Questing

It has been a long time since I have posted any thing here but I feel the time has come for me to write this.

I have been playing MMOs for a long time. I started with UO and have played almost every major MMO since then.

Questing in MMOs has a strange history.  UO did not have any questing to mention, it was a sandbox game and you did what you wanted to.

Everquest dispite what the name implies also did not have much questing and the questing that it did have was fairly difficult. You had to actually read the quest text and figure out what you needed to do next. Most of the time you would have your browser open and you would alt tab to get hints. Unless you really wanted the reward you pretty much ignored questing.

There were a few other games that came out that tried to improve on the everquest model but all of them were still pretty much like EQ.

The major breakthrough in questing was made when WoW came out. They decided to stop being so hard and put a big fat yellow exclamation point above the heads of quest givers. They also decided to make questing the primary way of advancement. This pretty much eliminated the old grind of camping and made a new grind of running around and completing quests.

This was the greatest advancement in MMOs made in years. This was the creation of the theme park. You were now led by the hand from quest hub to quest hub. It took all of the imagination out of it. I loved it.

Now years latter every game I play follows the same exact theme, quest hub to quest hub, level to level. There is no imagination in it. I long for a game that lets me grind again, like the old days. I want to sit in one spot for a hours and massacre innocent orcs. This gave me time to chat and get to know my fellow gamer. Now I don’t have time to chat because I am always RUNNING to complete another quest.  I dont have time to explore, I have no reason to go off the beaten path.

I want a game that lets you quest or farm and gives you equal reward for each. I want an incentive to explore and not just some stupid badge, reward, or achievement.

I am not sure that the two types of games can coexist.  I am not sure what I even want. I just know that I am very sick and tired of the WoW way of questing. There has to be something better.

Every sandbox game that has come out since UO has been about PVP. Open world PVP sucks no one likes to be ganked and all of their stuff taken. I want a sandbox game that is primarily a pve game with some very structured PVP built in. Like WAR and UO all mixed up into one great a glorious game.

Warhammer Online needs real crafting

WAR’s version of crafting is fairly um well shitty. You can’t create weapons or armor. This means that all armor and weapons must drop from PVE or RVR.

This is a very bad design choice for a game that really thrives on quick PVP/RVR sessions.  The core group of players only wants to RVR, they go through the PVE just to get to the RVR in the end.  They would rather buy the gear and specialize it to their build from players.

This would do a few things for the game. It would actually make the auction house useful. Currently I rarely use it because the dropped armor that I need is way too much money or not available.

It would really drive a player economy. It would give low level players something to make money on. In WoW I loved to just harvest leather I would do it all day long just to make money and play the auction house. Buying low and selling high was a mini game for me and one I really enjoyed.

It would also let people customize their armor to really help out their vision for their character.  You could try out those crazy builds that no one else thinks of. DAoC had a great armor and weapon customization system.

Really the biggest benefit would be eliminating the need to try to get a drop in PVE/RVR. You could buy and equip your armor without grinding.

Game Play Update and Grigdus the Choppa Update.

I have been playing mostly Aion with a bit of WAR scattered through out to satisfy my PVP lust.

Lets talk about WAR any my Choppa first. I have reached a point in the leveling curve that is fairly boring in WAR due to the complete nonsense that is PVE in this game. I am at level 15 which is fairly easy to power through and get to level 21 which is fun. The problem is I dont want to power through something to have fun. I want to have fun the entire way up.

This would not be much of a problem if the scenarios actually popped but they dont. This is the number one thing that needs to be addressed by Mythic. Scenarios should pop at least once every 10 mins. They need to combine them like WoW did across servers.

But I am still really enjoying the choppa. It is a very well rounded class and is a lot of fun for me. As soon as I get to T4 where the RVR action is happening I will have a blast.

I continued my second month of Aion. I started a mage class and I am having a lot of fun. I feel that this fun will wear down as I reach the 20s in leveling but right now I am enjoying it and will play until I do not. Aion at this low level does not include any PVP and if it did I think it would be a much better game. From what I understand PVP does not really start until the level cap and some time it takes me a year or longer to reach the cap in a game and I do not think I can bear it that long.

What I like about Aion is the smooth combat and the fresh world. I think when I get tired of exploring I will go back to WAR or something else until the shortfalls of WAR are fixed. WAR is my game and it will be for the foreseeable future. There is nothing out on the horizon that is really drawing my attention. So I sit back and wait for “the patch” to come out and fix the game. It is so close yet so far.

I will probably be putting a lot of my time into my Xbox due to Borderlands, Dragon Age, and Modern Warfare 2. I hope that mythic can release “the patch” during the time I am taking it easy.

Slow week

This was a very slow week for me gaming wise. Life took a lot of time this week. I am building a house and it is nearing completion so it is taking more of my time. Work is busy, which is a very nice change. Game for this week was mostly borderlands and WAR with a bit of DDO (There is something about free) I got a grand total of 3 hours of play time this week so I don’t have much to say about any of the games.

DDO is the best free game out. There is nothing that compares to it.  The beginning island is new since the last time I played and it is very well done and it solved my main issue with the game at the time, no outdoor exploration zones. The island zone is a great exploration zone and a lot of fun.

Borderlands is still fun when I can play. I realized that it my 2 year old boy should not watch me play, when one of the midgets ran up to me and my kid yelled monkey right before I shot him and then he yelled bang bang. I turned the game off at that point and now only play when he is in bed. I know most people are thinking “No Shit!” but as my wife says I am a little dense.

WAR I am still playing my choppa I have not made any more levels and have only completed a few quests. I am hoping to get 2 or 3 levels this weekend so I can jump back in to RVR.

That is it.

Grigdus the choppa enters Tier 2

Grigdus has entered tier 2 after several nights of good tier 1 action and some super fun event activities.  He has entered T2 and is screaming through it.

I am still really enjoying the class. I am grinding PQs and grinding more PQs some of the best gear is PQ rewards and this time I am focusing on being the best I can be in rvr through all of the tiers so good gear is very important.

The Bloodmoon event is a lot of fun. The PQs are easy and fun. The scenarios are not popping at the lower tiers. This needs to be address by the developers now by tying all the severs together for PQs like WoW does. I should be able to join a scenario any time I want and not have to wait. It is even worse when completing a task for an event requires me to complete the scenario 10 times.  The entire weekend it popped once while I was on. This is unacceptable and should be at the top of their priority list.

I plan on starting RVR again at level 15 or so. If you start to early in the tier you just get annihilated and it is not much fun. Then I will try to spend the rest of the tier leveling in RvR. I should be able to get the rest of my gear in those 6 levels and keep my RPs up to my level.

Meet Grigdus the Choppa

I know I said that I would roll a tank but the Choppa was calling me.

Well the first night of the new patch has been very good. I rolled my new destro character and plan on getting him to 40. I got him to 5 tonight and I must say the new player experience is pretty nice. The best part is that the newbie guild has Mythic employees as guild leaders. You can ask them questions and they lead pvp WBs. It is a really cool idea and I think it will make new players stick around.

The quest lines seem to be nicely adjusted and flow from one to the other. It really leads you through the begging of the game and it gets people doing pqs together. It is very well done. When they do this to the other 2 pairings the first tier of this game will be some of the best 10 levels in any game to date.

I did 2 pqs and got a gold bag with a sweet chest piece. I also did some scenarios, lost them all. But overall it was a good return to the game. I am going to enjoy it. You can see some screen shots of Grigdus over at scrns.me

Here is the sweet armor I got

New Warhammer Expansion!

I have been thinking a lot about WAR and where it is going and it is about time for an expansion to be announced.  So I am going to do a little speculating on what it will contain and what I hope it contains. Most of this will not be new to any one that reads Warhammer blogs but it is always fun to dream.

Two new races: Skaven/Lizardmen

I know this is not the first time that these have been mentioned as a possible expansion races.

The skaven are a very devious race that live underground and try to take over the world all the time. They believe they are the greatest race that lives and the horned rat will guide them to ultimate victory.  They will try to avenge their ancestors for the the brutal beating they took against the Lizardmen in the 1000 year war.

The Lizardmen will be the Alliance side of the new race. They will defend against the Skaven invasions of their lands. They will call upon the help of the Order races to aid them.

New Continent: Lustria

Lustria, the lands of the lizardmen. The new lands will have content all the way to 40. The lands will be very tropical and warm. The architecture will be Aztec based. It will be an Island and the only way on or off will be by boat.

The Chaos side will be tunnels underneath the island.

New Content

Twenty new scalable instances designed for solo or group adventures of all levels. These are placed throughout the old and new lands. The reward scales with difficulty selected and how many people are involved.

A new static dungeon for every tier in the new lands.  They will have solo, group, and RVR content mixed together.  Lots of quests for each dungeon.

All of the capitol cities will be completed and will be open to capture.

Old world changes

Tiers 1-3 RVR lakes will be combined into one lake per tier. This will keep the player base together and offer a more active RVR experience. All of the old lakes will be turned into epic PVE areas that offer great rewards if you are brave enough to enter.

Warhammer needs more dungeons!

A post over at We fly spitfires about open dungeons got me thinking about WAR’s dungeons or lack of.  Dark age of Camelot had a dungeon or two for all levels starting at level 5. I loved leveling in these dungeons. They each had their own loot table and lore associated with them.

WAR has these little mini holes that have some mobs in them but no dungeons. The dungeons that it does have are all very high level and I belive are instance with no chance to solo.  I used to solo them in DAoC all the time, I would often end up in a group and we would explore the depts of the dungeon. I made a lot of friends that way.

Create one per tier this would funnel people to them and actually get some interactions going, WAR is way to spread out and the people need to be funneled to make it fun.  Make each dungeon have a little mini opening camp that has solo and group quest for that particular dungeon.  Most of the content should be soloable with the bosses requireing a group. Put PQs through out the dungeon to get people grouping. Mix in some instances for groups on special quest and make them unlock from the previous quest so they tell an a story about the dungeon.

WAR needs something to bring the people together and I think some well thought out dungeons would do the trick. The new PVP dungeon is a step in the right direction. But we need more of that and we need it for all tiers. If people dont have fun in the first few levels they will never make it to the top. WAR needs to keep people playing.

Horizontal Progression

Source From the guy that inspired me to blog.

Note that adding raid dungeons and gear progression afterwards to a PvP game doesn’t work, and it was Mythic themselves with the Dark Age of Camelot expansion Trials of Atlantis who proved it doesn’t work. Mark Jacobs has been very explicit in expressing that he wouldn’t do that again. I get the impression that Mythic plans to expand the game horizontally, by adding more classes, and ultimately new race combos. I doubt we will see an expansion raising the level cap. But Mythic’s marketing has been sending out hints that soon the slayer and choppa classes would be added to Warhammer Online. It will be interesting to see how in the long term a game with horizontal expansions fares against the vertical expansion model of World of Warcraft. And personally I think that WoW could use a bit more horizontal expansion instead of just adding new raid dungeons and 10 more levels at the top.

The biggest problem with vertical progression is it makes your current content obsolete and useless. By expanding out you do not kill your high end raids. This makes it so they do not have to recreate a bunch of new raids for the new level cap. They can just change current raids a little to keep them fresh.  I do not know another company that has been able to successfully do this I wish WAR luck.

DAOC Origins: 6 Months of Silence

MMORPG.com Blogs – DAOC Origins: 6 Months of Silence

DAOC used to be my game of choice. I spent many hours in DOAC it was and still is one of the finest games on the market. I quit playing out of boredom and general tiredness of it. But that does not mean it was a bad game.

Some believe that TOA was the death of the game. When they released TOA it made you do a long series of quest/task to compete in RVR. People did not want to do more grinding to compete in RVR so people started to leave.

Will going back to the “Good Ol Days” really help? Was it really that much better then? Will it bring people back to the game? Does Mythic really want people playing that game with WAR out? I may try it again if they do bring out a new orgins server. But I suspect it will the same as before. The game is old and based on old ideas. There is not much that you can do to change that. There is a reason that WoW and the new games are doing better.

I hope that it brings people back. I hate to see games die and it looks like this one could be on the chopping block with the EA cost cutting plans.