Archive for November, 2008

26
Nov

Nirvana in Norrath

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

EverQuest 2 and World of Warcraft are such different games. Sure, there are similarities, and if you take them at face value then you might even be inclined to say that there’s nothing remarkably different other than the graphical style.

But when you play these two games, when you dig a little deeper, you find that they have vastly different cultures. The players in EQ2 seem more helpful, more courteous. The game supports a more social aspect via its superb guild system and LFG tools. While in WoW I’ll see hundreds of offtopic conversations scroll by in general chat, EQ2 has significantly less chatter. People communicate via party and guild chat.

A lot of this has to do with EQ2’s bloodline (EverQuest) versus WoW’s bloodline (the RTS Warcraft games, new-to-MMO players). And of course we can’t discount sheer numbers: WoW’s 10 million+ subscribers compared to the 200,000 in EverQuest 2. But sheer numbers don’t explain why so many WoW players chat ad nauseum about topics ranging from President-elect Obama to last night’s episode of 24. In my opinion, WoW just isn’t enthralling enough. You run around with QuestHelper telling you what mobs you need to kill and where to kill them so you can get your next level and start raiding. Then when you’ve raided and have everything you want, you stand around in Shattrath City or Dalaran with nothing to do but chat in the Trade channel. Yet so many people keep doing it, keep playing WoW until they get burned out and quit entirely.

Being an EQ2 player in this WoW zeitgeist forces a sort of defensiveness that gives way to the "you just don’t get it" sentiment. Any time I espouse the virtues of EQ2 to a WoW-playing friend, I get rolled eyes and pfft noises. While they admit that their drug of choice is no longer giving them the fix they need, they’re so committed to that drug that they refuse to see what other games are like, dismissing them outright or finding some strange little fault that shouldn’t eclipse a game’s value or fun-factor.

Yet at the same time, I realize that if these people don’t want to give EQ2 a shot, then no amount of convincing on my part will be effective. They don’t want to hear about the virtues of this game; they can’t be troubled with finding out more about what it offers, like player housing and guild halls and so on. Or maybe they just don’t care about those things, instead preferring to grind for gear and PVP in the same old battlegrounds over and over and over.

To each his own. Their loss. Et cetera.

Changing gears…. Last night I joined one of the largest guilds on my server (Old Timers Guild on Unrest) and visited our guild hall. The people who built the guild hall put countless painstaking hours into designing an environment that is so rich and enthralling that I was agape as I toured it. Even though I had only been in the guild for a few minutes, I felt so welcome and so connected. And visiting the guild hall just cemented that sense of belonging: here was a place where we could all convene and use as a starting point for our adventures in Norrath.

I think I’m just the type of player that wants to be part of a guild and look at my MMO experience as one involving lots of other people. The little things like an automatic message to the guild when I ding a level in armoring or when I loot a legendary item make for such an immersing experience.

I just wish my non-EQ2-playing friends could understand that.

25
Nov

Just a small update

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Grabthar is now a level 42 shadowknight and a level 30 armorer. I’m excited about crafting in tier 4 (30-39). I’ll first have to identify which are the tier 4 zones; I haven’t played in so long. I think Enchanted Lands will work. I didn’t do much questing there, so maybe I’ll knock those out for achievement XP.

Wicker is a 74 druid now. So far it’s been pretty boring. Round up a bunch of mobs and swipe them to death. I do love the new instances though. Our guild, Lobster Go PEENCH PEENCH, gets a lot of curious attention, too.

18
Nov

On Friends and MMOs

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

My previous post was somewhat fatalistic. I have been going through a mix of emotions the past couple of weeks, and while that may seem a little silly ("it’s just a game!"), those of you who play MMOs will understand. Not only do I have to choose which character to play in WoW, but I have to choose which character(s) to play across games. And each game offers something unique, while they all overlap. It’s not easy.

Last night I went to see the new James Bond movie with my fiancee and my brother. We had dinner at Chick-Fil-A beforehand an the inevitable topic of World of Warcraft came up. I relayed to them the various things I’ve read on various blogs (see my blogroll) and we talked about what the WotLK expansion has to offer. I also talked about Grabthar in EQ2 and what I wanted to accomplish with him, especially since the EQ2 expansion comes out today.

What I finally realized is that the games aren’t all-or-nothing propositions. I can get what I want from more than one game at a time. And the pressures I placed on myself–level faster, level slower, max professions, enjoy professions–were all of my own doing. That’s just the kind of guy I am. I was finally able to step back, take a deep breath, and answer the question, "What do I want to do?"

First and foremost, I want to play with my friends and family. It doesn’t matter what game. At the moment that game is World of Warcraft, so that’s the game I’ll play with them. I also want to invest in my EQ2 character, which I can do solo. (I mainly want to do crafting on him, which is best done solo.) The end result is that I’ll play my night elf druid, Wicker, who is currently almost level 72. Our regular group is druid tank (me), priest healer (fiancee), caster DPS (brother warlock), and melee DPS (friend rogue). We just need one more regular DPS and we have a prebuilt instance group ready to go.

I may never see Naxx in WotLK or I might run it every week. Who knows. All I know is that I have the most fun when I log into a game and see my friends and family in our special secret chat channel. And I’m glad I finally realized that.

We now resume our regular analysis of MMOs. :)

17
Nov

My return to Norrath

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Tonight I reactivated EverQuest 2. My main, a 41 sarnak shadowknight with the illustrious name and title of Avenger Grabthar Thrakazog the Treasure Hunter, was still camped in Gorowyn, right by the broker. The last time I logged him was 6/4/2008, which was the night I finished the heritage quest to get my journeyman’s boots.

I can’t remember exactly why I deactivated, to be honest. I mean, I’ve mentioned that HQ grinding wore me out, but I don’t know why I chose that day. I do know that I decided to roll an alt, so perhaps my switch to Ipswich the ratonga ranger was the reason ol’ Grabthar (and his squire/roommate, Steve) was neglected for so long. I do know that when I logged in tonight, I felt a rush of familiarity and I actually smiled. I only played EQ2 for a few months, but I fell in love with it during our brief time together.

So why now, just a few days after the launch of Wrath of the Lich King? That answer is easy: Lich King was unfulfilling. It was too much of “more of the same.” The new zones are wonderfully designed and there are a fair bit of new mobs, but there was something about it that just didn’t grab me. I didn’t feel connected to it at all because it was a gauntlet I had to run in a race to reach 80. The level cap–endgame–is where it’s at, and I felt that if I didn’t get there soon, I’d miss out on a lot. That rush, coupled with the total lack of gear upgrades for my druid (and thus, no real goal to work toward), I just didn’t feel compelled.

As an aside, I will say that the death knight is a lot of fun and very well-designed. I played mine to level 59 and loved it. But in the end, playing the death knight is what made me really miss Grabthar. They have similar playstyles and abilities. Grabthar uses DoTs and self heals while swinging a two-handed axe. My death knight uses DoTs and self heals while swinging a two-handed axe. Both wear heavy armor. Both have horses that were class-trained. And so on.

But what makes Grabthar more interesting is the investment I’ve made into him. The 46 achievement points. The armor I made. The languages he learned. The stuff in his apartment in Gorowyn. In fact, browsing the wall of accomplishment in his apartment really drove the point home: EverQuest 2 has what I’m looking for in an MMO, and it’s not a matter of what’s better or worse or which has this or that. It’s just a matter of which is more fun. And for now, that’s EverQuest 2.

08
Nov

LotRO Letdown

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Last night my fiancee decided to log in to Lord of the Rings Online and run her Loremaster to Rohan, a zone in the game that figures prominently in the book. Things didn’t work out the way she had hoped, and this is what she had to say:

I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online casually for about 5 months. There is a lot to like about the game and when I get into it, I really enjoy it.

One of the things I love about it is how immersing and huge it is. I’d open the map and see all the different zones in the game, and think about how I couldn’t wait to be high enough level to get to some of them. My favorite area in The Lord of the Rings books and movies is that of Rohan. I love the people from there, I love the way it looks. I’d open my map in the game and dream about when I’d be high enough level to go there. I wondered if all the characters that I know and love would be there, like Theoden, Wormtongue, Eowyn. I wondered if it would be as beautiful as it is in the movies; perched up high, overlooking the rolling hills, the beautiful snow-capped mountains in the back. I couldn’t wait.

So tonight I asked my kinship if it would be possible for me to run from Bree to Rohan. I thought I might die a few times, but I wouldn’t mind. Instead, they told me that the zone isn’t even open yet; that they’re saving zones to make into new expansions. My heart just sunk, and I had to turn the game off. I don’t think I even want to play it anymore. People in my kin thought that it might be out by next November, an entire year from now; they’re just preparing to release the Moria expansion, and that if it follows the logical order of the books/movies, Rohan might be available next year. I just feel so sad and let down. I had no idea that those zones weren’t open. I have no desire to play the game at this point.

People find different things disappointing. Some folks leave because of nerfs to their class. Others quit because they didn’t get an item they had been grinding for. And still others leave because what they want most from the game is not offered to them.

What makes you leave an MMO?

07
Nov

Vanguard Impressions

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Vanguard in November 2008 is definitely not Vanguard in January 2006. The game is remarkably different in a lot of good ways, all while maintaining the spirit of the design and original intent. I played several different classes to level 4, including a dread knight, a ranger, a sorcerer, and a bard. While level 4 is hardly going to provide an exhaustive impression of an MMORPG, it does do a good job of capturing that initial excitement–or annoyance–that new MMO experiences provide.

While I was doing those initial quests over and over, I thought about how Vanguard is different from other MMORPGs and tried to identify what would make someone choose it over, say EverQuest 2 or World of Warcraft. If I were to draw a direct comparison between Vanguard and any of the other fantasy MMOs I’ve played, I’d have to say it’s more similar to EQ2 than WoW, but sitting somewhere comfortably between them. Indeed, Vanguard was designed by people who worked on the original EverQuest (namely, Brad McQuaid), but Sigil (the developer of Vanguard) didn’t ignore the success of World of Warcraft entirely. So what you have is a game with a UI similar to World of Warcraft’s in terms of simplicity, with an overall feel that’s more in line with EverQuest 2. The combat mechanics are more akin to WoW: there’s a global cooldown, and each ability has its own cooldown.

What makes Vanguard unique is its consideration of the player. As I told my fiancee at lunch today, Vanguard is the ideal MMO for RPers. Much more so than WoW, and even better than EQ2. When you start a new character in Vanguard, you have a full set of class-specific armor. At level 2, you do a simple quest chain that gives you your class-specific weapons. By level 4, you’ve completed enough quests to have several pieces of armor with stat bonuses on them. Rather than make you feel like a child growing up in a fantasy realm, you are immediately thrust into the environment: upon entering Telon for the first time, you’re ready to make an effect on it.

Leveling up gains you new abilities based on your experience, and itemization comes along for the ride. Why should you have to wait until your teens or twenties to get some meaningful gear? In this regard, Vanguard takes an approach similar to the classic tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons. Level increases are meant to make your character more powerful so she can face more powerful adversaries, not serve as a reward for a commitment to the game.

EverQuest II, to its credit, follows that same road. Sony learned that over time, though, so only later expansions (Rise of Kunark, namely) offer good itemization in the starting zone. World of Warcraft has embraced this mentality as well, but shifts it to the higher level content that’s created for expansions: Hellfire Peninsula rewards in Burning Crusade come to mind.

Vanguard’s support for the RPer extends beyond armor and weapons. The initial quests are meaningful. You don’t just kill ten rats, then kill ten wolves, then find ten candles. The quests have lore behind them from the start, and introduce you to NPCs that will be important throughout your time on the Isle of Dawn. Vanguard also introduces you to faction at level 4, which leads to the biggest part of the RP aspect: diplomacy.

Diplomacy is like a game-within-a-game in Vanguard. Interacting with an NPC, you select diplomatic abilities and interact in a sort of back and forth discussion. It’s like a card game; you have cards that indicate certain abilities, such as Booming Voice or Courteous Bow, that affect the NPC in some way. If you’re successful in Diplomacy, you’ll gain levels and faction. If you fail, you’ll piss off the NPC and lose faction. The higher your faction, the better quests and interactions. This, in effect, lets you interact with the world in a way that’s beyond just killing the guys that the faction hates.

Of course, if you’re entering diplomatic relations with someone, you can’t show up with swords and spiky armor. Vanguard supports different sets of clothing for different scenarios. You have armor for fighting, clothing for diplomacy (with stats befitting diplomatic relations), and clothing for crafting. You wear your armor when you’re fighting, your tuxedo when you’re meeting the Prime Minister, and your overalls when you’re making horseshoes. This aspect of the game is fairly unique to Vanguard, with some of it borrowed from EQ2 (case in point: EQ2 lets you wear one set of armor for stats while showing another set of armor for appearance, and has certain armor that gives bonuses to crafting). Vanguard automatically switches your gear for you depending on the situation you’re in.

Add that to the ships, guild halls, player housing, mount choices, and so on, and you have an amazing game with endless possibilities for the fantasy adventurer.

Ultimately it is the immersion in a fantasy setting that makes Vanguard a strong game. I think it’s exactly the kind of game that WoW refugees should take a look at rather than EQ2. Vanguard features a simplicity not found in EQ2, despite the original intent of Sigil in making Vanguard a difficult MMO. But Vanguard is harder than WoW and less forgiving in certain ways. For example, in WoW, there’s no death penalty beyond losing some durability, which money will take care of. When you die, you run back to your corpse, sort of like a ghost monster in Pac Man. But in Vanguard, the death penalty is more severe: you lose experience. If you choose to run back to your body, you will regain some experience and whatever non-soulbound loot you were carrying at the time. If you use the "spirit rezzer," your body is summoned to you but you don’t get the experience back. And of course if you’re rezzed, you get your experience and your items. This kind of penalty is rough for WoW players who are used to a simpler system.

For me, I don’t see Vanguard becoming my main game. I already have too much invested in EQ2, and with the games being similar, I feel more comfortable in Norrath than Telon. But I believe that if EQ2 fails to retain my interest, Vanguard will be the game I retreat into, rather than spend another day looking for someone to run heroics in Northrend.

06
Nov

Vanguard Round 2

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

I downloaded the Vanguard trial and I’m giving it a solid go, on my own of course. I have a big post about Vanguard planned for the near future. First I have to actually play a character to 10 and figure out what all is different about the game.

One thing I’ve consistently liked about Vanguard is its immersing fantasy environment. As I work through the quests and try to get to level 10 before the trial ends, but I’m not going to rush. This game is about enjoying the progress of your character, not rushing to the endgame to start raiding. Dungeon crawls figure more prominently in Vanguard than, say, Warhammer Online, but not nearly as much as World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2. That said, Vanguard has two dungeons before you leave the island: one at 5 and one at 10.

My first impression of running around on the island is that there are a lot of other players there. I think creating a new-player zone for everyone was a brilliant idea on Sony’s part. It does away with the ghost town feeling that the other starting zones suffer from. It also lets players experience new quests that are better designed for starting out. It reminds me a lot of Timorous Deep in EQ2 and the blood elf/draenei starting zones in WoW. You can tell the developers learned a few things since launch.

The questions on Vanguard fans’ minds are, will this be enough to attract former players? Who is the Vanguard player base? What can Vanguard offer that other games can’t, and will people care enough? Only time will tell.

06
Nov

WAR and Surrender

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

The MMORPG blogosphere is deluged with posts from people quitting Warhammer Online in droves. Some give cheap parting shots, others suggest ways Warhammer could be improved. The fact that the game is just two months old tells me that it needs time to grow. My opinion on WAR is not so much that the game sucks (it doesn’t), but that the players suck. They want to rush to endgame because they’re accustomed to the WoW Way: everything happens at level cap. Anyone who has played WAR knows otherwise. It’s truly a “not the destination, but the journey” game.

One of the problems I had with WAR was that I couldn’t connect to any of the classes. I enjoy playing ranged classes (like the hunter in WoW or the ranger in EQ2) but the WAR ranged archetypes were slow and kind of boring. It also seemed like my squig herder was incapable of doing any real damage; in RVR I couldn’t kill someone on my own, and in PVE I’d get bored waiting for a mob to die. The ranged classes lack the frenetic pacing of the WoW hunter and the overall utility of the EQ2 ranger (although the Shadow Warrior has a lot of potential). Ultimately I just gave up on my squig herder because he just wasn’t fun, and I didn’t care at all about what happened to him.

That lack of caring is the bigger problem: as another blogger so eloquently put it, WAR has no soul. There’s no community around the game, there’s no RP aspect, there’s no driver other than killing other players. Perhaps it was naive of us to think we could drive our RVR exploits with PVE questing. In the end, WAR ended up being too much RVR for its own good.

03
Nov

State of the Game (player)

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

I’ve been absent from posting here on Angry Raider for a few reasons. I haven’t really been playing MMORPGs very much, I certainly haven’t been raiding (except a Karazhan run here and there, but more on that later), and honestly, I just haven’t had much to say. I think that the MMORPG ship had sailed for me, and I felt deep down that my days of massively online anything were over.

The problem with MMOs right now is that we’re in sort of a recession. Warhammer Online (WAR) came out of the starting gate with quite a bang, then fizzled into a fantasy-oriented version of something more akin to Halo 3 on Xbox Live. World of Warcraft is completely and utterly uninteresting, but the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is just on the horizon. Ditto for EverQuest 2, whose new expansion, Shadow of Odyssey, arrives a few days after WotLK. Lord of the Rings Online has an expansion coming out in November. And even my beloved Vanguard: Saga of Heroes saw an expansion-ish release (Game Update 6) in September that introduced new content, mounts, and items.

So all fatalism aside, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Not every MMO player is the same. Some people love PVP. Others love RP. Some enjoy raiding, and others just want to pick flowers. And of course, everything in between. I am the type that enjoys immersion, with goals for my character to achieve, whether they are crafting, questing, itemization, titles, or achievements. Each game offers a different approach to these goals, and given my playstyle and interest, my opinions of certain games are affected.

Let’s get caught up on where I stand.

Warhammer Online - I was very, very excited about this game. I played in the open beta, and I rolled a few different characters at launch. The highest I got was level 11, both on my shadow warrior and my squig herder. What I found, as many other MMO bloggers have discovered, is that WAR is boring. The PVE content is almost nonexistent, not because of a lack of quests, but because of a lack of interest. There’s no social interaction to speak of, everyone farms scenarios for gear and levels, and I never felt any kind of connection to the world I was living in. Some of the technical issues of the game didn’t sit well with me either, like the slow mechanics of fighting (specifically with the ranged classes). Despite what I liked about the game–the graphics, the design, the Tome of Knowledge, and so on–I cancelled my subscription after the first month and I don’t miss the game at all. It speaks volumes about an MMO when you just don’t miss the world when you’re not in it.

World of Warcraft - WoW is like that ex-girlfriend that you were with for so long that you never fully breakup with her. You go back to her for emotional and physical comfort because she’s just so familiar. You’ll only be able to completely sever ties with her when you get a new girlfriend, but nobody seems to completely measure up to your ex because you don’t invest enough into the new relationship. I find other games that are better than WoW, but for some reason I keep coming back to this game, despite its massive shortcomings.

Blizzard released content patch 3.0 in October, which introduced the achievement system, new talents, and some other things to prepare for the release of Lich King. The side effect of 3.0 is that it made everyone so unbelievably powerful and nerfed the content into such a deep oblivion that the game is incredibly easy. People who never killed Nightbane are downing Illidan in PUGs. Blizzard is basically giving everyone everything they’ve ever wanted, because the WoW way is to say goodbye to old stuff when new stuff comes out.

I preordered WotLK and I plan to play it a lot, mainly because my favorite part of WoW is leveling. Once I reach the cap, I don’t think I’ll go back into the endgame scene, mainly because the rewards for raiding are not interesting to me. The more WoW changes, the more WoW stays the same.

Lord of the Rings Online - I like this game. I played LotRO quite a bit in the Summer. It’s a gorgeous world steeped in lore with fun playstyles and a nice leveling speed. The problem? I ran around a lot with nothing to do. The game failed me in the teens because I had no guidance. Where should I go? Where should I quest? The final nail in the coffin was when the game deleted all my auction payments because I didn’t check my mail within the two week period. Such is the pain of playing more than one MMO at a time, I guess. LotRO is deactivated and I don’t plan on buying the expansion or playing the game again.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - Poor Vanguard. I have tried to resurrect this game among my circle of MMO-playing friends and family, but have met only resistance. The game world is beautiful, the playstyle is a blast, the quests are involved and interesting, and the immersion is top-notch (housing, ships, guild halls, mounts, oh my). The problem is that the population is so low, you can never hope to get anything accomplished. This may change now that the Trial is available and Vanguard players are coming back. I will probably give Vanguard one last try next Spring, after the WotLK dust settles. Even if I have to play it solo.

EverQuest II - This is, in my opinion, the finest MMORPG in existence. It offers everything: player housing, awesome crafting, tons and tons to do for both solo and grouping, incredible mount options, amazing graphics, and a finely-tuned UI. You can log into EQ2 and do a huge x6 raid for several hours, or you can just go harvest stuff to prepare for your next set of crafted gear (which is easily as good as what you can get from dungeon crawling). You can work on collections, or farm for that spell upgrade you really need, or quest in one of the many different zones for each level range. You can work on a long Heritage Quest for an amazing reward, or do the quests in one of the several adventure packs. You can travel all over the immense world and kill named NPCs for achievement points. You can work on status points for your guild. You can spend an entire evening just decorating your player housing. EQ2 has it all.

So why don’t I play it?

Simply put, when I started playing EQ2 last Spring, I dove into it headfirst. I spent countless hours working on Heritage Quests to get fine items and status points. I rolled one character and leveled him to 42. And I just did too much at once. I had just come out of the raiding scene in WoW, so EQ2 felt like I was putting too much time into a game, just in a different way. I made it worse when I rolled a new character (Ipswich the Ratonga Ranger) and leveled him to the mid-20s, even betraying Freeport for Qeynos (thus becoming a Ranger). He was–and is–a lot of fun, as is my Shadowknight, but I shot myself in the foot.

I do plan on getting Shadow of Odyssey and I do plan on making EQ2 my “main game” once the Lich King dust settles. I know that Lich King will not sustain me and there are still a ton of things to do in EQ2, as I have barely scratched the surface of the various expansions. I think I’ll just take things a little slower, focus more on crafting and questing, and enjoy the world of Norrath. I’m going to level my Shadowknight to 80 first, as he is the most unique class in all the MMOs I’ve played. I look forward to getting him a rhino mount.

I don’t know what will happen over the next several months. But I can say that after the MMO slump is over in just a couple of weeks, we’ll be in the glory days of MMORPGs. I’m just thankful I have a choice.