I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
Today is the day we look at January and say “See you next year!” Yes it can only be February, and February can only mean another Everquest expansion is releasing.
February starts off with two titles releasing: Global Agenda and Star Trek Online, on the first and second respectively. An important thing to remember about Global Agenda is that the game does have a single player and multiplayer free component, and that the persistent world AvA is the only portion that requires a subscription. Whether this subscription will maintain or go the way of Cities XL and Crimecraft is yet to be seen.
Star Trek Online, on the other hand, will be seeking the approval of Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike. Considering its place at the top of Steam’s sales list for the past few weeks, if Cryptic can keep the retention rate high, they will have a highly successful title on their hands. As for the myriad of preorder exclusives, we can only hope they will be available at some point on the Cryptic store.
This month also brings us some interesting news from Star Vault and the oft-delayed and much trolled Mortal Online. This month, today in fact, Mortal Online will be going into an open beta phase, where everyone can join! Although relegated to their own open beta server, that may or may not be capped, alongside a 5 euro discount in the box copy, anyone can join in for free and start playing. And by playing, of course, I mean jumping on the forums to textually assault those who paid for beta access by preorder. Mortal Online will stay in open beta until the game goes gold, when it will start charging the monthly fee and you will be required to own the game.
There’s no time for that, Omali, you say! Everquest 2 has a new expansion coming out this month! Sentinel’s Fate brings with it your normal expansion goody bag. New zones, new dungeons, a higher level cap (90), new loot, new weapons and armor, and new quests. Four hundred quests to be exact, and thousands of new items.
As for MMO Fallout, I decided to prune a couple of categories from the Live list due to clutter and inconsistency of updates. The Anarchy Online, Tibia, and Ragnarok Online categories have been deleted. Hopefully the Live category will be that much less cluttered.
Surely this can’t be all that is happening in February, you say. Of course not, but if I told you everything now, what reason would you have to keep coming back until next month? I see your trickery, internet, and I will not fall for it. Not after all of those lost buffs.
The typical MMO Expansion rules include new zones, occasionally a new class or two, perhaps a new race, and increasing the level cap. Of course, this eventually presents the problem that once you raise the level cap several times, it becomes a very long process for newer players to jump into the game and knock their way up to end-game, compared to those who had been in the game long enough to level with it.
So naturally, every now and then you have to increase the speed that players level. World of Warcraft did this by increasing the experience gained by quests in some levels and reducing the experience needed in other levels. Everquest 2 started with a level 50 cap, and now features a level cap of 80.
In response, Sony is releasing a patch to make the leveling smoother. Levels 1 to 65 have not been made shorter, but the experience has been mixed around to make the process much smoother. Levels 65 to 75 require less experience, and quests in this range will give more experience to adventurers. This is a good move, especially considering that several times during Everquest 2, there were levels that required more experience than further levels, an issue that will be fixed with this patch.
More on Everquest 2 and its leveling process as it appears. Sentinel’s Fate hits next month.
MMO Fallout 