Florensia

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. ...

World of Warcraft’s forthcoming Cataclysm expansion (1 week away!!!!) is still setting fire to the blogroll today. Hey, if all a MMO has to do these days to generate some buzz is destroy the world, well, I have a couple candidates who could use some devastation. I logged on to Vanguard yesterday evening to check on how my characters had fared in the big colossal server merge last July, and was shocked to find that whenever it was I last logged into the game, there had been no patches since. For a game that has had zero developer support in eleven months, the community there still seems vibrant and positive. You just can’t kill a good community. ...

Another week, another truckload of gaming press releases. Bioware announces their new downloadable content for their Dragon Age RPG, “The Darkspawn Chronicles”. Meant as an alternate story – one where your character from Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening dies during the Grey Warden initiation – here you command the forces of the Darkspawn against the remnants of the forces of Light, led by the man who wouldn’t be king, Alistair. ...

I was a little surprised to see that my character from Florensia’s open beta last year was still around, though naturally I’d entirely forgotten how to play her. To get back up to speed, I put my Saint (healer) aside and started a new character, an Explorer (ranged dps specializing in guns). The very detailed tutorial took me through setting skills, inventory management, ship construction and combat, and I was just about to set out on my new life as an Explorer when I read in chat that people were desperate for Saints in their higher-level groups. ...

Yup, back in Florensia for a second try at it. Because, hey, be a pirate on the sea and an adventurer on the land, build your own ship, hire a (NPC) crew, two separate career paths, and it costs nuttin’. The cash shop only has some potions… I dunno how they make money in this game. The general chat is about what you’d expect, though. Big news today was that ex-EverQuest and Vanguard helmer Brad McQuaid was ending his self-imposed exile of idyllic days spent racing cars and playing games to jump back into the spotlight with his very own blog. Or did he? Genda believes the whole thing is a hoax, someone (possibly drummer Keith Sharward) just having a bit of fun. The actual Brad McQuaid doesn’t seem to have taken the steps of building up his LinkedIn profile in awhile, anyway. ...

2008 has been an absolutely amazing year for MMOs, and my personal progress through them. Last year at this time, I’d just found the absolutely most perfect EQ2 guild – they were great raiders, loved grouping, and were fantastic people besides. With Clan of Shadows, I managed to do every flagging raid for Ruins of Kunark and was ready to step in and do my best to help the guild as they conquered Veeshan’s Peak. It wasn’t to be; I didn’t make the full membership vote. It wasn’t even close. That disappointment, along with other things to fill my evenings, eventually led to the end of raiding. Without raiding, though, I didn’t have much incentive to log in anymore. I tried to make things work with another guild, Delusions of Grandeur, but it just wasn’t CoS. I guess if I couldn’t make it in CoS, I didn’t want to settle for a lesser guild. ...

It was a pretty slow weekend, considering. I meant to do a first look at Pi Story to complement the one I did for Florensia, but I didn’t get to it. Nor did I play Florensia any. I did play some EverQuest; Saturday I did all sorts of running around with my ranger, soloed Hate and Sky with my cleric, and Sunday morning met up with a guildie to do The Hole more or less legit, in that I actually played Tipa the entire time :) But I’ve talked about that in a previous post. ...

Adventure on land and sea? Lush, detailed world? Dual talent trees that let you mold your character however you like? How can it miss? Florensia’s kinship with Dream of Mirror Online couldn’t be more unmistakable. That same sort of soft focus, cell-shaded look of the characters against backdrops so lush they seem to be almost painted. And these guys don’t just sit around and swing at each other… they put their bodies into it, jumping and swinging and spiking stuff at the enemy. The birth of the aerobic adventurer. ...

As I was working through DOMO-like* Florensia last night (expect a separate article about it tonight), I was thinking, and this goes back to my MMO DNA project, wouldn’t it be nice to take one of those F2P imports and really play the heck out of it, and blog about it, every day for a month? I think it woulld take that long to really get a thorough sense for a game. EVERY MMO is pretty similar at the start – pick up quests, go kill quick-spawning beasties, level up, etc. You can’t review a game based purely on the new player experience, as important a part as that might be. ...

I haven’t done a “what I’m playing” thing for awhile. So here’s my current roster of games, and I’ll start off with what I’m NOT playing. And that game would be Mythos. MMOs: Mythos had one of the strongest beta communities on record, with unparalleled access to devs. Community Manager Taylor Baldree would hold court in the #mythos IRC channel every night. Devs would respond daily on the forums. And all that was leading to a game that I very much wanted to play. With Hellgate: London’s reprieve by Namco Bandai, let’s hope there IS hope for Mythos as well. ...