Pumping Irony

Runes of Magic begins the 10-week process of updating to Chapter III: The Elder Kingdoms today. The full patch notes are up in the forums and are quite lengthy so I won’t bother re-quoting them here like I usually do. I would normally highlight the ones of interest to me but I’m so new to the game I wouldn’t know which ones are special to me and my character’s classes yet anyway; the Priest/Knight Elite skill changes are high level skills that I don’t have yet.

The beginning of the patch notes say that Phase 1 will be a 3-step process. I’m guessing that means 3 separate patches, the first one being today? In any event, the 3.0.0 patch is code-named The King’s Call.

Looks good, and I hope they’ve gotten the Guild Siege stuff working now. It’s been in public beta on the live servers for awhile now but everyone complains how unstable and buggy it is. I don’t think RoM has a test server, which is why they’ve been beta-testing sieges on the live servers.

Patch Notes 3.0.0 – The King’s Call – Runes of Magic US Forums

While trying to get my Knight class to 25 this morning, messages started scrolling that the servers would be shutting down in 30 minutes, then counting down every 5 minutes.

At first everyone was excited, hoping that it meant Phase 1 of the Chapter III expansion was coming today as Frogster stated it would be arriving this week.

Nope! In a bit of a surprise attack against gold spammers, Frogster is using today’s patch to remove the ability to trade Diamonds for Gold in the Auction House.

Dear Runes of Magic Community,

We will be immediately undertaking server maintenance from 10am to 11am PST.

In this maintenance we will be temporarily removing from the Auction House the ability to trade gold for diamonds, and vice versa.  Please note: This will not affect items already being auctioned.

We are taking this action in light of the dramatic increase in the number of gold sellers recently. This is a necessary step to protect you, our true community of players.

As soon as we’re certain that the trading of diamonds and gold between players can safely resume we’ll lift the temporary block.

In the meantime, please be aware that those who attempt to trade contrary to our regulations may have their accounts temporarily banned. The illegal sale of gold through third parties may lead to users being permanently banned from their accounts and from the game as a whole.

Thank you for your consideration,

Your Runes of Magic Team

I’ve noticed the spam increasing, especially the past week. Spammers are even spamming in the World chat channel — some on Artemis have even apologized for spamming World chat! Huh? — which requires use of a Megaphone — an item in the Diamond shop. (There are also Megaphones in the Phirius Token shop but these spammers are level 1 so could not have run enough daily quests to get the Megaphones.) This means the spammers must be spending money on the game in order to spam. Isn’t this the classic argument players use about gold spammers? That developers won’t do anything because the spammers have to have a subscription and are therefore giving the developers money? (Assuming trial accounts have been spam-gimped.) Prices for Diamonds in the Auction House have skyrocketed over the past week, even with the +100% Diamond sale this past weekend. Apparently the spamming must be working; someone out there must be buying these Diamonds — and likely having their credit card info stolen which is then used to pay for the Diamonds the spammers are using to buy Megaphones…  Yeah, real smart, people. Then again, apparently email spam still works too, or no one would still be spamming email.

People are retards.

Runes of Magic has three separate sections of the Item Shop:

1. Diamond Shop. Diamonds are purchased with money then spent in the shop. This is where the Good Stuff is sold, obviously.
2. Ruby Shop. Rubies are earned with any purchase in the shop from either the Diamond or Phirius Token shops.
3. Phirius Token Shop. Good stuff in here and only costs you time!

The Phirius Token shop is amazingly useful and is another way to reward players for simply playing the game rather than focusing on Diamond purchases only.

Each area of the game has multiple Daily Quests gained from either individual NPC’s or from a Bulletin Board in that zone’s town or city. Each character can complete 10 daily quests per day (for free), and each quest awards 10 Phirius Tokens for a total of 100 Phirius Tokens per day. The Diamond Shop sells a Daily Quest Token for 49 Diamonds that will reset your dailies so you can run 10 more each, but we’re not using that for this article.

Troy (formerly of the Voyages of Vanguard podcast) started playing RoM recently and I told him about daily quests and using the Phirius Token Shop and he was pleasantly surprised at learning about it.

My suggestions for initial usage of Phirius Tokens are buying a few items for your personal house. Houses in RoM are obtained free simply by speaking to a House Maid NPC in any town. Once you apply for a house, the House Maid lets you in and gives you a storage chest with 20 inventory spaces. Place the chest then go out and do those dailies!

Here is the Housing section of the Phirius Token Shop. My first suggestion is first buying the Long Beech Table for 400 tokens — 4 days worth of dailies. The table awards +15 TP (Talent Point) bonus. Next, get the Elegant Wooden Engraved Bed for 600 tokens — another 6 days of dailies — which provides a +10 XP bonus. TP/XP bonuses accrue while logged out in your house and function similar to Rest XP which we’re accustomed to in most modern subscription MMO’s. There are threads on the RoM forums detailing the math behind how the bonuses work, and they appear to be linked into your XP required for the next level, so as you level these bonuses increase exponentially.

From here, we can continue buying more TP/XP bonus furniture or my personal suggestion is to now start saving up for the Classical Wooden Chest which goes for 2580 tokens. Yep, it’ll take 26 days of dailies for that baby, but it’s another 15 inventory slots for spending your time rather than your dime. I am finding storage space to be a bit limited so any chance to get more (for free) and I’ll jump on it. Additional backpack and bank space is rented with Diamond purchases, as does increasing the furniture slots in your house from the basic 10 it starts with.

Another potentially useful aspect of the Phirius Token Shop is the Mounts section. There are two 30-day mounts in the token shop, the Brown Horse in a bag being the most useful at 1400 tokens. 14 days per month of daily quests spent on a mount that lasts 30 days probably isn’t a bad way to go while leveling, especially if you’re able to play every day to make the rest of the month worthwhile saving tokens for other things if you don’t want to spend Diamonds on a permanent (or temporary) mount.

From then, there are several convenience items such as Transport Runes or TP/XP potions and charms, etc. that can be purchased with tokens rather than Diamonds. At high levels when you begin using the Arcane Transmutor to enhance your gear, 300 tokens will get you another 10 charges. (I hear a lot of players simply make an alt, level it to 10 to get the free 10 charges, use them to transmute gear then delete the alt which lets them save their tokens for other things.)

Shortly after completing the Silverspring’s Hope set, as I mentioned last week in my first Runes of Magic post, I acquired the first piece of the next set, Top Secret Records. Over the past week I’ve leveled enough to start wearing them, but the final piece required killing the boss in Blood Gallery, a sub-instance inside the Forgotten Abbey instance.

Outside the entrance to Forgotten Abbey, here we see Jerreth on his flying Phantom Ferret mount, which I bought for him last week during the holiday sale. A little goofy but since it’s a flying mount I can ride it over bodies of water.

I’ve had Jerreth in FA three times now, counting this one, completing a series of quests. This run we completed all of FA to kill the Demon Witch Ancalon for my final FA quest, went outside for a quick bank/vendor trip, then back inside to enter Blood Gallery where we had to kill Count Hibara.

Once the real Count Hibara was down — the first quest has you fight a Count Hibara but you discover it was a fake — we had to fight all the way back out of BG into the FA foyer to turn in the final quest for the Bloody Earl jacket to complete Jerreth’s set!

From what I’ve been told, this set will carry Jerreth until he’s into his 30′s. I haven’t learned what the next set is; for now I’m looking forward to reaching level 25 so he can equip the new staff he got yesterday, then reaching level 25 on the Knight class so he can get the 25/25 Priest/Knight elite skill: Last Prayer.

I’ve decided to — for now — include Runes of Magic as one of my MMO staples. Out of the “true” F2P market it’s probably the best of the bunch. Perhaps I’m picking nits or splitting hairs, but I cannot bring myself to think of DDO’s freemium model to be quite the same thing as “F2P.” It also allows me to get into an established game rather than being an F2P Tourist (there, I just made a new sub-phrase) and jumping on the disastrous bandwagon of dreck like Allods Online. Yes, I tried Allods. It was uninstalled before I ever got a chance to look at the overpriced Item Shop.

So, I have a single character on the Artemis server: Jerreth, a Priest/Knight. I’ve gotten the Priest class up to level 19 and have been alternating between questing in the Sascilia Steppes (a new zone created presumably for leveling secondary classes) and saving up Daily Quests completed on the Priest then turning them in as the Knight so that class gets the XP/TP from them. It’s worked out well enough so far; the Knight is only two levels behind the Priest. I chose Knight as the secondary class because the Elite skills it provides when combined with the Priest make it the best primary healer (healbot) in the game. In all the F2P games I’ve installed and goofed around with, I’ve never leveled much and have never grouped with anyone so I wanted an in-demand class for grouping so I could get a chance to see what things are like grouping in F2P Land.

I knew I got my first Elite skill at 15/15 so that was a priority. I did not know the costs involved, however, but it wasn’t bad. I had to go out and gather enough resources to craft the second-tier materials out of them along with a hefty gold price. But a few levels later, Jerreth already has 100,000 gold again, so apparently gold isn’t much of an issue yet.

During the early leveling around Logar, I concentrated on earning the Glory of Logar armor set. I got the (rather nice looking) robe and trousers but the quest is currently bugged for the shoes. Oh well. I continued leveling and yesterday Jerreth acquired the final piece for the Silverspring’s Hope set. It’s a bit “foofoo” and kinda reminds me of the male Mesmer starter armor in Guild Wars for some reason. But it’s cool in an odd sort of way.

Jerreth is working his way up into Tagena now, in the northern section of Silverspring where the mobs are in the low 20′s, and has already received the first quest for the next cloth armor set: Top-Secret Records which involves some normal quests and a few in the first instance, Forgotten Abbey, which Jerreth will have to gain a few more levels to be a viable group member to enter.

Now, since I am choosing to really play a F2P, ground rules must be set. Unlike most MMO players I harbor no illusions that Frogster needs to make money. I am an adult with a decent salary and I have no problems whatsoever tossing some money at developers if I am enjoying their game. However, since I am not forced to pay monthly, I will only pay when I actually feel I may need or want to. In the meantime it will be an interesting experiment to see how far I can get and what I can accomplish if I decide to spend time rather than money. From what I’ve seen of the Item Shop, RoM does not outright sell gear and other unbalancing stuff. I am getting a bit tired of running everywhere so I will likely buy myself a mount soon, it’s just a matter of deciding which one. Otherwise, at this early stage of the game I have not heard of anything I would “need” to pay for. Should I decide to continue playing all the way to end-game, I’ve never heard of a single F2P where money did not come into play heavily at that point. So, if (and this is a huge “if” since I will be doing end-game in both AoC and LOTRO) I get to that point, and if I’m enjoying the end-gameplay enough to continue with it, a financial budget must be set. Normally I would suggest sticking to no more than what a subscription would cost, $15/month, but RoM doesn’t have a $15 package of Diamonds to make that easy. So I’ll think long-term and go for $180/year, which is what a subscription MMO costs annually.

Frogster ran a sale last week for +100% Diamonds, so I went ahead and bought the $22 pack of 500 Diamonds, which gave me 1000 Diamonds. So I’ve already given Frogster a couple bucks for my enjoyment of the game so far, I simply haven’t used those Diamonds to purchase something from the Item Shop yet. Remember how Darren went ballistic over the $10 horses? Those were the cheap 199 Diamond mounts. The cool mounts cost 395 Diamonds. Since I have 1000 sitting around, guess what I’ll be getting?

I did use the Phirius Token shop, however. Daily Quests in RoM awards 100 Phirius Tokens per quest, along with some XP and TP, and you can do 10 Dailies per day. Dailies reset at 10am Eastern, though there is an item in the Diamond Shop that will reset them whenever you want. I’ll be skipping that. In the Phirius Token Shop there are various furnishing for your house, some of which award either an XP or a TP bonus. I saved up enough for a plant that gives a TP bonus and am now working towards a chest that gives XP. The way these bonuses work is identical to “Rest XP” we see in most modern subscription MMO’s. If I logout Jerreth in his house, he begins to earn whichever bonuses the furniture provides and the next time he is out earning XP/TP, those bonuses will apply until he runs out, then he’ll simply earn the normal amount of each.

There are three Item Shops in RoM: the Diamond Shop (Diamonds are the “points” purchased for real money), the Phirius Token Shop which again is strictly earned by doing Dailies and saving them, so it’s more a time-based currency, then there is the Ruby Shop. Any time you make a purchase in either the Diamond or Phirius Shop you earn Rubies which can then be spent on special items in the Ruby Shop. In addition, Diamonds are allowed to be sold for gold, etc. so while it’s not quite on par with EVE and its Plex currency, it’s entirely possible for players to earn enough in-game gold to buy Diamonds on the auction house to make purchases in the Diamond Shop. Sounds like a very cool idea and seems like maybe it gives pretty much everyone the chance to “succeed” in RoM by spending both money and time as they see fit rather than requiring both.

Sorry, still no screenshots. Too busy installing and playing all these games to remember to take screenshots then upload them anywhere. I’ll do it next time! (That’s probably what I said last time, right?)

In the MMO Department, I’ve installed the obvious: LOTRO because I’m a Lifetime member and it’s “home” then Age of Conan because I kept my subscription active the past few months and *gasp* the game has come a long way since beta; it’s quite a blast now, and a shame more bloggers aren’t coming back to it.

I took Longasc’s advice and turned DX10 back on in LOTRO but disabled the dynamic shadows. Honestly, I can’t tell it from DX9 like that, but I’m sure there must be some differences somewhere that I’m missing.

Otherwise, despite being either on break or having a broken PC for the majority of last year, LOTRO was almost like I’d never left. I’m still busy grinding daily quests in Lothlorien for reputation so I can get into Caras Galadhon. I also never got to kindred with the Iron Miners so I’ll have to go back and work on that too so I can get the Friend of Nature combat pet. Then of course, I need the last few pieces of Radiance gear to complete the set then continue to the new set for Mirkwood which everyone is saying has crappy stats but the Radiance is required. So other than learning Skirmishes and grinding up my little Soldier — how the hell do I change classes or make it female? All I can do so far is trait him for Warrior (dps) or Protector (tank) — and the fact I’m getting XP again, it’s almost like nothing’s changed for me since I’m essentially still playing the early Moria game where I left off.

Age of Conan, as I mentioned, is a lot of fun! I’ve been plugging along quite nicely, just putting an hour or two per day in running quests. The XP is a bit over the top, though. My Bear Shaman reached level 28 and is already 80% to 29 just from turning in quests and only a few combat encounters. Maybe I’m just spoiled from having a mount in LOTRO but I’m really resenting being locked out of my mounts (I have two War Mammoths) until level 40. I’m assuming (hoping?) that the Bear Shaman will be a desired class for grouping and raiding, though. My primary goal in AoC is participating in end-game, so I want a class that I enjoy playing and is also in demand and can get groups easily. Really looking forward to the expansion!

Guild Wars is installed and up-to-date but I did not install using the -image switch so all I really have is the login screen. I’ll have to fully load each and every zone one by one once I decide to actually jump in and play the game, unless the -image switch also works after the fact?

I was planning on installing DDO but the little installer program doesn’t seem interested in running at all in Win7, even under compatibility settings. I’ll come back to that one, it’s rather low on the priority list, although I’m extremely curious to see how it’s changed since the business model shift.

In F2P Land, I installed that Allods Online game, and not sure I’ll be sticking with it. I do like that they totally ripped off Mythic’s font from Warhammer, though. That font was probably my favorite part of WAR’s UI. Otherwise, yeah, the art style in Allods is very WoW-ish so far. Due to that, framerate is excellent although the engine seems to falter a bit when it comes to loading in players.

I also installed Runes of Magic and spent a few hours today trying to remember how to play my character and how some of that game works. Despite being quite “standard” there’s something I rather like about Runes of Magic. I kinda wouldn’t mind having a regular F2P title as a secondary MMO; something that I like enough to be willing to support the developers by actually spending a little money here and there. It’s been well over a year since I last played, and my character is only level 11 now, but I never understood why Darren raised such a stink over the price of mounts. Compared to other F2P mount prices, RoM’s are right about in the middle; I’ve seen cheaper but I’ve also seen much more expensive in other games. I figure if he liked the game that much (and he seemed to until he saw the price of the mounts and then changed his opinion of the entire game) what’s $10 or whatever towards supporting a game you like that you never had to pay a dime for the box or a subscription? Darren has never struck me as an end-game kinda guy but the prices to play end-game at the same time he was complaining about the horse was the real crime. I think it was something like twice the cost of a full year in a subscription MMO in order to play RoM’s end-game. And he was complaining about a horse? That’s missing the forest for the trees, right there.

Finally, I saw Steam had Champions Online which is now setup as a permanent trial. So I logged into my Cryptic account and got a trial key and put a few minutes into it last night. Graphics are nice and I love the art style but the controls were a bit wonky and unresponsive. I was into comics and superheroes in high school, and I love the superhero movies of today, but I just don’t know that I’m into superhero games, MMO or otherwise. I bought City of Heroes at launch, and I think my character is perhaps level 9? Maybe slightly higher. I sub for a month every couple years, and CoH never manages to hold my interest the full month and after a few minutes in Champions I can tell it would probably be a similar story. But I’ll keep it installed since it’s a never-ending trial so I can pop in at my leisure.

In non-MMO territory, I started things off with my favorite PC shooter, Battlefield 2142. Installed it, patched it to 1.40 then installed the expansion then patched to 1.50. It runs fine but I keep getting PunkBuster errors and kicked off every server I’ve tried playing on. I have the manual PunkBuster updater but it’s not helping. So, no luck with shooters so far. It crossed my mind to pick up Bad Company 2 for PC but I only know two people who have it on PC. I run a Friends of Friends list on XBL that currently has 70 members of the 21+ adult gaming group I’m a member of so it’s not hard to do the math and figure out where I’d get the most bang for my buck. Bad Company 2 is arguably the best shooter I’ve ever played, but playing with the general public rather than squadding up with friends gives a much weaker experience and I’d most likely be stuck with the public if I got it on PC. Plus I get achievements on 360!

Speaking of that, Oakstout talked me into buying Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 yesterday. I know the hardcore PC-only guys bitch about the whole Games for Windows LIVE thing but I love it! Not only can I chat (both text and voice) with my friends on XBL but I get achievements too! So far the game is pretty fun. It’s more of an RTT than an RTS, which is more my style, and the bosses are much more active and scripted, similar to a console game boss or an MMO raid boss, which makes for an interesting experience. Apparently DoW2 has a co-op mode too, so Oakstout is looking forward to getting me into a match. JayeDub saw me playing yesterday and said the same thing, and I think both Hudson and SmakenDahead have the game so maybe Oak can get a whole blogger or Casualties of War group for DoW2.

I also installed World in Conflict, another RTT. I bought it launch day because a buddy and I were interested then we ended up only able to play once. That was, what, two years ago? Turns out Oakstout and Aaron both have WiC too, and have expressed an interest in making some rounds there.

Finally, Aaron has spent the past year or so trying to convince me to get Battle for Middle Earth 2, so I bit the bullet and ordered that yesterday as well. He says it has an excellent co-op campaign and I’ve heard good things about the game overall, despite being 3 years old or whatever now.

So, now I’ll be back to bouncing back and forth between the PC and 360 again; between MMO’s and real games again. The challenge I face is whether I can flit from game to game as much as Stargrace or not! Watching her status on Raptr can be entertaining all on its own and makes me wonder if I’m not the only blogger out there with an extremely short attention span!

Before I sign off, non-gaming question: Rather than making backups of important files, settings, and media I bought a new hard drive for this PC. I have the other hard drive installed as secondary, and eventually after I’m satisfied I’ve pulled all the files I need off of it, I’m considering formatting that drive and making the entire drive into the My Documents partition. I could do that easily under XP but does Win7 support that type of thing? And would you recommend doing it or should I leave well enough alone?

Horrible pun. HORRIBLE! But it’s staying anyway.

gPotato has their new F2P MMORPG, Allods Online, entering Phase 2 of Closed Beta. Graphically, it looks appealing enough though I’m wary of gPotato’s item shops from past experience but I’m willing to install the full game just to check it out once it’s launched.

Still, is it completely wrong that I have an automatic bias against Allods simply because of two bloggers?

Heartless_ has been raving about Allods but I fear I haven’t quite gotten over his stint as a pre-launch WAR fanboy. I know I should give him the benefit of the doubt “live and learn” thing, but the WAR fanboy effect is still there in the back of my mind.

Second, Keen of Keen and Graev’s has also been raving about Allods. It’s difficult to give Keen the benefit of the doubt because I have yet to ever read that he has “lived and learned.” Keen is notorious for “this next game that isn’t out [AoC/WAR/Darkfall/Mortal Online/whatever] will be the most awesome MMO EVAR!!!” yet within a month he’s canceled, writing how much the game sucks then immediately jumping onto the fanboy bandwagon of whatever other new shiny MMO looms on the horizon.

As I said, I’ll likely check out the final game but it’s nothing I’d stick with. It’s just another F2P DIKU-based MMORPG with two factions, the same ol’ leveling and questing and classes as every other DIKU-based MMORPG. Runes of Magic has possibly the least offensive of the Asian-style item shops, while DDO possibly has the most appealing overall for us Western players. I’m not entirely trusting of gPotato’s mentality of item shops but we’ll see what, if anything, they’ve learned in the past year or two of a handful of AAA-quality F2P titles seeing a measure of success outside the Asian market.

Welcome to World of Holic! I smile with a roll of my eyes as I see that greeting every time I login to Holic. Despite that single line of text making us think of the irreverent World of Warcraft, Holic shares nothing with the current behemoth of the MMORPG sphere. When you get right down to it, Holic is your typical Korean F2P title which is highly focused on grinding, similar to Silk Road, but it does have a few neat features. Mainly I think for me it’s been not only the whimsical nature of the game but also the community that has kept me playing. I’ve encountered no bots yet, and only two spammers who were reported quickly to the GM. Even though the game with its anime-inspired cartoon graphics and pastel colors will appeal to kids, a fair amount of adults also play. The chat is always busy and in general people are helpful with answering questions, or responding to revive requests, and grouping up for grinding or dungeons. Also despite playing the “Holic USA” version of the game, I regularly encounter conversations in Spanish, and even a few in French, Deutsch, Portuguese and Filipino so far. Most non-US players can easily switch to English. The reverse cannot be said of US players, myself included, unfortunately.

In my Guidelines post I mentioned I would play a healer class (if available) in the F2P games to hopefully get some idea how popular grouping in the game is, so without further ado, here’s Twikki (yeah, just had to go with a cutesy name) my male Koshare Priest at the Holic login screen.

Read the rest of this entry »

While working on my first Adventures in F2P article, I’m also trying to figure out a format to use. Your suggestions are appreciated. But I’m working on at least some guidelines to stick with over both which games I choose to write about and how I write the articles.

First, I pretty much go off the assumption that they all cater to the Asian penchant for grinding so that much is a given and I fully expect it with every F2P I try. They all have Item Shops, and I do plan on examining and writing about what those shops contain and what the most popular items players buy are, if I manage to get that information. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that all item shops are not equal, so knowing what they contain and what players buy is interesting, at least to me.

Second, I will only write about those F2P titles which held some appeal, in whatever manner. I do demand a certain level of “polish” (sorry Darren) in my games which F2P games don’t often meet. Part of what I’ll consider “polish” also includes native support for modern wide screen resolutions. If I can’t select my monitor’s 1680×1050 resolution from within the game’s options, it will be uninstalled. If I see a small amount of appeal in the game, I might see if there’s a text configuration file where I can manually set the resolution but that is still a huge negative in my eyes — it’s the 21st century and I’m playing a graphical game so I expect and demand graphical options not tweaking configuration files in a text editor like I’d do on a Linux server. Also, just because I can set the resolution doesn’t mean the game itself will actually support it rather than stretching things out and breaking the UI, so that will also be a factor in which games stay on my hard drive long enough to get considered for an article.

Third, it’s probably rare to be able to go so far as recommending an F2P game and that is not my goal. Even if the articles seem to read like a review, they are not intended as such but merely to highlight the game or its features that appealed to me in some degree. Something I’m trying to come to grips with myself is I tend to think in terms of “Western Polish vs. Eastern Lack of Polish.” I worry that actually saying that could be construed as harsh, even bordering on prejudice, despite what I consider to be obviously aimed at a universally low level of quality that comes from the Eastern games, not directed at the wonderful Eastern peoples and their cultures. But perhaps I should just stick with the safe “Pros and Cons?”

Fourth, I’ll be attempting to look at grouping in F2P games. Back when I first starting poking around in the F2P scene I quickly became of the opinion that they were all about solo dps with very little grouping. I say dps because I never got the impression that your class actually meant anything, that it was just a matter of personal preference if you’d rather see your character dps in heavy armor and swords or a robe casting spells or from a range with a bow. Therefore what I will probably do for these F2P games is play a healer class, when applicable, going on the assumption that just like in our Western MMOs healers are both desired and in short supply, therefore increasing my chances at finding groups.

Fifth, I’ll ask this one of you: how in-depth do you want the articles? A comprehensive full overview of everything the game offers, including multiple screenshots? A short article that just touches on the few neat or innovative features? I’m leaning towards the longer article and discussing each aspect of the game from graphics, sound, UI, available classes, etc., to the item shop, localization and so on.

[Edit: I forgot to copy #4 in the article before I clicked Publish the first time, so those of you on the RSS feed will see #4 being new and #5 being the former #4.]

I mentioned that currently I’m slowing down Arwellyn’s too-rapid (for my tastes) journey towards 60 in LOTRO, so while I’m still playing daily I’m doing things like the Yule festival quests for tokens and other activities that don’t involve gaining XP. I’ve also been putting more consecutive time on the 360 in the past month than it’s seen in the two years I’ve owned it.

But I thought I would add another column to the blog about F2P games that make any sort of positive impressions in any way. This won’t be a regular column, just whenever I actually happen to spend any amount of time in an F2P that I feel is worthy of discussion.

To clarify my own definition of F2P, I will only use that acronym to refer to games that are free to download as well, meaning Guild Wars does not qualify, nor will any other “buy to play” games that may exist.

My expectations of F2P games are fairly low. Poor graphics, poor communities — if a “community” exists at all — with chat mostly filled with spam from gold-selling sites, a “world” filled mostly with bots for said gold-selling sites, poor localization “featuring” at best some barely legible broken Engrish with funky characters and no word wrap in the worst possible font imaginable, AI (and I’m using that term loosely) that consists of ‘if $aggro { AI::Monster::Kill; }‘ (ok ok, been a few years since I’ve so much as glanced at Perl… gimme a break!), a shallow experience consisting of endlessly grinding rapidly respawning mobs, and of course item shops for microtransactions. Did I miss anything? Probably, but I think that pretty much gets across my overall low expectations of F2P and why the majority of the ones I install take longer to patch than I actually play them before uninstalling. So I’ll only be writing about ones that make any positive impressions at all, even if they inevitably end up falling into the “shallow and poor gameplay” category.

I do enjoy reading Tipas articles on Dream of Mirror Online (DOMO) which I was in beta for but that one must have crossed a line somewhere of being too Asian in its execution for me. I don’t mind cel-shading but I did mind the way DOMO did it. The pathing was horrid too; click to move straight ahead of you but the game can’t figure out how to do that so you end up walking in S-turns. Drunk of Mirror Online? Sheesh. Everything mouse-driven and the chat window is always active so every key I inadvertently press gets queued up for accidental chat. In beta I never even made it out of the starter town, never saw another player, never saw a single line of chat from anyone speaking. I tried DOMO this morning briefly and it still makes mostly negative impressions but I at least did the 2 or 3 quests (yes, that’s all it took, and I couldn’t bring myself to do them in beta!) it takes to get out of the starter area into the first city. Hey! There’s actually players now! That’s probably a good thing for what is billed as a “Social MMO.” Regardless, I just don’t know if I can make myself tolerate it enough to really get anywhere. We’ll see…

I do have my own first F2P article slowly working but with the holiday so near, preparations will likely be taking up my weekend, and I will be away most of next week — I finally have an appointment with an FAA consultant to hopefully get me back to work and then I’ll be traveling to the frozen tundra of Ohio to spend the holiday with the family before coming back home. Non-revving over a holiday is usually a nightmare only the truly desperate and insane attempt so on a completely selfish note I rather hope the economy makes for light holiday travel loads on the airlines…

On that note, if I don’t get the first F2P article up this weekend, you all have a wonderful holiday season, regardless which one(s) you observe (or not) and I’ll catch ya afterward!