http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9bCQPBYgKk

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1. The “M” in MMO
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Gophur’s Downfall, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

It is a shame as I have enjoyed my time in the game, it’s something different to everything else out there and with the latest graphical patches the appearance of the game improved too.

I met some good people in Battleground Europe and had many a laugh on my squads voice servers as you can tell if you have a quick read of the Battleground Europe category here on this site.

I hope to return to the game once things settle down here as it’s nice to have a bit of PvP to go with my main PvE games. For now I’ll be sticking to EQ2 and LOTRO as I’m only paying for one of the two and with the LOTRO life sub it doesn’t matter if I only drop in now and again.

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Farewell to the Fields, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

I’ve taken a few screenshots to show you of said bushes and other random sights, I’m sure more will follow in later posts. One of the most impressive sights of my first session was when a dozen or so bombers dropped their bombs over the town in sync. I was on a nearby hill so had a great view of the bombs falling and hitting the town, complete with some nice explosion effects. Before any call of duty players read this and complain the graphics are not up to their standards think of one thing. We are not talking about a 30 player map here and a game that’s just been released. We are talking about a 9 year old MMO with huge open play areas with many more players, a game that due to it’s age is still mostly processed by the CPU rather than the GPU. In fact a squaddie last night told me that he overclocked his CPU to see if it improved his  frame-rate and noticed a big difference. Battleground Europe also as far as I know doesn’t have multi-core support so more cores won’t help, just clock speed. MMO’s have to cater for a wider range of tech due to their expected longevity and I think the new graphical changes for Battleground Europe look great.

It plays really well on my PC with an average FPS of around 60, considering that the eye can only see around 35 (or something like), then staying over that is enough. My spec is as follows:

i7 920  @ 3.2 Ghz

6GB DDR3 @ 1600

ATI HD5870 PCS+ (factory overclocked)

160GB intel G2 SSD

A decent machine so you’d expect it to run well but if as I think a lot of the FPS rating is down to the CPU, overclocking that more would increase FPS should I ever need to. I’ve had the CPU at 3.8 stable but reduced it to decrease the radiator fan noise.

The pics are pretty self explanatory, apart from the one of Josker crouching in a field. I thought he was taking a crap so had to have pictorial evidence for you all to see. The random bush pic is Downsey hiding from no nearby enemies. Plus there are pics of my corpse (thanks to the new rag-doll physics) and other random sights. More will follow focused on more specific elements when I get around to it.

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1. Battleground Europe v1.31 preview
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3. So what is Battleground Europe?

Battleground Europe 1.31 is live!, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

The MMO in question states on their site that you can have up to 60 players playing in battles, this is where my question of the day comes from.

What makes the M in MMO? I’m talking about the first M, the massively part of the acronym, the part that makes an MMO what it is for me. There is also the point some will make that it’s the world you play in and it’s scope that has to be large, but you can see this in offline games such as Oblivion and others.

I no longer play offline games on my PC as after playing MMO’s for year’s I can’t play only against a computer AI when playing the kind of games I like to play. Some will argue that when your solo’ing in MMO’s your doing the same thing, but I disagree. When I’m playing solo in an MMO I have my guild to chat to, chat channels to watch and random players running around to chat to and observe. All these are the aspects of MMO’s that attract me.

Wodge one of our writer’s here asked a similar question in a post here where he asked about what makes an MMO. Does it have to be an RPG, have crafting, be persistent? This was all asked as he pointed out that none MMO’s are approaching player numbers of you can actually interact with at any one time. All are good points and I personally believe it doesn’t have to be an RPG, but instead has to have the ability to host a much larger number of players than 30-60. In relation to Wodge’s post I also think that an MMO has to be persistent in some way at least for a time. Battleground Europe is persistent for a campaign and then resets, but your persona’s persist between campaigns in regard to their ranks. Each campaign can last a week, a few weeks or even longer.

In the case of combat game like a world war 2 MMO I expect 100′s of players at least to be playing the game, in fact for any MMO I’d like there to be at least a few 100 players on a server. I’m not necessarily talking about them all having to be online at the same time, just that the option is there for those kinds of numbers to be online and playing the same game as me at the same time.

In Battleground Europe there are at least that many players subscribed I would guess and although you might not always see that many online, there are plenty of occasions when there are more than 60 players involved in a battle.

Large numbers of players result in a better more varied gaming community. Notice I don’t say quality, large and varied doesn’t mean good, just the possibility of it. Wolfshead touched on it in a recent post though whilst I don’t believe the communities in MMO’s are over, I do agree with Weflyspitfires that WoW’s is awful. I have only seen WoW’s from a friend that plays but that was enough to put me off the game. Everquest 2 my main MMO has a great online community in it’s chat channels and it’s one of the things I like most about the game.

So what makes the Massive in MMO’s for you? How many players does a game need to have before it’s a true MMO and not just an online game?

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The “M” in MMO, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

Anyway, this is a tale of 3 people with hours to spare in  a game where if you want to cross from the continent to England you really do need to sail for hours.

Sunday night is one of two squad nights in Battleground Europe for my squad SODS.  I don’t always make it on as I’m often playing my other MMO EQ2, but whenever I do we are always up to something. This week we decided in the early afternoon to sail to England from Oostende. The target was Ramsgate and Dfadd was to pick myself and Igor up (Igor also running Joskers account) and take 3 trucks to the English coast.

After a couple of attempts Dfadd managed to park the rather large floating bus in a position that we could be hoisted onto it’s deck. I have never been on a transport ship before so the hoisting experience was something new for me, it’s a good aspect of the game that I’ve been playing for a while now and there are still things I haven’t tried.

4 Hours or so sailing later (I did go afk for an hour or so to eat ), we landed in England. Only 2 trucks survived as one exploded on the ship, this does happen on occasion I’m told. This was the point myself and Igor took over and drove around an hour from the coast across to Ramsgate. Along the way we had enemy fighters and armoured cars to hide from. Igor was taken out by one of the armoured cars (sacrificing himself for the glory of the SODS ) and I made a run for it once the enemy moved. I managed to set up a mobile spawn point with my truck and our infantry began to spawn in. Everything was going well enough until some fool decided he would stand at the mobile spawn and shoot a plane with his rifle. Sure enough the plane spotted the spawn and killed it leaving us with no way of spawning into England.

We didn’t managed to capture a spawnable building in Ramsgate so a 329 minute mission was ended when I died at the airfield bunker. All the sailing, driving and running ended by some muppet with a rifle. Despite that I did enjoy my part in the mission. Sure the sailing isn’t the most fun but as I was able to go afk I didn’t have to sit through the whole journey unlike Dfadd (hats off to him). The drive was hairy at the end and it was satisfying to set up the MSP and be able to run around in England for a bit.

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The 329 minute mission, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

I bought a shiny new pc around 6 months ago which included an ATI 5850 graphics card. As you may know if your a regular reader I play two main MMO’s, Battleground Europe for my PvP and Everquest 2 for my PvE experiences.

The 5850 was a nice card and worked great in EQ2, but Battleground Europe was another story. Despite the suggestions on the forums I could not get it to run the game for more than a minute without crashing. For me this wasn’t acceptable and as I knew the MD of the company I bought the PC from (I used to work there), I gave him a shout and he kindly accepted the card back, even though the card wasn’t faulty.

Out came my trusty Nvidia 8800GTX, the card I had run for the past 6 months, plus a couple of years before that. It ran everything I threw at it without issues.

I had been waiting for the new Nvidia Fermi cards to arrive before upgrading once again with a credit note from PC Specialist waiting for me to spend. As the early benchmarks came in showing the Fermi cards to have larger power draw, noise and cost than the ATI 5000 series, I wasn’t really wanting to order one. Before the Nvidia fan’s jump on this post, I know they are both powerful cards but not worth the cost compared to their ATI equivalents. Especially in the UK where we pay more for items like this.

I instead bought a Powercolor PCS+ 5870 from Overclockers. I actually ordered a standard 5870 and received the PCS+ version, I had half expected it due to other reviews on the product page, but it was a bonus to actually get it.

I tried the card with EQ2 and LOTR which both ran fine, Battleground Europe was still it seems suffering from the same problems as before. I could play a while and then crash.

I couldn’t believe that CRS (Cornered Rat Software) hadn’t fixed the issues with ATI cards and the game. It seems there is a history of issues with ATI cards and BE. I actually pre-ordered one of the new Fermi cards (a GTX470), as I wanted to be able to play one of the two main MMO’s I subscribe to.

Still not happy I searched the web for an answer to my problems with Battleground Europe and found some 10.4 beta drivers. I was a bit hesitant as these drivers could be dodgy having not come from the ATI website. As I was at the end of my tether with the card I tried the new drivers anyway and rebooted to try Battleground.

I managed to play for 4 hours with only one crash, a black screen freeze. The occasional crash happens in that game so I wasn’t too bothered with that. Since then I have reinstalled windows 7 (as I had a strange bug with flash I couldn’t fix), along with all the other programs and applications I use. I managed to play BE without problems since then so it seems these beta drivers have solved the problem, resulting in a cancellation of my 470 pre order.

Who is at fault here? I’m not sure to be honest, sure maybe I was daft getting a 2nd ATI 5000 series but in the end it paid off as far as I’m concerned. I am more concerned with the fact it took 6 months of driver releases to make a game work with the 5000 series cards. Is it the developers of BE or the people at ATI that are to blame? Well the developers at CRS only have one game to make work with various cards, ATI have countless games to support. How hard would it be to get the two to work together to come up with a problem? Maybe ATI were not concerned by problems with a smaller MMO, maybe they did try to work it out together, I guess I’ll never know.

The whole thing has just left me annoyed at both companies but in time that annoyance will fade as I enjoy both my shiny new card and continued play time in Battleground Europe.

I guess the point of my post is, if you had a similar problem where a component stopped you playing a game you enjoyed what would you do? Would you swap the component, be patient, or quit the game until a solution was found?

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The difference a driver can make, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

I didn’t have long in beta so I can only report on a few things at the moment, hopefully I’ll get another chance to drop in soon to take some better screenshots.

The first image is a view from our mobile spawn over the town we were attacking, there is some nice scenery with the obvious change being the fauna. You can see some smoke from mortar’s in the distance and the system messages in chat that the Rats (Game Devs) were putting up for our attention, instructing us on what it was they wanted us to be doing. This is a beta afterall and we are there to break things, something I havn’t managed as of yet. I didn’t see a single bug during this first session.

The next image is of my first victim in the beta, an unfortunate german soldier who tried to shoot me. I have found it’s a bit harder to see enemy infantry with the new bush models so the trusty binoculars have to be used more. The death position of this player is due to the fact he was laid prone in the bush, not because he was having a bit of a rest at the time I shot him.

The 3 images above show first of all a view into town from close by where you can see the large brown spawn building at the far right side. I had thought the buildings were getting a revamp, but maybe that isn’t in beta yet as they don’t look any different to previous buildings as far as I can see.

Next is an image of inside one of the capture points. The corpse you see nearest to the bottom of the screen is me, the german running off is the one who shot me. This does show the effects of the ragdoll physics on the death postions a bit better than the previous corpse image. I hope to take more pictures of the rag doll effects as I manage a bit more time in the beta.

The final of the 3 images is my flaming Panhard armoured car. I’d been sat in a bush shooting the capture point when I was taken out by something unknown in town, I’d imagine someone rolled out an ATG as I didn’t see anything driving around.

Finally here’s an image showing the Cornered Rats staff taking part in beta. I managed to shoot AHWULF when I crept around the back of a spawn building to shoot an ATG I could see firing from there. My joy was shortlived however as AHWULF spawned in and took his revenge on me quickly.

Well I hope these pics are interesting to some of you and I’ll hopefully be posting some more in the near future. I’ve yet to see the revamped buildings or weather effects yet, or to try flying in the new beta.

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Battleground Europe Beta – first impressions, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

One of my new favourite unit types is the 232 armoured vehicle. It’s a very wobbly but very fast armoured car with an AP/HE firing main gun and a machine gun to back it up.

The picture here is what was left of a Bedford truck I blew apart as it tried to head to an FB I was defending.

The 232 doesn’t stand up to anti tank gun fire or heavy rounds of any kind. It can be destroyed by an anti tank rifle, a well place rifle shot from close range and as with any armour, satchel charges.

So you might think, why would I want to drive round in an armoured car that can be taken down so easily?

Well the 232 is fast, fun to drive, with guns that can chew up EI, anti tank guns, trucks and other small armoured cars like the Panhard with ease. Hell I even got a kill on a Stuart tank by ramming AP rounds into the side of it’s turret.

If your playing Axis for the first time, give them a go. Sure they are no replacement for a well armoured and heavy gunned tank, but they have their place on the battlefield as fast attack cars. The other day myself and a few of the SODS flew through an underpass in the centre of a town as the attack was at a bit of a stalemate. We drove right through the enemy guns and infantry, swung around and decimated everything in the way. Granted there were no heavy tanks in the way at that time and a couple of the SODS died in the melee, but we managed to stop the enemy spawning and allow our infantry to capture the CP. We then drove into the Army Base and helped suppress the infantry inside.

I’ll be posting about other equipment types soon, but for now, get in your wobbly beast and head off onto the battlefield.

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Battleground Europe – More on Axis equipment, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

As I currently don’t have the net at home due to Virgin’s slack install dates. I’d like to know what you’ve all been up to this year in MMO terms?

What games have you played? Which ones kept you playing and which ones did you try and drop after a beta/first month?

Also which MMO’s are you looking forward to the most for 2010?

I Myself as you might know if you’ve been reading the posts here (if not then go read some ), have been pretty much playing just Everquest 2 and Battleground Europe. Everquest 2 is a game I’ve played none stop since beta and is my main PvE game of choice. Battleground Europe is my PvP game which I only started playing this year. I am still enjoying BE while waiting for the huge new graphical update that’s on it’s way.

I tried a few beta’s such as Fallen Earth and Champions Online, neither of which held my attention enough to subscribe to. I’ve also played Dungeon’s and Dragon’s Online (the free version), which is not a bad game but it does have a bit of a solo feel to it. The reason for that is unless your grouped you only see others in city/town areas.

I plan to try Star Trek online open beta in the new year and I’ll probably have a look at The Old Republic at some stage, though the amount wanting into beta is sure to be massive (Bioware are you listening? ).

So that’s me and my year in MMO’s, I now await your summary of your own MMO journey through 2009.

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Your year in MMO’s 2009?, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium

First impressions were of massive confusion, I tried shooting German’s which obviously didn’t work as I am one. I kept panicking when I heard the noise of a 232 armoured car or a panzer tank, as I’ve only just learned to recognise them. It also was a while before I could spot allied soldiers quickly as I wasn’t used to looking for the same uniform’s or flashes of colour in the corner of my eye.

I’ve tried out all the equipment I can with my current rank, which started at 1 so I couldn’t use much at first. I’m rank 4 in the Army, 3 in the Navy and still 1 in the Air Force at the moment. There is a rank bug of sorts though as the game says I’m rank 5 when hovering over equipment, though I can’t select rank 5 gear. If I change persona from say Army to Navy and back to Army then I can select rank 5 equipment for my first spawn. As this is obviously some sort of bug, I don’t do it any more, sure I’ll select what I can the first time but I don’t swap persona’s now to use different gear.

The swap to axis for a campaign has caused no end of friction within the Hussars due to details I won’t go into here. We left the squad for the campaign so as not to have Hussars playing on the Axis side. The leaving was fine and banter went back and forth on the forum for a bit about kills we were getting on each other. One incident happened however which for me at least showed a couple of the Hussars members up for what they are, solo players within a squad. The rest of the squad I have no problems with but at this moment I’m undecided as to what I will do when I return to allies after the current campaign.

Do I stay Axis for another campaign as a couple of the guys I’m playing with are doing? Do I return to allied as soon as this campaign ends? When I do return, do I return to the Hussars?

One thing is for sure, my stint on the Axis side is a temporary thing as I prefer playing allied. I like the equipment better, I feel more comfortable playing as I am used to recognising the enemy and  I feel the communication at a local level is better. I’ve found on numerous occasions while playing Axis that when I say something target related in the target channel I am totally ignored. There does seem to be a bit of a “If we don’t know your name, we won’t bother to respond” setup going on. Each side’s High Command seem to be about the same when it comes to activity and communication though, I have my moans about both sides.

I’ll be sure to post here with further developments regarding when I go back to allies and where I find myself when there.

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Trying the other side, Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium