July 2007 Entries
More Dungeons and Dragons Online over the weekend, and I'm now, if anything, even more confused than a week ago, rather than getting the hang of it all, as one would expect. Two very different kind of session, showing me two quite different sorts of game really. Last time saw me grumbling about being in a group that didn't really need me, and so to avoid similar kinds of frustration, I took the initiative a bit, and did something I almost never do in my usual online wanderings, and that's start a group of my own. The party...
A bit of extra-curricular Guild Wars activity recently, seeing me poking about with nervous curiosity at the Great Temple of Balthazar and environs, mostly for a sense of completeness with the World Map uncovering. The various PVP-dedicated bits of the world of Guild Wars are largely campaign independent and mostly located on a separate island chain, where live the Zaishen Order, a kind of monastic order mostly concerned with the pursuit of enlightenment found by beating each other to death, and beyond. On these islands are a number of lobbies for various types of PvP event, along with the Guild Hall, which...
Ask and it shall be delivered!
My first real go at group work in Dungeons and Dragons Online the other night, and something of an eye opener, and exercise in frustration to some extent. I'd quite quickly found myself fascinated with the idea of traps, secret doors and so on, so rerolled as a Rogue, to better get to grips with this unusual and somewhat unique feature. Also, the dwarf's running animations are pretty awful, somewhere between 'constipated ape in a hurry' and 'seized up robot'. Turns out I needn't have worried too much - halfling running looks just as...
Fascinating discussion here, and quite possibly one of the longest blog post titles I've ever seen:
Broken Toys: See you in Ultima Online… no, Shadowbane… uh, DAOC… hey, SWG… wait, Horizons…. Vanguard?… Darkfall! YEAH! Totally see you in Darkfall, newb!
In which Scott picks over this gem of an opinion piece at Darkfall Warcry. Now I don't really know a lot about Darkfall, which is perhaps an error on my part, but I can't quite remember the last time I was called a plebian, mouth-breather and moron all in the same article! Well, not me personally, but according to Redmorgan, there are...
So moving on from the contemporary masked vigilantism, it's back to basics with Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach. Of course, the first stage was getting a trial at all, which proved to be a bit of an adventure in itself. "You have followed the link given to you by the DDO trial webpage, and now find yourself gazing at the terrifying visage of a File Planet login page. Vile and unpleasant banner ads crawl about the screen in all directions, clashing wildly and threatening to overwhelm your resolve and send you off to find a Matrix Online trial instead....
Another fortnight, another hopelessly unrepresentative lightning tour of an MMO that I'd never quite gotten around to trying before. This time it's Cryptic/NC Soft's City of Heroes. While there don't seem to be any free trials to be had directly from their website, there are lot of bulk trial giveaways floating about out there, so getting a look at the game isn't too difficult, and just requires a bit of hunting about. They also run a Refer a Friend scheme if you do have a friend on the inside.
The trial is for 14 days, is a full client download - about...
Dramatic Music! Tense Plot Culmination! "Previously on The Tuesday N00b Club..." flashback! I'm sure you've all be unable to eat, sleep, concentrate on worthwhile and/or necessary Real Life Tasks, nervously wondering if we'd fall at the final challenge, or if the imaginary online pretend world of Elona would be saved! Again! By us! More importantly, is it even possible that the word 'Closure' can ever be applied to an MMO? Well, let me put you out of your indifference...we won! Huzzah! Bucking the trend of one successful night out followed routinely by one disastrous one, this Tuesday session saw...
More City of Heroes over the last few days, and more ramblings here! So far I've made it to L17, largely without noticing it at all which is always nice. I seem to be settling quite comfortably into the role of front-line aggro-taunting meatshield, especially with the various tools they give you for gaining and holding aggro, and of course actually being able to survive the beatings is useful too. The group work continues to come at a fair old pace, and I rarely find the time to solo while playing, or indeed, the inclination. Mind you I'm not quite...
Meanwhile, in Guild Wars: Nightfall, the Tuesday N00b Club forges ahead, and an end is in sight. Night has fallen on Elona, and the world slowly but inexorably slides into a twisted version of it's former self, made hideous by the taint of a chained, maddened and vengeful god. Only a small band of plucky and driven heroes stand between the end of all things, and the slim hope of salvation, restoration, and victory.
I'm getting quite excited by it all actually, largely because of the clever way in which the Guild Wars Campaigns, and Nightfall in particular, are constructed.
Threaded throughout each campaign...
Just a quick plug, in case dear reader, you haven't seen this yet:
1UP.com: News
Specifically, look for the Massive Update: Weekly MMO News pieces, which I seem to have trouble permalinking, so you'll have to scan the list manually. These have been going for a few weeks now, and are the work of Michael Zenke, of MMO Nation, are definitely worth a read.
Of course this is partly shameless reciprocal backslapping backlinking, as he seems to link to yours truly on an alarmingly frequent basis, down there in the 'What People Are Blogging About' bit, but also I can't help be impressed...
Having spent most of the weekend actually out of character creation and playing the game, I'm now starting to get a much better idea of what City of Heroes is really like. Mind you - still couldn't resist making up another couple of heroes with the outstanding My-Little-Superhero Dress Up Playset they've tacked on the front of the thing.
Compelling stuff, and it's just as well you get so many character slots really. Clearly both CoH and CoV are an Alt-o-holics nightmare, and a certain degree of focus is needed to actually pick one and get on with it, but...
Next stop on my current series of Operation Cheapseats, is Paragon City; the City of Heroes. Now unlike most of the games I end up trying on this project, CoH is a confident, self-sufficient and popular game, and as such, clearly doesn't feel the need to just hand out passes to anyone passing their website, and so has no direct 'Try CoH for Free!' link on their own websites, and actually finding a free trial was quite tricky. They seem to be the preserve of the 'added value giveaway', typically granted in finite quantities, to PC Gaming Magazine Coverdisks, or other...
And so, after an awful lot of dawdling, detours, side-trips, expositions, reversals of fortune and sundry other sub-plots, we've finally made it to the Desolation. This is a distinct new region of the worldmap of Nightfall, and possibly one of my favourite to date. We're now in the wilderness, having left civilised lands behind, and the new areas are not really like (or inspired by) anywhere historical at all, instead being a rocky tortured landscape of sands, ruins and sulfurous deserts, all presided over by the large dark 'Nightfallen' tendrils, which seem to have sprouted from the earth pretty much everywhere...
Oops. A mere day after my Operation Cheapseats mini-review of Auto Assault's 14 day free trial, this news, found via Tobold's comments (Yes, yes, I was ego-surfing; no-one is perfect!)
Auto Assault: News
Which all goes to answer the mildly curious question I had a couple of posts back, 'How can they afford to keep Auto Assault going?', the answer to which seems to be 'They can't.' All a bit of a shame, as noted previous; it's not a bad game, by any stretch - just a rather quiet one.
Interesting seeing the various comments on this blog and others, from those that did...
And so the the roundup, after two weeks on the interstate system of a wrecked and ruined future. The Auto Assault trial can be found here:
Auto Assault.com: News - Look for the link near the top.
( EU players should try here instead: eu.autoassault.com/pcgamer)
Trial lasts 14 days, the client requires a ~3GB download, and the whole exercise requires no credit card details, but does need a PlayNC account setting up.
After an unexpected alien bombardment causes millions of deaths and thousands of mutations, and a failed attempt to restore order using a race of specially created biomechanical-enhanced shock troops, the remnants of genetically pure humanity, under the...