MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

I usually love the Path to 2409 posts on the Star Trek Online site, but this weeks edition, 2387, was just a repeat of what I’ve already read in the Star Trek Countdown comics, and just let’s us know that they are considering the comics and the upcoming movie part of the canon of the game.

Lots of people, including me, aren’t entirely impressed, but I will reserve judgement until they do the next update and go to the next year beyond this current “movie launching” story.

Some fans have been freaking out over the loss of the Romulan Empire, but I love when the Star Trek Universe is shaken to its core. Will the Romulans not be playable as their own faction? Who knows. It could make for a really interesting game experience, or if nothing else, as great material for both the Federation and Klingon stories in the game.

I am also looking to see what kind of technology we can expect in Star Trek Online. They’ve given us sneak peaks of ships, but without video to show off their “abilities”, we have to wait and speculate. I do like Geordi La Forge’s Jellyfish concept, though it doesn’t look like a Federation ship, hearing that he’s involved in some new “treknology” should be interesting.

One last detail worth mentioning is the return of the Orions as an interstellar race.

Starfleet Intelligence recommends that the Federation keep a close eye on activities of the Orion Syndicate. A multi-year crackdown on criminal activity in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants has been successful in curbing the threat of the Syndicate for Federation citizens, but on Stardate 64163.8 Hassan the Undying assassinates top Syndicate boss Raimus on Farius Prime.

Raimus’s death opens the door for Hassan’s employer, Melani D’ian, to take over Raimus’s Syndicate operations. Starfleet Intelligence estimates that Melani D’ian now controls as much as 30 percent of the Syndicate’s operations, and that other Syndicate bosses may seek to topple her before she seeks to expand her powerbase even more. Analysts note that Melani D’ian is the first Orion to rise to a top spot in Syndicate leadership in more than 20 years, and speculate that this could mark the return of the Orions as an interstellar power.

Anyways… I guess I have to wait until the next update for my real Star Trek Online excitement. If you haven’t read the Star Trek Countdown comics, the 2387 update will pretty much get you up to speed.

On May 5th some new house items will be making their way to the Station Marketplace, they follow the same graphics as the last round of house items, and are absolutely beautiful to look at. These new items have created a few issues both in game and out - but there’s a pretty valid reason for them when you find out why.

Voices were raised in the forums discussing the positives and negatives of station cash, and these items in particular because they are so unique compared to what the crafting class ‘carpenter’ already makes. Some felt it de-valued their craft classes, since a player could just throw down some real life money and purchase items that were far superior to what they could create. Others mentioned that at best these SC (station cash) items were aimed towards a niche market, and there was no way they would replace a hard working carpenter since they have a huge amount of items that they can create.

Whether you personally agree or disagree with station cash is not the main focus I want to mention today (not this time at least!) there was a point that was brought up: the fact that none of these station marketplace  furniture pieces can be placed within a guild hall. You are more then welcome to place the items in your house, or even a friends house, but you are unable to place them within a hall.

There’s actually a reason behind this - though you may not consider it a valid one from your personal perspective it’s just one indication on how developers think on a different level then players. Guild leaders have the ability to remove you from a guild and thus ban you from the guild hall - all it would take is for one guild leader (or officer) to kick out a member who has placed their station marketplace items within a hall for disputes to arise. You can in essence ’steal’ something that a player has dedicated an amount of real life cash towards.

Now, you can debate the fact that ALL items cost ‘real life’ money due to paying for an account monthly, and that players could lose items that they had placed be they station marketplace items or not, but station cash items were never intended to be placed within halls, for that specific reason.

Of course, there could be ways to fix that. Allow guild members to ‘donate’ an item towards a hall with the realization that they COULD potentially lose it. Allow a new flagging system to flag items based on a guild name so that it’s tied to the hall. It’s easy for me to spout off ideas since I’m not a game developer and I don’t have the faintest idea how hard it would be to implement a system like that. I’m sure it would take manpower that teams simply don’t have right now, or it would have already been looked into and done.

It’s important as players to remember as we’re begging for some new feature to be added to the game that the developers are NOT actually out to get us and screw us over - despite what we may all think. There ARE reasons behind their choices, whether we agree with them or not, and it’s typically some very simple fact that we just haven’t taken the time to look at because we’re glancing at things from a players perspective and not from the developer side of things.

Personally? I’m loving the new items in game. Sure my carpenter is a little put off that she can’t create these items herself, but for those who can afford to spend the money on these items they certainly do look awesome.

One thing I WOULD like to see, is all of the station marketplace items flagged as heirloom. This tag allows you to trade items between characters on your account via the shared bank. Right now the person who claims the item is the only character who can place / wear / use it. If there was an heirloom tag at least I could share items between all of my characters. /Feedback is a wonderful thing!

I’m not sure how everyone else feels but I personally loathe searching for a guild to join.  I find guild recruitment forums to be a waste of time unless you are seeking a full raiding schedule or a realm transfer.  Realm forums do not always prove to be the most helpful resource either.  So for individuals like myself, there is a gap between what we’re looking for and what we have available to us.

That’s where WOW Headhunter comes into play.  WOW Headhunter is a powerful website that allows individuals to search for guilds that are actively recruiting on their realm(s).  It quickly and cleanly displays what classes those recruiting guilds are seeking, as well as easy to locate guild websites and recruitment requirements. Those are not the most interesting aspects of WoW Headhunter however.

The real power comes from the guild leader/guild recruiter side of the equation.  Guild leaders, or their appointed recruiters, can go onto the WOW Headhunter site to list their guild as recruiting.  Just like the forum solutions they can enter information about their guild, raiding times, class recruitment, etc.  The piece of information that WoW Headhunter gives that is not always readily  available is what type of atmosphere the guild has.

The Personality Graph allows individuals searching for a guild to instantly see what type of environment that guild would be.  On the other hand it allows guilds to target individuals that are of likemind.  It makes the most sense to me to match up guild personalities with player personalities to avoid conflicts and misinterpretations. I feel this is a very powerful tool and would be overjoyed if more guilds would sign up to use it.

Head over to WOW Headhunter and give it a look!  Especially if you are Horde guilds in Bloodhoof-US…holy/shadow priest LFG PST…

I’ve talked about this before on my own site, but wanted to go into a little more depth on the matter. One of my personal pet peeves is games that allow a player to out level the content. I realize that games move in a linear fashion and that it’s not exactly easy to provide content that appeals to the masses - but what you really don’t want is for people to have a reason NOT to visit your content.

Lets take EQ2 as an example. Encounters in game ‘gray’ out, providing no experience or loot (aside from body loot which is typically used in quests). Unless you happen to be a quest-o-holic or you happen to be mentoring there’s really no reason to go back to an older zone. As the leveling process is sped up, more and more content is overlooked and lots of it isn’t even touched. Have you been to the caves in Pillars of Flame beneath the monk camp? Have you done all of the Gobblerock hideout instances in Commonlands and Antonica? Chances are if you’re a fairly new player you have not.

There are a few ways EQ2 has chosen to combat this. One is allowing higher level players to ‘mentor’ lower level players and adjust to their level. This allows you to play with friends and experience lower content. Lower level quests (10+) also offer achievement points for first time completions which inspire higher level characters to quest since those points are difficult to obtain.

This simply is not enough inspiration.

Over the time I have leveled it’s amazing to see how much empty content is out there. EQ2 is a huge vast world but you only ever need to level in a very small portion of it. Players keep asking for choice and content but forget the vast amount of content out there already because they have no reason to re-visit it.

Now take a game like EQ or Vanguard or even WoW. The content in these games does not trivialize. Sure, you may not gain experience from defeating an encounter but you will still find crafting goods, as well as quests and achievements to unlock, and even loot (gear etc) from defeating mobs. This allows players to at least have some sort of purpose. Perhaps they are working up a new crafter, or need gear for an alt, or have some unfinished achievements to unlock.

I know the whole concept of an achievement system has been over played these days. WAR and lotRO have vast systems where killing any mob or discovering any new area unlocks a new title reward. Players LIKE these though, they like having goals to aim for and have a sense of pride over hunting down each and ever little bit they can acomplish.

If there were title achievements for EQ2 like perhaps completing all of the quests in a zone, or discovering all of the POI (points of interest) maybe we’d see people in more areas then just the ‘main’ leveling ones. In EQ the problem is some times even worse because there are ‘hot zones’ which offer a substantial increase to experience then regular areas. Each level tier only has one zone associated with it, so while you may find groups within those specific zones fairly easily, you’ll be hard pressed to convince people to venture out into the world (which is gigantic).

This topic of out leveling content certainly is not new, either. You can take a look around the gaming blogs and see that it’s cropping up this week more often then normal. Why is that? Is there something in specific that we’re all trying to grasp our minds around here or are we just bored with the content we’ve been given and find ‘most’ players in so we’re trying to make a mass appeal to ‘older’ content for a change. Have any thoughts on the matter? Feel free to leave a comment below!

The other day in EVE Online, I went with a fleet to help shoot some player owned stations, and I fell behind by about a minute and a half. In doing so, I was caught unaware that there was a gate camp. I was subsequently destroyed in about fifteen seconds, and had my pod destroyed as well.

I did have my ship insured, but that doesn’t cover the cost of the modules, ammo, or even the implants that I had during that fight. It was a frustrating waste, and makes me want to play some more of the game that isn’t so confrontational, though most of my enjoyment in the game has come from PvP lately.

If you are ever in EVE and you loose an expensive ship, does that make you redouble your effort, or does that make you want to take a break from the game?

What is it about patch days that seem to bring out the worst (or best) in a player. I used to think there was some sort of secret conspiracy going on, World of Warcraft would patch every Tuesday (and still does) and then EverQuest II started patching every Tuesday, and so would Vanguard, and EQ. This left for a very long empty day with nothing to do but read forums and get angry at everyone else who happened to find something to complain about. 

Complain they did. Though game forums CAN be exceptionally helpful in finding information there are people there who will complain and comment about EVERYTHING it doesn’t matter how insignificant it is. There is no pleasing everyone no matter how hard you try. 

Anyhow, back to patch days. 

They happen, especially if a game is alive and well. It’s a sign of growth and change, new content, and fixes. For the most part they’re waited for eagerly and people begin counting down the hours until their servers are back up. When they’re postponed people grow frustrated. When they take longer then the announced time people start to build up into a frenzy. Mob mentality takes over and gamers are reduced to screaming apes. That’s what it seems like at least if you take a peek. 

So what do you do during that enormous amount of time when your game is unavailable? Do you have backup games? Do you play one of those ‘regular’ PC games that has been collecting dust on your desk? Maybe play a console game or two? 

Or maybe you’re the type to hit the refresh page every 20 seconds waiting to see the green light of servers back online. Browsing the local forums and checking out ever game related site there is out there. 

People (most long term gamers in any case) know better then to get too excited on patch day. It is typically a day where servers are brought down numerous times (if it’s a large patch in any case) for hot fixes when bugs prevail, and server stability is next to none. I know a few friends used to take the day off when a large patch was incoming (or an expansion) only to be disappointed as the game would be unavailable for the majority of the day. 

We learn eventually.

Guess it’s time for me to grab a book, seeing as the SOE servers are down for maintenance right now..

Free Realms has finally started sending out beta invites to those who have signed up via the web site. With so many new games being developed it’s nice to hear about some that are releasing specifically for younger children, in the case of Free Realms it’s aimed at kids ages 9-14 although there are certainly parts of the game that will interest those of all ages. 

If you’re not familiar with the game it’s an MMORPG developed by Sony Online Entertainment set in a fantasy themed world with bright bold colours and cartoon like characters. 

The game is host to a number of things for your character can do as opposed to most MMORPG’s that offer a hack and slash main focus. These include things like  mini-games, housing, combat, pet-raising, exploration and building. 

Free Realms is available to download and play free of charge (it’s also coming to the PS3 as well as the PC) but you can also snag yourself a subscription for $5/m or a family plan of $10/m which allows you to log in up to five characters at the same time, great for those with families who are looking for a kid-safe game for their children to play.

This certainly isn’t the first MMO aimed at a younger audience and for those parents who may be gamers themselves, it’s a nice way to introduce your children to gaming. There’s also FusionFall which is the Cartoon Networks universe and has a huge following of players not to mention my personal favorite Wizard 101 where people of all ages can enjoy Wizard City and its card based combat as well as unique pets and outfits. KingsIsle has also just recently announced that player housing will be incorporated into the game in late spring allowing wizards to purchase and customize their own spaces, something a lot of the player base has been looking forward to.

It’s great to see so many options opening up in regards to gaming. One could argue that there is perhaps too much choice now and the decision on what to play is more complicated then it ever was in the past - but personally speaking I love it. Whether you’re young or old, have children or not, the games certainly warrant a look if for no other reason to suggest to a friend who may be searching for a family friendly MMORPG. 

Are there other family-friendly MMO’s out there that you’re currently playing or want to suggest people check out? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Today, I was playing some Left 4 Dead, and I was doing rather well. I was playing online, and there were four of us versus four players as the infected. I was scoring the most kills, and sticking with the group. We got to one area, basically near the top of a building, and a Tank came out and was running around.

The group were hiding in an area, and the Tank was between me and them, so I started shooting the Tank. It turned, and came after me. I did everything I could to both get out of its reach and kill it quickly, but in doing so, I made the other three players on my team mad because they had to leave the safety of the spot they had picked out and come and assist me. I also was getting the most damage on the tank, an honor that one of the others had wanted, and thus, a dialog came up on the screen asking to “Press F1 to Kick David, Press F2 to Vote No”. And a few seconds later, I was met with the wonderful message that I had been kicked.

I was really frustrated. They were a perfectly synched up team of friends. They had a system, and I compromised it. Despite being a good player, scoring tons of kills, and basically taking down a Tank on my own, I was pushed from the game without a reason, second chance or anything. It really soured my gaming experience that evening, and I was in no rush to get back on.

These types of systems for kicking are so easy to take advantage of in games like Left 4 Dead where there are only four votes to count. On Team Fortress 2, it can take upwards of ten or twelve votes to kick someone, thus making it more social, and in my opinion, a little more fair.

I understand that there are people that ruin the gaming experience for other people, and need to be kicked, but I don’t think that my inability to psychically mimic the moves of the other players deserved such an immediate ban. It wasn’t like I was half the map away.

I know it is only a game, but rejection, in any form, isn’t very fun, and always bruises the ego.

Has a kick system ever been used against you in a way that you thought unfair? Let me know in the comments below.