The Art Design in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is Phenomenal

Similar to my experience so far with Destiny 2: Beyond Light, I’ve only dipped my toe into WoW: Shadowlands but the art has blown me away.

New post(s)?

A friendly comment on a random news post I made in 2010 may have just inspired me to ressurrect this blog from the dead. It has already spurred me to try and be more active in WoW (and get a class I actually enjoy to level 90), install DC Universe Online, and has me looking into Lord of the Rings Online’s latest incoming patch that’s dropping May 15th.

I may not be ready to commit to my old ways of only playing MMOs, but I’m curious to see if I can get back on the MMO-train while still avoiding the burnout that comes when you don’t just commit yourself to the idea of playing a singular MMO for the immediate future. I’m really wanting to get back into WoW, but I’m not going to rule out dabbling in other MMOs along the way.

So in the meantime, here’s a pretty cool Shadow Priest PVP video that I stumbled upon that helped convince me to transfer my level 49 Gnome Priest to my current server and attempt to make him my new main.

Rift: Planes of Telara could be something amazing

I’ve had my eyes on Trion World‘s Rift: Planes of Telara since it was first unveiled a year ago at E3 as Heroes of Telara. Many shrugged it off as another cookie-cutter “WoW clone,” but I saw some promise in it. Now, a year later, the more I read and see about it, the more I think Rift could really end up being a phenomenal game. The combination of the dynamic world events and robust class(souls) mixing system seem really interesting. The amount of polish the game looks to have, when it’s only in an internal alpha stage, gives me very high hopes and honestly has me impressed by Trion and their first MMO development project.

Below is a great interview done for the Rift Podcast site. Watch it!

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will begin on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT)!

Thank you twitter for the early-morning update!

As seen on the official FF_XIV_NA twitter account:

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will begin on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT)!

We are looking forward to your participation in FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test! http://entry.ffxiv.com/

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test Will Start on Sep. 1!

We would like to take this opportunity to provide an update regarding FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, which was announced to be postponed on Aug. 31, 2010.

Along with the completion on investigation and correction of the critical issue, we have decided to begin FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT).

Starting on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT), acquisition of registration code required for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be available.

We are looking forward to your participation in FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test!

Good news. See you all in Open Beta!

FFXIV Open Beta Delay + Minecrafting

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta was abruptly delayed, just hours before it was supposed to go live. The official statement, as well as the follow-up statement are seen below.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test Postponed

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, which is scheduled to begin at 19:00 (PDT) on Aug. 31, 2010, will be postponed due to a confirmation of critical bugs. New schedule will be releaseｄ at a later date.

Along with the postponement of FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, the issuing of registration code for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be postponed as well. With the download of client software’s installer, it will be suspended at 19:00 (PDT) on Aug. 31, 2010.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

….

When did it become “OK” to have a subscription fee AND a cash-shop?

Listening to the latest MMOvoices podcast and their discussion of EverQuest Extended (and its horrible implementation of the ‘free2play’ model) reminded me that EverQuest 2 already has a cash-shop within the regular, $15/month subscription, retail boxed-product. This made me think of Cryptic, who I consider to be the most dirty and unapologetic violators of this heinous act. You could go out on a limb and even say Blizzard does this as well, with their $10 vanity pets, $25 mounts, and handful of account services – but none of that is accessible in-game and most importantly none of that is intrusive and blatantly being commercialized to you while in game. When I think “cash-shop” in an MMO, I think of a big button on the in-game UI that is begging you to click it (read: EQ2 and Cryptic’s games).

I could probably name-drop a few more “subscription & cash-shop” games, but let’s stick to EQ2 and Champions Online (and breifly Star Trek Online). These are the ones that I have personally experienced and felt that the cash-shop was an impediment in my enjoyment of the game and left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Brand Spankin’ New FFXIV Trailer

Can Open Beta hurry up and start already?!

UPDATE: My rhetorical questioning has been answered. It looks like Open Beta will begin August 31st. That is even earlier than “early Septemeber!” Thank you, FFXIVCORE for being amazingly fast at breaking news.

Great Write-Up On The FFXIV “XP Threshold/Fatigue” System

Kudos to Cindy, over at MMOvoices, for directing me to this. Super-kudos to Suzaku, at Eorzapedia, for writing this up!

News of Final Fantasy XIV’s fatigue system has hit the web recently, causing a firestorm of controversy.  Translation issues and mass speculation served to light a fire in the community, and a vocal segment is demanding the system be removed.  Such demands, however, stem from not thinking the system through.

When designing an MMO, one of the things that needs to go in is some sort of limit on the possible progression of players.  Developers need to control the rate at which players can approach the endgame, and other milestones along the way.  Usually this is done with an Experience Point (XP) curve.

Final Fantasy XIV XP Threshold Properly Explained

Final Fantasy XI forums and fansites blew up yesterday with the translation of a developer update posted on the Japanese beta site that covered the “surplus system,” or as I like to call it now, the “xp threshold system.” People were going crazy with conspiracy theories and threats of “I just canceled my CE pre-order Square-Enix!” (Onos!)

Today Nobuaki Komoto posted an update on the North American FFXIV beta site addressing these issues directly to the NA/EU audience. No shoddy translations or guessing games. This is what he had to say:

Once again, we would like to thank you all for your participation and support during the Closed Beta. We will continue to take your valuable feedback into consideration as we develop the game during Open Beta and even beyond the official release.

Now I would like to take a moment to respond to the many questions and opinions regarding the manner in and rates at which experience and skill points are obtained in Beta 3.

Firstly, the concept for FINAL FANTASY XIV was to design a system of character progression that offers meaningful advancement for those with limited time to dedicate to playing. We did not want to create a game that forced people to play for hours on end to see their efforts rewarded. To that end, in addition to the Guardian’s Aspect and guildleve systems, we introduced a means of apportioning swifter advancement to shorter periods of play.

In order to achieve this balance, we calculated a value for the amount of skill or experience points that could be earned in a one-hour period. This theoretical value represents an hour spent engaged solely in combat, levequests, or any other activities that earn skill or experience points, and sets a threshold delimiting how many of these points can be earned in a period of play.

Based on this, we have implemented a “threshold value” concept. These thresholds are regulated by a one-week timer that begins counting down the instant you earn skill/experience points. After a week has passed, the thresholds will reset, and the moment skill/experience points are earned again, the timer begins counting down anew.

First Impressions: Champions Online

I could go on and divulge into why I’ve been a ghost for a bit but it’s honestly too complicated, melodramatic, and depressing to really get into, so just take this post and appreciate it! I’m overdue to talk about my recent over-indulgence of WoW, but I’ll save that for another time. For now, let me talk about my first impressions (we’re talking first night) of Champions Online.

I was excited to give Champions Online a try, for if nothing else, to get back into blogging and updating my site. Something about WoW just leaves me completely indifferent towards writing about it, so it’s always nice to play something else and get some actual inspiration and creative juices flowing.

I went into Champions Online retail knowing that performance of the beta client had left a very nasty taste in my mouth, but I was going to try and look past it. About a day into playing, and the game’s performance is really the only knock against the game I have. The graphics are perfect for the style they’re trying for, the character customization is deserving of all the hype (if not more), the depth of character progression and customization (beyond visual) is reminiscent of Star Wars Galaxies level of options, and the combat feels fresh and “actiony,” but still enough of the traditional MMORPG feel to make me happy.

I can’t go into much more than that at this point as I’ve seriously only played an hour hear and there. I’ve been scrapping and remaking characters just to try out a few of the power-sets and I think I’ve settled on the “Telekinesis” powers, which are quite fitting for my psychological-adept, mind-game hero “The Passive-Aggresive.”