That’s like Galaxy Express 999, NOT the Futurama ship. That’s Planet Express….
That’s like Galaxy Express 999, NOT the Futurama ship. That’s Planet Express.
Ever, like, DIE in a game, and your pet begins dancing around your decaying corpse, singing about what a great day it is? Thanks, Hello Kitty Online! Leveling has slowed quite a lot in that game. My pet is having a super time, though.
If you spend several hundred hours in your game of choice, the LAST thing you really want is someone coming up and telling you that you’re wasting your time, because Game B is SO much better than your Game A – insert any two games in those slots. Super Mario World vs Legend of Zelda. Cribbage vs Bridge. WoW vs…. well, any other game that is not WoW.
Tobold writes that people become so INCREDIBLY vested in their GoC, that they can’t even LISTEN to anyone praising a different game. Because they are WRONG and always WILL be wrong – as they run back to their computers and log in to their comfort game. MBP notes that it’s not just EVE, Darkfall and other non-WoW gamers that pile on to any mention of WoW’s merits, but WoW players who can’t understand why anyone would play any other game. MBP kinda makes that point as well, saying that “World of Warcraft is the biggest, most popular, most polished mmorpg on the planet. It is a very good game.” Well, EverQuest and EverQuest 2 are both bigger, and Aion is arguably more polished, and Maple Story has over 72 million players… kinda makes you wonder just what WoW DOES have going for it, aside from fanboyism… Blizzard, treat your fanboys well, they are your greatest treasure.
Karen of Journeys with Jaye makes a stellar comeback to her too-long-dormant blog with a homily to the power of a good guild to turn a game into a community. I love guilds, but that’s a huge problem for a MMO mayfly like myself that floats from game to game. I do love my EVE corp, OtakuDyne, to death, though – the game would be far too frustrating without them.
Speaking of EVE, omgtheyarenerfingtitans! Titans, for non-capsuleers, are moon-sized ships of ultimate destruction – like the Death Star, except bigger, and without a lot of starship-sized paths to the power core. Gordon of We Fly Spitfires says the Titan-only 10k radius sphere of destruction is being made… single target. Now, I’m still an EVE noob, but even I can see why that is a Bad Idea. AE spheres of doom don’t need to lock on to a target, they just kill everything in range. Weapons requiring a target can be foiled all sorts of ways. Hey, if I just spent hundreds of billions of ISK and a year or two of training to fly a Titan – which is like flying an asteroid-sized target around – I want it to be UBER.
Paladins RULE!
Zubon of Kill Ten Rats has been having a grand old time making and leveling new characters in the largest, most polished, most popular MMO in the whole world, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. His take: Night Elf druid boring, Gnome mage nerfed at low levels, and OMG Paladin!!! I wanted to make a screen shot of a paladin with its magic horse for this bit, but I am among the WoW-challenged, so I offer up the screen shot of a paladin and her magic horse in Nethack, instead. But it’s just like WoW in most ways.
Recently-capped protection warrior Copra finds the game changes at 80… especially in pickup groups. He has a dozen things PuGs have taught him about playing in a group with both random strangers and consummate professionals….
Massively has a great video of ship combat in the in-development Star Trek Online. One of the criticisms of combat in EVE Online is its slow pace of combat – STO looks to change all that. Can’t wait to see how all that comes together.
Wizard vs Crab
I’ve been back in Free Realms for a few days now, studiously leveling up my wizard. The game has sure changed a lot since its launch. I’m not sure why that surprised me, but it did. Beau of Spouse Aggro likes to point to Free Realms as an example of a larger trend among MMOs to remove all the boring bits and just move the player from one fun activity to the next at a good pace. Because, seriously, modern games are all more or less a collection of mini-games, right? Some just wear the badge more proudly than others.
Wolfshead was one of the fortunate few who went to Seattle’s PAX over the holiday weekend. He had this to say about the games he saw on the show floor:
Part of me is worried about the lack of originality and experimentation given this apparent grand consolidation of gaming features. This is probably because of WoW’s success and the simple fact that most people in the industry creating video games have either played WoW or are playing WoW and are understandably enamored of its success. I suppose in some ways it’s good to see features becoming standard much like a rear view mirror and seat-belts became much like standard features in the automobile industry. Still, it is a bit unsettling that all games seem to be converging into one game.
That IS disturbing, and I know that Wolfshead would agree with me when I talk about the virtues of games that do things in a different way.
Well, love to talk more, but have to head to work. A bunch of Republican thought-czars are coming to Hartford today, and traffic is gonna be AWFUL.
