Age of Conan

Welcome to another Friday! Got plans for the weekend? I’m planning to take a short break from EVE Online and get caught up on a beta, Mabinogi, Wizard 101 and will reinstall EQ2 to see if that fixes the problems I’m having with it freezing on launch. Spinks starts us off with a long and detailed look at the power of story in MMOs, specifically, the plight of the Forsaken as they meet their maker in World of Warcraft’s Howling Fjord. Those Forsaken aren’t dead, they’re just pining for the fjords! ...

I’ve been staying away from talking about Darkfall and Free Realms lately because, what’s more to say about it? Well, Darkfall is about to launch in the US, and we can only hope that makes more waves than Spellborn’s rather uneventful splash when it did the same a couple months back. Keen thinks Darkfall’s NA launch will give the game a chance to launch in the shape it should have been from the start. It’s kind of odd, really. Is Europe becoming a kind of live beta for US players? Spellborn, Runes of Magic, now Darkfall – the Europeans pay to make the game better for us. ...

In EVE Online, at my new home at the Sisters of EVE base in the Arnon system, with Mining IV, Refining III, and two Miner II mining lasers and purely selling in-system, I make about 27.5K ISK per minute of mining. If I processed the ore at my current level and sold it in the best market within seven jumps, I would make about 26K ISK/minute of mining, not including travel time. The question is, how many sessions of mining would it take to pay for the skills and equipment necessary to make refining more profitable than just selling the ore straight with no additional skills going toward mining? EVEMon has me at about ten days to having the skills necessary to fly a ORE Retriever mining barge… EVE is the first game I have HAD to play with a spreadsheet open. ...

I was thinking this morning about Norman Spinrad’s “Bug Jack Barron”, where a treatment can make you immortal, but a child has to die (this btw is a massive spoiler if you have not read the book). In MMOs, we are immortal, but at some point we’ve done everything or it just gets boring and we move on to the next game. If we had immortality in our real lives, how long would we live before we were just desperate to have it end so we could move on? ...

One of the nice things about doing the Daily Blogroll is that it takes the pressure off trying to do something fun every night. Tuesday night, Kasul and I were playing LotRO, running around doing quests in the Lone Lands, and I realized I was bored senseless by the tedium of LotRO’s quest grind. Last night was all W101; a friend and I did a couple Moo Shu Onis and then farmed Baron Greebly for cool stuff, and we let each other see our homes. I was playing with a good friend each time, but LotRO’s soul-crushing quest grind couldn’t be saved. I suspect LotRO won’t be on my hard drive much longer. I love the players, but the game is just a grind in pretty clothes. ...

We’re still in Wednesday, aren’t we? Since Free Realms launched way back last Tuesday, I’ve been running a day behind. FR has had a bunch of launch day issues, it’s been anything but a smooth launch. Friends lists disappearing, paid-for member access being revoked, Station Access members still not given memberships… Even though SOE had a cracked-wide-open closed beta, it still choked on the onslaught of live players. But it’s up, running fairly well, and when the hiccups are cured, should be able to get on with unleashing hordes of ninjas and wizards on the world. ...

Welcome to Monday! We had a gorgeous weekend here in Connecticut. The cat loved sunning herself in every patch of light, shorts weather for sure, and everything is in bloom. Free Realms is also in bloom. FR’s beta ended yesterday with a huge bash in the port town of Seaside. Oz of Kill Ten Rats isn’t feeling the love, and cites deceptive practices in game among reasons why he doesn’t feel FR is ready for prime time. Tobold responds by pointing out the collectible card game was not nearly as expensive as Oz opines, or that beta testers were required to pay to test member-only content, and offers his own thoughts on the Free Realms beta. ...

Day 2 of the Wizard 101 Name the Turtles contest! My site stats show that well over a THOUSAND wizards have come to this site to choose a name for the Marleybone turtle. I think we all know the turtles are going to end up being named Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Master Splinter. Soon-to-be-shuttered, PvP-centric MMO Shadowbane is Wizard 101’s ancestor in spirit. MMO Gamer has the story of how the Wizard 101 devs went from designing a no-holds-barred, kill-or-be-killed MMO to the kid friendly, brightly colored MMO of wands and wizards we play today. ...

The original definition of “blog” was as an abbreviation of “web log”, where you’d point out interesting places you found while surfing. I don’t really have anything to write about today – I did 1.1.11 in LotRO last night on my hunter and started in on the Forsaken Inn quests, and played Free Realms for a couple of hours but I can’t write about that, so… welcome to my web log! ...

In 2007, you could have surprised absolutely nobody by predicting that 2008, last year, would be the biggest, best year ever for MMOs. Triple A titles abounded – Age of Conan and Warhammer Online were both just going to tear WoW a new one, but heck, even WoW was coming out with its second expansion. Pirates of the Burning Sea would take MMOs into a new direction, Chronicles of Spellborn would be an indie hit from Europe, and Flagship would be following up Hellgate: London with their MMO homage to Diablo II, Mythos. ...