep. :)

On into Everquest 2 and I made my first character Yetian as a Halfling Enchanter (Illusionist) on the Splitpaw server, this character never felt right and I remade him as a Dwarf Shaman/Mystic. This version of Yetian also fell by the wayside as I just couldn’t get into Mystics in Everquest 2, I even changed to Defiler to try that class but something was missing. I also created and leveled other characters such as my Necro Vilesh (70), my Fae Wizard Naitey (73) and a few other alts. My main character at the moment is Mawmet a Sarnak Inquisitor a level 80/Master Weaponsmith/Master Tinkerer complete with Fabled epic. I enjoy playing Mawmet and enjoy playing a healer class once more,  but when the time came to make my latest alt I decided to remake Yetian one last time, this time as a Barbarian Warden.

Continue reading ‘MMO characters and you’

January 3, 2009
Everquest 2 and General MMO
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Written by Yetian 5 Comments

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