Pumping Irony

Arena.net updated their Guild Wars 2 FAQ a few days ago. One particular item was of interest — and concern — to me:

How will character progression work? Will you be raising the level cap

Guild Wars 2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent world RPG. It is our priority to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap.

Also, to allow players the freedom to play together even if their friends are at a much higher (or lower) level, we are planning to implement a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes.

We’re applying this same philosophy to competitive play. Players will be able to engage in organized, balanced PvP (similar to GvG in the original Guild Wars) without needing to first level up characters, find equipment, or unlock skills. While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.

/sigh

I’ve always felt one of the sources of confusion many players had in their attempts to adapt to Guild Wars was having levels at all. It’s a skills-based game, and the majority of the game takes place at level cap. The leveling phase is fairly quick and serves only to introduce you to the basic concepts of the game, nothing more. If you come into Guild Wars with the levels-and-gear-based mentality that most MMO’s have, you’re doing it “wrong” and will only walk away in disappointment.

When Arena.net originally announced Guild Wars 2 would be raising the level cap, or possibly have no level cap at all, I was immediately concerned. This takes away from everything Guild Wars stands for and lowers it to the sewer standards of a typical MMO. Having no level cap raised questions of balancing with mobs and other characters, then I thought of Asheron’s Call. AC is also a skills-based game, but it does have levels. However, your level is not an indication of your power like it would be in other MMO’s, but merely an indication of the total xp you’ve accrued on that character. Vanity abounds in Guild Wars, from elite armors, to green weapons, to title tracks, to mini-pets, and even Collector’s Edition emotes. Guild Wars also keeps track of your total xp (since you still “ding” repeatedly after reaching “level cap”) but it’s only available to you, no one else can see it. Within that context, a limitless level cap would actually make sense in the Guild Wars universe.

However, with this recent FAQ update, and the mere mention of a CoX-like sidekick system, I am very concerned that in GW2 levels, and all their associated problems, will suddenly matter. I think part of me just died inside…

Ok, I spent entirely too much time in June working up my monk’s Norn reputation mostly for the Ursan Blessing skill to cheat power my way through the Norn Fighting Tournament. Currently at Rank 8, which is probably enough, I thought I’d give it one last shot “for real” before turning in despair to Ursan. Someone suggested I modify one of my 55 builds to cut down on the enchantments since I’m only fighting one opponent at a time (well, usually) and use a few other skills to let my opponents kill themselves. My primary weapon of choice would be Spoil Victor, followed by Necrosis and Reversal of Damage. The remaining skills were more or less typical of a 55 Monk designed to minimize damage and keep a positive health regeneration.

In one time through the tournament with the new 55 build, I not only went every round to win the tournament and gain the Bison Cup item, I also gained Zehtuka’s Horn and unlocked the final Hero, Kahmu!

Such a weight off my shoulder, finally getting the last Hero in the game, not to mention two new items some of my Heroes can possibly put to good use and the satisfaction of winning the Tournament with a legitimate build rather than resorting to the cheesy, über-powerful Ursan Blessing.

However, one final task remains: I did not fight Zho to win her Journal, which is one of the steps required to eventually gain the much sought-after Black Moa Chick…

We poked fun at Turbine last August when they announced LOTRO had “over 4 million characters.” Earlier this month Funcom proudly announced they had reached their “One Million Copies Shipped” milestone. Shipped. Not subscribers, not boxes sold, just boxes shipped. Today Funcom’s at it again with their press release stating they’ve surpassed 700,000 registered users.

I’ll give Funcom the benefit of the doubt: since Age of Conan’s release last month, they’ve sold over 70% of those shipped boxes. It’s been on top of NPD’s sales charts. However, this is right up there with “4 million characters” in that it is not an accurate representation of how many active subscribers the game has. Within the small circle of blogs and forums I frequent only a minority of those users planned on continuing their subscription beyond their initial free month, and many of those remaining only planned on playing until Warhammer. Even on the test server this past month, the global chat had many long-time beta testers who, like myself, were not interested in playing the live game. I freely admit that is a small sub-section of players, but based solely upon that and my own blatant “meh, been there, done that” attitude toward the game, I can’t help but wonder if Age of Conan has already peaked?

On the other hand, I do think it has enough grit to attract a lot of people from the tamer environs of other titles once the more serious issues have been addressed. Perhaps by releasing prematurely and taking advantage of the summer dry spell when no other AAA titles were releasing, Funcom saw a huge spike but will also suffer a huge trough as they see a mass exodus. However, in a few months when performance is better, content is patched in, and overall “things work” perhaps word of mouth will cause another influx of players, both new and returning, who may actually stay for more than a short visit?

Ok, so my Delorean just made a pit stop in 1987 with the title… deal with it!

I was going to briefly mention this in my June Summary, but it was already rapidly becoming one of my trademarked Wall of Text posts.

My stint this month rolling with Van Hemlock’s Tuesday N00b Club was my first-ever static group! I was already a working pilot when I got into the MMORPG scene, and our schedules prohibit the very notion of static groups. A pilot’s schedule is totally different each week and each month. No two weeks are alike, much less two months. As such, it’s impossible to commit to playing on a certain night of the week. My job is why in every new game I decide to stick with I have to put so much effort into finding a casual-friendly guild with a “family feel” but who is also understanding of my schedule and allows me to raid when I can without penalizing me because of my job. In addition to its many other flaws, the DKP loot system does exactly that, so adamantly refuse to join any DKP guild and will leave any guild that adopts it. I have the will, I have the skill, but paying the bills takes priority and I will not tolerate a system which penalizes me for that.

Michael Zenke wrote today that he’s always had a static group but is in search of a good guild. The great thing about his position is that he’ll get into an awesome guild while also keeping his static group. The best of both worlds. Whether he’s “getting pretty tired of it” or not, don’t look the static group gift horse in the mouth. The guilds are out there, and they’re great, trust me! But having experienced a static group now and knowing they are even better than I suspected they would be, I have a very keen sense of exactly what I’ll be missing out on when I return to work soon.

I’ve been on medical leave all month, so I’m bored and ready to return to the *cough* “friendly skies” *cough* though I fully realize that as soon as I’m pronounced fit to return and I set foot in my domicile again I will immediately say something to the effect of “oh my gawd is this over with yet so I can go home?” The grass is always greener, indeed.

In spite of having the entire month off, I really didn’t delve into very many MMO’s. In fact, I spent the majority of game time in Guild Wars, which is not an MMO at all. I spent a lot of time adventuring and farming (boo hiss!) with my monk.

Guild Wars: Early in the month I happened to see Darren in-game and he was in dire need of assistance completing a quest and a mission. I didn’t realize his character was (still is?) still on Istan, which is the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign. His dervish is level 18 and Darren gave me the impression he’s one of the millions of people who just don’t “get” Guild Wars design. It has levels but it’s not about levels like most MMO’s are so he was curious (and perhaps concerned?) about what was next. I gave a short explanation that hopefully at least got him pointed down the right mindset. Turns out his quest was a Master difficulty quest so even though I’m level cap and had a decent healing and protection hybrid build loaded, as well as good builds on my heroes, we had a rough time of it. Or perhaps I should just say I had a rough time of it since I was the healer. I think he actually made me perspire trying to keep them alive. SOE unleashed their Living Legacy promotion so Darren is in EQ2 now for the duration, enjoying that game’s chapter of Karen’s Revelry and Honor guild!

My next celebrity run-in was the Stormbringer himself: Van Hemlock! I was given an honorary induction into his little Tuesday N00b Club guild, meaning I received a guest invitation that allows me to travel to their Guild Hall for 8 hours. Since I had the month off I ended up making a point of meeting the TNC each week for adventure, fun and hilarity. Last week was our first foray into PvP. We started off doing the Zaishen challenge, which is “practice PvP” against a team of NPC’s. Van Hemlock set up the NPC teams to be single professions. I forget what the first team was, but we mowed them down and got a bit cocky about it. The second team was all rangers loaded with a trapper build. They cut through us like soft, warm butter. Repeatedly. Finally, our heads hung in shame, we proceeded to try PvP against, you know, other players. Rather than the dangerous and competitive world of the arenas we went to Cantha for some Alliance Battles. The TNC is a Luxon guild, while I’m in a Kurzick alliance but I’m fairly certain I can build up Luxon faction without harming my Kurzick standing. We did two battles. The first one, we (Luxons) won (yay! oh wait…) making a dramatic comeback at the end to score the final points. Kurzicks did the same on the second battle. Luxons started off strong and maintained a very healthy lead until the very end when the Kurzicks made an incredible comeback to win. Probably the most fun all month with the TNC was running the Catacombs of Kathandrax dungeon, which received brief mention on the most recent episode of the Van Hemlock podcast. One of the TNC guys was commenting how it was so different running with a real healer. Apparently they’ve grown quite accustomed to having high death penalties in their adventures. Just getting to the dungeon itself is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off with only a few casualties. We proceeded through the first two levels of the dungeon in relative caution with only one character dying (twice, sorry mate) then we entered the third level and challenged the boss, Ilsundur, Lord of Fire. I’d never been in this dungeon before so I didn’t know what to expect. Just this one boss in his chamber, easy pickings right? Right… If his massive AoE attacks weren’t enough to immediately put me on a feverish healing defensive while the flame-licked group scattered about, in my concentration on the health bars I just barely caught notice of “something else” in the periphery of the screen. I then heard a rumbling sound slowly growing louder. Just as I started to ask “Hey, what’s that sou…” *KABOOM* I became a crispy, flaming pancake, run over from behind by a gigantic rolling fireball! Ilsundur sets two of these monstrosities rolling, each in opposite directions around the chamber so not only are we fighting him but we have to watch out for the approach of these fireballs, both in front and behind us. Luckily “death by flaming steamroller” is on the rather short list of occurrences which do not contribute to death penalty so despite at least five full wipes, the only death penalty anyone incurred was due to legitimate combat deaths.

Oh, just to explain the “Stormbringer” thing, Van Hemlock seems to be cursed. Every single Tuesday, shortly after logging in and grouping up with him, storms appear. Two weeks ago they became so violent the power was knocked out in this section of town for nearly an hour. Last week, I had just come in from a several mile walk. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, not extremely humid or anything. Van Hemlock logs into GW and within 15 minutes I’m hearing thunder! Ten minutes later a full-on storm is roiling.

It also turns out that despite having completed the Nightfall campaign late last year, I did so in a manner that completely skipped at least three entire zones and two towns! Possibly more, but those were the latest discoveries. I skipped them so entirely that my map didn’t even show the zone portals, so I had no idea anything should have been there until just by chance I compared my map to a fully explored map of Elona. I don’t have the zones fully explored yet but they are on my map and I’ve reached both towns so I can map travel to them now. Farming? Initially I was farming Norn reputation from the Eye of the North expansion to build up my Norn skills, most notably Ursan Blessing which gives extreme bonuses to armor and strength. Yeah, my character is a monk so he’ll have less armor even in Ursan than a warrior would, but I’ve been unsuccessful with every other tactic to get through that Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu (and a few other items) so in desperation I’m looking to Ursan to power my way through it. Rank 8 so far, and not looking forward to repeating this on my warrior someday. I’m also wanting to get my Lightbringer reputation to maximum rank because of the Lightbringer AoE healing spell I’ve recently been introduced to and fallen in love with, but that particular reputation is very slow to increase so I’m definitely not looking forward to repeating it on any other character.

Finally, this month I finally got to see both the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, two of the most famous elite areas in the game! I’ve only been in one time to each, but I’m definitely looking forward to more and being able to learn my way around and which mobs drop the most sought-after items! The alliance I’m in has a daily schedule so I should be able to get involved with more and more high-end content as I get to know everyone better. If I can get into a Domain of Anguish group, that should be of great help with my Lightbringer reputation as well.

DDO: I didn’t get nearly as much DDO time as I’d hoped, mostly because of Guild Wars. I did manage to sneak around solo into the new Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, but the second any mob noticed me I had to run for my life back to the inn. Wizards being super-squishy and all… I did do a few quests I’d never seen before, and in interesting groups. Oh, for the record, the new Monk class is awesome! I don’t have one to actually play myself, but just from what I saw being grouped with some, it looks like a blast. The only real gripe about them I’ve heard is from clerics, especially those from guilds who take things slower or perma-death guilds in particular. Monks need to keep going in order to maintain their ki so they tend to run ahead of the group and start fights to keep their ki up while everyone else sighs. I’m sure players will find a synergy soon though. In any event, my wizard did finally go adventuring once more, though someone needs to give me a lesson on DDO inventory management. Do I actually need all these robes, scepters, staves and wands? They each seem to have very unique properties so I’ve been reluctant to sell them but I’m nearly out of bag space now.

Hellgate: London: I put a little bit of time into HGL this month. Mostly in hopes of catching up with Hudson and Bildo in-game but that didn’t happen. It’s a shame the game was marketed as an MMO, for it definitely isn’t. In fact, Flagship seems to excel at marketing single-player games as MMO’s. Both HGL and Mythos seem to be solo-oriented with almost zero need to group with anyone other than “just for the hell of it.” I haven’t gotten far in either yet, so maybe that changes, but it seems silly for now. I thought HGL did a great job of nailing the shooter “feel” within an RPG context, far better than Tabula Rasa did. Although I’ll partially attribute that to HGL’s first-person view. Both HGL and TR do a horrid job in third-person. Why do console developers do such a great job with third-person shooters and the PC guys can’t pull it off to save their lives? Anyway, my only real gripe about the shooter aspect of HGL is the unlimited ammo. Sure, in LOTRO I love that my hunter doesn’t have to waste bag space stocking up arrows like I did in WoW (and risk running out in the middle of a raid), but HGL having unlimited ammo really trivializes the combat. All I have to do is hold down the fire button and move the reticule over the mobs until they die with no worries whatsoever about strategy or keeping track of my ammo. It did seem like they’ve squashed a lot of bugs in the months since I last played, and the performance is awesome now, but I still notice that it takes a very long time after quitting the game before resources are released. Memory leak? My Guild Wars alliance also has an HGL chapter, so perhaps I’ll try catching up with some of them and see how the grouping is. Speaking of Mythos, I guess a huge new makeover is coming to the test server. It’s already received the Overland treatment, where the whole game is open rather than being instanced. I haven’t been able to play in a very long time because there was a bug in the game that interfered with the Zune wireless networking services, causing Mythos to not react to any input (ie. I could login but not move). Sure, I could disable those two services and reboot (and I did once) but the Diablo click-fest game play just doesn’t interest me enough for it. Regardless, the latest update to Mythos’ test server fixed that bug so maybe, maybe, I’ll put some time in if I’m extremely bored and in a masochistic mood. I hear a future update will give an “MMO view” so maybe that will make it a more enjoyable experience. Then again, I absolutely cannot stand Dungeon Runners, so maybe not…

F2P: Nothing says “I’m bored!” more than going F2P. That also says a lot about EQ2 that I’d rather play any number of F2P games than login to EQ2, which I did re-install for the Living Legacy thing, and thus far haven’t managed to stay interested in playing for more than 5 minutes total this month. For no good reason in particular I always keep several F2P games installed but I never actually play any, at least not for any length of time. One thing I’ve noticed is that an awful lot of the F2P games seem to be all about soloing. You can create a warrior, mage, hunter, or priest-type character but that seems to make little real difference and only appeals to how you personally like to see your character kill things. I rarely see any incentive to group, unless the high level PvP/PK is better or safer in groups. Archlord has “auto looting” when you’re grouped, so you don’t have to waste time actually picking your loot up off the ground; it goes straight into your inventory. Other than laziness, I’ve seen no benefit to grouping there. The exception so far has been Rappelz. My initial impression is that it actually has a fairly helpful in-game community and I constantly see groups looking for more players, usually a cleric but often seeking a “damage dealer” (DD) class (which we’d call a “dps” class in other games). The classes in Rappelz do matter and they fit their roles more like a “real” (ie. Western AAA subscription) MMO “holy trinity.” There are several dungeons in the game, so you’ll see LFG’s for dungeon parties (DP) all the time. From the very little I can tell, dungeons are where the Cash Shop comes in: players buy the Stamina Savers to help keep them alive and earn extra XP and JP (Job Points for skills) while in the dungeons. Otherwise, the cash shop is aesthetic fluff items, for the most part, and not needed. In fact, in the little time I’ve put in I have received two or three stamina savers either as drops or quest rewards, so it’s entirely possible that the CS wouldn’t be needed at all? In addition to dungeon parties, which anyone of a certain level or rank can join, Rappelz has guild-only dungeon sieges which is a combination of PvE and PvP to own that dungeon, which gives some benefit to the guild. If my guild owned a certain dungeon, another guild can challenge my guild by first applying to raid the dungeon. If they kill the bosses before the timer expires they proceed to the actual siege, where both guilds fight for ownership of the dungeon.

I do notice that yes, F2P games have shallow game play (or at least don’t go to lengths to disguise the grind like our AAA ones do) but they do push the envelope in other areas. Rappelz seems to have a rather complicated pet system. Mabinogi allows your character to age, which I don’t think has been done in an MMO before. If the rumors of a Harry Potter MMO are true, I feel this would be a great aspect of game play where as students of Hogwarts, not only do we “level up” but each year of school our characters actually age and grow, just like the characters in the novels and movies do. If I understand correctly, Archlord seems to have some system set up where after a grueling set of dungeons or keep assaults, one player can become the archlord of that server, and receives super archlord armor and weaponry and a dragon mount, complete with AoE fire breath. Of course, he immediately becomes a target for whomever is waiting in the shadows with aspirations of becoming archlord himself. Who knows, I may actually put in more F2P time with the goal of exploring their specific features where they’re innovating into areas we haven’t really seen in our AAA subscription games.

This is why I don’t typically jump on the “news” thing, but what the hell, I’ll be the umpteen-bazillionth blogger to spout off on Blizzard finally announcing Diablo 3.

Diablo fans are rejoicing as their heavens tremble! I suppose that leaves me as the singular voice of dissent. I owned the original Diablo, played it a bit on and off over its first few years. The Diablo game play just doesn’t speak to me. I couldn’t get past the extreme downgrade in graphics to even purchase Diablo 2, despite having several friends continuously raving about it. I’m in the same boat with Mythos, I just don’t care for that clickfest hack and slash game play, and so far I haven’t been able to tolerate playing for more than 15 minutes. Diablo 3 promises, as usual with Blizzard games, multi-player over Battle.net. Ya know how everyone (including myself) complains about all the swearing, trolling kiddies on Xbox Live? That’s Battle.net in a nutshell. There was a time in WoW (perhaps still is?) when I often heard comments blaming the “quality” of WoW’s in-game community (ie. “Barrens Chat,” Chuck Norris jokes, etc. et al) on “Blizz kidz from Bnet.” I didn’t like it in 1997 when I had Diablo, and I’m pretty darned certain now that I’m 11 years older that I won’t like today either.

Go check out the new Diablo 3 site though. Per usual, Blizzard has a cinematic teaser that is of phenomenal quality. Blizzard should really look into setting up a CGI movie studio… A lengthy video of in-game footage introducing us to the Barbarian and a brand new class, the Witch Doctor which looks very fun and interesting.

Who knows, I won’t totally rule out getting the game, but that will totally depend on having a number of friends to play with because, just like I don’t do public XBL games, neither do I do public Bnet games.

I’ve been rather shocked that Funcom has left the Age of Conan beta servers up so long, but it’s at least given me some additional (and free) insight to the game’s development during its first month without needing to actually have a real account. Sure, I pre-ordered the game. I have the card with the code for the War Mammoth sitting here next to me, and the box is in the shelf here still in its shrink-wrap. Overall, the game just isn’t doing anything for me. I find it’s just WoW in another wrapper, and by that I mean it’s all about getting to the end-game where you’ll need to be in a good-sized guild to continue. Add to that the horrid UI, horrid itemization, horrid chat, PvP with zero meaning or consequences and DDR-style melee combat… I just don’t see the point in continuing to fuss over the game. It’s not for me right now. Someday maybe I’ll actually be interested in touring Hyboria but I’m completely uninterested in a hardcore-style end-game.

Despite my lack of interest, I have been diligent about keeping AoC patched up this month and even putting some play time in when I’m bored to see how the “real” game out of Tortage is. Hint: it’s nothing special, just your run-of-the-mill MMO with broken features.

Today however, the test launcher has a new announcement that the beta servers are being converted to retail Testlive servers, so only users with live accounts can use the test servers, which is normal practice.

Conversion of Beta Server

We will be shutting down all beta servers to start the conversion to our official Testlive server today. The forums will temporarily remain up until we get everything set up for the new Testlive forums.

We appreciate all the hard work from the beta community as your testing has been crucial to our development! The thousands of in-game bug reports, community posts and live testing has been appreciated among the studio. Without your help and dedication, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We hope that everyone can continue to do the same as we launch our official test server to the players.

I will continue to keep everyone updated on the process involved in getting set up and testing. To start, I will mention the latest information that has been mentioned in other threads on the forums:

• Testlive will be available to everyone who has an active AoC live account.
• We will be doing several things to encourage people to play on Testlive. We are looking at being able to copy characters from Live, having “buffing” NPCs that will level and gear your character up.

That last bullet point sounds interesting, and just might provide extra incentive for players to join the Testlive server to help out future development of the game. In the meantime AoC-ers, enjoy your time in Hyboria! Perhaps I’ll feel like taking a peek this winter, depending on what I hear as the game progresses.

While at heart I believe in the adage “life is too short for regrets,” I have many regrets in life nonetheless. Since this is a gaming blog, however, I’ll stick with that, as my list of life’s regrets could fill a psychologist’s case-study novel.

I’ve never done EverQuest, though I’d watched over shoulders enough to come to the opinion it wasn’t for me, and reading about the game’s mechanics and play-style in the years since have done much to validate that initial gut reaction (my enjoyment of reading Tipa’s exploits with her Nostaliga guild notwithstanding). Indeed, I’ve never played any of the original batch of defining (or not?) MMO’s. Ultima Online? Dark Age of Camelot? Asheron’s Call? Not me. Honestly, the only of those early games I have any interest in at this stage is DAOC, primarily to understand just what all the hullabaloo of RvR is and perhaps gain an inkling of interest in WAR as a result. However, I also realize that because of my job, out of the entire 14-day trial I would only get to play a total of 6 days. Even if I was available during the entire two weeks, based on current games I would think RvR is an end-game activity. I would never get there during the trial, assuming the trial even allows me to leave the noob content at all? But still, I’ve been curious enough to do a little light reading about DAOC and even hit up YouTube for a few video captures.

So, ok, I just blew a metric ton of geek street-cred by admitting that. Let’s see if I can regain a few points by also admitting that my first experience with “massively multiplayer” (for the time period, anyway. I don’t think the term had been created yet.) graphical gaming was the original Air Warrior on the GEnie online service, on my Amiga (which I still have, thank you very much). You think monthly subscription fees suck? We hearty Air Warriors paid hourly to get our game on! At the time, I was a kid living near Dayton, OH and Kesmai arranged for me to visit the archives of Wright-Patterson AFB to make photocopies of some specific aircraft data and specifications from WWII to help improve realistic performance of some of Air Warrior’s aircraft! Go me! Now, if only I’d had the forethought to springboard that moment of insider contact into the game industry career I’ve always wanted… Oh, sorry! I said I wouldn’t go there…

Anyway, on to the actual point of all this. I’ve stated a few times that my first MMOG subscription was the original Star Wars Galaxies. However, my very first actual experience with the genre was the Asheron’s Call 2 trial. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had a certain soft spot in my heart for Turbine, the same as many do for SOE because EQ was their first? I distinctly recall so many times seeing the AC2 box on store shelves, and it literally called to me. Vibrations of universal energies prognosticating Dereth’s final cataclysm, perhaps, but I resisted. Regretfully, I never bought AC2 because at the time I was less the independent MMOer that I am today. Back then, I only got into a game if I had real friends who were into it. SWG, then WoW, then I broke off into my own, trying all kinds of games and making new friends in each game separate from my real friends. But by the time I’d earned my independence, AC2 was no more.

I was in one of my reflective moods this morning, particularly of AC2. I remembered Ethic’s post on Kill Ten Rats of AC2’s final day so I stopped by and read it again. Whether you played or not, read that post. It’s a wonderfully heart-felt — and heart-wrenching — tale of a virtual world, filled with so many players’ enjoyment and memories, fading from existence. Just look at all the comments of sadness following the post! This is why I truly, truly regret not getting AC2. The very short time I got to spend there has given me a lifetime of love for it, and I barely got to experience anything at all! The real players have even more reason for their sadness. I still have the option, should I choose to exercise it, to download the DAOC trial and give it a whirl. But AC2 is one of those few titles which no longer exist. That ship has sailed; the opportunity is no longer available.

What I’d read about the state of AC2 as it shut down, by all rights it had come into its own and most of the initial complaints had been addressed. It even had an expansion, called Legions! The Hero 2.0 and Crafting 2.0 systems received rave reviews from players. The remaining complaints seemed to be those of the AC players, who didn’t like how completely different AC2 was. Yet I look at how different EQ2 is from EQ. One huge difference: AC2 was released in 2002, a mere three years after AC was released. EQ2 was released at the end of 2004, roughly five and a half years after EQ. Could the timing have been more of an issue gaining acceptance from the original’s fans?

I can’t help but wonder if Turbine couldn’t spend some time re-developing AC2 into a 3.0 version of itself and re-releasing it? From all the monthly content updates plus the expansion pack, they have enough content to launch with. Update to the current version of the Turbine Engine, DX10 graphics and all, then tweak the rest of the systems to bring them up-to-date, perhaps even redesigning the character leveling mechanics to better reflect the original AC’s primarily skills-based mechanics, while your level was merely an indication of total xp? While I’ve seen LOTRO described as AC2 2.5, and I agree to a point, there’s no doubt it’s a more casual game. It would be nice to see AC2 back on the table as a more… perhaps not “hardcore” but certainly more challenging and vicious… alternative. Having three modern games, plus the original AC, on Turbine’s plate would also be enough to justify having an all-access subscription model similar to SOE’s Station Access.

If only…

As a follow-up to my previous posts about Turbine rumors, today the latest one hit: is Turbine bring DDO to consoles? This appeared first on Joystiq, then Massively picked it up and ran with it.

First, consider DDO’s active real-time combat system. This particularly lends itself well to consoles in terms of the base melee aspect. On the PC, melee is a single right-click and your character does a random combat animation. Press a key to block, another to dodge… all combat mechanics very familiar to most console gamers.

The instanced nature of DDO would also be a boon for the console platform, given that consoles usually have much fewer resources and RAM than a comparable PC would. The instanced zones and dungeons would keep performance maximized on the consoles.

Communication… well, that’s always been a topic in regards to console MMO’s but as I’ve said before, both Xbox 360 and PS3 accept any USB keyboard and the Xbox has a mini-keyboard attachment that snaps right onto a controller. More importantly, while there is a degree of chat in DDO, nearly everyone utilizes the game’s integrated VOIP during adventures. No idea about the PS3, but I think all 360’s come with a headset for use on Xbox Live already so no additional purchase necessary.

Currently, DDO has the typical $15/month MMO price scheme (although I jumped on the $10/month they offered awhile back). Massively Speaking #8 (hey, that was great hearing Cameron in a podcast, by the way!) hinted that Turbine is actively looking at alternate pricing schemes for DDO, including free-to-play. I can see DDO doing quite well for itself switching to the Guild Wars 2 model: pay for the game, play for free, then charge for additional content packs. I’ve stated many times that I foresee issues particularly with Xbox Live’s Gold members when they discover they have to pay one fee for the Xbox Live services they’ve been using, but a totally separate fee for any MMOG’s. Xbox Live users are already accustomed to paying for new Downloadable Content (DLC) so that particular price scheme, I feel, would be a tremendous hit on both platforms and we’d see DDO’s total population grow.

Adding fuel to the fire are two items from Turbine themselves. First, as I mentioned a few days ago, Turbine is looking for a Senior Console Engineer. Then came yesterday’s announcement from Turbine’s Community Manager, Meghan “Patience” Rodberg, that DDO’s popular Weekly Development Activities will be ceasing because what the DDO team is working on is under tight wraps, and that additionally DDO is going to be getting some major PR pushes in the coming months. Here are two blurbs from her announcement:

Q: Why is the WDA going away?
A: There are two critical factors that went into the decision, so let’s talk about them a little:
The first is that following the completion of Module 7, the DDO development team has been working full-tilt on several things that are still under tight wraps. This means we’re unable to include them in the WDA – making it next to useless.
More importantly, though, is that DDO will be getting more and more focus from Turbine’s marketing and PR teams over the coming months. This renewed focus has already begun, in fact, and you may have noticed an increase in the publicity for DDO. This is a good thing! The pickle is that as time goes on, we will be getting even more press coverage for the game; this means that we’ll need to offer exclusives to the media about things that are coming up next for DDO – things that as a result cannot be included in the WDA.

Q: What are these top secret things you mentioned?
A: They are top secret. In time we will bring you more information, but currently we’re not at liberty to discuss them. If we told you, we’d have to… well, you know.

Now for a huge negative: DDO’s UI. No I don’t mean those fugly icons (seriously Turbine, get some new icon art) but the complexity of it all. My highest character is level 7 so far, and I already have the same number, if not more, hotbars onscreen that I had back when I was raiding and PvP-ing in WoW. And a lot of the slots in my WoW hotbars were fluff; just items I put there for convenience not because I needed them. In DDO, I feel like I need those slots onscreen, and I can only see it getting worse as I progress to higher levels. Real-time combat or no, DDO does have a standard MMORPG UI and that is simply unacceptable in a console environment. I’ve wondered if a shift to drop-down hotbars would work, similar to how EA designed the UI for the console versions of their RTS titles, Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Command and Conquer 3. That UI works great within the scope of an RTS, and could possibly work well for our standard turn-based MMORPG’s but again, DDO is real-time, fast action, and I don’t know how that would translate when it comes to a fighter quickly needing a Trip skill or a caster needing to quickly select a spell from his repertoire. If a console DDO is indeed on the “top secret” plate over at Turbine, I am extremely interested how they handle the UI translation.

Now, just to put away all thoughts that Turbine is going to blow all their recent fund-raising just on DDO, I’ll reiterate Time Warner was one of the lead investors last week, and their representative specifically said “Online interactive entertainment is a huge growth market and we are very excited about Turbine, its unique capabilities and the obvious opportunities that exist with our own broad portfolio of IP.” In my previous speculations, I linked Time Warner’s involvement to their Harry Potter IP, but don’t forget the potential aspect of implementing aspects of the Lord of the Rings movies into the MMORPG. Turbine only had a license with Tolkien Enterprises for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series of novels but nothing with New Line Cinemas. However, Time Warner is the parent company of New Line, so who knows? Maybe as an eventual result of this new turn of events we’ll finally hear Howard Shore’s glorious soundtrack in-game? Maybe we’ll see the NPC graphics reflect the looks of the actors? So much potential here, it would be a shame if it fell short. As their rep stated, Time Warner does indeed have a huge IP portfolio, so I’d still keep a Harry Potter-themed game as a possibility, or any number of their more popular franchises that could be brought to the MMO space.

I considered simply titling this “PunkBuster Sucks!” but…

First off, no I have not been banned due to PunkBuster. What I am is unable to play the game I’ve purchased. Out of curiosity a few weeks ago I bought Kaos Studios new shooter, Frontlines: Fuel of War over Steam. I’ve enjoyed the handful of games I’ve been in so far, although the nerve — nay, the stupidity — of anyone releasing a shooter without dedicated server support in the 21st century was beyond disappointing. Kaos’ 1.0.2 patch rectified this but it seems the damage had been done. Even last week Frontlines’ server browser was showing zero dedicated servers for the game.

June 5, Kaos pushed out the much-anticipated 1.1.0 patch, which among other things, adds PunkBuster anti-cheat support. I wasn’t 100% positive if I can use a “normal” patch for a Steam-enabled game, so I waited until Steam auto-updated the game the following day. Great, right? Not so much…

As you can see on the lower left, I do have PunkBuster enabled. Yet, for the past three days, I’ve gotten this error and have been unable to join any PB-enabled servers, which is the majority now. The other problem would be player count. Zero players on any servers? I’d love to think it’s because everyone else’s PB is broken and they can’t play, but I’ve seen a fair share of activity on PB-enabled servers the past few days. So it’s just me.

I recall having similar problems with both BF2142 and CoD4 — PunkBuster has been nothing but a pain in my ass — so I went to my old standby fix: run the official PunkBuster update software. I ran the PB updater, let it update itself then checked for updates for my PB-enabled games. Turns out both BF2142 and CoD4 were in need of PB updates. I could have sworn that PB was supposed to check for updates when I’m playing PB-enabled games? Anyway… I try to add Frontlines to my PB games list but hit another snag:

Ok, so let me get this straight: Kaos gets the green light from Even Balance to put PunkBuster in their game. But Even Balance doesn’t bother to put out an update that the game is officially enabled?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?