Game changes

Here comes another Christmas season and a new wave of games have come and gone.

Dreamblade was officially discontinued as of November 30th. Having worked on the game I'm sadly not surprised. It had a decent release, but came out with a quick expansion that tanked the game. Game companies have to realize that the first expansion is still under a lot of scrutiny. Potential Player/Customers use it as a measure of how the support is going to be for the game. Even though later expansions improved, the customer/player confidence was already long gone.

LotRO is still going strong. Though the traditional MMORPG trademark of PvP is very weak in this game, other elements like housing, questing, and storyline are pinnacles of the Fantasy MMO genre.

Another MMO I like, Horizons has made yet another come back. The game now has its 4th owner but is once again enjoying strong support. I'm hoping this game and the development company can make a comeback and prove you don't always have to be new and high-tech but can build on solid gameplay and add story content, graphic updates, and new gameplay and show how a success is made.


My Wife and I still paint VOR figures and wish that game would come back. My wife painted the Razorbacks pictures and I've add a new group of blue shard that I've really enjoyed painting. Now if we only had people to play the game with!

Bring back VOR!

I have missed this game.

It didn't die because of lack of players either, it seems that lawyers and business disagreements killed it.

Pity because its the only miniatures game I've seen fit to actually buy into.

I'm a Gamer

Which is why I've let this blog languish. That and I get so few comments!

I've been addicted to playing Lord of the Rings Online now that I've finely found a good Kinship to play with. Turbine is really taking this game well. That and being a father of two holding down a day job keeps me quite busy.

I should however blog more, be good to get more words in before Gamer blogs become more proliferous than they are now and the magazine/newspaper trade goes extinct. It is amazing how out of touch the old media outlets are to the fact that none of the younger generations use their products if they have the internet. Why bother?

Not enough time spent gaming or too much?

Between work, illness and Lord of the Rings Online I've not had time to blog much at all.

LotRO has captured me finally. I'll be joining a lot of prominent beta guilds in open beta on Ellendimir server. Game needs a little more polish which I hope it should get before release in about a month. It is pretty well ready and the end of closed beta events are a blast right now.

Oh, and 255 people in PvP is still too many in any game. I had fun stress testing the PvP zone which didn't crash even though the few NPCs in the zone took naps.

Back to Middle-Earth

Rather than going back to AO where I couldn't enjoy my dead-end character or the dwindling community I decided to go back to LotRO.

I'm enjoying it again, a lot of good changes have been made in beta and the gameplay is solid. I think the make or break point for me will be community though. Does this game have enough of it? Can I find a decent and solid "Kinship" (Guild/Clan/Org) before beta is over?

Lets see WHO middle-earth is made of.

Original Art

Here is a plug for Blackmane, I love her art. There isn't a lot I miss about WoW, in fact there isn't much at all but I do miss the Pilgrims and some of the incredible artists like Blackmane and Baji.

Fond and Not-so-fond memories

There are many games I keep checking out and thinking about again. When I get addicted to some I don't think I ever get cured, I just get tired of it or sometimes I hate something about it so much I just have to leave for my own health.

Anarchy Online is certainly one of those, the first MMORPG I played. It is how I developed my alter ego because I had to look for a name that wasn't taken when I started playing. So I picked the name Sallust for the first time thinking of my favorite Roman author. I stumbled upon a unique name that has become a staple moniker for all games I play online. This is also where I formed the guild The Pilgrims as a roleplaying guild, and many of the members have played together in various games though I don't believe there is any active group left still bearing that name. I started playing because of the unique story and the online roleplaying primarily, and kept coming back because of the excellent community I became a part of in the game.



Eventually I had nothing I felt was worth the work that continuing playing had become and a serious harassment complaint was not taken seriously by the company. So I left for greener pastures along with a few of the guild I had been a part of.

I've poked my head back in a few times briefly and I'm tempted to do so again. The player (Shadowgod) I handed the guild leadership off to has become a leader of the "class" community we played. Plus it is interesting to stop and talk to the people who still haven't moved on after all these years. I know that the game story has been completely stagnant and that essentially nothing has changed for the MP class I played. But like visiting your old childhood home I'm tempted to go back and see what has and hasn't changed.

Public comments enabled

Now play nice or the Warmachine and I will have to Frag you!

Religion in Games

Most people in the world live in or among a religious society. I dare say most societies have too much religion rather than the few which have very little of it. But in popular culture like games you'll find it rarely at all.

In cases like the Left Behind games or some evolutionary simulations it would be much better if we didn't at all as those games are more cult indoctrination than entertainment it seems. Most fantasy games have some made up paganistic polytheism you must partake it and all the others are generally devoid of anything religious except to mock it.

In MMORPGs this bugs me more than ever because it would seem even easier to just let people be. Its like developers think people don't want to still adhere to their religion or religious values while playing a game. I believe that games which have any place for religion in them should have that great western value of "Freedom of Religion" in them. Developers shouldn't shy away from letting people be themselves and have fun, they should encourage it.

Like most of the world I'm a monothiest, a believer in one supreme Creator and Diety. You would think that with as much market share as Christians, Muslims, and Jews represent that we'd be taken a little more seriously and catered to slightly like in most of the money grubbing world. Commercial businesses love religion for all the holiday sales and any other gimic they can use to get money out of people.

So maybe the next fantasy game developer can make some monotheistic religions to pretend to adhere to. Maybe they can even add a generic Synagogue, Mosque, Church, Buddhist Shrine, Hindu Temple, etc for people to hang out in... or ignore. Even at worst if there is religious violence it is better to get it out in a virtual world than a real one.

But unfortunately most Game Designers and even worse most game company Execs are afraid of the uphill struggle it might be at first to make something with so much potential appeal to this overly religious world we live in. I believe the ideals of the U.S. constitution such as Freedom of Speech and the free exercise of Religion don't just make for better society but they generally make for better profits as well.

What I'm playing - February

This month I've been playing Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, Dawn of War, Shadowrun 3rd edition, Dreamblade, and a very little bit of Galactic Civilizations 2.

I've been busy working so I've not actually played all that much. Well, okay one of my two jobs actually involves playing one of the above mentioned games.

I've actually been buying Shadowurn 3rd edition sourcebooks I don't have before they're all out of print. Watching how much some of them ebay for is kind of amusing. So why did they go to a 4th edition again?

Lord of the Rings Online!!!

My Non-Disclosure agreement is lifted and I can admit to being a beta tester of this fabolous MMO from the first day of beta. That said I quit well before NDA was lifted, probably about the end of December.

I didn't quit because the game sucked. It was one of the best betas among many that I've ever been a part of. The game itself is excellent and the graphics and sound is spectacular. As a Tolkien lover I found the game was really well set with a lot of attention paid to detail and getting it right. Tolkien snobs will be just fine and I predict this game will draw in a horde of people who've never tried a MMO before.

That said I did quit and won't play the game at release. The problem for me is that I'm an old MMO player and I'm looking for something new in terms of mechanics and gameplay. While Monster play and the LotrO classes are unique, it just isn't nearly enough for me.

If you just want to play in middle-earth or play another EQ/WoW style game done right then play this game.

If you're looking for something different in terms of gameplay or the next "generation" of MMO then look somewhere else. Another than a nice twist on classes and PvP this game doesn't have anything remotely new to offer.

I expect this game will be Turbine's biggest success in the MMO market by far, their previous games don't light a candle to LotrO. I expect this game will be more successful than EQ2 and has the potential to rival WoW in time if after game development is good (it won't rival it at launch). I personally simply have no interest in playing that type of game and I AM looking for the next new MMO that wants to do things differently and not follow in the EQ mold.

Nostalgia

Well, the latest dreamblade is an expansion and shows me that Wizards of the Coast hasn't changed at all when I thought maybe they were making a solid game and not a total money sink.

I'm becoming enamored of Shadowrun 3rd edition again and am finally getting my local group going. 4th edition is a horrible change and both the new edition and the upcoming video game seem determined to do away with anything which made Shadowrun a success previously. Fanpro also can't keep their sourcebook material straight, I bought Shadows of Asia and realized that not only is it nonsense and has nothing to do with the middle east of folklore, ancient history, or probable future but it is totally inconsistent with established SR3 canon as well.

Oh well, there is no shortage of good SR3 material and I could probably happily play one of the best genre games of all time for a lifetime with what is currently written. It is just a disappointment that the franchise is abandoning both its strengths and also it's storyline continuity (one of its greatest strengths).

IMHO Microsoft and FASA should yank their respective franchise licenses from current developers and give them to people who will take the franchise to be an industry leader and money making success that it should be.

Civ IV

Yesterday turned in a snow day, and because of it a Civ IV day with a friend I gave my old copy to. It is a worthy successor to the civilization franchise and the best of the bunch so far, but as a strategy game and even more so as a history game it always lets me down.

They always mess up the history and it isn't even possible within the game to recreate it as it should be, this bugs my desire to setup historical reenactments. At least this game was religion adverse, but buddhism being essentially always the first religion discovered ruins any immersion as a history sim.

I wish instead Firaxis had made this quality of a sequel to Alpha Centauri. Now that was a great game where you designed all your own units. Firaxis is also getting better with "social engineering", or declaring your fictional society to have certain attributes. It has been the most fun part of all these games lately.

But the biggest letdown to all these games is the challenge curve. Generally if I get a solid lead on the computer opponents in the early game I can't be beaten and if they get a lead then I can't come back. These games need to have more ways of bringing challenge and intrigue back into a long campaing game.

Now it is time for me to play Galactic Civilizations 2, or as I call it "Master of Orion 3 as it should have been"

Dreamblade match-off

Tonight was a Dreamblade night.
Played against my new and now usual partner. It is a fun game, I just hope WotC doesn't ruin it like usual in their pushes to make everybody blow a lot of money on new product. I also hate that after a little while 99% of their product is garbage as you sift for a few good pieces.

But for now it is still a really good game and I'm sure people will buy what I have for a good price if I get tired of it.

What I'm playing now

I've been trying to get this blog going but I spend too much time gaming and working these days. So to keep it a brief start here is what I'm playing these days:

Dreamblade (miniatures game)
Shadowrun 3rd Ed. (P&P roleplaying game)
Beta testing under Non-Disclosure agreement a MMORPG game
Galactic Civilizations II (A turn based strategy game)

and I'm hoping that I may start beta-testing Tabula Rasa soon. I think this is the most promising near future for MMO games. The MMO I'm beta testing now is great and likely to be a big hit, but I'm just tired of high fantasy genre games using the same old class based system found in most MMOs. Been there, played that and looking forward to something new.