Yes, after… who knows HOW long, I finally got around to updating the Suggested MMO List. I’d normally talk about this kind of thing in the Off-Week Update, but considering I literally spent the entire day working on it, I think it’s deserves its own mention.

Here’s the major changes:

Updated with every suggestion I could find.
I might have missed a few, or just plain didn’t count them as MMOs. (i.e. Heroes of Newerth is another MOBA, and I explicitly stated in the League of Legends review that MOBAs are not MMOs. Also I keep having to say this, but I don’t count Team Fortress 2 as an MMO. Not that that’s going to stop anyone from suggesting it again.) If you have one you suggested but it’s not on there, consider that one of the options, but feel free to suggest it again if it does fit the definition and I just missed it.

Split the games into categories, “Downloadable”, “Browser-Based”, and “Free-to-Try”.
Downloadable MMOs are priority one on MMO Grinder.
Since Browser-based are harder to record, and very often don’t exactly follow MMO formulas or merely don’t have much content, they may only occasionally appear as Official episodes, or will appear if I ever get around to making a Browser-Based spin-off.
“Free-to-Try” MMOs are MMOs that claim to be Free-to-Play, but severely limit you in gameplay. I consider these “unlimited trials”. See the likes of “WoW” and “Wakfu”. Grinder eps might be done on these, but with the “Cash Shop” portion changed to reflect subscription/purchase benefits.

Deleted nearly all the comments.
General consensus among the comments from the last off-week update was that it made perfect sense to delete the comments once the list was updated. I left two comments there for two reasons. One provided a link to the soundtrack of the game suggest, and that would really help me out when it comes time to look at that one, and the other had a warning for another game that had major security issues. Comments that suggest a game only, or talk in depth about a game on the list will be deleted once the list has been properly updated. I apologize for that, but the page was becoming a severe mess and I couldn’t let it continue on like that.

Please keep all suggestions to either my e-mail address (mmogrinder@live.com) or the Suggested MMO List as I all too often see suggestions popping up in other areas. Exceptions will be made for posts like this, regular episodes, and off-week updates, but please do not post suggestions on the Episode Guide, About, or F.A.Q. pages.

Speaking of upcoming pages, I’d like to eventually get the Terminology page set up. What kind of terms that I’ve used, or that you’ve heard me use would you like to see on there? Right now I’m planning on including not only common MMO terms, but terms I’ve made up, like “Microsoft Points Syndrome”. Please leave comments here about what terms you want to see on that page, just so I can add to the list I’m already thinking of.

Sorry for missing the update for Episode 17. I was still in debate as to whether or not I wanted to do these vlog style yet, but I’m not entirely sure where I’d want to host them. Eh, this is still easier.

First off, a quick thing from last week, the views on World of Tanks were fairly low, but then again, I didn’t expect them to be that high. World of Tanks, at least outside of Europe, isn’t all that well known and it doesn’t sound like something most people would want to play. They’ve gotten a bit better, but it was just an odd thing I noticed. Still not nearly as bad as Fantasy Tennis. Tonight, La Tale goes up on TGWTG, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Speaking of La Tale, I really do enjoy it. It’s yet another game I want to keep playing but have no time for. I am having issue with the gamepad not working well, especially if my computer is being heavily taxed at the moment. I even bothered to downgrade Skype, and I forgot how terrible the old version is, when it comes to speed. So it’s either render it useless when playing La Tale, or work with an inferior version.

And of course, since La Tale landed so many reference to Maple Story, I did start hearing about the planes again. Yes, I know about the planes. You do know that cutting 10 minute flights to 5 minute flights are still about 4 minutes too long. It’s still a pointless repeating cloud background, right? At least in… yeah I’m going to say it.. World of Warcraft… At least in WoW, when you ride a gryphon, you’re given a nice scenic tour of the landscape. The longest possible gryphon flight you can take in the game is only 9 minutes long comparatively, and that’s travelling from the top of one continent to the bottom. And no one takes that flight if they know a mage or understand the boats. Speaking of, the boats of WoW are a ton more like the Orbis travel system in Maple and they only last a minute. You spend more time (usually a minute or two) waiting for the boat, and once it arrives it takes off fairly soon, travel slightly away from the pier and then.. amazing concept here, a loading screen shows your map marker travel to the next area and you arrive seconds later. And please please PLEASE stop telling me I can just walk through Aqua Road to El Nath and up Ludibrium tower or whatever (don’t correct me. I don’t care.) and it’s “much faster”, well if that doesn’t make the game’s travel sound even MORE broken I feel the players are just trying to rationalize an obviously broken system and pretend like it’s no big deal. When walking around the FUCKING PLANET is “faster” than taking a boat to a neighboring continent, something is seriously wrong with your travel design. I really wouldn’t mind it if it happened ONCE, but every time you need to go back and forth is utterly ridiculous. Long story short, shit’s broke man.

Of course, Maple Story and La Tale isn’t my next game, so I need to get onto working on the next one, as well as my side project coming up.

A couple questions for the site-going public…

1. Would anyone mind terribly if I deleted all the comments from the Suggested MMO List once I finally get around to updating it?
My reason for this is WordPress, as far as I can work it, doesn’t have a way to group comments properly, and since it seems most people would rather tell me what to play, instead of commenting on my videos themselves, (Seriously, Suggested MMO List has nearly 200 comments to my second highest commented page of 26 comments.) the page is FLOODED with comments, many of which are repeats, and cause WAY too much to load for anyone clicking the page. I’m not saying I don’t want anyone to comment on that page anymore, but at least read the list before making a suggestion. Hell, I’ve had more than one person asking me to review games I ALREADY REVIEWED. See why I doubt the sincerity of some of these suggestions?
What I’m getting at is… every time the list is updated, all comments below will be deleted. Yay or nay?

2. Would anyone object to or have interest in a “Terminology” page?
Speaking  of projects I’ll probably never do, some might have noticed that I use terms in MMO Grinder that don’t always get defined. This is due to two reasons:
A.) I used the term in several episodes already and defined them previously.
B. ) I forgot.
So I figured the best way to get around this is to have a terminology page on here, where people can familiarize themselves with terms that MMO players, or perhaps even just myself, use on a common basis. Not entirely sure how I’ll set it up, but something I wanted to gauge interest in.

Oh and Aion is going free to play. I know Aion is going to free to play and it’s all I can do to board up my windows against up the storm of people who will spam me with “PLAY AION IT WENT FREE TO PLAY” that I’ll have flooding my inbox in the next week. Well I’m going to tell you two things right now.
YES. I will be reviewing it.
NO, it won’t be the minute it comes out.
Trust me, you have to let the initial fervor die down or the game will be completely unplayable. It’ll be choked with more gold farmers and new players looking to play and/or troll until the servers crash, and I don’t want to review a product when it’s learning the free-to-play ropes. I have previous experience with Aion, and those who watched Episode 0 might have noticed more than a few clips of the game in that video. Like Champions, and STO,  Aion was another game I fell for the fervor of playing at near launch. While I did enjoy the game to pay for another month when first starting out I had a bunch of issues with it, and I’m very interested to see what’s changed over the years.

One final thing: The very first MMO I reviewed on the Grinder will be shutting down on the 27th. Say good bye to LUNA Online for me, ok?

Ok, that was an unexpected rush. Well. Ok, it was a little expected, considering how many people asked me to look at the game.

I tried to field some questions about the STO review through Formspring and didn’t get many results back. At least nothing I didn’t answer. Honestly, I really mean it when I say I know pretty much nothing about Star Trek. I did watch parts of the new movie when it was on SyFy last week. I do want to see all of it. That counts for something, I hope…. probably not.

A major thank you for everyone who clarified the issue with character slots. The game made it seem like I had no more than one slot per account, and wasn’t clear on the system of how it was supposed to work. For those who watched it early on and didn’t rewatch it, I stated that one slot meant you’d either have to buy a new character slot, or possibly delete your original character. THE TRUTH is that you have 2 character slots, but the second is only unlocked once you reach level 25, so you can make a Klingon. Character slots in general are still quite limited, though. Sure, every “class” in the game pretty much extends to “guy with a laser gun”, but it’d be nice to give a quick look to all available bridge specialties.

I also had a lot of people informing me about the differences in the Klingon missions and ships. While I did outright state I wasn’t going to look at the Klingon side at all, I’m not entirely opposed to making a supplemental review to go along with this one once I reach level 25 and try out Klingons.

…but considering the next game I’m playing that might pose a problem… HOLY HELL this game is addicting. I picked it simply because I knew there wouldn’t be too much to explain and I’d be able to knock it out in a few less days than normal, considering it wouldn’t have nearly as much to talk about. But I have been pumping HOURS into it, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop. Such a simple game, but such an amazingly interesting system. Oh, it’s not for everyone, I can assure you, but it’s something that you can pick up and drop at your leisure… provided you can drop it.  The video SHOULD be out next week, but I really need to peel myself away from it. It’s that much fun for me.

Any other questions about the STO review, please ask them here. If not, let me know if you’d be opposed to me possibly doing a vlog version of the off-week update. I have some ideas on how I’d do that.

Off week update already? Where does the time go?

In case I haven’t repeated it ad nauseum in my videos, I’m currently heading out for MAGfest. Literally. I should be packing, not writing this.

Regardless this is my self-imposed duty do I’ll get something out before I make the drive.

First off, next ep… should go smoothly. I had to do a few things differently, but hopefully that won’t cause an issue in editing. It WILL probably cause an issue in vid length and quality, simply because it’s a browser-based Flash game, and my processor doesn’t like doing those at the same time it’s using fraps, or Debut, or what ever else I have to jury-rig to in order to get what I need. I’m almost positive this ep is going to be late. For real this time!

In other news, I probably have a few new fans… or enemies from my City of Heroes review. For those of you scratching you heads at what I just said, let’s just say that when I said the community was “passionate” I forgot how close that also includes a few of bits of “obsessive”. Ok, before you think I’m harping on all of you, I’ll say that’s not the case. My comments on BT and here have been, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive for a review I thought I had to rush through. In fact, a second version was just uploaded to fix issues I had with a credits typo, and adding the definition of “cooldown” when I first mention it.

However, I only recently found out the REAL reason the poll had so many votes for CoH. Ya know how I said that the forums posted about the poll? Well, yes they did… but whoever runs the CoH Facebook page at Paragon Studios also posted it there to it’s 50k plus fans. Most of whom probably said, “Not sure what this is. Voting CoH anyway. COH ALL THE WAY WOOOO!”

Well Paragon again posted on the CoH page, this time linking to my review. And… wow… did I apparently piss some people off. While I’m certain most of the people didn’t really watch the entire video, as most of the critiques was “Not sure what this is. What is he talking about WoW? CoH is better. COH ALL THE WAY WOOOO!” there were a lot of people who gave legitimate complaints, but stemming mostly from not exactly knowing what I do. So I’m going to clarify here:

1. “It doesn’t cost much to unlock those features! If you can’t afford to play, you shouldn’t be playing!”
This stems from my referring to how limited the game was in chat if you didn’t pay for anything. Hate to burst the bubble, but this is a Free-To-Play review show. I review the game as a free-to-play, regardless of the model of F2P used. Trust me, I’d mention how limited WoW’s F2P model is as well. Doesn’t make it less true.
It also doesn’t matter how “cheap” it is to unlock these features. If one has to pay 50 dollars or 50 cents, it’s still not “free”. Half these comments came from long time players who admittedly didn’t even know how the F2P model worked.

2. “Combat isn’t slow!”
Ok, fine. The combat does end up getting faster when you get more powers at later levels, but when starting out, and especially coming from another MMO when your character, especially as a melee class, just STANDS there taking punches while you wait to decide if you want to stab them again… that’s slow to me. People also took offense to me saying there was no auto-attack, and well… there isn’t. What I mean by that is one I right click on my enemy, as in most other MMO games, my character should start attacking them. If I’m wielding a ranged weapon I should start taking shots. If I am melee I should be punching or swiping constantly. This game doesn’t do that at all. As I said, in order to attack at all you need to use a power, which is the equivalent of only being able to attack with spells in other MMO games. (A line which kept getting taken out of context, and reminds me about something I’ll talk about in three.) In addition to that, You’re frozen in place while they cast, and completely unable to move, and if you’re used to playing a caster class in other MMOs this is going to feel really restrictive. Add to that the fact that these powers don’t usually do all that much damage, have a high chance of missing early on, and have a shockingly long cooldown. (Yes the enhancements let you change these as much as you see fit, but the early ones are, as I’ve been told on several forums, nigh useless, so it really sours the newbie experience.)  Yes, other MMO’s have a casting time, but a lot of powers are “instant” letting you move while using them, and most basic mage casting spells take 1-3 seconds on average to conjure, and can be cast again IMMEDIATELY after launching the spell. Unlike those games, though, positioning, and movement isn’t nearly as important, and this doesn’t effect the gameplay whatsoever. Your character CAN take a good beating most of the time. I was told that Ctrl-clicking on a power will let that one auto attack as long as an enemy is in rage, so there;s that, but not what I meant by “auto attacks” The same goes for “Aura powers”.

3. “They’re “missions”! Not “quests”!” 
I hate “rebranding”. What’s “rebranding”? Rebranding is when you take an existing and common concept and give it a brand new name, despite having changed nothing. LOTRO was filled with “rebranding”, going as far as rebranding the stats as well as the names for guilds, and parties. In MMO’s there are common terms that carry across all of them. The most common is “quest”. Did an NPC tell you to go to a certain location and retrive/kill/find some sort of book/monster/guard? Congrats. You’re on a quest. It doesn’t matter of the game I’m playing calls them “excursions”, “missions”, “adventures”, or “skiddlyborts”, they are quests. It’s the name most recognized by the community at large. In the review when I first identify the quests as CoH as “missions”, I continue to call them that for the rest of the review. The same goes for me calling “Supergroups” guilds. They’re guilds. That’s what the MMO community calls them. Case in point when I said the line, “In LOTRO at least they let you chat and join guilds”, if I had said, “In LOTRO,  at least they let you chat and join Kinships” would anyone outside of the LOTRO community have known what the hell I was talking about?

4. “You’re just a WoW lover! GBTWoW!”
You know I haven’t played WoW in over 6 months, right? I think THIS is why people are so pissed about my calling the game terms by the simplified MMO equivalents. Because they’re the same terms used by WoW. And they think I’m a WoW fanboy “angry” at CoH. You know why I mention WoW so much? Because it’s the game I’ve played the longest. It’s the one I’m most familiar and most importantly, it’s the most popular and identified MMO in media. It’s the easiest for outsiders of the MMO community to relate to. I sure as hell don’t see WoW as the be-all-end-all of MMOs and I’m not trying to convince people to play that game instead. It’s the whole reason a “Play-Pay-Pass” system exist so I can compare the game I’m reviewing to the most expected standard, and let people know objectively what the game is like so they themselves can make the informed decision to play it or not.

5. “Your review was limited/rushed!”
Yes. It was. But not in the way most people think it was. Check out some of the other MMO reviews out there if you want to see limited. I’m maybe seen only one other person try to delve into the entirety of the game, and you can imagine what kind of hell they would wreak on your social life and video release schedule. TBH, I think I’m taking a risk with a fortnightly show, considering that it doesn’t lend itself to recognition as well. Yes, I don’t have all that much time to delve into an MMO as someone who’d take a month o more between them, but I’ve always been about the basic ideal and concept of the game. A newbie’s guide. An outsider looking in. Of COURSE an insider is going to know the ins-and-outs of playing a game they’ve been with for years. I’m not going to know this, and I’m not going to ask. It’s unfair “above-the-board” knowledge to those who AREN’T going to have someone hold their hand throughout the entire review…. Also isn’t  it more fun to let players discover the quirks and deeper aspects of the game themselves? Isn’t discovery of new things what a LOT of people look for when playing MMOs?
The simpler fact was… this review was scheduled for Christmas week, and I had a LOT of things to do… and once Christmas actually came around, I got sick. This was NOT an easy one for me to finish.

Honorable mention: “This game does have a loot system!”
It’s a crafting system, and it’s not available to F2P. When I think loot system, I think taking stuff off of enemy bodies, having to prioritize space. Selling things I find to NPCs, and constantly wanting to upgrade to the next +5 Sword of Unending Disappointment. Enhancements come a lot closer to this system but not close enough that I feel it’s the same. Some players are admitted loot whores and only want to play a game so they can raise their e-peen level with an intangible item written in purple text. Those people would be lost in CoH.

Well, sorry for the rant, but I figured I’d try to clarify my points a bit better… I must be off though. I should have left for MAGfest a half hour ago.

Really not much to report, just hoping like hell I can get this one does being freaking Christmas time and all.

City of Heroes is going well enough, but it’s a little intimidating, knowing how long the game’s been around, and how much I’m probably going to miss when talking about it. If you want to look for me in game I’m “Ciann Magnol” on the Guardian Server (Hero side) and “Violetshade” on the Virtue Server (Villain Side).

If you are considering playing CoH, allow me to inform you of an issue I had installing it to help you in the event you want to try. I’m going to mention this in the review as well, but this is more for people looking to find me in game now.

If you are a former CoH Player, looking to get back in, or you played a few NCSoft games a while back and haven’t updated them in a while (i.e. Guild Wars, Lineage II, Aion) make absolute certain you delete your old NCSoft launcher if it’s still installed on your system. CoH will NOT let you install the game and instead will give you a vague error message and refuse to patch the game. Delete the launcher from your system, then run the installer, and everything should work normally.

Fantasy Tennis was kind of a dud review views wise, but I kind of expected that. Can you believe there are still people who think I’m not part of Blistered Thumbs yet? I’m posting weekly over there… not like I’m that hard to miss. Well, hopefully I can keep this up with this episode. More working on it tomorrow I guess. I think I’m just over compensating for the amount of time I’ll be out and about for holiday stuff.

So since I won’t be finished with the episode before Christmas, I’ll just take this time to say Happy Holiday of your preference this December and maybe I’ll see you at MAGFest 2012 if you’re heading there. I’ll probably be really drunk though… pretty sure of it.

So League of Legends is out of the way and I’d like to clarify a few things.

One.
Again I don’t hate this game, but I sure as hell can see why people wouldn’t like it. It’s an odd game of push and pull, where the people who are good at the game seem capable of superhuman feats. I know I’ll pick a champion, have people console me for not doing well with them, and then MegaGWolf will pick the same champion next round, and lead in kills, making me look like an absolute tool. He’s unholy at this game… Or he’s got better runes. One of the two.
Any reservation I may have seemed to have, or constant repetition of basic facts was entirely to quell the more rabid of the fans. Those who’d be ready to jump on me because I didn’t mention a single nuance about something. While that did happen to a much lesser extent, overall it was pretty well received. So I’ve got that going for me… which is nice.

Two.
Why did I repeatedly state it wasn’t an MMO? Because in my mind, it wasn’t. DId I place it until the “MMO category” of Blistered Thumbs? Of course. My show is “MMO Grinder” after all. And as I stated there’s a lot of MMO like stuff in the game. There’s level grinding, there’s skill trees. There’s items to equip, and skills to upgrade. Why was I so explicit about stating a game with a different playstyle was not an MMO. Well, some of you might point out that Pangya (now posted on Blistered Thumbs) doesn’t count as an MMO. Hell, the next one I’m doing might not fit with some people’s ideal of an MMO. But it fits with mine. Both of them. Why?

Self contained community. In case you’re wondering what I mean by that… League of Legends doesn’t have one. In the game your only means of talking to others are in game, in the lobby or in specific set aside chat channels.
“Ok, fine.” you might say, “but the same goes for Pangya doesn’t it?” Sure. The game itself is limited to 4-30 people at a time, and some might argue that’s not much more then LoL. And I’d agree… but there’s so much more to an MMO then the game. Think about it.

In Pangya, you can join guilds. You can set up holes as chat areas specifically to interact and talk with dozens of people. There are items to sell and trade. There’s a community with an economy, and that in itself is also part of the game.

League of Legends doesn’t have this. Only until recently could you actually form groups of players, and those are just limited to team sizes. Unless you are with friends, you are on your own. You can’t post on in-game bulletin boards to set time to play with others.  You can’t send other players mail. You can’t buy or trade items from other players.

So my reason for LoL not being an MMO probably isn’t the same reason you have… but I like to think it makes sense.

In other news, the next episode should be finished early, and I’m positive no rabid fans of the game are out to get me this time. There’s really not too much to talk about, so I’m hoping to be scripted by the end of the week.

Speaking of rabid fans, (I AM NOT MAD AT YOU GUYS, SERIOUSLY. I swear I come off as an asshole in text AND speech.) the Superhero MMO is pretty much a lock for the victor. Still, I know weirder things have happened, but expect that announcement very soon.

Also since I’m been blabbing about LoL so much, Andrew “Andycak” Leavitt and myself have been working on a stupid side project on Youtube… I’ll embed a video here and let it speak for itself. There are currently 18 videos out of the 80+ champions. I’ll keep it going until neither of us want to live anymore.

If you want to join any of us goofy bastards in a round of League of Legends, message “Nios” in game and maybe I’ll have time to play. Also if you haven’t signed up for League of Legends, you can do so by clicking here. There is no ulterior motive involved with you signing up through that link. Fer realz and stuff.