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Guest Post: How to succeed in dungeons without really trying
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Make no mistake: Early Cataclysm dungeons are not the faceroll that we experienced at the end of Wrath. Not only have everyone's gear levels dropped dramatically relative to the content, but Blizzard has returned to a more BC-style design philosophy wherein crowd control really matters and one live mob can make the difference between an easy pull and a very difficult one. Of course, the ideal solution is to read up on the dungeons beforehand and make sure you're prepared for them, but we don't live in an ideal world. Sometimes, you'll wind up in a random dungeon that you weren't expecting, and you haven't had time to research. Additionally, dungeon guides don't always give tips for trash, and trash pulls now require some coordination. Luckily, instance design does not expect you to have an encyclopedia in your head. An alert dungeoneer can succeed on the fly by following a few simple tips.
Hands-on with SWTOR's Jedi Knight on Tython
Last month, Massively was invited to LucasArts for a whole day's experience with BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. One of the perks of living on the West Coast is that I get to attend all these awesome in-depth Silicon Valley events and really expand on Massively's sessions at various conventions! For all my enthusiasm, I have to admit I approached this hands-on with no small amount of trepidation. I'm a huge Star Wars fan (I still play Star Wars Galaxies!), but I fell out of "expert" range on the saga a decade ago. Like many of you readers, I've been wary of the hype and even warier of delusions of grandeur on the part of game companies trying to do justice to the IP. I was really afraid that it wouldn't be as good as I'd hoped and that I'd walk away disappointed. And given the parts I saw, SWTOR's not as good as I'd hoped. It's better. %Gallery-108535%
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: In the case of Scrappers
We're in a small lull for City of Heroes at the moment, and truth be told it's well-deserved. After several months of invasions, updates, previews of the upcoming issues and so forth... it's nice to finally have a chance to just lean back and breathe a little bit. Of course, said breathing will involve a fair bit of superpowered antics, but as involved as that might be for the characters, the players don't have to be constantly looking to the future. So while we technically should be working through the Incarnate System, the odds are better than even that we'll all be rolling alts over the holiday season. We play City of Heroes; alts are in our blood. So in a move that can only have been brought on by an almost criminal overdose of liquor, I've decided to start taking a look at the powersets of the archetypes, starting with the alt-friendly Scrapper. This should be of benefit to those who have never played a Scrapper, including players who are starting the game for the first time and who by definition haven't tried one before.
WoW Rookie: Top 5 tricks for grouping in Vashj'ir
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking new areas, new styles, and new zones. This week, it's also about playing with the people you love. Have I ever mentioned that I'm incredibly fortunate to play WoW with my wife? It's a subtle, wonderful thing. And because I worship this wonderful creature, all of my journey to level 85 on my paladin is being spent in a group with her. Our first foray into Cataclysm's new content was the underwater realm of Vashj'ir. It seemed like a romantic way to spend time: dodging sharks, making appropriate crab jokes, and exploring new content. The thing you need to know is that Vashj'ir is a three-dimensional zone. You don't only run around on the ground; you can also swim up and down. That's not a terribly complicated issue for instances like the Oculus, but those three dimensions turn into pains in the neck when you're trying to do a hundred quests as a pair. If you're leveling in a group with more than one person, it gets even more confusing. It's easy to lose track of where groupmates are hiding out and where quest mobs are swimming. And many areas of Vashj'ir have an "upper" and a "lower" level. If you're doing all this as a group, you'll need coordination. Here are our top 5 tricks for working as a group in Vashj'ir.
MMO Family: A parent's look at World of Warcraft
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family, from tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate online games for everyone in the family. World of Warcraft? Yeah, even folks who don't play video games at all have heard of this behemoth of MMO gaming. With 12 million subscribers worldwide, the WoW phenomenon has practically come to define an entire generation's worth of MMO gaming. While it's designed for teens and up, the game is so ubiquitous that you wouldn't have to dig far to find players of all ages, including many teens but also younger children as well. With a new expansion, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, due for release on December 7th, plenty of kids (and grownups) will be angling for WoW in their holiday stockings. The question is: Is WoW a good fit for your kids? With good preparation and consistent parent moderation, it can be -- but if you don't play the game yourself or you take a more hands-off approach to gaming, you may want to wait until your little goblin- or worgen-to-be is well into the teen years. Join us after the break for an insider's look at WoW for younger children and teens.
Wings Over Atreia: Altaholics anonymous
OK, now I've done it... my status as an oddity at Massively is exposed for all the world to see. I confess -- I do not like to play alts. Whew. There, I said it. That wasn't so hard. And being unique is not such a bad thing, right? In gaming, and in Aion especially, I definitely feel out of place for this philosophy. After all, Aion not only encourages but rewards you for playing alts; what other game gives you an impressive armor set and weapon only after you reach mid-level on numerous characters? And even for those who eschew playing alts, there are times when you are forced to do so (like I was). Pathetic available inventory space? Make a mule. Miss lower-level solo instances because they were introduced after you were too high of a level? Make a noob. But these are only a couple of examples involving mechanics. What makes people create so many alts that they need spreadsheets just to know who has what and is where? Head past the cut to delve into the pros and cons of managing multiple characters in Atreia.
The Soapbox: Spoiled solo
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Back when I got started with MMOs, I was playing Final Fantasy XI and complaining quite loudly about the nature of the gameplay. I think it was after yet another night of sitting in Jeuno looking unsuccessfully for a party that I went on a real tear, complaining at length about how ridiculous it was that the game didn't let most classes just do things solo. Grouping up for everything was a gimmick, a cheap way to throw roadblocks at players. If you wanted to experience the game solo, you should be given that option by the game. Final Fantasy XI never really changed to support that playstyle, but it wasn't long before we saw a flood of games with a much more solo-friendly attitude launch. World of Warcraft launched with solo leveling as a core feature, and over time we've moved on to games, such as Star Trek Online, which can be played solo almost the entire way through. You would think I'd be happy -- and I am, really. But I look back at games that required me to party up before I could even go out and earn some experience, and I can't help but think about what we've lost in the interim.
EVE Evolved: Preparing for Incursion
Several months ago, pirate faction Sansha's Nation began invading the populated systems of New Eden in force and abducting colonists from the defenseless planets. Using a frightening new technology, Sansha's forces have been able to open controlled wormholes directly in orbit of their target planets. CONCORD and the local faction navies have been unable to defend against the incursions, leaving the fate of EVE Online's planets solely in the hands of capsuleers. EVE players immediately began to organise intelligence networks and corporations dedicated to detecting and fighting the Sansha threat. In the upcoming Incursion expansion, Sansha's Nation will be stepping up its attacks to full-scale invasions of entire constellations. Having converted the millions of colonists they've abducted to mindless drones of the Nation and even having moved a conquered Jovian space station into their hidden wormhole home, Sansha's forces have never been stronger. When the Incursion expansion's main feature goes live in January of next year, players will find themselves on the front-lines of a war. We'll group up in fleets of 5-10, 10-20 or 20-40 players to tackle the various incursion sites and ultimately destroy each invasion wave's mothership. With the first Incursion release scheduled for this month and less than two months to go until the constellation-wide Sansha attacks begin, now is the perfect time to prepare for the expansion. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the ways you can benefit from the upcoming expansion and what players can do to prepare for the war against Sansha's Nation.
MMO Family: Mind your massively multiplayer manners
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family, from tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate online games for everyone in the family. Kids are like sponges, sure -- old saying is old. But are online manners something you really want to leave to chance? Are the interactions your kids so intently follow online the manners you want them soaking up and using themselves? As parents, we know that the habits and attitudes that kids pick up today are what we'll find coming right back at us tomorrow. Teens who are used to trolling in games and forums will have a hard time modulating to a less strident tone in a business meeting. Kids who excuse a lack of scruples with "whatever -- it's only the internet" are due for a big surprise when a thoughtless instant message or careless lack of response to an email slams doors in their faces later in life. As parents who game, we all have hot buttons that set us off: the guy who always shows up late to raids, beggars, you name it. The point is: Have you talked to your kids yet about these behaviors? Are you explicitly (by both word and example) helping them not to grow up to be That Guy? I'm pretty sure we don't need a primer in online etiquette here at Massively, but I don't think it would hurt to share some of the things we wish Those Other Parents had taught their kids before turning them loose in our games. I'll share my dirty dozen after the break -- won't you share your own in the comments?
Details of EVE's upcoming Incursion expansion revealed
It's an ordinary day in EVE Online, with pilots going about their daily business of trading, blowing each other up and battling the pirate forces of New Eden. Everything is quiet -- perhaps a little too quiet. All of a sudden, alarms go off in the space stations as warning comes in of an incoming Sansha incursion. We've known for some time that the Incursion expansion would include dungeon-like military incursions by ruthless pirate faction Sansha's Nation. Until now, however, details on exactly how those encounters would take place have been kept secret. In a new EVE devblog, CCP Ytterbium has now revealed exactly what we can expect from the Incursion expansion's signature feature. The Sansha incursions will begin with wormholes opening into every system in the target constellation. Sansha forces will form blockades at the stargates, replace the local NPCs in asteroid belts and begin to set up a series of military outposts. Sansha's Nation brings a frightening new technology to each incursion, capable of causing a number of debilitating effects on every pilot in the system. Ship resistances and damage output of all ships will drop, making it difficult to run missions or explore while the incursion is in progress. Similarly, cynosural fields will be blocked to prevent any capital ships entering the system. Skip past the cut for a run-down of how we'll tackle the Sansha invasions coming with the Incursion expansion.
The Daily Grind: What do you really think of your game's community?
It's a fact of life that community is the lifeblood of any MMO. While a bad game can be salvaged with a group of fellow players to whom you've grown attached, a good game can be utterly destroyed by a bad gathering. As a result, most of us generally say that we have at least a passable community within our games of choice. But let's be honest -- there are communities that don't so much resemble a group of gamers as a batch of particularly unruly howler monkeys with worse social skills. We've all played games with a supposedly "great" community that seemed snobbish and elitist, and games that supposedly have an awful community but really aren't that bad. Even World of Warcraft can be seen as a game with a good community if you only focus on your friends, despite the wide-ranging belief that the community is immature at best. So leaving aside the people you usually group with, what do you think of your game's community as an aggregate? Is it a good environment for other players, or do you try to stick to your own little corner of the larger playground? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: Playing alone together
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. It's sitting there in my quest log, frustrating me with its presence and quite possibly calling me names when I'm not around. "It" is a fellowship (group) quest for Lord of the Rings Online that I need to complete to continue Volume 2 of the epic storyline. This particular quest has been moldering in my log for over two weeks now, and I'm starting to think I'll never get it done. I hate it. Oh, sure, I know that there's plenty of other things to do, I know that if I'm diligent I'll find a group sooner or later, and I know that eventually enough of my kinship will need to do it and we'll throw together a "help each other out" posse. But I absolutely, completely hate being dependent on others for my gaming, and it always grates when I hit a wall that cannot be passed unless I gather a few friends -- or, more likely, a motley crew of puggers -- to get around it all. Yup, that's right, I'm a solo MMO player. I'm the very oxymoron of what some consider to be the quintessential MMO experience, which is to play an online game together with thousands of others. I like to do my own thing, go my own way, and 95% of the time, chew through content as a one-man act. I don't mind being with other people for fun and adventures, but I don't want to need them to progress. And I'm part of a growing majority of MMO gamers.
Wings Over Atreia: Making the cut
"What position are you applying for?" The interviewer listens and nods. "Mmhmm. Thank you. Now, what special skills can you bring to the team?" "Please list all previous experience and describe your major accomplishments." A pause. "Have you the required equipment to adequately perform your duties?" The interviewer is quiet while sizing up the applicant. "I'm sorry, but you just don't quite have what we are looking for. Next!" Sound familiar? No, this isn't a job interview -- this is the rigmarole many players experience simply to get into a group in NCsoft's Aion. You might think that time of day or availability of people in the right level range would have the most affect on forming up a group, whether in a legion or a PUG. Instead, players often must contend with an entirely different beast before even stepping foot into an instance: group elitism. Unless you have a regular group of friends with identical play times or a very supportive legion, you are apt to occasionally find yourself in the situation of seeking a group while traipsing about Atreia. Even with a regular group, there are going to be times you are left more-or-less on your own and just want to get something done. Thus begins the (oft times unpleasant) task of creating or finding a group. Like a microcosm of drama played out in short spurts, group formation showcases a variety of less-than-desirable attributes: greed; envy; lust; selfishness; and inflated egos. Just how exclusive can this process become? Your inclusion could ride solely on your class, equipment, or skill set, and have nothing to do with your ability and skill as a player. Heck, even your name may keep you out of groups. Join me past the cut to explore elitism in group dynamics in Aion.
Choose My Adventure: Off to the mainland
It's time for Vanguard maniacs, and we're zany to the max... (ahem). OK, so it's week four of the Vanguard edition of Choose My Adventure, but this week I did get a chance to see more of the game's veteran community than I'd previously experienced in the noob Isle. Indeed, it seemed like no matter what time of day I logged in, someone was in chat looking for people to group up and take on a dungeon. From what I've learned through talking to Orin, a great majority of the dungeons in Vanguard are open-world, offering challenges for both groups and solo adventurers. Indeed, teamed up in a pair, we seemed to be able to level anything in the 10-14 level range in pretty short order, which was good fun. However, before I get too far ahead of myself, I'm going to take you back to the beginning of this week's adventures in Telon. Join me after the break for all the juicy details -- as well as for this week's vote! %Gallery-104309%
NYCC 2010: DCUO's Q&A panel and fan event
The gods of New York Comic Con smiled upon Detective Comics fans and MMO junkies alike this weekend, as DC Universe Online kicked butt and took questions at not one, but a senses-shattering two Q&A sessions on Saturday. Conventioneers enjoyed a glimpse into the character-creation process at the "Creating the Next Legend Panel," and then Sony Online Entertainment invited fans to a special Q&A event afterward. And I would not be exaggerating if I said the audience reaction was riotously positive. Executive Creative Director Jim Lee, Creative Director Chris Cao and Art Director Mark Anderson shared details and fielded dozens of questions about the DC-based MMO at both events. Discussion ranged from costume creation to endgame content to the game's recent delay to early 2011.
Final Fantasy XIV expands details on the battle system
While Final Fantasy XIV doesn't go out of its way to be massively accessible, Square-Enix is clearly making a conscious effort to avoid confusion wherever possible. The official player site has been steadily receiving updates about how game systems work and what's going on behind the scenes, with the newest update discussing Battle Regimens and incapacitating body parts in combat. The systems had never been discussed in-depth before, but they now offer players a chance to understand exactly what each system entails. Battle Regimens are distantly similar in theory to the skillchains that ruled Final Fantasy XI's combat, but they have many differences in practice. Rather than being a chained deployment of specific skills, chains of general ability types will both buff the party and debuff the enemy party. Body parts, meanwhile, are targeted and damaged by certain weaponskills, with a helpful chart explaining what skills target what and which types of monsters can be affected. While it doesn't reveal the full details of Final Fantasy XIV's combat, it should provide players with an excellent place to start understanding the system.
The Daily Grind: What content keeps holding you back?
Back when I was in the middle of Naxxramas in World of Warcraft, there was an iron wall that held my entire guild back, and that was Grobbulus. It was insane. We could clear every other wing of the raid without a single wipe, even managing the much more difficult Four Horsemen battle without any problems, but every time we wound up facing the slime daddy it was a night of wipes and frustration. When we finally took him down, the rest of the raid fell to us in a matter of an hour. For some reason, that one boss was just such a hurdle. It could be a mission that you can't solo and can't get help with in City of Heroes. Maybe it's a raid boss in Lord of the Rings Online. Or maybe it's a certain episode in Star Trek Online in which a bug breaks the game and prevents you from completing your objectives. Whatever the reason, we all have something in our games that just refuses to let us past, content that we'd happily never do again if we could get past it the first time. So what's your iron wall?
The Daily Grind: What do you do when things turn south?
There's a crucial tipping point in any sort of party scenario when it becomes obvious that the situation is going badly. More to the point, there's a moment when you realize that every single person in the party is likely to die in short order. In some games such as Final Fantasy XI, death is a fairly major penalty; in other games, such as World of Warcraft, death is not much more than a slight inconvenience. But even if death results in nothing more than respawning a few seconds later in Star Trek Online, when the group is together, people can act differently. So what do you do? Do you try to take enemy attention so that your fellow party members can get away? Do you make a run for it, figuring that whatever's coming for you will eat someone else first? Or do you try to go down with guns blazing and make as much of a dent as you can?
Behind the Mask: Play nice with others
If there's one thing everyone here at Massively enjoys, it's playing MMORPGs with other people. Teaming with people makes almost anything fun. I have friends who play EVE who somehow claim that even mining can be fun, if done with friends. Unfortunately, Champions Online has a big problem with team play. It's hard for a team to share objectives, and the rewards for teaming are otherwise horrible. It feels a bit like World of Warcraft, yet much worse. WoW has real incentive to get into teams and run instances at the lower levels, and although many of these dungeons are skippable, WoW's focus on loot advancement encourages players to team up and get the best stuff they can use at any given level. This is just not true for CO. Many players just skip lairs entirely, even though lairs give great rewards. There are no "random missions" like there are in City of Heroes, either. Still, lairs are fun, because you get to play with other people.
Persistent issues and Final Fantasy XIV
There are certain recurring complaints heard about Final Fantasy XIV's beta, especially with players freely able to share their experiences. The fact that guildleves are on a 48-hour timer and the lack of easy and efficient mana regeneration are two of the more persistent ones, and a recent interview with Hiromichi Tanaka at Gamescom address just those complaints among others. But it's not all roses and sunshine -- if you're one of the testers hoping for the guildleve timer to be reduced, you're flat out of luck. Tanaka makes it clear that several of these issues are part of the intended design -- guildleves, for instance, are doable solo or in groups, but they aren't meant to just be burned through solo each time they're up. As a result, the team is looking into how to give better incentives to group up and share guildleves. MP regeneration is meant to be difficult, and spells are supposed to be a choice of using up limited resources. There are several interesting answers in the interview, but not every Final Fantasy XIV player will be happy with the content of those answers
