Continue reading »]]> This is a sidebar widget I saw on MMOCrunch today. I don’t normally go to MMOCrunch (in fact, I’m not sure I ever have), but when reading an article earlier today this chart caught my attention. Apparently it’s the best “free MMORPGs” as voted by their users. Apparently that term just means “doesn’t need a subscription”, because otherwise I don’t know what Guild Wars 2 is doing on there.For the most part the chart seems surprisingly solid and I would play a lot of these. I’m kind of amazed by the score for Allods Online, considering how much hate the game has gotten in recent times over various changes. I can’t speak on those changes personally (maybe they’re even overblown, but what do I know?), but when I played it many months ago it was pretty decent. It’s still just surprising, particularly when it and Runes of Magic are the only games that have even cracked 8 out of 10.

Then I look at the bottom of the list and see that MapleStory has a 7.5. It makes me sound like a snob, but it kind of makes the 7s almost every other game on this list has received seem pretty suspect, haha. If someone thinks LOTRO is an only miniscule amount better than MapleStory, then I’m not sure what I can say to them.

I’m sure it means little in the scheme of things. Who knows what game communities promote these things to help inflate numbers, etc. Who knows what interests the average crowd there compared to me. I was just  surprised.

Continue reading »]]> Like most people, I’m excited about Guild Wars 2. The original is still a solid title and the sequel is looking strong.

That said, I really do not get the Asura race. They really, really turn me off. I know this is a totally aesthetic thing that I’ll just have to get over, but just seem so out of place and weird to me. They seem to be the title’s answer to Halflings or Hobbits or Gnomes . . . but when I first saw shots of them I thought I was looking at some sort of Troll doll MMO.

An Asura with a Golem

I’ll get over it quickly, but I was still kind of taken aback.

Continue reading »]]> We’ve known that Fallen Earth was going “Free to Play” for some time now, care of GamersFirst. The official date now is October 12th, 2011. In some ways I think the huge gap between the announcement and the model change probably hurt. I suppose it gave some time for veterans to temper their expectations of the change and new comers, which can be a good thing. At the same time, I think the gap also created a dip in enthusiasm about the switch. Particularly now that we know Star Trek Online is officially going F2P too.

I’ve played both at various stages in their development, and honestly, despite the weight of the Star Trek license, I’d rather play Fallen Earth again. This is despite the fact that my friends have only shown interest in Star Trek Online. I’m willing to ditch them over this one, although obviously I’m sure I’ll play both to some degree.

Fallen Earth stuck out the premium subscription model longer than I think many people thought it would. I was never under the impression it was going anyway anytime soon, but a shift to F2P can mean an incredible increase in revenue. Turbine has already seen this with Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Despite what you may or may not think about their approach, it definitely ensured the game would be sticking around. Sometimes that in and of itself is a very good thing. I think with Fallen Earth it’s an especially good thing, simply because there’s not really anything like it on the market.

Fallen Earth has always been a niche title for many reasons. Despite that, this can really give it a chance to expand. You have the obvious infusion of new blood, but it also means that the development team will likely have more revenue that they can reinvest into the game itself. The plus here is that, so far at least, the new free versus 3 levels of premium model Fallen Earth is adopting seems pretty fair.

So I hope when the time comes that people give this game a chance. It’s not for everyone, but this is finally a good time to try something that maybe you would have ignored before.

Continue reading »]]> So my plodding along in Final Fantasy XIV continues. No magic moment yet, but I did read something on Massively today that was heartening about an upcoming patch:

The UI changes include the long-requested feature to make aetheryte, retainer bells, and similar environmental objects directly targetable. But that’s the least of the improvements that include a UI lock feature, several adjustments to text colors to help indicate item quality and rank, and an auto-compare feature for equipment bought from vendors or retainers. While there’s still no word on exactly when FFXIV players can look forward to the update going live, all signs point to “soon” for the latest major update.

How soon is soon? Who knows. If it’s before  my subscription ending, that would be quite nice. In my earlier post about this game, I complained most vocally about the horrendous UI in this game. Even that sort of change would go a long way and instills some hope that Square Enix is making some smart decisions.

Continue reading »]]> People have been able to pre-order Rise of Isengard for LOTRO from Turbine for a while now. This is handled through the Turbine Web store and they offer three different packages, ranging from $30 to $50.

Everyone has wondered what Turbine’s plans for Rise of Isengard would be in the actual in-game LOTRO Store. It’s long been hinted that they would be available piecemeal and today Sapience posted on the official forums confirming this.

Isengard Expansion Quests
Available in the LOTRO Store September 27 (Isengard Launch) for 3250 Turbine Points
Over 375 Quests and more than 40 Deeds for characters level 66-75 in the following regions

• Dunland — Adventure amidst the bright forests in the foothills of the southern Misty Mountains. Beware the Dunland Clans, rugged warriors tempted by the dark promise of power.
• Gap of Rohan — Battle over the legendary pass between Eriador and the plane of Rohan. This key strategic point must be defended against the ambitions of Sauron.
• Isengard — Explore Orthanc, one of the iconic Two Towers as it rises over the once beautiful Isengard valley. The once beautiful vale now desecrated beyond imagination by the Wizard Saruman the betrayer.

Raid: Draigoch’s Lair
Available in the LOTRO Store September 27 (Isengard Launch) for 1250 Turbine Points

• Face the ancient evil of Draigoch, one of the most powerful creatures in Middle-earth! Prepare for the ultimate challenge where nothing less than the strength of an entire force of 24 heroes stands the chance of victory

Derudh’s Stone
Available in the LOTRO Store September 27 (Isengard Launch) for 995 Turbine Points
A permanent pocket item that grants +25% XP on Monster Kills when equipped. This item binds to the purchasing character. Usable by characters level 1-64.

Expansion Instances
Available with Update 5, currently slated for December, for 1495 Turbine Points

• One 12-player instance
• One 6-player instance
• Three 3-player instances

So, basically, if you’ve saved up your Turbine Points, you’ll need a total of 5995 points. This is more than $60 in real money, although it’s eased up a bit by the sales offered on TP from time to time.

This is more expensive than I expected. I thought the prices would be slightly more comparable to those offered in the web store. As an example, the $30 package included all this content. The $40 package also included this content, with the addition of cosmetic clothing, a horse and 1,000 TP. The $50 package included all of that, plus all flavors of clothing and horses and a bunch of other quest packs.

I want to reiterate that if you’ve pre-ordered, you will get all the Update 5 instances coming this December too. If, for example, you only bought the Isengard quest pack and the new raid (which are all that will be available at launch), you’d still be paying $45. That’s pretty awful when compared to the $50 pre-order package, particularly when they plan to sell the bonus Derudh’s Stone for over $10.

So it’s easy to see the value in pre-ordering if you truly care about Rise of Isengard. I feel for those of you who have saved up or bought a bunch of TP hoping to use it toward this expansion… Perhaps Turbine means for the price difference to make up for the fact that VIPs get 500 points per month and that you can gain points by completing deeds. Either way, I’m somewhat surprised by it.

I guess it is what it is. Nothing will change it. That said:

There’s still time to pre-order. If you really care about getting the most for your money, I really suggest you do it before it’s too late.

Continue reading »]]> For my birthday in August, I was given a Best Buy gift card. I had no idea what to do with it and it was burning a hole in my pocket. Instead of waiting mere weeks for some games I knew I would enjoy, I brought myself to spend $29.99 on Final Fantasy XIV.

At this point, word had gone around for months that Square Enix knew this game was a mess. The most obvious aspect of this being that they extended the free trial period for owners because they knew people would refuse to pay for it. In recent weeks, I had heard that the game had supposedly made great strides. Square Enix was outright admitting its problems and going so far as changing the leadership of the game entirely. If only more organizations out there would own up to their mistakes, I thought.

Getting Started

Once I got home, though, I quickly started realizing that this purchase might have been a mistake. After installing from the disc, I had to update the game. Now, I’m aware there have been many, many patches since launch. Even so, there’s no reason this process should take this long when I’m capable of downloading 1.5 MBs per second. I was lucky to crack 100K per second and the process took the entire evening.

The process’s design recalls PlayOnline, Final Fantasy XI’s system for accessing the game and related information. It’s nowhere complicated (really, it’s just used for a handful of menus before starting the game proper), but aesthetically it’s extremely similar. In both games, there’s that weird “floaty” feel while controlling it too. It just never feels right.

Once the game installed, I tried making my account. It seemed to go well enough, until I clicked on the “play” button in the launcher and was given a message implying the servers were down. I tried again and it worked fine. This is something that has actually happened to me multiple times now. I have no idea what causes it, but I have no reason to think it’s my fault.

Creating a character is an all too familiar process for two reasons: one, it’s painfully slow because every menu change has an unnecessary delay (in addition to the previously mentioned weird floaty feel of the mouse) and two, the races are essentially identical to the ones in FFXI. I knew this already, but it’s just disappointing. At least they look really good.

I made my character and was transported into the game.

Starting Off in the World

After some admittedly nice cut scenes in-game and a short battle you couldn’t possibly lose, the game proper starts. This is essentially where everything becomes confusing. You’re essentially dropped into this world and left to figure almost everything out on your own.

Running around in Ul'Dah

What I thought was odd was that the game essentially went out of its way to get me to leave the town. I had no idea what anything within it was actually for and most of the icons on the mini-map are not explained in the map legend. I eventually figured out there were people I could talk to that gave out quests and other pieces of information that weren’t marked whatsoever. The obvious NPCs related to your quest generally have a “?” icon over their heads, but there are places to get quests that are not marked like this. I talked to someone who was represented by what I assume is a blue jewel in the mini-map and she had several quests of all types I could take on. I took some and continued on with the main questline.

It brought me around town, visiting specific guild locations, but in no way explaining what in the world I was supposed to do with any of them. So this is the guild for Botanists… Great. You can get a quest from the guild, but there’s literally no explanation on how to actually do anything. I quickly just left these places, continuing with the main questline hoping perhaps it explained these things and that was I getting ahead of myself.

The first questline eventually leads you to a camp (far) outside the city where you can continue on. You can start the quests you gathered in town here (which I still find convoluted, as you have to return to town to get any more) or continue the main questline. The first thing I had to do was kill some enemies. This is the first time that I really realized how convoluted almost everything in this game is.

To start the quest, you need to access a crystal in the camp. You can’t click the crystal at all. Instead, you have to get close to it and wait for an icon to appear in your interface. You can then click on this icon, which opens your main menu. Then you click an option on the list to actually interact with the crystal. This opens a separate menue in the center of the screen, where you can pick what you actually want to do with the crystal. I finally was able to pick my quest and was basically separated from everyone else in the camp.

That’s the oddest thing about this game, in many ways. It goes out of its way to separate you from the fact that this is supposedly a MMORPG. Almost every other thing is instanced in some way. I don’t really understand the point of this approach (considering how often you see bunches of the same few enemies in each area, it’s not like there aren’t enough to hunt normally), but it is what it is.

So the a timer appears and the mini-map points to where I need to go. I go there, kill the enemies and the quest ends. Eventually a “node” appears, which allows you to finish the quest and, if you wish, return to camp. I do so. OK, one quest down. Convoluted, but doable.

Starting My First Craft

My main questline then requests that I make some bread for someone. In most games, there would be some decent information telling you what you have to do. In this game, those bits of information largely just do not exist. I had to make some bread for someone, but I was a Thaumaturge, not a Culinarian. What was I supposed to do?

Luckily there are people nice enough to explain all of this on the Internet and you can pretty easily figure out which items you need to change your class. So I needed a frying pan, fair enough. Once I equip this, my class will change. I finally find a NPC who sells one since my starting town doesn’t have a Culinarian Guild. I equip it and my class changes as expected. OK, not so bad.

I make it back to the camp where I’m to continue this quest. Now it’s time to actually make the bread. A NPC nearby informs me that she doesn’t care if I use their crafting facilities. The weird thing is that there’s nothing around that even looks like a “facility”.

Apparently this enables the option that allows me to craft in the camp, but the game does almost nothing to make you aware of this fact.  So here I am, assuming that if I’m standing in the right place I’ll see an icon on the top of my screen saying that there is a facility to interact with so I can cook something.

Nope.

Fun with menus in Final Fantasy XIV

I have to open the main menu, which now has another option that allows me to start crafting. My character whips out his cooking gear and I’m presented with what I suppose is best called a crafting mini-game”. You have to pick from a few separate options (wait, craft normally, craft while focusing on success with a higher rate of decomposition to the item, etc.) and attempt to fill up a “progress” meter without breaking the item you’re trying to make. On one level I liked the fact that there was more to do beyond clicking a button. On every other level, the system is just… convoluted. The game tries to imply that there is a rhyme and reason for why picking one choice in this menu over another, but I never really understand what that was. Eventually, I just started clicking between two options because that seemed to be for the best. Sometimes my item would craft, sometimes it wouldn’t. Either way, you use the crafting materials. I soon found myself out of the allotment of ingredients the quest giver had provided.

The Problems… And More Problems

Every single thing in this game is at least this needlessly tedious. Even using skills in your quickslot bar doesn’t work how you’d expect. And perhaps the single most bone-headed move as far as all of this goes: you can only work in one menu at a time. You want to click on something else in the main menu? Too bad, you have to close every other menu you have open first. That’s just outright nuts.

I imagine some of the menu setup is due to the plans to release this game on the PS3 eventually, but even with a controller this game is needlessly bogged down by menus. I have to wonder why Square Enix couldn’t figure out how to retain what makes this game work while actually developing a PC-centric control scheme for the computer.

Final Fantasy XIV does have some good ideas. For one, I do like that users can set up their own little shops to sell items instead of relying on an auction house. Like most things in this game, they’ve improved upon it and actually allow you to search now. Unbelievably, this wasn’t an option before and players had to go to each individual shop hoping that someone actually had what they wanted at a price that was reasonable. This is hardly a unique concept to the game (you see it in almost every other Korean MMORPG on the market) and I would like if it complemented a full Auction House, but it’s something.

More interesting is its class system, which I suppose is most similar to jobs systems in non-online Final Fantasy games. You’re not stuck with the class you choose at the outset of character creation. If you want to be another class, all you need to do is equip that class’s main tool or weapon. Experience applies to your “physical level” (the level of your character regardless of how good you are at any given class) and your “class level” (which is unique to each class). So you could be a Level 20 character that’s a Level 5 fisher and a Level 13 Thaumaturge, for example. This allows you to, really, be whatever you want. Given that the default monthly fee only includes one character slot, this aspect of the game is pretty welcome. It means you really always do have something you can work on if you want to do so. I hate to gloss over this because it’s truly something that is great about this game, but it’s just so hard to care.

I really do want to believe that somewhere underneath all of this weirdness there’s a good game. I just wonder if it matters. I don’t mind complexity in my games, nor do I mind difficulty. I don’t expect handholding to the point of absurdity. I’ve played MUDs and Ultima Online and others with no issues, why do these Final Fantasy MMORPGs seem even harder to get into? If you make a game that tries to undo so many conventions in this genre, you better damn well explain how it works. There’s a reason why certain things are conventions and that’s because they make sense.

I’m going to keep trying to get my $29.99 out of this game for the first month and maybe it’ll click. We’ll see.