Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from TERA, showing off the game’s first expansion Fate of Arun.
Check out MMOrning Shots almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Category: Editorials
Diaries From The Old Republice: Fly Me To Coruscant
Let’s get one thing out of the way: I haven’t played The Old Republic in a very, very long time. Before strongholds, before legacy, before achievements, before just about any of that stuff. I think I might have logged in once or twice after the game went free to play, but aside from that all I have to show for my pre-order is a level 26 smuggler. Those of you who have read my playthrough pieces know that I level slow, in fact even with the 12x experience boost, I can’t guarantee that I will get my current character to level 55 before the expansion hits…in December. Yea, I’m that pathetic.
For the sake of figuring out just how far I could outlevel the content, I decided to make a new character and go for a Jedi Knight. The 12x experience boost only applies to story missions, which is a good thing. At the rate that story missions are propelling me through my levels, side missions don’t offer much outside of some equipment or planetary tokens. I’ve told myself that I should be focusing on story missions for now, and that I can always come back and mop up missed side missions once my speed run is over and done with. Since each story mission provides at least one level, I am currently at level 22 running a level 16 story mission.
The Old Republic is supposed to be several KOTOR sequels wrapped into one, and with that in mind I am going to play the story and enjoy it. So far the Jedi story is pretty cut and dry, but the characters are interesting and the overall plot manages to seamlessly change from planet to planet. The story is basic Star Wars: There is a sith doing bad things, and you kill him only to find out that there is a badder sith somewhere else controlling his strings. Rinse and repeat. The side missions that appear in the middle are where the creative minds at Bioware really shine through.
For instance, you arrive on Coruscant to find that not a whole lot of people particularly like you. The Republic troops on Coruscant don’t trust the Jedi because they up and left when the Jedi temple was sacked by the Sith, leaving the planet to be overrun by criminal cartels. While the resource-starved Republic was forced to withdraw its forces, a militia called the Justicars formed up to fight the various crime syndicates only to find that their efforts too would not be enough. Many have lost hope in the Republic, and some are even considering switching over to the Empire who seem more willing to stamp out crime on the planet. It seems that even in the old Republic, there is no shortage of misery caused by the inaction of the Jedi order.
One small aspect that I enjoy is the crew affection rating. In conversations, you can gain or lose affection rating with your companion based on what you say. As a jedi, my companions are better tuned toward feats of courage and compassion than malice and revenge. They call it the Jedi Order for a reason.
While I wouldn’t describe my feelings as overenthusiastic, I am having some fun playing through The Old Republic. Who knows, maybe by the time the December deadline comes around, I’ll be on my second character. I doubt it.
[Editorial] Gem Store Update Poorly Introduced, Response Even Worse
The latest gem store update to Guild Wars 2 has had players up in arms, and it’s hard not to sympathize with their position. Previously, buying and selling gems was a process that involved deciding how much you wanted to buy/sell, setting an asking price, and waiting until your order was filled. If you wanted enough gems for a Black Lion chest key, you could get it. If you had 124 gems and wanted an item that cost 125 gems, you could buy that extra gem.
If you can figure out what is wrong with the new gem shop interface in the screenshot above, you probably don’t work for Arenanet. Given that the trade shop was built to be flexible and user-friendly, the change to a system that is entirely based on fixed, inflexible increments seems counterproductive and quite baffling in its logic, but so far Arenanet doesn’t seem to understand why players would be angry about being forced to buy 400 gems minimum.
As seems to be the popular excuse, Arenanet blamed the update on new players not understanding the system, a problem that apparently only exists in Arenanet’s customer support tickets. Communications team lead Gaile Gray has not helped the situation by going on the offensive against players in the forums. In her first response, Gray explained that “very few people bought gems at smaller denominations.” Following pages of complaints and suggestions, Gray made another post making no acknowledgement of the previous suggestions and instead decrying “most” of the posters as nonconstructive ranters.
Ok, guys. Some of you are unhappy about this change, I can see that. BUT… quite honestly, most of you are sort of (I hate to use the word) ranting (sorry!) instead of offering suggestions.
The comment on this update being geared towards new players is suspicious at best, considering that the lowest increment of gems now costs 75 gold. How many new players are going to have 75 gold to spend on the gem store? None. The only impact that this could conceivably have on new players is to remove their ability to purchase smaller amounts of gems and funnel them toward buying the gems with real money.
Guild Wars 2 has a habit of introducing updates which beg the question “who asked for this?” The answer is usually a lot of unseen people who submit support tickets and then apparently never feel the need to discuss the matter anywhere else, because if you searched the forums you wouldn’t come up with many, if any, results.
Arenanet has already confirmed that an update will allow player to use either system to their choosing, begging the question on why it wasn’t just included in the first place.
MMOrning Shots: Heavensward Bound
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Final Fantasy XIV, showcasing the upcoming expansion Heavensward. Set for release in Spring 2015, Heavensward introduces a new race, new classes, a new level cap, and more.
Check out MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Less Massive: Afterfall Insanity Is Free, And Still Costs Too Much
If you follow MMO Fallout on Twitter, or even if you don’t and simply catch my tweets on the sidebar of this website, you might have followed a link yesterday to redeem a free copy of Afterfall Insanity. Well, after putting about six hours into the game, I can honestly say that I got out of this exactly what I paid in: Absolutely nothing. The simple fact that I knew what the twist ending was going to be not even five minutes into the story should have been the first sign, and probably the only one I needed.
Afterfall Insanity is a third person game from Intoxicate Studios. The game takes place in a fictional timeline where nuclear war breaks out and most of the world is destroyed. Thankfully, a small portion of humanity managed to survive by living in underground Fallout© shelters. You play as Albert Tokaj, a psychiatrist specializing in confinement syndrome who notices that the mental and physical status of those in his shelter is growing increasingly unstable. Is everyone going insane around Tokaj, or is he the one who is truly crazy? Spoiler: It’s him.
In the world of “survival horror” games, Afterfall Insanity is on the level of Syfy original movie. Like many other low-budget horror flicks before it, Afterfall Insanity sets out to tell a serious story and, in the process, unintentionally creates something so schlocky that the horror element is replaced by bad comedy. Tokaj flips from “I’m a doctor, I have to help these people” to beating insane people to death so fast, the player is bound to get whiplash from the experience. There is less than a minute between Tokaj punching his guard for abusing an insane person and him wielding a fire axe and chopping off limbs.
It’s hard to get motivated for the horror aspect of Afterfall when the voice actor playing Albert has the emotional range of stale roadkill. Just about all of the voice actors provide the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect from a high school student being picked to read a passage from Shakespeare. It’s the kind of voice acting that makes you suddenly appreciate the works of Tommy Wiseau, or the dramatic chops of Nicolas Cage. Throw that voice acting in with copious amounts of broken cutscenes that clip through actors and the environment, and shake in some mediocre animation, and you have a recipe for gaming’s Asylum Film company with none of the self-awareness.
I have to assume that Intoxicate Games developed Afterfall by looking at popular survival and horror games and plucking concepts to use, albeit half-cocked and unfinished. The melee combat system, by which you’ll find all sorts of pipes and axes lying around, is clearly taken from Condemned, minus the unique feel of each weapon that set Condemned apart. Melee combat in Afterfall is clunky, Albert will often take another swing or two after you’ve stopped clicking. Enemies get in cheap shots often, hit detection is poor at best, and blocking seems mostly useless since it doesn’t do much to mitigate damage.
Afterfall grabs fear aspects from various other titles, and implements them in a manner that is just as woody and inauthentic as the acting. Albert will get spooked when scary things happen around him, leading to the picture going fuzzy and aiming a gun becomes difficult, effectively meaningless if you’re using the melee weapons. There are puzzles in the game, most of which consist of repeatedly hitting the same button, or hitting the directional arrows in a random order based on trial and error.
Which isn’t to say that the game falls completely flat. Afterfall is at its best when the developers aren’t trying as much. During the first half of the game, when your biggest adversary is the darkness and your limited flashlight, the game genuinely gets creepy. It is blatantly obvious from the beginning how the game is going to end, anyone who has played Spec Ops: The Line knows this tale back to front, but in that time where Albert loses his two bodyguards and must travel through the dark and creepy passageways alone, that is where the game hits its high points. Parts like silhouette children dancing in a circle are not scary.
There are so many better horror games on the market, and a lot of them come from indie developers like the Penumbra games and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Instead of going for a game that picks random elements from other games, why not just play those games directly? Amnesia, Dead Space, Eternal Darkness, etc.
Xsyon Improves Free to Play Trial
Xsyon is a free to play sandbox MMO which features an extensive terraforming and construction system, but up until now you had to be a paying subscriber to truly make an impact on the world. In the latest update, Notorious Games has opened up homesteads to free players, allowing them to build and shape to their heart’s content. Free players will now be able to form tribes of their own and tinker with the game’s architecture system.
Starting this week, new players can join the Xsyon community and start their own tribe for free. Creating their own homesteads, new free players can shape the land explore the game’s extensive architecture system on their own, without the aid of other game citizens!
Judging by a forum post, the ability to create tribes and terraform is set to a seven day trial.
(Source: Notorious Games press release)
Diaries From ArcheAge: Why I've Left
I love ArcheAge, really. When Bioware announced a massive experience boost for The Old Republic in preparation for the launch of the next expansion, I had to make a choice: Continue subscribing to and writing Diaries From ArcheAge articles, or allow my subscription to lapse that very day and move over to The Old Republic and see how far I could catch up before the expansion launched. I chose The Old Republic. Since this is the last editorial I’ll be writing on ArcheAge for a while, I decided to offer up a few of the reasons that brought me to this decision.
As always with editorials, these opinions are my own and do not speak for anyone other than myself. If you agree or disagree, feel free to leave a comment on why.
1. Hackers
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. First it was gold farmers using hacks to teleport around the world at whim to finish trade runs, and then they were using exploits to win at arenas. Land is virtually impossible to get your hands on thanks to teleport hacks being used to snag every piece of open space as soon as it becomes available, and accounts are able to maintain the land they accumulate thanks to the prospect for profit far outweighing the cost of taxes that was supposed to make such land seizure impossible.
The opposite side of this is that as gold prices on farming sites plummet, money becomes more worthless and prices for auction house goods go up. In addition, I’d just like to know that the fact that I can’t find anything bigger than my 8×8 farm is because of legitimate player competition, not because Chinese gold farmers are teleporting around and buying up lots on Aranzeb. Hack Shield, as with any other game it’s been implemented in, is completely worthless. Aion is in the process of dumping it for something better, ArcheAge should as well.
2. Unopposed Griefing
The great thing about games like ArcheAge is that, generally, griefing has some sort of revenge mechanic. Someone is attacking innocent players? Report his crimes and, if possible, murder him so he can spend a good long time in jail. Someone going around uprooting plants on public land? Report the footprints and waste his time and money by either buying a potion or going to court. When it comes to ganking or competing for resources, I am of the mind that you either get big or go home. If you want a 100% safe game, consider playing something else.
That being said, in order for this mechanic to work right there needs to be a way for people to fight back. When players in Ultima Online started blocking areas with furniture, Origins made it possible to torch their creations. Eve Online allows corporations to go to war with one another. If someone decides to park their cart on your land and prevent you from planting on it, there is one thing you can do: Nothing, and hope that they get bored and leave soon. The fix to this is a simple one: I should be able to claim/destroy anything that is on my property. Another idea is to implement an ArcheAge version of the Castle Doctrine, where I can shoot anything violating the sanctity of my property.
I’ve been told that in the Korean version of ArcheAge, you can actually push other player’s carts out of the way, in which case that should be implemented in the western version. The problem in ArcheAge isn’t the potential for griefing, it’s the inability in most cases to even retaliate.
3. The Community Sucks
Even well before MMO Fallout started in 2009, I played a lot of MMOs. I won’t say that ArcheAge is the most trolled game I’ve ever played, that award goes out to World of Warcraft Barrens chat circa 2005-2009. What it is, however, is definitely the most racist. I’ve seen racist comments and names in other MMOs, but nowhere near the extent that it exists in ArcheAge, to the point where most of the screenshots I took for my previous articles had to be scrapped or heavily edited to not show chat.
At first I thought it was because of the PvP sandbox nature of ArcheAge, but in the time that I played games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and even League of Legends, I’ve never seen the level of vitriol come close to a casual day on ArcheAge. I don’t even believe that ArcheAge is full of racists, most of the people you see in chat are part of that edgy demographic of twelve year olds and people who never grew up once they turned twelve, feeding their desperate need for attention by flailing their arms and making noise. The other half are a force of nitwits who simply aim to offend as many people as possible because “my first amendment rights.”
I have to put the blame on Trion Worlds for this, partially for the poor filter and also for fostering an environment where people believe that they do not care and will not take action.
Diaries From ArcheAge: Why I’ve Left
I love ArcheAge, really. When Bioware announced a massive experience boost for The Old Republic in preparation for the launch of the next expansion, I had to make a choice: Continue subscribing to and writing Diaries From ArcheAge articles, or allow my subscription to lapse that very day and move over to The Old Republic and see how far I could catch up before the expansion launched. I chose The Old Republic. Since this is the last editorial I’ll be writing on ArcheAge for a while, I decided to offer up a few of the reasons that brought me to this decision.
As always with editorials, these opinions are my own and do not speak for anyone other than myself. If you agree or disagree, feel free to leave a comment on why.
1. Hackers
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. First it was gold farmers using hacks to teleport around the world at whim to finish trade runs, and then they were using exploits to win at arenas. Land is virtually impossible to get your hands on thanks to teleport hacks being used to snag every piece of open space as soon as it becomes available, and accounts are able to maintain the land they accumulate thanks to the prospect for profit far outweighing the cost of taxes that was supposed to make such land seizure impossible.
The opposite side of this is that as gold prices on farming sites plummet, money becomes more worthless and prices for auction house goods go up. In addition, I’d just like to know that the fact that I can’t find anything bigger than my 8×8 farm is because of legitimate player competition, not because Chinese gold farmers are teleporting around and buying up lots on Aranzeb. Hack Shield, as with any other game it’s been implemented in, is completely worthless. Aion is in the process of dumping it for something better, ArcheAge should as well.
2. Unopposed Griefing
The great thing about games like ArcheAge is that, generally, griefing has some sort of revenge mechanic. Someone is attacking innocent players? Report his crimes and, if possible, murder him so he can spend a good long time in jail. Someone going around uprooting plants on public land? Report the footprints and waste his time and money by either buying a potion or going to court. When it comes to ganking or competing for resources, I am of the mind that you either get big or go home. If you want a 100% safe game, consider playing something else.
That being said, in order for this mechanic to work right there needs to be a way for people to fight back. When players in Ultima Online started blocking areas with furniture, Origins made it possible to torch their creations. Eve Online allows corporations to go to war with one another. If someone decides to park their cart on your land and prevent you from planting on it, there is one thing you can do: Nothing, and hope that they get bored and leave soon. The fix to this is a simple one: I should be able to claim/destroy anything that is on my property. Another idea is to implement an ArcheAge version of the Castle Doctrine, where I can shoot anything violating the sanctity of my property.
I’ve been told that in the Korean version of ArcheAge, you can actually push other player’s carts out of the way, in which case that should be implemented in the western version. The problem in ArcheAge isn’t the potential for griefing, it’s the inability in most cases to even retaliate.
3. The Community Sucks
Even well before MMO Fallout started in 2009, I played a lot of MMOs. I won’t say that ArcheAge is the most trolled game I’ve ever played, that award goes out to World of Warcraft Barrens chat circa 2005-2009. What it is, however, is definitely the most racist. I’ve seen racist comments and names in other MMOs, but nowhere near the extent that it exists in ArcheAge, to the point where most of the screenshots I took for my previous articles had to be scrapped or heavily edited to not show chat.
At first I thought it was because of the PvP sandbox nature of ArcheAge, but in the time that I played games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and even League of Legends, I’ve never seen the level of vitriol come close to a casual day on ArcheAge. I don’t even believe that ArcheAge is full of racists, most of the people you see in chat are part of that edgy demographic of twelve year olds and people who never grew up once they turned twelve, feeding their desperate need for attention by flailing their arms and making noise. The other half are a force of nitwits who simply aim to offend as many people as possible because “my first amendment rights.”
I have to put the blame on Trion Worlds for this, partially for the poor filter and also for fostering an environment where people believe that they do not care and will not take action.
MMOrning Shots: Listen Close, Children
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from World of Warcraft. The guy with the purple staff is giving a history lesson on the days before WoW had a streamlined auto-patching tool, and the process of installing the game from start to finish was often a ten hour job.
Laboriously install MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
MMOrning Shots: Halloweenie Roast
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from DC Universe Online, where Halloween is around the corner and on every streetlight. Fight demons, earn money made out of candy corn (what else are you going to do, eat it?), and nab yourself some fancy Halloween items.
Try not to get spooked by MMOring Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
MMO Fallout 