Defiant Discussion

It has been some time since I last posted here so without further adieu…

Aion

I was blissfully stuck in WoW again, and had done a decent job of getting myself all epic’d out for the IceCrown update and then futility of it all hit me again as it sometimes does.  Get geared for that and then this Cataclysm expansion comes out and renders all my hard work obsolete again.

A friend recommended giving a game called Aion a try so what the hell right?  The base of the game is that the planet was torn asunder and now the two halves host two different peoples.  On the bottom half that gets all the sunlight you have a bright, lush, very human looking race called the Elyos, which basically look more or less like angels (yes white wings and you DO fly with them).  On the top half that is stuck in dark shadow you have the Asmodians which are more beast-like in form and have black wings.

So like many MMO’s you must first choose your realm - goodies or baddies.  Next you have four base classes of Warrior, Scout, Priest, and Mage.  At level 10 you get your wings and get to choose your speciality, which are as follows:

Warrior -> Gladiator: A two-handed weapon wielding, plate-wearing, bringer of dps or a Templar which is your typical sword and board wielding tank class.  Both have a wide array of special abilities and the combat animations are quite good.

Scout -> Assassin: Dual wielding masters of the back stabbity stab and stealth, these are one of the best dps classes in the game.  Ranger: Master of the bow, these guys do sick damage as well and are great for soloing as long as you use your skills and traps for kiting when necessary.

Priest -> Cleric: Healers that may carry shields and one handed weapons.  Enchanter: A staff wielder (Little John style) with light heals but great group buffs which make them highly sought after for groups along with thier cleric counterparts.

Mage -> Spiritist: This caster’s strength lies with its pets and DoTs.  Sorcerer: Strong DPS and easy to solo with, but also highly sought after for groups and instances due to their CC abilities.

The skills go beyond the combat skills many are used to from games like SWG and WoW.  The games best features right now in my opinion are the graphics which are among the best I’ve seen to date, the PvP, and the skillsets and animations.  The bad so to speak is the xp grind.  Not that it is terrible per se, but games like WoW have made leveling so easy that a game like this seems much tougher.  In reality it isn’t as bad as it seems if you’ve gone through other MMO’s such as EverQuest and SWG in the beginning.  The quest system is pretty similar to most you’ve seen - talk to the marked guy, get the quest, turn the quest in.  One different thing I like is that along with your ‘regular’ quests there are also Campaign quests which basically take you through your story as you go along.  The game has several short cinema scenes and there are a lot of voices done up.

The creators will be implementing a major overhaul of their graphics engine, which will put the game well beyond anything else in terms of eye candy.  You can take a look at this 9 min video which shows the graphics enhancements along with some before and after footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNVn6DW6pfg.  Along with the graphics update they will also be adding player housing and cities, and correct xp scaling which will make leveling a bit easier than it is currently.  As of now they are having double xp weekends either every weekend or every other and there is also an amulet you can claim as a 1 month vet reward which grants an xp boost for an hour.  I’ve only played off and on for a few weeks and I’m at level 28 I think.

It is certainly worth checking out if you’re looking for eye candy.  Even without the upcoming overhaul the graphics are great.  When you get to around level 30 or so you can change the appearance of your armor to match any existing set of the same armor type and you can color everything to your liking for a truly unique look.  Speaking of unique the character creation is AWESOME.  If you are one of those people that really like to do yourself up you can easily spend an hour creating the look of your toon.  People have already made their characters look like real life celebrities.

The real drawback to me at this point is the limited character classes to choose from and leveling between 20 and 30.  You can start hitting your first instance at level 25 after some quests and then the next instance comes around level 35.  If you are bored with what’s out there and have the money it is definitely worth checking out.

Cheers

Hello again,
If you’ve read my previous post you know my mental state when it comes to MMO’s at this time, but I wanted to follow up and give my impressions on Age Of Conan since it was with much reluctance that I spent the money to purchase it.

My expectations for this game were very low between what I had heard about the blood splashes on the screen and that it was Conan in general wasn’t very appealing.  I started and played several class types, but found myself having the most fun so far with a Ranger and a Demonologist.  The Demonologist has turned out to be my favorite so far and I’m happy to report as of last night I’m now level 16.

The Good:

Graphics are excellent - best eye candy by far out of anything I’ve played on the MMO market.  The drawback to it is I can see it requiring a very high performance machine in order to fully enjoy what it has to offer.

The storyline of your character is worked into the game in such a way that it remains fun and you want to get to the next leg of the story to see what transpires.  Your story is only progressed through a series of quests and events done in the “Night” instance, which is pretty much and instance just for you.  During the “Day” you are free to complete dozens of side quests that each have their own story.  The quests usually have just the right amount of difficulty to them.  You DO still have to do a lot of back and forth quest turn ins, but the quests and the givers are fairly close together and if you plan your quest order a little it isn’t so bad.

The inventory is way on the small side, so I frequently find myself making stops into town I wouldn’t otherwise make, just to sell all the crap I picked up.  It also seems a bit lacking in terms of action bars.  After WoW I’m a bit addicted to having a lot of action bars to put stuff on.  I believe I have four right now, but whereas WoW had like ten or more slots on each one, this has like six.

I haven’t used the market at all to buy/sell as I feel I’m too low and nothing I’m getting is really worth putting up there.  Quests and random drops have kept me decently geared and I don’t find that I need to buy anything really.  So thus far, everything I loot and sell is pretty much for 100% profit.

The blood splashes and gratuitous gore do fit the Conan mythos of course, but the only time I’ve really seen any was when playing a melee character.  Since I play a caster class it hasn’t been an issue at all.  There are several “instanced” areas that seem to be PvP free-for-all areas.   As I discovered the hard way, people will hang out in them just for the sake of ganking people trying to do quests.  It sucks and doesn’t really belong and is probably my only major complaint at this point.

Every MMO to date has had either PvP enabled areas or ways in which you could PvP enable your toon specifically.  This game just seems to make any instance area PvP enabled.  So what this means is either you get used to spending several hours to complete quests that should be done in about fifteen minutes or you stay until those quests are green or gray and then go back and do them.  I’ve done the former, hoping not to miss out on any gear rewards that would be useful now.

Luckily there seem to be enough quest instances that you can hop from one to another depending on which one is full of more buttheads…the zones are fairly large too so you can sometimes sneak around the would-be offenders.  This is on a RP server by the way - I can only imagine how much worse the ganking is on a normal one.

As for RP, I’ve not seen any to speak of, but in fairness it is still the starter city and everyone seems focused on leveling and questing.  I’m hoping this improves as I move higher in level and into different areas with higher populations of RPers.

So in conclusion, while my expectations were very low, I’m actually very pleased with the game so far and I’ve passed that ten level hump and I’m still not bored.  There may be hope for me yet.

After many years of playing MMO’s, it seems I’ve developed a case of MMO A.D.D.  I spent several years playing EverQuest, which really got me hooked on the MMO concept itself.  Then went on to play several other MMO’s since then including a five year on/off relationship with SWG.

No matter how bad it gets it seems I end up coming back.  World of Warcraft was fun for awhile, but then it just gets to the point where you play the carrot on a stick game and raid just for some crap-ass piece of loot you may or may not get that will only become obsolete when they patch or release a new expansion.

So finally my long time dream of Warhammer emerges.  Dark Age of Camelot was a pioneering game in its own right and I enjoyed several years there and looked forward to the makeover it seemed it would get as Warhammer brought in line with the times and the current technology.  The game is nice looking, but now that I’ve playing it a few weeks I can’t honestly say anything about it other than that it is extremely boring.

The quests have no real story to them and they’ve gone backwards to the time when it was:

- get quest

- kill something

- go back and turn the quest in

Rather than the on-the-fly quest updates in some other games that take away a lot of the back and forth running to and from quest givers.  I’m sure the end game PvP will be great, but the PvP leading there is just lackluster.  There are no siege weapons, no taking or holding keeps as there was in DAoC, more of a WoW style go in and try to hold objectives while killing as many enemies as possible…there’s no real strategy involved and no real coordination of effort….more like a running of the bulls with weapons.  Now, the good thing is that you can spend your entire life in the PvP instances and level there if you really love PvP and detest questing, but as with the questing it is sooooo monotonous.

So it seems no MMO at the moment can hold my attention longer than 10 levels or so before I’m either tired of clubbing small furry critters or small greenskin orcs.  Sad to say, but for all of it’s flaws (of which there were a great many) SWG is still the best pound for pound MMO I’ve played to date.  Nevermind the classes and that it is Star Wars (very watered down now), but there’s space which always makes me go “Oooooo” inside, and the player housing, decorating, city building, gadgets and vehicles, and the sheer number of combinations of armor/clothing you can piece together for different looks.  Haven’t tried any of the new instances…somehow it seems weird to raid in SWG.

Going to try out Conan eventhough the gratuitous gore and cheesy blood splashes are already a turn off, perhaps there will be some other redeeming quality about it that will make it worth sticking with for awhile.  Maybe some, dare I say, roleplay?  I will hold out hope and try to give it as fair a chance as possible.

It’s Interesting to me these days, specially with what I am going thru in my personal life how those things effect my gaming life. I will give my last night example to sort of explain where I am going with this.

Actually it started the night before. I had just respawned and was trying to heal up from that. This other player game up and started toying with me, he was a few levels higher and guess thought it would be fun to see how low he could keep my health without actually killing me. This went on for a couple minutes, then he killed me, possible twice, I am really not sure. Most times this doesn’t really bother me, I usually take the ignore approach and they get bored and go away. I had thought about making note of these people for later use, but really, I am not sure I care that much. I went on my way, grinding myself up.

Last night, I have traveling thru the same area, just about done for the night. As I am crossing a bridge I see none other than the same guy that toyed with me the night before, and it looks like he was just invloved in a skirmish of some sort has his health was well under 50%. He must not be grinding very hard either as I was not just a level or 2 under him. Of course, without even thinking about it I attacked and killed him. It felt good, I mean it was surprisingly satisfying. The respawn point for that area was just a few meters away, I could have went back and toyed with him (if he was brave enough to respawn that close, which usually that type are not) But I just went along me marry little way once again.

So what I am getting at is that it seems to me these days especially that my emotional state, or needs or current state of being really feed on the MMO world. My character is almost involuntarily effected by my mood or what’s swirling in my head. It feels different now, and I have been working on making a better connection with what I am feeling in real life. Its not like the good old days of SWG and attacking a jedi as a bounty hunter, and its not like FPS games like Call of Duty and that little rush you get when you get a knife kill. Its different, and I am not sure I am describing it well enough to make my point.

Now I dont think its at an unhealthy level, but I do notice the difference, it wasn’t the competitive rush like playing hockey (or your favorite sport) or like my other example, of besting another person in a game, like the jedi hunt. The revenge I achieved last night was just satisfying on a level higher than just playing a game, I didn’t gloat, I didn’t dance on his corpse, I just continued on and it felt nice, I smiled and moved on.

I feel like other aspects of my play are effected like this now, my character direction has hints of my real life. I know that people play these games and try and be someone they are not, I guess in a way, I am trying to play this game and work thru who I currently am.