I’m no fan of DRM, nor are many consumers. That said, we don’t always have a choice in the matter. So far I have completely avoided purchasing any DRM crippled enabled MP3’s. Just think if I’d bought into the whole PlaysForSure fiasco and now looking at MSN Music shutting down. I never bought DRM’d music from iTunes nor the Zune Marketplace nor Amazon MP3. I did buy a handful of DRM’d eBooks back when I was heavily into the eBook thing on my old iPaq a few years ago. All said and done, Palm’s DRM seemed the least of the evils in the eBook market so I went that route.
Games… sure piracy has always been around. I remember going to computer clubs or conventions (I can’t recall what they called them at the time) where the overall point of the entire meeting was distributing pirated software. Is it as damaging as the high-dollar publishers and developers say? Or, more likely, are we consumers just tired of paying top-dollar for crap like we do in the pre-iTunes music industry? Why should I pay $15 (for that matter, why do CD’s still cost $15?) for a CD when it turns out there’s only one song on the entire album I want to listen to? Was piracy really the reason Iron Lore shut down, or was it simply the fact that Titan Quest was a steaming pile and word-of-mouth defeated marketing hype?
My former brother-in-law is in the gaming industry and he says even within the industry itself, piracy runs rampant. Not the “we’re passing out free copies of the software to our competitors as a professional courtesy” but outright piracy just like we see at home. So it seems like a shot of hypocrisy if a dev team is whining about pirating their game while they pirate everyone else’s. I’m just sayin’…
SecuRom is beyond what I am willing to put up with on my computer. I just recently got my Xbox 360 back from the whole RROD thing several months ago and was on the fence whether to get Mass Effect for 360 or wait for the PC version. The SecuRom announcement made the decision for me. But wait! EA/Bioware witnessed the consumer uproar and backed down! (Who says whining doesn’t work?) Mmm… it sounds like SecuRom will still be utilized, they’re just dropping the “phone home” aspect. Either way, I don’t want SecuRom on my system, period. The PC version won’t be a “better” Mass Effect, it’s just Mass Effect with higher resolution graphics (duh) and a new PC-friendly interface. It just doesn’t strike me as the type of game I want to be huddled up at my desk in front of a monitor for, so I now own Mass Effect on the 360. If (huge if) I ever decide to get Bioshock, I will also get the 360 version purely to avoid SecuRom.
Something I’ve recently noticed, since I keep so many games (especially MMO’s) installed, are the two distinct policies for patching an MMO.
Patch and Play. Funcom [see Note 1], NCSoft, Turbine, and every Asian F2P game I’ve tried all use this policy. Run the launcher, it checks for updates and handles any required patching prior to logging in. This is my preferred method as it allows me to keep games up-to-date even if I am not maintaining an active subscription at the time.
Login Required. Blizzard, Flagship, and SOE are the big three that come to mind here. They ask us to login first, verifying we have an active account, before updating. If our account is inactive, no updates.
The second option provides obvious bandwidth savings to the hosts since only currently active players will be able to download the new data. I have to wonder if it costs them players in the end, however?
Look how many players complained about the size of Vanguard’s installation, something around 17GB. That took quite some time just to install, if I recall, then awhile getting all the updates. I’m only one month inactive so getting GU5 whenever it’s released won’t be that big of a deal but if I’d uninstalled Vanguard, it might be another story. Vanguard’s 17+ GB is chump change compared to Age of Conan…
If I were to have a moment of near-complete neurological failure-level insanity and decided to play WoW again, I’d be looking at installing from the CD and then downloading three and a half years worth of patches via their torrent downloader. Or manually downloading the patches from an external mirror. Either way, I’m guessing I’d be looking at several hours worth of patching alone. Possibly the better part of a day? If I remember, WoW also makes us login after each individual patch so it can check and verify that another patch is needed? If that is still the case, the total patch time would be longer because I’m not going to sit at the computer all day watching 40+ months worth of patcher progress bars scroll by. By the time it’s finished, I may not be as in-the-mood as I was when I first inserted the CD.
I’m a guy, so I’m obviously into instant gratification. Barring the possibility that I’d uninstalled a game, when I want to play, I want to play now. The morning after I get home from a trip, I habitually run the various launchers on my desktop which ascribe to the “patch and play” policy while I make my coffee and catch up the blog and forum scene. Shortly thereafter, I’m typically awake enough to jump into a game, and I’d much rather have been able to just click the launcher and read my blogs than have to login first. I can only tolerate City of Heroes for maybe a month out of the year, but I like to keep it patched and ready to go for when I do reactive my account. Next time I’m in the mood for Vanguard, I’ll have to wait for updates, which will be a deciding factor to which game I decide to play that morning. Perhaps that entire day. Perhaps at all.
Note 1: On a whim this morning, preparing for tomorrow’s admittance of the technical beta testers into the full closed beta, I ran the Age of Conan launcher. It updated itself to a new launcher which now requires me to login prior to checking for further updates, but it specifically calls itself a “Beta Update Login” so I will go out on a limb and assume (yeah, I know…) that post-launch AoC will return to the “patch and play” method.
I was shocked to have a good schedule at work for a change! In fact, I had two five-day breaks between trips, which was heavenly! I was fortunate to be paired with a First Officer who I got along extremely well with for a change; one who shared many common interests and personality quirks and could match or perhaps exceed my penchant for immaturity and silliness, which I keep bottled up the majority of the time at work. On more than one occasion a flight attendant called up to the flight deck asking “are you guys singing up there?” Yeah… We were jammin’ on some 80’s…
I got a bulk email from the leader of my DDO guild that he was dissatisfied with his leadership and inability to be online due to real life constraints, and would be disbanding the guild. One of the regulars stepped up to the plate and leadership was transfered to him, but I was dismayed enough that I did not login to DDO at all in April. Here’s my thing: I didn’t join this particular guild because I wanted to be in some huge DDO über guild. Mind you, they raid and do all the high-end content that I’m itching to see, and the overall DDO community is such that most guilds and players are all friendly, so it’s not a huge issue getting into some other guild’s raid. The reason I joined this guild was for the family atmosphere. The guild leaders, a well-known (in the DDO community) husband and wife team, were like our little DDO parents, everyone got along quite well in the guild, and it just felt like “home,” which is precisely what I was looking for. I didn’t feel the leaders needed to be in-game every night; I didn’t feel the guild needed the normal (is there such a thing?) style of “leadership” that a progression-oriented guild may or may not need. Does that mean the new leader won’t keep that feeling? Absolutely not, but the whole minor drama bothered me just enough that I decided to distance myself from the whole thing until the guild emotions boil over and I can get an idea of where things are headed. I learned from the whole GuildCast fiasco that I tend to spout off comments that don’t read quite as I’d intended when emotions are flaring so there was no sense adding my own salt to everyone’s wound. Maybe I’ve just gotten a little gun-shy of guild drama?
So, that put me exclusively in Middle Earth! As of last night, my lore-master Arwellyn is level 43 and has entered the south-western regions of Angmar on her own. I say “on her own” because some of my kin-mates were in need of help defeating some elite hill-men bosses last week, and summoned me to their location in the rather dark village of Donnvail, which is near Carn Dûm. Great group, and we all went in and kicked ass! It was pretty amazing watching a fully geared-out 50 champion (also a kin-mate) do his thing. On the flip side I was left with a sense of disappointment or perhaps loss because that was my first time in Angmar and I didn’t get to enter the zone “for real” from an exploration point of view and work my way to that location, discovering everything along the way. I didn’t know the lore behind Donnvail or what all content came prior to that adventure, I was simply summoned into the middle of strange territory and the ass-kicking commenced. Arwellyn has also entered the Bruinen Source West region of the Misty Mountains “for real” which has been fun and challenging as well. This is post-Book 13 so I’m seeing the Misty Mountains with the new weather effects seen in Forochel, Book 13’s new adventuring zone.
Speaking of Book 13, I’m loving every bit of it! The new quest log is phenomenal! Fishing was implemented very well, and the little I’ve seen of Forochel was excellent! If I had to point out any negatives it would be the lack of sound effects to fishing, the elf lore-master’s new jump animation, and the nearly hidden and underwhelming LFG tool. The LFG tool is the biggest offender by far. Seriously, as much group-only content as the game has, they really need to take a look at what makes the DDO LFG tool so awesome, and make it even better. An LFG tool should be in-your-face obvious, as well as simple and intuitive to use. As it is, most players don’t even know it exists, so I expect the LFF channel will still remain the primary means of finding PUGs. The new combat timing is taking a bit to get used to but it’s a great tweak. As a lore-master I’m primarily noticing the new timing when casting Light of the Rising Dawn, which now fires immediately after the casting bar fills. Previously, the casting progress bar would fill and the lore-master would raise her hand, then the beam of light would blast down from the heavens. Now the animation and blast are simultaneous. I’m sure I’ll notice other tweaks to the other classes as I start playing my hunter and captain, but I’m concentrating my efforts on Arwellyn for now.
My birthday is next month, and I’ve set a very soft goal of achieving 50 with Arwellyn by then. The problem is my schedule is much less flexible in May, with fewer days off, and my girlfriend and I are going to a resort in the Keys a few days prior to my birthday. (Plan A was the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island but I seem to have misplaced both my passport and original birth certificate! I know they’re here somewhere but damn if I can find them.) Plus it’s full-on summer here in Florida and I’d rather get some sun. Given those realities combined with my attention span, I sincerely doubt I’ll actually get her to 50 in time.
Once again this month Funcom held a technical beta for Age of Conan that I missed. I was working both the original date and the date it was delayed til. Given the two five-day breaks I had, I wasn’t exactly pleased that Funcom apparently called my employer and deliberately scheduled these tests when I was unavailable… However, to make amends, Funcom has generously upgraded all technical beta testers to full closed beta testers effective May 2nd. So I’ll finally get a chance to see what the fuss is all about and if it truly holds any interest to me or not. This close to launch I’m rather unsure if they’re still in a true “find bugs, etc.” beta phase or if it’s the marketing “come play for free” version of beta that is so annoyingly common in the MMO genre these days. If it’s the real deal, I’ll commit some time prior to launch to play testing and reporting feedback, otherwise I’ll just play the game as-is and decide whether or not I want to give them any money. I was extremely dismayed to read some of the latest AoC posts over at Keen and Graev’s this past week. It sounds like AoC is just another fantasy MMO based entirely on levels and gear and ends up on the exact same PvP/Raid treadmill that just isn’t burning the calories it used to, if you get my meaning. We’ll see…
The two highlights I’m most looking forward to are the two new maps, both of which are futuristic versions of 1942 maps (I always loved Wake Island in 1942!) and widescreen support — both 16:9 and 16:10!
Really looking forward to 1.50 (hell, I may even do the beta?) and especially looking forward to native 16:10 so I won’t need Widescreen Fixer any longer. (Quite frankly, I’m not 100% sure it’s even doing anything…)
I mentioned in my previous post how excited I was that my lore-master Arwellyn had reached level 40 in Lord of the Rings Online. It is exciting, but at the same time, nerve-wracking.
I felt much the same back in World of Warcraft. I took forever to get a character to 60 because I’d never reached level cap before in any MMO and in my infinite noobness was afraid of the unknown. Would I feel the game was “over” once the xp bar disappeared? Would I feel I’d “beaten” the game? I was aware of dungeons and so forth, and certainly had gone through Deadmines, Scarlet Monestary, and others during the leveling process but I was completely unsure of what exactly there was to do with no xp bar, or why anyone would do it. I did everything I could think of to slow down the leveling, gaining as little xp as I possibly could, but finally the day came when I experienced the dreaded, yet wonderful, Final Ding. It didn’t take long for the lightbulb to go off in my head and realize how wrong I’d been: rather than coming to any “end” reaching 60 opened so many possibilities it was staggering!
With LOTRO, I’m not walking around with blinders on. I know what there is to do at 50, and I want to do it. The catch is, I’m a bit of a completionist, and in the next few months prior to the release of Mines of Moria, we can look forward to Book 13 (this month) and Book 14 which brings the Shadows of Angmar epic story line to a close in preparation for an all-new epic story arc with Mines of Moria. On the one hand, I want to experience the final two Books during the leveling process and feel like I’m earning my way through them rather than already being 50. On the other hand, if I delay leveling until Book 14 has been pushed, will I even have time to do the current raids, etc. that I’ve been looking forward to before the expansion ships?
Regardless, I had Arwellyn nearly parked this week, only doing some solo quests in Evendim and helping a few kin-mates with some quests. Otherwise I’ve been leveling my new hunter, Sethryndil, who is already level 22! The hunter is an amazingly fun class to play, downright addictively fun. I’ve only managed to get into a group twice though, and I’m finding learning aggro management more difficult than with the lore-master since, other than healing, the lore-master isn’t exactly going to top the dps charts. The hunter, on the other hand… It almost took me back to those WoW days with my hunter, back in the pre-raiding days where I had no use for dps or aggro addons, I had to learn and manage my aggro on my own. Once I got into raiding, so many addons were in use that everything was being told to me anyway, I could pretty much turn off the brain cells, veg out and spam a couple DoT’s or special attacks. LOTRO’s lack of addon scripting support is a nice change of pace in that regard, although given how RP-friendly the game is, I really miss the old RPHelper addon that I was in charge of before I retired from WoW and turned development over to a user who’d been contributing to the project. I’d love to write a LOTRO version if Turbine adds scripting support someday.
In FPS news, the Battlefield team has announced that a 1.50 patch will be going into beta soon for Battlefield 2142! Looking forward to that; it’s almost unbelievable that any game published by EA is getting an inkling of support nearly a year after launch!
Curiosity finally got the better of me and I purchased Frontlines: Fuel of War on Steam. I had to turn off a few of the eye candy options to get a playable frame rate, and I still need to do some tweaking to smooth out the experience but it seems pretty cool so far, though I only have a few minutes with it. I’ve completed the first single player mission and played one match online. My initial gut reaction was that it’s way better than the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo 2.0 from Steam but I’m unsure yet — despite 64 player support — if it will have the large maps with multiple battlefronts, varied objectives, and the overall feeling of being in a large-scale war that the Battlefield series has always excelled at. That’s what I’m looking for in this type of FPS these days. The small-scale skirmishes ala COD4, Insurgency, Counter-Strike, whatever is so 20th century for me. I bought Frontlines the same day dedicated server support was patched in, but there weren’t any dedicated servers up at the time. I’m looking forward to checking out more Frontlines when I get home next week; hopefully some dedicated servers will be operational by then. Also looking forward to getting some 2142 action since I totally slacked off getting my frag on the past few weeks. Mainly because I’ve been so into LOTRO and having fun with my kinship…
My Lore-master, Arwellyn, is now level 40! Very exciting, though I was disappointed that with such a milestone, her only new trainable skill was Warding Knowledge: Drakes. That’ll come in handy for sure, especially once she get into dungeons like Carn Dûm with drakes and dragons. She’s already been to the drakes in the very southern fringe of Angmar but the groups were so strong, she wouldn’t have had time to even cast the warding circle before the drakes would have been dead. Maybe it’s just me, but I consider each ten level mark to be a Big Deal™ therefore skills that are trainable at those ten level marks should also be a Big Deal™, as opposed to “whooptidoo, big deal…”
So, a year being pretty casual, and now I’ve arrived at the final ten levels… Well, until Mines of Moria later this year. There’s much to look forward to, starting with Fornost then into the end-game dungeons and the Ettenmoors for some PvMP action… should be an exciting time!
I’ve also been working my new hunter Sethryndil a bit, he’s up to level 17 now, nearly 18. Completed all the quests and deeds in Ered Luin and I took him straight to Bree-town, skipping the Shire altogether for now. Sethryndil spent the majority of yesterday morning grouped with Troy’s lore-master and a few other kin-mates doing the Epic Prologue and getting started on Book 1, then Troy switched to his main character, a hunter.
I also had a discussion with Troy, one that’s been on my mind for months. Several times in the Voyages of Vanguard podcast he’s stated his dislike for quests. Yet his two games now are EverQuest 2 and LOTRO! LOTRO in particular is extremely quest-centric, which means by skipping quests (and that’s exactly what he’s doing) he will also miss out on the best content. I’ve often wondered why people who want nothing more than to kill mobs solo just don’t do the F2P games where that’s often quite literally all there is to do. Troy has also said a few times in his shows that he dislikes MMO holidays, festivals, and so on. Pretty much anything that’s “fluff” or “RP-ish.” Yet the very second he gets accepted into the kinship, he’s talking in character, role-playing, and every time he logs on he’s in character for the most part. It’s just mind-boggling after so many months of listening to him on VoV then seeing him in action in LOTRO! He’s truly the Master Soloist too, though after doing Book 1 yesterday I did catch him saying “wow, groups rock!” in kin chat… perhaps he’s leaning towards the Dark Side finally!
The LOTRO launcher now has a link to an official LOTRO Monster Play (PvMP) survey where Turbine is mining players for information on the system. I’m not a huge fan of MMO-style PvP but my brief stints in the Ettenmoors were interesting, so here’s hoping the players submit useful info and the PvMP system gets improved. I’m unsure how much time I will spend on my Creeps but I do plan on getting that black PvMP reputation horse for Arwellyn once she reaches 50 so, here’s hoping PvMP gets some much-needed lovin’.
Well, well… March saw me whittle down my list of active games a bit. After finally canceling the whole SOE Station Access last month, I didn’t immediately renew my subscription to Vanguard. I did get around to it, but I’ve decided to re-cancel and take a break from the game. The Vanguard guild seem to be dwindling in numbers at the moment, with Karen’s shift to EQ2 as her primary game. Dolndruth is to a point where the majority of his time is spent grouped in “dungeon” content and the targeting issues with Vanguard has finally pushed me to the breaking point where it’s hindering my ability to both play and enjoy the game. The whole developer shift drama notwithstanding, new VG team? This is an easy fix. Read carefully: if the mob isn’t loot-able, and it’s either not skin-able or I don’t have a skinning ability, the corpse should not be click-able. Period! Not to mention the “hit boxes” (for lack of a better term) for interacting with any object in the game is way too big. The combination of those two factors makes tanking more of a chore than it need be. While I do think the whole leveling process of VG is pretty fun, like many others I just have to wonder where all this is going, especially with the direction the new team leader wants to go. Which is: more like WoW, it seems. Some of the changes they’ve mentioned I’m totally in line with, others… let’s just say I won’t be surprised if VG sees it’s own NGE treatment. I’ve said before that my own observation of the “MMOsphere” is that players don’t forgive and forget; they move on. Permanently. They might stop back in a year later for a month or less out of curiosity, but by and large once a player moves on in their heart, they move on for good. I think pulling an NGE 2.0 will serve only to demonstrate to the public that SOE does not in fact listen to feedback nor learn from its own mistakes. Perhaps Vanguard will gets its due rather than becoming yet another Matrix Online or SWG barely surviving on life support (ie. Station Access), but I’m taking my rose-colored glasses off when it comes to SOE.
I’m also having too much fun again in LOTRO with the kinship. Which means, just like the first time, I have to temper myself and my playing because it’s truly a bunch of fantastic guys and gals and we all really enjoy chatting and grouping together. As it turns out, Oakstout also started up LOTRO on my server, so we’ve been chatting it up, and Troy (formerly of Voyages of Vanguard fame) also just started LOTRO. Troy and I may even be kin-mates soon! We were both in the same Vanguard guild as well. I’m not sure if either of them will end up sticking with the game after the initial 30 day period, but in the meantime April should be fun having new friends to adventure with from the blog scene. I’ve also heard through the grapevine that pΘtshΘt might be doing a bit of LOTRO this month, although he’s on a different server. Perhaps I’ll send the Middle Earth Mafia over to “coerce” him to starting fresh and joining the rest of us?
Arwellyn just reached level 39 today as well, so that’s very exciting! She’s questing nearly full-time in Evendim now, with a few stints in the Trollshaws as she gears up to start Book 4. One of her kin-mates made her a set of the Scholar’s armor today, and Gandalf himself awarded her with a new staff after she walked around Rivendell with Frodo, who shared his concerns about everyone depending on him. Nice little fellow, I’m sure he’ll come into his own… After grouping with several high-level hunters, I’ve been in awe at their sheer single-target DPS abilities, so I now have a third LOTRO character and he is already level 14!
I’m actually pretty happy with the way this is turning out. LOTRO can be my full-time MMO, and I have both DDO and Guild Wars when I’m in the mood for them. Oh, I just looked at my desktop and saw the Hellgate: London icon! I guess that counts too? Maybe someday I’ll spend more time with it and try to get a group, but that hasn’t worked so far. The whole point of buying that was group-based, Diablo-esque game play, and it’s been nothing but solo so far. Very disappointing in that regard.
For my non-MMO gaming, I’m still very much into Battlefield 2142. I’m sorta-kinda debating joining a clan but I play so casually I don’t know if that would be such a good idea. I do play primarily (well, in the evenings) on two clan servers if they have any open slots. One in particular I really enjoy playing on, and I’m always getting invitations to normally clan-only squads so that’s been great. I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 since the recent update, so I can’t comment on that. I downloaded the Enemy Territories: Quake Wars demo 2.0 on Steam but… it just seems very “meh” to me, so I don’t see myself getting the full game at all. I’m extremely curious about Frontlines: Fuel of War (also on Steam) but I’m also going to wait until they get a demo out the door. Releasing an FPS with no dedicated servers? In 2008? Sorry… I’ll hang til you guys get your act together…
I did play a single round of World in Conflict this month. I’m still having a hard time sitting down from the spanking I received… If any very friendly and patient bloggers are WIC players and want to give me some “WIC For Dummies” schoolin’, let me know.
So yeah, once again I’m sucked into LOTRO pretty hard. Exodus is like, the best.guild.evar! Kinship, yeah, yeah… Ironically, being the best.guild.evar is why I took my break from LOTRO to begin with — I vowed to not get so embedded in a game and start playing in that addictive hardcore style I did in WoW. Granted, if nothing else, my crappy laptop prevents that since it can’t run LOTRO at all. I did install it once just to see how bad it was, and it was almost humorously unplayable. There was a bit of drama as I was making my return, but it’s all over with now and in a moment of perfectly inspired timing, our original kinship leader is back from his break too and things are back to crazy, whacky, laughing-our-asses-off normal.
I only had two days off this week, and while I was working on crafting with all three characters (I now have a lowbie hunter…) when it came time to get things done, it was Arwellyn all the way. A couple of us still needed to finish up Book 3, even though it had turned grey for Arwellyn already. I’m a completionist; I despise deleting quests, especially this type. However… for the so-called “Epic Book III” I am sorely tempted to give a nod to Cameron that in this case, “epic” doesn’t quite apply. Book 3 was short, consisting of a mere 6 chapters, most of which were solo quests of the “run all the way here, run back, run here too” variety that made me wonder if Turbine had borrowed one of Blizzard’s Alliance quest designers for the day. The couple of group quests towards the end were short-ish but fun, especially fighting the over in Nan Wathren. But the final instanced battle saving the burning town of Trestlebridge from an orc raid was too short, and quite anti-climatic, hardly deserving of it’s “epic” title. Book 3 is the only series I’ve heard that complaint though, so I’ll cut Turbine some slack for now. I look forward to arriving in Rivendell to start Book 4 in the next week or so when I get back home.
After Book 3, several of us headed back over to Dol Dinen again, which is a sub-zone in the North Downs where a tribe of mostly elite orcs and trolls have set up camp. Some of the quests involve disabling their siege weapons and what-not; last night we were after the Siege-Master himself: Patonka, a master elite level armoured troll. Trolls are quite fun to fight, and groups of orcs with a troll in the midst makes for a hilariously fun, and tense, combat session. We fought our way up to Patonka and during the final fight with some of his guards, another kinship snuck in from the left side and tagged him first so we had to wait (an awful damn long time too!) for him to respawn, where we proceeded to whoop his armoured ass.
Getting back out of Dol Dinen was interesting when a full group of orcs and two trolls respawned on top of us while we were already fighting another group! Laughing our asses off! It’s a good think Arwellyn has that backup heal, she saved our poor overworked minstrel a few times, as well as keeping him charged up on power.
He’s truly the Master Soloist too, though after doing Book 1 yesterday I did catch him saying “wow, groups rock!” in kin chat… perhaps he’s leaning towards the Dark Side finally!
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