I’ve been thinking of swapping my sidekick in Legends of Zork from the Gent (who made me essentially immune to traps) to the Accountant (who earns interest on your stash) for awhile. It kinda disappointed me that they nerfed her – it used to be that having her in your base would soon make you rich as Croesus. Not so much anymore, but as each upgrade now costs well over a million zorkmids, I need all the help I can get. And I can switch back to the Gent later on, once I’ve reached my goals and seeded the clan bank with some good upgrades for others.
Hudson writes that WoW’s faction change service is now live – you can go from Alliance to Horde and back again, as long as you stay within your class, you get a race change as part of the transfer. This is fantastic for Forsaken and Humans, who actually can get a LOT of RP mileage out of shrugging off their curse – or being struck by the necrotic power of the Burning Legion. Night Elves can become swayed by arcane forces to become Blood Elves, or swear off their evil ways to veer closer to the Emerald Dream. But – Taurens and Night Elves? Dwarves and Trolls? I’d like to see how the lore explains that….
Lore, that wild, wonderful backstory to which games slavishly adhere* in order to give players a sense that they are part of a vast story that stretched endlessly behind and ahead – until the devs decide to change it when it’s convenient. Melmoth at KiaSA has a bit of fun with that legendary silent killer, the ninja-esque Hobbit Warden. Tolkein was probably going to write about the elite corps of Hobbit assassins in his NEXT book.
- this would have sounded more natural if I’d left the dangling preposition. IN.
Pushing back a little on the fannish fervor Champions Online’s launch, Spinks, a lover of comic-book superheroes, wonders why superhero MMOs only bring the dullest parts of comics to life. Well, Champions DOES have the Nemesis system, so that’s something new, right?
Anjin of Bullet Points takes a look at Champions Online’s odd way of balancing the game, and wonders why they did it THAT way.
Okay, I don’t understand. Why not try to hit your intended target instead of swerving back and forth in the hopes you find it accidentally?
Green Armadillo sees a trend in modern MMOs – a sharp veering from the onerous grind of doing an instance a hundred times to get a chance at a rare drop. WoW, EQ2, Warhammer and LotRO have all added ways to slowly earn items you can’t get to drop. And THAT’S a good thing. When I think of all the stupid guild drama a token-oriented loot system could have saved back in EverQuest. Who needs DKP when you can earn upgrades just by showing up? We used to have people drop from raids left and right once they’d gotten all they wanted. Only to show up with their vast DKP when we entered a new dungeon.
Malistaire has been defeated, but the grandmasters of Wizard City keep honing their wizardly skills, certain of the arrival of some new threat that will stretch their skills. But who? KingsIsle hints that someone is on their way. The Friendly Necromancer hears mention of a mysterious Roberto… could this be the new Wizard101 villain?
Did ya think that onerous death penalties were a thing of the past? Not so fast. Werit finds that in Aion’s open PvP “Abyss” zone, dying in PvP can strip you of vast amounts of the PvP currency, Abyss Points, while killing someone in PvP brings far fewer. This apparently leads to people only doing the PvE quests in the zone and avoiding PvP entirely.
Ever come across a hardcore raider in an MMO and wonder what happened to them to make them that way? Suzina of Kill Ten Rats has the scoop on how she and her husband were just casual players playing SWG for laughs and getting bored when, one day, Something Happened… and after that, everything was different.
And lastly, this has nothing to do with MMOs, but I like it because having just watched Starblazers and its parody, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, seafaring battleships fighting space battles just makes me smile. This is the trailer for the new Space Cruiser Yamato movie – Starblazers but done with modern animation techniques. This looks as if the Yamato crew meet up with the Comet Empire again…. I don’t know if I like the departure from the unmistakable Matsumoto drawing style, but everything else looks so cool.