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Don't use public crafting stations, learn to craft from home
Last time we checked in with Saylah from Mystic Worlds, she was off enjoying the free to play MMO Runes of Magic. Her goal was to perfect her home crafting station, allowing her to turn her house into a small store to sell items to the people she met in her travels.Well, it looks like her home crafting shop has been completed and is now ready for public consumption. As an added bonus, she's posted on her blog some good tips for how to put together your own workshop for just a couple bucks a month. Plus, if you want a closer look, you can check out her home inside of Runes of Magic and get some ideas from the things she's already put together.Her full post is available over at her blog, Mystic Worlds, and it's a pretty good read for anyone who's interested in crafting in RoM.
Runes of Magic: Not just another pretty game
There's been more and more buzz about Runes of Magic as their release date of March 19th draws ever closer. From what we've seen, it looks like a pretty rich world, featuring lots of different things that MMO players love: PvP, lots of quests, player housing, cool-looking mounts, a dual-class system - and let's be blunt, it seems to remind everyone who touches it of Blizzard's 800 pound gorilla, World of Warcraft. Considering there are half a million people who have registered for the open beta of the game, it would seem that players are definitely curious about all that Runes of Magic has to offer. To those who (like us) are curious about how this game is progressing, there's a great interview with Joerg Koonen of Frogster over on IGN. Among the juicy bits served up, we are treated to some interesting insights into how closely Frogster is working with the development company, Runewaker Entertainment, and just what kind of a role the community has been taking throughout the process. Also in the mix, we noted how the items in their cash shop are the same ones available in game for those who don't want to spend money - and how they feel this is the way it should be to keep the playing field level for all players. Also, be sure to check out our recent interview with Daniel Ullrich if you're hungry for more Runes of Magic information!
Player review of Runes of Magic open beta looks promising
You may not have heard, but Runewalker's Runes of Magic is a free-to-play/free-to-download fantasy MMORPG that features a large world, avatar appearance customization, dual-class specialization, interesting combat mechanics, player housing, crafting, high-end PvE raiding, and even PvP. If that seems like a little bit of everything from some of the more popular fantasy MMO titles like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and Age of Conan, that's because it is.According to a player's review of open beta, RoM has taken some of the best elements from these aforementioned games and tried to blend them into a fun and cohesive experience. It also seems to have taken not-so-good elements like daily quests, no career respecialization, and gear dependency. Many people think free-to-play games must be shallow, but it took the reviewer three days to pick a class combination that would suit their play style. That seems pretty deep to me. Perhaps the best consideration a gamer can make is that free-to-play in this case also means free-to-try. How many times have gamers been burned by paying for a product that ultimately didn't live up to their expectations or tastes? What do you have to lose by giving Runes of Magic a shot?
Why do people buy virtual goods in MMOs?
Massively multiplayer online gamers spend hours -- so many hours -- working towards obtaining virtual gear. Epic armor sets, mounts, player housing, faction ships... the list goes on, and will continue to go on. Our collective fascination with these intangibles ensures our desire for them -- and for those things beyond a player's reach solely within the virtual realm, real world cash makes all things possible. This is the research focus of Ph.D. student Vili Lehdonvirta of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, who breaks down our buyer's impulse according to three criteria: Functional attributes, such as speed, hitpoints, teleportation. Hedonic attributes, or how the virtual gear looks or sounds, its provenance or its connection to the background fiction of the setting, and of course customizability. Social attributes, particularly the prestige accorded with ownership of a rare item. Have a look at his "Virtual item sales as a revenue model: identifying attributes that drive purchase decisions" for a thorough analysis of why many of us are so inclined to obtain something that's ultimately ephemeral, which goes beyond the simpler "useful vs. decorative" angle.
The Queue: Trinkets, sigils and death by Orcs
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.It's Wednesday, which I've determined is the worst day of the week ever, so let's skip any delays today and jump right into the Q&A. If you disagree that Wednesday is the worst, you are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. As wrong as you could possibly be. Just sayin'.Robsato asked... I recently got my warrior to level 71 and I really miss my riding crop especially since my main is a pally going at normal speed feels really slow. Is there a way to get my 10% speed increase back?
Nethaera talks about supporting roleplayers
There's a huge forum thread over on the forums right now (though it's been going for the better part of a month) about Blizzard putting in more for roleplayers -- player housing, surnames, and "a more interactive world" are all asked for, and much later in the thread, Nethaera does weigh in with a nice long statement about how Blizzard is dealing with all of this stuff. The bottom line, as always, is that there's only so many hours in the day, and Blizzard has to prioritize what gets worked on. And as of yet, neither player housing nor surnames or any of the other suggestions have made their way to the top of the list.Which makes sense -- as many roleplayers as there are, nobody would really call them the primary audience of the game. There are definitely other games out there that are much better for defining a character. Which doesn't mean that we'll never see these things ingame -- player housing has been wanted (and promised) for a long time, and surnames are something that's common in almost every MMO but World of Warcraft. Neth just says that it's a matter of time, and that while player housing is still on the horizon, the world of Northrend will be more immersive and interactive than the rest of the game so far. Which is good news not just for roleplayers but for everyone else as well.
Making/Money: Conservation of Mass - Part 3
Once more with feeling! Welcome to the third and final (planned) installment of our series on closed-resource economies in MMOs. So far, we've laid the foundation of the system and discussed how starting out, leveling up, and gaining loot could work. Today we will be exploring how crafting professions could still be possible even when the law of Conservation of Mass applies and how banking might function. There's been a lot covered so far so if you haven't already, i recommend reading the first two posts. But since I know that gets into the TLDR length, here's a very quick recap. In order to maintain a constant level of stuff in the game, new items could only generate once old items leave the game. Money would function in the same way, except that it would flow from NPCs to monsters (meaning any monies collected by NPCs would spawn as loot) in order to recirculate. There would need to be additional gold sinks (some of which we will get to in just a minute) and limits on the number of characters per server. Each server would then "age" as the average level of characters on it increased.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Portals, pandaren, and Jaina Proudmoore
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.Let's get this party started with Lionheart's question...What is that barred off instance looking portal thing in Stormwind, by Old Town? Were the gates once open?There are actually two of these in Stormwind. Neither of them were ever open, they're relics of unfinished projects. One is a closed off little guarded island in the Canals. That one was going to be the Stormwind Vault, probably a dungeon like Arcatraz or the upcoming Violet Hold in Dalaran. Probably.There's also the barred off one at the end of the Canals, right down the way from that one. This is probably the one you're referring to, I'm going to guess? I don't think we've gotten a real answer on this was supposed to be, but it was probably going to be the portal to player housing. They actually did start work on player housing at one point, but never got far. There are relics of it in the game files. Half completed houses/structures, things like that. They all use the Stormwind motif for their appearance, and they would have to put it somewhere. Through this portal is a safe bet.thinice asked...Jaina Proudmoore and Arthas. Any chance they'll hook up against in the future? What are the details of their history together?
Making/Money: Unlocking More Money
Picture this, if you will - You are in Lord of the Rings Online and have amassed just enough coinage to purchase your first house, a minimum of 950 silver. You have looked through the various neighborhood maps for each of the races to determine where you want to be, taking into consideration the proximity of the housing to a town, the proximity of the house you chose to the gate and the water feature within the neighborhood (for safe fishing right outside your door), and the amount you will have to pay in upkeep. You head to the housing broker of your choice, find a neighborhood that has that house available and purchase it. Ahh, your first property. A place to call your very own in the middle of a bustling game life. You put some nice carpets down, paint the walls, and put some locally-caught fish up as trophies. You might even put a bed in one of the rooms as an homage to real life - not that anyone sleeps in LotRO... at least on purpose. You pay a couple of additional weeks' upkeep in advance to ensure that the house remains yours. Eventually, you unlock the storage container within the house and put some of the items in that would not fit in the bank and you haven't quite decided what to do with. All is going swimmingly. Then, a few short weeks later, real life calls you away on vacation to somewhere with limited internet access (may it never be so!). You get back to heaps of work and do not have time to log in for a little while. When you finally do, there is a box on the left-hand side of your screen informing you that maintenance is now overdue on your house and you have been locked out until such time as you pay it. "Oh noes!!!" you cry, "Whatever shall I do now? I cannot get to the things in my storage container to sell them and I do not have the money to pay this outright. My house is doomed!" Ah, not so, Grasshopper. There are ways to save your house and today we explore my favorite - the crafting method.
New wall textures for Lord of the Rings Online
Lord of the Rings Online player Harp has been doing a lot of fishing to earn enough Summer Festival tokens to get all the new wallpapers. They cost 12 Summer Festival tokens per new wall, and are sold, one each, in Bree-land, Bywater, Celondim and Thorin's Hall. Three of the walls are pleasant floral patterns; the fourth is an elaborate, stylized sun-and-tree motif (pictured) which can be dyed various shades. Other house items include window boxes and vegetable gardens, as well as some clothing and party goods.Make sure to check out our Lord of the Rings Online Summer Festival guide to get full details on the mini-games and prizes you can earn from this in-game event.%Gallery-27209%
Buying your way through raid content
There's a new game in town, and Artirius of the Aerie Peak server has noticed it, and admittedly, so have I. With attunements gone, it is now possible for any level 70 to go in and see tier 5 and 6 content whenever they want. Of course, they don't generally have a prayer of actually downing bosses unless they have 20-24 well geared people to help them out. That's where gold comes in. With a few thousand gold, you can buy your way into a tier 6 group that doesn't need the tier 6 armor and go along for the ride. A few hours later, you come out on the other end with Illidan dead and a few shiny new drops, even if you've never set foot in Karazhan. It's not just people trying to buy these slots in the trade channel either. As Artirius observes, many raid groups are actively soliciting for buyers for their raid slots. On my own server, one Horde group is trading tier 6 runs for large quantities of certain herbs, promising that all but a few select drops will go to the people who buy their slots with stacks of Netherbloom and Ghost Mushrooms. So what's causing this?
Foraging for furniture in EQ2
SOE is getting sneaky. Along with their recent EverQuest II game update 46, SOE added (without telling anyone) red shinies to the game. In EQ2, you might see little harvest-able white sparks here and there while you are walking around. These shinies can be collected and turned in to collectors for experience and items. The Echoes of Faydwer expansion introduced "blue" shinies, that can only be seen when wearing special goggles that are themselves the reward from a collection quest. And now, GU46 brings us "red" shinies.Red shinies may only be seen by level 80+ crafters that have obtained and are wearing the crafting epic, the Earring of the Solstice. Stargrace of MMO Quests has an excellent article showing off some of the many house items you can get from red shiny collections. So head down to the Barren Sky, Loping Plains, Steamfont or the Fans of NASCAR (er, Fens of Nathsar) and get digging!
A path to the recognition of virtual property
That epic mount? That sweet sword? All that gold you have stashed away? All the time spent leveling your character? The mount, the sword, the gold, and your character -- none of them are yours. All can be swept away at the whim of the game company, because virtual property, such as in game items, don't really exist, and thus you have no rights over them.Columbia Law School graduate Daniel Gould argues that a limited recognition of the rights of players to their virtual property would benefit both the the players and the virtual world companies themselves. An astounding position -- virtual world companies are notorious for laying claim to everything that exists or happens in their games, with some notable exceptions. The developer might make a decision that devalues your virtual goods -- for instance, your Uber Sword of Sweetness could begin dropping from newbie field trash mobs. Or all teleports to your virtual homestead could suddenly disappear. Gould explains how models based off real-world property law could show the way to giving the dwellers in virtual worlds some legally-recognized recourse for their grievances.Virtual property law is a minefield because the very first time a judge assigns a real-world monetary value to virtual property, it can be taxed. And then, everything changes.
Taxidermists and their creations in the World of Warcraft
The author of "Warcraft and Other Hooha" read on the Lord of the Rings Online's site that there are taxidermists in game who will mount and show off your kills, and wondered why the same thing wasn't going on in Azeroth. It seems silly at first, but there's actually a lot of precedent -- they collected all the current taxidermy in Warcraft, and the case is pretty convincing. Clearly someone is stuffing and mounting animals in Azeroth.Of course, as in LotRO, this is a feature that would go hand-in-hand with player housing, so we shouldn't expect to see one until we've gotten the other (and odds are that we won't see player housing anytime soon, though guild housing is another story). Not everybody would want dead animals adorning their walls (Druids probably wouldn't appreciate having that bear around), but what better way is there for you to show off what you've taken down out in the wild?[Via Mania]
Gamers on the Street: Playing with roleplaying
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.The WoW roleplayer is a strange creature -- in a game universe almost completely designed for the non-roleplayer (there are enough pop culture references to make anyone sensitive to anachronisms apoplectic), they soldier on insider RP servers, taking their time leveling up, and having perhaps much more fun than anyone who races towards the endgame might otherwise have.So for this Gamers on the Street, I decided to head to Moon Guard, an RP server. I had hoped to chat about what players were expecting for season 4, and maybe find out what casual players thought of all the new things coming in Wrath of the Lich King, but when I sent out my query for interviewees, what I found were two roleplayers. people who were taking the game at their own pace and having fun doing it.I also made sure, due to past reader comments, to speak to Alliance this time. After the jump, meet two roleplayers who are playing the game their own way.
Poll: Are you looking forward to WoTLK more than you looked forward to Burning Crusade?
So recently, Tobold was saying that excitement around Wrath of the Lich King is visibly much less than the excitement that led up to the release of Burning Crusade. People are tired out by the 2 year wait, WoW isn't innovating, WoW isn't adding the content fast enough: there's just so many reasons that the Wrath of the Lich King is being greeted with ennui instead of excitement. My first thought upon reading that: Wait, people aren't excited over WoTLK?
Wonderland Online furniture review
Aspiring carpenters in IGG's Wonderland Online may wonder, rightly, if they are as clean and fresh as they possibly could be. Is the bathtub that they picked out when they first started their fight against nature's foes still relevant to their faster-paced lifestyle? Is the tent just getting a little small, needing perhaps a second floor or a larger garage? It is these sorts of questions that the Wonderland Online developers answer in their list of furniture improvements that will turn your old tent into one that will be the envy of your friends and the inevitable gathering place for your guild. Learn the benefits a bookcase will bring, or how to decide between an ancient bathtub or air conditioning.Wonderland Online is a free-to-play Asian import that combines standard RPG elements with interactive social spaces. In how many other games can you leave your rustic cabin in the middle of the forest primeval, climb into your robot and jet away into space? Darn few.
WoW Insider Show Episode 36: MEH-lay
Both Duncor and John "BigBearButt" Patricelli were on the podcast with me last Saturday, and despite my being a bit behind (Liberty City claimed most of my time last week), the show went really well. We chatted a lot about the mounts of Warcraft, including why you can't ride most of the bug mounts outside of AQ. We talked about how to make raiding faster We hit on a number of player events, including John's post about those crazy Druids in Nagrand, and our own It Came From the Blog fun We talked about what we're looking forward to in Wrath of the Lich King (I can't wait for the five man instances) And we answered lots of emails -- a few more jokes, a little advice, some good thoughts about Trinkets (and maybe putting an extra inventory slot in there), player housing, and lots of making fun of Duncor for quitting the game. And we figured out the real pronunciation of melee -- here it is. Definitely give it a listen -- there's a lot of good stuff in there. As usual, the show is available over on WoW Radio, or in iTunes if you'd rather get it that way.And here's a special announcement: This coming week on the WoW Insider Show (which will be live on WoW Radio at 3:30pm EST on May 10th), we'll have a special Mother's Day edition of the podcast. Not only will we have Robin Torres (who is herself a mother) on with Turpster and I, but both Amanda Dean and her mother will be live on the show as well. Moms and WoW -- next week on the WoW Insider Show.
Making/Money: The Wisdom of MMO Banking
Does it seem strange to save up to buy a house in a game? We are in an era where the real world economies of some nations are paralyzed by debts incurred from home purchases. Yet in games where there is player housing there is a surprising lack of player debt. MMOGs offer a simplified financial system seemingly impervious to the ills of modern society. What could we as a gaming society learn about real-world finance and money management from the way we act in game?
Insider Trader: Crafting speculation in the Flower Kingdom
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.To celebrate the kick-off of HKO-Insider, Insider Trader will be doing a bonus column this week! As the closed beta has only just been put in the works, there are understandably few details floating around.Currently, we have confirmed at least the following professions: Mining. Gathering fruit from the wild. Tailoring. Furniture-crafting. Farming. Cooking. House-building. This week we will speculate on what we might see, and compose a wishlist for what we would like to see. Join us on Friday as we resume our normal schedule and delve deeper into the concept of mining as a profession, building on today's overview as well as player feedback.
