MMORPG

In last week’s episode, “Cold Call”, we were introduced to the Deferans, a race that believes in balance in all things. They, for instance, see no reason to side with either the Klingon Empire or the Federation, and consider both allies against the Breen. Searching for ancient Preserver technology, the Breen found evidence on the Deferan homeworld; and found as well, a non-violent, pliable civilization that they could exploit for their own, cold-hearted purposes. ...

Someone needs to tell the truth about MMOs. I guess it falls to me to explain to parents about the games their children are playing online with people whose idea of a good conversation opener is “I AM SO HIGH.” **World of Warcraft: Cataclysm by Activision Blizzard.[ ](https://tipa16384.github.io/wkblog/uploads/2010/09/worgen_1280x1024.jpg)** In the original World of Warcraft, children could take the role of a virtuous human fighting on the side of the Church against the evil Horde. The Burning Crusade expansion revealed that the enemy Horde came from Hell itself, and the humans took the fight against the villainous Orcs and other demons to the lower realms. ...

As part of Wizard101’s second year celebration, every account gets a ninja pig transformation potion. Now everyone can understand for fifteen minutes how Myth wizards feel every day of the year. Awesome. In the September Producer’s Letter, Leah Ruben drops some hints about upcoming features, and precious little about Celestia! My number one Celestia question? Not that anyone asked, but if I could have her answer one question in her NEXT producer’s letter, it would be how come Celestia is an underwater realm? The old Celestial Armor, before it was removed from the game (and later returned to the Crowns shop) had wings all over it. We know Celestia brings us Astral magic, based on the Sun, the Moon and the stars – things of little concern to undersea critters (except the Sun). Well, arguably, both the Sun and the Moon affect tides and…. ...

“Cold Call” is the first of Star Trek Online’s “Feature Episodes”. The first series deal with those cryo-suited Alpha Quadrant villains, the Breen. Staying more or less out of galactic affairs after their defeat along with the rest of their allies at the close of the Dominion War, they have returned. Those Federation diplomats who negotiated a treaty between the Ferengi, the Rigelians and the Deferans in the Starbase 39/Sierra diplomacy mission may remember Ambassador Surah as the Deferen Ambassador. Klingons will be reminded of an ancient pact between the Klingons and the Deferens where the Klingons promised aid when asked – that time has come. Though simply knowing that they would face the Breen would be reason enough for the Klingons to show. ...

Cryptic starts their new weekly episode tomorrow, with “Cold Call”. I’m pretty excited to see what they’ve come up with! I’m not sure any subscription MMO has ever done weekly content updates before. All players level 10 or higher will be able to access the Featured Episode: Cold Call starting at 11:00am PDT (6:00pm GMT) on Saturday, August 28. Once the Episode is live, you may begin the new mission by traveling to the Defera Sector and contacting Deferi Ambassador Surah. (K, Surah, Surah?) ...

Where does this portal lead? It’s a mystery – but let’s back up a bit. The USS Monterey has her regular patrol – exploring the expanses of the B’Tran Cluster to keep the systems closest to Borg space safe, the occasional mission for the Federation Diplomatic Corp, helping out on any fleet actions that may arise. This is the bread and butter of life in Starfleet. But on occasion, some brass with shiny medals plastered up and down their uniform sends an encoded transmission for My Eyes Only, and then we’re off, and these entries in my Captain’s Log are all the record there ever will be outside of the locked corridors in Starbase 01. ...

I find, these days, that I don’t make that much of a distinction between online RPGs – even Massive ones – and offline, single player RPGs. The only real difference is who I am playing with. Offline ones, I tend to chat with people about the game as I play on Twitter or somewhat slowly via this blog. Online, I chat with people about the game in game. ...

My friend Michael Stormpyre and I were farming for grandmaster gear the other night. I was on my myth wizard, Marissa Spiritcaller, and I was getting a little frustrated by the awful nature of the higher level myth spells. My Minotaur and Orthrus spells did a trap-destroying weak attack before the now-debuffed main attack. Setting up an attack required casting two myth traps, two feints and so on, so that, having wasted traps on the weak hit, I would still have some left over for the main damage. Otherwise, I would be very lucky to break 1K damage on blades alone. ...

No other game looked like Spellborn The Chronicles of Spellborn seemed to provide a wish list of what people want in an MMO. You could look cool from day 1; the gear you chose at character creation could be upgraded by slotting in runes to increase their power. You could still find or craft items with more or better slots, but there was never a time when your character would have to look anything but cool as sheets. ...

It’s not wrong to be nostalgic. A lot of us old EverQuesters (as opposed to EverQuesties; we hate them!) have warm feelings toward what was, for many of us, our first MMO. Sure, the graphics were crude and the leveling was brutal, but there was the same sort of camaraderie based on shared suffering that you get in wars and natural disasters. It’s not just the players that get nostalgic; SOE has gotten a little nostalgic as well for the time when EverQuest was the industry leader and set the bar that all other MMOs had to cross. “If only…” they might say, “if only we could return to 1999 and do it all over again!” ...