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First Impressions: Tales of Fantasy
Tales of Fantasy is a game created by IGG that is set in a world of great mounts, strange creatures and small children that carry swords. Well, maybe not small children, but child-like characters that you can take control of. Most players seemed like they enjoyed the larger, more "adult" characters to play, but when I saw the option to play a 6 year old boy that carried a sword I had to have it. Graphically the game is reminiscent of Everquest 2, with all its glowy-edged oddness and its harsh environments. It's one of those games that can be amazing looking in one area only to be followed up by an area that looks semi-unfinished. That could very well be the case, being that the game is actually in closed beta and this is a "First Impression." Still, overall it takes free-to-play game graphics up one more notch.
Wasteland Diaries: Spinning the wheel
Every game has a group of number-crunchers that want to get the most out of a character build. Whether you call them min-maxers, power gamers or munchkins, they are intrinsic to any RPG system ever made. They are the direct antithesis of the roleplayer, and often referred to as roll-players. There is a very clear-cut process to maximize your character's power in Fallen Earth. This process is called "Spinning the Wheel". When I use the term "wheel", I am referring to the faction wheel. While some do choose to spin the wheel, most players usually flip the wheel. I'll explain the difference later. So what does the wheelspin do for you? It gives you about 30 extra AP and unlocks all the mutation lines. The important thing here is that you will be noticeably better than those who don't bother to do it. Why would you do it, and how do you do it? Read on.
The Mog Log: You've got questions, we've got deflections
It's time to kick off one of the features that we're hoping will become a regular standby on The Mog Log -- community questions and answers. It's a chance for you to all ask the questions about the game that you'd like answered, and a chance for me to shuffle awkwardly and stare at my feet. Kidding aside, if you have a Final Fantasy XI or Final Fantasy XIV question that you'd like answered, send them to me, and I'll happily answer them to the best of my ability. It's all the edification of research without the actual research part. We'll start with a question from Simon: "Are we sure about when the beta for FFXIV is going to start?" Nothing is certain, least of all what Square-Enix decides to do. Right now, they're content with not filling us in on the start date of beta, but they might very well share that tomorrow at VanaFest. On the flip side, they might hold on to that tidbit until after the stateside launch of Final Fantasy XIII, just to keep excitement up for the title. Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow, we should know then.
Perfect World Entertainment talks about delay on Battle of the Immortals
We recently brought you the news that the closed beta for Battle of the Immortals has been delayed until mid-April. Several reasons were cited, including details such as Windows 7 support, revising the item shop and the AI behavior, and so on. The Perfect World Entertainment team took some time to expand on those reasons for us this week.
How consistency softens the grind
"Grind" is on the verge of becoming what "nerf" already is -- a word thrown around so frequently and with such broad possible meaning that it's essentially meaningless. After all, the word now gets used for any part of a game the player finds boring and repetitive, rather than the process of repeating something over and over. It's the latter meaning that Kill Ten Rats discusses with an intersting thesis -- we don't mind a grind so much as we mind one we can't advance without breaks. Using the Guild Wars Wintersday redux as an example, the point is made that the holiday events are a straight-up grind -- but they're a constant one that you can pick up and start with no downtime, then stop whenever you want. Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft have both taken the same approach with Skirmishes and the Dungeon Finder, taking the slow march to being ready for an instance out of the equation. It's an interesting idea, that what we really dislike aren't the grinds but being stuck unable to make much progress in them. If you tend to think that grinds are the worst thing in MMOs today, it might be an opportunity to re-examine that stance.
The Mog Log: The worrying future of Final Fantasy XI
There's a growing unease in the Final Fantasy XI community. It's one of those subtle things that no one is willing to outright talk about, but it's still there, just beneath the surface of a surprising number of discussions. And it's a bit unusual for an MMO, because it's not fear or anxiousness about something being broken from the last update or an upcoming update. No, it's more about the question of whether the upcoming updates will be the last, or if there will even be any changes that could break something. There is an elephant in the room with a big number fourteen on its side, and while few fans of the game are upset that Final Fantasy XIV is coming... well, it raises no shortage of questions about the future of the game we're already playing. And it's not new. People were saying as far back as the leadup to the July update that something was rotten in the state of Jeuno. But when coupled with the promise that Final Fantasy XI isn't over... well, there's an excellent article that almost every fan needs to read on Allakhazam, summarizing what no small number of fans have been thinking. Where are we actually going to be when the dust clears?
Double XP in Aion this weekend
Since we're aware many of you get your MMO time in on the weekends, double XP events are always something we're keen to post about in a timely manner. This is especially true if you're stuck in a level spread that's seemingly impossible to grind past without developing a desire to redistribute objects on your desk in a forceful manner. Double XP weekends can be a real life saver for the jaded MMO gamer. That's why we're here to tell you that Aion is having one starting on Friday, January 22nd -- although make sure to take a gander at the official post, as it contains the starting time for each server timezone. The weekend ends at 8am (server time) the following Monday, so check which timezone your character's server is set to and plan accordingly. [Thanks, AterNox!]
Player rewards versus character rewards
Rewards have, more often than not, been things that make your character better. You complete a quest and you get a new piece of equipment, or access to a new area, or even just a nice handful of experience toward the next level. But we've recently talked a bit about how leveling, and progression by extension, can get rather tedious. Spinksville also talked about this, discussing the differences between player rewards and character rewards, with the former being general rewards that stick with the player and aren't contingent upon or related to power level. An excellent example is that of Klingons in Star Trek Online. The race has been a staple of the series ever since it began, and the Klingon Empire is one of the major political factions in the game... but it's not initially accessible to players. You have to complete a mission or reach Level 6 in order to unlock the option of playing a Klingon. Similarly, World of Warcraft gates its first hero class, the Death Knight, by requiring a level 55 character before one can be created. Player rewards contribue less to a sense of avatar progress, but they also help keep the power level slightly lower, as well as providing benefits that you can take with you, so to speak. On the other hand, they're vulnerable to feeling less like rewards because they're unrelated to the character who obtained them. We've all been well-versed in the endgame grind for gear acquisition, however, so the post's call for more player rewards might be a welcome change for many of us.
The Daily Grind: Characters go around again?
One of the features that's become more and more de rigeur for single-player games is the concept of a "new game plus," a second go-through of the game with all of the abilities and equipment you picked up the first time around. In some cases, you can't even actually play the full game until you've managed to beat it once, at which point you earn a number of rewards that would have been useful to beat the game the first time around. (Insert your own jokes about boss loot here.) Kill Ten Rats recently suggested the idea of allowing a similar mechanic in MMORPGs, borrowing from games such as Torchlight that allow you to retire a character and pass benefits on to a new one. Certainly it has advantages -- we've all had a character or two that's sat at a level too high to be deleted that we don't want to play any longer, and it'd be nice to pass along something useful for the playtime. On the other hand, a forced cycle of leveling followed by retirement followed by another level grind could get tedious quickly. What do you think? Would this sort of feature be an enjoyable way to expand your character stable, or a searingly obnoxious grinding treadmill?
Chasing carrots, and why we do it
A while ago, Kill Ten Rats advocated a rather interesting approach to solving the problem of any tedious grind: cheat. More viable in a single-player game (but still possible if you're willing to use methods of dubious legality), the reasoning was to cut away the reward portion and see if you were enjoying what you were doing on its own merits. Two follow-up posts have been made since then, further extrapolating the question and getting into the way our brains fire in response to anticipation of reward. Grind, of course, is both a dirty word and a quintessential part of any current MMO, which means that we generally aim at games with the most enjoyable grind. But are we focusing on an enjoyable grind, or just one that's not too painful as we head toward the end goal? Is the problem with Aion (to pick a game routinely raked over the coals for its grind) the basic structure, or could the grind become irrelevant if it were just a hair more enjoyable? The very structure of MMOs encourages a certain amount of grinding, and it's interesting to take a look at whether we're doing it because the grind is fun, or just because we've tricked ourselves into thinking it's not all that bad.
The Daily Grind: How much grind is too much?
We aren't always gung-ho about it, but somewhere deep down we realize that MMOs kind of need a certain amount of grind. After all, that's part of what keeps us in the game and playing, and there are some areas where avoiding the grind arguably injures your overall experience. But there are still degrees of grind. Guild Wars, for instance, is notable as being largely free of grinding with a few small exceptions. On the flip side, Aion is almost universally agreed to be a nonstop extravaganza of grinding in one form or another, which has been one of the elements that turns many players off from the game. Both are good games, but they're targeted to people who enjoy differing levels of the age-old pastime of grinding. Today, we ask our fine readers how much of a tolerance they have for grinding. Are you able to sit at the computer for hours on end, whistling away as you relentlessly kill things without a twinge of regret? Or does the mere thought of repeating something for rewards send you screaming to the hills? What games have struck you as too focused on grind, and which ones seemed too eager to hand out rewards?
The ups and downs of the Battered Hilt
Yesterday, Bornakk said clearly that the Battered Hilt drop that starts the Quel'delar questline was dropping at the right rate, which is much less than when the patch first hit. And then of course, in last night's fixes, they went ahead and increased the drop rate anyway. He also claimed there were no plans to make it BoP, but who knows what'll happen in the future? For now, however, you can still buy and sell the quest item for quite a bit of gold. We'll have to see where the price eventually ends up -- on the staff here, we've seen anything from 8,000g to over 23,000g, and Twitter tells us that people are paying an average of around 12k or so, going up to as high as 30k (or even shady real money offers in online classified ads). Our own Matt Low has actually seen the drop three different times, and lost every roll. It drops off of any of the mobs in the Heroic versions of the Frozen Halls 5-mans, and as Bornakk says, any class can use it to come up with a pretty solid weapon, so the competition will probably keep the price high, depending on where the drop rate ends up. The silver lining, if you really want one, have terrible luck, and don't ever expect to have all that money, is that the price will probably go down eventually. Bornakk says that as people move up into Icecrown and start picking up weapons that are even better than the sister blade, demand is likely to drop off a bit. But he also says that Blizzard does want this to be a special and relatively rare item, so you'll still have to probably either be lucky or ready to grind it out. Good luck -- I'm out there searching for one with you.
Aion introduces XP bonus weekends to smooth the curve
Some will say it's unnecessary. Some will say it's coming too late. And others? Others will jump up and down in joy. What could possibly be so divisive? Oh, well, that's Aion's new bonus experience weekends! According to community manager Tamat, Aion is introducing these brand new experience gaining opportunities to help smooth the leveling curve between levels one and 35. As long as you log on during one of these weekends and are between those levels, everything you do will garner you double experience. Crafting? Yep. Gathering? Yep. Killing? Yep, it's all there. Now Tamat does go on to say that this is a temporary measure before they do something more permanent about the leveling curve, but it's a good start to address what is an issue to many people. Especially when, as we've said before, only 2% of the entire population is between the levels of 46-50 and Aion's endgame doesn't function well without people. Hard to PvP with no one there.
Disguising the grind
Believe it or not, grind is an essential part of an MMO and we might be pretty lost without it. Repetitive content is the cornerstone of the MMO genre but it's not all just smacking monsters over the head for hours on end or completing yet another "kill ten rats" quest. The repetitive elements in an MMO give us predictable gameplay in a form we can digest. We don't feel lost when we pick up a quest because it uses similar mechanics to previous quests we've done. From a development standpoint, the amount of time it takes to create new and unique gameplay for an MMO is quite large and it's just not feasible to churn out unique gameplay with every new piece of content. Instead, developers are forced to re-use the same gameplay mechanics over and over again. So if we genuinely appreciate predictable, repetitive gameplay and it's not feasible to do otherwise, why are we always so up-in-arms about the evils of grinding? In this probative opinion piece, I look at why we need repetitive gameplay in MMOs and the various ways developers disguise grind to keep the game entertaining. Update: Link to page 2 fixed. Thanks Brian!
Disguising the grind, part 2
Other quests may require you to kill a named monster but to get to him you have to go through several passageways full of other monsters. The core idea here is pretty solid -- the quest isn't the mundane task of running from A to B or killing some monsters. The quest has another goal entirely and the mundane tasks of travel and killing monsters are challenges to overcome in accomplishing that goal.
Patch 1.5.1 goes live for Aion
A new patch for an MMO is a bit like a present. At best, it can provide a number of new opportunities for fun and enjoyment. At worst, it can break several things you already liked and now have to replace. Aion has recently deployed the new patch 1.5.1 and, as could be expected, fan reaction is somewhat split on whether it's a nice present or the immortal pairing of socks and underwear. Certainly there isn't a major content influx, and the often-requested reduction of the game's grind has yet to be implemented, but there are still a number of nice updates and additions. Leaving aside the bugfixes and optimization with only a mention that they should help the game play more smoothly all around, several instanced dungeons have been adjusted somewhat. Nearly all of these changes look beneficial to players -- reductions in difficulty and increases in reward, as well as added UI displays for important objectives. They've also added stealth-detecting NPCs to starter areas and increased several NPC health totals in an effort to curb destructive PvP tendencies. Quest experience at mid-to-high levels has been adjusted upward, rewards have been slightly improved on several quests, and level-difference experience penalties have been reduced. Last but not least, there's now more incentive to hold a fortress in the Abyss and work to defend it, as rewards are offered for defending players. Aion's fans aren't all happy about the changes, but it's best if you take a look at the changes yourself. Just remember that even if you don't like it, this present is unreturnable.
Phat Loot Phriday: Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw)
I'm kind of surprised we've never done this one on PLP (in fact, I think we may have, though I couldn't find it in the archives at all, and it just changed recently anyway). But just in case you don't want to spend $10 of real money on an epic in-game pet, you can try to get this one anyway. Name: Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw) (Wowhead, Thottbot, WarcraftPets) Type: Epic (yes, Epic) Noncombat Pet Damage/Speed: N/A Attributes: Allows you to summon the Hyacinth Macaw companion pet, one of the most beautiful "parrot style" pets in the game. %Gallery-33600%
Curse.com founder's open Aion letter to NCsoft Korea
Open letters to MMO developers from forum members area dime a dozen these days but it isn't very often you see one from a forum admin. It's even more rare to see one from the founder of a major fansite network. Today must be our lucky day because Netcurse, founder of Curse.com wrote just such a letter to NCsoft Korea, head studio behind Aion.The public plea puts some extra weight behind the biggest complaints many Aion players have been voicing since release, namely: "the grind," spammers/botters, and large-scale PvP performance in fortresses. Statements like "...there are three issues I want to bring to the front page today that need to be addressed or this game will end up being a 300k subscriber game within 6 months, not the one-million+ subscriber game it should be," show just how impassioned Netcurse is about these issues.What's refreshing is that the author is pointing out potential solutions for each problem he draws attention to. For instance, to combat the grind, he feels XP should be increased and more benefits should be rewarded to social players (groupers). Not everyone is agreeing with his comments in the replies, so we're curious, what are your thoughts?
WoW Moviewatch: Grind
It's been a little while since we've heard from Nyhm and Summergale, especially as a duo act. That made the tip that they've released a new video an incredibly exciting bit of news. The bonus to this news is that the video isn't just a song, but also includes a brief mock-commercial as the opening to the video.The opening commercial is a parody of the Real Men of Genius spots by Budweiser. In the short segment, Nyhm and Summergale poke a bit of fun at the immense shoulder armor design favored by World of Warcraft. I wish I could say some of Nyhm's hypothesized designs were so far-fetched as to be laughable. But based only on a quick, visual scan, I could almost see Arthas dropping some of it.The song itself is called Grind. It's a WoW-themed parody of Busta Rhyme's Break Ya Neck. I have to admit that Grind didn't appeal to me quite as much as other work from Nyhm or Summergale, but the video introduced a technique that I thought was a lot of fun. The chibi-like portrayal of the singers really lightened up the video, and made the entire production much more engaging. It was a cool thing to do, and I'd like to see Nyhm grow that technique more in future videos. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
Massively goes toe to toe with Jade Dynasty's Andrew Brown
Jade Dynasty. The game that plays itself. We ran an op-ed on it a while back and even got some impressions on the game from E3, looking into the game that offers all players the special ability to run a bot to play the game and lets players gain experience while offline.Needless to say, we were interested in the game thanks to, what some would say, are odd choices in game design. However, we were recently lucky enough to sit down with Andrew Brown, the project manager for Jade Dynasty, and put him to the test. Why should MMOers try out Jade Dynasty?Well, Andrew took our hard questions and sent us back some awesome answers. He didn't shy away from our question barrage. If you were looking for some answers for why Jade Dynasty took the game design path it did, or why they believe their decisions will ultimately help the many players of their game, then look no further than this interview. And what's this new immortality ability and "hardcore PvP" server that Andrew has mentioned? You're just going to have to follow after the break and find out!
