Pumping Irony

So, here we are ending 2011. Seems that a lot (or maybe just a little) has changed over this past year within the circle of bloggers and gamers I interact with, but generally I’ve seen a degree of movement toward being more positive in their outlook on the games or type of games they play. Ironically, I just saw a couple of them on Twitter yesterday complaining how negative so many are getting, full of complaints, shouting, whining, you name it. Apparently I don’t follow those people, and that’s fine by me.

I’m sure everyone who still reads this has noticed my marked neglect of Pumping Irony this year. I just didn’t feel it, for the most part. I had a lot of fun writing about Champions Online‘s first Comic Series, though my glass cannon character got stuck (and still is) on the final fight. The draft post is still sitting there since July waiting for me to finish it, meanwhile Cryptic has the second Comic Series currently running. For the most part, I’ve damn near given up on MMOs, and what’s left of my readership are primarily MMO Gamers. Right now the exception is Star Trek Online but the catch is, MMO or not, I don’t play that like an MMO. Other than that, I’ve mostly gaming on the Xbox 360, which has become my preferred platform for everything except MMOs for now.

The Blog

[This is the "glass is half empty" paragraph] That leaves me in a predicament. I’m barely playing MMOs and when I do, I’m still not bothering to write MMO blog posts. I’m mostly active these days on Google+ where everyone who’s moved there too has been far more accepting of my non-MMO and non-gaming interests. I’m still deciding, but don’t be shocked if I just pull the plug on Pumping Irony. I know one of the top rules for writing is "write for yourself," but this is a blog, not literature. If I get the interaction I seek elsewhere – in this case, Google+ – then elsewhere gets my focus.

[Now for the "glass is half full" treatment] However, I’ve also made a pact with myself to write more in 2012. I have Pumping Irony, and I have a few other blogs that have nothing to do with gaming at all. I’ve neglected all of them, so one way or another I’ve promised myself to take time to write on at least one of them, and to finally pick up writing fiction again. So, in one form or another, I expect more writing out of  myself next year even if it’s in a location you gamer-only readers never see. I enjoy the creativity involved in putting words to paper pixel, the behind-the-scenes research, and hopefully learning new additions to my vocabulary.

What I’ve Been Doing

Other than the aforementioned Star Trek Online, as I said I’ve mostly been on the Xbox 360. But what fantastic games came out this year! The past few months (and upcoming few still) was an onslaught of AAA titles that are well-deserving of anyone’s hard-earned cash.

Role Playing:

Skyrim. Obviously the big recent RPG was Bethesda’s Skyrim. Finally, Bethesda made a game that gets it right for me. Oblivion was a chore for me to slog through a few months ago, but I did it mostly out of spite. With Skyrim, on the other hand, I finally "got" what people say about Bethesda’s games being mostly about the exploration. Oblivion was bland – nearly every environment looked identical and the same music always played. In Skyrim, everywhere I go has its own unique appearance and music. The dungeons are more varied, even though I can still spot individual 3D "tiles" (a 2D description, but you know what I mean) being re-used for dungeon construction. And something very important for me, finally a third-person view that is functional and playable! First-person melee is horrid and bland, and honestly I don’t see it improving, so putting me in a third-person camera where I can see moves that cannot be accomplished from first-person keeps the combat interesting for me.

Fallout 3. As much as I’m enjoying Skyrim, it has caused me to get an interest in finishing Fallout 3, which I last played in May, 2009. I was level 16 at the time, but I had botched a few achievements. Similar to how I played Oblivion, my goal with Fallout 3 is to finish the game (and DLC) with 100% achievements. So I deleted my previous game and started over. This time around, I still can’t say the exploration is all that exciting or interesting, but achievement-wise (which equates to quest-wise) I’ve already surpassed where I left off two years ago, but am also only level 13. I’m not spreading my points all over the place this time, mostly concentrating on small weapons and other skills that will specifically get me through the game. Which is fine, because that’s also how I prefer to play this character. Unless he gets really bad die rolls, he is far more deadly at level 13 than my former level 16 character was. And being able to quickly and violently kill the Wasteland baddies makes me smile and even laugh, which perhaps makes up for the game itself not being all that fun (from a pure "fun" perspective).

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. I started DKS a few months ago, and got to the point where I could become a dragon and took control of my own Battle Tower. Then other games took my attention, but I plan to get back to it as soon as possible. It’s a really good RPG with some great action moves and a lot of diversity in its freedom to create characters. I don’t often play ranged characters in RPGs (MMOs maybe but not in real RPGs) but I am in DKS and it’s a blast. Some of the higher-tier abilities are just awesome to behold, and I’ve enjoyed the story so far.

Shooters:

Battlefield 3. This is my new go-to shooter. I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with it, especially some of the maps like Operation Metro that seem like more of a nod towards the Call of Duty style of gameplay, but when I’m playing on a _real_ Battlefield map, I get that _real_ Battlefield feel again.

Gears of War 3. I’ve always like the campaigns in the Gears of War series but I’ve never been a fan of the multiplayer, which I tend to describe as "shoulder rolling with shotguns." I’m just not that good at it, and because it is built around small teams (5v5) that makes me more of a liability to my team, so in Gears 1 and 2 I mostly chose to just avoid multiplayer altogether. Gears 3 is no exception – I’m still avoiding the competitive multiplayer – but with four-player co-op, Horde 2.0 and the new Beast game modes, there is so much variety with Gears of War 3 that I’ll probably give this one my vote for best value overall.

Modern Warfare 3. I own it. I finished the campaign, which was fun (for me, the best part of any Call of Duty) and finished up the series’ storyline. Multiplayer is horrible, though. As much as Black Ops multiplayer pissed me off last year, I gradually learned to at least tolerate it and would often play it even without friends. MW3 has caused me to violently rage-quit almost every single match, though. COD games have always been hyper-fast and hyper-twitchy, but MW3 seems to have finally crossed some invisible line in the sand that pushes it over the edge for me. It’s just not fun, and I do not enjoy dying, watching the killcam and seeing the guy didn’t even hit me, respawning and dying again before I can count to 5. I also don’t enjoy when I kill someone when I never hit him either. It’s sad when the COD franchise is a license to print money yet the multiplayer experience actually degrades with each iteration. In a related note, I did finally start the Black Ops campaign recently, and I’m about halfway through it. Since I only played multiplayer this past year, I had no idea whatsoever the game was set in the 1960s. Strange, but it seems to have put a slight damper on whatever semblance of positivity I felt towards the game.

Other:

Saints Row the Third. Over the top craziness in an open world. Where the GTA series went all serious on us, the SR series relishes in its zaniness. I’m not finished with the campaign yet, but think I’m getting close. The co-op is a lot of fun, though it’s a shame it still only accommodates two players. Like Gears of War 3, this one has been enough fun that I went ahead and bought the Season Pass which discounts all upcoming mission DLC.

Forza Motorsports 4. I’m not usually into racing games, especially the more sim-like ones that lock me onto the track, but Forza 4 has been quite enjoyable on a casual basis. I also picked up Test Drive Unlimited 2 which is a sorta-kinda MMO (they refer to it as a MOOR – Massively Open Online Racing) game.

Also plenty of other 360 and XBLA games have been in my roster, with more to come. I’ll try to do a better job of writing about them as we enter the new year!

Star Trek Online‘s new Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo, has been busy the past couple weeks writing blog posts detailing the game’s Path to F2P.

The two most recent posts (as of this writing) are each reflective of the new economy that Cryptic is in the process of developing and evolving on the Tribble test server so that F2P will go live with a viable new economy.

First, Blog #10 detailed the new system of starship acquisition. New ships will be added to the game, along with shifting how ships will be acquired and what they will cost. The table at the bottom of the article shows which ships will be available in-game for either the new Dilithium currency or some other means, such as the free tokens for Gold players, and which ships will be in the C-Store. One very important thing to note is that all Vice Admiral (Tier 6) starships will be C-Store exclusive! To me, this seems a drastic departure from what we normally see in subscription-to-F2P conversions, where players – even Gold players! – have no choice but to buy their "end-game" ship. We’re still only a couple weeks into beta testing, and I expect Gold players to go ballistic and throw conniption fits over this.

As for my own take on how it may effect my own game and experience, I’m a bit torn. I do still believe that as a Gold (I’m a Lifetime Subscriber) player, basic "equipment" should remain available in-game. The C-Store has always been around, and I haven’t minded it. I haven’t gotten around to buying any starships yet, because the only ship I ever wanted since starting the game was the Intrepid class science ship. If it had been C-Store exclusive, I would have bought it. That’s just how "right" that ship feels for everything I wanted in my science officer character. Vice Admirals have the most starship choices available, most of which are in the C-Store, and that’s fine, but I do think at least one basic model should be available in-game for normal means for the Gold players.

Blog #11 goes into how Cryptic ideally wants the normal Energy Credit economy to work as the most common currency players will be spending and needing to acquire. Then comes the new Dilithium currency, which is primarily intended for only high-end gear (like players on Holodeck currently barter for Emblems) and non-C-Store starships. D’Angelo says he does want that gear to be harder to acquire than it is now, since it’s most appealing to the harder-core player, and those players will "work" to get it, giving it more "worth" to the player.

New to equation (at least to me, I don’t frequent the forums) is the planned Currency Exchange where players can sell Dilithium to other players for C-Points! Cryptic will not be selling Dilithium in the C-Store, so the only Dilithium available on the economy market will be that which other players are willing to go out and get, then put up for sale. Prices are expected to be reflective of the amount currently on the market. On the one hand, I think this is an intriguing RMT-ish addition to the game. Players who absolutely refuse to buy C-Points for a Vice Admiral starship could grind Dilithium and sell it for the C-Points. On the other hand, I routinely witness just how much the hardcore STO players are willing to grind. When the Borg Incursions went live last month, the hardcore guys went… hardcore… over completing all the related accolades, including the final one for destroying 2,000 Borg ships, and finished them all in about two weeks. When the F2P beta went live on Tribble, several hardcore types got to Vice Admiral rank in under 48 hours. The KDF faction just went live last week, and those players did the same thing getting level capped KDF characters in record time. Now they’ll have a way to make all that time grinding have some value in that they can earn C-Points from other players and turn around and buy stuff from the C-Store! The primary bottlenecks will be two-fold. First, how many ways will there eventually be to earn Dilithium in-game? In the recent (today’s patch isn’t finished downloading yet) build, there were a few new ways to earn Refined Dilithium (the real currency used to buy starships and gear) and a few ways that awarded Dilithium Ore, which the player has to refine (just a button click) and is capped at refining 8000 per day. So we’ll see how this ends up working out. Either way, it should be interesting.

See what I did there?

As I mentioned recently, Star Trek Online‘s test servers have been reassigned. The RedShirt server, which is usually for internal testing or invitation-only Quality Assurance testing, is now assigned as the public test server. Tribble has been reassigned as the F2P Beta server, and that’s where I’ve been spending all my time with STO lately.

Unlike most MMO betas, which are nothing more than marketing speak for glorified free trials, the F2P Beta hearkens back to the late 20th century where, by golly, beta meant beta! So much stuff is broken, it isn’t even funny. If nothing else, this goes to show how many seemingly unrelated systems in an MMO end up being related after all. These things are complicated under the hood! I’ve lost count how many bug reports I have filed already, and several more that I’m debating filing or not because I know other testers have already filed them.

One minor, but cool, graphical overhaul is that the Bajoran wormhole is now visible from inside DS9!

Bridge Officer (“BOff”) AI is broken in the current build in the respect that your BOffs will no longer automatically perform CPR on incapacitated team members when out of combat, so you have to manually resuscitate your team on away missions. Items from a future event somehow ended up in the loot table, so we occasionally pick them up. No big deal other than everyone wonders what they’re for. If you’re quick enough you can sell them for 50 Energy Credits each, otherwise you’ll soon see a notification that you “used” the item and it vanishes from your inventory. There are plenty of others, mostly small bugs and glitches.

R&D (crafting) has been altered so that players can only make odd-numbered tier items. I can’t even imagine the reason for this, unless it’s to force purchasing dilithium in the C-Store (see the Dilithium Conspiracy a couple paragraphs down) but I typically R&D gear for my ship every tier then use badges of exploration to outfit my away team. This not only is a drastic change, it nearly makes R&D completely useless until reaching level cap.

The big show-stopper is broken missions. Unlike the current game, the F2P game will be very story line-dependent for leveling, and the mission journal UI has been updated appropriately for this. The good part of this is that each story line will be given in a linear manner, so we can play through a continuous story to its conclusion rather than the current live game where it’s not always clear which missions are related. The bad thing is that if a mission breaks, your progression comes to a dead halt. Not good. The very first story arc in the game has a mission that is broken in the current build, for example. At the end, you fight an Undine dreadnought ship. The glitch is that it keeps spitting out smaller ships who quickly overwhelm and destroy the player’s ship. Over and over. The workaround for this is to team with other players. Ha! Teaming with other players? In an MMO? Whodathunkit? But, as with most group content (and this is supposed to be a solo mission) finding other players isn’t always easy. Luckily, I had already joined a pretty large and active fleet on Tribble so four guys joined me — one of whom had played for over 24 hours straight, no sleep, no breaks, to reach Vice Admiral! — so we scaled ourselves to the highest team member (VA) and took out the dreadnought in record time. There are apparently other broken missions as well. I keep reading the complaints on the test chat but haven’t reached them yet. But hey, this is why we’re Beta Testing, right?

The other big deal is the new Dilithium currency. I dislike the name, simply for role-play purposes I don’t think trading dilithium makes sense from a canon or lore perspective (but I’m no big Trek fanatic, so maybe it does?) but I was really excited to have the currencies whittled down. In the live game, there are so many that become useless as you level up but you still have all these leftover marks and badges. The only use for them is to go ahead and barter for gear then sell the gear for Energy Credits. Or, I suppose barter them to twink an alt? Now everything will use Dilithium, so no feeling of “wasted” badges and marks leftover. In the current system, you’ll get one large payment of Dilithium when you get promoted to the next rank, starting with Commander. The “glitch” (quotation marks because it isn’t truly a glitch) in the system as I write this is upgrading your starship. In the live game, when you earn a promotion you also receive a token for a free ship of the appropriate tier you were just promoted to. Those tokens are gone now; everything will be bought with dilithium. Cryptic says the intent is for your promotion payment to roughly equal 80% of the cost of the starship, and it’s your responsibility to come up with the other 20%. However, in the current beta build, the other means of acquiring dilithium are not in the game yet. So, in order to afford your Tier 3 (Commander rank) ship, you have to fly your Tier 2 (Lt. Commander) ship all the way to Captain, where you would normally pick up your Tier 4 ship. Essentially, we’re always one tier behind. I suppose on the plus side, this certainly makes space combat more difficult! The flip side for the F2P Conspiracy Theorists is that ships will also be available in the C-Store, so it will be a choice of grinding for the extra 20% dilithium or just buying your ship with Cryptic Points. Also, keep in mind, gear that was formerly bartered for badges will now also use dilithium. And the stuff is expensive! The Test Store gets patched in tomorrow so I’ll see if Cryptic also patches in some other ways of earning dilithium in-game before I put on my “pay to win” foil hat.

Aside from the changes to the existing game, we’re also testing the new feature we’ve been looking forward to for months: Duty Officers! (“DOff”)

Beginning at Lt. Commander, grade 2 (level 12) you receive a mission to receive your first batch of 20 duty officers. From there, bring up the new Duty Officer UI and assign them to positions on your ship or send them on assignments. There are a ton of different types of duty officers, some including civilians (even prisoners in your ship’s brig) with various areas of expertise in addition to the Starfleet (and coming soon, Klingon Defense Force!) officers.

For Starship Duty, you can assign up to five duty officers to provide essentially passive buffs or special “proc” to your normal build. I’m still working with my first batch of duty officers, so I’ve only assigned two to ship duty. One provides a chance of partially recharging my ship’s shields if I use the Brace for Impact ability, while the other reduces the refresh time on Transwarps. I’ve seen several other “proc”-style duty officer abilities but they did not apply to my tactical officer abilities (duty officers will not “proc” for bridge officers, by the way).

Duty Officer Assignments are as varied as the officers themselves. Each has a chance for success, critical success, failure or disaster. Rewards vary as well, but the big deal is the new progression, Commendation XP (“CXP”). Some assignments can reward various types of CXP per the assignment type, such as Military, Science, Trade, and so forth. There are even diplomatic assignments that will reward your captain with Diplomacy XP (“DXP”) to help with his diplomacy progression. Others may reward items such as R&D data samples, a piece of gear, or the new prototype schematics which can in turn be used for shipboard assignments.

As your duty officers successfully complete assignments that award CXP or DXP, your commendation tier in that area will increase, opening up new (and riskier) assignments, as well as “leveling up” your duty officers if I am understanding it correctly. Failure will put that duty officer in sickbay for a certain period of time, so he is unable to be used for other assignments, and I think I read that disaster could possibly result in your duty officer being killed. Permanently. So this could certainly be a risk versus reward system when we get into the Duty Officer “end game.”

Duty Officer assignments also occur in real time. Some of the simpler ones may only take 10 to 30 minutes. I’ve done several of those already. Others take 1 to 8 hours that I’ve seen so far. Still others take 1 to 3 days. Days! Yes, this means duty officer assignments continue when you are offline. For example, after receiving my initial complement of DOffs, I beamed down to Starfleet Academy where a 3-day assignment to recruit another cadre of DOffs was available. I still have 2 days remaining on that. I was also enroute to a mission yesterday when the test channel lit up that the Sirius sector block had a recruitment for an Andorian duty officer, so I warped to Sirius to get that, which also turned out to be a 3-day assignment.

So in essence, the Duty Officer mechanic is more of a long-term system to work towards some minor build customization (I don’t play EQ2 so can’t say how analogous this is to “alternate advancement”), coupled with some limited offline progression of sorts.

All in all, STO F2P looks to be interesting once they get the bugs ironed out and full details on how Dilithium is going to work both in general and alongside the C-Store.

Cryptic put up a new Public Test server, named RedShirt, last night which, for the time being, will take the place of the Tribble test server. Tribble will be utilized as a Beta Tech server for the next few months as Cryptic prepares the Duty Officer system and even bigger, the Free-to-Play (F2P) conversion. They didn’t say otherwise, but I will go out on a limb and assume that once F2P goes live, RedShirt will go back to being an internal test server and Tribble back to our public test server.

Community Rep “StormShade” made the announcement yesterday afternoon in the forums:

Hey gang!

Those of you have had access to Tribble will now have access to a new server, “Public Test (Redshirt)”. This server will be taking the place of Tribble as our test server for all builds that are heading to our live environment, Holodeck, while we prepare Tribble for an upcoming beta, and make use of that server during the beta.

If you currently have access to Tribble, you shouldn’t need to do anything other than transfer a character to STO Public Test, and resume testing as normal. If you don’t have access to Tribble yet, you can gain access to both Tribble, and STO Public Test, by following the steps outlined in this handy FAQ.

Thanks, and happy testing!

The Star Trek Online Team

Those of us already playing, however, caught the update prior to the announcement as RedShirt was stealthily added to the launcher.

Currently, RedShirt is a duplicate copy of Tribble. Monday, however, Tribble gets wiped — all characters, etc. will be gone! — as the new beta build gets implemented. Presumptions, both my own and other players who read forums more, gleaned from the vague forum notes about Monday’s update are that it will be the Duty Officer system, which sounds like requires new methods of inter-system mechanics, which is why Tribble is being wiped.

[Note: I started this post last week. Reading it today, it seems a bit "train of thought" and perhaps rambles a bit; I'm not sure if it even gets to the point I set out to make. But I'm posting it anyway.]

It’s no secret that I’ve become a fan of, shall we say, alternate pricing arrangements for my entertainment. MMOs in particular, I find more and more difficult to justify a $15 monthly subscription simply on the basis that I know I won’t “get my money’s worth” out of any particular MMO in any given month. I’m in the travel industry, therefore I’m only home a couple days a week. Totaled, I am away from home roughly 8 months of the year.

The unfortunately-named “Free To Play” or F2P model is attractive to me at this point in time because, in theory, in allows me to play at my own pace and toss the devs a few bucks here and when I see fit if I decide their product is worthy of my dollars. I say “in theory” because we’re all-too-familiar with years of F2P systems that either routinely gate content behind a mandatory pay wall, or gouge players for mandatory consumables.

Guild Wars is my favorite model, and one which in another sense is similar to my experience on Xbox Live: buy the software once, play forever at no additional charge, and buy DLC for continued adventures. I am very interested to see how often Arena.net issues content updates for Guild Wars 2 which will also be using this model.

SiriusXM ran a promotion recently where they gave everyone two weeks of free satellite radio, along with a promotion to signup for $25 for 5 months, equating to $5/month compared to the normal $13/month. As I just mentioned above, I’m not home enough to justify $13/month for radio, no matter how many stations they offer. The longest I’m in my car is driving to and from the airport, twice a week, 30 minutes each. Otherwise nearly everything I need is within 10 minutes of my home. But for $5/month? That’s the cost of a Frappucino at Starbucks, so I can justify that to have a few months of new radio stations I couldn’t otherwise experience.

Bringing that back to MMOs, at this point in my life with not only limited time for gaming but so many gaming choices, both within and outside of the MMO genre, I feel developers or publishers need to continue their pricing experiments, perhaps offering a time-limited access for a substantially lower fee if they insist on subscriptions. I could foresee spending $5 to $7 (which is what a streaming-only Netflix subscription costs) per month for say, a block of 50 hours per month tops?

I look at everyone on Twitter playing RIFT and I can tell just from the scenery graphics I would enjoy the game (or at least the scenery) for awhile, but at the end of the day, it’s just another “level up, gear up” game that has and/or will have all the same problems every other vertical-progression MMO has. I may not have played RIFT‘s sub-systems but, to paraphrase Bartle, I’ve already played RIFT countless times and can’t justify $15/month on it when I consider the other MMO’s I’m already invested in plus all the other games I play in my limited time.

A lot of this falls in line not only with my limited gaming time but also the notion that the subscription is a “game as a service” which is where the unconscious “need” to get your money’s worth comes in. Currently, I don’t have any MMO subscriptions. I casually play three MMO’s — Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online — all of which I have Lifetime Memberships for. Aside from the convenience of never having to update my account page doing the Re-sub/Un-sub dance, lifetime memberships allow me to change my outlook from “game as a service” back to the normal “game as a product” that I grew up with and continue to experience with non-MMO games. I can pick up or walk away from any of those three at any time, never having to concern myself with my account status, never worrying about getting value out of a single month. Are they a gamble? Certainly! One has to look no further than Hellgate: London to see how short a game’s lifetime can be. But I figure $200 is roughly equal to four full-price games for my Xbox 360, which would be $240 (plus taxes or shipping) or six PC games at the $50 that seems to be the average these days. I currently have a stack of 58 games for my 360, only a few of which are “finished,” and my Steam library shows 26 games installed. Add to that all the MMOs I’ve bought, the non-Steam PC games at home, and so forth. Even though a good chunk of those were pre-owned from Gamestop or purchased during a Steam sale, that’s still a large chunk of money set aside just for my gaming hobby. So when I look at the total gaming library I’ve already invested in, $200 doesn’t seem like that much of a worry anymore. The two Cryptic games are pretty much the only chance I have to play alongside certain people like Blue Kae, MMO Gamer Chick and a few others, so I can easily place the “reward” of that over the “risk” of the lifetime membership as part of my own justification process.

Similarly, I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops and both it’s map packs ($60 for the disc plus $15 for each map pack) strictly so I could play online with Aaron and Oakstout (even Genda jumped in twice as a bonus). I’m not sure if I’ve ever ranted here on PI.net about my utter frustration with Call of Duty games, though both Aaron and Oakstout are well-versed with my oft-profane-laden outbursts of vitriol towards the multi-player game. During my worst tirades, Oak usually breaks out into giggles and I have a suspicion Aaron mutes me momentarily if I enter territory that offends his Catholic upbringing. I’ve had a neighbor knock and ask if things were OK, so yeah, to say Call of Duty pisses me off is an understatement, but it’s also a testament to what I’m willing to put up with for the sake of having fun with online friends. I don’t necessarily approve of the steep price of the map packs, but in a sense the model itself falls in line with Guild Wars where I buy the game and play for free, then buy DLC on top of that to continue support. (Don’t even get me started on Call of Duty: Elite, however…) The only difference being that Call of Duty is a “game as a product” and will be replaced in twelve months with the next annual edition of the franchise as opposed to the continuing growth of something of the scale of Guild Wars 2.

Back in the pre-internet days of GEnie we had to pay hourly for the service itself then an additional hourly fee to play online games like Air Warrior or Islands of Kesmai. That adds up way faster than any F2P game that I have deigned to play, believe me. I don’t want to go back to those days, but I also feel that for myself and others who participate in the myriad gaming choices available, subscriptions just don’t cut the mustard any longer. I don’t want to feel psychologically “locked into” one game to the near-exclusion of others because of the full-price subscription.

Funny thing is, and perhaps this is a whole other aspect of psychology, even a few years ago I was all about the subscription games even as more viable choices began to appear, diluting my overall gaming value or perhaps making me spend more on multiple subscriptions. Money was tighter then, too. Now that I’m in a better financial position where I can easily pay for essentially three Frappucinos per month (roughly the same as an MMO subscription) I am more loathe to do so knowing I won’t get the same value from it as I did back in the earlier days where I had to consider the finances, but also had more time to devote to my one (or precious few) choice(s).

Since I’ve spent the past few months casually enjoying Cryptic’s Star Trek Online I thought I’d give their other MMO, Champions Online, a try as well. I had avoided it until now simply because I didn’t care for their previous superhero MMO, City of Heroes and Villains at all. Generally speaking, while I enjoy many superhero movies, and was briefly into reading comics in high school, the MMO-flavored games are so shallow I cannot bring myself to take them serious nor make a significant time commitment to them. Rather than making a bullet-point list, I can sum up my feelings with: Superhero MMOs are not worth $15 per month to me.

However, Champions Online recently switched to a F2P model, which alleviates the psychological burden of "getting my money’s worth" out of an MMO. One of the benefits (in my opinion) of Champions Online‘s Silver (F2P) system is it uses Archetypes (ie. classes) whereas Gold (subscription) players can construct Freeform heroes as they always could. Both Silver and Gold still have all the costume generation during character creation, but Silver players cannot choose Powers, as the Archetypes have preset Power pools. That’s perfect for someone like myself who never liked the character creation in City of Heroes and Villains either. I know for many people that was their favorite part of the game, but at best I have zero patience; usually negative. Why waste my time on a "deep" character creation system then dump me into a shallow beat-em-up game? Just get it over with and let me start beating up bad guys as soon as possible, if not sooner.

Silver players get two character slots to start with, with additional slots available for purchase from the C-Store. I bought Champions Online before it went F2P so I had a low-level melee hero with the super-creative name Nightblade who specialized in dual-wielding swords. After the F2P patch/re-launch my free month was up so when I logged in I was given the option of converting Nightblade over to the Blade Archetype. He was only level 7 at the time and the conversion seemed identical to the limited upgrades I had already made.

Just like I am still very much learning Star Trek Online‘s RPG system, I am very much in Noob Territory with the systems in Champions Online as well, though at first glance it seems much more straightforward and near-traditional. If that turns out to be the case then I only have to learn the terminology and how attributes and abilities synergize. I am fairly unclear on what gear upgrades to get Nightblade but I did notice today when choosing a new Power that certain attributes in the description were highlighted so until I learn for certain I am going to assume that highlighted attributes mean those attributes are considered primary for that Archetype. Once I get a grip on that, choosing gear should be a much easier decision.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it seems faster-paced than City of Heroes and Villains. I liked getting a Travel Power almost immediately after leaving the Qularr Invasion tutorial, too. I don’t remember if I ever played CoX enough for my hero to get any travel ability, so already this is an improvement. After years of MMO combat where auto-attack is just swinging a sword for bare minimum damage, it still throws me off in Champions Online where the ’1′ key sets off an auto-attack loop using the hero’s basic full attack, but I suppose it does help keep the visual pace of combat fast, if that makes any sense? I don’t normally like melee dps classes but I do enjoy his Thunderbolt Lunge ability, which makes him leap at his target feet first, slam them in the chest, which often knocks them down, and backflips off their chest ready to start with some snickety-snick dual-blade action.

Just like Blue Kae, Tipa and MMO Gamer Chick were my inspiration for trying Star Trek Online, Tipa has inspired me by her occasional adventures in Dungeons & Dragons Online. I think I would like to have an extremely casual, part-time guild in Champions Online where we play under the Silver (F2P) system (except Blue Kae who has a lifetime membership) and may only get together once or twice a month. Nothing to get all serious over, nothing that will detract from our primary MMOs, just something fun for a change of pace every so often. If we get this going, not sure I’ll play Nightblade as I think I would like to play either of the "tank" Archetypes for group activities. The Glacier in particular sounds appealing, being a crowd-control tank, but the Behemoth is also attractive and is apparently the superior tank in its current incarnation.

This may or may not be a serious issue; I haven’t spent enough time in the LOTRO Store to know if there is anything that can be bought for Turbine Points then sold or traded for in-game gold or if everything in the Store is bound, but… there is no additional security on the Store.

The few other F2P games I ever purchased “points” on — Runes of Magic, for example — have always had a secondary password for the Store which is separate from your login.

In LOTRO’s (and DDO’s) case, if your account is compromised and your account tied to your credit card, the hacker can buy all the Turbine Points he wants. Unlikely, perhaps, since the gold sellers committing these attacks just want to get in, get your gold, and get out as quickly as possible, but nevertheless there is a weakness just waiting to be exploited.

It’s been a few months since I’ve played Runes of Magic so I logged in this morning. I vaguely remembered the 3.03 patch for the Chapter 3 expansion had come out last month so this time I remembered to check if my skills had been reset. They had. Last expansion, I had no idea so I was running around with zero points put into my skills and wondering why I was barely surviving each fight with single mobs. If nothing else, free respecs are nice for tweaking builds.

I had left Jerreth in his house to accumulate XP/TP bonuses, which at this point were pretty much full. Once loading into Aslan Valley, my screen was assaulted with messages and a bright little pixie appeared! A Newbie Pet!

This little pet was included as part of the 3.03 patch for characters of levels 1 through 30. Sheesh. Here I thought “newbies” (excepting player knowledge and skill) were primarily characters in the starter zones but apparently Frogster has determined everyone less than level 31 is a newbie.

I checked both Jerreth (25 Priest/25 Knight) (now 27 Priest) and Arwellyn (13 Druid/10 Mage) and in both cases their Newbie Pets were level 10. I don’t have any other characters so I will assume that even for brand-new characters, the Newbie Pet is always level 10. It is worth noting that the Newbie Pet is a non-combat pet and as such will never draw aggro from monsters.

What does it do?

Clicking it brings up a UI dialogue frame that is essentially a small FAQ. The pet has text describing how to get quests, the difference between a normal quest and a daily quest, using the party search system, the transport book, etc. Perhaps useful for legitimate new players who maybe skipped the tutorial or forgot small details but by the time a character is level 10 or so, most of the content would already be known.

At level 11 and above, however, a more useful choice appears on the dialogue frame: Get Attonement Vouchers. Starting at level 11 in Runes of Magic, each death incurs an XP/TP penalty and 70% of all XP/TP you earn goes towards paying off that debt. Retrieving your tombstone will also relieve a large percentage of the debt, if you’re able to get to it. Once per day, the Newbie Pet can place an Attonement Voucher in your inventory which will completely erase the death penalty! The vouchers also stack, so you can collect them even if you don’t use them every day. Once you achieve level 31 any unused vouchers will be removed from your inventory.

The Newbie Pet will also cast a Heal spell on you in combat which will regain 300 health points. The catch is the pet seems to wait until you are in the vicinity of 10% health before it begins casting Heal, which has a two second induction, so it’s entirely possible you may die before the pixie heals you. Additionally the pet seems to have a lengthy cooldown on its Heal spell so while it’s a nice extra “oh crap!” feature, it isn’t something to rely upon if you’re out pulling mob after mob.

The downside to the pets (aside from accidentally clicking them instead of the intended target) is that everyone has them and when you go into heavily populated areas such as Logar and Varanas those little pixies kill the framerate. So please, be courteous and dismiss your pixie (and other non-combat pets) before going into towns!

Runes of Magic begins the 10-week process of updating to Chapter III: The Elder Kingdoms today. The full patch notes are up in the forums and are quite lengthy so I won’t bother re-quoting them here like I usually do. I would normally highlight the ones of interest to me but I’m so new to the game I wouldn’t know which ones are special to me and my character’s classes yet anyway; the Priest/Knight Elite skill changes are high level skills that I don’t have yet.

The beginning of the patch notes say that Phase 1 will be a 3-step process. I’m guessing that means 3 separate patches, the first one being today? In any event, the 3.0.0 patch is code-named The King’s Call.

Looks good, and I hope they’ve gotten the Guild Siege stuff working now. It’s been in public beta on the live servers for awhile now but everyone complains how unstable and buggy it is. I don’t think RoM has a test server, which is why they’ve been beta-testing sieges on the live servers.

Patch Notes 3.0.0 – The King’s Call – Runes of Magic US Forums

While trying to get my Knight class to 25 this morning, messages started scrolling that the servers would be shutting down in 30 minutes, then counting down every 5 minutes.

At first everyone was excited, hoping that it meant Phase 1 of the Chapter III expansion was coming today as Frogster stated it would be arriving this week.

Nope! In a bit of a surprise attack against gold spammers, Frogster is using today’s patch to remove the ability to trade Diamonds for Gold in the Auction House.

Dear Runes of Magic Community,

We will be immediately undertaking server maintenance from 10am to 11am PST.

In this maintenance we will be temporarily removing from the Auction House the ability to trade gold for diamonds, and vice versa.  Please note: This will not affect items already being auctioned.

We are taking this action in light of the dramatic increase in the number of gold sellers recently. This is a necessary step to protect you, our true community of players.

As soon as we’re certain that the trading of diamonds and gold between players can safely resume we’ll lift the temporary block.

In the meantime, please be aware that those who attempt to trade contrary to our regulations may have their accounts temporarily banned. The illegal sale of gold through third parties may lead to users being permanently banned from their accounts and from the game as a whole.

Thank you for your consideration,

Your Runes of Magic Team

I’ve noticed the spam increasing, especially the past week. Spammers are even spamming in the World chat channel — some on Artemis have even apologized for spamming World chat! Huh? — which requires use of a Megaphone — an item in the Diamond shop. (There are also Megaphones in the Phirius Token shop but these spammers are level 1 so could not have run enough daily quests to get the Megaphones.) This means the spammers must be spending money on the game in order to spam. Isn’t this the classic argument players use about gold spammers? That developers won’t do anything because the spammers have to have a subscription and are therefore giving the developers money? (Assuming trial accounts have been spam-gimped.) Prices for Diamonds in the Auction House have skyrocketed over the past week, even with the +100% Diamond sale this past weekend. Apparently the spamming must be working; someone out there must be buying these Diamonds — and likely having their credit card info stolen which is then used to pay for the Diamonds the spammers are using to buy Megaphones…  Yeah, real smart, people. Then again, apparently email spam still works too, or no one would still be spamming email.

People are retards.