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.

Pondering what to scratch my MMORPG itch with

My short-lived rampant addiction to The Secret World faded after about a week or two. I definitely got enough out of it to warrant the price of the game and the first “free month,” so I’m not bitter about it, but I can definitely say I’m shocked my desire to log in came to such a screeching halt. I think I logged about 40 hours in just the first few days of having it, so when I, all of a sudden, stopped logging on it was peculiar, to say the least. I think the first thing that might have put a dent in my momentum was the fact that I rerolled away from my first character and server, in order to be able to play with a friend of mine who I had convinced enough to buy the game. I won’t lie, I was kind of looking for more excuses to reroll my character, because I was unhappy with how his face turned out (little things like that nag the hell out of me in games) and I was already thinking about trying out a more offensive/dps build, as opposed to my purely survival-focused blade/chaos tank. Besides rerolling, the Steam sale didn’t help the cause at all, as that reminded me that I have a gigantic Steam library that doesn’t get enough of my attention. Before I knew it I had forgotten about my Templar comrades and I can pretty much say I’ve moved on. For now at least. I can definitely see myself coming back to TSW if Funcom sticks to their promises of monthly content patches. There was a lot I loved about TSW and I still truly believe it’s one of the gems of MMORPG launches in the post-WoW age of MMORPGs.

So here I find myself with a dozen-or-so freshly installed Steam games, looking for an MMORPG I can log into when I want that “lose myself for a few hours with a podcast playing in the background” type of game. I tried hopping into Rift since they reactivated old accounts for the weekend, but it wasn’t seeming to grab my attention. Maybe when the expansion’s launch is a bit closer? After Rift, my mind wandered to Final Fantasy XIV (probably due to the recent ‘A Realm Reborn’ 2.0 news), Star Wars: The Old Republic, and World of Warcraft.

My deal with FFXIV is that I feel like I’m still just better off waiting for the glorified 2.0 patch to go live. I already picked up the game for ~$10 a few months ago, so I’ll be able to side-step the inevitable price increase that comes with the relaunch and version 2.0. The FFXIV I tried a few months ago, while definitely improved, was still too much like the FFXIV I played back in the beta. I’m afraid this would still be the case if I reactivated any time before 2.0

SWTOR and WoW are kind of pulling the same strings for me when I try to analyze why I am getting an itch for both of them. Both have similar theme-park experiences, class mechanics, and talent-tree layouts. Both (now) have an automated “LFG” system. Both have similar end-game experiences of either “PVP or PVE” being the baseline options. What SWTOR has going for it that WoW doesn’t is that more of it is fresh to me. The idea of starting from scratch with the Reddit guild is really appealing to me. When I try to think of what I would jump into in WoW, it all kind of starts out hazy and then goes downhill when I think about server transfer and faction change fees — all due to the fact that I just don’t know if I want to stick to my level 85 Death Knight who is a recent Horde-faction-change-victim or if I want to go back to my home of Alliance, that just feels more natural and normal to me.

Besides these heavy hitters like SWTOR and WoW, I feel like I’m somehow overlooking an MMORPG that could hit the spot just as well as these. Lord of the Rings Online? It’s never really lasted long for me in the past, and with an expansion launch on the horizon that’s just an added cost, so an added barrier of entry. Guild Wars 2 launches in less than a month, but the client’s lack of optimization throughout the beta weekends has really turned me off, and besides that, I need something now, not a month from now. Planetside 2 beta is said to start in just a few days, but how do I know I’ll be in the first wave of invites? I’ve played a bit of it during the tech test (thanks to a lucky friend of mine who got in) and that engine could use some optimization too. I’ve thought about hopping back into Diablo 3, but having done all four acts, three to four times each speaks for itself. I’m tired of repeating content in that game for such little reward. What the hell, it’s not an MMORPG anyways.

Working this all out in my head as I’m typing this post has actually helped a lot, and I’m honestly leaning towards SWTOR at this point. Rerolling a Jedi or Smuggler could be fun, and I feel like I can fill my head with a “to-do list” in SWTOR way easier (and cheaper) as opposed to WoW. After all, setting goals (both big and small) in an MMORPG is what keeps me playing them. What’s an MMORPG without a carrot-on-a-stick?

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.

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.”

Bringing out your dead (aka PC game boxes you hoard in your garage)

I love PC game boxes. They have this nostalgic vibe to them, and I’m not even talking about the old textbook-sized PC game boxes. I know I’m missing some that I might have lost or thrown out, digital-distro MMOs, and I left out all my single-player games, but good times, good times.

cliche introduction title for first posting

It took me multiple Backspace spammings to get this first line out, but, HEY, here it is. I don’t know what to say really. Making your first post on a blog is like sparking a conversation on a blind date with an attractive girl. You know you like what you see, you know what you want, but you just can’t spit out the right words at the right time.

I guess i should start with why I made a blog and why i feel the need to post it on the world-wide-web for anyone to read, as if they should care. Well you should care, because it’s fun to read other’s opinions, right?

Let’s get the business and formal stuff out of the way: I am a Journalism student at the University of North Florida and I’m just trying to get my feet with in the ol’ blogosphere and get some writing in when I’m able to pry myself from whatever MMO i am playing. I will be talking a lot about Warhammer Online (hell i almost even made it a WAR-centric blog) as it is the game i am currently most excited about (obssessing about). Waaagh!

Let’s get this straight. This will not be a live-journal, myspace blog, man-diary, disguised as a gaming and gaming industry blog! I am here to discuss all things gaming: the politics, the sales, the communities, and so-forth. Of course, as the name implies, my spceciality obviously lies in the Massively Multiplayer Online genre, and although this genre may ignite many of my rants and raves, it is not the only area of interest to me or this blog.

I’m a big time gaming-blog reader. I literally have 10+ gaming news and blogs that i will religiously check every time i open firefox. I really should get on that whole RSS feed train. Oh well. But my constant attention to gaming blogs is what helped motivate me to finally make my own. I find it encouraging to read simple blogs made by simple gamers like myself, and find that they actually have a nice following of active readers, so i hope to follow in the footsteps of many bloggers who have influenced me. That’s right, it’s shout-out time: Kotaku, wowinsider, massively, joystiq, the greenskin, and a fellow wordpress blog, Waaagh!. I thank those sites for giving me hours of good times and good reads.

So as i bring this icky first post to an end, let me say to the 3 people out there who will probably read this first post (including my girlfriend and mom) thank you and please check back for many more updates!

Disclaimer: I used the word “blog” way too much. I sowy.