Pirates of the Burning Sea

Since the game is still hot on the shelves, this isn't a comprehensive in depth review. Having said that, the tutorial seems to guide you swiftly through the three main mechanisms of play. Armed combat, Naval Combat and Exploration/quest gathering. I must say the first thing that hit me straight away is that I've seen this sort of thing before, a few years previous. 1999 on the original Xbox a game called Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat. Except it was a single player console game, and there wasn't as many quests. Your character configuration is not as varied as you would like, but there are enough costume decisions make you look the part. The classes you can play didn't seem to have much in the way of defined variety, they all come across a bit the samey, with perhaps just factional differences. A Navy person would be similar to a Privateer, but more regimented sort of thing. A Pirate is just a Privateer but evil. Obviously many people are coming to this game because of the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, and indeed there were quite a number of variants on the Jack Sparrow theme running around the villages.

Privateer


Questing seems to follow MMO tradition, with a bit of textual flavour, kill a few brigands, sink a few ships and heres some money at the end. Villages and outposts are like instanced city hubs, and some quests actually step into a personal instance of the city, for you to tackle a specific enemy. These hubs seem quite small and have just the basic NPC's for trade, and questing. Although plenty of NPC's are milling about so that they don't seem empty places.

Armed Combat


Every now and then you will be drawn into armed combat, whether in a town or on a ship (mainly for boarding purposes). Melee combat doesn't seem to be the games strong point. Its in there, and you have a few skills that you need to juggle to make the kills, but the swordfighting animations didn't fill me with enthusiasm or excitement at all. In fact theres no tactile feel to the combat, you press a block a couple of times to build up your fencing power and then you press a main attack or a finishing move. I'd have preferred a much more "twitch" based combat, where position and sword strikes matter more than building a series of skill keystrokes. The skills are gained as you level up your character through questing, and the skills on offer range across the fencing and defense, through to naval combat prowess and even ship endurance.

Ship


Where the game does shine is in its naval combat, battles on the sea are quite frantic, require a measure of skill to position the boat at its optimum firing solution, selection of appropriate ammo (sail/mast ripping grape shot, anti-personnel shot to assist boarding etc), and damage management. One on one encounters include a lot of zig zagging in and out of the wind, to get a strong position to let rip, multi-ship encounters are where it gets interesting, trying to find gaps in the enemy's position to sail in and release your salvo and have the wind behind you enough to get out of there before your shredded. Although I haven't tried any grouped fleet battles, I think this is the area I would be most excited about.

Exploring the Open Sea


Apart from specific questing you can venture out into the Open Sea and join in generated ship battles there. In Open Sea, your ship moves much faster, and you don't see the crew on board. This is your main travel mechanism, between ports and cities, and anyone venturing into the trading business will no doubt be in this mode quite a lot. There is a whole player based economy, but with my limited try out, I haven't managed to delve into that yet.

Overall, I'd have said Pirates of the Burning Sea will be a curiosity for most, with the naval combat fuelling most of the enthusiasm for it. The Armed combat and character progression simply fuelling the fitting out of your ship for combat purposes, or for travel and trade. I'll play around with it for my 30 day free allocation, but whether it attracts masses to the game I'm uncertain. If you enjoy real time naval combat from days gone by, its worth the price of admission to experience that with others in a multiplayer environment.

Neriak

As I stumble through the dark, a brilliant indigo light draws me. Having spent months wandering through the forests of Nektulos, and finally emerging into the blazing dry sunlight of the Commonlands, I've gripped the starched mountain pass and hugged the dry pumice to emerge into the forest bowl known as the Darklight. Meandering past pocked craters and river gouges I finally cross the bridge over Innoruk's Scar, and behold the stories were true, the City of Hate, Neriak stands before us!



Luckily the Teir'Dal have also annexed a part of Neriak for Foreign Quarter so Ogres have free passage through to these slave areas, so I pass by the Teir'Dal Dread Guard easily, yet I feel their hatred towards me almost seep out of their armour. In Neriak I will always be an underclass, to be used and abused at their whim. They have a busy forge, creating more and more of the necessary equipment to kit out their ranks and furnish their city with ornamentation worthy of the palaces of Maj'Dul.



Delving deeper into the Nerian warren, you come across the Spires of Innoruuk, built to whorship the God of Hate himself. Their architectural beauty just amazes my simple Ogre tastes, I'm almost overwhelmed by their craftmanship.. dominated by it.



Have to keep hurrying, so that the Dread Guard patrolling this area keep their attention on other things.. I'm followed for a while by an Asari Guard, he seems very suspicious of me.. luckily he was distracted for a moment by a gathering of floating imps, kept as living gargoyle ornaments I think, they haunt most of the halls of this mighty place.





The Teir'Dal have constructed a place for the appreciation of their arts, the Nightsong Opera House, a three teired building of enormous beauty, I could stand and stare at it for many days...



but the guards are tracking me now. The Haunting Sirensong drifting out from the building lulls me into a sleepy state and I almost topple off the edge of a precipice.. this city is not very forgiving of bumbling fools... trip or stumble too near the edge and you will plummet hundreds of feet down onto stalagtite spikes. Even the Frostfell celebrities are not immune to a good spiking.



At the end of the warren, is the mighty Darklight Palace, flanked by the House of the Teir'Dal family D'Morte.



And Vampires. I had to make a quick retreat, fending off these biting shrews.. I don't understand why they are tolerated, the Dread Guard doesn't venture this deep..



For all its beauty there is always a price to pay, and I for one am willing to pay it. For the God of Hate, Neriak take me as one of your own!

Lord of the Rings Online

Well, initially disappointed in it, I've started to warm to it again. Second beta client in.

Graphically, they've gone a bit too astray from the Peter Jackson vision we all know and love. The world is a bit too cartoony. A bit too colourful and 'feathered cap' for my liking. Where is the gritty mud soaked realism Wingnut films threw at us in 3 hour chunks? With Dungeons and Dragons Online login/update mechanism reskinned, the entrance to the LOTRO client is a bit too familiar. When you're in there, waves of deja vu wash over you, whispering Guild Wars and Asherons Call in your shell like. The world is well crafted, with some areas showing off sights to be dumb struck at, but mostly, you get the feeling, that this isn't the MMO of the film of the book.

The initial quests you are thrust into are simplistic, but flavoured enough in LOTR lore, for LOTR fans to be swept up in joining Elrond in battle, or seeing Gandalf and Gimli. As tutorial quests they do give you basics in a nicely presented way, although they get a bit tedious if you're on them for the 5th time (rolling different characters). Then you have a mini-area to play in and get your feet. Similar to Guild Wars, you get a tight knit area to run some quests and cut your teeth, with the skill progression, and the beginnings of your character tweaking. Once you've eeked out all quests and you've camped one or two bosses, with plenty of others, you get to run through another storied instance into the bigger world of Middle Earth.

You're more or less plonked into this without explanation. And the subtleties of the game are gleaned by plenty of chit and chat on the /ooc channel, or a brief search on the web for info-packed fan sites. The player achievements are very welcome, and you gain traits and skills and increases in your damage as you level up.

The combat is good in that many of the special skills you posses act in chains, so that you are always planning a chain to lay down on the enemy. Keeping you interested, and not just mindlessly mashing buttons. However, some of the melee combat is a bit weak willed. Doesn't feel satisfying. And the combat animations (as well as most of the player animations) feel awkward, mistimed and gangly. Since I played an archer (Elven, from Mirkwood, obviously!), there is satisfaction in coupling a double shot, with a barbed shot, which them adds a damage multiplier to a melee hit when they come up close and personal. Plus you have traps (which lay invisibly), with which to hold your pray and get another shot off at them. It may sound like the combat is rubbish, but its not, its just animated a bit rubbish. The combat actually works well, and the combinations you can lay down do always keep you in the action, especially with the variability of misses, evades and blocks coming into play. If only I could duel wield earlier than level 20, I'd have my Legolas clone with big daggers from the films. I do however have an attack that jabs the enemy in the face with an arrow. A personal favourite of mine.

I must say, I've found the LOTRO community to be about as hostile as you can get. Not Neocron hostile, but Guild Wars hostile. Theres a lot of trouble with having a multi-laguage server, being inundated with reams of french or german doesn't help sift the info. Also, asking questions rarely gets an answer, and forming fellowships (teams, parties) seems to be against most players religion. Being in a ravine full of players as well as menacing orcs, and then being jumped by three of orcs instead of the planned one, you'd expect the player populace to help out a bit. After all, you've spent some time plinking your mirkwood arrows into their beasts to help them out with adds. But no. They'll happily let you die. Some, will exploit the aggro of a helper, so that you help them with the damage, and attract the beasts attention, then they'll happily wander off to let you deal with it, and they'll take the experience reward and come back for the loot too.

I do like the idea that you kill animals in the field for their skins and bones to craft stuff from, rather than just because we needed something to kill. All your quarry seems fairly natural for the area. And a hunter, does indeed feel like they're hunting for their wellbeing, and not just because we need to kill x of y.

Lets try and summarise everything, I like the setting, that goes without saying. I'm not massively keen on the overly colourful rendering of it, but some areas I've seen are really well built (The Shire for instance), the characters are semi-realistic, but with a cartoon bent that Asherons Call suffered from, long before the WoW machine with its "art direction" come on the scene. The combat system seems satisfying enough, if only it was animated better to provide a bit more feedback. The crafting system seems to follow current convention, but its heirarchy and hopefully accessibility will remain to all, and not just the dedicated few. At least the client runs fairly well on lower end machines, we're not talking the juddering monster that Vanguard is here. However it doesn't come across as having the class or style that the DDO engine has.

I can see myself spending a while in the Shadows of Angmar. I enjoy the lore behind it. I enjoy the classes (especially the archer, where archery counts as the main attack skill and not just for pulling - something Asherons Call 2 did well) and the races - although I'd like to have seen a female dwarf option - sexists! I'd like to see how organised grouping works out, because at the moment, theres very little fellowshipping going on at the lower levels. If you prefer your MMO'ing with a bit more grind and substance, you'll probably want to tackle Vanguard. If you want the cartoon art direction and immediacy of WoW, perhaps WoW is where you should be, or Warhammer Online when its released. If you want something that leans between Guild Wars and WoW, with a lot of established Lore behind it (that could be trashed and ruined), and follows the likes of Asherons Call 2 then LOTRO might just be for you. If you can't decide, why not pick up the client and the beta key they're offering and join in the world now?


I think I'd like to be involved with a Legends LOTRO guild, so please show your interest in these forums and we can sort out a start up on the 14th April (when the pre-orders get access to the servers)

DDO Rant

I think DDO was originally designed to the roleplayer, not the MMO player. However Turbine seem happy enough to take MMO players money, and pretend they're the same sort of game. It just becomes glaringly obvious after the current content is burned up that perhaps DDO isn't the same as WoW. This Dragon Vault expansion has been slotted in to keep hold of the MMO player.. shiny new loot (some bind on equip ffs!), big raid style quest.

I think they're playing a dangerous game, because there isn't enough proper roleplay functionality in the game, and there isn't enough content for your MMO player, and they're trying to appeal to both camps. They certainly can't cut the mustard compared with the amount of content on offer in WoW. I think they should drop the pretence and forge ahead as a true real time PnP experience.

Theres hardly any solo game in DDO. Its all about the group. A good roleplay group can enjoy the storied content and develop and enjoy their own characterisations in DDO. A well organised pick up group of MMO players can blitz through the same content in a fraction of the time. They can do the XP gain thing, be hurtling through the objectives and performing a loot trawl over and over again. If you blitz the content, it is quite easy to get to the end game. That doesn't mean the content isn't well designed if played through properly, it just means theres no mechanisms in place to prevent your average progression hungry MMO player from bolting it all down.

The only mechanism in place is a reduction in the quest completion XP gained for repetition of the quest. However, each quest has three difficulty settings, normal, hard and elite, which means each quest can be repeated at least 4 or 5 times at each difficulty level before the XP reduction makes it not worthwhile. XP gathering field day for your MMO player.

Dungeons & Dragons Online BETA

http://www.ddo-europe.com

As a quick sound bite, I can sum up DDO in one sentance. "Neverwinter Nights with better graphics".

Each quest is a crafted storied instance, with varying lengths (short, medium and long) and difficulties (normal, hard and elite). Nothing in the game allows "free form" hunting, theres no experience gained from killing more or less monsters. Finishing the quest is where you reap your rewards. The emphasis is heavily placed onto the goal and sub-goals of the current dungeon, rather than falling back on the xp grind of slaying endless spawns. Even in the dungeon instance, the quantity of kills is irrelevant to your rewards. Loot is rarely dropped from kills made in the dungeon, the little that is dropped is usually a collectable 'turn in' item, that equates to very little worth really. The majority of your questing loot will be gained from treasure chests, usually found after a quest goal has been acheived, or rewarded to you by the quest giver.

Real time combat interaction (your positioning affects the damage done). The combat relies on you to keep the monster in front of you, for attacks to be successful. Shifting position during combat can modify the chance of you being hit. Turn your back on an enemy and you'll no doubt suffer a critical hit. You can force a direct swing of your weapon by right clicking the mouse, or you can initiate auto-attack and swing automatically. Positioning still plays a part even with auto-attack toggled on. You can also react to the monsters attacks and try to block, using the shift key. Combat can become quite an intense session of keyplay, and to truly do it justice requires your attention and concentration. I enjoy the dynamic it adds to the gameplay, it makes it more real to me, more important to control my avatar as an efficient combatant. Encircling an opponent, to swipe at their side or back becomes a viable tactic, as does trading blows with blocks and counterattacks. It takes some getting used to, especially in third person. But I think it does give a more organic, less predictive flavour to the combat and its outcome.

To complete a quest, quite a bit of thought and planning is often required. There are stages where you just can't throw everything in and to hell with it. You often find yourself having to conserve Health and Mana because once you're in the dungeon, you have limited resources available to you in terms of Healing abilities and Mana regeneration. All casters have a finite amount of mana when they enter, and the only place you can regenerate that mana is at a resting shrine. Even then its a one shot deal. Once you've used it, no more. Your only other option is to stock up on health and mana potions. However, these items are incredibly expensive and are difficult to find a vendor with them available. Perhaps you'll buy one or two and use them in extreme emergencies. Since all casters have to prepare their spells before entering the dungeon, spell selection and spell/feat conservation (eg. level 1 clerics can only Turn Undead 5 times before they need to rest to regenerate) are also issues that need to be decided on.

Overall, the party requires a lot of co-operation to get through the quest. Since the players are quite interdependant on each other, you have to 'care' more about the other players. If the party splits and charges off in different directions theres sure to be a death or two. Since your reward (xp and loot) are dependant on completing the quest and its sub-quests. If you have a death, the party has to take the responsibility to get all their players back into the dungeon so they can continue, and so that the downed player gets his reward. This opens up a method by which gung-ho players can leave their comrades in the lurch, if they're about to complete the quest, and you have two or three other people dead and waiting to get back in for the completion update to their quests. By and large, I have been fortunate enough to have been in groups where everyone looked after everyone else. If a death occurs, we would try to heal/repair them back to life, if not, you'd try and carry their soulstone to the last resurrection shrine, and if not, they'd recall to a tavern and everyone would wait for them to run it back. If you die and recall and then re-enter the active quest dungeon, the overall XP you will get is dimished by a percentage.

The game does seem to promote the need for a slow and methodical way to exploring and questing in the dungeon. Take your time, conserve your skills, use the right person for the job, look after each other, and get the job done. I like this. As I said above, it reminds me very much of my time playing on a Neverwinter Nights Persistant World Server. The 3rd edition D&D ruleset sits perfectly with my idea of how dungeon exploring should go. The more I play this game, the more I seem to fall in love with it.

My greatest concern for the game is whether it will have enough storied quest content to justify the subscription fee? Guild Wars already provides similar storied instance questing (plus a very complete team PvP experience, PvE "free form" hunting with a rudimentary crafting mechanism) for only the box fee - no subscriptions. Repeating the quested content for diminishing returns on XP rewarded will only push the progressing characters forward into the new content, will there be enough of it? They haven't released information on subscription fees, or how that would relate to content provision. I hope they strike a balance that makes it affordable enough for people who like adventuring in the D&D ruleset online, and also provide enough regular new quested content.

RF Online

http://www.codemasters.com/rfonline


First thoughts, "Ah, just a prettier version of Lineage II then". I rolled a Cora "elf" ranger and shot a few arrows at some cute dinosaurs. Didn't inspire me at all. Graphics were really nice, detailed models, very sharp impressive landmarks, environment and terrain a bit bland. Since you are forced to be one of the three races and you can't mix and match them on the same account (for PvP purposes, like DAoC), I trashed the elf and rolled an Accretia "robot" ranger instead. Time to get some guns out.

The Accretian starting zone is very much more impressive, a large nexus that is not a million miles away from having been styled by the people who did the interiors for Phantasy Star Online. Only better. The Accretian robot style is very much japanese killing machine, think 'cool as fook'. The character models are very well done, so much effort going into the detail on them. However, they are all very similar, apart from a few slight modifications to the starting armour, every Accretian looks like every other Accretian out there. So you're more of a soldier pawn in a massive android army, than a deadly unique armour plated assassin.', 'Out you go from the nexus, the Accretian HQ, with your standard issue training gun and a couple of clips of ammo. Your first quest is to kill some cute dinosaurs (that could have starred in several episodes of Barney) with the laughably named the 'Flem' and in addition to frazzle some flying baubel guns known as the 'Wing'. The control mechanism is typically awkward. Holding down the Left mouse button, runs/walks you forward. The Right Mouse button and mouse movement turns you left and right. Forget using WSAD here, but fortunately you can couple directional movement with the cursor keys and rotational movement with the mouse. The interface is minimal and basic, like most other Korean MMO's. You have skills associated with your chosen profession, they seem to be set in stone, and have experience bars by the side of them. So you can choose which skills out of your skill set you want to use and level up. I dragged the fast shot ranged skill onto the quick bar, along with the aiming boost skill. You can start combat by double clicking on the target, or by selecting the target with a left click and then performing a skill on it. You can toggle auto combat on and off.

The whole zone seemed well paced out, by level 2 you'll be in amongst lots of similarly levelled monsters. The dense groups of monsters were easy to find, and the respawn rate was astonishingly fast. Good thing too, since most areas had many many people equally searching for the same things to kill. Monsters dropped weapons, armour, and hunting loot (for crafting with). Loot seemed to drop generously. Your experience seemed to raise with each shot, rather than with each kill. Every successful hit would yield some experience, both in your overall xp gain, and in your skillset (both active skills, such as the fast shot special and passive skills such as defense etc). There was a fair bit of diversity in the monsters you encountered. The quests seemed to be given to you at key times in your development, such as after you've levelled. You didn't visit a quest giver, once the quest was over, you'd be contacted and rewarded, and then given the next quest. The next quest usually being, kill 20 of th next set of monsters you're likely to stumbled upon.

You run around a fair bit, and this is controlled by your stamina bar. You toggle between the very slow walk, or the slowish run. Running uses more stamina, and subsequently you can't run for really long periods of time, unless you have stamina potions. However, most of my gameplay seemed to consist of a run, then plenty of battle, then a run to the next pocket of quest monsters, more battling. So I never really saw the stamina pool affect my play. The only time it became apparent, was when I died a long way away from the nexus and had to leg it back to the area I was in, that long a run, sapped my stamina about three quarters of the way there, so I had to pop a stamina potion to continue running.

In order to use your skills (specials) you need Force power, each special having a force cost, so you had to use them sparingly. Each fight would only allow approximately one or two specials at these low levels. The force pool grows when you level, and so you can then start to fit more specials in. Or there are force potions. Healing out of combat is slow, unless you sit down, which makes you vulnerable to attack. Health potions seemed to be essential if you wanted to keep up a constant rate of combat and not spend lots of downtime sat down regenerating. Healing potions could be used whenever you want, they didn't seem to have any associated cool down period, so when I had the money, I stacked up 99 heal potions and could more or less ensure my saftey, even when fighting quite tough mobs, as long as I could chug potions and the amount healed was bigger than the damage taken I would be ok.

I found as a gun toting ranger, my damage ability was impaired quite a bit, so I also dabbled in swords, axes etc, and started to make much faster progress. So I used my melee abilities quite heavily to finish quests and level up swiftly, and only when I started to find better guns, could I return to levelling my ranged skills. Even though I was a ranger, it seemed as if I could chose to live the life of a melee warrior almost. Dual wielding some rather nice looking swords, I was one cool robot assassin at one point. The specials have enough 'cool value' to make you want to do them again and again. Enchanced effects and really cool acrobatics were the order of the day. All japanese kill style.

There were some high level (named 'Ace') monsters kicking around even in the newbie yard, and you had to be careful not to draw their aggro. They would sometimes notice you attacking a newbie dino, and join in, pursuing you quite a way. This pursuit also meant it was easy enough for someone to train the nasty onto you. The chat channels were thick with people shouting about kill stealing. That went on all night. The game doesn't protect you from Kill stealing whatsoever. In fact with the servers and kill areas chock full of players, you had to ensure you'd do enough damage on a monster as you grabbed its attention, or someone would swoop in and hit it hard and then the kill credit would go to them. As I levelled towards 12, there was an area that was so full of players you'd end up getting one in five of the kills you'd started. That was a bit ridiculous. But I put it down to the gamut of beta players levelling at approximately the same pace as me, and hitting a monster bottleneck.

Parts of the game I didn't manage to sample where the ore collecting, and the PvP. Some determined players already had reached the level limit of 30, and had amassed a PvP force at the appropriate PvP area, and any new players who stumbled out there were being executed by them. Many heated comments about joining the wrong side etc were littered throughout the chat channels. As well as mention of the fact that sometimes PvP come down to who had more health potions. Which didn't sound encouraging.

Weapons and armour seemed to be graded according to level, with certain levels opening up new types of armour and weapons. Such as level 15 being the gateway to the launcher style guns, big heavy duty grenade and rocket launchers which seemed very popular with the robotic rangers. Some armour was tailored with certain skills in mind, such as the Accretia "launcher" armour, which had stats to boost your launcher skill. You also had yellow special weapons with boosted stats (known as the 'intense' weapons), or even purple weapons that were rare and more powerful. A bug existed with the purple ranged weapons at the time (where the stats didn't kick in, or something like that), so the general vibe was go intense weapons if you are a ranger for now.

The musical accompaniment to the whole process was rather splendid, from the wistful login page to the battle chants and emotive racial scores. In fact I liked the music so much, the mp3 score is sitting on a memstick awaiting my attention.

All in all, it was straightforward and stylish. Limited interface and very simplified quest mechanics. Cannot comment on how the PvP will pan out, but the PvE game seems only geared to making a level 30 PvP player out of you. very little in the way of story. However, since I started it at about 8pm, and didn't surface until I had a level 12 Accretian Ranger at 2am, I was embroiled in the experience, and the combat remained satisfyingly exciting.

Guild Wars Preview Event

I know most of you don't want to hear me rattle on about yet another MMORPG. But, this one seems to be very different.

http://www.guildwars.com

I took advantage of the 2 days free session this weekend, and I have been playing it more or less non-stop. I can sum it up in one word. Action.

I thought Guild Wars was primarily a stab at PvP MMORPG. But having steeped myself in their Co-operative quests most of the weekend I can truly say, that the PvP aspects of the game have rarely caught my attention.

GW is basically a bit like Dungeon Siege only multiplayer. This may put some people off. But, I would say give it a try. It's action, all out action, but it has some exquisite quests. They are linear in that your character has to do the first quest to open up the second one. Each quest takes place amongst the world, but is instanced for the party embarking upon it. If you can't make 6 players, then you can take generic AI henchmen (bots basically) of the 5 types (ranger, warrior, monk, elementalist, necro, mesmer).The game is highly detailed. Although its not all shiny like EQ2, however, the world itself is very well modelled, very recognisable all over. It loads bit by bit, in a unique attempt to only download the content you need, so after your initial download of the game files, some quests are loaded on demand during a loading screen, most of these seem to be like 300k so on broadband the wait is very bearable.

The first three quests that I've done many times on my four different characters, were very impressive indeed. The first one being a jaunt through a nasty path between cities, where you meet a confessor at a sort of ruins, and have to endure the onslaught from different directions, with many waves, alternating and combining against you and your team. Bosses included. Then you have to take the news to another chief in another city, coveted by another boss. Once the quest is complete, you get a quite lengthy cutscene, with lots of story, and of you and your team (in the cutscene) being initiated into the order of knights.

The second quest was embarked upon, and you had to retrieve a sacred artifact and return it to a particular village. However, after fighting your way to the artifact, you had to cleanse all your party in a particular font before gaining possession of the artifact. Once cleansed, you go back to the temple where it is stored, and the artifact (which was a glowing eye on top of a pyramid) is then transported by you and your party (literally being hovered over your party's head, with lighting forks of connection attaching the glowing artifact to you and yours). Very well implemented. Never seen anything like that in a MMORPG before. More fighting but with the artifact in tow, and deposit it to the village at the end, another cutscene, with bucketloads of story included.

The third quest, leading on from the cutscene of the second, was a rather nasty affair with lots of beefed up enemies in small tunelled ravines, and massive canyons only traversed by vine bridges that you have to 'grow' by collecting seeds from special vine plants to make the bridges. Cutscene for the first bridge growth, Jack and the Beanstalk style. Plenty of bosses and side exploration quests to perform, whilst on your general journey. The map/radar can be drawn upon to explain directions to the party. Plus you can click and highlight certain points on the map and make the map peep to the rest of the team. Invaluable tools for keeping the party focussed. Basically these quests play out like single player quests, lots of story, lots of complexity and all for a co-op party of 6 and under. Very impressive.

Loot is assigned by the game, no problems there, the game combat mechanism allows for targetting and firing at an enemy, plus alternate targetting and say healing of an ally, once heal stops, auto target and fire back at enemy. Works really well as a bowgirl who heals (ranger/monk combination). Each character has two roles, primary and secondary, skill points are spent between the two. What is novel is that the skills, or specials are bought with money. The first skill you buy, costs 1 gold coin, the next 2 and so on, so the order in which you buy them determines their overall cost. Different trainers sell different skills (for your professions).

Also buffs are handled slightly different, your mana (or energy) regenerates at a given rate, the more buffs you hold onto party members the slower the regen. So you can more or less hold three buffs all the time, if you are near the characters, still having an acceptable rate of regen. If you need more, then drop the buffs for a while, take them up when you can. Equipment and weapons seem to play a more minor role in the game, you can still be effective with your starting kit, only looted stuff later on will make you much better. Most loot seems to be of regular damage, and you can customise it at weaponsmiths, and you seem to be able to crystalise certain skills/spells so you can use them even if its not your profession. Obviously over two days, I can't really comment on the crafting side to the game. Since Skills are related to loot, loot is really important. Every nugget gained, can afford you another skill in the long run. So even tat loot is good loot.

The preview sets you all at level 15 to start with, so perhaps the stuff you can play with is way over the top compared to the retail release, but from what I've seen its something to work towards, and you can certainly get a good feel for the classes.

I honestly had trouble finding downsides to the game. The only ones I can mention are that you can only have 8 skills in operation during a quest, and you have to set these before embarking. And if some of your fickle team decides to abandon you mid quest, you are going to have a hell of a time trying to complete it. Travelling on the world map involves opening spawn points really, and once open (usually through a quest or exploration map) then you can virtually travel there again for free. So third quest leaves you in the middle of nowhere, you can log, come back hours later and log to city, travel to quest site and begin again with another group. All seems very set up for casual players.

Because of the delivery of the game, the whole place seems instanced, everywhere. Even cities have like 30 instances, called districts, so not only do you need to know where your mates are you need to know the district number - think PSO lobbies. Each external place from the city, is also instanced for a party. Even if you're solo, or with just henchmen. Some are exploration, some quest based, some PvP arenas. You chose where you go and what you do. I've spent most of my time in the co-op quest areas though, lots of excitement.

The PvP that I have done, was ok to start off with, some sort of confrontation to deal as a warm up, then into a closed arena for a battle with another party (whilst online they raised the PvP party limit to 8 ). I didn't care for it much, lots of 'we were owned', 'joo sux' etc. Still was good to see PvP so organised, reminded me of Quake 3 in a way. You can even play on the servers when there is a patch pending, several times I had the server has been updated please log out at the next appropriate time. I mean their delivery system of content is just top notch. It all comes down very small bits, as and when you need it. Works brilliantly. The only time you notice it badly is when all party members enter an instance of a quest, and some come in a few moments slower than others because they're still downloading it. But once down and on the go the quest is a self contained peice of story with goals and rewards. And they seem to be able to conjure up quite complex and unique instanced quests - knocks Lost Dungeons of Norrath into a cocked hat.

So, overall, GW is worth the effort, if you like casual action based MMORPG. Probably not going to suit everyone, especially hardened EQ fans I'd guess. But bugger me, they've got a sparkle to the mix here. Since the game will be a purchase the box only, no subscription fee, I can't see it failing in its release. It's just whether they can keep on adding content based on retail box purchases.

Saga of Ryzom Event

Meant to post about this earlier.... Saturday evening, there was a continent wide event run on the European Server in the MMORPG Saga of Ryzom. Luckily I was around when the event kicked off.

The event was announced throughout the continent of Fyros, with a small description about an invasion force kidnapping a number of Levier nobles. The Leviers are a band of nomadic patrollers who wander the wastelands and deserts of Fyros. The event lasted about 2 hours and at the start of it, we noticed that a lot of the resident herds of animals and insects started dissappearing. The call to arms was made, and every player in the region was asked to search out the Frahar kidnap groups and set their prisoners free. The Frahar are bat winged apes that have facial that even Noddy Holder would be proud of. Everyone started migrating to the major city Pyr, to collect up and form searching parties, and on our way to the city, we were attacked by quite a large invasion force. The way Nevrax implemented the invasion was quite effective. There seemed to be spawn points peppered all over the land and if a player or group of players approach it, the invasion force spawns. The invasion group was made up of a large number of these monkies, and their companion guard and patrol dogs. So to the players moving around, you would get a horde of angry beasts coming over the next dune and making a charge at you. Very effective. The invasion groups seemed to be quite low level at first, so we could cleave through them quite easily, but the closer you got to key event areas their level and quantity raised quite sharply. What impressed me the most was the event was continent wide, and everyone from level 1 to level 200 could take part in it. The invading forces were indeed very intimidating, and if you spotted them forming at the base of a hill, and then they detect your presence, a whole stream of these nasties amassing and charging towards was a very unsettling sight. There were three or four kidnap camps, as far as we could tell from the region chat, guilds were grouping together and performing area searches. Initial confusion slowly turned into determined searching and hunting down the camps. Once all kidnap camps had been liberated, there was a call to say that the 'boss' had arrived on the planet and was sending in more monkey patrols. We got close to the boss camp, but were swamped by really nasty monkies.

I haven't been on a MMORPG event as such, not one with a real story behind it and a continent wide level of co-operation. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and although there was little experience points to be gained at first, because the invading forces were quite low level, there was a sense of city defence and a purpose to save the Levier troops. The only downside I could see was the fact that they removed most of the normal flora and fauna, so you were more or less thrown into the event, without the choice of sticking around the area you were hunting in. I should explain the continent level of segragation. Basically, in Ryzom the four races don't get to see each other, or travel to each others cities very easily. We're emerging from our beaten down state to fight against the kitin horde. To get to the other races continents involves a nasty run and usually lots of deaths and lots of luck is needed. So the isolation is real. Nevrax seem to be running different events for the different continents. So the Matis had an event about a week ago, where they were swamped by an insurgence of starship trooper like bugs. Not sure how often these events will happen, or how they will differ from the invasion model, but I'm looking forward to the next one.

Camelot - A lesson in Realm vs Realm Gaming

Last night, after piddling around in Hibernia with Saulf and Halen, under the guidance of Nym and Telmorial we tasted our first (my second) bit of RvR spanking. It was very tense, and strangely exciting, creeping around the Milefort and flitting about with worried expressions on our faces.

We headed out to find ourselves some action. We stumbled across a small collection of enemies and we proceeded to puff out or chests and stare each other out. One was a massive troll with the taste of human blood on his mind. I foolishly thought, hide in the trees, within healing range. So I crept over to my hideout. Although in a full RvR battle this plan might have worked, in a small group battle it wasn't the best option. I was alone. Away from my protectors, and a stealthed little kobold had obviously watched me slunk off. So he come round my behind, and promptly slit my throat. I didn't die straight away, and even popped a repel evil on him, but alas I was doomed, my insta heal and sprint could not save me. Before anyone else knew it I was down.

This act of barbaric savagery without thought for honour or combat-manship could only have come from these fat dark simpletons from the other realm. Anyway, it lead to a frontal attack from the troll, he charged our party, the uncloaked kobold had already met his end to them and they netted some well earned realm points. The troll was now beating down on our party, Nym threw me a rez, and in my rage I decided it was time for a mez and another repel evil.. erm with my health less that nought, and my power about the same. My gourd had risen and my instincts told me to attack. How foolish your instincts can be at times. I should have ran to the hills, rested a little, healed and maybe pop off a smite. Instead I chose to stand there and get my bonker out. One swift cast from the trollie and I was down again. What a pillock I am! Our party started falling, although they gave him a good run for his money, and he was almost done - when Saulf breathed his last breath and the Troll found some luck that day. Damnit. One smite from a half eaten cleric could have swung the outcome. What a pillock I am!

Well, all was not lost I suppose. We'd had our first real encounter, and some of us had gained realm points, and it was a welcome intermission from our levelling treadmill.

After being blooded we decided to do some forest sausage mobs, however on our way back to castle sausage, there was a gathering. About 40 Albion players, organising themselves into groups and practising group movement and co-ordination. What a sight! I decided to lurk about and listen in on the yells. A couple of guilds were getting together a sizable RvR force, and they moving in staggered phased groups anticipating enemies and assigning tasks to each phase. They even had some members (dressed in black) acting out enemy attacks. Very organised, or at least trying to be very organised. Anyway, I decided to tag along with them and see what transpired.

We spent about half an hour practising phased movements at the keep over in Hibernia. It was good to see so many Albion folk move as a co-ordinated whole. After a while, we moved over to the Milefort. There was word of an approaching Midguard offensive. I spent my time, buffing the tanks I could, moving in a confusing manner around near the gate (acting my role of disruption officer) and generally taking in the battle atmosphere. An attack started, plenty of fireworks from our caster teams, and the phased attack system seemed to be working quite well. I nipped in and out of healing range and healed who I could. The enemy starting sending runners forward into our backlines and several of our frontline pulled back to take care of them. I rezzed as many fallen comrades as I could. We had about four runners that made it to the Milefort gates but who were viciously pounded down. The main Midguard attack group were still engaged at our frontline, and a number of them were dispatched and the remainder fled. I felt pretty good healing the wounded from the frontline as they stumbled back to the gates. Obviously the Middies will be back with larger numbers and after this initial battle our numbers seemed to dwindle a bit. The next objective was to take Milefort and hold it. So we mobilised what we had and in staggered phased fashion we moved onto Milefort2. When we got there, there was already a number of big trolls waiting for us. Spread out and exhausted we waited for the remainder of our lot to assemble up, ready for battle. There seemed to be a very long time between getting there and any action starting. Some mentioned that this pause in the attack, affords the enemy time to assemble troops from further afield to join in later. The attack began, I was well behind our main force and again as the tanks engaged volleys of firecrackers were being slung in to the mix. I could see the Midguard Mez holding our boys at the front. I think the yellow sparkle of death rousted some of our troops to move forward onto the caster. It was to lead to our deaths. The guards from the keep ran out to meet our boys, currently either mezzed or engaged in combat. Our front lines were falling. I ran in closer to get within healing range and healed a couple of folks who were still moving around but were hurt bad, and on my way out caught the infectious lemon sparkle myself. I tried all I could to break it with insta heals and group heals - but alas, nothing fired off. I was pinned waiting my turn for slaughter. I was kept waiting for what seemed like an eternity - held against my will, forced to watch others being slain, without any means of helping out. Suddenly, a purple jet of smoke surrounded me and shot up in the sky, I felt my body racked with pain and along come a troll and flattened me with one blow. All I could do was gasp at the carnage and watch as the stragglers where taken down systematically by a combination of the enemy troops and their marauding guards. Not sure how many of our troops escaped with their lives, but it was very few. There seems to be some really pretty but effective group casts that wipeout several people at once. It was a nasty place to be caught that night.

Anyway, top fun! Really enjoyed feeling a part of the "big thing" - even though I was just a hanger on.

I can't wait to get much higher - so that I can feel a more effective part of the battle group, rather than just a cursory low level who can heal and rez a bit if he stays alive long enough.

Camelot: Arthurian Excitement

DAoC, has the levelling treadmill in there, but it isn't as painful as EQ. The quests system is very clever and keeps you busy. You can get "kill tasks" of any guards for experience and cash. Also, there is a bonus if you don't camp a mob. Rare items drop less and less the more you have been camping. It promotes moving on to kill rather than sitting in one spot and raping it.

You get to level 5 and then specialise. After that you are free to specialise in your trained disciplines. The game is geared towards making levelling a nice and fairly fast experience - they want you in the Realm vs Realm game. So you level up to 20+ in player vs environment (a la EQ) then you take an army of you into another realms frontier lands and try to kill them and/or take over their forts and keeps. You earn realm points for kills and victories. You can spend these later of special realm items. It takes what EQ started and makes it more enjoyable, nicer to look at, and adds the spice of not only gearing up to level up, but specialising your character to be successful in battle.

I play a cleric. Now in EQ clerics heal. Mainly. In Camelot, you specialise and you can be a healing cleric, or a smiting cleric (mainly direct damage spells and area mezmerise). You can balance your skills between the two, or go with one or the other. The classes are much more flexible and you can tweak them as you want. The Realm vs Realm stuff bristles with elements from Team Fortress Classic and other combat based games, advancing over EQ's player vs Player stuff. You are battling for land and territories and ancient artifacts that bestow statistical bonuses on all players in your realm. Top stuff. Very exciting. Lovely to look at. I can see me playing Camelot a lot longer than EQ or PSO ever held me, and thats saying something!!!

Dark Age of Camelot: Excalibur

Well, my life has been taken over by this game. I knew it would be big, but not this big. An obsession that equals my PSO one.

It's basically a much nicer to look at, well rounded online role playing game. It caters for people who can't afford massive time committments. Levelling isn't as arduous as in EverQuest. The questing mechanism relaly is entertaining and enjoyable. The characters are based in Arthurian legend (on the realm I play) and there is good scope for taking each class and specialising them in different ways (eg. a cleric could be a smiting force, or more healing and enhancements).

Watch this space for some of my antics within the game. Since I imported Camelot from the US, I haven't really touched any other game.

Back to the Grindstone

Everquest has been described as an "Endurance Test". This is true. Levelling up can be very hard work, and extremely time consuming. In fact, it is for this reason, that I have abstained from EQ for a number of months. My EQ gaming was also put on hold due to the arrival of Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast.

Well, I am desperately trying to find reasons for me to continue with Everquest. The characters I have are all level 20 or lower. I would like to get them higher - but this involves vast amounts of playing time - and without new places to go and explore or new mobs to kill - it just becomes tedious.

The worst of it is that you have to battle for the mobs that do spawn. Most of them are camped, particularly when playing at peak times. This is not fun. Not only is it painfully slow to make progress with a character, but now your progress is made even slower due to the sheer numbers of people online.

I enjoyed Everquest because it gave you a 3d environment in a fantasy setting to explore worlds and battle creatures in a team. The pioneer spirit that once spurred me to put in 3 and 4 hours at a time, has dwindled. In fact the game is so slow in making progress that 3 to 4 hours are just not enough! The higher your character the more difficult the progression becomes. Now verant might argue that this is to make the game suitably challenging and gives a dedicated player something to aim for. The truth is probably to keep your monthly paying userbase from completing the game and moving on. Apart from the *real* die-hards, most people just haven't got the time necessary to invest in their characters to gain high levels.

Perhaps I will go back and find the servers have quitened down enough for my character to progress. Perhaps the new expansions planned will draw characters away to new lands whilst those long-sufferers of camped mobs can get a sword or arrow in edge-ways. Perhaps I'll deliberate about playing the game again for another month and Verant can have some more of my money, for free, just to keep my characters alive.