MMORPG

If there could be a greater revolution in online gaming than Microsoft’s upcoming Avatar Kinect, I’m not really sure what it could be. uses its popular new peripheral to track your gestures, mouth movements and even your eyebrows and use this data to create a lifelike puppet of you in an online chat room. The traditional problems of the Kinect remain; your avatar won’t be spending much time walking from place to place, but it is certainly worlds better than having to clean house to have friends over. ...

Soooo…. how about that Massively article? Did it make you mad as hell? Meh. I had a look at my site analytics today, just to see if people were coming here to read about the so-called controversy and you know? More people came to read my view of Velious through frost-covered glasses. That reinforces what I’ve always known about MMO fans. We just want to get online and PLAY GOOD GAMES. ...

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. ...

Even in a California summer, the icy blankness of Velious’ frozen wastes could make me feel chilly. EverQuest was always immersive for me in that way; the first time we raided the underwater dungeon of Kedge Keep, I thought I might drown, I was so short of breath. Every race had its own starting zone, with plenty of things to do up to around till around level 10 or so without ever having to encounter another race – which, in most cases, would mean braving some dangerous encounters. The total immersion was what I loved most about EQ. ...

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. ...

I long ago pre-ordered SOE’s DC Universe Online, but this was my first opportunity to play it, in beta, on the PC. Though it’s on the PC, the little picture hints and controls clearly expect you to be using a PS3 controller to play the game. I don’t have a PS3 controller, but I do have a XBox controller, so I plugged it in and away I went. ...

I’d hoped that the Giving Tree would give, as its final gift, the seed for another Giving Tree, but – no such luck. A bunch of rare Celestia harvests, a handful of gold and Rank 7 – Expert Gardener – will have to do in its place, I guess. I’d been saving a Rank 7 seed just for this occasion, the Maelstrom Snap Dragon, which was intended to fill the Giving Tree’s empty plot. The Large Enchanted Soil required for the plant couldn’t fit in the spot where the Giving Tree had been planted, so I had to plant it across the path, which is going to be inconvenient. I planted more Baby Carrots where the tree had been, instead. ...

Trion has announced the third beta event for their Rift MMO. It’s been described as an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary game, and that seems about right. Like fantasy novels, I guess, where very few ever try anything new, and yet people still buy, read and enjoy them. It’s a decent genre entry, and as I don’t currently play any games in the fantasy MMO genre, I’m very much looking forward to it. (Wizard101 is so entirely different that it cannot be compared to the WoW-likes in any way. That’s what I love about it!) ...

Scott of Pumping Irony was chiding me and other bloggers today on Twitter for getting totally excited about a game, writing loads about it, then dropping that game the moment something new came by. I was all defensive, pointing to my long-term coverage of W101, STO, DDO and, when I played them, EVE, EQ and EQ2 when – I remembered Fantasy Earth Zero, Dragonica, Dream of Mirror Online, Dragon Oath and so many other games I played heavily for a few weeks, then totally forgot. ...