MMO Blog posts
Free to Play / Game Design / MMORPG / Sandbox

Dragon’s Prophet: Doesn’t take a prophet to see what’s coming

Dragon's Prophet Dragon
Fight, capture, train and ride 300 different dragons that come with their own set of abilities.

Shortly after I wrote about an ideal MMO sandbox which takes elements from very specific games, I discovered details about a SOE game in the works called Dragon’s Prophet.  Dragon’s Prophet seems to come close to what I want, but illustrates how easy it is to miss the mark with a few awful decision.

Features in Dragon’s Prophet

Dragon’s Prophet will feature an odd skill system that I am still trying to wrap my head around.  Someone correct me if I’m totally wrong, but what I gather about the system is that you find a dragon and gain a random set of abilities.  There’s an element of fighting, taming, and training going on here. I’m sure another class system will also be in place.

Non-instanced housing will let players claim plots and plop down a house out in the world for all to see.  I want to know if it’s like SWG and houses can be placed freely anywhere, or if there are designated plots of land.  I’m leaning toward the latter because what I’ve read seems to indicate that certain plots cost more. Sounds better than most systems, as I am a huge fan of open-world community-centric features.

What sounds really neat about Dragon Prophet is the idea that players can claim areas of land almost like the kingdom idea from my previous entry.  Out in the frontiers, areas of PvP land that can be colonized (again like my ideal MMO), players can become subject to taxation from other players.

Combat will use what the official site calls “auto-targeting”.  It has been likened to DCUO’s combat, which isn’t bad, or like TERA but faster (or something like that).

Overall, a nice set of features.  Implementation could be all wrong, but at least the ideas on paper are good ones.  That said… (more…)

8 Comments
October 26, 2012
Game Design / MMORPG / PC / Themepark

Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 3

In this last look at my tour of Rift: Storm Legion, I want to outline some of the details I gleaned about the world, souls, and overall Rift experience from Community Manager James “Elrar” Nichols.

Changes to the World

Rift: Storm Legion Tempest Bay
Tempest Bay finally brings that real capital city feel to Rift.

Storm Legion adds two new continents and a new capital city.  According to James, each of the new continents are bigger than the original game world.  That means the new areas roughly triple the size of the world. There are two starting locations — one on each continent — and a different experience can be found playing through each of the continents.  Brevane is all about discovering what is going on, figuring out the mystery, and exploring.  Dusken throws the player into the middle of a war.  James emphasized that players can find a unique experience on each of the continents, allowing for additional playthroughs without repeating content.

Quest Hubs are story-driven locations.  The team wants to get away from having a player go to a camp and pick up a ton of kill quests.  Now the kill quests are available in a slightly more organic way.  If a bear is slain it can offer a quest to kill more bears.  You can then turn that quest in to an NPC.  I was reminded of the “bears bears bears” Paul Barnett line back from the WAR hype days.   So like I said, quest hubs are for the story aspects whether for you personally or for the zone.

Read more after the break for my impressions of Rift: Storm Legion. (more…)

9 Comments
October 23, 2012
MMORPG / PC / Themepark

Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 2

In Part 2 of my Rift: Storm Legion hands-on Tour I want to focus on Raids and PvE content.  Storm Legion will launch with 1 20-man raid, 1 10-man raid, 7 new dungeons, and after their first big patch a second 20-man will be added.  Listening to James explain Trion’s approach to content in Storm Legion, I got the distinct impression that Trion really wants to come out of the gate strong.  Their story is important to them.

Regulos and Crucia are some nasty villains.  Regulos, The Dragon of Extinction, The Destructor, and a slue of other titles, is planning his comeback.  His presence (Plane of Death stuff) is clearly visible in some of the new zones.  Crucia, leader of the Storm Legion, Dragon Goddess, and lover of oddly-attractive succubi-harpy-things, is of course center stage during the entire expansion.  These bosses are so big and important to the story of Rift that the only fitting way to emphasize their strength is through raiding.

Rift doesn’t do a whole lot to change the concept of raiding for themeparks.  These will feature tiered loot progression, be instanced, and be very familiar to veterans of contemporary MMO raiding.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is a good thing or not.

I took a ton of screenshots.  Perhaps too many.   Instead of a wall of text, I’m going to give you a picture tour and briefly talk about each image.  Any images I do not include can be found at the bottom in the embedded gallery.   Is it still appropriate to give a 56k warning?

Since I was shown many of the new raid bosses, including the current final encounter for the expansion, I was asked not to reveal any strategies.  Here’s a hint though: Having an invulnerable insta-kill-wielding CM with you helps.

Storm Legion Crucia Returns

Read on for more after the break.

(more…)

6 Comments
October 22, 2012
Game Design / MMORPG / PC

Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 1

Rift: Storm Legion launches November 13, 2012I had the opportunity to take a private tour of the upcoming Rift: Storm Legion expansion with Community Manager James “Elrar” Nichols.  As many of you know, I played Rift when it first launched back in March of 2011.  I played for a few months, got a couple characters almost to the max level, but didn’t continue playing because I felt like something was missing — I wasn’t hooked by anything in particular.  After this awesome tour, I’m able to see many of those ‘hooks’ making their way into Rift when Storm Legion launches November 13, 2012.

During the tour I was introduced to the story and shown the dungeon that would lead up to the new content.  I was shown the Dimension system (player housing), and also the major end-game raid zones.  Elrar also took me to several of the new zones, explained to me how the content would progress during the expansion, and provided me insights into Trion’s thoughts of Rift’s end-game and its future. I was also granted a max level character for the duration of the beta test currently underway.  So as you can tell, there’s a lot for me to share. I’m going to give you guys my honest opinion of what I saw and fill you in with as many details as I can. Be sure to check back for the full look at my tour through Rift: Storm Legion.

Read more after the break for Part 1: Dimensions! (more…)

15 Comments
October 21, 2012
Game Design / MMORPG / RPG

Do your chores!

Gameplay should never feel like a chore.  I don't care if it's grinding, questing, raiding, or going through a story; If the activity feels like a chore it is poorly…

48 Comments
October 9, 2012
Adventure Logs / MMORPG / PC / Sandbox

Adventure Log: In a galaxy far, far away

Returning to SWG
I think my character’s face says it all.

I delayed last week’s adventure log a few days because I decided to do it on my mini-adventure back into the galaxy of Star Wars.  No, not the Old Republic.  I’m talking about An Empire Divided.   Some of you are still probably going “wtf is he talking about?” — SWG!  Star Wars Galaxies.

The urge to go back and play was overwhelming when I heard the news that SWGEmu is almost getting to the point where the long beta is over.  SWGEmu is a SWG emulator  recreating the game at the point it was at before the infamous combat update.   Since the real SWG was shut down, just about everyone who still wants to play the game is playing on SWGEmu — about 3,000 people online at any given time.

Entering such a vast galaxy as a completely new player is overwhelming.  A few of my friends were totally lost as to how to actually play the game.  SWG was never very good at taking the new player and getting them started down a path.  It’s really up to the individual to figure things out, or have another player guide them.  Sometimes the most confusing part of SWG is the best part: Crafting.

Crafting comprises the vast majority of SWG.  The entire game revolves around the player-driven economy.  Players craft literally everything, and everything has a use.  It’s such a complex system that I can’t do it justice here.

The key to understanding SWG, and understanding how to play, is knowing that combat is not the emphasis.  Did that blow your mind?  An MMORPG where you can literally never, ever, engage in combat and still have one of the most enriching, immersing experiences possible in a MMO actually exists.  The trick is understanding that you’re not progressing towards beating something.  The goal is to live and survive in the galaxy while hopefully creating a more comfortable existence for yourself while building relationships and enjoying the community.

Okay, so less about SWG and more about me.  Read on. (more…)

32 Comments
October 2, 2012