1. No more corpse runs.

Now, when you die, you simply respawn with all of your gear feeling pretty tired for a bit of time. Of course, you are still penalized some experience points and still need to have a resurrect spell cast on your body if you want to get a portion of that experience back. I am probably the only one who, kind of, sort of misses the naked corpse run. I met a lot of really cool people because they either a) needed help to get their body, or b) were willing to help myself/friends recover ours. The naked corpse run was a community building vehicle which made people be somewhat reliant upon each other from time to time. It was one of those things which I felt defined EQ (for better or worse). The change was such a shock, such a reality twisting event that I was inspired to break out my litle drawing tablet and draw a cartoon memorializing it.

(you can click this for a slightly bigger version)

2. Mercenaries are another new addition to the game.

If you like to solo, these guys (and gals) are great. Simply pay some money to have a partner in your group. You may choose either a tank, or healer of most any race you wish. They come pre-geared with all their spells and level up with you. Each fifteen minutes of use, you pay an upkeep fee for your rent-a-friend. At lower levels, the mercenaries are almost over-powered. I am wondering how people who have chosen clerics and warriors to play as their class feel about the mercenaries, but when I asked in the general chat channel no one answered. So, I am guessing they are indifferent?

3. OR the lack of response might be because the game population is incredibly low.

On the Luclin server, most times our group is completely alone in whatever zone we have chosen to stomp around in. It is like playing on our own personal server. Without having to deal with other players in the way of what we want, it makes the game much less stressful. We kill lots of named monsters. We don’t even think about sitting in one camp waiting for respawns. The level “grind” doesn’t seem so grind-y. But then again, we are playing the game with a full group ready to go each time we log on. It probably isn’t the same thing for most people who still log in and have watched their friends gradually move on to newer, shinier games. I imagine that the two changes I mentioned above are directly related to this reality. Few people means no help getting corpses. Few people means no groups. Few people who can’t get groups and can’t get corpses means even fewer people who are going to remain interested in paying every month for a frustrating decade old game.

For now, I’m having a lot of fun, more than I have had in any MMO since leaving EQ four years ago. It’s probably 50% my nostalgia, 25% my insanity and 25% the actual game. Hopefully it’ll last a while before the shine of this old game starts to wear off again.

In the meantime, any ideas for a cool guild name?

When the Optimus was announced, back in July of 2005, it made a pretty big splash. I can recall thinking that it was a must have item for me. The designer, Art Lebedev, originally said that he figured the keyboard would cost “less than a good mobile phone.”

The product was delayed time and time again. Eventually the company released a mini 3-button version in August 2006.

So now the full-size version is scheduled to finally arrive, supposedly in December of this year. If I had enough money (which I don’t) and nothing else to spend it on (which I do) and I DID pre-order (which I didn’t), I don’t think I would be holding my breath for it to arrive in time for Christmas.

That’s just a hunch.

Of course, if someone wanted to get one for me, I wouldn’t say no.

If you are deeply intrigued by the story of the Optimus, you should read the project official blog.

I had already canceled my subscription because Sony decided to hike up the rates on their Station Pass, which I was a subscriber to despite only playing Vanguard at the time. I hadn’t even thought about it since then, I can’t believe that was only back in March, it seems like such a long time ago that I played it.

But to finally un-install it made me just a touch melancholic. Maybe it’s the rainy New Hampshire evening that’s got me a bit down already, or maybe it’s the idea of “the Vision” which could have been, but never quite materialized from the murkiness of the wonderful daydream that it must have been and that many of us at one time shared.

I can still remember how excited I was when Sigil Games was formed. At the time, I had even sent Brad McQuaid, the CEO, an exuberant email inquiring about possible employment, which he took the time to respond to personally.

I was excited for this game from the beginning, although I didn’t much care for the title. I heard the wonderful ideas and plans and I imagined great things to come.

Of course, I knew the reality would never live up to the utopian game I had imagined Vanguard would become, just as a movie seldom plays out exactly like you imagine it would from reading the book. There is always a lot which gets lost in translation. But even as I was ready to acknowledge that in my head, I still was waiting for something great.

When Sony took over the publishing role for the game, there was such a hue and cry among those who were excited about the game, and there was much hand-wringing done in the forums over the switch. It would be the death of “the Vision,” some said. And looking back, maybe it was. But personally, I didn’t see Sony as that much worse of a partner than Microsoft. After all, what wonderful Microsoft published MMOs have there been? Asheron’s Call? Sony almost seemed like an upgrade to me.

By the time I was selected for the beta on August 29, 2006, my anticipation was still running high. I spent nearly 2 days downloading the client and I completely quit playing Lineage 2. Once I had it downloaded, I found that my system couldn’t really run Vanguard all that well. I was using a AMD Athlon 3000+ and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro in an AGP slot. I was disappointed in the performance and although I desperately wanted to play, the horrible frame rates made it nearly impossible.

So, I upgraded my system. Did I upgrade solely for Vanguard? No, but it was a factor. I bought a brand new Core 2 Duo 6600 to put in a 680i chip-set motherboard and GTX 8800 video card on the day they were released (November 8, 2006).

On my new system, the textures rendered incorrectly on the 8800 video card, but after a couple weeks it got sorted out and the game ran very well in 1600×1200 resolution. But although Vanguard was pretty, the game wasn’t compelling enough for me to stay interested in to test. The combat mechanics felt like a step backwards from EQ2 and other games, the world felt flat and lifeless and I just couldn’t get into it. I did like the diplomacy part of the game, but it didn’t feel integrated enough. I felt like a bolt on extra time-killer rather than a real path of advancement. I was pretty disappointed. So, I more or less dropped out of the beta a few weeks later and I imagined that there would have been plenty of angry folks on the forums to know that one of those coveted slots had pretty much gone to waste.

When the announcement came from Sigil in early January that the game would be released on January 30, I logged back into the beta to see what kind of progress had been made. What I found is that it was still a very buggy game. Even in the last stage of beta, each game session could be counted on to have a) a crash and b) at least one falling through the world episode. The forums were full of posts wondering what the heck Sigil was thinking rushing the release of a product destined to piss off people who purchased it and Brad McQuaid posted that the launch was driven by financial concerns and major work on game bugs could continue after that point.

I wasn’t going to bother with Vanguard, I knew it would be a mess, but against my better judgment, I bought it on release day anyway through direct2drive.com.

On my system, the released game was still unstable and would crash randomly or crash as a result of certain repeatable circumstances (like if I received two pieces of mail in my character’s mailbox… crash), but most of those bugs started disappearing by the end of the first month.

It took me longer to stop playing than it should have, I think I quit in mid-March. Ultimately, there wasn’t all that much which was new, different, better or whatever. I guess that realization came to me at a little earlier than it did to Sigil, but they soon learned that the wheels were off the wagon themselves a month or so later.

Then there was the announcement by Brad McQuaid which read more or less like an obituary for Sigil where he admitted that in retrospect, things should have been done better and that Sigil would need significant help from the Sony partnership in the future.

It really came as no surprise to hear today that Sony has acquired them outright.

I imagine that Vanguard fans out there will be hoping that Sony will attempt to right the ship, improve the playability of the game and make it relevant in the currently crowded MMO space. Someone let me know if they do.

After surfing over to Nerfbat’s page, I noticed that he recently updated his own MMO Lexicon page, which is a wiki format page allowing the community to stock it with content. Well heck, if someone out there is already getting the community involved in defining the various MMO terminology, I might as well just link to that instead.

And I believe they even have more than 6 terms defined already!

I am a masochistic gamer.

Of course, I should have realized this long ago. After all, when playing games of any kind, I routinely ratchet up the difficulty until it becomes impossible to win without me turning in a near-perfect performance. I don’t get put off by losing, penalties, being flung back to checkpoints or even complete restarts.

But now I understand that this may make me different from many other gamers. It is probably hard for many to imagine that there is anything “fun” about playing games on maximum difficulty when they could be played and beaten on “normal.” Some people probably think that losing over and over could not possibly be as much fun as winning. But for some reason, that doesn’t seem to be true for me.

For example, I realize that playing Civ IV on emperor level against 17 opponents is a no win scenario for me, but despite losing game after game where my cutting edge longbowmen are overrun by my opponents’ infantry and modern armor, you won’t find me lowering the difficulty settings any.

When I play Europa Universalis 3, do I take Spain, England, or even Sweden? No, I prefer to play nations like Iroquois, Kongo, or Dai Viet, which have no chance of ever becoming serious world players.

In Everquest each time a new server would come up, I would quit whatever character I was playing and jump to the new server and try to finish all the available content as quickly as possible, staying ahead of the majority and tackling the content with gear I had earned myself or with guild-mates, rather than bought from a high-level player merchant.

Recently, I have been playing Guild Wars and I have been singularly focused on obtaining the “Survivor” title for my character. In order to achieve it, I need to get to level 20 without dying. However, I am unwilling to change my aggressive play-style of soloing without henchmen . After 8 re-rolls of this character, the highest deathless level I have achieved is 11. But that’s okay. For me, that’s what makes it fun.

After all, I also played Pitfall on the Atari for years.

I have friends who are content to grab a game and play through it at a lower difficulty setting. They have fun “beating” the game. Getting to the end is what matters for them.
But for me, I like “playing” the game. Getting to the end means the game is over; that there is no challenge left.

Back in the day, it seemed like most games were designed to be pretty darn difficult to beat. It took me forever to beat games like Adventure (Atari), Zork (C-64), Ultima and X-Com (PC). Those were games I played and worked at for long periods of time and the possibility of having to start all over from the beginning was around every corner. There was no hand-holding and no sympathy treatment. Screw up and you go home.

But lately, I have been getting the feeling that game designers are designing games so that nobody loses. Anyone who simply puts enough time in (and saves frequently enough) will eventually get through the game. It’s sort of like that feel-good style of little league they were pushing some years back. No one loses, we’re all winners. Yay!

I think that philosophy sucks.

I think this is what disappoints me most about MMOs now. There is no barrier for completion, there is no minimum standard for competency of players. There is nothing which stops anyone who creates an account from achieving nigh god-like status in the world. Permanent death, grievous injury, character age and obsolescence, gear destruction, and systems by which players have to pass difficult trials unaided to advance are all mechanisms which the current crop of MMOs ignore in the pursuit of the “casual” gamer, the “goal-oriented” gamer, or the “social” gamer.

So instead, I find myself on single player games mashing the difficulty setting all the way to “Insane” or “Oh my God. you’ve got to be kidding” level, or imposing artificial challenges on myself within the framework of online games, just to make it tougher and see what kind of teeth each game really has. And I don’t want to see the end of the game, unless I’ve had to bleed for it.

Which reminds me of one more thing I really dislike, which is game designers who try to force “replayability” into their games by only letting you unlock higher levels of difficulty if you complete the game. Seriously, who (without severe OCD) wants to replay some linear style game just to see what it would have been like if it was actually tougher to play? Certainly not me (my OCD notwithstanding).

Now after all that rambling, I want to qualify what I am saying. Although I do not mind losing or negative game reinforcement for poor play, that doesn’t mean I am willing to tolerate poor game design and ill-conceived mechanics which make it painful to play – perfectly or not. For example, I find nothing redeeming about Lineage 2 which certainly is torturous to play, but only by virtue of being totally devoid of anything resembling fun and requiring a monumental time commitment to the tedium to be able to advance to even more mind-numbingly boring time sinks.

No, I simply want games to be fun, and challenging nearly to the point of impossibility and then I want to win in spite of it. Is that really too much to ask?

I’ll leave you to ponder that while I go put my perfect Pogo Free Cell record on the line…

Everything is better now that I found the flamethrower and the chainsaw.
I promise.

According to some handy quote site on the internet it was Elizabeth Taylor who said “It’s not the having, it’s the getting.” And not that I am doubting Mrs. T, but when it comes to MMORPGs, is she right?

Clearly, the folks who are trading cash for characters and items don’t think so. For them, it is all about the having. They would rather not wait to get a certain level or item via the game mechanism, but instead just buy it and circumvent the whole “getting” process.

So I wonder, where would be the ideal place to “have” before starting to “get?”

I wonder if anyone would choose level 1? I don’t know that I would. Most of the time the beginning of MMORPGs are dreadfully boring. I particularly despise killing rats and beetles and wolf pups. I’m not all that fond of delivering muffins, or coffee for random guards. I’m not all that keen on rummaging through trash piles looking for lost baubles. Why are you inviting me to a group? Who needs a group? I’m pretty sure I can smack a “slightly miffed scrawny hamster” without your help. none of this sounds fun, so I imagine I would opt in sometime after level 1, like maybe level 5.

Level 5 is better, five times better at least, right? Well… not really. Now that I think of it, I might not want to be level 5 either. Sure I am out in the world now, or in the city sewers, but what am I bashing the baddies with? Some rusty sword or bent dagger? Am I nuking away with the equivalent of a nerf dart? Is my armor all held together with duct tape and string? I’m sure I can only carry 10 items because I have only the basic bag. And I certainly can’t buy a new one because I am dirt poor and selling scavenged rat tails for 1 copper each. Level 5 is no fun, the only advantage I can see to starting here is that the levels typically go by pretty fast. but I can just get them all instantly if I just start at…

Level 10 is where it’s at, I think. Here’s where the adventure starts… I’ve got a snazzy new robe if I am a caster or a gleaming breastplate and sturdy sword if I am a tank. As a caster, I’ve got some spells now, I imagine – a drain life, a fireball, a heal of some consequence, maybe even invisibility or a run speed boost. Or I can sneak and backstab as a rogue. I can go into the first of the game dungeons. I think these things are all about the having and now I can start the getting. But… something is still missing. Oh yeah, I want to be in a guild not just a newbie guild of people who are likely to quit tomorrow, but an established guild of experienced players. Probably not going to get into one of those at level 10, actually I wonder if I might rather be…

Level 20 is even better than level 10, don’t you think? Why would I want to waste my time in the newbie dungeons in pick up groups? At level 20 my class is fleshed out, or I can subclass… In my groups, I have a definitive role which I enjoy. I’ve got a horse now, a pet and a surname. My sword and armor are magic. I can wander around the lands near my city without fear of anything. I crush mobs in the newbie zones to save folks in danger. I hand out buffs to low level characters like candy because everyone knows the early levels just suck to do on your own (duh, that’s why I started here). I’ve got some gold in the bank, not enough, but no one has enough ever. I can join a guild that are some semi-serious players, not one which is just full of people who are going to re-roll their characters daily. But… whenever I am out exploring and that big giant wanders by, he still kills me every time. Someday, I will kill you Mr. Giant and today could be that day if only I was…

Level 40 is where the real game starts or so I’ve been told. I’ve got seriously magic jewelry and weapons made of some exotic material like glass, mithril or adamantium. Spells? Yeah, I’ve got spells. I can nuke like a howitzer, I can summon a lesser demon as an ally and I’ve got a wall of flame around me so you can’t get close enough to hit me. If a mob is silly enough to let me get behind it, I can backstab for Mach 5 damage. And I can stand in the middle of a sea of mobs and keep all of their attention while my experienced guild/group mates mow them down like so much chaff. Not only can I kill Mr. Giant, but I can take on all comers in most dungeons including the end bosses that drop the good loots. Roomy, magic bags mean I can haul away more loot than a modern day tractor trailer which helps me to have cash to spare (not enough for beggar newbies, though). Life is finally good, this is where I want to be in the world. Of course, it would be nice if I could leave this world once in a while and go to other planes of existence to battle the gods and their servants. But to do that I’d need to be…

Level 60 means I have finally arrived. I’ve got the keys to the city of “wherever the heck I want-ville.” Dungeons on the mainland? Yawn. Please, I only go to those to camp rare spawns when I am not off exploring the 3rd circle of the Plane of Awesomeness in a full raid with my uber-guild. We kill dragons, demons and even the avatars of the gods themselves. My weapons glow and shower particles as they shred minions effortlessly. They proc heals and damage and poison and lemon juice just to be mean. In fact, they only reach their full potential when fighting the toughest bosses. I can summon an army of zombies, create a bottomless chasm, or manifest a black hole with a simple flick of my staff. A backstab kills all but the fiercest opponents immediately. I can resist fire, lightning, acid, poison, harsh language and whatever else a monster could throw at me. The toughest fights and the best loots are where our guild goes. Sometimes on weekends and sometimes at inconvenient times during the day on a Wednesday or something and we can only raid when we can get more than 20 of us online at once. Sometimes I think it would be nicer if I didn’t need to depend on all those folks, like if I was…

Level 100 makes me the king. There is none higher. Other PCs should call me sire.* (*loosely quoted from Run-DMC) I can solo any mob in the game – dragons, devils, gods, forces of nature, or immortals, I can kill them all. I am finally free of the shackles, the unnecessary hurdles of the limiting game design, I don’t need any help to do anything I want, to get anything I want. In fact, if the entire planet had a health bar over it, I could probably beat it down too. My blade cuts diamonds in half like butter. My arsenal of spells is so powerful, I can’t even call them “nukes” anymore since a thermonuclear detonation would pale by comparison. My armor is impenetrable and even if it were, death does not exist as a possibility for me as I can not only stop, but I can also reverse the flow of time. I have more gold than Gringott’s. I walk through walls, see through time, and am nearly omniscient. The having, the having, the having! It’s so much better than the getting, is it not? Who said a challenge is what keeps the game fun and fresh? Not me.

What do you mean there’s another expansion planned for next month and the max level will go to 150?

Nooooooooooo!

So this is a little story about my first adventure in Nicktropolis.

Nicktropolis is a flash game that is played in a web browser. It’s loads up fast and has fairly simplistic style graphics. The initial screen you are presented with after logging in is the character customization menu. Each time you log in, you will come to this screen to have the opportunity to change the look of your avatar. Character customization is pretty simplistic with a gender choice and just color choices for skin, hair, shirt, pants and shoes. When you are done, you are presented with a map screen to go where you want in the game.

The first place I went was called the “Lounge” in the Downtown area. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting to find in the lounge exactly, but as you can see by the picture, it wasn’t a very happening place (That’s me with the blue hair).

So, I tried to leave, but I couldn’t figure out how. Clicking the floor, moves you around and sometimes you can click on an object to interact with it. I managed to turn the lounge TV on, and even switch the channel a few times, but nothing I clicked on seemed to be an exit. I clicked and clicked all the corners of the room to no avail and just when I was about to try to find the “help,” I finally noticed navigation tabs above the play area with handy labels like “Map” and “My room.”

Ooh, I have a room? Let’s see what it looks like…

Hmm… not so snazzy. It could definitely use something, like at least a few dust bunnies in the corners or a last can of Who hash. I decided that my next priority would be to figure out how to get some swag for my dreary digs.

As it turns out, finding those tabs was the real trick to opening up the game, after that I was able to easily navigate myself around (Not bad. I managed to master a basic element of a kids game in under an hour). I jump over to a place called “Wild Walls and Floors” on Market Street in the Downtown area because those plain walls and wood floor have got to go. Upon entering the store I was immediately greeted by simulated elevator music for my listening pleasure. Do kids enjoy elevator music? Or more to the point, does anyone? I found it an odd choice.

As I am preparing to browse for a new room look, I notice that I only had 2100 points, so I figured that there wasn’t much I could buy. I was wrong! I couldn’t, for example get imported Italian marble floors and Tuscan style walls, but I did manage to score a Rare space wallpaper and a simulated beach floor.

With a new floor and wallpaper in hand, I still needed some additional accessories for my extreme-simulated-room makeover, so I scooped up some other doo-dads and thingamajigs – jumping all over rares when I saw them. In the end, I had quite a haul including a butterfly (rare), a robot(rare), a slimy gyroscope (rare), a trunk (rare) and a mini-tv. Nearly all rare gear, I wonder if I can sell my Nicktropolis account on e-bay?

Now my room is seriously spruced up.

Besides sprucing up rooms, what else is there to do you may wonder. It seems like quite a bit, from treasure hunts to voting in the kids choice awards to hanging out with or making new friends online.

On the topic of making friends, conversation in Nicktropolis is handled in an interesting way. To speak, you select what you want to say from an extensive menu of choices. Each choice is “kid friendly,” aka non-offensive, non-abusive, non-what-you-get-in-every-other-game-ive. There are general conversation choices and also some specific to Nickelodeon TV shows. But navigating the conversation menu is tricky (at best) and by the time you have selected “Now it’s time to feel the wrath of our mustaches!” the person you may have been trying to say it to could be long gone. Still, the implementation should make parents of Nicktropolis-goers rest a little easier knowing that there simply are no options for disclosing personal information built into the game.

Overall I found the game, interesting. It probably won’t be something I play more than this once, but then again, I am not really in the targeted demographic and I doubt Nickelodeon is worried if I ever finish pimping out my room. According to the article I read, Nicktropolis has somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 million registered users (the game is free), so they’ve got plenty of takers for this brave new world.