MMOG Chronicles

Questing

Jim — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 03:59:13 +0000

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.

And I am back

Jim — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:58:44 +0000

After a long break of blogging and gaming I am back. I was beginning to get tired of all MMOs so I just stopped playing them and focused on my huge backlog of xbox games. I finished Fallout3, and played many others that I hope to finish soon. I tried fallout when it came out and I just could not get into it. This time I pushed past that section of the game and it was well worth it, that is a fantastic game.

I am currently playing 2 mmos; Lotro and Champions Online. I am really starting to love F2P; it makes it so much easier enjoy multiple games at once.

Salzenmund: Great game design

Jim — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:55:16 +0000

I have recently started to level a DoK up in WAR. The highest destruction character that I have is level 15 and I have never leveled through Nordland on the destruction side before.

So I am thoroughly enjoying the new streamlined quest and having a blast when I get this quest to go through a smugglers tunnel. I go through the tunnel and on the other side is a town under siege. NPCs are fighting each other, buildings are on fire. It looks really nice and has a great WAR feeling to it.

Then I notice that there is a PQ in middle of this area and a few quest lines that take place in this town that is under siege. The quest all by themselves are pretty run of the mill quests but when you wrap all the other lore that is taking place in this area the quests become great. I had a blast running around and convincing a priest that everyone was cheating him and he should go crazy and kill people.

This has shown me that if you make areas that are interconnected with stories, quests and activities that I will actually get into the story. So many of the quests don’t seem to really relate in a good way to what is going on around almost all MMOs are guilty of this. I hope that I run into some more of these areas.

Guild Wars 2 Ranger Video

Jim — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:37:26 +0000

While I have been following GW2, I have not been really reading much about it in depth. Then I ran across this newish ranger video and since rangers are one of my favorite classes I have taken a sudden interest in the game.

Here is the video

It seems that I can not embed the video. So here is the link http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/#gw2-video-hunters-call

Read the entire write up here

I am a visionary

Jim — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:05:54 +0000

Syp over at Biobreak has just suggested that Guild Wars 2 may very well be the game that surprises every one and surpases WoW. I suggested this about 4 months ago and since then even more information has come out about the game that looks VERY promising.

TOR will die under its own hype. There is no way that it can live up to the hype it is creating.

The whole story-driven mmo thing will kill it. If you look at all the games that have tried to copy WoW the one thing they did that did not work was try to add more “you are the hero” type of things and by doing this they have killed re-playability and the sense of a large, living world. The reason people play WoW is to live in another world. I don’t know a single person that really cares about the story.

With all that said I will defiantly play TOR and I will probably love it, but I do not think it will be as great as every one is hoping. I believe that Guild Wars 2 will surpass everyones expectations and be one of the next big games if not THE one.

I told you so!

Jim — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:42:12 +0000

I am still alive, there is just a lot happening in my life and blogging has kinda fallen off. But I had to pop in here and say that I predicted Lotro going free to play in my 2010 predictions.

http://mmogchronicles.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/2010-predictions/

A game play update while I am at it. I got tired of most games and started to look at F2P games as a way to just pop in and out of games with out costing any money. So I started to play Runes of Magic. It has been a fantastic experience so far. I am level 30 and I would recommend every one to at least try it. They have moved out of copy wow stage and are doing their own thing.

I have also pre-ordered APB. I know it is not technically an mmo but I love GTA and it looks like fun. I also really like the pricing structure because it fits with my new casual gaming style.

Life is getting back to normal so I expect to start blogging a little more.

TGMT2010-STO Update

Jim — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:30:58 +0000

As I predicted in my last post I will be continuing Star Trek Online for another week. I was only able to play about 5 hours and that does not seem like a fair amount of time to make a decision on.

TGMT2010 Update

Jim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:52:10 +0000

Well so far my little experiment is coming along well. I am currently playing Star Trek Online and I am enjoying it a lot. This has caused me to rethink the 1 week time limit on my trials. I may want to continue to play STO after one week, I have only been able to play about 3 hours this week and I may need more time to give it a fair review.

With Darkfall’s recent announcement I am changing the order of the games I am going to try. I am going to try darkfall next instead of Champions Online. This will be better because CO is so close to STO that it would probably not be a fair trial.

I really did not like Darkfall the last time I played it, but I have heard that they have made it much better (from darkfall’s biggest fanboy) and I am excited to try it again. I have always had this dream of the perfect sandbox game since I started playing UO. My hope is I can get past the little things that bugged me last time and enjoy the game. I really like the idea of a sandbox game.

TGMT2010- Everquest 2 Review

Jim — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:37:52 +0000

I am going to try to set a standard format for the TGMT reviews so that people can look through them and they all are similar. These are not meant to be full blown reviews. They are reviews based on one week of casual playing

Time played: 16 hours

Levels: 0 – 14

Class: Berserker

What I enjoyed the most: The world

EQ2 has a wonderfull world full of character and lore. The world looks absolutely spectacular and the zones are humugous compared to the zones in games released in the last 2 years. I spend at least an hour just trying to get to Greater Faydark and it was a lot of fun.

What I disliked the most: Questing

I know the name of the game is EverQUEST but I am so sick of questing to advance. I don’t know what would be better but I am tired of going to a contact, getting a quest, running back and killing 10 rats or delivering a letter to a hobbit and running back for my reward. I think it would be much better if they eliminated the running part and just had the quests end when you finished it instead of having to run back.

EQ2 is absolutely full of bad quests with a lot of running around and it just kills my mood. I am a casual player and when the longest part of the quest is running back to the quest giver it is a little much.

Will I give it a longer trial? No

EQ2 is a great game and has a lot to offer the gamer that has the time and patients to go through all the quests and all of the running. Right now that is not what I am looking for.

The Great MMO tour of 2010 or TGMT2010

Jim — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:49:08 +0000

Here is how it works.

I will go back to or try various mmos for one week (Suggestions are welcome) after that time I will post a mini review of what I thought and rather or not I want to explore it further.

Each Sunday I will start a new MMO for that week because that seems to be the day that I am able to play the most. I will use a trial or active time if I have any. If the game does not have a trial of some sort I will not pay to try it.

At the end of the week I will decide if I want to give this game a longer trial and put it on a list of games that I will subscribe to for a month in this way I hope to weed it down to a game that I will play for a bit. It will also be fun to go through all of them and write a review for them.

I will keep a list on this post of the games that I try, and link to the review. I am going to start with STO and Champions Online because I have an active subscription to those 2 and would like to use it. The EQ2 review will be up later this week.

MMO Schedule

Everquest 2-Review
Star Trek Online
Champions Online

Games I am going to try

Allods Online
EVE
Warhammer
Ultima Online
Everquest
Anarchy Online
Darkfall?
Age of Conan
Vanguard
Dark Age of Camelot
Runes of Magic