This is something that I feel Rift by Trion World didn’t truly allow me. For those who have never played Rift, let me elaborate.

The game is linear, oh so linear, in fact until you hit around level 40 there is only one route for each race, then you have a choice of two zones and then for the last 2 or 3 levels before you reach end game you’re back into the last zone.

Well gee… I wouldn’t really call it an adventure, being led by the hand through zone after zone of quite dull quests to reach an end game that requires you to grind rifts that appear randomly doesn’t really appeal to me, I’m not saying first encounter with huge watery tentacles coming out of a funnel are not exciting, it’s just when you’ve done the majority of them they become a little dull.

So what makes a really playable game? For me the world has to be sufficiently big enough so that you can get lost in it, I’m not talking Star Wars Galaxy lost where you can wander for 10 minutes without seeing a soul, let alone something to attack, but somewhere you can adventure and it’s a novelty to see another player go past on their own little adventure.

The game world has to have multiple areas for you to adventure at your current level. I’d prefer 3 or 4 zones that look good than one zone that looks great, dungeons! What is it with outdoor zones? Some of the best zones in games I’ve played have been indoors, I’m taking you right back to the original Everquest now, but some zones that I enjoyed and where indoor, Befallen, Solusek’s Eye. Step forward to Everquest 2, you had Ruins of Varsoon and everyones favourite Stormhold.

Sometimes when you play a game you can be a few weeks in and suddenly you reach the end. It can be quite disappointing, I know I felt disappointed when I reached the end of Rift, because I knew that all I had then was to return to the zones where I missed quests and achievements, end game, grind out equipment (that is pretty disappointing) and those oh so annoying world events. Oh and crafting (easy, even I maxed out crafting…).

Rift’s levelling is far too easy, in the early part of the game you can put on 2 or 3 levels per 4 hours game play and in the later levels 40-50 you should be able to must a level in a 4 hour game session.

Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard where 3 MMO’s that I played/tried that required you to adventure, quest and grind your way through the levels. Vanguard was certainly one of the games that I found tough to level, mainly because it wasn’t quite finished and when reaching the higher levels quests dried up a little, but the game was fun and interesting with multiple routes to the end level, stunning graphics for the time and it was very shiny, this made the game fun and created re-playability.

For me Star Wars The Old Republic looks to have that unique quest element that I will enjoy, the world looks a might disappointing at the moment from gameplay I have seen, I just hope it will have the adventure that I have been looking for.

My only gripe is that it is Star Wars, I have yet to enjoy any game in the Star Wars Genre more than Star Wars Rebellion (Ok it’s not an MMO but hey, I can have other passions).

Star Wars Galaxy was initially fun but they spoiled it and the dynamic quest system annoyed me as well as the ease that could meet characters like Darth Vader, which turned it into quite a dull encounter.

Like I said I have high hopes for SWTOR and with that I hope that Sony Online Entertainment take note for when they put together Everquest Next (Everquest 3), I want to return to Norrath and see what is in store for me, lets hope they don’t dumb it down like many of the MMO developers are doing these days.

Related posts:

1. No, I am not the Hero!
2. Star Wars Old Republic
3. Star Trek Online Screenshots

The journey is half the fun, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

Ok I’ve calmed down a bit now, I’ve just finished the flying mount line for crafters in EQ2. Yeah I know I could have grown one from an egg by now but hey, I’ve been busy.

Anyway I finished the last quest today and chose the Boreal Gryphon as my shiny new mount. I jumped on and flew around a bit in the Great Divide before deciding that the scenary was boring, it’s all a bit white you see, something about the snow. You think I’d love it with Yetian being a Barbarian and all but there’s only so much white snow you can see before it gets a bit much on the old eyes, though seeing the odd Dwarven head popping through the snow as they trudge through never gets old.

Anyway onto the mount again, well it erm it can fly and walk and oh did I say fly? Oh and as mine is fairly quiet I’m naming it after our none voice activated guildie Milkyjoe.

Well pics to follow but first a bit about the controls. To take off just press jump when running, jump also raises your height though most of the time I use mouse view (right click for me) to angle the griffon. That’s pretty much all I’ve worked out so far, there’s a nice animation as you bank sharply left or right well I think it’s nice.

Well enough rambling you want to see the damn thing don’t you? Well you don’t really have a choice, what follows are a few shiny pics I quickly took as I flew around (mostly) Antonica. Maybe I should do a flying tour of Norrath?

Related posts:

1. EQ2 upcoming update on test
2. Tinkering maxed again
3. Flying mounts in EQ2

I wish I could fly…, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

I decided to create a new alt as until Velious the latest expansion was released, apart from HQ’s and Sig quests my main didn’t have that much to do and Naitey my top level alt just waits in the wings to kill things when my guild requires something different.

Strychnine could have been either a Halfling or Ratonga and I ran a quick poll on twitter to see which people thought I should make, ending in a pretty one sided vote towards Ratonga.

The next hurdle to stumble over was the name. Strychnine was initially named Sicarii after I found the Wikipedia article about a bunch of Jewish assassins which seemed to fit his character class. I played the first few levels and then the server merge of Runnyeye into Splitpaw happened along with an X added to his name.  I wasn’t too impressed as it had taken me long enough to find a name the first time, the next 3 play sessions passed without a new name. I once again put it out to twitter only to find suggestions such as Mayor McCheese coming back from Ffaffner my guild mate.

After much deliberation and a few play sessions as Sicariix (which one kind player pointed out sounded more like an STD), I chose Strychnine after one of the more deadly poisons. I also went with this as his full name at level 20 will be Strychnine Twitch, a reference to a line from a Foxboro Hottubs track. This is where you all go “who?” while heading off to look for them on the interweb.

While on the topic of lyrics I also came up with a snappy bio this time a line from a Black Keys track.

I’ve got a tortured mind and a blade that’s sharp, a bad combination in the dark.

I figured it fits so you could say my new alt’s destiny is determined by Twitter and song lyrics, that really is a dangerous combination. I had even thought about deciding his AA path via twitter but I’d just end up with a random collection of abilities that probably wouldn’t work as deep down your all a twisted lot… admit it.

Anyway I have a loose rule for this alt, Strychnine has his AA slider turned to 100% xp. I say loose as obviously it’s not permanent or I’d be level 10 forever and as fun as Darklight Wood is I do want him to see more of the world. The plan so far is I quest in my chosen zone until I either run out or need to level to do more, then I try another zone. Once I am looking like running out of quests for my level or get bored I do one of two things. I either turn the slider off and level a couple of levels, or put it down to 50-75%.

Currently I’ve leveled in Darklight Wood to around 10, then went off to Freeport where I gained a few AA and went to level 12. I’m now back in Darklight doing more quests and will do a few in the Commonlands also. At some point I’m bound to get bored with my current zone(s) in which case I’ll level to the next tier and head to a new set of zones. The trick I guess it to plan it so when I need to level I can do so via quests rather than having to grind. So far I’ve managed that by keeping the quests I’m working white/blue (current or previous level) quests and when I’m out of those I level a bit.

With the release of Velious I’m bound to be playing Yetian and Naitey through the new content but I intend to keep up some play time on Strychnine as his AA focused leveling gives me something different. In fact I’m enjoying old zones more again as I am finding things I’ve missed in the past and in many cases simply forgotten.

Related posts:

1. Another Alt is Born
2. Are you an MMO completionist?
3. An expansion at my own pace

A stab in the dark, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

I haven’t played with it too much yet but it seems you can chat in game and with your guild, I’ve also heard you can send tells though I haven’t worked out how yet.

I have tried the guild chat and it worked well although a bit laggy though I was on an Edge connection at the time. I also have a fair few connection problems at first which our very own Wodge suggested could be related to the current EQ2 server merges, though it’s working fine now.

Character details, in game mail and maps are other features of the App. As I said I haven’t had that much chance to test it yet, so go grab it and have a play if your an Everquest 2 player.

The only thing I’m suprised about is as it’s SOE, I would have expected in app purchases on the iPhone.

Related posts:

1. Virtual to Reality

EQ2 Mobile – Iphone/Android App, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

Level 90 may be no great achievement to some guilds in Everquest 2, many raid guilds or larger guilds hit the cap quickly. My guild neXus however was formed as we wanted somewhere where casual play was the norm rather than a way of falling behind others. Where everyone helped each other out when asked, or even without being asked. We are a small guild, we have a tight recruitment policy to keep out those who don’t fit our ideals and have an active guild website.

Our initial aim was level 5 so we could display our guild tag over our heads, this quickly progressed through the levels before taking a bit of a slow down at the higher end. As a casual guild leveling is slow and something we accepted, never having any pressing need to push the number up. As time progressed many members joined a raid alliance which enable status to come more quickly but without the pressures of the guild having to raid on a regular basis.

As a result we now sit at the top level in Everquest 2 (for now) and all members of neXus can be proud that we managed to do it without sacrificing any of the values we set out to maintain.

Grats to all neXians and may it be the first of many such achievements!

Related posts:

1. Yetian gets his Mythical
2. Forming a Guild (again)
3. Virtual to Reality

A big congrats to neXus!, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

When asked if it would be coming to consoles, he said “All I can say is we are a Sony company, and we are very, very proud of the work we’ve done on DC Universe Online, which is multi-platform; and we are very, very proud of the work we have done on The Agency, which is multi-platform”

Sounds like you’ll be able to play with a dualshock 3 to me.  SOE did try with EverQuest Online Adventures, and there was those EverQuest themed dungeon crawlers on the PS2 before now, but none on the scale of a ‘proper’ MMO, maybe the PS3 will be the next best place to play MMOs, FF XIV (which I hope will be half decent by march for the proposed PS3 release) DC Universe, The Agency all confirmed to be heading to the Sony console, and games like PlanetSide Next would be a perfect fit for a console environment.

Playing an MMO with a pad will be a bit odd, but it’s something I could get accustomed to.

Via Eurogamer

Related posts:

1. MMO characters and you
2. Add your own story to Norrath
3. Been Hacked… (UPDATE)

EQ3 on PS3?, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

In case you were wondering LF2P stands for limited free to play. A new term I’ve coined for SOE’s effort at making EQ2 free to play. I’ve gone for the term as for me a free to play game should not place restrictions on the level of a character, you should be able to play to the higher end of the game without having to buy level access. Quests, zones, items are all acceptable if you are playing a F2P game, In my mind levels are not.

EQ2 extended I reckon is also a name created by SOE to signal the extended amount of cash a player has to pay to obtain the same features as they could get for less on the standard live servers.

EQ2 is my main MMO and still the game I enjoy the most at the moment, I’m hoping that won’t change too soon but I fear SOE are trying destroy the live servers. One way transfers from live to F2P, no live server trial and news such as is mentioned above regarding the beta forum access are only the beginning. I fully expect SOE to make more and more additions to the game biased towards the F2P servers allowing the live servers to slowly die off. I mean why would they want to push people to the live server? A player playing on the live servers as I’ve already said would have to pay more per month to obtain the same features if they moved to EQ2 extended.

This also makes me wonder about EQnext? Will that have a warped LF2P model the way EQ2 now does?

The beginnings of a slippery slope for live server players like myself I believe, I hope I’m proved wrong but it’s SOE and their track record of inserting large objects up the orifices of their player base is well known.

Related posts:

1. EverQuest 2: Free to Play?
2. Everquest 2 server mergers
3. Shards of Destiny EQ2 update

A sign of things to come?, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

Firstly, I, nor my good mate Milkyjoe are in the Velious CBT, so we’re not breaking any NDA personally, this was posted on EQ2 Flames, on a thread which has since been deleted.

Apologies for the WALL OF GREEN TEXT below.

Greetings everyone,

I just wanted to take a moment to explain some of the changes that will be introduced with Velious.
Keep in mind that we need your feedback on all of these.
What: Proc/Item effects
Changes:
· Procs have been limited to a few slots and specialty items.
· New procs have been turned into yellow/red adornments that can be placed in any items that have the properly
colored slot.
· All Sentinel’s Fate ward-type procs will not work in Velious zones.
· Seven class focus effects have been changed to passive effects on armor.
· Remaining class focus effects are on new adornments, along with a variety of stats to choose from.
Details:
After reviewing past itemization and looking at our current gameplay, we felt that the number of procs given out
made these special effects feel rather ordinary. We do not want players relying on these effects that are meant to be more
of a bonus than a requirement. In Velious, the increase to effectiveness from natural item growth should far outweigh the
loss of procs/effects.
Starting with the Velketor’s instances, you will see weapons, shields, and symbols with yellow adornment slots.
This is how you can customize the proc you want to have. Similar to past expansions, these adornments are available on
the Ry’Gorr faction merchants.
The requirement for procs was most prevalent with healers in the form of ward procs. After looking at these procs
and how frequently they were being used, we realized how much we’ve been balancing combat and encounters around the
power of wards. That meant if you did not have ward proc you were in dire straits. While we are introducing a new set of
healing-related procs with Velious, they will be toned down quite a bit and only available in one of the three slots
mentioned above.
Class focus effects have been changed a little. Seven of the ten class/archetype focuses that were on red
adornments in SF are now built into the armor as passive effects. This allows you more freedom in what you want to put in
your red adornment slots. The remaining three focuses have been retained on red adornments, but they offer varying
combinations with other stats like crit bonus, potency, or mitigation. Group players will now have access to armor pieces
with innate class focuses on them starting with Velketor’s shard armor. They will be able to get up to three slots with
class focus effects. The remaining effects will be on raid armor pieces.
What: Item Score
Changes:
All items will now display their item score.
This only applies to Velious and future expansion itemization.
Details:
Item score represents the power of an item relative to other items. This value is meant as a quick way for
someone to gauge if an item is an upgrade and where it comes from. In general if an item has a higher item score than an
item it would replace, the overall stat bonus should be higher.
This item score is not intended as a tool to segregate players by the quality of their equipment. While it does provide a
quick summary of the overall quality of your equipment, it doesn’t give more information than a player already has by
inspecting you .
What: Threshold stats
Changes:
Critical mitigation is now a required stat for all tiers of content starting with Velious.
Critical chance is now contested against a NPC’s crit avoidance.
Resistance bonuses have been limited to jewelry slots.
Details:
Previously critical mitigation was only used in raids; unfortunately Velious mobs did not get that memo and so
they all know how to critically hit. Because of this, critical mitigation is valuable everywhere and Velious itemization
reflects this. Each tier of the expansion expects you to have a certain value of critical mitigation give or take a few
percentage points. So if you find that you are being hit too hard you may want to go for some drops in other dungeons to
help make things easier.
Critical chance has been turned into the offensive version of critical mitigation. All NPCs have a stat called critical
avoidance. This stat is a direct reduction of your chance to critically hit them. This means if an NPC has 30% critical
avoidance you would need 130% critical chance to hit him all the time. The critical mitigation and critical avoidance values
are displayed as a buff on any NPC you encounter using this mechanic.
Resistances have been limited to ears, rings, cloak, and wrists slots. Velious focuses on a primary resist of
elemental, which should be naturally gained by acquiring various levels of jewelry in the expansion. While the other resists
are still useful, you will want to chase elemental primarily.
What: Health and Power mods merged into attributes
Changes:
Stamina now gives a static amount of hit points per point.
Stamina no longer has a cap or a diminishing return curve.
Your primary attribute gives a static amount of Power per point.
Your primary attribute power benefits are not capped.
Details
In a continued effort to reduce the unnecessary complexity of items, we have rolled hit point and power bonuses
into the attribute stats that are on every item. Before Velious, you would get a raw hit point bonus plus a calculated hit
point bonus from stamina. Now stamina will give you a flat amount of hit points per point, so calculating how much
health you will get from an item is simply: (Stamina*HP per stamina value).
This takes the guesswork out of how much you’re getting and reduces the amount of stats that your need to
consider on an item, making comparing items a little bit easier. Power has been converted in the same way making your
primary attribute even more valuable.
Currently the value per point for both is ten. Because of the way the curve worked previously, players at the lower
level will see little to no change. Any change you see should be positive; at least that is our goal. As we go through beta
we will be looking through feedback and adjusting g this value if needed.
Casters and priests will more than likely see the largest hit point bump. Scouts and fighters will more than likely
see the largest power bump. Tank gear in Velious will give bonus stamina and tanks inherent base hit point bonus has
been standardized across all tanks and is the largest of all the archetypes. This should result in more hit points for tanks
even though the benefits from stamina are the same for everyone.
Hit point and power items will still exist in the form of adornments and buffs.
What: Side Bonuses
Changes:
Agility no longer gives an avoidance bonus or critical mitigation bonus.
Wisdom no longer gives a resistance bonus.
Details:
With the launch of Sentinel’s Fate, we introduced the initial stage of attribute refinement. By defining a primary
attribute we made it easier for the average player to understand what kind of items they should be chasing when they
equip their character. With Velious we are moving more towards this by folding power into your primary attribute, and also
by removing the small side benefits from these stats.
When defining primary attributes, the unintended side effect was that some classes got an extra benefit because they
naturally had a lot of a stat where other classes did not. A tank having high strength does not benefit from anything
outside of the power increase it gives, while a scout not only became more powerful but gained an avoidance and critical
mitigation advantage because they were easily capping that benefit. The same goes for wisdom – Priests gained added
resistances, but all items used the same resist values so there was no compensation for the fact that other classes could
not cap that benefit.
In the grand scheme of things, the total benefit, for those classes where that was not their primary stat, was small but it
gave players a reason to chase the primary attribute of other characters when they should not. Along with this change we
will be reviewing various buffs that give bonuses to these stats and changing them where they should be in order to
compensate for anything we feel is a significant loss.
What: Melee Range Increase, Multi Attack change
Changes:
Melee range has been increased to match the max range of combat arts.
Items that increased melee range have had this removed from their spell effects.
Multi-attack will now grant an additional attack for every 100% over cap.
Details
This is a relatively straight forward change – in the past, combat arts and melee auto-attacks had different
ranges. This didn’t make much sense, so we made auto- attack and combat arts have the same range.
The cap on multi-attack has been removed. Now if you have more than 100% multi-attack, you gain a chance to
make additional attacks. For instance, If you are at 150% multi-attack you have 100% chance to hit twice with every auto
attack, and a 50% chance to hit a third time
What: Ability Mod
Changes:
Ability mod is no longer being itemized
Details:
After reviewing the usefulness of ability mod we determined that this is relatively useless when compared to
simply giving more critical bonus and potency. Ability mod has a cap, is not straight forward, and does not affect all
classes equally. Ability mod is not going away though; this stat will still be given as an option in AAs and potentially with a proc.
Summary
Overall our goal is to try to remove unnecessary complexity. We think of this as any extra complexity that doesn’t
improve gameplay or provide interesting choices and decisions. If a game system would be just as fun with fewer moving
parts, then we’d like to streamline it as much as possible without diminishing the value of that feature.
We want to make sure that players are getting enough of the right information so they can make intelligent
decisions when it comes to enhancing their characters through items. Since Velious is an expansion with no level increase
the largest percentage of power growth will be through itemization. When all is said and done everyone who enters Velious
should leave it much more powerful and with an easy understanding of what items are upgrades and what are not.
Many things play into this goal including simplifying presentation, making sure that the growth path is very
straight forward, and ensuring that a player feels and is more powerful in the end. Velious presents you with challenge at
all levels and it is our hope that these challenges are enjoyable and very rewarding.

I’m pretty much done with SOE, Gearscore and pointless nerfs, stonewill in particular, far outweigh the good points (increased melee range and possible improvements to the archetype main stat system).

SOE should focus on game content, and less on this meddling they insist on doing.  EQ1 Velious was amazing, could be wrong, but from these “patch notes” I’m not holding my breath on EQ2 Velious following the trend.

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3. A stab in the dark

Some EQ2 Velious Details, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

My interest in this issue isn’t WoW, but the wider implications this could have if the decision to keep the ban in place was overturned.

The arguement seems to centre around the fact that the creators of the bot in question say their customers should be able to use the bot as they purchased the game and should be able to do what they like to the game the purchased. The other side of the arguement is that customers are merely purchasing the rights or licence to use the game and that this does not imply ownership of the software or contents of the game.

I am in complete agreement with the second of the two views. I do not think that as I buy and subscribe to EQ2 I own the game, it’s an MMO and I am paying for the right to install and play the game. My subscription simply is payment for the service SOE provide which includes the servers, game updates, staff needed to keep the game running and other bits and bobs. If these bot users think they own the game then they need to think about the fact that they are altering not just their own copy of the software but the code which is running on servers they certainly do not own

If the bot ban was ever to be overturned then it could spell the end of MMO’s for me. Who would want to play a game like EQ2 where auto camping, harvesting or even hacking and altering of characters was allowed? I know at the moment the WoW bot in question is there to play the first few levels for a character but if anyone thinks it would end there then that would be a very naive viewpoint indeed.

Maybe it’s just me, but I actually enjoy the lower levels as I always seem to find something different to do with an alt, and it’s usually where I pick up the basics of a class. I play MMO’s to interact with other players and running a Bot is hardly doing that. It would explain why you often see high level players who don’t have a clue what their class is supposed to be doing.

What are your thoughts on the WoW bot matter, or the implications it could have should the ban ever be overturned?

WoW Bot Ban, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

Well it’s not quite as juicy as it seems but hey headline grabbers are fun, a bit like the one I saw outside a shop in Cardiff once that said “SEX, now we’ve got your attention” followed by get 2 of something I can’t remember for a fiver.

I logged into EQ2 at the weekend to find I had no sub, It’s probably down to SOE cancelling my sub to sort my account details out. I proceeded to sign up for a new subscription and was greeted with shiny offers to buy expansions, which I have so I passed by without bother.

I finally get to the subscription page to be greeted by a nice new interface offering me discounts, that’s right in this time of economic trouble SOE are giving me discounts! Wooo I thought, I’ll get a multi month subscription. So I scanned the offers, and found they are also offering bribes.. erm bonus items if you sign up. I could have a cloak for the 3 month signup, a cloak and some appearance armour for the 6 month and the same plus a steed for 12 months.

I actually forgot the fact that there was a monetary value discount and thought “hey that steed looks cool”, so was about to go for the 12 month option until I started wondering when EQ next was out, lol. Some common sense did come in however as with my other half on maternity leave, saving cash is good though spending too much isn’t. I finally settled for the 6 month option at £49.99 saving a couple of quid a  month or near enough.

I logged into game and gave my current leveling alt Tindr the Nizaran Assassin appearance armour as he looked a bit pants in his standard crafted gear. He now looks pretty good if I say so myself and ran around Enchanted Lands slapping goblins before running away laughing. He also has the cloak but hasn’t equipped it yet as it’s heirloom and therefore I am able to give it to one of my other characters. If I remember right, the Cloak of Storms has safefall (Tindr is working his own innate skill) and can grow your character by 30 ish %. I haven’t yet decided if I should give it to my halfling monk (who doesn’t love massive halflings?) or just hang onto it for another alt.

In other EQ2 news, my Warlock Naitey is now level 90 has a nice looking brown/green outfit going on to represent his love of disease and poison, has finished his epic conversion quest and is now on a gear hunt to stop him being pants. As I said Tindr the troubadour is my current active leveling alt and I’m clueless on Troubadour AA’s so any advice welcome.

I don’t have the pics on my work Laptop so I’ll have to add some later, or post them with a later post as I know your all dying to see their new appearance.

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1. Everquest 2 server mergers
2. Your year in MMO’s 2009?
3. A sign of things to come?

SOE bribery scandal!, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium