Pumping Irony

A decision that will be surprise none of you: I have cancelled my subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Don’t break out the popcorn yet, this isn’t going to be one of those "I Quit" rage posts. Far from it. I fully intend to return to The Old Republic and at the very least, reach level cap and finish my class story. TOR only has a few minor annoyances that I’m sure will get ironed out by the time I return, and – for the type of MMO it is – it’s quite a good game. Honestly!

I was hesitant to get into the game at launch because I’m still burned-out on the traditional Diku/Trinity MMO. It’s why I haven’t touched my main MMO, Lord of the Rings Online in the past 10 months. I should have listened to my instinct, because right now I am still in the burnout stage, causing TOR to have exactly zero "pull" to play it. Today marked 3.5 weeks since my last play session, and since with a subscription you pay no matter what, I decided the smart thing to do would just be cancel until I want to play for my own enjoyment, not because it’s what the blogger bandwagon is doing at the moment.

Fear not, I shall return some day. I was finally starting to enjoy my character after he got some better-looking equipment, and I do look forward to going full Dark Side with him!

The Sith will conquer the galaxy!

Just not today…

The topic of subscription versus free-to-play has become one of those cyclic topics in the MMO blogosphere, especially given the trend of most MMOs converting to one sort or another of free-to-play with relatively few exceptions.

Some of the complaints of free-to-play simply refer to the more aggressive in-game marketing. Blue Kae, for example, among others, has complained numerous times about the in-game button to buy consumables in the LOTRO Store in Lord of the Rings Online. Me? I barely notice it. I have a vague awareness that the button is there, but maybe it’s a combination of playing the game since beta so I just know where things are on various UI frames plus the fact that I have no use for any of those consumables anyway. That button isn’t going to be clicked by me, no matter what, so I just ignore it. (Despite having the Lifetime Subscription, I have bought things like additional storage and costume slots. But consumables? Sorry, no sale here.) Age of Conan, on the other hand, opens a huge window on the screen every time I login. It’s just a matter of reaching up and closing that window but that offends me much more than frequent store button placement does. Perhaps it’s a relic from my IRC days, but I find it extremely rude and offensive when an application opens additional windows on its own without my input to do so. That is also why I tend to get highly annoyed when people reply via tell to a conversation I’m holding in normal public chat, despite MMOs not opening separate windows for private messages like an IRC client might. But I digress…

This past weekend two totally unrelated posts came up on the subject of subscriptions.

Pete over at Dragonchasers has canceled both his Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic subscriptions because he isn’t playing them enough to justify the subscription in his opinion.

What makes this whole situation worse is I start to feel guilty about not playing. I’m going through that with SW:TOR now. I don’t really feel like playing but I feel like I -should- play since I’m paying for it. After a while that vague guilt turns to resentment and then I’m even less likely to play.

Last year I wrote a meandering post that touched on the psychology of subscriptions, and the point of that article still applies. It fits what Pete is feeling and what I am currently feeling about SWTOR myself. I haven’t loaded the game in over two weeks. I had four days off last week, and I got plenty of gaming done on both PC and 360, but I couldn’t be bothered to click the SWTOR icon. Now we’re starting the third week, and I have five days off coming up when I get home from this trip. I’ll more than likely play SWTOR out of guilt this week, rather than out of excitement to play it. Who knows, maybe there will finally be more players coming up the ranks in the lower level zones so I can maybe group for the couple Heroics I need. Or at least see some chat going on. Or maybe see some players out in the world.

At this point in my career I am one of those people with a disposable income. Due to being single, no children, and (despite what the previous paragraph makes it sound like, those lengthy breaks are rare) not home very much, so I have far more money than time for gaming, and my interests (and attention span) are very divergent as well. That $15 for the SWTOR subscription? I barely even notice it in the big picture of things in terms of spending the cash. I can blow through ten times that taking my girlfriend to dinner and not blink twice about it. (Well, actually I might blink or gasp even, but I’ll still buy dinner. ) I have no problem whatsoever spending a lot of money on my hobby because it brings me enjoyment and sometimes I think of it as directly supporting a development team I believe in. Example: as I write this I have over $300 worth of Xbox 360 games already pre-ordered for the upcoming few months. I will probably pre-order more as I learn of others releasing in 2012 that I decide I want. That’s just pre-orders. I already own over 60 titles for the 360, some I paid the full $60 for, others I got new at reduced prices, still others I bought pre-owned from Gamestop. I also bought two more games at reduced price from Amazon a few days ago which should be waiting at my door when I get home. And I’m perfectly fine with that. When you put the $15 for SWTOR per month up against what I have and continue to spend for other titles, it’s a pittance. What I resent is the "get your worth" psychology inherent in a subscription. In normal games that are sold as a product, it doesn’t matter to me if I blow through the game in 6 hours or if it takes me 6 years to finally complete it. I paid my money, I have it available to me at any moment. Inasmuch as software is ever "owned" those games are essentially "mine." But when a "service" is introduced, that changes my (and many others’) mindset, and we want to feel like we’re getting value out of our service fees. The same applies to most services. We adjust our wireless phone plans to match our usage. I just lowered my monthly bill $10 by dropping to a lower tier SMS plan because I very rarely exceed 100 SMS per month, for example. Pre-paid phones or time-limited plans are becoming increasingly popular with certain segments of the population who either can’t afford the full "unlimited" monthly plan or have learned that they don’t use their phones enough to "get their money’s worth" from that "unlimited" plan. I could also look back at my Netflix habits last year. I had the "one DVD at a time" plan plus unlimited streaming. I only used the streaming for the most part, but because the psychology of knowing I was paying for DVDs too was a factor, I would put DVDs on my queue as well even though I am not fond of physical media any more, and with my limited time at home it often felt like I was watching the DVD because I "had to" not because I wanted to. On the plus side, I did get to see a handful of newer movies that were not available on streaming, but I resented the feeling that I "needed" to order a DVD simply because I was paying for that particular service. When Netflix finally ordered a streaming-only option, I went for that immediately and dropped the physical disc plan like a hot potato.

It’s one thing to dedicate yourself to playing solo in an MMO. I’m often forced to do so simply because of my job and schedule. It’s another thing entirely to be the only person around in an MMO, which further highlights the fact that when you get down to the nuts and bolts, MMOs really are not very good games at all. It’s only the fact of the other players around you – whether you choose to interact with them directly, indirectly, or not at all – that makes MMOs "special." Tesh has written a few times that he would gladly buy World of Warcraft if it were a single-player offline game. I’ll bet he wouldn’t, though. It’s "easy" enough to try yourself – just go download one of the WoW server emulators, set up your own private server and go play WoW as the only person on the server. Then tell me how long you last at that. Continuing this train of thought, here’s another snippet from Pete:

I’ve been in a love-hate cycle with MMOs for a long time. Lately it feels like my “love” phases are getting shorter and shorter and I think that’s just a result of me acknowledging the reality of my situation vis a vis games that are focused on playing with a regular group of friends. It’s just not going to happen until I give up my night job.

In the meantime, titles like Star Trek Online offer a great experience, guilt free. There are tons of players of all levels and no subscriber’s-guilt for when I decide not to play.

As I mentioned above, my schedule prevents me from any "normal" scheduled activity. I can’t commit to raiding every Thursday because my schedule is completely different every week. I would love and adore to have a static group to play through Dungeons & Dragons Online with, but it isn’t fair of me to demand that every other player involved submit to my schedule, my whims, and none other. Believe me, I am more than self-centered enough to demand exactly that, but I know better than to do so and I know better than to think anyone would be gullible enough either. Pete at least has, in theory, the option of someday giving up the night job. His day job is the normal Monday – Friday, 9 – 5, leaving evenings and weekends open for hobbies and gaming with friends or guild-mates. I will never have that option, at least not until I retire as a curmudgeonly old fart kicking the kids off my lawn. There are a few reasons I have continued with Star Trek Online specifically. Despite instances, the game is hosted on a single shard so there are players active from all over the world 24/7, which has not been the case with The Old Republic. Addtionally, STO does not use the "Trinity" group makeup so when I use the PvE Queue to play an STF, it doesn’t matter if there are no "tanks" or "healers" around. You can just play the game, play with others, and unless things go horribly awry you should at least complete the STF with the bare minimum reward. If you happen to get placed into team with a lot of Tactical captains with uber dps, you’ll likely succeed at the optional objectives for additional reward. If you go into the STF with a pre-made team, there should be little question of your successes just like doing a pre-made guild-only raid in a Trinity MMO. So STOs design allows me to indulge in all the team-play I want without the Trinity stress and limitations, since again with my schedule there just aren’t going to be many friends or guild-mates around; I have no choice but to rely on PUGs. I don’t get all angry if we don’t complete the optional objectives. They’re "optional" for a reason, and life is too short to live it angry at Internet People on an Internet Game.

Now, to completely turn this on its head, I could look at Stargrace’s wonderful adventures in Wurm Online recently. It’s a small, niche, "indie" sandbox MMO. If I chose to involve myself in Wurm, and if I enjoyed the game and believed in what the development team was doing, I might not have as much of a problem supporting them – even with a subscription – because additional charitable psychological factors come into play, those of supporting the "underdog" or the "starving artist" that might make me feel as if I’m doing a good deed and legitimately helping that team as opposed to giving my money to the corporate machines of Activision or Electronic Arts.

Gorden over at We Fly Spitfires is still a fan of subscriptions, and offered up his idea of an adjustable subscription rate based on the number of active players. I’ll just go on record here and say that my own opinion is that is a horrible idea. In fact, banks giving out adjustable mortgages at subprime rates a few years ago were a major factor in the current housing and foreclosure crisis in the US as the economy collapsed and rates rose to the point homeowners could no longer afford them. Sure, you could cap the MMO subscription but why would you? Gamers are hobbyists and fans, and we like to think the people who make the games are as well. In most cases, that’s true, but they are no longer strictly hobbyists – it’s their job now. Companies are in the business of making money. I’ve said for years that I no longer believe the standard $15 per month subscription is profitable on its own. It was one thing in 1999 with Everquest, but can you name a single service that has not increased its rates in the past 13 years? The world economy is crap, inflation is much higher than in ’99, the cost of living is higher than in ’99, the cost of game – especially MMO! – development has skyrocketed since ’99 (waves at SWTOR) and you expect me to believe that every single game that slaps "MMO" on the label can survive at the same $15 per month that EQ got by on? If that were true, Sparkle Ponies would be standard in-game quest items…  Remember when WAR was still popular? Yes, that’s right, it was before launch. (Couldn’t resist the dig.) Mythic specifically spoke of the possibility of needing a higher fee than the $15 we’ve become accustomed to. Oh, the Internet Nerdrage was strong with that one. Mythic quickly backtracked and stuck with the $15 after the backlash they received over the very notion of paying a higher fee.

There is still a market for subscriptions, but I am more supportive of having multiple means of monetizing online games. Turbine’s Adam Mersky gave an interview about just that last month at Eurogamer. Pete canceled his Rift and SWTOR because the only option is subscribe or don’t play. I’m considering canceling my SWTOR for the same reason. It has been speculated that SWTOR just might be the final big-name AAA MMO that can even release as subscription-only. Every other MMO that follows will have other methods if they are smart. The Hybrid or F2P model fits my personal style and schedule, while the full subscription might fit others. We demand more "choices" of things to do in-game, and now the reality is that players are going to start demanding more choices of how we pay for or support these online games.

Because I am running out of time before I catch the van to start my day at work, I will end on a tangent: I am also extremely supportive of not limiting oneself to solely "MMOs" or solely to monetized online games, or to any other single genre. If you are truly a gamer, you will indulge and enjoy offline games, multiplayer games, singleplayer games, and the various sorts of massively multiplayer games. To many so-called "gamers" are really just "MMO gamers" and even then limit themselves to a very specific style of MMO. (Gosh that was extremely difficult, but I did it just for Pete LOL!) Try new things! Oh, and get outside every once in awhile, the MMO out there has way better graphics and interactivity!

We’re two weeks into Star Trek Online re-launching as Free-to-Play (F2P) and, honestly, it’s been wonderful and crazy. I’ve never seen so many instances of Earth Spacedock and other starbases, and each instance is near capacity. PvE Queues pop within seconds of signing up for one; in fact I typically begin by queuing for all three space STF’s under the Normal difficulty and usually one of the pops before I finish signing up for the third one. I wish I could say the same of PvP Queues, though, but I never see enough KDF queued to actually pop a PvP match.

But I have to give Cryptic – and Perfect World Entertainment – a major kudos for the success STO has seen. It started off with PWE funding Cryptic a few months ago when the acquisition was completed, so Cryptic hired more people for STO (and the other games too). It takes a few months to get trained and up to speed on the toolset but we’re about to see the results, first with this weekend’s brief 2nd Anniversary events, then next Saturday we’ll see the launch of the next Featured Episode.

PWE has also been advertising the game, something Atari never allowed for either Star Trek Online or Dungeons & Dragons Online. STO also reappeared on Steam last week, and yesterday was the featured F2P game on the Steam Store. Between the advertising, the events, and the general influx of going F2P anyway, it shows:

I’ve never even heard of a login queue for STO! But there it is, in all its glory! LOL! Gold players (monthly or lifetime subscribers) get bumped to the top of the queue, and so far no one is reporting anything longer than 10 seconds. My own queue times have been less than 5 seconds. Silver players (F2P non-subscribers) remain on the queue, which is showing well over 1,000 players as you can see here.

While I’m ecstatic for the success STO is seeing in the short-term, I’m not going to go all fanboi and call it an instant win. Players are fickle as a rule of thumb, and the general consensus is that F2P players are even moreso. This weekend with the Anniversary and next weekend with the first new Featured Episode story content will be STO’s "trial by fire" for F2P. Or I suppose, more appropriately, the week(end)s following the initial FE release. Either way, it sounds like good things will be coming in 2012 for STO players if this continues!

I was probably supposed to make these either in December or at least at the very beginning of this month, eh? Ever the contrarian, I’m doing it now. I was seriously considering doing this on one of my other blogs which are 100% non-gaming related, but ya know what? This is my blog, and my byline is "Me, My Virtual Self, and I." Only one of the three imply games, therefore the majority me wins!

• This year I would like to make a leap of faith and get laser eye surgery. I’m beyond sick to death of wearing eyeglasses. I have to jump through all sorts of hoops for the FAA, but that’s ok. It’s an investment in myself.
• One way or another, I will learn about finances and investment this year. I’ve been saying this for a number of years now. The time for talk is over. I have no investments other than my 401(k) which I have no clue what I’m doing with. Entirely too much money in the bank that is not "working for me" earning more. I may have to come up with a "game-like" methodology to make it fun and keep me coming back, but this must be done, no ifs, ands or buts.
• I want to educate myself about wine. Liquor, too, so that I have a more well-rounded repertoire of mixed drinks when I go out to a bar, but wine is more socially accepted and sophisticated. I’ve pretty much given up ever being able to tolerate a beer, and honestly that’s fine.
• I want to get back to being more fashionable. I’ve gone several years now of jeans and tee-shirts, and it’s all fine and good to dress down sometimes when I’m home after having to wear shirt and tie at work, but I take it to extreme sometimes. Here’s where the finances and investments come in, making that money earn more money so I can afford a closet of upscale clothes to balance my downscale ones. :p
• I absolutely need to be more balanced and well-rounded in life. Work has also become my extremely limited social life, and that is unacceptable. So, in the interest of changing myself for the better, the agenda will be:
• Keep better track of news and events, starting locally and working out to state, national and global. I’m terrible about staying up on any news, especially local, and then retaining that knowledge and learning from it.
• Explore my local area more. Since I’m not home much and dedicate too much time to my hobby (again, unbalanced) when I am, I’ve barely explored anything beyond the couple areas I typically shop, etc. There are plenty of cool things that come up on maps or Google or local social sites and newspapers and it’s a shame I take the area for granted and don’t enjoy it.
• Sports. I pretty much hate watching your typical American sport. But, my goal is to pick one sport, maybe one team for that sport, and make an attempt to give a crap. I do like watching snowboarding and certain skiing but those are X-Games, but we’ll see. The only guarantee I can make is that I will not be following America’s highest-paying work-release program the NBA. :p
• Saving the biggest for last: I’m ready to move my relationship to whatever the next level might entail. We’ve been extremely averse to the M-word, but we’ll see. Even if we never do the M, I’m not opposed to getting engaged. Or something. Living together isn’t going to happen unless I get a house or a bigger condo, though. 2011 saw both our schedules extremely busy and for awhile it seemed we were spinning our wheels only being able to see each other briefly maybe two or three times a month, meeting for dinner or whatever. We’ve gotten even closer recently, though, and not only do I not want to lose that by backsliding into last year’s behavior (whether that was by choice or not – hint: it wasn’t) but I want to keep the relationship moving forward, whatever that ends up meaning for us. Love ya, babe!

Consider this Tips For Noobs, From a Noob. Because despite being level 52 at the moment, I’m still very much a noob at the competitive side of the game. Racing against the AI is very misleading to your actual skill at driving in the game.

Practice! This is a Duh, Captain Obvious! thing to say, but it’s extremely important. Get accustomed to the way your favorite cars handle under your favorite tune setups, learn the track layouts and how they flow for your car. And it’s important to practice with your controller of choice, be it the gamepad, the Wireless Speed Wheel or one of the more expensive and hardcore steering wheel and pedal setups. Fine, smooth control makes a difference. I’m still working on slowing down. Seems silly, but I have a real problem getting a grip (pun intended) on how effective (or not) my brakes are, and I either overestimate and end up getting way too slow or more often I underestimate the brakes and go careening off the track and into last place. Practice, practice, practice!

Handling! This goes along with practicing in your cars, but while some cars may be faster on the few straight stretches of road, generally speak, races are won and lost in the turns in Forza. Get or create a tune setup for your car that handles well in the turns for your preferred driving style. There are a lot of drift fans out there, and it’s damn impressive to watch but for me, drifting is counterintuitive so I tend to go for grip tunes. The sports cars I had a chance to drive in my youth all hugged the road and could corner like a sonuvabitch, and that’s how I want my Forza cars to drive, not handle like they’re hovercraft.

Credits! If you’re into saving credits as much as possible, here’s a handful of tips. For the car collectors among you, Gamespot put together a list of recommended cars to get while leveling up, in terms of which one is most expensive if you were buying it. Choose the most expensive car as your reward, so you end up spending less credits buying the others. Also, related to the handling paragraph above, most of the default tunes for the cars seem to me rather loose and borderline drifty. There are tons of free tune setups in the auction house but loading them can be costly buying the upgrades they’re built for. Go ahead and drive the car (or any car from that manufacturer) a few times to get your Affinity to level 4 so that manufacturer upgrades are free. Some tunes will use custom upgrades, so you’ll still end up spending credits but much less than if your Affinity were under 4.

Cars! Rather than release new tracks as DLC, traditionally Turn 10 has only released new cars for both Forza 3 and Forza 4. (There are codes that come with the game to download a couple free custom tracks, I’m not counting those because from what I can tell – again, I’m still a noob – they’re only used situationally, not something you race online or in the campaign with. Could be mistaken on that, though.) While I enjoy getting new cars as much as the next guy, I personally don’t see the DLC worth my money because when I look at the list of cars, I would never want to drive a lot of them. I don’t like old beaters and stuff like that, totally not into that scene. However, each DLC pack does offer one of its cars as a free download! You still have to buy it in-game with credits, of course but you’re not spending real money in the form of Microsoft Points to acquire the cars. The free cars are:

• 2011 Volkswagen Scirocco R from the November Speed Pack
• 2011 Mazda RX-8 R3 from the December IGN Pack
• 2012 Honda Civic Si Coupe from the January Jalopnik Pack
• Hyundai Veloster Bonus Pack offers the 2013 Veloster Turbo and the 2011 Rhys Miller Racing Veloster, plus adds a Veloster to the Autovista part of the game – the first-ever DLC Autovista addition.

Etiquette! As hardcore as the Forza community can seem at times, generally speaking they also expect some level of professionalism in your driving; some etiquette. Problem for me is, I also enjoy “racing combat” games like Blur and Split/Second where smashing your opponents is part of the gameplay. I behave similarly racing the AI in single-player, I’ll go full-bore into a turn and slam into an AI car to slow me down rather than using my brakes. Online, however, that can get you a bad reputation. Not only will they downvote your Gamertag reputation, they will trash you on the community forums and post their replays online for everyone to see your poor behavior in action.

Today Cryptic’s Star Trek Online officially launched as Free-to-Play (F2P) for all customers! We’ve had a week or so of Early Access where previous subscribers could login and play but today is the real deal for everyone. The launch of F2P on the 17th of January was no coincidence, either, for those Trek-minded readers. 17-01? Hello? The Enterprise from the ‘60s television series was NCC-1701..

Also check out the new F2P Trailer which uses the in-game engine and features some of the new settings such as Starfleet Academy. Watch it on the official site or YouTube.

Already today I’ve seen over a dozen instances of Earth Spacedock (ESD) with each instance close to player capacity. ESD zone chat is crazy busy, and it’s usually busy anyway. Hopefully this is the mark of good things to come.

Now that F2P is upon us and the bulk of the conversion work is over, the design team can get back to giving us more Stuff To Do!

Acting Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo writes in the Season 5 Dev Diary #11 that the next few months are expected to be busy at last with new content. Exciting times!

• February brings the game’s Second Anniversary celebration.
• The Anniversary event also brings the new ships – Odyssey class cruiser (aka the Enterprise-F) for the Federation and a new Klingon flagship – into the game’s lore.
• The Season 5 Featured Episode (FE) story arc will begin in February and continue into March with five episodes. This FE will be centered around Deep Space 9 (DS9) and the Dominion.
• March will see the first expansion to the Duty Officer system as well as the next new set of game features.
• More content and events continuing into April and May.
• The Season 6 FE is currently in development and hopefully will arrive in June.

D’Angelo says it best towards the end:

All told, it’s my goal to have something new in the game nearly every week starting with the second anniversary event and running through the end of April.

I’ve been enjoying the content lately already. I still haven’t completed all the accolades for the Borg Red Alerts yet, so I occasionally jump into one if I’m not already on my way to something else. The new events are a lot of fun, especially the Mirror Universe invasions which are setup in an identical fashion to the Borg invasions but are less difficult and completed faster, therefore leaning themselves to less frustrating pickup groups.

I’ve also been doing a lot of the new space Special Task Force (STF) content, now that they are separate from the ground content, which seems more difficult to me. I’ve only done one ground STF so far. A lot of fun, but I didn’t really have much of a clue what was happening. That was also true the first time I did each space STF so I’ll learn as I go and get more confident what to do with my team.

Also the new Deferi Invasion is a lot of fun! It appears to be the largest ground map in STO and in some sense could be considered a “public quest” type affair. The event doesn’t happen very often compared to all the others, however. You beam down to the base camp and there are three NPCs. Each has two missions labeled Easy. Complete those and you unlock two Medium, then a Hard. At some point a Hard mission from a fourth NPC opens up but I haven’t had a chance to do that one yet. The event only last two hours and my group ran out of time finishing up the final Hard mission and just barely made it back to the base camp before the event ended. But considering the type of ground content STO has always had, it’s damned impressive to see a map that big and all those players running around shooting Borg drones, saving Deferi, uploading new software to anti-infantry turrets, etc.

I don’t normally play, or even like, driving games. But last year I picked up Bizarre Creations Blur and holy crap but that is an extremely polished and fun game! It’s much less of a "racing game" than a "driving combat" game, however, and I’ve heard more than one person say it’s like a Mario Kart on steroids.

Back in my Playstation 2 days I was big into the Gran Turismo series. It was either GT3 or GT4 (most likely 3 due to its release year and my memory of where I lived while playing it) but I bought a Logitech steering wheel to play the game. It was very cool, and steering improved dramatically as you might expect over using analog sticks, but it required being mounted on a table. My coffee table at the time (which I still have) was not designed in such a manner that allows things like steering wheel accessories to be mounted to it. So back to the store it went that night.

Fast forward to the present (well, last summer) and suddenly Microsoft announces they’re making a Wireless Speed Wheel that doesn’t even have a base! (At one time they made a "normal" wireless steering wheel but it’s out of production and often runs $600 or more because of that.) I’d pre-ordered the wheel from Amazon and was eagerly anticipating its Halloween release date. That is, until I watched video after video of early reviewers attempting – and failing miserably – to use the WSW with Blur. It just flat out did not work at all. My assumption, based off descriptions of the WSW’s inner workings, was simply that it emulated the analog sticks, but that is obviously not the case. Still, it didn’t take long for users to compile a list of WSW-compatible games.

I am not certain what prompted me to make an impulse purchase of Forza Motorsports 4, which is Microsoft’s answer to Sony’s Gran Turismo "driving sim" racing series, though I suspect Pete from Dragonchasers is rather high on the blame list. Oddly, however, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the game! Raptr has me clocked at 32 hours of Forza 4 time to date, and I am currently level 44 and just completed the Masters series.

I also went ahead and picked up Split/Second, which is similar to Blur in that it’s a "combat" racer but in a totally different way. Paul, also known as Oakstout has had that game for awhile now and often wishes he knew someone else to race with, so I nabbed it recently, though I haven’t put much time into it yet.

Finally, I also bought Test Drive Unlimited 2 recently. I had played the demo of the original but it didn’t really sink in. In theory though, I approved of the Massively Open Online Racing concept. TDU2 came out last year but was apparently inundated with severe issues, so I let it fade into memory until recently I had a few conversations while co-op gaming with Aaron from Anyway Games where he said he thought he would really enjoy some type of open sandboxy driving game. In the end, curiosity got the better of me.

Before I get to the games themselves, let me just state that the Wireless Speed Wheel has two limitations. First, it was for some unknown reason designed without bumper buttons, which nearly every Xbox 360 game in existence uses, including these racing games. Second, it does not have a microphone input so racing with friends can be problematic. If you happen to own one of the wireless earpieces, you’re good to go. With the normal 360 wired headset, you’re out of luck. I also own the Turtle Beach XP500 headset, which by the way is an absolute glorious piece of hardware, but due to the lack of mic input I can only hear my friends speak and cannot talk back.

So, in total I have Blur, Split/Second, Forza 4 and Test Drive Unlimited 4 as my selection of driving games, plus I own Hydrothunder Hurricane which is an excellent arcade boat racing game on XBLA. Out of those, Blur does not function at all with the Wireless Speed Wheel.and Hydrothunder relies so heavily on the bumper buttons that all you can do is drive the boat around the tracks in last place because you’re unable to hit the speed boost or any other special function, thereby rendering the WSW useless for that game.

So far, in my limited time playing Split/Second, it appears to work fine with the WSW. It does require more oversteering than I’m seeing in the other games, but not enough to make it unplayable at all. The cinematic and explosive "power plays" you use to alter the track or hinder your opponents are triggered with the normal buttons, so the lack of bumper buttons has so far not been a problem at all. The only oddity is that the menu screen is sensitive to the steering so rather than being d-pad only, if you tilt the wheel in any direction the cursor will rapidly move from tab to tab.

The WSW was allegedly designed to work specifically with Forza 4, so again, one has to boggle at the lack of bumper buttons. To be fair, you can play the driving game just fine and never need the bumper buttons at all. But when (when, not if) you want to go into the in-game Auction House to get cars, paint schemes, tuning setups, etc. you’ll have to shut off the WSW and grab a controller because the Auction House and a few other extraneous parts of the game rely on heavy bumper usage. For the main attraction, the driving game, the WSW is really smooth! It does make a few keybind changes without telling you. Driving with the controller, you use the B button to shift, X to downshift. A is the hand brake, and you can use the right analog stick to look behind you and to either side. When using the WSW though, the shifting gets switched to the d-pad which is located on the left "handle" of the wheel. Press up to shift, down to downshift. Makes perfect sense, but I’m right-handed and it’s proven very clumsy and uncomfortable to shift with my left thumb while braking and turning at the same time. I’m getting better at it, but it’s slow going and unintuitive. The A button is now a rear-view camera. Left and right views are gone, and I have no idea if there is a handbrake function at all for those emergency quick turns. Y is Rewind in both controller configurations, and while using the WSW pressing the Back button changes the camera which might be one of the bumpers when driving with a controller.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 is also damn near flawless for the driving portion of the game. Actually let me just state that TDU2 is by far the smoothest feeling driving game I’ve played with a controller! So popping over to the WSW is just heaven! However, the segments of the game where you’re outside your car are awkward and clumsy. With a controller, those segments control like a standard first-person shooter. You walk around the building like you would any shooter and you aim your huge reticle at the various NPCs or interactable objects. With the WSW though, you’re using a combination of steering to turn left or right, and the d-pad to move forward and back and strafe. The WSW only registers left-to-right motion so you can’t truly aim the reticule up or down. To compensate, you can use the trigger buttons to either raise or lower the reticule to interact with those objects not placed in the normal height area. Finally, there are a few option screens that require bumper usage, so a controller is required there.

I’ve heard the Wireless Speed Wheel also performs flawlessly with the previous Forza 3 and also Codemaster’s well-reviewed Dirt 3, which I’ve considered getting at some point. I was a little dismayed to see the notification on the official WSW page that EA’s new Need for Speed: the Run was also not designed for the wheel. I haven’t bothered to read how well it performs at all, since the game is not currently on my To Get list, but I’d considered giving it a try later this year.

For me and the games I do own so far, the WSW has been great to drive with. It’s annoying when I have to switch between the wheel and a controller when bumpers are needed, such as navigating the Forza 4 auction house as I mentioned earlier. Playing alone is perfect, but when I join the AGE guys on Forza 4 Game Nights, the lack of the mic input is a tremendous limitation. I do have a wireless earpiece but it was not charged up the last time I was home for Forza Night so I ended up driving with a controller. I did try using my XP500 to listen then plugging in a second controller to power the Bluetooth mic module but that didn’t work, the guys couldn’t hear me.

If you’re in the market for a wheel accessory for your 360, I will go ahead and recommend the Wireless Speed Wheel despite its two limitations, just decide for yourself how much they will impede your driving experience, if at all.

I was not planning on playing Star Wars: The Old Republic just yet because I have limited time available off work this month, and limited hard drive space. But curiosity won out (I seem to recall some old saying about curiosity and cats… but I’m human so that doesn’t apply, eh?) so I got the game (Digital Collector’s Edition) installed last week and have put several hours into it so far.

For those who do not follow me in Google+ I’ll just say this: I had all but ignored the hype for SWTOR. I knew I’d play it eventually, but was in no hurry (in fact, I wasn’t planning on installing it until February at the earliest) and since I knew it was Yet Another DikuMMO I also was not excited for the game in the least, other than the vague “it’s BioWare and it’s Star Wars” bit. Needless to say, I skipped every single media or blog post on The Old Republic. I did not apply for beta, and I did not read anything that anyone ever said during beta I. I’ve also ignored everything that everyone has said (I read enough to get vague impressions how people felt, good or bad, about the game but nothing more) since the game released. This leaves me able to maintain all the shiny newness with no story spoilers. That also means pretty much anything I say about the game will be “duh, old news” to you all. But I’m saying it anyway.

The few MMOs I am or have been playing recently, I’ve been mostly playing some support role. Arwellyn in Lord of the Rings Online is a Lore-master, which is a crowd-control and buff/debuff support class. The other Arwellyn in Star Trek Online is a Science Officer who is spec’d for full-on support in space, and crowd control buff/debuff on the ground. Katriva in Allods Online (just started playing, level is still in the single digits) is an Inquisitor, which is a healer class. Jerreth in Runes of Magic (which I haven’t played in a year or more) is a Priest/Knight who, as you’d suspect from the class names, is a healer. That just leaves Drayvin in Champions Online who, despite a shield ability which perhaps I’m just not very skilled at using yet, plays a big-time glass cannon DPS role. So if I must do a Trinity game again (and no one is really going out of their way to make non-Diku and non-Trinity games) I miss tanking. I last wrote about tanking as the Warden class in Lord of the Rings Online, but I have been on break from LOTRO for several months now with no real plans to return anytime soon. So for SWTOR I doubled up on the tanks: On the Alliance Republic side I have Krynna, a Trooper who will go down the Vanguard path for ranged tanking (at least I think that’s what they do?) and on the Horde Empire side I have D’ravendaar the Sith Warrior who choose the Juggernaut path for the more traditional “stand there and take a beating” style tank. With a lightsaber! Now that I’ve gotten those two strike-throughs out of the way, I will dispense with the “WoW Clone” thing. TOR, like countless others in addition to WoW, is a two-faction DikuMMO. Far as I’m concerned, the similarity to WoW in particular begins and ends right there.

I’ve spent several hours playing the game (each character is level 10 now), so from a very general perspective, I have a grip on how it plays, which is a very polished – though also very streamlined (that’s my impression anyway) – traditional DikuMMO. If you’ve played one before, you already know how to control SWTOR, interact with NPCs, manage your inventory, acquire and complete missions, and so forth. No surprises here, this is a completely by-the-numbers DikuMMO in that regard. That may sound like a negative point, but I don’t mean it as such. I am by no means giving up on my “Diku Must Die!” mantra, but I do enjoy the general gameplay if it’s done in way that appeals to me and if I am able to enjoy the character and role in both solo and group play. In TOR’s case, the combat is typically fast-paced which is a nice change of pace from the slower combat in fantasy MMOs. That said, I do have some gripes. I’m primarily playing the Sith Juggernaut and due to his Rage mechanic, I spend more time staring at the hotbar to see when the Global Cooldown is over so I can press the next key. This is known as "playing the UI, not the game" and this is not a good thing. He has one "reactive" skill, Retaliation, which becomes active for a successful melee or ranged defense, and I can press that immediately, otherwise for all other skills I’m waiting for the GCD, which is a shame because my character has all sorts of cool lightsaber fighting animations that I’m not getting to see very often. On that note, all the animations I’ve seen so far in the game have been excellent except the one almost every MMO does poorly: jumping. Generally speaking, MMO animators seem to only build animation frameset that looks just fine for characters standing still. In practice, players are rarely standing still so the animation looks completely wrong for someone who jumps while running. But since every MMO is guilty of that, I’ll let it slide.

Along with my Global Cooldown gripes,

Companions have long been a BioWare staple. In TOR, I would say they are a combination of Heroes from Guild Wars and the companions of BioWare’s own Dragon Age: Origins. I give the GW comparison solely because everyone of any class gets the same companions in TOR just like GW, they have the same personalities and so forth, so that (false) sense of "uniqueness" is lost. All Koss heroes have the same personality in GW and all Vette companions have the same personality in TOR. The same could be said of all character classes in all MMOs, however, as far as "uniqueness" goes – we all end up looking alike, cosmetic outfits notwithstanding. I liken companions to DA:O due to the "affection" meter where conversation options cause them to like you a little more or less, and the gift-giving mechanic.

I like that I can tell my companion to gather from nodes we pass in the wilderness. Nice touch. I can’t say I’m overly fond of crafting with them, though, only because that’s time I can’t "play" the game. Like "tank" classes in any MMO, I’m not doing much damage so I’ve come to rely on Vette’s damage while I’m soaking what I can. So sending Vette on crafting missions is best done – provided I remember to do so — while running around the city or hub areas where I don’t need her around. Once I’m in the wilderness where combat is around every turn, forget crafting, I need her there with me.

Just for comparison, Star Trek Online also has AI companions, your Bridge Officers who you assign duties on your ship and take with you on away missions. They are very customizable, come is all sorts of races, colors, shapes and sizes so from a purely roleplay perspective fit the "unique" angle perfectly. However, they do not come with preset personalities like GW and TOR provide. But STO doesn’t have the voiced-over cutscenes that TOR does, either, where having distinct personalities is a requirement. STO also recently added the Duty Officer system. While you never actually meet these junior officers, you send them on various assignments to gain points in all the various categories, earn money, gather R&D (crafting) materials, or even craft special items that are not available for the player to R&D himself. So I can have hordes of Duty Officers out gathering or crafting for me in the background, all the while I have my Bridge Officer crew available to play the game in both space and ground scenarios.

Graphically, TOR is very nice. I’m guessing the look is based on the stylized Clone Wars animated series, perhaps? I’ve never watched it, but TOR has a somewhat stylized cartoony look, though one I find pleasant and appealing. The environments are very nice, and while my Juggernaut is only level 15 and has seen limited content, I’ve been extremely pleasantly surprised at the way it handles phasing and instancing. So far (and admittedly that’s not saying much) it almost seems like it just "pops" you into an "instance" with your group without any loading screens. Seamless instancing? That could be coincidence with the content I’ve done, though. I’ll see what happens once I reach level cap and the "end game." The game performs extremely well both on my home desktop PC and my little Alienware M11x laptop. If there were ever doubts about the Hero Engine’s viability – and I read plenty of doubts! – SWTOR has put them to rest quite handily.

The audio is fantastic. From the iconic soundtrack to the sound effects to the voice acting, this is some top notch work. Which is why I just want to bang my head against the desk when, once again, a game studio didn’t hire an audio engineer (or didn’t think to code it anyway) to lower the background sounds during dialogue. I’ve slammed other games for doing this before, and I’m disappointed to be slamming BioWare for doing it here. I’d have to go back and check, but I’m fairly certain that this was addressed in both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. My Juggernaut just got a headgear, and it gives his voiced dialogue a slightly digitized effect. It’s the little things that sometimes make the biggest impressions. That being said, I’ve already ran into one occasion where the same actor who voiced my character also voiced the NPC he was talking to. Sure, there was that sense of disappointment, and even a minor foreboding of dread that it may become apparent there were fewer voice actors than I had thought, but it was only a single occasion out of all the dialogues I’ve had so far. It’s certainly no Oblivion where it seemed like four people voiced the entire game.

Exploration appears to be a mixed bag. It’s a Shiny New MMO, so every new planet and zone is fresh to my eyes and ears, and I am eager to explore them. Like a lot of other ground-based MMOs, you get a *poof* "You Discovered [Region Name]" message, which "unfogs" that region on your map, and a *poof* Discovery XP to accompany the message which . Where exploration falls a bit flat is the zone design. I can’t say "oh, I wonder what’s over beyond that ridge?" because not only can I not get beyond that ridge, chances are high I can’t get anywhere near that ridge either. The only ways of traversing the terrain are defined pathways, which are already displayed on your map. Also, from what people in my social networks are saying, there is a single linear leveling path. In other words, where LOTRO might give a choice of 3 zones per level bracket and the player is free to choose any or all of them, SWTOR appears to only have one zone per level bracket. I’m already hearing people who are sick of Balmorra and never want to go there again. That doesn’t bode well for player retention if the goal is to have people play through all 8 class stories, but people already have zones they don’t want to visit ever again.

The UI is nice enough, very iconic Star Wars. I love that the top of the chat box shows me how many people are in a zone with me, and how many friends or guild mates are online. That beats having to open separate UI panels to check, or issuing /who commands or whatever. I also love that I can minimize the chat box! Despite my love and desire for having people busy chatting in MMOs (more on that in a bit) there are times when I just don’t want my game experience diluted or my attention distracted with chat. It’s very rare that designers think to include a minimize function, instead forcing us to go through the clunky process of leaving then later rejoining each chat channel. Cryptic has a minimize feature for both their MMOs and I am extremely pleased that BioWare included it with TOR!

On a related note, I’ve noticed the chat on the Sanctum of the Exalted server is… quiet during my normal playtimes, which is typically weekday mornings and possibly early afternoons. That has historically been true of most MMOs and is simply a result of my job and its random schedule, so it’s not a complaint I can level specifically at SWTOR. In fact, LOTRO is the only server-based MMO in recent memory where my playtimes have not been an issue and there are players busy chatting and grouping at all times of the day. That’s yet another reason I get along so well in Cryptic’s MMOs and even Guild Wars because they all share the same "instanced zones but everyone is on the same server" design, and as such they are socially active games 24/7.

So far my only gripes with the UI are, first and foremost, that each frame is locked into position. There’s no moving things around, at least not that I’ve seen so far. I also haven’t gone on a lengthy search for that ability, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed it. The map confuses me quite often. Perhaps it’s something I will eventually grow accustomed to but between the near monochrome color scheme (again, iconic Star Wars) and all quest icons being identical, I quite often intend to head toward one blip and end up at a different one. For now, I’ve gotten into the habit of going into the mission log and manually untracking everything except the one mission I intend to play so that I only have one blip on the map. One thing I appreciate about Cryptic’s games is I can keep all my missions in the tracker UI frame but I can set one as the primary mission. It gets moved to the top of the tracker, all the text is bold and even the map and radar icons are very distinct. I also wish there was a setting to not display the guild Message of the Day unless it’s changed. That’s something I would just as soon see go into the chat box instead of opening a UI frame in my face that I’m just going to close immediately anyway. Finally, I wish repeatable missions such as Heroics had distinct icons so that I could tell it was a repeatable, and preferably if I could tell if I’d already done it once before initiating a dialogue sequence with the NPC.

SWTOR has mailboxes. Not that in and of themselves, mailboxes are a bad thing. But… this is Science Fantasy here. We have radio communications, and a holocommunicator which is featured prominently in several mission cinematics yet players have to go find a mailbox just to read a text mail message? Really? I can see having to travel to  a mailbox to retrieve items but just for a message? All this advanced technology, space travel, droids, cybernetics, holographic communications, laser blasters and lightsabers yet people can’t receive simple text messages? Ludicrous, I say!

SWTOR also has vendor trash. Not just a handful of vendor trash, no! Or should I say NOoOoOoOo? I think they may have outdone LOTRO for the sheer quantity of completely useless items that serve no purpose than to forcibly cut short your adventuring so that you return to a hub to sell the crap to make space in your backpack. I am not a fan of the inventory management mini-game. There can be that sense of progression as you level up, gain more funds to acquire more inventory space, and that is a happy feeling. But it has a dark side (cheap Star Wars puns come so easily) in that the goal or accomplishment we’re so happy (or at least temporarily relieved) about – increased inventory — was one borne of frustration.

In summary, I realize some of this comes off like I’m really down on the game. I’m not! I do like it quite a bit so far, and I plan to continue my subscription for the foreseeable near future. It’s not something I’ve been inclined to put hours and hours into per day, but honestly that’s fine by me. It’s a "theme park" game, but I knew that going in, and accepted it. It’s a Diku-based and Trinity-base game. Again, I knew and accepted those facts before I even considered getting the game. I feel most of the complaints I lodged above are minor quibbles in the larger scheme of things, and I’m not going to waste time complaining about what SWTOR is not when I could be enjoying what it is, instead. It’s a game. It’s just a game. Games are for enjoyment, for fun, for escapism, and for learning. Too many so-called "gamers" seem to have forgotten that somewhere.

So, here we are ending 2011. Seems that a lot (or maybe just a little) has changed over this past year within the circle of bloggers and gamers I interact with, but generally I’ve seen a degree of movement toward being more positive in their outlook on the games or type of games they play. Ironically, I just saw a couple of them on Twitter yesterday complaining how negative so many are getting, full of complaints, shouting, whining, you name it. Apparently I don’t follow those people, and that’s fine by me.

I’m sure everyone who still reads this has noticed my marked neglect of Pumping Irony this year. I just didn’t feel it, for the most part. I had a lot of fun writing about Champions Online‘s first Comic Series, though my glass cannon character got stuck (and still is) on the final fight. The draft post is still sitting there since July waiting for me to finish it, meanwhile Cryptic has the second Comic Series currently running. For the most part, I’ve damn near given up on MMOs, and what’s left of my readership are primarily MMO Gamers. Right now the exception is Star Trek Online but the catch is, MMO or not, I don’t play that like an MMO. Other than that, I’ve mostly gaming on the Xbox 360, which has become my preferred platform for everything except MMOs for now.

The Blog

[This is the "glass is half empty" paragraph] That leaves me in a predicament. I’m barely playing MMOs and when I do, I’m still not bothering to write MMO blog posts. I’m mostly active these days on Google+ where everyone who’s moved there too has been far more accepting of my non-MMO and non-gaming interests. I’m still deciding, but don’t be shocked if I just pull the plug on Pumping Irony. I know one of the top rules for writing is "write for yourself," but this is a blog, not literature. If I get the interaction I seek elsewhere – in this case, Google+ – then elsewhere gets my focus.

[Now for the "glass is half full" treatment] However, I’ve also made a pact with myself to write more in 2012. I have Pumping Irony, and I have a few other blogs that have nothing to do with gaming at all. I’ve neglected all of them, so one way or another I’ve promised myself to take time to write on at least one of them, and to finally pick up writing fiction again. So, in one form or another, I expect more writing out of  myself next year even if it’s in a location you gamer-only readers never see. I enjoy the creativity involved in putting words to paper pixel, the behind-the-scenes research, and hopefully learning new additions to my vocabulary.

What I’ve Been Doing

Other than the aforementioned Star Trek Online, as I said I’ve mostly been on the Xbox 360. But what fantastic games came out this year! The past few months (and upcoming few still) was an onslaught of AAA titles that are well-deserving of anyone’s hard-earned cash.

Role Playing:

Skyrim. Obviously the big recent RPG was Bethesda’s Skyrim. Finally, Bethesda made a game that gets it right for me. Oblivion was a chore for me to slog through a few months ago, but I did it mostly out of spite. With Skyrim, on the other hand, I finally "got" what people say about Bethesda’s games being mostly about the exploration. Oblivion was bland – nearly every environment looked identical and the same music always played. In Skyrim, everywhere I go has its own unique appearance and music. The dungeons are more varied, even though I can still spot individual 3D "tiles" (a 2D description, but you know what I mean) being re-used for dungeon construction. And something very important for me, finally a third-person view that is functional and playable! First-person melee is horrid and bland, and honestly I don’t see it improving, so putting me in a third-person camera where I can see moves that cannot be accomplished from first-person keeps the combat interesting for me.

Fallout 3. As much as I’m enjoying Skyrim, it has caused me to get an interest in finishing Fallout 3, which I last played in May, 2009. I was level 16 at the time, but I had botched a few achievements. Similar to how I played Oblivion, my goal with Fallout 3 is to finish the game (and DLC) with 100% achievements. So I deleted my previous game and started over. This time around, I still can’t say the exploration is all that exciting or interesting, but achievement-wise (which equates to quest-wise) I’ve already surpassed where I left off two years ago, but am also only level 13. I’m not spreading my points all over the place this time, mostly concentrating on small weapons and other skills that will specifically get me through the game. Which is fine, because that’s also how I prefer to play this character. Unless he gets really bad die rolls, he is far more deadly at level 13 than my former level 16 character was. And being able to quickly and violently kill the Wasteland baddies makes me smile and even laugh, which perhaps makes up for the game itself not being all that fun (from a pure "fun" perspective).

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. I started DKS a few months ago, and got to the point where I could become a dragon and took control of my own Battle Tower. Then other games took my attention, but I plan to get back to it as soon as possible. It’s a really good RPG with some great action moves and a lot of diversity in its freedom to create characters. I don’t often play ranged characters in RPGs (MMOs maybe but not in real RPGs) but I am in DKS and it’s a blast. Some of the higher-tier abilities are just awesome to behold, and I’ve enjoyed the story so far.

Shooters:

Battlefield 3. This is my new go-to shooter. I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with it, especially some of the maps like Operation Metro that seem like more of a nod towards the Call of Duty style of gameplay, but when I’m playing on a _real_ Battlefield map, I get that _real_ Battlefield feel again.

Gears of War 3. I’ve always like the campaigns in the Gears of War series but I’ve never been a fan of the multiplayer, which I tend to describe as "shoulder rolling with shotguns." I’m just not that good at it, and because it is built around small teams (5v5) that makes me more of a liability to my team, so in Gears 1 and 2 I mostly chose to just avoid multiplayer altogether. Gears 3 is no exception – I’m still avoiding the competitive multiplayer – but with four-player co-op, Horde 2.0 and the new Beast game modes, there is so much variety with Gears of War 3 that I’ll probably give this one my vote for best value overall.

Modern Warfare 3. I own it. I finished the campaign, which was fun (for me, the best part of any Call of Duty) and finished up the series’ storyline. Multiplayer is horrible, though. As much as Black Ops multiplayer pissed me off last year, I gradually learned to at least tolerate it and would often play it even without friends. MW3 has caused me to violently rage-quit almost every single match, though. COD games have always been hyper-fast and hyper-twitchy, but MW3 seems to have finally crossed some invisible line in the sand that pushes it over the edge for me. It’s just not fun, and I do not enjoy dying, watching the killcam and seeing the guy didn’t even hit me, respawning and dying again before I can count to 5. I also don’t enjoy when I kill someone when I never hit him either. It’s sad when the COD franchise is a license to print money yet the multiplayer experience actually degrades with each iteration. In a related note, I did finally start the Black Ops campaign recently, and I’m about halfway through it. Since I only played multiplayer this past year, I had no idea whatsoever the game was set in the 1960s. Strange, but it seems to have put a slight damper on whatever semblance of positivity I felt towards the game.

Other:

Saints Row the Third. Over the top craziness in an open world. Where the GTA series went all serious on us, the SR series relishes in its zaniness. I’m not finished with the campaign yet, but think I’m getting close. The co-op is a lot of fun, though it’s a shame it still only accommodates two players. Like Gears of War 3, this one has been enough fun that I went ahead and bought the Season Pass which discounts all upcoming mission DLC.

Forza Motorsports 4. I’m not usually into racing games, especially the more sim-like ones that lock me onto the track, but Forza 4 has been quite enjoyable on a casual basis. I also picked up Test Drive Unlimited 2 which is a sorta-kinda MMO (they refer to it as a MOOR – Massively Open Online Racing) game.

Also plenty of other 360 and XBLA games have been in my roster, with more to come. I’ll try to do a better job of writing about them as we enter the new year!

Star Trek Online‘s new Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo, has been busy the past couple weeks writing blog posts detailing the game’s Path to F2P.

The two most recent posts (as of this writing) are each reflective of the new economy that Cryptic is in the process of developing and evolving on the Tribble test server so that F2P will go live with a viable new economy.

First, Blog #10 detailed the new system of starship acquisition. New ships will be added to the game, along with shifting how ships will be acquired and what they will cost. The table at the bottom of the article shows which ships will be available in-game for either the new Dilithium currency or some other means, such as the free tokens for Gold players, and which ships will be in the C-Store. One very important thing to note is that all Vice Admiral (Tier 6) starships will be C-Store exclusive! To me, this seems a drastic departure from what we normally see in subscription-to-F2P conversions, where players – even Gold players! – have no choice but to buy their "end-game" ship. We’re still only a couple weeks into beta testing, and I expect Gold players to go ballistic and throw conniption fits over this.

As for my own take on how it may effect my own game and experience, I’m a bit torn. I do still believe that as a Gold (I’m a Lifetime Subscriber) player, basic "equipment" should remain available in-game. The C-Store has always been around, and I haven’t minded it. I haven’t gotten around to buying any starships yet, because the only ship I ever wanted since starting the game was the Intrepid class science ship. If it had been C-Store exclusive, I would have bought it. That’s just how "right" that ship feels for everything I wanted in my science officer character. Vice Admirals have the most starship choices available, most of which are in the C-Store, and that’s fine, but I do think at least one basic model should be available in-game for normal means for the Gold players.

Blog #11 goes into how Cryptic ideally wants the normal Energy Credit economy to work as the most common currency players will be spending and needing to acquire. Then comes the new Dilithium currency, which is primarily intended for only high-end gear (like players on Holodeck currently barter for Emblems) and non-C-Store starships. D’Angelo says he does want that gear to be harder to acquire than it is now, since it’s most appealing to the harder-core player, and those players will "work" to get it, giving it more "worth" to the player.

New to equation (at least to me, I don’t frequent the forums) is the planned Currency Exchange where players can sell Dilithium to other players for C-Points! Cryptic will not be selling Dilithium in the C-Store, so the only Dilithium available on the economy market will be that which other players are willing to go out and get, then put up for sale. Prices are expected to be reflective of the amount currently on the market. On the one hand, I think this is an intriguing RMT-ish addition to the game. Players who absolutely refuse to buy C-Points for a Vice Admiral starship could grind Dilithium and sell it for the C-Points. On the other hand, I routinely witness just how much the hardcore STO players are willing to grind. When the Borg Incursions went live last month, the hardcore guys went… hardcore… over completing all the related accolades, including the final one for destroying 2,000 Borg ships, and finished them all in about two weeks. When the F2P beta went live on Tribble, several hardcore types got to Vice Admiral rank in under 48 hours. The KDF faction just went live last week, and those players did the same thing getting level capped KDF characters in record time. Now they’ll have a way to make all that time grinding have some value in that they can earn C-Points from other players and turn around and buy stuff from the C-Store! The primary bottlenecks will be two-fold. First, how many ways will there eventually be to earn Dilithium in-game? In the recent (today’s patch isn’t finished downloading yet) build, there were a few new ways to earn Refined Dilithium (the real currency used to buy starships and gear) and a few ways that awarded Dilithium Ore, which the player has to refine (just a button click) and is capped at refining 8000 per day. So we’ll see how this ends up working out. Either way, it should be interesting.