Virtual Reality: First Thoughts

Preface: This was written on 1/14/19. Until 1/13/19 I had never slid my head into a virtual reality headset. I was a VR Virgin. These are my unadulterated first impressions of the Oculus Rift and the games I played. Enjoy

 Yesterday I got to try out an Oculus Rift on a high-end gaming PC for about 5 hours, playing a half-dozen or so games in the process. While playing some WoW and catching up with an old LAN/MMORPG gaming buddy of mine, he casually brought up VR, mentioning that he had splurged on an Oculus Rift last year. Intrigued that I had never tried any form of VR, he invited me over to check it out; he says watching people experience their “first steps in VR” is half the fun of owning it, because you get to relive that feeling and see how other people try to interact with the virtual  world they are experiencing for the first time.

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?

Rift gets an expansion – Rift: Storm Legion

This is huge news and very telling of how well Rift and Trion are doing. I can’t think of the last time a MMORPG released an actual, oldschool “Expansion Pack” that wasn’t for World of Warcraft. Everquest 2 has had a ton of them leading up to their conversion to free-to-play, but SOE and Everquest are ubiquitous with waves and waves of expansions. The original Everquest has 18 expansions chalked up so far, and Everquest 2 is on number eight, 11 if you include the purchasable Adventure Packs. What I’m getting at is that I feel like most modern released MMORPGs can’t afford to have enough employees to be both working on content patches and a retail expansion pack. Even if I’m way off, as I’m not an expert on the inner workings of a development team and publishing process, you can’t ignore the fact that MMORPG expansion packs have become rare, excluding the two examples noted above. How “well” rift is doing and the fact that they’re pushing so much content on top of working on this expansion has to have some correlation to each other. Trion has done one of, if not the best jobs at post-launch support of an MMORPG in its first year. Every patch Rift has received has been chock-full of content, not just filler bug fixes or rehashing of assets. I’m talking about new game systems, new mechanics, new ways to play the game, and a whole new zone; that type of stuff. The type of stuff that most games would withhold for an expansion pack.

Before I get too gushy for Rift and Trion and sound like a flaming fanboy, I’m going to stop and just direct you to take a look at some of the official bullet-points for Rift: Storm Legion and watch the trailer, exclusively from Gamespot.

 

 

Announcing RIFT: Storm Legion – Our first epic expansion will transport you to a far away land, ripped asunder by the Bloodstorm’s landing thousands of years before.

 

Crucia gathers her Storm Legion in the long-lost cradle of civilization. Adventure through this eldritch landscape, battle your way to the planes themselves, and conquer the dragons of Air and Death!

 

Here’s just a taste of what you’ll find:

 

KEY FEATURES

 

• Adventure across two huge new continents that more than triple the size of the existing world 
• A new Soul for each Calling expands the Ascended Class System – build the hero you want!
• Rise to new heights of power through 10 challenging levels, increasing the level cap to 60
• Dimensions: Customizable spaces allow players and guilds to own a sliver of Telara
• Become the talk of the town and boost your stats with stylish new capes
• And more!

 

Prepare for the coming storm – more info awaits you at www.StormLegion.com!

Gamespot exclusive Rift: Storm Legion Trailer

 

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!