Allods Online

Here we go again. The top 38 MMOs in the last 30 days in the USA, as reported by Google Trends.

Yeah, I’ve been MIA for a couple weeks now. Work time is creeping into home time. It’s so cold when I get home that I find myself cuddling up with blankets and a cat on the couch, watching Netflix (tonight: the Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows”, season 1). I’m not wild about this “winter” thing in general. I haven’t been able to get on the bicycle for a few weeks now, and it’s really making me antsy. ...

If you want to hear about the huge controversy over Jef Reahard’s one hour dismissal of Rift, well, I’ve already said all I’m going to say about it. There’s lots of MMOs, like Kung FOO, Fists of Fu, and Mabinogi that I played for an hour or two and felt no attachment. If someone had come up to me and asked me how I felt about those games after that hour or two playing them, I’d have told them what I thought. ...

We’re way behind on our latest project at work, so I’ spent most of Friday working. I did take a break, though, to log on and participate in the final Beta 3 invasion event this afternoon. I’d spent all night (until 4:30AM) leveling my cleric from 12 to 20, and though I didn’t get a chance to visit the Iron Tombs, I did want to help keep Freemarch free. I’d leveled from 16 to 18 in a raid group at one of Thursday’s invasions. That also earned me nearly enough planar currency to get some nice epic items. I logged on, joined in, and earned enough to get some “purple” leggings. Good stuff. ...

I suck at predictions, but everyone else is doing them. Luckily, I have a Magic 8 Ball. I’m just gonna list some games, and ask the Magic 8 Ball what it thinks of them. Question to the 8 Ball for all of these games: Will this game have a good year in 2011? Age of Conan: “Outlook Not So Good”. AoC released its first expansion, “Ride of the Godslayer”, last summer, and that’s pretty much the last I’ve heard of the game. I don’t think the Magic 8 Ball is correct; I think Funcom is content to support their current player base without feeling the need to go F2P. Their massively hyped launch should have helped them recoup their development costs years ago. ...

Click to Enlarge Allods Online is fun enough, and I guess it’s cool that everyone’s characters speak and read Russian because, hey, it’s an overseas game not afraid to show its roots. Or too cheap to localize the voice and art assets, one or the other. Yet I still feel a little uneasiness toward the game. Not because I can’t handle a little Cyrillic here and there. Not because it doesn’t depart far enough from its influences to really stand apart from the crowd. But because…. ...

After helping to save dozens of people from the destruction of their doomed Allod – an island floating in the Twisting Nether – my gibberling crew defeated a ravening demonologist, lured a marauding demon into a trap that meant its doom, defended a powerful sorceror as she strived to keep the island afloat just a few more seconds, and finally escaped at the last moment to safety, regarded by all who knew them as a new breed of hero. ...