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Choose My Adventure: How Lineage II feels to a Western newcomer
We're down to the wire for Lineage II's Choose My Adventure, with one more week to go. My Abyss Walker quickly rushed to the 40s, at which point leveling has slowed down considerably. I've talked about pets, explored (only a fraction of) the countryside, and touched on crafting and other features. What else could we possibly talk about? I haven't really shared a lot of my experiences with my character class or how the class-transfers and skills affect my overall enjoyment of Lineage II. My third class-transfer is set in stone thanks to your poll choices and the game mechanics; now that I'm an Abyss Walker, I'm locked-in to become a Ghost Hunter, which makes sense. Ghost Hunter is melee, like my Abyss Walker. I can't really jump ship at this point and go ranged. So let's look a little more at my character, what the future could hold for him in terms of more class-transfers, and my opinions on non-situational combat and how that makes the game feel to me.%Gallery-141708%
Choose My Adventure: Post-Christmas update
A turkey and ham coma, family soiree, and the biggest calendar holiday of the year have left my Lineage II escapades a wee bit smaller this week, but not without some fun happenings. Speaking of holidays, I hope everyone had a terrific one! Random events, miraculously revived dead pets, more amazing scenery, and lots of killing are on deck in today's Choose My Adventure. It turns out that I am terrible at raising my pet wolf and even got into an accidental scuffle with another player that left her pet dead and me even deader. I returned to the Path to Awakening because that's what you voted for last week. I've also neared the end of the uber-fast leveling cycle via quests and am turning to grinding for the majority of my experience gain. The fun-level has yet to dip for me; there's higher level gameplay I'm really hoping to dip my dagger into, and I'm curious to see what level I can reach by the end of this trip. As always, check out the extensive gallery and livestreams, and tune in to MV Guide to see when my next livestream will be.%Gallery-141708%
Choose My Adventure: Exploration week
From desert wastelands and salty shorelines to plateaus and ocean floors, I've been busy traveling in Aden, and I've seen but a glimpse of the entire continent. Last week, you voted for me to stray from the Path to Awakening and explore the world in Lineage II, and I've been having a blast doing just that. I discovered a monster racetrack, ran into raid bosses in the middle of nowhere, discovered a vast undersea temple, and so much more. I've also added 47 more screenshots to the gallery, uploaded a walkabout video, and have another livestream this week. We still aren't done yet. There are more chances for you to decide my fate in this week's Choose My Adventure.%Gallery-141708%
Choose My Adventure: Lineage II by a landslide
It was no contest from the get-go. Lineage II took an early lead in last week's poll and firmly held on to it. Color me shocked. I really thought that a few of the entries would be closely tied. Some contestants recently added some juicy content releases, but Lineage II crushed them, and all the others, by getting 1,320 votes. The runner-up, Black Prophecy, only managed to secure 299 votes. All its servers going F2P and the release of Age of Discovery weren't enough to put EverQuest II in the running. The F2P population boom in DC Universe Online's and its recent Lightning Strikes update weren't enough to create competition. Nope. The allure of Lineage II's F2P mode and the launch of the Goddess of Destruction expansion were just too much for voters to pass up. Now it's your turn to start steering my course in the lands of Lineage II. Race, class, gender and my first class-transfer are all on the table. I've tried to make voting as easy and clear as possible, but given how each race, and gender determine which classes you can choose from, you should make an effort to understand how all the choices work. Here's one example: Voting Dwarf and then Mystic is wasting a vote because Dwarves can only be Fighters, and it skews the results for those who are voting for a race that can be Mystics. You'll see what I mean.
The overwhelming power of community
"Without you, none of this would be possible!" While this saying is true for most things in the entertainment industry, it's mandatory for MMOs. A single-player game can make that initial retail box sale and never worry about keeping anyone happy after that, if they don't want to. Sure, most single-player game developers understand that they want their customers to be happy in case there's a sequel or future downloadable content, but for the most part, they can do alright with a relatively low maintenance developer-community relationship. Of course this isn't true at all for MMOs. The community makes an MMO. You can have the most immersive, gorgeous game with the perfect PvP and roleplaying capacities, but it still needs to appeal directly to a community. It doesn't matter what community, but it just needs to have a role and find that niche with people who are looking for that specific itch to be scratched. This isn't going to happen with advertising alone.
WoW in the running for Game of the Decade
2009 is coming to a close, and with it, "the aughts," which means we're about to get flooded with list after list of the best of the decade. It's been a raucous ten years for gaming (some, including me, might call it the best ten years in gaming so far), and Crispy Gamer is the first to step up and try to pick the best games we've seen so far. In their Game of the Decade showdown, World of Warcraft is still in the running, up against Bioware's legendary Knights of the Old Republic RPG, as the latest post has readers trying to pick the final four choices. If you think our game is more deserving than KotOR (note that this isn't the MMO, it's the old RPG with your friendly meatbag hater droid, HK-47), you can vote for WoW over on this page until Tuesday at 6pm. KotOR is a great game, but as a decade-defining game, I'd have to think WoW will pull that one off. After that, though, there's some tough competition: BioShock and Half-Life 2 are up against each other, Halo and Left 4 Dead are facing off in another bracket, and Super Smash Brothers Melee and Shadow of the Colossus (which I guess I need to go play now) are the challengers in the third. I have to say -- as a "Game of the Decade," BioShock and Half-Life 2 are definitely in competition, but if you want to pick a game which has really defined both the online and casual gaming movements of the last ten years? We'll have to see what the readers choose, but I'd have to think World of Warcraft is your game. [ via BlizzPlanet and kyleorl ]
Massively's End-of-the-Year Reader's Choice Awards
The end of 2009 is almost upon us, and Arthur C. Clarke's dreams are all about to come true in less than a month. It's been an interesting year for MMOs, including everything from Tabula Rasa's official closure to the launch of LotRO's second paid expansion. While it's inevitable that the Massively staff all have their own favorite games in several different categories, we figured it would be best to get the readers involved this year. So we've compiled a series of polls (found after the jump) in which you can vote for your favorite games of 2009 in 10 different categories. The poll choices consist of some aspect of games or expansions that launched this year, so don't expect to see older games on these lists. With almost 50 online games launching in 2009, we chose to only include a maximum of 10 for each category. At the end of the month, we'll compile the results into one post, letting everyone know what the Massively readers think is the best of the best (or worst). So you have plenty of time, but the deadline for votes is December 31st at 11:59pm EST!
PC Gamer Top 100 list: vote for your favorite MMO
Last week, PC Gamer launched their Top 100 website where readers can vote on their favorite PC games of all time. The PC Gamer staff already chose their own top picks, but now it's our turn to not only tell the world which games are our favorites, but we also have the chance to win a pretty sweet gaming computer in the processSo this is where we plead with you, the MMO players to make your voices heard. Let's let the world know that our genre is where it's at, and we are very passionate about what we play. We can't just sit back and let Half Life 2 or something from the GTA series win, we need to see some World of Warcraft, some Guild Wars, some Lord of the Rings Online and some EVE Online up there. Let our voice be heard! Viva la revolucion! Or something.
Macworld Editors' and Readers' Choice awards voting begins
Macworld has announced that they're looking for nominations and votes for their fourth annual Reader's Choice awards-- they're asking interested parties to drop a note over on this forum thread in the categories of Apple Product of the Year, Third Party Hardware and Software of the Year, and Mac Gem of the Year (an under-$50 software out there that deserves more recognition than it usually gets).As I suspected, there's no question about Apple Product of the Year: it's definitely the Hi-Fi. Wait, no, I mean it's definitely the iPhone. Duh. And the rest of the votes are literally all over the place, from Parallels, Adobe's suites, and even Leopard (despite not actually being from a third party, but maybe it's just that good) to smaller stuff like Panic's Coda and Gus Mueller's Acorn. I gotta say good luck to Macworld's editors-- they're going to need it to come up with some good award winners from that mess.But they've got time-- the awards probably won't drop until mid-December. And by then, we'll all have used Leopard enough to know that it is the software product of the year, third-party or otherwise.
