MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

By now most people who follow ‘gaming news’ on the blogsphere would have heard about the Eurogamer fiasco (for lack of a better term right now) that happened due to an online game review receiving a low score and then Tasos’ reply to that and a whole lot of other replies following.

There has been a lot of feedback on various blogs about this matter as well, but the one that sticks out most in my mind is from Dusty Monk of ‘Of Course I’ll Play It!‘ - his comments on the matter echo my own almost exactly. I felt that the response to the review was handled poorly, and if you stand by your game and believe in it why would you even give such a strong reaction to one single review.

That’s not what I wanted to talk about though.

When I first heard about this incident I couldn’t help but chuckle. Let me explain - aside from writing class guides and dungeon guides for Beckett MOG, I also dabbled briefly with writing reviews for an online site. I was given an assignment (yes, the editor knew the games I currently played) to re-review Dungeons and Dragons Online. Actually, the specifics were that DDO had recently revamped their starter area, and that was the area I was to review. I mentioned at the time to the editor that I had never played DDO before, that my perspective would be that of someone who has never experienced any aspect of the game and I asked before I even accepted if that would be alright. I was told yes.

So I picked up a copy of the game, and played a few hours every evening. I don’t consider myself an expert in any one game but I have played a LOT of games over the last few years and I know what I like and what I don’t like. While I DO enjoy LotRO a huge amount (another Turbine game) I did NOT enjoy DDO. At all. I didn’t enjoy the character creation, the game play, instancing, the social (or lack there of) experience, nothing. I created multiple characters and ran them through the newly revamped starter area (even though I had no idea what the old one was like) and it was simply not enjoyable for me.

Of course a review is a persons personal opinion - and I even stated as much in the article, but when you simply are not grabbed by a game it is VERY hard not to let that show in your writing. I was told that articles were supposed to be ‘genuine’ and reflect the writers personal thoughts. I’ve never written any other way, and so I thought nothing of it. I gave the game an average rating of 6.5 I believe (maybe 6.2)  since the game site does use a rating system, and explained my reason for why I had rated it thus. I mentioned that I had never played before, and I mentioned that I could not comment on how the game used to be. Keeping in mind that these were things that I had cleared with the editor beforehand via email.

Not 10 minutes after the review was posted I received a frantic email from the editor because the forums had exploded with comments from DDO fans who were exceptionally upset at my review. He mentioned that it was partially his fault because he had posted the review as being a full review and not just a review of the introduction area which was what I wrote about (and was told to write about). I stand by my writing and I had re-read what I had written and did not feel that I had said anything I couldn’t justify. The first question I was asked (of course) was how long I played. At the time I had xfire shut down (it does happen rarely!) so I couldn’t just send over the numbers (and even that is not a perfect indication) but I still felt that I had played enough (2-3 hours an evening over the course of two weeks) to justify writing about the starter area.

This site is known for its less then glowing comments made by readers. I was expecting it. As a game reviewer you’re told to have a thick skin and you have to be able to handle a lot of nasty remarks made by people (like how I should be fired, and even killed). Those did not bother me because I knew they would come.

What DID bother me was that the editor requested that I rewrite the review (or write a second review), this time using an end game character supplied to me by turbine and an official in game tour / play session.

What? There was no way I would feel comfortable writing the article under any circumstances. I did not feel that I qualified to write it based on the fact that I had never played the game before and I had no idea what the experience used to be like. I felt that re-writing another review would mean I didn’t believe in what I said the first time - and I stood by my writing (and still do). I was upset that I was even asked to do the second assignment. After thinking about it for a day or two I said that I was sorry but that I was simply not qualified, and I felt pressured into writing a higher rating based on the response from the previous article. The issue was dropped from there and I did not write a second review.

At least Eurogamer has the mind to suggest a different writer gives their opinion in a second review instead of requesting that the original reviewer plays more and gives it a second shot hoping to some how change their opinion. Let me tell you, that won’t happen. There are just some games out there you simply don’t enjoy - and that is OK. You don’t HAVE to enjoy them. There’s a lot of pressure when it comes to reviewing games and readers need to remember that it is ONE persons opinion which may not be anything at all like yours.

I went back to writing articles the way I am most comfortable with. Guides and my personal experiences within the game, a positive outlook on things rather then a negative. Maybe that’s taking the easy way out but I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who had a bad experience with a game review.

COT PLZ is a column that hypothesizes potential Caverns of Time content that Blizzard could explore in the future.

If you’re a lore nerd like myself, you most likely enjoy the Caverns of Time instances.  With the introduction of the COT,  Blizzard has opened up a large chunk of past and potentially future lore to be experienced.  I often sit around and extrapolate on what possible adventures Blizzard would send us on through the Caverns of Time system.  One such adventure comes directly from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.  During the Scourge (Undead) Campaign, Arthas and the Scourge direct an attack against the Magical City of Dalaran.  The Scourge is seeking the last spellbook of Medivh in order to use its magic to summon Archimonde to Azeroth.  As a defense, the wizards of Dalaran put up barriers that harm undead units.  Your mission is to destroy the barriers by killing the wizards that guard them and secure Medivh’s spellbook by slaying Grand Magus Antonidas.

Now the question, how would this apply to the Caverns of Time mechanic?  I would set it up in the same fashion as The Culling of Stratholme instance.  Give us the “cutscene” using in-gaming graphics again to set up the premise of the instance.  However the twist would be to borrow from the Oculus instance.  I would propose that you would be able to select a unit of the Scourge to be (as an illusion) but you would gain abilities relevant to that unit (like the dragons you ride in the Oculus).  That way any individual in your group could fill any role and it would allow you to assist Arthas’ campaign.  You could have armored skeletons for the “tank” role, necromancers for either a “healer or dps” role and a ghoul or possibly a geist (I’m aware they were not in the WC3 campaign) as a “melee dps” role.

The Caverns of Time is such a great mechanic that I can not help but dream of more adventures to explore and hopefully Blizzard can not help but dream either.

Shoutout to my friend Ken for letting me bounce these ideas off him constantly.

One way of making money for combat focused players in Eve Online is to grind through missions. I hate grinding through missions in any game, but Eve can be especially boring. Running through level four combat oriented missions with my cousin, me in a Caldari Navy Raven, and him in a passively shielded Drake, we rip through the missions at a fairly quick rate. We just wait to collect our bounties, loot and rewards, and move on to the next one.

The only reason I am doing this is to gain some in game currency, as I’ve become rather poor recently. One thing that I’ve noticed though is that there are very few people that enjoy grinding through missions. Even with a goal, it is tedious. They’ve tried to fix this by making more multi-mission quests, but I don’t care about stories, or epic arcs. I just want my money.

I haven’t been able to really get into the role-playing aspect or metagaming aspect of Eve Online. Has this ever happened to you? How did you find enjoyment in the game? Or did you just eventually quit?

I gave the station launcher a look a while ago at the beginning of beta, and there were so many bugs and issues with it that I just couldn’t see myself using it, so I un-installed and barely gave it another look.

On a whim this weekend I decided to reinstall it and see if it was any better the second time around now that some time has passed, and much to my surprise it is.

Keep in mind that I play three of the SOE titles (four in total but Free Realms is not listed on station launcher as of yet) and have friends scattered all over on various servers. That’s where this little application really comes in handy.

Now let me start by saying there is one semi-significant bug still. The bug occurs if the game you’re playing thinks you have not logged off properly. This is most notably the case in Vanguard, I haven’t seen it happening anywhere else yet. There IS a way to solve the issue by logging to character select first before you exit the game. This tells the system that you’re actually NOT in the game. If you do have a ’stuck’ character in some game, you’ll also be able to SEE it, under the ‘by character’ category it will list your characters and say “so and so is currently in game” - if you have a character stuck in game (such as I did) you will be able to send tells to your friends but they will be unable to send tells back because it thinks you’re on as that character. Make sense? Good!

For people who may have been having issues launching their SOE games from the patcher, this also provides a work around. I know people who have been having some enormous issues trying to get the game to start, but can launch perfectly fine from here. I’ve got mine set to close down once I start up a game which comes in handy and the whole program acts as a chat platform for when you’re not actually in game. The friends list is a little easier to understand now. You can have it ignore particular characters you may have to cut down on doubles and reduce the size of the friends list. You can easily block and ignore people, or add new people to the list. The program has yet to crash or freeze on me, and aside from that one ’stuck character’ bug, it seems to be working fairly well. I’ll continue to use it for the next few weeks and if I like it I’ll stick with it after that. It’s nice to see it’s still being worked on, and if you DO have issues with the station launcher be sure to bring it up on the station forums, there’s a fairly active section devoted specifically to the launcher.

One of the best things to come to Left 4 Dead in a long time is the new survival mode. I have been having so much fun with it, as I know that the longest I have to play a round for is around ten minutes and it is rare for it to go longer than about five minutes. The idea is that you just need to sit in a map, and wave after wave of zombie horde come at you. The maps are contained to smaller areas, and they released two new maps for the mode.

It is hugely entertaining, especially with the right team of people. Finding spots that work well to defend from, dealing with the randomness of the spawns. I find after playing, my pulse is always a little up. If you haven’t played survival mode, I suggest checking it out. It doesn’t take much time, and can be a great little break or distraction.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to talk about my experiences in Eve Online, a game that I have come back to at least half a dozen times for different reasons. The last week or so, I haven’t been playing much. The corporation I am in has been shooting at towers (which for the most part are either defenseless, or are being attacked by so many ships that the odds of being shot at are one in two hundred) and pulling out of previously occupied space (which I am opposed to).

Add to this the fact that building a Jump Freighter has emptied out all the in game currency I have, and you create a situation where I just don’t feel like playing.

Don’t get me wrong. There is so many things happening in the game, and they are interesting, but they don’t interest me. One of the only reasons I even got back into Eve was that my cousin was playing, and I really needed the distraction from work sometimes, but the only things that excite me in Eve anymore are player to player combat, and making lots of ingame money quickly. I don’t want to grind through missions. I don’t want to mine ore for hours on end. I just want to fight in battles with under one hundred combatants and find easy ways to make ISK, the in game currency.

It is a real shame that the goals of my game play don’t match up with the corporation I am in currently. Too many friends in the corporation to start over somewhere else. It might be time for me to put the game down for a while, and come back to it again later, once PvP and making ISK are the main goals of the corporation again.