jeremy-stratton
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Lost Pages of Taborea: The importance of learning to play your role
This past week I was working on a couple of planned articles when I saw Josh Myers' post on WoW Insider about being a middle-ranged DPSer. I think the gist of the article was that we shouldn't look at another player's class and keep asking for buffs, skills or stats that would give another class more direct output to even out the equation. Not being able to pump out the most DPS is not a bad thing. This falls right in line with the subject of class balancing that I've been talking about with some astute players on the Runes of Magic forum. I wish I could take credit for this, but it was midknight129 from the RoM forum who said -- to paraphrase -- "Classes don't have to be equal; they just should be equitable." Any player should want to play his class because he enjoys the skills and abilities that his preferred class provides, but he should also want a class that will hold up when compared to the other classes. This is especially true in a PvP environment. It's just hard sometimes to compare the damage-dealing capability of a Priest to that of, say, a Scout. All of this brings me to the idea of learning to play specific roles around intermittent patch updates and skewed mechanics. Can we enjoy our favorite class in such a gear-heavy MMO without worrying about maximum damage or healing output?
Lost Pages of Taborea: Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine
When I first started playing Runes of Magic and other MMOs, I never used addons because they broke my perceived immersion. Fast forward to today and I have well over a dozen different addons to enhance my user interface and interaction with Taborea. There are quite a few addons that I'd now highly recommend. The collection has both evolved and stayed basically the same over the months. The collection does grow, but a lot of the new addons that come along don't see any love once uploaded. Some of the great classics -- like Advanced AuctionHouse -- are constantly being updated and are very useful. Many others that come along are variations on older popular addons or they aren't popular because they are small fluff addons. Basically, there's a core of great addons that are still being updated, but good new addons are coming at a slow pace. One new addon in particular is the Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine. DIYCE is a robust combat engine that can allow players to pre-script entire combat encounters with the push of a button. There are some ethical questions about the ability to easily program what some would call a cheat code. Is this going too far and skirting the boundaries of hacking? Let's take a closer look at the pros and cons for this program.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Trouble with PvP
Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a safe and fun break. For my first article of 2011, I want to talk more about PvP. I've spoken about PvP before, but I want to look specifically at player-killer protection and the ability to instantly change PK status. There was also the slight change to a short-term criminal or hero status since Runes of Magic started. A lot of time has passed since Runewaker made the changes, but I still remember them. Long gone are the days of a forced 10-minute cooldown on PK status and no protection bubble. I'm not a huge PvPer myself, but I wanted to explain a little more about the changes and the way I felt about the system then vs. now. I think it would also be relevant to bring up how the overall system works -- or claims to work. If you're interested in what PvP was like in the early days of RoM and would like to voice your opinion on it, click past the break.
Lost Pages of Taborea: A peek behind the fountain rune
Runes of Magic's fountain rune is one of many slottable runes that fall outside the standard attribute boosters. Its job is simple: It increases the rate at which you regenerate mana points. It doesn't fill up one of the six statistic slots that are burned onto an item. It gets plugged into one of up to four slots that are found randomly or drilled on accessories. It's also a great eater of time and resources to tier it in the arcane transmutor. I've been testing a tier 4 fountain rune on two of my characters that are different levels in order to see the difference in output. If you look on the Runes of Magic Database, you'll see it says a fountain 4 adds +22 MP recovery rate. Those who use the addon StatRating will see the same figure. Now I know that the numbers that equipment and runes show are not indicative of what you actually get. I also know that StatRating is there to tell you the actual numbers you get for any stat, but 22 for a tier 4 rune sounded like a lot. It doesn't really tell you how that number is applied, but I think of mana regen in terms of ticks. If a tier 4 fountain gave +22 mana per tick, and we can upgrade it to tier 10, and we can stack different tiers on five different accessories... there's just no way that number can mean that, can it? This week I found my own answers to what the fountain rune gives you. I also share some thoughts on using -- or not using -- the fountain rune.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Snowflake Festival
Jingle brother's time is here. Time for slaying. Time for cheer. Presents abound every Christmas in the Snowflake Festival, and I've been hoarding them like a squirrel. This is one of my favorite holidays, probably my favorite one in Runes of Magic. Not only are there lots of treats to get, but the quests are fun. I reminisced last week about the events held in RoM year-round, but I wanted to run through some of the things I've been doing in this year's festival. Despite some recent patching trouble, the holiday is up and running. There are new mounts, furniture, Christmas graphics and prizes galore to enjoy this year. If you've never played RoM during the Snowflake Festival -- or never took part in the quests -- this will serve as a fun guide and idea engine for what's in store for you. Get your space bar primed and ready for lots of jumping and read on past the break.
The Soapbox: Accessibility and customer service
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. I was originally pulled into World of Warcraft by two real-life friends of mine. They liked the game, played for a year or so, and then quit playing. They never got sucked into the world of MMOs like I did. I don't think they ever will either. It's not that they aren't gamers or that they don't fit into the culture. Maybe for their own reasons, they'd never play an MMO again... life and all that. But one interesting thing they told me makes me think they really will never play an MMO again: imperfect games. Now, besides the fact that no game -- online or off -- is perfect, there appears to me to be a great disparity in the functionality between MMOs and single-player games. It's easy to see how someone similar to me can work his way past a few speed bumps to get an MMO up and running, but what about a computer-illiterate person? Before there's even talk of bugs in the game or of the game being fun or not, there's an issue of accessibility and customer service. I want to talk about accessibility and customer service in this round of the Soapbox.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Reminiscing on holiday events
There's been a lot of event play-time in Runes of Magic lately. The pumpkin festival carried on for a lot longer than was originally anticipated and transitioned into a short -- and smaller -- autumn banquet. Now, Christmas is right around the corner. I've been drooling over the Christmas trees that are already for sale in the cash shop. RoM has seen a full year's cycle of events come and go twice now, and we are approaching the third Christmas. Now that long-term players have seen all the offerings, I wanted to peer into the place these holidays have in the world of Taborea and see how they add to our virtual lives. In this article, I want to share how I look forward to events and explore some of the great reasons to have them. 'Tis the season, and all that jazz. Let's take some time to look back and reminisce on RoM's holiday events and why we take part in them.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Seeking out the roleplay
Runes of Magic is funny with its seemingly high emphasis on chasing carrots, but it also contains some horizontal gameplay features. Gear is so highly customizable and the higher-level dungeons require you to invest a lot of time upgrading. Running dungeons is easily a full-time gig that I'm finding out firsthand. I've been leveling a new character strictly for dungeons, but it takes up all of my game time. I've cut out crafting completely and I outright ignore my house, yet I'm still falling behind my guildmates. But for those who actively seek it out, there are plenty of features to aid the other pursuit known as roleplaying. The horizontal aspects of RoM have a lot to do with why I love the game so much. Of course, they are ripe for the roleplaying crowd, but roleplayers aren't limited to only those areas. I think there are both areas good for roleplaying and areas that aren't so clear but lend themselves well to roleplaying. It's about how you roleplay with RoM's features, not which features are best for roleplaying. This week, I want to take a look at a few ways you can seek out roleplaying, with an emphasis on the uninitiated. I finish with a sappy message about roleplaying and instant gratification. Pros can very well find some ideas past the break as well.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Level 62 growing pains
Halloween has stubbornly refused to leave the land of Candara and is relentlessly holding monster parades around the clock. While it may be boring some, other persistent folk are probably stock-piling enough candy to make it all the way to next Halloween. So while we conveniently ignore the Pumpkin Prince, I want look ahead to the coming new zone. I've been steadily finding great content on the Runes of Magic forum, and the new level-cap increase is a hot subject right now. When chapter 3 rolled out, we knew we'd be seeing the maximum level raised to 60, but this new one wasn't expected, especially not so soon. This new level cap will take us into Limo Desert and to level 62. That means at least one new dungeon, new quests and most likely new armor. There's more than a few in the Runes of Magic community, including CM Swag, who have voiced their opinions both for and against another raise in levels so soon. Let's take a look at the situation that this presents, and I'll give my opinion on the new level cap.%Gallery-108554%
Lost Pages of Taborea: Save those pennies
Seeing players farm high-level dungeons can be a constant reminder that your gear sucks. If you really want to get into running instances and being the baddest of the bad, it's easy to feel pressured into spending money. Spending money isn't inherently bad. It's what makes the world go round. But it may behoove you to spend your hard earned dollars judiciously. I want instant gratification as much as the next bloke, but it isn't going to happen for me. I have bills and a limited income stream. I have to budget time and money. Everyone will have to do it someday, no matter what his or her income potential is. Runes of Magic offers periodic sales that the savvy gamer can take advantage of. This guide offers advice, reminders and tips for getting the most out of your money. Players play differently and want different things from RoM. I'm looking at these money-saving ideas with the basics in mind, but you should be able to easily adjust how and what you want to spend money on -- based on your personal income and game preferences.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Is Runes of Magic too easy?
It seems things are never quiet in regard to Runes of Magic these days. If it isn't holiday events or new world bosses, it's large-scale balancing issues. Players may still be plugging away at title achievements this Halloween, but the event has been going long enough for people to settle into a daily routine and get back to everyday affairs. In other words: it's something to do, but the shiny is starting to wear off. I took advantage of this lull and decided to do a Q&A on the overall difficulty of RoM. It's not a huge issue; it's more like a constant issue that creeps into other discussions on class balance or the memento system. And after the attempted change to a percentage-based mana cost, it's definitely worth consideration. Is RoM too easy? The question seems like it'd be a quick one-line answer, but there are many ways to view it that would yield different outcomes. What are players' goals? How can a change to one system affect the whole game? How will future updates affect any changes made today? Is there an answer to whether RoM is too easy or not? Well. Let's find out.
Free for All: Why I play free-to-play
I hid in waiting under a soggy sheet of cardboard for the past three days with stale Cheetos as my only nourishment. I had but a single target, who finally exited his house with bleached skin, a red fuzzy head and blurry eyes. As he stood at his front door trying to shoo away the sun like a vampire, I made my move. At last, I thought, Beau's spirit hood will be mine. By the time I was well into a Keanu Reeves-style flying scissor-kick, I realized an important tactical error. It wasn't the horror-filled eyes of a man who had spent too much time indoors staring at a computer screen that I was looking into, but the fierce come-get-some eyes of a teenager with spiky, dyed hair who was practicing his karate moves. Had I thought beyond simply looking cool as I made my attack, I would have realized I spent every ounce of energy I had to pull off the insane leap-kick that actually looked more like what you'd expect: a tired, wet, dirty, malnourished geek hop-skipping and shouting gibberish through a yard with a piece of cardboard stuck to his back. The three-day diet of stale Cheetos did not give me enough fuel to defend myself from the brutal pummeling that the pint-sized Bruce Lee gave me. It turns out Beau lived in the house next door. He had seen my wild display and subsequent beating, so he came out to help me. He invited me into his house to let me clean myself up, extolled the dangers of trying to live out movie fantasies, and offered to let me write his column for a week. It wasn't a spirit hood, but it was a very nice gesture. The dog-shaped cookies were a nice gift too, although I don't know why he snickered every time I ate one. No. The above tale really didn't happen, but Beau is letting me write his column today so I can tell you why I love to play free-to-play MMOs.
