MMO Grinder

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.

Alright, let’s get this thing out of the way…

First off, I’m positive I don’t need to mention this to anyone who’s reading this, but who knows?
I was recently picked up for Channel Awesome’s Blistered Thumbs. The only thing this will effect is that I will place the Blistered Thumbs bumper at the very end of the video (post stinger). I’ll post on LordKat’s Blogs and Angry Bananas, but let’s face it… a good amount of you come here first, anyway.

I’ve been getting some oddly overwhelming feedback from people, which I honestly didn’t expect. I never go into something expecting a warm reception. What I DO hear most often is that I’m very stiff in my delivery. Some even take it as “lifeless”. I guess now is as good a time to tell you that’s just how I look. I think a lot of people might be overly used to the “angry reviewer” trend that was so prevalent these past few years, but I don’t think multiple camera angles, wearing sunglasses, or flailing my arms around while wielding garden shears constitutes as a review. I really don’t appear on camera that much, unless I have a quick joke to make that I think would work better visually. That’s just how I roll. For the most part, I let the words or the footage do the talking. I only seem to go on camera to remind you where that voice is coming from. I know I’d forget.

The Superhero MMO Poll is going much better then I thought… mostly because someone posted about the poll on a message board. (Don’t think I didn’t notice the sudden influx of comments and votes, even before I checked in with the “referrers” feature on this site.)

I would like to mention to those players/commenters one thing, because there seems to be some confusion. The poll isn’t giving an award to the “best MMO” or saying that the winner is the best choice of the three. All the polls are are a gauge of interest in a certain MMO, and the winner is the one I review for that episode. In no way does that mean I WON’T review the others at some point, nor does it mean that I’m going to give any special praise to the poll winner. I’m going to go in the same way I always do. I know a lot of people think I was very negative to Maple Story, but I honestly expected to be much more harsh about it, and it was nice to see the changes they made for the better. (Also, is traveling around the entire fucking world REALLY a better option that taking the transportation provided? That seems broken as hell to me. Why not tell me it’s easier to get to China by waiting for winter and walking over the Bering Strait, and through Russia?)
Ok, I digressed long enough. When it comes right down to it, when you vote in a poll, you’re only making my job in choosing the next MMO to review that much easier. I am very impressed by your fervor however.

So, League of Legends. Ok… You all were right. It’s NOT an MMO and it really doesn’t fit my definition of an MMO, so yeah. You were right about that. Still there’s a bit of roots and style that lend itself to MMO like development, such as talent trees in the form of “Masteries” and equippable bonus traits in the “Rune” system. There’s summoner levels to be gained and grinding to be done. So it’s closer then Team Fortress 2 will ever be.
I’ve… yet to start the script because… there’s not nearly as much to talk about, and I’m wondering how I want to go about doing it. Perhaps I’ll get more work done today, if the weather would stop being so damned depressing.
If you want to catch me online in LoL, look for me as Nios, but I do play alongside a few other people. Feel free to ask me if I want in a game, but don’t expect me to answer yes every time.
I have to warn you, though. I am absolutely terrible.

I haven’t updated the Suggested MMO List in a while, and I really should get on that. I think I might want to organize it better… like separating Browser-Based MMOs for the others. I’ve received a FEW new suggestions but still haven’t gotten around to doing anything but removing Rusty Hearts from the list.

So, before I go, I mentioned that LoL doesn’t really fit what I think counts as an MMO, but as well all know, that’s a heated discussion for the ages. So much so that it’s the topic of a podcast I have been in that recently started up with TWBfromTDOB (an MMO news blogger who frequently posts on the BT Blogs, and Tyger from MUD2MMO. Right now it’s only one episode, but keep a look out for “The MMO Underground”. In time, I’ll probably have a link to it on the sidebar once we have enough episodes up. So if you want to hear a recording of myself talking out of my ass to other people for about an hour, feel free to check out the Pilot, here. We just finished recording the second episode, and if you want to keep up on anything and all things MMO, check out TWBfromTDOB’s site here.

Ever since DC Universe Online went free to play all of… a few weeks ago, I’ve been bombarded with requests and inquiries as to whether or not I’m going to look at it. While the interest is there, I am noticing that a LOT of people were also requesting City of Heroes and Champions Online, two much older, formerly subscription based, and now Free-to-Play MMOs that I have previous experience with.

Since both CoH and CO put up an initial good fight in the last poll, and the interest in DCUO is there, I figured… why not pit all three against each other?

Same poll rules apply as last time.

• Poll closes the Saturday night before the previous episode is released. In other words, just before Episode 11 airs. (Sunday Dec. 11th, 12:01 a.m.)
• In the event I am unable to run the game that wins, for whatever reason, the next highest voted game will be chosen.

I added a new twist this time around. Now you will not be able to see the results in the poll, so you won’t be able to vote stack the game that’s currently winning to ensure its victory. Have fun now.

Ok, as many of you might have figured out by now, my Eden Eternal episode is now up on TGWTG’s main page. (Well, second page by the time you read this.) I’ve noticed a major influx of views on here, so if you’re just arriving…

Welcome to anyone who’s found this site from TGWTG! I usually post new Episodes every other Wednesday, while I update with news about the show here but that is subject to change. Feel free to check the About page to get an understanding of how the show works (as well as find Episode 0). You can also check the F.A.Q. for other more specific show questions, otherwise, feel free to ask. You can also find the Episode Guide to see what’s been currently reviewed, or the Suggested MMO List to see what’s being considered, or offer suggestions of our own.

If your comments are not appearing immediately after posting them, it’s because I have to approve the initial comment. Luckily, I get the alerts to my e-mail, and can approve them over my phone when I see them. After the initial approval, you can comment again at any time. I do this to weed out the amount of spam WordPress blogs usually get, as even though the filter here does a decent job detecting them. Usually.

Ok, that’s over now. Time for the actual update.

I’ve been playing Rusty Hearts for a good while now, and like DFO, I think I have more then enough footage and knowledge to finish up, so I’m using the time to make sure I can cover as much as possible. I’m finding the lack of the “awakening” mode information a bit annoying, and since I’m already level 21 with Angela, I’m not sure how much further I have to go before I reach it. It might end up being another “Skirmish” issue like in LOTRO where I didn’t have the time to reach the appropriate level, but we’ll see. As for footage I’m sure I have more then enough, but I might need to delve into PvP… just because I like being humiliated before I finish playing.

I’m noticing that once you leave the first town area, and move onto the second, the framerate (on my PC mind you) seriously dropped, and it was a lot more lagging. Unfortunately the stages weren’t much better as the Atrium was pretty choppy… I chalked it up to my PC being junky again, so I’ll delve back into it solo. I also need to verify something about the gamepad controller option, otherwise this should be on time. Vegas willing.

Looking at the Poll for Episode 10, it seems a tug of war between Ragnarok and League of Legends. It’s nice to know that one isn’t drowning out the other, but it’s sad it seems like it’s only down to two games again. Now since I want to have ample time to deal with possible video issues, the poll will be officially “closed” on 12:01 a.m. Sunday, November 13th. (That’s “Saturday night” to avoid confusion there.) Whatever the poll reads at that time will be game I look at. Standard exceptions apply. (i.e. “Shit don’t work no good.”) Make your final pushes soon.

Stay tuned for Episode 9: Rusty Hearts on Wednesday. It’s a game I’ll probably keep installed, so message me if you want to find me in game as “Vaias”.