Botchandango.com

Warhammer pt II

The second month of my subscription to Warhammer Onlines expires tomorrow and I don't plan to renew. It's not that it's such a bad game, in fact it's pretty good and has just the right level of accessibility for a casual player. The biggest reason why I can't bring myself to renew is that this Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game is lacking one crucial ingredient.... players. It wasn't the most over populated game to begin with but the recent WoW expansion kind of killed things from what I could see. Previously it could be a 20 minute wait or so to get into a Scenario. Post WOTLK I haven't been able to get into a single Scenario and that is with joining all queues as soon as I log in and staying in the queue for the duration of the time I play. Something tells me this is not because there are too many people playing the scenarios (as happened with battlegrounds a lot back when I played WoW).

Wandering around the large, and attractive game environments it feels empty even in the main areas of each zone. There are some fun things to do and see and although the quests are a bit 'grindy' I don't mind that at all. For a few weeks it had been possible to hook up with some other players in Public Quests and for it to almost feel like a MMORPG but no longer. Another thing impacted by the low population is the in game economy. Granted, the drop rate of decent equipment is suprisingly high and reward items quite useful but while early on the Auction House seemed to make sense recently, it is almost impossible to sell anything and prices are either ridiculously hopeful (high) or barely worthwile (low, a bit higher than you'd get just selling the item to a vendor). Crafting isn't great in the game from what I have seen but could be easily changed. Increasing the populations of their servers to more viable numbers to make the game work as more than just an average single player game is going to be a whole lot tougher.

I'll keep the disk handy and probably leave the game installed for now but wont go back until I hear better things about it in the forums if at all. I actually fancy giving SPORE another go it was good fun and had just started getting challenging when WAR came along...

Fiesta

No not the dodgy top shelf mag... but a cutesy anime style fantasy mmorpg which also happens to be free.

Wikipedia entry here

Main site here

It's Aimed at causual (ish) players and is certainly not a game in the same complexity leauge as EvE or WoW. However, it is fairly slick and has all of the typical elements that you'd expect from a game in this genre. I've played about half of the noob starter area and have to say it has been an enjoyable way to pass a little spare time.

(I've also found myself back in EvE for an hour or so each night the past few days... so much for walking away from it after 3 years of ultimately frustrating gameplay. Still a 6 month break means everything is pretty new again and there is plenty of new content to check out...)

Massively multiplayer?

I've been spending the last month and a half playing EVE Online a game highly rated for it's both it's content and community. However, so far I have interacted with a grand total of zero players. I don't know why that is. The majority of my activities within EO so far have been geared towards making money and improving my character, but to what end I'm not so sure. I'm by no means bored with this and I'm still getting a lot of enjoyment from the game but to be honest there are only two main reasons that I know there are other players on the server.. the total current players statistic on the login screen and the contents of the general chat channel.

With WoW almost from day one you are very aware of other players around you in the environment and the more social side of play such as grouping, guilds and general chat seems to come along quite naturally. Even though I tended to play WoW solo most of the time I was still in quite a respectable and active guild and there were several non-guild players who I would also look to group with when absolutely necessary.

With EO the movements and activities of other players are just not as obvious most of the time. The ships of other players tend to blend into the background of NPC ships and other objects and it shouldn't be forgotten that the world is vast so it is quite possible that you find yourself in an area where you are the only character, player or otherwise in sight. The equivalent of WoW guilds in EO are Corporations. There are plenty around advertising for members but I don't want to rush into joining one just yet. Relatively speaking I'm still a noob and it is clear that the best corps have strict entry requirements that can only be met after several months of successful play. It is probably my best bet though for getting more involved in the game world.

Ad-hoc grouping within EO for carrying out missions and larger scale mining operations etc. is another possibility but so far not one that I have had to consider. My cash flow has so far been pretty good right from the start and I have found that my ship, skills and equipment have been much better than I probably need at any one time. This generally means that the missions I am currently eligible for are completed solo without too much risk or effort but it's early days yet. While I don't relish the idea of failing a mission or losing another ship (I lost one early on while I was getting the hang of combat) I do hope for some more challenging things to do soon.

Within a few months Dungeons and Dragons Online will be released. It goes without question that I will give it a try as I have read too many good things about it to pass it by. The lack of PvP and Crafting within DDO could actually be a good thing as the whole focus of the game is on traditional dungeon bashing in small groups... just like the pen and paper version of D&D. I'm not sure if the emphasis on group play will ultimately suit me or the time I have available to play but we will see. Who knows, the game may not even be that good but if that is the case it will be a real travesty, the name D&D alone to my mind sets a high level of expectation.

Gaming

I've spent the past few weeks looking for something to do with myself after quitting WoW.  Ok, I've read a couple of books and watched a lot of films but what I really needed was a new computer game preferably online and hopefully as fun but less addictive that WoW).

To summarise several weeks of gaming I have been trying the following:

Fate - A light weight single player offline dungeon bashing game. The game is a free download and allows access to the first handful of dungeon levels before requiring a license key to unlock the rest of the game. The graphics are cartoonish but nice and the interface is pretty easy to get the hang of.
I liked this game enough to get the license but soon afterwards realised just how repetitive the game was and stopped playing around level 10.

Magic Online - A true implementation of the Magic The Gathering trading card game. As an ex-player of the physical card game I was really impressed with the way in which the game has been transferred online. Everything was there and in fact I'd go as far as to say that the online version offers some
distinct advantages in making sure that some of the more obscure rules are followed correctly etc. It had been over 8 years since I had played the physical card game but surprisingly won my very first online game followed by two defeats. This is a good diversion every now and again but not something I want to play regularly. I now have a collection of online Magic cards to match the collection that is gathering dust somewhere in the attic. It's worth noting that while the software and access to the game server is free, all of the online cards have to be paid for at prices pretty much similar to the physical cards, a minimum cost of roughly $9 for a basic set of cards. One of the reasons I gave up the physical game was that it was too expensive to keep buying booster packs in the hope that 1 or 2 particular cards would turn up. For the same reason I don't plan getting heavily involved in the online game but there are cheaper options for playing either through buying standard preconstructed or  theme' decks and limiting yourself to playing opponents who also have pre-constructed decks or playing against 'beginners' in the tutorial section which doesn't require you to own any of the cards you are playing with and is free.

Second Life - A MMORPG of sorts but while there are some game like elements to it, Second Life is first and foremost an online community. I created an avatar and spent a few days exploring but found very little to do. Most people just seemed to be hanging out together and chatting. There are different levels of access but I didn't really look into anything other than the free account. Interesting aspects of Second Life were being able to build things that other players could see and interact with. Players can acquire their own land on which they can build everything and anything from bowling alleys to traditional Japanese mansions. Perhaps if I were to have put enough effort into this it would have been more rewarding but it just seemed like too much hard work.

Project Entropia - A Sci-Fi MMORPG set on a newly colonised frontier planet that has been in the news recently when one player paid $100,000 for ownership of a space station. The in-game economy of PE is tied to the real world $US (10 PED = 1 $US) and as your character earns money you can withdraw it from the game. The real catch is that to get started you realistically have to pay $20 - $30 into the game in order to have enough PED to get your initial equipment and maintain it. All transactions of money into and out of the game incur a transaction charge to the company that run it and other in-game costs for things such as ammo and repairs also go straight into the company's coffers. This wouldn't be so bad as the game itself and access is free and the costs are not that high. However, all equipment deteriorates through use and therefore needs regular repair. The drops from mobs and the value of materials collected or mined are also very low which requires a substantial amount of time to be spent just to try and break even. There is little in the way of story to this game and no real direction to speak of as there are no quests or missions as such. Most players appear to be naively chasing a dream of getting rich through playing a game and while there are more experienced and longer term players around these tend to be quite standoffish towards the 'noobs'. The only people making money out of this game are going to be those who can afford to make huge investments that allow them to charge (or tax) other players for services or access and the game company themselves. I thought that this game had a lot of potential and had quite a good time initially interacting with some other new players but eventually the lack of any goals other than general character development and earning money started to make the whole thing seem kind of dull.

City of Villains - A comic book superhero (or rather super villain) themed MMORPG. I've only played for just over 2 hours but while appearing quite simplistic (no in-game economy for starters) it was fun from the start. The most fun has so far been in actually creating a Super Villain. There was a lot of flexibility and customisation which allowed me to create exactly the character I was imagining (A Samuel L Jackson look-alike in black and white spandex with icy powers called 'Blackice'). However, while I could create the exact character I wanted, I couldn't give him the name that I had chosen as someone had already taken it. I even tried the other European server and it was in use there too. After putting so much thought into creating a character I didn't want to change his name and instead changed the body type I had selected for something  of a similar size and shape to the Hulk and changed the powers from Ice to Radiation renaming the character Man Hatten. I'm one mission past the initial tutorial so it's too early to say how much longevity this game will have but the graphics and general environment are good and who hasn't wanted to be costumed hero or villain at some stage in their life?

EVE Online - A space based MMORPG which owes a lot to the greatest ever home computer game of the 80's Elite. It's a game of trading, mining, piracy, combat and a lot more set in a environment of 5000 star systems with over 17000 players. The graphics are stunning but this is a complex game that requires a lot of patience (and study) to get started in. Luckily there is a well paced,  although long, tutorial which I have yet to finish that goes through all of the basics. I reached "Elite" on the cassette version of Elite for the BBC Model B and "Dangerous" on the 5.25" Floppy Disk version. I'm not sure what the equivalent of the rank "Elite" is in EVE but I'm planning on having a good attempt at reaching it.