Hehe. well it seem the gaming goods have conspired and made the start of 2007 really busy to make up for a frankly disappointing 2006 (at least when it comes to MMOs). As I noted before there are several games I am looking forward to playing this year. And just last week in my inbox was another invite to beta one of them.

Okay so it seemed to be an invite to a stress-test the coming weekend. But the mail did say something about the account will stay open if I use it then. Pretty cool even if it does somewhat expand on ‘currently played games’ since I am currently playing Vanguard ‘open’ beta too. And in a - presumably - not so distant future I should be in yet another beta… Well I have mentioned that one before since it’s been more that two months since I was accepted into it. But there is now talk about slowly letting in the people selected. So perhaps I will be testing that soon too. And finally I figured out how to get into the Myst Online open beta.

If this keeps up I won’t have time for the day job =)

On the Vanguard front I’ve been playing on and off for about two weeks now. But it is a bit of a strange game in some areas. It’s not that is a particular tough game to play. But it does take a lot of times to do most things in it. Other first impressions are that there is no doubt these guys also made EQ. The graphics are similar. While some people rave about them - don’t fanboys always? - I think they are somewhat bland and nothing new. Not I’m running in 1920×1200 on just one GeForce 7950GT (other one is in for replacement - again) so I can’t really turn up to the max for playing. But even doing that don’t really seem to display graphics like other games that are supposed to come out. Frankly I think WoW does a better job even if they have ‘cheated’ and made ‘blocky’ part of their cute/friendly cartoonish style.

The UI layout looks a lot like the default WoW one (”If it works…” I suppose). And at least they didn’t take the EQ2 one. What I don’t understand is that they seem to not have gotten the memo that people like intuitive UIs with good information layouts as opposed to small - static sized - windows that show half the info of what you might want to see. I suppose it can’t get any bigger on 1024×768. But it is not like there is a HUGE marked on that resolution anyway. And too many of their windows just waste a lot of space on nothing useful.

The class selection is, like EQ2, put into a 4×4 grid meaning there are four variations on four different ‘generic classes’ (defensive tank, offensive tank, healer and nuker). While the classes are not a direct EQ2 rip-off. The underlying idea definitely is.

The races look familiar too. I suppose it is hard to come up with new fantasy genre races anyway. But most of the EQ lore animal-people are back with new names. Elves have the same three types. But that is really more something of a given in the genre.

The game is supposed to have three separated progression lines - or ’spheres’ - to play on, each independent of the others. I am not sure I would see it quite like that. I mean progression axis are ‘Adventurer, ‘Crafter, ‘Harvester’ and ‘Diplomat’. The first one is the usual stuff about killing mobs and leveling up your fighting skills. The second is supposed to be crafting. But harvesting is just as independent as crafting. Sure crafting is more involving, but they are still separate… Guess ‘four spheres’ didn’t work for the marketing people. The fourth is diplomacy.

Crafting seems to be the most innovative in the game - at least in implementation. They have gone hardcore on it and made it almost completely resistant to macroing. I mean of course it COULD be macroed. But the effort required to do so would be more than most people would be willing to waste their time doing… But if it gets big enough I am sure there will be someone who will do it anyway. The nice thing about crafting is it seems to be actually worthwhile. Most games have it one of two ways: “Crafted items are pointless because loot will always be better” - like WoW - or “You won’t want anything that wasn’t crafted because those are just pointless trinkets put in the game to make sure you are never without at least SOME gear”.

I am not quite sure where Vanguard lands on this. I know that there is better loot than what I have seen crafted (not a whole lot). But even simple crafted items have bonuses on them too. But how can you beat a game where you can make anything from handles to boats and houses? Not too likely you will loot a house on a dungeon raid. Now is it? At least I really really hope it won’t happen. Apart from the dreaded ‘potential’ crafting it is - like most other things - hampered by an almost impossibly bad set of UI windows to manage it in. And a good addition of several screens showing the same info and looks the same. But don’t show the same details… Well done! Call up Apple and get some UI lessons (before they sell out the last shreds of consistent UI design people).

Now diplomacy is a novel idea. It’s basically a bit like social XP in Dark and Light except here it is a simple card game versus completely inept NPCs. It is a little odd that this part is considered a sphere when harvesting isn’t. It’s not much more involving. But I guess it IS build a bit more into the game… or will be… whatever. One of the problems with this is that while the game is simple it has simply not been worked a lot on. At the beginning of the beta the High Elves capital didn’t have any of it at all. It was only added last week. And consistently it has been broken somewhere in the initial quest line ever since. Each new patch released fixes something only to allow players to progress a couple of steps - if we are lucky - and get stranded again. The carrot here is that we get the first horse free as a reward from this quest line.

As said diplomacy isn’t very hard. It is a basic card game in the line of all those collector games like Magic The Gathering. You build a deck of cards and select what five you want to play any given session with. In the beginning you only have 6 cards that you had no choice in. You then get a couple of quest rewards with where you can choose between a couple of cards. But you are still not able to build a very flexible deck. And this becomes a problem when you suddenly meet an NPC that only have cards that never benefit you while anything you deal benefits him. Unless this happens the NPC AI is too simplistic to be any real challenge. And some of them are outright broken so badly that you can easily beat much more ’skilled’ opponents. As I see it diplomacy is a gimmick. It will only be used because it is supposedly what allows you to influence towns - and possibly build your own. But that might be a rumor. And for now you can’t even duel against other players. So making it a meta-game for the Magic addicts isn’t really what it is about either.

Frankly I have not all that great hopes for Vanguard. While the last weeks show the developers can hack together something in a hurry. I am somewhat puzzled what they have spend the last years doing. Several areas are supposed to get major overhauls soon. Some of the ’spheres’ are badly broken and half implemented. And at least one class is getting a lot of changes… It’s two weeks before launch guys. Why didn’t you do this earlier? Also it is clear that the ’seamless movement’ isn’t quite as seamless. It is very obvious when you are moving from one ‘chunk’ (aka server/cluster) to another… at least the fact you freeze up for around 30 seconds (and sometimes longer) is a nice little hint.

But Age of Judgement is going to play it. And maybe some of the people from SDA too. So I have pre-ordered the collectors edition - I am a sucker for those things. In the end it’s only money. And perhaps the people I play with can make it worth while. But enough about Vanguard for now.

The other game is somewhat better implemented. I cannot say much about it - with the NDA and all. But it does seem remarkable stable and solid for the stage it is in. I can’t remember if I have seen a release date for it yet. But I am relatively confident it is not supposed to be out for a couple of months at least. But while ’stable’ and ’solid’ are nice properties of a MMO. It is not what make games fun. And from my current time spend in the game I am not impressed. There is hardly anything new in it. And maybe I am just dumb. But it quickly becomes rather hard to figure out what people actually want you to do in quests. Or rather, how you are supposed to go about doing it. Oh well… I get bored of it after playing less than an hour. So I doubt I will spend a lot of time doing that. But I supposed I gotta milk the opportunity to try it out before release so I can see if I would want to pay for it. Who knows? It may improve!

I also tried out the Myst Online experience a bit. I’ve been a fan of the series but I can’t really see the point of this installation. Basically they moved the the single player experience online and added a bit of interaction with other players. And that SEEMS to be it. There is no real social interaction encouragement as part of the gameplay. So people are just milling around solving the ever increasing number of ages. All this while speaking with friends and helping each other figuring them out. I donno… It’s not what I want out of an MMO. And I LIKE that Myst games have historically had a set story that played with the vision Rand Miller had for the world he created. I can’t see how this can be anything but a step away from that, a bit like Lord of the Rings Online really. I heard there is going to be a new book tho. I think I’ll just read that one.

Of course there is always WoW to fall back on. Can’t really see myself buying the expansion with my current involvement in it. And it is not like it really offers any radical changes to the brain dead endgame of the thing. So I’ll just trot along and see what happens on that front. Blizzard is supposedly already in gear for an expansion for next year tho. Wonder if that will liven things up. While there are some interesting games coming this year. I doubt anyone will knock Blizzard off the throne anytime soon. It’s becoming like the Counter-Strike of MMOs: Lots of people are playing it because it don’t require all that much skill or hardware. But you can still become a ‘big guy’ doing it.

Well perhaps the Lord of the Rings MMO can threaten it a bit. But WoW don’t live on brand recognition alone I think…

It’s officially 2007 now and with the resetting of our calendar postfixed with a new number is traditionally an event that provokes people to promise themselves - and others - that now they can change their ways and everything will be better this year. I never really practiced this myself. But it seems fate - that I don’t really believe in either - has teamed up with random chance to make me celebrate new year with following this tradition.

2006 ended with a bit of a revisit of WoW and a final dismissal of EQ2 - neither of them really planned. First a good friend of mine asked me to play WoW with him. It was a bit odd since he has never played that kind of games. But since he had started a trial of WoW I figured it might be fun to join him and start all over on that again. This time around it is on a very casual basis since my friend has only limited time to play. But it’s all good. I’m not really into doing hard core WoW gaming anyway. Now if he had only created his character on my old server and in the right faction… Ah well. Guess that level 60 warlock will have to just sit there then.

It does give me a chance to try out some new things tho. I have never really played a healer before. So I decided this was as good a time as any. So I rolled a priest to complement his warrior. Well… Before I knew what race/class he was I made a hunter that I am playing a bit too and that’s a bit of a change from anything I usually play too.

Quitting of EQ2 was even more random. Basically my account was closed for some reason (might have been due to my credit card having been replaced I suppose) without any notice or emails about it. I can’t even find any explanation on my The Station account pages. But as it turns out the timing is pretty good. I just quietly quit a guild - the Secret Keepers - before I went on holidays vacation. And I wasn’t really having much fun playing the game… It felt too much of a chore to me.

The reason I quit the guild was really to because while they seemed like nice people I never really did anything with them. I never actually quested with ANY of them. And only occasionally got a bit of help on tricky quests I was trying to solo. Now I could possibly have gotten more help with stuff. But I am not really looking for people to power level me. I want to play the game and experience the content. Especially in a game with very little end game content. And I don’t personally think constantly raiding the same dungeons is ‘content’. And even more annoying they never seemed to talk much. At least not in game. For hours the only things on the guild channel would be greetings, congratulations and goodbyes. Any attempt to talk to people would die real quick. Not really my idea of a community.

But this year also promises a couple of new games I am looking forward to to trying out. I’ve started to list them in the ‘Upcoming Games’ block on the front page of the site. But let’s just list them anyway since they might change over time…

‘Age of Conan’ is looking to be a really dark and violent PvP-centered game. PvP games have always had my interest. But I need a reason to do PvP and not just having the act of PvPing being the center. I can do that in plenty of games that are not persistent worlds just fine already. And I generally feel those games does a better job of letting player skill being the factor that decide who is the winner. So I am looking forward to seeing what ‘Age of Conan’ will do in this regard.

‘Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising’ and ‘The Chronicles of Spellborn’ both looks to just be interesting by how they are different from most other games. Spellborn seems to attempt something completely different with how fighting and using powers work. Also it’s a new contender in the market. That is always something to look for.

‘Gods & Heroes’ on the other hand is changing the genre in other ways. Apart from having chosen the mythical Rome as it’s setting - as opposed to the actual one - it tries to give players their own little army to help out in fighting. While the graphics look nice and the setting of the game is refreshing I am really looking forward to how they implement the minions. They are on one side claiming it is make it easier to build a well balanced group. But on the other hand they say the minions are not a replacement for players. As always I am interested in how they balance solo play content with the need to work with other players. ‘Gods & Heroes’ also makes a lot of promises of things to come… But that isn’t exactly news. We’ll see if they do better with that than some of the others that has played the same game.

‘Vanguard: Saga of Heroes’ I don’t really have much to say about. It looks to be placed squarely in the mainstream section of the genre. I am mainly looking to play it with people from the guild I joined in Dark & Light. But also I am hoping it will be a fun game to just play. And as always playing with pleasant people goes a long way to help that along. But at least it seems I get to play a bit of beta of this game through my Fileplanet subscription. I always was against paying to get to download demos and other promotional materials at reasonable speeds. But they ARE good at making deals so their subscribers get access to betas. So in the end I suppose it has been worth it.

A couple more are worth mentioning: Myst Online, Lord of the Rings and Tabular Rosa. I am not really sure any of them are ones I would really play seriously. LotR is mostly to see how badly they transfered the strict IP control of the Tolkien family into a functional MMO. Myst is a bit of the same. It’s been some nice adventure/puzzle games. But as an MMO I am wondering what you will be doing. I haven’t tried Uru so I am not really sure what to expect at all. And finally Tabular Rosa looks like a PvE first person shooter MMO. A bit of an odd setup but I would like to find a sci-fi MMO to play sometime. So I suppose I’ll have to give it a go too.

But anyway. Games are a bit slow right now. I am still waiting for another beta to start besides Vanguard. I’ve been accepted for some months now. But it seems they had to implement some changes. So maybe I will have some time to work on this site a bit. I’ve been playing with making a module for Xoops to better manage the info around all of my various gaming personas over the years. And also I have been looking at changing the design so it is a bit more pleasant to the eye. Too bad graphical design work isn’t exactly one of my stronger talents. But since this site is mainly for myself. I suppose it only really matters to me.