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The Game Archaeologist moves into Lucasfilm's Habitat: Part 2
Last week on the exciting cosmic adventures of the Game Archaeologist, we uncovered the ancient civilization of Lucasfilm's Habitat, one of the early predecessors to graphical MMOs. While we talked about how it came to be and pondered just how much money we'd waste if game companies were still charging by the minute, we didn't have the time or space to cover the community and events that formed around this experimental project. That day has come. Prepare your bladder for imminent release! Giving a bunch of players tools to do every which thing in the game and turning them loose without strict regulation might seem like a recipe for an instant sewage pit of a game today, but our cultured, classy behaviors weren't quite trained into us in 1986. When players first set eyes on Habitat, they weren't thinking of min-maxing, kill-stealing, or raid progression; they were trying to make sense of a virtual world using the only frame of reference they had to date: their own lives. Out of a melting pot of ideas and objects came fascinating stories from one of the earliest MMO proto-ancestors of the modern era. Get your '80s on as we head back... to the future!
Wasteland Diaries: Why do I PvP?
Lately I've been asking myself, "Why do I PvP in Fallen Earth?" The game isn't designed around PvP combat; it's more of a sideshow. The factional conflict was what made me decide to try it out in the first place. But after getting to max level, I realized that there wasn't a true faction conflict. There were just sporadic skirmishes arranged by the same core of players. So what is it that motivates me to do it? What is it that motivates other PvPers to do it? I can think of a few possibilities, but even if I look at my best reasons as objectively as possible, they aren't even remotely good reasons. Yet I keep doing it. In this post I will take a look at what drives one to PvP in Fallen Earth. What are the benefits? What are the risk vs. reward factors? Are there objectives or goals? When I look at the cold, hard facts, I'm still not quite sure what motivates me (or the others who still hang around). After the cut, I'll go over all the potential reasons to PvP in FE (that I can imagine) and possibly narrow it down.
Wasteland Diaries: So you want to be a crafter?
Fallen Earth has a complex, robust crafting system. The vast majority of the items in the game can be crafted from things you find lying on the ground. I am not exaggerating when I say "vast majority" because it's well over 90%. You can literally level your way to the cap simply by scavenging and crafting. It used to be much easier, but it is still possible. Tradeskills are different from other skills in Fallen Earth in that you raise them through use rather than spending AP on them. The system itself can be quite daunting when you are first starting out, but once you have a basic grasp of how it works, the rest is pretty intuitive. In this post, I'll touch on the basics of crafting. I'm no expert, but I do have a completely maxed-out social/crafter that has most of the game's recipes in his repertoire. You may know what you are doing, but I think even the most learned of crafters might learn something from this piece. The novice crafter will learn a few simple tricks (tricks that I wished I had known when I was just starting out) that will make his life a little easier out there. It's tough when you just want to make something with your hands and there are legions of bloodthirsty miscreants trying to kill you. So grab your toolkits and click past the cut for more.
Wasteland Diaries: The Nerfpocalypse
I don't know about you, but when I think about a post-apocalyptic future, I think about bands of merciless raiders, anarchy and danger along every roadway. Does Fallen Earth have all of these things? Yes, but it is hardly the lawless, danger-ridden place (once you get acclimated to it) that you would expect to find when civilization has collapsed and there are mutants running amok. Fallen Earth is hardly the quintessential post-apocalyptic future. Games like Gamma World (a pen-and-paper RPG from days of yore) and Wasteland captured the bleakness of a destroyed world much more convincingly. But who knows. Maybe the folks at Icarus got it right. We'll never know until the earth is destroyed. And games won't be such a matter of import when almost everyone is gone. Anyway, what I am getting at is the setting. The setting looks fantastic; the art department has certainly captured a desolate wasteland. The writing is great, and the towns and encounters are well-designed. Fallen Earth has the ambiance nailed. But the wasteland just doesn't have that sense of danger about it. Not for me, at least. After the cut, I'll discuss what I thought FE was going to be like, what it is, and what I think it should be.
Alganon patches Phase III PvP update
Destruction, terror, and mayhem came to Alganon this past November with the arrival of the game's first PvP patch. This week, the free-to-play fantasy MMORPG is tweaking the functionality with Phase III of its planned PvP rollout which includes a couple of noteworthy additions. First up is the new tower mechanic. In a nutshell, the towers are PvP-enabled zones that automatically flag players for conflict five seconds after they've entered. Temporary promotions will be in effect for characters from levels 10 to 49, and statistics and action levels will be raised to level 50 for the duration of a player's time in the tower zone. The towers can also be captured, which brings bonuses to every member of your faction in the zone. The Quest devs have also added local and world defense chat channels to facilitate battlefield communication. Finally, the new patch has also increased the renown level cap to 10 and there is new PvP gear for sale at various capital city quartermaster NPCs. Read all the details on Alganon's 2.5.2 patch at the official website.
