Feeling Alive

I was reading Hunter's entry on his first impressions of the GW2 beta and he commented on how "Cities feel more alive than SWTOR.." I want to understand that; most capital cities are seen mostly as a hub for people to meet up but doesn't do very much more. You don't go because you want to, but because you have to.


I'm going to brainstorm on some reasons to make a city feel more alive because currently in more mmo's imho is for:


- skill trainers & crafting trainers; possibly making them have special skills/recipes/discounts at certain times


- capital city leaders; normally infrequently used, even at high levels


- pvp npcs that teleport you to the battlegrounds


- show off your gear/mounts


- banks and auction houses; probably 95% of the reason why you're there


So what other activities can make a player want to go a city and make it feel more alive?

- public quests built into the city; similar to WAR's system, Mythic had quests and public questing areas (arena) built into the city. Making them accessible at all levels is sometimes hard, possibly making it a daily activity with fluff rewards can work here


- a relatively cheap money sink via mini game/luck-based game. I know WoW had the bejewelled game built into the fast travel, this could be implemented into future mmos as well but only installed in the city instead, kind of like WoW's Darkmoon Faire, but year round within the city.


- I believe a 'more alive' feel for the city was partially b/c of your personal story area in GW2. If only there was a way to be able to affect more of the city and see an actual effect; now that would be engaging.


- more puzzles, easter eggs and special achievements for exploring the city. From the looks of GW2, the city looks huge; there ought to be many different places to explore for background lore.


- guild housing; GW2 takes care of personal housing via the personal story instanced area, but guild housing would be a nice touch too, preferably farther away; what benefits would guild housing be? Possibly fast travel to dungeons, other cities, or pvp areas.

Making the Impossible, Possible.

From my gameplay, the top 3 souls from each calling that i've seen:

Warrior:
Beastmaster

Paladin
Reaver

Cleric:
None; b/c no one plays a cleric! :P
Ok fine; Druid

Rogue:
Ranger
Saboteur
Bard

Mage:
Pyromancer
Necromancer
Elementalist

What have you seen as favorite/frequently used souls? (i like being less frequently used souls)

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I must commend Trion on once again surpassing my wildest dreams and kind of causing me to play till 3 this morning.

Mythic helped me grow to love my first tank class ever: The Blackguard. With the cool looks, polearms (memories of UO) and my pocket healer which had me taking down 5-8 monsters at a time, I was instantly attracted. Trion continued that love with the Paladin which had countless aoes. And now I understand the love of Captain America; using your shield as a primary weapon and flinging it at your enemy gives you a such a rush. The skill Bullrush in the Champion soul reminds me of Gundam Seed and I absolutely love that anime. Constantly jump and fly into an enemy's face? Yes please!


Trion has possibly done the impossible; making a melee stealth dps an interesting and fun experience for me. If i've ever played a dps class, it was always ranged, whether it be magic or arrows. It would never be an assassin. Thing is, once people closed that gap and got into the face of the ranged dps, you were done: Game over. I've been playing alot more pvp recently as it is my girl friend's choice of activity and found alot of people were ranged and i've always liked being unique.
And then I made a 32 Assassin, 10 Nightblade, 0 Bladedancer. And it worked. Solo is incredibly fast; I can manage 3+ monsters at a time, and sometimes down a monster in 3 hits. THREE hits. Thats impressive. I haven't tried pvp, but i'm quite sure ill be a terror on the battlefield now.

No Room to Breathe

Is instancing overall good or bad?

These people that go into their own instances are removed from the actual game world. I like my game world to be busy and crowded. At the same time, I like having my own instance so there isnt' kill stealing, leeching, ninja looting and having that protection from being ganked.

But if everyone has their own instance, the world becomes empty.
Right?
Well, not necessarily; there will always be people who like to solo, or don't like/need to do things that require an instance. At the same time, its the responsibility of the developers to ensure the servers are populated to a degree so its not over-crowded or empty.
Its possibly the reason why Mythic recently introducted the Skaven to WAR; to get people out of scenarios and back into o-rvr. Nothing was worse/boring in that game than attacking empty keeps in zergs.. and even worst protecting a keep with an empty battlefield.. hence the beauty of cultivation and the mods for them... GOOOOO DYES!!

Once again, reminisce of a simpler time when there were no chat channels, where possibly the most populated place was the bank (it still is in a way) and b/c of that everyone hawked their wares there. The screen would be flooded with text. People had their favorite vendors and hangouts, there was guild housing.. and places that was normally deserted b/c it was out of the way, but still visited for the rare services they provided. I loved the city of Magincia in UO where the graveyard was always busy with people and undead, or the quiet of Yew's monastery and how exciting it was when people were actually there. Or letting out a sigh of relief when bogged down with loot from a dungeon and finding out the new comers to the dungeon were friendly and not gankers. The world was busy b/c alot of people were online and in the same area. The world could be empty but have alot of people online not because they were in their own private instance, but b/c they were somewhere else in the same world, making it busy in that area.

Busy busy

The next Borderlands?

In development by Id Software, the same makers of Quake and Doom...
Read more here

Added my Deviant Art link, Pat's and Soto's website links. All great photos found on each site. Give it a look if you have time =)

More cosplayers!

Get your fix =)

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This is another pay plan I was thinking that you don't see... or atleast that I haven't seen yet.

Pay-as-you-go:
1.50$-2.50$ an hour
To the normal 15$ a month

So that comes out to approximately 6-10 hours a month..For people with limited game time; they can pay per hour they play. Great if you don't think you're getting 15$ dollars worth. Obviously the more hardcore players won't even need to look at this option.. though if the company wants to be flexible, they might work out a deal that a specific month they can change from subscription to pay per hour if say they know they'll be busy or on vacation and not have access to the internet/game. Also great for Weekend Warriors who save rest xp for when they have time to play.

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Warhammer Online - Cross Faction Announcement

I'm a little late on the subject, but I did write about it as soon as I read it, just too busy these days to get everything done at one time. I now have a Deviant Art account.. soo i'm gonna be even more busy ;)

Bad. Idea.
I generally would like to think of the positive side to new ideas/concepts.. but I can't really think of how this helps anyone..

Concepts:
More traffic on lower tiers
+ people would re-roll on the same server instead of taking people away from the server
+ these maxed out people won't be facing off against newly maxed out (lvl40) characters, making gear a bit more balanced
- T4 might not be as busy anymore.. possible more server merges?

Balanced servers
+ if a side is too dominant, the dominant people will go over to balance it, while the weaker side can go to the dominant side so they don't lose interest
- communication; there WILL be spying which kind of makes it unfair.. sure there may be spying anyways, but it will be more prevalent (even with lockout timers)
- if you have many characters, you may not have enough character slots

More interest in the game overall
+ losing all the time sucks, going over to the winning side is always nice, having a challenge is also fun
+ no one likes to move (servers), now you can stay on your familiar servers
- its cheap; you don't like losing, go to the winning side :P
- when I make alts, i tend to lose interest in my older characters, I have 2 DoKs, 1 Blackguard, 1 Sorc, 1 Magus and my current favorite: Squig Herder.. add some Order guys.. and i'll losing interest in playing Destro

After re-reading what I wrote.. there seems to be more positives to this than negatives. My main argument is that some people (ie: me) see's this as a cop-out/catering to some whim or just wasn't explained fully and I cross my fingers that it is implemented correctly. I've seen fantastic ideas poorly implemented all the time which resulted in catastrophe and this is not something the Mythic should mess up on. Yes, it sounds fanboi-ish but it isn't meant to; its mostly because a concept such as this cannot really be reversed. People will scream bloody murder if characters need to be transferred or even deleted.

If it has to be done, it has to be fleshed-out and implemented smoothly. Its never good to criticize without giving solutions, so this is my solution, Shadowar is more knowledgeable in timer-lockouts than I am, but i'd go further and say 2 weeks, 14 day lockouts. If you really want to move over, you must stick with it for 14 days; no spying, no just-b/c-i-can-or-feel-like-it, no messing with the opposing faction. Make a commitment to your choice or either play on a different server or get another account.

Better now than never..

Its all over the blogosphere, but here's what Mythic put out today in regards to the billing error that affect many players recently:

Over the past 15 years we have always strived to do what’s best for our players. We are truly sorry, and want to work to make things right and restore our relationship. We hope you will accept this small token of our appreciation for your continued commitment to our games:

For starters all players will earn 100% bonus experience and renown when killing enemies and monsters for two weeks. As well, during this time we’ll be hard at work designing and implementing a special vendor. This vendor will only accept special tokens that will be sent to your mailbox, using these two tokens each of your characters will be able to receive two of the following items:
Bottomless Chaos Black Dye
Bottomless Skull White Dye
Imperial Griffon Mount (Order)
Enslaved Manticore Mount (Destruction)
WAR Tract – earn a free level
Choose from any of these pets – Order: Imperial Hunting Hound or Dwarf Keg Handler; Destruction: Warlord’s Fell Hound or the Goblin Bar-Back.
Change your appearance with any of these illusion items: Skaven Skin Cloak (skaven), Kossar’s Helm (bear), or the Signet of the Cursed Company (skeleton)

Please accept this gesture as a step towards rebuilding our relationship. From all of us at Mythic, we thank you for your time, your commitment, and your trust that helps us to make great games year after year.

It's purely coincidental that I started up the Warhammer Endless Trial and initiated a 1.4gig patch, the same day there is news of Mythic's letter in the herald of the billing fiasco. I've always had an itch to play my White Lion character; it was one of the last characters I played before I deactivated my account since everyone I knew stopped playing. I love the art and concept of the class (melee dps with evolving pet) so much, that I keep a picture as my cell phone wallpaper (along with a squig herder).

I've always loved Warhammer, the game, and Mythic the company; its a great game with it's own unique issues due to it's own attempt at a new player experience (orvr, castle seige mechanic, 24 class balance). Mythic always seemed to have great interest in their community and even though there were great hurdles in the game, the company did and continues to do it's best to show they're trying, taking our feedback and that they're worthy of our hard-earned subscription dollars.

Keep up the good work!

Flawed System?

If Mythic did anything right, it was the Tome of Knowledge.
Can anyone agree with that?
It tracks everything you do, every little thing there is a reward and gets increasingly harder to achieve the next level.
They reward you for finding special things and putting time into it. Its all for your own personal glory, and nothing is 'that' special that everyone will seek it as well. If you don't want to, you don't have to do it. You're not stupid if you don't want lots of unlocks.

Now the achievement on the 360 system I personally don't like it.
You want to have a high score compared to other people and you always can see how many points they have; its not something you guess that they have alot of.
Case in point:

I bought Loderunner on xbox live yesterday. I used to play the computer version AGES ago on my uncle's computer.. it was really fun. I found that I was so obsessed with getting achievements that I wasn't having fun. I was getting really far in the game, but no achievements.
If there wasn't any achievements, I would be having tons of fun, killing baddies, getting gold, completing complex puzzles.
Instead I spent my time distraught that I only got 2 of 12 very hard unlocks [ie. get all the gold off enemies you trap... meaning you can't touch any of them and are blocked from most of the map]

Sometimes the achievements come from just doing what you're doing. Sometimes they're really freaking hard to get; you gotta time it perfectly.
And you dont' get anything with these points. Couldn't you use it to get additional games or map packs or it translates into microsoft points?
Worst thing is, just because they have a low amount of achievements, doesn't mean that they suck. The may be leet, but just don't play every single game that comes out.

I tip my hat to you Mythic on your Tome of Knowledge; be proud. You got something right.