I think Cryptic hates success.

This is a fine example of what NOT to do with your Cash Shop and what NOT to do with your newly released licensed IP MMO.

Know what insults me more than the nickel and diming?  Not the fact that Ferengi are only 1/3 the cost of Klingons.  Nope.  It’s that the female Ferengi are…*wince* wearing CLOTHES!    That’s a crime I tell you.

Sorry Metaplace people, I couldn’t help it.   The title was too catchy to pass up.

Today was one of those days where it felt like no one else was on the internet.  Forums were slow and the best the news sites could come up with was telling us Leonard Nimoy voices something and Maple Story has tv commercials now.  It’s the dreaded Christmas Crawl.  Tons of little stuff worth talking about though.

Steam’s Holiday Sale
Tons of stuff for cheap!  It makes me absolutely ill to see stuff selling for under half what I paid for it not more than a few months ago.  Amazing deals though on hundreds of games.   Stalker for $1.99, Torchlight 50% off, even games that haven’t come out are on sale like Global Agenda.  It’s nuts!  I might actually pick up Left 4 Dead 2 which is also on sale for $37.49 as a Christmas Present.

Metaplace goes *poof*
There wasn’t any game.  Aside from everything I’ve ever seen appearing to be about a decade late, it just lacked… anything palpable.   In my opinion they need to take the talent they have and make an actual game.  Their problem isn’t a lack of talent in my opinion.  Raph has a decent grasp of the social workings in a mmorpg.   Neat idea but ultimately I believe you really need a game somewhere underneath it all.

Army of 2: The 40th Day Demo
I like it!  I was a little skeptical at first.  It was feeling a little bit like they took what was nearly perfect and decided to make it shinier and better and in the process killed the soul of the game but once things got going I discovered it hadn’t really been lost after all.  I’m not blown away by the graphics or the performance.  There was noticeable delay in the weapon customization screen and some minor slow down while playing.  I saw enough to know I’m going to get and play the heck out of it.

C&C 4
I don’t like this new Tiberium stuff.  It looks like the Dawn of War control points.  I’m also hearing there isn’t base building anymore.  Bad idea.   Just stick with what works.  Base building is great.  Tried and true isn’t something you should try and innovate on.  That goes for everything out there.  Don’t fix or change what isn’t broken.

Allods Online
CBT#3 starts December 29.  They’ve also updated their FAQ to include a line that says there will be other closed beta tests.  Whether or not that was just an oversight since they edited their CBT#2 FAQ or not I don’t know.  I thought I had read that CBT3 would be followed by open beta (which is launch).  This next phase raises the cap to 30 which will include PvP and another dungeon (Castle Blight).  I’ll be sure to take lots of video and let you all know how things progress.  If you’re looking for a guild then check out ours.

I’m actually excited about this one.  Stargate Worlds development studio Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been running in silent mode and pretty much treading water with SGW for a long time.  In my opinion, they missed a crucial launch window for a MMO.  The series had its day and that day passed quickly as the latter seasons  of SG-1 dwindled on and eventually the show wrapped up.  The great thing about the Stargate Series is that it had Atlantis and now Universe.  Atlantis didn’t run as long as SG-1 but it did introduce a lot of great things to the series.  Unfortunately, it ended in the same way as SG-1 — dragging on too long.  Now that Universe is around (although not a great show, but a decent one) a new window of opportunity is opening up.

They’re going with a third-person shooter in this window.  It’s not the first attempt either.  Stargate: The Alliance was highly anticipated by Graev and I for a while since we are huge fans of SG-1 and watched each new episode when it was still running.  The game never saw the light of day though.  Now that Cheyenne Mountain is making one, I hope that maybe the great potential for a SG shooter will manifest itself into a decent game.

SG-Resistance’s website is a little 1999′ish and there isn’t much information.  Chris Klug (Creative Consultant) addresses the community with a tone of ‘we know we let you down but would you give us a second chance’ and basically represents SGR as a game all about the combat.  I’m expecting the game to run on the same engine as SGW.  I’m expecting it to be similar to Star Wars Battlefront, actually.  I think it has always been a better idea for Stargate to manifest itself in a shooter game and now I think Cheyenne… (or is it Firesky now?)  … knows that too.  In my opinion, this is like a retcon of SGW.  Expect this to completely replace the MMO; I do.

We’ll see what they’re able to pull off.  Given the right people, this game could have spectacular gameplay.  Anyone who has watched SG-1 knows the franchise is packed full of amazing worlds, ships, weapons, and all sorts of goodies.   I can imagine flying an Al’kesh or even battles including Goa’uld motherships and F203’s.  A BF2142 mechanic could exist where you ring up to a mothership or gate over to SGC to destroy the enemy’s base, similar to the Titans in 2142.  As long as their team is creative and understands Stargate and Shooter Games well this can be a ton of fun.

Tomorrow at 11am PST the second closed Beta test begins for Allods Online.   If you do not have a key yet, and you want to try the game, it’s probably a good idea to grab one.  However, there’s really no rush.  Several websites have keys including us.

MMORPG.com – 3000+ Keys remaining
Massively – They should have some left.
Keen and Graev (us!) – If you need a key we have some to hand out.  Just ask for one in the comments section and be sure to fill out your comment with a valid email address (Only I can see it, don’t worry). Update:  Gone!

If you’re just joining the party, Allods is a free to play (F2P) mmorpg. I’ve written my initial impressions of the early-game and created a video with more impressions.   “Sneak Previews” of the game are showcasing the new zone and monsters that we’ll get to experience with the level cap raising to 20.  We’re quite behind the Russians though who have tested the game to the level cap.  Plenty of videos, impressions, screenshots, and videos are available from their adventures and much of that information can be found in the K&G Commnity’s ‘Tidbits of Interesting Info‘ thread (or Wave!).

There are a few key points that I want to emphasize right now about the game.

It’s F2P.  That means there is a microtransaction model in place via a Cash Shop.  How intrusive will the cash shop be?  Right now I can’t say with absolute certainty that it will be no big deal.  In fact, it’s my biggest concern and will be the deciding factor whether or not I will even bother spending time playing.  However, since the cash shop was visible during CBT#1 and the Russians have been playing the game for a while, we do have some idea of what to expect… assuming they stick with the same thing for NA release.  It appears that you can not buy success in Allods like you can in a game like Runes of Magic.  Allods takes a more cosmetic and convenience approach.  You can buy costumes, potions (Alchemists in-game can make these too), bigger bag/bank space (available through quests in-game too), scrolls to teleport, and that sort of thing.  You can also buy Chests.  Chests drop off mobs as well.  Inside these chests you’ll find a random item.  So, in a way you can get a random item if you’re willing to gamble with real money.  I found several chests while hunting so I see no reason to spend real money on a gamble.  The only real advantage one can buy is gold.   Will this be a problem and if so how big?  I just don’t know yet.

There are Dungeons and Raids.  We know this because the Russians tell us so.  There are videos that you’ll find linked to in that tidbits thread as well as ones on Youtube if you search well.  The content in Allods appears to be on par with a solid AAA title, and on par with Vanilla WoW.  Again, this is what impresses me so much.  We’re seeing titles release without low-mid level dungeons these days because developers have stopped caring about the journey as part of their game and only focused on creating this urgency to reach the end.  There is also group content in Allods.  I experienced a couple of quests during CBT#1 that required me to seek out a full group to kill an elite mob.

Allods Online is a PvP game too.  I don’t really know to what extent the developers intended the game to revolve around PvP.  I know, from reading an interview, that their original goal was to create a PvE game but they decided that PvP was important.  I guess they decided that it was super important because there are several styles of PvP in the game.

Open World – It’s been spoken about many times as being a blending of Stranglethorn Vale and Hillsbrad on a PvP WoW server back in the old days.  You’ll be questing in a zone together with the opposite faction and it’s inevitable that you’ll end up fighting each other.

DAOC/WAR style Objective Based -Players fight each other for special points in the Holy Land. I wish I knew more about this.

Arenas – Think STV’s Arena.

Goblin Ball – a mini-game type event.

Astral Ship Combat – Worthy of an entire article or two explaining it. Essentially you get enormous ships that you work towards in the end-game. They take 5 or 6 people working together to pilot them in the Astral area. You can play like a pirate and attack enemy ships or you can simply use your ship to explore for treasure. There’s a lot to it and I recommend the various articles.

Clearly we haven’t seen this amount of variation in an MMO’s PvP gameplay done well in a while.  A couple of us are intent on leveling up and experience how some of the PvP works in the CBT#2.   We want to figure out if the good ideas are executed properly, because in the end a good idea means nothing if you just don’t implement it correctly.  I believe that the Holy Lands stuff starts a little bit after level 20; maybe they’ll open it up for us to try.

Like always, our community likes to play together in these things.  You’re welcome to join us.  We’ll be playing both sides to figure out what we like more (and for some avoiding the side we know we’ll play so that we don’t spoil it for launch).  You can visit our board we just launched for Allods Online or hop on Ventrilo to get involved.

Anyone else agree? Watch the Part 1 and Part 2 videos (Part 2 embedded below) and, if you played Pirates of the Burning Sea, you’ll see quite plainly how STO is going to be almost exactly like it. The naval combat in PotBS looks exactly like this space ship combat with ships circling each other jockying for shots on the hull (or shields in STO) weak spots and focusing on one area to weaken it and bring it down. Damaging crews to weaken a ship and using different attacks to accomplish it; in STO it’s shuttles and in PotBS it’s grape shot and the like. When it mentioned boarding parties I was waiting for it to show us a similar scenario that we saw in PotBs where it teleports you to the ship and you do a quick skirmish to see who wins. Heck, we could still see that implemented.

Equipping ships with different “Equipment, Weapons, or Bridge Offiers” is just another way of wording the modules you add to your ships in PotBS (even EVE has something similar). I think we can expect to see STO’s ground combat or away missions work in the same way that the quest missions did for PotBS. Let’s just hope that they’re not as mundane.

What absolutely kills me though is the mention of tanking, support, and escort or “dps”. Clearly these forms of ships exist in Star Trek and we’ve seen them play out in these roles during big battles such as with the Dominion. However, listening to the developers talk about the roles these ships play as though they’re being designed specifically to fill these roles destroys the natural feel of the ships. Obviously the bigger ships are going to be slower and more “tank-like”, but I don’t want to be a “tank” just because I chose a big ship. Does that make sense? Let me choose my ship because I like that ship — because I have a connection with that ship — not because that’s the role I need to fill.

Ship Combat looks like it is going to work. I’ve done combat like this — exactly like this — in PotBS and something very similar in Star Trek Legacy for the Xbox 360 (great game, I recommend it). The UI appears to have the elements necessary for some “sim” elements. Raising shields, adjusting tactics during a fight, and that sort of thing appear to be present. This isn’t where the game will face its problems though. If I had to predict right now where the game will come up short I would put my money on lasting appeal and gameplay not meshing well to create a fun and immersive game. It will be that “Well, that ship combat was fun…. but what is there really to this game?” feeling.

Thankfully there is going to be an “Open” Beta Jan. 12-26. Maybe I’ll get to test my predictions.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry right now.  I was certainly crying when I read about this yesterday on Shacknews.

“We’ve been building up this system on the backend called IW Net, to allow matchmaking for our PC users just like you have on the console,” Infinity Ward community manager Robert ‘fourzerotwo’ Bowling explained on podcast BASH 123.

“You’re completely reliant on IW Net and there’s no dedicated servers or server list. You rely on IW Net for your matchmaking and finding games, but then you also have the private match, much like the other platforms, where you can go in and…customize the game rules, all via private match, and invite people to the server that way.”

“The mentality is making it much more accessible to the PC community as a whole and making it where it’s a lot less cost burden for our community members.”

I’m really trying to understand the logic.  How is it better for a community when you are REMOVING THE COMMUNITY?  Dedicated servers are a way to build a place for people to come to every day and play with the same people — the same COMMUNITY.  Making it like a console matching system is going to only silence the in-game community created by dedicated servers.

Admittedly there will be some neat features of this system on the PC.  One of the more annoying aspects of the dedicated server system is being unable to find a dedicated server that I enjoy playing on.  Sometimes the communities would become so tight on the dedicated servers that being a newcomer was quite an alienating experience.  Sometimes dedicated servers = cheaters. This IW Net may allow me to get in and play a game a lot quicker.   Is that worth the loss of dedicated servers?  Right now I do not believe so.

Integrating MW2 with Steam is nice.  I like Steam.  Why not just integrate the dedicated server system with Steam like TF2?  Do not tell me that this IW Net is any more community friendly than Steam’s community tools — nothing is more friendly to a community.   You can have your cake and eat it too if you just use your brain.  Don’t insult us by telling us you’re making it more “casual friendly”.  We know you’re not that stupid, so don’t think we are either.

I have signed the Online Petition (lol, a petition.. I know, worthless).  This Parody of Kotick holding the dedicated servers hostage sums up how I feel (WARNING: Gory at the end which is why I didn’t stream it.)

There has been a lot of speculation from the community and vendors regarding these dates, but we finally have official dates for the Aion launch schedule.

Open Beta: September 6 (Sunday) – 13 (Sunday)

Server and Character pre-selection: September 18 (Friday)

Head Start: September 20  (Sunday)

Launch: September 22 (Tuesday)

I’ve avoided playing the Aion beta beyond level 18 and have not given in to the hype-machine, or allowed it to consume my every waking thought, as I have with past launches.  The result, I believe, will result in a much greater enjoyment of Aion.  I’m excited for the game to go live after what feels like endless waiting and self-control this summer.

The K&G Commnunity will be playing together as usual.  We’re joining forces with another group (founded as a guild by another member in our community) to form a Legion (guild).  We’ll be playing Asmodians at launch.  Our Open Beta plans are still being finalized, but we know that we’re going to all play together to have fun during the OB week.  Our Launch server choice is unknown as of this entry, but we’re currently figuring out where the best place for us will be – ideally avoiding the asshattery and elite crowds while still getting ourselves on a high-pop server.  Be sure to stop by our Aion forum if you’re interested in playing with us or just want to know where we end up during OB and Launch.

It looks like Aion will be the only polished and consistent mmorpg gaming out there for many of us until Cataclysm and/or SWTOR.   I plan to make the most of it.

NCsoft has released information about the Beta Client and how you can get it early.  Take advantage of it now because if it’s anything like the past few test weekends the speeds are going to be a bit slow.

Level 1 Goblin LFG!

This is truly a great day to be a Blizzard fan.  There is so much information pouring out from Blizzcon that I won’t even try to report on it for you.  Go to WoW.com or your favorite news site and they’ll fill you in on everything.  I’m more interested in how these announcements will affect me personally as an avid gamer and lifelong Blizzard fan.

Deathwing

As I mentioned in my original blog post about the Cataclysm rumors (now confirmed), I said I would be returning to WoW if this all turned out to be true.  I meant it, and I plan to return now.  Just reading through their FAQ to gain an understanding about what to expect, I saw one line in particular that removed all doubt about what I should expect:

“Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms are central to World of Warcraft lore, and we want those areas to remain an important part of the game, not just a place to train or auction. Our goal is to make questing, leveling, and the overall story more fun for new, returning, and existing players. By redesigning areas of the original continents and introducing new content that matches or exceeds the quality of Wrath of the Lich King, we can revitalize the nostalgia and coolness of Azeroth.”

The “old world” or “vanilla WoW” (whatever you want to call it) receiving phasing technology, the same type of quality from WotLK content, and a major face lift means that I can return to the game and experience 1) Quality content and 2) Nostalgia.  We all know that looking back and remembering how content or gameplay was years ago never matches the reality of how it is today, so the opportunity for nostalgia to make an appearance and exceed the quality of yesterday is beyond words.

The trailer shows a few zones that are also mentioned in the FAQ.  “Nearly all of the game’s original zones are being altered to some degree, but the extent of the changes varies by zone”, states the FAQ.  I’m hoping that we see surprising changes throughout the game on the same level as Desolace’s transformation.   While I’m worried that I could possibly be building this up beyond even Blizzard’s abilities, I know that so far they have been the only company to ever match hype with results.

Bringing Deathwing into the fray makes me giddy with glee.  Day of the Dragon is an amazing book (that I am now searching for on my shelves to reread) if any of you are interested in some Deathwing lore.  Deathwing is probably the coolest “bad guy” in all of the lore making the Lich King look like a scrub.

So whether or not I return to WoW is no longer in question, but rather when.  Blizzard is saying 2010 for cataclysm which puts it at around 2 years after WotLK.  That gives me plenty of time to enjoy Aion (over a year) and establish whether or not I’ll play it longer.  Where this begins to conflict is with SWTOR… this could get messy.  On one hand I’m a Star Wars fanboy, and on the other I’m a Blizzard (Warcraft Lore) fanboy.  The only chance I have of playing both (due to $$$) would be dropping Aion and playing both SWTOR and WoW.    Maybe this should have been titled “This is a great day to be a MMORPG fan”.

Diablo 3 getting pushed into 2011 or later makes me die a little inside.  I was hoping for a late 2010 release.  Blizzard is really wanting Cataclysm and Starcraft 2 to be their 2010 titles though.  The new class announcement for D3 is the Monk.  I remember playing an unofficial Diablo expansion called Hellfire which was developed by Sierra.  There was a Monk in that game and he was really fun and seemed to fit right in with the game’s style.  The trailer for the Monk does not disappoint at all – in fact it makes me want to abandon any ideas I had about the other classes and play one.  Such a magnificent looking environment in that video as well.

I guess it’s going to be a busy year anyway without D3.  Finding time to play SC2, WoW, SWTOR (Assuming it’s 2010 and not push out further), and all of these games … awesome and horrible problem to have all at the same time.  As I find more information, or more becomes available, I’m excited where our discussions can go about the coming year.

Update: I just learned about the new Battle.net and its features.  Looks like we were right in predicting premium services and a Xbox Live direction for the system.   Profiles, Avatars, Account-wide (not game or character wide) achievements, communication across all games via this platform, and a marketplace.  It sounds like everything Graev and I predicted Bnet would turn into.

Makes sense why SC2 is delayed now – they’re adding crap we don’t need.  It will be the first game to utilize this market for premium custom made content.  I don’t like this idea at all as it appears to be the pandora’s box waiting to be opened.  Charging for the popular custom maps is nothing but a cash grab and I don’t buy the excuse about giving modders the credit and part of the money for their effort as a legitimate reason.  This won’t be the end of it.

SC2 Map Marketplace