MMORPG

KingsIsle today released a mysterious screenshot of some of the folks we’ll be meeting when we journey to the undersea realm of Celestia this summer. They promise to reveal some of the darkened characters little by little as the day approaches, but we here at West Karana have a pretty good idea what we’ll find. In the background we clearly see the majestic , protecting Earth from dangers both in space and under the water. Inside the glass dome, you can see a Farmville crane constructing a Pumpkin Hatchery, so there’s anime, space/water warfare and super popular social gaming, all in one shot. The characters appear be facing a photographer who would be outside the dome, indicating a species of water-dwelling portrait artists, clearly a reference to the precinct sketch artist in . ...

There was no way I was going to miss Bristlebane’s Day on EverQuest II! Bristlebane and I have always had a special relationship. He was my deity in EverQuest and remains so in EQ2; as the creator of the halfling race, how could he not? Though others may claim Brell had a hand in our creation, we know better. The April 1-only quest largely involved answering riddles by running to obscure corners of the globe looking for such things as a pack of cards, a map, an egg…. The sphinx who asked these riddles in the Enchanted Lands wouldn’t just let you answer the riddle with words. Silly thing. And a kind of creature that seemed to be having seizures; people were so crowded around her, and every time someone spoke to her, she would spin toward them and bow in their direction. That made attempting to click on word balloons that constantly jumped all over the screen a not-so-fun mini-game of its own. The quest gave the Stone of Gygax, the large 20-sided die in the screenshot above, and who WOULDN’T want such a nice thing in their house? ...

Click to enlarge You may want to check out your WoW Armory listing today….

It took a lot of waiting around, but on this stardate, the Federation News Service (thanks, Ark, for the awesome name suggestion!) became the latest fleet to roam the space lanes, seeking out new adventures and stories and so on…. Now that we have a fleet, maybe it’s possible to get enough people to do the raidisodes? If you’d like to become a part of the Federation News Service in Star Trek Online, hunt up one of the senior editors – @Caylinn, @BlueKae, @Tipa, @Vannikar, @khaaaaaaan!, @Aurangzeb or @camenecium – for an invite!

Tuesday is typically not a gaming night for me; Tuesday is American Idol night! So you’ll find me planted in front of the television with a cat, a bowl of pistachios and a glass of Diet Coke, rooting for Crystal Bowersox. This year, anyway. We’d discussed this awhile ago, but @Longasc asked me on Twitter this afternoon if I had a good picture of my Star Trek Online character I could send him; he wanted to (with my permission) have my character be a bridge officer on his star cruiser. ...

OpenEdge1 has for awhile been estimating the number of subscribers to a game based on the number of its players who report their usage with XFire. His latest calculations put Star Trek Online at 117K players, which more or less jibes with Cryptic’s reports. I’m dubious about the other standings. His formula would give WoW 6.3 million players in the West, which I believe would be a real high water mark for them. Of oft-repeated 11.5 million players, the majority were in Asia, and unlikely to be XFire users. ...

The games in the title – EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online. Three of the four have “online” in their name. It’s Lord of the Rings, except ONLINE! It’s Star Trek like you never imagined it – ONLINE! Throw away your pencils and dice because D&D is ONLINE! EverQuest is just – EverQuest. Online is all it knows. That’s the power of having a pre-existing IP for your game; its name is its best feature. ...

What have I done today in EverQuest? Hunting in Old Commonlands with Sispis Sispis showed me how to navigate the Void and come to an ancient version of the Commonlands, where all the animals were level 75. I look like a kitty here because I’d just been to Shar’vahl, the kitty city on the not-yet-exploded moon of Luclin, and I always try my best to fit in. I have a huge bag full of illusion masks just for that, though you can purchase innate illusions with AA now. Though not the gnome illusion! ...

Actually, STO wants to sell you bridge PACKS. 120 Cryptic Points will now buy you three new bridges for your newbie ship, and 200 will get you four new bridges for your top-of-the-line Federation or Klingon cruisers. These are still (for the Feds, anyway), the cavernous flight deck hangar-sized bridges. So now you can invite your friends to your ship, and everyone can pretend that the bridge consoles do something or the viewscreen works >< Well, they DO look nice! I spend a lot of time on the bridge of the USS Monterey because, dammit, that’s where you SHOULD be! ...

Based on helpful comments and e-mails from yesterday’s post about choosing a game in which to immerse myself for awhile. I’ve decided to go with EverQuest, but to also keep checking out EVE opportunities while I complete some long-term training goals, AND to try out Fallen Earth at some point! Because it’s clear that my brief experience with FE in its early beta wasn’t enough to get a good feel for the game. ...