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Lost Pages of Taborea: Content needs to meet the versatility of gear-upgrading
Last week I compared looting and class-bending in Runes of Magic with similar features found in RIFT. RoM's system of gear customization was a part of that article. This week, I want to talk business. Don't worry, I'm not a business major about to sling pie charts at you or talk about quarterly earnings. I want to talk a bit about business, specifically about how it might relate to decisions developers make concerning what kind of balance to put into an MMO. RoM's gear system is extremely flexible on the outside, but inside there are some restrictions. Some of these restrictions are imposed by the game, but some are imposed by players. In this week's Lost Pages of Taborea, let's take a look at how the flexibility and choice of RoM's gear system -- and other systems -- are in opposition to the game's content and some desires players have.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Comparing RIFT's looting and multi-class systems to Runes of Magic's
Sometimes I feel like I'm playing the best MMO that no one's ever heard of. Lately, all I see are new games on the horizon that promise new flexible class systems, better functionality in old standard mechanics, improved pet systems, and so on. Every time I read these press releases, announcements, or blogs, I lean back, tilt my head a bit and say, "Interesting. But Runes of Magic already does that." It's why I have a lot of faith -- even if I disagree from time to time -- in Runewaker. The company has made all these great systems that are exactly what newer games are promising, and players are stoked about it. It really has me wanting to embark on a series comparing systems between RoM and other MMOs. RIFT has bulk-looting and class combining that I want to compare with similar features in RoM for this week's Lost Pages of Taborea. I'm tired of feeling like I'm playing an MMO no one's heard of, even if it isn't true -- RoM is very popular and it keeps growing at a fast pace. But dagnabbit, sometimes I want to tell everyone RoM did it before the other guy gets all the credit. Let's look at RoM's dual-class and pet systems to compare looting and multi-classes between these two games.
Class cooperation tricks players may not have thought of
Recently, we took another look at the best and worst class combinations you can make with your friends, and you all had many insights on how to choose classes that match each other well. It occurred to me that there are some special tricks that two classes can pull off in pairs or small groups that would be impossible to do on their own, and that this might be an interesting thing to try if the trick strikes your fancy.The most obvious one may be that rogues and druids can sneak around together as a stealthy mini-party all of their own, and that's the sort of thing that many people know about. But for me, I remember being very surprised to learn from a friend how powerful a mage and a priest can be together when leveling through PvP content. I saw the mage gather up many enemies together and use arcane explosions on them while the priest healed and shielded her. They completed quests faster than anyone I'd ever seen before. Later they invited me to level new triplet alts together with them -- two mages and one priest. She taught me how she and I could gather up many monsters and kill them all without getting hurt by alternating our frost nova and blizzard spells, while at the same time having the priest's healing for tricky spots, mistakes, and emergencies.This is a fast way to level cooperatively that I never would have thought of on my own, and it took my friend's ingenuity and research to make it happen. Have any of you found similar class-cooperation tricks that you think many people might not have heard of?[Exciting fan art by Sara Forlenza]
