Sean E asked me why I wasn’t playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. I hear DDO and I think “hey, another fantasy MMO with wizards and stuff”. Why add a twenty-first to the twenty I already play or have played? And who has that kind of time? I guess it depends on who you play with; in an MMO, it’s more about the company you keep than the merits of the game. ...
I’m really enjoying Runes of Magic. When I first saw screenshots for the game a year and a half ago, I called it a WoW clone and didn’t think much about it, and this does turn out to be a game that knows its market - WoW players. Most keys work the same as in WoW. It definitely looks like WoW – if the starting zone doesn’t remind you of Elwynn Forest, then you never played an Alliance newbie, looking for a Hogger group. Though if you went looking for a Hogger group THESE days, you’d be talking to yourself, because it’s not 2004 and everyone is way past that. ...
Guy just keeps popping up everywhere, don’t he? I am playing Runes of Magic now because, hey, WoW is coming out with a new expansion that I probably won’t play, so why not reminisce about good times in WoW by playing some other game? Runes of Magic only allowed me to pick from two races, Elf and Human. I thought they had some short folk in the character concept art, but I guess those were just meant to be children. It’d be kind of cool, by the way, to start of as a child in an MMO (optionally, anyway), and play children’s games of crafting, socialization, war and magic while slowly aging and learning more of the wider world and your place in it. ...
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. ...
(Shhh! Hello Kitty Online’s closed beta started yesterday! Expect a HKO First Look once I’ve found my way around). Massively reports that EVE Online’s next expansion, Dominion, has just been announced. Dominion brings a new focus on planets, undoubtedly setting the scene for EVE’s planetbound companion FPS MMO, Dust 514. EVE is also adding social media functionality to the game, and I have no idea what that means. Tweet every mission? No clue. Lastly, the walking around in stations expansion is given a name, Incarna, so I guess we’re stuck in our pods for at least another few months. ...
Is Gatheryn in open beta or not? Massively says not yet, but following Merry and Pippin’s example, I showed up where I wasn’t invited because they couldn’t keep me away. Picture above is from the docks, where it’s clear they haven’t invented automated rust scrapers and hull painters in Elymia as of yet. In news of the OTHER upcoming superhero game, Massively also has screens of SOE’s DC Universe Online. This fast-paced, arcade-ish actioner looks to be the evil twin to Champions Online’s more traditional quest-based offering. ...
Having heard about the EVE Fitting Tool from a helpful commentator, I spent a lot of time last night working some Battle Clinic builds into viable builds for me. VERY happy. Later on, the corps went on an impromptu trip through a wormhole, where we were relentlessly shadowed by the corp (Bones) who had staked it out. They allowed us to take on a Sleeper cell before we left. We got some T3 loot, but since we’d all brought expendable ships (that’s my Exequoror “The Liberator” hovering outside the wormhole), we weren’t up for taking out the second wave, which included a battleship. (Drew at Wizard of Duke Street has a little more about wormholing). ...
To mix things up while gathering enough loyalty points for a Gallente Navy Comet blueprint (so I can see if I can make copies of it and thereby enter the 30m ISK-a-pop Comet business), I moved my base from Aunia to Marsalla and offered my services to the Public Relations department of the Federation Navy, reasoning I could use relatively safe courier missions to quickly raise my LP total. ...
In honor of finally being able to fly the Dominix, a collage of most of my ships (to scale). Some I don’t have anymore, like the Myrmidon, which was pinned down by (no exaggeration) about twenty ships, two of which had warp scramblers, and taken apart. I was just a couple of hours from being able to fly the Dominix battleship, so I helped with a mining op for a little while, then got the ship, crafted a stable fitting from spare parts – including two warp stabilizers – and headed into the deadspace encounter. ...
This has been a pretty decent week in EVE Online, which is running neck and neck with Wizard 101 as my main game. Earlier, Otakudyne corp officer Sredans made a Dominix battleship for me as reward in part for a couple of nights of mining; I’ll be able to fly that Sunday evening. I was kinda disappointed to not find the skill to fly Gallente Battleships among the skills sold by the Federation Navy loyalty point store, so I put in a BUY order for the skill at a 20% discount from the average regional price set to expire just about the time I will need to train it. If nobody sells me one for my three million ISK, I’ll just buy it, no big woop. After all, I AM a millionaire. ...